STOKER
Cast: Mia Wasikowski, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman
Director: Park Chan-wook
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Director: Park Chan-wook
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Korean Director Park Chan-wook, perhaps best known for his "Vengeance" trilogy, makes his English-language debut with Stoker, from a script by Wentworth Miller. It proceeds from the point of view of India Stoker (Mia Wasikowksa), a teenage girl whose father dies suddenly, leaving her to grieve with an emotionally distant mother Evie (Nicole Kidman).
Surprisingly, an uncle whom she wasn’t previously aware of (Matthew Goode) arrives at the funeral, a man whom India finds herself attracted to despite a deep and tangible suspicion of his motives. This mysterious arrival coincides with a series of disappearances and India focusses on unconvering his dark secrets.
Park's lens in a slow and precise style, simultaneously captures the banal, the beautiful, and the grotesque. The opening shots of the film are especially striking, encompassing the large gothic landscape of India's father's sprawling, ominous estate. The scene where India and her uncle play the piano together, is claustrophobic, disturbing, and strangely beautiful thanks to sumptuous cinematography by Chung Chung-hoon. The entire atmosphere of the piece seems to suggest a looming danger, the potential and aftermath of violence. And while the violence here is more understated than that of the director’s previous work such as the sublime “Old Boy”, it's handled with an unflinching eye that both tantalises and implicates the viewer.
The piece is intended as an intricate puzzle, slowly unraveling as the film develops on screen, exploring themes of grief, burgeoning sexuality, and fate through the incestuous triangle of India, Uncle Charlie, and Evie. The subtle nuances of these themes never quite make as much impact as the stylish direction, which overwhelms the story's mystery with its at-times heavy reliance on brooding looks, gothic atmosphere, and vague, circuitous dialogue.
As with all thrillers, the climax is as important as the setup, and it's in the final revelation of the story that Stoker slightly loses its footing. A series of flashbacks designed to explain Uncle Charlie's presence, as well as his motives, are more confounding than clarifying. The revelation isn’t entirely obvious however, and there does remain a partially satisfactory element of surprise.
HANSEL & GRETEL:
WITCH HUNTERS
WITCH HUNTERS
Cast:
Gemma
Arterton, Jeremy Renner, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare
Writer/Director:
Tommy Wirkola
Running time: 86 minutes
Running time: 86 minutes
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is more guns and
grenades than the Brothers Grimm. Got a witch problem? Call H&G —
Witchbusters!
It’s a catastrophically poor attempt, and it simply doesn’t work. The filmmakers have shot a feature packed with ridiculous anachronisms — a Bavarian forest from the past with witch trials, pump-action shotguns and tasers, where bottles of milk have woodcut pictures of “missing children” on the labels.
Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) turn up just as the village of Augsburg is about to burn a redheaded witch. My guess is that “Gingers” were a favourite target of witch hunters. Hansel brusquely shrugs off this barbaric crime, but Gretel insists that the locals need evidence. This immediately creates conflict with the sheriff (Peter Stormare), who can’t come to grips with the ongoing “witch plague” and the missing children who seem to be involved in it. So sibling warriors Hansel & Gretel have been hired to do the neccessary, i.e. what he apparently can’t.
Almost inevitably in the mix of this American-dialogue-heavy tosh, Hansel eventually moans “Anyplace we can get a drink in this hell hole?” to allow him a break from the job, which has been chasing lesser witches, whilst the main aim is the pursuit of the Great Witch, played by Famke Janssen - as if the rubbish makeup is going to do all the acting for her.
Hansel and Gretel also have an anorak techie nerd groupie (Thomas Mann) who actually asks them, "sorry you guys but could you, like, sign this?” for autographs, alongside of course the grateful ginger woman (Pihla Viitala) whom they saved from burning in the opening scene, and who wishes to repay the favour to Hansel by enticing him to engage in a bit of nude bathing in the stream. Still awake? In their armoury, they have all manner of hi-tech gear to assist their battle against the wand-wielders — pistols, rifles, a semi-automatic crossbow and the aforementioned taser (hand-cranked of course, in case no power points were handy on a nearby oak tree).
Writer-director Tommy Wirkola (who? indeed) puts his 3-D cameraman on overtime, as limbs are whacked off, whilst heads and torsos explode. The dialogue is beyond preposterous, of course. One other thing, Hansel has a few difficulties on occasion, so he carries an ancient hypodermic needle and takes injections to ward off insulin shock!
It’s a catastrophically poor attempt, and it simply doesn’t work. The filmmakers have shot a feature packed with ridiculous anachronisms — a Bavarian forest from the past with witch trials, pump-action shotguns and tasers, where bottles of milk have woodcut pictures of “missing children” on the labels.
Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) turn up just as the village of Augsburg is about to burn a redheaded witch. My guess is that “Gingers” were a favourite target of witch hunters. Hansel brusquely shrugs off this barbaric crime, but Gretel insists that the locals need evidence. This immediately creates conflict with the sheriff (Peter Stormare), who can’t come to grips with the ongoing “witch plague” and the missing children who seem to be involved in it. So sibling warriors Hansel & Gretel have been hired to do the neccessary, i.e. what he apparently can’t.
Almost inevitably in the mix of this American-dialogue-heavy tosh, Hansel eventually moans “Anyplace we can get a drink in this hell hole?” to allow him a break from the job, which has been chasing lesser witches, whilst the main aim is the pursuit of the Great Witch, played by Famke Janssen - as if the rubbish makeup is going to do all the acting for her.
Hansel and Gretel also have an anorak techie nerd groupie (Thomas Mann) who actually asks them, "sorry you guys but could you, like, sign this?” for autographs, alongside of course the grateful ginger woman (Pihla Viitala) whom they saved from burning in the opening scene, and who wishes to repay the favour to Hansel by enticing him to engage in a bit of nude bathing in the stream. Still awake? In their armoury, they have all manner of hi-tech gear to assist their battle against the wand-wielders — pistols, rifles, a semi-automatic crossbow and the aforementioned taser (hand-cranked of course, in case no power points were handy on a nearby oak tree).
Writer-director Tommy Wirkola (who? indeed) puts his 3-D cameraman on overtime, as limbs are whacked off, whilst heads and torsos explode. The dialogue is beyond preposterous, of course. One other thing, Hansel has a few difficulties on occasion, so he carries an ancient hypodermic needle and takes injections to ward off insulin shock!
