So, you think you want to see Evil Dead but you’re not sure whether you’ve got the stomach for it? Here’s one way of gauging your gore threshold. Check out this red band clip of the cheek-cutting scene from Fede Alvarez’s remake of Sam Raimi’s horror classic. Intense stuff, although not without humor: The moment where Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) slips on the flap of cheek that Mia (Jane Levy) has removed from her cheek is a great update on the classic banana-peel gag. Evil Dead : Cheeky Gore How did you do? If you couldn’t get through it without throwing up in your mouth, then you should probably check out something else at your local cineplex. How about Danny Boyle’s Trance ? Oh wait, that film features a fingernail-removal scene and a moment where Vincent Cassel gets the top of his head blown off but continues talking so that an important plot point can be established. Come to think of it, that’s kind of funny, too. Trance : Half A Head Is Better Than No Head At All Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“Everyone knows amnesia is bollocks,” snarls one of the thugs in Trance . Hypnotism, on the other hand, is fair game in this brash, beyond-belief psychothriller from director Danny Boyle , who seizes on a script co-written by Joe Ahearne and longtime Boyle collaborator John Hodge as a chance to play elaborate mind games with fans of his early work. A trippy variation on the dream-within-a-dream movie, Boyle’s return-to-form crimer constantly challenges what auds think they know, but neglects to establish why they should care. The pic’s flashy style, plus its stark violence and nudity, ought to transfix male genre auds. More of a conceptual exercise than a conventional film noir, Trance demonstrates Boyle’s determination to continue to overcome seemingly impossible filmmaking challenges. After painting himself out of a physical corner with 127 Hours , the director now confronts a psychic obstacle in attempting to tell a complex genre movie from within the confines of one person’s consciousness — even as others noodle with the same character’s subconscious. A charismatic, yet miscast James McAvoy plays the mark, a clean-scrubbed auction-house employee named Simon who snaps into action during the attempted theft of a Goya painting. Back in the day, all it took was a bit of muscle and some nerve to rob art from auction, Simon explains in a stretch of Scottish-lilted, direct-address narration that not only recalls Hodge’s earlier scripts ( Shallow Grave , Trainspotting ), but suggests a younger, softer-edged Ewan McGregor . To whom is Simon speaking: The audience? A hypnotist? The cops? Doesn’t matter. The film takes place mostly in Simon’s head, so it’s his experience auds see unfolding. After establishing how staff have been trained to protect the auction-house assets in the prologue, Simon springs the pic’s first twist: He was the caper’s inside man. Problem is, after removing the Goya from its frame, he sustained a blow to the head, and the crucial memory of where he stashed the painting is beyond his reach. Torture doesn’t work to bring it back, so underworld tough guy Franck ( Vincent Cassel , terrifically unpredictable) suggests hypnotism, allowing Simon to pick his own mesmerist. He opts for Elizabeth Lamb, played by Rosario Dawson , whose sultry power over men makes plausible how easily her character manages to put Simon under. While neither the film nor its goons puts any stock in amnesia, both encourage a willing suspension of disbelief when it comes to far more elaborate feats of mind-control. In that respect, Boyle seems to be asking whether he too can play the hypnotist. Using dynamic, visual storytelling, slick cutting and a propulsive electronic score, can he successfully convince rational auds to buy into an increasingly far-fetched story? The stunt works for a time. On Simon’s second session with Elizabeth, she pounces, demanding to see the men who put him up to this — and offering her services for a share in the prize, should they find the painting. It’s at this point in the film that things start to get really weird, as the narrative starts to fold back on itself, blurring the lines between reality and the hypothetical. Each time Elizabeth puts Simon in trance, she takes him to a new location in his mind, making it increasingly difficult for auds to tell fantasy from memory from lived experience. As Simon’s sense of danger grows, these scenes become more fragmented and violent, which allows the pic to introduce and instantly erase shocking homicidal behavior, but puts a strain on McAvoy, who seems too nice to harbor such demons. Boyle has cited Nicolas Roeg as an influence on the film’s disorienting style, and sure enough, Trance shares the jagged subjectivity of Performance and Don’t Look Now , along with the director’s raw treatment of anger and arousal. The deeper things go, the kinkier they get, as Elizabeth finds herself seducing both Franck and Simon — but are these fantasies real or projections of their jealous imaginations? They’re certainly real enough for audiences, who won’t soon forget the sight of a denuded Dawson, or the erotic art history lesson that explains her carefully sculpted appearance. Superficial pleasures aside, however, the convoluted script jumps and dodges so often, it soon loses the thread of its own story. This isn’t Inception , where layers of experience are nested neatly one inside the next, but rather a frittata, its ingredients distinguishable only by the various hyper-saturated colors that seem to define each scene. The lost painting is just the first of multiple MacGuffins, after which Simon’s missing memory becomes the thing they all so desperately need to recover. And then, quite abruptly, Simon finds himself on the margins, and Elizabeth takes centerstage — an opportunity for which Dawson proves more than ready — leading to a succession of reversals that seem a bit too dependent on enormous gaps in logic only half-excused by the pic’s record-skip storytelling style. With all its trickery, the film presents a sexy distraction, but proves a mind is a terrible thing to waste. More on Trance : Train In Vain Spotting: Danny Boyle Picks His Favorite Clash Albums − And Disses Phish
Danny Boyle is a big Clash fan. The Slumdog Millionaire director came to New York Tuesday night to talk about the way he uses music in his films — including his latest, Trance — and, in the process, revealed his love of the late, lamented British punk band. During his conversation with Rolling Stone film writer Logan Hill at the 92Y’s Tribeca outpost, Boyle revealed that he has attempted to fit the Clash’s 1978 song”White Man in Hammersmith Palais,” which he called “the greatest song ever written,” in “like 10 films”, but has yet to be able to find an appropriate place for the ska-inflected tune. If you’re not familiar with “White Man in Hammersmith Palais,” you should be. Check it out here: Danny Boyle’s Favorite Clash Albums After the Q&A session, while Boyle signed autographs for fans, I asked him to name his favorite Clash album. Clearly, he loves the band because he couldn’t settle on a single work. “The first one, probably,” Boyle said, referring to the rockers’ 1977 debut, The Clash . But, he quickly added that he also loved the band’s experimental, politically controversial triple-album Sandinista! , in part because, he said, the massive 36-song collection, which was sold at a reasonable price, was designed “to fuck off the record company.” Finally, Boyle said, ” London Calling is a great album, too.” During his conversation with Hill, Boyle said he’s found that the best movie-music choices “drop into your lap.” For example, he explained, the idea to set the closing scenes of Shallow Grave to Andy Williams’ “Happy Heart” came when, during filming in Scotland, Boyle heard the song during a black cab ride and remembered that the tune was a favorite of his father’s. And Boyle’s discovery of the Underworld B-side “Born Slippy” while browsing records at HMV in London led to the song being used during a key scene in Trainspotting and a decades-long collaboration with the electronic group’s Rick Smith. Smith, who worked with Boyle on the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics and composed original music for Trance , joined Boyle on stage for the conversation, and, near the end of the discussion, the audience got to see a tense clip from Trance that was an extended variation of this video: What the 92Y audience got to see is James McAvoy attempting to taser Vincent Cassel . It ends badly. Not A Phish Fan Hill also got Boyle to talk about his dislike of Phish. Despite being the favorite band of Aron Ralston, who James Franco played in 127 Hours , the filmmaker said the jammers left him cold and aren’t on the soundtrack. “I tried with Phish,” Boyle said. “I bought everything and listened to it multiple times…but I found it very, very difficult.” Indeed, Boyle went so far as to say that nobody does music better than his fellow countrymen and women. “I think we are really brilliant at music,” he said. “We’re rubbish at films, actually. It’s not really in our DNA. But music is.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
I don’t love Black Swan . I barely even enjoy it! I barely even get what there is to enjoy. It boasts the hammiest dialogue of the past Oscar season? It’s the most transparent psychodrama in film history? It can’t establish a tone, a fully believable character, or consistency because it resorts to camp at every turn? I just don’t know. But if Friends With Benefits star Mila Kunis ever starred in a Bad Movie We Love, it’s this. (Sorry, Krippendorf’s Tribe — you’re just bad.) There’s an argument for its inclusion in our weekly feature, and reservations aside, I’m picking out five utterly bizarre instances in Black Swan that justify that inclusion. I will now recite them diplomatically!
Another day, another casting announcement for HBO’ s Game Change , the movie about the 2008 presidential campaign. Woody Harrelson has been added to the apparent Oscar-nominee-only cast as Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s senior campaign strategist and adviser. Harrelson joins Ed Harris as McCain and Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in the Jay Roach film. Expect Sarah Palin to continue to belittle this project on Fox News. [ EW ]
A tremendous week of news deserves no less a finale than this: The Weinstein Company is going into the video-game business . “The TWC Games label will utilize The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films’ strong and recognizable properties, and work with external partners to develop and publish video games for mobile, social, and console platforms,” announced a press release, punctuated by Bob Weinstein’s observation: “With all of the digital platforms, there are so many opportunities to broaden our audience with compelling, high quality, cost-efficient, video game entertainment.” No kidding! But what should come first?
If there was ever a perfect afternoon for a hang gliding lesson in Rio de Janeiro, it was today. At least that’s what new photos of Rio star Jesse Eisenberg suggest. The normally serious actor looks like he was having a ball learning valuable lessons of flight. Since Movieline HQ is in a “joining” mood this afternoon, let’s all throw on our best sporting helmet and glide through the jump to caption the hilarious/adorable full-size images.
While Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch getting knocked around by critics , it’s as good a time as any to remember that he’s the man responsible for bringing Superman back to the big screen for Warner Bros. The renewed enthusiasm for the Man of Steel here in 2011 has led some to wander back to 2006, and the nearly forgotten about Superman Returns from director Bryan Singer. How come that movie failed to connect with audiences? Singer has an idea.
I was almost positive we’d never have to talk about awful-ass Black Swan again, but here comes a kick-ass, scorned ballerina with a tale to tell: Sarah Lane, a 27-year-old American Ballet Theater soloist who worked as a body double on Black Swan , tells EW that there’s a “cover-up” to prevent people from knowing she performed 95% of the cygnet moves in the movie. Now, I can’t guarantee that Sarah isn’t wearing black wings and circling her house right now like a crazed Sean Young type, but her quotes sound legitimate.
I was almost positive we’d never have to talk about awful-ass Black Swan again, but here comes a kick-ass, scorned ballerina with a tale to tell: Sarah Lane, a 27-year-old American Ballet Theater soloist who worked as a body double on Black Swan , tells EW that there’s a “cover-up” to prevent people from knowing she performed 95% of the cygnet moves in the movie. Now, I can’t guarantee that Sarah isn’t wearing black wings and circling her house right now like a crazed Sean Young type, but her quotes sound legitimate.
