Mother! (2017)

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I don't read as much as I'd like, but even if I had all the time in the world I probably wouldn't read the Bible, as I got enough in (Catholic) grade school to know the basic gist, even if some of those particulars are fading in my memory. And I certainly wouldn't read the sort of publications that inform you about celebrities' current dating/marriage status, because there is literally nothing in the world I can imagine caring about less than where anyone besides myself sticks his dick. But if you want to get the most out of Mother! (I'm not doing the lowercase) I might suggest reading up on both, or at least the former while also knowing that director Darren Aronofsky is now dating Jennifer Lawrence, as it helps clarify some of the autobiographical details he has laced his heavily allegorical film with. Though I should stress I didn't know they were dating until after I walked out of the theater, having enjoyed what I saw despite not knowing the current history of its filmmaker.

SPOILERS FOLLOW! The ad campaign has been vague and therefore pretty much any detail counts as a spoiler, but I'm gonna get into it because otherwise there wouldn't be a lot for me to say. You've been warned!!!

If you choose to ignore any deeper meaning or symbolism in the film, you might enjoy it just for its sheer insanity, as this is possibly the nuttiest goddamn movie ever put on over 2,000 screens - and that includes Aronofsky's previous film, Noah, which had giant rock monsters helping to tell the story of the famous ark. It starts off like a low-key home invasion movie of sorts, with Lawrence and her husband (Javier Bardem) enjoying their quiet life in their isolated home when Ed Harris shows up, claiming he thought the place was a B&B and asking to stay the night. Then his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up and Lawrence starts getting a bit weirded out, as Pfeiffer is a bit too forward (it seems like only ten minutes go by after their introduction that she's asking them about their sex life) and Bardem is being way too accomodating. Then more people show up. Then more. And then even more. If nothing else, this movie must have the largest cast for a single location movie ever made, as the camera never leaves JLaw's face for more than a second or two, and her character never leaves the house. But even if no one ever showed up besides Harris and Pfeiffer, it'd still be a terrific exercise in creating tension; from the film's first minute or two we're already made uneasy by how people treat Lawrence, and even though nothing particularly chilling is happening to her, you'll probably start hoping for any break in the anxiety and dread Aronofsky manages to build up with almost nothing happening.

Oh and I'm not calling the characters by their real names out of laziness - they aren't really given any in the film. Bardem is "Him", Lawrence is "Mother" (not "Her", tellingly), Ed Harris is "Man", etc. There's no way to know them until the end credits, so they don't really matter in the long run, but if you missed the biblical connections in the film, crediting Harris and Pfeiffer's children (yep, they show up too) as "Oldest Son" and "Younger brother" should remind you of Cain & Abel, and you can start filling in the others from there - depending on how well versed in the bible you are, of course. It reminded me of Antichrist (a movie I damn near hated), which credited the leads as "He" and "She" and dealt with similar plot threads (marriage, misogyny, etc) while also being the kind of movie that will likely cause walkouts at your screening, though I only saw one (maybe two? I saw two people leave and not come back, but one was sitting in front of me so it was more noticeable that they didn't return - I might have just not seen the other re-enter) at mine. I mean, even though the ads were very WTF? and Aronofsky has never been a "multiplex" kind of filmmaker, folks might STILL find this a bit too much.

But I love crazy, even if I'm not always sure the meaning behind any of it happening. Sometimes it's just kind of awesome to see an Oscar winning actress storm around her house that's been gradually overtaken by insane fans (Bardem's character is a bestselling poet who is mounting a comeback), tearing apart her walls and setting up club equipment for a mini rave in her living room (told you, it's weird). Better, smarter writers than me will write 1,200 word essays on these kind of moments and find fascinating explanations for their inclusion - I on the other hand was just stoked to see character actor extraordinaire Stephen McHattie show up, as I don't think he's been in a wide release from Hollywood in several years (Immortals, maybe? from 2011) and it's nice to see him in something besides some TV show or junky Canadian horror flick. I also had no idea Kristen Wiig was in the movie, so when she showed up I was just as surprised as Lawrence's character, who by that point was having trouble of finding new ways to make a "What NOW?" kind of face as more and more people kept barging into her home and making it their own.

See, even if you ignore the Bible stuff, the movie kind of works as a heightened tale on how difficult it is to share the love your life with his (or her) fanbase, as these people mean well but can be rather intrusive. Bardem points out that he needs to connect with these people to get ideas and be able to create, something he can't get from sitting at home alone with his wife all the time, and Lawrence is devastated that she can't be enough no matter how hard she tries to fulfill his needs (during the movie's few quiet moments she is usually trying to restore his family home, which was largely destroyed in a fire and she is now rebuilding it). This has been read as Aronofsky admitting (defending?) his apparent penchant for being in relationships with his actresses, relationships that haven't worked out, but as a minor creative type I think it's more universal than that, and not even just to men - to all creative folks. Bardem's not wrong - maybe some people can conjure fantastic stories (or whatever their chosen medium may be) without new experiences, but he's not one, and his wife is seemingly devoted to recreating the past and afraid to try anything new (she turns down a drink of some exotic alcohol after insisting she likes to drink, for example).

In fact, if not for a pregnancy plot that takes up the film's second half, I feel the roles could probably be swapped and you could have a healthy chunk of the same takeaway (plus maybe if the roles were swapped it might make me feel less guilty for all of the times I went out to see horror movies so I could write something instead of staying home with my wife). I don't have to deal with it often, but even on my very minor level of (lack of better word here, trust me) fame I occasionally encounter people who just assume we are friends because they follow me on Twitter or whatever, and it feels fairly intrusive if I'm with my kid or even with a few other friends - yet I feel guilty if I just mumble a "thanks" and walk away. The push and pull is, like everything else in the movie, exaggerated to an insane degree, but the same point is being made - anyone in a position to have fans needs their support, and when they overstep their boundaries it can be difficult to tell them to back off, and therefore they're never sure when they've crossed the line. But at the same time we might not inform them of this, so it's not their fault that they are unaware they were off-putting. So in this movie's batshit version of the world, Bardem creating a baby with his wife is no different than creating a new poem to be read - his fans want it, Bardem doesn't want to create conflict with the people who adore him, and that's where the film REALLY goes off the rails.

(Oh, and keeping with the Biblical theme - he's God, by the way. So there's that, but I don't know enough about Aronofsky to make any assumptions with what he's saying there, so let's move on, with respect.)

Indeed, the baby's birth and what happens in its life shortly thereafter is probably where the movie lose the most people. The first half is the buildup to the conception, and the second half is when she's about to pop (it's not "nine months later" per se - the movie is just as vague with time as it is with names, and given that it's not a particularly realistic film by any stretch, it could be the next day for all we know), and once again her home is overrun by strangers (the first batch, with Ed Harris and the rest, are scared off by a burst pipe - i.e. driven out by a flood, in keeping with the biblical ties). If nothing else, you gotta appreciate how much action Aronofsky is able to cram into this damn house - we get raves, riots, shootouts, masses... it kind of reminded me of Snowpiercer in a weird way, with each room of this house being a microcosm not unlike each train of the car was one (hey, Ed Harris was in that too - maybe let's double feature this with that instead of Antichrist). At a certain point it becomes kind of obvious that Lawrence is never going to leave that house, so I kind of love that they staged five action movies' worth of stunt men and scenarios into it instead - I hope like hell the Blu-ray has a production design featurette, if nothing else.

In fact a lot of what I liked about the movie ended up being on the technical side of things as opposed to its characters (ciphers) and narrative (a mish-mash - by design! - of biblical themes and personal struggles). For starters, it's actually shot on film (16mm, I believe), which is such a rarity these days I momentarily thought something was wrong with the projection before I realized it was just film grain. And even though I'm not exactly a huge fan of Jennifer Lawrence, I love the fact that we never leave her POV even for a moment, and she's probably in 90% of the movie's shots, if not more (even cutaways to other characters are frequently over her shoulder or something) - we're never made privy to a single detail that she didn't catch herself, easily making us as uneasy and paranoid as the character. There's a scene where Harris is puking, seemingly naked, and (Bible alert!) sporting a fresh wound near his ribs - she wasn't there when he got the injury (or took his clothes off), so we're never informed what the hell that was all about. I love stuff like that, which goes a long way toward keeping me engaged in the film even though I couldn't tell you what was going on and/or necessarily caring about anyone on-screen in the usual way.

Ultimately, it falls into that category of movies I "appreciate" more than I traditionally "enjoy", like Kidnapped or Martyrs, albeit for different reasons (apart from the aforementioned beating, which lasts only about 20-30 seconds, there's nothing "hardcore" about the film's violence). I'd much rather read other people's interpretations, even ones I disagreed with, than watch the film again, though I still encourage folks to check it out if they think they know what they're in for (and no, it's not really anything like Rosemary's Baby, despite what the posters seemed to be suggesting at one point - though it was a nice misdirect for the early goings on). I suspect it will get an F Cinemascore, which puts it in good company with the likes of Solaris, Bug, and Killing Them Softly (the only F Cinemascore movie I DON'T like is Darkness, in fact), and probably won't do anyone's careers any good, but who cares? It's a remarkable achievement both in the "hey, you've never seen anything like this before" way and also the fact that Paramount put up a lot of money to make and release it wide, instead of dumping it in limited release/VOD. The idea that some suburban soccer mom (or even better, her Katniss Everdeem loving daughter) will walk into their local mall multiplex and see this makes me super giddy, and that's more than enough to qualify it was a win in my house.

What say you?

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Evil Ed (1995)

JUNE 7, 2017

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SPLATTER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (REVIEW SCREENER)

I remember reading about Evil Ed in Fangoria back in the 90s at some point, making a note to see it as soon as possible because it sounded so much in my wheelhouse. Alas, the VHS version that was released in the US was cut, and I was too snobby to settle for such a thing, so I opted to wait until I found an uncut one. And then I just forgot about it, apparently, because I'm sure I could have found one by now thanks to having money and the know-how to import discs and such. Well, 22 years later, I've finally seen the movie thanks to Arrow's new Blu-ray, which is more uncut than ever, featuring a few extra minutes of (non-gory) footage and, of course, given a high-def/widescreen transfer to boot - it's as if I was meant to wait more than half my life to get around to seeing the damn thing.

Ironically, if I had to distill my thoughts on the film down to one word, it would be "dated", and so even with all the gore chopped out I probably would have enjoyed the movie more had I seen it in the 90s. The plot, for those uninitiated, concerns a mild-mannered editor who is used to working on art-house dramas tasked with censoring a series of slasher movies titled Loose Limbs, bringing them up to the standards required by the local ratings board. At first he wearily works on the films as "just another job", but then overexposure to all of the violent imagery starts warping his mind, resulting in a series of hallucinations and then murders as he goes more and more insane. Lots of old-school Peter Jackson-y splatter ensues. The filmmakers were taking shots at Sweden's censorship board, which was at the time one of the most strict in the world; interestingly enough the practice of cutting films was relaxed the following year, though I doubt Evil Ed was a factor in the decision.

But that just adds to the feeling that it's a bit past its time - censorship now isn't as big of a problem for horror and its fans. With more and more films going out unrated entirely (and the MPAA being more lenient in general), it feels like the time to take a stand against slicing the gory bits out of a slasher movie has long since expired (correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time they made a big stink about a horror movie was Hatchet II, seven years ago). This isn't a critique on the film's existence; just more of an observation, that I almost wish I was seeing the film now in "revisit" mode, as opposed to seeing it for the first time. There are some great gags that haven't dated at all - such as when Ed smiles proudly at a cut he made that renders a gore scene completely incoherent - but overall it felt like kicking a dead horse as opposed to standing up against some ongoing injustice.

(Note - if you are a filmmaker who has recently battled with the MPAA or any other ratings board, feel free to counterpoint, but please note I'm speaking in general terms. I do not doubt that there is still a problem with filmmakers being forced to hack up their films to appease a bunch of people who wouldn't see it anyway - it's just not something that makes the news as often as it did in the 80s and 90s when they were targeting Wes Craven and the Friday the 13th sequels seemingly out of spite. And, again, going out without a rating isn't as crippling as it used to be since newspaper ads aren't how these films get promoted.)

So without that niche appeal, it's just another "guy goes crazy and starts killing people around him" movie, albeit one with a more humorous and whacked-out slant than the average Shining wannabe. Ed's hallucinations aren't just of his friends/loved ones saying things that are only in his head - no, he sees possessed nurses, devils, and even a thing that I could best describe as a goblin version of one of the characters from ABC's 90's show Dinosaurs. His hallucinations START normally - he sees an old lady neighbor as a hot lady coming on to him early on - but they go full blown gonzo by the midpoint, which was a fine surprise. Not only is it obviously more interesting to look at, but it also showcases more of this next-to-no-budget film's surprisingly strong FX and makeup work, which more than makes up for the time capsule-y feeling. Let's not forget that by this point in the 90s, CGI was already starting to take over even in lower-budgeted horror films (1995 was the year of Hideaway and Lord of Illusions, among others), so it was already time to start appreciating the films that were still doing it the right way.

But it also feels like they didn't have quite enough for a feature with their initial concept, so the film takes an odd detour for its climax, as Ed rampages around a hospital while a bunch of SWAT type guys try to take him out. This allows for a lot of bonus gore, but also feels like you're suddenly watching a sequel to the movie you watched for the first hour or so. And not just any sequel, but one made by a new creative team, as the whole "horror movies drove him crazy" focus feels like it's no longer even relevant. It's entertaining in its own right, no doubt about it, but as a whole the movie feels a bit cobbled together from a bunch of ideas as opposed to something more cohesive. As a result I felt kind of exhausted and ready to move on, which is a bummer when being presented with top notch prosthetic work (and a very game performance from Johan Rudebeck as the title character, who reminded me of an older Toby from The Office).

Arrow's blu-ray is, naturally, aimed more at folks who already loved the movie (and were likely aware of its narrative shortcomings), and I can't imagine a scenario where they will be disappointed. In addition to two cuts of the film, there are two extensive documentaries (one running over three hours) and lots of new interviews with director Anders Jacobsson and the simply named Doc, who edited the film. Apparently they've been working on putting together this special edition for over six years now, so it's clearly a labor of love and it shows - I particularly liked the footage of them hunting around for deleted scenes (and a quick bit where Doc almost accidentally cuts up the film's negative!). I actually learned how to use a flatbed editor back in college and it gave me a world of appreciation for those who cut full films on it since doing a 5 minute short was hard enough, so seeing it in action (both here in the bonus features and in the film) gave me pleasant memories of the simpler days of being in college. Some additional deleted scenes and other outtake type material is also present, though as it was all in Swedish (with subtitles) and extensive I didn't get through it all, since I would have to keep my eyes glued to the screen instead of just listening to the interviews while I worked as I normally would. Multitasking is the only way I survive, really.

I'm happy I finally saw the film, and would happily keep it in my collection if I had a regular copy of it (I only got a screener disc in a blank plastic sleeve, i.e. nothing I would put on my shelf), as it'd be a fun one to throw on at parties given the extensive makeup and gore highlights. Arrow's set does it a justice it's never been afforded for over 20 years, and I'm happy for Jacobsson (who has only directed one film since, sadly) and his crew as they clearly worked hard to get it out there both in the '90s when it was made, and now where it can be properly seen for the first time. I wish I liked it a bit more, but not as much as I wish I was finally owning a proper copy of an old favorite that would have blown my mind when I was 15. Oh well.

What say you?

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Tank 432 (2015)

APRIL 11, 2017

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

While I'm neither a scholar or even dedicated fan of Ben Wheatley (I've only seen two of his movies, but Free Fire is one of my most anticipated films of the year, if that makes up for it), the name means enough to me by now to know that whatever the project is, it will be an interesting one. To be fair, Tank 432 (formerly Belly of the Bulldog) is merely executive produced by him, which is often a ceremonial credit one lends to a pal in order to get the film a bit more attention (hey, it worked!), and writer Nick Gillespie is a frequent collaborator of Wheatley's, making his feature debut here. I can't speak as to whether or not that is definitely the case here, but if you thought Wheatley's own films were puzzling and cold, you should steer far clear of this one, as it makes something like Kill List look like the most formulaic studio release in ages.

I don't usually do plot summaries, but I'll break tradition here because, quite frankly, it's pretty much all I can say about the film with any certainty. A group of mercenary soldiers are trying to transport two hooded POWs (if this is even a war) on foot when they come across some corpses and a car that won't start. They make their way further and find a tank, but before they can fully check it out someone starts shooting at them so they dive inside and shut the door, inadvertently trapping themselves. Then they start going through the motions of single-location horror (trust and mental states break down in equal measures) and people start dying. Our lead (Rupert Evans from The Boy) is kind to the prisoners while the rest of the squad is not, and one soldier hates rookies - and now I've also told you everything I learned about the characters in 90 minutes.

To be fair, I am not now nor have I ever been much of a fan of these kind of aloof, "mood above coherence" horror or thriller movies, because I tend to prefer a narrative that I can get a grasp on and characters I can give a shit about (or at least tell apart, which I had trouble doing at first until two of the men were removed from the equation). Nothing wrong with a little mystery, and I don't need every question answered, but this is a movie that starts not unlike a segment in Memento, albeit without the "OK now we will flash back ten minutes so you can see how he ended up in this chase scene" explanations. I actually had to double check the runtime because it seemed like my Blu-ray skipped forward a few minutes, and it's far too late by the time we learn that not knowing what was going on in the first minute was part of the point. That I'm still unsure of what the point WAS is just the cherry on top, I guess. Gillespie based the film on his own short story "The Smith Hill Forest Incident", but I'm not sure if it was ever published, because the only evidence of its existence that I was able to find online was in reviews/press notes for this movie. Perhaps it will yield some clues if he ever releases it, though if it's not in the next few hours, I'll likely forget all about it.

That said, there's JUST enough here to give it a look as long as you're prepared for such rampant ambiguity. As you might expect given the "psychological" tagging, hallucinations are common, and the assorted visuals that accompany them - gas masked specters, flash-forwards of our characters covered in a mysterious orange powder, insects and the like - do their job in unsettling the audience just as the characters are. The claustrophobic setting is also inspired; when I heard the movie involved characters trapped in a tank I assumed that they were "trapped" as in pinned down and not able to get far from it, not literally trapped inside one. Gillespie cheats a bit to give his angles (i.e. the camera is aimed at the right side of Evans' face, but on the reverse shot we can see he's up against the side of the tank and therefore no camera could be there unless that side was removed), but apart from establishing shots used to show time passing he stays inside with everyone, rather than cut to other characters or a command center or anything like that. They're in the tank for a good 45-50 minutes before this approach is abandoned, enough time to be as sick of being in there as they are. The story may be incoherent, but the film as a whole sure allows us to feel the same way its characters do.

Also, I'm not sure if this is a compliment or not (complisult? h/t Community), but since we don't know what's going on or what these folks are all about, the movie is NOT the latest in the endless series of war-set horror films where our heroes are undone by the traumas of war, like Deathwatch, R Point, Below, The Squad, etc. Do these people deserve their fate? Are their pursuers actually the ghosts (real or imagined) of innocent victims of the war they're fighting? Couldn't tell you, so we can say they're NOT and this is different than 90% of horror films with war backdrops. Much like found footage movies about abandoned asylums, I think I've seen enough of those movies, so I was a bit relieved when I realized this was not the latest one. And even if it is, at least it's still different, because those I usually understood and here I was just frequently wondering if I perhaps fell asleep or somehow activated a "shuffle scenes" feature on my Blu-ray player.

But like I said, there are folks who really love those kinds of movies, and they're probably not being satisfied as of late, especially not on a professional level with recognizable actors and actual production value. The actors are fine, the score is quite good and it's never dull to watch, so it technically meets watchability requirements - it just lacked that element that makes some hard to follow movies compelling (see: most David Lynch), where I might want to rewatch a film to see if I could get the answers on a second go around. Here, they didn't give me enough to care to do that, but if I'm not in the target audience I guess it doesn't matter much what I think. You guys can keep making fun of me for liking Shocker or whatever, it's fine.

What say you?

*Yes, war + orange usually means Agent Orange, but if that's what it's supposed to be I think Gillespie looked at the wrong symptoms.

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Split (2016)

JANUARY 20, 2017

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Following The Visit, it seems that working with the small budgets but (far as I know) creative freedom of a Blumhouse production (as opposed to expensive studio gigs where you might be at the whims of people like Will Smith) is a fine fit for M. Night Shyamalan. Split is another winner from the pairing, and continues his creative comeback after a period filled with duds, from Lady in the Water up until After Earth, which I liked for the record, but was a costly money loser, and worse - saw his name removed from the marketing because it had become such a red flag for audiences. Time will tell if he mucks it up again by getting too indulgent, but if that's the case, I'm happy I was able to see him prove he still had it in him, unlike other genre directors who flame out and seemingly never find their groove again, even temporarily.

Split sees him trying something new: containment. It's not as claustrophobic as something like 10 Cloverfield Lane, because we occasionally leave to spend time with a psychiatrist played by the great Betty Buckley, and a few flashbacks to the childhood of Casey, the character played by Anya Taylor-Joy, but he gets to show off precious little of his beloved Philadelphia, and sets 75% of the movie in one of two rooms. Yet, it never gets visually dull - his directorial prowess has never been questionable (it's his screenwriting that sinks him - like Rob Zombie, his lesser efforts probably would have improved if he had a writing partner), and if there ARE any doubters they should be silenced after seeing the film, as he never seems to settle into standard ways of filming these small rooms. David "Panic Room" Fincher and Vincenzo "Cube" Natali would be proud, and I couldn't help but wonder if, after (quite skillfully) dealing with the confines of found footage in Visit, he was eager to get his Spielberg/Hitchcock on again and frame things impressively without having to worry about the camera being a character.

But even if he locked a tripod down in a corner and took a break, the film would still be engaging thanks to James McAvoy, who is given the role of a lifetime with Kevin, who has Dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder - I'm not clued into the psychiatric world enough to know why this changed but I'll assume someone took offense to the old term, as they always do). Kevin has 23 personalities, and McAvoy is able to make each of the ones he shows (I think we only see eight of them throughout the film) a complete character, and while he's usually aided by wardrobe changes, he is able to sell a change occurring with simple gestures and expressions. Night uses the camera wonderfully during these moments, angling things ever so slightly to make McAvoy even appear larger/smaller as necessary. It's the most impressive of its type I've seen since John Lithgow in Raising Cain, and in some ways even more so since he has more roles to play and (minor spoiler) at one point cycles through several in one go. I fully expect that he'll be passed over by the Academy, but if he doesn't win the Saturn Award (since they DO take such films seriously), it'd be a damn crime.

Like Cain (De Palma being on the mind a lot here, thanks to Buckley and showy camera moves), he also has to toe the line between being a hero and a villain, as some identities are good-natured and seemingly want to help the three girls, but he's also the guy holding them hostage in the first place. And we don't know exactly what he has planned for them, but we can be pretty sure they won't like it and it will be another one of his identities doing it. There's a lot going on during any given encounter due to this setup, and I like that Casey is smart enough to understand this early on, and plan her moves carefully. The movie thankfully doesn't waste time on her trying to escape, because we know she won't (the other two girls she's with aren't as intelligent, so we get those minor chase scenes to pepper a little action throughout the film), and it's a delight watching her take on different approaches with each identity as she starts to get a better handle on who is who. Given that the film suggests such a disorder is the direct result of abuse, and both characters were abused as children (Casey's flashbacks spell out the nature of her own trauma, and it's fairly grim stuff for a PG-13 movie), the movie could have gone for broke and triggered her own full blown disorder for a battle of dissociative wits, but thankfully it sticks to just "Casey is smart and thinks things through rather than act impulsively".

That's not to say the movie doesn't go nutty in other areas, however. This being an M. Night joint, it'd be foolish to go in thinking that there wouldn't be a surprise or two. As the billboard tells us, he has 23 personalities and the 24th is about to be unleashed, so a good chunk of the mystery is finding out the exact nature of this 24th personality and how it will differ from the others if and when it appears. I wouldn't dare answer that question for you, but I will say that you should probably see the movie sooner than later, because unlike back in the days of Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, we have the internet now, and people seem hellbent on making sure they spoil the film's surprises (one of which has been floating around since September, though MOST people who saw the film then have been cool about keeping it to themselves). At any rate, the answer is a satisfying one.

Unfortunately, not ALL of the film's final scenes are as satisfying. Without getting into spoilers, Casey's arc feels like it's missing a final beat, and I'm baffled why Night chose to end her part of the story the way he did. Not that every little thing needs to be tidied up and closed off, but it's almost like they lopped out her final scene to save it for later, as if Split 2 would be about her instead of McAvoy's character (I'm not saying there will/could/should be a sequel, just saying that I would assume if the money men demanded a followup, it would seem like he'd be the one to follow - same as the Friday the 13th sequels follow Jason instead of the Final Girl). And the final shot is a great moment on its own, but wasn't wholly necessary in a film that's already a bit too long; it's JUST under two hours, and possibly could have been nipped and tucked in a few spots to get it down some. As much as the last shot put a smile on my face in the moment, overall and probably down the road, I think I'd rather that time was spent giving Casey some more closure.

You might be wondering if this is a horror movie, and no, it's not really, but it inches so damn close to that territory I figure it's OK to talk about here. The D.I.D. stuff is unpredictable enough to make it tense as all hell (though it's also funny at times - it's kind of great how a moment that plays as a really freaky scare in the trailer is actually the setup for a legitimately hilarious non sequitur), and with four females being menaced by a very messed up individual in a Blumhouse movie rated PG-13 for violence I don't think it's really a spoiler to say not everyone makes it out alive, but if you go in expecting a horror film (even by M. Night standards, who usually kind of plays in on the borders of horror instead of diving right in) you might walk out disappointed. But if you're a fan of his you should probably know not to expect full-blown horror movie stuff, and you should also join me in thinking this is easily his best film in years (yes, better than The Visit in my opinion, and I liked that one a lot). Can he make it a hat trick with his next one? Let us just forget that unfortunate mid-to-late '00s period? I hope so.

What say you?

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Raising Cain (1992)

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Curious - do you folks consider a movie as "seen" if you were so young that you a. barely remember it and b. wouldn't have the proper context to take away as much from it as the filmmaker intended? I usually do, but I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't, if Raising Cain is any indication. I "saw" it when it hit VHS, making me 12 (maybe just turned 13), but even if I could remember much about it from that one viewing (all I recall: being confused, being smitten with Lolita Davidovich), I hadn't seen anything else of note from Brian De Palma at that stage (the lone, inexplicable exception? Bonfire of the Vanities), and as I watch it now I realize part of the film's fun is seeing him play with his own filmography as much as he does with the usual Hitchcock stuff. PLUS it's easier to follow when you know more about cinematic language in general; I'm sure I would have quickly understood that "Cain" wasn't really there in his scenes if I were to notice that De Palma never cheated and put them both in the same shot, for example.

(Double Impact had already come out - I knew it was possible to do this with one actor!)

While I still haven't seen them all (still no Body Double - much to my chagrin), I've seen enough De Palma by now to realize this one isn't exactly his finest hour, but probably works best for his hardcore fans (as opposed to say, Mission to Mars, which might satisfy you more if you have no idea who he is). Again, he throws in little nods to his past work - the plot feels like a variation on Sisters, and it's probably only his fans that will laugh instead of getting freaked out when a baby carriage starts rolling toward a staircase during the film's climax. Plus it's got plenty of his gee-whiz camerawork, including an epic 4+ minute long-take (a walk and talk, no less) that takes the characters down two flights of stairs and an elevator, finally ending on a corpse's ridiculous death face. The average moviegoer will not notice or at least not think much of these elements, but if you're familiar with his work it's sort of like comfort food, especially since it was his first thriller in nearly a decade.

But whether you're a BDP fan or not, I think we can all agree that the highlight of the film is John Lithgow's performance(s), as he plays at least five characters throughout the film, each with their own unique mannerisms and vocal inflection. Two of them are distinguished by their appearance (one older, one in drag), but the other three are just "off-the-shelf" Lithgow, and yet it's instantly clear when a new personality takes over - in particular the scene where Frances Sternhagen is interviewing him. When he snaps awake (she's hypnotizing him), you can tell right away it's not Carter or Cain, but a new personality we haven't met yet - just from how he's fidgeting and looking at her! Naturally, he didn't even get nominated for any mainstream awards, let alone win any due to the fact that the film was kinda/sorta horror and it also wasn't a big hit (if Silence of the Lambs only grossed 10m do you think it'd win Best Picture? Or even get nominated? Hah!). He DID get nominated for a Saturn award, yet lost to Gary Oldman for Dracula (kinda hard to argue, really), as did Bruce Willis (Death Becomes Her) and Chevy Chase (Invisible Man), which was probably the first and last time Bruce and Chevy were ever up for the same award.

However, a big draw of Lithgow's performance was kind of ruined by the film's re-structuring. When cutting the film, De Palma second guessed himself and didn't put enough faith in the audience to follow his non-chronological narrative, and so he recut it to be in order. This makes it (somewhat) easier to follow, sure, but it also gives the movie a very strange pace, because what was designed to be a twist halfway through (that Lithgow's character was a killer, not the "Mr. Mom" wet blanket he appeared to be in the original version's first half hour or so) was now pretty much the first scene in the movie. This would be fine if it was a movie about a guy living a double life (Mr. Brooks comes to mind), but it's not that kind of movie at all, so the (now) later scenes of him acting like a completely normal guy feel out of place. Because they are! Granted, there's no way in hell that the ads wouldn't have given away the multiple personalities element, so we'd know he was nuts no matter how the movie was cut, but knowing something from a trailer is different than knowing it too early in the full narrative. Like Psycho - even if you know Janet Leigh dies in the shower ahead of time, it's WHEN it happens (i.e. the end of the first act) that makes it such a shock, because even if you knew that her character died you'd probably assume it was somewhere near the end.

Luckily, this new Blu-ray from Scream Factory offers a one of a kind bonus feature - a cut of the film assembled by a fan that follows the original script's ordering. Alas, the new cut's editor, Peet Gelderblom, didn't have access to the scenes that were excised from the theatrical cut as a result of the new structure, so it's hardly a perfect execution (you almost have to watch the theatrical cut first just to know the difference when it jumps back in time), but if you mentally fill in those blanks it's easy to see that it's the superior way to watch the movie. This version keeps us more or less in Davidovich's POV (literally, at one point) for a while, allowing Lithgow's sudden turn to be the shock we were never afforded in the theatrical, and it also keeps the mystery of Carter/Cain's father (also Lithgow) slightly more compelling since we don't meet him 10 minutes in like we do in the theatrical. Both versions leave you guessing if Dr. Nix is truly alive or just another personality until the very end (in fact after about 45 minutes I don't think there's any major reordering at all), but the subplot just flows better in the recut version.

One thing the disc does NOT offer, sadly, is footage of Gregg Henry acting against Lithgow. Even though you never see two Lithgows at once, the actor still needed someone to interact with for the dialogue, and Henry did that for him throughout the shooting (in addition to his regular role as the head cop investigating the missing children). I think it would have been great to see, but alas the movie was shot in 1991/1992, long before anyone thought to record a film's entire production so it could have good blu-ray features. Instead, the disc offers a ton of interviews, including ones with Lithgow and Henry (as well as Paul Hirsch, one of the three editors), and you can't even complain about De Palma not offering one since the disc hits at the same time as the simply titled De Palma, a documentary which is basically a feature length interview anyway and covers all of his films including Cain. Lithgow's runs a half hour and is obviously the big draw, but they're all loaded with the usual fun anecdotes and recollections - it's a bummer they didn't cut them all together for a feature length retrospective (their combined runtime is almost as long as the movie itself, in fact) like they did with Day of the Dead and The Offspring, but it's not a big deal. The 2nd disc offers the recut as well as some background info on how that came together, as well as De Palma's sole "appearance" on the disc - his note saying how much he liked seeing the cut and wished he hadn't second guessed himself in the first place.

Again, I haven't seen Body Double (I swear I'll fix that soon), but I consider Blow Out to be a masterpiece and I really, love Dressed to Kill, and quite like Sisters (moreso after suffering through its remake), so I can't exactly say Raising Cain is an essential De Palma thriller when he has so many great ones to choose from (sort of like how Prince of Darkness is awesome but not even top 5 Carpenter. But it's deserving of more love than it gets, so I'm glad Scream Factory and Universal are working together a lot now, because otherwise there's little chance this minor little gem would have gotten a spiffy Blu-ray release. And I in turn probably wouldn't have gotten around to revisiting it until I decided to do some sort of massive De Palma appraisal/catch-up (I would skip Redacted, for the record), which is something I should do anyway. My favorite is Carlito's Way and it's been nearly 20 years since I watched that one! Plus he jumps genres a lot, so if I did them chronologically it wouldn't be repetitive or anything. I think I'll do this!

What say you?

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Necrophobia 3D (2014)

AUGUST 16, 2016

GENRE: GIALLO (!), PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (ONLINE SCREENER)

It's rare, but every now and then I see an underwhelming movie at (or, in this case, out of) Fantastic Fest, and my reaction is always the same: I've done something wrong as a viewer. The festival is so fun and its programmers so like-minded (yes, before anyone points it out - I work for one of them), and most of what I see is, even if I don't love it, at least so nutty or unique that I can ADMIRE it, that those odd lackluster entries almost make me feel bad for saying so. Such is the case with Necrophobia 3D, which played at the festival in 2014 - a year I missed due to my son's recent birth, but had I been there I almost certainly would have been at one of its showings, as on paper it sounds exactly like my kind of thing. Plus I still get a kick out of legitimate 3D when used properly, and lacking a home set I usually make extra efforts to see them in their native gimmicky glory.

But this would have been one of those screenings where I start looking at my food instead of the screen, because it landed in that decidedly un-sweet spot of being both hard to follow and also not particularly compelling - the movie didn't do enough to make piecing together its narrative worth the effort. It's got a good hook: a giallo-esque thriller about a man whose twin brother dies and then everyone in his life starts following him to the grave, but there are no viable red herrings to keep the "mystery" afloat, so you're just waiting for the obvious reveal. When it comes, rather early (then again the movie is only 75 minutes with credits so even scenes in the 3rd act are "rather early"), I started wondering if it was a misdirect, and one of the other characters would turn out to be the REAL culprit, but that didn't happen. Instead...

(OK, spoilers are coming!)

...the movie keeps doubling down on its central "twist", which is a Raising Cain kinda deal with multiple incarnations of the same character. Whether they're figments of his imagination or actual physical beings that have come to life somehow, I'm not sure - I even rewatched the last 25 minutes or so and still couldn't come down hard on either answer. Then writer/director Daniel de la Vega throws a fun but even less coherent time travel element into the proceedings, showing that the mysterious phone call our protagonist got near the beginning of the film was sent by one of his doubles here at the end of the (otherwise linear) movie. It's the sort of twist that'd be great if it was the only one in a film (and, you know, had some logical way of occurring), but it's one too many for the film, which - again - already suffered from simply not being particularly engaging. Our killer wipes out all of the supporting cast almost as soon as they become important, and even a 75 minute movie should have time for more than 5-6 important characters - ESPECIALLY for an alleged mystery.

Plus there's no real story. The brother dies, our main man Dante freaks out, then the wife is killed, he freaks out, then a priest is killed... you get the gist. Not that any of the classic giallo movies had current-day narratives that were really terrific, but you'd get the nutty backstory and colorful cast of characters to make up for it, not to mention the usually stylish murder sequences. Here, most of them are fairly quick - the priest is offed almost the second Dante leaves the room, instead of de la Vega giving us a nice buildup with the guy wandering around his church and being pursued by the gloved killer. In fact, I often wondered why they bothered with the 3D - apart from a couple of the scenes where Dante was having a mental collapse, and maybe (if done well) the wide shots of his tailor workshop (mannequins pop up with frequency), there wasn't anything in the film that seemed like it would benefit from the technology, so I am curious what inspired them to do it that way in the first place. If it was five years ago, sure - every other movie was in 3D, it seems. But this was shot in 2013, when 3D was already past its peak popularity, so who knows. Maybe they got a tax break or something? Whatever the reason, not counting post-converts it's the most pointless 3D entry I can recall since the woeful Julia X.

The titular phobia is equally pointless in the narrative - it's the fear of being near a dead body, but this isn't something particularly worth revolving a movie around. For starters, it's not like this is some weird tic - who the hell DOES want to be around dead bodies (well, I'm sure there's a term for it, but it'd be more interesting to watch), and phobia or not, all of the people who die in the movie are very close to him, making his inability to be around them kind of understandable. When a protagonist suffers from a phobia, part of the filmmaker's job is to get the audience - who presumably doesn't feel that way for the most part - to walk in his shoes a little bit. Agoraphobia movies usually do a fine job with this; you and I don't feel any particular fear of going outside, so they will employ heightened sound effects, off-kilter angles, etc. to make the act of walking out the front door seem like a herculean feat. Here, actor Luis Machin just sort of yelps and staggers around, which I'm guessing lots of people would do if they found their brother or wife dead. And by the halfway point he's around corpses in every other scene anyway so it's not even a "thing" anymore.

On the plus side, Machin does a fine job with the various incarnations of his character; the main one, Dante, is kind of a Toby Jones-y nebbish, but the others are like Richard Lynch level menacing - it's a shame we don't get to see much of his brother Tomas, since we'd get a fleshed out third version. Also, I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but the killer's dark appearance and black hat give him a Halloween Man in Black vibe that amused me (especially considering that mystery was equally easy to solve and woefully underwhelming). If the movie threw Druids into the mix I might have actually liked it more, now that I think of it - it's nutty, but not nutty ENOUGH to elevate to "WTF" kind of cinema. It's just got some twists for the sake of having twists, I suspect, and when you consider the 3D, it's not hard to think the movie was an exercise of some sort to try out the cameras for a more elaborate project. You can almost hear a producer asking for some horror script that could be banged out quickly so they could work out the kinks on a movie that would find an audience anyway.

Oh well. I'm all for filmmakers trying to revive the giallo genre, but Necrophobia lacks a lot of the things that make those movies so enjoyable, and doesn't really do anything unique on its own to make up for it. It's watchable enough, and again quite short, so you can't accuse it of wasting too much of your time, but apart from admiring Machin acting opposite himself in a few scenes and the Lost Highway-tinged phone call stuff, there isn't enough here to really make it worth seeking out. I later asked some attendees of that year's Fantastic Fest and few even remembered the title let alone the movie, so it clearly didn't make much of an impression, and I probably would have been downright angry if I picked it over (scans that year's lineup) Spring, Cub, or Let Us Prey to name a few. Of course, that's the nature of fests, and even part of the fun to take such gambles, but it really stings when those gambles don't pay off. The food would have been good though.

What say you?

p.s. I'm not sure when it's coming out to see for yourself, I saw it via screener for my freelance job but that means nothing with regards to a looming release. I couldn't find it on Blu even in other regions, so maybe it's just in limbo? I normally don't bother reviewing movies like this since it defeats the purpose of the site, but it was the only thing I've watched in two weeks thanks to my move (which I'm STILL technically in the middle of doing) and I wanted to post something so you guys knew I wasn't dead.

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Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

MARCH 25, 2016

GENRE: MONSTER (really!), PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I learned something interesting a couple years ago about the writing credits on a movie. If there's more than one screenwriter, they're listed with either an "&" or an "and" between them, and there's a reason for the non-conformity: the "&" means the two writers worked together, whereas the "and" means one rewrote the other's script. Alas, even though Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice feels like the sort of movie that would skip an opening title sequence and save it for the end titles, we learn right off the bat (heh) that the film's two credited writers, David Goyer and Chris Terrio did not work together - there's an "and", not an ampersand, and by god does it show. At times I wondered if one actually rewrote the other script or if they wrote completely separate ones and Zack Snyder just took whatever he liked from each with no rhyme or reason, but either way, even if this movie makes a billion dollars I wouldn't expect either of them to consider it their finest work.

To be fair to them, I'm sure if they were hired to write a movie where Batman fights Superman (and then probably teams up with him against a villain) and nothing else, they'd probably do a fine job (well, Terrio could; Goyer has given us little reason to have faith in his abilities unless he's backed up by filmmakers like Guillermo Del Toro or Christopher Nolan). But that's not what they were hired to do - they're also writing a prequel for a Justice League movie, a prequel to a Wonder Woman movie, a sequel to a Batman movie that doesn't exist, a sequel to a Superman movie that established Lex Luthor, and, when time allows, a sequel to Man of Steel, which may have problems but is comic movie perfection compared to this mess.

I'm not exaggerating when I say the first hour of this film seems like a collection of deleted scenes: there is zero connection between most of them, with more "and then this happens" storytelling (for lack of a better term) than I have ever witnessed in a major film. At times it made me long for the relative cohesion of the Amazing Spider-Man or Transformers movies, because as bad as they are at least I could usually track the characters from point A to B, a feat that is impossible here. For example, there's a scene where we've just cut to the Daily Planet offices, and Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) wonders where Clark Kent is - it's the sort of scene that should belong right before we cut to Clark/Superman doing something far more exciting than sitting at his day job desk. But this is BVS (I have taken to calling it Beavis, for the record), so after he inquires about Clark we cut to... Lois Lane, meeting with a source as she works on her next story. Then we cut to Lex Luthor, doing his thing. So why is the Fishburne scene there, exactly? It doesn't inform the narrative in any way, it doesn't offer insight into any of its characters, and it's probably long forgotten by the time Zack Snyder bothers to return to Clark - not to mention that we never know why Perry was looking for him in the first place. You can ask that "why am I watching this particular scene?" question about a lot of them, though that one stuck out as particularly egregious.

And that's because a lot of the other disconnected scenes have an answer: because DC has a bunch of movies down the road planned, and since they didn't have the patience to do this right like Marvel (mostly) did, they need to get a lot of the Justice League pieces into place in time for that movie, which is coming in 2017 and starts shooting next week I think. If you want to compare to what Marvel has done (and there's no reason not to, since they're obviously swiping from their "shared universe" playbook), if Man of Steel was their Iron Man, kicking the whole thing off, then this is their Avengers - without Iron Man 2, Captain America, Incredible Hulk, and Thor in between. At the very least the movie often feels like it should have had another Man of Steel film and the debut of Ben Affleck's Batman (which, as confusing as it is with Nolan listed as a producer on this movie, is NOT a recast version of the character Christian Bale played - it's a "remake" just as Bale's was to the Burton/Schumacher series) before this one, because there's a lot of ground to cover just to get Batman worked into things - at the expense of Superman's runtime. Indeed, Affleck is billed over Cavill, which is kind of weird since Cavill's the one who is coming back and "Batfleck" is technically being introduced - this transition would have been a lot smoother if they had settled into their roles and with their characters more clearly defined. At one point Bruce Wayne pauses to reflect on a beat up Robin costume with a scary Joker message scribbled on it - a moment that carries exactly zero weight since we have never even seen ANY version of Robin with ANY version of Joker in a live action movie since the 1960's*, let alone in this particular incarnation. I get the inclination for wanting to focus on a Batman that's been around for 20 years when the story begins (as opposed to another goddamn origin tale), but there's gotta be a way to do it without it feeling like you actually missed a movie.

Now, I mostly liked Man of Steel (and I should note I'm nowhere near as big of a Superman fan as I am of Batman), but one thing that felt odd to me and certainly didn't sit well with a lot of Supes fans is that he was kind of a brooding jerk in the movie, as opposed to the uplifting hero we're used to from the comics. In Man of Steel I was fine with this - they were doing the Superman version of the Nolan Batfilms, and it was a total 180 from the 2006 Superman film (that I didn't really like at all). But when this brooding Superman faces off against Batman, the appeal is mostly lost, because darkness is Batman's thing. Lex has this little speech about their impending fight (which he orchestrates) and spells out their opposite standings: "darkness vs. light!" and things like that, but where's the light? It's not night and day, it's 11pm and 1030pm. Snyder attempts to dig himself out of the hole he dug by simply making this Batman even darker than usual (meaning he kills people, without a moment's hesitation or contemplation), making Superman seem more "golden" in comparison, but it's not a particularly successful gambit. Plus, with a new Batman that we've only known for an hour, it's hardly an iconic meeting anyway - the ideal version of this movie would have been released in 1994 and featured Michael Keaton facing off against Christopher Reeve. Instead they made Speechless, and we get this.

Back to all the sequel setups. Also along for this clumsy ride is Wonder Woman, played by the otherworldly Gal Gadot (Gisele from the Fast movies), though she's never really introduced in the narrative. She appears as a mysterious thief who steals one of Bruce Wayne's little spy gadgets because it has a photograph on it that proves she's at least 100 years old, and I guess that'd be a problem in a world where everyone knows Superman is an alien and they're OK enough with him that they build statues in his honor despite having gotten thousands of people killed during his fight with Zod (which we see from Bruce Wayne's perspective in an opening scene that is also far and away the best the movie ever gets). Anyway, she's in civilian mode for 80% of the bloated runtime, but when Lex creates Doomsday (out of Zod's corpse - OK?) and sets him on a warpath against our other heroes, she springs into action, getting off a plane at once and suddenly reappearing in her WW costume (did she have it on her carry-on?) to join the fight. I'm not even sure if her name (Diana Prince) is ever even fully revealed, though with so much information crammed and offered haphazardly throughout the film I suppose I myself could have been in it somewhere and I wouldn't have caught me. And again, if they didn't have to spend so much time re-explaining Batman to us (including yet another parents getting murdered scene) they probably could have used a little more time on introducing her - after all, except for a quick bit in Thor we didn't really meet Hawkeye until Avengers. Not everyone has to have their own movie before they all meet up, but they certainly need more than ONE MOVIE TOTAL before throwing everyone together.

And yes, three other JL members are introduced, quickly, and in a scene so abysmally bad I couldn't believe that they stuck it into the middle of the movie instead of at the end of the credits, where its lack of connection to the narrative wouldn't be as jarring. Despite having plenty on his plate, Bruce sends Diana (this is probably where her name is shown, now that I think of it) an email with some videos attached (he got them off the doohickey that she had stolen from him - she gave it back because she couldn't break the decryption), and those videos are of Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg (who is created by Joe Morton, which I thought was inspired casting), who Bruce assumes are all aliens like her and Superman I guess? I dunno. It's really awful, and just adds to the problem - it only exists because DC is doubling down on their impatience by releasing Justice League before any of the other stand-alone films come along besides Wonder Woman's. Flash and Aquaman are coming AFTER the JL movie, so now they're basically going ahead and making Avengers 2 before making Hulk or Captain America (or even a proper Batman movie, not to mention the seemingly non-existent Man of Steel 2 unless they change their schedule plans). And just to make all this crap even more frustrating, the picture has Chris Pine standing next to Gal Gadot - it's such a pointless distraction that I had to laugh. Ebert famously referred to another Ben Affleck movie as a two and a half hour trailer (Armageddon) - if he was alive he might be forced to take it back and use it to describe this film, because it is almost quite literally a two and a half hour trailer for all of the movies that they've dated and cast but haven't actually made yet. And they're using time that should be spent on THIS movie's plot to set them all up, rather than do it organically like their competition has done. You know, Age of Ultron wasn't that great, but they've earned enough goodwill by this point that we're still stoked for Civil War next month - who can possibly be excited for Justice League (also from Snyder) when he can't even handle doing 2-3 heroes in a movie? And when it's the first time we'll really be seeing half of its members?

When you strip all that crap out, you're left with the skeleton of what might be a pretty fun comic book movie where Lex Luthor arranges for Batman and Superman to fight, only for them to realize what he's up to and join forces to stop him, at which point he springs another villain on them to battle. Lex's plan is easy enough to engineer since Batman already hates Superman for all of the destruction he caused in Metropolis (it took out a Wayne Enterprises building, in fact), though the script curiously has Lex deal only with Superman - Lex and Bruce Wayne's entire relationship in the movie is shown in the trailer. I guess since Lex doesn't know Bruce is Batman that he didn't think much of him, but why not have him figure that out? After all, he's got files on Aquaman for some reason, so it's not completely impossible for him to have at least given a passing interest in who the masked vigilante one town over (yep, Gotham and Metropolis are neighbors here) might be. Wait, why am I suggesting MORE subplots for them to toss in? Perhaps with fewer characters in the mix there might be time to explain why anyone does anything, so I wouldn't be muttering "Wait, what?" to myself so often. For example, Batman crafts a spear out of Kryptonite to fight Superman with, but once they patch up their differences he tosses it aside. Lois Lane then throws it into the water (why, I have no idea), but later Batman realizes he can use it to fight Doomsday, who is currently just sort of standing there on an uninhabited island. His plan, for some reason, is to lead Doomsday back to Gotham (where the spear is, probably near some innocent people**) to get it, rather than just fly back and grab it while Doomsday chills out not bothering anyone. Once Batman arrives on the scene, he suddenly forgets all about the damn spear, but luckily for him Lois suddenly knows how much they need it and dives into the water to get it, while Batman sits most of the Doomsday fight out. Huh?

At least I get Doomsday's motives: he's a giant ugly monster and therefore wants to kill our heroes, as is tradition. Lex, on the other hand, has a plan that makes no real sense, and we're never given much of a reason to fear him as a villain. Except for showing Bruce's parents dying (which is necessary for a later, very silly plot point involving a funny coincidence about Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne to really register), Snyder and his writers just assume you know who all of these people are, why they're important, etc. So Lex (who, it should be noted for those who forgot, was not in Man of Steel) just shows up and everyone's already suspicious of him for some reason, and he's already obsessed with Superman because... uh, he is in the comics, I guess. I mean, I know that the primary audience for these movies are comic fans, but it's a baffling decision to alienate non-readers by not giving even rudimentary background information on who anyone actually IS. If you hadn't seen a Batman movie before, you'd be completely baffled as to who Alfred is, why the Waynes were important, etc. Plus, fans of the comic will be angry about all of the changes anyway (Batman killing people, Lex being so young, Doomsday being made out of Zod's corpse, etc.) so who exactly was Snyder trying to please here, anyway, besides WB stockholders?

He sure as hell wasn't out to win over families. I felt legitimately sad for all of the excited kids who were running into the theater before it began, because they probably spent most of the following 150 minutes alternating between being bored and terrified. Both of the heroes are jerks, there are scary nightmare scenes throughout (I momentarily wondered if WB was roping Freddy into the mix), and there's a shocking lack of any big action scenes until the final half hour, which is just a CGI fest on par with the terrible finale of last summer's (otherwise superior) Fantastic Four movie. There's even a suicide bomber scene, and the only time we see Batman doing anything "regular day" is when he's rescuing some sex slaves (that he's also terrified in the process). And people thought Batman Returns was too fucked up for kids? It's Schumacher-level goofy compared to this, and I honestly feel bad for kids whose parents will (rightfully) deny them permission to see a new Superman movie because it's too grim and upsetting. Since there's such animosity between Marvel and DC fans I won't use Spider-Man 2 as the example of a perfect, well rounded comic movie (as much as I'd like to), so let's use the first Batman (1989) instead - it's got some adult-leaning elements, but I'd still be OK showing it to my kid when he was 7 or 8, i.e. the age kids probably start really reading comics and wanting to see their heroes in big-screen adventures. This? There are a couple of R-rated movies I'd feel more comfortable showing him first.

OK, a million words later you're probably still wondering why you're reading a review of a Superman movie on Horror Movie A Day. Two words: Ben Affleck. You gotta understand how much I truly love the guy - he was a Boston boy (like me!) who won an Oscar right when I was about to start film school. Later that year he co-starred in what would ultimately be one of my all-time favorite movies, and in 2003 he starred in a movie based on one of my three favorite comic characters: Daredevil. That movie wasn't that great and it's hardly one of his best performances, but as a fan of the character I was happy to see a guy I really liked in the role - one of those other three favorite characters was Spider-Man and it's not like I had any real affinity for Tobey Maguire. So who is the 3rd in that group? You guessed it: Batman. Most of the comics I read nowadays are of the non-hero variety, but I make two exceptions: Daredevil and Batman (Spider-Man lost me forever a few years back... maybe it's OK again now but I grew tired of all the dumb retcons and resets). That one of my favorite actors has played two of my favorite heroes is pretty nuts, I think, and as someone who has rooted for him time and time again (even in the mid-00's... some dark times those were) I couldn't have been more excited to see him take on this role and hopefully get back some cred in the eyes of comic fans. So far, it seems he has - even the harshest reviews seem to point out that he's great in the role and that they can't wait to see him in a solo movie (not to mention Jeremy Irons, who is a wonderfully gruff Alfred) without all of this other bullshit weighing him down.

Long story short, I want to stress that I was very much excited for this movie and had no reason to go in wanting to hate it or any of that; even with all of the bad reviews coming in (and trailers that didn't exactly leave me hopeful) I was still optimistic that I'd at least enjoy it as a fun timekiller, same as Deadpool. I in no way could have predicted that a sequel to a movie I enjoyed that added my boy Affleck to the mix as FUCKING BATMAN would leave me feeling annoyed and bored in equal measures. And even if I WAS planning to hate it, if there's anyone who can overcome that sort of thing it's Zack Snyder - I went into Dawn of the Dead fully expecting to despise it, and walked out a huge fan. But alas, I would estimate that there are maybe about 20 minutes of the movie that I actively enjoyed - that is not what I'd think of as a "fun timekiller". And since I couldn't quite convey why I was so disappointed with 140 character tweets (and my other site kind of already clogged with BvS coverage), I figured I'd "October Extras 2" this thing and offer anyone who might give a shit what I think about a comic movie something to read over the weekend. Fear not, I'll be back to reviewing killer scarecrow movies in due time.

But then again, there IS a monster and a lot of scary nightmare scenes, so I guess I couldn't have picked a better one to review here!

What say you?

* A movie that got a very funny shoutout in the teaser for The Lego Batman Movie, which was NOT the same one that's available online. It was by far the highlight of the moviegoing experience, and I suspect the movie will do very well - the teaser went over like gangbusters.

** After all the shit Snyder and co. took from Superman killing thousands while bashing Zod around, the movie hilariously keeps having reporters and army types explain (via quick voiceover) that this or that area is uninhabited, or that everyone has left for the day or whatever. But still, leading him back to the mainland when he's on an island is completely fucking ridiculous, and even dumber when you consider that the reason Batman hates Superman in the first place is because he took his very destructive fight to areas where people are around. Hypocrite!

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The Brood (1979)

OCTOBER 7, 2015

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Since I've been MIA at home for the past 2 weeks due to late work shifts, I don't think my wife was too pleased when I got out of work a bit earlier than expected and opted to go to a screening tonight. But at least I had irony in my corner, because the movie was The Brood, about a couple with far bigger problems than not getting to see each other all that much during the horror-heavy month of October - but that didn't stop me from wondering if she was mad enough at me to manifest little dwarf killers in raincoats that would kill me during the movie. And that would be tragic, because it's my favorite David Cronenberg film and I had never seen it on 35mm before - I'd have to politely ask the dwarfs to wait until the movie was done to cave my head in with a mallet.

There are many reasons why it stands above his others for me (though only a bit over The Fly, with Rabid coming in 3rd if you must know), such as the more sympathetic and relatable male hero than he usually offers (runner up is probably Dead Zone - and saying you identify with Christopher Walken just makes me uncomfortable) and the fact that it approaches killer kid movie territory. But as this was the first time I had been able to see the film again since I started Horror Movie A Day*, there were a lot of other things I appreciated that I didn't in the past. For starters, I never noticed that Oliver Reed is one of the few people in the movie who DOESN'T grab a drink at the drop of a hat - I delighted in his drunkenness over and over again on this site, so that was particularly amusing to me. The grandmother in particular was downing brandy (?) like water, but as far as I could tell, Reed's character never once indulged. Likewise, I hadn't seen Don't Look Now before, so now that little visual reference for the film's pint-sized killers wasn't lost on me.

I also now have a further appreciation for genre movies that don't stick to the usual cliches; watching hundreds of movies that adhered (some quite militantly) the usual tropes helps make The Brood's surprises all the more satisfying. Again with Reed (spoilers ahead), when we meet him he seems to be the usual shady doctor who will stop at nothing to finish his research, prove his theory, etc - but ultimately he proves to be a pretty good guy, once he learns that his methods have resulted in the death of an innocent young woman. Hell, he even goes above and beyond to help our hero (Art Hindle from Black Christmas), as he could have easily taken the "easier" job of talking to the wife but instead opts to go into certain danger to help Hindle rescue his daughter. That's the sort of thing that makes me love the movie - it's not opting for some mind-blowing twist, but merely having people act like human beings instead of caricatures.

And I love how it kind of starts in progress ("in media res" I guess is the term), with the wife already deep into her strange therapy, the kid already showing signs of abuse, etc. It's almost like they skipped the first reel and got into it, which is doubly sweet when you consider that Cronenberg dishes out information at a nearly perfect rate, constantly peeling back the layers of what's really going on without ever really spelling it out (well, Reed kind of does in his final confrontation with Hindle, but it's like a sum-up, not a long bout of exposition). It's all very natural - since the failed marriage, the therapy sessions, etc. have all been going on, there's no reason anyone should be explaining everything in detail, because it would be for the audience's sake, not the characters. Even when the police get involved after the grandmother's death, Cronenberg doesn't make us suffer through three straight minutes of Hindle explaining the situation to them, as we've already garnered that information ourselves. It's quite refreshing, and again, this is something that seeing about 2,000 not-great horror movies since my last viewing of The Brood really helped me appreciate.

Speaking of the cops, these guys are amazing. Seeing a movie with a crowd is always a good way to pick up on some rather silly things that might not have registered at home by yourself, such as the fact that the cops apparently didn't find the murderous little mutant in the house because they "weren't looking for anything that small". I mean, if it was the size of a rat, sure, but I don't care if you're looking for Andre the Giant in a house - how do you miss a 3 foot tall human(oid)? And the bloody handprints it leaves at the murder scene was another thing that didn't register last time, because there's this extended closeup of them (and now they're like as tall as me on the silver screen), and yet again, they were apparently looking for an adult (this one's in the IMDb goofs as a plot hole; I think it's more just sloppy policework but whatever). It could have even been another bit of evidence to prove they weren't human, like the no belly button thing, but Cronenberg just drops it. That said, I also appreciate that neither Hindle or the daughter are considered suspects despite being tied to several murders. We in the audience know they're not the culprits, so why waste time on such drivel?

Oh, and I love that Hindle shuts the TV off in the police station's break room. There are like 5 other cops in there watching, ya jerk.

Also, and I didn't need a post-HMAD refresher to appreciate this, the climax is so goddamn good. I mean, how many horror flicks have you seen where the tension comes from whether or not a guy can keep his wife from yelling at him? There's one amazing bit where she gets a bit perturbed, and they cut to Reed jerking his head to the side as if suddenly aware of impending danger, and it's like one of the best jump scares ever even though the actual antagonists aren't even on-screen. Seeing him make his way around their cabin, inter-cut with the increasingly heated conversation downstairs (if she gets too worked up, the little mutants will follow suit), is excruciatingly suspenseful, as is the unnerving bit where two of the kids approach the teacher in the classroom in front of all the other children.

I made a joke tweet on the way out of the theater that I wished the guy who made The Brood hadn't retired, a not too subtle (or even original) jab at Cronenberg's seeming lack of interest in making anything full blown horror again. But sitting in traffic on the drive home I thought about it more and realized it's probably for the best now, because it's been too long - any return he makes will likely be disappointing due to overly inflated expectations. He made a few masterpieces before switching gears, and it's not like he's making PG-13 rom-coms (though that would be preferable to Cosmopolis, Jesus Christ) - plus he's still far more active than his 70s/80s peers. I guess that's better than trying to recapture his glory days, but then again, there's no one like him and thus he shouldn't really be held to the same standards, right? And how bad could it be? Come on, man... just ONE more like your 70s movies and I'll stop bugging you.

What say you?

P.S. The film is being released on Criterion next week, which may translate into one of my very, very rare purchases from the overpriced company. I've linked it below; can one of you rich folks and/or Criterion snobs pick it up and let me know if it's actually worth twice the cost of every other Blu-ray that's available? Thanks.

*Technically this should be a "Non-Canon Review", but that was something I used to differentiate between those bonus reviews and the regular day's entry back when this was a daily updated site. Now that I'm "retired" it didn't make much sense to distinguish. Just be happy you're getting a new review, you bastards!

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The Babadook (2014)

APRIL 12, 2015

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I forget if I've mentioned it here, but right around the time HMAD was ending the daily routine, I started working part time for Netflix as one of their taggers, which means I watch movies and enter in all the data that helps them make their recommendations ("if you like Exorcist, you may also like Omen" - they know that because someone before my time had probably noted that they were both 70s horror movies with religious overtones and creepy kids, and the computer matched them, same as an online dating service or whatever). On one hand this is great, because not only is it extra money (basically, daycare gets paid for), but also if I see something terrible like Wrong Turn 6 at Screamfest, and say "You'd have to pay me to watch that again!", it actually happens. On the other hand, that means I'm watching movies the totally wrong way, counting up the F-bombs to determine its profanity tag, keeping an eye out for license plates in case no one actually says what city/state they're in (the location gets tagged), and other things that distract away from how a horror movie like The Babadook works on a normal audience.

Which is to say, when I watched it a while back for tagging, I wasn't as impressed as many of my peers. Even factoring in my usual "I don't scare easily" problem for a movie that was mainly winning people over for being scary, I just didn't get why it was touching such a nerve - the recent The Canal was far more effective to me, also offering a supernatural/psychological blend for a tale about a single parent becoming unraveled. It wasn't until this week, when I watched it again the RIGHT way (i.e. not concerning myself with things like "Does that count as innuendo?" regarding sex), that I started to get why the likes of William Friedkin sung the film's praises during its theatrical run earlier this year. Of course, by now some of the power had been diluted because it was a 2nd viewing, but I was able to at least PRETEND I was seeing it with fresh eyes, and thus I'm happy to report that this is indeed one of the year's better fright flicks (though I still like The Canal better!).

Its first hour and change works best, which is kind of remarkable because it only takes about 10 minutes for you to fully understand the gravity of the situation. Our heroine is Amelia, a very tired/frustrated single mom played by Essie Davis, and her kid is... different, but not in the usual horror movie way - to put it gently, he's a giant pain in the ass. Eventually we learn that his father/her husband was killed in a car crash on the way to the hospital to give birth, which has understandably left his mom with a bit of resentment that she tries to bottle up and choke down, and also left HIM without a father figure. As I'm learning now with my own son, there are things that I can do my wife can't, and vice versa (not limited to breastfeeding), and while obviously many single parents have produced amazing, normal kids, I'm pretty sure mine will be left a bit messed up without both of us. We each have our pros and cons, so we know who the go-to person is for certain things, a system that will (hopefully!) ensure he turns out OK. Not that he will turn out like this friggin nightmare of a kid either way, but I certainly get the idea now better than I would have a year or two ago. Sometimes I have to watch him solo for the bulk of a day, and while it's fine for that rare occasion, if I had to do it every day, without her much better skill at putting him to sleep, getting him to eat solid foods... yikes.

Now, to be fair he's not like Problem Child or whatever - he's just hyperactive and maybe a little bit "on the spectrum" as they say ("he speaks his mind", his mother often says, in response to the way he can casually offer exposition to complete strangers - a nice shorthand to deliver the backstory, really) which of course makes everyone think he's weird. He's obsessed with magicians, seemingly has no friends, and makes homemade weapons to protect him and his mum against the monsters he's convinced are after them. This fear intensifies after he reads "The Babadook", a terrifying bedtime story (a pop up book to be exact) that he finds in his collection one night - neither of them recognize it but the mom goes ahead and reads it anyway. Side note here - the movie frequently employes jump cuts, and the one that transitions between his unknowing mom reading him this awful thing and him sobbing his eyes out as she tries to comfort him with a traditionally calming bedtime story is amazing. From then on they are terrorized by the titular monster, who she believes is just his overactive imagination at work, but eventually she starts seeing things too...

And this is where the movie starts falling apart a bit for me. Her growing belief in the Babadook (which, of course, might be the manifestation of her own frustration) plays great, but the climax itself goes on forever, and it's simply not as interesting to me as the numerous scenes of the kid driving his mother to the breaking point, watching her unravel more and more as his behavior gets increasingly obnoxious. Her sister starts to distance herself, she screws up at work, etc, and the kid just WON'T. SHUT. UP. Her lack of sleep becomes an ongoing plot concern (Ms. Davis sells it beautifully; one quick look at her face tells you everything in any given scene), with several scenes where she just finally gets to lay down and the kid instantly starts screaming about something again. I'm not sure if non parents can appreciate how great these scenes are - it's rare I identify so well with someone in a horror movie as I did at these points, as I myself have literally gone to bed only to have to get back up within a second or two (not an exaggeration) because the sleeping baby had already woken up. You might be so exhausted that you can barely move, and yet you HAVE TO GET BACK UP. And he's just crying for some milk; this kid's problems clearly can't be solved so quickly or even temporarily. Writer/director Jennifer Kent does a fantastic job of letting us feel her exhaustion, loneliness, etc - while still delivering a few scares and other traditional horror elements.

But like I said, the climax isn't quite as effective. Oddly, it feels a bit like Poltergeist II's, of all goddamn things, with a parent being possessed by SOMETHING and being the tormentor before resuming their role as protector to a justifiably confused child. I don't care how good it is before then, if you remind your audience of Poltergeist II, you're doing yourself a disservice (unless it's specifically recalling Kane, then it's OK). Plus, unless Kent is cheating visually, we have our answer as to whether or not the Babadook is real, so part of the fun is deflated - the question of whether or not it was just the kid's imagination and/or the mom having a mental break (or both) was the selling point, and getting the answer is bound to be disappointing on some level. I don't know if never coming down hard either way would be any better, but again, The Canal did similar things and its climax is incredible. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't "ruin the film" or anything drastic like that, but if I felt stronger about the film's last 15-20 minutes I'd probably be as vocally supportive as Friedkin (I forget the exact quote but I think he basically said it was the scariest movie since Exorcist).

Another issue I had requires a SPOILER, so skip this paragraph if you don't want anything else revealed. For those still here, I think Kent needlessly obscures the fact that the mom was the one who wrote the damn book. At least, I THINK it's supposed to be a fact; if it's up to interpretation then our other option is that a random book appeared in their house before any sort of entity had been unleashed, which suggests... home invasion? No, it has to be that she wrote it, but there are only two signs pointing to that. One isn't TOO bad; she quickly reveals that she used to write children's books, but the subject is changed instantly, so the audience can't really let its implication sink in, if they pick up on it at all. The other is even more vague - at one point she has dirty smudged ink hands, and we later see that the book has had pages added to it. Putting those two things together is not something the average audience member will do on first viewing unless they are specifically looking for clues that the mother wrote it. So combined, it's not a very effective means of conveying what's kind of an important plot point. Unless, again, Kent didn't want that spelled out or didn't even want it clarified one way or the other, but if that is the case I can't really see what the motivation for that would be, beyond needless vaguery for the sake of vaguery. If you have theories, I'd love to hear them - the movie certainly has elements that are up for debate, but this particular one doesn't seem like it should be one of them, since you're left with the question of "If not her, who did?", which for a relatively grounded movie is something that demands an answer. It's not like this is a David Lynch movie.

If you're looking for any further insight from Kent, the vast collection of bonus features won't be of much help. Kent provides no commentary or anything of the sort; she appears in the hour-long collection of interviews but they're taken from the promotional EPK and thus are not very revelatory (and yes, she even says "I want the audience to decide those things for themselves"). These interviews are not broken up with chapters either, so if you want to skip past someone like the coworker who appears in like two scenes to get to Kent (who is smack dab in the middle of the sequence) you just have to fast forward them - kind of obnoxious considering the length. Since EPKs are largely worthless once you've seen the movie anyway, feel free to skip them (and the "behind the scenes", which is just the B-roll) and focus on the others, in particular the look at the set design (I was kind of amazed to discover the house was a set) and the creation of the pop up book. I've watched a million bonus features on DVDs/Blus for the past nearly 20 years (damn) and this is the first time I've seen one explaining how a pop up book is put together. The original short, Monster, is also included and is worth a look at what boils down to the movie's entire plot sped up into ten minutes. Some deleted scenes are also included; nothing particularly useful (and no explanation for their excision is offered), but I did like the bit with the neighbor - Davis once again effortlessly sells this woman's total exhaustion with just a few looks and words, and the neighbor lady's response to her is not only sweet, but reminds her of something that I myself have trouble remembering: asking for help is OK. We have no family around to help with the baby, and kind of feel isolated at times, but on those rare occasions we've asked someone to babysit so we can just go relax for a bit, it's amazing how UN-difficult it's been to find someone willing to lend a hand. As long as we don't forget that, we will be safe from the Babadook!

Speaking of the pop-up book, the limited edition of the Blu-ray has a scaled down version of the book's cover, which is very cool, and the special edition is the only way to get Monster and the better bonus features (the junky interviews are on the regular edition, I guess). So if you're a bonus junkie, you should spring for the pricier one, but it's nice that the "non" special edition still has SOMETHING added to sweeten the deal. It's a shame that Kent couldn't be roped in for a commentary (it's the rare Scream Factory release that lacks one), but based on her interview I guess she's not the sort that likes to spell everything out, so it makes sense that she'd opt out of sitting down and talking about the movie for 90 minutes. I DO wish I could get her to reveal whether I'm right regarding the film's title - if you flip the Bs and Ds (in their lowercase form) you get "dada book", which I have no further theory on but I'd like to know if it was intentional. I know the film's anagram is "A Bad Book", but that's boring to me. Team DADA BOOK!

What say you?

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