New York, 1973. Social worker and single-parent Anna (Linda Cardellini) receives an alert about two young boys being held in apparent captivity at their home before helping them to safety. But relief is short-lived when it turns out their mother was in fact protecting them from La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez), the furious spirit of a Mexican peasant girl who murdered children three hundred years earlier. What she did in life she carries on in death, and now Llorona's attention has been roused, the lady in white has an eye on Anna's offspring…
PRETTY ONE The sight of Llorona looming sharply into view certainly isn't a pretty one of course, nor is it meant to be. Director Michael Chaves forgoes the classical third-act reveal by using his antagonists's terrifying visage frequently throughout the film, letting the audience know they're not safe from the very beginning.
The basis of our tale here is Mexican folklore. And while these are sensitive times to brandish potential generalisations, the cultural references - certainly when it comes to tackling the demon - are used with a sense of inclusivity rather than belittlement. The Conjuring universe brings Hispanic ghouls to the table in the same way that The Possession did for Hebrew legends.
La Llorona's veil is a twisted parody of both bridal attire and the muslin cloths frequently used to swaddle infants, while her hair-bedraggled face and theme of drowning both manage to borrow motifs from traditional Japanese horror. And much like the classic Ringu, La Llorona's is a curse which can't be outrun by distance once it's set. In keeping with its south-of-the-border roots, the film even manages to throw in a brief homage to From Dusk Till Dawn in the preparation for its final showdown. When the moment arrives, Anna's last-ditch attempt to save her children is worthy of Hammer-era Peter Cushing. This is a film steeped in its genre, a brutal study of PTSD and post-feminist matriarchy which challenges the genre as much as the audience.
MOTOR RUN The casting here is textbook and Linda Cardellini goes from strength to strength. Having shown she's got a handle on comedy with the Daddy's Home series and held up the more domestic-side of superhero life in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she now effortlessly turns her hand to horror; not as a threat or shrieking victim, but a saviour and protector-figure.
La Llorona is only connected to the Conjuring universe by means of an incidental character, but is connected all the same, a fitting addition to the macabre family. Scares arrive with dramatic punctuality, Chaves keenly aware that there's no time to drag things out at a lean 93 minutes. He skips the niceties of an extended setup while still respecting the overall form and structure required for a horror movie.
From its first lumbering steps with Bathsheba, through the twisted grimace of Annabelle and on to last year's Valak, the Conjuring series has showcased female antagonists as a contemporary taunt to the testosterone-fuelled slashers of yesteryear in Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers and even Candyman. Although far from pinning the evils of the netherworld on women as a whole, they're more properly possessed by demons here, used as channels and portals, preying upon and amplifying the insecurities of societal expectations.
OFF THE LINE And that's taken to its logical and horrifying conclusion with La Llorona, challenging the audience's natural instincts to cherish notions of motherhood as the supernatural malevolent force is faced in turn not only by a woman who is a mother, but also a social worker - one who provides care and support to others in times of crisis.
What tragedy has occurred in La Llorona's past that her very soul has turned against the sacred covenant handed down to women since time immemorial, both as a right and responsibility? The more we witness her supernatural crimes first hand, can we develop if not an air of sympathy, then at least understanding? Can some monsters be redeemed, absolved? Should they be? At what point do we as a passive viewer abandon our own humanity in the race to condemn a lack of someone else's?
MY LLORONA*1 Still the film has a playful aspect, as Anna blithely ignores an episode of Scooby Doo playing on the television, a nod to Cardellini's role as Velma in the two live action adaptations of the high-camp spooky comedy. And during the climactic showdown, Anna's son Chris wears a t-shirt bearing the cartoon image of a dinosaur - a symbol of fact and reason against naive superstition, but one that still acknowledges that the past has its place.
Giving Marvel Studios a run for their money, the next Annabelle-led installment of the Conjuring universe is due to his cinemas in under two months' time, so plan your viewing of this accordingly.
I'm only joking, The Curse Of La Llorona is absolute shite from start to finish.
But where's the fun in writing that review again? *2
The Nun*3.
If you liked The Nun you'll enjoy - nay, deserve - La Llorona.
Look, if you've got a tenner burning a hole in your pocket, give me a shout and we'll go for a pint.
If you're going to watch this at all, wait until it hits pre-paid streaming or TV.
Well what do you think?
If we disagree about this you need medical help, not booze.
*2 To be absolutely clear, the main body of this review should be taken with a pinch of salt so large that it will induce scurvy before the end of the second paragraph is reached. Although that's not to imply that the comparisons made above have no basis, they're just not intended to be complimentary. The only terrifying thing about this tedious, clockwork bollocks is how it even made it past the pitch-meeting in the first place.
How does La Llorona's premise work, exactly? She killed a couple of kids and felt really guilty about that, which is why she kept killing more children as a means of atonement? Wait, what? She can be summoned from Mexico to New York just on a whim? Presumably she's on-call everywhere? This shit's been going on for three centuries and not once has someone said "have you tried just stabbing her with the crucifix, Terry? In the sternum? I think that's how you do an exorcism". And look at that tagline on the poster. 'She wants your children'. Was that one crafted on a Friday afternoon by any chance? The cast aren't trying here and the writers sure as hell aren't, so why should the audience?
Best line: "Now he's a faith-healer. A shaman who operates of the fringes of religion and science…".
Fucking hell, mate. [ BACK ]
*3 Why did I go so easy on The Nun? It's even more laughably bad than this movie. Must have caught me on a good day, or something? [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Will Ferrell falls over six times in this movie. He's by no means alone in pursuing this basic comic staple, but on the leaderboard of Daddy's Home 2 pratfalls, Will's right there at the top. This festive follow-up to the 2015 movie which provided the lighthearted scheduling-alternative to The Force Awakens is an under-written, erratically paced, haphazardly directed exercise in box-ticking, button-pushing cinematic gibberish. John Lithgow falls over three times.
Helmed by Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, the two performers who effectively wrote the 21st-century appendix on The Formulaic Studio-Comedy Textbook, the 100 minute run-time is a collection of jokes they did last time, the jokes you'd expect them to do this time, and a climactic a cappella version of Do They Know It's Christmas. I wish I was making that up. Meanwhile, poor Linda Cardellini pads around the back of the screenplay looking for someone who's at least heard of the Bechdel Test, never mind up for trying to pass it. Added to the roster are the aforementioned Lithgow and Mel Gibson, as the central pair's dads. They're both quite fun*1, if only because they haven't stretched this shit to breaking point already, like their screen-sons, but in the end this is an easy paycheck and they treat it accordingly. If you've seen the trailer for Daddy's Home 2, you don't need to watch the film*2.
Well, writer/director Sean Anders is hoping you enjoyed and memorised the first Daddy's Home, because in the sequel he doesn't bother to introduce or re-establish any of the returning characters.
This is not a cinema film, despite having its entire climactic sequence take place in a cinema with a sense of completely unearned smugness.
…
It's not even the best work in this two-film series.
Probably not.
There might be one in the cinema scene, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
Let's say no.
*1 That said, Gibson needs to tread carefully. The troubled™ star clawed back some much-needed respectability earlier this year with Hacksaw Ridge, but this comedy turn leaves him standing in the entrance to De Niro Alley, an apparently one-way street of ill-will and diminishing casting opportunities. [ BACK ]
*2 Or to put it another way, You Don't Need To Watch The Film. Glad we cleared that up. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
If there's one golden rule of cinema, it's that everyone loves a good underdog story. I must get round to seeing one soon. The Founder however, depicts not of the struggle McDonald brothers themselves, but of Ray Kroc - the guy who successfully franchised out their business, turning it from a precarious six-outlet chain in California to the behemoth we know today. It's not a particularly subtle tale, and it's not handled particularly subtly. From the cinematic hush the first time The M-Word is spoken, then again when The Golden Arches™ are later revealed*1, to the lead character tracing a route to california on a map with his finger when there's already a massive red line denoting the journey, The Founder is based on a level of simplicity which befits is subject perfectly.
Michael Keaton gives a relatively strong central performance as Kroc, even if he's only really playing Michael Keaton™, while John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman are on surprisingly great form as the McDonald brothers (not surprising that Offerman should be great of course, just that he's great in this). Laura Dern appears fleetingly as Kroc's long-suffering first wife Ethel, as does Linda Cardellini as his second, with some of the most over-directed flirting cinema has ever witnessed.
This is by no means a hagiography of the world's largest burger chain, but neither is it a hatchet-job. While the film isn't officially authorised by McDonald's, it's clearly designed to weave its way around any potential defamation lawsuits. The people involved in the corporation's infancy are depicted variously as naive, controlling, needy, vain, conniving and ruthless, but the ideal itself is never less than idolised. When Ray Kroc lays his franchise-pitch out to the brothers*2, dreamily comparing the McDonald's brand to literal churches and courthouses, the audience can take that any way they want, and they'd probably all be correct to some degree.
But despite the eventual ubiquity of the California startup and the lead character's mantra of persistence (which he lifts wholesale from a motivational-speaking LP), this isn't a film of 'the little guy'. Failed business-deals are done in kitchens and parkings lots; the successful ones occur in upmarket restaurants, golf courses and lodge-clubs. The faceless, burger-munching public aren't the customers here, they're the product. This is the underdog story, repackaged as a corporate sermon, where the first past the post is the winner, fuck everyone else and welcome to America. This is the tale of a down-at-heel salesman who comes across something new that he really likes and thinks "Wow! I'm terrible at my own job, how can I make money off the back of someone else's idea?" *3
I particularly liked the caption card before the closing credits stating that McDonald's 'feeds 1% of America every day'. My brain assumed that was delivered as an achievement. As if they're some sort of humanitarian organisation. I imagine this is a lot more enjoyable if you leave your cynicism at the door. A big ask, for 2017.
What can I tell you? Interesting as a film, depressing as a story. The Founder kept me engaged for its duration albeit in a slightly perfunctory way, but it's ultimately conceited, disposable and leaves a slightly unpleasant aftertaste.
And I think we all know precisely where that analogy is headed…
Difficult to say as I'm not exactly sure who this film is for…
Not particularly, although the 1950s colour-palette set-dressing is very well executed.
*1 The arches are part of a concept painting in the brothers' original San Bernardino office, created from Richard McDonald's idea, and Kroc's awe-struck response is met by Mac McDonald's line "Oh, that's some real Dick magic, right there". Meanwhile, the audience nods in agreement, for any number of reasons… [ BACK ]
*2 Although I liked that the screenplay makes a thing about Maurice McDonald co-running a stressful and thriving business whilst living with Type 1 Diabetes. Faintly ironic given that the man himself is arguably a key factor in the 20th century boom of the Type 2 variety… [ BACK ]
*3 While I can't seem to locate it on YouTube at present, I'm fairly certain McDonald's ran a TV commercial in recent years featuring a brief flashback sequence to the first quaint restaurant out in California in a 'how far we've come' vein. Although I don't recall that advert using the voiceover line "…of course, our Ray fucked those boys over good and proper like they deserved". But without watching the ad again, who knows? [ BACK ]
*4 An actor, oddly enough, named Mac McDonald. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Wow, this might be the Will Ferrell's laziest movie since Get Hard. No wait, this is Will Ferrell's first movie since Get Hard. Although it's also both. He's joined in this thankless endeavour*1 by comedic deadweight Mark Wahlberg, who starred in a Transformers movie that was less mechanical than this. Every step in the three-hand screenplay is heavily telegraphed, patronisingly executed and then called-back half an hour later, where it's congratulated by itself as it pats the audience on the back for remembering the thing they were just shown.
But let's be entirely fair, Daddy's Home doesn't fail as a formulaic, broad-strokes comedy. The film is every bit as slapdash and uninventive as it means to be, and as much as I'm bitching and moaning about it, I wasn't in the least bit surprised by anything that happened. It's not necessarily badly done, it's just blandly done, refusing to drive outside its own metaphorical coned-off safe area*2 and recycling the tropes from a hundred other slapstick, one-upmanship comedies while bringing nothing new to the shrieking party. Although even with a 12A certificate nerfing-out the worst excesses of the genre, the movie is still too tonally coarse to be the kids' comedy flick it clearly should be, and can't quite commit to either side of the dick-joke fence.
Considering Daddy's Home is just the single premise from the trailer stretched out for an hour and a half, it doesn't half drag its feet in telling that joke, and the more that the antics escalate (you've seen the punchlines in the trailer, remember), the more pedestrian it somehow becomes. Wahlberg at least appears to be enjoying himself a little as the resentful blowhard dad, but Ferrell's earnest counter-performance slips into autopilot with the first line of his sporadic (and needless) narration. Linda Cardellini and Bobby Canavale seem to spend their scenes silently consoling themselves that at least they're part of the Marvel universe now, and poor Hannibal Buress looks embarrassingly lost throughout.
If anything, the film is absolved slightly in that I've seen both leads in worse movies than this one, and I'm genuinely not sure if either can better themselves any more. Steve Carrell is off making waves in the grown-up's pool, Ferrell is still splashing around in his armbands…
Warning: The film also features the worst CGI-enhanced motorcycle gag you've witnessed this year, irrespective of many many or few CGI-enhanced motorcycle gags you've seen this year.
Oh, and I confess that I did laugh out loud in the film's finale when a young boy punches a young girl in the face, although I think that was just a release mechanism since I'd been sat there willing someone to be convincingly hurt for about an hour and a half…
If you're one of the poorly-behaved customers which surrounded me tonight on their annual post-Christmas cinema visit, chattering and yapping throughout the movie and generally acting like Screen 4 was their own living room, then apparently so.
Telly, if you must.
Hahahahaha.
Oh, probably.
If you're going to look me in the eye and tell me you enjoyed Daddy's Home, I expect you to have some weapons-grade reasoning to hand…
There isn't, although it is used for the skateboard/powerline gag in the trailer.
Daddy's Home stars Linda Cardellini, who was in the Scooby Doo movies with Freddie 'Kanan' Prinze Jr and Sarah Michelle 'Seventh Sister' Gellar.
*1 By which I mean that I'm going to thank no-one for this film.
*2 Although there was one moment in the third-act where the script suddenly tries its hand at being self-referentially meta, at which I thought "Oh, don't you fucking dare. You haven't earned the right to make fun of what a mainstream comedy-flick would do in this situation, since you're barely at that level yourself…". Although unlike (seemingly) the rest of tonight's audience, I didn't say this out loud. Plus, I didn't have to; I knew I'd be typing this...
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
