Movie Review - The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black (2012)

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, and Janet McTeer

Directed by James Watkins

I must preface this review by saying that it took me nearly two months to get through The Woman in Black.  That's not to say it's horrible (although I'm not saying it's good either), but I started watching this on a plane ride home from London and the little television screen and poor audio weren't doing this ghost story which relies heavily on far-off ghostly images and strange noises any justice.  So, twenty minutes in, I decided that it might be best simply to rent this one once I got home.  Two months later that came to fruition and I finally finished the tale.

I think there's a really good ghost story here -- one of those that you'd tell around a campfire and perhaps genuinely get scared.  In fact, The Woman in Black is an incredibly long-running, well-received, and apparently frightening play in London and I actually thought I might see it when I was over in the UK.  I didn't get around to seeing it onstage and unfortunately something doesn't quite click with the movie.  For only being ninety minutes long, there seems like an awful lot of boring exposition in the first half of the film which drags this thing down horribly.

Lawyer Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is sent to a remote village in England to a huge mansion to find the paperwork needed to sell a deceased woman's estate.  For years, many of the town's children have been dying heinous deaths and Arthur uncovers that the unfortunate occurrences stem back to the decades-old death of the young son of a woman named Jennet Humfrye.  Ms. Humfrye, who is also now deceased, feels that her son's death could have been prevented and has been seeking revenge on the youth of the town.

The huge positive of The Woman in Black is that it doesn't try to be anything other than a genuine ghost story.  There's no blood or guts, just old-fashioned scares.  Unfortunately, those scares are too often foreshadowed by director James Watkins' camerawork or Marco Beltrami's score.  We in the audience are conditioned to know in a horror movie that if an actor is standing towards the left of the screen with a large black space to his right, something is going to pop up in that area.  Sure enough, that happens all too often here.  It makes me wonder how this tale would work on a stage.  I can't help but think that it would be more successful than on film.

Daniel Radcliffe is actually fine, but doesn't exude any modicum of charisma (of course, he didn't do that in the Potter films either).  There's also a nice performance from Ciarán Hinds as the only member of the town to befriend Arthur.  In the end, it's kind of a shame things don't come together because the film picks up quite a bit halfway through and at least becomes enjoyable to watch, but it never really becomes "scary" or even "eerie" which ultimately is a disappointment.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Albert Nobbs

Albert Nobbs (2011)

Starring Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska, Aaron Johnson, and Janet McTeer

Directed by Rodrigo García

Albert Nobbs is, quite possibly, the most boring film released in 2011 -- and in the year of J. Edgar, The Iron Lady, and Anonymous that's saying something.  However, unlike J. Edgar which had a decent performance from Leonardo DiCaprio, The Iron Lady which had a worthy Oscar-winning turn from Meryl Streep, and Anonymous which had some interesting visuals, Albert Nobbs has absolutely nothing going for it.  Nothing at all.  This "dream" project of Glenn Close is dreadfully monotonous and torturous to sit through and without even a captivating performance with which to breathe life into it, Albert Nobbs is a period piece that really shouldn't even exist.

Sorry, but the raves that came in for Glenn Close's Oscar-nominated performance as the title character -- a woman who has dressed as a man for decades in order to keep a job -- were completely unwarranted.  As Albert Nobbs, Close is emotionally one-note, appearing "stoic" throughout and very little else in terms of notable characteristics.  As Albert struggles to find a woman to spend his life with, training his eye on young co-worker Helen (Mia Wasikowska), I found my eyes wandering around the close quarters of my plane home from London.  Not even the Oscar-nominated turn from Janet McTeer as a fellow woman who lives her life as a man (with a heckuva lot more charisma than Close) can do anything to save this film from simply floundering.

With awkward direction and a horrible subplot involving Wasikowska's character and her relationship with a conniving young handyman (Aaron Johnson), this is a movie in search of itself.  Seemingly as much time is spent on the young lovers storyline which goes nowhere as is spent on Albert's -- and neither of them are worth paying any amount of attention to.

The RyMickey Rating:  D-