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Where the Wild Things Are:
The IMAX Experience
By Scott Mendelson

It is often said that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a children's novel that adults can enjoy, while The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an adult novel that children can enjoy. This statement in itself constitutes a form of elitism. Just because Huck Finn is a better, richer novel than Tom Sawyer, it must be presumed that the second story must not have been truly intended for children. This idea rears its ugly head in the discuss ion of family films as well, as poorly made family films are often labeled 'just for kids', while superior family entertainment is often accused of being secretly made for adults. The very idea of high-quality entertainment that is specifically directed at children seems to be some kind of oxymoron in the critical community. I have no idea for whom Spike Jonze crafted For the Wild Things Are. But the film is a high-quality children's movie.

A token amount of plot: Coping with his parents' divorce and having few friends, Max (Max Records) has taken to dealing with his pain by acting out in a somewhat animalistic fashion. After an argument with his mother (Katherine Keener), Max runs away and sails off to another land, a truly wild place where the animal inhabitants decide to make Max their king. But Max quickly realizes that being a ruler of such an untamed world may be more complicated that he realized.

Technically, the film is a glorious achievement. More or less eschewing CGI, director Spike Jonze creates his fantasy creatures the old-fashioned way, with puppeteers in costumes and animatronics. By having real costumes and thus the illusion of real monsters, the film reminds the viewer how much more powerful an image is when you can actually believe your own eyes. While the vocals are provided by name actors, the most emotional moments often come from the silent facial work of the 'wild things', a staggeringly lifelike effect that makes the viewer forget that they are watching special effects and allows them to simply marvel at the performances of these non-existent creatures. Needless to say, the both gritty cinema vérité shooting and editing style and glorious fantastical compositions look even more striking in the IMAX format, where this world literally envelops you in its dreamlike haze.

Visual wonderment aside, the film does suffer a bit in the second act. Once the fantasy world is solidly introduced, we do little but wait for the third-act conflicts to raise their ugly heads. But the lack of incident in the second act sets you up for the genuinely powerful conclusion. The emotions in this film are shockingly raw for a children's adventure story, and there is a certain primal fury lurking just underneath the surface. So while children may be upset by the emotional violence at play in this story, the film will surely play as a healthy outlet for youthful frustration, as well as a cornerstone for any number of discussions about the burden of childhood and the complications in the 'real world'. The finale is both uplifting and heartbreaking, I was sincerely moved.

I have not read the original Maurice Sendak book in twenty-years, so I cannot say how faithfully his vision was executed. But the film is a stirring and often powerful meditation on the painful process of growing up. The film quickly becomes a skewered variation on The Wizard of Oz, where the hero learns to both appreciate what he has in the real world and sympathize with those entrusted with his care. The creatures that Max meets are not literal fantasy translations of the people in his life, but the problems that they are dealing strike a chord with the young adventurer. With the roles reversed and Max now burdened with being the emotional caregiver, he realizes the difficulty of being all things to all creatures. At its core, Where the Wild Things Are is a story of a young boy who takes a first step towards manhood by learning empathy.

While the picture deals with issues that are somewhat unusual for a would-be family film, it is absolutely appropriate for children. Spike Jonze has crafted a fable that resembles a childhood daydream, but with the messy complications of human existence. It is serious without being dark, it is moving without being a downer. It is a flawed but compelling adventure parable that is occasionally magical. Where the Wild Things Are is a fine film, no matter how we choose to classify it.
Grade: B+

'WHIP IT'
ELLEN PAGE
By Sean Chavel

If you can believe in the idea that an actress like Ellen Page can recall the formula of a previous success ("Juno") and rework and tailor her appeal into another movie, and yet excel it further, than you can believe that her performance in the new film "Whip It" is one of the year's best. The Academy will likely overlook her for a nomination because it's a roller derby movie even though they should take more time to consider that it is more than just a roller derby movie.

Page showed up a Hollywood hot spot this week to promote her new movie.

Q: We heard that you became an amazing skater because of the training you did for the movie. Do you miss it now that you don't have to do it?

Ellen: Yeah I still make sure I do it. My derby trainer and I became friends, so I called her the other day so we went for a little skate. I can't really derby right now because I'm shooting another movie. But we just sort of do some mellow skating nowadays.

Q: What did you like about skating?

Ellen: I grew up playing sports so I'm already attracted to anything that allows me to use my body and my mind and just throw it into something. It was exciting to learn something new. I know this sounds weird because I'm so young, I'm 22, but still it's like there's not a lot of stuff that you're just learning like that anymore. You know what I mean?

Q: So besides stretching every morning to get prepared what kind of routine did you have?
Ellen: [Trainers] whipped my butt into shape. I worked with a team five days a week to skate, and training for derby three days a week. That's all I did.

Q: Your character had a soft spot and emotional component but how did you approach the requirement for your character to also be ruthless out on the track?

Ellen: Oh well, I think that's one of the cool things about the derby world. You meet a lot of women who have never played a sport their entire life, and never thought they would, who then become the biggest derby jocks. It's kind of like this dualistic life that a lot of these women have. Here's my character - shy, introverted and quiet - and then found this thing that ignited this passionate fire within her and allowed this confidence to just erupt.

Q: In the love scene did you get water up your nose?

Ellen: [Laughs] I don't remember the water up the nose, but yeah, it's a bit challenging. It's one of those things where you're doing and thinking no one would ever do this. But I loved the way it turned out and love the Jens Lekman song that plays. You know the scene where Juliette Lewis throws me into the hot tub. That went on a lot longer originally where she keeps shoving my head down under, and it's actually quite violent, there was a lot more water up my nose in that one. And it was hot tub water!

Q: Not at all a vanity exercise, Drew proves herself to be a real director with this movie. What tipped you off right away that she had talent with this job?

Ellen: From the moment you meet Drew. She's just super intelligent and works tirelessly. Here was somebody that was in pre-production for her first feature film and simultaneously training to be a roller derby star. The fact that she was always available and always emotionally present with the material - her vision was so clear and she was assured with what she wanted.

Q: There was something in the press notes that was not explained. What is fishnet burn?
Ellen: Fishnet burn is when you fall and skid so fast on the ground - obviously you are wearing fishnets - that it makes the mark embed into your skin.

Q: Did you have one of those?

Ellen: Ah, no. I gotten some wrink burn for sure but never while I was wearing the fishnet pattern.

Q: Did you girls ever show-off amongst each other and compare bruises?

Ellen: I never got big bruises. Drew got a lot of bruises but she just bruises easily. I got more bruises by beating punched than roller derby. Because we had a female fight club going on. I don't know if you saw that at the end of the movie [end credits]. That was going on during the entire shoot of the movie. When I watch the movie you can SEE there's like make-up covering the bruises. You would think it's from bruises but it was from being punched by Drew and Kristen Wiig, and all, everybody punched each other. Long hours makes one a loopy gal! [Laughs]

Couples Retreat
By Rei Nishimoto

Finding the humorous side of relationships between people and how they work on it comes in an assortment of ways. Couples therapy is the latest wave of how couples attempt to work on improving their relationships, and the funny can often be found.

Couples Retreat looks at four couples who are all encountering problems. Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) are one couple who are overly happy except they do a superb job at masking their own problems. As a way to save them from divorce, they choose to take a vacation to a tropical resort in the South Pacific designed to help couples through therapy.

They enlist their other couple friends - the child raising Dave (Vince Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Akerman), the loveless yet married Joey (Jon Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis), and the newly divorced Shane (Faison Love) and his new much younger girlfriend Trudi (Kali Hawk) - Jason and Cynthia are short on cash and enlist under a group rate. They give the couples a fancy slideshow about the resort, and they are thinking they are about to go have fun. This is where they quickly learn the other couples are about to have their relationships under a microscope like Jason and Cynthia.

They are met by Schtanley (Peter Serafinowicz), the British resort manager who is overseeing their stay. His blunt yet snobbish personality quickly interacts well with the four couples, where brief conflicts over what they expected from the resort and what was about to happen in the story build up naturally.

Another key person in the film in Marcel (Jean Reno), a Zen style therapist and founder of the resort. His methods of trying to work with the couples clashes with their lifestyles and causes tension to each of the couples. His unorthodox methods, such as having the couples disrobe on the beach to swimming in shark-infested waters, is the beginning of many laughs throughout the film.

Each of the couples never dominate throughout the film and compliment each other very well. Jason and Cynthia want others to think they have the perfect marriage except they try to hide their problems from the world. Dave and Ronnie are the couple who are only looking to spend some time away from their two young boys. They also are viewed by the others to have the good life, except they cannot see that. Joey and Lucy are the couple who are too busy seeking other singles on the resort and are too blinded to realize what they have. Plus Shane is trying to impress Trudi by overdoing things.

Part of their resort stay includes sessions with a couple's therapist (played by Ken Jeong, Amy Hill, John Michael Higgins, and Karen David). Each couple has their relationships examined closely, which creates tension for most of them. Their interactions with the therapists expose each of their vulnerabilities, but also creating problems that did not exist before.

Each of them discover each other's troubles, as Shane briefly loses Trudi over a fight and runs off to the single's resort. The rest of the group attempts to help Shane by going across the waters to the resort. During that moment, Cynthia breaks down and tells them about her secret. Joey's wandering eyes leads him towards younger singles he met when they arrived, and Lucy is impressed by the attractive yet flirtatious yoga instructor Salvatore (Carlos Ponce). But throughout their wild adventure, Shane finds what he was looking for, as well as the other three couples in their own wild ways.

This movie is not quite the comedy of the year, but the story is relatable enough for viewers to enjoy and find a few laughs along the way. There is a humorous side to this entire story without getting too ridiculous and becoming distasteful. Couples Retreat is enjoyable from beginning to end, and rarely has a dull moment.

Paranormal Activity
By Scott Mendelson

It is a rare thing to walk into a movie by choice expecting to dislike if not outright hate it. Yet off I went to a Saturday evening showing of Paranormal Activity, praying that it would not be a replay of The Blair Witch Project ten years prior. The ingredients were frighteningly similar. We had a no-budget horror film shot on a home video camera made to look like a documentary of real events, a reliance on implied terror and just off-screen menace that theoretically excused a lack of any actual scary imagery, and a carefully plotted advertising campaign that played up word of mouth from underground screenings and made the movie seem like an event that you had to experience before your friends did. But, the results are different this time. Maybe it's because I wasn't caught my surprise this time around, and thus I knew what I was getting into. Or maybe Paranormal Activity is just a better film than The Blair Witch Project. But while Paranormal Activity certainly is not the scariest film ever made, it also did not leave me with sharp feelings of anger, betrayal, and the distinct impression that the movie going populace had just been conned.

A token amount of plot - A young couple have recently moved in together into a new home, but they've been plagued by various loud noises and odd occurrences while they sleep. Determined to solve this mystery, the couple sets up a video camera in the corner of their bedroom to try to record some evidence of the mysterious goings-on. Needless to say, if they didn't happen to record some most disturbing stuff, then there would be no movie. But as the occurrences increase in quantity and quality, the young couple realize that this may be more complicated than a simple house haunting. That's all you get and that's all you need. Unlike other critics, I won't reveal how much or how little you see or don't see. I won't tell you if the film relies purely on off-screen scares or actually has some creepy imagery. Unfortunately, the majority of the movie fails to truly terrify not because of its minuscule budget, but because of the film's strict adherence to its own rules. Horror films work best when you realize that you cannot trust the filmmakers. But writer/director Oren Peli crafts a low-tech chiller that almost plays too fair with the audience.

I hesitate to say more, because I don't want to spoil by implication (consider that a spoiler warning). But the film quickly sets a very specific pattern as to when the scares might come and when you can catch your breath. The very best scares (think the big jump-scenes in Jaws or Deep Blue Sea) usually come during 'time-out moments', when the plot and character seems to be developing in between horror set pieces. But the world in Paranormal Activity is very strictly divided into 'potentially scary' and 'plot and character' scenes. Once that line is set in stone by the first third of the picture, we know that we will never, ever be caught off-guard. Furthermore (and this was a big issue with Blair Witch as well as the theatrical cut of One Hour Photo as well), the opening exposition basically establishes the fate of our major characters, so once again we understand that everything that happens until the end of the picture will be a false alarm of some kind.

Of course, one might find terror through empathizing with our young couple, but they aren't the least bit developed. While Katie Featherstein makes an empathetic victim as the primary target of terror, the male half (Micah Sloat) is written as annoying, unsympathetic, and occasionally counterproductive. Even more so than in The Blair Witch Project, the constant recording of every important moment of the narrative strains believability. So despite the ambitious ideas and somewhat successful execution, we are left with several false scares that all occur exactly on cue with very little to entertain us during the downtime (a wannabe ghost-buster provides rare comic relief).

Having said all of that, it's a more honest film that The Blair Witch Project. It won't make you dizzy, it's always in focus and easily audible at all times. The movie never really cheats and establishes a genuine filmmaking talent with just $11,000. If you must experience the would-be phenomenon, make sure to go to a packed theater, so you can at least enjoy the screams and shouts from more easily traumatized moviegoers. It's not a terribly scary film, but it is occasionally clever and it won't leave you feeling angry.

Shriekfest Film Festival
By Jonathan Weichsel

The 9th annual Shriekfest horror film festival ran from October 1-4 at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. Shriekfest, founded and directed by Denise Gossett, is the longest running horror film festival in North America. The festival features some of the most cutting edge films in the horror and dark fantasy genres.

Lo, written and directed by Travis Betz, is a dark fantasy with strong comedic elements about a young man, Justin, who calls on the demon Lo in order to retrieve his girlfriend April, who was taken by a demon. Lo plays mind games with Justin, who spends most of the film sitting in the center of a pentagram, his only protection from the demon. Lo shows Justin flashbacks of his time with April. Instead of using traditional flashbacks, the film represents Justin's and April's history as a series of black-box theater scenes.

I am a sucker for unique production design, and Lo features some tragically beautiful imagery. The theatrical scenes are reminiscent of Wes Anderson, but the entire look of the film is completely original. The production design is minimalist, but Travis Betz is able to get more meaning, and mileage, from each little detail than most directors are able to get out of an entire feature.

It is conventional wisdom that horror deals with our fears. However, Lo works so well because it deals with desire. Featuring a touching and ultimately heartbreaking love story, Lo was winner of the Audience Award for Best Feature.

Another great film was the smart, witty horror-comedy How to Be a Serial Killer, written and directed by Luke Ricci. I have always found bromance comedies creepy, without exactly knowing why. How to Be a Serial Killer clearly articulates why these films disturb me. The film's Oscar-worthy screenplay cleverly dissects the twisted dementia lurking below the surface of bromances both real life and fictional.

The film deals with a successful, charismatic serial killer, Mike (Dameon Clark), who takes on Rob (Douglas Dickerman), a shy loser, as his apprentice. Mike sees himself as improving the world by killing bad people, and Rob aspires to be a great man like Mike. There is a disparity of status within the relationship, with Mike using all of his manipulative powers in order to string the sycophantic Rob along on a path of cold blooded murder. Dameon Clark won the festival award for best actor.

Shellter was the festival's one entry in the extreme horror genre. It is also one of the most terrifying films I have ever seen. The film, inspired by the Milgram experiments, is about a woman trapped in a bomb shelter after a biological attack with a sadistic doctor who tortures and eventually brainwashes her. Writer-Director Dan Donley holds an MA in psychology, and he used his expertise to great effect in crafting the film. The doctor uses status, fear, and his patients' survival instincts in order to manipulate them into becoming killers. The extreme horror elements go much further than anything that has been done in the Saw or Hostel movies. It is also much more intelligent than anything in either of these film franchises. Shellter had me squirming uncomfortably in my seat, and I loved every
second of it.

Evil Angel is a sexy, stylish, supernatural erotic drama. Horror and erotica have always been first cousins, and Evil Angel deals with one of the oldest stories to cross the two genres, the story of Lilith. Ava Gaudet gives a bold, charged performance as Carla, the suicidal wife of the film's hero, who after a few attempts finally manages to kill herself, and wakes up as Lilith, the world's first woman. Gaudet is a brave actress, and one of the festival's standout discoveries.

The best action film of the festival was Evilution. To put it simply, in Evilution director Chris Conlee crafts a fun, exciting rollercoaster of a zombie flick.

To learn more about shriekfest, including this year's winners and finalists, visit them at:
www.shriekfest.com

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