www.list.co.uk/film HORROR THE STEPFATHER (18) 101min ●●●●●
SCI FI/THRILLER THE BOX (12A) 115min ●●●●●
As with his debut, Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly’s third film boasts an intriguing conundrum and an evocative period setting to complement it. Unfortunately, like his second film, Southland Tales, Kelly’s latest eventually unravels into an incomprehensible mess. It’s looking like Kelly’s going to squander the great promise heralded by his first film with a preoccupation with obscurantism that threatens to sink his career. Still, there’s much to be admired about The Box, which is based on a
12-page short story, ‘Button, Button’, by the great science fiction writer Richard Matheson. Set in America in 1976 (the post-Watergate conspiracy era, significantly), it features Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a young married couple in dire financial straits who are offered a unique way out by Frank Langella’s enigmatic and disconcertingly disfigured stranger. Having been presented with a wooden box with a red button on top, they’re told if they push it someone they don’t know will die and they will be given $1 million tax-free. You can probably guess what happens next, and when it does Diaz and Marsden are sucked into an increasingly incredible mystery that involves creepy kids, bodily possession, government spooks from the NSA and a NASA Mars mission.
All of that’s interesting up to a point, with the first hour playing like an episode of The Twilight Zone (for which TV show Matheson’s story has previously been adapted) directed by David Lynch, but then Kelly’s determination to maintain the mystery becomes confounding, pretentious, laughable and finally irritating. (Miles Fielder) ■ General release from Fri 4 Dec.
Reprising the unfortunate wine-into- water routine of his Prom Night remake, director Nelson McCormick performs a similarly unwelcome trick by blandly rehashing Joseph Ruben’s solid 1987 sleeper hit. TV staple Dylan Walsh steps into the role previously filled by Terry O’Quinn, playing David Harris, a serial killer who targets vulnerable young women and their families. JS Cardone’s script opens with an effectively gothic scene, with Harris calmly changing his appearance to the tune of ‘Silent Night’ while the bodies of his latest victims lie festering under the Christmas tree. Any tension, however, is quickly dissipated by the miscalculated strategy of focusing not on single mom Susan (Sela Ward) and her kids, but on her grown-up son Michael (Penn Badgely), who’s freshly returned from military school and suspicious of her mother’s new beau. Despite the Hamlet-lite subtext, The
Stepfather never amounts to much, with the dozy family taking a protracted 90 minutes to wake up to the titular character’s obvious villainy. Given that McCormick seems much more interested in photographing Michael’s girlfriend Kelly (Amber Heard) in a skimpy bathing suit, a career photographing swimwear models more seems more likely than in horror. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 11 Sep.
Reviews Film
DRAMA THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (15) 77min ●●●●●
Steven Soderbergh returns to his roots with more sex and lies on tape (now disc) in this low-budget drama about a high-class hooker in New York who offers her clients the titular relationship facsimile. Hard-core porn star Sasha Grey plays Chelsea, a 21- year-old professional who lives with her personal trainer boyfriend and keeps a careful record of her clients and the services – companionship as much as carnal – she provides them. Soderbergh himself shot the film in a loose approximation of cinema vérité style and he further blurs the line between fact and fiction by not only having Grey play a version of herself (sans explicit sex) but also by assembling the rest of the cast from non-professional performers. Furthermore, Soderbergh’s penchant for chopping up the chronology with flash forwards and backwards here serves to underline the slice of life vibe of the film.
There’s no denying Soderbergh’s a great craftsman, but his low-key styling combined with the plot-lite script by Ocean’s Thirteen’s co-writers Brian Koppleman and David Levien makes for a somewhat tedious experience. And it doesn’t help that while Grey performs perfectly well, the part she plays is surprisingly dull. So the film’s message, that everything is commodity, falls on deaf ears. (Miles Fielder) ■ Selected release from Fri 4 Dec.
COMEDY/DRAMA THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE (LE PREMIER JOUR DU RESTE DE TA VIE) (15) 113min ●●●●●
An enormous hit at the French box office, writer-director Remi Bezancon’s second feature explores the highs and lows of middle-class suburban family life. Split into five chapters, each of which offers the perspective of a different member of the ‘ordinary’ Duval clan, the film picks out five significant days in the characters’ lives between 1988 and 2000. Thus eldest son and medical student Albert (Pio Marmai) leaves home, teenage daughter Fleur (Déborah François) contemplates losing her virginity, and middle child Raphael (Marc-Andre Grondin) remembers a romantically charged encounter with a female air-guitarist. As for the parents, mother Marie-Jeanne (Zabou Breitman) ponders an extra-marital affair, while father Robert (Jacques Gamblin) receives an unexpected medical diagnosis. Less substantial than either Summer Hours or A Christmas Tale, two other
recent French family sagas, the slickly photographed and scored The First Day of the Rest of Your Life breezes its way through its narrative coincidences. Bookended by Super 8mm footage of the Duvals larking around on the beach and in the garden in blissful times, it ultimately presents a sentimental vision of ‘la vie famille’, even if the performances of the attractive ensemble cast are undeniably engaging. (Tom Dawson) ■ GFT, Glasgow from Fri 4–Thu 10 Dec. Cameo, Edinburgh and Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 11 Dec. See profile, index.
3–17 Dec 2009 THE LIST 49