Movie Review: The Skin I Live In

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Antonio Banderas was the actor of the weekend. I discovered that I had a free loyalty movie ticket that was going to expire during the next week so I needed to use it or lose it as well as some free popcorn and soda coupons. I used them to see Puss in Boots. Of course, he voiced the lead character Puss in this spin off from the Shrek franchise. Light, care free family fare with Banderas speaking in English with a few words in Spanish. The other movie was very different clocking in at just under two hours (117 minutes to be precise) and rated R for disturbing violent content including sexual assault, strong sexuality, graphic nudity, drug use and language and done in Spanish with English subtitles. Banderas plays Dr. Robert Ledgard in The Skin I Live In.

Ledgard is a renowned plastic surgeon having participated in three of the nine face transplants to have occurred. He passionately believes they as doctors and scientists can do better in these reconstructions with improved skin for skin grafts. Why does he so strongly believe in this? His wife, years earlier, had been in car crash and was severely burned. He believes that had he had the improved skin made by combining cells from pig’s skin with human skin at the time after the accident, he could have saved her.

This feeling, the longing to help a family member or situation is the genesis act for the birth of a mad doctor and scientist. We’ve seen it happen over and over again where they become so obsessed that they leave any sense of morality and ethics along the roadside. Quite frequently the collateral damage is either overlooked or is unknown with consequences to take place down the road. One of the more recent movie examples is Rise of the Plant of the Apes. The good doc wants to create a serum that will cure the Alzheimer’s afflicting his dad; instead it gave the primates the intelligence and spread a virus that killed millions of people. Or on Fringe on TV, an engineer builds a time bubble based off his theoretical physicist wife’s notes in order to go back in time before she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s not realizing that his time bubble created other time bubbles destroying property and lives in the process. It’s just coincidence that in both examples Alzheimer’s was the reasoning. It’s no coincidence that the love for the family member pushed them over the edge.

Experimentation of this magnitude is never done in a vacuum; the doctor inevitably has to have someone else either as an accomplice or as the guinea pig or victim and sometimes both. Ledgard has Marilia (Marisa Paredes) his longtime housekeeper assisting him with keeping victim Vera (Elena Anaya) imprisoned up in El Cigarral, the doctor’s large beautiful estate. Vera is locked in a room with cameras being monitored by the doctor and Marilia. She is not allowed out of the room, food is given via a dumb waiter and only the doctor has the key to the room. Vera wears a beige colored full body unitard that included gloves and foot coverings with individual toes (think the Vibram FiveFinger shoes). Instead of mice as the doctor has told other doctors at a conference, his experimental skin which doesn’t burn and is impervious to mosquitoes has been placed on Vera. These characteristics would have saved his wife, the selfish motive, and helping others, the public motive, by reducing the spread of malaria. These were his justifications for pushing the limits of the science and technology.

This is not your typical mad doctor movie. There is a deliberateness, a slowness and calmness about the mansion. Being a plastic surgeon, artwork (rather large ones too!) showing the human form with lots of skin exposed are decorating the walls of El Cigarral. Classical music stylings featuring piano and strings form the background music for the piece. There is a brightness and clarity in many of the scenes instead of the creepy dark and foreboding typical of the mad scientist genre. What is really dark and foreboding is Ledgard’s soul and spirit as he continues his work on Vera.

Many of the scenes were easily watchable for their visuals but at times left a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when the implications of the dialogue settled into my brain. Why did Legard continue to do what he did? Why would the accomplice stay there knowing the results come at such a great cost? The gore was not graphic but some of the themes expressed by director Pedro Almodóvar were unsettling…very unsettling. As depicted by the rating, there was violent content that was tough to watch. Almodóvar laid out the story in a non-linear fashion and along different points of view from the characters each adding a new layer changing your perception of the situation giving you information that the characters themselves did not have to round out their world view of the events. This works well to build up to the final climax and reveal that had people in my theater responding to audibly. It came out of nowhere and hit you in between the eyes with a two by four.

If you go see The Skin I Live In, just know that it’s not your run of the mill mad scientist. Banderas does not have the wild grey hair, thick glasses, crooked teeth and lab coat prevalent of most mad doctors…well, actually he does have the lab coat, but only when working in the lab! He’s suave, smooth, calculating and diabolically deliberate, yet charming and sophisticated. If you can handle the implications of his work, you’ll have a different style of movie in your hands.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Fright Night

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Slow weekend for choices at the movie theater. You have not one, but two remakes and one sequel. They all appealed about equally on my radar. Conan the Barbarian starring Hawaii born Jason Momoa and Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D which had scratch and sniff cards were two of the three selections available but ultimately, Fright Night won out only because it had the first non 3D showing of the day.

It is a remake of a 1985 version of the same name. Set in Las Vegas, the action starts quickly and keeps moving along. Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) is told by former long time best friend Ed (Christoper Mintz-Plasse - McLovin from Superbad) that his new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire responsible for a slew of missing fellow classmates and families in the area. Charlie doesn't want to believe Ed, after all, what vampire would be named Jerry, right? Charlie quickly figures out that Ed was right after all and sets out to protect his stressed out real estate selling mother (Toni Collete) and knock out gorgeous girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots) about the danger in the night.

To help with his crusade, Charlie heads over to the Hard Rock Hotel to get advise from a person in the know. This person is Peter Vincent (David Tennent, the tenth Dr over there on Dr Who), the magician whose show is vampire themed and called Fright Night. Of course some actor/magician would know everything you need to know to put down a hard core vampire with mean sharp nasty teeth, because we're dealing with reality here, not some nut job who just thinks they are a vampire.

The movie is rated R for bloody horror violence and language including some sexual reference. My theater must have thought it was scarey enough to keep the house lights on the dimmed but not dark mode for about 20 minutes into the 106 minute running time. Through the whole movie I only found myself startled twice by what happened on screen.

Nothing really ground breaking covered in the remake. The standard stakes, crosses, holy water, turning victims into vampires and belief all come up as well as giving permission for the unholy creature of the night to cross the threshold of your home. We did get answers for two variations of the crossing the threshold dilemma. The first, what if it's not your home and the second, what if you can't call the house a home anymore. Does the logic support the outcome?

Keeping with the genre, the big climatic battle scene seems to occur around the vampire's coffin just as the staking is to occur and right after the sun makes its daily graceful exit behind the horizon. The head vamps eyes pop open and the would be vampire killer is grabbed around the neck, hoisted off the ground and thrown across the room if it's an older tale with a castle, or to the other side of the basement if it's a more modern vampire story. The lived up to the standard. Although, I will give Fright Night a little credit. There was a nice twist on the standard vampire dispatch method to finally vanquish the bad guy.

So, while not a top shelf movie for the weekend, it fits solidly within the standard scope for telling the tale of a creature who needs to feed on human blood in order to remain alive. No day time walking, sparkly skin exposing, synthetic blood drinking, I just want to be your friend and marry you while not sucking your life force from two holes I put in your neck to be found here.

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.

Movie Review: The Wolfman

At Universal Studios Hollywood is the House of Horrors, a place where you walk through many scary scenes from classic horror movies like The Mummy, Psycho, Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolfman.

As I was walking through I managed to get by the wolfma's area unscathed but after I rounded the corner and was exploring the world of Frankenstein, the Wolfman came up behind me and gave me a good startle. Some of those same startles got me as I watched the new updated version of The Wolfman.

In this version of Benicio del Toro gets the lead as Lawrence Talbot who will eventually end up as "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright." Lawrence has come home to at the behest of his brother's fiance Gwen (Emily Blunt) as his brother Ben has gone missing. Anthony Hopkins plays his father Sir John Talbot who greets him as he enters the dark, large and brooding Talbot Manor in the English countryside.

After the funeral Lawrence wants to find his brother's killer for himself and for Gwen.

Inspector Abbeline (Hugo Weaving) comes in from London to officially investigate the murder. His father recommends that since the moon was full he stay at the manor but does Lawrence listen, no. Gypsies are in town so he goes to their encampment to talk to them about a medallion that was found among his brother's personal effects. He's told to stay in the encampment by the gypsy Maleva; does he listen No. The encampment is attacked by something big, fast, strong and brutal and when Lawrence chases whatever it is, he gets attacked and wounded. So by not listening to people Lawrence ends up in deep kimchi as the saying goes.

Most people watching knows what is coming. At the next full moon Lawrence turns into the wolfman bringing hysteria, death and destruction to the local populace. The movie has an R rating due to the violence and the gore of primal violence displayed by the beast. Between his bite and several turnings Lawrence develops feelings for Gwen who tries to rescue him from his curse. Like all good monster movies the monster is sacrificed for the love of the women. Lawrence does it for Gwen like King Kong did for Fay Wray. "It was beauty killed the beast."

The makeup for the monster was done by Rick Baker. He's the same guy who did the make up for Michael Jackson's transformation in Thriller and David Naughton in An American Werewolf in London. Del Toro's Wolfman is not as animal like as Naughton but not quiet as human as Jackson but somewhere in between. Baker makes a cameo in the movie as one of the gypsies. The transformations are relatively short and it takes a while to see the monster's face but when you do, it's a good homage to Lon Chaney's look in the 1941 original.

Del Toro doesn't fully emote a man conflicted between the man who says his prayers by night and one who has knowledge that he shreds people just as a beast has sliced his brother. A sense of urgency doesn't seem to be there. Hopkins comes across as the man who knows more than he is telling since he lived in the countryside for so many decades.

The plot moves along. I didn't look at my watch because I was bored. While watching I had a couple of questions that did lead to a section of plot that I wasn't expecting within the familiar wolfman story. There were a few points where I got startled and jumped in my seat which is what I hope will happen when the movie genre is horror. Being a remake one hopes that it will be much better than the original. This didn't reach that level, but it was good enough to keep me engrossed for the two hour and five minute movie worthy of the matinee admission that I paid.