In short: Monster Hunters (2020)

Looking for some missing colleagues, some bad-ass US soldiers under the leadership of one Artemis (Milla Jovovich) drop through a rift in space into a desert full of giant monsters.

It doesn’t take terribly long until Artemis is the last one standing of her team, so it’s lucky for her she meets and eventually – after the usual tensions and miscommunications – teams up with a guy she dubs Hunter (Tony Jaa). There’s more monster fighting, unfunny jokes, and even something akin to a plot for the two to work through eventually.

I know I’m supposed to hate everything Paul W.S. Anderson does, what with all of his films (let’s ignore Event Horizon and that thing with Kurt Russell as early aberrations on the more brainy side, comparatively) being low-brow action, science fiction and horror mash-ups based on video games that aren’t ideally suited to adaptation even at the best of times. His insistence on casting his wife in the lead in every single movie he makes doesn’t make the not hating part easier, given that Jovovich can barely act on the best of days.

However, watching this stint in the playground of Capcom’s Monster Hunter games, I found myself not annoyed by low effort writing (though the script by Anderson himself certainly is nothing to write home about) but started enjoying myself quickly. Watching old Milla, the always lovely Jaa and co fight against various well-realized CG monsters may not be the deepest experience of my movie watching life, but it turns out to be effective popcorn movie fun, with neat monsters, special guest star Ron Perlman, a silly cat person right out of the games, and a well-paced script. Hell, I didn’t even mind Jovovich’s performance here, and found the film’s “so what” shrugging at its source material’s stranger elements pretty charming.

Even better, in this one, Anderson has most of his annoying directorial tics fully under control, not showing even a single scene first backwards in slow motion before repeating it normally, and really giving off the calm, professional directorial air of a guy who has made mid-budget popcorn movies of this type for several decades, and actually knows his business very well indeed; at least this time around.

All of this may not sound like a glowing recommendation, but honestly, Monster Hunter is a fine way to watch people fight giant monsters for hundred minutes or so.

In short: Asher (2018)

Asher (Ron Perlman) is a professional killer. You know the kind – aging, tired, sad, lonely apart from a handful of professional contacts, and not without regrets for his life decisions. His life just might take the kind of surprising upturn few people of his age get, when he killer-meet-cutes Sophie (Famke Janssen), a woman with some baggage herself and a mother (Jacqueline Bisset) suffering from dementia.

But as these films go, a strategic mistake in his professional life sets Asher on a collision course with one of his former friends and associates (Richard Dreyfuss), and some too ambitious plans the killer doesn’t know about get most of the rest of said associates killed, so his newfound hope for an actual human life just might come too late and be rather deadly for Sophie.

On paper, Michael Caton-Jones’s Asher is nothing special. We’ve seen its plot and variations thereof a hundred times before and its central characters are just as well-worn (though kudos for Sophie not being blind). However, in practice, there’s something pretty special about the whole affair. In part, the film’s considerable amount of actual human pathos is won by a cast and director whose careers have reached a trajectory quite parallel to Asher’s, a late middle to final phase that doesn’t fit comfortably with anyone, and the least with consummate professionals in a business that favours youth over talent and experience any day, as much as you try to mutilate yourself with botox and whatever other nonsense’s the flavour of the day.

It’s not all self-pity and doom and gloom here, though. Instead there’s a relaxed quality to quite a bit of the film, a willingness to stay with characters and care for them when other films would make haste to the next plot point. But then, we know the plot very well indeed, so fixating on it would be quite beside the point, especially when caring for what’s going on with the characters is a lot more rewarding.

Part of Asher’s special quality in this regard is how clearly it applies actual lived experience to the genre tropes it uses, providing the film with palpable humanity where it could get away with going through the motions. The actors clearly share in the film’s approach here, and they all, especially Perlman, Janssen and Bisset, seem to put a lot of themselves into what we are seeing.


There are also some fine, homage-heavy scenes of professional killer business, a dry yet warm sense of humour and low-key eccentricity as a way to give standard plot beats more life to enjoy here, turning this into quite a different film from the would-be post-Tarantino thing I expected Asher to be going in.

In short: The City of Lost Children (1995)

Original title: La cité des enfants perdus

A strongman named One (Ron Perlman) tries to rescue his little adoptive brother who first ends up in the hands of a pair of Siamese twins who have a very Dickensian idea of the kind of work orphans are to be put to, and then in that of rather fittingly named mad scientist Krank (Daniel Emilfork) – Krank meaning “sick” or “ill” in German. Krank steals the dreams of children while hiding away with his clones (all played by Dominique Pinon), a woman of short stature and a brain in a tank on an oil platform. One finds help in the clear preference of this particular cinematic universe for helping out the kind hearted in the end, as well as in the form of Miette (Judith Vittet), one of the twins’ orphan pick pockets.

Encountering certain movies at the wrong time in your life can paint a director in a very wrong light for years to come. Case in point for me is Jean-Pierre Jeunet (here partnered with Marc Caro as co-director). After an early grumpy encounter with Delicatessen I had the man pegged as a perpetrator of films of shrill yet pointless weirdness, and boy, was I wrong. Not that Jeunet’s films – with or without Caro – aren’t weird and sometimes indeed a bit shrill, but his is very much a weirdness with a point and a personality, born from an aesthetic sensibility that takes elements of the grotesque (always a main strand of the fantastic here in Europe, and particularly in France), poetic realism (not even I can watch this film without being reminded of certain parts of Marcel Carné’s aesthetic though seen through the sideways lens of Jeunet’s and Caro’s world view), pulp, fairy tale and proto-steampunk and mutates them into an organic whole.

The City is a film that consciously uses artificiality and artifice not to distance the viewer from itself but to put her in a heightened state of responsiveness necessary to really share into its vision. Cinema as a form of hypnosis is a bit of an old cliché, of course, but that’s the kind of magic Jeunet and Caro are aiming for here, an idea of cinema as something that sucks its viewer completely into a world of its own.

Because the film does this so well, it can tell a story full of improbable coincidence that is really fate having its say without looking embarrassed. The whole affair takes place in a world where everything and everyone is more or less visibly skewed (unlike our world where these things are often a bit better hidden) but where kindness and graciousness can dwell in the grotesque and the strange, too (which also might provide a bit of hope for our world).

Among the way, there are moments only a fool wouldn’t describe as poetic, of strange ideas turned strangely beautiful, and of the beautiful turned strange. While they are at it, the directors seed more than just a tiny bit of thematic work about families (chosen, fated, or just accidental) and the way they can form, deform or reform their members without ever falling into the deadliest trap for the cinema of the fantastic where the fantastic is only a metaphor.

Three Films Make A Post: Brace yourself for the ultimate transplant. The human soul.

The Devil's Tomb (2009): Take one bit of military horror, a spoonful of Event Horizon (but none of that film's glorious production design), a chattier version of the demons from Demoni, lots of running through corridors and a wasted Ron Perlman, shake, stir, add a bit of pus and gore and about two scenes that actually work as they are supposed to, and let cook until the plot becomes increasingly stupid but mildly entertaining in its wilful stupidity. One Jason Connery movie with extra cheese, coming right up.

Viva Riva! (2010): In a sense, the core of this Congolese gangster film is just as derivative as that of The Devil's Tomb, but transplanting the tropes of neo noir into the contemporary Congo produces changes in these tropes that shift one's perspective on them. This aspect of the movie is further improved by the fact that director Djo Tunda wa Munga just loves to give most of his characters hidden depths that are revealed in sometimes painful, sometimes enlightening ways and which keep most of the people on screen here away from just fulfilling their genre roles as written.

This isn't meant to say Viva Riva! doesn't work as a genre film. In fact, its slickly filmed mix of effective hyperrealism, a bit of the old ultra-violence and a sense of humour whose bitterness can become quite cutting with a twisty plot that actually works is pretty riveting. It's just nice to find these virtues paired with intelligence, playfulness, and the type of humanism that can't really believe in happy endings anymore.

The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians aka Tajemstvi hradu v Karpatech (1981 or 1983):

This film's director Oldrich Lipský is beloved by Czech language viewers for a series of more or less bizarre comedies that mix the corny with the grotesque and the surreal.

This example of Lipský's improbable art is based on one of Jules Verne's lesser novels, and uses this source material for a loving parody of adventure novel and gothic romance tropes that has just as much fun with its parodic elements as it has with showing off the grotesque inventions of its mad scientist (there's always a mad scientist). These inventions have a sort of proto-steampunk aesthetic, fusing the industrial with the weirdly aesthetic. Here - of course! - listening devices are shaped like ears and a scientist has replaced his hand with an excellent, brass-gleaming multi-tool.

If the film weren't told in the tone of a farce, it would actually be a macabre story about two men who can't cope with the death of a beloved woman and do immoral things to keep her with them in what has clear hints of necrophilia; as it stands, it's a very funny film that contains mad science, death, destruction and (in good Vernesian tradition) many a funny beard.

 

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Season of the Witch (2011)

Not to be confused with George A. Romero's Season of the Witch, but then, you wouldn't.

It's the 14th century. After having slaughtered the pope's infidel of the day for a few years, crusaders Behmen (Nicolas Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) have become a bit disillusioned by their work. Especially Behmen is quite nicely on his way to being a heretic, what with his doubting the Church's ability to speak for the will of their God.

Behmen is so disgusted by the state of affairs that he and Felson not just desert from the crusades (which, historically speaking, was their right after forty days of service, but, you know, Hollywood), but also manage to piss off the Pope himself before they do.

Obviously, the pair try to stay incognito once they've returned to Europe. Life at home hasn't improved during the crusaders' absence, for the plague has arrived and is killing off people left and right.

Worrying about dying from a horrible death might just be an academic question for our protagonists, though. They're recognized as deserters in the first city they enter, and could probably look forward to a nice execution, if the plague-sick cardinal of the place (self-important horror icon Christopher Lee) did not have need for their services. The Church, you see, is convinced the plague has been caused by a single witch (Claire Foy) they just caught and can be stopped through a ritual that can only be performed by monks living in a monastery about 300 miles away. Because the plague has somewhat reduced the numbers of able-bodied men, the cardinal would very much like Behmen and Felson to help transport the girl to where she belongs. Only after a night in jail and a meeting with the supposed witch that convinces Behmen she looks somewhat innocent to him, does he agree to do the Church's work again, yet only if the girl will be guaranteed a fair trial.

Now Behmen, Felson and a small band of man (first guy to die, priest, young man who wants to become a knight, and rogue-ish guide, you know the deal) will only have to survive travelling through places with charming names like "Wormwood". Surely, no additional trouble will await them at their destination.

Season of the Witch looks like a bit of a dubious candidate for the critical mauling it has received to me. Sure, the film's historical accuracy leaves a lot to be desired, but I somehow doubt that a film full of witches, demons and zombie monks is in any way or form meant to be historically truthful. In fact, it's the sort of historical pulp fantasy that treats all elements of medieval beliefs - or to be more precise, its own very contemporary interpretation of what these beliefs were - as if they were true, giving itself a fine grab bag of supernatural fun to work with. None of the film's ideas about the supernatural, nor the way it treats Behmen's crisis of faith, are in any way, shape or form original or even just a bit clever. They are, however, the perfect basis for an adventure movie full of decently done genre standard scenes (though I was disappointed by the lack of a bandit attack), and the usual clichéd character work any Hollywood writer can probably do in their sleep. This surely is not a film to set new intellectual standards, but compared to the Steven Somers school of dumbness in pulp adventure, Bragi Schut's script is perfectly fine - possibly even coherent.

The film's director Dominic Sena (remember when he had only made a few music videos and the decent Kalifornia, and still was a talent to watch?) does not exactly present his audience with visual brilliance. He's comparatively point-and-shoot-y for a contemporary mainstream director. This directorial style is, however, a pleasant reprieve from the world of bad slo-mo, whoosh-cutting, and obfuscating staging many of his colleagues inhabit. Only some of the CGI sequences could have used a bit of that kind of obfuscation for my tastes - the initial battle sequences are looking especially phony.

It's also nice to see Nicolas Cage slightly back on track again in that he doesn't overact every darn second of the film as if he had to use up Bela Lugosi's and Sharukh Khan's combined scenery-chewing reservoir in every single scene he does. I'd even suggest some of Cage's acting here has nuances. Obviously, I always love Ron Perlman.

Now, I'm pretty sure somebody like Neil Marshall could have taken the same basic ideas and made a much better, and more exciting film out of them, yet if there's one thing the still very small but growing movie genre of historical neo-pulp fantasy truly needs, then it's movies like Season of the Witch that are neither unwatchable shite nor awesome, but the entertaining middle-ground a genre needs to thrive.

 

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3 Films Make A Post: The Marsupials

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009): Fox continues to crap all over one of my favorite parts of pop culture. On the bright side, while Brett Ratner's unbelievably bad and disrespectful (of the first two movies, of the comics, his audience and possibly humanity at large) third X-Men film nearly had me in tears of pain, at least half of this masterpiece of unintentional humor produces tears of laughter. The other half unfortunately is the pure teeth-gnashing annoyance that results when you let robots who have been fed a diet of all the wrong action film clichés and are now eagerly ticking the action film ticky boxes one by one write your film, instead of actual human beings.

 

I Sell The Dead (2007): This comedy about the misadventures of the two body snatchers played by Larry Fessenden and Dominic "I was in Lord of the Rings and Lost" Monaghan who specialize in graverobbing the undead started out a mite slow, but soon won me over through a difficult to achieve mix of playfulness, genre homages and humor I for once did find funny. It also works as a love letter to all poor proletarian bastards who ever had to pay their rent through work done for madmen and mad scientists, making this some kind of low class horror fan feelgood movie, as if one of those British social realist filmmakers had suddenly developed a sense of humor and met a member of the working class he's always going on about.

The only thing I didn't like about it was Ron Perlman's oirish accent, if mostly for reminding me of the dreadful Mutant Chronicles.

 

The Hills Run Red (2009): The basic premise of an obsessed film student and entourage trying to track down a copy or at least the production traces of the single, infamous and lost horror film of a disappeared filmmaker and landing in a backwoods horror movie has the possibility to make for an intriguing, even intelligent film. Too bad that director Dave Parker just trots out one bad horror movie cliché after the other without ever doing anything interesting with any of them. Instead, we get groan-worthy characterization, mostly dreadful acting and the sort of script that bases its view of the world and psychology exclusively on other movies that themselves didn't have much of a clue about anything to begin with. Adding some Scream-like laziness hidden under the veil of "irony" just means adding insult to injury.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,superheroes,action,horror,comedy. larry fessenden,ron perlman,dominic monaghan,in short