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Down in the depths with CRIMSON PEAK

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

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Charlie Hunnam, Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro, Jessica Chastain, Jim Beaver, Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston

Crimson Peak

“Is this Rebecca or Notorious?” a friend whispered at a certain point while watching Guillermo del Toro’s new ghost story Crimson Peak. It’s a little of both, plus Suspicion, Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, and probably more of the Hitchcock canon. Del Toro paying homage to Hitchcock and adding his own supernatural twist—think Devil’s Backbone—ought to be a glorious thing, but instead despite a thoroughbred cast, gorgeous production design, and exquisite cinematography, the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own silliness. Fans hoping for a return to del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth form are in for a disappointment.

The trouble with Crimson Peak is that it is one of those films that is entirely dependent on otherwise smart characters turning suddenly stupid. That Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a penniless baronet who comes to 1901 Buffalo, NY, ostensibly to raise funds for a new mining process to extract rich red clay from beneath his land, would turn Edith Cushing’s (Mia Wasikowska) head is understandable. He is handsome and charming and is the only person besides her industrialist father (Jim Beaver) and childhood friend, Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), who takes her writing ambitions seriously.

But besotted as she is, it’s hard to fathom why Edith finds nothing creepy about Thomas’ possessive sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) or why—once the action moves to England—she would agree to stay in complete isolation in a crumbling house where she observes that it’s colder inside that it is outside. Evil doesn’t even have to be lurking. Edith is a literate woman. She’s surely read the Brontes and knows what happened to those women, and Allerdale Hall, the Sharpe family estate, has all the earmarks of a conduit to death by consumption. As it happens, something is amiss with the Sharpe siblings and their grandly decaying home, but even with ghosts crawling out of the walls and her growing suspicion that something is not right with Lucille, Edith stays put. She’s smarter than that and she’s a woman of means, so what gives?

As one incident piles on another, Crimson Peak doesn’t just jump one shark, but an entire school of them. Any film that incorporates del Toro’s own supernatural obsessions and this much Hitchcock in it ought to at least be suspenseful. Instead, moments clearly meant to frighten an audience, invite howls of laughter. Casting Hiddleston and Wasikowska together only invites memories of Only Lovers Left Alive, and makes one yearn for Jim Jarmusch’s offbeat sensibility. One wonders what he might have done with this material. Perhaps Jarmusch would have been kinder to Chastain, who couldn’t be more cartoonish if she was playing Jessica Rabbit. Del Toro set the bar high for himself like The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. In not reaching those lofty heights, Crimson Peak is a tremendous letdown.–Pam Grady

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Review: Jim Jarmusch finds true romance in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE

17 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

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Anton Yelchin, Jim Jarmusch, John Hurt, Mia Wasikowska, Only Lovers Left Alive, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston

"only lovers left alive"Beneath Jim Jarmusch’s cool, hipster veneer beats the heart of a romantic and he proves it with Only Lovers Left Alive, a paean to the constancy of love wrapped in the tale of a vampire couple, soul mates for centuries. Horror nibbles at the edges for the ethereal twosome played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, but what resonates in this gorgeously photographed, often darkly funny drama is their unconditional devotion to one another.

Jarmusch says he took inspiration for this tale from Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve. Somehow from that congenial author’s fables about the biblical first humans, he glimpsed these ultimate outsiders. And while they may be bloodless, undead creatures, they also may be the warmest in the filmmaker’s universe. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a morose, reclusive rock musician, living among a huge vinyl record collection and a pile of vintage guitars in the ruins of Detroit. The more exuberant Eve (Tilda Swinton) resides in luxury in a beautifully appointed, book-filled home in Tangier. Though separated by geography, these opposites are as one.

Adam and Eve are also living in a dangerous time for their kind. Their food source, human blood, is no longer reliable. What runs through the zombies’ (as Adam derisively refers to mankind) veins is too often tainted. Eve has a reliable supply of the good stuff from the couple’s friend, playwright Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt). Adam’s connection is a doctor (Jeffrey Wright). But when Adam and Eve come together again in Detroit, a reunion they celebrate with a night out clubbing with Eve’s wild child sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) and Adam’s human friend Ian (Anton Yelchin), their well-ordered lives fall apart, and along with it their connections. The couple is soon on the run and thirsty, very thirsty.

That need to feed prompts fear, but also soul searching for these creatures of the night. Is it time, at last, to reclaim their mortality? Ava calls them snobs, and they are. Scrounging for blood is at odds with the sophisticated images they present to the world. Death as an option would satisfy their vanity. Shuffling off the immortal coil together would be one last grand romantic gesture. It’s something to consider, anyway, on a long night in Tangier.

There is a lot of beauty in Only Lovers Left Alive, starting with the ravishing leads and Yorick Le Saux’s shimmering cinematography. Even Detroit’s desolation looks alluring in the film’s evocative nightscapes. More than its pretty stars and beautiful photography, it is Adam and Eve’s enduring passion that makes this Jarmusch’s most appealing film in years. The vampire trappings, the deadpan humor and the dangerous situation that threatens them are almost beside the point. One gets the feeling that if Adam and Eve’s hearts could still beat, upon seeing each other, they would beat a little faster – even after hundreds of years. –Pam Grady

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