Daily Archives: April 11, 2008

The Living and the Dead

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

British indie flick The Living and the Dead, a multiple award winner at Austin’s Fantastic Fest a couple years back, is certainly out of step with much of the cinematic output of its national brethren, but never less than rather mesmerizingly so. An unnervingly, chilly blend of madness and pathos, the film is a solid, horrifically engrossing portrait of the slow slide into madness, and the ripple effect that psychological disorders can have on families.

Shot in 2006, The Living and the Dead captures family dysfunction at its most shocking and grotesque. With bankruptcy looming, financially desperate Donald Brocklebank (Roger Lloyd Pack) must leave his bedridden wife Nancy (Kate Fahy) alone with their son James (Leo Bill), a mentally impaired, schizophrenic man-child. Abandoning his medication, James spirals downward into a horrific fit of dementia, locking out both his father and a visiting nurse from their sprawling, palatial estate, and playing solo caretaker to his mother, insisting that “the more [pills] you take, the better you get.” As his ability to distinguish reality from morbid fantasy starts to first fray and then outright rot, James plunges into a mental labyrinth so violent and deranged that it holds dire consequences for everyone involved.

Written and directed by Simon Rumley (Club Le Monde, The Truth Game), and powered by a meticulously constructed sense of atmospheric dread, The Living and the Dead recalls claustrophobic thrillers like William Friedkin’s Bug, and certainly Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery, but also something like Brad Anderson’s Session 9. Shot over the course of 18 days at the Savernam Estate’s cavernous Tottenhouse House in the English countryside — a location that effectively doubles as an extra character in the otherwise spare, intimate psychological drama — the movie unfolds in mostly long-take wide shots, though Rumley also isn’t afraid to stage a canted angle for art’s sake. Rumley has described the roots of the inspiration for the film as coming from his mother’s treatment for terminal cancer, and watching the manner in which medications and the lack of greater social interaction destroyed her connection with the world at large. That mangy sense of pained isolation comes through here. Bill looks sort of like a cousin of Ewan Bremmer, and his twitchy performance creates genuine discomfort — which is of course the entire point.

Housed in a clear, regular Amray case with a paper insert touting a series of TLA releases, The Living and the Dead is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a 5.1 Dolby digital audio track. Along with the movie’s original theatrical trailer and a gallery of four other previews for other TLA pictures, supplemental extras consist of a one-minute photo montage, 13 minutes of deleted scenes and Laughter, a 13-minute short film from earlier Rumley’s career, shot in grainy black-and-white. There is also a very nicely done 26-minute making-of featurette, which includes loads of on-set footage and interview material with Rumley, who talks a lot about the difficulties in raising financing for the movie, his fourth feature, as well as its place alongside his other work. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Keanu Reeves on The Tonight Show

Ephemera

Keanu Reeves appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last evening, in support of Street Kings, and he and Leno talked motorbikes (a shared love) and past employment. In his inimitably self-effacing yet still detached style, Reeves recalled his adolescent jobs — which included paper routes, landscaping work, sharpening skates at a hockey rink and “an underground Italian specialty food store,” where he enjoyed a five- or six-month rise from “sandwich creator” to manager. Reeves also talked about how he gained weight and bulked up for his role in the movie… something of which I saw, or recollect, no evidence.

Critics Not Asked to Prom (Night)

Ephemera, Irritations

So Prom Night, featuring the stone-faced intensity of yes-he-really-spells-his-name-like-that killer Johnathon Schaech and the umm, much more interesting assets of Brittany Snow, isn’t screening for critics, apart from a come-and-get-it-if-you-want-it 10 a.m. “courtesy screening” this morning, its day of release. What a shock, really. This is the new confirmed writ-in-stone trend for PG-13 horror flicks.

Alvin, Chipmunks Shill DVD

Irritations

It shakes me to my core, semi-honestly, but in support of the recent DVD release of Alvin and the Chipmunks, there will be at least a half dozen free, live, stage show concerts performed in San Diego and San Francisco. The event in the latter city is tomorrow afternoon and evening, April 11, at Newpark Mall, at 3 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m.; the former is Sunday night, at the Chula Vista Center, at noon, 1:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. Bring your own helium balloons, I guess…

Advance Thoughts on The Promotion

Musings

I caught The Weinstein Company’s The Promotion last night — for all intents and purposes the directorial debut of Steve Conrad, writer of The Weather Man and The Pursuit of Happyness — and I rather adored it in a small, to-scale way. The story of two mid-level Chicago supermarket employees (Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly) who compete for a
coveted managerial post at a new store location, it’s not for all tastes, I’ll concede, and I don’t want to oversell it — it’s not flat-out great. But it’s one of the most steadfastly low-fi movies about male existential crisis I’ve ever seen, and I appreciated that it kept surprising me in small but meaningful ways. Plus Jenna Fischer costars in a small role as Scott’s wife, and she’s always a welcome sight, let’s face it. No idea what the crap is up with Conrad’s Chad Schmidt, starring Brad Pitt (if anyone in the know knows, drop me a line), but this did certainly further whet my appetite for that.

Son of Rambow Makes Its Case

Musings

So Son of Rambow, which premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival and has been hung up in rights-related distribution limbo ever since, came in second place at the box office in the United Kingdom this past weekend, with the British indie nabbing almost £1million in its first four days.

Set during a long, hot summer in 1982, the film — opening in New York and Los Angeles on May 2, from Paramount Vantage — revolves around two 11-year old scamps who, after seeing First Blood for the first time, decide to film their own sequel with nothing more than a camcorder and, natch, some imagination. That hearty across-the-pond embrace, its blossoming early critical support (especially when compared to the recent Rambo‘s still-too-generous 32% on Rotten Tomatoes aggregate Tomatometer), and my sincere admiration for director Garth Jennings’ work on 2005’s adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, may yet persuade me to check it out, assignment be damned. We’ll see. These are some of the in-field considerations one must juggle… wants versus obligations.