Category — Movies

My sister’s grandson works so hard that he needs a break from his Web blogger thing. I figured, since he’s one for the movies, that I’d go and see a movie. To keep his internet friends entertained.

I went with my girlfriend Mary to see that Kitt Kittredge film, but we went into the wrong theater I suppose, because we watched what Jeffrey told me is called Wanted. I should have known it would be unsavory when I saw that Angela Jolie in it, I told our Peg that she’s a harlot, that one. I didn’t see Kitt Kittredge once.

This movie was foul and I didn’t understand the twists and turns. It was full of blood and swearing and rats and guns, and none of those are things I stand for. It’s only worth seeing to find out the truth about what the youth does all day.

(Psst - Jeff here. Wanted is big, stupid fun in the vein of Night Watch and Day Watch. It’s eminently disposable but fun to watch, unlike the comic it’s based on, which is simply disposable. It wasn’t as crazy as I’d hoped Bekmambetov’s American blockbuster debut would be, but that’s almost a trivial complaint. Gotta go!)

Our Jeffrey tells me he wants to see Hell Boy this weekend. I’ll pray for him, and I hope you do, too.

OR
U-DECIDE

So, assuming that you thought that maybe you’d ordered a pizza and forgotten about it, or maybe just really hoped that it was going to be, I don’t know, Publisher’s Clearing House, you answer the door.

And you see a girl who has tampered with your porch light so you can’t see her face.

And the girl asks a weird-ass question, like, “Is Tamara home?” And you don’t even know a Tamara.

Around now, I’d starting acting cautious. Like, ‘get the gun now instead of waiting a damn hour until it’s too late’ cautious. And when Wednesday Addams tells me she’s going to ’see me later?’ Well, that’s about the time I blow her damn head off for trespassing.

And once that creepfest’s over, do you think it’d be a good idea to split up and leave Liv Tyler alone in the house in the remote woodsy middle-of-nowhere? Yes?

As much as I like The Strangers as a taut, atmospheric horror flick, there’s something to be said for not being an idiot. And Scott Speedman’s character is a pretty genuine idiot. Much like Ben Covington. Yes, I watched Felicity.

My understanding of the titular Strangers’ rules is such that I’m pretty firmly convinced that Ben Covington and Arwen would have been completely left alone if they simply didn’t answer the door.

It’s 1 AM as I write this, and I wouldn’t answer the door. I have a deadbolt, dammit.

Stephen Graham Jones has written a great deal about how the onus of horror has changed in a post-Columbine, post-September 11 world. Instead of just punishment (righteous, not simply), horror metes out violence to the undeserving. Our cultural demons aren’t the excesses of the flesh that the Grimm’s Fairy Tales version of horror seeks recompense for, as seen in the ‘dead sinning teens’ movie that redefined the genre in the late 1970s. Today, horror primarily befalls those who don’t deserve it at all, and can often be a random act of senseless destruction lacking a real explanation. Horror is and has always been our shrink, and that’s what we have to work through.

What is more terrifying than helplessness in the face of a fate you’ve done nothing to earn? “You were home,” is what Pin-Up Girl tells the victims in the ads you’ve undoubtedly seen for The Strangers, and the sense of arbitrarily having selected these victims is the most frightening thing about the movie. More than the jump scares. More than the creepy masks.

I haven’t had a good ‘this can happen to me tonight’ feeling after a scary movie since going camping right after a Blair Witch showing, but I felt twinges of it as I double-checked the deadbolt after coming home from The Strangers. My wife, the face buried in the crook of my arm who claims to love horror as much as I do, couldn’t sleep right for three days after the matinee we saw. The matinee.

We are nearly always connected and nearly always anonymous; it’s the great irony of the cloud computing, socially networked age, and The Strangers attacks its audience on both of those levels, confronting us with the notions that technology will not save us and that our neighbors cannot.

Or to maybe just have common sense. And not open your door to random crazies in the wee hours of the night.

While I certainly can’t be as glowing as Puff Daddy in my review of Hancock, I have to say it’s a fun ride. And while I’d figured that ‘Superman is a dick’ was ground that could no longer support a fruitful harvest, the spectacle of massive collateral damage is always welcome. Besides, Peter Berg turns in another solid, fun action effort, and as much as I liked The Kingdom, this movie is the next logical step from what he had me at hello with in The Rundown. And of course, Will Smith is infinitely affable, and Jason Bateman is, too.

I can’t be too critical here, because - look, we all knew this was going to play out like this:

People of Los Angeles: Oh, Hancock, you’re a cad!
Hancock: I guess you’re right. I learned a valuable lesson about personal responsibility.

Which is fine. And honestly, the first time he shows up as a legitimate superhero and kicks ass without wreaking any major destruction is kind of cool. But, see, that’s the end of the movie. Hancock’s character arc is pretty well finished. And yet the movie keeps going, hinging on a plot twist that is well-executed in the moment it occurs, but changes the tone of the movie so radically that the second half of the movie plays completely differently, devolving into 40 minutes or so of tortured, bathetic feelings stringing together two pretty badass fight scenes.

So yes, Hancock throws a whale. Yes, Jason Bateman weilds an axe. But the movie isn’t all whale-throwing axe-murdering fun. Honestly? It’s maybe a little emo.

Best. Tagline. Ever.

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Listening to: Agalloch - …And the Great Cold Death of the Earth

M. Night Shyamalan has a formula.

Yes, yes, shocking twist endings. Bruce Willis is a ghost. Sam Jackson is a supervillain. Swing away, Merrill.

But, more than that, his movies are, invariably, about broken families. What makes The Sixth Sense good isn’t the plot twist, but that it’s a plot twist that makes sense within the context of the character’s relationships. Although Night’s subsequent films never captured that nuance as effectively, the element of broken people and groups healing is at the core of everything he does.

Unfortunately,

I kid.

The problem with The Happening goes deeper than its antagonists. The real problem is that all the strong, haunting visuals that populate the ad campaign and make for some of the movie’s best moments are completely disconnected from the story that’s supposed to be at the movie’s heart. Shyamalan is constantly dragging the audience away from wherever Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel are and showing us startling developments in New York or Princeton that have no bearing on the story.

Not that Wahlberg and Deschanel have any real chemistry or that the movie ever gives us a reason to care about the couple; the movie’s far too busy showing us a guy getting run over by a lawnmower and car crashes and the same basic cliche ugliness that clutches humanity in the wake of a disaster that we’ve seen before in countless iterations. And the ‘basic-human-ugliness’ scenes in The Happening are much less watchable than even that horrid, horrid Tim Robbins scene in War of the Worlds.

The Happening is the worst M. Night Shyamalan movie, hands down. And really, when the ad campaign turned into, “Oh shit guys, this is Rated R, seriously an R rating - you gotta check it out!!!!!” I really should have figured out the shocking twist - its lack of quality - a lot sooner.

I’ve been feeling kind of blog-averse lately, maybe due to work or the oppressive heat. I hurt my back last week (as seen on Twitter!) and there’s a story in there that can probably be tagged ‘Matrimonial Ruminations’ and am only now really getting back to normal.

Plus, the oppressive heat.

To make matters worse, I haven’t really read or watched anything worth talking about in the past week or so, and my consumption of media is the MacGuffin which this enterprise revolves around. Maybe a movie-laden weekend will help me out, as the plan (and loyal readers know how plans work out for me) is to see Hulk, The Happening and The Strangers. Hearing from a friend that the press screening for The Happening doesn’t happen until next Thursday paradoxically makes me want to see the film more. After all, I like Lady in the Water and Unbreakable a lot more than I do Signs or The Sixth Sense. However, I really do think that M. Night Shyamalan needs to just start calling his movies Twilight Zone VI, for instance. Which reminds that (also drawn from the Twitter vaults) I want to open a pretzel shop in Bucks County named “What A Twist!”

“It’s like Network meets CHUD.”
“It’s like Remo Williams crossed with Terms of Endearment.”
“Think Terminator with a bit of Mrs. Doubtfire thrown in.”

The stereotype Hollywood pitch structure is nothing if not easy and fun to mock. My friends, like I’m sure your friends do also, have turned making out outlandish pitches into something of a leisure activity, in which one of us pitches an outlandish concept, “I Spit On Your Grave meets Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey,” and the rest of the gang then breaks down the plot - which I’m not going to do with that particular example, but suffice it to say that there’s an adorable kitten reaping bloody vengeance.

Anyway, as fun as the storied pitch model is to mock, I think that Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane maybe took the “Night of the Living Dead meets Snakes On a Plane” thing too seriously. Because that’s the entirety of the movie. There are zombies on a plane. That’s it. There’s some weak attempt to justify how a zombie got onto a commercial air liner, but if you really stop and think about that, the movie is ruined for you.

This is basically a Space Mountain movie. As long as you keep riding, you will be amused - however, the moment you start to get critical, you will quickly remember that you are not on a mountain and that you are certainly not in space. The good news is that the movie doesn’t try to be good - it aims squarely for USA Up All Nite-dom.

Witness:

A zombie speared through the face with an umbrella, which the wielder then opens (and that’s bad luck, considering they’re indoors), leaving the zombie staggering around with an opened umbrella jutting through her head.

A character who is totally not supposed to be Tiger Woods committing what I can only term a putter massacre.

A staggering amount of military ineptitude, culminating in a fighter jet shooting a missile into the plane and then realizing that there are still non-zombie civilians aboard, causing him to basically go “Oops!” and fly away.

Elektra’s dad/the cabbie from that one episode of Seinfeld Erick Avari getting torn apart by zombies, only to come back as the head zombie.

Once you strip the fun away, though, the movie really just kind of sucks out loud. The zombies don’t behave in traditional zombie fashion, which is a bit annoying, and they look like extras from Thriller. Also worrying is the plane set’s ridiculously shoddy construction. If I zombie can claw his way through the floor, I’m never getting on an airplane again. If five zombies can fit into the space behind the bathroom mirror and drag me through the mirror into the dark recesses of the aircraft, I will freaking drive everywhere from now on. Luckily, I don’t think planes work that way.

So, Flight of the Living Dead is bad, but still fun. It’s a good party movie, or a serviceable free rental. If nothing else, it’s exceptional for making fun of.

My wife is a massive Indiana Jones fan.

I like the movies a whole lot - I even had my ‘want to be an archaeologist when I grow up’ phase when I was seven or eight, and I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade at least once a year because they’re really goddamn fun to watch.

But my wife - my wife loves Indy, in the same way that I love Star Wars. And while I had no doubt that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was going to at least be strongly okay, I didn’t think she was prepared for it to be anything other than at least as good as the others.

With that in mind, I came to her last night - before we went out to the Movies 14 - and I laid out 3 DVD cases in front of her: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. “When I was a little boy,” I told her, “Star Wars was the most powerfully awesome thing I had ever seen in my life. And the first three movies (in terms of release date) are pretty great films, but they’re only invested with the kind of power they are for me because they cemented the parameters of my sense of wonder - created a standard by which I would judge everything else ever. Indiana Jones is basically the same thing for you. Also, you want to sleep with Harrison Ford.”

“Not now, I don’t. And isn’t he still shacking up with Ally McMeal or whatever?”

“Right. But what about thirty year old Harrison Ford?”

“That’s a different tale.”

“My point exactly.”

“These movies,” I say, pointing at the Prequel Trilogy, “are still generally good. Wait,” I caution, and with that I toss Phantom Menace into the trash (and don’t worry, I’d get it later), “these are still generally good, but when I saw them, I wanted them to give me that sense of joy back - and it didn’t happen. Like if you really loved the Eagles and couldn’t wait to see them reunite, but once you did, you realized they were really just kind of old and desperate.”

“Can’t we just go to the theater, Jeffrey? We’re going to be late.”

“You need to understand what’s happened to George Lucas. He’s become a soulless egomaniac,” pounding both fists on the table to emphasize each of those words, “and I think it’s maybe because of Labyrinth. Spielberg, David Koepp and Frank Darabont may all have had a hand in this, and I know you like virtually every actor in the film, but this is not going to be the same - and it won’t be something you know, it’ll be something you feel. You won’t be able to articulate it and it will make you sullen. This is going to be a fun movie - maybe a good movie - but it cannot be a great one, and that won’t be good enough for you. I need you to know that walking in. I’ve been burned three times, and I wish someone had had this talk with me.”

Was I right? Absolutely. Through no fault of the direction or acting, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is, and after careful thought, this is the best way I can state it, like Sandra Lee (she of Semi-Homemade Meals fame) cooking one of Bobby Flay’s recipes. The individual performances were good, the effects were good, and it held my interest for its over-two-hours run-time. Hell, when Shia Lebeouf and Cate Blanchett swordfight on the hoods of their respective speeding jeeps, I may have flipped out a bit. In terms of action, the entire ‘escape the Commies in the Amazon’ sequence is the best thing - better than most action in most action films in the past two to three years easy. The motorcycle chase was really cool, too.

And Harrison Ford is still Indy. At the beginning, he’s operating in full Henry Walton Jones Jr. mode even though he’s dressed like Indy (and I’ll talk about that more in just a second), but the second that he has whip in hand, he comes alive again.

And there is, if you watch the films, a definite difference between Indiana and Henry Jr. - and it ties directly into that talk I had with my wife. Indiana still lives in that moment of fear-joy-inspiration that would go on to shape Henry’s adult life. The hat, the whip, the A2 jacket, the ‘fortune and glory’ talk that a younger Indy was enamored with are all trappings of that singular encounter from his childhood (the prologue to The Last Crusade). That adventure is his Star Wars or his Raiders of the Lost Ark and he never wants to leave it. Henry, on the other hand, is his father’s son, and he’s old. He’s even lost his sex appeal, with about as many male students in his class as females, and none of them are writing secret mascara messages to him anymore. Ford has always played the part with this nuanced dichotomy, but Kingdom is where it’s most apparent, probably due to his age.

The plot - like Raiders and Crusade manages to stitch the quest parts of the plot into the political zeitgeist of the story’s political era. Which is good, except that very much is made of the McCarthyist subplot at the beginning of the film, and it’s promptly dropped without revisiting.

In terms of geek fodder, the implications about Indy’s missing years between 1939 and 1957 make sense. There’s some mention paid to Marcus Brody and Henry Jones Sr. and at least one reference to The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. And a very neat cameo in the Area 51 sequence.

Honestly, my only complaint is that it feels wrong. Like someone took the ‘had-to-haves’ and went down the list by rote until everything was there. “Must lose hat - check.” I’m not going to go more in-depth about the plot just yet because I don’t want to spoil anyone.

Now, my wife enjoyed Indy 4 a lot less than I did. She confesses to the dissatisfaction I warned her about, but also dislikes “the aliens.” I think that going with pseudoscience may be very fitting for the 50s time frame, but after dealing with the supernatural aspects of religion in the mythos behind the other three films, the transition is a bit jarring.

One theatergoer told his friends that Crystal Skull “made The Mummy Returns look like Casablanca,” and that’s just not true at all. It’s still solid. You’ll still enjoy it. But it’s not going to live up to your inner child’s hype.

That and the overwhelming sense that every time either of the Racer brothers talk about “automobile racing” and their rebellious opposition to “the major sponsors,” I keep hearing the Wachowski brothers talking about “making movies” and their rebellious opposition to “the big studios.”

Am I alone?

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Listening to: SCI FI Channel; Ronald D. Moore executive producer, Battlestar Galactica - Battlestar Galactica Episode 403 Commentary (Enhanced)

Mulberry Street is a movie about zombie rat people menacing tenants in an NYC apartment building. I liked it a lot. It’s one of those movies - like Night of the Living Dead - that manages to be about people and not stock characters and that gives it a lot more impact than, say, the Day of the Dead remake.

One thing that I really like about those kinds of movies that was totally absent from the sort of Encyclopedia Brown element that horror movies of this stripe let the audience indulge in - wherein there are hints and clues laid out, but nothing explicit. When this is done right, it’s a reasonable stand-in for interactivity and it lets the audience interact with the world of the film a bit. The classic example is The Birds, I think - I’ll be damned if I don’t know someone who doesn’t have a theory about the lovebirds. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it, but the text version of The Mist is pretty good about this as well* but the movie spells it out a bit too directly. As a rule, I love elements of a story that create a sub-text in and of themselves. Mark Danielewski plays with this in [House] and in Only Revolutions, though more explicitly through the form of the novel itself. Demon Theory does this via footnotes and its framing conceits.

But I’m getting a bit far afield of myself. Mulberry St. hints at this sort of storytelling, but never really delivers on it. We see a lot of the stock Evil Corporation’s branding near the start of the movie, with the movie’s tagline cleverly attached to it, but we never see the hints toward a direct correlation between the urban renewal and the rat attacks or why these rats are different.

Don’t let that dissuade you. Mulberry has a character-driven slow burn that builds organically into a violent crescendo. It’s a spartan film, but it has surprisingly effective moments.

Next up: P.S. I Love You (for the wife) and then Borderlands

*King’s shared universe thrives on these sorts of throwaway mentions that either were developed elsewhere or will eventually be developed elsewhere.