The Bride: I Prefer Not To

★★—The Bride? More like The Ex. Am-I-right? I sort of liked this, at first. It seems that it is universally hated, but I thought it was sweet, though incredibly unfocused. I think it would be more accurate to say I wanted to like it… But the more I think about it, the worse I feel about it. 

 

Recent Oscar winner Jessie Buckley is Jean Harlow is Marla Singer… with some shit on her face. She’s also inexplicably possessed by Mary Shelley some of the time. Quotes Melville a lot, ye olde “I prefer not to.”

 

Some Gyllenhaal-on-Gyllenhaal action. Maggie directs what I assume will be her last film for a while. Jake plays a Fred Astaire type that Frankenstein is really into. Speaking of weird siblings, this super niche Swedish electronica band, the Knife, showed up playing not period music. The band is made up of Karin and Olof Dreijer. You can’t miss them. Karin looked more like a zombie than Frankenstein. 

 

Like Christian Bale in everything. This was no different, though it was no Big Short. People are constantly trying to fuck with him. Kids, if you are listening, picking a fight with a large man that looks like that is ill-advised. Then again, he passes as a waiter at one point. Am I sure I liked this movie? 

 

Takes place in the mid-1930s, roughly around the time Bride of Frankenstein came out. Love a period piece, usually. Way more dancing than I was expecting. Lot of film references. Ones I recognized, in addition to Bride of Frankenstein, include Bonnie and Clyde, Natural Born Killers, Moulin Rouge, Poor Things, Young Frankenstein. 

 

Overall. Too long. Too referential. Too little substance. Plot is insane, but not in a good way. Everything with Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz was unnecessary. 

31 Days of Halloween: Ghost Story Night: Gothic del Toro

Crimson Peak - Guillermo del Toro - 2015

 

★★★★-Day 6 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Ghost story night. Crimson Peak. Would put this in mid-tier Guillermo del Toro. Still rocks though. Huge fan of his work. 

Gist is aspiring author Edith Cushing marries charming baron Thomas Sharpe, who has some weird shit going on with sister Lucille. She then moves to his remote Gothic mansion and uncovers various dark secrets behind the ghosts that haunt the massive, dilapidated home.

 

Cast is solid with great performances. Stars Mia Wasikowska in the lead as Edith. She has really had some canonical, literary parts in her years. She was Alice in the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland flicks. Also, the title role for the Jane Eyre a decade back with Michael Fassbender as Rochester, Emma Bovary in a Madame Bovary adaptation, stars next to Robert Pattinson in the bananas film Damsel, and the part of Judy in Judy and Punch, which was also insane. She is pretty great. 

 

Others include the Loki man himself Tom Hiddleston as the baron, the always solid Jessica Chastain in her stabbiest role as sister Lucille who is completely out of her mind, and Charlie Hunnam as Dr. Alan McMichael, the other love interest. Also get Jim Beaver as Edith’s dad (he is Bobby Singer in Supernatural). And it wouldn’t be a Del Toro movie without a little Indiana native Doug Jones, he was the fish man in The Shape of Water as well as the fish man in the Hellboy movies. 

 

Love a gothic period piece. The production of this world is the best part about the movie. Totally giving off Hammer Film vibes in that respect, but with the del Toro style. Chastain steals the show with her subdued yet unhinged performance. Pacing and story could have been fleshed out a little bit, and the end is a little over-the-top. Not a classic like Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, or The Devil’s Backbone, but it’s close.