Wednesday Horror: A Cure for Wellness

Film: A Cure for Wellness
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on The New Portable.

There are a handful of movies that I have checked out from a library any number of times and haven’t pulled the trigger on watching. There are probably at least half a dozen that I have checked out in the double digits and simply haven’t watched. Until today, A Cure for Wellness fell into that category. I’m not sure exactly what prevented me from watching the film aside from the fact that it’s long and I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend that much time on a movie that got such mixed reviews. I don’t live and die by what critics or audiences have to say about a movie, but sitting for nearly 150 minutes for a movie that racked up a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes is a hard sell.

But, knowing that I had once again check the movie out and that it was due in the morning finally lit the fire underneath me that I needed to sit down and watch it. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m not entirely sure what to think of it. I hate to say that I need to watch it again, but that might be the case. Standing in the way for me is the presence of Dane DeHaan front and center. There’s something about DeHaan that I find upsetting. I’m not sure if it’s the giant eye bags that make him look like he wandered head-first into a wasp nest or the fact that his head is shaped like a garlic bulb, but there it is.

Off Script: The Ring

Films: The Ring
Format: DVD from personal collection on rockin’ flatscreen.

In the 2000s, particularly in 2008, there was a spate of American remakes of Japanese horror films. Arguably this trend started with 2002’s The Ring, a remake of Ringu from 1998. A lot of these remakes (see One Missed Call or Pulse) have gotten nothing but a critical panning and ended up giving this trend a deservedly bad name. The Ring is different, though. It sticks to the original story well, maintains a solid air of mystery throughout its running time, and packs in a few quality scares. I don’t like the insta-remake trend more than anyone else seems to, but when the results are this good, it’s hard to object.

I do like the original version better, but not a lot better. I’m just enough of a purist to think that a remake has to be significantly better than the remake for me to think it was worth making. The benefit of The Ring for an American audience is that it’s simply more accessible than the Japanese version for an American audience. The benefit of this version is that anyone who isn’t willing to watch a film with subtitles will be able to get a very good, very accurate version of a damn good horror story.

Just Desert(s)

Film: Rango
Format: DVD from Schmaling Memorial Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

A bit more than a year ago I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s animated film. My issue with that movie is that I have no idea who it was made for. The closest I could come to a potential audience for it is the children of Wes Anderson fans. I’m running into a similar issue with Rango. This is an animated movie about a chameleon who appears in town that’s an odd throwback to the ancient West, but a lot of it seems far more adult than a children’s movie. In fact, I’m pretty sure that this isn’t a children’s movie despite all of the trappings that make it look like one. I’m not bothered by the instances of “hell” or “damn” in the dialogue or the occasional sexual reference that kids might actually pick up on. No, I’m just not sure that there’s much here for a younger audience. At the same time, I’m not sure that a lot of adults would voluntarily choose to watch a film about an animated chameleon.

Anyway, our unnamed chameleon (Johnny Depp) lives in his own little terrarium world where he evidently writes and produces plays of his own design, using the other elements of his cage (including a partial Barbie doll and a wind-up fish) as his other actors. As it happens, his owners are evidently moving. The car hits a bump, the terrarium goes flying, and the chameleon finds himself stranded on a desert highway. The only thing he has to talk to is his wind-up fish and an armadillo (Alfred Molina) that is somehow still alive despite being almost bisected by a passing truck.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Format: DVD from personal collection on rockin’ flatscreen.

When the first Pirates of the Caribbean film was announced, there weren’t a lot of people who had high hopes for it. Oh, I knew I’d go see it, but I didn’t expect much. The only exception to this I know is my friend Doug, but he’s not an objective voice on this one. Doug will watch anything with wooden ships and/or pirates in it; he actually liked Cutthroat Island. And then the reviews started coming in. Gore Verbinski had done the unthinkable and created something far more than anyone thought possible: a genuinely good and entertaining film based on a theme park ride. Usually it goes the other way—movie first, theme park ride second.

We get a nice tease at the start when young Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley eventually) not only rescues a young boy named Will Turner (Orlando Bloom after the opening scene) from a ship that has been raided by pirates. Will is wearing a medallion that looks suspiciously like it should belong to pirates, and since the penalty for piracy is death, she hides it.