Somehow I got onto a really dark movie path in the passed few weeks. We Need to Talk About Kevinis my latest stop on The Feel Good About Nothing tour.

We Need is the story of a mother who never makes a connection with her son. From the very beginning there is an emotional rift between Eva and her son Kevin. Kevin immediately picks up on it and grows to completely resent his mother. Up until Kevin turns 15, there is something very strange about Kevin. Eva is very cautious and tentative about it while her husband Franklin dismisses or outright ignores any signs of wrong doing. One day at high school, Kevin innacts a plan that cannot be ignored.

A great and rather odd cast anchors We Need. Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly play Kevin’s parents and Ezra Milller plays Kevin (the two kids playing Kevin at age 3 and 7 are shockingly good too). There’s a real chemistry and disturbed energy between Eva and Kevin that is brought to life by Tilda and Ezra. John C. is more known for his comedic roles, so seeing him in a movie like this was a real trip for me. He makes it work though, as he plays Franklin as a gentle and loving soul that is unknowingly in the center of a growing maelstrom. The story is told from Eva’s perspective, or more accurately her memory. We bounce around from the past to the present and back again gaining pieces of the puzzle with each stop. It’s a bit jarring in the beginning and it’s hard to tell what’s really going on, but the ebb and flow does click in and makes sense. There’s a lot to take in from scene to scene as the visual palate changes every time Eva recalls different moments.

The topic of We Need is a complex puzzle (and rather taboo). It’s nature vs nurture, the role and responsibilities of parenthood. There’s really no clear answer to the puzzle and the movie clearly shows that. Seeing things through Eva’s memories, it’s like we’re thinking about what happened with her over and over again. Is she responsible for all of Kevin’s actions? Is she the one to really blame? Where did it go wrong, could she have done anything differently? “Why?” is constantly asked and never answered. We Need is a stark look into the side of tragedies that is often over looked. We always look first to the perpetrator, but what about the collateral damage to the immediate family? A lot of lives get ruined in a wide radius.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a uncomfortable movie to watch, but it’s really thought provoking and that makes it worth experiencing.

Elijah Wood stars in Maniac, a remake of the original made in 1980 (which I have not seen). I’m a big fan of Elijah Wood and his work here made for one of the most effective horror movies recently released.

Frank is a very disturbed young man, molded by an abusive childhood where his mother subjugated him to things a child should never see. With mommy issues galore, Frank takes it out on women he stalks in the night, killing, then scalping them to keep as a trophy.

Using a rather unique first person perspective that is pulled off extraordinarily well, we are literally put into the head of a psychopath. We come out of his head only for brief moments which makes for a really tense and disturbing horror experience. While we don’t hear Frank’s thoughts, we do hear everything he says. He’s often fighting with himself, so it doesn’t take much inference to figure out what he’s thinking.

Elijah Wood is really terrific, giving Frank a real emotional core of a person who just never had a chance. He’s so mentally disturbed, just struggling to hang on to some sort of normal life. He manages to make a living by restoring mannequins and when he meets Anna, he thinks he might actually see a light at the end of the tunnel. He desperately wants to have a relationship but constantly snaps into a murderous state, haunted by flashbacks to his childhood and the physical torture of migraine headaches. There’s a war in Frank’s head and the audience is a witness to it all.

This is a tough movie to watch and the visual effects are very, very well done making the horror seem all that much more real. Really great editing, this must have been a tough film to pull off the page and put onto the screen in such an effective manner. I think this is a real standout for horror buffs.

Zombies over here, zombies over there, zombies everywhere! With the zombie craze still going strong, every medium of media is getting a piece of the action. World War Z started as a book that took an interesting angle of the zombie apocalypse: an anthology of stories from survivors of the outbreak. The horror retold from the ground from people who saw it first hand.

The film adaptation starring Brad Pitt is much more conventional in it’s story telling. Abandoning the format of the book, we follow a UN employee in NYC named Gerry Lane. From the start, the outbreak is a full blown epidemic. When it reaches the city limits, the sickness travels like a tidal wave over everyone (literally and figuratively. The zombies are the sprinting variety as seen in 28 Days Later). Making it out of the city with his family, Gerry travels the globe looking for patient zero which may be the only hope of finding a cure.

Where the Romero movies are horror movies wrapped over social commentary and The Walking Dead is a showcase of how people are often the real monsters, World War Z is more of a disaster movie on a grand scale. The action set pieces are huge with hoards of undead that resemble insect hives conquering a neighboring nest. Gunfire, grenades and heavy artillery explode in a desperate attempt to slow down the end of humanity.

Overall it’s a good movie. While I found it low on horror and devoid of any gore, it’s still a tense ride. The first half is on a grand scale as you see society being trampled into the ground where the last half scales things down to just a few people in a confined environment. It’s a smart move as there’s only so much CG city destruction you can show before full action fatigue sets in and the more focused ends brings things back to a more traditional zombie movie.

Having no gore in a zombie movie is really odd, but what is shown is an exciting action movie. There’s a lot of CG monsters that look good, but the make up work (again really shown off in the last act) is very good. These guys tend to click their teeth together which makes them unintentionally funny at times and things seem to go into Brad Pitt’s favor all the time, but I can’t find much that really bugged me. Smart move with the ending too, it’s not all nicely tied up in a bow.

Chucky is usually left out of the horror movie talk. It’s always Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers. You’d hear Pinhead and Leatherface long before Chucky too. Being a murderous doll does have it’s disadvantages (a solid kick will probably save you). Child’s Play hit theatres in 1988, at that point Friday the 13th was up to it’s 7th movie. So while he’s always been in the shadows of the bigger horror icons, Chucky’s fan base still appreciates him. The series continues to pop up over time and this year we get the 6th movie, Curse of Chucky.

The last 2 movies strayed from the mold of the first 3, adding doll family members and more comedy to the mix. The series went in the direction that the Nightmare on Elm Street veered into, leaving straight horror for more camp. Curse of Chucky pulls things back to the original, the trapped soul of a serial killer hiding in plain sight, bumping off people one by one to get to his goal. They really tried to make a straight forward horror movie while expanding the lore of the franchise. For the most part, it worked.

It’s a great low budget movie. Made for a few million dollars, all that money appears on screen. Most of the movie takes place in an old house, so the scope is very narrow and precise. Chucky is delivered to Sarah, who we find out is part of Chucky’s past. She opens the box and it’s just a funny looking doll, so she sets it aside for her granddaughter at the request of her daughter, Nica.

Chucky is wisely in hiding for the entire movie. He only reveals himself to people when it’s too late for them to defend themselves. It works to build tension and suspense really well and the pay off is usually great. There’s a body count of 6, which isn’t too much, but it fits the series and the deaths are well done. The puppet work is really outstanding, with little CG added (only when he’s seen walking down stairs). There’s a real life to him and the voice of Brad Dourif is perfect as usual. My only complaint is that he seems to change in size from scene to scene. When he knocks someone down and walks up to them with an ax, you can see his legs are maybe 4 inches long. He’d never be able to walk downstairs normally with legs that long. He’s huge when people pick him up, but not nearly as big when standing on his own.

The story is solid as it’s a mystery in the beginning that slowly unravels right into the end. I was really surprised at the end as it’s not something you see much. If you like the Child’s Play movies, check this out for sure. If you’re in the mood for a different kind of slasher movie, go for it and have a good time.

I wanted to see The Perks of Being a Wallflower simply because Emma Watson is in it. I’ve followed all of the main Harry Potter kids to their other movie projects and this is Emma’s first outside of that universe. So with her casting getting my attention, I looked to see what attracted her to signing on this movie.

Perks started life as a young adult novel published in 1999 by author Stephen Chbosky. He wrote the screenplay and directed the film so he saw his baby right through from book shelf to big screen.

Charlie (Logan Lerman) is a high school freshman in the early 90’s who doesn’t have any friends. The tragic death of his aunt when he was 7 and then the recent suicide of his best friend have made Charlie keep to himself. He finds comfort in books and writing, his new English teacher is the first one to make a real connection with him in some time. Then he meets Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller), seniors (and step siblings) who befriend him and change his life.

Perks is a great coming of age story that works so well because of its awesome cast. Emma is brilliant as Sam, who Charlie falls in love with the first time he sees her (easy to understand and relate to). I’ve never seen Ezra before (and half convinced myself that he is Paul Dinello’s son) but I love his work too. They have an immediate chemistry together and with their close friends Brad, Candice and Mary Elizabeth. It makes the story and interactions of characters seamless and believable. In the ways that The Breakfast Club became landmark roles for its young cast, I think Perks will have similar effects on this cast from a new generation of kids.

Charlie is at a tough spot in his life and as the movie goes, you see more of why the way he is. Events out of his control and understanding have molded him, but the support of his family (big props Nina Dobrev who plays his sister Candace. She reminded me of my sister which was kind of a trip). Even though Charlie has a lot on his shoulders and emotional problems because of it, I always felt for him. He was never annoying or obnoxious and Logan’s acting in the last act of the movie is exceptionally good.

A couple plot points from the book were wisely edited out of movie, which streamlines Charlie’s journey and keeps Perks from being way too dramatic and overbearing. There’s already a significant weight being pulled around by Charlie and I think any more would have just made it a hard movie to watch. Great editing, sound track, directing and cinematography made this a great surprise for me. It’s got a lot of what I look for in a movie.

I watched V/H/S 1 and 2 just in time for Halloween, so I’m going to lump them together and talk about them in one post.

V/H/S is a anthology horror series that uses found footage as its hook. There are 5 stories that are linked together by the over arcing story that some lowly crooks are hired by someone to break into a house to steal a VHS tape. They walk into way more than they could have ever imagined. It’s basically a rip off of The Ring set up, but the real meat and potatoes of the movie is watching the VHS tapes that are found. The stuff in the house with the crooks is really paint by the numbers stuff, so it works out well as a whole. There’s only one story I didn’t like and that was the rip off of Friday the 13th. Much like why I don’t like the over arcing story bit, this run of the mill slasher tale does nothing new and has the worst SFX in the whole movie. That’s like the 4th story and thankfully the first one shown is much stronger so it doesn’t disappoint up front. I think my favorite one was the Halloween party that starts out innocent and descends into haunted madness in great ways. The ones I liked have interesting set ups and surprises and are generally well made. V/H/S is an fun movie that uses the old Tales From the Crypt ethos that was always fun to watch. It mixes in the found footage gimmick to make it more contemporary and cohesive as a package (found footage is really hard to do well too, so it’s a huge challenge). The only recent movie I can think of like this is Trick R Treat which came out a good 5 years ago (and is very good too).

V/H/S 2 runs with the baton that the first hands off. Two Private Eye’s hired to find a woman’s son go to his house and go in looking for clues to where he’s gone. The same set up of multiple TV’s with stacks of VHS tapes are found…

The sequel uses the same found footage presentation but the collection of stories are much stronger as a whole. There are 4 and I found the first one “Phase I Clinical Trials” to be the weakest. In it, the main character has an experimental eyeball surgically implanted after losing his natural eye in a car accident. It’s really predictable and rather cliché, but it was done well so it was fun to watch. There’s a cool zombie tale in here, that boasts some great make up work. Then “Safe Haven” which is directed by the great Gareth Evans (The Raid) which is a fantastic short horror piece…until the end. It’s so well done and crazy, but there is a creature that they overstepped in using. It’s introduction is great, you get a glimpse of it in action shortly after mixed in with an harrowing and intense chase scene and then the final time they show it, it looks TERRIBLE. So fake and goofy looking that it takes all the fear away. So much so, that those last 20 seconds almost ruins everything they worked to accomplish. Now the last story “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” might be my favorite short, in any genre, that I’ve ever seen. It takes place at a house on a lake where the kid’s parents go away for the night/weekend and the kids invite their friends over and have a good time. I can’t get over how much amazing stuff they pulled off. Huge props to director Jason Eisener and co-writer John Davies. It’s really well thought out and paced perfectly. The cast is great and believable and the audio and visual work completely sells the madness and horror the kids go through. I was blown away when it ended.

In addition to having better stories, even the P.I. set up I didn’t care about had a great pay off in its last segment. The final gore gag is crazy and looks amazing, a really great pay off. If they can keep the quality going up, I’d be totally down for a part 3. Don’t watch the trailer for this! It gives away way too much.

It’s taken director Alfonso Cuaron and his crew close to 5 years to make Gravity and the time and effort was well worth it. It’s a stunning movie from start to finish. An exhilarating movie with mind bending visuals, raptureous audio and genre leading acting from Sandra Bullock.

While on a space walk to fix the Hubble Telescope, Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) get caught in a chain reaction disaster that leaves them alone in a exhausting fight for their lives. They must depend on each other to survive the most inhospitable environment imaginable.

The visionary work in direction and technical effects make Gravity one of the most visually stunning movies ever made. To the point, it looks like the movie was actually filmed in space. The 3D is done just right, it often achieves the “window effect” where it looks like the movie screen is actually a window you are looking through with the action happening beyond it. There’s depth to what you are looking at. From the shots of tools floating in front of Ryan while Matt buzzes around her with his jet pack as she works to the absolutely unbelievable of Ryan spinning alone through space are just amazing. The latter scene of Ryan alone in particular is really arresting as there is nothing but space around her. With the 3D it looks like she is actually getting further and further away from you sitting in the theatre. Each time she spins around you can see her face lit up by the lights in her helmet, but with each rotation she gets smaller, her face harder to make out with the endless void of deep space and stars stoically shimmering all around her. It looks like she’s just seconds away from being swallowed into oblivion. It’s a frightening scene of complete isolation that is absolutely convincing. The phenomenal sound work completes the illusion of bringing you into space, watching these two trying to survive. The music (and lack of music) is just perfect, the sound effects are immensely engrossing.

While the movie stars Bullock and Clooney, this really rides on Bullock’s shoulders and she does a damn good job. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of hers prior to this, but I think this is the best work of her career. Once the movie started, I only saw her as Ryan Stone. You get to know her as things go from bad to worse which makes you empathize with her. Clooney as Matt holds the senior position (this mission is his last one) and offers a cool, confident and funny relief to the crushing intensity that surrounds the movie. It’s a great balance that works very well with these two actors.

I really loved seeing this, Cuaron is one of my favorite directors and his work is simply stunning here. He devoted a big part of his life to this project and it really shows. The long, single takes are mindboggling. The camera moves beautifully and with clear purpose at every moment, the man is simply one of the best in the world. Gravity is a front runner for movie of the year, let alone action movie of the year. I hesitate to call this sci-fi as it is pretty grounded in today’s tech and science knowledge. It’s easier to call an action-suspense thriller than anything else. I highly recommend going to an IMAX 3D showing if possible as it greatly uses all that wacky tech to its fullest.. At the very least you need to go to a theatre with a fantastic sound system. Strap in and enjoy the ride.

I’m a casual fan of the Iron Man movies. I think they are grossly overhyped despite Robert Downey Jr. being a great Tony Stark. The films would be nothing without him.

Iron Man 3 fixes one of my biggest complaints with this series, the action scenes. They’ve all been teases until this movie. It’s like once something great was happening, the fight ended. Here, the action scenes last more than 35 seconds and are really satisfying. The plane rescue is a real knockout and they came up with some really wild in-suit, part-in/part-out suit action that was really inventive. Special FX remains top of the line ILM work, they make knock out stuff that integrates so well with practical work.

I real surprise for me was how little Iron Man is actually in this. It’s all Tony. He’s full bore IM for a small percentage of the movie. There’s a really great story arc for Stark here where he is suffering from PTSD from the events in Avengers He’s a real mess in the beginning. he goes through even more terrible stuff (which his ego asked for) and at the end he’s much more than a guy in a really expensive suit. He IS Iron Man.

Solid villain work here too (something IM 2 completely botched), with great set up, villainous follow through and a good amount of scenery chewing.

But there is a ton of suspend your disbelief logic and physics here. They acknowledge it at times, but it’s ridiculous. The same people that moan about Batman surviving huge falls and getting back to Gotham in a day better be crossing their arms at the nonsense pulled off here too. At one point the parts of his suit fly to Stark over 800 miles in maybe 2 minutes. That basically requires time travel to work. But I digress, it’s still a good movie and easily the best Iron Man.

Life of Pi’s story is framed in the smartest of ways: a person retelling an experience to another. A beautiful film in it’s visuals, pacing and meaning, Life of Pi is one of my favorites I’ve seen all year. In fact, I regret not seeing it in theatres as the rich visual element (and from what I’ve heard leading 3D cinematography) probably would have made me enjoy it even more.

In his travels, a writer is told by a man that he knows someone that could tell him a true story that would make him believe that God is real. With a pitch like that, who wouldn’t want to hear that story? The writer tracks down Pi Patel and sits down with him to hear a harrowing story of adventure, loss, acceptance, power and discovery. As a teenager Pi and his family were on a large tanker sailing across the Pacific ocean from India to Canada to start a new life with their zoo animals. One night a massive storm sinks the boat and only Pi, a zebra, a orangutan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger survive.

It’s a fanciful story, much like Noah’s Arc where the resiliency and growth of the human spirit is demonstrated. At sea for weeks with only the tiger, animal and man end up depending on each other to survive. There’s a lot of metaphors and hidden meaning in Pi’s tale, one that I think is brilliantly told in just under two hours. The reveals at the end were great and masterful and a lot goes to director Ang Lee on his careful and gentle eye to tell this epic story. Often intense and deeply touching, I think this is a movie for the ages.

Life of Pi reminds me of Tim Burton’s Big Fish which is another beautiful example of how the myths and stories made by man often carry the most weight through generations because they are so colorful and poignant no matter how old you are. Life can be difficult and dark, sometimes dressing things up can make it easier to comprehend. Learning doesn’t come from just step by step manuals where everything is laid out for you.

Years ago I was given Life of Pi to read. I gave it a try but for some reason I didn’t make it far in. Was a too young? Too disinterested? Too distracted? I can’t say for sure, but I think now is the time for me to give it another go.