Glass (2019)

Glass (2019)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, James McAvay and Anya Taylor Joy

M Night Shyamalan’s a walking time bomb when it comes to quality. While one film might deliver, the next might disappoint. For example, the double knockout of Lady in the Water (2006) and The Happening (2008) were completely rejected by fans of the director and nearly destroyed Shyamalan’s career entirely. He’d lost the respect of many audience members out there. Had he lost it? Well, for a while there it seemed like so, like he’d lost that magic that makes directors produce a good film. Then he kicked back and made a horror film called The Visit (2015), about these pair of grandkids who go to visit grandma and grandpa in their house in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, working on a smaller budget did Shyamalan good because with The Visit, Shyamalan proved to us and himself that he could still make a good film. Shyamalan cemented his comeback with Split (2016) which presented us for the first time with the fascinating character called ‘The Beast’. An awesome performance is what carried that film and we got McAvoy to thank for that. His psychical and psychological transformations when he switches from personality to personality is one of the films biggest strengths. 

Split was also the film that united Split, Unbreakable and now Glass as films that coexist in the same universe, with characters from Unbreakable and Split crossing over onto this new film Glass. There was a lot of speculation in regards to the film. Would Shyamalan deliver one of his good ones? Does he still as they say “have it”? Was Split a fluke? Would this be a great sequel, or a forgettable one? 

I enjoyed Split a lot but I remember thinking it wasn’t original. We’d seen movies about psychos kidnapping people for vile purposes a million times before. But that performance and that tension Shyamalan directs so well got me reeled in. With Split I went back to that old saying “it’s not what you say but how you say it”, sure we’d seen this type of story before, but Shyamalan told it so very well! Now here comes Glass, the sequel in which we’d see all these fantastic characters clash. The Beast, The Overseer and Mr. Glass. So is it the big conclusion we all expect? Yes it is my dear readers. You feel that tension building all the way through, kind of how all those Rocky movies that all led up to the big fight in the end. Glass is a very fresh take on the whole superhero thing. It tones everything down, makes it more believable. This is not a big special effects spectacle, no, this movie is more about performances, tension and suspense. In that sense the film was a breath of fresh air. It was interesting to see a super hero film that wasn’t  90% computer generated. So yes, glad to inform that Glass focuses on gripping performance and a well written, tense script. 

When Unbreakable (2000) premiered I remember I didn’t know what to expect. The premise pulled everyone to see it. How and why had David Dunn survived that tragic train crash where everybody died, except him? A lot was expected of the second film from the  director of The Sixth Sense (1999), which had been a hit the previous year. When I went to theater to see Unbreakable the night of its premiere, did my comic book loving heart know that it would end up being a movie that explained the nature of comic books so well? Nope. And that blew me away! Here I was watching a film about something I loved so much. Back in 2000, super hero films were not as big as they are now, so seeing a film that talked about comic books, was something for me. The film used all we know and love about comics and analyzed it with style. To me Unbreakable was one of the films that helped kick off what would become a new era of comic book movies, and era that has been reigning supreme in Hollywood for almost two decades now.

Glass does the same thing yet again, it dives into comic book lore by analyzing the nature of the villain. Why are these villains so deranged? What makes them tick? What set them off? We get a good dose of that in Glass. It takes us deep into the psyche of the psychos Mr. Glass and The Beast. This movie belongs to McAvoy and Mr. Jackson on the performance side of things. Willis plays David, who’s job is to be stoic, strong and quiet, but McAvoy’s Beast loves to chat it up. Every single one of The Beasts 20 something personalities likes to say their piece! The real spectacle here is watching McAvoy do this masterful job of giving each one of the personalities a completely different performance. I’d dare say I’d consider this performance for an Oscar, or some sort of award. Fantastic performance, a memorable villain if there ever was one. 

So did Glass deliver? Hell yeah, it’s a good film. I don’t get these “bad reviews” that it got from critics? The general consensus out there is that critics hate it, but that fans love it. I don’t get why critics would hate it but I agree that a fan of Split and Unbreakable should be very pleased (and even surprised) by this movie. It takes the premise from Unbreakable and Split further. I congratulate Shyamalan for playing with heavy themes within the context of the comic book world. On Glass he played with that wonderful idea that we all have this potential to be amazing, that we are capable of more than we know, we just have to believe. So yeah, Glass delivers, another good one on Shyamalan’s cinematic crown. 

Rating: 4 out of 5 

The Witch (2015)

The Witch (2015)

Director: Robert Eggers

Cast: Anya Taylor Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw

The quintessential ‘good horror film’ is a diamond in the rough, hard to find, elusive, so when it comes across your path you thank the cinematic gods for it; you cherish it like the delicacy that it is. The Witch is such a film, a true blue fantastic horror film that plays with your notions of religiosity and the supernatural. It takes place during the sixteenth century in New England, a place and time in which being a witch meant you’d get either tortured or hanged, most of the time both.

 On a personal note, it’s interesting that I saw The Witch days after taking a college class on the late works of William Shakespeare. On said class I wrote an essay on the supernatural elements in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this essay, I wondered if Macbeth, the power hungry king, had actually spoken to witches and seen actual ghosts and apparitions, or if it was all just part of a head trip in his guilt ridden mind. I concluded that it was a little bit of both. The Witch is similar to Macbeth in that sense; it keeps you on a loop about the witches. Are they real? Are the village folks simply bible crazy? Are they simply religious fanatics willing to take their beliefs to the extremes? Or are witches really snatching up babies for sacrificial purposes?

On The Witch we meet a family of Puritans who are psychologically traumatized by the fact that their baby has disappeared. I mean, literally, the baby was there one moment and the next it wasn’t, vanished into thin air. To make matters worse, the baby disappeared while under the care of the adopted daughter of the family, a girl whom they’ve always suspected of being a witch. But is she? Are they just looking for a scapegoat to blame? As you can see, there are always two possibilities to everything in The Witch; there’s that ambiguity to the story which I loved. You’re never really sure where to stand, which in my opinion makes the film incredibly effective.

Artistically speaking the film is a wonder to behold, the art direction, the wardrobe, the dialog; it all evokes its era to perfection. For starters, the film was mostly shot with natural lighting, this means, little to no artificial light was used during the shoot, which gives the film an amazing look. Interiors were lit with candles; exteriors were lit by the sunlight.  Few directors have pulled this off effectively because it’s a difficult way to shoot a film, a lot can go wrong; you risk images ending up grainy and losing definition. Yet on The Witch, this natural lighting goes so well with the era they are depicting, an era where there was no electricity. Last time I checked, Stanley Kubrick was the last one to pull this off perfectly in Barry Lyndon (1975). So The Witch has a great spooky dark look to it. Another added bonus that adds authenticity to the film is that the dialog rings true. It doesn’t feel out of time or place; this is due to the fact that they used real life accounts of “witchcraft” to write the screenplay. This is why the dialog sounds like something straight out of Shakespeare.

They also got the behavior of these characters right. You feel the backwards mentality of these Puritan Christians. You believe they truly think evil lies within the woods. You feel the paranoia, you feel that genuine fear of God and the Devil and you feel how dangerous it all is. How once you got blamed for possibly being a witch meant you were going to go down even if you weren’t, because now doubt had been planted. The film shows how dangerous religion and hive like mentality can be. How superstition can turn its back on you and bite you in the ass in a heartbeat!  I mean, back then they used witchcraft as an excuse to kill a person. Let’s say you were a rebellious woman who had an opinion, suddenly they’d blame you for witchcraft and boom, days later you’d be hanging from the ugly end of the rope. A lot of innocent women died this way. So you get that vibe with this film, that when the masses turn on you, you’re done for. For more films dealing with witchcraft watch The Crucible (1996), Witchfinder General (1968) or Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922), the last one being an exploration of the origins of witchcraft.

I have to hand it to director Robert Eggers for doing his homework and making sure every little detail is faithful to the time period, the 1600's. I mean, so many things worked in favor of this film, right down to shooting in a remote, real location where these actors could cut loose, that was genius. This isn’t some set in a green room, the exteriors were shot a real location, with real freaking trees and mountains and wind, that’s a plus for me in this day and age of computer generated everything’s. The isolated location lends itself to making everything look evil somehow, you know those films that make even nature and animals look evil somehow? Films like Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (2009)? Well, that's what they achieved with The Witch, where even aninals look like they could have evil within them, more so if they are black goats. And speaking of solid performances, that’s what you get all around. Special shout out to Harvey Scrimshaw, the child actor who portrayed the character called ‘Caleb’, he really knocks it out of the park with his performance. He portrayed a child whose psyche has been damaged by religion and its fears. And while I’m at it, kudos to first time director Robert Eggers who made this fine film on his first outing. Here’s hoping this wasn’t just some fluke and he ends up making more films as good as this one.

Rating: 5 out of 5