Dir - Justin Simien
Overall: WOOF
Two attempts, twenty years apart and Disney still fails to turn their celebrated dark ride into a not-terrible movie as the latest Haunted Mansion reboot painfully proves. Inevitably compared to the universally panned, 2003, Eddie Murphy-stared vehicle, this attempt may be even more groan-worthy and certainly more bloated. In development hell, (cue "Where it should have stayed" joke here), for a number of years as one of countless would-be projects that Guillermo del Toro was attached to, the inevitable, juvenile, and sentimental CGI spectacle finally emerged with Justin Simien behind the lens and Katie Dippold getting sole credit for a screenplay that had boatloads of other people shoehorning ideas into it. While the humor consistently lampoons cutesy family movie tropes which may seem like an improvement over the lazy writing found in the aforementioned Eddie Murphy version, the tonal inconsistencies are fumbling all over themselves, with the usual hackneyed insistence on undermining every sincere emotional moment or performance with more nod-and-a-wink jokes and scenery-chewing. Unfortunately this tactic is uninspired, aggressive, and consistently not amusing, plus the digital effects work is as cartoony as in any other contemporary, general audience popcorn spectacle out there.
BIRTH/REBIRTH
EL CONDE
Overall: WOOF
Two attempts, twenty years apart and Disney still fails to turn their celebrated dark ride into a not-terrible movie as the latest Haunted Mansion reboot painfully proves. Inevitably compared to the universally panned, 2003, Eddie Murphy-stared vehicle, this attempt may be even more groan-worthy and certainly more bloated. In development hell, (cue "Where it should have stayed" joke here), for a number of years as one of countless would-be projects that Guillermo del Toro was attached to, the inevitable, juvenile, and sentimental CGI spectacle finally emerged with Justin Simien behind the lens and Katie Dippold getting sole credit for a screenplay that had boatloads of other people shoehorning ideas into it. While the humor consistently lampoons cutesy family movie tropes which may seem like an improvement over the lazy writing found in the aforementioned Eddie Murphy version, the tonal inconsistencies are fumbling all over themselves, with the usual hackneyed insistence on undermining every sincere emotional moment or performance with more nod-and-a-wink jokes and scenery-chewing. Unfortunately this tactic is uninspired, aggressive, and consistently not amusing, plus the digital effects work is as cartoony as in any other contemporary, general audience popcorn spectacle out there.
Dir - Laura Moss
Overall: GOOD
A grisly debut from filmmaker Laura Moss, Birth/Rebirth contextualizes the mad scientist movie into a disturbed essay on motherhood. Body horror in some respects, it tackles heady themes along with gross-out, matter-of-fact visuals that are not for the faint of heart. As two personality-opposed women bound over their mutual obsession, Moss and co-screenwriter Brendan J. O'Brien gradually shift the audience's knee-jerk sympathies towards them. Marin Ireland's on-the-spectrum pathologist comes off as almost humorously cold and lacking in empathy compared to Judy Reyes' over-worked/single mother/maternity nurse who gets hit with the most tragic of blows in the first act. Yet as things progress, the plight that each women has burdened themselves with takes its tole and moral complexities then arise. It becomes less judgemental of an affair overall though, intimately asking the question without providing the answers of what "playing god" truly encumbers; not so much in the name of science, but in the name of grief. Both Ireland and Reyes turn in nuanced performances considering the uncomfortable subject matter and Moss handles it with a brutal yet humanistic agenda.
Dir - Pablo Larrain
Overall: GOOD
A stylishly breezy satire, Pablo Larrain's El Conde, (The Count), fuses together vampire tropes, black comedy, and infamous historical figures. After Princess Diana, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Pablo Neruda, Larrain along with frequent screenwriting collaborator Guillermo Calderón take on Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet this time, though a standard, biographical saga this hilariously is not. Instead, Pinochet is envisioned as a centuries-old member of the undead who decides to bequeath his horded wealth to his frustrated children and wife, only for a French nun with her own agenda to arrive on the scene and complicate an already ridiculous situation. The humor is played dry as a bone, which creates a wonderful, ethereal atmosphere against Edward Lachman's lush black and white photography and the deliberate pacing. Instead of making unabashed greed and hubris the mere byproducts of vampirism and the lumbering weight of the immortality that comes along with it, the film presents everyone, (undead or not), as being morally dubious to varying extents. This makes Jaime Vadell's ruthless dictator a charming fellow against the lot of everyone else, though warts are both exhibited and lampooned for everyone on screen. What metaphorical things it may say about Chilean politics, (either unflattering, disturbingly patriotic, or both), is open to interpretation, but it certainly skews the biopic formula to a surreal and humorous extent.
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