HORNS Review

In the opening moments of Horns, Daniel Radcliffe and Juno Temple lay in a green meadow fawning over one another and exchanging hip yet still cheesy dialogue about being horny and then loving one another for the rest of their lives. It is a short scene that quickly moves us forward to after the major incident that defines the narrative of the film, but is an exchange that makes you wonder. Wonder in the sense that these two intelligent and clearly ambitious actors who want to make art that is substantial and means something have this opening that works contrary to all of that. Radcliffe has been picking projects in hopes of distancing himself from his Harry Potter counterpart for a few years now, but as he and Temple exchange this obvious exposition dialogue clearly intended to tell us these two are in love and doomed because of it (while ironically forcing it to counter-intuitively feel effortless) I wondered what they saw in this script. What about these opening moments made them think this was a good idea? What spoke to them? From that point out the challenge was for the film to make me feel more weight to this exchange that I openly chuckled and slightly cringed at for its seeming contrivances. In short, mission accomplished. In only his fourth big screen appearance after retiring the scar and glasses Radcliffe has made a horror picture, a romantic comedy of sorts and a historical drama where he played poet Allen Ginsberg. I have yet to see that rom-com, now titiled What If with Zoe Kazan which I think might be the most radically different thing he's done to date. With Horns though Radcliffe has done more than I would have ever given him credit for based on the trailers in making strides to be an actor the public actually sees as an actor and not just representative of a single role. The supernatural is somewhat of a comfort zone for him and while I appreciated the aesthetic and throwback style that comprised The Woman in Black, Horns is a much deeper-minded film with more on its mind than giving audiences the creeps or gutting them with dark humor, but instead it is a rather insightful study of who we are as a race and who we desire to be as human beings and how tough it can be to discern the difference.  

A SINGLE SHOT Review

What is a tragic character study comes to light slowly in David Rosenthal's A Single Shot. With its southern gothic tones that nearly dip their toes into the horror genre at certain points we tread lightly along with lead character John Moon (Sam Rockwell) as he sulks through the woods that provide the backdrop to his now barren trailer where he lives and waits, pointlessly, for the return of his wife and son. I have yet to see any previous directorial efforts by Rosenthal prior to his latest, but it is clear he has a gift for being able to access the inner-workings of his characters minds and translate them to the screen without resorting to over-indulgent tactics that exclude some audience members. Either that or he was extremely lucky to land someone as versatile and gifted as Rockwell to play his lead character that starts his journey as a man desperate for normality without the intelligence to see what it might actually take to get back to that point. We are subjected to Moon's journey as things only begin to unravel. As the title suggests, a single shot sets off a chain reaction of cat and mouse that allows the film to become much more generic than its tone and prestigious cast would indicate. The nearly two hour film moves at a somnolent pace and doesn't return to the surprising or poignant place it began in until its final scene where, miraculously, we are provided with a genuine emotional payoff that I didn't see coming. That final scene made me want to re-consider my overall opinion of the film, but as I thought through the piece as a whole it seemed too much an intriguing start and perfectly balanced conclusion with a messy middle that comfortably fell into conventions rather than a film who had the nerve to stick with its protagonist and trust that his psyche alone was worth following. There are films that make you question what exactly you're looking for in them and when you have to ask that question it usually means there is no clear objective or that the film itself isn't sure what it wants to be. That is the vibe that comes from A Single Shot as I could see that it wanted to be a dark and brooding story from the untold diaries of backwoods Appalachia, but it didn't necessarily know where to go to accomplish that and so instead became a familiar thriller with the saving grace of Sam Rockwell at its center.