Burning Questions: Are Jump Scares Ever Not Awful?

Michael C here. I recently caught up with Andres Muschietti’s Mama and found it to be a decent little chiller with one particularly irksome habit. It is packed end-to-end with cheap jump scares. It’s as if the studio insisted the director include a quota of brainless “Boo!” moments amid all the creepy suspense stuff that takes actual filmmaking skill. 

Savvy filmgoers understand that jump scares are the worst. Apart from the fact that it requires roughly the same level of craft to startle someone with a loud noise as it does to zap them with a seat buzzer, they have the added drawback of creating distance between the audience and the film. They release tension, rather than build it. This explains their popularity among teenagers who see horror movies as a carnival ride, doling out empty “scares” with mechanical timing.

So finding a minefield of these cheap shots in another otherwise capable spook story like Mama got me thinking. Are there any defensible examples of the jump scare? Or is it an artistic sin every time it’s trotted out?

jump scares after, um, the jump.

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Burning Questions: What Kind of Sequels Should Be Made?

I've hijacked Michael C's column this week because I have a burning question of my own to ask. 

With that hot buzz for Before Midnight from Sundance warming the expectant hearts of even the coldest cinephiles this winter (it'll win more fans in warmer temperatures next month at SXSW), I've been thinking about movie sequels. Why do we get them, how we receive them, and whether or not we need them.

The first and usually sole reason of "why" is money. Humans are creatures of habit so it's an organic reality that nearly every artform indulges in sequels (whether they're named as such or not) and has since long before "branding" was a term people without business acumen understood. Branding is so common and catch-phrasey now that even non-sequels feel like sequels. What is, for instance, each new Johnny Depp and Tim Burton collaboration but an endless series of sequels Johnny & Tim: Now...Vampiric. Johnny & Tim: Now... Caloric... Now... Johnny & Tim: in Garish 3D. Usually sequels make enough money to suggest that Hollywood should make them forever and preferrably split each sequel up into two parts to double investment. And, if they can control costs, make them for everything that was successful. 

But what kind of sequels should be made?

Maybe it's the edge-of-my-seat expectant bliss/wracked nerves regarding Before Midnight (dare I trust the critics who've already seen it? Critics are least trustworthy, I find, during the heat of festival mania and during the heat of awards season when constant conversation/groupthink and jetlag/movie-binging are most likely to affect them.) Maybe it's my now comical tries at seeing Yossi (things keep going wrong and I still haven't seen it!) which is the ten-years later sequel to the charming Israeli gay drama Yossi & Jagger (2003). The point being that I've decided that my absolute favorite kind of sequel is the "let's drop in on these characters again for no particular reason" When these films are done right it feels like they're done for the art of it, to illustrate what changes and insights the passage of time brings. And because we love spending the time with the characters. Now of course this doesn't always work out. The Evening Star was a big letdown for anyone expecting Terms of Endearment 2. But in concept, why not revisit one of the most indelible characters of 1980s cinema?

Terminator 2: The Return of Sarah Connor

Come to think of it this stance also helps explains my super-intense abiding love for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) which is a sequel of the traditional kind (i.e. this will make TONS of money!) but which I would rank -- easily -- near the tippity top of a list of the greatest sequels ever made. And that's largely because of the authentically shocking evolution of character. The Sarah Connor therein is nothing like the one we met in 1984 but once you're past the 'what the hell!?'reveal the new one feels like a natural progression nonetheless to traumatic events from the first film. And it immediately shows how lazily written most characters are in sequels where nothing between films has ever affected them. Big blockbusters so rarely feel that deeply rooted in actual human drama. 

What kind of sequels do you long for?
Which film characters would you love to drop in on again?

Burning Questions: Is Michel Gondry Lost In The Clouds?

Kate Winslet with Michel Gondry filming Eternal Sunshine Michael C. here back with the return of Burning Questions, the weekly column where I answer all the most pressing film issues of the day, and, more importantly, address whatever is rattling through my head at any given moment. It’s a pretty sweet gig. First up is a growing concern I've been nursing for one of our best filmmakers.

If I hadn’t known the Mood Indigo trailer was for the new Michel Gondry film I might have wondered if it was an incredibly skillful satire. Like those spoofs that show films directed in the deadpan style of Wes Anderson it plays like an exaggerated showcase of all the director’s idiosyncrasies. The tone of melancholic whimsy. The frequent detours into magic realism. The loving devotion to the handmade over the slick and polished. The presence of Audrey Tatou in particular seems specifically engineered to provoke a chorus of cooler-than-thou Internet smart-asses to point fingers and shout “Twee!” “Twee!”

Twee, clouded?

I hold Gondry in high esteem and unashamedly enjoy his all the quirks listed above, but at some point you have to ask: Is Gondry ever going to come back down to Earth?  Currently Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind sits in the middle of Gondry’s filmography as a glorious anomaly... [more]

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Burning Questions: Repeat Viewing Discoveries

Michael C here. Now that Toronto has kicked the Fall movie season into high gear it’s useful to remember that for most of these films February’s impending Oscar ceremony is the beginning of the story, not the end. An Academy Award is a great leg up when it comes to securing a film’s legacy, even if it’s only as a footnote, but the real test of a film’s shelf life will be its ability to stand up to the gauntlet of repeat viewings. The test of time is much more accurate measure of a film’s worth than awards season's five month carnival of hype.

You only need to look back to recent movie history to see how the years can build up some films while grinding others down without mercy. I cannot recall the last time I’ve read a film lover reference a great scene from former big event films like Babel or The Queen. Yet the reputations of other less celebrated films from that time period like Eastern Promises or Let the Right One In grow with every passing year.

So this leads me to the question I’m curious to have answered:

Which recent films are coming alive on repeat viewings?

I’m not talking here about complicated films which reward repeat viewings. Yes, dense films like Gosford Park and LA Confidential play better with a foreknowledge of the story, but their quality was clear even when lost in the weeds of the initial viewing. No, I’m talking about films that hit us as average or even so-so the first time around but which linger in the memory and nag at us and then – BAM – sucker punch us with their previously unseen strength when revisited.

This happened to me recently when I was struck to realize that I had watched the Coen brother’s True Grit no less than half a dozen times. I had a positive, if somewhat underwhelmed, reaction to the western in theaters. It was the usual A+ stylistic Coen brothers job, but hit me as an unusually straightforward genre exercise from them. I wouldn’t have even bothered to picked up the DVD if not for the fact that my parents wanted to see it and the only way to get them to watch a movie is to personally interrupt an episode of NCIS with it.

Once I owned it I was surprised to find True Grit become my go-to feature. I now understand that the Coens did with True Grit what Tarantino did with Jackie Brown. Tarantino says he wanted Jackie Brown to be a hangout movie. The sort of film you watch first for the plot but return to for the downtime between the big moments, just to spend time with the characters. I realized that on repeat trips to Grit I wasn’t looking forward to the big set pieces as much as I was anticipating the odd little encounters like the unexpected run in with a bearskin clad backwoods doctor who wants to bargain for the teeth from a corpse Mattie cut down from a tree. Or the way the film's main heavy, Barry Pepper’s Lucky Ned, turns out to be unexpectedly reasonable when they finally catch up to him. (Admittedly it also helps to know in advance everything Bridges is saying) I suppose I should have known better than to trust my snap judgment when it came to the Coens, whose Big Lebowski is one of the great repeat viewing success stories of the last twenty years. I suppose it’s time I gave Burn After Reading another spin.

Have any of you had any recent repeat viewing discoveries? Do you see a consensus emerging around any titles that flew under the radar in theaters? Let me know in the comments.

Follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm. And read his blog Serious Film.

Burning Questions: Can a One-Note Performance Be Great?

Michael C here. On my list of cinematic obsessions the Alec Baldwin scene from Glengarry Glenn Ross ranks near the top, alongside stuff like the zither music from The Third Man and the ending of Barton Fink. Part of that obsession is my ironclad belief that Baldwin should have won the Supporting Oscar hands down, no contest.

Those who disagree could justifiably point to the complexity of Gene Hackman's and Jaye Davidson's nominated performances that year in Unforgiven and The Crying Game, or, for that matter, the greater range shown by Alec's Glengarry co-star Al Pacino. Baldwin's performance shows no such range. We don't see his softer side, he doesn't reveal any hidden dimensions, we don't even learn his name. He just struts in and delivers a seven minute tour de force of invective.

It's an unforgettable scene but is that enough? Can a one-note performance truly be considered great?

This discussion cropped up earlier this year when Michael Fassbender's supporting turn emerged as the clear stand out from Prometheus. All the praise came with the caveat that as an android, his role lacks the range to attract any real awards attention. To this I would ask, does not the limited nature of the role make his work more impressive? Isn't it a remarkable achievement to hold the audience's fascination while staying inside the confines of playing a machine?

Are intrinsically limited characters limitless with the right actors?

Acting, as we've so often heard, is about making choices, so in the right role is it not sometimes the stronger choice to refuse to show additional sides of a character? Look at Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. Would it make the character stronger if he dropped that guy's invincible confidence to show a few moments of vulnerability? Of course not. That would have been disastrous.

Or better yet, look at Full Metal Jacket's R Lee Ermey. There's a guy who finds precisely one note and hammers on it down to his last second of screen time. At the time, audience's could be forgiven for wondering if Ermey could act at all, or if he could merely dole out colorfully obscene abuse on command. We now know from his work in films like Dead Man Walking that he is a perfectly capable actor, and time has shown that his choices in Jacket to be the correct ones. I will never forget the impact when it became clear during his final confrontation with Vincent D'Onofrio that the bastard was still - still - not going to soften one iota even when faced with a psychotic soldier pointing a loaded gun at him. And isn't leaving a lasting impact on the viewer what great acting is all about?

What's your take on this? Are certain performances barred from top tier status by their narrow scope, or can the right actor be brilliant in even the most limited of roles, a la Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man?. Let us know in the comments.

You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm. Or read his blog Serious Film.