Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey tries to explain human sexuality while sharing air time with a scary pale child in The Grudge. And Joe “Sky Captain” tries to save the world in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
The Grudge (R)
The horror clichés come early and often in The Grudge, beginning with title cards reading “when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born.” This essentialist pronouncement is as absurd as It’s a Wonderful Life’s “Every time you hear a bell ring, an angel gets its wings”—but unlike that masterpiece, The Grudge relies on this vague pronouncement to tell its story.
The Grudge’s curse is a creepy pale-skinned, dark-haired child who goes around scaring white people living in Japan. Said victims include Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), an attractive exchange student living with her attractive boyfriend, and Emma, the old woman for whom Karen volunteers. Besides being creepily pale, the kid also can also make weird noises, make people hallucinate, make people die and make a delectable flan—you have to see the DVD’s deleted scenes for that last scary trick.
American cultural displacement in Japan is an interesting theme throughout The Grudge. It’s like Lost in Translation, only with screaming. This ethnophobia is apt, given that The Grudge is a remake of a Japanese horror film, although it kept the same director, Takashi Shimizu. He must really like this story.
I, on the other hand, do not. I’m not a big fan of the horror genre, and The Grudge does not do much to reach out to a wider audience. It has none of the charm, character, humor or novelty that classics like Poltergeist, The Exorcist or The Sixth Sense possess. Its one mildly unique trick is a confusing, Tarantino-like fragmented storyline, jumping between time and characters. This trick keeps the audience somewhat interested between all the killing, but doesn’t form any interesting characters.
The Grudge will probably frighten you, if you want it to. Don’t ask for it to do much more, though. It’s not the delectable flan of horror.
—reviewed by Bradley Iverson-Long
Kinsey (R)
In Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey’s day, people generally assumed that masturbation would make you go blind or insane and homosexuality was still thought of as a psychological disorder. But Kinsey rocked the country, and eventually the world, with his provocative research on human sexual behavior.
In Kinsey, we are introduced to the man behind the legend. The film deals not only with Kinsey’s research and the country’s reaction to it, but also with his difficult personality—Kinsey studied humans for much of his life, but wasn’t very good at interacting with them. An appealing complement to his occasionally frustrating personality is his wife Clara (Laura Linney), through whom we grow fond of Kinsey.
Kinsey happens upon sex research almost by accident when a young couple comes to him for advice—he actually began his scientific career by studying gall wasps. His first book was published in 1947 amid a storm of controversy, and he subsequently became a target for members of Congress who were convinced he was part of a Communist conspiracy.
Nevertheless, Kinsey presses on, even encouraging his staff to have sex and then report the results. He is probably most famous for developing a straight-to-gay sexuality scale, but his work reaches much farther than that, attempting to explain an area of human behavior that no one had ever wanted to explore.
Kinsey doesn’t succumb to pruriency in the hope of attracting more viewers. Its strength is in its honesty, both about Kinsey’s shortcomings and the difficulties he encountered in the research that is at the heart of the movie. It is refreshingly honest and straightforward about sex without being voyeuristic or moralistic, and the result is an intellectual turn-on of a film.
—reviewed by Caitlin Carmody
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (PG)
When hordes of gigantic flying robots attack New York, there is only one man to call—Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), the Sky Captain. Joe teams up with Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), the tell-all reporter and our hero’s ex-love interest.
Their mission: to stop the evil Dr. Totenkopf and his dastardly plan to rule the world. The long-dead Sir Laurence Olivier plays Totenkopf. His part is made up entirely of archive footage, which is just one more element in the flick’s unique style. The entire movie was filmed on a soundstage in front of a bluescreen, the result being real characters against computer generated backgrounds. This has the effect of making the film seem incredibly fluid, as the entire world could be created as first time director Kerry Conran wished.
There is a very retro feel to the movie, and memories of Superman, Lois Lane and even James Bond come to mind as the characters casually set out to save the world.
Six prominent scientists have mysteriously disappeared, and Polly, who is covering the story, is summoned by Dr. Jennings (Trevor Baxtor). He claims he knows the cause of the disappearances, and fears he may be the next victim. After receiving an important clue from him, Polly tracks down Joe “Sky Captain” and dangles the clue in front of him, convincing him to take her on as a partner in crime-fighting.
Couple the perfected computer world with slightly campy dialogue and a classic hero-heroine duo, and it is a classic air pirate movie. The characters are straight out of a superhero comic—they are the archetype dashing hero and spunky girl reporter.
With its inventive world and oddball characters, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow brings you back to the days when reporters wore deep red lipstick and robots were taking over the world.
—reviewed by Carl Falcon
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