The last post of this year will be a fitting set of tales: Tales of Terror/Twice-Told Tales (1962/1963), two horror anthologies by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price.
Terror is a trio of stories based on Poe. The first, Morelia, has young Maggie Locke visiting her father, Price, in his mouldering New England mansion. Her mother died in childbirth and he never forgave her. Now she has come back to say she is dying. It turns out her mother never forgave her either, and Price has been keeping her mouldering body in the bedroom.
The Black Cat is probably our favorite. It features Peter Lorre as an abusive drunk with a beautiful wife, Joyce Jamison. To get some free drinks, he crashes a wine tasting event and challenges wine champion Price to a drink-off. Although he gets very drunk, he can identify any wine - I think it ends in a tie. But when Price takes Lorre home, he meets Jamison, and sparks fly. Lorre winds up plotting to brick them together in a wall. Since he is named Montresor Herringbone and Price is Fortunato there is a bit of Cask of Amontillado in this tale - allowing Lorre to intone the immortal line, “yes, for the love of God!”
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar has Price in the title role, with Basil Rathbone as the mesmerist who soothes the pain of his mortal illness. He also uses his powers to prolong the moment of death indefinitely. But can he control this undead creature he has created?
Twice-Told Tales is based on a stories by Hawthorne. The first is Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment. Two old scientists get together, Sebastian Cabot and price. They visit the corpse of Cabot’s betrothed, who died before they could be wed. They find her perfectly preserved, and deduce that the mineral water dripping from the ceiling of the vault has special powers. They drink it and become young, and even revive the girl, Mari Blanchard. But it comes out that Price was her lover, and it doesn’t end happily.
In Rappicini’s Daughter, Price keeps his daughter, Joyce Taylor, in a garden of poisonous plants so that no man will ever love and betray her. Her very touch is as poison as the weird plants in the garden. Brett Halsey woos her, but how will he overcome her curse. We liked this one a lot, due to the crazy garden.
The final tale is The House of Seven Gables, in somewhat abbreviated form. Although I have visited the actual house in Salem, I’ve never read the story. Here, Price comes back to the house, even though all the men in his family who stay there die due to an old curse. It is not the best story, but it does feature the lovely Beverly Garland.
So, two movies, six tales, filled with Price and other horror faves. Worth it if only for drunk Peter Lorre. In the busy holiday season, we had to watch one of two at a time, then get back to work or go to bed. A great way to end the season. Happy Holidays!
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Sunday, December 29, 2019
All Truism
It’s All True (1993) is a documentary about Orson Welles’ unmade Brazilian film of the same name. It seems that Welles was working on an idea for an anthology film, made in a semi-documentary style. The first part, filmed in Mexico with non-actors, was about the love between a boy and his bull. Before he got very far, he was approached by the US government. To support the “good neighbor” policy, designed to keep South America out of the Axis sphere, he was asked to go to Brazil and film there. He came up with the idea of making a movie about samba, and filmed a lot of Carnaval.
Around that time, a group of poor fishermen with rafts called jangadas made a perilous trip to Rio to ask for the social services they deserve. They became national celebrities and Welles decided to do one part of the film about them. However, when he recreated their triumphant arrival in Rio, the jangada overturned, and their leader, Jacaré, was drowned. Welles pledged that he would complete the film to honor the cause.
But as so often happened with Welles, studio interference caught up with him. Management changed and the jangadieros protest was suspiciously communist. He struggled on after the money dried up, but eventually had to abandon it. This is the first part of the film.
The second part is a reconstruction of the jangadiero movie, from existing footage found and recovered. It is shot in lyrical silent black and white, like a documentary. Some parts, like the triangular sails against the sparkling sea are almost abstract. There is a sketched in love story but it isn’t important.
I don’t know if Welles could have made these bits and bobs into a real hit movie, but it would have been interesting to see. He claims that a voodoo priest who had been promised a part in the movie cursed it when the funding ran out. He may have been right - I don’t think he had an easy time making a movie after this.
Around that time, a group of poor fishermen with rafts called jangadas made a perilous trip to Rio to ask for the social services they deserve. They became national celebrities and Welles decided to do one part of the film about them. However, when he recreated their triumphant arrival in Rio, the jangada overturned, and their leader, Jacaré, was drowned. Welles pledged that he would complete the film to honor the cause.
But as so often happened with Welles, studio interference caught up with him. Management changed and the jangadieros protest was suspiciously communist. He struggled on after the money dried up, but eventually had to abandon it. This is the first part of the film.
The second part is a reconstruction of the jangadiero movie, from existing footage found and recovered. It is shot in lyrical silent black and white, like a documentary. Some parts, like the triangular sails against the sparkling sea are almost abstract. There is a sketched in love story but it isn’t important.
I don’t know if Welles could have made these bits and bobs into a real hit movie, but it would have been interesting to see. He claims that a voodoo priest who had been promised a part in the movie cursed it when the funding ran out. He may have been right - I don’t think he had an easy time making a movie after this.
Monday, December 23, 2019
Movie of Sorrowful Countenance
So Terry Gilliam finally released his famously doomed film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2019). Conceived in the 80s (if I remember correctly, I’m not looking it up again), he shot a little in the early 2000s with Johnny Depp, got flooded out, lost funding, and got a famous documentary out of it. Now, it comes to life, starring Adam Driver (who, Ms. Spenser says, is in everything now).
He plays a director filming a Don Quixote themed commercial in Spain. It isn’t going well. His boss, Stellar Skateboard, has found a DVD of his student film about Don Quixote, and hopes it will inspire him. His boss’s wife, Olga Kurlyenko, seduces him, but he is more interested in watching the DVD.
The next day, he realizes that the village he filmed it in is nearby, and heads off. In flashback, we see him and his college buddies partying in the little town and enlisting the locals to be in the film. He picks an old cobbler to be the knight (Jonathan Pryce), and the 15-year-old daughter (Joana Ribeiro) of the tavern keeper as Dulcinea.
In the village, he finds people indifferent or hostile. Ribeiro has run off to the city to be a whore, as her father says. And Pryce is now a madman who believes he truly is Don Quixote, being kept by an old woman as a tourist attraction. He decides Driver is Sancho Panza, and they escape to find adventures (accidentally setting the town on fire as they leave - and maybe killing a policeman or two).
Their first adventure involves a windmill, and Pryce is wounded. A group of seeming Gypsies in a ruin take them in, but Driver comes to suspect that they are terrorists. As things spiral out of control, he wakes up, and it was a dream - the people are just undocumented immigrants.
From here on, things continue to spiral. Ribeiro shows up for the commercial shoot as part of a Russian oligarchs retinue. She has been a wannabe actress and “escort” and is sort of owned by the Russian, but doesn’t accept Driver’s apology. She has the life she wanted, sort of. The boss wants to find out who is doing his wife. There is a mysterious gypsy. There are wild costume parties, and Pryce acting crazy. And it ends in madness.
I liked this movie a lot, especially the way it wove madness and reality together, while always escalating. But recently Gilliam has been bad-mouthing Black Panther as an unrealistic portrayal of Africa, and I’m mad at him (along with everyone else on the internet). So I don’t know what to think. I guess I’ll watch Lost in La Mancha and get over it.
He plays a director filming a Don Quixote themed commercial in Spain. It isn’t going well. His boss, Stellar Skateboard, has found a DVD of his student film about Don Quixote, and hopes it will inspire him. His boss’s wife, Olga Kurlyenko, seduces him, but he is more interested in watching the DVD.
The next day, he realizes that the village he filmed it in is nearby, and heads off. In flashback, we see him and his college buddies partying in the little town and enlisting the locals to be in the film. He picks an old cobbler to be the knight (Jonathan Pryce), and the 15-year-old daughter (Joana Ribeiro) of the tavern keeper as Dulcinea.
In the village, he finds people indifferent or hostile. Ribeiro has run off to the city to be a whore, as her father says. And Pryce is now a madman who believes he truly is Don Quixote, being kept by an old woman as a tourist attraction. He decides Driver is Sancho Panza, and they escape to find adventures (accidentally setting the town on fire as they leave - and maybe killing a policeman or two).
Their first adventure involves a windmill, and Pryce is wounded. A group of seeming Gypsies in a ruin take them in, but Driver comes to suspect that they are terrorists. As things spiral out of control, he wakes up, and it was a dream - the people are just undocumented immigrants.
From here on, things continue to spiral. Ribeiro shows up for the commercial shoot as part of a Russian oligarchs retinue. She has been a wannabe actress and “escort” and is sort of owned by the Russian, but doesn’t accept Driver’s apology. She has the life she wanted, sort of. The boss wants to find out who is doing his wife. There is a mysterious gypsy. There are wild costume parties, and Pryce acting crazy. And it ends in madness.
I liked this movie a lot, especially the way it wove madness and reality together, while always escalating. But recently Gilliam has been bad-mouthing Black Panther as an unrealistic portrayal of Africa, and I’m mad at him (along with everyone else on the internet). So I don’t know what to think. I guess I’ll watch Lost in La Mancha and get over it.
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Slammer
Bandslam (2009) is another movie not really meant for us, but we liked it.
It stars Gaelan Connell as a chinless, bad-haired high-school freshman loser. He is obsessed with music, and writes an email to David Bowie every day (which is never answered). He has no friends. His single mom, Lisa Kudrow, tells him they are moving to Connecticut, where maybe he won’t be bullied. But he suspects nothing will change.
However, on his first day he meets Vanessa Hudgens as Sa5m (the “5” is silent), a gothy depressive loner who will hang out with him, although she doesn’t do friends. Also, super-popular senior Aly Michalka corrals him into helping her with the daycare for kids of students. (The kids are like 5 years old, but the actors playing the students are around 30, so just roll with it.)
He also finds out that the school is obsessed with Bandslam, a state-wide (nation-wide?) battle of the bands. Their school’s entry is The Glory Dogs, fronted by Michalka’s ex. They are a pretty hot band, with a kind of up-tempo Springsteen sound, with an R&B horn section. I would expect Connell to be pretty psyched, but maybe they weren’t “alt” enough for him.
When Michalka tries to introduce him to the Velvet Underground (while “Femme Fatale” plays on the soundtrack), she discovers he is very well versed in rock. She takes him to check out here band, featuring bassist Bug (a Flea wannabe) (Charlie Saxton) and guitarist Omar (Tim Jo). They rip through a hot version of “Amphetamine”, which Connell ruthlessly criticizes. So Michalka asks him to be their manager.
It turns out that they used to be Glory Dogs, but got thrown out because Michalka broke up with Scott Porter, their douchy lead singer. Connell’s image is to fatten their sound by corralling a classic pianist and cellist and finding the hottest drummer in school, a burnout played by Ryan Donawho. He only agrees to join because he thinks Connell’s mom is hot.
Through this all, Connell is painfully shy and awkward, but he’s trying.
The basic conflict, other than Connell’s struggle with loserdom, is that his friendship with hot, cool, caring Michalka is getting in the way of any romance with Hudgens. And why is a senior even acknowledging a loser like Connell? When we find out, it all comes apart, then back together. They go the Bandslam and (SPOILER) lose. But maybe the real Bandslam is the friends you made along the way.
Never mind all of that, how’s the music? As indicated, it’s pretty hot, although it definitely gets more indie-pop as it goes along. A third-wave ska version of a Bread song is featured, and there’s an “original”number that is pretty dire - especially from a kid who worships CBGB’s.
Also, how does a loser like Connell get two of the hottest girls in school latching onto him on his first day? I’m going to say, unreliable narrator. Let’s assume he is better looking and they are more average, and he is just seeing them, and himself through the eyes of teen angst. But how does he get to manage and arrange for a band when he doesn’t sing or play?
Never mind, it’s just a show. A pretty good one - not as good as, say, Booksmart but in the same league. If teen movies are mostly like this, we should watch more.
It stars Gaelan Connell as a chinless, bad-haired high-school freshman loser. He is obsessed with music, and writes an email to David Bowie every day (which is never answered). He has no friends. His single mom, Lisa Kudrow, tells him they are moving to Connecticut, where maybe he won’t be bullied. But he suspects nothing will change.
However, on his first day he meets Vanessa Hudgens as Sa5m (the “5” is silent), a gothy depressive loner who will hang out with him, although she doesn’t do friends. Also, super-popular senior Aly Michalka corrals him into helping her with the daycare for kids of students. (The kids are like 5 years old, but the actors playing the students are around 30, so just roll with it.)
He also finds out that the school is obsessed with Bandslam, a state-wide (nation-wide?) battle of the bands. Their school’s entry is The Glory Dogs, fronted by Michalka’s ex. They are a pretty hot band, with a kind of up-tempo Springsteen sound, with an R&B horn section. I would expect Connell to be pretty psyched, but maybe they weren’t “alt” enough for him.
When Michalka tries to introduce him to the Velvet Underground (while “Femme Fatale” plays on the soundtrack), she discovers he is very well versed in rock. She takes him to check out here band, featuring bassist Bug (a Flea wannabe) (Charlie Saxton) and guitarist Omar (Tim Jo). They rip through a hot version of “Amphetamine”, which Connell ruthlessly criticizes. So Michalka asks him to be their manager.
It turns out that they used to be Glory Dogs, but got thrown out because Michalka broke up with Scott Porter, their douchy lead singer. Connell’s image is to fatten their sound by corralling a classic pianist and cellist and finding the hottest drummer in school, a burnout played by Ryan Donawho. He only agrees to join because he thinks Connell’s mom is hot.
Through this all, Connell is painfully shy and awkward, but he’s trying.
The basic conflict, other than Connell’s struggle with loserdom, is that his friendship with hot, cool, caring Michalka is getting in the way of any romance with Hudgens. And why is a senior even acknowledging a loser like Connell? When we find out, it all comes apart, then back together. They go the Bandslam and (SPOILER) lose. But maybe the real Bandslam is the friends you made along the way.
Never mind all of that, how’s the music? As indicated, it’s pretty hot, although it definitely gets more indie-pop as it goes along. A third-wave ska version of a Bread song is featured, and there’s an “original”number that is pretty dire - especially from a kid who worships CBGB’s.
Also, how does a loser like Connell get two of the hottest girls in school latching onto him on his first day? I’m going to say, unreliable narrator. Let’s assume he is better looking and they are more average, and he is just seeing them, and himself through the eyes of teen angst. But how does he get to manage and arrange for a band when he doesn’t sing or play?
Never mind, it’s just a show. A pretty good one - not as good as, say, Booksmart but in the same league. If teen movies are mostly like this, we should watch more.
Friday, December 20, 2019
Shafted
Shaft (2019) turns out to be a sequel of Shaft (2000) which we haven’t seen. That didn’t cause much confusion.
It starts in 1989 with John Shaft II (Samuel L. Jackson) and his wife Regina Hall arguing in his car, with baby John in the back. When the bad guys shoot up the car, Hall has had enough and takes the baby out of Shaft’s life. Cut to present day. Baby Shaft, a.k.a. J.J. (Jessie T. Usher) is all grown up - a bougie data analyst for the FBI. He is friends with nurse Alexandra Shipp and Avan Jogia, a Moslem and recovering addict. When Jogia dies of an ‘overdose’, J.J. decides to investigate. He heads for the worst drug den he can find and asks to talk to the boss. Since he’s a college educated nerd, this doesn’t go well. He is going to need help. His dad.
This is mostly a comedy - the joke being the contrast between Jackson’s bad-assedness and Usher’s softer approach. Take his friendship with Shipp. He’s clearly in love with her, but doesn’t want to break up the friendship so won’t move on her. Jackson just tells him to smash it - not quite the right approach either, but he has a point.
And of course, his granddad, the original Shaft, Richard Roundtree, gets involved.
Sadly, although this is all fairly well done, it is pretty predictable. In fact, it has a TV sit-com feel to it. A good one, maybe - and these days that can be great - but not a great movie. But fun forgettable fluff is still fun, and I might even watch this again, or at least the 2000 version.
It starts in 1989 with John Shaft II (Samuel L. Jackson) and his wife Regina Hall arguing in his car, with baby John in the back. When the bad guys shoot up the car, Hall has had enough and takes the baby out of Shaft’s life. Cut to present day. Baby Shaft, a.k.a. J.J. (Jessie T. Usher) is all grown up - a bougie data analyst for the FBI. He is friends with nurse Alexandra Shipp and Avan Jogia, a Moslem and recovering addict. When Jogia dies of an ‘overdose’, J.J. decides to investigate. He heads for the worst drug den he can find and asks to talk to the boss. Since he’s a college educated nerd, this doesn’t go well. He is going to need help. His dad.
This is mostly a comedy - the joke being the contrast between Jackson’s bad-assedness and Usher’s softer approach. Take his friendship with Shipp. He’s clearly in love with her, but doesn’t want to break up the friendship so won’t move on her. Jackson just tells him to smash it - not quite the right approach either, but he has a point.
And of course, his granddad, the original Shaft, Richard Roundtree, gets involved.
Sadly, although this is all fairly well done, it is pretty predictable. In fact, it has a TV sit-com feel to it. A good one, maybe - and these days that can be great - but not a great movie. But fun forgettable fluff is still fun, and I might even watch this again, or at least the 2000 version.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Silly Monsters, Super Creeps
Another oldies double bill - this time a pair of horror comedies: You'll Find Out/Zombies on Broadway (1940/1945).
Although it features Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre, You’ll Find Out is actually a Kay Kyser vehicle. Kyser was dance band leader who also had a radio quiz show: Kay Kyser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge. A debutante, Helen Parrish, booked his band to play at her house party - an old, not that dark, house.
They arrive on a stormy night and meet batty Aunt Alma Kruger. She has been hosting mystic medium Bela Lugosi, who her lawyer and old family friend Boris Karloff is suspicious of, but admits that he does seem to have some powers. Of course, everyone listens to Karloff because he seems like such a kind and trustworthy sort. Parrish has invited a debunker of the supernatural, but with the road washed out, he might not make it. Wait - here he is, and it’s Peter Lorre! Another trustworthy sort, just look at him.
I’m sure you can imagine the hi-jinks, including the full suite of spook tricks that Lugosi employs for his act. Dennis O’Keefe is on hand as Parrish’s boyfriend, and makes little impression, which is kind of his trademark.
Although I’d heard of Kay Kyser, I didn’t realize that his cornet player was Ish Kabibble - who was not what I was expecting at all. He looks like a mixture of Jerry Lewis and Moe Howard (around the hair) and maintains a deadpan look of puzzlement throughout. I was expecting someone more Yiddish.
Zombies features the comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney, a knockoff Abbott and Costello. They are PR men for Sheldon Leonard’s new nightclub, the Zombie Hut. They promise to get him a real zombie in time for the opening, and he promises them they’ll be in trouble if they don’t. So after some silliness in a museum, they head for the island of San Sebastián, the only place where real zombies can be found.
Does that fictional island sound familiar? Wait until you hear calypso singer Sir Lancelot serenading them when they arrive. Or when they meet skeletal zombie Darby Jones. These are all clear callbacks to I Walked with a Zombie. Except that the mad scientist making the zombies is Bela Lugosi - for a touch of White Zombie.
This is far from hilarious, but it’s kind of cute. It’s basically forgettable. At least Bela got a paycheck.
Although it features Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre, You’ll Find Out is actually a Kay Kyser vehicle. Kyser was dance band leader who also had a radio quiz show: Kay Kyser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge. A debutante, Helen Parrish, booked his band to play at her house party - an old, not that dark, house.
They arrive on a stormy night and meet batty Aunt Alma Kruger. She has been hosting mystic medium Bela Lugosi, who her lawyer and old family friend Boris Karloff is suspicious of, but admits that he does seem to have some powers. Of course, everyone listens to Karloff because he seems like such a kind and trustworthy sort. Parrish has invited a debunker of the supernatural, but with the road washed out, he might not make it. Wait - here he is, and it’s Peter Lorre! Another trustworthy sort, just look at him.
I’m sure you can imagine the hi-jinks, including the full suite of spook tricks that Lugosi employs for his act. Dennis O’Keefe is on hand as Parrish’s boyfriend, and makes little impression, which is kind of his trademark.
Although I’d heard of Kay Kyser, I didn’t realize that his cornet player was Ish Kabibble - who was not what I was expecting at all. He looks like a mixture of Jerry Lewis and Moe Howard (around the hair) and maintains a deadpan look of puzzlement throughout. I was expecting someone more Yiddish.
Zombies features the comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney, a knockoff Abbott and Costello. They are PR men for Sheldon Leonard’s new nightclub, the Zombie Hut. They promise to get him a real zombie in time for the opening, and he promises them they’ll be in trouble if they don’t. So after some silliness in a museum, they head for the island of San Sebastián, the only place where real zombies can be found.
Does that fictional island sound familiar? Wait until you hear calypso singer Sir Lancelot serenading them when they arrive. Or when they meet skeletal zombie Darby Jones. These are all clear callbacks to I Walked with a Zombie. Except that the mad scientist making the zombies is Bela Lugosi - for a touch of White Zombie.
This is far from hilarious, but it’s kind of cute. It’s basically forgettable. At least Bela got a paycheck.
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Blood-Sucking Gangsters
Speaking of Yayan Ruhian, we watched Yakuza Apocalypse (2015). He only had a small role, but I was looking for an excuse.
It starts with a yakuza boss getting into a gunfight against incredible odds and winning. Our hero and narrator, Hayato Ichihara, talks about how loved and respected the yakuza are in his small town, and how he became one, becoming the boss’ bodyguard. But the boss is killed, and just before he dies, he bites Ichihara.
You see, he was a vampire all along, and now Ichihara is too. Before he quite realizes it, he starts turning townspeople, leading to a rash of vampirism. But that’s not the worst part - the same people who killed the boss are after him.
This seems like a pretty cool horror-thriller, but it’s actually an absurdist comedy. For example, when Ichihara turns, one of the boss’ helpers explains the rules with the help of a blackboard: Only civilians taste good, yakuza have little nutrition. But yakuza must not kill civilians, so this leads to a dilemma. The boss solved it by imprisoning enemy yakuza and reforming them by forcing them to learn to knit, and torturing them when they show anger or aggression. Once they are gentle and sweet, he kills them and sucks their blood.
One of the assassins sent to kill him is a priest in a Portuguese ruff collar who only speaks English and carries a coffin (like Django). Another is a nerdy backpacker tourist (Yayan Ruhian). But the strongest opponent is a guy in a frog mascot furry costume. SPOILER - when he takes the head off of his costume - he really has a frog head! But he can grow to the size of Godzilla!
When we started watching this, I had forgotten it was a Takashi Miike film. He usually makes very violent films, and this qualifies. I’ve mainly seen his more serious fare (like Thirteen Assassins), but I guess he makes a lot of violent comedies as well. There seems to be some kind of social commentary here: both vampires and gangsters live of the blood of the normals. But it doesn’t really seem to come together, and might just be a red herring. So don’t come to this looking for sense and sanity. You have been warned.
It starts with a yakuza boss getting into a gunfight against incredible odds and winning. Our hero and narrator, Hayato Ichihara, talks about how loved and respected the yakuza are in his small town, and how he became one, becoming the boss’ bodyguard. But the boss is killed, and just before he dies, he bites Ichihara.
You see, he was a vampire all along, and now Ichihara is too. Before he quite realizes it, he starts turning townspeople, leading to a rash of vampirism. But that’s not the worst part - the same people who killed the boss are after him.
This seems like a pretty cool horror-thriller, but it’s actually an absurdist comedy. For example, when Ichihara turns, one of the boss’ helpers explains the rules with the help of a blackboard: Only civilians taste good, yakuza have little nutrition. But yakuza must not kill civilians, so this leads to a dilemma. The boss solved it by imprisoning enemy yakuza and reforming them by forcing them to learn to knit, and torturing them when they show anger or aggression. Once they are gentle and sweet, he kills them and sucks their blood.
One of the assassins sent to kill him is a priest in a Portuguese ruff collar who only speaks English and carries a coffin (like Django). Another is a nerdy backpacker tourist (Yayan Ruhian). But the strongest opponent is a guy in a frog mascot furry costume. SPOILER - when he takes the head off of his costume - he really has a frog head! But he can grow to the size of Godzilla!
When we started watching this, I had forgotten it was a Takashi Miike film. He usually makes very violent films, and this qualifies. I’ve mainly seen his more serious fare (like Thirteen Assassins), but I guess he makes a lot of violent comedies as well. There seems to be some kind of social commentary here: both vampires and gangsters live of the blood of the normals. But it doesn’t really seem to come together, and might just be a red herring. So don’t come to this looking for sense and sanity. You have been warned.
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Canyoneros
Echo in the Canyon (2019) is one of those music documentaries that we love, about a period in music that we love. But it has some problems that make it hard for us to love.
It is narrated by Jakob Dylan, who had the idea for the movie when watching Model Shop, the Jacques Demy movie which we are going to watch once we watch Lola, to which it is sort of a sequel. It takes place in Vietnam-era Los Angeles and it got him thinking about that time - especially the music. So he decided to make a film about the Echo Canyon scene. Being a Dylan, he can call on a lot of musicians.
So he gets interviews with David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Steven Stills, Brian Wilson, Tom Petty, Michelle Phillips, Jackson Browne, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton and a host of others. He also gets some friends together to sing and talk about the songs of the time, including Cat Power, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, and Beck. They talk about Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, how they inspired the Mamas and the Papas, the Beach Boys and how they inspired the Beatles and vice versa. They play archival footage of the bands and play their own versions. One very sweet scene has them playing “I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” with Brian Wilson. When they start he asks what key they are playing in, and Dylan says Eb. Brian says - there’s your problem, you’re in the wrong key. Never mind, play it in any key you want.
This is all very cool as far as it goes. The old guys tell great stories (especially Crosby, who admits that he was an asshole). Since I’m old, I don’t really know the new kids, but their renditions are mostly great. At least there are women in the young crowd. Of the older generation, only Michelle represents the female persuasion, and she only talks about who she was sleeping with. Someone (Stills?) mentions Judy Collins, only to say he stole a few bars of one of her songs to make one of his own. Joni Mitchell, who wrote “Ladies of the Canyon” about this scene, is not mentioned.
Of course, other canyon dwellers who don’t really fit the mold, like Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart aren’t mentioned either. So this take is far from definitive. I was hoping for a broader look at the time and place. Also, Dylan seems personable and doesn’t impose himself on the narrative, but is just a little too blank for me. Good looking, though, like his dad.
It is narrated by Jakob Dylan, who had the idea for the movie when watching Model Shop, the Jacques Demy movie which we are going to watch once we watch Lola, to which it is sort of a sequel. It takes place in Vietnam-era Los Angeles and it got him thinking about that time - especially the music. So he decided to make a film about the Echo Canyon scene. Being a Dylan, he can call on a lot of musicians.
So he gets interviews with David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Steven Stills, Brian Wilson, Tom Petty, Michelle Phillips, Jackson Browne, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton and a host of others. He also gets some friends together to sing and talk about the songs of the time, including Cat Power, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, and Beck. They talk about Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, how they inspired the Mamas and the Papas, the Beach Boys and how they inspired the Beatles and vice versa. They play archival footage of the bands and play their own versions. One very sweet scene has them playing “I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” with Brian Wilson. When they start he asks what key they are playing in, and Dylan says Eb. Brian says - there’s your problem, you’re in the wrong key. Never mind, play it in any key you want.
This is all very cool as far as it goes. The old guys tell great stories (especially Crosby, who admits that he was an asshole). Since I’m old, I don’t really know the new kids, but their renditions are mostly great. At least there are women in the young crowd. Of the older generation, only Michelle represents the female persuasion, and she only talks about who she was sleeping with. Someone (Stills?) mentions Judy Collins, only to say he stole a few bars of one of her songs to make one of his own. Joni Mitchell, who wrote “Ladies of the Canyon” about this scene, is not mentioned.
Of course, other canyon dwellers who don’t really fit the mold, like Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart aren’t mentioned either. So this take is far from definitive. I was hoping for a broader look at the time and place. Also, Dylan seems personable and doesn’t impose himself on the narrative, but is just a little too blank for me. Good looking, though, like his dad.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Get Smart
Booksmart (2019) was so much fun. I saw it described as Superbad with girls, but smarter. I've actually never seen Superbad, but I believe it.
It stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as two high school seniors on the last day of school. They are sort of the class nerds. Feldstein is class president, a strident feminist who plans to go to Georgetown after she graduates from Yale. Dever is a an out lesbian, who is volunteering in Botswana over the summer. They have a joyous friendship, goofing around and acting shocked at how awesome the other one is. But at school, they stick to themselves, eating lunch alone together, or bugging the principal about student council duties.
Then, in the bathroom, Feldstein overhears some of her classmates talking about her and what a drag she is. She confronts them, saying that while they were partying, she was studying, and now she's going to Yale. It turns out that they all have pretty good plans - Stanford, Yale also, and the stoner kid isn't going to college because he has an offer at Google. Feldstein realizes that avoiding socializing and parties have all been for naught, and vows to change her ways. She will go to a senior party.
She convinces Dever to go to one of the popular kids' party, because the girl who Dever has a crush on will be there. She doesn't admit that she has a crush on the guy who's throwing the party. The only problem - they don't know where the party is.
I'm sure this is the plot of a dozen movies (Superbad?), but it's the way they pull it off. First, they get taken to the rich kid's party on a yacht - and are the only ones who show up, except his druggie girlfriend. These are both pretty stock characters, but with some real definition - especially Billie Lourde, the girlfriend.
Then they wind up at the drama kids' party - a formal murder mystery party with a sit down dinner. This is not their scene, but it gets worse when the hallucinogen that Lourde dosed them with kicks in. They hallucinate that they have turned into Barbie dolls.
And so on. A couple of things I liked: Although Feldstein is a bit stocky, with a kind of bulldog face, nobody mentions this - they just trash her personality. Nobody slams Dever for being gay, just for being killjoy. Also, these kids are known by their peers. They aren't anonymous nobodies. And their peers include semi-outcasts like the rich kid, the druggie and the flamboyant drama kids. When I was in high school, I was kind of an outcast nerd, but I realized years later that I was actually pretty well known. Maybe not popular or respected, but not just an extra in a busy school corridor. Also, even the party kids are getting into good schools - I wasn't exactly a party kid, probably more of a burnout, and I got into a good school. So, maybe this is a 1% problems movie, but I relate.
But in addition to a tried-and-true plot and some interesting social observation, it's just really fun. The girls have a deep friendship and are articulate and fun, even if they are also shy and socially backwards. And although everything does NOT work out, they do go to a party, take drugs, and make out with someone (even if it wasn't what they planned). I love happy endings.
It stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as two high school seniors on the last day of school. They are sort of the class nerds. Feldstein is class president, a strident feminist who plans to go to Georgetown after she graduates from Yale. Dever is a an out lesbian, who is volunteering in Botswana over the summer. They have a joyous friendship, goofing around and acting shocked at how awesome the other one is. But at school, they stick to themselves, eating lunch alone together, or bugging the principal about student council duties.
Then, in the bathroom, Feldstein overhears some of her classmates talking about her and what a drag she is. She confronts them, saying that while they were partying, she was studying, and now she's going to Yale. It turns out that they all have pretty good plans - Stanford, Yale also, and the stoner kid isn't going to college because he has an offer at Google. Feldstein realizes that avoiding socializing and parties have all been for naught, and vows to change her ways. She will go to a senior party.
She convinces Dever to go to one of the popular kids' party, because the girl who Dever has a crush on will be there. She doesn't admit that she has a crush on the guy who's throwing the party. The only problem - they don't know where the party is.
I'm sure this is the plot of a dozen movies (Superbad?), but it's the way they pull it off. First, they get taken to the rich kid's party on a yacht - and are the only ones who show up, except his druggie girlfriend. These are both pretty stock characters, but with some real definition - especially Billie Lourde, the girlfriend.
Then they wind up at the drama kids' party - a formal murder mystery party with a sit down dinner. This is not their scene, but it gets worse when the hallucinogen that Lourde dosed them with kicks in. They hallucinate that they have turned into Barbie dolls.
And so on. A couple of things I liked: Although Feldstein is a bit stocky, with a kind of bulldog face, nobody mentions this - they just trash her personality. Nobody slams Dever for being gay, just for being killjoy. Also, these kids are known by their peers. They aren't anonymous nobodies. And their peers include semi-outcasts like the rich kid, the druggie and the flamboyant drama kids. When I was in high school, I was kind of an outcast nerd, but I realized years later that I was actually pretty well known. Maybe not popular or respected, but not just an extra in a busy school corridor. Also, even the party kids are getting into good schools - I wasn't exactly a party kid, probably more of a burnout, and I got into a good school. So, maybe this is a 1% problems movie, but I relate.
But in addition to a tried-and-true plot and some interesting social observation, it's just really fun. The girls have a deep friendship and are articulate and fun, even if they are also shy and socially backwards. And although everything does NOT work out, they do go to a party, take drugs, and make out with someone (even if it wasn't what they planned). I love happy endings.
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Java Jive
We watched Merantau (2009) because Yayan Ruhian caught Ms. Spenser’s attention in John Wick 3. I’ve seen him and crew in The Raid, but had this queued up for just such an occasion.
It starts in rural Sumatra with Star Iki Uwais practicing solo Pencak Silat, an Indonesian martial arts style. He goes home to his mother and brother and they talk about his upcoming merantau, the ritual that men in his region take part in. It means traveling to the big city and gaining experience and success. His brother came home from his merantau, which put him in disgrace, but his mother assures him he can come home whenever he wants.
He gets to Jakarta and finds it to be a hard place, and no one wants to hire him to teach Silat. When a little kid steals his wallet, he chases him down and finds the kid’s sister being shaken down by her pimp, so he intervenes. That gets the girl fired from her dancing gig, and doesn’t appreciate it. Of course, he has to save her many more times, in bigger and bigger fights against worse and worse opponents.
This is a regular martial arts movie in a lot of ways. It doesn’t have the relentless drive that director Gareth Evans later achieved with Iko Uwais in The Raid, which influenced the current crop of action movies like JW3. The fights are very good - Silat is an interesting style, even though we don’t see a kerambit in action or much in the way of stick fighting. But the emphasis is mostly on the suffering Uwais endures while still taking on the bad guys and protecting the girl and her brother.
Ruhian’s role was a small one - a guy like Uwais who came to the big city, but sold his skills to the mob. His fight with Uwais in the elevator is significant, but maybe not the best in the movie.
It starts in rural Sumatra with Star Iki Uwais practicing solo Pencak Silat, an Indonesian martial arts style. He goes home to his mother and brother and they talk about his upcoming merantau, the ritual that men in his region take part in. It means traveling to the big city and gaining experience and success. His brother came home from his merantau, which put him in disgrace, but his mother assures him he can come home whenever he wants.
He gets to Jakarta and finds it to be a hard place, and no one wants to hire him to teach Silat. When a little kid steals his wallet, he chases him down and finds the kid’s sister being shaken down by her pimp, so he intervenes. That gets the girl fired from her dancing gig, and doesn’t appreciate it. Of course, he has to save her many more times, in bigger and bigger fights against worse and worse opponents.
This is a regular martial arts movie in a lot of ways. It doesn’t have the relentless drive that director Gareth Evans later achieved with Iko Uwais in The Raid, which influenced the current crop of action movies like JW3. The fights are very good - Silat is an interesting style, even though we don’t see a kerambit in action or much in the way of stick fighting. But the emphasis is mostly on the suffering Uwais endures while still taking on the bad guys and protecting the girl and her brother.
Ruhian’s role was a small one - a guy like Uwais who came to the big city, but sold his skills to the mob. His fight with Uwais in the elevator is significant, but maybe not the best in the movie.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
MiBI, Maybe?
Possibly because we weren’t expecting the moon, we enjoyed Men in Black: International (2019). I would say that it was exactly good enough.
We start with the backstory of the protagonists, Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth (yes, Thor and Valkyrie). Hemsworth and his mentor Liam Neeson first take on an interdimensional alien swarm at the Eiffel Tower. Then we see Tessa Thompson as a little kid watching her parents being neuralyzed when they see an alien. She helps the cute little alien escape and remembers everything.
That’s the start of her journey. She spends the rest of her life studying and researching, trying to find the Men in Black organization. When she does, she convinces them not to neuralyze her because she is very smart - she found them, right - and she has no other life. And so she is sent as a probationary MiB to the London office.
Hemsworth, on the other hand, has been letting things slide - sloppy MiB work, getting by on charm and luck, and by the way, being a total man-slut - sleeping with the aliens if that’s what they like. This sort of reminds me of how he was a just a bimbo in Ghostbusters. When he gets the assignment to show Vungus the Ugly (Kayvan Novak) a good time while he’s on Earth, Thompson talks her way onto the assignment. And of course it goes very badly.
Hemsworth’ s character is pretty fun - like I say, man-slut party boy who Is one of the best agents, but pissing it all away. Thompson’s is a little more of a problem. She has to be a big nerd - no life outside her desire to be an agent. She has to be naive and idealistic, and she does it well. But she also has to be sassy and street when called on, because (I guess) she’s black? I guess it isn’t too bad.
A lot of this movie is very predictable, and it tilts pretty strongly to cute. Take Kumail Nanjiani’s “Pawny”, a tiny alien chess pawn. Very cuddly. But Hemsworth and Thompson are just so charismatic and lovely that you can forgive a lot. At least we could, and did. There was no need for this movie, but it was good enough for us.
In conclusion, remember Zed’s funeral in MiB3? It was pretty much “He never told me a single thing about himself”? Now everybody knows everything about any agent. It’s a damn shame.
We start with the backstory of the protagonists, Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth (yes, Thor and Valkyrie). Hemsworth and his mentor Liam Neeson first take on an interdimensional alien swarm at the Eiffel Tower. Then we see Tessa Thompson as a little kid watching her parents being neuralyzed when they see an alien. She helps the cute little alien escape and remembers everything.
That’s the start of her journey. She spends the rest of her life studying and researching, trying to find the Men in Black organization. When she does, she convinces them not to neuralyze her because she is very smart - she found them, right - and she has no other life. And so she is sent as a probationary MiB to the London office.
Hemsworth, on the other hand, has been letting things slide - sloppy MiB work, getting by on charm and luck, and by the way, being a total man-slut - sleeping with the aliens if that’s what they like. This sort of reminds me of how he was a just a bimbo in Ghostbusters. When he gets the assignment to show Vungus the Ugly (Kayvan Novak) a good time while he’s on Earth, Thompson talks her way onto the assignment. And of course it goes very badly.
Hemsworth’ s character is pretty fun - like I say, man-slut party boy who Is one of the best agents, but pissing it all away. Thompson’s is a little more of a problem. She has to be a big nerd - no life outside her desire to be an agent. She has to be naive and idealistic, and she does it well. But she also has to be sassy and street when called on, because (I guess) she’s black? I guess it isn’t too bad.
A lot of this movie is very predictable, and it tilts pretty strongly to cute. Take Kumail Nanjiani’s “Pawny”, a tiny alien chess pawn. Very cuddly. But Hemsworth and Thompson are just so charismatic and lovely that you can forgive a lot. At least we could, and did. There was no need for this movie, but it was good enough for us.
In conclusion, remember Zed’s funeral in MiB3? It was pretty much “He never told me a single thing about himself”? Now everybody knows everything about any agent. It’s a damn shame.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Wicked Cool
We’re finally getting a some of the big 2019 movies delivered, and John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019) was one of the ones we were most excited about. No need to say - it delivered.
It starts right after the end of JW2. John Wick and his pit bull puppy are one the run on a crowded New York street in the rain. They are about to become the target for every assassin in a world of assassins. John looks determined, but the dog looks like it doesn’t like getting wet. So he sends the dog back to the Continental and heads out on his own.
I’m goin to skip all the plot and stuff, and just mention a few things. Like how cool Anjelica Huston is as his mother figure - a Belarus Roma who runs a school for ballerinas and assassins. Laurence Fishburne is the king of the bums, and one of his subjects is Jason Mantzoukas. A new addition to the mythos is the Adjudicator, played by nonbinary Asia Kate Dillon. They act to enforce the rules of the High Table, who rule this assassins’ world.
Wick also gets some assistance from Halle Berry, an assassin who works with dogs, a pair of black mallinoises. This is one of Ms. Spenser’s favorite parts, because doggies. Of course, Wick also uses a horse to kick and kill several opponents in another scene, and rides them against a team on motorcycles. So, yeah, I guess he likes animals.
The big boss fight in the end is against Mark Dacascos, a fighting sushi chef (because I guess people know him from Iron Chef). His henchmen are Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian, from The Raid. They act like the chance to fight him is a big honor, and there seems to be something going on in the fight - like maybe Reeves has trained with these guys, and they are buddies in real life. In fact, many of the fights show more than the choreography. They seem to show some of the personalities of not just the characters, but of the actors. Maybe even the personality of the fight itself.
Like the pit bull puppy - it looks tough but it acts kind of spoiled. It spends most of the final fight in a bunker on a couch with Ian McShane.
It starts right after the end of JW2. John Wick and his pit bull puppy are one the run on a crowded New York street in the rain. They are about to become the target for every assassin in a world of assassins. John looks determined, but the dog looks like it doesn’t like getting wet. So he sends the dog back to the Continental and heads out on his own.
I’m goin to skip all the plot and stuff, and just mention a few things. Like how cool Anjelica Huston is as his mother figure - a Belarus Roma who runs a school for ballerinas and assassins. Laurence Fishburne is the king of the bums, and one of his subjects is Jason Mantzoukas. A new addition to the mythos is the Adjudicator, played by nonbinary Asia Kate Dillon. They act to enforce the rules of the High Table, who rule this assassins’ world.
Wick also gets some assistance from Halle Berry, an assassin who works with dogs, a pair of black mallinoises. This is one of Ms. Spenser’s favorite parts, because doggies. Of course, Wick also uses a horse to kick and kill several opponents in another scene, and rides them against a team on motorcycles. So, yeah, I guess he likes animals.
The big boss fight in the end is against Mark Dacascos, a fighting sushi chef (because I guess people know him from Iron Chef). His henchmen are Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian, from The Raid. They act like the chance to fight him is a big honor, and there seems to be something going on in the fight - like maybe Reeves has trained with these guys, and they are buddies in real life. In fact, many of the fights show more than the choreography. They seem to show some of the personalities of not just the characters, but of the actors. Maybe even the personality of the fight itself.
Like the pit bull puppy - it looks tough but it acts kind of spoiled. It spends most of the final fight in a bunker on a couch with Ian McShane.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Something to Avenge
Because of a stupid mistake I made, we finally got to see Avengers: Endgame (2019). On Weds night, I realized that I had forgotten to send back two of the Netflix DVDs, and I wasn’t sure they would get to Netflix in time for them to send our next movies. And indeed, they didn’t. But Netflix kindly sent us two DVDs from the top of our queue anyway. And Endgame has been at the top of the queue since Netflix moved it up from the Saved queue. But they’ve been listed as Short Wait. This next part is just a theory - if you send your DVDs back on Sat or Mon, like everyone else, you will never get the Long or Short Wait movies. They only ship later in the week. So we got lucky. Oh so lucky!
It starts just after the Snap. The Avengers are in shock, defeated. Tony Stark is stuck in a spaceship with Nebula, running out of oxygen. Then, a bright light - it’s Captain Marvel! She brings them back to Earth, and declares that it’s time to go after Thanos. They failed last time, but now they have her to back them up. They find him alone on a garden planet, and find out that he destroyed the Infinity Stones. So Thor kills him.
Wow, movie over? I thought this was going to be 3 hours long. Maybe just a long credits sequence? Cut to Five Years Later. The world is devastated. Cap is running a therapy group. Natasha is trying to run the Avengers, but nobody has their heart in it. Hawkeye is in Japan killing bad guys for his therapy. Tony has retired to a cabin with Pepper and their daughter - actually, he’s doing pretty all right. Everyone keeps telling themselves to accept it and move on. Then Ant-Man shows up, released from the Quantum Realm. For him, only five hours have passed. Maybe they can build a time machine.
So they get the team back together. Thor has been hiding out, drinking beer and playing video games and looks like the Dude Lebowski. Banner has figured out how to take Hulk form and stay smart - and he wears shirts now! Clint is brought back from Japan. Tony refuses to abandon his family, until he figures out how to build the time machine. And so the Time Heist is on. Steal the Infinity Stones before Thanos gets them and undo the Snap.
The cool thing about this movie is the tone. It’s depressed and desperate, what with half of all life gone. But it’s also quite silly, with Fat Thor, Smart Hulk, and goofy Ant-Man. When discussing the Time Machine, everyone asks if it is going to be like that movie - and starts listing the hundreds of time travel movies. But even when it’s goofy, it often has great heart, like when Fat Thor meets his mother just before her death. He’s drunk and out of shape, but at least he gets a chance to say goodbye.
And of course, everyone gets unSnapped (you knew they would because of the sequels). But there are also real stakes. Not everyone comes out of this movie (you might have known that because of actors who want to move on...).
There are a ton of great set pieces (The Ancient One meets Hulk! All the women heroes assemble! The Asgardians call Rocket a rabbit!) and fights - one on one and melee style. It’s three hours long, and that’s about right.
In conclusion, this sort of closes a chapter in this 20+ series of films. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
It starts just after the Snap. The Avengers are in shock, defeated. Tony Stark is stuck in a spaceship with Nebula, running out of oxygen. Then, a bright light - it’s Captain Marvel! She brings them back to Earth, and declares that it’s time to go after Thanos. They failed last time, but now they have her to back them up. They find him alone on a garden planet, and find out that he destroyed the Infinity Stones. So Thor kills him.
Wow, movie over? I thought this was going to be 3 hours long. Maybe just a long credits sequence? Cut to Five Years Later. The world is devastated. Cap is running a therapy group. Natasha is trying to run the Avengers, but nobody has their heart in it. Hawkeye is in Japan killing bad guys for his therapy. Tony has retired to a cabin with Pepper and their daughter - actually, he’s doing pretty all right. Everyone keeps telling themselves to accept it and move on. Then Ant-Man shows up, released from the Quantum Realm. For him, only five hours have passed. Maybe they can build a time machine.
So they get the team back together. Thor has been hiding out, drinking beer and playing video games and looks like the Dude Lebowski. Banner has figured out how to take Hulk form and stay smart - and he wears shirts now! Clint is brought back from Japan. Tony refuses to abandon his family, until he figures out how to build the time machine. And so the Time Heist is on. Steal the Infinity Stones before Thanos gets them and undo the Snap.
The cool thing about this movie is the tone. It’s depressed and desperate, what with half of all life gone. But it’s also quite silly, with Fat Thor, Smart Hulk, and goofy Ant-Man. When discussing the Time Machine, everyone asks if it is going to be like that movie - and starts listing the hundreds of time travel movies. But even when it’s goofy, it often has great heart, like when Fat Thor meets his mother just before her death. He’s drunk and out of shape, but at least he gets a chance to say goodbye.
And of course, everyone gets unSnapped (you knew they would because of the sequels). But there are also real stakes. Not everyone comes out of this movie (you might have known that because of actors who want to move on...).
There are a ton of great set pieces (The Ancient One meets Hulk! All the women heroes assemble! The Asgardians call Rocket a rabbit!) and fights - one on one and melee style. It’s three hours long, and that’s about right.
In conclusion, this sort of closes a chapter in this 20+ series of films. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Nine Lives, Give or Take
The Man with Nine Lives (1940) is sort of a hold-over from Spooktober - a black and white Boris Karloff movie. It’s also kind of a fluke - it was about 9 down on our Netflix queue. But we didn’t mind when it got sent.
It starts with Dr. Roger Pryor and his fiancée Nurse Jo Ann Sayers demonstrating an advanced medical procedure to the faculty and press: they have frozen a patient and resuscitated her after 5 days. But the world isn’t ready for this, and the dean makes him take a vacation to get him out of the limelight. So they go to look for the man who developed these techniques, Dr. Boris Karloff, who disappeared from his home by the Canadian border 10 years ago.
After the obligatory warning-off by the locals, they find his house on an island. It’s deserted and run down. But they discover there is a hidden basement when they fall through the floor. Under that, there is a deeper basement, and that’s where the hidden laboratory is. And behind a door they find an icy room, with Karloff frozen on the floor.
They revive him (OK, that’s 2 lives) and he tells of how he was treating a rich man for cancer by freezing him, when his greedy nephew tried to get him declared dead. The court ordered him to show them the uncle, so he took the judge, sheriff, nephew, and lawyer into his underground lab. Then he threatened them with a foaming poison and everyone got locked in the deep freeze.
When they thawed everyone out, Karloff was very excited that his experiment worked. It just needs a few test subjects, and he has 7 right there (judge, sheriff, lawyer, nephew, uncle, doctor and nurse). So he plans to start trying out different formulas on them one by one until someone lives.
The cool thing about this movie is that Karloff is so sympathetic. Pryor and Sayers are on his side almost all the way, against the bumbling, ignorant and greedy nephew and crowd. Even when he shoots the nephew for burning his notes, they kind of see his point. But when he starts to run out of subjects, and it’s either Pryor or Sayers...
It’s amazing how good Karloff can be. I’m beginning to think that we have to watch some of the Dr. Wong movies.
In conclusion, if you count all the lives, the math kind of works out.
It starts with Dr. Roger Pryor and his fiancée Nurse Jo Ann Sayers demonstrating an advanced medical procedure to the faculty and press: they have frozen a patient and resuscitated her after 5 days. But the world isn’t ready for this, and the dean makes him take a vacation to get him out of the limelight. So they go to look for the man who developed these techniques, Dr. Boris Karloff, who disappeared from his home by the Canadian border 10 years ago.
After the obligatory warning-off by the locals, they find his house on an island. It’s deserted and run down. But they discover there is a hidden basement when they fall through the floor. Under that, there is a deeper basement, and that’s where the hidden laboratory is. And behind a door they find an icy room, with Karloff frozen on the floor.
They revive him (OK, that’s 2 lives) and he tells of how he was treating a rich man for cancer by freezing him, when his greedy nephew tried to get him declared dead. The court ordered him to show them the uncle, so he took the judge, sheriff, nephew, and lawyer into his underground lab. Then he threatened them with a foaming poison and everyone got locked in the deep freeze.
When they thawed everyone out, Karloff was very excited that his experiment worked. It just needs a few test subjects, and he has 7 right there (judge, sheriff, lawyer, nephew, uncle, doctor and nurse). So he plans to start trying out different formulas on them one by one until someone lives.
The cool thing about this movie is that Karloff is so sympathetic. Pryor and Sayers are on his side almost all the way, against the bumbling, ignorant and greedy nephew and crowd. Even when he shoots the nephew for burning his notes, they kind of see his point. But when he starts to run out of subjects, and it’s either Pryor or Sayers...
It’s amazing how good Karloff can be. I’m beginning to think that we have to watch some of the Dr. Wong movies.
In conclusion, if you count all the lives, the math kind of works out.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Ghosts of Old Japan
As Spooktober draws to a close, we finish with a trio of Japanese art-house ghost or horror films.
Onibaba (1964) starts with images of long waving grass. We are introduced to a hole in this sea of grass, then two figures struggling through the grass, that reached above their heads. These two, wounded samurai from a nearby battle, sink down to rest, and are killed by two women hiding in the grass. These women strip the samurai of their arms and armor and dump the bodies in the hole. This is a striking scene - the women, clearly peasants, work at stripping the men like hunters skinning a deer, or butchers skinning a pig. They are strong and desperate.
They go back to the hut they share in the grass, gobble a handful of millet porridge and collapse in sleep. The older woman is played by Nobuko Otawa, the younger by Jitsuko Yoshimura. They are the mother and wife of a man who has gone to the wars.
Later, a man (Kei Satō) shows up, a friend of the son. He is sure glad to make it back, it was crazy. It takes a while, but he gets around to mention that the son is dead. After some time, the wife, or widow, starts sneaking out at night to see Sato. The mother-in-law tries to discourage it by talking about the Buddhist hell awaiting women who aren’t faithful, but it doesn’t seem to be working. When she steals a demon mask, she uses that to scare her daughter-in-law - with bad consequences. Hint: Onibaba could be translated “demon mother-in-law”.
This was an amazing movie. First, the scenes of grass, almost as abstract as a Stan Brakhage piece. Then the women, living primitive lives, so that the samurai seem almost like aliens. The women are simply dressed, sometimes stripped to the waist in the heat, with rough hair, completely unglamorous - but with exaggerated eye makeup. Their bodies are strong and very lean, which is hard to fake. This movie seems more like an ordinary drama (or maybe Woman in the Dunes), about what it takes to survive in wartime. Then, the supernatural intervenes, almost at the end.
Kwaidan (1964) came out the same year, but is a little more modern seeming. It was in color, rather than black and white like Onibaba. Also, the costumes are more likely to be colorful silks than the rough clothes of the peasants in Onibaba. Also, it’s an anthology movie, with five stories from Lefcadio Hearn’s book of the same title. I won’t go into all the stories, except to mention “Black Hair”, which is about a poor samurai who leaves his wife to marry a rich man’s daughter and take a post far away. When this works out unhappily, he returns after many years to find his first wife still loves him and forgives him. Until he wakes up in the morning...
“Hoichi the Earless” is probably the longest story. It’s about a blind biwa player, Hoichi, who sings the tale of the battle of Dan-no-Ura. When the priests (including Takashi Shimura from Seven Samurai) at the temple discover that he’s going out every night, they follow him. They discover that he is performing for an audience of the ghosts of the dead from Dan-no-Ura. To make him invisible to spirits, they write the Lotus Sutra all over his body. However, they forget to cover his ears, and that’s all the ghost who summons him can see. Guess how he got his name?
Ugetsu (1954) came out 10 years before the other movies, but has a very similar feel. Like Onibaba, it is about regular people and what happens in war. It is about a potter, his neighbor, and their wives. The potter sells his wares in a nearby town, and due to the war makes a fine profit. His neighbor helps him with the next batch - he wants to get enough money to buy armor and become a soldier.
When they are firing this load, the army comes through, raiding and stealing food. If the fire goes out before the kiln load is baked, they will lose everything. Against his wife’s wishes, the potter sneaks past the army to check - and it’s good! The pots are baked, and they can sell them at a town across the lake. The wives try to come, but they leave them on the far shore and go into town.
While very bad things are happening to the wives, and the neighbor is able to go to war, our potter meets a noble lady and her companion. They take him to a mansion, seduce him and marry him. She loves him for his artistry. And so he is happy for a time, until he finds out the truth. They are ghosts - the lady died without ever knowing love, and so stole him from his wife. Like in Kwaidan, he returns home to find his wife awaiting him, loving and forgiving. But, like his noble wife, she too is a ghost - she died while he was away with the spirits.
These movies had a very similar feel to them. They can be slow and contemplative, with lovely camera work that dwells on the natural world (or the soundstage version). Onibaba and Ugetsu both concentrate on peasants, rather than the nobility as in most costume dramas, but all three are at least partly about the tragedy of war. And they all have austere soundtracks, dominated by taiko drumming. They may be too similar to work really well as a triple bill, but seeing them that way made it easy to compare and contrast. And very enjoyable too.
Onibaba (1964) starts with images of long waving grass. We are introduced to a hole in this sea of grass, then two figures struggling through the grass, that reached above their heads. These two, wounded samurai from a nearby battle, sink down to rest, and are killed by two women hiding in the grass. These women strip the samurai of their arms and armor and dump the bodies in the hole. This is a striking scene - the women, clearly peasants, work at stripping the men like hunters skinning a deer, or butchers skinning a pig. They are strong and desperate.
They go back to the hut they share in the grass, gobble a handful of millet porridge and collapse in sleep. The older woman is played by Nobuko Otawa, the younger by Jitsuko Yoshimura. They are the mother and wife of a man who has gone to the wars.
Later, a man (Kei Satō) shows up, a friend of the son. He is sure glad to make it back, it was crazy. It takes a while, but he gets around to mention that the son is dead. After some time, the wife, or widow, starts sneaking out at night to see Sato. The mother-in-law tries to discourage it by talking about the Buddhist hell awaiting women who aren’t faithful, but it doesn’t seem to be working. When she steals a demon mask, she uses that to scare her daughter-in-law - with bad consequences. Hint: Onibaba could be translated “demon mother-in-law”.
This was an amazing movie. First, the scenes of grass, almost as abstract as a Stan Brakhage piece. Then the women, living primitive lives, so that the samurai seem almost like aliens. The women are simply dressed, sometimes stripped to the waist in the heat, with rough hair, completely unglamorous - but with exaggerated eye makeup. Their bodies are strong and very lean, which is hard to fake. This movie seems more like an ordinary drama (or maybe Woman in the Dunes), about what it takes to survive in wartime. Then, the supernatural intervenes, almost at the end.
Kwaidan (1964) came out the same year, but is a little more modern seeming. It was in color, rather than black and white like Onibaba. Also, the costumes are more likely to be colorful silks than the rough clothes of the peasants in Onibaba. Also, it’s an anthology movie, with five stories from Lefcadio Hearn’s book of the same title. I won’t go into all the stories, except to mention “Black Hair”, which is about a poor samurai who leaves his wife to marry a rich man’s daughter and take a post far away. When this works out unhappily, he returns after many years to find his first wife still loves him and forgives him. Until he wakes up in the morning...
“Hoichi the Earless” is probably the longest story. It’s about a blind biwa player, Hoichi, who sings the tale of the battle of Dan-no-Ura. When the priests (including Takashi Shimura from Seven Samurai) at the temple discover that he’s going out every night, they follow him. They discover that he is performing for an audience of the ghosts of the dead from Dan-no-Ura. To make him invisible to spirits, they write the Lotus Sutra all over his body. However, they forget to cover his ears, and that’s all the ghost who summons him can see. Guess how he got his name?
Ugetsu (1954) came out 10 years before the other movies, but has a very similar feel. Like Onibaba, it is about regular people and what happens in war. It is about a potter, his neighbor, and their wives. The potter sells his wares in a nearby town, and due to the war makes a fine profit. His neighbor helps him with the next batch - he wants to get enough money to buy armor and become a soldier.
When they are firing this load, the army comes through, raiding and stealing food. If the fire goes out before the kiln load is baked, they will lose everything. Against his wife’s wishes, the potter sneaks past the army to check - and it’s good! The pots are baked, and they can sell them at a town across the lake. The wives try to come, but they leave them on the far shore and go into town.
While very bad things are happening to the wives, and the neighbor is able to go to war, our potter meets a noble lady and her companion. They take him to a mansion, seduce him and marry him. She loves him for his artistry. And so he is happy for a time, until he finds out the truth. They are ghosts - the lady died without ever knowing love, and so stole him from his wife. Like in Kwaidan, he returns home to find his wife awaiting him, loving and forgiving. But, like his noble wife, she too is a ghost - she died while he was away with the spirits.
These movies had a very similar feel to them. They can be slow and contemplative, with lovely camera work that dwells on the natural world (or the soundstage version). Onibaba and Ugetsu both concentrate on peasants, rather than the nobility as in most costume dramas, but all three are at least partly about the tragedy of war. And they all have austere soundtracks, dominated by taiko drumming. They may be too similar to work really well as a triple bill, but seeing them that way made it easy to compare and contrast. And very enjoyable too.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Plant Food
It started with Monsters (2000). Someone, probably in Twitter, recommended it, so I rented it without much thought. Since I knew the (first) twist - it’s a plant monster - I figured I’d queue up RiffTrax: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960). We picked the RiffTrax in case it got boring. I figured we’d round it out with The Day of the Triffids (1962), but that wasn’t available on Netflix. But we could watch on Amazon Prime, so our botanical horror weekend was complete.
Monsters is Gareth Edwards’ (Rogue One) first feature. It takes place in the near future, where giant tentacled monsters from outer space have been devastating the Infected Zone, a region on the US/Mexico border. Scoot McNairy is a photojournalist, having a field day around the Zone, when his boss calls. His boss’ daughter, Whitney Able, is more or less stuck in the Zone, and he has to get her back to the US. This is all filmed in a very verite style, with glimpses of the monster on the TV news, and the wreckage they encounter as they travel. They are young and foolish, so they do quite a bit of drinking and fooling around, which causes McNairy to lose their passports.
There are scenes of downed airplanes and helicopters, and graffiti that indicates that the local populace aren’t happy about being bombed by the Americans, on top of hosting the rampaging monsters. The enormous wall at the border doesn’t seem to have kept out the monsters, and it’s all a pretty clear political metaphor - or maybe it’s just what things are like, plus monsters.
The monsters turn out to be trees infected by fungus, and the tentacles are roots. Hey, we saw it after spoilers, why shouldn’t you? This was a different and interesting movie, although the leads were a little on the unlikable side.
It might be a bit of a surprise, but we’d never seen Little Shop of Horrors (or the musical version either). It is a bizarre and ramshackle little horror comedy. It stars Jonathan Haze as a clumsy and not very bright shop boy in a Skid Row florist shop. He sort of looks like Dick Miller, but Miller has a different role - he comes into the shop and order a dozen carnations and begins eating them. Don’t knock it until you try it.
The shop is run by Mel Welles, with a broad Jewish schtick. He also employs Jackie Joseph as Audrey, a ditzy dame that Haze is in love with. He has been growing a unique plant that he names Audrey Junior, after her. It’s kind of sickly, but perks up when it gets a taste of human blood. Soon Haze is feeding it bodies, and it learns to talk. But it’s good for business.
There is a lot of random nonsense here - Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient for no reason, the cops who investigate the disappearances are parodies of Dragnet, and Dick Miller eats flowers. Also, Haze makes Sammy Petrillo look like Jerry Lewis. But it’s also pretty much nonstop fun.
I wish I could say the same for Triffids. I was sure I had seen this as a kid, but I didn’t recognize any of it. For one thing, I thought it starred James Mason, but actually, it stars Howard Keel as Bill Mason. He’s a navy man in the hospital with his eyes bandaged after an operation. A meteor show is making a beautiful display, and he has to miss it. But when he wakes up and takes off the bandages, he discovers that anyone who watched the shower has gone blind. Plus, the odd little flowers called triffids that someone discovered a few years ago are now capable of walking and eating people.
So he goes around finding sighted people, a little girl and later, a Frenchwoman, Nicole Maurey. Maurey had a large chateau, and was helping to shelter a large number of the blind. But when some escaped convicts, who were in the Hole for the meteor shower come along, Keel, Maurey and the girl take off.
It’s weird the way the blind are treated here - almost as if they were dead already. Of course, considering how easy it would be to stumble into a man-eating plant (even if they couldn’t walk, and they can), maybe that’s realistic.
In the meantime, on a lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall, and alcoholic biologist and his wife are studying something or other - too busy studying and/or being drunk to watch the meteors. When they realize that the rest of the world is going to pieces, they start looking for a way to kill the triffids. The answer was right under their noses.
If you’ve seen Horror of Party Beach, you probably guessed “Sodium”.
So, in conclusion, I have to say that most ambulatory carnivorous plant props (or CGI effects) look silly, and the ones in Triffids don’t look much better that the one in Little Shop.
Monsters is Gareth Edwards’ (Rogue One) first feature. It takes place in the near future, where giant tentacled monsters from outer space have been devastating the Infected Zone, a region on the US/Mexico border. Scoot McNairy is a photojournalist, having a field day around the Zone, when his boss calls. His boss’ daughter, Whitney Able, is more or less stuck in the Zone, and he has to get her back to the US. This is all filmed in a very verite style, with glimpses of the monster on the TV news, and the wreckage they encounter as they travel. They are young and foolish, so they do quite a bit of drinking and fooling around, which causes McNairy to lose their passports.
There are scenes of downed airplanes and helicopters, and graffiti that indicates that the local populace aren’t happy about being bombed by the Americans, on top of hosting the rampaging monsters. The enormous wall at the border doesn’t seem to have kept out the monsters, and it’s all a pretty clear political metaphor - or maybe it’s just what things are like, plus monsters.
The monsters turn out to be trees infected by fungus, and the tentacles are roots. Hey, we saw it after spoilers, why shouldn’t you? This was a different and interesting movie, although the leads were a little on the unlikable side.
It might be a bit of a surprise, but we’d never seen Little Shop of Horrors (or the musical version either). It is a bizarre and ramshackle little horror comedy. It stars Jonathan Haze as a clumsy and not very bright shop boy in a Skid Row florist shop. He sort of looks like Dick Miller, but Miller has a different role - he comes into the shop and order a dozen carnations and begins eating them. Don’t knock it until you try it.
The shop is run by Mel Welles, with a broad Jewish schtick. He also employs Jackie Joseph as Audrey, a ditzy dame that Haze is in love with. He has been growing a unique plant that he names Audrey Junior, after her. It’s kind of sickly, but perks up when it gets a taste of human blood. Soon Haze is feeding it bodies, and it learns to talk. But it’s good for business.
There is a lot of random nonsense here - Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient for no reason, the cops who investigate the disappearances are parodies of Dragnet, and Dick Miller eats flowers. Also, Haze makes Sammy Petrillo look like Jerry Lewis. But it’s also pretty much nonstop fun.
I wish I could say the same for Triffids. I was sure I had seen this as a kid, but I didn’t recognize any of it. For one thing, I thought it starred James Mason, but actually, it stars Howard Keel as Bill Mason. He’s a navy man in the hospital with his eyes bandaged after an operation. A meteor show is making a beautiful display, and he has to miss it. But when he wakes up and takes off the bandages, he discovers that anyone who watched the shower has gone blind. Plus, the odd little flowers called triffids that someone discovered a few years ago are now capable of walking and eating people.
So he goes around finding sighted people, a little girl and later, a Frenchwoman, Nicole Maurey. Maurey had a large chateau, and was helping to shelter a large number of the blind. But when some escaped convicts, who were in the Hole for the meteor shower come along, Keel, Maurey and the girl take off.
It’s weird the way the blind are treated here - almost as if they were dead already. Of course, considering how easy it would be to stumble into a man-eating plant (even if they couldn’t walk, and they can), maybe that’s realistic.
In the meantime, on a lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall, and alcoholic biologist and his wife are studying something or other - too busy studying and/or being drunk to watch the meteors. When they realize that the rest of the world is going to pieces, they start looking for a way to kill the triffids. The answer was right under their noses.
If you’ve seen Horror of Party Beach, you probably guessed “Sodium”.
So, in conclusion, I have to say that most ambulatory carnivorous plant props (or CGI effects) look silly, and the ones in Triffids don’t look much better that the one in Little Shop.
Monday, October 28, 2019
Wicked Good
Although I’m not a big fan of Ray Bradbury, or Disney in general, I thought Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) would be worth checking out. I think it was.
It takes place in October in a small Illinois town, just after the war. A lightning rod salesman, Royal Dano, comes to town to tell the townspeople of the storm that’s coming. Youngsters Vidal Peterson as Will Halloway and Shawn Carson as Jim Nightingale get let out of school when their old battle axe teacher Mary Grace Canfield releases them from detention. They go to meet Will’s father, Jason Robards, at his work as town librarian. When they get home, the lightning rod salesman sells one to Jim - this will come in useful.
As the wind rises, it starts blowing around posters for a carnival - Dark’s Pandemonium - which is strange because the carnivals usually stop coming after Labor Day. The kids hear a train and sneak out their bedroom windows to see the carnival set up. It is all ready, but no one is there, and it gets pretty spooky.
The next day they go to the carnival, and find that it’s just an ordinary carnival. But we’ve been introduced to some of the townspeople - the tobacconist who is money mad, the barber who dreams of exotic women from exotic lands, the bar tender who was a football star until he lost an arm and a leg. The carnival will tempt all of them and more. First the tobacconist wins $10,000 in a game of chance and gets on the Ferris Wheel with a beautiful lady - who gets off alone. Then the barber goes to the hootchy-kootchy show - and doesn’t come back. And so forth.
Finally, Mr. Dark, Jonathon Pryce, will come for the kids (who know too much) and for Robards, who is an old man with heart trouble, who feels that life has passed him by.
A lot of this reminds me of The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao - a carnival where everyone sees what they need to see. In the hall of mirrors, this is made concrete, when the bartender sees himself with all his limbs, and the schoolteacher is young and beautiful. These are a little puzzling - are these dreams really so bad that the dreamers will be condemned (somehow) because they succumbed?
There’s a nice spider attack with a lot of tarantulas (which Ms. S liked, since she is a spider fan and has a few for pets), but that’s about it for children in peril. The real peril is that one of the kids would “ditch” the other and take Mr. Dark’s offer without the other.
But my favorite parts were the special effects, which weren’t that special, but we found rather psychedelic. The final scene involves slow-motion explosions of glass, which reminded me of the end of Zabriskie Point.
Bradbury’s superpower is poetic nostalgia mixed with horror or fantastic elements. I think the movie does a good job giving you this. In some ways, it seems like It’s a Wonderful Life, with that small town feel, and the characters who yearn for a bigger life. So, even though that’s not our favorite thing, we liked the way they did it, and enjoyed this a lot.
It takes place in October in a small Illinois town, just after the war. A lightning rod salesman, Royal Dano, comes to town to tell the townspeople of the storm that’s coming. Youngsters Vidal Peterson as Will Halloway and Shawn Carson as Jim Nightingale get let out of school when their old battle axe teacher Mary Grace Canfield releases them from detention. They go to meet Will’s father, Jason Robards, at his work as town librarian. When they get home, the lightning rod salesman sells one to Jim - this will come in useful.
As the wind rises, it starts blowing around posters for a carnival - Dark’s Pandemonium - which is strange because the carnivals usually stop coming after Labor Day. The kids hear a train and sneak out their bedroom windows to see the carnival set up. It is all ready, but no one is there, and it gets pretty spooky.
The next day they go to the carnival, and find that it’s just an ordinary carnival. But we’ve been introduced to some of the townspeople - the tobacconist who is money mad, the barber who dreams of exotic women from exotic lands, the bar tender who was a football star until he lost an arm and a leg. The carnival will tempt all of them and more. First the tobacconist wins $10,000 in a game of chance and gets on the Ferris Wheel with a beautiful lady - who gets off alone. Then the barber goes to the hootchy-kootchy show - and doesn’t come back. And so forth.
Finally, Mr. Dark, Jonathon Pryce, will come for the kids (who know too much) and for Robards, who is an old man with heart trouble, who feels that life has passed him by.
A lot of this reminds me of The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao - a carnival where everyone sees what they need to see. In the hall of mirrors, this is made concrete, when the bartender sees himself with all his limbs, and the schoolteacher is young and beautiful. These are a little puzzling - are these dreams really so bad that the dreamers will be condemned (somehow) because they succumbed?
There’s a nice spider attack with a lot of tarantulas (which Ms. S liked, since she is a spider fan and has a few for pets), but that’s about it for children in peril. The real peril is that one of the kids would “ditch” the other and take Mr. Dark’s offer without the other.
But my favorite parts were the special effects, which weren’t that special, but we found rather psychedelic. The final scene involves slow-motion explosions of glass, which reminded me of the end of Zabriskie Point.
Bradbury’s superpower is poetic nostalgia mixed with horror or fantastic elements. I think the movie does a good job giving you this. In some ways, it seems like It’s a Wonderful Life, with that small town feel, and the characters who yearn for a bigger life. So, even though that’s not our favorite thing, we liked the way they did it, and enjoyed this a lot.
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Swinging the Classics
As we approach Halloween, we decided to go for some classical scares. Believe it or not, we’d never seen any of these.
Or so I’d thought. Ms. Spenser told me we has seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) together. I doubted her until we got to the carnival scene, when it started to come back to me. This is the one where Quasimodo is played by Charles Laughton, in truly grotesque makeup. Maureen O’Hara is Esmerelda, the gypsy dancer that everyone is in love with. First, Quasimodo, because she gives him water when he is whipped. Then the slimy Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke). Then Edmond O’Brien as idiot poet Gringoire stumbles into the Court of Miracles, where the blind see and the lame walk - that is, where the sham beggars drop their disguises. The beggar king decrees he must die or marry a gypsy, and Esmerelda volunteers. But she’s really after Captain Phoebus, a handsome playboy type.
We get to see a lot of Notre Dame sets and backdrops, some great spectacle, and Laughton (or his double) ringing the bells with his feet. Gringoire is less of an idiot than in that book, and actually saves the day and gets the girl. In the book, he winds up with the goat.
Hollywood's Legends of Horror Collection: Mad Love / The Devil Doll (1935/936) is a great and odd double bill by Tod Browning. Devil Doll stars Lionel Barrymore as French convict. We meet him escaping with another aged prisoner, Henry B. Walthall. Walthall takes him to his secret laboratory, where his wife is waiting for him. His wife is played Rafaela Ottiano, with wild, bulging eyes and a bride of Frankenstein skunk stripe in her hair. Walthall has been working on reducing living beings to one-sixth size. He hasn’t gotten the brain to work, but the miniatures can be controlled by his mental willpower. After shrinking their halfwit maid, he dies. So Barrymore decides to use the process and the widow to carry out his own plans.
He was a banker who was framed by his three partners, who are now worried that he has escaped. They have put up a big reward for him, so he goes about disguised as an old lady (!). Madame Mandalip (not to be confused with Mandalit del Barco) has a toy store where she sells lifelike dolls. She uses them to get her revenge.
Seeing Barrymore playing a little old woman is a lot of fun, the special effects were fine, and the little touches, like having the dolls dress as Apaches (French gangsters) and do the Apache dance made it great.
But Mad Love was even better. It starts at a Grand Guignol sort of theater in France. Francis Drake is the star, Yvonne Orlac. Her husband, pianist Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive) is off playing a concert, which she listens to on the radio. After her show, an admirer drops by - Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol. He looks amazing by the way - with a shiny bald head and coat with a big fur collar. Gogol is a famous surgeon, known for treating children and never worrying about payment. He clearly dotes on Drake, and is crestfallen when he discovers that she is married. On his way out of the theater, he sees that they are throwing out her wax statue, and buys it, calling it his Galatea.
On the way back from the concert, Clive meets a famous American knife murderer, Ed Brophy (fireplug shaped character actor), on his way to the guillotine. When the train derails, Clive is badly injured and his hands, which are his profession, are crushed.
Lorre attends the execution of Brophy along with American reporter Ted Healey (the Three Stooges first straight man). When Drake contacts him to get him to save her husband’s hands, he gets the idea to use Brophy’s hands.
Soon, Clive finds that though his hands can’t play piano, they can throw knives. That will come in handy (no pun intended).
We get Key Luke as Dr. Gogol’s assistant, May Beatty as Gogol’s drunken, parrot-toting housekeeper, and a scene with Drake pretending to be the wax Galatea. When she comes alive, Gogol goes really mad! Lorre is wonderful in this. He plays a man of great skill and compassion, a man of taste, and an odd kind of beauty, but with something repulsive at his core, which bursts forth in madness. This may have been a better role than M, maybe even better than Joel Cairo. Not sure about Sr. Ugarte.
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) may be the only silent movie that I’ve blogged about - not counting Guy Maddin. It starts with an amazing scene at the grand staircase at the Paris Opera. Young Raoul (Norman Kerry) is hoping to hear his belove Christine Daae (Mary Philbin) sing - she has been understudy for the prima donna. He professes his love for her backstage, but she insists on putting her career first. Her star is rising since she started working with a mysterious mentor.
The opera has been haunted by rumors of a threatening Phantom. The prima donna gets a letter threatening her if she goes on, so her understudy gets her chance to sing the part of Marguerite in Faust. But this can’t go on. Finally, the prima donna decides to do a show whether threatened or not, and the great chandelier in the hall falls, killing a bunch of people. The work of the Phantom!
When Daae finally meets her mentor, she finds him in a mask. He takes her to his underground lair, deep in the sewers and catacombs below Paris. He promises her he will make her the greatest singer in the world, as long as she doesn’t touch the mask. But of course, she takes it off and discovers Lon Chaney in his famous make up. And it is spectacular.
There is a lot of underground hugger-mugger, and a mob of Parisians (torches, but unfortunately no pitchforks - not too common in Paris) that seem to take forever to show up. Will they be too late?
I was pleasantly surprised by how exciting this silent feature was - the opera quite grand and the underground labyrinth was suitably Piranesian. My main regret is that the score they used was pop classical piano, and there should have been some Faust.
So that was a fun set of classic movies, coincidentally all set in France. In the next few weeks, we’ll do a few more horror theme sets, then back to regular programming.
Or so I’d thought. Ms. Spenser told me we has seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) together. I doubted her until we got to the carnival scene, when it started to come back to me. This is the one where Quasimodo is played by Charles Laughton, in truly grotesque makeup. Maureen O’Hara is Esmerelda, the gypsy dancer that everyone is in love with. First, Quasimodo, because she gives him water when he is whipped. Then the slimy Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke). Then Edmond O’Brien as idiot poet Gringoire stumbles into the Court of Miracles, where the blind see and the lame walk - that is, where the sham beggars drop their disguises. The beggar king decrees he must die or marry a gypsy, and Esmerelda volunteers. But she’s really after Captain Phoebus, a handsome playboy type.
We get to see a lot of Notre Dame sets and backdrops, some great spectacle, and Laughton (or his double) ringing the bells with his feet. Gringoire is less of an idiot than in that book, and actually saves the day and gets the girl. In the book, he winds up with the goat.
Hollywood's Legends of Horror Collection: Mad Love / The Devil Doll (1935/936) is a great and odd double bill by Tod Browning. Devil Doll stars Lionel Barrymore as French convict. We meet him escaping with another aged prisoner, Henry B. Walthall. Walthall takes him to his secret laboratory, where his wife is waiting for him. His wife is played Rafaela Ottiano, with wild, bulging eyes and a bride of Frankenstein skunk stripe in her hair. Walthall has been working on reducing living beings to one-sixth size. He hasn’t gotten the brain to work, but the miniatures can be controlled by his mental willpower. After shrinking their halfwit maid, he dies. So Barrymore decides to use the process and the widow to carry out his own plans.
He was a banker who was framed by his three partners, who are now worried that he has escaped. They have put up a big reward for him, so he goes about disguised as an old lady (!). Madame Mandalip (not to be confused with Mandalit del Barco) has a toy store where she sells lifelike dolls. She uses them to get her revenge.
Seeing Barrymore playing a little old woman is a lot of fun, the special effects were fine, and the little touches, like having the dolls dress as Apaches (French gangsters) and do the Apache dance made it great.
But Mad Love was even better. It starts at a Grand Guignol sort of theater in France. Francis Drake is the star, Yvonne Orlac. Her husband, pianist Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive) is off playing a concert, which she listens to on the radio. After her show, an admirer drops by - Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol. He looks amazing by the way - with a shiny bald head and coat with a big fur collar. Gogol is a famous surgeon, known for treating children and never worrying about payment. He clearly dotes on Drake, and is crestfallen when he discovers that she is married. On his way out of the theater, he sees that they are throwing out her wax statue, and buys it, calling it his Galatea.
On the way back from the concert, Clive meets a famous American knife murderer, Ed Brophy (fireplug shaped character actor), on his way to the guillotine. When the train derails, Clive is badly injured and his hands, which are his profession, are crushed.
Lorre attends the execution of Brophy along with American reporter Ted Healey (the Three Stooges first straight man). When Drake contacts him to get him to save her husband’s hands, he gets the idea to use Brophy’s hands.
Soon, Clive finds that though his hands can’t play piano, they can throw knives. That will come in handy (no pun intended).
We get Key Luke as Dr. Gogol’s assistant, May Beatty as Gogol’s drunken, parrot-toting housekeeper, and a scene with Drake pretending to be the wax Galatea. When she comes alive, Gogol goes really mad! Lorre is wonderful in this. He plays a man of great skill and compassion, a man of taste, and an odd kind of beauty, but with something repulsive at his core, which bursts forth in madness. This may have been a better role than M, maybe even better than Joel Cairo. Not sure about Sr. Ugarte.
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) may be the only silent movie that I’ve blogged about - not counting Guy Maddin. It starts with an amazing scene at the grand staircase at the Paris Opera. Young Raoul (Norman Kerry) is hoping to hear his belove Christine Daae (Mary Philbin) sing - she has been understudy for the prima donna. He professes his love for her backstage, but she insists on putting her career first. Her star is rising since she started working with a mysterious mentor.
The opera has been haunted by rumors of a threatening Phantom. The prima donna gets a letter threatening her if she goes on, so her understudy gets her chance to sing the part of Marguerite in Faust. But this can’t go on. Finally, the prima donna decides to do a show whether threatened or not, and the great chandelier in the hall falls, killing a bunch of people. The work of the Phantom!
When Daae finally meets her mentor, she finds him in a mask. He takes her to his underground lair, deep in the sewers and catacombs below Paris. He promises her he will make her the greatest singer in the world, as long as she doesn’t touch the mask. But of course, she takes it off and discovers Lon Chaney in his famous make up. And it is spectacular.
There is a lot of underground hugger-mugger, and a mob of Parisians (torches, but unfortunately no pitchforks - not too common in Paris) that seem to take forever to show up. Will they be too late?
I was pleasantly surprised by how exciting this silent feature was - the opera quite grand and the underground labyrinth was suitably Piranesian. My main regret is that the score they used was pop classical piano, and there should have been some Faust.
So that was a fun set of classic movies, coincidentally all set in France. In the next few weeks, we’ll do a few more horror theme sets, then back to regular programming.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Mimzy were the Borogroves
Although I was aware of Golden Age science fiction authors Henry Kutcher and C.L. Moore, writing as Lewis Padgett, I didn’t exactly remember any of their work. But when Ms. Spenser mentioned that one of their stories had been made into The Last Mimzy (2007), I queued it up.
It starts in a Utopian future where children learn telepathically in fields of flowers, and the teacher recounts this tale. It seems that the Earth was dying of pollution, and there wasn’t any untainted DNA to clean up humanity. So a scientist sent packages back in time, hoping they would be found by someone who could set things right.
They wash up on a beach where two kids are playing: Chris O’Neill and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn. There mom, Joely Richardson, has taken them on vacation while dad, Timothy Hutton, has to work. The package contains some mysterious items, and a stuffed rabbit that Wryn says is named Mimzy.
They hide these from the grownups and explore their powers. One is a slab that looks like an iPhone with a smashed screen. When O’Neill shows it to his mother, she just sees a flat rock. But soon the kids are learning telepathy, how to levitate rocks and to control spiders with sound.
O’Neill’s science teacher, Rainn Wilson, is an open-minded groovy type, who begins to suspect the kids know something. He has had psychic experiences before - he once dreamed of a lottery number and it won. To his girlfriend’s chagrin, they didn’t buy a ticket, and now she asks him if he sees numbers after any dream.
When the kids cause a major blackout, the FBI finds them and “borrows” Mimzy. Under extreme magnification, they find that it’s made of advance nanotech, and has a sub-microscopic Intel logo on it. Oddly, the FBI, led by Michael Clarke Duncan, aren’t evil or uncaring. They are pretty helpful actually.
And of course, it all comes out OK. I was a little worried that Timothy Hutton was going to be a problem, what with him always “stuck at work”. But no, he’s just kind of busy.
We enjoyed this as a nice mix of Golden Age SF (1950s era) and modern kids movie. I wonder what kind of audience there is for that, though. Don’t we want more conflict, more peril now? Or more quaintness or nostalgia on the other hand? So, like A Wrinkle in Time, this just didn’t do much business. I don’t think I even heard about it when it came out. Well, at least we got a chance to enjoy it.
It starts in a Utopian future where children learn telepathically in fields of flowers, and the teacher recounts this tale. It seems that the Earth was dying of pollution, and there wasn’t any untainted DNA to clean up humanity. So a scientist sent packages back in time, hoping they would be found by someone who could set things right.
They wash up on a beach where two kids are playing: Chris O’Neill and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn. There mom, Joely Richardson, has taken them on vacation while dad, Timothy Hutton, has to work. The package contains some mysterious items, and a stuffed rabbit that Wryn says is named Mimzy.
They hide these from the grownups and explore their powers. One is a slab that looks like an iPhone with a smashed screen. When O’Neill shows it to his mother, she just sees a flat rock. But soon the kids are learning telepathy, how to levitate rocks and to control spiders with sound.
O’Neill’s science teacher, Rainn Wilson, is an open-minded groovy type, who begins to suspect the kids know something. He has had psychic experiences before - he once dreamed of a lottery number and it won. To his girlfriend’s chagrin, they didn’t buy a ticket, and now she asks him if he sees numbers after any dream.
When the kids cause a major blackout, the FBI finds them and “borrows” Mimzy. Under extreme magnification, they find that it’s made of advance nanotech, and has a sub-microscopic Intel logo on it. Oddly, the FBI, led by Michael Clarke Duncan, aren’t evil or uncaring. They are pretty helpful actually.
And of course, it all comes out OK. I was a little worried that Timothy Hutton was going to be a problem, what with him always “stuck at work”. But no, he’s just kind of busy.
We enjoyed this as a nice mix of Golden Age SF (1950s era) and modern kids movie. I wonder what kind of audience there is for that, though. Don’t we want more conflict, more peril now? Or more quaintness or nostalgia on the other hand? So, like A Wrinkle in Time, this just didn’t do much business. I don’t think I even heard about it when it came out. Well, at least we got a chance to enjoy it.
Monday, October 21, 2019
Sphere-o-sphere
We’re watching Sphere (1998) partly as part of our 90s undersea horror fest (The Abyss, Deep Rising, from the same year as Sphere), but also because the chuckleheads on the We Hate Movies are doing it on a recent podcast, and I wanted to be in the loop.
It starts with a title card “The Surface”, but they are in the air. A helicopter is taking Dustin Hoffman to the middle of the ocean for reasons not discussed. He is a psychologist who often counsels survivors of air disasters, so that’s what he assumes. When he gets to the one of the many ships out in the middle of nowhere, he finds out that’s not what happened. He meets his team members: Astrophysicist Liev Schreiber, mathematician Samuel L. Jackson, and biologist Sharon Stone. It seems that the Bush administration had paid Hoffman to write up the protocol for alien contact. Figuring no one would ever need it, he kind of half-assed it, and put in some smart people he knew as the ideal team. After all, why sweat it? The team will be lead by Navy Captain Peter Coyote.
The next chapter is “The Deep”. They head to the underwater lab that is investigating the sunken spacecraft. There are several very Michael Crichton touches, describing submarine life. For instance, since they are all breathing oxy-helium, they have a scene with everyone talking like Mickey Mouse. Then Coyote tells them to put on their voice compensators and it stops. That’s what I mean by Crichton touches - some specific, well-researched technical detail, and some bullshit, made up to keep the story moving.
We get a bit more of Hoffman’s backstory - not everyone he put in the report is glad to be on this expedition, and that he had an affair with Stone that ended badly. Actually, I think it started badly too - she was both his student and his patient. When she tried to commit a little light suicide (Hoffman doesn’t think it was too serious), she did it with pills he prescribed.
Then, in “The Spacecraft”. This giant spacecraft has been at the bottom of the sea for 300 years, by the coral growth (not sure it grows that deep, but anyway), They suit up and head over to the alien vessel, and discover a lot of familiar things. Like, the ancient corpse died eating a pack of Blue Diamond almonds. It isn’t alien - it’s from the future.
But it does have an alien on board - a 20-foot floating golden sphere, with ripples. They can’t see in, and it doesn’t do anything, so they all head home to bed. Just before lights out, Jackson says, “We’re all going to die down here.” You see, the people in the future didn’t know what was going to happen on their mission. But if the team had reported it, they would have known. So - they don’t make it back alive. Then he sneaks out and gets into the sphere, by way of his reflection.
And then people start to die. First, crewmember Queen Latifah (!) is out walking underwater when she is swarmed by jellyfish. At first it’s cute, but then she starts to freak out, and they bust into her suit. Meanwhile, everyone else inside is just watching and nobody even mentions like saving her. After she’s gone, everyone kind of goes about their business. Hoffman mentions that he has kind of a jellyfish phobia. But nobody cares about Latifah. I can’t decide if this is because the characters are all self-absorbed dicks, because Crichton is a dick, or because this is supposed to represent some kind of dream-state.
Speaking of dreaming, they found Jackson under the sphere in a coma. When he wakes up, he’s happy and hungry (don’t try to feed him calamari, though), but won’t really answer questions about the sphere. Actually nobody really asks, and again, I wonder why.
We’re only about halfway through, and just getting to the meat of the story, but I’m going to skip all the rest. It does become kind of a horror movie, with some gruesome deaths. Hoffman and Stone’s personal problems get way out of hand, and so do everyone else’s. There’s some psychological and philosophical stuff that isn’t bad but maybe not great.And an ending that is acceptable but not really satisfying.
After I admit that this is a cool high-tech sci-fi adventure, with a touch of Alien but underwater, I’m going to say that I don’t think this is very good. Part of it is Hoffman’s extreme dickishness to Stone. At the end, he sort of apologizes, and it just seems to show how little he gets it. But the same problem applies to pretty much everyone - people die and no one cares. Jackson sleeps through most of it. He becomes odd and autistic, and nobody cares or seems concerned.
I really like Michael Crichton - take The 13th Warrior or a classic like Andromeda Strain. But like a lot of old-timey SF authors, he seems to have trouble imagining what people’s feeling would be like.
It starts with a title card “The Surface”, but they are in the air. A helicopter is taking Dustin Hoffman to the middle of the ocean for reasons not discussed. He is a psychologist who often counsels survivors of air disasters, so that’s what he assumes. When he gets to the one of the many ships out in the middle of nowhere, he finds out that’s not what happened. He meets his team members: Astrophysicist Liev Schreiber, mathematician Samuel L. Jackson, and biologist Sharon Stone. It seems that the Bush administration had paid Hoffman to write up the protocol for alien contact. Figuring no one would ever need it, he kind of half-assed it, and put in some smart people he knew as the ideal team. After all, why sweat it? The team will be lead by Navy Captain Peter Coyote.
The next chapter is “The Deep”. They head to the underwater lab that is investigating the sunken spacecraft. There are several very Michael Crichton touches, describing submarine life. For instance, since they are all breathing oxy-helium, they have a scene with everyone talking like Mickey Mouse. Then Coyote tells them to put on their voice compensators and it stops. That’s what I mean by Crichton touches - some specific, well-researched technical detail, and some bullshit, made up to keep the story moving.
We get a bit more of Hoffman’s backstory - not everyone he put in the report is glad to be on this expedition, and that he had an affair with Stone that ended badly. Actually, I think it started badly too - she was both his student and his patient. When she tried to commit a little light suicide (Hoffman doesn’t think it was too serious), she did it with pills he prescribed.
Then, in “The Spacecraft”. This giant spacecraft has been at the bottom of the sea for 300 years, by the coral growth (not sure it grows that deep, but anyway), They suit up and head over to the alien vessel, and discover a lot of familiar things. Like, the ancient corpse died eating a pack of Blue Diamond almonds. It isn’t alien - it’s from the future.
But it does have an alien on board - a 20-foot floating golden sphere, with ripples. They can’t see in, and it doesn’t do anything, so they all head home to bed. Just before lights out, Jackson says, “We’re all going to die down here.” You see, the people in the future didn’t know what was going to happen on their mission. But if the team had reported it, they would have known. So - they don’t make it back alive. Then he sneaks out and gets into the sphere, by way of his reflection.
And then people start to die. First, crewmember Queen Latifah (!) is out walking underwater when she is swarmed by jellyfish. At first it’s cute, but then she starts to freak out, and they bust into her suit. Meanwhile, everyone else inside is just watching and nobody even mentions like saving her. After she’s gone, everyone kind of goes about their business. Hoffman mentions that he has kind of a jellyfish phobia. But nobody cares about Latifah. I can’t decide if this is because the characters are all self-absorbed dicks, because Crichton is a dick, or because this is supposed to represent some kind of dream-state.
Speaking of dreaming, they found Jackson under the sphere in a coma. When he wakes up, he’s happy and hungry (don’t try to feed him calamari, though), but won’t really answer questions about the sphere. Actually nobody really asks, and again, I wonder why.
We’re only about halfway through, and just getting to the meat of the story, but I’m going to skip all the rest. It does become kind of a horror movie, with some gruesome deaths. Hoffman and Stone’s personal problems get way out of hand, and so do everyone else’s. There’s some psychological and philosophical stuff that isn’t bad but maybe not great.And an ending that is acceptable but not really satisfying.
After I admit that this is a cool high-tech sci-fi adventure, with a touch of Alien but underwater, I’m going to say that I don’t think this is very good. Part of it is Hoffman’s extreme dickishness to Stone. At the end, he sort of apologizes, and it just seems to show how little he gets it. But the same problem applies to pretty much everyone - people die and no one cares. Jackson sleeps through most of it. He becomes odd and autistic, and nobody cares or seems concerned.
I really like Michael Crichton - take The 13th Warrior or a classic like Andromeda Strain. But like a lot of old-timey SF authors, he seems to have trouble imagining what people’s feeling would be like.
Monday, October 14, 2019
The Return of Dr. Bogart
Few people realize that Humphrey Bogart was in a horror movie - and only one. Or maybe many people do - what do I know? But he was - and it was a sequel. So we watched both the original and the sequel: Hollywood's Legends of Horror Collection: Dr. X/The Return of Dr. X (1932/1939).
Dr. X stars Lionel Atwill as the head of a research center for mad scientists. There have been a string of murders of women killed under a full moon with scalpel and partially cannibalized. Police detective Lee Tracy goes to Atwill’s lab because they use the kind of scalpel the murderer used. Atwill can’t believe his scientists could have done anything like this. They include some of the following: Preston Forster is a cannabilism specialist with a missing hand. John Wray has a sexual attraction to cannabilism. Arthur Edmund Carewe studies the psychological implications of the phases of the moon. And Harry Beresford is just a guy with a beard and a bad attitude in a wheelchair.
To test if one of them is the murderer, they decide to re-create the murder while the scientists are monitored to see if their heart rate gives them away. Since the victims were strangled by two strong hands, Forster is excluded. But the lights go out and the one of the scientist is murdered. Darn.
They plan to try again, but can’t get a woman to play the part (because they are smart). So the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter, Fay Wray, volunteers. And this time, all the scientists, including Atwill, will be handcuffed to the chair. No spoilers for who the killer is or how Lee Tracy saves the day.
By the way, I was just talking about Lee Tracy, who I always get mixed up with Jack Haley and Jack Oakie. Know what I mean?
In The Return of Dr. X, we get a series of murders where the victims were drained of their rare Type 1 blood (I don’t know why they started numbering types with a rare one, but whatever). Reporter Wayne Morris gets his pal Dr. Dennis Morgan to introduce him to mad scientist John Litel, an expert in blood types. There, they meet his assistant, Humphrey Bogart (!). Bogie has a skunk streak in his hair, big round glasses, and assumes the “sissy” manner he used when he was undercover in the bookstore in The Big Sleep. It’s a look, all right.
I’ve got to admit, I sort of fell asleep after this. This is not a good movie, and other than Bogart, I don’t think it has much to recommend it. At least the original had the whole lab full of mad scientists. This one barely has two. On the other hand, the first was in two-strip Technicolor, while the second was good old black and white. So maybe it’s a wash.
Dr. X stars Lionel Atwill as the head of a research center for mad scientists. There have been a string of murders of women killed under a full moon with scalpel and partially cannibalized. Police detective Lee Tracy goes to Atwill’s lab because they use the kind of scalpel the murderer used. Atwill can’t believe his scientists could have done anything like this. They include some of the following: Preston Forster is a cannabilism specialist with a missing hand. John Wray has a sexual attraction to cannabilism. Arthur Edmund Carewe studies the psychological implications of the phases of the moon. And Harry Beresford is just a guy with a beard and a bad attitude in a wheelchair.
To test if one of them is the murderer, they decide to re-create the murder while the scientists are monitored to see if their heart rate gives them away. Since the victims were strangled by two strong hands, Forster is excluded. But the lights go out and the one of the scientist is murdered. Darn.
They plan to try again, but can’t get a woman to play the part (because they are smart). So the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter, Fay Wray, volunteers. And this time, all the scientists, including Atwill, will be handcuffed to the chair. No spoilers for who the killer is or how Lee Tracy saves the day.
By the way, I was just talking about Lee Tracy, who I always get mixed up with Jack Haley and Jack Oakie. Know what I mean?
In The Return of Dr. X, we get a series of murders where the victims were drained of their rare Type 1 blood (I don’t know why they started numbering types with a rare one, but whatever). Reporter Wayne Morris gets his pal Dr. Dennis Morgan to introduce him to mad scientist John Litel, an expert in blood types. There, they meet his assistant, Humphrey Bogart (!). Bogie has a skunk streak in his hair, big round glasses, and assumes the “sissy” manner he used when he was undercover in the bookstore in The Big Sleep. It’s a look, all right.
I’ve got to admit, I sort of fell asleep after this. This is not a good movie, and other than Bogart, I don’t think it has much to recommend it. At least the original had the whole lab full of mad scientists. This one barely has two. On the other hand, the first was in two-strip Technicolor, while the second was good old black and white. So maybe it’s a wash.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Oh, No, There Goes Tokyo
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) is both terrific and ridiculous. It’s basic plot made no sense and we loved every minute.
It starts right in the middle of everything, with a family searching for a lost child in a San Francisco destroyed by Godzilla. The father (Kyle Chandler, who I thought was Timothy Hutton), mother (Vera Farmiga) and their daughter (Millie Bobby Brown, from Stranger Things) never find the son. Fast forward several years. Farmiga and Brown are living together in what looks like a suburban home, and Brown keeps up with Hutton on by email. But it turns out that the house is a monitoring station for the Chinese step pyramid (?) that houses a monster egg. And it’s hatching.
Mother and daughter head for the egg, and Brown has a moment of empathy and awe when she touches the egg. Just as Mothra hatches, a gang of eco-tourists - or terrorists, not sure - led by Charles Dance bust in. And not in a nice way - in a shoot everyone who moves, then shoot the ones keeping still way. Farmiga and Brown are taken as hostages, but it looks like Farmiga is cooperating. And Mothra flys away.
So Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe of the secret Monarch monster squad get Chandler back on the team to get them back. It’s the usual rag-tag bunch of quirky scientists, mostly mad. They head to Antarctica, where Monarch has been monitoring the frozen “Monster Zero”, Ghidora. When Dance’s gang arrives to awaken Ghidora, it becomes clear that Farmiga isn’t a hostage, but another eco-tourist. Like Dance, she thinks that humanity has become a plague on the earth, and that the monsters used to keep balance. If they are revived, the earth will bloom again.
Now, I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed. Two, three billion killed, tops.
And that’s the big ask of the movie: that we believe that a woman, who has seen a monster destroy a city, and kill her son, would think it’s a good idea to release more monsters and kill more people for an abstract ideal. And expects her daughter to go along with it. Millie Bobby Brown is way to smart for that.
Oh, and it’s not just Godzilla, Ghidora and Mothra - there are monsters hibernating all over. Yes, every country has a monster.
But while we’re laughing at this, Ghidora is killing soldiers, Godzilla is fighting Ghidora, Mothra is helping Godzilla, volcano bird Rodan is helping Ghidora, and so on. It’s all state of the art - no barely glimpsed figures in the night. I kind of wish there had been more of guys in rubber suits stomping miniatures, but I’ll take what I get.
Also, there’s a fairly cheesy score by Bear McCreary, but the roars and screams of the monsters made the best music - up until the credits. That’s right: With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, he pulls the spitting high-tension wires down!
Aside from the very far-fetched eco-tourism angle, there’s another, deeper, “loving the alien” theme. Millie Bobby Brown hints at it a few times when she reacts to a monster like Mothra with awe at its majesty rather than fear of it’s power. But they don’t seem to be able to pull this off, so it’s like a glimpse at a plot point that was mostly written off. Which is too bad, because I like that theme.
It starts right in the middle of everything, with a family searching for a lost child in a San Francisco destroyed by Godzilla. The father (Kyle Chandler, who I thought was Timothy Hutton), mother (Vera Farmiga) and their daughter (Millie Bobby Brown, from Stranger Things) never find the son. Fast forward several years. Farmiga and Brown are living together in what looks like a suburban home, and Brown keeps up with Hutton on by email. But it turns out that the house is a monitoring station for the Chinese step pyramid (?) that houses a monster egg. And it’s hatching.
Mother and daughter head for the egg, and Brown has a moment of empathy and awe when she touches the egg. Just as Mothra hatches, a gang of eco-tourists - or terrorists, not sure - led by Charles Dance bust in. And not in a nice way - in a shoot everyone who moves, then shoot the ones keeping still way. Farmiga and Brown are taken as hostages, but it looks like Farmiga is cooperating. And Mothra flys away.
So Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe of the secret Monarch monster squad get Chandler back on the team to get them back. It’s the usual rag-tag bunch of quirky scientists, mostly mad. They head to Antarctica, where Monarch has been monitoring the frozen “Monster Zero”, Ghidora. When Dance’s gang arrives to awaken Ghidora, it becomes clear that Farmiga isn’t a hostage, but another eco-tourist. Like Dance, she thinks that humanity has become a plague on the earth, and that the monsters used to keep balance. If they are revived, the earth will bloom again.
Now, I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed. Two, three billion killed, tops.
And that’s the big ask of the movie: that we believe that a woman, who has seen a monster destroy a city, and kill her son, would think it’s a good idea to release more monsters and kill more people for an abstract ideal. And expects her daughter to go along with it. Millie Bobby Brown is way to smart for that.
Oh, and it’s not just Godzilla, Ghidora and Mothra - there are monsters hibernating all over. Yes, every country has a monster.
But while we’re laughing at this, Ghidora is killing soldiers, Godzilla is fighting Ghidora, Mothra is helping Godzilla, volcano bird Rodan is helping Ghidora, and so on. It’s all state of the art - no barely glimpsed figures in the night. I kind of wish there had been more of guys in rubber suits stomping miniatures, but I’ll take what I get.
Also, there’s a fairly cheesy score by Bear McCreary, but the roars and screams of the monsters made the best music - up until the credits. That’s right: With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, he pulls the spitting high-tension wires down!
Aside from the very far-fetched eco-tourism angle, there’s another, deeper, “loving the alien” theme. Millie Bobby Brown hints at it a few times when she reacts to a monster like Mothra with awe at its majesty rather than fear of it’s power. But they don’t seem to be able to pull this off, so it’s like a glimpse at a plot point that was mostly written off. Which is too bad, because I like that theme.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Circle Cross Wavy Line Triangle
The Gift (2000) isn’t really a ghost movie - more of a supernatural thriller. I think Netflix recommended it, and since it was directed by Sam Raimi, it made sense. But it was Cate Blanchett that really sold it.
Blanchett plays a small-town fortune teller, who works with ESP cards - circle, square, wavy line, triangle. She does a reading for the battered wife (Hilary Swank) of a local bully, telling her that he’s just a mean redneck, and wouldn’t really kill anyone. She also does a reading for Giovanni Ribisi, a mechanic who hears voices telling him to do terrible things.
Then Swank’s husband show up in his big pick-up to tell Blanchett to stop seeing Swank. He’s played by Keanu Reeves, so he’s pretty threatening, especially when he threatens her kid. But not too threatening, because he’s Keanu.
But someone has gone missing. Greg Kinnear comes to ask her help in finding his fiancé, Katie Holmes. Now, Blanchett has seen Holmes in action, and knows she’s fooling around on Kinnear. And also, Kinnear and Blanchett seem to be getting attached.
Blanchett has a vision of Holmes floating in the air, and thinks she might be in a pond (of which there are many in this swampy Georgia town). She tells sheriff J.K. Simmons, and he drags Reeve’s pond, and finds the body. So Reeves goes to jail for murder - he confesses to sleeping with her, and knocking around his wife, but swears he didn’t kill anyone.
Then Blanchett gets a vision saying he didn’t do it. Since the DA was also sleeping with Holmes, he isn’t interested in re-opening the case. So she will need the help of Simmons and Kinnear, and maybe even psycho Ribisi - although he is in the funny farm upstate.
It’s sort of surprising, given the great cast with Sam Raimi directing, that this is such an ordinary movie. It has it’s share of tension and even madness, and some great acting (Ribisi more than anyone, I’d say), but not really out of the ordinary. But Cate Blanchett elevates it above just fine to great, just through the special effect of her face. What cheekbones!
Blanchett plays a small-town fortune teller, who works with ESP cards - circle, square, wavy line, triangle. She does a reading for the battered wife (Hilary Swank) of a local bully, telling her that he’s just a mean redneck, and wouldn’t really kill anyone. She also does a reading for Giovanni Ribisi, a mechanic who hears voices telling him to do terrible things.
Then Swank’s husband show up in his big pick-up to tell Blanchett to stop seeing Swank. He’s played by Keanu Reeves, so he’s pretty threatening, especially when he threatens her kid. But not too threatening, because he’s Keanu.
But someone has gone missing. Greg Kinnear comes to ask her help in finding his fiancé, Katie Holmes. Now, Blanchett has seen Holmes in action, and knows she’s fooling around on Kinnear. And also, Kinnear and Blanchett seem to be getting attached.
Blanchett has a vision of Holmes floating in the air, and thinks she might be in a pond (of which there are many in this swampy Georgia town). She tells sheriff J.K. Simmons, and he drags Reeve’s pond, and finds the body. So Reeves goes to jail for murder - he confesses to sleeping with her, and knocking around his wife, but swears he didn’t kill anyone.
Then Blanchett gets a vision saying he didn’t do it. Since the DA was also sleeping with Holmes, he isn’t interested in re-opening the case. So she will need the help of Simmons and Kinnear, and maybe even psycho Ribisi - although he is in the funny farm upstate.
It’s sort of surprising, given the great cast with Sam Raimi directing, that this is such an ordinary movie. It has it’s share of tension and even madness, and some great acting (Ribisi more than anyone, I’d say), but not really out of the ordinary. But Cate Blanchett elevates it above just fine to great, just through the special effect of her face. What cheekbones!
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Train in Vain
Backtrack (2016) is another ghost story for Spooktober (hope we don’t run out!). It’s kind of a small movie, starring Adrian “Broody” Brody.
Brody is a psychiatrist, deeply traumatized by the death of a young daughter. He’s better off than his wife, Jenni Baird, who can barely get out of bed. He drags himself to his mentor Sam Neill, who is referring patients to him - he seems to have moved to this city from somewhere else - it’s all vaguely in Australia, although pretty much no one has an accent. He sees a few patients, looking pained and sad while they tell him their problems. Actually, since it’s Adrian Brody, he can’t help but look pained and sad. One woman tells him she feels like she’s invisible, and wants to kill herself but she can’t.
A girl appears in his waiting room, who doesn’t seem to be able to talk. He tries to communicate, find out her problems, but she vanishes again. On his way home on the subway, he sits next to the woman who feels invisible, and doesn’t recognize her until she speaks up. She tells him she knows why she can’t kill herself - she’s already dead. Then she turns into a demon and attacked him. And then he wakes up on the train.
In fact this happens a few times in the movie: things spiral out of control and then Brody wakes up. Not as much as in Twixt, but still a motif.
So, to SPOILER the first twist, it turns out that all of Brody’s patients are ghosts, and so is Neill, his mentor. They all died in a train wreck, in Brody’s old home town. So he goes back to find out what he is repressing. He leaves his wife behind, because she isn’t really in this movie.
Back in his home town, he sees his father, a retired policeman. He also meets up with an old school friend who tells him not to investigate and to leave him out of it. He also checks in with the local policewoman, Robin McLeavy. It turns out she was the mother of the ghost girl in the waiting room. Brody finally recovers the memory of biking out to the train tracks to watch lovers park and make out. The train hit their bikes on the tracks and derailed, killing many. He confesses to McLeavy, who takes it pretty well, considering. His friend, on the other hand, hangs himself.
But this isn’t the end - there’s one more twist and a tense standoff on the train tracks. But I’ll leave that for people who haven’t watched yet.
Not sure I have much to say about this - it was a good ghost movie with a few flaws, like the weird almost-not-Australia setting. A lot depends on how you feel about watching Adrian Brody looking hurt, sad, worried, concerned and broody for a whole movie.
Brody is a psychiatrist, deeply traumatized by the death of a young daughter. He’s better off than his wife, Jenni Baird, who can barely get out of bed. He drags himself to his mentor Sam Neill, who is referring patients to him - he seems to have moved to this city from somewhere else - it’s all vaguely in Australia, although pretty much no one has an accent. He sees a few patients, looking pained and sad while they tell him their problems. Actually, since it’s Adrian Brody, he can’t help but look pained and sad. One woman tells him she feels like she’s invisible, and wants to kill herself but she can’t.
A girl appears in his waiting room, who doesn’t seem to be able to talk. He tries to communicate, find out her problems, but she vanishes again. On his way home on the subway, he sits next to the woman who feels invisible, and doesn’t recognize her until she speaks up. She tells him she knows why she can’t kill herself - she’s already dead. Then she turns into a demon and attacked him. And then he wakes up on the train.
In fact this happens a few times in the movie: things spiral out of control and then Brody wakes up. Not as much as in Twixt, but still a motif.
So, to SPOILER the first twist, it turns out that all of Brody’s patients are ghosts, and so is Neill, his mentor. They all died in a train wreck, in Brody’s old home town. So he goes back to find out what he is repressing. He leaves his wife behind, because she isn’t really in this movie.
Back in his home town, he sees his father, a retired policeman. He also meets up with an old school friend who tells him not to investigate and to leave him out of it. He also checks in with the local policewoman, Robin McLeavy. It turns out she was the mother of the ghost girl in the waiting room. Brody finally recovers the memory of biking out to the train tracks to watch lovers park and make out. The train hit their bikes on the tracks and derailed, killing many. He confesses to McLeavy, who takes it pretty well, considering. His friend, on the other hand, hangs himself.
But this isn’t the end - there’s one more twist and a tense standoff on the train tracks. But I’ll leave that for people who haven’t watched yet.
Not sure I have much to say about this - it was a good ghost movie with a few flaws, like the weird almost-not-Australia setting. A lot depends on how you feel about watching Adrian Brody looking hurt, sad, worried, concerned and broody for a whole movie.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
Natural Born Eastman
Buck and the Preacher (1972) was supposed to be a comedy adventure western, but it was something more serious - including a history lesson on race in the West.
Director Sidney Poitier is Buck, a wagonmaster leading freed slaves from Louisiana to a fertile valley in Colorado, prophesied by an old man who reads the bones. They are dogged by nightriders, led by Cameron Mitchell. These are unreconstructed confederates, being paid by Louisiana plantation owners to bring the ex-slaves back to work the fields - or kill them to discourage others. Buck leads them away from the wagon train and meets up with his wife Ruby Dee, then rides off again.Needing a fresh horse, he negotiates for and then outright steals Harry Belafonte’s horse. Belafonte is the Preacher, a shady, threadbare drifter who claims to be doing the Lord’s work.
But while he is away, the wagon train is hit by the nightriders, who trash the camp, destroy their supplies and steal their money (probably while raping the woman who was wearing it in a money belt - as soon as I saw them put it on her, I knew that was a bad hiding place). When the Preacher comes along, he is most concerned about getting his horse back. But soon he is throwing his lot in with the wagon train.
Poitier doesn’t trust him and calls him an “Eastman”, which is an old term that I’ve been researching for a while. It shows up in songs, like “On the Road Again” (“Natural born Eastman, on the road again”) and Furry Lewis’s “Kassy Jones” (“See it written on the back of my shirt, I’m a natural born Eastman and I don’t have to work”). Nobody seems to know where it comes from, but it seems to mean “someone who lives off the labor of others, especially women.” Belafonte certainly looks shifty here, with a scruffy beard and mustache. Poitier, on the other hand, looks as noble and strong as John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Randolph Scott put together.
There is a little bit of comedy-action when Buck and the Preacher go to steal the money back. But Buck meeting with the Indians to negotiate for free passage for the train is more typical. The movie is mostly about the actual historical experience of African Americans in the western frontier. Exciting and interesting.
Director Sidney Poitier is Buck, a wagonmaster leading freed slaves from Louisiana to a fertile valley in Colorado, prophesied by an old man who reads the bones. They are dogged by nightriders, led by Cameron Mitchell. These are unreconstructed confederates, being paid by Louisiana plantation owners to bring the ex-slaves back to work the fields - or kill them to discourage others. Buck leads them away from the wagon train and meets up with his wife Ruby Dee, then rides off again.Needing a fresh horse, he negotiates for and then outright steals Harry Belafonte’s horse. Belafonte is the Preacher, a shady, threadbare drifter who claims to be doing the Lord’s work.
But while he is away, the wagon train is hit by the nightriders, who trash the camp, destroy their supplies and steal their money (probably while raping the woman who was wearing it in a money belt - as soon as I saw them put it on her, I knew that was a bad hiding place). When the Preacher comes along, he is most concerned about getting his horse back. But soon he is throwing his lot in with the wagon train.
Poitier doesn’t trust him and calls him an “Eastman”, which is an old term that I’ve been researching for a while. It shows up in songs, like “On the Road Again” (“Natural born Eastman, on the road again”) and Furry Lewis’s “Kassy Jones” (“See it written on the back of my shirt, I’m a natural born Eastman and I don’t have to work”). Nobody seems to know where it comes from, but it seems to mean “someone who lives off the labor of others, especially women.” Belafonte certainly looks shifty here, with a scruffy beard and mustache. Poitier, on the other hand, looks as noble and strong as John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Randolph Scott put together.
There is a little bit of comedy-action when Buck and the Preacher go to steal the money back. But Buck meeting with the Indians to negotiate for free passage for the train is more typical. The movie is mostly about the actual historical experience of African Americans in the western frontier. Exciting and interesting.
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Shaken and Stirred
We’re fans of Illeana Douglas, although mainly for one movie and her podcast. Because she is in Stir of Echoes (1999), and because Ms. Spenser likes ghost stories (and it’s rolling into Spooktober), we queued it up.
It stars Kevin Bacon as the father of a little boy who has an imaginary friend - a ghost. Bacon is a blue-collar guy married to Kathryn Erne. They have moved into an old house in a working class Chicago neighborhood near the college. It’s kind of a fratty atmosphere - they put the boy to bed and take the baby monitor across the street where there’s a semi-rowdy house party going on.
Erbe’s sister, Illeana Douglas is there, and Bacon is kind of getting into it with her, because she’s a kind of new agey, almost-certified hypnotherapist. He goads her into hypnotizing him, and he goes right under. He has a horrific encounter with the ghost of a young girl while under, although his friends just see him talk about childhood memories and get a pin pushed through his hand.
After this event, he starts seeing more visions - he sees one of his own teeth fall out, for instance - and he learns that Douglas gave him a post-hypnotic suggestion to “be more open”. Turns out, he’s open to the spirit world, like his son. When Erbe is walking the son, he homes in on a funeral and a black policeman, Officer Exposition, explains that the son has the sight, and suggests that Bacon drop in on their support group. Note that this is a literal Magic Negro, but this actually comes to pretty much nothing, since Bacon is doing the strong, silent man thing and won’t admit there’s anything going on.
So of course, he gets more and more unhinged, even as he tries to act normal, socializing with the bonehead neighbors, going to a football game, etc. Eventually, he begins digging up the backyard and smashing the walls of the house while his wife and son are away.
The solution to the mystery is rather banal and tawdry, and realistic. I’ll let you discover the details if you watch it. It’s worth it - a solid, if not groundbreaking ghost story (it came out the same year as Sixth Sense). Bacon’s refusal to talk about what’s going on is kind of annoying, but it isn’t one of those movies that would be over in 10 minutes if someone just communicated with anyone else. Also, Douglas’s slightly airheaded sister-in-law is quite endearing. There’s a silly scene where Bacon bursts in on her getting high with a girlfriend that gives her a mysterious backstory. I wonder if she’s in the sequel.
It stars Kevin Bacon as the father of a little boy who has an imaginary friend - a ghost. Bacon is a blue-collar guy married to Kathryn Erne. They have moved into an old house in a working class Chicago neighborhood near the college. It’s kind of a fratty atmosphere - they put the boy to bed and take the baby monitor across the street where there’s a semi-rowdy house party going on.
Erbe’s sister, Illeana Douglas is there, and Bacon is kind of getting into it with her, because she’s a kind of new agey, almost-certified hypnotherapist. He goads her into hypnotizing him, and he goes right under. He has a horrific encounter with the ghost of a young girl while under, although his friends just see him talk about childhood memories and get a pin pushed through his hand.
After this event, he starts seeing more visions - he sees one of his own teeth fall out, for instance - and he learns that Douglas gave him a post-hypnotic suggestion to “be more open”. Turns out, he’s open to the spirit world, like his son. When Erbe is walking the son, he homes in on a funeral and a black policeman, Officer Exposition, explains that the son has the sight, and suggests that Bacon drop in on their support group. Note that this is a literal Magic Negro, but this actually comes to pretty much nothing, since Bacon is doing the strong, silent man thing and won’t admit there’s anything going on.
So of course, he gets more and more unhinged, even as he tries to act normal, socializing with the bonehead neighbors, going to a football game, etc. Eventually, he begins digging up the backyard and smashing the walls of the house while his wife and son are away.
The solution to the mystery is rather banal and tawdry, and realistic. I’ll let you discover the details if you watch it. It’s worth it - a solid, if not groundbreaking ghost story (it came out the same year as Sixth Sense). Bacon’s refusal to talk about what’s going on is kind of annoying, but it isn’t one of those movies that would be over in 10 minutes if someone just communicated with anyone else. Also, Douglas’s slightly airheaded sister-in-law is quite endearing. There’s a silly scene where Bacon bursts in on her getting high with a girlfriend that gives her a mysterious backstory. I wonder if she’s in the sequel.
Friday, October 4, 2019
Cootie Call
Cooties (2015) is another one of those zombie horror comedies - not one of the best, but not too shabby.
It stars Elijah Wood as a sad sack wannabe novelist who has moved back to his old home town after spending some time in New York. He has a job as a summer substitute teacher, and he’s not too happy about it. He shows up at school in a beat up car and is immediately parked in by the Rainn Wilson, the buffed out gym teacher. The new-age principal confiscates his cellphone (school policy and convenient plot device) and sends him to the teacher’s lounge.
There he meets hostile Nasim Pedrad, spacey science teacher Leigh Whannell, and sweet Alison Pill. Wood and Pill went to school together, and he’s obviously sweet on her. Too bad Wilson is her boyfriend.
But the cafeteria had some bad chicken nuggets, causing one girl to go pycho and start biting faces off. Wood is not too concerned - he didn’t like the bitten kid anyway, and is more interested in his novel and trying to flirt with Pill. Pretty soon they are cut off with a few uninfected kids while the rest run around eating the other grownups.
There’s a lot of gross out gags in this, and a lot of just plain fun ones. When Wilson is insulting Wood, he calls him a little hobbit. Then there’s Whannell, telling people to keep quiet when they aren’t saying anything, and reeling off imaginary science. Also, in the gross category, handling body waste and parts with no gloves.
The initial joke is that Wood can’t focus on the life-threateningly horrible stuff going on because he’s thinking about his novel - a horror story about a haunted boat. Wilson calls it The Shining on a boat, like Speed II, which is a pretty good gag. Also, Pill - but she actually seems kind of dim.
Also, shout out to Jorge Garcia, who picked the wrong day to take shrooms. And Peter Kwok, who is barely in this movie.
I guess this went to streaming pretty quickly, and I can see why. But it does have some good gags, some gross gags, and good character acting. It won’t beat out Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead, but we liked it.
It stars Elijah Wood as a sad sack wannabe novelist who has moved back to his old home town after spending some time in New York. He has a job as a summer substitute teacher, and he’s not too happy about it. He shows up at school in a beat up car and is immediately parked in by the Rainn Wilson, the buffed out gym teacher. The new-age principal confiscates his cellphone (school policy and convenient plot device) and sends him to the teacher’s lounge.
There he meets hostile Nasim Pedrad, spacey science teacher Leigh Whannell, and sweet Alison Pill. Wood and Pill went to school together, and he’s obviously sweet on her. Too bad Wilson is her boyfriend.
But the cafeteria had some bad chicken nuggets, causing one girl to go pycho and start biting faces off. Wood is not too concerned - he didn’t like the bitten kid anyway, and is more interested in his novel and trying to flirt with Pill. Pretty soon they are cut off with a few uninfected kids while the rest run around eating the other grownups.
There’s a lot of gross out gags in this, and a lot of just plain fun ones. When Wilson is insulting Wood, he calls him a little hobbit. Then there’s Whannell, telling people to keep quiet when they aren’t saying anything, and reeling off imaginary science. Also, in the gross category, handling body waste and parts with no gloves.
The initial joke is that Wood can’t focus on the life-threateningly horrible stuff going on because he’s thinking about his novel - a horror story about a haunted boat. Wilson calls it The Shining on a boat, like Speed II, which is a pretty good gag. Also, Pill - but she actually seems kind of dim.
Also, shout out to Jorge Garcia, who picked the wrong day to take shrooms. And Peter Kwok, who is barely in this movie.
I guess this went to streaming pretty quickly, and I can see why. But it does have some good gags, some gross gags, and good character acting. It won’t beat out Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead, but we liked it.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Twixt Ending
Twixt (2011) is a funny creature - a small horror comedy, by one of the biggest names in cinema, Francis Ford Coppola.
It stars Val Kilmer as a minor horror writer on a book tour. He’s booked into a tiny town that doesn’t even have a bookstore - just a few bookshelves in the corner of the hardware store. He meets Sheriff Bruce Dern, who could tell him a few stories, by gum. He takes Kilmer to see a fresh body that he claims was murdered by a serial killer. Kilmer is intrigued and agrees to take Dern on as a writing partner.
Later, he discovers that Edgar Allen Poe stayed at the hotel in town and decides to stay awhile. He meets Elle Fanning, a quiet, outcast girl who won’t come into the hotel with him. She also points out that all of the clocks on the seven-sided clock tower in town show different times. Then Fanning bites the hotel proprietress and is chased off by a priest, and Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) comes along. And Kilmer wakes up.
He is now inspired to stay on, and discover the truth behind these dreams. The sheriff tells him that there’s an encampment of kids across the river, probably satan cultists, possibly vampires. Their leader is a sensitive biker called Flamingo (Alden Ehrenreich). Dern has even developed an automatic vampire staking machine to execute them, if need be.
But all this doesn’t help him get his book written. His editor wants a draft soon, and the ending has to be bulletproof. So he gets the sheriff to buy him all the sleeping aids he can find, and settles down to finish the dream.
I won’t go into it too much (or spoil the ending), but it is fun to see how Coppola blends dream and reality. I guess this is a popular horror trope, where a scene starts normal, then gets weirder and weirder, and then the character wakes up (but not always!). There are also a lot of eerie, beautiful images - Fanning’s character, the clocks, Flamingo gang of freaks, runaways and fire jugglers. But it kind of doesn’t come together - too much dream logic, not enough story. And the real story, which I will spoil, is not really presented fully: While Kilmer is dreaming up a horror fantasy, Dern is probably the actual serial killer, murdering children as “vampires”. I get that the joke is that he doesn’t care about something so serious, while chasing the trivial. I just don’t think Coppola pulled it off.
Also - and I say this as someone who loves him - Kilmer has a weirdly tiny face in a big, puffy head.
I guess Coppola had a good time making this - he filmed from his home in Napa. And he deserves it, after all he’s given to cinema. It’s just not that great - twixt bad and good?
It stars Val Kilmer as a minor horror writer on a book tour. He’s booked into a tiny town that doesn’t even have a bookstore - just a few bookshelves in the corner of the hardware store. He meets Sheriff Bruce Dern, who could tell him a few stories, by gum. He takes Kilmer to see a fresh body that he claims was murdered by a serial killer. Kilmer is intrigued and agrees to take Dern on as a writing partner.
Later, he discovers that Edgar Allen Poe stayed at the hotel in town and decides to stay awhile. He meets Elle Fanning, a quiet, outcast girl who won’t come into the hotel with him. She also points out that all of the clocks on the seven-sided clock tower in town show different times. Then Fanning bites the hotel proprietress and is chased off by a priest, and Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) comes along. And Kilmer wakes up.
He is now inspired to stay on, and discover the truth behind these dreams. The sheriff tells him that there’s an encampment of kids across the river, probably satan cultists, possibly vampires. Their leader is a sensitive biker called Flamingo (Alden Ehrenreich). Dern has even developed an automatic vampire staking machine to execute them, if need be.
But all this doesn’t help him get his book written. His editor wants a draft soon, and the ending has to be bulletproof. So he gets the sheriff to buy him all the sleeping aids he can find, and settles down to finish the dream.
I won’t go into it too much (or spoil the ending), but it is fun to see how Coppola blends dream and reality. I guess this is a popular horror trope, where a scene starts normal, then gets weirder and weirder, and then the character wakes up (but not always!). There are also a lot of eerie, beautiful images - Fanning’s character, the clocks, Flamingo gang of freaks, runaways and fire jugglers. But it kind of doesn’t come together - too much dream logic, not enough story. And the real story, which I will spoil, is not really presented fully: While Kilmer is dreaming up a horror fantasy, Dern is probably the actual serial killer, murdering children as “vampires”. I get that the joke is that he doesn’t care about something so serious, while chasing the trivial. I just don’t think Coppola pulled it off.
Also - and I say this as someone who loves him - Kilmer has a weirdly tiny face in a big, puffy head.
I guess Coppola had a good time making this - he filmed from his home in Napa. And he deserves it, after all he’s given to cinema. It’s just not that great - twixt bad and good?
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
No More Bonk-Bonk on the Head
As we head into Spooktober, the spooky stuff starts hitting our queue. Some of it, like Stephen King's Children of the Corn (1984) is pretty silly.
It starts Gatlin, in a small Nebraska farm town, with a boy going to a diner with his dad after church. On a signal, all the older kids start murdering the adults. Fast forward 3 years - Burt Stanton and Linda Hamilton are driving through Nebraska when they hit a kid in the road. Stanton notices that his throat was cut just before he was hit, and loads the body up and starts looking for a town. A mechanic at a gas station tells them to avoid Gatlin, but all the roads seem to point that way. While they are driving in circles, lets meet the kids.
The children who murdered all the adults in Gatlin are lead by the child preacher Isaac, who has the kids sacrifice to He Who Walks Behind the Rows. He has a thuggish lieutenant, Malachi, who just likes killing adults. The kids are mostly happy to be out from under the grown ups, but the little boy from the diner and his sister (who draws pictures of the future) still like to go to their old house and play with toys and records. When our adult protagonists finally get to Gatlin, these kids will be their allies and vice versa.
So it’s the kids vs. adults story - just like the Miri episode of Star Trek. My favorite part of this one is how easily the grown ups here just shrug off the kids attacks and knock them down. Even if they are outnumbered, they’re just kids.
I know King has a reputation as a great horror writer, but it seems to me that, outside of The Shining, all of his movies are trash. (And he hated The Shining.) This one is no different. Not even all that scary, although pretty gory.
It starts Gatlin, in a small Nebraska farm town, with a boy going to a diner with his dad after church. On a signal, all the older kids start murdering the adults. Fast forward 3 years - Burt Stanton and Linda Hamilton are driving through Nebraska when they hit a kid in the road. Stanton notices that his throat was cut just before he was hit, and loads the body up and starts looking for a town. A mechanic at a gas station tells them to avoid Gatlin, but all the roads seem to point that way. While they are driving in circles, lets meet the kids.
The children who murdered all the adults in Gatlin are lead by the child preacher Isaac, who has the kids sacrifice to He Who Walks Behind the Rows. He has a thuggish lieutenant, Malachi, who just likes killing adults. The kids are mostly happy to be out from under the grown ups, but the little boy from the diner and his sister (who draws pictures of the future) still like to go to their old house and play with toys and records. When our adult protagonists finally get to Gatlin, these kids will be their allies and vice versa.
So it’s the kids vs. adults story - just like the Miri episode of Star Trek. My favorite part of this one is how easily the grown ups here just shrug off the kids attacks and knock them down. Even if they are outnumbered, they’re just kids.
I know King has a reputation as a great horror writer, but it seems to me that, outside of The Shining, all of his movies are trash. (And he hated The Shining.) This one is no different. Not even all that scary, although pretty gory.
Monday, September 30, 2019
Don’t Make Me Do It without My Fez On
Sometimes you just want to watch a silly Irwin Allen adventure, so I queued up Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962). It fit the bill.
It stars Cedric Hardwicke as a Victorian inventor and aeronaut. He has invented a balloon that can fly without dropping ballast or releasing gas. The Jules Verne novel this is based on probably goes into a little more detail. With his pilot Fabian, he plans to fly across Africa, from Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. To get funding from a newspaper publisher, he agrees to take along the publishers playboy nephew, Red Buttons. Before they leave, the government asks them to plant the British flag at a spot on the Volta, to keep it out of the hands of slavers. They are required to take along a bumptious general, Richard Haydn.
In Zanzibar, Buttons frees a slave girl, BarBara Luna, which leads to them beating a hasty bon voyage. They pick up a chimp somewhere as well. Then they land in an imaginary kingdom where Billy Gilbert is Sultan. In case you don’t remember Gilbert, he was an old-time character actor whose signature bit was the extended sneeze (!). He is in no way African. Which is funny, because our aeronautics also run into Peter Lorre as an Arab slave trader, who is selling American schoolteacher Barbara Eden. Of course, they wind up with Eden and Lorre.
Now, we have Luna, who owes her life to Buttons, but is making goo-goo eyes at Fabian. Eden seems to be getting on well with Buttons. But nobody else is, because he keeps screwing things up. When they try to decide what to do with him, Lorre is always behind his back making throat cutting and hanging motions. Really, the best part of the movie.
No one will be surprised if I report that this is a deeply racist and generally fucked up movie. Ostensibly anti-slave trade, they don’t seem to mind Luna deciding the Buttons owns her because he saved her from slavery (?). There are very few black extras and not one with a speaking role (“Ungawah” doesn’t count). Also, the jungle is particularly unconvincing, and the stock footage boring.
On the other hand, the whole adventure thing is pretty well carried out. The balloon, with it’s ornate boat-like gondola and steam-punk hydrogen generator, is fun. I’m not sure how you feel about character actors, but we enjoyed Gilbert, incongruous as his role was. And Lorre was a hoot.
And finally, I got to watch this wearing my fez, which I put on for any movie that gives me the excuse. And that was all I needed.
It stars Cedric Hardwicke as a Victorian inventor and aeronaut. He has invented a balloon that can fly without dropping ballast or releasing gas. The Jules Verne novel this is based on probably goes into a little more detail. With his pilot Fabian, he plans to fly across Africa, from Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. To get funding from a newspaper publisher, he agrees to take along the publishers playboy nephew, Red Buttons. Before they leave, the government asks them to plant the British flag at a spot on the Volta, to keep it out of the hands of slavers. They are required to take along a bumptious general, Richard Haydn.
In Zanzibar, Buttons frees a slave girl, BarBara Luna, which leads to them beating a hasty bon voyage. They pick up a chimp somewhere as well. Then they land in an imaginary kingdom where Billy Gilbert is Sultan. In case you don’t remember Gilbert, he was an old-time character actor whose signature bit was the extended sneeze (!). He is in no way African. Which is funny, because our aeronautics also run into Peter Lorre as an Arab slave trader, who is selling American schoolteacher Barbara Eden. Of course, they wind up with Eden and Lorre.
Now, we have Luna, who owes her life to Buttons, but is making goo-goo eyes at Fabian. Eden seems to be getting on well with Buttons. But nobody else is, because he keeps screwing things up. When they try to decide what to do with him, Lorre is always behind his back making throat cutting and hanging motions. Really, the best part of the movie.
No one will be surprised if I report that this is a deeply racist and generally fucked up movie. Ostensibly anti-slave trade, they don’t seem to mind Luna deciding the Buttons owns her because he saved her from slavery (?). There are very few black extras and not one with a speaking role (“Ungawah” doesn’t count). Also, the jungle is particularly unconvincing, and the stock footage boring.
On the other hand, the whole adventure thing is pretty well carried out. The balloon, with it’s ornate boat-like gondola and steam-punk hydrogen generator, is fun. I’m not sure how you feel about character actors, but we enjoyed Gilbert, incongruous as his role was. And Lorre was a hoot.
And finally, I got to watch this wearing my fez, which I put on for any movie that gives me the excuse. And that was all I needed.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
A Crystal Darkly
We watched The Dark Crystal (1982) in case we want to see the new TV series. I had seen it way back when - late 80s - on TV, and Ms. Spenser hadn’t seen it at all. When I first saw it, I liked it but didn’t love it. I still feel the same way, and I’m not sure why.
The movie takes place on a world ofpuppets Skeksis, gross, decadent, evil creatures who use the cracked Crystal to extend their lives, and Mystics, ancient, benign, but maybe also decadent creatures who chant in resonance with all being. The Mystics have raised a gelfling, a small gentle being with pretty, fairy-like features. This gelfling, Jen, last of his race, will be our protagonist.
The Mystics decide that he will heal the crystal, once he gets the missing shard from an astrologer, who will let him know what to do. He gets his shard, but before he gets any more info, the Skeksi shock troopers arrive and he escapes.
On his way to the crystal, Jen meets another gelfling, Kira. They have a telepathic bond, and she can also talk with animals. They travel together with her pet Fizzgig on this quest.
The whole thing is beautifully put together, and the puppeteering is first class (since this is a Frank Oz production). The art direction is like Labyrinth without live actors. So why was I again underwhelmed? Was it excessively fey? (Like that would bother me.) Did it lack stakes, because puppets? Maybe it just wasn’t our thing for some reason. Ms. Spenser felt the same. We’ll probably give the TV series a shot anyway.
The movie takes place on a world of
The Mystics decide that he will heal the crystal, once he gets the missing shard from an astrologer, who will let him know what to do. He gets his shard, but before he gets any more info, the Skeksi shock troopers arrive and he escapes.
On his way to the crystal, Jen meets another gelfling, Kira. They have a telepathic bond, and she can also talk with animals. They travel together with her pet Fizzgig on this quest.
The whole thing is beautifully put together, and the puppeteering is first class (since this is a Frank Oz production). The art direction is like Labyrinth without live actors. So why was I again underwhelmed? Was it excessively fey? (Like that would bother me.) Did it lack stakes, because puppets? Maybe it just wasn’t our thing for some reason. Ms. Spenser felt the same. We’ll probably give the TV series a shot anyway.
Monday, September 23, 2019
Be It Resolved
Resolution (2012) came before The Endless, even though we watched it second. They are very intertwined, possibly to the point that it doesn’t matter which you watch first.
It starts with Peter Cilella getting a video email of his friend frolicking in the countryside, shooting guns and smoking crack. This is Vinnie Curran, the tweeker gun-nut from The Endless. So Cilella heads up to help his friend out, telling his wife he’ll be back in a week - just before he heads out of cell range. When he gets there, Curran is friendly but psycho, and refuses to go to rehab. So Cilella hits him with a stun gun and handcuffs him to a pipe. He’s going to let him sweat our detox for a week, then either go to rehab or go to hell.
But while Curran is suffering cold turkey, Cilella keeps finding odd documents - books, slides, movies. They have cryptic information about the land around and even themselves. That email he got that started the whole thing wasn’t sent by Curran. It’s not clear where it did come from. And when they watch the file again, it has changed - and now shows the two of them from just minutes ago.
Also, Curran’s dealers come by - high school friends of the two of them. Curran owes them a lot of drugs or money. Then it turns out that Curran is squatting in the house he’s staying in - it belongs to an Indian reservation, and the Lou-Diamond-Philips-looking security guard is giving them 5 days to get out. (These scenes are cute because Cilella is gratingly P.C., prefacing every statement with a “no disrespect to your traditions meant.”)
So, while Curran is pretty much stuck on the suckitude of his detox, Cilella is getting more and more paranoid about the weird people he is meeting, and the inexplicable messages he keeps finding. Since we saw The Endless, we kind of know what’s going on. I’m not sure whether that is a good or bad thing.
We also meet the Frenchman in the RV trailer that we meet in The Endless, and even one of the directors, who is one of the main characters in The Endless, although we meet when he is younger, and in a different cult.
This isn’t actually much of a horror film. Like The Endless, it’s sort of a slow burn that seems to be about one thing, but turns out to be about something else. And both are equally good, and go well together. I wonder if this will be a trilogy?
It starts with Peter Cilella getting a video email of his friend frolicking in the countryside, shooting guns and smoking crack. This is Vinnie Curran, the tweeker gun-nut from The Endless. So Cilella heads up to help his friend out, telling his wife he’ll be back in a week - just before he heads out of cell range. When he gets there, Curran is friendly but psycho, and refuses to go to rehab. So Cilella hits him with a stun gun and handcuffs him to a pipe. He’s going to let him sweat our detox for a week, then either go to rehab or go to hell.
But while Curran is suffering cold turkey, Cilella keeps finding odd documents - books, slides, movies. They have cryptic information about the land around and even themselves. That email he got that started the whole thing wasn’t sent by Curran. It’s not clear where it did come from. And when they watch the file again, it has changed - and now shows the two of them from just minutes ago.
Also, Curran’s dealers come by - high school friends of the two of them. Curran owes them a lot of drugs or money. Then it turns out that Curran is squatting in the house he’s staying in - it belongs to an Indian reservation, and the Lou-Diamond-Philips-looking security guard is giving them 5 days to get out. (These scenes are cute because Cilella is gratingly P.C., prefacing every statement with a “no disrespect to your traditions meant.”)
So, while Curran is pretty much stuck on the suckitude of his detox, Cilella is getting more and more paranoid about the weird people he is meeting, and the inexplicable messages he keeps finding. Since we saw The Endless, we kind of know what’s going on. I’m not sure whether that is a good or bad thing.
We also meet the Frenchman in the RV trailer that we meet in The Endless, and even one of the directors, who is one of the main characters in The Endless, although we meet when he is younger, and in a different cult.
This isn’t actually much of a horror film. Like The Endless, it’s sort of a slow burn that seems to be about one thing, but turns out to be about something else. And both are equally good, and go well together. I wonder if this will be a trilogy?
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Nothing to Conjure with
As we move into the spooky part of the year, we thought we’d try something from the James Wan-iverse: The Conjuring (2013). It shares a lot of DNA with the Insidious franchise, but doesn’t really measure up.
It’s the story of two families: Lily Taylor and Ron Livingston and their four daughters move into an old house in Rhode Island. Livingston is a trucker who has put all their money into buying this place. The girls don’t love it, and are less than thrilled when they find a boarded up basement. Then things get really creepy. (The dog dies.)
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are supernatural investigators. They too have young children and live in an old house, with a museum of possessed objects. And here is my first problem with this movie - these two couples were just too similar. Although they don’t really look much alike, I kept getting them confused. For one thing, both were a little financially strapped - supernatural investigation pays no better than trucking, I guess.
Anyway, they are called in to investigate the haunting, bringing their assistants Shannon Kook and John Brotherton, who are no Tucker and Specs. Also, Wilson and Farmiga are no Elise, and we really wanted them to be.
Finally, this just isn’t as scary or surprising as Insidious series. It’s just a random haunting. When they track down the origin of the spirit, they also turn up about 20 other incidents, to the extent that it is almost funny - but none of it seems original.
And as far as Annabelle, the haunted doll, who gets a cameo, Ms. Spenser just said, “Creepy doll movies are stupid.” And there you have it.
It’s the story of two families: Lily Taylor and Ron Livingston and their four daughters move into an old house in Rhode Island. Livingston is a trucker who has put all their money into buying this place. The girls don’t love it, and are less than thrilled when they find a boarded up basement. Then things get really creepy. (The dog dies.)
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are supernatural investigators. They too have young children and live in an old house, with a museum of possessed objects. And here is my first problem with this movie - these two couples were just too similar. Although they don’t really look much alike, I kept getting them confused. For one thing, both were a little financially strapped - supernatural investigation pays no better than trucking, I guess.
Anyway, they are called in to investigate the haunting, bringing their assistants Shannon Kook and John Brotherton, who are no Tucker and Specs. Also, Wilson and Farmiga are no Elise, and we really wanted them to be.
Finally, this just isn’t as scary or surprising as Insidious series. It’s just a random haunting. When they track down the origin of the spirit, they also turn up about 20 other incidents, to the extent that it is almost funny - but none of it seems original.
And as far as Annabelle, the haunted doll, who gets a cameo, Ms. Spenser just said, “Creepy doll movies are stupid.” And there you have it.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Western Sunset
We queued up The Hired Hand (1971) partly because Peter Fonda passed away. But also, Verna Bloom, Ms. Spenser’s aunt, died not that long ago. So we were watching for her.
It starts with cowboys Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, and the kid, Robert Pratt, sitting around a campfire, talking about what to do next. Pratt wants to go to California, and Oates allows as how he might like to see the ocean. But Fonda says he wants to go home and see his wife again. It’s been seven years since he’s seen her. But before Oates and Pratt can head off, Pratt goes into town and gets killed offscreen.
So Fonda and Oates go into town and shoot the foot off of Severn Darden, the man who killed their friend and head out.
When Fonda gets to the old homestead, his wife, Verna Bloom, isn’t too happy to see him. She finally agrees to let him stay as a hired hand, sleeping in the barn. She’s become a hard woman and bitter towards Fonda. Also, he hears that she usually sleeps with her hired hands. When he confronts her about that, she asks why she shouldn’t?
So, little by little, he gains her trust, and Oates heads off to California. But it can’t end happily, can it?
Fonda wears a beard in this, and seems to be doing Eastwood, although it’s probably just the style at the time. He’s pretty stiff, but maybe he’s supposed to be. Oates is always good, of course. But Bloom is truly great here. She’s plain and unglamorous, bitter and unapologetic. She’s quiet, expressive, and brave.
But I have to say that cinematographer Vilmos Szigmond is the best thing about the movie. It is full of dark scenes and sunsets, and long dissolves. One that I liked a lot was a dissolve between Fonda and Oates talking and a sunset, with them silhouetted at the bottom - so it was almost like three planes, the conversation over the sunset, with the silhouettes at the bottom of the screen. Very memorable.
In conclusion, RIP, Peter Fonda. RIP, Aunt Verna.
It starts with cowboys Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, and the kid, Robert Pratt, sitting around a campfire, talking about what to do next. Pratt wants to go to California, and Oates allows as how he might like to see the ocean. But Fonda says he wants to go home and see his wife again. It’s been seven years since he’s seen her. But before Oates and Pratt can head off, Pratt goes into town and gets killed offscreen.
So Fonda and Oates go into town and shoot the foot off of Severn Darden, the man who killed their friend and head out.
When Fonda gets to the old homestead, his wife, Verna Bloom, isn’t too happy to see him. She finally agrees to let him stay as a hired hand, sleeping in the barn. She’s become a hard woman and bitter towards Fonda. Also, he hears that she usually sleeps with her hired hands. When he confronts her about that, she asks why she shouldn’t?
So, little by little, he gains her trust, and Oates heads off to California. But it can’t end happily, can it?
Fonda wears a beard in this, and seems to be doing Eastwood, although it’s probably just the style at the time. He’s pretty stiff, but maybe he’s supposed to be. Oates is always good, of course. But Bloom is truly great here. She’s plain and unglamorous, bitter and unapologetic. She’s quiet, expressive, and brave.
But I have to say that cinematographer Vilmos Szigmond is the best thing about the movie. It is full of dark scenes and sunsets, and long dissolves. One that I liked a lot was a dissolve between Fonda and Oates talking and a sunset, with them silhouetted at the bottom - so it was almost like three planes, the conversation over the sunset, with the silhouettes at the bottom of the screen. Very memorable.
In conclusion, RIP, Peter Fonda. RIP, Aunt Verna.
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