Matthijs van Heijningen's The Thing, a prequel rather than a remake, is harmless current horror fare, relying on the typical CGI and overblown sci-fi action set pieces that flood the market on a weekly basis. The plot is still the same, giving off a Cold War, "can you trust thy neighbor?" vibe, and I suppose it works the mystery well enough into its "been there, done that" dull narrative. It's noble but routine.
I do have a few questions though. If the alien creatures, hidden in the recreated bodies of their human prey, can duplicate the human form and its average intelligence, why do they then blow their cover by shedding their human epidermis whenever danger arrives, effectively exposing their vagina dentata-like faces and thus losing their ability to communicate? Why go through the trouble of transforming your appearance when you throw it out at a moment's notice? And say the aliens do win the ultimate battle and and take over the world by wiping out the human race, well, what exactly do they gain? Their First Amendment rights?
The film is bookended by two pretty nifty scenes, one involving a funny sex joke amongst two about-to-be-offed gentleman, and the conclusion which consists of Ennio Morricone's classic score over a clever use of foreshadowing that connects the film with John Carpenter's. In between, all you unfortunately get are funny spacecrafts, cheap pixelated alien prisms, and har-har Cleveland Cavaliers jokes. The film works better if you apply it's body-morphing plot to current American politics.
Speaking of which, George's Clooney's new film The Ides of March is a heavy-handed, spiritless tale about a Democratic nominee hopeful and the young, admittedly naive man behind his campaign. Like The Thing, it's another movie about not trusting your fellow brother. The film's screenplay by Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Beau Willimon is what really turns it in though, and the story goes through the motions, depicting the formulaic structure of absolute power corrupting absolutely. One thing that bugged me: we are supposed to believe that our politician, Mike Morris, so close to the Democratic nomination, could successfully run on being religion-less. Uh huh. There hasn't been a separation of church and state for as long as the idea existed, and to assume that a candidate would advertise his choice as a selling factor sounds to me like career suicide. And to merely mention the scene where Morris admits on the Charlie Rose show that, although he is against the death penalty, he would gladly kill a person that dare murder someone in his own family, is to note what's wrong with it. In politics, honesty is not always a virtue.
Ryan Gosling, as Stephen, the clueless campaign man, is saddled with an anti-arc. He starts off as the innocent one enveloped in a pack of wolves and then becomes the coldest, huffest-puffest-and-blowiest of them all. For some reason, the viewer isn't supposed to see this coming. We also shouldn't be aware of the answer to an in-house mystery that involves Stephen's questionable loyalty (when word gets out to the press that he spoke with someone working for the competitor, we are meant to question how it leaked, even though an earlier scene which takes place behind a giant American flag — visual symbolism! — makes it obvious to everyone in the theater).
Also, a word of advice: don't sleep with the interns, and certainly not the ones whose fathers are the head of the Democratic National Committee. That's just carelessness, and it goes way beyond the notion of the blood of a man's head rushing down toward beneath his pants. One wonders if Morris is Pro Life or Pro Choice. I suspect he's like Herman Cain and somewhere in the middle.
As a director, Clooney often tries too hard to find a mood. There's a scene that takes place between Morris and Stephen in a desolate kitchen that is staged with too much forced tension and questionable shot choices (why is the ghostly shot of a guard standing in complete darkness, nonverbally beckoning to Stephen to come forth necessary? Why is Morris hidden behind rows of pots and pans as if reenacting a page out of "Where's Waldo?") Another laughable scene involves Stephen using an intern's cell phone to call Morris at a press conference. Morris looks at his phone (while the television cameras are still rolling) and looks up at Stephen, hidden in the crowd with a zombie-like, cationic expression displayed across his mug. About that intern: the scene where her body is discovered in a hotel room is pure campy goodness. About interns in general: in The Ides of March they are all very attractive, wearing the same clothes, doing the same tasks, and flirting with the one man the previous intern didn't get around to. To make up for Clooney's lack of subtext, the role of the intern foreshadows and winks at us. Every person in the campaign gets serviced sooner or later.
There's a scene involving a particular character getting fired after just getting a haircut that is appropriately subtle and stylistically restrained. More of that could have gone a long way. Sure, the Barack Obama-inspired posters of Mike Morris' face would have to go out the window, as would the the useless appearances of real life MSNBC hosts to make the fictional events appear palpable, but at a certain point we all have to sacrifice a little for our art.
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