Thanksgiving

Director: Eli Roth
Starring: Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Milo Manheim, Tomaso Sanelli, Gabriel Davenport, Jenna Warren, Ty Victor Olsson, Karen Cliche, Rick Hoffman, Gina Gershon
Running Time: 106 min.
Rating: R

 

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

When Eli Roth's 70's-inspired trailer for the fictitious horror film Thanksgiving appeared during Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse in 2007, many assumed a feature would be right around the corner. Nearly seventeen years later, it came, even as clips hinted at a project far different from the grainy, low budget VHS homage most anticipated. But in appearing to invoke 2000's era remakes like Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine or even Rob Zombie's Halloween, Roth still goes old school, with his movie sharing similarities with both those titles and the originals that inspired them.

Aside from the unimpeachable classics any entry in this genre is judged against, horror constantly lifts ideas, themes and even specific shots from other works, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's what you do with it that matters, and longtime slasher fanatic Roth again goes to his grab bag of influences, incorporating a variety of different elements. Rather than break new ground, this instead accomplishes all that's needed by being a well made, ridiculously entertaining ride that cleverly mixes gore and humor.

In Plymouth, Massachusetts, a crowd of anxious, unruly shoppers are gathered outside RightMart for the annual Black Friday sale. But when they notice the store owner's daughter, Jessica (Nell Verlaque) her boyfriend Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks) and classmates Gaby (Addison Rae), Evan (Tomaso Sanelli), Scuba (Gabriel Davenport) and Yulia (Jenna Warren) sneak in early, the mob breaks through the doors. After trampling a security guard and rushing past Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) and store manager Mitch (Ty Victor Olsson), a full blown riot breaks out, with tragic results. 

The next year RightMart callously prepares for another sale when a mysterious killer wearing a John Carver mask goes on a killing spree, targeting those responsible for the Black Friday massacre. As Jessica and the gang realize they're next, Bobby's sudden reappearance in town only complicates matters, with suspects and bodies continuing to pile up. Everyone's in danger of being picked off by Carver, who's in no mood for any leftovers this Thanksgiving.

Setting the bar high with a graphic, wickedly satirical opening sequence that terrifies in spots, Roth immediately makes his goal clear. It may not be the full-fledged throwback most expected, but the blueprint and execution of those retro slashers are prevalent, especially as rabid customers kill each other for discounted waffle irons, transforming this big box superstore into a human slaughterhouse. 

Jeff Rendall's script gets a lot out of the thrillingly staged RightMart catastrophe and its ramifications for everyone directly or indirectly involved, with only a tension filled parade scene and Carver's third act feast coming close to equaling it. That everyone truly is a suspect gives Carver more than enough opportunities to get creatively gruesome in ways that'll have viewers wincing in disgust and rolling with laughter. Roth also makes good use of social media as both a tracking device and an indictment on our obsession with going viral.

Nearly every character could be affixed a backstory or motivation that qualifies them as the murderous pilgrim in retrospect. But Roth does a better job than most playing that game and the enormous cast makes sense once you realize Carver needs enough heads at the table to host dinner. If there's a Final Girl, it's Jessica, played by relative newcomer Nell Verlaque, who makes for a likable, charismatic presence as the group member with the most guilt to bare. 

As Jessica's dad and store owner Thomas Wright, the great Rick Hoffman gives another masterclass in corporate sleaze, with Patrick Dempsey covering the same law enforcement territory he did in Scream 3, but faring even better. The rest of the cast deliver exactly what's called for, even if the real star is Carver himself, (voiced by Adam McDonald and physically portrayed by stuntman Adam Armbruster), who's very much patterned after iconic horror villains like Michael, Jason and Ghostface, complete with that memorably creepy mask.

A whodunnit horror plot loaded with suspects will always invite Scream comparisons, but if that franchise takes an entirely meta approach, Roth allows the content serve as its own self referential wink. And while it's easy to argue this doesn't exactly stand out from the pack, there's really little need. Thanksgiving is what a film like this should be, earning its inevitable sequel and a place alongside the seasonal slashers it pays homage to.

Inglourious Basterds

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Bruhl
Running Time: 152 min.
Rating: R

★★★★ (out of ★★★★)

There's usually a section in any bookstore where you can find those speculative fiction novels dealing with various alternate history scenarios. The victory of the South in the Civil War. The survival of the Byzantine Empire. Nazi Germany's victory in World War II. Quentin Tarantino uses the pages of those books as toilet paper in Inglourious Basterds, the alternate history to end all alternate histories, and easily his best film since Pulp Fiction. What everyone expected to be another one of his fun  B-movie tributes (this time to Spaghetti Westerns) over-performs considerably to become something far more, representing a giant leap forward for a director who was written off as peaking a while ago. It stands as his least indulgent, most assured effort, playing on all the strengths that were evident in his best work and finding a way to incorporate his cinematic influences and fanboy instincts into a film that's uniquely his. A substantial, focused work from a filmmaker who for the past decade has mostly been prone to taking crazy detours and marching to the beat of his own drum.

It wasn't until it ended that I realized most of the picture is in subtitles, not as if it matters because I was too enraptured in the story to even notice, hanging on every word in each tension filled scene. Tarantino milks every moment for all its worth but as impressive as it is, it's his ability for discovering and fostering underseen talent that reaches unthinkable heights. There's a brilliantly understated performance in this that even eclipses the film containing it, which is saying a lot considering the film itself is a near-masterpiece. This is the rare motion picture that will likely invite many repeated viewings to fully grasp all its crazy complexities and its ending, backdropped against an unforgettable final image, is as controversially cathartic a release as you hope a movie could deliver.

The film opens in German occupied France in 1941 with a visit to a dairy farm from "The Jew Hunter," Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). He suspects the farmer (Denis Menochet) is hiding Jews and after initiating a bizarre conversation about squirrels and rats, he kills the Dreyfus family, found hiding under the floorboards. All except one. Daughter Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) escapes and we catch up with her four years later when under an alias she now operates a small Paris cinema. All is fine until she encounters war hero Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), who's interested in her theater (and actually a lot more than that) for the premiere of the new Nazi propaganda picture, Nation's Pride, in which he stars and will be attended by Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. She agrees, plotting the ultimate revenge against the Nazis who murdered her family, provided her cover isn't blown first. Revenge is also on the minds of "The Basterds," a gang of Jews who kill and scalp Nazis. Led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), they have a dangerous plan of their own for the premiere involving infiltration from undercover former film critic Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) and a famous German film actress turned Allied double agent named Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

What's always been the long-running joke with Tarantino as a filmmaker, even amongst his most loyal supporters, is that he's a far better writer than director and that the guy just loves movies. That former criticism is called into question for the first time with this film while the latter isn't so much a criticism as it is the God's honest truth. But they've manifested themselves as criticisms mainly because he's spent the years following the enormous success of Pulp Fiction applying them to exciting diversions and genre tributes. That's not to say his day at the playground with a Jackie Brown, a Kill Bill or a Death Proof wouldn't be the equivalent of any other director's career best, but this one is more than that. Here he's really channeled and harnessed his self-indulgent tendencies and cinema obsession in the best possible way, applying them for more than just a good time (although this certainly delivers that in spades).

The love for movies does not only factor into the screenplay, for the first time it seems fully ingrained into the entire picture. Like Pulp Fiction, this is divided into chapters (five of them) but what's so curious about that is how each of them is so tightly constructed as to feel like five huge scenes. There are two or three huge ones while the rest wrap around it perfectly. Christoph Waltz is in most of them and his Landa is a Nazi unlike any we've seen depicted on film before. Rather than project him as pure evil personified, Waltz plays him as charming, intelligent and slick. His chief motivation really is simply doing his job and doing it well and it's that approach that makes the character so much more chillingly terrifying than it could possibly be otherwise. What Waltz does in the opening interrogation scene to get to the point he needs to with this character and jump start the story has to be seen (and heard) to be believed. Had he only appeared in those first ten minutes and nothing else he'd still have the Supporting Actor Oscar in the bag.

All the praise and awards attention for Waltz is justified but on equal ground, if not higher, is the work of newcomer Melanie Laurent as Shosanna. Part of why I'm so partial to it is that there are just so few strong starring roles available for women and it's something Tarantino has always excelled at writing, but takes to a new level here. Laurent doesn't have a lot of lines. Most of them are in foreign tongue. Yet she expresses all she needs to without words and just her eyes. A scene where Shosanna sits and eats with Landa, the man who murdered her family. As he questions her about the movie premiere the tension and suspense becomes unbearable. Just watch Laurent's face the entire time and when the scene ends witness her let it all out. She also expertly sells the most difficult part of the story--Shosanna's complicated, seemingly one-sided relationship with war hero Zoller, which we're not quite sure what to make of even right up until its tragic end.

At risk of overstating the case, Laurent gives the kind of iconic performance you can see being looked back on years from now as a landmark. The final image we get of her is so memorable it could very well be burned (literally) into our psyches. Considering this is an ensemble film I'm not sure which Oscar acting category she'd fit into but here's hoping they figure it out soon. And that's no knock on Diane Kruger as a separate review could be written exploring how Tarantino somehow managed to get such a thrilling performance out of an unproven actress barely memorable in the National Treasure movies. She's a surprise but Laurent's the heart and soul, so much so that movie actually suffers a little when she or Waltz aren't onscreen.

The Basterds are entertaining as hell, which is all they need to be and Brad Pitt (in a less pivotal role than you might expect) delivers a turn as broadly comic as his work in Burn After Reading. Of course, the most controversial casting decision is non-actor Eli Roth in the role of Staff Sergeant Donnie Donowitz (aka "The Bear Jew"), who takes a baseball bat to Nazis' heads. Roth really isn't asked to do a whole lot and this isn't a challenging part but he's adequate enough in it. The irony isn't lost that the "torture porn" director of Hostel brutally hands out the most controversial killing at the end of the film. There's a message in that somewhere. Make of it what you will.

The biggest accomplishment is that Tarantino takes the most sensitive, shameful subject imaginable and makes it fun. Barrels of fun. It's almost horrible to say, but true. And by having the Jews mimic the atrocities that were done to them by the Nazis and reversing the balance, he also forces to look at history in a way that goes beyond the normal black and white textbook depiction found in so many dry war epics, as uncomfortable as that may make us feel. It's a fascinating experiment because they become real people rather than labels or footnotes in history. As a result, this movie feels alive with an energy and importance. It's really a complete subversion of all genres and though its title may be inspired from Enzo Castellari's little seen 1978 war film The Inglorious Bastards, there's no mistaking this as a wholly original work. It's all Tarantino, who's back with a vengeance, and now has us wondering again if all the massive hype surrounding him was true.

Hostel Part II

Director: Eli Roth
Starring: Lauren German, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips, Roger Bart, Richard Burgi, Vera Jordanova, Jay Hernandez, Jordan Ladd
Running Time: 93 min.
Rating: R

*** (out of ****)

Almost two years ago I reviewed a movie called Hostel, directed by Eli Roth. At the time I noted it had slightly more for going for it than just blood and gore and praised the film for exploiting our fears of being left helpless in a foreign country. That infamous line in the film, "You're a long way from home" couldn't have rang any truer. I also thought Jay Hernandez's underrated performance was an overlooked reason why the film's third act worked. I gave the movie three stars and moved on. I didn't really pay it a second thought after that.

Sometimes when people find out I review movies they ask me which I enjoy more: Praising a great film or bashing a terrible one. The answer is neither. The most fun comes from reviewing the movies that fall right in the middle in that three star category, but then later they somehow return to your conciousness. You realize there was more to them than you originally thought and you can go back and re-watch them, discovering little details you may have missed the first time. That's what I love most about movies. This has been happening a lot with me lately, especially with horror films, most recently with The Descent, which I realize now I didn't give the credit it deserved when I reviewed it earlier this year. Hostel is such a film and I recently re-watched it with the commentary on and realized there was actually a great deal more going on than maybe I gave it credit for. It's still a three-star movie, but it's a more memorable one. If I wrote a review now it would likely be completely different.

You could imagine my surprise then when the movie got an incredible amount of publicity and Roth became a lightening rod for hatred and controversy, prompting allegations that his films are misogynistic, homophobic, and he holds contempt for his characters. And that's just the beginning. I haven't even mentioned the things that were said about him personally. A new term, "torture porn," was even coined to describe what many believe is his sick and sadistic method of filmmaking. I'm going to be brutally honest here: I don't care. It's a horror movie. People are going to die. People are going to be tortured. The strong will survive and the weak will perish. And, oh yes, there will be blood. I care even less what his films say about him as a person since I don't know him. What I do care about is whether he can tell a visually involving, smart and entertaining story for an hour and a half. I'm happy to report that the answer is "yes."

Now the big question: Is Hostel Part 2 better, or as good, as the original? Visually and technically it's leaps and bounds better and a noticeable directorial improvement for Roth. In fact, it's probably his best directorial work (his Thanksgiving trailer during Grindhouse notwithstanding). The film also contains something the original didn't: genuine suspense and terror. Unfortunately the sequel, unlike the original, contains minor miscalculations by Roth that individually may not amount to much, but by the end start to add up and take the film down a notch. Still, it's impressive and the film is redeemed by two unforgettable characters and an interesting twist at the end that ranks among the most psychologically complex you'll ever see in a horror film.

Hostel Part II opens with a prologue catching us up on what's happened to Paxton (Hernandez), the first film's protagonist, who managed to survive and is now haunted by visions of his horrific experience. He's in hiding with his girlfriend (Jordan Ladd) at her grandmother's farm and always looking over his shoulder, basically living in fear. It's at this point that a decision is made early on with the Paxton character I didn't agree with and does more to negate the ending of the first film than add to the start of this one. It seems like it was thrown in for shock value and sensationalism. I understand the point of the prologue was to catch people up on the events of the first film, which is fine, but I think most of it could have been excised with no harm done to the picture. The cynic in me thinks it exists just to get Hernandez and Ladd into the movie.

Luckily we shift quickly to meet Beth (Lauren German), Whitney (Bijou Phillips) and Lorna (Heather Matarazzo) who are three American girls studying abroad in Italy. While there they encounter exotic model Axelle (Vera Jordanova) who lures them to the same Slovakian hostel that led to the bloodshed for our pals in the first film. Then in one of the very best scenes in this film we see an electronic, e-bay like bidding for the three girls and the winners are two American businessmen, Todd (Richard Burgi) and Stuart (Roger Bart). Todd, an arrogant prick, is almost literally dragging the shy and reserved Stuart to Slovakia to do some "elite hunting" for his birthday. The dynamic between these two characters make the film and before it's over they'll be tested as much as the girls they've won the privilege to torture and kill.

There's a lot of plot going on in the first act of this film as we're thrown from the prologue into two different, but directly related plots. We also get an unprecedented, behind the scenes look at the inner workings of this secret murder-for-profit organization, which has even further reaching influence than we originally thought. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is left to the imagination as Roth throws everything out on the table for us to see. We even get to meet the mastermind behind the entire operation. Normally leaving so little a mystery should rob the film of suspense and tension, yet strangely it doesn't. Somehow it increases it as seeing the sadistic way it all works makes us fear for these girls even more. Roth seems to be using the sequel as a means to fill in the little details that were missing in the first film and expand on themes that were only just touched on. If you think about it, that's exactly what a sequel should do.

It could have just been me, but the protagonists in this film seemed a lot stupider than those in the original. You'd think traveling to a foreign country, and especially being female, these characters would have been especially cautious and made smarter decisions, even if this is a horror film. Everything they do, and how they eventually find themselves in the dire situation they're in seemed like it came out of a handbook titled, "What Not To Do When Traveling Abroad." However as stupid as their decisions were (and boy were they stupid) I can honestly say I believe someone could have made them. Still, I thought how the guys in the first film found themselves in the situation they were in was more realistic and held up better to logical scrutiny. Also in the first film the guys seemed like they were really good friends with a strong camaraderie.

Here, these girls seem like they're just mere acquaintances which takes away from the story a little bit. They're also more stereotypical characters. We have the slut, the dork and the normal girl (if normal can actually be considered a stereotype). Phillips and especially German (who's really tested late in the film) give good performances, but Matarazzo does not. Those wondering why you haven't seen her much since her role as Dawn Weiner in 1995's Welcome to the Dollhouse will get their answer here. Her performance is like nails on a chalkboard and a parody of every movie geek stereotype with the volume turned up to eleven. It's like Dawn Weiner goes to Europe. What a testament to how gruesome a later scene is that we do eventually have sympathy for her.

The first film featured the cruel irony of guys going to the hostel to take advantage of women only to have the tables turned on them and get taken advantage of themselves in the worst way. Even though the backpackers here are young women Roth still finds a way to make an insightful commentary on gender roles and male psychology. He does this with the characters of the two businessmen and the performances from Burgi and Bart (who ironically have both appeared on tv's Desperate Housewives) are absolutely sensational. You'll swear you know guys exactly like Todd and Stuart. I know I do. Considering this is a horror movie, which aren't generally known for deep characterizations, that's a major accomplishment. Roth was interested in blood and gore in the first film but here he's actually interested in exploring the moral ramifications of what these people are doing. By having two very different types of males who aren't in agreement about what they're doing, a moral center is created in the film. By the end he challenges our expectations of what each will do and how they will act, but does it in a way that makes so much sense and brings truth to the situation. Roth has publicly called the ending to his film "the most shocking in horror movie history," but it's actually what comes just before the ending that's more shocking and carries the most emotional impact.

In a strange sort of way this film reminded me of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof in that we're given time to get know a group of girls before the carnage comes. Of course Roth doesn't have Tarantino's ear for dialogue (who does?), but three quarters of this film is dedicated to building suspense, and it's done successfully. When the carnage comes it's brutal and graphic, but to be honest if you look at the whole picture there isn't that much of it. There's a scene with one of the characters alone in a swimming pool and Roth does something he's never done before. He directs a scene that's terrifying and sets a mood. I was legitimately frightened for this character and worried what would happen next. The first Hostel was just fun. This one, even though it probably has more flaws, seems better put together and feels like a deeper movie with more to say thematically.

All the little pieces don't quite fit together seamlessly and I thought the film went on one scene longer than it should (with a final shot that really breaks the film's tone). Also the "bubblegum kids," one of the few genuinely frightening elements from the first film, return in what seems like a larger role, except this time they're treated more as a joke than anything else. These are relatively small complaints because overall this is a strong effort. Eli Roth has yet to make a truly great film, but for the first time, he comes dangerously close. There are flashes of brilliance here. I wouldn't want to see a Hostel Part III and I don't think we will, at least judging from the box office take of this one. This feels like a good time to end it and for Roth to move on to something else, which I'm looking forward to since he's improving as a director with each film he makes. It's a shame little mistakes at the scripting level prevented this from being everything it could have been because it's almost flawlessly directed. If you're looking for a quality horror film you're not going to do much better than Hostel Part II.