[UA] Movies & Books -- with spoilers!

[Greg Stolze]

Warning: Spoilers follow, if anyone cares.

Sadly, I can't really read a book or watch a movie without gauging it in UA
terms these days.  So here are UAble reviews of two books and a film.

FILM: WHAT LIES BENEATH

Boy, you'd think this would be home run film.  Lessee... Vengeance from the
grave.  Creeping insanity.  Unnatural phenomena.  A guy who tries to murder
his wife by drugging her with something that leaves her paralyzed but
aware, then putting her in a tub that slowly, slowly fills up so that the
water covers her mouth and nose.  And yet...

Michelle Pfeiffer is great.  For my money, she shows that she's got serious
acting cred and it's not her fault if she's goddamn pretty.  Harrison Ford
also does a swell job, taking that mild current of sadism you ALWAYS
responded to in Indiana Jones and Han Solo and cranking it to creepy
levels.  Good acting by good actors, and good framing of scenes... should
be a good movie, right?  And yet...


I guess my problem is that this movie is so coy about what it wants to be
-- "Hey, am I a psychological thriller about a woman slowly cracking up?  A
ghost story?  A murder mystery?  Keep guessing!" -- that by the time it's
finally revealed, you're too tired to care any more.  2 hours, 10 minutes,
felt longer.  I mean, I like a lingering shot of Michelle Pfeiffer looking
nervous and vulnerable as much as the next red-blooded American man, but by
the third or fourth one I'm drumming my fingers and saying "Payoff!  C'mon,
let's have some payoff!  Please, payoff!"

Perhaps it's a lesson about the perils of trying to have it both ways.
(Or, really, all three ways.)  If it came out as a ghost story earlier, all
the detective scenes could have been glossed over.  Conversely, if it was a
"suburban wife goes apeshit" movie, the plot could have been streamlined.
Instead, it lumbers along in three directions at once.  I'm probably
fooling myself, but I think I could make this film better by picking out
fifteen scenes and telling the editor "Okay, you can keep FIVE of these.
Five only."

That said, there are UA crunchy bits.  The handling of the ghost is pretty
consistent with UA, which (I suppose) means UA is consistent with how
people generally thing such things work.  The lock of hair that makes you
possessed is all right, though I wonder why, after getting possessed once,
the heroine goes and picks the damn thing up again.

The climax, however, is pretty UAish, in that you've got two combatants who
JUST CAN'T GET THE JOB DONE.  It's almost funny, really, except that it's
handled well enough to be kind of scary.  If I'd been built up to it,
instead of bored up to it, I'd probably have nightmares.  But the last ten
minutes or so are just fraught with examples of people failing but
continuing to try, which is something the UA mechanics certainly support at
lower levels.

BOOK: AKA JANE

I'll admit it, I picked this up because the graphic design made it jump off
the shelf at the library.  I looked at the inside jacket, thought "Elite
counterterrorist agent is mystery writer in her spare time?  Riiiiight" and
put it back on the shelf.  But then a friend said it was good, so I read
it.  And it's not bad.  Particularly for a first book.

I kind of felt, though, that the author had ideas for three books, got a
contract for one, and crammed them all together.  This is the kind of book
where every single plot line IS going to get tied up in the last ten pages,
no matter how much it strains credulity.  I kind of wish she (the author)
had taken more time, but the book does a nice job making the heroine
sympathetic and showing her frailties and insecurities and doubts -- even
though she's this elite commando infiltration specialist badass type.

It's somewhat UAble for the details on how the real pros go about
espionaging on someone.  I really liked the bit where the spy says "Ach,
your security system was so weak that I took the back door off the circuit.
That way, while you were gone, I could let myself in for a cup of tea."

It's also pretty true to how madness is measured in UA.  You get good looks
at people with a few hard and failed notches.  No one really blows it,
though.

The part that bugs me is at the end, where the bad guy forces the heroine
to strip naked at gunpoint.  But more on that after my next review...

BOOK: THE PURIFICATION RITUAL

Well, the title sounded good, and I liked the song "Birth Ritual" by
Soundgarden, so I pulled it down and gave it a go.

It's got some fairly UAish paranormal elements -- tied to Olde Injun
Wisdom(TM) in this instance.  But it's nice and subtle stuff.

The plot is that the heroine is going off to this elite hunting lodge in
the middle of nowhere to clear her head after a nasty divorce and her dad's
death and other psychic garbage I won't go into here.  When she gets up
there with (I think) seven other paying hunters and their guides and the
guides' wives, they get snowed in, their radio's smashed, and someone is
hunting THEM, one by one.  It's the Most Dangerous Game, only the
psychopath and the heroine both seem to be avatars of the old-style hunter.
It's nice, it's subtle, it's fairly well written and the characters are
interesting (if usually unpleasant).  You can do some fine UA-jacking of
the Kewl Powerz the evil hunter has -- movement unseen, rapport with
animals, spoiling people's shots at him -- nothing blatant, but very nicely
handled.

My complaint?  Well, surprise surprise, the bad guy gets the drop on the
heroine and... forces her to strip naked.  Honestly, when did this become
such a cherished trope?  I'd like to read a book with a strong heroine who
doesn't get sexually humiliated via the threat of violence.  There's these
two books, there's the gratuitous rape scene in "The Diamond Age" (which
was otherwise just groovy)... do I just pick out these books somehow?

-G.

Calming down and realizing this never happens in Anne Tyler or Barbara
Kingsolver books.



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