Video-Game "Beowulf," Creepy "Mist," Slick "Devil," and Incoherent "Tales"
FS
Issue date: 12/4/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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And the suspense is magnified by the fact that the story is told out of chronological sequence, with discrete scenes showing the same events from the perspectives of different characters and shuffled so that we're constantly taken backward and forward in time.
The result is a film that demands greater attention than usual, but amply rewards the added effort.
"The Mist"
If you're in the mood for a monster movie from the 1950s told on a far larger scale, "The Mist" (wide release) is for you.
Adapted from a Stephen King novella, it's basically a giant bug flick, about a bunch of customers who find themselves trapped in a supermarket by a strange cloud that's populated by huge insects and tentacle-armed creatures that aren't at all shy about attacking and devouring anyone who gets in their way.
Adapted by Frank Darabont, "The Mist" is very different from his previous films based on King stories ("The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile"). But on its own terms, it's a very effective, if old-fashioned, portrait of a crowd losing control under the stress of assault by forces it can't comprehend.
And the ending is a grim shocker.
"Southland Tales"
Devotees of Richard Kelly's debut feature "Donnie Darko" are hereby warned that his follow-up, "Southland Tales" (Angelika) is a complete mess, a sophomoric exercise that aims to be a satiric take on the post-9/11 world as sharp and funny as Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" was for the Cold War era but fails miserably.
The script, set in an America that's turned into a crypto-fascist state following a nuclear attack, is a pretty much incomprehensible cacophony of plots involving, among a small army of characters, an action movie star played by Duane "The Rock" Johnson, a porno actress played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, and twin brothers-one a cop, the other a war veteran-played by Seann William Scott.
Others in the cast include a number of "Saturday Night Live" veterans, Justin Timberlake (who does a flamboyant music video) and Wallace Shawn as a German scientist who claims to have developed a process to turn sea water into gasoline.
There's also some business about time travel (a pet interest of Kelly, as "Donnie" demonstrated), but how exactly it fits in isn't readily apparent.
Nothing that happens in "Southland Tales" makes the slightest sense, and it finally ends after two-and-a-half excruciating hours in an explosive finale involving a flying ice cream truck and a dirigible floating over Los Angeles that justifies the reversal of T.S. Eliot, "This is the way the world ends-not with a whimper but a bang," that's used as a mantra throughout the picture.
That's appropriate, since Kelly's movie turns out to be a bomb of "Heaven's Gate" proportions.
The result is a film that demands greater attention than usual, but amply rewards the added effort.
"The Mist"
If you're in the mood for a monster movie from the 1950s told on a far larger scale, "The Mist" (wide release) is for you.
Adapted from a Stephen King novella, it's basically a giant bug flick, about a bunch of customers who find themselves trapped in a supermarket by a strange cloud that's populated by huge insects and tentacle-armed creatures that aren't at all shy about attacking and devouring anyone who gets in their way.
Adapted by Frank Darabont, "The Mist" is very different from his previous films based on King stories ("The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile"). But on its own terms, it's a very effective, if old-fashioned, portrait of a crowd losing control under the stress of assault by forces it can't comprehend.
And the ending is a grim shocker.
"Southland Tales"
Devotees of Richard Kelly's debut feature "Donnie Darko" are hereby warned that his follow-up, "Southland Tales" (Angelika) is a complete mess, a sophomoric exercise that aims to be a satiric take on the post-9/11 world as sharp and funny as Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" was for the Cold War era but fails miserably.
The script, set in an America that's turned into a crypto-fascist state following a nuclear attack, is a pretty much incomprehensible cacophony of plots involving, among a small army of characters, an action movie star played by Duane "The Rock" Johnson, a porno actress played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, and twin brothers-one a cop, the other a war veteran-played by Seann William Scott.
Others in the cast include a number of "Saturday Night Live" veterans, Justin Timberlake (who does a flamboyant music video) and Wallace Shawn as a German scientist who claims to have developed a process to turn sea water into gasoline.
There's also some business about time travel (a pet interest of Kelly, as "Donnie" demonstrated), but how exactly it fits in isn't readily apparent.
Nothing that happens in "Southland Tales" makes the slightest sense, and it finally ends after two-and-a-half excruciating hours in an explosive finale involving a flying ice cream truck and a dirigible floating over Los Angeles that justifies the reversal of T.S. Eliot, "This is the way the world ends-not with a whimper but a bang," that's used as a mantra throughout the picture.
That's appropriate, since Kelly's movie turns out to be a bomb of "Heaven's Gate" proportions.
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