By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Say what you will about Gore Verbinski's "The Lone Ranger," but it didn't lack for ambition.
Verbinski's $215 million film was a bid to reorient the Texas Ranger tale around its Native American sidekick, Tonto (Johnny Depp), and reinvigorate the Western with rollicking blockbuster extravagance. It was both amusement park ride and commentary on American (and movie) history.
It was, of course, a massive disappointment, leading to a write-down for Disney of at least $160 million. So how do you follow up a flop like "The Lone Ranger"? If you're Verbinski, with a movie about the dangers of ambition.
"It's not an affliction I consider myself immune to," the director says with a chuckle in an interview.
Four years after "The Lone Ranger," Verbinski, the director of the lucrative "Pirates of the Caribbean" films and the Oscar-winning animated tale "Rango," has returned with "A Cure for Wellness." The film, which opens Friday, is a lush, gothic thriller about a snide, unscrupulous and striving Wall Street stockbroker (Dane DeHaan) who's sent to a remote Swiss spa to fetch his company's CEO. He soon becomes suspicious of the place's dark mysteries and healing waters.
In budget (approximately $50 million) and genre (horror), it's something of a return for Verbinski, whose "The Ring" (2002) propelled him to the top ranks of big-budget filmmakers and led to him becoming the custodian of the "Pirates" franchise.
"This was starting over," Verbinski says. "I went to Germany. Aside from Bojan Bazelli, the cinematographer, I didn't know a single person on the crew."
But if anyone expected a docile retreat for Verbinski, "A Cure for Wellness" is not it. Though its budget was roughly a quarter of what it was for "The Lone Ranger," it's just as detailed, decorated and lengthy. The only issue for Verbinski with the 146-minute running time, he says, was trimming it down from more than three hours.
For a filmmaker who has often worked from previously existing material — if only a theme park ride in the case of "Pirates" — the chance to tell an original story meant a fresh canvas.
"Hollywood has made this massive push to 'event-ize' everything. As a result, all the writers are fleeing to TV. You see the fabric ripping apart," he says. "It's easier to get $158 million or $8 million to make a movie than it is to get $38 million. But when everyone is running away from the middle, I think there are opportunities there."
Verbinski, 52, is the son of a nuclear physicist and it's not hard to see a scientific precision in both his calm, deliberate manner and in the thick, carefully summoned atmospheres of his films. The appeal of "Cure for Wellness," he says, was playing with the idea of sickness. "He's a contagion," he says of DeHaan's Lockhart.
He's a filmmaker of grand excess: of lavish production design, of big, costumed performances and of endless cinematic references. "Rango," which was the first animated feature for the effects leader Industrial Light & Magic, was especially stuffed with nods to movies as varied as "Chinatown," ''Star Wars," ''Cat Ballou" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
Of his film inspirations, Verbinski says: "If you want to make a creature with a giraffe head and an elephant body, you need to have before seen both a giraffe and an elephant."
"A Cure for Wellness," too, is a homage to B-movies and their evocative, dreamlike atmospheres. "There's something about those old film noirs, the way you hear the sounds of the footsteps a little too loudly," Verbinski says. Viewers will quickly note on ode to "The Shining" in a tracking shot of Lockhart's car winding up through the Alps. The Henry James adaption "The Innocents," with Deborah Kerr, was another inspiration.
Whether audiences will go for it will be a test for Verbinski. Reviews, while respectful of the film's craft, haven't been good. And the lengths distributor 20th Century Fox has gone to in order to sell "A Cure for Wellness" have raised some eyebrows. (For a viral marketing campaign, the studio used fake news sites to lure moviegoers.)
But it should be noted that "The Lone Ranger" has been warmly reappraised by some critics; it has its defenders . Perhaps "A Cure for Wellness" will, too.
“Heretic” and “Maria” Set As Red Carpet Premieres At AFI Fest
The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced that Heretic, the psychological thriller starring Hugh Grant, and Maria, based on the life of opera singer Maria Callas starring Angelina Jolie, will round out the Red Carpet Premieres section at this year’s AFI Fest. The Heretic Gala Screening will take place on Thursday, October 24, and the Maria Gala Screening will be held on Saturday, October 26. The complete Red Carpet Premieres section includes the world premieres of Music By John Williams, Robert Zemeckis’ Here, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2. All Red Carpet Premieres will take place at the historic TCL Chinese Theatre. The full lineup for AFI Fest 2024 will be unveiled on October 1.
“At the heart of AFI Fest is an unwavering dedication to celebrating the best in global cinema--together,” said Bob Gazzale, AFI president and CEO. “We look forward to uniting artists and audiences once again to be inspired by the art form in a powerful sense of community.”
Heretic follows two young missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) who are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr. Reed (portrayed by Grant), becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse. The film is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods and produced by Stacey Sher, Beck, Woods, Julia Glausi and Jeanette Volturno. The film will be released nationwide by A24 on November 8.
Directed by Pablo Larraín, Maria presents a tumultuous and beautiful depiction of one of the world’s most renowned artists and reimagines the legendary soprano in her final days in Paris, as Callas (Jolie)... Read More