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  • Emma Thompson Produces Her Own Career Nightmare In ‘Dead of Winter’

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    Emma Thompson braves the frozen wilderness in “Dead of Winter,” a hackneyed horror film that traps the Oscar winner in subzero temperatures and an equally chilling screenplay. Courtesy of Vertical

    Like almost every other actor of renown in today’s diminished world of second-rate movies, Emma Thompson is forced to face the challenge of inventing her own projects to keep her film career alive. This now includes starring in a hackneyed, uninspired dime-a-dozen horror film called Dead of Winter. She also produced it herself. Times are bad all over.

    DEAD OF WINTER ★★ (2/4 stars)
    Directed by: Brian Kirk
    Written by: Nicholas Jacobson-Larson & Dalton Leeb
    Starring: Emma Thompson, Judy Greer, Marc Menchaca, Gaia Wise, Cuan Hosty-Blaney, Dalton Leeb, Paul Hamilton, Lloyd Hutchinson & Brian F. O’Byrne
    Running time: 97 mins.

    In this waste of a great actor’s talent and intelligence, she plays an aging, gun-toting hag unwisely revisiting an old fishing hole her late husband loved to spread his ashes. On a snowy road in the frozen wastes of northern Minnesota, her truck breaks down in a storm and when she hikes through drifts of ice up to her eyeballs seeking warmth and shelter in an abandoned shack in the wilderness, she finds a young kidnap victim handcuffed to a frozen basement pipe by a pair of married of demented killers (Judy Greer, especially menacing as the wacko wife) for reasons that are never convincingly explained. The movie is about the old woman’s futile efforts to save the girl from an endless series of assaults and tortures, narrowly escaping near death at every turn. It’s a preposterous story to follow, but thanks to the expertise of Emma Thompson, it keeps you interested.

    Shot, slashed, bleeding, and half frozen to death, she copes remarkably well, fortified by memories of her happy marriage and her ability to keep a fire going in a deserted cabin, medicate her gunshot wounds and sew the pieces of her arm together (“Just like sewing a quilt,” she quips through the pain.) The white backdrop of constant snow and zero temperatures also add to the intensity of the winter ambience with enough discomfort that your teeth will chatter just looking at it. The movie is a far cry from the star’s collection of elegant Jane Austen period pieces, but Ms. Thompson is always worth watching, even when she’s wasting her time—and ours.

    Unfortunately, the sloppy screenplay by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb asks more questions than it answers, deriving most of its style from Fargo. Knowing the territory, why did Ms. Thonpson’s character choose the Midwest’s worst season to spread ashes from a dilapidated truck not safe to drive, even in the best weather? What did the kidnap victim do to get captured? Where are the vicious kidnappers going, and why? Director Brian Kirk does nothing to explain, elaborate or justify. Worse still, the two lunatic villains are identified as fentanyl addicts, but that doesn’t explain why the female half of the team goes through most of the movie with as many as five hypodermic needles at a time lodged in her tongue.

    What attracted such a fine actress as Emma Thompson to so much carnage in the first place is anybody’s guess. According to the end credits, Dead of Winter is set in Minnesota but filmed on location in Finland, Germany and Belgium, when all it takes is one snow-covered backyard in New Jersey.

    Emma Thompson Produces Her Own Career Nightmare In ‘Dead of Winter’

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    Rex Reed

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  • Reviews For The Easily Distracted: The Long Walk

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    Title: The Long Walk

    Describe This Movie In One Gong Show Creator Quote:

    CHUCK BARRIS: The ultimate game show would be one where the losing contestant was killed.

    Brief Plot Synopsis: It’s a walk. And it’s long.

    Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2.5 Scarfaces out of 5.

    click to enlarge

    Tagline: “How far could you go?”

    Better Tagline: “This new Klondike Bar campaign sucks.”

    Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Every year, a young man from each of the 50 states embarks on the Long Walk. The boys assembled this year include Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), Pete DeVries (David Jonsson), and Art Baker (Tut Nyuot), who form a friendship of sorts, which complicates the fact that there’s only one winner. Any Walker who drops below three miles an hour gets three warnings before their “ticket” is punched. The winner is basically granted a wish, and Garraty has plans for his.
    “Critical” Analysis: Does dystopian fiction still work if we’re already living in a dystopia?

    The alternative timeline The Long Walk is set in is no picnic. Perceived enemies of the state are taken from their homes and given a choice: service in the “Squads” or a bullet to the head. The postwar economy is in shambles, and the resident dictator (The Major, played un-memorably by Mark Hamill) promises to make the country number one again.

    I trust none of this is disturbingly familiar.

    Stephen King’s original novella was itself a barely veiled metaphor for Vietnam, written in reaction to the televised draft lottery, but the movie — while evidently set in the mirror universe1970s — reflects current events in other ways. Well-meaning people might say, “Society would never tolerate an event like this where young people are needlessly gunned down.” Some of those same people would still vote against regulating firearms even after kids were shot in a school or church.

    Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend, several of the Hunger Games…es) and screenwriter JT Mollner had to make some choices in adapting Stephen King’s story. They’ve truncated the number of kids from 100 to 50, for one, and removed many of the (meager) references to the wider world (shout out to Orange Julius).

    As with most of King’s work, a fair bit gets lost in the translation from page to screen. Much of the novella takes place in Garraty’s head; thoughts of his girlfriend and mom, and loss, and patterns of life and death. It’s not very easy to shoehorn into a movie (or a miniseries, if the latest calamitous attempt to adapt The Stand is any indication).

    And in going with fewer Walkers, certain characters are excluded, others merged (“lean Buddha” Stebbins gets Scramm’s pneumonia, for example). What hasn’t changed is DeVries’ role as Garraty’s garrulous companion, though Lawrence clearly didn’t have time for the character’s amateur theology). Jonsson is the high point here, as DeVries modulates the often hysterical Garraty and is given the most compelling backstory.

    Hoffman, so disarming in Licorice Pizza, is fine here. But he isn’t a great fit for Garraty, even with the additional motivation Lawrence and Mollner give the character. However, they do delve into what we’ve probably all considered (at least I know I have): being the subjects of our own story. Bad things — tickets getting punched, etc. — happen to other people. The idea of being the principal protagonist has gotten more traction in the age of FPS games and online anonymity, but The Long Walk attempts to bring that unreality a little more immediacy.

    The conundrum of how to consistently adapt Stephen King for the screen continues. Lawrence and company have condensed a meditation on mortality and the hopelessness of adolescence into a quest for vengeance.

    The Long Walk is in theaters today.

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    Pete Vonder Haar

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  • ‘Eric LaRue’ Review: After Soaring in Succession, Skarsgard Transforms in ‘Eric LaRue’

    ‘Eric LaRue’ Review: After Soaring in Succession, Skarsgard Transforms in ‘Eric LaRue’

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    There’s a lot to be said about Eric LaRue. It’s Michael Shannon’s directorial debut. It’s a meditative adaptation of Brett Neveu’s 2002 play. And it stars Judy Greer, Alison Pill, Tracy Letts, Paul Sparks, and a just about unrecognizable Alexander Skarsgård. The latter is what the film will undoubtedly be remembered for, but let’s start from the top.

    Eric LaRue premiered on June 10th at Tribeca Film Festival. This highly anticipated drama is a fresh perspective on a timely and important topic: gun violence. The film follows two parents (Greer and Skarsgård) whose son commits a school shooting. After murdering three of his high school peers, the title character Eric LaRue is sent to prison. In the aftermath, his parents struggle to repair and adjust to life without their son and as pariahs in their cookie-cutter suburban town.

    The film poses a number of questions. Whose to “blame” when such a shocking tragedy occurs? Who takes responsibility? How does a community heal? And what is our responsibility to ourselves?

    However, while the film provokes and prods, it doesn’t build avenues toward solutions. With nebulous questions that have no right answers, a film like this leans on its characters to raise and elaborate on the issues. Although the characters are compelling and entertaining — and well rendered by the actors — they aren’t complex enough to lead us toward an honest conversation about the film’s themes.

    Within the film itself, the characters attempt to have conversations among themselves. Most of these attempts are just that, with no results. And while this is intentional, when problems are repeatedly introduced nothing moves forward — the action is inert. For the viewer, Eric LaRue feel repetitive and monotonous. A shame, considering the astonishing direction, the striking cinematography, and powerhouse performances.

    As Michael Shannon’s directorial debut, this is a triumph. The actors interact with each other seamlessly. And the establishing shots of suburbia clue the viewer into this community’s rules and the enormity of the coming transgression. It’s also a career-defining role for Judy Greer — who plays the devastated mother, Janice LaRue. Her quest for answers and healing is portrayed with a brilliant blend of melancholy, torment, and messiness.

    However, the most memorable performance is by Skarsgård. It’s always a treat to see one of your favorite actors in a role where you barely recognize them. Skarsgård achieves this with phenomenal results.

    Fresh off a scene-stealing appearance in Succession as the eccentric — and often-shoeless — tech founder, Alexander Matsson, Skarsgård chalks up yet one more title to his already stacked filmography. This film, I think, will live on largely as an example of the actor’s extensive range.

    Rather than the charming, authoritative figures he often plays, Skarsgård transforms into Ron LaRue — an awkward and aimless father. Somehow he wrangles his giant Viking frame into khakis and flannel to bumble around the house. Skarsgård balances power and heartbreak — searching for himself as much as he’s searching for answers. We view him as Janice LaRue sees him: as lacking. And Skarsgard’s complete immersion in his role truly convinces us.

    Overall, Eric LaRue is a half-realized execution of a dynamic concept. Although the pacing is slow and stilted, those moments between characters are so riveting, you can’t look away.

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    LKC

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