The Conjuring 2

Photo: the movie's poster, from t3.gstatic.com

My review of the first Conjuring movie is here.

I visited the house in the first Conjuring movie. You can read about that here. There are lots of creepy photos of gravestones and crypt doors, too.

This was a good scare of a movie, perhaps better than the first. I can't remember the last time I was actually spooked in a theater, but I exclaimed something out loud during one of the scenes. (I never talk during movies, and usually tar and feather those who do. And I never get jolted at them, either. I tend to figure them out pretty quick, too, like when I saw The Sixth Sense and knew right after he got shot that he was dead thereafter. I mean, the kid said he saw dead people, for God's sake.) James Wan, the director, is especially good, I noticed, at showing something you expect to be scared by, then not being scared by that thing (because nothing's there, but you're a veteran of these movies, so you expect there to be, but Wan knows that, so purposely doesn't put anything there), and then when the camera slowly pans back to where it had been, something jumps out at you. That's what happened when I said something out loud. The instant is when the little girl is watching television--and it's not when something was in the television, either. Just next to it.

The story starts at the home of the clairvoyants--or mediums, or whatever exactly it is they say they are. (Actually, it really starts in the Amityville Horror house. You know you've seen and read a lot about this stuff when you see just the outside of the house in the opening shot, and think, "Oh, it starts in Amityville, with Ronald DeFeo killing his family." I also remembered the house was owned by the Lutzes and that the book was written by Jay Anson. I really should go on Jeopardy one of these days. By the way, I also thought, "As you know, Amity means friendship," but of course that's another movie.) One of them keeps seeing this really spooky-looking nun with barracuda teeth and dirty smock--ironic, considering how Christian the two say they are. (In fact, they technically work for the Church in this movie.) This nun-demon is harassing one of them, and they agree to stop their investigations.

Until...

In Enfield, England, a really nasty old man of a ghost is haunting a woman and her two daughters and two sons. (The father abandoned them--all five of them! How come people like that are never the ones harassed?) This only happens after one of them messes with a handmade Ouija board, which I never recommend. Anyway, this old guy had died in their living room, in his favorite old recliner, which every old man has. (We called my father's black, held-together-by-thick-black-masking tape LAY-Z-BOY "The Knowledge Chair," for obvious reasons.) This old guy is in the habit of biting unsuspecting screaming people on their arms--though they find his retainer after the last one, and the biting stops. So he's harassing everyone, insisting the place is his--while others insist it's not anymore, because he's dead, and so will he please leave, and not let the door hit his arse on the way out?

He agrees to do that--without telling anyone--but then...Well, Houston, we have a problem.

So go see this one if you like this kind of thing. Like most decent scare flicks, this one won't make too much sense when you have a second afterwards to think about it, but it's a good scare while you're sitting there. I'd heard from a few reviews that the whole movie seemed a half hour too long. It didn't seem that way to me, and it didn't really drag, either, which is rare for this kind of thing.

One thing I really liked about it is that the movie doesn't pander to the audience. At the risk of sounding like a prude, there's no gratuitous violence, gore, or anything else. It has confidence in its ability to scare, and it doesn't assume the viewer's an idiot. There are the token nay-sayers (Franka Potente, from the first Jason Bourne film, and from Run, Lola, Run), and it's nice to see that they're smart as well, and not just token blowhards. In fact, Potente's character had a point: these things are often either fakes, or the person being possessed--usually an adolescent girl--has psychological or emotional damage and disabilities going on that have nothing to do with being possessed. (There's one on YouTube, a French girl from the 50s, that I play whenever I want to freak out my better half, who insists with vigor that I turn it off.) Anyway, these girls think they're possessed, so they're not faking, exactly, but the parents often know there's no actual possession going on, but they let the whole thing go on anyway because of a Munchhausen Syndrome, and...yeah, it's all a mess, and very hard to both prove and disprove. The girl in this movie looks and sounds like the one I'm talking about on YouTube, and I think some of The Exorcist is based on this girl as well.

I kept waiting for something else to happen, because the girl's behavior and voice mirrored the one I mention. When the slight twist happens, you may be a little let down like I was, as the movie comes full circle again, and if that was going to happen, why not just do so where they were, and not make these two have to travel across the Pond to get what they can get (and did get) just as well back home? Like I said, like most terror flicks, it's a house of cards if you think about it too much.

So don't do that. Go see it. You'll get your scare fix, and probably stronger than from the first one.

For more on the Enfield story, and for a fact vs. fiction article, go to http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/conjuring-2-enfield-poltergeist/

I'm most impressed by the tidbit at the bottom, which says that when the new family moved in, they almost as quickly moved out, staying for just a few months. This is unlike what the new families said of the Amityville house, and of the house mentioned in the first Conjuring, which I visited.

As a reminder, you can read about that here. There are a lot of pictures, including some creepy gravestones and crypt doors. My review of the first Conjuring movie is here.

The Lost Painting

Photo: The Taking of Christ, from its Wikipedia page

Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting is a surprisingly fascinating book that chronicles how Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ was "found" in Ireland in 1990. It tackles the story from two ends: research student and assistant Francesca Cappelletti, in Italy, and Sergio Benedetti, a restorer who actually found the physical work in a Jesuit church, in Ireland. Roughly two-thirds is spent watching Cappelletti research Caravaggio and his paintings, from the hugeness of Rome to the tiniest archive in a small mountainside town on the other side of Italy. Her investigation for this missing Caravaggio (there are many others still missing) takes her to Dublin, Ireland, where it deadends at an auction house that had gone out of business--and had not left any paperwork. The last third is spent with Benedetti, who nobody seems to like (including Harr, who sounds maybe a little too opinionated about his nonfiction subjects), and his realization while looking up at a huge painting in a small Jesuit building. He also restores the painting--almost ruining it in the process.

This is a good read for many reasons. Like good Bourne or Bond movies, the locales, buildings, peoples and environments all take center stage. Italy, a very old country, is juxtaposed nicely between present-day and the early 1600s. (The differences aren't as many as you think.) The book also goes into Caravaggio's short and violent life; he was a genius known for his fighting, who put his favorite prostitutes in his paintings. He was very popular and well-paid in his lifetime, even though Church leaders, his best customers, rejected the work they'd paid him for. (They didn't approve of famous Bible characters made earthy, nor of Mary, Jesus's mother, being portrayed by the famous, well-paid prostitutes of his day.)

You'll learn things about the Italy of Shakespeare's day (1590s-early 1600s) that you didn't know you wanted to know. You'll learn about how masterpieces are bought, sold and evaluated. You'll learn about how paintings are restored, and about how easy it is to ruin or to lose a masterpiece worth tens of millions of dollars. Most importantly, you'll learn a lot about Caravaggio, his paintings, his life, his Italy. Whether I make it sound like it or not, this is very fascinating stuff that will leave you wanting to know more.

At a time when seven Ty Cobb T206s, with the super-rare Ty Cobb backs, were found together in a crumpled paper bag about to be thrown away, you will believe that a $30 million Caravaggio was found in a small, neglected ancient church in Ireland. And this book makes you think: What other rare treasures are out there, waiting to be found? And why can't I be the one to find it?

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Photo: Cover of the Swedish first edition, on its Wikipedia page

A pretty good read, not as good as the first two; it pales in comparison, especially, to the second one because of ...Played with Fire's intensity at the end.  There's not much intensity in the last one here.  This stands to reason--Salander is inherently the only super-intense character, and she's stuck in a hospital room, a jail and a courtroom for most of this book.  When she's out, she gets involved in some intense action almost immediately.

Larsson again gets away with a lackluster first half--or the whole middle--of the book, and this time it really grated at me.  There are some frankly unnecessary scenes, and there's a subplot with someone stalking Erika Berger that is excessive and unnecessary.  (A guy she ignored in high school is harassing her at her new job.)  The only interesting part of this is that Lisbeth helps her find who it is.  (Remember that Lisbeth saw Blomqvist and Berger together at the end of the first one.)  But this part rings a bit untrue: Lisbeth, I think, would help Berger find the harasser because a) Lisbeth hates men who hate women, and b) she's excessively bored, and hacking into people's computers to expose them is interesting to her.  But what's false is that Berger wouldn't have accepted her help, no matter how desperate.

There are other problems.  The most glaring is that a senior citizen hitman was able to shoot a former nationally-important espionage agent in a hospital.  This spy had no sort of bodyguard, no police protection, no nothing.  He also would never have stayed in the same hospital as his original attacker, who was just a few rooms down.  They definitely wouldn't have both been unprotected, especially her, as she was a hated and sought-after person for a long time.  There are many more items of this sort, though this was the most obvious.  Naturally two people who just tried to kill each other--and who are nefarious and related--wouldn't be placed within a few rooms of each other in the same hallway.  And they'd have guards.

The trial was practically an after-thought, and not very realistic, either.  The prosecution, glaringly, had no case, and you would think they'd have bolstered it considering they were dealing with an infamous celebrity by that time.  All they had was a psychiatrist whose testimony a kid in a mock trial could've annihilated.  He clearly had preconceived notions; Lisbeth obviously had reasons not to talk to him or anyone else in authority.  And when everyone swore to the hills that her guardian was a great guy who she murdered, they proved that the prosecution had no evidence that she'd killed him--and then they played the movie.  End of trial.

All that's left over is to find her half-brother, which she does--though every cop in the country, and tons of lawyers representing her father's estate--should have investigated the property she goes to.  The relationship between Blomkvist and a cop is not convincing, and once again a beautiful, independent woman couldn't keep her clothes on in front of him.  The chances she takes after living a life of professional independence is unrealistic.  People do dumb things--but every woman he meets takes a dumb chance because they have to have be with him.  This includes a married woman (whose husband goes along with it, rather happily), an emotionally and psychologically bereft young woman, and a previously missing millionairess who'd been abused by her father and brother until her mid-teens.

Humph!

Having said all that, the book works while you're reading it, though the above examples had begun to get to me after awhile.  The second book also excelled because the women in it mostly kept their clothes on in front of him.  It was all mystery, intrigue and tension, and zero forced relationships.  Had he lived, I bet Larsson would have realized this, and gone back to that winning formula.  I suspect that his love interest here would've been disposed of in the next book, a la the Bourne movies and its like.  Certainly we would've finally met Salander's elusive twin sister.

The book ends well, as we knew it had to.  He had, after all, stuck by her and saved her in the second book, and basically in the third.  It says in the end that she realized she no longer had any feelings for him in that way, and that also ends like it should, though I don't buy it for a second.  Their relationship, and his with Erika Berger, were clearly the most realized and realistic.  Had there been a fourth book, I suspect there would've been maybe a little more tension there, and Berger very clearly tells his current flame that she'll try and stay away from him, but makes no promises.  He doesn't, either, for that matter.  This wouldn't sit well with her.

Odd and interesting thing about the books is that it shows that getting old is hell.  Every old man is dying of some kind of cancer, or is shot but lives for months as a vegetable, or is set on fire, loses a hand and foot, gets shot a few times, and then finally dies after getting shot a few more times.  Or has a stroke but recovers fairly well, if not painfully.  Old men do not age or die well here.

Lisbeth Salander is by far the most thoroughly and realized character in the books, and rightfully carries the distinction of being one of the more realistic and defined female characters in the genre.  No helpless lady in distress here, and no femme fatale.  She is only herself, and by the end was beginning to realize who that was.  Unfortunately, even she is a pale shadow of herself in the last book, but even that is enough to distinctly define and carry on her character.

I'm very interested in Lisbeth, Berger and Blomkvist.  I hope Larsson's partner and his father and brother can resolve their issues before too long, and that someone lets her finish his book, as I agree with her that she is the only one in a position to know what Larsson himself wanted to do with these characters.  Some hired gun shouldn't take over the series and throw his own beliefs into Salander.  Larsson was trying to say something important through her, and only he--and, second best, his partner--have any idea what he wanted to say next.