Snowman never comes to life

Michael Fassbender in The Snowman. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

The Snowman is an awful film on just about every level, but it masks its incompetence by being largely boring and dull. It’s just a way of wasting two hours of one's existence, watching poor Michael Fassbender mope around a very snowy Oslo searching for one of the least interesting serial killers in cinema history. It's a movie that just happens, it exists and it ends with no measurable effect on the viewer's outlook on life.

A lot of strange decisions were conjured to create The Snowman. Making the movie heavily centered around the titular beings of ice, snow, coal, carrots, and leftover winter clothing is among the more notable ones. The snowmen in this movie are little tokens left by the serial killer after he's abducted or murdered someone, designed to be ominous and foreboding. Except, well, snowmen don't really work as images of horror. They're beings of snow that just stand around waiting to melt, their horror derived more out of an existential terror than a more primal fright. Perhaps a field of snowmen could be frightening, a phalanx of creatures built of ice and snow with mean dark eyes and coal frowns… although just typing that sentence still makes them sound silly. If an army of snowmen can't produce any sense of fear, a single snowman won't succeed in that task.

So why does the killer design these snowmen in the first place? It's revealed in an opening sequence as a result of a traumatic childhood moment. It's not a competently executed sequence, with a poorly executed twist with no real motivation provided to the viewer. And that's not the only moment in which The Snowmen opts to keep what should be important information away from the viewers. Suspects are tossed out and in not because of any real detective work from Fassbender (playing a detective named Harry Hole) and his partner (played by Rebecca Ferguson). Rather, there's some unseen internal logic that at one moment makes J.K. Simmons a suspect before moving on to some other bloke until the real killer is revealed. There's also an undercooked subplot about Fassbender's ex (Charlotte Gainsbourg), along with unnecessary backstory involving Val Kilmer that would tie in cleaner with Ferguson's story if the movie had a stronger narrative connection. The Snowman is really more of a series of plot holes cobbled together into a thin story, which isn’t surprising considering around 15-percent of the script wasn’t actually shot, per director Tomas Alfredson.

Hypothetically the additional amount of footage would have given The Snowman more time to provide those clues so the audience can parse out the killer’s identity. Not that it's all that difficult to figure it out, but that isn't because of any clues or hints provided by the filmmakers. Rather, the resolution comes from knowledge of the genre that makes the whole reveal obvious; the movie itself just says it’s this guy without any legitimate clues, let alone any logic behind it. A clever movie can take advantage of audience knowledge and use it against viewers, but this movie is nowhere near clever enough to pull off such a feat. The killer is the killer, and the killer is disposed of with a lame Deus ex machina because the filmmakers opted not to make it properly climactic or thrilling. It just sort of ends, because everything has to end at some point and the movie couldn't figure out a better way of getting away from itself.

Review: One out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 119 minutes

Genre: Crime

Ask Away

Target audience: Criminal procedural fans and people who like snowmen.

Take the whole family?: It gets graphic enough to bother kids, so make it a date night if you decide to go out...

Theater or Netflix?: Or just don't go out at all to see it.

Does this movie do anything right?: By name the cast is OK. Michael Fassbender, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and J.K. Simmons all have strong acting chops, and Val Kilmer has a couple of great performances under his belt from like 25 years ago. Figures that this movie couldn't do anything with the cast it had.

Watch this instead?: Insomnia does a lot of what The Snowman tries to do, but way, way better. There's also the animated Snowman movie from the 1980s that is just splendid.

The Accountant proves itself a bad idea

Ben Affleck does math in The Accountant. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

It’s easy to figure out how bad The Accountant is by reading its synopsis. This is a film, after all, that has Ben Affleck as an autistic accountant who goes on murderous, vengeful rampages when the occasion for such actions occur. Read that summary again and let the awfulness of this idea wash over you, because, again, this film stars Ben Affleck as the eponymous autistic bean counter who kills ruthlessly and efficiently. Because Affleck's character is autistic, and, per the film's logic, autistic people feel less remorse for their actions than average people do and have little comprehension of the consequences their actions incur. The film, in effect, reveals why autistic people would make for the best mass murderers, because they’d be so intensely focused on the task the inhumanity of the acts wouldn’t even dawn on them.

The Accountant thrives on stereotypes. It covers how autistic people have trouble interacting with people; how well they can comprehend difficult mathematical concepts; their issues with loud noises and over stimulation; their difficulty with eye contact; and their problems engaging in romantic relationships. It presents these facets in an easy to read fashion, falling back on all the clichés used by filmmakers to indicate autism without delving into the true ramifications or depths of it, the pain and sadness of always being a few miles away from everyone else. Affleck's take is the take most actors use; a confused blank canvas whose existence is defined by the surface and lacks anything underneath the lost exterior. Some credit goes to Affleck for not overindulging in ticks or wobbly strangeness like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, but he adds little else to the formula set before him. He is defined by his autism, as many filmmakers believe people with autism are.

Strangely, it takes a suspiciously long amount of time for the film to admit verbally Affleck’s killer has autism. The first act features a scene with a young Affleck and his parents visiting a specialist, who outlines the boy’s symptoms that are shorthand for autism. Yet the word is not mentioned at all; rather, the film uses the “I'm not saying, I'm just saying” approach to insinuate as heavily as possible that Affleck's character is autistic. It's an incredibly cowardly bit of filmmaking to insinuate a diagnosis like that, as if they're afraid to actually say “autism.” Which is a little weird considering the last few minutes of the film play as something of an odd to those along the autism spectrum, including a quote of the current statistics and the concept of greatness hidden behind the veil of their personalities and moderate oddities. The Accountant even takes the time to bring up some famous historical figures who may have been autistic (Lewis Carroll among them), which  really makes that initial hesitation to say the word autism doubly annoying.

The Accountant is a pretty annoying viewing experience setting aside the awful premise. Talented costars Anna Kendrick, Jeffrey Tambor, J. K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal (the closest anyone gets to being interesting), John Lithgow and Cynthia Addai-Robinson waste their time waiting for Affleck to do something.  It has little storytelling ingenuity, riding several minutes of J. K. Simmons exposition to explain plot points residing somewhere between key and middling. That much of the exposition is redundant exacerbates the run time that is already much longer than the story has any right to justify. And the filmmakers, director Gavin O'Connor and Bill Dubuque, frequently alert viewers to impending twist reveals with the cinematic equivalent of the elbow jab, vomiting in tiny reveals leading to a grander reveal that feels oh so clever. They're like the house cat who kills a pigeon and leaves it at the front stoop, so proud of its relatively minor accomplishment.

It’s that autism angle that bothers me the most, because eliminating whatever layer of autism O'Connor and Dubuque inserted into Affleck's character has no effect on the story. This would still be a pretty basic story of a loner who seeks revenge for lost friendships and abides by a moral code, like the Driver in Drive. Affleck's autism doesn’t have an effect on his machinations or even serve as a reason for his aloofness, considering the filmmakers lobbed in an abusive father backstory that more than explains his character’s difficulties with people. O'Connor and Dubuque use autism as a cheap, lazy storytelling trick, which is the most offensive part of their abysmal movie.

Review: One out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trainer.

Rating: R

Run time: 128 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: I haven't the foggiest.

Take the whole family?: This is a pretty bloody, violent film, so don't take the kids with you if you decide to go.

Theater or Netflix?: If you're really fascinated by the concept of Ben Affleck as an autistic murderer, do yourself a favor and at least wait for the home option.

Are there any good films about autism?: Not that I've seen, although Temple Grandin is supposed to be pretty good. So many of these films feature actors playing with little hand quirks and head rolls they never bother to capture the depth of the characters they're playing. It gets frustrating watching people try to AUTISM on screen.

Watch this instead?: Hit up The Bourne Identity to get your fix on a high quality action flick with a complicated central figure. Drive also does tackle the complexities of humanity and love with tremendous blood and grace, along with iconic turns from Ryan Gosling and Al Brooks.