A ‘Frankenstein’ infused with passion

 

   Throughout the first half of Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited Frankenstein, I kept waiting for an aria to pierce Alexandre Desplat's heavy orchestral score. For the record, a variety of operas based on the Frankenstein story have been written. Add a few arias, and del Toro's movie happily could have joined their ranks.

   But, no, del Toro presents his operatic melodrama without anyone breaking into song.

  Instead, Frankenstein serves as the director’s adaptation of and meditation on the classic Mary Shelley story, which first appeared in 1818, spurring more than 200 years of sustained interest. That’s a hell of a run.

   A del Toro dream project, Frankenstein swells with passion. I guess that's notable -- a director displaying palpable enthusiasm for the dark corners of the stories that inspire him. There's no question that del Toro -- The Devil's Backbone (2001), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Shape of Water (2017) along with movies such as Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004), and Crimson Peak (2015) -- has built a visionary body of work that's often rooted in mythic aspiration.

    In Frankenstein, del Toro puts his considerable visual skills to work, but adds another dimension: He splits the story in two, telling it from the perspectives of both Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and his monstrous creation (Jacob Elordi).

   To quote the current lingo, the poor creature has “his own truth,” and insists on sharing it.

    Of the two stories in del Toro’s 149-minute opus, the monster -- listed in the credits as The Creature -- gets the best of things, emerging as a near holy innocent in a corrupt human world. Stitched together from the carcasses of dead soldiers, The Creature learns to speak as he wrestles with questions of identity and loneliness. 

   If the movie has any heart, it belongs to the monster. NBA tall and rendered in cool tones reminiscent of a cadaver before rot sets in, Elordi becomes the movie’s sorrowful centerpiece, a wounded outlier whose torment never can be eased. The poor creature can’t even die.

      Abuse, of course, breeds fury. The Creature's super-strength comes off as the justifiable rage of a character whose very existence represents an act of exploitation. Frankenstein keeps The Creature chained in the nether regions of his laboratory, denying him even rudimentary freedoms.

    Del Toro guides us toward the story's all-too-obvious irony: The monster may be more human than the mercilessly driven Frankenstein, played by Isaac with a verve that borders on hysteria.

   Not surprisingly, del Toro loads the movie with statements (sets, costumes and make-up) that burst with Gothic mood and intent, beginning his story with a bracing chill. A Danish sea captain (Lars Mikkelson) tries to free his ship, which has become stuck in Arctic ice. Enter the badly wounded Frankenstein, whose presence and condition will be explained later. 

       Once tucked away on the ship and after a tussle with the now tattered monster, Frankenstein tells his story, narrating the tale until The Creature catches up with his creator and delivers his side of the story.

      Backstory accumulates, fragments of narrative stitched together in quilt-like fashion. We learn of young Victor’s abuse at the hands of his father (Charles Dance), a gifted surgeon and brutal taskmaster who schools his son in anatomy. He disciplines young Frankenstein with a stick across the face lest he damage the hands the boy will need for his own surgical career. 

       Later, Frankenstein will meet Harlander (Christoph Waltz), the patron who wants to fund research into reanimating the dead.

      We also meet Victor’s younger brother William (Felix Kammerer) and his fiancee Elizabeth (Mia Goth),  who happens to be Harlander's niece. Recognized as a rare beauty, Elizabeth has a scientific mind and a keen interest in insects. Frankenstein’s pheromones kick in, but Elizabeth remains loyal to her betrothed.

      Elizabeth quickly develops a sympathetic interest in Frankenstein’s creation, raising another question:  Are humans more than an accumulation of body parts?  She surveys Frankenstein's body and asks which part contains the soul.

     As for body parts, they abound.

     When Frankenstein moves into the tower that serves as his laboratory, del Toro embraces the opportunity to show the products of war carnage that Victor accumulates for his experiment, a task made easier by Waltz's Harlander, an arms dealer already familiar with ravaged battlefields. 

      A psychological motif makes its presence felt as two father/son relationships are juxtaposed: Victor’s relationship with his tyrannical father and The Creature's relationship with Victor, who summons the monster with an assist from an elaborate lightning rod constructed in the tower he has turned into his laboratory.

      The film’s emotional heart beats loudest during touching scenes in which the creature, fleeing after Frankenstein tries to destroy him, is sheltered by a blind old man (David Bradley) who expands The Creature's vocabulary and teaches him the meaning of the word “friend.” 

      No matter how wobbly the build-up, Del Toro sticks the ending.  Isaac’s performance calms down, and the movie sounds a melancholy yet slightly hopeful note. 

      I wish I could say that Frankenstein was gripping throughout its entire 149-minute length. Moreover, del Toro's impassioned approach arrives with a downside; it sometimes feels overblown, an exercise in overstatement that gushes rather than unfolds.

       Honesty compels me to confess that Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974) has made it difficult for me to watch any Frankenstein movie without playing an alternate comedy version in my mind, a problem I presume most viewers won’t have. 

       My idiosyncrasies aside,  del Toro's boldly conceived version of Shelley's first novel finds some of the tragic grandeur in an oft-told tale. Imposing as Frankenstein can be, I couldn't help wondering, though, whether all the effort couldn’t be reduced to something narrower and much less lofty: two guys struggling with unresolvable daddy issues.

A porn star's bumpy road to fame

 

   At one point in the movie MaXXXine, a porn star (Mia Goth) seeking crossover fame as a horror movie queen,  tries to evade a slimy private investigator (Kevin Bacon). To avoid her pursuer, Goth's Maxine seeks refuge inside the famous Psycho house on the Universal Studios lot.

   Mark the Psycho house as one of many movie references in the third installment of director Ti West's horror trilogy, which began in 2022 with X and Pearl. 

   West primes us to see Norman Bates, or a facsimile, pose a frightening new danger, but he purposefully undermines the suspense he creates. Once inside, all we see is the wooden scaffolding that keeps the house from collapsing. 

     We're behind the facade, a strategy West repeatedly employs as he plays with horror and movie tropes from the 1980s. The result ranges from smartly mounted jests to self-conscious displays of pop-cultural savvy.

    MaXXXine feels like an ambitious movie that can't quite shed enough of its genre skin to emerge as something startlingly fresh, even as West works to expose the seaminess behind Hollywood’s bright lights.

     The movie's casting probably broadens its reach. Employing a southern accent that makes his words sound as if they've been dipped in grease, Bacon scores as PI John Labat. 

     The rest of the cast includes Giancarlo Esposito, as  Teddy Night, Maxine's unscrupulous agent. Two homicide detectives (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan) figure in the plot. Elizabeth Debicki portrays the ambitious director of the crossover horror movie Maxine hopes will make her a star. Of course, it's a sequel. 

     Then there's Goth, who has staked out impressive territory in three of these movies, most notably in Pearl, the best of the trilogy. 

    Goth plays the only character who survived the first movie, which saw a group of young filmmakers trying to break into the biz by making a porno. Post X, Maxine  traveled to Hollywood where she made a mark in the adult-film world.

     Goth's performance embodies one of West's central observations; those who don't wish to become monsters shouldn't aspire to stardom. The movie never forgets that Maxine's past is bathed in the first movie’s bloodshed. Her freckled face looks innocent, until it curdles into an expression of monstrous ambition.

        Although it’s difficult to take seriously amid all of West’s showmanship, a story emerges. During the 1980s, a real-life serial killer called The Night Stalker terrified Los Angeles. News footage tells us about this horrific chapter of LA history, which West uses as a springboard to put Maxine in danger.  More can't be said without spoilers.

     West's movies have become known for adding layers of meaning that elevate them from the usual Hollywood gore ghetto -- while also not abandoning major plasma flows.

    The gore in MaXXXine slashes and smashes its way onto the screen like exclamation points.

     The movie's conclusion struck me as more risible than chilling; it's followed by a needless epilogue that restates the movie's ideas.

      It's also arguable that the parade of movie allusions gets out of hand.  West even finds a way to put a bandage on the nose of Bacon's PI. We're clued to remember Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes, the detective who discovered Los Angeles's dark side in Chinatown.

     Chinatown (1974), of course, was not an '80s movie, but West uses the reference to draw thematic connections to his LA foray -- the story that festers beneath the surface, the lowdown.

      Garish, glitzy, and gruesome, MaXXXine can’t outdo its predecessors. Still, if you’re a fan of the first two movies, West gives you no particular reason to avoid the trilogy’s semi-successful finale.

       Oh, I almost forgot an important question: Is  MaXXXine scary and creepy enough to haunt you once you leave the theater? I don't think so.

A prequel serves up horror of its own

    Maybe you haven't spent the last several months yearning for a prequel to the movie X, released earlier this year. Perhaps you didn't even see X, a well-regarded helping of horror about the dangers of trying to make a porn film on an isolated farm.

    Director Ti West's reasonably smart film referenced horror history while serving up its own brand of chills.

   Pearl takes us back to 1918 to tell us how the desiccated hag of the first movie spent her youth. Using the same settings found in X, West enhances the color of his images. He adopts an approach reminiscent of the way Todd Haynes paid homage to director Douglas Sirk in Far From Heaven. Pearl comes on like melodramatic comfort food from a bygone cinematic era.

    Too much genuflecting at the altar of film history? 

    Maybe, but West links his work to the past and, in this case, to his previous movie.

   References to other movies aside, Pearl functions well as a stand-alone effort, although it won't be everyone's idea of a scary good time. Slowly paced and evocative, Pearl uses its nostalgic allure to draw us into the increasingly weird world of its title character.

    West turns Pearl into a showcase for Mia Goth, who played dual roles in the first movie and was unrecognizable as the killer crone of X.  Here, Goth meets the moment with unsettling flashes of mania and longing.

  Goth's Pearl lives an emotionally and sexually undernourished life on a farm with her sternly religious mother (Tandi Wright) and paralyzed father (Mathew Sunderland).

   Dressed in overalls, Pearl looks as if she might have tumbled out of Norman Rockwell painting. We know better, particularly when Pearl spears a goose with a pitchfork and feeds it an alligator or when she has enthusiastic masturbatory sex with a scarecrow.

   Pearl joins a long line of insanely frustrated women. She dreams of being a star and finds encouragement from the projectionist (David Corenswet) at the town theater. He urges her to dream -- but shows her a "special" film he acquired in France, a helping of porn that underscores the theme of dreams that are smashed or even perverted.

   Pearl's chance at escape arrives when a friend (Emma Jenkins-Purro) tells her that a traveling dance troupe plans to hold auditions at the town's church. 

  Against a backdrop of illuminated crosses, Pearl gives a knock-out performance but an eerily stoic panel of judges rejects her. They want a blonde.

   What's a frustrated young woman supposed to with her husband off fighting World War? And what about those movie-inspired fantasies in which Pearl sees black-and-white images of chorus girls kicking their way to the glamorous life she believes she deserves?

  The answer is obvious but still alarming. Pearl's smile --a grin that stretches her face to the breaking point -- no longer will mask the evil that festers within.

  West offers gore and murder but served sparingly when compared to the butchery that sometimes dominates contemporary horror.

   And despite his love for movie references, West’s approach remains idiosyncratic and he’s not afraid to take chances -- big ones. At one point, Pearl delivers a lengthy monologue, part confessional and part threat. It could have derailed the movie but Goth makes it work.

   Clearly, Pearl is too twisted and weird for all viewers. But it's more accomplished than X and it allows Goth to smear the screen with blood, unleashed rage, and a killer smile -- or maybe I should say, a killer’s smile.

Two very different horror films: 'X' and 'Master'

    Contemporary horror has gotten meaty enough that I'm sure it has inspired doctoral theses wherever film studies are taught. Thanks in large part to Jordan Peele (Get Out and Us), racial prejudice has joined the world of horror movies. You can include the recent Candy Man in that category, as well.

  Then there's the world of horror served straight no chaser, movies that are more aligned with the history of horror than with any topical issue. These movies require that we know that filmmakers are keenly aware of horror conventions and precedents. Such films may be violent and even vile, but we're expected to be in on the joke. 

 

X
    Let's start with a movie that's both a riff on previous efforts and an attempt to deliver an alarmingly  sleazy helping of horror. 

  X walks in the bloody footsteps of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a variety of other movies that aficionados will easily identify. 

   Director Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) also takes a bow toward Boogie Nights as he tells the story of a group of young folks who gather at an isolated farmhouse to make a porn film. The year: 1979.

    The cast includes the porn movie's female leads (Brittany Snow and Mia Goth) and a young woman (Jenna Ortega) whose original job involves the production's sound. Ortega's Lorraine eventually decides that if she's going to work on a porn film, she might as well be in one. Porn seems less a matter of talent than of a simple decision. Yes or no? The women decide.

   The men are represented by Martin Henderson as a low-rent impresario with few illusions about what he's doing. He's joined by Owen Campbell as RJ, an aspiring filmmaker who deludes himself into thinking he's making an independent film. Kid Cudi plays the well-hung Jackson, the male star of the porn film which is given silly a throwback title, The Farmer's Daughter.

    Trouble, of course, lurks. The crew has rented a facility from a farmer and his wife, characters we instantly recognize as lethally dangerous. Both are old to the point of desiccation with leathery skin that looks as if it might have been preserved in formaldehyde. 

     I won't get into spoilers but you should know that West doesn't skimp on gore or nudity. He tries to serve two masters: an audience that's hip to horror ploys but also wants to be creeped out and shocked.

     He does a bit of both in a movie that adds thematic weight to its blood-clogged pores, much of it centering on Pearl, the farmer's wife. Pearl laments the loss of her beauty and sexuality and, therefore despises, a youthful crew that has turned sex into something that requires only consent.

     The old woman wants nothing more than to be desired, the one thing age has denied her. West occasionally photographs her with backlighting that seems to liberate her from time and hints at how she might once have looked.

     (I haven’t named the actress that plays Pearl but suggest you look it up after you’ve seen the movie.)

     Occasionally, we see a preacher railing about sin and hellfire on a black-and-white TV in the farmer's house, a detail that yields an unexpected payoff before the movie ends.

     West does a reasonably good job of mixing skin and gore, although the movie's willingness to kneel at the altar of contemporary horror keeps it a bit hemmed in: We know we're watching a movie -- albeit one that inhales deeply and breathes sleaze.

       Whether you want to breathe along with it remains an open question. Know this, though, X may not transcend its horror  niche but it embraces it with unwavering commitment.

     

Master
    In Master, director Mariama Diallo takes a different tack. Diallo has made a horror film in which the characters are haunted by institutional racism at fictional Ancaster College.

      The prestigious school has a tarnished history.  In its early years, a woman was hanged for witchcraft. Since then the students have perpetuated a legend: Every year, the witch's ghost selects a freshman whose soul she will steal on the anniversary of her death.

      Enter Jasmine (Zoe Renee), a high school valedictorian who we instantly know will be the witch's next target. Along with her roommate Amelia (Talia Ryder), Jasmine is assigned to Room 302, which has a history of turning at least one of its occupants into a victim. 

       It's less a room assignment than a sentence.

       At Ancaster, Jasmine faces both supernatural and social threats. The student body isn't welcoming. 

       A fine performance from Regina Hall as a housemaster and tenured academic helps raise questions about the price a black student pays to prove worthy in an institution steeped in white bona fides.

       Amber Gray plays Liv Beckman, a Black professor who pushes wokeness on her students. Jasmine's paper on  The Scarlet Letter earns an F from Beckman. Poor Jasmine. She failed to connect Hawthorne's story to critical race theory.  

      The film also makes room for a mystery about a woman who insistently phones Hall's character and, of course, there's the ghost.

       Master might be a case in which the horror could have been dropped to good effect. Racism in academia remains a valid and important subject and it might have benefited from a bit more subtlety.

        Eerie manipulations and obviousness aside, Master still manages to hit some powerful notes about the endemic persistence of racism in the so-called "best of circles."

    

Another ‘Emma’ reaches the big screen

An aggressively well-appointed version of a Jane Austen novel gets the job done.

We hardly need an introduction to Emma, the title character of Jane Austen's 1816 novel. The young woman was the subject of a well-received 1996 Douglas McGrath movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Even greater numbers of viewers probably are familiar with Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, which starred Alicia Silverstone in a smartly conceived, high-school updating of Austen’s story.

Other Emmas have come and gone and some adventurous souls may even have read Austen’s novel. But Austen never seems to lose her appeal, which may explain why we now get director Autumn de Wilde’s 21st Century addition to the Austen big-screen canon.

De Wilde's Emma stars Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, Glass) as the smugly self-assured Emma, a young woman who has lived in happy isolation from life’s harder knocks.

For reasons that I couldn’t entirely discern, de Wilde and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt decided to present the movie in a kind of strange way. Everything about the movie’s settings and costumes seems perfect, yet nothing seems entirely right. It may be pushing the point but it’s as if we’ve landed in a theme park devoted to the novelist’s work. Think Austenworld, where visitors are separated from the exhibits by velvet ropes.

If the approach was meant to heighten the cloistered rigidity of the world Austen observed, it becomes superfluous. Austen was no satirist, but she needed no help in pointing out the pretensions, social limitations, and hypocrisies of her characters.

Thankfully, Austen’s attempts to humble Emma -- making her aware that the world may not revolve around her -- remains. Better yet, the secondary roles are well-cast, from Bill Nighy as Emma’s constantly fretting father to Miranda Hart’s annoyingly loquacious but well-meaning Miss Bates to Mia Goth’s Harriet, a young woman who falls prey to Emma’s thoughtless manipulations.

Early on, Emma dissuades Harriet from marrying Robert Martin (Connor Swindells), a farmer who makes an obviously perfect match for her. Not good enough, says Emma as she sets Harriet up for disappointment.

Such is Emma’s issue; her faith in her own judgment blinds her to the feelings of others.

The key role of Mr. Knightley goes to Johnny Flynn, who brings hunky appeal to the character and who has the distinction of being the only Knightley in the story’s long history to be given a rear-view nude scene.

Austen’s story revolves around misdirected romance and signals that are misread, some involving Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson) and the supposedly irresistible Frank Churchill (Callum Turner).

The key scenes — Miss Bates’ humiliation by Emma, for example — work well and Austen’s idea that love must be earned with expressions of good moral character survives. Besides, it's reassuring to see that, even with limited screen time, the ever-resourceful Nighy refuses to be held prisoner by a costume so constricting it made me uncomfortable just looking at it. (See photo above.)

Much style, too little payoff

Gore Verbinski tries his hand at stylish horror in A Cure for Wellness.

Director Gore Verbinksi's three Pirates of the Caribbean movies demonstrated a rare flare for visually based comedy -- not just sight gags, but intricately designed sequences in which the gags dropped like pins in a bowling alley. Verbinski later entered the world of offbeat animation with Rango, a story about a chameleon who poses as a tough loner in a dizzyingly off-kilter version of the Wild West.

So, despite the fact that we're bobbing in the dull waters of a pre-Oscar lull, there was reason to hope that Verbinski's latest -- a highly stylized hunk of horror called A Cure for Wellness -- would be eccentric enough to merit attention.

No, I haven't forgotten Verbinski's version of The Lone Ranger, but who in Hollywood isn't entitled to a mega-mistake?

Those looking for intriguing imagery won't be disappointed by A Cure of Wellness, which makes the most of Bojan Bazelli's stunningly suggestive cinematography. But at two-and-half hours in length, this increasingly taxing thriller suggests more than it delivers and finally goes up in flames (literally) in what amounts to a bust of a payoff.

Cast in the movie's central role, Dane DeHaan, a veteran of HBO's In Treatment, makes you wonder whether he has the right stuff to carry a movie. DeHaan, who appears in nearly every scene, plays Lockhart, an ambitious but callow young executive with dubious ethical standards.

Early on, Lockhart receives an odd assignment; he's sent to a spa in the Swiss Alps to retrieve his company's CEO (Harry Groener), a man who refuses to return to the US to sign off on a pending and very lucrative merger. The CEO claims that he's seen the light, and no longer gives a damn about business.

Obviously, complications ensue for poor Lockhart. The spa's head doctor (Jason Isaacs) won't allow Lockhart to see the reclusive CEO, much less cart him off the premises. As the movie progresses, Isaacs' Volmer tries to convince Lockhart that he, too, is ill, and should avail himself of the doctor's wondrous cure.

Much effort has gone into showing the strangeness of the spa environment: With its eerie hallways, the place seems more like a mental institution than a retreat where the guests guzzle the local waters, traipse around in bathrobes and play croquet.

Lockhart also meets Hannah (Mia Goth), a strange young woman who seems to hold the key to the movie's central mystery -- which, as it turns out, is not nearly as unexpected as the filmmakers may have think.

Before reaching its overstated conclusion, Justin Haythe's screenplay has dabbled in a variety of twisted developments that include a horrific scene in a dental chair that recalls Dustin Hoffman's torment in Marathon Man, attacks by flesh-eating eels, an obsession with water, and a fairly major letdown at the end when Verbinski serves up heaving sprays of over-the-top expression.

Throughout, the movie spends time condemning the all-American tendency to sacrifice life for work, but the theme doesn't amount to much after an opening prologue in which a broker, working late at night in an empty Manhattan glass tower, keels over and dies of a heart attack.

About halfway through Verbniski's slow-moving dirge of a movie, I made a note to myself. "No matter how artful the setup (an it is plenty artful), a movie such as A Cure for Wellness depends on having one hell of a payoff. Sadly, it doesn't.

Nymphomanic: Volume II, the punishment

Lars Von Trier continues the torment.

Not content with one sexually explicit movie, Danish director Lars von Trier has issued the provocatively titled Nymphomaniac in two volumes.

Volume 1 dealt with a nymphomaniacal woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who told her story to an older man (Stellan Skarsgard) who adopted an Olympian view of her sexual history.

Seen in flashbacks, the young Joe (played by Stacy Martin) learned to express her power through sex, a risky business to be sure.

Together both volumes total more than four hours, making Nymphomaniac a contender for the longest sex movie yet -- if, indeed, it's really about sex.

In Volume II, the adult Joe takes over the story, and von Trier more clearly marks his territory by pushing her toward punishing extremes.

What happens? Joe -- who has lost all sexual sensation -- submits to torment from a sadist (Jamie Bell) who ties her down and beats her up. In the process, Joe proves that she's a careless mom and renounces those who would judge her at a meeting of sex addicts.

She also sleeps with two black men who face each other naked in what looks like a duel of semi-erect penises.

Toward the end, Joe hooks up with an extortionist (Willem DaFoe) and acquires a wily protege (Mia Goth).

All this is recounted in flashbacks as Joe finishes telling Skarsgard's Seligman how she wound up bloodied in an alley, which is how he discovered her at the beginning of Volume I.

In Volume I, Von Trier punished some of the characters: He does so again, but this time, the torment extends to the audience.

The shock of explicitly presented sex having been depleted in the first volume, we're left to watch Gainsbourg's Joe demean herself, take a prideful stance toward her activities and ultimately commit one final act of self-assertion.

Whatever von Trier had to say seems to have been said in the first movie. Volume II doesn't add much, except for those who want to speculate about von Trier's aims with yet another movie that seems designed to provoke without explanation.

As for what motivates Joe: It may be nothing more than von Trier's desire to put her through a variety of degrading situations and then try to defend himself by glossing it all with a feminist veneer.

As my grandmother might have said, "Oy."