Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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20 UCW NOVEMBER 11-17, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM I was thoroughly underwhelmed by Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak (119 minutes). He transferred the deformed angry ghost from Mama, kept the ghost baby as an afterthought, because why not, and gave Jessica Chastain a license to go completely nuts in the last act for no real reason. Also, Mia Wasikowska wears an incredibly unattractive neck ruff the size of a monster truck tire throughout most of the film's second half. But why waste time writing about a nightgown when I could be complaining about the plot? Edith Cushing (Wasikowska) sees dead people. This is scary because they do not appear in their human image, but instead as poorly realized, deformed, semi-decomposed, CGI versions of themselves. Why a ghost with helpful intent would deliberately scare the snot out of people it is trying to help makes no sense, but at least it pays the bills for the special effects people. Edith is a modern woman of the fin de siècle, so of course she rejects the idea of romance and marriage to pursue a career as a writer. She has one friend, the eligible Dr. Alan Dr. Alan McPlotDevice (Charlie Hunnan). He can't quite seem to catch her eye because he has been friend-zoned. In a nice change of pace, his female relations spend their time on screen mocking Edith instead of quietly supporting her literary efforts. Anyway, Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) arrives to coax her self- made father Carter (Jim Beaver) into giving him a loan. He travels with his sister, Lucille Sharpe (Chastain), who is completely stable and definitely not spreading waves of creepily inappropriate possessiveness over her brother. The story proceeds exactly as expected. Carter sics a private investigator on Lucille and Thomas and, given the amount of paperwork, bribery and travel time that must have been necessary to get dirt on someone at the beginning of the twentieth century, receives results surprisingly quickly. As anyone parenting a teenager can tell you, ordering two kids in love to stay apart is sure to drive them together. It sure would have been logical for Carter to tell Edith what that PI found out! But he doesn't, so she marries Thomas and wanders off to his ancestral ruin of a home, complete with a view of the sky through the massive holes in the roof. Once ensconced in a home with a husband who isn't actually interested in playing house, the fun really begins. Luckily for our hero, McPlotDevice shows up just in time to inject her with sedatives that will render her unable to move as part of his plan to, um, walk out the front door after threatening the potentially violent people in the isolated mansion with no witnesses around. Overall, del Toro should stick to movies with scary/weird/feral children who may or may not try to kill you, like in The Orphanage. This latest effort feels overwritten, like he had three or four separate stories he wanted to tell in a gothic style and couldn't decide what to keep and what to toss. Some people will really like it, but I found the dialogue stilted, the characters under- developed, and the narrative full of holes. Granted, the colors were gorgeously contrasted, the house worked as an awesome set piece, and the scares were there (until they weren't). That, however, isn't enough to make up for that ugly nightgown. Now playing at Patriot 14 + IMAX. I See Deformed Dead People Crimson Peak (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200. Adults $21.95 per person Seniors $18.95 per person Children 5-12 $9.95 (Price Excludes Tax & Gratuity) Fayetteville I-95 *Call for reservations 910-323-1600 1944 Cedar Creek Rd. Fayetteville, NC 28312 Take advantage of our SPECIAL $79 HOLIDAY RATE for your out of town guests. Waldorf Fruit Salad Garden Salad Granberry Sauce Maple Butternut Squash Soup Crab Bisque Soup Traditional Carved Turkey Carved Sugar Glazed Ham Southern Fried Chicken Roast Loin of Pork Traditional Southern Dressing Garlic Mashed Potatoes Sweet Potato Casserole Macaroni and Cheese Sweet Buttered Corn Green Bean Casserole Lima Beans Hot Rolls Sweet Cornbread Iced Tea, Coee Cash Bar Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Pecan Pie, Cream Pies, Banana Pudding, Chocolate Cake, Lemon Cake