Blast From the Past: "Tenderness of the Wolves" Review

As the dawn of the Digital Age blossoms and we step into the overly open arms of the glaringly bright Digital Day, it is very possible that my generation may be the last to remember, with fondness, of visiting the local video store.  For those that do remember, and to share with those that do not, it was that warm, muted scent of dust baked in a heating vent, the occasional wafting aroma of popcorn from a mini hot oil popper, the ever-present yet subliminal high frequency sound the T.V. always made that was playing whatever was new that week, or whatever the on-duty staff could get away with playing during open hours.

I remember walking up and down the aisles, looking over all sorts of VHS (that later bled into DVD) titles, constantly curious and excited with each and every box of cover art that I could see.  There were always those handfuls of films that, for whatever reason, caught my eye particularly with the covers they bore.  These weren't movies I ever watched immediately, but rather, movies I would see the cover of, time after time, sometimes in different sections, depending on the store, and never actually make the move to grab.

I'm sure anyone who's been into a video store as a child knows exactly what I'm talking about.  You were never really sure what it was about the cover art that got you to imprint the image in your mind, even years down the road.  Was it the color?  Or the face/faces of the actors on the box?  Was it the title itself?  It's hard to tell what it was that drew you, because it was never just one film that did it, and no two films that caused this imprinting were often alike.

One of these films, that forever plagued my memory at the very back of my mind, was Tenderness of the Wolves.

Ignore the little "DVD" marker in the bottom right corner, this cover managed to remain the same since it's inception in 1973.

A few months ago, I went on a pawn shop binge with a buddy of mine and scoured a giant selection of used DVD's, coming across this in the process.  It was cheap, and my curiosity was through being ignored.  It was time to see what the hell this movie was about that I had randomly noticed more than other films during my video store visits from time to time.  (I even remember staring at it a couple of different times during a stint when I worked at a video store in a mall).

Choosing to torture myself just a bit longer, I didn't even read the back of it, and it got pushed into a stack of films that I bought that I would view at a later date (things that have high promise, but I'm not certain I'll want to keep later).  It popped into my mind yesterday, and I decided to get to it tonight.  Entirely different than what I was expecting.

If you'll note the bottom left corner of the picture above, there's a quote from the NY Times that reads, "...inspired by Fritz Lang's 1931 classic, M."  A poor blurb to put onto the film, in my opinion, since it's more like both Lang's M and Tenderness of the Wolves are both inspired by the same story, and focus in different directions, otherwise it might make the viewer assume that this film is directly taken from the other, which isn't the case.

Tenderness of the Wolves, is a German production from 1973 that features a minimalist setting and brief character development, save for the main character, Fritz Haarmann, who plays an estranged sometimes informant to the police, while doubling as a night predator for young men.  Before this movie, I had never heard the name Fritz Haarmann, or his alternate title, the Butcher of Hanover.  He was quite the messed up cookie, I recommend you check him out in the link provided above.

The film actually follows his initial crimes pretty closely, all based on real crimes by a man during the early part of the 20th century, specifically from 1918-1925.  The film captures a sense of bleak and crippled Germany, post WWI.  "Times are hard," so say several characters during the film, and it shows. Everything is being stolen for the black market, and pork is an especially hard to acquire commodity, and it is very subtly suggested in the film that it's no ordinary pork that Haarmann is selling to people.  (This is based on a rumor that Haarmann's illegal butcher dealings were directly connected to the men he murdered and dismembered).   

The actor who plays Haarmann, Kurt Raab, does a really interesting job with the character, making him appear genial and relatively upstanding within his meager means under the duress of the nation's economic crisis.  The way he paints his persona makes it seem very believable, even in the way in which he addresses young men and boys, which added quite the eerie vibe to the film's mood.

Not gonna lie, however.  I had some wine and a bunch of homemade spaghetti, and then I got under the covers to watch this movie, I got too comfortable and it was a quiet film (and subtitled), so I had some trouble keeping my eyes open.  It didn't help that the film's propensity for staggered dialogue between characters was consistent throughout the film, in addition to the setting in which it was filmed.  Overcast skies, cold nights, simple, ramshackle buildings and rooms, and a particular lack of bright colors, save for the pork meat and when blood was drawn (nice effect there).

Definitely a decent film in that it captures the bones of a true story with very little flashy work, but with its bare bones approach, it did give off a somewhat bland vibe at the same time.  There were about 3 or 4 wangs in it too, so that was unexpected, and some of the imagery between Haarmann and the men he takes into his home is remarkably well done.  There's a particular setting in his small apartment where there is a small table, a low roof, a shelf with some type of liquor on it, and perfectly placed in the middle of the shot in the background is a large simple black cross on the wall.  As it hangs above everything, the positioning of the characters was very clever.

Bottom line: Bit o' fascinating history I didn't know about, good acting, but don't watch when warm, full, and comfortable.

OZ: The Great and Powerful

Being a fan of director Sam Raimi (Evil Dead Trilogy, Spiderman Trilogy, A Simple Plan), it was easy for me  to have a desire to see this film.  Some people may be concerned because it has the same CGI effects style and producer-backing as seen in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, and that film wasn't received super well.  Also, there is the ever-present stigma that comes with films of this type--which is to say that any film "based upon" or even "inspired by" anything that was a literary and/or cinematic classic immediately receives an air of judgment over it's head.  And that preconceived judgement only heightens with the new spin/take/direction a film chooses to have, as this one did.  Furthermore, I don't doubt that people are going to be comparing it to the original MGM film before the book.  Because of the overwhelming box office success and groundbreaking effects the original 1939 film had as an impact, the book, written by L. Frank Baum, will ultimately be undershadowed when people go to see this new film.  But that's just my assumption.  Moving right along...

Oz: The Great and Powerful is set in the two same locations everyone is familiar with from the beloved 1939 film, Kansas and the land of Oz.  It has modest but key references to familiar characters, places and things that everyone knows, but really, it is supposed to be its own thing--it is in fact, a prequel to the story everyone is familiar with.  The wizard of Oz--who was he when he was young?  How did he make it to Oz in the first place and what happens there?  All of this is crafted well into an engaging story that kept me interested and curious throughout the film's 2+ hour duration.  It had me laughing at the right times, feeling an emotional pull at the right times, and cleverly, being fooled as to where the story was going at the right times!

The imagery...beautiful and good enough to lick--since everything looks like candy--but in a non-nauseating way.  Where I was concerned the colors were going to resemble the style I saw in both of the Tim Burton films with the same CGI style--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice In Wonderland, being so neon compared to a slightly washed-out, pseudo-sepia backdrop where the bright colors were garish and intense, I was pleasantly surprised.  The actors and the backgrounds matched the wild and crazy imagery--the shading was stronger, and the lighting was adequate and while bright, wasn't nearly as sickly looking since no one was overly pale and looked like they'd stepped out of a roaring 20's speakeasy in London and into Candyland.

Years ago, I began to postulate a theory that with each new film, the effect/animation team assigned to work on it is trying to focus/harness a specific aspect in detail and make it superior to the last time they worked on a film.  Each movie where effects are made to be realistic as possible, I try to look for what I think is most likely the detail they're working harder on to perfect.  In this film's case, I determined that it was the realistic effect of light reflection on non-real things.  There is a character in the movie that this effect is used heavily upon, and the work is fantastic.  The way the character moves in relation to light and how things reflect off of it is smooth and looks very real.  I was impressed.

The cast was well chosen too.  James Franco (Freaks and Geeks [TV], Spiderman Trilogy, Pineapple Express), I realize that not everyone likes, but I dunno, he hasn't actually made me frown yet, so I rolled with it and gave him a chance to play young Oz.  He did well, being the right sort of face for the type of womanizing charlatan he portrayed.  He can also properly wear a twisty mustache without looking like it was added to make him look more like Snidely Whiplash or Captain Morgan in a bad way--some actors just don't have the face for it to make it look good.  He did, so bonus for him.  Mila Kunis (Black Swan, That 70's Show [TV], Family Guy [TV]) looks pretty in everything she wears and she pulled off her character, Theodora, quite well and had some impressive range I hadn't seen her do before.  Rachel Weisz (The Mummy, The Fountain, The Constant Gardener) I have always been pleased with and this role was no less the same level of performance I expected from her.  Also, she just seems to charm you with her voice no matter who she plays.  Michelle Williams (Dawson's Creek [TV], Blue Valentine, Brokeback Mountain) plays a younger Glinda the Good  Witch, and has the infallible ability to always look humble in any shot she's filmed in.  Bonus points for looking like the sweetest girl in school while still maintaining a very strong female character.

As a side note, be sure to look out for Bruce Campbell and Zach Braff, who both have memorable roles.

Before I wrap this up, let me also say that for those of you who are Raimi fans, you might be glad to know that his signature film shooting style still holds.  He has this particular love for moving the camera from here to there in scenes of intensity in such a way that I've come to recognize and appreciate as a part of his style to get you in to the movie's more thrilling sequences.  Points in example: the way in which things in the Evil Dead trilogy leap towards the character, or that scene in Spiderman 2 where Doc Oc is unconscious on a gurney and his tentacles start attacking the med staff, just to spout off a few examples.  You'll know what I'm talking about after seeing a certain scene in Oz where the characters are assailed by weird things which you should just see for yourself.

Well, if I haven't bored you to tears yet, or if you simply wanted to do the TL;DR method, let me say this:

Bottom line: Entertaining, funny, interesting, clever, and pretty.  Go see it!

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; By No Means Another 'Van Helsing'

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is the new MGM-produced film by a relative new director Tommy Wirkola.  Definitely new, but a name that I thought might just be someone I recognized.  Sure enough, he directed and wrote, like H&G, a Norwegian film called Dead Snow (English Title), a particularly cool little comedic horror film that is interesting, kind of ridiculous, and topnotch on the gore.  Learning this after seeing the film has actually upped my general enjoyment of it, as some of the most gruesome shots in the film were quite juicy, and now I know why and where to give the credit.

So, en route to see the movie, I was with a friend.  He was telling me about this making-of section on the DVD for Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  It's actually interesting and you should watch it when you have 6 minutes to kill.  To summarize, it's Steven Spielberg explaining how he didn't want to do the movie, and how without Harrison Ford's interest and then George Lucas' endearing persistence (I'm not sure what else to call the attitude of a friendly man who has bad ideas), the movie would not have existed.  At least not until someone else bought the rights to it and tore it a new one.  So, you have Spielberg's point of view, trying to be creative, genuinely new, but still preserving everything that is core to the Indiana Jones universe.  Then you have George Lucas who is all like, "Let's do a B-movie with aliens!   No, wait, not aliens, but "inter-dimensional beings--who look like aliens!  It'll be great, I swear!"  Basically, one kid spends all his effort building a medieval Lego world with dragons and knights and tries his hardest to make it look good, and then you have his friend who is annoying but has his heart in the right place who comes over and starts pulling out all the dinosaurs and He-Man toys to take over little medieval land because it looks cool.

Where the fuck am I going with this?  Well, many people have been worried, due to the trailer, that H&G is just going to be Van Helsing Part 2.  Why?  Because it's backdrop is set in a period era (in this case the 1800's) and the producers' scant ability to keep it from becoming an anachronistic buffet of lolz doesn't look good.  Van Helsing suffered at the box office because of this, among other reasons, being overly action-packed and rather inorganic and insensitive to any of the folklore it was sporting.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters definitely can be accused of some of this, but I would say that it was more black and white in pros and cons, unlike Van Helsing, which I'm still upset about to this day that I paid full, evening admission for seeing stuff that constantly made me, a strong fan of cheese, twist and turn unhappily. If I can't even laugh at how silly it is, there's something very wrong.

For H&G, it was like there was a Spielberg and a Lucas dividing the film.  The story is decent, follows plot points, and everyone has that fancy vaguely foreign accent to help put you in the mood that you're watching a film set in a different time and place.  But Hansel and Gretel...it's like they were transported from an alternate reality and looked "passable" for the time period.  They don't have accents, everyone else holds a touch of one, sparing the peppy pseudo-sidekick Ben, played by Thomas Mann (Project X), but I've noticed that younger actors do that less than the older ones in movies so I didn't mind.  Everyone who has a coat in the film has a noticeably nice leather coat, but the two main characters look just that extra bit of too cool for school.  Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, Bourne Legacy, Dahmer, Justice League), who plays Hansel, has this sweet-ass coat that's got these neat little frills on the shoulders, a perfectly popped collar, and is tailored to expertly hide all his gadgets so he doesn't look like he's too weighed down.  Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Clash of the Titans), also has her own set of nifty frills on her mega-tailored slim-cut coat, and wears painted-on leather pants.  Now, granted, this was all possible in the 1800's, but the styles weren't something a little German village would have ever seen, and especially on a young woman.  It might have been nice if just once the townsfolk said that they looked overly fancy or eccentric.  They also bring in trippy, out-of-period weaponry and gadgets.  Their guns are super stylized and tricked out beyond necessary means.  The townspeople are pretty much in total awe of Hansel and Gretel's grasp of science for the time period.  And I was in awe as well.  Case in point: There is a steel and copper wire Jerry-rigged stun gun that also acts as a defibrillator.  You heard me.

So, bringing this all into perspective, it felt like there was a Spielberg who wrote the story, the side characters, who was in charge of costumes, set design, and created possibly one of the coolest, most realistic trolls I've ever seen come from a film that wasn't a CGI fap session.  The lead bad guy has a good motive and is well-written, played by the lovely Famke Janssen (X-Men trilogy, Goldeneye, The Faculty) who has cool, creepy makeup--as do her many other cohorts, who come, literally, in all shapes and sizes.  I'm willing to bet the makeup/prosthetics department had a blast.  And there are even worthwhile, well-written side characters, like the grizzly douchebag town sheriff, played by the always familiar yet still a man of many faces, Peter Stormare (The Brothers Grimm, Constantine, Armageddon, The Big Lebowski).

Then, there was a Lucas, who was in charge of everything Hansel and Gretel.  Their personality/voices, their clothing, their awesome toys.  They acted just fine, and were having some fun with the film, but I was thrown off by their casual, 'here to kick ass and chew bubble gum' attitudes and appearance.  I get the idea that they were supposed to be different, that their lifestyle as witch hunters had turned them into the nonchalant badasses they strolled into town as, but I felt they could have blended in a bit more.  Just a touch.

All that being said, I laughed a lot.  The gore was juicy and well-placed.  It had one booby, a nice booty, and Jeremy Renner got to have his shirt off, naturally.  Fortunately, everything mentioned above was within context and appropriately part of plot devices.  The costumes and makeup for the witches in the film were really good, and the set design was preciously done.  The little town looked like something right out of a woodcutting, and the infamous Gingerbread house looked good enough to eat.

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

It entertained me, and I never once looked at my watch--which would have been really sad considering it's right on that perfect hour and a half marker.  The pacing was surprisingly good.  There was a really nice lull in the film between action sequences where you were getting fed character and story development--and then it got back on the flashy train and reminded you that it had some cool, shiny action balls it was going to wave in your face.  Truthfully, had it not been for one particular Matrix moment where someone throws something and the other person does the slow-motion lean-back to dodge it, I would have liked this movie even more.  But frankly, I'm tired of that effect, and it made me frown.  Thankfully, it only happened once.

Nudity, humor, juicy gore, cool effects, decent story.  Not a spectacular event, no Van Helsing by any means, but most certainly a good little escape into the fantasy realm--and free of the abused folklore that is vampires, zombies, and werewolves.

Bottom line:  Deserving of its R rating, and enjoyable all more the because of it.  Also, Jeremy Renner, always good.