[31 Days of Horror Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan] Day 3 – Wolf (1994)

Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Kate Nelligan, Richard Jenkins, Christopher Plummer
Screenplay: Jim Harrison, Wesley Strick
125 mins. Rated R for language and werewolf attacks.

It’s weird that Jack Nicholson (Chinatown, How Do You Know) was so passionate about making a werewolf movie. He and his friend and screenwriter Jim Harrison tried to get this project off the ground for 12 years before finally making it happen. What’s even weirder than Jack’s drive to make Wolf is the idea that the movie has seemingly disappeared from pop culture. No one talks about Wolf. No one really discusses its place in the wider horror canon, especially among the realm of Werewolf Cinema, perhaps the toughest horror sub-genre to crack in cinema history. So why did this film get forgotten. Let’s look at that today as we break down my first viewing of Wolf.

From director Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Closer), Wolf is the story of Will Randall (Nicholson), skilled editor-in-chief from a major publishing house, who is bitten by a black wolf on his way home from Vermont. In the following days, Will’s life is upended by changes in his career and personal life, seemingly none for the better. What’s more curious are the changes to Will’s body and mind. His ability to smell and hear grow exponentially to a superhuman level. He’s waking up in new and interesting places with no memory of the night before except unusual dreams. As the odd occurrences continue, Will finds himself ulterior perspectives, including a doctor who believes that Will is slowly turning into a wolf following his bite. Now, Will is forced to consider his limited options as his time runs out.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I dug the hell out of this movie. It’s not perfect, but for what it’s trying to do, I really found myself taken with it. Jack Nicholson’s take on Will and his transformations into a beast are fantastic, which should be a no-brainer, but his commitment to the role is really great. He also has great chemistry with just about everyone in the movie, from his romantic entanglement with Laura Alden (Michelle Pfeiffer, What Lies Beneath, French Exit), his new boss’s daughter, to even secondary characters like David Hyde Pierce’s Roy, a colleague and assistant to Will. It helps that Harrison’s screenplay with Wesley Strick treats Will like a human being with a solid characterization and a gripping realistic take on the idea of lycanthropy.

On the other side of things, James Spader (Avengers: Age of Ultron, TV’s The Blacklist) just chews the scenery as Will’s protege, Stewart Swinton. There’s a smarmy quality to Spader’s best characters, and Stewart has that and a healthy dose of pity. It’s almost like Stewart is fully aware that his lies are unconvincing, and he doesn’t care. His sociopathy is higher than most characters, and through Spader’s performance, I believed every second of it.

Wolf has a similar visual flair to other horror films of the early 90s, like The Silence of the Lambs or perhaps The Good Son. What struck me was the visual likeness to Kubrick’s The Shining. It may have been the inclusion of Nicholson as a fractured character, but I got the same sense of tone from what was on display in Nichols’s movie as well. The cinematography from Giuseppe Rotunno seems to take cues from classic Universal Monsters and updates it to the early 90s (that pre-Frighteners look of the 90s).

Perhaps the film was mostly forgotten because it chooses to steer away from the campier albeit more memorable facets of the Werewolf film. Much like how zombies are never called zombies in Romero’s Living Dead films, we never hear mention of werewolves as an entity, and the idea of Randall’s slowly turning into an actual wolf may have lent it to disappointment for horror hounds looking for carnage, but I think that’s part of the charm. Rick Baker was brought on to develop the makeup and transformation effects, which may have led some to believe that the film would be more in line with his famous work on An American Werewolf in London (for which he won the inaugural Best Makeup Oscar), but his restraint here gives a more nuanced werewolf movie for the adults in the room. Baker had to work around Nicholson’s allergy to spirit gum, and he also had to craft realistic pieces of transformation and wolf effects. My wife laughed at the look of the wolf from the opening of the movie, but I loved the practical effect at play.

That’s not to say that Wolf is without fault. There are some choices, like shooting day-for-night in the dream sequences looking completely out of place. The film also runs on about 20 minutes too long, and it leaves you with unanswered questions and a bit more open of an ending than I would have liked. I also found the building of the romantic angle between Will and Laura to be a bit simplistic (remember, I called out their great chemistry here as a saving grace, but it could’ve been written better all the same). I also would’ve preferred a bit more bite in the climax, which works well but left me wanting more.

All of that aside, it’s amazing that we had a 90s werewolf movie with Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, and Christopher Plummer (Beginners, The Insider) and directed by the guy that did The Birdcage. It’s also amazing that we don’t really talk about it. My copy of the movie was a Mill Creek barebones DVD, so the film doesn’t seem to have the fanfare surrounding the more classic of the Werewolf movies, and it didn’t exactly blow away the box office, but I would very much recommend checking it out (or revisiting it if it’s been a while), as I thoroughly enjoyed Wolf.

4/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

October 3, 2021 1

[#2020oscardeathrace] Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)

Director: Joachim Rønning

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sam Riley, Ed Skrein, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Leslie Manville, Michelle Pfeiffer

Screenplay: Linda Woolverton, Micah Fitzerman-Blue, Noah Harpster

119 mins. Rated PG for intense sequences of fantasy action/violence and brief scary images.

Academy Award Nominee: Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling [PENDING]

I was genuinely interested in Maleficent when it came out back in 2014. I liked the idea that Disney was taking a different route with their live-action adaptations by focusing on the villain. It’s an overall rough move, but I admired the attempt. Unfortunately, that was all for naught, as Disney merely decided to make Maleficent (Angelina Jolie, Girl, Interrupted, Kung Fu Panda 3) into the hero and make the King an evil bad guy. It was a disappointing move that essentially turned Maleficent into a film that didn’t work. Now, some years later, Disney is going back into the world of Maleficent with a sequel, and to be fair, the trailers seemed quite intriguing. But would Mistress of Evil be a course-correction, turning Maleficent into the villain we all know her to be, or is this another misfire?

Five years have passed since the death of the evil King Stefan, Maleficent has been protecting the Moors with Aurora (Elle Fanning, Super 8, A Rainy Day in New York) serving as Queen. When Prince Phillip from Ulstead proposes marriage to Aurora, Maleficent is forced to play nice when meeting Phillip’s parents, King John and Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer, Hairspray, Avengers: Endgame). That plan goes south when Ingrith creates toxicity at their first dinner together, manipulating the situation to make Maleficent look like the evil creature that the people of Ulstead believe her to be. She flees but is attacked by Ingrith’s soldiers and is injured, rescued at the last second by a winged creature who looks similar to her. Now, with Maleficent in hiding and Ingrith twisting the narrative, it would appear that there’s no stopping an all-out war between the humans and the magical creatures, and it’s up to Maleficent to stop it.

Apart from the obvious question of “Who Was Asking for Maleficent 2?” comes the realization that, to a lesser extent, this follow-up repeats the same mistakes as the original. Again, we have a marketing campaign selling us on Maleficent, the Mistress of Evil, one of the greatest villains in history, and the movie is Maleficent Lite, the “Diet Coke of Evil” as Mike Myers once put it. Yet again, we have an opportunity to see a hero turn to darkness, and yet again, the decision is made to keep her heroic. This film rides the line a little better than before, but it still keeps Maleficent heroic.

The performances are all just fine, specifically Jolie, Fanning, and Pfeiffer, but I feel like the writing for Queen Ingrith intrudes on Pfeiffer’s performance, making her a little mustache-twirly at times. I don’t get her motivation as a villain considering how the first film framed Maleficent, and I need more from her character to showcase why she has it out for Maleficent.

Outside of all that, some of the action is fun even though this movie is so CGI-heavy that it’s tough to take any of it seriously. The CGI is just a little too glossy. It’s enjoyable enough, and what can I say, it’s a better movie than its predecessor, but not by much.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a poor title for this film considering Disney isn’t actually willing to make a story about the real villain and chooses to sugarcoat this story making the villain into the hero…yet again. It’s disappointing because this sequel just feels like broken promises stretched into two hours. I think there are people that will enjoy it, and I believe it is a wholly better film than the first one, but I don’t think we need this franchise to continue.

2.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent, click here.

January 24, 2020 0

[Batman Day] Batman Returns (1992)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, Michael Murphy

Screenplay: Daniel Waters

126 mins. Rated PG-13.

Academy Award Nominee: Best Effects, Visual Effects
Academy Award Nominee: Best Makeup

On this day in which we celebrate the caped crusader, let’s take a look at the strangest, and dare I say, greatest, live-action Batman film, Batman Returns.

It’s Christmastime in Gotham City, and the rich businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken, Catch Me If You Can, Irreplaceable You) is showing his holiday spirit by secretly trying to get a power chemical plant built in the city. When he gets kidnapped by the sinister Oswald Cobblepot (Danny DeVito, Matilda, TV’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), a man more known by his moniker, the Penguin, Max sees a way for each of them to get what they want as he attempts to get Cobblepot into public office as Gotham’s mayor. It’s during this time that Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton, Birdman, Dumbo) begins looking into Cobblepot’s background and see him as a threat to the city.

There’s a surface-level love for Batman Returns that springs out of the fact that it was my first experience with Batman of any level. I hadn’t read any of the comics when I saw the film, I hadn’t watched the cartoon, I hadn’t seen any of the other films. It was my first and most memorable experience of the caped crusader.

Michael Keaton has always been the actor I’ve most associated with the Batman and Bruce Wayne role, and I think he’s the actor that’s always embodied the conflict of the two roles and the sacrifice that he feels is necessary for him to give to Gotham for its protection. He’s better in this sequel than the previous film because here he’s even more conflicted about his role. He’s put through trials that test his commitment to Batman, most notably through his interactions with Selina Kyle and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer, Hairspray, Avengers: Endgame).

Director Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Beetlejuice) put a lot of himself into this film, more than its predecessor, and it’s especially apparent with the villains. Danny DeVito’s Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman both have some altered history with their origins, and there are liberties taken with a lot of what makes them villains, and part of that is likely from Burton’s very obvious disinterest in comic books. While that can be a death knell for a film, I really like his take here, and I think he is able to juggle multiple villain arcs alongside his hero in a way most superhero films cannot.

There’s another accomplishment to Batman Returns that most reviewers and fans tend to overlook regarding its villains. Returns features a third villain, remarkably made from scratch, in Max Shreck. Yes, he’s just as much a villain in the film as Penguin or Catwoman, perhaps a little less zany, but a villain all the same, made by a terrifically unhinged performance from Christopher Walken. Without Walken, the film may not have worked at all. In fact, I would say that I remembered Shreck more than the other two as a child. He was frightening because he was very real, and the role he plays in both the Penguin’s master plan and Catwoman’s origin makes for an effective creepy character.

After the success of his first Batman film, Tim Burton was able to really explore his version of Gotham City and its inhabitants with his special visual blend of gothic and supernatural influences. This is a very arty Batman film, and that’s mostly due to Burton being at the top of his game here. He’s playing with his cinematography, he’s exploring the sound and music of Gotham, and he’s relishing in a classical costume design within the confines of this world.

Batman Returns is perhaps the most unique of all the Batman films in that it is really experimenting with its tone, look, feel, and world. It’s hard to find a flaw, but if there’s one, it’s that the film does take a little pushing at the beginning to get it moving, and in the modern superhero landscape, some of its zanier elements might seem laughable, but revisiting this film in honor of Batman Day has reminded me of how rich an experience Batman Returns is. I highly recommend a rewatch if it’s been awhile.

5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Tim Burton’s Batman, click here.

For my review of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, click here.

For my review of Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, click here.

For my review of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, click here.

For my review of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, click here.

For my review of Tim Burton’s Dumbo, click here.

September 21, 2019 0

Vanessa Kirby to Play Catwoman?

So more news out of the rumor mill, and as this pertains directly to DC movie casting, slap a big Rumor sign on this one!

Vanessa Kirby, soon to be featured in the new Fast & Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw, is reportedly being eyed to play Selina Kyle/Catwoman in The Batman.

This is interesting news, but I know very little of Kirby’s work so there isn’t much to go on. Speaking to her look, I think she has a Michelle Pfeiffer-y look to her, so there’s that. I could believe her to look the part of Selina Kyle, but I just don’t have much to go on for acting chops, and that, more than any visual look, is what will make or break the role.

As I’ve said before, in Matt Reeves I trust, so I will let him make his movie and look more forward to Hobbs & Shaw to get a glimpse of Kirby’s acting level.

What do you think? Is Vanessa Kirby right for Selina Kyle/Catwoman? Let me know/Drop a comment below!

-Kyle A. Goethe

July 2, 2019 0

31 Days of Horror: Day 19 – Dark Shadows (2012)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloe Grace Moretz, Bella Heathcote

Screenplay: Seth Grahame-Smith

113 mins. Rated PG-13 for comic horror violence, sexual content, some drug use, language and smoking.

For horror fans, the 1966 television series Dark Shadows is a pretty big deal. For soap opera fans, it is also a big deal. A dark brooding and eventually supernatural based soap opera, Dark Shadows was so far ahead of its time that it didn’t really take off during its initial run. It didn’t really take off during its revival either. In 2012, director Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Frankenweenie) brought a reimagining to the big screen from a screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith (TV’s The Hard Times of RJ Berger, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). It, too, did not take off. So how does a movie with this much going for it, a new and promising screenwriter, a talented director behind the camera, and explosive leading man Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Into the Woods) as a lead, fail so much? Truth be told, I rather enjoyed it for all the reasons you should.

Depp portrays Barnabus Collins, a privileged man who took too much for granted. He loved and left women like the voluptuous Angelique (Eva Green, TV’s Penny Dreadful, Casino Royale), and he paid dearly for it, for unbeknownst to Collins, Angelique was a witch who cursed his beloved Josette (Bella Heathcote, In Time, Not Fade Away) to walk off a cliff and turned Barnabus himself into a vampire and had him buried for all eternity. Around 200 years later, Barnabus is awakened by random happenstance and returns to his beloved home of Collinwood Manor to find distant relative Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer, Scarface, The Family) and her family residing. Collins’ family name has been tarnished by the still living Angelique who has taken the town of Collinsport for herself. As Barnabus tries to put the pieces of his afterlife in order and bring his family back to their stance in the community, he is bewitched by the Collins’ new family tutor and caregiver Victoria, who bares a striking resemblance to Josette.

This movie succeeds at what it is trying to be. Much like the adaptation of Rock of Ages from a few years ago, this film is not rounding the bases to Oscar glory. All it wants is to remind you of cheese from which the original Dark Shadows bore and is what it is so beloved for today. Dark Shadows was not a great television series ever, but we love it. Why? Because it is so much fun. Exactly. Not because it was filled with nuanced performances, but because it was filled with such lovable (or unlovable) characters. I think people didn’t do their research for this film (surprise, surprise, those same people didn’t expect Sweeney Todd to be a musical) and they expected something dark and brooding, perhaps for akin to Edward Scissorhands or Sleepy Hollow, when really this is more attuned to Beetlejuice and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, being dark comedies with dark undertones.

Now the film is far from perfect. Some of the performances are wooden, while others come off as over goofy. The cinematography is nothing particularly special. The music and visual effects are rather fun, but the film isn’t going to be remembered or rediscovered as perfect, but it is just a good time. This is a movie I should have expected to fail, but I had faith in moviegoers. If you saw this during its initial release, I advise you to give it another go, because it wasn’t all that bad. It is, ironically, rather lively.

3.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For more 31 Days of Horror, click here.

October 19, 2014 12