tabuno
06-22-2013, 12:42 AM
Nicole Kidman co-stars or more gets the credit of "with" in this mystery thriller about a young woman who along with her mother experience the death of the young woman's father and subsequently who then is introduced to a mysterious uncle, when people start to disappear.
I assume for most people that morally this movie wouldn’t be an easy movie to watch as there appears to be no character of really any, ultimately likeable disposition. But I can’t say for sure the same thing about the younger generation some of whom may have a proclivity bordering on the sociopathic perhaps. Thus, it makes it difficult to assess this movie objectively in some matters and at times it seems almost repulsive. It’s not that the cinematography was bad, it was shot with a quality technique that in fact was somewhat creative and experimental. There were many fascinating transition scenes back and forth with associated images and some surrealistic images that usually aren’t used in most other feature films.
Thus with all this preface out of the way, this movie was moderately and innovative visually speaking for the most part and for most of the movie until towards the end. Yet as much as it was innovative, it seemed almost too much, too cinematically challenging that almost reversed the background into the foreground, making the story narrative almost secondary. And as for the characters, they weren’t very appealing, not that being bad is such a bad thing in and of itself. Yet depending on the judicious use of character development or using a more subtle, complex deviant personalities than those found in Stoker, the audience can come to admire such psychopathic behavior such Kevin Costner’s serial killer persona in Mr. Brooks (2007), Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s criminal characters of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as sympathetic criminals in Thelma and Louise (1991), Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and of course perhaps the most famous of all adored psychopaths Anthony Hopkins – Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Other such questionable characters have also received praise but in the context of an overarching movie that isn’t completely as dark as Stoker such as Brendan Fraser role as an enforcer in The Air I Breathe (2007) or Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (2007) or John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction (1994). Even with a much more focused character study, even the most challenging character can develop into an voyeuristically fascinating case study such as Michael Douglas’s or Christian Slater’s character’s descents in Falling Down (1993) or He Was a Quiet Man (2007) respectively. Even so, in the horror genre, we can expect the evil reversal and accept it such as the young boy in The Omen (1976), the horror mystery starring John Cusack in Identity (2003) or the occult twister with Nicole Kidman in The Others (2001) or in real life subject matter and again starring Nicole Kidman’s To Die For (1995)(maybe she’s just good in these movies, but so good as not to be typecast which may be she’s cast for these roles) or her perhaps her most usually set designed movie in Dogville (2004).
Nevertheless, there is more identifying appeal with characters that we ourselves can appreciate and relate to as ourselves that we’d like to be, even with a dark side such as Saoirse Ronan great characterization as a young female trained to kill in Hanna (2011) or her a surrealistic side as a murder victim in The Lovely Bones (2009), Brad Pitt’s demise in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), and of course the most famous of all horror films . For the most part, the moral balance for American audiences has much more potency in such movies as Black Swan (2010) or Another Earth (2011), Atonement (2007), or another Kevin Costner vehicle in A Perfect World (1993) and of course the most famous horror movie with Anthony Perkin’s at Bate’s Motel in Psycho (1960).
As for Stoker, the characters’ motivation and behavior in this movie doesn’t offer enough background and reasonable psychological believability to make them even voyeuristically appealing. Instead the characters seem at times like the creative visual effects more background and less human as opposed to subjects to be manipulated to tell as a supposedly interesting story. While the over all storyline is decent and hangs together, the presentation and the sufficient depth just seem to be missing to make this movie into a really substantive and completely acceptable, sympathetically enjoyable.
I assume for most people that morally this movie wouldn’t be an easy movie to watch as there appears to be no character of really any, ultimately likeable disposition. But I can’t say for sure the same thing about the younger generation some of whom may have a proclivity bordering on the sociopathic perhaps. Thus, it makes it difficult to assess this movie objectively in some matters and at times it seems almost repulsive. It’s not that the cinematography was bad, it was shot with a quality technique that in fact was somewhat creative and experimental. There were many fascinating transition scenes back and forth with associated images and some surrealistic images that usually aren’t used in most other feature films.
Thus with all this preface out of the way, this movie was moderately and innovative visually speaking for the most part and for most of the movie until towards the end. Yet as much as it was innovative, it seemed almost too much, too cinematically challenging that almost reversed the background into the foreground, making the story narrative almost secondary. And as for the characters, they weren’t very appealing, not that being bad is such a bad thing in and of itself. Yet depending on the judicious use of character development or using a more subtle, complex deviant personalities than those found in Stoker, the audience can come to admire such psychopathic behavior such Kevin Costner’s serial killer persona in Mr. Brooks (2007), Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s criminal characters of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as sympathetic criminals in Thelma and Louise (1991), Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and of course perhaps the most famous of all adored psychopaths Anthony Hopkins – Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Other such questionable characters have also received praise but in the context of an overarching movie that isn’t completely as dark as Stoker such as Brendan Fraser role as an enforcer in The Air I Breathe (2007) or Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (2007) or John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction (1994). Even with a much more focused character study, even the most challenging character can develop into an voyeuristically fascinating case study such as Michael Douglas’s or Christian Slater’s character’s descents in Falling Down (1993) or He Was a Quiet Man (2007) respectively. Even so, in the horror genre, we can expect the evil reversal and accept it such as the young boy in The Omen (1976), the horror mystery starring John Cusack in Identity (2003) or the occult twister with Nicole Kidman in The Others (2001) or in real life subject matter and again starring Nicole Kidman’s To Die For (1995)(maybe she’s just good in these movies, but so good as not to be typecast which may be she’s cast for these roles) or her perhaps her most usually set designed movie in Dogville (2004).
Nevertheless, there is more identifying appeal with characters that we ourselves can appreciate and relate to as ourselves that we’d like to be, even with a dark side such as Saoirse Ronan great characterization as a young female trained to kill in Hanna (2011) or her a surrealistic side as a murder victim in The Lovely Bones (2009), Brad Pitt’s demise in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), and of course the most famous of all horror films . For the most part, the moral balance for American audiences has much more potency in such movies as Black Swan (2010) or Another Earth (2011), Atonement (2007), or another Kevin Costner vehicle in A Perfect World (1993) and of course the most famous horror movie with Anthony Perkin’s at Bate’s Motel in Psycho (1960).
As for Stoker, the characters’ motivation and behavior in this movie doesn’t offer enough background and reasonable psychological believability to make them even voyeuristically appealing. Instead the characters seem at times like the creative visual effects more background and less human as opposed to subjects to be manipulated to tell as a supposedly interesting story. While the over all storyline is decent and hangs together, the presentation and the sufficient depth just seem to be missing to make this movie into a really substantive and completely acceptable, sympathetically enjoyable.