Crimson Peak bukanlah film hantu “normal” ala Paranormal Activity ataupun The Conjuring. Nope, menurut sang sutradara, Guilermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim), definisi genre yang lebih tepat untuk film ini adalah gothic romance. Terdengar lebih “eksotis” bukan? Tapi, pertanyaan yang lebih mendesak adalah...is it any good?

The Quality. Dan jawaban Cosmo: a big YES. Dan Anda pun akan menikmatinya asal Anda sedikit “merendahkan” ekspektasi Anda lantaran, seperti yang telah disebut di atas, Crimson Peak bukanlah jenis film horor yang kerap menghantui sinepleks belakangan ini. Ya, memang ada hantunya tapi film ini lebih concern dengan membangun atmosfer yang supercreepy melalui rumah angker di akhir abad ke-19 dengan detail desain yang luar biasa (karya Thomas E. Sanders dan Brandt Gordon). Rumah ini diberi nama Crimson Peak lantaran saljunya berwarna merah yang merupakan dampak dari tanah liat cair yang meluap. Shivers.

The Plot. Para pembuat filmnya juga tampak lebih fokus pada empat karakter utamanya: sang heroine yang beraspirasi jadi penulis ala Jane Austen, Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), kakak-beradik misterius, Thomas dan Lucille Sharp (Tom Hiddleston dan Jessica Chastain), serta Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam). Ceritanya sendiri cukup simpel: Edith jatuh cinta dengan Thomas, seorang bangsawan yang tengah mencari investor untuk mendanai proyek penggalian sumber clay yang terletak di tanahnya di Inggris. Walaupun sang ayah tidak setuju akan relationship mereka namun pada akhirnya Edith dan Thomas menikah dan dibawalah Edith ke Allerdale Hall, rumah yang dari luar tampak megah namun di dalamnya justru perlahan terurai lantaran sang pemilik rumah tak punya dana untuk merenovasinya. Di sinilah Edith—yang sudah terbiasa melihat hantu sejak kecil semenjak ditinggal mati oleh sang Ibu—diteror oleh sejumlah penampakan yang perlahan menguak misteri di balik Crimson Peak. 

The Inspiration. Nah, bila saat Anda menonton film ini dan merasa dialog atau alur ceritanya agak jadul (sedikit spoiler: jangan mengharapkan twist yang menggegerkan di akhir cerita), well, memang itulah tujuan sang sutradara! Del Toro bermaksud membuat semacam homage kepada film-film bergenre gothic romance tempo dulu seperti Gaslight (1944) dan Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Tentu gothic romance versi Del Toro dibuat lebih kontemporer melalui karakterisasi tokoh wanita yang lebih tangguh dan visual yang sarat CGI, terutama untuk adegan-adegan rumah angker yang mungkin akan lebih mengingatkan Anda dengan film The Haunting yang dibintangi Catherine Zeta Jones. (Walau begitu, dalam sebuah wawancara, Del Toro mengatakan ia menggunakan CGI seminimal mungkin.)

The Characters. Oh they’re so good, ladies, terutama Jessica Chastain (salah satu aktris supersibuk di Hollywood ) yang tampil sangat dingin sekaligus menakutkan, bahkan kostum yang ia kenakan bisa jadi bahan kostum baru untuk Halloween! Tak pernah ada keraguan siapa villain di film ini karena dari awal pun interaksi antara Thomas dan Lucille dalam kegelapan sudah mensinyalir intensi buruk mereka, bahkan kostum mereka—terutama Lucille—cukup menjelaskan karakter dengan pulasan hitam dan marun jadi pilihan warna utama Lucille. Kontras dengan Wasikowska yang sedikit memberikan unsur cerah ke dalam mood cerita yang suram. She’s optimistic, witty, ambitious, passionate, loving, fashionable, and, in the end, fearless—our favorite kind of heroine!

The Bottom Line: A must-see! Walaupun hanya untuk mengetahui apa sih film yang bergenre gothic romance? Percaya sama Cosmo—there’s not that many of them, ladies...
 
Published at www.cosmopolitan.co.id

The Story. Get a free science course in Ridley Scott’s non-alien sci-fi drama thriller The Martian, in which astronout Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is left behind on planet Mars after being mistakenly assumed dead by his team mates (Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Michael Pena, Aksel Hennie, and headed by Jessica Chastain) after being struck by a rod during a sand storm. Luckily, with a background as a botanist, Watney is amazingly able to cultivate food under the inhospitable climate of Mars and eventually reach communication with earth. Establishing comm is one thing, saving him is another as the trip to the red planet can take four years to traverse.

The Breakdown. I haven’t read the book by Andy Weir that became its source but now I most def looking forward to it as it will give me the opportunity to slowly absorb the science speak (in the movie courtesy of screenwriter Drew Goddard, who wrote the brilliant revamp of Daredevil on Netflix) and then slowly translating it to plain English (or Indonesian). As much I admire the stunning visuals (lensed by Dariusz Wolski), the solid performances, the ingenious survivalism, and Chastain’s classy visage, I find it hard to engage emotionally to The Martian as it all seems very technical (not helping is the underwhelming score by Harry Gregson-Williams). I was engrossed, for sure, with the proceedings, entertained by some of the scenes involving Damon and disco music, but I never felt tense, thrilled, nor excited, perhaps only the final scene accomplish just that (though perhaps its too reminiscent of the rope grabbing scene in the simpler and tenser survival saga Gravity). The Martian is a good movie, very expertly made (it’s Ridley Scott for Christ sake), in fact it’s far warmer than that other sci-fi pic, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which Damon (in a similar role) and Chastain also starred in, that left me cold despite Matt McCounaghey’s sensitive performance. (And I love that The Martian, along with Gravity and Interstellar, marks the third Hollywood entry into non-alien space adventure.)

For a sci-fi pic, The Martian is very talky, alternating between Damon solitary conversation in Mars; NASA’s closed door rescue preparation populated by Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig (Kristen Wiig!!), Donald Glover, (a weary looking) Sean Bean, Mackenzie Davis (from Halt & Catching Fire), and Benedict Wong; then to the crew aboard the now supposedly Earth-bound ship captained by the stern Chastain. One thing for sure, it’s amazing that Scott was able to amassed all of these known actors into one movie. Interesting side note, the movie also involves Chinese space team, which I don’t know if it’s part of the book or it’s another Hollywood further effort to include China as it now has become a big cinemagoing market. Just wondering...

Another Sidenote: There has been some controversy surrounding The Martian (not to mention Damon's own problem with racial insensitivity in his HBO-produced Project Greenlight) involving the casting of non-Asian characters: in the book the character played by Davis was Korean-American and Ejiofor’s is supposed to be Indian (well, the name is Vincent Kapoor), and I say... maybe there were Asian actors auditioned but ultimately feel the two actors casted were the better choice (?), who knows, but who are we to complain about other people’s “office rule”, right? I don’t remember hearing any dissenting voice when our highly successfull Indonesian movie, The Raid, were directed by a foreigner (a Welshman to be exact). Anyway, just sayin’...

The Bottom Line. The Martian is an engrossing and cerebral one man adventure (with peripheral multicharacters) that might teach you a thing or two about science. Love the idea of growing potatoes with dried human waste, but somehow I just can’t experience the deep emotional experience of actually eating it...

2,5 stars

The Story. Watching Sicario makes me feel grateful that I don’t live in Mexico. Now I hope that remark doesn’t make me sound culturally insensitive, but in the movie the director really made the city so unattractive with bare bones houses, dry climate (obviously), corrupt police officers, congested traffic, and, oh, violence. Jakarta seems like shangrila compared to Mexico’s infrastructure. Even though it’s billed as fiction but I’m pretty sure that the gist of the plot were borrowed from real life political shenanigans. As the trailer and opening credit reminds us, Sicario means “hitman” in Mexican and in the pic who it allude to can be quite clear from the start. The protagonist is Arizona-based field FBI agent Kate Macer (eyes of the audience Emily Blunt) who is recruited by shady adviser to the Department of Justice, Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), for a mission to extract the brother of a notorious drug dealer out of Mexico City. During the mission she meets the mysterious  Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro), also from the Justice Department. Shootouts and closed door showdown ensues.

The Breakdown. Dennis Villeneuve is really a director to watch out for: he only got two movies made-in-Hollywood on his resume (Prisoner, Enemy) but in those two highly regarded pics the French-Canadian has shown consistency and fascination to explore the dark side of human nature, wrapped in bleak, gritty, on the nose thrillers. He’s done so again in Sicario, a perhaps too gritty and bleak thriller with this time involving characters more higher up on the food chain, allowing them a kind of carte blanche to exact violence even in public domain, all in the name of Justice. The slaughter in the middle of traffic has perfect buildup, and Villeuneve is lucky to score a heart-pounding score by Johan Johansson (The Theory of Everything) who throughout the pic successfully made the atmosphere quite unsettling. The downside of Sicario is that for those looking for high speed chases and explosions might be dissappointed because the filmmakers are more interested in characters and atmosphere-building, even the last tunnel scene involves shootouts that happens in the distance, camera transfixed to our lovely heroine’s face. Just adjust your expectation before seeing the pic.

The Performance. Talking about our heroine and expectation, honestly I was craving for a kickass role from Blunt going in to the theater, and she did just that in some scenes, but gradually I discovered that the pic it’s not about her showing who’s tougher amidst a group of tough men. There’s a tendency to make the heroine of a movie more courageous, smarter, and badass-er then everyone else, but that’s not the case here: Macer is smart and brave, of course, but here she’s more or less a proxy for the audience who is trying to figure out her specific role in the mission, eventually finding out that she’s merely a pawn in the murky waters of crime prevention. The matter of gender is hardly relevant here. (Though interestingly, I’ve heard that Villeneuve was initially pressured into changing the sex of his protagonist by studio head. Snooze.) But it’s hard to believe that I’m seeing lovely British import Blunt in the role (who shot to stardom as the snickering assistant of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada) of Macer, but she has shown versatility in the last few years, especially in the badass-ery department showcased perfectly in the sci-fi pic Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise. But enough about Blunt, the real attention-getter here is Del Toro who’s mere stoicism is able to mesmerized and terrorized both quite effectively. From his first scene you can just sense that there’s more that meets the eyes, and it’s all in his disconcerting gaze. Del Toro, with his baggy eyes (though less so here), has always been dripping with charisma and menace ever since he came out as a villain henchman opposite Timothy Dalton’s James Bond in License to Kill, but his droopy eyes also provide enough room for pain and sincerity as is the case in his role as a recovering drug addict in Susan Bier’s Things We Lost in The Fire. It is that mix of intensity and sensivity that made his dinner table scene in Sicario really hard to watch. As for the other cast member, Brolin, as always, inhabits his charming yet brewing with something dangerous character solidly.

The Bottom Line. Sicario is a very grim affair, filled with deadly traffic, walls infested with dead bodies, vicious threats, barbaric torture, personal vendettas, civilian sacrifice, and shootings in the dark. But it also has something to say, especially about the hush hush ways some government would go to in order to curb crime. Just be grateful that you’re not living (innocently) in the middle of it.

3,5 Stars