Stoker

          Stoker is the story of India, a naive girl whose father has just passed away. Her mother quickly invites her late husband's brother to come and live with her and India. It soon becomes obvious that they have a romantic relationship and are eager for India's acceptance of the family's new incestuous lifestyle. Fans of The Virgin Suicides will probably like this movie. Full of hypnotic sequences of lust and violent temptations, the story often lacks substance. India's different problems and potential solutions are touched on the surface, but never fully explored. Despite the absence of a structured plot, the tantalizing sequences make this a must-see. Fans of cinematography will be lured into the array of hypnotizing pans and glimpses of nature. We get a peek into India's cryptic mind in the sequences that are meant to fill in her backstory. Often sexual in nature, the uncomfortableness of India's urges, both romantic and violent, are displayed artfully, making the emotions fluctuate similarly to the positions of a yoyo. Created suspense and sexual tensions made the few key plot points rather predictable, but the ending was different from what I had been expecting. I enjoyed watching this spectacle, but I cannot say that it was a great movie. It was fun to see Mia Wasikowska play a part for older audiences, but her character at the core was not much different from her Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Plus she was getting darker with the humor of her character in Gus Van Sant's Restless. She did a great job as usual. Also, kudos to the costume department for her shoes. As for Nicole Kidman, she really did an outstanding job as Wasikowska's onscreen mom. I normally cannot stand Kidman (especially in The Others or on any red carpet), but I enjoyed her performance in Stoker. Matthew Goode was creepy yet seductive as India's uncle. I look forward to seeing it again to enjoy the interesting story more, though a bit sloppily-structured, and of course for the cinematographic sequences. 

I would like to note here that, although I think the nature-filled sequences worked in this movie, I do not enjoy them in every movie in which they are present. For example, the random history-of-the-earth special that occurs roughly twenty minutes into Terrence Malick's Tree of Life completely takes away from the already-half-buried story. I think the difference is that India was still present in these sequences, and usually something about her past was revealed during them. In Tree of Life the actors took a lunch break while Malick chronicled every existing biome on planet earth.