Was that in Cinemas?... The Skeleton Twins

Oh that Bill Hader! Everything he does just cracks me up!

 

So my wife is in India for a couple of weeks and I've been left alone to tend to myself. Now I'm not completely lost on my own, but I was looking for a film to cheer me up. So I waded through the growing stack of dirty clothes and take-away boxes to find the remote and pulled up the comedy section on my OnDemand movies and found The Skeleton Twins. It stars Kristin Wiig (funny, like in Bridesmaids), Bill Hader (very funny, like in Superbad) and Ty Burrell (I mean, come on, he was in the Muppet movie!). Surely, this was a recipe for good times. So I present to you, The Skeleton Twins: fun romp about how midlife crises happen in your mid-to-late-twenties nowadays - especially to lonely people, married life if often rubbish and suicide might be (though probably isn't) the answer to all your problems.

 

Are you laughing yet?

 

Hader plays Milo, gay, depressed, a failing actor. Reaching the end of his tether, he decides to commit suicide, but fails. The hospital calls his estranged twin sister Maggie (Wiig) who invites him to stay with her and her husband (Luke Wilson) while he recovers. During his stay, Milo discovers that Maggie's life is far from perfect: she is cheating and lying about wanting to have a baby. Furthermore, when he tries to rekindle a relationship that he had with one of his teachers in high school (Burrell), he finds that the teacher now has a wife and a son, older now than Milo was when they had their relationship. As Milo struggles with the idea that life does not necessarily get better after high school, he finds strength by rebonding with his sister and their shared experiences.

 

It's the classic comedy format - characters struggling to find direction; quiet contemplation of the unfairness of the world; hard-hitting truths that everyone must face about life not being everything you ever hoped it would be.

"I don't understand any of that, because I am James Franco and I exist only to remind you how little you've done with your life."

No, I'm not bitter, shut up.

 

So it's not that funny, but it does have that sad, quiet, character-driven thing going for it that I really like and in many ways, it really, really works.

 

As an indie movie, it is practically obliged contractually to have a solid soundtrack and this movie delivers, with particular credit going to the reintroduction of Jefferson Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now to my playlists.

 

The dialogue is brilliantly natural. I can't think of a single line in the film that felt forced or exposition-oriented. Even the dramatic scenes are not over-played. Everything is very low-key to the point where it's no longer "I can imagine having conversations like that.", but rather "I've had that conversation.", which is rare but extremely important for this type of film.

 

The acting is also superb and, in spite of my mock-disappointment at this not being a comedy, it is wonderful to see these actors stretching their muscles in a different genre. Seeing Wiig shrug off her usual goofiness for realism; Hader exhange his carefree-stoner-guy for a genuinely troubled individual; seeing Ty Burrell furious. These are all things that I would never have expected could be achieved so competently by actors who are, to an extent, so iconic in their comedy roles to have become typecast. Particular credit goes to Hader who captures one of the most natural portrayals of a gay man that I have ever seen in film. Indeed, his balance of campness without flamboyance was so believable that I was actually compelled to look up whether or not he was actually gay (he's not) - a powerhouse performance by any measure.

Pictured: Subtlety

 

The character that is a little more of a conundrum is Wiig's Maggie. As I've said, Wiig's acting is admirable and she has more than a few scenes that prove that her talent is wasted in many of her comedy roles (I'm looking at you, Anchorman 2!) but the problem is the character she is playing. No matter how well Wiig does with the script, the character of Maggie is nonetheless a disloyal wife, manipulative person and, when all is said and done, pretty darn selfish. But the film asks us to feel sorry for her. Indeed, it chalks up these actions to the same kind of crisis that Milo is suffering, and sorry, but "I've been a set upon my entire life, and now that I'm trying to fulfill my dreams and rise above my teenage life, I'm failing", is not equal to "I'm unhappy being married to a man who loves me very much, but rather than talk to him about it, I'd rather sleep around and lie". I found Maggie so dislikable that, until the end of the film, I found myself wondering whether I was supposed to like the character, but in the end it seems that the movie is asking us to accept her actions under the same "life is tough sometimes" heading as is used for Milo's struggles, and I just...can't.

 

That being said, the film is great, and my objections about Maggie's characterisation are not enough to take that away from the story in general. The stellar performances from everyone involved make it worth watching. What makes it rise above the average stock of indie films, though, is that The Skeleton Twins opts not to be a comedy. It doesn't make fun of the problems raised. It doesn't make light of the seriousness of the issues being faced by the characters. It is just realistic people dealing with realistic lives. And the casting of comedy actors to set up the expectation of a frivolously fun picture is a brilliant move. Grab a comforter and a bucket of ice cream, and check this movie out.

OK fine, it's not completely without frivolity, but this scene is improvised so that's basically just Wiig being Wiig...

 

That's a wrap...

 

 

 

 

Rerun... Scream 4. Remembering Wes Craven

This is the face of your nightmares!

I love horror. I am a huge defender of the medium in all its forms and my affair with all things gory, scary, thrilling and suspensful (my danse macabre, you might say?) has continued for about as long as I can remember. Every once in a while, I get a horror itch - a need to delve back into the genre and just revel. This was the itch I experienced on Sunday 30th of September, 2015. I found myself in HMV perusing the shelves and my eye fell on Scream 4, most recent entry in a franchise that I love dearly and so I decided to complete my collection. I didn't know, as I picked up the film, that the director of it, creator of the Scream franchise and altogether iconic film maker was living his final hours upon this earth, nearing the end of his struggle with brain cancer.

Wes Craven passed away later that day.

One's relationship with one's favourite horror film-maker is always curious: the person whom you so admire is the same person who has likely tortured your mind some evenings and nights. I still remember when I was young overhearing that my sister was going to watch a film that I was absolutely not allowed to watch. I sneaked in to the room to glimpse the first scene of Scream and ran hell-for-leather after seeing Drew Barrimore hanging lifeless and bloodied from a tree. Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors gave me one of my earliest full-blown recurring nightmares - the opening scene where Patricia Arquette thinks she has woken up and then the taps suddenly grab her hands gives me chills to this day.

And is set in a bathroom, doubling the desire to wet yourself.

That's just me, but think about it - what would the landscape of modern horror look like today without Wes Craven and movies like these? Without Nightmare on Elm Street, without The Hills Have Eyes, without Scream, without Last House on the Left? These movies aren't just landmarks in the horror genre, they shaped the genre itself.

Scream was a particular feather in Craven's hat as it was not only a well-made horror film, but a love-letter to the genre, and fans appreciated it as such. Often, self-referential films come off as a bit heavy-handed, but Craven achieved the perfect kind of parody, pointing out the flaws in the genre and improving upon them. This kind of integrity in and reverence of the creation of horror varied in the sequels, but when Scream 4 was first considered, Craven said that he would not even think about directing until he thought the script was as good as the first Scream. This was not a man looking to make a quick buck. This was a man wanting to create great movies.

Scream 4 is not the best Scream movie. Certainly, I think it misses the greatness of the first one, but in the light of Craven's death, it does, in my opinion, take on a new significance. You see, the franchise is all about the creation of horror: the rules that go with them, the cliches, the pitfalls, the wonder and the fun. Scream 4 is no different, but, released fifteen years after the original, it is all about how the new wave of filmmakers are creating horror movies. Stage cameras are swapped for webcams. Movie buffs are now bloggers (it's like he knows my life!). Every five minutes there is a reference to the ridiculousness of reboots and remakes in the horror franchise. Now, one might expect Craven to criticise, harking back to the glory days of horror cinema, but this is not the case. Craven, with Scream 4, is diligently, gleefully, celebrating the genre as it exists today. It isn't making fun - it's passing the torch.

Watching this film, one cannot help but think about the innumerable directors, writers, reviewers, actors, and fans that are working today as a result of the inspiration that Wes Craven provided, and while Scream 4 modestly suggests that it can roll with the times, we as fans must proudly proclaim that these times would not exist but for people like him.

Wes Craven was known as a fun-loving man, a practical joker on set. He was a man who would never make a film for the paycheck. He was an artist who cared deeply about everything that he made, and its impact upon the genre. Horror, especially the slasher subset, is a divisive genre and there is plenty of discussion to be had about it's worth. But in the centre of that discussion sat a hard-working, genuine man with a love and integrity towards his craft that must be admired.

He has inspired me, and I thank him for it.

“If I have to do the rest of the films in the [horror] genre, no problem. If I’m going to be a caged bird, I’ll sing the best song I can[...] I can see that I give my audience something. I can see it in their eyes, and they say thank you a lot. You realize you are doing something that means something to people. So shut up and get back to work." - Wes Craven

That's a wrap.