Triple Bill Mini Musings: Killers & Writers...

Chained:
What's it about?
A taxi driving serial killer called Bob abducts a mother and child, takes them home, kills the mother, and then keeps the nine year old boy chained up in his house for close to a decade, treating him like a dog and his own post-kill cleaning attendant.
Who would I recognise in it?
Vincent D'Onofrio, Julia Ormond, Jake Weber.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Written and Directed by Jennifer Lynch - daughter of David, thus partly explaining the sheer darkness of this intensely disturbing psychological horror - Chained makes for a bleak but fascinating watch. Everything is deliberate and calculated, there are moments of shocking psychological conditioning, and the deep-freeze coldness of the selection and killing of victims by Bob is decidedly unsettling. The central performances by D'Onofrio (killer Bob, simmering threat and full stops in all the wrong places) and Eamon Farren (captive Tim, gaunt and painfully quiet) are utterly captivating - at times terrifying - while Lynch keeps the film moving forward at a precise pace. So pitch-perfect is the film for the duration that's it's confusing when a late-in-the-game development nearly derails everything ... however, recall one particular detail of a flashback and suddenly a bizarre left-field punch turns into a typically deliberate calculation that feeds right back into the nurture-over-nature theme. The last minutes do exhibit moments of messiness, but then maybe that's the point. Easily one of the most unsettling films I've ever seen. Great.

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Alex Cross:
What's it about?
Attempted reboot for a franchise that once starred the superior Morgan Freeman as the titular serial killer profiler (Kiss The Girls, Along Came A Spider), but this time starring that guy who does all those Madea movies ... yeah. A fat-free assassin stalks a series of high profile targets in Detroit.
Who would I recognise in it?
Matthew Fox, Tyler Perry, Edward Burns, Jean Reno, Rachel Nichols, John C. McGinley, Giancarlo Esposito.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
The bloke that plays Madea ... trying to inhabit the role of a brilliant homicide detective ... yeah, it doesn't work at all. The script is shoddy, the female characters are slap-dash after-thoughts, and the idea that Tyler Perry's athletically unconvincing thinking man can win a fight against a trained assassin who easily beat-down a professional cage fighter is just ludicrous. Attempts at emotional heft aren't earned and feel cheap, while most - if not all - of the characters are lumbered with cliched character traits (womanising sidekick, grumpy politicking boss). The only thing that kept me watching was Matthew Fox, and mostly because his physical transformation (over-played ticks aside) is so stunning - he dropped all his body fat for the role to become nothing but a tightly-bound, gaunt stack of muscles and veins ... what a shame that he wasted such effort on a script this crap for a movie this by-the-numbers. Shite.


Ruby Sparks:
What's it about?
A struggling novelist experiences a dream featuring a beautiful woman, so he begins to write a free-flowing book about her - then one morning he wakes to find that this eponymous dream girl is very much in his life. Living. Breathing. Fully formed - and whatever he writes about her comes true.
Who would I recognise in it?
Paul Dano, Antonio Banderas, Annette Benning, Elliott Gould, Steve Coogan.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Written by and co-starring Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks), this is not only an inventive look at male/female relationships, it's also an inventive look at the 'plagued writer' concept. The script feels fresh, free, honest, lively, and absolutely involves the viewer. It never feels forced, over-or-under-played, nor cutesy, and it wisely doesn't bother getting bogged down in metaphysical reasoning to explain the possibility of Ruby ... that would be like quantifying the notion of love. Beautifully constructed and performed, it's the best film about relationships I've seen since "(500) Days of Summer", and is one of the best films I've seen this year. Highly recommended. Great.