Capsule Review: "A Nightmare on Facetime"

Remember the old episode “The Simpsons Already Did It”? Well, tonight’s South Park did another thing Fox’s yellow family already did by spoofing Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. But this time, Comedy Central’s vulgar cartoon actually did it better than The Simpsons.

The Overlook Hotel is replaced with a video store (remember those?), which Stan’s father Randy buys in a compulsive attempt to run his own business. But the results are much the same as what happened to Jack Nicholson, as the barren emptiness of the obsolete store, coupled with the ghosts of old patrons, drive Randy insane on Halloween night. The almost scene-for-scene parody of Kubrick’s film is spot-on, and the episode hammers the idea that physical movies are obsolete home with a subplot involving the “Redbox Killers,” who rob stores for the cash inside of the Redbox machines (which is a miniscule amount of loose change).

The laughs keep coming in this one, which is a nice rebound from last week. But there’s also a twinge of sad nostalgia for the bygone days of renting movies at the local video store, even though admittedly, the show is right about streaming being cheaper and easier.

The episode also integrates some more recent pop culture, including the four main boys dressing up as The Avengers for Halloween (which makes for some very funny gags) and the iPad (hence, the title). And the way the show incorporates the current “Gangnam Style” craze is quite clever; I bet there will be at least a handful of diehard fans who show up at Halloween parties as “Gangnam-stein” this year.

Paranormal Activity 4

If horror movies get a bad rap (and I would argue that the genre gets less respect than others), one of the reasons could be the genre’s tendency to produce so many sequels, many of them subpar. Whenever a horror film is a hit, the studio will rush out another entry seemingly every year until the franchise no longer brings in the dough. This is not a new trend: it goes from recent movies like Saw, to the slasher films of the 1980s, all the way back to the old Hammer Horror films of the late 1950s and 60s. You could even argue that this started with the classic Universal Monster movies eight decades ago.

Paranormal Activity is the perfect series for making sequels because it has a process that's easy to repeat year after year. Since it consists of supposedly found footage, all you have to do is film on a handheld camera with none of the typical movie production values. Throw in some randomly moving objects, loud noises, and fleeting shapes in the shadows, and you have a movie. Not necessarily a good or scary movie, but a cheap, economical one that will probably turn a profit on its first weekend.

Now the series is on its fourth movie in as many years, released a few weeks before Halloween. I never caught on to the Paranormal Activity phenomenon when it started, so 4 is my first foray into the series. And after sitting through it, I don’t think I’m going to go back and watch the rest of them.

By now, the series’ gimmick is well known: the viewer is supposedly watching real footage of people being tormented by supernatural forces, found some time after the fact (the series wasn’t the first to use this technique). This time, the said footage follows a normal suburban family, who take in neighbor boy Robbie (Brady Allen) when his mother Katie (Katie Featherston, who’s appeared in all four movies) is in the hospital. During Robbie’s stay, he acts rather strangely, and spooky things start happening in the house, which makes teenage daughter Alex (Kathryn Newton) suspect there’s a demonic force at work. There are apparently connections to the previous films, with a prologue establishing as much, but I wouldn’t know.

If they wanted us to believe what's onscreen is actually real, they should at least have the actors act like normal people. Instead, they play out every cliché of characters in a bad horror movie. There’s the awful dialogue, the almost lackadaisical reaction to supernatural happenings (in one scene, a kid is more excited than scared when his Big Wheel starts riding by itself), and all the typical mistakes like going off into a dark room alone. The only difference is that this time they’re holding the camera.

This doesn’t exactly doom the film, as a bad horror movie can be entertaining if it’s so ridiculous it’s funny. But what kills the experience is the simple fact that it's not scary, or even that comical in its attempts to be scary; it’s actually quite boring. Much of the meat of the picture consists of long shots of empty rooms at night, as we wait for something, anything, to be caught on camera. This goes from creating tension the first time, to slow and excruciating by the third or fourth time.

To be fair, when something does appear suddenly onscreen, yes, it does make you jump. There are several parts that at least give you a jolt to prevent you from falling asleep completely. But these are no scarier than someone jumping out of a closet in a Halloween mask, or playing this for the first time. They're also pretty few and far between among the endless shots of an empty house, and some of them are more comical than scary. All of it builds to a finale that's less frightening than just confusing (again, this could be a result of me not seeing the first three movies, but it doesn’t seem like it explains anything).

For those who want to get the experience of being startled by someone jumping out and yelling “Boo” over and over again for 90 minutes, Paranormal Activity 4 might suit you, though there are plenty of other movies that do it better and more often. For a truly terrifying cinematic experience, there are many, many better films out there.

Capsule Review: "Going Native"

Most of the time, South Park is at best hysterical, and at least funny enough to burn a half hour. But when the show isn’t clicking, there aren’t different levels of bad to it. When it’s bad, it’s usually HORRIBLE.

Sometimes on the show, Trey Parker and Matt Stone get so into their surreal storylines that humor is left by the wayside. Tonight’s episode was an example of that.

In it, we find the usually excessively cheerful Butters in an inexplicable fit of rage, having beaten up a recurring character offscreen (I know this is horrible, but that might have actually been very funny to see, in the show’s gleefully offensive way). Turns out his anger is somehow because he’s a Hawaiian by birth, and he must make a pilgrimage to the Aloha State to participate in a sacred ceremony with other Native Hawaiians (in actuality, just regular Americans who make the state their seasonal home; I guess this was the intended joke, but it didn’t make me laugh). There’s also some stuff about a war with the U.S. Mainland, and the ghost of Elvis, and…yeah, it lost me at about the 12-minute mark.

The one redeeming moment (well, not redeeming enough to salvage the episode) came when Butters revealed the true source of his anger: Ben Affleck, who Stone and Parker seem to have something of a grudge against. Butters’ aimless tirade about Affleck (including a diss/shout-out to his current film Argo) might give dedicated fans a chuckle, but that little inside joke is about the only laugh in this one.

The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson might not exactly be a household name to the average moviegoer, but he is certainly one of the most talented directors today. His pictures are aesthetically so simple, and yet so deep and complex. You can watch them as the simple story at the surface, or you can spend hours unraveling the themes and ideas every line, every scene, and every shot may implicate.

His last film, 2007’s There Will Be Blood, can be viewed simply as the story of a ruthless oil baron in the early 20^th Century. But dig a little deeper, and the movie works as a parable on greed, isolation, capitalism, religion, or human nature, among other things. It’s easily one of the best films since the start of the new millennium.

Anderson's newest film The Master similarly works on many different levels. The subject taking center stage this time is religion and indoctrination, specifically that of a new age cult, as seen through the firsthand experience of one man.

That man is Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a depraved drifter returning from World War II.  More than an alcoholic, the film depicts him drinking machine oil while in the service and making cocktails out of dangerous chemicals. He is quite sexually ravenous, but seemingly can’t cope on a personal or societal level. After failing to keep some meager jobs, he drunkenly wanders on board a yacht owned by Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the founder of a radical new religion called The Cause. Dodd sees in Freddie a potential convert, and takes him under his wing as a follower.

Some have speculated that the story is based on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. I can’t say for certain if it is or not, because the extent of my knowledge of Scientology doctrine comes from South Park. It doesn’t really matter, though, because the content presented in the film can act as stand-in for any fanatical belief system.

The ritual indoctrination on display is wrenching and excruciating. Ostensibly, Dodd seeks to help people, and yet, none of The Cause’s activities ever seem to be even remotely spiritual, just manipulative and spirit-breaking. Such a stark, unfiltered look at the dark side of a cult mentality is different from anything depicted in Hollywood before, as it seems so real and unglamorous.

Great performances that are tailor-made for award season abound in the picture. It’s good that Joaquin Phoenix’s announcement that he was quitting acting turned out to be a hoax, because for all his off-screen eccentricities, he can still deliver a great performance. As Freddie, he is pitiful and, at some points, disturbing as a man with many demons, and who's quite probably mentally ill. Yet, he comes off as a real human being, not an exaggerated caricature. He’s even somehow, in spite of everything, sympathetic (maybe just because of the way The Cause uses him). It’s possible that Phoenix’s weird behavior surrounding said hoax makes him even more believable in the role.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Dodd as an enigma, for it’s never quite clear whether or not he actually believes what he preaches. His angry outbursts when people question him suggest he’s just a con man. Yet, his devotion to saving Freddie, who it becomes obvious is beyond help, makes it seem like he really believes what he’s doing is right, or at least he’s convinced himself he’s right. For all the character's manipulative charisma and demagoguery, Hoffman still convincingly walks this fine line between prophet and fraud, never firmly stepping on either side and leaving it up to the viewer to decide where he stands.

Amy Adams is also very good as Dodd’s status-seeking wife. Unlike her husband, her true nature is obvious, as she only takes part in The Cause’s activity for the power it allots her as its leader’s wife. Adams usually plays such likeable characters that it’s a little weird to see her as an overbearing, guilt-instilling shrew, but she plays the part well.

And all this is just on the surface. So many little pieces throughout could suggest completely different interpretations. One example: Some scenes from Freddie’s point of view, especially flashbacks to his hometown love Doris (Madisen Beaty) prior to the War, seem to have a surreal quality, possibly suggesting that they’re all in his head. The ending also leaves questions: Did The Cause help Freddie, or was it just another stop on his aimless journey through life? Again, the answer could change with each viewer.

Admittedly, the film as a whole is not exactly the most enjoyable cinematic experience. There are really slow stretches, and some of it is rather unpleasant, such as the aforementioned indoctrination sequences and the jarring, unerotic sexual content. But while the adrenal gland may take the movie off, the mind is working overtime, which is arguably a more rewarding experience.

Capsule Review: "Insecurity"

South Park used to always make its point by addressing its topic directly, with those sappy “I learned something today” monologues at the end of each episode. But the show’s satire is many times more scathing and effective when they just let the story play out. Be it saving the rainforest or gay conversion camp, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have a way of making a point painfully, brutally self-evident without their characters jumping on a soapbox.

In last night’s case, the target was home alarm systems, as the men of South Park seek to install them to protect their wives from being seduced by the UPS delivery man (a non-problem, only brought upon the town through a misunderstanding involving the bedroom habits of Kyle's parents). Though Cartman let them have it over the phone several times, much of the episode made it clear how Stone and Parker feel simply by showing how the alarms are only effective at creating a nuisance without actually helping to make people safer. Seeing alarms go off over and over got a little grating as the episode went on, as some gags on the show do over the course of an episode, but in this case, it helped hammer the point home even more. In addition, the episode found time to skewer Cialis ads, compulsive online shopping, and all our little insecurities (they have alarm systems for those, too, called “IN-security”).

The main storyline of the misunderstandings involving Kyles’ parents’ roleplay wasn’t as funny by the end as it was at the beginning, and the reference to The Dark Knight Rises seemed more superfluous than funny. Overall, though, this episode was solid, in both the comedy and commentary departments.