Are you drinking the water?

A Cure for Wellness

(2016)

(SPOILERS) Well, this is far more suited to Dane DeHaan’s slightly suspect shiftiness than ludicrously attempting to turn him into an outright action hero (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets). It’s not, though, equal to director Gore Verbinski’s abilities. One of Hollywood’s great visualists but seemingly languishing without a clear path since he was cast adrift from collaborating with Johnny Depp, unfortunately, he must cop most of the blame for A Cure for Wellness, since it was his idea.

There’s a whiff of Shutter Island’s pulp psychodrama tonally, as DeHaan’s unscrupulous finance company executive Lockhart is sent to a Swiss health spa to fetch back a board member vital to pressing ahead with a merger. No sooner has he reached the alpine wellness centre, resplendent in the grounds of historic castle with a dark past, than he’s involved in a car accident, leaving him with a leg in a cast and “encouragement” to recuperate on site, taking the waters while being subjected to strange hallucinatory encounters and visions. The patients are all elderly – barring Mia Goth’s Hannah – and seemingly resigned to remaining there, languishing blithely, their teeth dropping out due to dehydration, despite imbibing vast quantities of fluids. And then there are the eels. And Dr Volmer, who’s played by Jason Isaacs, so you know he’s a stinker.

Is Lockhart going mad? Is all the oddness in his own mind? His mother warned him “You won’t come back” when he left, which is pretty ominous. And company man Pembroke (Harry Groener) is full of misgivings, regarding which Lockhart seems implicated, presumably by the very fact of being involved in finance (“We’ve all done terrible things. So many terrible things”).

The set up, then, is at least intriguing, even if it feels as if events can only unfold in a limited number of predictable ways. While Wellness, fortunately, doesn’t end with DeHaan in a state of perma-dribble, the architect of his own delusion, as that would be a Shutter too far, there’s contrastingly never very much doubt that this is all real, even if the precise nature of events is murky for a portion of the running time. Although, you don’t have to really try to put two and two together too hard to get the gist of the link between the tales of villagers rebelling against experiments by a mad incestuous baron two centuries past and the present incumbent presiding over more dodgy goings-on.

Which is a problem, as Verbinski, yet again in his career, is happy to take his bleeding time. Wellness runs to two-and-a-quarter hours, and could only have benefited from being pruned to around 90 minutes. He can bring a picture in at a commendably concise length (Mousehunt, Rango, The Weatherman) but given enough rope he’ll give himself way too much slack. There isn’t enough going on here to hold the attention for long, no matter how typically well-furnished the green-tinged frames are (courtesy of cinematographer Bojan Bazelli), and it lacks the relief of Verbinski’s batty sense of humour. Instead, one’s mind drifts to The Mighty Boosh when numerous eels start tickling down inside Lockhart. There’s an appropriately cringe-making tooth extraction scene to pass the time, and some dodgy effects work (a dying deer, a doctor without a face) as the picture lurches into an OTT finale that suits Isaacs’ theatrics but leaves you wondering that such extensive build-up led somewhere so anti-climactic.

Mainly because the picture starts off with a sense that it has pretensions to be about something, but ends up as empty set dressing, a bit like Robert Zemeckis’ more comedic but also all-about-the-art-direction Death Becomes Her. It may be that Verbinski intended A Cure for Wellness to be a commentary on the elite poisoning the masses while incestuously perpetuating their bloodlines, but since that’s right on the surface, it’s hardly an allegorical take.

For those who like the director in more serious mode (The Ring), A Cure for Wellness will likely be welcome, but it reminded me that, even at his most bloated (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End), he usually remembers to include an infectious sense of fun amid his prevailing world conjuring. If A Cure for Wellness is any indication of what was in store, tone-wise, from his cancelled Bioshock, it may be just as well it was cancelled. Verbinski’s now attached to the long-delayed Gambit, in an attempt to muster some commercial cachet after two flops in a row. Hopefully he can make Channing Tatum seem interesting (which he rarely is when he isn’t in a comedy).

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

I’m smarter than a beaver.

Prey (2022) (SPOILERS) If nothing else, I have to respect Dan Trachtenberg’s cynical pragmatism. How do I not only get a project off the ground, but fast-tracked as well? I know, a woke Predator movie! Woke Disney won’t be able to resist! And so, it comes to pass. Luckily for Prey , it gets to bypass cinemas and so the same sorry fate of Lightyear . Less fortunately, it’s a patience-testing snook cocking at historicity (or at least, assumed historicity), in which a young, pint-sized Comanche girl who wishes to hunt and fish – and doubtless shoot to boot – with the big boys gets to take on a Predator and make mincemeat of him. Well, of course , she does. She’s a girl, innit?

If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

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I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

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Everyone creates the thing they dread.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) (SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron ’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison. Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War , Infinity Wars I & II , Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok . It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions ( Iron Man II ), but there are points in Age of Ultron whe

Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) (SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell , as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick. Evil Bill : First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted : Then we take over their lives. My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reev

I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

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This entire edifice you see around you, built on jute.

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Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

Pulp Fiction (1994) (SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction ’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump . And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

Paterson (2016) (SPOILERS) Spoiling a movie where nothing much happens is difficult, but I tend to put the tag on in a cautionary sense much of the time. Paterson is Jim Jarmusch at his most inert and ambient but also his most rewardingly meditative. Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver and modest poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, is a stoic in a fundamental sense, and if he has a character arc of any description, which he doesn’t really, it’s the realisation that is what he is. Jarmusch’s picture is absent major conflict or drama; the most significant episodes feature Paterson’s bus breaking down, the English bull terrier Marvin – whom Paterson doesn’t care for but girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) dotes on – destroying his book of poetry, and an altercation at the local bar involving a gun that turns out to be a water pistol. And Paterson takes it all in his stride, genial to the last, even the ruination of his most earnest, devoted work (the only disappoint

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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