A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

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AndyDursin
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A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#1 Post by AndyDursin »

Creepy looking Fox/Regency release from Gore Verbinski (Pirates, The Ring, etc.):


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Monterey Jack
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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#2 Post by Monterey Jack »

Intriguing...I think Verbinski is a visually gifted filmmaker who got WAY too drunk on megabudget Disney excess after the first Pirates Of The Caribbean (which remains the only good film in that series), which has led every movie he's made since into ever-more-grotesque overkill and insanely bloated running times. :? This looks more akin to The Ring, which is a good thing in my opinion. Now, if someone would force the Wachowskis to make a movie that cost less than $50 million, maybe they could make a their first watchable movie in nearly twenty years...

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#3 Post by AndyDursin »

Agreed totally on Verbinski. Hopefully this will get him back to his roots, and back on track. Looks intriguing enough...

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#4 Post by Monterey Jack »

Monterey Jack wrote:...which has led every movie he's made since into ever-more-grotesque overkill and insanely bloated running times.
Two hours and twenty-six minutes.

Image

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#5 Post by AndyDursin »

Is that for real? lol

Well, at least it won't be 45 minutes of CGI effects over the last third.

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#6 Post by Monterey Jack »

My poor bladder. :( I wish filmmakers would think of what actually sitting through one of their movies (including anywhere from ten to twenty minutes' worth of un-skippable trailers beforehand) in a theater without going to the bathroom feels like before they settle on their all-important final cut. :? A movie about a haunted mental hospital (or whatever A Cure For Wellness is about) should not have the same running time as a 60's roadshow epic...and at least those gave you an intermission to take a pee and have a stretch halfway through without missing anything. Sadly, most "auteur" filmmakers, once they have a string of box-office hits and/or critical acclaim under their belts, ruthlessly exploit their right to the final edit of the movie, and let them ramble on far past the point of common sense. Imagine if Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark or E.T. were released today...all three would run at least 150 goddamn minutes. And people give me crap about, "Well, it only takes two minutes to run out, use the restroom, and get back to your seat!", but I honestly DESPISE it when I'm forced to leave before a movie is over (and I count the end credits as well), and it wouldn't be such an issue if directors like Verbinski, Tarantino, Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan and Jackson would take pity on their poor audience and make something under two hours again. I'm sure Scorsese's Silence is a good movie, and I'm keen to see it, but honestly, THREE HOURS of it? All at once? I'm sure I'll be feeling it by the ninety minute mark and in serious bladder distress by the 2:15 mark.

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#7 Post by Monterey Jack »

8/10

It may already be vanishing from theaters after being greeted with a communal “huh?” from the critics, but, dammit, Gore Verbinski’s latest is actually one of his strongest, most atmospheric films. I honestly expected just another variation on the type of “What a tweest!” mind-benders that were all the rage fifteen years ago, and while the film bears surface similarities with Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (heightened by the resemblance between leading man Dane Dehaan and Leonardo DiCaprio), A Cure For Wellness plays out like a mash-up of vintage Polanski, old “they’re trying to drive me crazy!” Hammer melodramas, and boasts an insane, go-for-broke climax straight out of an early-70’s AIP Vincent Price flick that had me grinning with bemused delight. I can’t think of a recent film that has made me feel as squirmy and downright nervous as this (at least one person in my sparsely-attended matinee got up and left following an especially icky scene involving a distressed farm animal, and the movie boasts the most shuddery trip to the dentist’s chair since Marathon Man), and it’s all polished to a gorgeous gloss by Verbinski and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli. Plus, major brownie points for the richly sinister score by Benjamin Wallfisch, which boasts a siren call lullaby main theme I haven’t been able to get out of my head all day. Aside from overlength (a common problem with the self-indulgent Verbinski), A Cure For Wellness will no doubt attain a cult audience for those with a taste for the surreal and disturbing.

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#8 Post by AndyDursin »

My god, what in the world was Regency thinking letting Verbinski have a 2.5 hour Director's Cut on this film? This thing is beautifully shot, the score is actually very decent like you said MJ, and has some strong elements, but I haven't seen a movie this unjustified in terms of its running time in ages. Too much of the first hour plays like a deleted scenes reel.

A shame, there's some engagingly nutty stuff at the end (and I liked it better than CRIMSON PEAK, another "gothic" horror that took its time so to speak), but it's lost in the flab. Especially with this story, there was no reason to take that long to tell it.

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#9 Post by Monterey Jack »

Yeah, it is indulgently overlong (especially the "false" Shutter Island ending...it even climaxes with a particularly beautiful wide shot of the mountains that made me expect to see the film fade to black and the credits start to roll...but no, there's still a HALF-HOUR to go! :shock: ), and could have easily been trimmed down, especially in the first half, but the INSANE actual climax is one of the most goofily diverting things I've seen in a movie since...what, Gods Of Egypt? It was overstuffed and unwieldy, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a modest cult form around this as horror audiences who gave it a pass in theaters discover it at home. I'm definitely gonna add it to this October's Halloween horror marathon...it's spooky and atmospheric as hell. And the score is great.

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#10 Post by AndyDursin »

Yeah, I agree -- the movie has a certain "something" to it, and I kind of loved the over-the-topness of the climax. Reminded me of an old school horror movie from the 50s! Bazelli's cinematography is superb too.

I just wish he had tightened it up, it should've been under 2 hours with ease and the first hour needed pruning. I ended up hitting fast forward a couple of times. :?

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Re: A CURE FOR WELLNESS - February 17th - Trailer

#11 Post by Monterey Jack »

AndyDursin wrote: I just wish he had tightened it up, it should've been under 2 hours with ease and the first hour needed pruning. I ended up hitting fast forward a couple of times. :?
Sadly, I don't think Verbinski is even capable of bringing a movie in under the two-hour mark anymore. :( Once most filmmakers have enough clout to demand "final cut", it's pretty rare to see them bring in anything under 2:15 at the shortest.

Then again, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk is supposed to be around exactly two hours, so that's heartening news. :)

There's this guy at the Blu-Ray.com forums who considers any movie under the two-hour mark to not be worth a trip to the theater ("I'm paying for a full movie!"), and I'm like, man, I wish more movies were under two hours. I don't recall genre movies, in particular, even exceeding 100 minutes on average back in the 80's, and yet Michael Bay will pummel your senses into mush with a THREE-HOUR Transformers movie every couple of years. :? Those films would be unbearable at 90 minutes, so why are they so goddamn LONG?! You'd think movie studios, concerned with maximizing profits, would push for movies to be shorter just to get in an extra showtime or two per day on those all-important opening weekends, and yet the average runtime for a big superhero movie these days is around 136 minutes. Granted, the last ten minutes of those tend to be end credits, but that's still over two hours for films that would be a lot leaner and meaner if they ran around 15-20 minutes shorter. I would have been bored out of my MIND sitting in a theater at the age of eight or nine watching a 165-minute cut of Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Octopussy or whatever, so in the era of constant ADD distractions, it's even more puzzling why movies are so needlessly distended.

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