A Serious Man
(Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Alan Arkin)
If a demon curses your Polish relatives, you should probably expect some bumps on life’s little journey.
In this darkly comic mess of a film, the Coen brothers take on the Book of Job and their Midwestern Jewish upbringing comes shining through. A Serious Man is worth seeing if you love experiencing what inventive people do with film, even if it’s not always successful.
Stuhlbarg is a religiously devout physics professor whose life is falling apart. His wife is leaving him for his best friend, his 
lawyer Arkin is a depressing pessimist, his children and his students hate him, his perverted slacker of a brother (Kind) is living on his couch. It’s enough to make Stuhlbarg waves his hands to the heavens and ask, “Why?!?”
Not all of this Yiddish self-deprecation works. Most of the comedy will also make you wince. Both the beginning and the end are weird and unsettling, but in wonderful ways. A Serious Man won’t make any logical sense, but then there’s magic here; faith never follows the rules—cinematic or scientific.
The Coens have a history of pushing boundaries. They reinterpreted Homer’s Odyssey in O Brother, Where Art Thou? They also made Raising Arizona, Fargo, the Oscar-winner No Country for Old Men, and Burn after Reading. So, it’s no surprise that A Serious Man is strange. What is surprising is that these whacky Jewish siblings have made a sardonic version of Job that feels deeply personal and secretly reverent.
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire Assistant
(Starring Chris Massoglia, Josh Hutcherson, John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek, Willem Dafoe, Ken Watanabe, Patrick Fugit, Jane Krakowski)
This adolescent thriller combines cool effects, choppy editing, chilling moments, amoral characters with hammy acting. It’s a bit of a bloody mess.
Two young friends (Massoglia and Hutcherson) go to a really nifty freak show on a lark. Then Massoglia—the hero we’re supposed to sympathize with—steals a performing spider, keeping the poor thing in a knapsack. When his butthead best friend Hutcherson is bitten by the poisonous arachnid, Massoglia goes back to the circus to try to get an antidote. To save his friend, Massoglia agrees to become an assistant vampire to John C. Reilly’s bloodsucker.
So, not only is Massoglia a thief, he also pretends he’s dead and makes his family grieve his untimely death. However, this film knows enough to blithely breeze past this messy part where the family bawls their eyes out.
The vampires are supposedly a likable bunch; they sedate their victims and just take a little blood without killing. It’s a cool idea, but no one mentions how this method is a violation akin to a roofie-induced rape.
Did you notice all the stars? Most of them get more time in the credits than they do in the rest of the film.
Sure, this film has great actors and sharp visuals. However, instead of squirming at the vampires we’re completely creeped out by the film’s campy callousness and general heartlessness.
Paranormal Activity
(Staring Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat)
Paranormal Activity is a small-budget wonder created by Hollywood unknowns for $15,000. As of press time, this little spine-tingling terror has made more than $80 million.
Micah and Katie are a couple who’ve been dating for seven months and are now living together. What Katie has neglected to share is that, since she was eight, she’s been getting infrequent visits from a creature from the beyond. Intent on capturing physical proof, Micah films himself and his girlfriend both in waking and sleeping hours. That’s when things happen that will scare the bejeezus out of you!
The success of the film is that it uses its limitations as a strength. Katie’s demon possession is supposedly footage discovered after the “real” horrible events in 2006. Filming techniques are either handheld or shot with a single camera on a tripod. Micah and Katie are very natural actors. The paranormal effects are based on what the audience can’t see—the terrifying things we fill in with our imagination.
Of course, in horror films, the people act more stupid than we ever would, and this couple is no exception. They yell and curse the demon long after we’d be bathing ourselves in holy water, calling priests and accessorizing with multiple rosaries. Also, anyone with a cursory knowledge of old-time film techniques will be able to figure out how the filmmakers did most of the visuals.
Still, this homemade horror is more effective at creeping us out than most multi-million dollar gore-fests. That should certainly frighten Hollywood!
