Critters:

Review incoming....

 

Sleeping Beauty:

I finally watched Sleeping Beauty, a film which first seized my interests last year after I stumbled across the trailer on-line.

The fact that Emily Browning had a starring part in this film was a major seller for me, as I've always loved her previous roles. I don’t normally tend to seek out art films, even coherent ones, as they’re usually rather dull, but something about this one intrigued me, and I've always been a sucker for fairy tale references. Besides, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to view a film whose trailer reminded me of The Story of O, not so much for the latter's dealings with sadomasochism, as that particular perversion is not covered within this movie, but due to the similarities in atmosphere, at least in the beginning. Browning's scenes at the estate put me in mind of O's experiences within the Château de Roissy. While the desires and practices of the men in both films are very different, the dehumanization of the girls involved is eerily similar.

The story revolves around Lucy, a young college girl struggling financially, who responds to an ad looking for beautiful young women to act as servers and eye candy at an estate which caters to rich, older men. Lucy, who is given the name “Sara” by her new employer, is required to pour wine and brandy, while wearing expensive and barely-concealing lingerie. The job eventually extends to include having Lucy consume a extremely strong sedative which places her into a deep, dreamless sleep, during which time she is placed in a room where one of the gentlemen clientele may do whatever he wishes to her senseless body, with the exception of penetration.

First let me say that this is a very pretty film, but it’s also a very English film. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it tedious, but it creeps right up to the edge of that line and tap dances around it while dining on crumpets and tea.

This movie feels like what you’d expect to see if Jane Austen had written a soft-core porno.

There is an abundance of nudity in it, and yet very rarely does the bare flesh come off as titillating. Even when the women are being draped in reveling lingerie, their actions are so benign that they might as well be wearing full Nun habits for all of the actual arousal it invokes. They are nothing more than inanimate objects to the rich and powerful men they serve. The few “sexual” situations are also tame for the most part, except for one in particular, which just comes off as grotesquely comical in comparison to the dignified tone set by the rest of the film.

 

Emily Browning is stunningly beautiful in her role, which should come as no surprise, and she carries off her performance with a serenity that is often at odds with the situations her character finds herself in. I can’t really praise her acting too much, not because it was lacking, but that the story itself felt incomplete. There is some mediocre attempt to show the audience a brief glimpse of her character’s life, but none of it is explained in any depth, and any dramatics we are tantalized with are quickly forgotten with no further explanation or conclusion.

Still, considering how little she was given in the way of character development, and the fact that she doesn’t say very much in the film, she still managed to captivate me. There’s a hint of something more there, and it’s perhaps one of the biggest teases the film has to offer. There is a scene in particular which I found profoundly moving, in which one of the gentlemen quotes a book to the proprietor of the establishment, while both are sitting on the edge of the very bed that an unconscious Lucy is laying on. The depth so subtly expressed in that one moment is exactly what I was craving from the rest of the film. 

I won’t go so far as to call the movie shallow, as there is at least some meaning behind it all, I just wasn’t always so clear as to what it was.

Underworld Awakening:

The recent holiday festivities have tampered down my free time a teensy bit, so forgive me for the site's lack of reviews.

I'd offer up some dramatic gesture of supplication, but I leave grand posturing to the cam whores. Instead, I have procured a nice, juicy bone for all you Underworld lovers out there.

Tada! New trailer:     

Also, it's been confirmed that Scott Speedman, the actor who played Micheal Corvin in the first two Underworld movies, will not be in the newest film. For which I am exceptionally grateful. His character was boring as shit and I usually tune out whenever he's on the screen.

My interest has been tickled by the Super-Lycan referenced to in the trailer, and since everyone's favorite Werewolf from the series Lost Girl, Kris Holden-Ried, has a part in this movie, I can only cross my fingers and pray to Fenrir that he's been cast in the role of mutant Hulk-wolf.

Although, let's face it, they could have cast that hunkalicious man as an inanimate object and I'd still be fighting back the urge to dry hump my computer screen.