By Rick Bentley
FILM: Carrie
CAST: Chloe Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde
DIRECTION: Kimberly Peirce
How much you enjoy the remake of the 1976 classic horror film Carrie will depend on how well you remember the original film. Except for more elaborate special effects and the addition of social media as a tool for the bullying that turns milk toast Carrie into the worst prom date ever, this is basically the same take on the Stephen King novel.
Those who haven’t seen the original will be introduced to the emotionally and socially stunted Carrie, played to a creepy chill by Chloe Grace Moretz. She’s a high school reject because her zealot mother (Julianne Moore) has raised her to believe that any good feelings are pathways for Satan to take her soul.
When Carrie becomes the focus of ridicule, caused by the social ignorance her mother has instilled in her, the teen appears headed to a lifetime of solitude. It’s at this time that Carrie finds she has telekinetic powers, a family trait that skipped a generation.
One popular teen (Gabriella Wilde) feels sorry for Carrie and convinces her equally popular boyfriend to make Carrie his prom date. This act of kindness becomes a bloody nightmare when the hazing of Carrie reaches to new levels. There’s no wrath as deep as a prom queen scorned.
The key to making Carrie work falls on the mother and daughter. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie set a high standard in the original — one that Moretz and Moore match. They manage to make these characters both unnerving and sympathetic, a task that’s not easy to do.
From the agonising pain in her voice to her slumped-shouldered stance, Moretz finds the perfect pitch to play this ultimate tale of teen angst. The young actress has an incredible ability to sell a scene with her eyes, a powerful tool for this performance as Carrie’s emotional stability tilts and shatters.
Moore becomes possessed by the spirit of the emotionally mangled maternal character and creates a mesmerising performance as she swings from caring to crazy. The balance she finds to play this character is the cornerstone for the entire film.
They found these performances through Kimberly Peirce, who would seem to be an odd selection as director. Her past works have featured the socially relevant films Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss. But, if you look past all of the blood and gore, Carrie is the kind of movie Peirce likes to make. The original Carrie was released almost 40 years ago, but it has a message about bullying that resonates clearly today. That element, as accented by Peirce, makes Carrie a smarter movie than most horror films.
It’s a strong point, but it’s not enough to make fans of the original film change their loyalties. As for Carrie virgins, they get both an entertaining and socially relevant take on the King classic. — The Fresno Bee/MCT
Commanding performance
By Rick Bentley
FILM: Thor
CAST: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman,
DIRECTION: Kenneth Branagh
It takes three elements to make a great movie based on a comic book super hero: an actor who embraces the role, a director who treats the material with respect and fantastic visual effects.
Thor has all three.
The film, based on the Marvel Comics series about Norse mythology, follows Thor to Earth. On the day he is to take over as king of mythical Asgard, there’s an attack. Thor defies his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), and goes on a quest for revenge. Odin banishes Thor — stripped of “thunder powers” and powerful hammer — to Earth. There, Thor meets a scientist (Natalie Portman), who helps him on his path to redemption.
From the arrogance he shows through the early scenes to the humility he finds once Thor lands on Earth, hulky/hunky Chris Hemsworth embodies the charm, strength and power of the character. It’s as if he stepped out of the pages of the original comic book created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The last actor to embrace a comic book-inspired character so completely was another Aussie, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
Hemsworth gets help from a strong supporting cast that includes the always-dependable Hopkins and a wonderful performance by Tom Hiddleston as Thor’s mischief-making brother Loki.
A huge reason Hemsworth’s performance is so commanding is the direction of Kenneth Branagh. His selection as director created a buzz among fans because his past films were based on the works of William Shakespeare. That was the exact quality this film needed.
Unlike other Marvel Comics characters who are firmly planted on Earth, Thor’s origin is in Asgard. Branagh’s always been able to take lofty tales and bring them down to the elements of family, honour and love and make them accessible.
Even if you have never read a Thor comic — or don’t know the character of Loki from Lockheed — Thor is enjoyable for its story of father-son conflicts, sibling rivalries and budding romance. As for the visuals, they are stunning. And it’s not just the elaborate creation of Asgard or the stunning presentation of the famous Rainbow Bridge. Everything, from Thor’s use of his hammer to the battles in the desert, is dead-on. — The Fresno Bee/MCT
A paean to books
By Roger Moore
FILM: The Book Thief
CAST: Sophie Nelisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson
DIRECTION: Brian Percival
Whatever virtues turned The Book Thief into an acclaimed international best seller are strangely absent from the film adaptation. A sad orphan’s story bereft of emotion, a paean to books that does precious little to pass that on to the viewer, a Holocaust tale where the Holocaust has been sanitised and washed out of the story — it’s a flat exercise in recreating a place and time but not really “getting” the point of it all.
Brian Percival, a veteran of the TV soap opera Downton Abbey, tips his hand early. Little Liesel (Sophie Nelisse) is on her way to a new family with her younger brother. The brother dies, en route — and she, and we feel ... nothing.
Since the tale is narrated, ironically by Death (Roger Allam), we wonder if that’s not perhaps the point. “When the time comes,” Death says of his arrival, “don’t panic. It doesn’t seem to help.”
The Book Thief is about Liesel’s life living in an unnamed small German city from 1938-45. She arrives, 11 years old and illiterate. Her kindly stepdad, Hans (Geoffrey Rush, at his twinkliest), an accordion-playing house painter and handyman, gently tricks “Your Majesty”, as he calls her, into learning to read. Her grumpy new stepmother Rosa (Emily Watson) tolerates this, and not much else.
But neighbour boy Rudy (Nico Liersch) is smitten. And no amount of bullying, no number of brush-offs can keep him from Liesel’s side. They witness Germany’s slide into World War II together, from Kristallnacht to utter defeat, giving us a child’s-eye view of what they see.
A few chilling moments come from Liesel’s Hitler Youth uniform and their child anthems, about rejecting “non-Germanic” citizens and the book burning. The Nazis liked to burn books. Liesel, instinctively, sees this for the crime it is.
Percival, working from a Michael Petroni script of the Markus Zusak novel, finds fun in Liesel rescuing a book from a bonfire (smoke, wisping through her coat, alarming Hans). But Percival is at a loss about what to do with the Holocaust and a major character, Max (Ben Schnetzer), a Jew whom we see flee the country, yet somehow come back and require sheltering by Liesel’s new family.
While the portrait of everyday life — ordinary people expressing tiny, fearful kindnesses in the face of totalitarian bigotry and a nation being led to doom — is novel, Percival fails to stage scenes suggesting the popular support of Hitler with any conviction.
Still, The Book Thief falls somewhere on the Life is Sweet/Boy in the Striped Pajamas scale of WWII tales, never exactly trivialising the war, the suffering and the Holocaust. Rush and Watson make strong impressions, but no one else does. — MCT
DVDs courtesy: Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha