by: Anghus Houvouras

The Box
Starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden
3 stars (out of 5)

What’s in the box? It’s a great question, one I can’t ask without hearing Brad Pitt screaming it from the top of his lungs just before realizing it’s the disembodied head of Gwenyth Paltrow. This is a different kind of box but equally shrouded in mystery. Much like the famous query from Seven, it represents a deadly choice.

The Box is a film that will dazzle some and confuse others to the point of painful boredom. This is nothing new for director Richard Kelly, who has puzzled audiences since his first film, Donnie Darko, hit the festival back in 2000. There are many forgivable cinematic sins from first-time directors. Donnie Darko is a fascinating movie but suffers from a few rough corners. On the other hand, his sophomore effort, Southland Tales, was a fascinating failure. Even though not perfect, it was forgivable.

Kelly puts a lot of effort into what goes onscreen and presents a lot of interesting ideas. What tends to be his dividing line between good and bad lies in the number of unresolved threads left in his movies: cinematic rhetorical questions that are open to interpretation. There are those who enjoy having their mind’s eye widened, and there are others who may feel like they’ve had their mind’s eye poked.

The Box is a movie with a simple premise: A creepy, old guy shows up with a box. If someone pushes the button, said person gets $1 million. Naturally, there is a catch: a stranger will die. Of course, in terms of catches, that’s pretty big. Thus, a moral dilemma presents itself to our two main characters, played by James Marsden and Cameron Diaz.

Casting is such a vital part of any film. I realize such a statement is akin to saying bread is a vital part of any sandwich. Of course it’s vital. Bad casting can tip a marginal movie into grating territory. There is hardly ever a sane reason to cast Cameron Diaz in any movie—much less casting her in a movie where her character has a heavy Southern accent. It’s completely superfluous.

The Box is based in Virginia in the 1970s. While I’m sure there are plenty of people with Southern accents in Virginia, it would hardly be jarring to hear someone there without one—especially one so terrible. Diaz is to the Southern accent what the Greeks were to Troy. Unable to conquer or master the accent, she instead sneaks deep into it and slaughters everything in sight. The result is the third worst accent ever put to film, one butchered so brutally that it could constitute a hate crime. Picture Elmer Fudd being sodimized by the guys from Deliverance, with the transcription of the event being read by Marlee Matlin. It is bad enough to land in the Top Five Worst Film Accents of All Time. In no particular order they are:

1. Kevin Costner—Robin Hood: Prince of Theives.
Yes, it’s an easy target—but that’s because it sticks out like a fireball in a coal mine. His accent was lazy and off-putting, something made even worse by the actual Englishman playing the supporting roles. To be fair, this accent wouldn’t have been convincing in a 3rd-grade dinner theater production of Jane Eyre.

2. Sean Connery—any film in which he’s not playing a Scot.
Sean Connery is a fantastic performer. But he’s a bit limited in range. Most of it doesn’t matter. However, when he attempts to stretch and play a Spanish ship captain or a Russian sub commander with a familiar brogue, not only does it strain credibility but the eardrums of its victims.

3. Jodie Foster—Nell.
This may be a very well-done accent. I don’t know what the indigenous mountain people sound like. I know that listening to Jodie Foster emote with a mouth full of marbles is about as vocally stimulating as two cats making love through a megaphone.

4. Mickey Rooney—Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Ahhh... the days when minority roles were played by white actors under a thick layer of brown make-up doing the most bigoted impression ever. What an awful time in our collective history captured on film to be remembered forever.

It’s a little strange to watch Rooney play a buck-toothed Asian just a few years after we herded up the Japanese in internment camps. Even if we overlook the painful stereotyping, it’s just an awful impression.

Once viewers get past what a terrible actor Cameron Diaz inflects, there is a creepy mind-boink of a thriller. This flick is brimming with weird, and it works well. There’s an otherwordly vibe to the story, a kind of ethereal resonance. A great majority of the creepy is brought to the screen by Frank Langella. who plays the mysterious “benefactor,” complete with a giant lightning-bolt scar on his face. Every scene he’s in is deliciously malevolent. His intentions are nebulous, as if he’s nothing more than a pawn in a scheme far greater than anyone can imagine.

I liked The Box enough to recommend seeing it. But there’s a lot there that will leave most people going, “Huh? What now?” Don’t worry, this isn’t the kind of movie that doesn’t come with answers wrapped tightly in, well, a box; instead, just interpret it, as there is no right answer. And while the movie might reveal just what is in the box, it tells little else.

by: Anghus Houvouras

HALF-EMPTY
Length: 90 minutes
Director: Troy Carlton and Marcus Mizelle
Friday, November 13, 1pm-2:50pm
Lumina Theater

Troy Carlton has been lending his notable talents to the Wilmington film community since his days in the UNC Wilmington film program. Together with fellow alumnist Marcus Mizelle, the two collaborated on Half-Empty, the story of a corrupt executive desperate to cover up a coke deal, who is eventually driven to frame a fellow employee.

Carlton has been working in the film industry for five years as a technician and is making the transition into a full-fledged filmmaker. Half-Empty makes its world premier at Cucalorus 15, proving to be a prime example of the homegrown projects that evolve from Wilmington’s film community.

encore: What should people expect when they sit down to see Half-Empty?
Troy Carlton: To have as good of a time watching it as we did shooting it.

e: What was the inspiration behind making the film?
TC: First of all, the script embraced the feeling of getting shitted on and behaving irrationally because you feel like you’re justified in doing so. The inspiration behind the actual shooting process was to shoot our first feature film for no money, and try to make it entertaining and appear professional, too. At the same time, we wanted to have a lot of fun with friends.

e: Like any independent film, this wasn’t just a one man show....
TC: Right. The other creative forces behind the project were, of course, Marcus [Mizelle], who wrote the original short script, and together we wrote and directed the feature; Jim Mahorney, who we based a character, Sam, on; Nate Panning from Hank and Jed Movie Pictures. Our DP, German Valle, and Michael Kuhn who helped me produce and manage my money.

e: What’s the most important learned experience you took away from making the film?
TC: The greatest lesson I took away from Half-Empty was how a movie can get made not by money or stars but on drive and pure motivation just to finish. The motivation behind making this film independently was that we all knew that we could sit on this idea for years and wait for some deal to make the movie for a million bucks, but the simple reality is that we could wait our whole lives for that, so once we had a good enough script to shoot (after three years of off-and-on revisions), I had some extra money from a couple of well-paying jobs, so I essentially said, “Fuck it! Let’s shoot a movie with the money I’ve got in my bank account.”

e: What other advice would you offer a first-time filmmaker?
TC: My advice to others: Use the shit out of Craigslist, and make a whole lot of compromises while maintaining some level of integrity—and do not give up if you run out of money.

by: Anghus Houvouras

AMERICATOWN
Length: 77 minutes
Director: Kenneth Price
Friday, November 12, 4:30pm-6pm
City Stage

Wilmington’s very own Superkiiids! have been a creative cyclone over the past handful of years. There have produced a comedy album, inspired stage shows and, of course, filmed their first major motion picture, Lightning Salad Moving Picture.

The kids upped the creative ante earlier this year with their second production, Americatown. Much like Lightning Salad, Americatown is a labor of love, created by Kenneth Price, Jonathan Guggenheim and Cory Howard, with the help of local art director Chad Keith, who have a passion for getting their wacky on at every monument, historical site and national relic across our nation.

I had a chance to talk the director, Kenneth Price, about the Work-in-Progress screening at this year’s Cucalorus.

encore: So it hasn’t even been a year since the premiere of Lightning Salad. Catch us up on what has happened since the first screening.
Kenneth Price: It’s really hard to believe it was just one year ago that we had Lightning Salad Moving Picture at Cucalorus. We screened the film at six festivals and won Best Narrative Feature Film at the East Carolina Film Festival. We had a blast going up to the Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore in May and going to the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham back in September. We have the entire film up on www.americatownthemovie.com for free, so hopefully it will reach even more people.

e: Creatively speaking, what’s the biggest difference between Americatown and Lightning Salad?
KP: Well, I think the three of us have changed a lot since Lightning Salad, and Americatown reflects those changes. We never wanted to make a Lightning Salad Part 2. In Americatown, characters actually have names, and there are even a few dramatic moments here and there. It feels a little bit more like a “real” movie, but I think we kept just enough of the improvised, fun, no-budget feel of Lighting Salad.

e: No budget and a much greater scope from what I understand...
KP: We were on the road for 30 days and covered over 9,000 miles [across the states]. We camped and slept on our friend’s floors around the country. Wilmington film guru Chad Keith came on the trip with us to keep us sane, and I think it really helped having four people on the trip.

My favorite memory from the trip was the day we shot at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico. We wanted to go as a homage to the Boyz II Men video “Water Runs Dry,” but it really was an amazing place that makes you feel like you are on another planet while you’re there.

We wanted to do a film on the road that wasn’t a road-trip movie. So back in January we got together for a few weekends, and started bouncing around ideas and came to the premise of what if all the amazing things America has to offer exist in this one, tiny fictional town of 1,000 people. And Americatown was born.

e: Is there a potential for a third film in the series? Can we expect the inevitable trilogy?
KP: I think we all want to do another project next summer. Whatever it ends up being, I think it will be a departure from the previous two films.

e: As a filmmaker, where do you see yourself heading next?
KP: Well, being in grad school has given me a lot of time to work on bunch of different stuff. I don’t think I’ve really found a niche, and I’m not sure I really want to. I’m starting on a documentary about Grammy award-winning hip-hop producer 9th Wonder next month, and am planning a trip to Japan in January to do a new-wave styled short about a girl’s journey to see the first sunrise of the year.

Price will do a Q&A following the screening of the WiP film.

by: Anghus Houvouras

HOUSE OF THE DEVIL
Length: 93 minutes
Director: Ti West
Friday, November 13, 10:45pm-11:59pm
Lumina Theater

It was over two years ago when I first met Ti West, director of House of the Devil, a new film making it’s local premiere at Cucalorus. I was on set of the locally filmed Cabin Fever 2, doing some interviews for the horror Web site Bloody Disgusting. Within the first five minutes of meeting West, it was easy to see how he ended up directing horror films. There is a sense of eerie, childlike glee underneath his deadpan demeanor. His affection for the genre and his obsessive devotion to the craft makes him someone worth watching.

I’m not sure what happened to Cabin Fever 2. After filing my stories the whole thing kind of vanished into the ether. I was delighted when I picked up the screener for House of the Devil and saw “Ti West’s” name in the credits. The movie’s an interesting little larf—a pungent, occasionally wayward, scary movie that seems derived from the kind of satanic cult mayhem that inspired such anarchy as Manos: The Hands of Fate. Truth be told, House of the Devil plays like an episode of Tales from Darkside, a 1980’s horror anthology series in the vein of Twilight Zone. The episodes were always creepy, a little disturbing, and had some truly frightening moments that inspired many sleepless nights.

House of the Devil turns it up a notch wherein everything about it feels conveniently situational. A cute young college student signs up for a job babysitting. Everything goes to hell. Between points “A” and “Z,” there are a whole lot of scares, leading to a wonderfully creepy conclusion. High art, it’s not—but it’s wonderfully executed and lovingly crafted.

West has zeal in his work, featuring tiny little moments that make the movie amount to more than the sum of its thinly cobbled narrative. If the film has a flaw, it is the maddening sense of inevitability that permeates through every reel. The road map for this film is so woefully laid out. The only hope lies in the slowly-rising tension that eventually leads to a more exciting final act.

As I watched House of the Devil, a number of classic spooky films came to mind. I wondered if West was doing some kind of subtle satire of the genre. It’s difficult to interpret a film like this. Taken as a scary little satanic cult film, it’s perfectly serviceable. I was never quite sure if some of the cheesier elements were intended or just a by-product of this kind of movie. I enjoyed myself on one level, but spent a lot of wasted hours considering if there were other levels. That’s the trouble with kitsch: When spread thick, it becomes quickly apparent. When spread thin over a broad canvas, it’s more difficult to differentiate.

Maybe because House of the Devil is part of Cucalorus’ lineup did I feel the need to over-critique. (It wouldn’t be the first time my brain got me into trouble.) What I wrestled with was the eternal question: form or function? The form is wonderful, but is there any purpose to the function? Was West striving to bring something new to the genre? Or was he giving his best interpretation of films that influenced his particular brand of whimsy?

House of the Devil almost feels like a cinematic ellipses. Eventually, we’ll see another film from Ti West. Maybe then we’ll have the answer. Hopefully, he’ll go the way of Peter Jackson, whose early films helped him transition into a quality director, as opposed to Eli Roth who made a ridiculous horror film before transitioning into crap, as evidenced by the Hostel films. I would recommend House of the Devil, but I also want to see West’s more innovative contributions in the future.

by: Anghus Houvouras

BIG FAN
Length: 102 minutes
Director: Robert Siegel
Thursday, November 12, 10:45-11:59pm
Lumina Theater

There are very few things I find myself obsessing over. Football is one of them. I’m the guy who meanders aimlessly through the world from the time the Pro-Bowl ends until pre-season starts in late August. I started watching football at an early age, thanks to my father. And like my father, I carried on the tradition of becoming the guy who yelled at the television, and constructed sentences composed only of obscenities and the name of a player on my team.

The definition of “football-obsessed” has changed in recent years. There are those who take the game of football to a sad and desperate place. Fantasy Football has become a cottage industry for people grasping to try to make football more about themselves. And there are others who are so tied up in the agony of defeat of the game that they suffer as much, if not more so, than those who play the game.

Big Fan takes a look at the trite and lonely life of Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt), a die-hard Giants fan. Everything revolves around the team. His nights are spent manning the exit gate of a parking deck, listening to sports-talk radio. He composes his thoughts with paper and pen before calling every night to praise his team and, more importantly, denounce their conference rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles. His onair nemesis Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rappaport) is an equally loud-mouthed ass who taunts Paul when the season begins to go sour for the Giants.

Paul’s life is one that no one would envy. He has a nowhere job, a family that thinks he’s as a failure, and an unyielding devotion to a team he can’t even afford tickets to see. None of that matters. The only thing in his life capable of bringing him pleasure are the Giants. This unhealthy obsession is personified in his favorite player Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm). While not exactly a man-crush, his fixation on Bishop is awkward. To see a man in his 30s with the poster of a football player on his wall creates a particularly creepy psychological portrait of Paul. His obsession is confronted when he spots Bishop at a gas station and follows him all the way to a strip club. When he finally tries to engage Bishop in conversation, an awkward exchange soon turns into a rage-fueled beating. Paul is practically beaten to death by the player he idolizes in a misunderstanding about his intentions.

For Paul’s family this is the wake-up call they’ve been waiting for. His brother, a personal injury lawyer, sees this as a winning lottery ticket. But Paul wants nothing to do with it. Bishop gets suspended, and Paul has to bear the burden of watching his team suffer. Despite the reality of the situation, Paul feels guilty. Unfortunately, he can’t just walk away, hounded by a police detective, seeking to make a case against Bishop, and the press who is quick to turn this into a story. But Paul’s only allegiance is to the Giants.

Patton Oswalt plays Paul to perfection: a lonely man who exists in a lonely world, living with his mother, his sexual encounters all coming courtesy of a bottle of hand lotion. The emptiness and desperation is so vividly painted on camera by the director, Robert Siegel (former editor-in-chief of The Onion and writer of The Wrestler). We can’t help but pity Paul, even though his actions defy any sense of logic.

The movie starts out right near the bottom of the barrel and soon plummets to emotional depths very few films are willing to go. There were moments when the movie almost became too dark for me. I was half convinced I had the entire plot and story arc for Paul figured out. But there’s a fantastic third-act switcheroo—a fourth quarter creative Hail Mary that saves Big Fan from becoming just another dark independent film.

The movie is a powerful character study about a guy who lacks perspective—someone whose identity is tied into a world over which he has no control. What makes Paul a great character is how blind he is to the painful realities. In spite of common sense, he is able to reconcile his world view with absolute certainty. Like many great protagonists, he is blissfully unaware of the path he is on, even when everyone else sees the end coming. And speaking of endings: It’s a doozy.

What I liked most about Big Fan is how accessible it is. This is the kind of film-festival movie that can be appreciated by the indie-loving art-house film crowd as well as the mainstream cinephile. Good movies know no boundaries, and Big Fan is a film worth rooting for.