Waitress

There isn’t a mammoth amount to be said about Waitress, other than that it is Adrienne Shelley’s last movie (the director was murdered late last year during post-production) and, in contrast to that awful tragedy, happens to be one of the gentlest, happiest, most heart-warming pieces of simple confection I’ve been served up in a long time.

The opening scenes tell you all you need to know, really; Jenna (the utterly gorgeous Keri Russell) is an unhappily married waitress in a tiny mid-west town, squirreling away her tips and dreaming of winning the local pie-baking contest so, with the prize money, she’ll have enough cash to leave her oafish husband Earl. However, she finds herself pregnant, and wonders how she’ll ever cope, now that her plans must inevitably be kicked into touch.

Resentful of the baby, she tries to resolve her feelings and create a new future for herself. As she does this, whenever she reaches a moment of stress, she drifts away into a pie-dominated dreamscape where she bakes the most phenomenal pies that have ever existed. The great thing about going to see this a month early, with press and film-y people clamouring for some advance lowdown, is that you get the occasional freebie. Here, it was a nifty little recipe card with some of Jenna’s dreamed-up pie masterpieces:

Anyone who knows how these things work will be able to guess Jenna’s reaction when the wee bairn finally makes an appearance, and no, there are no surprises here, but what this loses in predictability it makes up for in sheer unadulterated heart. And when you smile as someone walks off – literally – into the sunset and you’re beaming away like a loon, you know that you have a little heart left too. Joyous.

Plus, it has pie. Lots of pie. In fact, these must be some of the best pie-making scenes ever committed to celluloid. Pie-tastic, in fact.

1/2 for the movie

for the pie

(actually, +, now that I’ve remembered the Marshmallow Mermaid Pie)

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

Yes it’s gonna be a cold, lonely summer…

image courtesy of rottentomatoes.com

There is a tide in the affairs of man, the Bard wrote, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true, and often life pans out poorly, bound in shallows and miseries, if you Will. We must, we’re told, take the current when it serves. And so, yes, sometimes things work out, but mostly they suck, mostly they fall flat on the ground and disappoint us immensely. Never is this more apparent, for culture vultures such as ourselves, than when we invest a couple or more hours sat in front of a truly crap movie. We hand our hard-earned cash over, we take time out, we sit in the dark…and we are thoroughly discouraged as we emerge into the light, blinking and blinking annoyed by what’s been served up before us.

 

Consider, however, the same feelings, only massively magnified, for yer average Horror/Thriller/Fright fan. The proportion of poor to good movies in these genres is something truly extraordinary to behold. Ever since watching the old Bela Lugosi Dracula as a kid I’ve searched for that elusive treat, the horror film that genuinely delivers. And it is an almost fruitless quest, let me tell you. That tiny handful of diamonds in the rough, a Night of the Demon here, a Dead of Night there, does not a fulfilled cinematic life make. For every Exorcist there’s a hundred Screams, for every Ringu there’s a thousand Slithers…it really is a thankless task. One might almost be tempted to give up the chase were it not for the possibility of finding that one shining gem hidden in the mire. I remember seeing The Innocents one sunny Saturday afternoon and being scared out of my wits by its creepy beauty; these things exist, it’s just finding them, and not getting disillusioned by the near-overwhelming tsunami of trex that’s out there.

Which is why All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, the UK Premier of which I saw a couple of days ago, needs special mention. Mandy is a gift to those of us who have made that journey, a treat for all those who’ve sat through the countless Fridays, the Elm Streets, the I Knows, the Hallowe’en sequels…this is our moment; this is our perfect moment.

Schoolgirl Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) is loved by everyone. Not just the boys, but everyone. Not just the geeks who worship her, or the jocks who want to get with her, but everyone. She exudes an effortless charm and ease, and yet she’s ultimately unattainable, unknowable. Even the bitchy, slutty Heathers-a-like want to know her; she’s on a pedestal, but not of her own making, she’s different, but she walks among the mortals. And they love her for it. Mandy smiles and talks to them all, but so far she’s let no-one in.

There she is boys, Mandy Lane. Untouched, pure. Since the dawn of junior year men have tried to possess her, and to date all have failed. Some have even died in their reckless pursuit of this angel.

Mandy wants to be a part, not apart, and so, in the perfect instance of plot set-up, she accepts an invitation to the ranch of one of the members of her school’s Alpha group; beautiful rich kids, hedonistic, loved up, drug-fuelled, boozy and horny. She says no to the Js and shotgunning the Bud, she politely brushes off the overt sexual advances of the boys:

Bird: You know we are all trying to get you right?
Mandy: Get me?
Bird: Get with you. But here’s the deal, I’m not like the other guys

Yeah, right. But Mandy doesn’t express it so cynically; she just smiles that smile.

And then, as the night comes around, and the others start to bitch and get wasted, there are fall-outs and storm outs. And some people don’t come back from their moody exits; some people get cut to ribbons.

The slasher scenario is perfectly choreographed, then, the crew (the stoner, the jock, the dick, the bitch, the slut, the hero, the heroine) are all assembled; what’s so different? Well, with Mandy Lane, the difference is that this isn’t some po-mo smug-a-thon with smartass cultural references; the stereotypes are gradually rounded out so that – dammit – you actually start to give a shit about them, and more importantly – bizarrely – there’s no real hiding of the perpetrator. This isn’t a cheap throwback to the pants slice ‘n dice movies of the 80s, this is its own thing. Conventions are set up, you’re kidded into thinking down a certain route and then, without realising it, you’ve gone somewhere else. Oh boy, have you gone somewhere else. For the last quarter of an hour, though, you won’t really mind where the film takes you, or that you’ve underestimated it, because you’ll be enjoying the ride so much. There are some crazy, bloody clever deviations here, some neat tilts back and forth that bugger up with your sense of expectation, and some extraordinarily beautiful cinematography thrown in as a huge bonus (one sequence, with a grim drama being played out before a background of stop-frame forked lightning against a slate grey sky is just stunning). And, at the very end – as I willed them to take the road less travelled towards a conclusion – I almost punched the air when they delivered the most satisfying ending I’ve ever seen in a horror film.

I’m a boy, and I loved Mandy Lane:

image courtesy of Occupant Films

I’ll see you in the sunlight
I’ll hear your voice everywhere
I’ll run to tenderly hold you
but Mandy you won’t be there…

The Abandoned

Marie, an American film producer, travels to Russia seeking information about her biological parents. The solicitor who has been working for her, Misharin, informs her that her mother died shortly after giving birth. However, she discovers that she has been left the family house, a great rambling estate in a remote mountainous and wooded part of the country.

She goes to see it, but encounters great resistance as the local superstitions claim the area is damned. Only one man will embark on the journey, a stranger who appears to know about her. On arrival the guide mysteriously vanishes, forcing Marie to explore the derelict house alone. She finds someone else on the property: a man named Nikolai, who claims to be her twin brother, also seeking his parents. Because their transport has gone with their guide, they are incapable of returning to civilisation.

Almost immediately they begin to be plagued by terrifying visions of the ghosts that prowl the estate during the night. Ghosts that look exactly like them…

The Abandoned, made by the Spanish director Nacho Cerdà, who was part of the crew responsible for The Machinist (in fact, many of the crew worked on both projects), is a film that is wholly reliant on mood and atmosphere. The plot, once the beautiful visuals and the gloriously eerie sounds are stripped from it can be written on the back of a postage stamp…but then, so can almost all ghost stories.

Admittedly, there is a nagging discomfort apparent as one tries to iron out the illogicalities of the plot, but this shouldn’t detract from what is a very lovely looking film indeed. The Film Festival meet-and-greet guy where I saw it introduced it as a “big, beautiful film” and it is all that; as if David Lean had decided to make an intimate slice of phantasmagoria.

When it works – and it works pretty much all the time – it does that thing that modern horror movies rarely manage, it keeps your admiration ticking over while thoroughly creeping you out.

Hell’s Ground (Zibahkhana)

Set in modern day Pakistan, Hell’s Ground takes the age-old horror convention of young, sophisticated suburbanites being thrown into a terrifying alien landscape and runs pell-mell with it, bumping crazily into all manner of homages and thefts from old movies but adding a few unique little twists and turns all its own.

Somehwere just outside Islamabad, an isolated rural area is beset by huge environmental problems. Outrageously infected water supplies have led to horrific diseases and defects. Ignorant of this, a group of friends, OJ, Roxy, Ayesha, Simon and Vicky set out from the city on a hidden-from-parents trip to a distant rock concert. Ayesha, the baby of the group, is cautious and naive, worried about the lies she’s told to get away from home. On the way, in their Mystery Machine-a-like Scooby mobile, the gang toke on a few Js and talk about music and rebelling against their parents. Diverted by a protest, aimed at the factories polluting the rivers, they end up in an uncharted jungle and are soon lost. When they stop for a comfort break, OJ the stoner of the group, is attacked off-camera by a madman with a face “like a leper”. I imagine you’re way ahead of me, and I’m sure it’s no surprise that as OJ’s health deteriorates we see more and more of the creepy countryside, with strange leering figures walking zombifically (it’s a word) through the scrubland and trees. The sense of dread develops quickly and at one point we tip full length into an horrific Lucio Fulci-style chomping on intestines cannibal-fest.

It is at this point that the thrust of the film alters and the intense sort-of-unDead storyline judders to a halt and – as the car (natch) runs out of fuel – we clatter straight into a full-on, over the top, stalk-and-slash hunt to the death. First one, and then the next, and then the next, of the young blades discover what happens when the isolated and forgotten have been suffering for too long, unknown and unwanted. The damaged and mutated villagers they’ve previously witnessed are nothing compared to the hermit-like monster they now stumble on. As the first victim comes to his gruesome end, there’s no looking back, no moments of rest, no let up; it’s like having someone scream directly into your face for twenty minutes. You almost miss the colon-chewing loonies from Act 2.

Hell’s Ground is as rough as a badger’s arse, there are some eye-rolling jump cuts and the director is too in love with his fish-eye lens to evoke dread than is healthy, plus, it’s so derivative as to be actionable, but…I loved it. Omar Khan directs with an infectious (no pun) exuberance and the result is patchy, but one thing that really comes alive is the sheer sense of absolute, nerve-shredding, WTF! terror that all great horror movies must have. I recognised all the steals, but I still had no idea what was going to happen next, and for that it deserves huge credit. Some nifty little comic graphics between ‘chapters’ give it a knowing swagger, too.

There’s a genuinely heartfelt social/environmental message thrown in, and the Urdu/English patois that the kids chatter away with is incredibly addictive to listen to.

A rip-roaring ride into darkness.

½

End of the Line

End of the Line is a balls out horror thriller that starts of with a genuine out-your-seat shock and then follows the various conventions of Survival/Apocalypse/Slasher movies (like Warriors crossed with Dawn of the Dead crossed with any of the Fridays) as we hurtle headlong towards the grimly unenlightening conclusion.

Karen (Ilona Elkin), a young nurse who works in a psychiatric ward in a large Canadian city – it may have been obvious or mentioned, but I missed it – boards the last subway train of the night only for it stop suddenly in the middle of the tunnel. At this point you might, as I did, be forgiven for thinking you’re in Creep territory, but writer/director/producer/editor (hmmm) Maurice Devereaux has grander, more ambitious plans than that particularly narrow slice of hokum.

This is an end of the world movie, albeit on a miniscule budget, and so we have to act within a fairly small frame of reference (the train carriages to start with, then the tunnels they’re sat in) whilst talking in grander terms about the world above ground. This is relatively well done to begin with, but grdaually becomes quite limiting. Thankfully, for much of the time there is a grinding sense of dread and panic as the small band of survivors head out to try and get to safety.

I fear that End of the Line is rather taken with its own sense of subversive socio-political intent, for it places the blame for Armageddon at the hands of homicidal religious cult members, who chant their “Brothers, Sisters, God is Love” message as they massacre all around. Portentous political and religious symbolism (the killers’ daggers are crucifixes, they all wear brownshirt uniforms) are painted in unsubtle broad brushstrokes across the screen and regular screenings of “The Reverend’s” world-destroying messages don’t lighten the mood one bit. Of course, you can have a lot of fun with this sort of thing, but it’s all played dead straight and is ultimately rather cloying and one dimensional as a supposed threat. In the last few moments, as the situation becomes desperate, a new and unexpected card (not unlike the startling mood-shift of From Dusk Til Dawn) is played and it’s woefully ill-advised, not fitting at all with the general vibe of the movie. Poorly executed, this derails what had been, up until that moment a fairly competent actioner with a handful of meaty shocks.

The acting won’t win any awards, but this is nevertheless an entertaining and competent on-the-run piece; shame about that ending.