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Reviews
Body/Antibody (2007)
OCD -- Oddly Compelling and Delightful!
Usually when I hear the term "indie film", I roll my eyes and think, "Oh great. I'm going to be subjected to absurdly quirky characters engaged in improbable activities in jumpy black and white", and if I even watch at all, I find myself watching my watch more than the screen. So I was very pleasantly surprised to find that "Body/Antibody" was NOTHING like that, and, in fact was so engaging and well-done that the only time I consulted my watch, I was actually disappointed because I realized that the movie was almost over.
Perhaps one of the most engaging and unconventional aspects of this film is its characters. Kip, portrayed to marvelously comical effect by handsome Robert Gomes, could have easily sunk into "stock" characterization of a man afflicted with OCD, but instead is infused with a touching combination of ridiculousness and pathos. The struggle to accept another body into his sheltered life plays across his face beautifully.
That other body, Celine, played by deceptively delicate Leslie Kendall, is a wonderful breath of fresh air (excuse the cliché) -- not just in Kip's stale life but in the movie theater as well. She hearkens back to a certain sort of "old time" elegance and glamour that is so lacking in movies these days. Her performance is nuanced and layered, and I found myself constantly wondering, "What ELSE is there about Celine? There MUST be more." And oh, there was!
This is typical of the movie as a whole as well. Just when you think, "Oh, I know what's going to happen next!", you find you really don't. The direction manages to not reveal anything that shouldn't be revealed, but teases us juuust enough that we can't help but think, "Did he do that for a certain reason? Is that going to be important later on?" The direction is intelligent and cautious, never giving anything away and barely hinting at what's to happen next.
When the movie was over, I turned to my boyfriend and said, "You know what? I would have actually PAID to see this." If you know me at all, you know that's sayin' something. ;-)
A Cry in the Night (1992)
A laugh in the afternoon
There is nothing mysterious or intriguing about this movie at all. The only mystery is why anyone watching this thing for longer than five minutes wouldn't be able to figure out what happens in the next hour and a half.
Jenny, a divorced mother of two meets Erich, a handsome artist, in an art gallery. Of course he's as charming as he is handsome and seemingly perfect. After dating for maybe a month, he presses her to marry him, and even though she is hesitant she agrees. Everyone moves up to his gorgeous house in Quebec, and then the new husband's charm is displaced by increasingly bizarre behavior.
*** SPOILERS FOLLOW, SO YOU MAY WANT TO STOP READING HERE!!! ***
Erich (the artist/husband), it turns out, witnessed his mother's death by drowning/electrocution as a 10-year-old boy. Ever since then, he has kept the big house in a state of sort of suspended animation, a shrine to his dead mother. He won't let one of his new daughters (he adopts his bride's kids) touch anything in his old boyhood bedroom, and when his wife rearranges the sitting room furniture, he throws a fit and puts everything back the way it has been for about 30 years.
Erich spends way too much time in a secret studio on his property, and it just so happens that those nights when he is at work there, we see, through hair covering a mysterious person's face, that mysterious person looking in on Jenny as she sleeps. (We also hear some particularly overdone heavy breathing, which I suppose is meant to heighten the drama.) We never know who it is, of course. But of course we know who it is. Or we do if we've watched this movie with half an eye open.
Eventually a puppy is shot, Jenny's ex-husband is drowned, a farm hand is attacked by a horse who is fed drugged oats, Jenny and Erich's newborn baby is smothered to death, and of course everything conspires to pin the blame on Jenny. But we are still wondering, Gee, whodunnit, even as we see Erich's face struggling to retain composure over Jenny's shoulder as he consoles her and assures her he knows she is innocent.
To make an already too long story short, we eventually find out (as if we didn't already know) that Erich is a bona fide wacko who's been dressing up in his dead mother's green cape and dark wig and HURTING and KILLING people, and passing off her bad artwork as his own. (Perhaps one of the funniest scenes in this entire movie involves Jenny finding all of Erich's outrageously laughable and horrible paintings and running across the lawn with one in tow.) And all of these paintings answer all of the questions everyone's been asking.
Erich, in the meantime, has kidnapped the kids, has called Jenny to try to force her to sign a letter swearing she killed her ex-husband and poisoning the horse, and she has the police and Erich's best friend (whom Erich accuses her of being in love with) at the house. They all leave, and then Jenny takes matters into her own hands. Puts on a green shawl/cape, beckons to Erich (who has returned to the property), and then he chases her to the very barn where he'd killed his mother several decades earlier. He's just about to kill Jenny when the farm hand (whose daughter, by the way, he'd also killed years ago) shoots him neatly through the back.
And then Jenny and Mark find the girls where Erich, in his last breath, said they would be, and the foursome literally walks off into a sunset.
Oh, and the performances? Every one of them stock and cliché.
It took me about ten minutes to write this thing. Twice as long as it took me to "get" what was going to happen in this movie. I hope I saved anyone from wasting any time on it at all.
The Babysitter's Seduction (1996)
A baby could figure it out
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS (and may contain PEANUTS!)
If you're in the mood for a formulaic hour and 40-some minutes of less than satisfactory acting and a storyline that a two-year-old could figure out, then this is the movie for you. To say that anything I will include in this review is a SPOILER is actually quite laughable, since this movie is outrageously predictable.
There are no surprises here. None. Pretty, young babysitter gets drawn into the "perfect life" of the family that employs her. The mom/wife commits suicide ... oh, or does she??? No, it turns out she has been -- sit down! -- MURDERED!!! Who could have seen that coming? And who could have foreseen the dad/husband's seduction of the pretty, young babysitter and subsequent attempt at framing the babysitter for the murder?
Of course, to throw us off the track, the wife's lover is thrown into the mix. But never do we really suspect him. Indeed, he is less of a FOIL than he is transparent SARAN WRAP!
The best performance in this movie comes from P. Rashad's character's dog, who thankfully escapes harm in one of the most overdone scenes ever to hit the small screen: a gas range turned on full blast, and ... well, you can figure it out.
If you can't figure it all out, and you'll still wondering GEE, WHODUNNIT??? then by all means watch this movie. If you think Keri Russell is cute, then by all means watch this movie. If you don't like being surprised, watch this movie.
This schlock gets a big "Feh. Kaka."