Category Archives: Movies

Movies

John Dies At The End (2012) a (mildly) belated review

Way, waaaaay back when, perhaps late 1979 or early to mid-1980, I got my hands on a betamax tape that carried a copy of the recently released horror film Phantasm.

There was an eeriness to the proceedings, of the story involving a young boy and the strange encounters he has with the supernatural.  It was almost as if the movie presented a particularly twisted version of a fairy tale, complete with a very scary “witch” in the form of the “tall man” and his deadly spherical weapons.

The film, quite frankly, scared the living shit out of me.

Watching the film again many years later, it was obvious the original Phantasm was a no-budget work that featured some rather rough (ahem) acting and effects that weren’t all that good.  While I suspect modern audiences may find the whole thing too slow and too cheesy, way back when Phantasm was a kick to the gut.

The years passed and sequels to the movie appeared.  I wasn’t as into them as I was the original, but then in 2002 I heard about an oddball sounding horror-comedy called Bubba Ho-Tep.  The plot certainly sounded intriguing:  Elvis Presley is not dead but in an old age rest home along with a black man who believes he is John F. Kennedy.  Together, the two old men face off against…a mummy’s curse?!

Clearly, one of the more…original…concepts out there.  Even ten years later.

The best part of it all?  Bruce Campbell was playing Elvis!

The film proved a delight, and it was only after doing some research on it I realized the director of that film, Don Coscarelli, was also the director of Phantasm, its sequels, and a few others, including the cult flick The Beastmaster.  Since then, Mr. Coscarelli has been on my personal radar, and when I heard about his latest film, John Dies at the End, well, it was a must see.

Alas, the film appeared to have, at best, a very limited release.  In fact, I don’t think it showed up at any of the theaters around my neck of the woods so I had to wait for Netflix to get their hands on it and, yesterday, I finally had a chance to give the film a look.

To put it simply:  If you enjoyed Bubba Ho-Tep, you’ll probably love this film as well.  However, Bubba remains the superior product.

Having said that, John Dies at the End (JDE from now on) is well worth your time.  The movie concerns two friends, Dave (Chase Williamson) and John (Rob Mayes) who, while at a party in which John sings with his band, stumble upon a strange drug known as “soy sauce” which grants its users some extraordinary abilities…and may lead to the destruction of Earth as we know it.

The story is told in media res, with the drugged out Dave talking to reporter Arnie Blondestone (Paul Giamatti) about the series of strange events that have led to this point in time.  The movie begins on a potentially ominious note, but quickly establishes the tongue in cheek attitude that was prevalent in Bubba Ho-Tep, delivering each scare with an armful of chuckles.

What the film lacks, however, are the stronger stroy concepts and established actors that helped push Bubba Ho-Tep into being something truly special.  This is not a knock against JDE’s young principals, but their characters are lacking when compared to following such historical figures as Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy.  Further, JDE plays out like an extra weird two-part episode of the TV show Supernatural rather than a self-contained film.

Still, and despite these knocks, I still highly recommend John Dies at the End to anyone who enjoyed Bubba Ho-Tep.  When all is said and done, nothing may ever surpass the clever lunacy of Bubba Ho-Tep.  However, while Mr. Coscarelli is still in the game and swinging, I’ll most certainly be around to watch.

Books/Literature, Movies, Music

Don’t wait for inspiration…

A few days back I posted an entry regarding Mason Currey’s fascinating articles published on Slate regarding creative people and their rituals (in that case, his column was about procrastination).  In this, his last entry regarding creativity, he focuses on what is perhaps one of the more important things a creative individual should do:  Work.

Or, as he put it, don’t wait for inspiration to hit you:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/features/2013/daily_rituals/john_updike_william_faulkner_chuck_close_they_didn_t_wait_for_inspiration.html

I enjoyed this particular column so much I had to add my two cents, which essentially amounted to repeating what was written above!  For those curious:

Don’t wait for inspiration may well be the best advice to any creative individual. There have been many a day I absolutely DID NOT want to sit before my computer and get to work…yet did so anyway. The temptation not to do work, as Gershwin so aptly put it, is indeed a great one. But if one day you want to have the unique pleasure of looking back at what you accomplished in your creative life and be rewarded with the sight of a bookshelf carrying your books or an art gallery featuring your works, etc. etc., then you have to put in the effort. Inspiration does indeed come to me when I keep working, regardless of my mood.

Movies

Argo (2012) a (mildly) belated review

The two big films in the hunt for the Academy Award for motion pictures released in 2012 appeared to be Argo and Zero Dark Thirty.  I find this fascinating because both films share much in common.

There’s the obvious fact that both are based on real events that involve the United States and our dealings with the Arab world.  From a story standpoint, both films follow similar patterns.  In Argo, we start with a primer on the United States’ relationship with Iran and how all this lead to the eventual taking of the U.S. Consulate in Iran.  In Zero Dark Thirty, we start with eerie sound from the tragedy of 9/11.

Both films then introduce us to our protagonist and the job they devote themselves.  In both cases, our protagonists are intelligence agents.  In Argo, we follow Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) as he puts together a phony movie to use as a front to get six American who escaped the U.S. Consulate and are hiding in the home of a Canadian diplomat stationed in Iran out of the country.  In Zero Dark Thirty, we follow the more mysterious agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) as she spearheads the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.  Both movies climax with the end of their respective missions.

The tone of the two films presents the biggest difference between them.  While Zero Dark Thirty was serious and mostly grim, Argo manages to insert considerable humor into the proceedings (mind you, the film is NOT a comedy) which play out like a real life Mission: Impossible episode, minus all the masks and sophisticated equipment.

The events in Argo took place in 1980 while the events in Zero Dark Thirty took place in 2011, some thirty one years later.  And while both films are highly recommended and are equally enjoyable on their own merits, I found it sad to compare and contrast them and realize that after all these years between the events depicted in the two movies we are still caught in a vortex when it comes to the Arab world.

Perhaps one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, we will finally, finally make a peace between our peoples.

Books/Literature, Computers/Electronics, Movies, Music

The new (movie) media…

Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits offers an interesting “rant” (its rant number two, about halfway down the column) here:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/050113_1515

Basically, he’s worried about movie studios and “digital streaming”.  I think he hits the bullseye in many respects with the rant, noting that when you purchase a “stream” of a film, you really don’t own it.  Yes, you can watch the film but, should the movie studios in the future decide to remove the film from their streaming services (for whatever reason), you’re essentially out of luck.  The film you “purchased” is gone.

Mr. Hunt goes on to compare this with music streaming and, effectively, champions keeping a “hard copy” of whatever entertainment (be it music or motion picture) you may have because of the possibility that somewhere down the road the thing you spent money on might no longer be accessible to you.

I can certainly sympathize with Mr. Hunt’s worries.  Technology has shifted dramatically.  A few years ago, I had to go to the local electronics store and bookstore to see the latest movies/books/music that was available for purchase.  Now, there are no bookstores anywhere near me, and its been quite a while since I’ve gone out to the local Best Buy.

If I’m purchasing music, I do so exclusively online (and, yes, I do actually purchase the music!) via download.  I keep copies of my music on my harddrive and a backup drive, but the idea of having “physical” copies on CD has become a thing of the past.

So too it seems with most books.  If I want one, I tend to go to Amazon and download it and read it on my tablet.  If I want a physical copy of a book, I similarly order it (usually through Amazon) and wait the few days it takes before arriving at my home.  It’s hard to believe it, but I don’t miss the bookstores.

As for movies, I realized early on that, like laserdiscs, there were a bunch of films I had to have early one, and I spent an awful lot of money getting my hands on them.  I moved to DVD and then to BluRay, but once I had those “essentials”, my spending dropped dramatically.  I tend to use Netflix to check out “new” films, and if I like them enough, I will purchase a physical copy, but I can honestly say many of the newer films I’ve seen are decent but only a few have been worth actually owning.

What is the point of all this?

I guess it boils down to this:  What used to be standard is no longer so.  We used to want books/movies/music, we’d go to a book/music/movie store to buy them.  We’d have the physical copies.  Now, we go online and do one of three things: download the material, stream it, or purchase physical copies which are sent to our home.

Which means that the physical shops I used to see are slowly, inevitably, dying out.  As I said before, I don’t have a bookstore close to my house.  And I live in a BIG city.  The nearest bookstores are at least a half hour to forty five minutes away.  As for music stores, forget it.  The only movie store is a Best Buy about twenty minutes away and, as I noted before, I barely go there anymore.

And I don’t miss doing so.

The fact is a that computers and the internet have created the proverbial better mousetrap, but I worry about the consequences.  Less physical stores means less places for people to hang out and meet other people.  Also, less places for employment.  When we were younger, many of us worked in a record or bookstore.  No longer.  A big section of business has effectively been compressed into an online system of which Amazon is king and iTunes is running a close second.

Unquestionably, I have access to everything I want and/or need within my fingertips.  I can find obscure films or music or books without the hassle of running to different stores searching (often in vain) for what I want.

But this instant gratification comes with a cost locally.

It is better for the consumers, I believe.  But is it better?

Movies

The American (2010) a (mildly) belated review

Perhaps the most fascinating things about 2010’s The American is how skewed audience reaction was.  If you head over to Rotten Tomatoes’ summary of the film, you’ll find that critics, for the most part, liked it (66% approval) while regular audiences pretty much hated it (only 37% approval).

I found these statistics after seeing and digesting the film for myself.  My conclusion?  The results don’t surprise me.  I suspect The American is simply one of those divisive films that one is either going to love (or at the least like) or hate.

For The American is something of a throwback of a film, a 2010 film that nonetheless feels as if it is trying to evoke the moody character studies present in films of the late 1960’s and into the 1970’s.  For my money, there’s nothing wrong with that.  For others, the idea of following a dark, emotionally distant hitman over the course of nearly two hours with very little actual “action” may be simply too dull a trip to take.

Count me in the former category…though with one very big caveat.

The American begins with our main character, the mysterious hitman (George Clooney) in a small wooden cabin out in the middle of a serene snowy tableau.  He has company, a beautiful woman whom he is clearly intimate with.  They go out for a walk and, suddenly, the hitman realizes someone is targeting him.

Without giving too much away, our hitman is separated from the woman and is forced to leave this seemingly idyllic home.  He contacts his superior who sends him to a small Italian villa to cool off while he “looks into” the people who are after the hitman.  He also offers him a job.

The bulk of the film follows our hitman as he navigates two small Italian villas while working on the creation/modification of a silenced weapon.  Three times he meets his actual (Thekla Reuten), who, we know, will use this weapon for an assassination.  During this time we become close enough to our hitman to get a taste of his growing sense of paranoia.  Are the killers who nearly got to him at the start of the film still on his trail?  Is his client and/or his boss out to get him?  And, when he starts seeing a prostitute named Clara (the absolutely stunning Violante Placido), is she more than she seems…?

By the time the film reaches its climax, most of my guesses as to what was going on turned out to be true and, therefore, I have to say the plot of The American is -to me anyway- rather predictable.  It is this very predictability (the caveat I mentioned above) that keeps me from giving The American a hearty endorsement.  The movie is, nonetheless, a good slow burn thriller which features some incredible cinematography and acting (and, as mentioned before, the stunning Ms. Placido).  While it may not be as successful -at least from a story standpoint- as I hoped it would be, you can do far worse than spend your time with The American.  On the other hand, don’t expect a truly stunningly original and/or unpredictable story.

(Maybe one of the other reasons audiences were turned off by the film is that the trailers, like the one below, made the film look like more of an action/adventure/thriller than it was.  There are action sequences, but for the most part the film is a character study.  You have been warned!)

Movies

The Naked City (1948) a (ridiculously) belated review

“There are eight million stories in the naked city…this has been one of them.”

So concludes the narrator/producer Mark Hellinger at the end of 1948’s The Naked City, the justifiably famous film noir/police melodrama that features a fascinating -and prolonged- glimpse at the New York City of the then present but for us distant past.

I’ve seen the film before and was riveted by the sights and sounds and people presented in the movie, many of them little more than faces in the crowds.  The movie’s look at New York City circa the late 1940’s should appeal to all history buffs, but the story is equally interesting.

We begin with the city itself, late at night, and we are presented with various places that are, for the most part, deserted at this late hour.  Then, the meat of the story:  Two thugs in a blonde woman’s apartment have subdued their victim using chloroform.  Their reason for being in the apartment is not immediately clear, but their intentions with the beautiful woman are:  They decided to place her in the bathtub, to “make sure” she doesn’t live the night.

The next day, her body is discovered and the investigation begins.  We follow the police, principally Detective Lieutenant Dan Muldoon (a typically delightful Barry Fitzgerald) who sifts through the evidence and interrogates suspects and Detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) who does most of the case’s foot work.

Without giving too much away, the case has its ups and downs and the protagonists have to deal with witnesses both good and bad and, in an especially poignant scene, the parents of the victim.  All the detective work leads to a fantastic climax that in many ways is reminiscent of the climax of King Kong (!!!!).

So, if you’re a fan of mystery films and/or are curious to get an extended, loving look at a New York City that for the most part no longer exists, I highly, HIGHLY recommend checking out The Naked City.

A couple of bits of Interesting trivia:

The movie eventually led to Naked City, the popular television show that ran from 1958 to 1963 and featured an amazing array of them up and coming actors.

Don Taylor, one of the two main protagonists in the film, went on to have a fascinating career as a director.  He was responsible for several interesting 1970’s to 1980 era sci-fi films, including (but not limited to!) Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Damien: Omen II, and The Final Countdown.

Movies

The Day (2011) a (mildly) belated review

I first heard about 2011’s The Day from an interview of Dominic Monaghan, arguably the most recognizable star of the film and one of its producers.  Unfortunately, Mr. Monaghan gave away a rather large spoiler regarding the film which ruined what was surely one of the bigger surprises the filmmakers wanted to unload on audiences.

Afterwards, I heard almost nothing of the movie.

The Day received a limited U.S. release and, for all intents and purposes, became another in the endless string of (in this case almost) direct to video releases.  Then, a couple of “Movies you should see but didn’t” type reviews re-ignited my interest in seeing it.  So I did.

The Day is, essentially, a zombie flavored siege type story, only without zombies.  We have a group of five people, three men and two women, who are cautiously hiking through what we quickly learn is very dangerous territory.  The weather is cold and rainy and one of them is very sick.  When the group finds an abandoned home, they decide to camp out there until the rain lets up, unaware that the building is more than it seems.

As mentioned, this is a siege type story, with the villains turning out to be cannibals.  In this post-apocalyptic future, “regular” humans are few, animals are for the most part extinct and farming is a thing of the past.  Thus, there is no food source other than scavenging for scraps from the past (in the form of canned edibles) or joining cannibal clans on the hunt for other humans to feed on.

This is a low budget film, but the movie does manage to build up a nice head of steam and provides audiences with several interesting characters.  Of particular note is Ashley Bell’s portrayal of Mary, one of the group of five who, we find, has some very dark secrets of her own.  She is effectively the movie’s protagonist, and shines the brightest among the other characters as the stoic, tight lipped ass-kicking protagonist.

Having said that, the film is not without its problems.  Unfortunately, the makers relied on some very substandard computer generated effects for some of the more grisly scenes.  While I think computer generated effects can be used well in movies, when they are used to portray blood or injuries to the body they can be unrealistic to the point of being distracting.  In the case of The Day, the filmmakers probably would have been better served trying to use practical effects rather than the computer generated ones.

The movie also spends a little too much time, in my opinion, with the villains of the piece.  The movie might have worked a little better if those villains had been kept a little more obscure, a la John Carpenter’s 1976 Assault on Precinct 13, my all time favorite siege film.

Still, for a low budget and for all intents and purposes direct to video film, The Day delivers a decent amount of thrills and chills and a fascinating protagonist.  It may not be one of the best siege type films ever made, but it is far, far from the worst.  Recommended for those who like this type of movie.

Movies

The Five-Year Engagement (2012) a (mildly) belated review

I’m not a big fan of “romantic comedies”.  It seems just about all of them follow the same basic formula:  Guy meets girl and often they are attracted immediately (in which case they are often involved with other girl/boyfriends) or initially hate/despise each other.  Over the course of the movie, they realize they are meant for each other, but then in the later acts comes the “big split” and the couple go their separate ways and it seems love will lose out.  But in the movie’s climax, something makes them realize they were meant for each other regardless of whatever problems they just went through, and the movie ends with the two in each other’s arms or at the altar and on their way to living happily ever after.

In the case of The Five-Year Engagement, much of that first section of of the story is truncated (though it does appear in flashbacks) as the movie starts with the proposal between Tom Solomon (Jason Segel) and Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt).  She accepts, of course, and the film then proceeds to pull the couple through many obstacles on their way to the altar, including the inevitable split up and equally inevitable reconciliation and (believe it or not he says with more than a hint of sarcasm) climax at the altar.

Despite finding the whole romantic comedy formula rather obvious and not being a big fan of it, I don’t necessarily hate romantic comedies either.  When the formula is really subverted, as in the case of the razor sharp Grosse Point Blank, it can be quite delightful.

But despite some genuinely hilarious bits (and there are quite a few) in The Five-Year Engagement, what ultimately does the film in is its waaaaaaay too long run time.  Incredibly, the movie clocks in at just over two hours (124 minutes, according to IMDB) in length and, frankly, the screenplay by Jason Segel and director Nicholas Stoller needed a thorough going over and -yes- paring down.  If not in the screenplay stage, then certainly in the editing phase.  There were several scenes and sequences that could have easily been cut from the film without impacting the story in any noticeable way.  Two of the more egregious ones involved Tom’s near-infidelity with a fellow worker which resulted in him losing a toe (don’t ask, but it was neither funny or pushed the plot forward in any big way) and Tom’s subsequent relationship with a much younger woman (ditto).  No offense to either of the actresses involved in those sequences, but the film would have been perfectly fine without those -and a few other- scenes at all.

The bottom line is that there’s a perfectly good one and a half hour (at most!) romantic comedy hiding in the bloated two hour-plus The Five-Year Engagement.

Movies

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) a (mildly) belated review

Given the popularity of the film and the many, many reviews of the same out there, I thought hard about whether it was worth it to offer my own spin on Zero Dark Thirty, perhaps one of the more controversial films of the past year.

After all, what more could I add to the myriad of opinions regarding the film, both good and bad?  Perhaps there was…we’ll see.

Briefly, Zero Dark Thirty is a film very much worth watching.  It is a steely account of the manhunt of Osama Bin Laden for the ten years from 9/11 to his killing by U.S. forces in 2011.

The movie’s main controversy centers around some early scenes depicting U.S. “enhanced interrogation” techniques, ie torture.  While the film does show that some information is extracted from one such use of the technique, in the end the film also shows that it is detective work and persistence that ultimately pays off in the manhunt.

Having said that, I can’t help but wonder what the critics were so bothered by.  Had director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal completely avoided the topic of torture -something that was sadly very much a part of the early days of the “war on terror”- they would have rightly been accused of whitewashing a reality of those early days.  Also, this ignores what I found most intriguing about the later part of the film, how the many sins of the Bush administration wound up coming back to bite the protagonists in their quest to find Bin Laden.

For example, when our protagonist Maya (Jessica Chastain) pieces together the clues that lead U.S. intelligence to what they suspect is the Bin Laden compound, there winds up being great hesitancy (and 120 plus days of delay) before the order is given to assault the place.  In some of the film’s best moments (IMHO) we find that may of the higher ups in government are leery of committing any actions against the compound because of the dark specter of Weapons of Mass Destruction never found in Iraq.  In other words, the absolutist bluster of the Bush administration in that there were WMDs in Iraq and which led to the war in Iraq wound up causing the next administration to make damn sure they weren’t about to go down that rabbit hole again and assault a compound that certainly housed some high level figure (though they couldn’t be certain if they were terrorists or simply drug dealers) but one they could not verify was Osama Bin Laden himself.

If the film fails in any way it is that Ms. Bigelow chose to present her work in a very neutral, almost completely unemotional tone.  There are few ups or downs, with the notable exception being the tension from the raid on the Bin Laden compound.  For most of the rest of the film we “see” things through Maya’s eyes but because she’s presented throughout the film as an emotional cypher with no family nor lover and seemingly no friends, the film adopts her perspectives.

Which brings me to this:  In many ways, Zero Dark Thirty is not unlike another politically charged film, specifically All The President’s Men.  It is my feeling that All The President’s Men was a far more successful attempt to bring “real life” events to the big screen.  Both films shared a similar plot structure in that both sets of protagonists were hunting information.  In All The President’s Men, the information revolved around possible corruption in the White House while in Zero Dark Thirty, obviously, it was information leading to Bin Laden.

But what worked better in All The President’s Men was the fact that as a viewer I found myself far more engaged, emotionally, in what was going on.  Because of this emotional engagement as a viewer I was far more invested in the unfolding mystery and the very real fear that something sinister was going on here.  In Zero Dark Thirty, unfortunately, what I mentioned above regarding Maya’s lack of emotions winds up making most of what goes on an emotional blank and, therefore, we aren’t as deeply involved in the hunt as we might have been.

Despite this, I still recommend Zero Dark Thirty.  It is a worthwhile chronicle of a very dark time in U.S. history.

And, just for the heck of it…

 

Comic Books/Graphic Novels, General, Movies

R.I.P.

Yesterday came the sad news that two people who had a huge influence on my life -through their own work rather than any personal contact- had passed away.

Siskel & Ebert

Roger Ebert (on the right with Gene Siskel), probably the more famous of the two to the general public, was known for his many years of movie reviews, humorous wit, and liberal views.  I first encountered him on PBS when the late Gene Siskel and he hosted “At the Movies”.  They were a curious pair, often seemingly rubbing each other the wrong way while at other times appeared to be the best of friends.  In later years and after Mr. Siskel’s passing, much was written about their sometimes contentious relationship.  In this day of people’s opinions being such absolute “my way or the highway” tropes (especially in politics), it was refreshing to see two people with such different backgrounds and (sometimes) wildly differing opinions nonetheless get into meaty arguments over their views of individual movies.

Their analysis proved something of an intellectual watershed.  The duo taught me, perhaps more than anyone else in my life, the value of smart analysis and debate.  Though I would not agree with their opinions all the time, I grew to appreciate their viewpoints and through them realized that opinions could be radically different from mine yet could be just as right to them as mine were to me.

In his later years, Mr. Ebert showed incredible courage in continuing his life as normally as he could despite a series of medical issues which ultimately stilled his speaking voice.  In computers and the internet Mr. Ebert found a way of continuing to do what he so loved…”talking” with the world at large and offering his clever opinions on movies and everything else that fancied his mind.

Carmine 2

Carmine Infantino, though perhaps not as well known to the public at large as Mr. Ebert, nonetheless is easily one of the giants in the comic book industry.  During the so-called “Silver Age” of comics his artwork graced many a book and his designs for comic book covers were among the most recognized ever.

FlashBut to me what I’ll always remember and honor Mr. Infantino for is his work as editorial director for DC Comcs from the later sixties to 1976.  During that time DC Comics underwent an incredible change.  Mr. Infantino purged many of the older writers and artists and brought in a stable of talent both new and old to the ranks and supervised the release of some truly fascinating -and diverse- books.  During his run, we had the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams Green Lantern-Green Arrow.  The same duo also moved Batman from the campy past into a darker, more eerie milieu and in the process created some of the best Batman stories ever.  Jack Kirby was notably whisked away from rival Marvel Comics and released the epic New Gods books as well as my personal favorite Kamandi.  Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson collaborated on the memorable Manhunter saga while Len Wein and Berni Wrightson made ten of the most stunning issues of comic books ever with Swamp Thing.  DC Comics also released a series of great War and Supernatural books…and even combinations of the two!

If there was a “golden age” for me of comic books, it was DC during the very late 1960’s to the mid 1970’s and in that time the person in charge of the company was Mr. Infantino.  Sadly, his moves ultimately didn’t really work with the general reading population.  Many of the books mentioned above, now considered all-time classics, found their fans long after said books were cancelled and/or Mr. Infantino was ousted from his job.  It is a sad reality of life that sometimes the best, most innovative works are not appreciated until well after the fact.

Yet the diversity of product and the soaring imagination within the pages of the many books published by DC during that time remains a highlight of my childhood and, even today, a point to aspire to in my own humble writings.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Infantino.  Rest In Peace, Mr. Ebert.  You’ll both be missed.