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Reviews
Red State (2011)
Better luck next time Kevin
I like Kevin Smith. As a director, Smith has directed fantastic comedies like Clerks, Mallrats and my personal favorite, Dogma. Kevin Smith is also a fantastic storyteller, and does amazing Q&A sessions with fans, three have been released on DVD and Too Fat for 40 is the newest (and now available on Instant Watch). Smith also has a pod-casting empire at www.smodcast.com where Smith is able to do what he does best, and host several entertaining podcasts.
Having said all of that, I've known about Kevin's new horror film Red State for some time, and I have been eagerly awaiting its release on VOD at the start of this month. To say I wasn't impressed, is putting it lightly.
A group of teenage boys are drugged and fall into the clutches of Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) a Fred Phelps style preacher with a terrifying edge. The ATF, lead by Joseph Keenan (John Goodman) show up at the compound and all hell breaks loose.
That's what the trailer gives you, and that's pretty much the movie. Red State has some amazing scenes and a great villain in Michael Parks, but the story just doesn't gel. The three teenagers, Travis (Michael Angarano), Jarod (Kyle Gallner) and Billy Ray (Nicholas Braun, sporting the most hideous mullet I've ever seen) are your typical horror movie fodder, and the entire first half of the movie feels very generic, as they drive out of town to meet a woman they found on the internet with the promise of sex. It's clearly a horrible idea, but the boys do it anyway, and end up half naked and wrapped in heavy duty plastic wrap in Abin Cooper's chapel.
Michael Parks performance alone was worth the rental fee. We've all heard of Fred Phelps and his antics picketing funerals of soldiers as well as hating the gay community and running the site "God hates f*gs".
Fred Phelps ain't got sh-t on Abin Cooper.
When you watch Abin Cooper you completely forget that it's Michael Parks, Cooper's a well dressed grandfatherly type of man who preaches hatred and bigotry with such eloquence and conviction that you can't help but be completely mesmerized and disgusted with him simultaneously.
The problem comes in the second half of the film, as things suddenly change direction, going from horror film to action film when the ATF gets called in and Cooper and family start shooting it out. There are some great scenes that happen during the firefight, and John Goodman puts in a fantastic performance, but the giant shootout just doesn't really make much sense. I mean, the sequence of events that start the shootout make sense but it just doesn't fit the tone of the film to that point.
Red State starts out cliché and then moves into promising territory with the introduction of Abin Cooper but instead of going the philosophical and violent direction I was expecting (like Martyrs) it suddenly feels like I'm watching The Devils Rejects and the Firefly family is having their last stand.
There is one moment during this whole cluster f-ck shootout sequence that almost pulled things back together for me, when out of nowhere there's a deafening trumpet sound. This moment grabbed me, as it seemed like maybe the apocalyptic preaching Cooper had done was actually about to take place. For once in a movie, I was actually excited to see possible divine intervention. Instead we get John Goodman recapping how they wrapped up the situation and explaining that the trumpets were a hippie commune trying to annoy the Cooper's clan. That they happened to play these Rapture announcing trumpets during a massive fire fight was just lucky timing.
Red State has genuinely awesome moments in it, and John Goodman and Michael Parks performances are amazing, but they seem like two characters from two distinctly different films that were suddenly smashed together. Red State feels less like a cohesive whole and more like a series of cool moments that didn't quite fit in any other script. If the film had focused more on Cooper or hadn't copped out at the end, I might have enjoyed it more, but in the end I was left with an overwhelming feeling of "What was the point?"
I wanted to like Red State but watching the trailer may have been a mistake, as I had a bad feeling about the film after I watched it and that feeling was correct. I don't recommend Red State except for Michael Parks performance. If you have seen Red State, I welcome all comments and would like to see what you the readers thought about the film.
15 Till Midnight (2010)
Mindbending Sci-Fi on a budget
15 Till Midnight
The phrase "High Concept Sci-Fi" is tossed around quite a bit these days, and usually directed at big budget films like Christopher Nolan's Inception or Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men, films that take the science fiction genre into strange new worlds beyond the typical "Space Opera" genre.
15 Till Midnight is just such a film, breaking down the walls of the big budget Sci-Fi extravaganza and stripping it down to its core, proving that you don't need a multimillion dollar budget, excessive special effects or A-list actors to tell a powerful story of a man thrust into unbelievable circumstances.
The first half hour of the film is pure build up, introducing us to Lukas Reyes (Brandon Slagle) and his wife Sera (Andrea Chen), and laying the first bricks of the bizarre into the story. Lukas wakes up one morning to find that Sera has seemingly disappeared into thin air, everything she owned is gone, along with the photos of the couple together. Lukas is distraught, but heads out to a bar that night with a friend to drink away his problems, and meets the lovely Nara (Devanny Pinn) who he takes home.
The next morning Lukas wakes up to find that Nara has seemingly moved in overnight, even going so far as to claim that they've been married for two years. Lukas and the audience are left to wonder what the hell is going on, and from here on out, the film pulls out all the stops, pulling us through a mind bending, reality warping nightmare of secrets, lies and men in gas masks.
To put it bluntly, I loved 15 Till Midnight from start to finish. The story kept me engaged, the characters felt real and the dialog never felt wasted or forced in any situation. Brandon Slagle's performance as Lukas was captivating, giving the viewer a solid anchor to the ever shifting and changing world of the film. To his credit, Slagle not only portrays Lukas, but also the "Evil" Reverse Lukas who makes periodic appearances throughout the film but doesn't really get a chance to shine until the last twenty or so minutes of the film. Devanny Pinn's Nara is an intriguing character, unfortunately she's out of the story nearly as quickly as she arrives, and giving us little time to truly grow attached to her as a character. However, the raw emotion that Pinn brings to her final scenes is so heartbreakingly honest that I found myself relating to her character despite her brief screen time. The other stand out moment of the film comes near the end when Andrew Roth gives one of the most moving speeches I've heard in a sci-fi film in a long time, bringing a human element to what could be a one dimensional villain.
My only problem with the film had less to do with the film itself and more to do with my screener copy. Darker scenes were blurred and everything had that slightly washed out look of a low resolution Youtube video, but in a testament to not only the script but to the actors and everyone else involved in the film, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen for the entirety of the nearly two hour running time.
15 Till Midnight is the type of independent film that you pray for as a reviewer and fan of genre cinema, a film with a solid script, acting that actually draws you into the film instead of pulling you out, and well thought out cinematography and special effects that enhance the experience instead of distracting from it.