What can I say? We wanted to watch The Wicker Man (1973), and had to watch The Wicker Man (2006).
Since these movies have basically the same plot, I'll save a little time and describe the common thread. There is an island, isolated and seemingly idyllic, where everyone is named after plants. To this island comes a lone policeman. He has received a letter telling him that a little girl, Rowan, has gone missing from the island. But no one on the island will admit to knowing the girl. There are hints that she exists - she's on the school attendance list. Maybe she's dead, but the grave is in a ruined churchyard. Is she even in the coffin at all?
The islanders have peculiar religious practices, modeled on the old nature cults. When our policeman finally meets the mysterious leader of the island, he begins to suspect that they even practice human sacrifice, and that the girl may be the next victim. And it is April 30, and tomorrow is May Day.
In the original 1973 stars Edward Woodward (another plant name!) as the policeman. The island is in Scotland, and the islanders engage in fertility rituals - for singing bawdy songs in the pub and dancing lewdly with the landlord's daughter, Britt Ekland to outdoor public swiving. It actually looks kind of nice - lots of folk music if you're into that, and strapping lads and lusty wenches if you're into that. Woodward is not - he is a straitlaced Catholic and has a hard time keeping his mind off the depravity. My favorite scene has Ekland in the room next to him, all nude and sweaty, working a sex spell to entice him into her room. She writhes, dances and knocks on the wall in a seductive rhythm that really raises the heat.
The mysterious leader, Lord Summerisle, is Christopher Lee. He plays it just right, an aristocratic New Age hippie type. When he shows up, things really get going.
In the 2006 version, the policeman is Nic Cage. Before he goes to the island, we see him involved in a horrible, unexpected and hilarious accident. As soon as I saw it, I knew this was going to be played for laughs. Anyway, he is traumatized, not sleeping, and popping pills for the flashbacks. The letter about the missing girl is his chance for redemption, to become whole again.
In this movie, the island is in the Puget Sound, and specializes in honey production, which is a problem, since Cage is allergic to bee stings. The inhabitants are almost all women, the men all mute drones. Although this version of the island looks cozy, writer/director Neil LaBute's famed misogyny really comes through - these are the asexual, funless type lesbians, not the skyclad dancing type. Elen Burstyn is Sister Summersisle, and a lot less fun than Christopher Lee, although just as devious - wait until you see the bee-funnel.
So, watch the 1973 version for the Hammer-like seductive horror, and the 2006 for the laughs, intended and un-.
In conclusion, Ms. Spenser would just like to say, "The bees! The bees!"
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Giving 110%
Just how many SF movies was Scarlett Johansson in in the last few years? Ans: Lots, and we will watch them all. We went into Lucy (2014) knowing only that she was in it and that she uses more than 10% of her brain. We didn't find out that Luc Besson wrote and direct until the credits.
Scarlett Johansson is Lucy, a model or something in Taipei. She gets involved in a drug deal and winds up with a bag of the illegal designer drug CPH4 sewn into her side by some Korean mobsters. By the way, if they are looking for a cool street name, I would go with "cypher". This drug seems to make giigling crackheads into spazzed-out, raving crackheads. So it's too bad that Lucy gets a beating that makes the stash leak into her system.
By the way, did you know that the earliest human was called Lucy? We see shots of this early hominid and some gazelles getting hunted as metaphors for Johansson's situation, but they do pay off later. We also see Morgan Freeman giving a lecture on how humans only use 10% of their brains. At 20%, they could read minds. At 40%, they could control space and time. And at 100%, they could, dare I say it? Rule the world?
Which also pays off, because the CPH4 starts to give Lucy the use of the other 90% of her brain. She starts getting awesome powers, including the ability to predict that it would kill her in about a day. But that's fine, first she has to retrieve all of the drug shipments, so she can do it all. To keep it out of the hands of innocents, I'm sure.
One of the limits of the movie is that Lucy at 20% and up is beyond pain and human emotion, so she's not very relatable. Johansson is great at getting a lot out of a blank, expressionless deadpan, so this works for her. Another limit is that the whole 10% of the brain thing is BS, but so are vampires and faster-than-light space travel, and we swallow that when we have to.
I thought this was a lot of fun, although not Besson's best. If you can ignore the boneheaded attempts at profundity spouted by Prof. Freeman, and approach it as mindless fun, I think you will be entertained.
And the message of the film is, when dosed with a mysterious illegal drug, try to do as much as possible. Drugs are amazing!
Scarlett Johansson is Lucy, a model or something in Taipei. She gets involved in a drug deal and winds up with a bag of the illegal designer drug CPH4 sewn into her side by some Korean mobsters. By the way, if they are looking for a cool street name, I would go with "cypher". This drug seems to make giigling crackheads into spazzed-out, raving crackheads. So it's too bad that Lucy gets a beating that makes the stash leak into her system.
By the way, did you know that the earliest human was called Lucy? We see shots of this early hominid and some gazelles getting hunted as metaphors for Johansson's situation, but they do pay off later. We also see Morgan Freeman giving a lecture on how humans only use 10% of their brains. At 20%, they could read minds. At 40%, they could control space and time. And at 100%, they could, dare I say it? Rule the world?
Which also pays off, because the CPH4 starts to give Lucy the use of the other 90% of her brain. She starts getting awesome powers, including the ability to predict that it would kill her in about a day. But that's fine, first she has to retrieve all of the drug shipments, so she can do it all. To keep it out of the hands of innocents, I'm sure.
One of the limits of the movie is that Lucy at 20% and up is beyond pain and human emotion, so she's not very relatable. Johansson is great at getting a lot out of a blank, expressionless deadpan, so this works for her. Another limit is that the whole 10% of the brain thing is BS, but so are vampires and faster-than-light space travel, and we swallow that when we have to.
I thought this was a lot of fun, although not Besson's best. If you can ignore the boneheaded attempts at profundity spouted by Prof. Freeman, and approach it as mindless fun, I think you will be entertained.
And the message of the film is, when dosed with a mysterious illegal drug, try to do as much as possible. Drugs are amazing!
Monday, March 9, 2015
Fear Itself
Since we saw the original, we felt like we should check out Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear (1991). It's both very close and completely different.
It stars Nick Nolte in the Gary Cooper role of an upstanding lawyer being menaced by Max Cady, played by Robert De Niro in the Robert Mitchum role. In the original, the lawyer is a decent man, but a bit weak and maybe corrupted. In the remake, he is weaker - he is having an emotional affair (no sex yet) with court clerk Illeana Douglas (Grace of My Heart), some of his legal cases seem a bit low, and, like in the original, he tries to get Cady rousted.
But he goes further, and hires a private eye to rough him up and then act as bodyguard - and it's Joe Don Baker! All MSTies laugh at him for his work in Mitchell, but he's pretty good in this, as the sleazy, not-as-good-as-he-thinks-he-is good ol' boy.
Then there's Nolte's wife, Jessica Lange, not the Donna Reed housewife type, but a bit of a bitch. The daughter, Juliette Lewis, is also more modern - she was suspended for marijuana and has to go to summer school. This leads to one of the most upsetting scenes, where De Niro pretends to be one of her teachers and starts seducing her. Very creepy, and not really necessary. By contrast, Mitchum's scariest scene was when he beat up the b-girl. In the remake, he beats Illeana Douglas, and it just isn't as bad.
The filming styles were completely different as well. The original used a classic black and white style with lots of location shooting. The remake used a fair amount of optical effects - turning the sky purple, etc, that gave it an almost 70s look. The southern location was bleached out - mostly office buildings and the bland mini-mansion Nolte and family lived in.
The climax on the Cape Fear River goes way over the top and kind of shows up the problem of this remake. The original was tense and dramatic, but this gets almost silly. And De Niro is suitably creepy, violent and evil, but when he starts speaking in tongues, I couldn't hang.
In conclusion, the best parts were cameos for Robert Mitchum, Martin Balsam and Gary Cooper (who was actually a little stiff). And, of course, Joe Don Baker.
It stars Nick Nolte in the Gary Cooper role of an upstanding lawyer being menaced by Max Cady, played by Robert De Niro in the Robert Mitchum role. In the original, the lawyer is a decent man, but a bit weak and maybe corrupted. In the remake, he is weaker - he is having an emotional affair (no sex yet) with court clerk Illeana Douglas (Grace of My Heart), some of his legal cases seem a bit low, and, like in the original, he tries to get Cady rousted.
But he goes further, and hires a private eye to rough him up and then act as bodyguard - and it's Joe Don Baker! All MSTies laugh at him for his work in Mitchell, but he's pretty good in this, as the sleazy, not-as-good-as-he-thinks-he-is good ol' boy.
Then there's Nolte's wife, Jessica Lange, not the Donna Reed housewife type, but a bit of a bitch. The daughter, Juliette Lewis, is also more modern - she was suspended for marijuana and has to go to summer school. This leads to one of the most upsetting scenes, where De Niro pretends to be one of her teachers and starts seducing her. Very creepy, and not really necessary. By contrast, Mitchum's scariest scene was when he beat up the b-girl. In the remake, he beats Illeana Douglas, and it just isn't as bad.
The filming styles were completely different as well. The original used a classic black and white style with lots of location shooting. The remake used a fair amount of optical effects - turning the sky purple, etc, that gave it an almost 70s look. The southern location was bleached out - mostly office buildings and the bland mini-mansion Nolte and family lived in.
The climax on the Cape Fear River goes way over the top and kind of shows up the problem of this remake. The original was tense and dramatic, but this gets almost silly. And De Niro is suitably creepy, violent and evil, but when he starts speaking in tongues, I couldn't hang.
In conclusion, the best parts were cameos for Robert Mitchum, Martin Balsam and Gary Cooper (who was actually a little stiff). And, of course, Joe Don Baker.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Hard-Riding Women
Like Westerns, but looking for something crazy, and maybe a little psychosexual? Try Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954).
It starts with a bang. Johnny Guitar, Sterling Hayden, riding along a trail, passes construction work for the railroad dynamiting through a ridge. He overlooks a stagecoach holdup and rides on. He's on his way to Vienna's place, a casino out of town (but on the new rail line), run by Joan Crawford. But she's got a bit of trouble - Mercedes McCambridge leads a posse in, dumps a dead body on the roulette table and accuses Crawford of harboring the gang that done it, lead by her boyfriend, the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady). Hayden shows up and plays a little guitar for the Kid to dance to, and it's all quite threatening.
The key to the movie is McCambridge's hatred for Crawford, because she has a yen for the Kid, but was too much of a virgin to let him know. Then there's the back story between Crawford and Hayden. It's all expressed in the most overwrought and melodramatic way possible, up to and including a classic hideout behind a waterfall.
It could be ridiculous (well, maybe it is), but this is Nicholas Ray, so it's also wonderful. Needed more guitar, though.
It starts with a bang. Johnny Guitar, Sterling Hayden, riding along a trail, passes construction work for the railroad dynamiting through a ridge. He overlooks a stagecoach holdup and rides on. He's on his way to Vienna's place, a casino out of town (but on the new rail line), run by Joan Crawford. But she's got a bit of trouble - Mercedes McCambridge leads a posse in, dumps a dead body on the roulette table and accuses Crawford of harboring the gang that done it, lead by her boyfriend, the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady). Hayden shows up and plays a little guitar for the Kid to dance to, and it's all quite threatening.
The key to the movie is McCambridge's hatred for Crawford, because she has a yen for the Kid, but was too much of a virgin to let him know. Then there's the back story between Crawford and Hayden. It's all expressed in the most overwrought and melodramatic way possible, up to and including a classic hideout behind a waterfall.
It could be ridiculous (well, maybe it is), but this is Nicholas Ray, so it's also wonderful. Needed more guitar, though.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Vanilla Eyes
I guess we saw Vanilla Sky before I started this blog, because there's no post. It might have been the first not-horrible Tom Cruise movie I had seen. We just saw the original movie, Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos, 1997) and it helps explain why.
Basically, Vanilla Sky is a remake of a Spanish film called Abre los Ojos. It stars Eduardo Noriega as a shallow rich handsome man who never sleeps with the same woman twice. After meeting Penelope Cruz, he thinks he might have found someone to settle down with. When he is horribly disfigured, everything changes. Without his good looks he is nothing. Then things start to get strange.
I've read the Cruise optioned the remake of this movie before he finished watching the credits. It's easy to see why:
In conclusion, if you have seen either, and didn't hate it, try the other. If you haven't, watch Ojos first.
Basically, Vanilla Sky is a remake of a Spanish film called Abre los Ojos. It stars Eduardo Noriega as a shallow rich handsome man who never sleeps with the same woman twice. After meeting Penelope Cruz, he thinks he might have found someone to settle down with. When he is horribly disfigured, everything changes. Without his good looks he is nothing. Then things start to get strange.
I've read the Cruise optioned the remake of this movie before he finished watching the credits. It's easy to see why:
- Playing handsome shallow assholes is pretty much Cruise's sweet spot.
- Head games about the nature of reality work with his Scientologist philosophy
In conclusion, if you have seen either, and didn't hate it, try the other. If you haven't, watch Ojos first.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Playing Chess
Nobody worries about historical accuracy when making a biopic, especially about musicians. Take for ex: Cadillac Records (2008).
It stars Adrian Brody as Leonard Chess, founder of legendary Chicago blues label Chess Records. Now, if you know Chess, you might be wondering, what about his brother Phil? Well, he's not in this movie, at least he doesn't have any lines. Leonard is a Jewish immigrant of little means who wants his future wife to drive a Cadillac. He thinks he can get there by recording "race" records.
He finds talent like Muddy Waters (Jeffery Wright), Little Walter (Columbus Short), Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer) and significantly, Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). He recorded their records and got them played on the radio (even if it took a little payola). He got them all Cadillacs, but he took it out of their royalties. The message seemed to be that he was really on the artists side, but was a bit sleazy too. Also, he was faithful to his Jewish wife, except for a little thing with Etta James.
About that - he was bringing her around when she was overdosing on heroin, which progressed to the start of an intimate act. Now pardon me if I seem old-fashioned, but you don't sleep with passed-out drunks and you don't do it with someone high on smack. Gross! Sorry, had to get it off my chest.
Anyway, the historical accuracy is negligible. Fine, what about the music? Amazingly, the actors did their own singing (except Beyonce - she did her own singing and it is amazing, but it's not amazing that she did her own singing). Wright sing a solid Muddy, but he plays the role as a man unsure of himself, worried about his popularity. Eamonn Walker, on the other hand, makes an amazing Howlin' Wolf, tall with a sharp haircut and bowtie, full of righteous independence, performing a fierce rendition of "Smokestack Lightning". Mos Def isn't bad as Berry, either.
But Beyonce was best, and they save my favorite Etta James song for last, "I Would Rather Go Blind". Really, I would have liked to see a lot more of her and Howlin' Wolf, and less melodrama. Although, I did kind of the like the idea that Muddy's band were called the Head Hunters - They'd go after other bands and blow them off the stage, either with the blues or with Little Walter's gun.
In conclusion, silly story, good acting, great music.
It stars Adrian Brody as Leonard Chess, founder of legendary Chicago blues label Chess Records. Now, if you know Chess, you might be wondering, what about his brother Phil? Well, he's not in this movie, at least he doesn't have any lines. Leonard is a Jewish immigrant of little means who wants his future wife to drive a Cadillac. He thinks he can get there by recording "race" records.
He finds talent like Muddy Waters (Jeffery Wright), Little Walter (Columbus Short), Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer) and significantly, Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). He recorded their records and got them played on the radio (even if it took a little payola). He got them all Cadillacs, but he took it out of their royalties. The message seemed to be that he was really on the artists side, but was a bit sleazy too. Also, he was faithful to his Jewish wife, except for a little thing with Etta James.
About that - he was bringing her around when she was overdosing on heroin, which progressed to the start of an intimate act. Now pardon me if I seem old-fashioned, but you don't sleep with passed-out drunks and you don't do it with someone high on smack. Gross! Sorry, had to get it off my chest.
Anyway, the historical accuracy is negligible. Fine, what about the music? Amazingly, the actors did their own singing (except Beyonce - she did her own singing and it is amazing, but it's not amazing that she did her own singing). Wright sing a solid Muddy, but he plays the role as a man unsure of himself, worried about his popularity. Eamonn Walker, on the other hand, makes an amazing Howlin' Wolf, tall with a sharp haircut and bowtie, full of righteous independence, performing a fierce rendition of "Smokestack Lightning". Mos Def isn't bad as Berry, either.
But Beyonce was best, and they save my favorite Etta James song for last, "I Would Rather Go Blind". Really, I would have liked to see a lot more of her and Howlin' Wolf, and less melodrama. Although, I did kind of the like the idea that Muddy's band were called the Head Hunters - They'd go after other bands and blow them off the stage, either with the blues or with Little Walter's gun.
In conclusion, silly story, good acting, great music.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Cometary Track
Night of the Comet (1984) totally counts as a post-apocalyptic zombie horror movie, but I queued it up because it's a cheesy 80s teen comedy. So why not?
Mary Catherine Stewart "works" at a B-movie palace - "works" in quotes because she spends most of her time making sure her name is the only one on the leader board of the lobby video game. I guess she's hoping for Robert Preston to show up, like in Last Starfighter. The projectionist has a scheme to spend the night with her in the projection booth, while the rest of the world is out watching a spectacular comet pass by overhead.
For example, all the neighbors will be out having an all-night comet party. Her mother will be there, snuggling with some guy from next door because her father is in El Salvador fighting commies. Her sister, a cheerleader valley-girl airhead (Kelli Maroney), will miss it, because she got grounded, ran away from home and slept in a garden shed.
The next morning, everyone is gone. The projectionist is gone, leaving a bloody smear. The block party is gone, leaving little piles of red dust. Only Stewart and Maroney, some zombies and the radio station are left. The radio station turns out to be on auto-pilot, but they meet one more survivor, Robert Beltran. Now the problem becomes, how can two girls survive the apocalypse with only one boy to hook up with.
Fortunately, an underground lab full of scientists are going to make everything better. Although, scientist Mary Woronov doesn't seem too sunny. Oh well, end of the world, flesh-eating zombies, kind of a bummer, I guess.
This isn't a big comedy like, say Shawn of the Dead, but it's pretty funny. It has fun with cheap horror movie conventions and with the whole 80s milieu. I might have liked it even more if I watched more of the movies it parodies. I don't know why it isn't referenced in Maximum Overdrive.
Mary Catherine Stewart "works" at a B-movie palace - "works" in quotes because she spends most of her time making sure her name is the only one on the leader board of the lobby video game. I guess she's hoping for Robert Preston to show up, like in Last Starfighter. The projectionist has a scheme to spend the night with her in the projection booth, while the rest of the world is out watching a spectacular comet pass by overhead.
For example, all the neighbors will be out having an all-night comet party. Her mother will be there, snuggling with some guy from next door because her father is in El Salvador fighting commies. Her sister, a cheerleader valley-girl airhead (Kelli Maroney), will miss it, because she got grounded, ran away from home and slept in a garden shed.
The next morning, everyone is gone. The projectionist is gone, leaving a bloody smear. The block party is gone, leaving little piles of red dust. Only Stewart and Maroney, some zombies and the radio station are left. The radio station turns out to be on auto-pilot, but they meet one more survivor, Robert Beltran. Now the problem becomes, how can two girls survive the apocalypse with only one boy to hook up with.
Fortunately, an underground lab full of scientists are going to make everything better. Although, scientist Mary Woronov doesn't seem too sunny. Oh well, end of the world, flesh-eating zombies, kind of a bummer, I guess.
This isn't a big comedy like, say Shawn of the Dead, but it's pretty funny. It has fun with cheap horror movie conventions and with the whole 80s milieu. I might have liked it even more if I watched more of the movies it parodies. I don't know why it isn't referenced in Maximum Overdrive.
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