We watched Doctor Sleep (2019), based on Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining. Even though I still haven’t seen the Kubrick movie, I really liked this.
It starts with little Danny Torrance, haunted by the naked old bathtub lady from the Overlook Hotel. The ghost of Not-Scatman-Crothers (Carl Lumbly) teaches Danny how to lock these spirits into spirit boxes, which helps quite a bit.
However, at a campground, Rebecca Ferguson, as Rose the Hat, lures a little girl into her clutches, then spirits her away with a flock of campers.
Now, in present day, we meet Ewan McGregor as Danny. We find him in bed with a coke whore with a sick hangover. She has also stolen his money, so he steals her - even though she has a hungry little girl. Even Lumbly tells him this is going too far, and he’s dead. So he spends the money on a ticket as far as he can go and winds up in a little town in New Hampshire - with a little model of the town in the town square. This is an odd little detail that I don’t think pays off, but lets director Mike Flanagan include a shot where the foreground buildings turn out to be tiny, due to perspective. No pay off, but weird.
He meets a nice guy, Cliff Curtis, who helps him find a place to live and an AA meeting. He gets a job in a nursing home. When the death cat (you know about death cats?) predicts someone will die, he uses his psychic powers to calm then before the big sleep. This earns him the name in the title.
Meanwhile, a young girl named Abra Stone (Kayleigh Curran) is discovering that she has psychic powers, very powerful powers. Rose the Hat and her gang, who feed off of the fear and death of Shiners, are noticing her too. So does McGregor. This movie has a lot of balls in the air, but that’s the basic setup: Rose and her gang torture and kill kids who have the Shining. Stone and Torrance will have to keep them from eating them.
One of the fun things about this movie is that the protagonists are as powerful, smart and aggressive as the bad guys. Little Abra gets more than a few licks in, and Danny and his AA sponsor go from zero to mass murder (of the enemy) in the time it takes to drive to Iowa (I think they passed the Children of the Corn on the way). And it all ends up back at the Overlook Hotel, which has been closed, but is still super haunted.
I liked that there was so much going on, but this movie is two-and-a-half to three hours long. One of the most striking scenes is when Rose the Hat astral projects and goes looking for Abra. I sort of fell asleep a little way into this scene, then woke up to find that it was still going on. After a while, I dozed off again, then woke up, and yup, still astrally projecting. I’m saying, they could have trimmed this.
So, I guess I should watch The Shining, right?
Monday, March 30, 2020
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
You’re No Fun Anymore, Rocketman
It makes sense that we’re watching Rocketman (2019). After all, we watched Bohemian Rhapsody and Blinded by the Light. We’re just trying to cover all the Dad Rock angles of 2019.
In fact, Rocketman and Rhapsody have a lot in common - gay and talented kid from a repressive home gets fame and fortune, but almost loses everything to drugs, alcohol, and sexual excess. The main diffference is that Rhapsody tells the story straight, but Rocketman gets a little crazy.
It starts with Taron Edgerton as John in a wild, horned and winged devil costume, stomping into a group therapy session and telling the story of his life. His mother was a loose woman who didn’t care for him, his father was a cold military man who seemed to hate him, but his granny was lovely. His talent on the piano got him into the Royal Conservatory. When is parents split up, his mom took up with a fun guy who got him interested in rock. He started playing in the pub - “Saturday’s All Right for Fighting”. And it took off from there, playing piano in a touring backup band.
A record company puts him in touch with Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and they start making hits. Soon, they are off to LA to play the Troubador. Just as one example, when he starts playing, he levitates and time stands still - then he crashes out “Crocodile Rock”. Then booze, gay and straight sex, bad management, drugs, and more and more music. Some of it is fantastical, some heartfelt, and Edgerton sings it all. Which is pretty impressive.
We liked the whole fantasy musical thing, although there are some parts that I wish were more historically accurate. Like the backup band he worked with was headed by Long John Baldry, once much beloved by British blues fans, but pretty obscure. The movie implied that Elton chose his last name for John Lennon, but it was actually Baldry. They wrote him out of the picture completely. And Elton got a big boost on his first trip to America from Leon Russell. I had hoped he’d get into the show, but was only mentioned at the Troubador: “Neal Diamond, Leon Russell and half of The Beach Boys are out there!”
That aside, we liked what director Dexter Fletcher did with this. Parts were a little clunky - we got hit over the head in some scenes, but I guess Elton John isn’t exactly subtle. Since Fletcher also took over Bohemian Rhapsody when Bryan Singer left, it’s interesting to compare and contrast.
In conclusion, I’m not really a big Elton John fan (or Queen fan, either), but boy did this make me appreciate him. Also, I’ve always felt Bernie Taupin didn’t get enough credit, and he comes across well here, just a solid, steady, working songwriter. No complaints.
In fact, Rocketman and Rhapsody have a lot in common - gay and talented kid from a repressive home gets fame and fortune, but almost loses everything to drugs, alcohol, and sexual excess. The main diffference is that Rhapsody tells the story straight, but Rocketman gets a little crazy.
It starts with Taron Edgerton as John in a wild, horned and winged devil costume, stomping into a group therapy session and telling the story of his life. His mother was a loose woman who didn’t care for him, his father was a cold military man who seemed to hate him, but his granny was lovely. His talent on the piano got him into the Royal Conservatory. When is parents split up, his mom took up with a fun guy who got him interested in rock. He started playing in the pub - “Saturday’s All Right for Fighting”. And it took off from there, playing piano in a touring backup band.
A record company puts him in touch with Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and they start making hits. Soon, they are off to LA to play the Troubador. Just as one example, when he starts playing, he levitates and time stands still - then he crashes out “Crocodile Rock”. Then booze, gay and straight sex, bad management, drugs, and more and more music. Some of it is fantastical, some heartfelt, and Edgerton sings it all. Which is pretty impressive.
We liked the whole fantasy musical thing, although there are some parts that I wish were more historically accurate. Like the backup band he worked with was headed by Long John Baldry, once much beloved by British blues fans, but pretty obscure. The movie implied that Elton chose his last name for John Lennon, but it was actually Baldry. They wrote him out of the picture completely. And Elton got a big boost on his first trip to America from Leon Russell. I had hoped he’d get into the show, but was only mentioned at the Troubador: “Neal Diamond, Leon Russell and half of The Beach Boys are out there!”
That aside, we liked what director Dexter Fletcher did with this. Parts were a little clunky - we got hit over the head in some scenes, but I guess Elton John isn’t exactly subtle. Since Fletcher also took over Bohemian Rhapsody when Bryan Singer left, it’s interesting to compare and contrast.
In conclusion, I’m not really a big Elton John fan (or Queen fan, either), but boy did this make me appreciate him. Also, I’ve always felt Bernie Taupin didn’t get enough credit, and he comes across well here, just a solid, steady, working songwriter. No complaints.
Monday, March 23, 2020
Ed Asner Per Aspirin
Ad Astra (2019) is another movie Ms. Spenser saw on a plane and wanted to see on the bigger screen. I wanted to see it too, even against mixed reviews.
It starts with a great set piece: a group of astronauts working on a large structure in low Earth orbit - or so it seems. Something happens and all hell breaks lows - sparks, explosions and chunks falling off. One of them knocks star Brad Pitt off his perch and sends him spinning towards Earth. Here we see that the structure isn’t in orbit: It’s a beanstalk, a space antenna anchored on Earth. And although Brad Pitt is going to have a rough trip down, he also has a parachute, and lands safely. SPOILER for first 10 minutes.
Now we get to meet Pitt with his suit off. He is offered a new mission. First, they talk about what a cool and competent astronaut he is, which is too bad, because I sort of saw him as a blue-collar worker up on the tower - a space lineman. But anyway, it turns out that the power surge that caused the antenna accident is part of a series, originating from around Neptune. They think it is caused by the antimatter drive of the ship that went out there years ago - under the command of Pitt’s father, Tommy Lee Jones.
Throughout the movie, we learn that Pitt’s father was always away on missions, and cared more about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence than his own family. But Pitt is a stone-cold astronaut, who got divorced from Liv Tyler for similar reasons. He has no emotional response.
So it’s off the moon on a Virgin Galactic flight. This seems to be a cute ref to 2001. On the moon, they fight off moon buggy pirates, in a scene that is well-filmed, exciting and pretty much useless to the story. Form the moon, they take off for Mars, stopping on the way to answer a distress call for a research ship. This winds up with them having to fight killer space monkeys (shades of Venom and Rampage). This scene is also redundant.
When Pitt gets to Mars, he sends a message to his father, but gets too emotional. He is pulled off the mission. Project leader Ruth Negga tells him confidentially that the crew off the Neptune mission mutinied in order to get home, and Jones killed them all - including Negga’s parents. So she will help him stowaway on the Neptune flight. This goes spectacularly wrong.
I’ll just mention that this is another case where one side kills their own team, like in DeepStar Six or Ready or Not. This is a handy way for script writers to include a lot of mayhem without making the main character a monster.
This takes us up to the last act, which I’ll pretty much skip, except to say that papa Jones is an unrepentant monster who learns nothing. Pitt doesn’t do that great either, but does better. And there’s a great scene with him surfing a panel through Neptune’s rings like the guy at the end of Dark Star.
I’m not sure that’s an actual homage, but I did say to Ms. Spenser that this was like a mix of 2001 and Apocalypse Now. This is apparently exactly what director James Gray was going for, so point all around.
It starts with a great set piece: a group of astronauts working on a large structure in low Earth orbit - or so it seems. Something happens and all hell breaks lows - sparks, explosions and chunks falling off. One of them knocks star Brad Pitt off his perch and sends him spinning towards Earth. Here we see that the structure isn’t in orbit: It’s a beanstalk, a space antenna anchored on Earth. And although Brad Pitt is going to have a rough trip down, he also has a parachute, and lands safely. SPOILER for first 10 minutes.
Now we get to meet Pitt with his suit off. He is offered a new mission. First, they talk about what a cool and competent astronaut he is, which is too bad, because I sort of saw him as a blue-collar worker up on the tower - a space lineman. But anyway, it turns out that the power surge that caused the antenna accident is part of a series, originating from around Neptune. They think it is caused by the antimatter drive of the ship that went out there years ago - under the command of Pitt’s father, Tommy Lee Jones.
Throughout the movie, we learn that Pitt’s father was always away on missions, and cared more about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence than his own family. But Pitt is a stone-cold astronaut, who got divorced from Liv Tyler for similar reasons. He has no emotional response.
So it’s off the moon on a Virgin Galactic flight. This seems to be a cute ref to 2001. On the moon, they fight off moon buggy pirates, in a scene that is well-filmed, exciting and pretty much useless to the story. Form the moon, they take off for Mars, stopping on the way to answer a distress call for a research ship. This winds up with them having to fight killer space monkeys (shades of Venom and Rampage). This scene is also redundant.
When Pitt gets to Mars, he sends a message to his father, but gets too emotional. He is pulled off the mission. Project leader Ruth Negga tells him confidentially that the crew off the Neptune mission mutinied in order to get home, and Jones killed them all - including Negga’s parents. So she will help him stowaway on the Neptune flight. This goes spectacularly wrong.
I’ll just mention that this is another case where one side kills their own team, like in DeepStar Six or Ready or Not. This is a handy way for script writers to include a lot of mayhem without making the main character a monster.
This takes us up to the last act, which I’ll pretty much skip, except to say that papa Jones is an unrepentant monster who learns nothing. Pitt doesn’t do that great either, but does better. And there’s a great scene with him surfing a panel through Neptune’s rings like the guy at the end of Dark Star.
I’m not sure that’s an actual homage, but I did say to Ms. Spenser that this was like a mix of 2001 and Apocalypse Now. This is apparently exactly what director James Gray was going for, so point all around.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Truly Magnificent
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve watched The Magnificent Seven (1960), but considering how little I actually remembered, it must be the first time in a long time.
It opens with an army of banditos lead by Eli Wallach raid a Mexican village and tell them that he will be back for the rest of the harvest. In desperation, they gather everything they have of value and head to the city to buy guns to defend themselves.
In the city, they come across a funeral director refusing to bury a man because he isn’t white. So Yul Brynner steps up and agrees to drive the hearse to Boot Hill. Steve McQueen offers to ride shotgun. They handily dispatch the mob trying to keep them out, and the town rallies to bury the man. Bystander Horst Buchholz is so impressed he starts following these guys. I had forgotten that Brynner and McQueen were introduced on a note of racial tolerance.
The Mexicans approach Brynner to ask him where they can buy guns, and he says that they can get men with guns just as cheap. So he gathers five other men, including McQueen, Brad Dexter, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughan. Buchholz tries to join but Brynner dismisses him as a kid.
So the magnificent six ride off, with Buchholz following. Now, I guess I don’t remember Magnificent Seven all that well, but I remember its inspiration, Seven Samurai, well enough to watch it in Japanese and recite chunks of the English translation (I don’t understand Japanese that well, either). I was surprised at how closely Buchholz’s fishing scene matches Mifune’s version. They have a very different style - Mifune-San plays like a monkey, squatting on his haunches and leaping around, where Buchholz is more puppy-like. But in both versions, his fish fry gets him included in the seven.
It just occurred to me that maybe Brynner got the job as leader because of his bald head, like Shimura-san in Seven Samurai.
This version really doesn’t live up to Kurosawa-san’s original, especially the final battle. But director John Sturges does give it a beautiful sweeping grandeur, and the cast is excellent. Brynner, in particular, is iconic. And the Marlboro theme, by Elmer Bernstein, is pretty catchy.
We will not even mention the 2016 remake.
It opens with an army of banditos lead by Eli Wallach raid a Mexican village and tell them that he will be back for the rest of the harvest. In desperation, they gather everything they have of value and head to the city to buy guns to defend themselves.
In the city, they come across a funeral director refusing to bury a man because he isn’t white. So Yul Brynner steps up and agrees to drive the hearse to Boot Hill. Steve McQueen offers to ride shotgun. They handily dispatch the mob trying to keep them out, and the town rallies to bury the man. Bystander Horst Buchholz is so impressed he starts following these guys. I had forgotten that Brynner and McQueen were introduced on a note of racial tolerance.
The Mexicans approach Brynner to ask him where they can buy guns, and he says that they can get men with guns just as cheap. So he gathers five other men, including McQueen, Brad Dexter, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughan. Buchholz tries to join but Brynner dismisses him as a kid.
So the magnificent six ride off, with Buchholz following. Now, I guess I don’t remember Magnificent Seven all that well, but I remember its inspiration, Seven Samurai, well enough to watch it in Japanese and recite chunks of the English translation (I don’t understand Japanese that well, either). I was surprised at how closely Buchholz’s fishing scene matches Mifune’s version. They have a very different style - Mifune-San plays like a monkey, squatting on his haunches and leaping around, where Buchholz is more puppy-like. But in both versions, his fish fry gets him included in the seven.
It just occurred to me that maybe Brynner got the job as leader because of his bald head, like Shimura-san in Seven Samurai.
This version really doesn’t live up to Kurosawa-san’s original, especially the final battle. But director John Sturges does give it a beautiful sweeping grandeur, and the cast is excellent. Brynner, in particular, is iconic. And the Marlboro theme, by Elmer Bernstein, is pretty catchy.
We will not even mention the 2016 remake.
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Haunt If You Want
I heard about Haunt (2019) on Illeana Douglas’ podcast. She was interviewing Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote the script for A Quiet Place. They barely mention that they have directed a movie about an “extreme” haunted house attraction. So I queued it up.
It’s Halloween. College student Katie Stevens has an abusive boyfriend, who is ignoring her texts and (possibly) throwing pumpkins at her house. Her housemate, Lauryn McClaine, convinces her to go out for drinks with two other friends. There, she meets fellow student Will Brittain and his obnoxious pal. Said pal convinces them to all drive out to a haunted house he found a flyer for.
Before they leave, Stevens sees a mysterious figure in a red hooded robe (matching her red hoodie?), and tell Brittain that she lived in a haunted house - haunted by her alcoholic abusive father. Which explains some of her brokenness.
They find the haunted house deep in the woods, in some kind of abandoned industrial building. The masked clown at the door demands that they sign waivers and put their cellphones in a lockbox. Then they head in. The first scare is behind chain link fencing. A masked man is torturing and killing a woman with a hot poker. The lights go out and they disappear. Boy, this sure is realistic.
The group separates at a sign pointing “Safe” in one direction, “Not Safe” in the other. They are still yucking it up, although they are getting uneasy. One group comes to three coffins propped up along the wall. They realize that a door in the back of the coffin will open if they get in and close the lid. I think I would have backed out here, but I might not have made it this far.
Even after a number of very bad experiences (but no kills yet), they still have hope that this is just a very extreme (and maybe inadvertently dangerous) amusement. Some of them meet an masked figure who says his name is Mitch and he’ll lead them out to where the rest of the group is probably waiting. Just go a little further in...
It doesn’t take too long to get to the real bloody kills. Stevens gets very freaked out - she didn’t want to come anyway. But she also has the strength to survive, and even give a little back. Also, her drunken boyfriend has tracked her phone, and is coming - to the rescue? Honestly, I thought he was behind the whole thing.
I’ll just go ahead and semi-spoil the ending: it all works out, except for the kids who got killed.
This is pretty much a slasher film. The bad guys are just demented villains, with no plan or reason. The kills are extreme and gory. But it was also pretty well done - the maze-like space, the “Is it real or is it Memorex” effect in the first half, and the way they wrapped it up. It wasn’t exactly funny, but clever. I guess Beck and Woods are pretty good at this.
In conclusion, they use a nail-through-the-foot trauma that they used in A Quiet Place too. That’s because they wrote the two scripts at the same time and figured they’d sell one at most, and nobody would notice.
It’s Halloween. College student Katie Stevens has an abusive boyfriend, who is ignoring her texts and (possibly) throwing pumpkins at her house. Her housemate, Lauryn McClaine, convinces her to go out for drinks with two other friends. There, she meets fellow student Will Brittain and his obnoxious pal. Said pal convinces them to all drive out to a haunted house he found a flyer for.
Before they leave, Stevens sees a mysterious figure in a red hooded robe (matching her red hoodie?), and tell Brittain that she lived in a haunted house - haunted by her alcoholic abusive father. Which explains some of her brokenness.
They find the haunted house deep in the woods, in some kind of abandoned industrial building. The masked clown at the door demands that they sign waivers and put their cellphones in a lockbox. Then they head in. The first scare is behind chain link fencing. A masked man is torturing and killing a woman with a hot poker. The lights go out and they disappear. Boy, this sure is realistic.
The group separates at a sign pointing “Safe” in one direction, “Not Safe” in the other. They are still yucking it up, although they are getting uneasy. One group comes to three coffins propped up along the wall. They realize that a door in the back of the coffin will open if they get in and close the lid. I think I would have backed out here, but I might not have made it this far.
Even after a number of very bad experiences (but no kills yet), they still have hope that this is just a very extreme (and maybe inadvertently dangerous) amusement. Some of them meet an masked figure who says his name is Mitch and he’ll lead them out to where the rest of the group is probably waiting. Just go a little further in...
It doesn’t take too long to get to the real bloody kills. Stevens gets very freaked out - she didn’t want to come anyway. But she also has the strength to survive, and even give a little back. Also, her drunken boyfriend has tracked her phone, and is coming - to the rescue? Honestly, I thought he was behind the whole thing.
I’ll just go ahead and semi-spoil the ending: it all works out, except for the kids who got killed.
This is pretty much a slasher film. The bad guys are just demented villains, with no plan or reason. The kills are extreme and gory. But it was also pretty well done - the maze-like space, the “Is it real or is it Memorex” effect in the first half, and the way they wrapped it up. It wasn’t exactly funny, but clever. I guess Beck and Woods are pretty good at this.
In conclusion, they use a nail-through-the-foot trauma that they used in A Quiet Place too. That’s because they wrote the two scripts at the same time and figured they’d sell one at most, and nobody would notice.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Black to the Future
We skipped BlacKkKlansman (2019) a number of times, ordering the disc, not watching and sending it back. Partly because Ms. Spenser is sick of Adam Driver - he’s in everything! But we finally watched it.
Set in the late 70s, it stars John David Washington as Ron Stallsworth, the real-life first black police officer in Colorado Springs. When assigned to infiltrate a Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) rally, he meets and is attracted to political activist Laura Harrier. Soon, they are dating.
Looking for a meatier role, Washington calls a KKK recruitment ad. With his mastery of “white voice”, he talks his way into an invitation. Since he won’t be able to attend in person, he convinces officer Adam Driver into doing that part of the undercover job. And it works - Driver winds up meeting the scary and sometimes dopey local klan, while Washington works his way up to talking to David Duke.
Most of this movie is just a good tale well told. Politics are kept to “racists are stupid and bad, tolerance is hard but wins in the end.” Washington plays Stallworth as a fairly conservative black man - he had always wanted to be a policeman. He doesn’t think Ture and Harrier should be persecuted, but he doesn’t want to see any race war or revolution. Even his accent is basic midwestern aw-shucks. And in the end, the good guys win. The klan is embarrassed and prevented from blowing up enemies and burning crosses, and the racist cop is caught and punished.
And then Stallworth is taken off the case, and the files are ordered destroyed. Then there is a short epilogue, showing the current state of race relations. This includes Black Lives Matter and the murder of a counter-protester at the Unite the Right rally. So, a fun comedy, as long as you don’t think about it too much. But director Spike Lee makes you think.
In conclusion, after this and The Dead Don’t Die, Ms. Spenser now likes Adam Driver.
Set in the late 70s, it stars John David Washington as Ron Stallsworth, the real-life first black police officer in Colorado Springs. When assigned to infiltrate a Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) rally, he meets and is attracted to political activist Laura Harrier. Soon, they are dating.
Looking for a meatier role, Washington calls a KKK recruitment ad. With his mastery of “white voice”, he talks his way into an invitation. Since he won’t be able to attend in person, he convinces officer Adam Driver into doing that part of the undercover job. And it works - Driver winds up meeting the scary and sometimes dopey local klan, while Washington works his way up to talking to David Duke.
Most of this movie is just a good tale well told. Politics are kept to “racists are stupid and bad, tolerance is hard but wins in the end.” Washington plays Stallworth as a fairly conservative black man - he had always wanted to be a policeman. He doesn’t think Ture and Harrier should be persecuted, but he doesn’t want to see any race war or revolution. Even his accent is basic midwestern aw-shucks. And in the end, the good guys win. The klan is embarrassed and prevented from blowing up enemies and burning crosses, and the racist cop is caught and punished.
And then Stallworth is taken off the case, and the files are ordered destroyed. Then there is a short epilogue, showing the current state of race relations. This includes Black Lives Matter and the murder of a counter-protester at the Unite the Right rally. So, a fun comedy, as long as you don’t think about it too much. But director Spike Lee makes you think.
In conclusion, after this and The Dead Don’t Die, Ms. Spenser now likes Adam Driver.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Super Freaks
Due to Netflix’s queue management (sending/withholding “Short Wait” movies), we watched Brightburn (2019) and Freaks (2019) on consecutive nights. These two movies are very similar - and part of a new genre: low(ish) budget, grounded indie movies about superheroes, usually kids. See Fast Color, et al.
The elevator pitch for Brightburn is simple: Superboy, but evil. It starts with a farm couple in Smallville (ish) trying to get pregnant. A meteor lands on their land, and guess what is inside? Cut to ~10 years later. The couple (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) have adopted the baby, who has grown into a nice, smart young boy. He likes playing in the barn (which his parents don’t allow) and talking about predatory wasps in class. Some of the kids bully him, but one smart girl likes him.
Then on his 12th birthday, he starts hearing alien voices, and starts getting powers. When he tests them by slowly feeding his hand into a running lawnmower, you understand that this is tending toward horror more than a little. He sneaks into the little smart girl’s room - just trying to be friends - and freaks her out. Soon, there will be a lot more freak outs.
In Freaks, our protagonist is a seven-year-old girl. Her father (Emile Hirsch) keeps her in a creepy house with windows all covered over. She is a sweet kid and very obedient, but when her dad is away, she does like to look out the window. She wants ice cream. But when her dad goes out for supplies, he comes back with a bullet wound (and no ice cream).
There’s an ice cream truck that parks outside the window with old man Bruce Dern creepily enticing her to get a cone. She doesn’t go out but does psychically will the neighbor girl to bring her some. Hirsch puts a stop to that. But now you see the problem. She has powers, and this world doesn’t like kids with powers.
We enjoyed Freaks more than Brightburn. For one thing, the little girl was a more sympathetic character than the older boy. She didn’t really turn to the dark side, either, although she could get angry. There’s even a scene in Freaks where she tries to join the normal family across the street and the neighbor girl is frightened because her attempts at being friends comes off as creepy - just like Brightburn, but without the sexual awakening stuff.
Because Brightburn seems to be a metaphor for puberty turning kids into monsters, while Freaks is more about acceptance. And I guess we just liked that more. Or maybe I just preferred the movie with fewer horror movie themes.
In conclusion, the barn in Brightburn sort of played the same as the barn in Ready or Not. Huh.
The elevator pitch for Brightburn is simple: Superboy, but evil. It starts with a farm couple in Smallville (ish) trying to get pregnant. A meteor lands on their land, and guess what is inside? Cut to ~10 years later. The couple (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) have adopted the baby, who has grown into a nice, smart young boy. He likes playing in the barn (which his parents don’t allow) and talking about predatory wasps in class. Some of the kids bully him, but one smart girl likes him.
Then on his 12th birthday, he starts hearing alien voices, and starts getting powers. When he tests them by slowly feeding his hand into a running lawnmower, you understand that this is tending toward horror more than a little. He sneaks into the little smart girl’s room - just trying to be friends - and freaks her out. Soon, there will be a lot more freak outs.
In Freaks, our protagonist is a seven-year-old girl. Her father (Emile Hirsch) keeps her in a creepy house with windows all covered over. She is a sweet kid and very obedient, but when her dad is away, she does like to look out the window. She wants ice cream. But when her dad goes out for supplies, he comes back with a bullet wound (and no ice cream).
There’s an ice cream truck that parks outside the window with old man Bruce Dern creepily enticing her to get a cone. She doesn’t go out but does psychically will the neighbor girl to bring her some. Hirsch puts a stop to that. But now you see the problem. She has powers, and this world doesn’t like kids with powers.
We enjoyed Freaks more than Brightburn. For one thing, the little girl was a more sympathetic character than the older boy. She didn’t really turn to the dark side, either, although she could get angry. There’s even a scene in Freaks where she tries to join the normal family across the street and the neighbor girl is frightened because her attempts at being friends comes off as creepy - just like Brightburn, but without the sexual awakening stuff.
Because Brightburn seems to be a metaphor for puberty turning kids into monsters, while Freaks is more about acceptance. And I guess we just liked that more. Or maybe I just preferred the movie with fewer horror movie themes.
In conclusion, the barn in Brightburn sort of played the same as the barn in Ready or Not. Huh.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)