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The Orphanage

The name of Guillermo del Toro looms large in the publicity for The Orphanage, Spain’s entry for consideration for Best Foreign Language Film. The title alone is enough to make you think that this may be the third part of a trilogy with del Toro’s two films about children and the supernatural, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. And while del Toro is in fact only the producer and “presenter” of this movie by first-time director Juan Antonio Bayona, it its fairly well into his canon. Similar in tone to some of the wave of “J-horror” films from Japan, The Orphanage is set in a large, secluded seaside mansion. Abandoned for years, it was once an orphanage where a girl named Laura was happy until she was adopted. As an adult, she returns with her husband and young son, planning to re-open the building as a group home for sick and “special needs” children. But when her son begins to develop friends that only he can see, it opens up a past of secrets and guilt that may or may not actually exist. In the manner of The Innocents, The Others or Poltergeist, The Orphanage is a fright film that rests on the shoulders of a splendid actress, in this case Spanish star Belen Rueda. Faced with the tricky job of playing a complex character whose motivations and secrets are never entirely clear to us, she compels our attention right through the unsettling ending. You could spend all day playing “spot the reference”—scripter Sergio G. Sánchez owns up to The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and there are also nods to Friday the 13th and Flowers in the Attic—all of which seems more likely to alienate the arthouse audience for this than to attract the horror fans who will find it too cerebral. The same is true of a few overly gruesome shocks Bayona indulges in along with a catalogue of more subtly effective jolts. The Orphanage lacks the political subtext that gave del Toro’s films extra substance, but it’s made to order for audiences who like to be scared without being grossed out.



The Bucket List

A year or so ago, NBC ran a few episodes of a sitcom called Twenty Good Years, starring John Lithgow and Jeffery Tambor as two sexagenarians who decide to make the most of their 60s and 70s. It showed a little promise, but I can’t say that I was too surprised when the network pulled it. Still, it was better than the similarly themed The Bucket List, which essentially adopts the same idea to a feature length film. Because a movie isn’t as open-ended as a TV show, the plot here is compressed: Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman learn that they are dying of cancer and decide to experience everything they’ve missed out on in life. This is facilitated by the fact that Nicholson is a billionaire, which allows them to move as if at will around the world, taking in the Taj Mahal one day, the south of France the next. Other reviews of the film have decried the poor special effects; maybe I’m just gullible, but I had no trouble believing that the film took its stars to these locations, and if that’s not really them skydiving, well, don’t ever let me on a jury. What I had less trouble believing was anything else about this woefully shallow film. In a would-be heart-tugger like this, we presume that the expensive adventures on which our doomed adventures embark will be a background against which they come to terms with what has been valuable in their lives. But what they conclude is so banal that even Hallmark would feel compelled to beef it up before printing it as a card. The script tries to disguise its weakness with a senseless trick ending that piles irritation onto the cinematic malnutrition. The Bucket List is little more than an excuse to generate some cash flow from the combined star power of Nicholson and Freeman, neither of whom does anything you haven’t seen them do hundred times before. (I don’t know if Nicholson purposely put on weight for this film, but he looks terrible, at least 10 years older than in The Departed.) Save your ticket money and spend it on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a much better film about a stricken man who learns to appreciate his life. (It’s scheduled to open in Buffalo next week.)





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