The things I do for this job. In order to interview actor Hayley Kiyoko about her role in Insidious: Chapter 3, I had to walk through the “Into the Further 4D Experience,” a jump-scare haunted house on wheels that incorporates Oculus Rift VR technology to make ramp up the scare factor to pants-wetting levels. It was so super spooky it made me behave quite strangely (at one point a guy in a costume grabbed me from behind, and I tried to hug him; he declined, understandably), but it was all worth it once I sat down with the charming Miss Kiyoko at a grilled cheese spot just across the street (ahhh…melted cheesy goodness).

Insidious: Chapter 3 is an origin story that takes place before the events surrounding the Lambert family. It follows psychic Elise Rainier as she uses her abilities to aid a young girl named Quinn Brenner (Stefanie Scott), who’s got an evil entity breathing down her neck. Kiyoko plays Brenner’s friend and confidante, Maggie. The film opens wide today.

Tell me about your character in Insidious: Chapter 3.

I play Maggie, Quinn Brenner’s best friend. She’s the positive support system for her. There’s a tension in the film where you question why she’s so normal, and then something bad happens.

Do you find as an actor that you have to have something in common with your character for it to work?
If you can’t find something you have in common with your character, you utilize your differences to find something in common. The fact that you’re so different makes you almost relate to it because you’re so polar opposite. It’s hard to explain. I also use people from high school [as inspiration]. Mean, shallow girls. But you also have to humanize every character you play. Whether they’re a good or bad person, there’s always this underlying issue that they’re going through which you can relate to. The character can be this crazy monster, but whatever their issue is, it’s going to be very human. You can relate one way or another.

That makes sense. I wasn’t a bully in high school, and I assume you weren’t either, but I’m pretty sure we can use past experiences to understand how bullies behave. We know bullies.
I know a ton of them. And look where they are now! [laughs] When you’re young, your parents go, “Don’t worry, they don’t matter,” but you don’t listen. Then, you’re 23 and you’re going on Facebook and you see all the popular girls that were at one time the shit, and they’re pregnant or divorced or whatever. I root for the underdogs, and I root for my fans to try to learn what I didn’t learn until now: high school doesn’t matter. You have to stick to yourself and the people who are nice to you. The world is so much better and bigger than school.

I listened to your music a bit and thought it was pretty cool. Talk to me about that side of your career.
I released This Side of Paradise back in February and I’m going back on tour soon. I have a music video coming out too, and Stefanie Scott from Insidious: Chapter 3 is going to play the lead in my music video. That’ll be out at the end of June, so check it out.

It’s pretty cool that you’ve got these two careers going on at the same time and you can use resources from one to support the other.
I’m cross-promoting them, totally. I love doing both. My dream life is doing world tours and shooting movies during my breaks.

Seems like you’re pretty much right there!
Well, not yet. [laughs] I’ve still got to do my world tours and play amphitheaters.

It seems like horror movies are being taken more seriously nowadays as legitimate works of art. It used to be sort of a fanboy, B genre, but now these movies are a viable place for A-list actors to do some good work.
I think there’s a difference in the style of horror films. Insidious 3 is more of a drama and a thriller than anything, you know? There’s a good story to it. It’s not just sitting in a chair and getting scared for an hour and a half. I think that’s why people are respecting horror films more and why they’ve been so successful lately. They really connect with a wide audience.

Are you a horror fan?
I don’t seek out horror films because I get scared way too easily, but I’m definitely a fan of the Insidious franchise.

It’s been a very successful franchise. What do you think makes it special?
You care about the characters. A lot of the fans are obsessed with Lin Shaye, the “godmother of horror.” Some horror films have all these random people in it, and you watch it, and it’s cool, but then you forget about the whole thing. People are invested in Lin’s character and what she’s going through, so you want to go back for more.

This is a prequel, correct?
Yeah. It’s an origin story.

I feel like some horror franchises end up going on too long. Is there a danger that Insidious could run too long?
I don’t think there’s a danger if you’re making money and the people want more. It’s about them and what they want. As long as they’re happy, that’s what’s important. Fast and Furious is going really long…

And it’s going strong.
Right. We’ll see how long it goes. Maybe Insidious 8 will be the best one yet. [laughs]

You say you get frightened easily. Do you get scared on the set of a movie like this?
Yeah. It’s scary to walk into the further. The further is so scary. The red elevator door is the worst.

Did you have a good enough time making this movie that you’d be interested in doing more horror?
I would definitely be open to it. I want to do action films most. I like being physical. I’d love to learn how to shoot a gun, ride horses, throw karate chops. Maybe in a cool country. I’d like to be in a big blockbuster. I’ve done martial arts since I was five, so it’d be nice to utilize that down the line.

What do you look for when you read a script?
A challenge. There are a lot of things I haven’t tackled. I’ve only just begun, so there’s a long list of challenges I haven’t faced yet.

The cast in this movie must have been great to be around for a budding actor like yourself.
They’re so cool. Dermot (Mulroney) is the nicest guy ever and Stefanie is super cool. It’s been fun doing all the press stuff together.

Dermot seems like a really down-to-earth kind of guy.
He’s really chill. I love when you meet people and you think they’re going to be nice, and they are.

Have you had it happen the other way, where they’re not so nice?
Yeah. I think we’re all so scared to meet our idols because we don’t know what to expect. It’s always great to find out that they’re cool.

I interview people a lot, and sometimes you leave and you go, “Man, he was kind of a dick.” It’s really disappointing.
Yeah. Then you think, “Maybe I shouldn’t have met them.” [laughs]

You have a lot of young fans. Do you go out of your way to be really nice to them?
Oh yeah, I love my fans. I really try to instill confidence in them. They’re so supportive, and they’re unique people. I could have had really freaky fans, [laughs] but luckily they’re cool to hang out with and really loving and kind.

People who do what you do are forced into the position of role model. Some aren’t comfortable with that role, but you seem very at ease with it.
I think it’s important to put positive things out there. For people who follow me, it’d be shitty if I was a bad person. I enjoy it. It’s cool doing concerts and meeting fans there. A lot of fans feel that you don’t read their tweets, but I see everything. There are a top 20 fans that I feel I’m really close with. When I finally meet them, I’m going to give them the biggest hug because they’re so supportive. I really do care about them.

I like your song “Girls Like Girls.”
That’s the video Stefanie’s playing the lead in. It’s going to be a really powerful, emotional story. I think it’s a great positive message to put out there. I don’t feel like there’s another song that sends that message quite like that, so I’m really excited to put that video out.

What can your fans expect from Insidious: Chapter 3?
Well, it’s really scary! So, if you’re going, you’d better be ready! Don’t go see the movie alone. Stay with your friends.

Broad and brutal, August: Osage County doesn’t offer much in the way of subtlety, but there’s something satisfying about indulging in the bigness of it all. The all-star cast, headed up by a bitch-mode Meryl Streep and a seething Julia Roberts, put up bombastic, larger-than-life performances. Which makes sense, since it’s based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy Letts (Bug, Killer Joe) stage play. This “home-for-the-holidays” family drama’s (substitute “family tragedy” for “holidays”) transition from theater into the world of cinema isn’t a smooth one (due to director John Wells’ lack of vision), but the venomous dialog delivered by the accomplished, decorated cast make it hugely entertaining.

Streep plays Violet, the cancer-stricken matron of the Weston family. She’s a pill-munching, fire-breathing, queen of cruelty who fancies herself a “truth-teller”, when in reality she’s a mean old witch. Her toxic tendencies have trickled down to her three daughters, effecting them each in different ways. Julianne Nicholson’s Ivy has been rendered uncommonly dependent on Violet, never leaving their Oklahoma family home. Oppositely, ditzy, flighty Karen Weston, played for laughs by Juliette Lewis, has made herself scarce for years. Roberts plays Barbara, who shares a most contentious relationship with Violet and has inherited her mother’s nasty bark. When their father (Sam Shepard, whose screen time is brief and sweet) goes missing, the sisters reconvene at the old Weston house in muggy Osage County, bringing their significant others and heavy baggage (mostly figurative) with them.

The tension between Violet and Barb bubbles, then erupts at the film’s bravura dinner table scene, where deep-cutting insults are flung, egos are eviscerated, and we even get a mother-daughter grappling match. The construction of the scene is excellent; if the basement bar scene in Inglorious Basterds is a slow, steep incline leading to a sudden, furious drop, Letts’ symphony of wicked barbs is a twisty-turny, rickety wooden roller coaster ride full of surprises. There are so many tonal shifts, big laughs, awkward laughs, long silences, explosions of anger, and cuttingly clever jabs that your head will spin (mine almost spun right off my neck).

Streep is as Streep-y as ever as Violet, attacking every syllable of every piece of dialog with full force. Her spiteful glare and inebriated rage are met with a cerebral, sober, but equally deadly antagonism from Roberts, whose performance is raw and stripped-down (she’s usually at her best in this mode). Their scenes together are dynamite across the board, surprising no one. The acting, like the story, is a bit obtuse, but the spectacle of these heavyweight actresses going toe-to-toe, line-for-line, is ridiculously fun to watch.

The two other Julias are excellent as well, and each of the supporting players have wonderful moments. Playing the sisters’ lovers are Ewan McGregor (he still hasn’t gotten that American accent quite right…), Dermot Mulroney (surprisingly funny), and Benedict Cumberbatch (playing a meek, boyish character for once). Abigail Breslin, Chris Cooper, and Margo Martindale also impress.

Wells sits high in the director’s chair, but his filmmaker fingerprint is nowhere to be found. It seems as though he’s gotten Letts to adapt his play, collected some of the strongest actors he could find, and let them all do the heavy lifting while he does little to transform the theater experience into a cinematic one. Aside from moving certain scenes from interiors to exteriors, there’s no effort made to yank the story away from the stage, where its roots are buried deep. Wells does little to nothing interesting with his camera, and there isn’t a memorable shot to be found. It’s visual vanilla.

The film picks up speed as it progresses, with a cascade of earth-shattering revelations in the latter half causing the characters to exit one by one until only Violet and Barb are left. Everyone leaves battered and bruised to the core, but Violet and Barb are left crippled in the wreckage of the family implosion. They’re ugly creatures the both of them, and though Barb is still pretty on the outside, she can see her monstrous future self wasting away right in front of her eyes.

The first of what will surely be an unending wave of Steve Jobs films (Aaron Sorkin is hard at work on his) is here, and a doozy it’s not; Joshua Michael Stern’s Jobs is about as straightforward and unremarkable a hero’s story as you can imagine, never mind the elephant in the room that is Ashton Kutcher‘s strained and uneven take riff the Apple genius. Despite all its shortcomings, a few elements work: the focus on Jobs pre-iPod/iMac, the strong supporting cast, the willingness of the filmmakers to show Jobs at his darkest and most unlikable. What it comes down to is that the negatives severely outweigh the positives, a disparity that the real Jobs would have likely thrown a spitting, fuming tantrum over.

The film opens in 2001, with Jobs’ reveal of the iPod (Kutcher’s resemblance to the man is actually pretty startling.) Then, we zip back to 1971, where he’s a stinky, bare-footed, horny hippy at Reed College. He takes embarks on an LSD trip and we’re treated to one of the most idiotic-looking montages I’ve seen—Kutcher is flailing his hands like a fool in an attempt to pantomime an orchestra conductor while (you guessed it) orchestra music plays and the camera twirls around his dunce ballet. This is meant to show that he’s a genius, that mind works complexly, somewhat musically, and on a plane we can’t understand. Instead, it comes off as silly and heavy-handed. I get that Kutcher’s dumb expression is appropriate—he’s tripping balls after all—but the sequence just feels confused.

After an enlightening journey to India and some fiddling around as a technician at Atari, we see Jobs and his buddy “Woz” (Steve Wozniak, played endearingly by Josh Gad) found Apple computers (they work out of Jobs’ parents’ house). Now we dive into the meat and potatoes. Fueled by Jobs’ drive and ingenuity, company grows and grows, until it’s so big that its board of directors—who don’t appreciate the high financial risks of Jobs’ lofty vision—fires Jobs, booting him from the company he birthed in his parents’ garage. Years later, as Apple flirts with irrelevancy in the ’90s, they invite Jobs back, and he returns triumphantly (we glimpse conceptualizations of the first iMac, you know, the awesome candy-colored ones.)

The story Stern and writer Michael Whitely are trying to tell is actually a good one. The period of Jobs’ life they focus on is rife with all the trappings of a great drama. What they fumble with is getting the bits of story to cohere to a central arc. Some scenes, like one in which Jobs screams and breathes fire into a phone with Bill Gates on the other end, lead nowhere. In fact, it feels like a lot of the characters are thrown in simply to make those familiar with the Jobs story go “Ah! I know who that is!” It contributes almost zero to the narrative. “Steve, I’d like you to meet [insert name of guy from his biography].”

Kutcher puts forth a good effort. He really does. It’s clear that he’s spent days and days perfecting Jobs’ slouched saunter, his Midwest/Californian accent, and his infamously volcanic temper. Plus, he unquestionably looks the part. But, there are two problems here, the first and most important of which is that he simply doesn’t have the acting chops to carry the film. You can see it in his eyes; he’s constantly, desperately grasping at the emotion he’s trying to communicate, and when (if) he finally finds it, he gets overly excited and plays it way too big and loud. Everything he does feels magnified (his accent feels painfully forced), but that’s not the most distracting thing.

With some actors (Will Smith, Angelina Jolie), I have difficulty divorcing their character from their celebrity. Ashton Kutcher is the prime example of this barrier to belief. When I see him, I see the guy from “Punk’d” who wears funny hats and tweets on the daily. I just can’t shake it. Unlike a lot of actors, he’s made himself widely accessible to the public, which makes it nigh impossible for me to dissociate his face from his fame. I believe it’s the actor’s job to convince us of their role, to deceive our perceptions of who we think they are in reality. By this standard, Kutcher may have dug himself into a hole too deep to escape.

Kutcher does show glimpses of fine acting—some (not all) scenes where he seethes and bursts with rage are truly intense, and a pivotal bedroom breakdown (captured nicely by Stern) resonates emotionally. Whiteley’s dialogue is blunt and heavy-handed, but the supporting players have no problem making their lines count (legendary character actor J.K. Simmons plays a great jerk as a member of the board of directors.) The film isn’t the complete stinker I feared it would be; I love that it cuts off just before Jobs’ glory days (we only get a brief look at the “keynote master” Steve Jobs we’re all so familiar with), and Stern illustrates vividly his fight to conquer the mountainous challenges he was faced with. Unfortunately, the film’s major moving parts are damaged, effectively crashing the machine. Send this one back to the factory.

Jobs opens this Friday, August 16th.

Jobs trailer

Anyone able to withstand the visual and aural assault of The Oregonian will find plenty more to like in Calvin Lee Reeder’s follow-up. Reeder, who tends to prefer a bombardment of surreal imagery over narrative, has a unique style that makes it hard to find any contemporaries similar to him. The closest might be Quentin Dupieux, a director whose bizarre stories have enough self-awareness to make their pointlessness enjoyable. Reeder, on the other hand, seems to take himself too seriously, an issue that sums up everything that’s wrong with The Rambler. It’s not so much singular as it is singularly bad.

The title character (Dermot Mulroney), returning home after a long stint at prison, doesn’t take long to get out of town. His long-term girlfriend (Natasha Lyonne) tells him she’s pregnant with someone else’s child, and the boss at his new job spends most of her time berating him. The man’s brother offers him work at a ranch in Oregon, setting off a cross-country journey that makes no sense whatsoever. The cast of characters Mulroney’s rambler encounters include a doctor whose dream recording machine blows up people’s heads, a taxi driver with a fetish for wounded women, and a romantic interest (Lindsay Pulsipher) who repeatedly dies.

Any attempts to make sense out of The Rambler are a waste of time, as Reeder throws up everything he can think of at the screen that will unsettle viewers. Some of these elements feel derivative on their own, while most of them are amateurish at best. The use of stock sound effects, radio static jump cuts and abundant gore give a cheap, amateur quality to the film that makes it more laughably bad than legitimately disturbing. What The Rambler amounts to is a series of boring vignettes, and when Mulroney’s character predictably abandons his “normal” brother after arriving it turns into an incomprehensible and annoying curiosity.

There’s still something to admire about Reeder’s direction. As bad as it can be, he clearly has a specific vision in mind that he carries out to what appears to be the best of his abilities, even if it fails at what it tries to do. Weirdness for its own sake isn’t a bad thing, but it has to have some sort of entertainment value if it wants to succeed. The Rambler is missing that quality, and as a result it suffers immensely. It’s a head-scratcher of a film, but only in that it’ll have you wondering how it got made in the first place.

Joe Carnahan’s The Grey is an exhausting film. I mean that in a good way. This film involves characters going from one dire scene to another for 2 hours. The film doesn’t cheat its audience on how bleak situations can get. I admired Carnahan’s choice to not hold back. One of the best scenes of the film involves the death of a man that felt so true to life that it took my breath away. I’ve never been in the same room as anyone while someone has passed on, so I can’t say for sure how real the scene is portrayed. But the scene, felt very, VERY real.

The Grey is a very simple movie. Men board a plan in the Alaskan oil fields heading to Anchorage. The plane crashes during a massive blizzard. The survivors must fight all the elements, including a pack of vicious wolves that seem to have a serious problem with strangers in their territory. Carnahan and his screenwriting partner (Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who also wrote the short story the film is based on) must have realized how much this kind of movie has been done before because they add some nice details to the film that really flesh out characters in a nice way.

Liam Neeson, who seems to be having a career renaissance as an action hero as of late even though he will turn 60 soon, stars as Ottway. Ottway’s job is very clear. He is to protect men in the field who repair oil lines from wolves that seem to have an appetite for humans. He sits hundreds of yards away watching and waiting. When a wolf makes a mad dash to catch some dinner he shoots them without remorse. When we meet Ottway, he is near suicide. An ever evolving backstory that runs throughout the film fills us in on certain details of his life.

What I liked about the Ottway character the most was how much respect he has for the wolves. I personally don’t think he liked killing them, but I do think he is a man who believes in kill or be killed. This becomes pretty clear later on as the film presses on.

Ottway wakes up after the plane crashes and immediately imposes his survival knowledge on the rest of the men. He knows what to do, he doesn’t panic. He becomes the group’s leader by showing leadership and initiative. The others are shell shocked and scared. But Ottway is not scared or at least very good at not showing it.

One of the best things the movie does is show how packs work. One pack is obviously the wolves, but the other is the men. It’s funny I didn’t pick that up the first time I watched the film. Wolves are a lot smarter than I think most people give them credit for. When working in packs they are extremely deadly, they kind of reminded me of Velociraptors from Jurassic Park. They test their prey, often teasing them at times. There are scenes were the wolves I think are purposely installing fear into the men they stalk before they do the actual killing. Now that is scary.

The movie was kind of sold to and bought by the audience as Liam Neeson vs. wolves. Yeah, I can I see that, but the movie is so much more than that. A lot of the film is Neeson plotting the survival of his group as the wolf who leads the other pack hunts them. It sounds silly talking about a wolf being smart enough to ‘plot’ to kill, it really does, but Carnahan is smart enough to trust his audience to go along with it and he presents the idea very well.

What was most impressive about The Grey was how it presented an age old story of survival. Instead of being a stupid brainless action movie it transcends the genre and becomes something else. It becomes a meditation on what lengths man must go to in order to survive. I don’t think I would survive the conditions the film presents. I can’t say that for sure because I’ve never had to. The film asks us as an audience to look at ourselves and wonder if we were in this situation could we do what we had to do to survive. Most people would probably say no. But if you’re in the wild, freezing, no food to eat and being chased by blood thirsty wolves I’d bet my bottom dollar you would kill to survive. When we are pushed, we push back.

Carnahan presents three dimensional characters who have thoughts, who say things not to please a story but because they have something meaningful to say. The men have hopes and desires. They want to see their wives, children, girlfriends again. They aren’t all about killing and being ‘men’. A lot of them are not as tough as the first seem. The wild breaks them. Neeson’s character in particular has a fantastic backstory that is shown in small bits at various points in the film. The final revelation in that backstory arrives at a perfect moment in the present time near the end of the film and will break the heart of even the manliest of man watching the film.

The Grey feels very succinct with its scenes. A lot of them are straight to the point. Deaths aren’t being foretold within the scene. They just happen, Carnahan is not here to mess around. One great scene in particular involves men running through a massive blizzard trying to make it to a tree line of a forest to escape the rabid pack of wolves. We know as an audience one of these guys is not making it. Sure enough the straggler of the group falls to the ground and out of the heavy wind and snow come the wolves to claim him. He has no chance. He is ripped to shreds. There is no build up to this. Carnahan shows him falling and as fast as he hits the ground the wolves are already on him. The men scream at them and try to run back to help him, but their feet can’t go fast enough through the snow. As soon as the attack begins, it’s practically done. The wolves drag him back into the unkown.

Carnahan made a film nearly a decade ago called Narc. The film showed Carnahan had lots of promise and a lot of talent. Since then he has made Smokin’ Aces and The A-Team (also with Neeson). I thought both were terrible. I (wrongly) wrote off Carnahan as a sellout. Both films are by the numbers and at times extremely nauseating. I’m here to say that he is back. He shows maturity with The Grey. He doesn’t pull any punches with his audience and treats them with respect. Most people don’t like being treated like a child when watching a movie, Carnahan knows this. The film is like the weather it presents, it’s blunt and very unforgiving. The Grey does not disappoint. This is one of the best films of the year.