31 Days of Halloween: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

2024, Tim Burton (Big Eyes) -- cinema

Seriously, those are the lyrics for the song "MacArthur Park" ?!?!

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no.

Well, that's just dumb.

Non sequitur!

We are still Tim Burton fans. We have seen more of his post-Planet of the Apes movies than Kent has, but not all. We have A Nightmare Before Xmas Xmas tree ornaments and when I went to Vegas we went to the Tim Burton exhibit at the Neon Graveyard. But still, I am not a huge Burton fan, just a solid admirer. That said, the original Beetlejuice did stand up to history, and the new one did generate enough hand-clapping interest, that we wanted to revisit the world in the theatre. 

Totally worth "the cinema experience" even if midway through the movie, the couple behind us decided to have an out-loud conversation with each other, I think prompted by her taking a phone call; but eventually they just left so all good.

Does the movie have a plot? It has things going on, all via the catalyst that Lydia's dad has died and the family is returning to Winter River for the funeral, and to close the house down. Sad that nobody still lives there, but people have moved on, including the Maitlands. Lydia (Winona Ryder, Stranger Things) is the host of a popular ghost-focused interview show (with a set modelled after the attic) and Delia (Catherine O'Hara, Schitts Creek) has actually succeeded at becoming a world famous artist, and actually succeeded at becoming weirder and actually succeeded at ... becoming a decent person?? Lydia is somewhat estranged with her teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega, Wednesday) and really not into the whole gothy ghost thing that is her mother's schtick -- she doesn't even really truly believe her mother can see ghosts.

So, the things going on. Lydia is seeing Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton,  The Flash) again, visions of him appearing out of nowhere and interrupting her TV show taping, and interrupting real life. Beetlejuice seems to have established himself as a haunter along with a cadre of shrunken-head office workers. His ex (Monica Bellucci, The Matrix Revolutions) re-assembles her dismembered body parts and goes on a soul-sucking rampage to find him. Dead actor Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse) fancies himself a detective and is trying to "solve the case". Delia is all about the spectacle of funereal rites for her late husband, but also genuinely seems to miss him. Astrid is fed up with them all, and finds a nice boy to crush on in town, except he turns out to be a ghost who wants to steal her place in the land of the living. All of this jumbles into Beetlejuice taking the opportunity to con Lydia into marrying him again.

Of note, a backstory for Beetlejuice?!?! I never thought he was ever a human, but the way they played it out... <chef's kiss> BTW, was that giallo?

The crux of this movie is running around the amusement park of an afterlife. This is where the fun is to be had, as the movie revisits what we already knew, but also adds in enough additional world building to keep distracting us from the lack luster stories being told. And I was distracted enough to be utterly delighted and don't care an iota. I had a ball.

Admittedly, it was somewhat jarring to see Jenna Ortega non-gothy, after having just rewatched Wednesday but I did really like her not-archetype character. Lydia as an adult is just grand, having matured and gained some opinions, faults and is not just a teen archetype dragged along by the plot. But the belle of the ball for this movie, and I cannot overstate my amazement, was Delia. OMG Delia! Sure, the world now has more fondness for Catherine O'Hara going over the top than ever before but the balance she portrays, between the extreme artist personality and the stabilizing foundation for this odd little family is just grand. They could do a third movie just about her and I would be happy. Beetlejuice is ... Beetlejuice and Keaton just seems to pick up like it hasn't been 30 years, albeit dialing down the perve-factor a lot. Not entirely; he still has 17 year old Lydia's picture on his desk. 

If there was anything I did not like about the movie was that they felt they had to do a possessed musical number, as if Beetlejuice is a one-trick-pony. And fuck, did it go on and on and on and ON. Still, what a weird weird weird song to choose -- should have gone with the original 60s Richard Harris version.

Finally, I surprised myself being fine with the nod to Lydia's dad via a upper-torso shark food corpse wandering around the afterlife, burbling words from some organ. We knew Jeffrey Jones wouldn't be back, but I was happy his character got to make an appearance sans-Jones.

Not finally! You forgot to mention the delight of seeing the return of pushy real estate agent Jane Butterfield by way of HER DAUGHTER also named Jane, the girl we see in the back seat of Jane Sr's car in the first movie. Do women often to the naming-their-child-after-themselves bit or was that a nod to her narcissistic personality?

31 Days of Halloween: Infested

2023, Sébastien Vanicek (feature debut) -- Shudder

Or Vermines.

This season we are doing the recent "spider trilogy". They are unrelated movies from the last few years only connected by the theme of spiders being the monster. The first is this French movie that strikes me as a nod to Rec (we saw that movie before this blog existed) and any French movie that deals with underprivileged surviving in one of the many "housing projects" where immigrant families gather together, likely because they have no choice, and end up building communities among the residents. Also, hints of Attack the Block.

The tower depicted in this movie was something so fantastic looking, I assumed it was CGI, but no, the Arènes de Picasso are very much real buildings built in the 80s. Unlike in the movie, the scant information I can find on the structures implies they are not as rundown as the movie depicted.

Anywayz, spiders. The movie starts with some Arab collectors digging around in the desert for spiders they can sell. They gas an underground nest and collect the spiders as they spill forth, but one man is bitten. As he is writhing in pain, another kills him.

The spiders make their way to Paris, to the grotty shop behind a convenience store where Kaleb (Théo Christine, Gran Turismo) is looking for earrings to give as a gift, but one of the spiders catches his eye. He seems genuinely intrigued, an enthusiast, supported by the veritable zoo in his room, filled with rare species of bugs and lizards. This introduction also includes his sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko, feature debut), who keeps turning off the power in his room leaving all the precious creatures in the dark & cold. She is trying to renovate the apartment, left to them by their late mother, so she can sell it. Kaleb is the opposite, a member of the community of the tower, over-protective and entrepreneurial despite being seen as a requisite criminal by the local busy body, this time portrayed by a man in his 40s instead of the familiar old lady. Kaleb actually seems popular with the elderly of the building. In fact, Kaleb is selling shoes, not drugs.

So yeah, his spider escapes. This is not any normal spider. This is a scifi spider. It replicates really quickly, they grow really big really quickly. Soon the place is infested, webs are in every corridor, every air vent, every dark room. Pretty soon, I was pulling my feet off the floor, and squirming all over the sofa. You see, I like big bugs, I really think hand-sized beetles and stick insects are fascinating, but... spiders... spiders give me the non-stop heebie jeebies. When the palm sized spiders were spilling out of the bathroom air vent I squirmed. When a spider the size of a small dog appeared on the ceiling behind a character, I visibly cringed.

The movie escalates really quickly. Kaleb and his "friends" (one friend, one ex-friend, a girl who hates him, and his sister) decide they have to convince the neighbours to escape the building, but the casualties rack up really quickly. Soon it is just a matter to survive long enough to ... run into a quarantine. Apparently the authorities are aware of what's going on, but have trapped all the residents in the tower, barricading doors, sealing exits, etc.  So, the kids have to find a way to get out before they join the rest of the building as spider food.

This was a fun movie, frantic and chilling, creepy and, if you are like me, scary AF. Well no, not truly scary for me, for I am able to acknowledge my fears and enjoy the ride. The portrayals are really tight but that is made easier by focusing on only the kids, where everyone else is incidental and expendable.

31 Days of Halloween: It's What's Inside

2024, Greg Jardin (feature debut) -- Netflix

Is there now potentially a new sub-genre of watching privileged beautiful young people undo themselves purely through the nature of their vapid and self-centered personalities? Usually in a violent way? If so, I think that makes more commentary of the creators of such sub-genres than the subject matter they are commenting on. But who am I to talk, as I yell at clouds...

FYI, last year's example was Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. And again, full disclosure, this did not end up identifying as horror. It could have, but instead, it more went down the path of scifi thriller with dark comedy elements.

OK, the movie begins with Shelby (Brittany O'Grady, Star) trying to convince Cyrus (James Morosini, American Horror Story) to have sex by wearing a blonde wig, but ends up just interrupting him wanking, which then leads to a realllllly awkward argument. Shelby is gorgeous, Cyrus is an idiot, but she suspects he is thinking about influencer Nikki who, of course, gets more Likes than Shelby does.

They are all meeting in The Countryside at the estate of Reuben's (Devon Terrell, Cursed) late mother, a shock artist (giant chrome vulva on her lawn), for one last shindig before he gets married (hashtag Reuphia). These old college friends include aforementioned Nikki the Influencer (Alycia Debnam-Carey, The 100), Dennis the Hedonist (Gavin Leatherwood, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Maya the Hippie Dippie (Nina Bloomgarden, The Resort), Brooke the Artist (Reina Hardesty, The Flash) and eventually Forbes the Tech Mogul (David Thompson, Gotham). You could build a red yarn "murder board" connecting all these "friends" together in contentious and misguided ways, especially Forbes whom most of them haven't seen since college (which, said out loud, tells me they are not all that young -- late twenties, early thirties) a decade earlier, where a singular event involving Forbes high school age sister got him kicked out of university.

When he shows it is with a party trick -- a suitcase (with a nod to Pulp Fiction) with something mysterious within, something analog, something full of switches and electrodes and lights and nobs. He says his company has been working on it. He doesn't explain what it is, just sets it up, electrodes on everyone's temples and BLINK, for a brief moment they are all in each other's bodies. Freaky Friday the app. For even the even more briefest of moments they are all freaked out, and then they agree to play along with a "game" of guess who is in who's body.

Much of the middle act is about people freaking out at each other, interspersed with artistic flairs supplemented by the strange setup of the late artist mom's house: hall of mirrors, halls of all red or all blue lighting, etc. The director is really REALLY impressed with himself, and all his visual representations of the characters' temperaments. The only thing I was impressed with was the ability of each actor to play another character; even if you dismiss us as only having seen their extreme traits, the actors do an admirable job playing through those roles.

Things are already going wrong when they go worse --- Reuben and Brooke, in the bodies of Dennis and Maya fall off a balcony and die horribly. So, that means  at least two of them will have to stay inside the bodies not their own, but they also have to explain the accidental deaths. It wouldn't be that bad but for the fact the "game" has led to almost everyone letting everyone else know how they really feel about each other. Everyone is very unpleasant. I don't have any sympathy for anyone, not even "nice girl" Shelby.

It was a sliver above ... just OK ? The tension is often overwrought and the setup is ridiculous but its played through decently enough even if you don't count on the "twist" which was mostly extraneous to the movie, but tied up things in a bow?

Dude, what the fuck was the twist? Nobody here cares about the spoiler.

OK, said twist was that it was never Forbes to begin with. It was always his sister Beatrice (Madison Davenport, From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series) who was slasher-movie level nutso, completely unhinged, and had stolen the machine from Forbes who was stuck in her body. I felt the whole thing was an unneeded add-on which should have stuck with just showing how horrible all these kids were.

This is the point in watching this season where I hit, "Why do we do this, if there are so many 'just meh' movies?" Good question. It could be as easy an answer as, "To find the diamonds among the coal." But that is too pat because as we sit down each night, we ask, "What do you want to watch?" even when there is a list of Good Choices right in front of us. I do feel we have to temper it, not binge on high-tension high-quality too quickly or we will..... become over satiated? That makes a bit more sense, no?

31 Days of Halloween: Azrael

2024, EL Katz (Channel Zero) -- download

Still not sure about this movie. At first blush, a post-apocalyptic post-Rapture survival movie with a gimmick where speaking draws The Monsters thusly a movie with little dialogue, would be right down my alley. And it should have been, if they had just fucking done something in the movie. Instead what we have delivered is just chase scene leading to chase scene leading to chase scene. I don't require a "Ending Explained" type movie, and I know without even looking there will be at least half a dozen genre movie blogs writing such articles, but I do hope for at least a bit of world building.

OK, so via sectional leader cards, we are told The Rapture happened. Starting in media res, a Woman (Samara Weaving, Babylon) and a Man (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Misfits) in love are escaping pursuers. She is caught and tied to a chair, and cut open so as to bleed. The remaining captors stand with their backs to her while she struggles to escape, as weird burned zombie creatures emerge from the wood. One of them sees she is escaping and tries to prevent it, only to be struck in the neck, and subsequently taken down by the monsters. She escapes into the wood.

Despite IMDB and Wikipedia having names for the characters, and the latter having a detailed explanation as to what is happening, none of this information is present in the movie. Nothing is explained and almost nobody is named. Seems silly to fill in blanks you don't have info on, unless they are taking headcanon as truth.

The Woman finds the encampment of her captors, surrounded by a ramshackle fence that makes lots of noise, and she sneaks in. Why did she come here? We don't know, but it is an opportunity for the movie to show us the church with the pregnant woman in white, someone they are obviously following. Why? Who knows. But the Woman is discovered and has to escape.

Later she comes across a road and a man in a brightly lit truck, who is not under the imposed "no speaking" rule and seems ... less PA ? He is confused as to why she is bloody and offers to take her somewhere for food and safety. He even plays her some music that briefly calms her before he is shot by one of her captors. She survives the crash, they struggle, she shoots him.

Back into the woods for pretty much more aimless fleeing. But she does her her Man, nailed to a tree, trying to gesture she should not come closer because... sproing... rope trap. While she dangles by one foot (fool pose) another of the captors appears, as well as more monsters. She scrambles up the rope, higher into the tree while the monsters take her Man as well as ripping the head off the captor. So much for his devious plan. One monster does climb the tree but she nags it in her rope and kills it by hanging, and ... back into the woods for more escaping.

Back to the encampment where The Woman goes into the church to kill the woman in white but barely scratches her before she is caught. The captors toss her into a recently dug grave and coffin, covering it up and tossing a few perfunctory shovels of earth on top. The foot of the grave is open to tunnels but they are full of the monsters, which as she scrambles back, they smell the blood of the woman in white on her finger nails and back off, giving The Woman time to dig her way out of the grave.

Back to the encampment where the Woman breaks in and starts killing willy nilly. The camp is on fire, people are dying left and right, and the monsters are coming out of the wood drawn by blood and noise.  She goes into the church to confront the woman in white again, and they fight. The Woman bites her in the neck and the woman in white is driven back, going into the throes of childbirth. The leader of the captors appears but is mortally wounded by The Woman. The woman in white has given birth but recoils from  the terrible crying sounds of the baby, and cuts her own throat. The Woman, who we are now realizing is likely the titular Azrael, aka The Angel of Death, picks up the baby, a cutie patootie goat thing with multiple eyes, aka The AntiChrist, as more of the monsters appear crying out to the skies.

The End.

To quote the peanut gallery, aka Marmy, "A Big Ol Meh!"

Sure, we got lots of cool PA imagery but we have no world at all. Are these just looney cultists hiding in the woods, cutting out their own voice boxes for fun? The lone guy in the bright truck implies that could be the case. What are the monsters? They look like full body burn victims and act like zombies, or vampires, ripping people open and drinking their blood. Perhaps Hell has broken open and they are sinners burned by the flames of the pit? The movie doesn't seem to care to even hint at an explanation... And if the movie doesn't care, why should I ?

The Dark Year: Bird Box

2018, Susanne Bier (Things We Lost in the Fire) -- Netflix

This one gets to serve dual duty, slotted into an empty spot in the 31 Days of Halloween calendar and covering a gap from 2018.

This movie slides into the sub-genre of post-apocalypse / survival horror / monster movie that has grown in the last handful of years; I guess, it likely has existed long before, but it garnered attention with the A Quiet Place. This one was based on a 2014 novel from Josh Malerman, wherein an invisible force causes those that look upon it (so, is it invisible or is it just not able to be depicted?) to commit suicide. I can only assume Malerman was inspired by Shyamalan's The Happening which also has an invisible force caused mass apocalyptic level death by their own hands, though he claims he had a rough draft written before. Yeah, uh huh.

Anywayz, the movie does as the book, the bulk of the story told in flashbacks to the time during and just after the event, the arrival of whatever or whoever it was. Malorie (Sandra Bullock, The Lost City) is pregnant, a single expectant mother only connected to the world by her unflappable sister. Said sister (Sarah Paulson, Glass) dies almost immediately and panicking Malorie is ushered into a house where a number of survivors are hiding out. They have quickly ascertained the cause and black out the windows. The rest of the movie, the "current timing" is Malorie escaping with two five year children, Boy and Girl, to a boat on a river to a place of refuge.

There is just enough world building to satisfy my brain. The "creatures" are depicted through shadows, whispers and the swirling of leaves. The movie begins, as all do, with news reports of this phenomena emerging first in Romania or Russia and quickly spreading to the rest of the world. If you do not look at whatever it is, it will eventually leave you alone. It also will not enter a location with closed doors, which led me to wonder if there were hints of vampire mythos in there. This was also supported by the "Renfields", those that had looked upon the "creature" and survived, and were now obsessed with making sure all survivors looked upon the "beauty".

In my rewatch I once again enjoyed myself. The movie goes quickly enough from an ensemble bottle episode format to survival so as to not drag out the expected conflicts between personalities. Bullock really does a good job of embracing the personality of a woman who really wasn't suited to being a mother, but tenacious about protecting her family. I suspected she had not really decided whether she was keeping the child until the day the event happened. The journey, both literally and figuratively is handled well.

31 Days of Halloween: Trap

2024, M Night Shyamalan (The Visit) -- download

Full disclosure, its definitely more a thriller than a horror, but we approached it as Shyamalan's latest flick about a serial killer, and thought it would turn down the horror road, but it did not. That said, the road it did turn down (one near the Roger's Centre) was very satisfying. Well, maybe for me the Proud Shyamalan Apologist, but I did enjoy myself immensely and liked how so much of the movie was not trying to have us Root For the Bad Guy, but literally see the tables turned on him at every turn. I also liked that  he (he Shyamalan) knew we would see trailers, and the "twist" (or premise FFS) was revealed almost immediately. The movie was all about how it would play out.

An anti-Shyamalan from Shyamalan???

So, we have Cooper (Josh Hartnett, Oppenheimer) and his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue, Wolf Like Me) off to see a big concert for a popstar Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan, feature debut; she actually is a popstar) who at this point in time would be a Taylor Swift analog. We are talking a young singer with LEGIONS of fans packing a stadium in the middle of the day, a stadium also mysteriously (not mysteriously, remember trailer) packed with cops and federal agents. Cooper learns quickly, from one of my favourite Toronto actor / Skittles Guys Jonathan Langdom (No Tomorrow), they are indeed here for him, a serial killer known as The Butcher because he disassembles his victims. We also learn quickly that he has a young man trapped in a basement who he keeps checking in on via a phone app.

I wonder, is it an off the shelf serial killer app, or did he have it custom written on the Dark Web?

So, on his mind: find a way out, and keep his daughter oblivious. There is a bunch of fun cat & mouse game stuff where once again, I get distracted by Shyamalan's film techniques popping up here and there, his usual nods to directors like Hitchcock. By distracted, I mean I love it, because I do so love a well framed shot. Eventually his machinations lead him to positioning his daughter in the place she would love the most -- on stage with the popstar. If anything this derails her suspicions, because she has constantly asked him, "Dad, why are you being weird?" He knows his only way out of the stadium is through the pre-approved entourage of the popstar, so he... corners her and admits all, but with the not-veiled threat of murdering the young man trapped in the basement. Lady Raven has no choice but to help him escape.

You are now entering Spoiler Territory.

This led to my favourite plot turn. Lady Raven is no meek fraidy-cat and positions herself in a situation where she forces him to reveal himself, tragically to his oblivious suburban family, and she can use the power of her Lady Raven Army of Fans to find & release the trapped young man. The act is not entirely realistic, but its a beautiful thriller technique wherein she has less than two minutes to mobilize thousands of fans, crowd-sourcing the location of the trapped man from only a few scant clues.

Lady Raven gets to play a hero for proud daddy M Night. Of note, while I so did not enjoy the music in the movie, I was so impressed at how real it all felt. Sure, Saleka is a real popstar so she probably has a fanbase, does stadium shows, has real music she has produced and performed, but it was how it was presented and how the teen girl fans reacted that felt so very real.

But no, again, the movie is not over yet. Sure he's revealed, and sure the FBI shows up immediately to arrest him, but the movie reminds us that he is actually smart, and he has been evading the authorities for years through meticulous planning. BUT again his machinations are foiled by a woman he thinks he can easily manipulate, his wife (Allison Pill, Star Trek: Picard). Whether you like them or not, I always love that Shyamalan movies make active choices and you rarely feel like you are just a plot on rails.

So, not a horror movie, but a solid thriller in my books.

And yes while the movie is obviously shot in Toronto, it is still Philadelphia.

31 Days of Halloween: Cuckoo

2024, Tilman Singer (Luz) -- download

Weird. Everything I had been reading about this movie was that it was the most bizarre thing ever. I guess this would assume nobody has seen anything but the most straight-laced Hollywood movies. It was odd, for sure, but unlike his previous movie Luz, it was actually a mostly straight forward horror thriller. Also weird, I have fonder recollections of watching Luz than my writeup leads me to believe. Much of this season is full of VERY straight forward movies that once watched never come to mind ever again, so I guess its a good thing that I at least remember it making an impression? Old brains are weird.

So we'll go with the lack of thesaurus aspect of that last paragraph as intentional? Yes? Ok then...

Germany; clearly Germany, or at least clearly not US or UK with big picturesque mountains that look so postcard like I wondered if they might be AI generated. But no, just the Bavarian Alps. Gretchen (Hunter Schafer, Euphoria) arrives with her family; technically, she arrives with the moving van, a useful technique to highlight that she stands apart from this family, the daughter of a first marriage now stuck with her dad's new family. They have come to Herr König's (Dan Stevens, Downton Abbey) resort to help him design a hotel. König is creepy-nice, as Dan Stevens does so well, and gives Gretchen a job at the reception desk of his resort, something to put money in her pocket and fill her time.

I mean, it might technically still be AI generated, "Chattie, please generated a photogenic scene of mountains that look like the Bavarian Alps."

Stuff gets weird. Female guests are seen wandering the resort at night, vomiting on things. Nobody cleans up after. König states loudly that the desk is closed down at 10pm and everything must be locked, and Gretchen must not bike home; he will come and drive her home. She ignores him and on her bike-ride home, is followed by a running-faster-than-she-should-be-able hooded woman in weird sunglasses, which frightens Gretchen into running to a nearby hospital; unfortunately she also runs smack into a clear glass door and gets a nasty cut. The police state it must have been a prank.

Meanwhile her dad (Marton Csokas, xXx) is occupied with his daughter Alma who earlier had strange time distorting seizure after hearing weird sounds from the forest. Dad sees all this as Gretchen acting out and is very unfair with her. Gretchen responds by running away with a Parisian woman who stayed a single night in the resort, and stealing all the cash from the resort. They don't get far as the Hooded Woman does the deer-in-headlights thing and they crash. We see the Hooded Woman grab the Parisian Woman and toss her like a ragdoll, just as Gretchen passes out, saved by a mysterious man who shoots at the Hooded Woman.

She awakens to even angrier Dad and "I'm not angry, I'm disappointed" Herr König who seems more annoyed she is upsetting his plans. Yeah, its obvious some sort of machinations are going on here. Gretchen loses it on her father and König, but her father derails her outburst by giving her a box of her remaining belongings from her mother's house -- he has sold it, so she has nothing to return to. Also, confirms that her mother has passed and she has been calling, and leaving messages on an answering machine, for no one and said answering machine is in the box. Gretchen retreats to her room to listen to the sound of her mother's voice and hears an additional message, one from Alma who has called what she assumed was Gretchen's mother to say "Gretchen is very sad, please call her back". When Gretchen comes back out, everyone has gone to the hospital again, another seizure for Alma, but König will drive her to the train station. BUT first a stop by his house so he can give her money for her journey... away.

Yah right. Final act, the exposition, confrontation and conflict ! König has been experimenting with a rare species of .... bird person? Homo cuculidae, of course, the titular cuckoo which is known to leave its eggs in the nests of other birds. He has been using guests at the resort as surrogates for his mute bird ladies, and the mysterious man who saved Gretchen from the Hooded Woman was an ex-cop who lost his wife to this experiment. Said Hooded Woman is the said cuckoo, who disorients people with her call, causing some sort of time loop, likely just a massive déjà vu experience. Just as König is about to have Gretchen "impregnated" (icky goopy stuff from... down there) ex-cop guy escapes confinement and shoots König. Gretchen becomes focused on saving Alma, who is revealed as a cuckoo child, and while the two men shoot it out she is just trying to protect her sister and avoid the Hooded Woman. Luckily the two men kill each other and Gretchen is able to kill the cuckoo mom with Alma's help. Outside, the Parisian Woman appears and they all drive off together.

As said, much of the Internet thought the movie was confusing and really out there. Not so much. But it is weird, and fun, and tense and pretty decently acted. Obviously Singer does lean on the weird with Stevens hamming it up as much as he can, which is something he has been embracing since Legion. I have said it before, if I am engaged, I don't grab my phone, I shift around on the sofa dispersing tension, and this movie definitely had my attention throughout. I also do like that the season has its returning players, and even with the middling movies, I am always keen on exposing myself to their later work, as long as we didn't actively DISLIKE our introduction.

31 Days of Halloween: May the Devil Take You

2018, Timo Tjahjanto (Portals) -- Netflix

Or  Sebelum Iblis Menjemput.

OK, I don't care if someone is doing an enthusiastic homage to Sam Raimi; to me, if the movie ends up looking a patchwork of pieces lifted from other horror movies, and yes, many of those patches are Evil Dead ripoffs, then I am not impressed. So, if you are going to do such, at the very least you have to have a tightly done movie with consistent internal structure and a decent plot. Instead, here get an hour & half of screams from the antagonists and protagonists.

Way to just jump into the disgruntle !

Indonesian (horror) films, for us at least, have almost entirely been about tragic family situations in rural areas. So, when this movie started in the city, with Alfie (Chelsea Islan, Headshot) being called about her father in the hospital, I was thinking, "OK, something different." Bzzzzzzt, nope, because no sooner does Alfie have a nasty encounter with something clawed & terrible in the hospital (just a typical jump scare vision, followed by daddy blood fountain), then she returns to her father's house in the country. This is the house she knew as a child, before her mother committed suicide, before her father remarried and started another family she didn't fit into. There is literally a line, "We are her family, but she is his biological daughter."

Now, let me not forget the preamble where father dearest is shown making a pact with a evil priestess lady for... well, for cash. She shows up at his house, knocks on the door (evil shamans knock?!?!), and is shown to a pre-prepared ritual chamber in the basement, where she eats hair and fills up his briefcase with cold hard cash. Then we transition to opening credits where he is suddenly, unexpectedly rich, gets richer through real estate but soon after tragedy befalls him. Guess evil witch hair magic is temporary? Don't trust Satan based ponzi schemes? Who woulda known...

Not moments after Alfie arrives at the house, her not-family shows up. They want Alfie, who has the deed to the house, to liquidate it, partially to cover hospital bills, but mostly because failed actress New Wife needs to be kept in the lifestyle she has become accustomed to. Her husbands financial downfall and really nasty, obviously demonic disease is truly inconvenient.

Of note, there is a basement door, covered in those little rune printed prayer sheets, the kind you should never remove in anger or disgust. Its also nailed shut and padlocked. What does that mean? GOOD STUFF DOWN THERE ! In most movies they contrive a reason to go through the Scary Go Away Door, but not this family. Devil Gotten Gains must lead to ludicrous levels of greed. No sooner do they open the door then New Wife (mom!!) is dragged into the dark, only to return moments later Possessed By a Demon. After a bit of fighting, a nibble on one of her daughters and some more blood fountaining, Mommy Demon jumps through the window.

OK, what? That's it? She just wanted to leave? Well then, everything should be fine, right?

Alas no...

The movie continues, finding unending reasons to have the kids confront demons, spirits and anything else the director has seen in other horror movies, usually Japanese or American. For example, having someone trying to climb their way out of a muddy, water filling grave, but... why is it raining the basement? In the Sam Raimi spirit, some go mad and turn on the others, while Alfie remains true to saving the family that has rejected her. Eventually we have to actually go into the basement to have Visions of Exposition, and background visions of a Horny Goat Fellow -- I have mentioned before my dislike for having scary imagery in the background that is purely for our benefit; like, if the Devil is taking time to show up, why not reveal himself to people? Oh, the exposition? Dad came back to the house to sacrifice his family for more money but... changed his mind? He stabbed the witch and she cursed him with the blood fountain disease. So now Alfie has to unravel some blood hair paper magic to stop it all but not before pretty much everyone dies.

In much the way western horror movies often draw upon Christianity motifs, while this one is wrapped up in such to a degree, the meat of the movie is about family. Alfie just wants some, Dad is horrible for sacrificing his for money and mom (Old Wife) did not commit suicide, but was his first sacrifice. Sure, most American horror movies have a focus on family as well, but the direct focus of this movie is on them as a unit -- only Alfie is an individual. Much of the screen time, when not presenting us with low-budget monster makeup, is about the trials and tribulations of keeping a family together, especially ones that don't deserve it.

And again, if you are going to wear your Sam Raimi love on your sleeve at least do something interesting with it. 

31 Days of Halloween: Baghead

2023, Albert Corredor (feature debut) -- download

This was Corredor's first feature, adapted from his award winning short of the same name. Unfortunately, this movie fell into the all too familiar category of ... streeeeetch it until you have a feature film. There were some genuinely creepy things about it, all drawn from the original premise, but to make a full film, with a proper ending, they needed to expand the story.

I really need to find how many movies I think fall into that trap, but obviously enough for my brain to say "they made a short, now its a full length feature!" It has to be more than "Mama".

This season is going to be like most, rife with "meh" movies wading through the dross to find gems in the muck. Its not like we are choosing to watch bad movies, for if we wanted to do that we have Tubi or the "suggested" piles under Amazon movies, but an interesting premise and a decent trailer does not always beget an enjoyable movie, and rarely a good movie. At least we also rarely run into those that force us to turn them off.

Premise. A man (Peter Mullan, The Vanishing) somewhere in the UK owns a pub with a creature in the basement. A young man (Jeremy Irvine, Treadstone) is demanding access to "her" which the pub owner denies, as he goes into the basement, finds a witchy looking womanly creature strapped to a chair with a bag over her head. He basically claims that her hold over him is at an end, douses her in flammable alcohol and ... click, his lighter fails. When it finally works, she knocks it from his hand and he catches on fire. Screaming, he escapes the inferno in the basement only to die at the top of the stairs, as the fire dies as well. We also see these scenes interspersed with the "in case I am dead" video he is making, the exposition to tell us the viewer WTF is going on here.

Enter his daughter, his heir, Iris (Freya Allen, The Witcher), a screwup breaking into her own apartment/art studio that she has been evicted from, when she Gets the Phone Call. She immediately flies, which in UK-set movies means a really long distance, like the length of England, but possibly another country? She meets a "solicitor" (Ned Dennehy, Zone 414) who hands her keys and a deed, but claims he can have the pub sold off before the end of the week.

The wikipedia article says this is Berlin but absolutely NOTHING in the movie implies they are in Germany beyond a few, small details that could be easily hand-waved away. I am pretty sure the original script had it as such (Germany) but it was edited out and left... ambiguous.

The pub really is a character here. While it does the annoying thing of depicting the structure inside (cramped, ornate, lots of wood) not matching what we see on the outside (industrial building, big windows, lots of space) the whole space is really cool. Beyond having some alcohol on the premises it doesn't strike me that dad was running the place as a proper pub but Iris is intrigued, more as an opportunity to better understand her estranged father.

Then the young man with the money arrives. He offers her a lot of money to see what is in the basement. He walks her through what is going on. They draw the woman out, force her into the chair, give her something "the deceased" owned and then the baghead woman transforms into the dead one, so questions can be asked. But only for 2 minutes; any longer and the interaction is corrupted. The first time the young man tries, he gets his mother and lots of abuse heaped on him.

It may be indicative of horror movies, or my writing style, but I more often than not start with a detailed play-by-play of the opening, but then... fade out into the broader strokes. I think it is part of how these movies play out for me, especially the "adapted from a short" ones, in that once the premise is played through, and they have to get an entire rest of a movie from it, things get ... strained. I get bored.

Iris really likes the idea of getting money for this utterly fucking scary, insane, truly supernatural situation. Sure, her dad is finally, in death, giving her something. But she has numerous warnings this won't go well, but as per the equivalent of "don't go down into the basement" shouted (by the audience) entreaties, Main Characters never do the smart thing.

They don't even do a good job of expositing what she actually is. A witch. OK, yeah but she's immortal and angry and.... what? There needed to be something more than a secret society with an undead woman trapped in their basement.

In the end, the movie follows some tiresome trope laden paths until it does a weird WTF twist, which I guess is supposed to leave things open to a possible sequel? Too bad the only character I cared about (the pub) is finally successfully burned to the ground.

KWEIF: Will & Harper (+the Bounty Hunter Trilogy)

KWEIF=Kent's Weekend in Film, because I did a Kent's Week in Film already this week (twice!). I took a couple days off work to decompress an watched a pile of movies, and that continued over the weekend.

This Weekend:
Will & Harper (2024, d. Josh Greenbaum - Netflix)

Killer's Mission (1969, d. Shigehiro Ozawa - bluray)

The Fort of Death (1969, d. Eiichi Kudo - bluray)

Eight Men to Kill (1972, d. Shigehiro Ozawa- bluray)

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Tactic number 1 of the conservative political playbook is to make the people afraid. Make them fearful, make them hate. Give them an enemy as the root cause of all their problems. Distract them from the real and exceeding complex issues of sustaining a democracy. Distract them from the glad-handing  deals, from the dissolving of social infrastructure, from the capitalism-run-wild that favours the few at the expense of the many. Keep them pointing fingers at anyone but the (primarily, but not exclusively) conservative political powers that are the true root of the problems.

Conservative politicians, and their public mouthpieces (from talk radio, to social media feeds, to 24 hour cable news channels) keep a large swath of populace under their sway through tactic number 1, and have been doing so for generations. They do so because it works. People want easy answers in a complex world. Explaining global economics or spelling out the complex chain of events that lead to a small town falling into ruin or understanding how a prosperous country slides into negative population growth and thus needs immigration to bolster it's economic infrastructure...well, the average person doesn't want to sit through that lecture. They just want to know who they should be angry at, and most conservative politicians have no moral compunction about pointing a finger. At any given time it's been Blacks or Mexicans or Asians or Muslims or gays or all of the above. It's only been recently that it's been trans people, and more specifically it seems to be pointing a finger at trans women.

The largely patriarchal world is a dangerous place for women. It always has been. Men have objectified and othered women as something less-than for centuries. Objects of desire, prizes, possessions, muses, tools, toys. When men don't see women as human, as equals they can do horrendous things. 

So imagine how scary it is when you've got politicians and political mouthpieces shouting to a massive and receptive population that you, as a trans woman are not even worthy of being an object of desire, a prize, possession, muse, tool or toy. That if you are not a man than you are nothing. It says a lot about how these men not only perceive trans women, but women in general.  But it's not that politicians and political mouthpieces are saying that trans women are nothing, they are actively saying trans women are predators, they are perverts, they are the root of leftist blabbetyblah (and these are the nicer things they say). They are making a populating dehumanize, hate and be angry towards a population that just want to be free, to have the liberty to live in a skin the is comfortable, to be who they feel they are inside on the outside rather than be trapped in a construct, in the confined definition that the patriarchal society has determined they should be.

Most trans people go through a period of deep depression and suicidal ideation before they come out. Most of us cannot truly understand this struggle, to feel so trapped by one's own skin by societal expectations that death seems like the most straightforward answer to it all.  And then imagine when a whole political segment is saying they would rather you kill yourself than wear the clothing of the opposite gender to what you were born with. It's frankly repulsive.

I have trans people in my life. I love, support and accept them unconditionally. Radical empathy should be mandatory teaching, not just in school but at work and throughout everyone's life. It's a health and safety issue. Not everyone has trans people in their life, or has encountered trans people socially, and so if you don't have exposure, it's easy to other, to give any credence to the inane ramblings of those political mouthpieces.  

Will Ferrell has made many movies which play well in conservative spaces. His comedies have rarely been political or exclusionary, they're usually pretty silly and play pretty broadly. He knows films like Step Brothers, Anchorman and Talladega Nights have earned him a wide audience of fans, and now he wants to attempt to engage that audience and introduce them to a trans woman, his dear friend Harper Steele.

Harper was, in her masculine disguise, a writer for Saturday Night Live when she met Will and they became fast friends, and remained very close over the decades. During the pandemic, Harper came out to everyone in her life as a trans woman, no longer able to tolerate living the lie she was living. Post-pandemic ("post"), the friends decided upon a road trip for the two of them to get reacquainted, for Will to meet Harper properly as the friend he's always known but now could truly know.

But the film is only half about Will meeting his friend in total, the other half is Harper coming to terms with being a trans woman in America, of exploring the spaces she used to freely engage with as a man...spaces that, by all accounts from news reports and political discourse, would be dangerous for her to enter.

With Will's celebrity presence acting as buffer, they set forth on a New York to L.A. trip that takes them to some of the most gorgeous vistas the world has to offer, and to some formative spaces in Harper's life, and to those rural red state places where she gets those leering looks that, if not for Will or the camera crew, could spell danger for her.

There are genuine moments of connections with people that Harper has that surprise her, but there are fresh wounds made by daring to even enter a space where she knows she's not wanted. I'm sure Will okayed it with Harper, but every time he announced her publicly as his friend who transitioned, I cringed. But it came from both a place of pride, and from of place of hope, that simply by stating he, Will Ferrell is an ally, he might get others to be so as well. It's bold, perhaps brave, but also naive. 

This is a funny, sweet, heartwarming film about friendship, but also intense, painful, and, at times, dispiriting film about Western society and its constructs, and the pain its very arbitrary and imaginary boundaries inflict upon much of the population.  

There were few times where I felt Harper was safe.  When she was among friends or family or alone with Will, I felt she felt at ease, and it was lovely to see. Every other public space felt extremely loaded, just bracing for someone to say something, to incite.  It makes me sad. I am worried for the trans people in my life, but also for those that I don't know. I'm most empathetic towards those who witness the discourse about them and decide not to come out, to stay trapped. I wish society wasn't so primitive, that it would evolve enough to see through patriarchal  rhetoric and conservative dogma, and see the spectrum of humanity for the beautiful thing it is.

I hope this film is effective, that cisgender people engage with it (I think it's much less vital for trans people, as it's not presenting them with much they don't already live or know), and learn and grow and become more open and empathetic. It's truly lovely.

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I had never heard of The Bounty Hunter Trilogy before, a trio of films in Japanese genres of jedaigeki and chambara from the late-60's early '70s starring Lone Wolf and Cub's Tomisaburo Wakayama.  (If you don't know these terms, that's okay, because I don't really either.  "Jedaigeki" are basically period dramas, where "chambara" are the subgenre of sword fighting films. Both are kind of used, maybe inaccurately (?) as a general term to reference samurai movies.) I'm not well versed in these genres largely because they weren't very accessible when I was younger. Outside of Kurosawa and Godzilla, there wasn't a lot of access to Japanese cinema until the double-boom of Power Rangers and Pokemon started a whole mass wave of interest in Japanese entertainment, primarily manga and anime.

The chambara I started with were the Kurosawa movies, mainly through the references to them in my readings about Star Wars (if you look at the genre terms above, you see where Lucas got "Jedi" from). Kurosawa's samurai films are gorgeous, intelligent, and masterful cinema. But what I glommed onto most immediately was the pulpier, more violent, more stripped-down Lone Wolf and Cub. I watched most of the films and some of the TV series in the early 2000s thanks to an incredible local video store when I moved to Toronto (no longer exists sadly).  I coveted the collection for years, and finally acquired the six-film series on blu-ray last year. I really need to review it. I got halfway through before I got distracted. 

Outside of Kurosawa and Lone Wolf and Cub I haven't explored the jedaigeki much, in part because there's just so much of it out there, and also because it's still not extremely accessible. Unlike Chinese martial arts films, the jedaigeki and chambara films haven't been Sunday afternoon cable classics, video store hallmarks, or Tubi essentials. If you want to watch them, you have to seek them out, and if you don't really know what you're looking for it can be difficult (and expensive) to traverse.

I only learned about The Bounty Hunter Trilogy by visiting one of my local video stores (we have a few in Toronto, thank the gods - Bay Street Video, Eyesore Cinema, and Vinegar Syndrome, to name three) and spying the boxed set on the shelf. Released by Radiance and limited to 3000 copies, it features a quarter-sleeve on the box that tells you what this is: "Tomisaburo Wakayama [stars] in this triptych of violent samurai spectacles inspired by James Bond and spaghetti westerns." 

Films blending the genres of samurai, British super spy and Italian westerns...plus Wakayama in the lead? I had to see these.

Killer's Mission most fully realizes this promise of genre-blending. Wakayama plays Shikoro Ichibei, a doctor who moonlights as a "bounty hunter" (we'll get to that), taking missions to help fund his medical practice. The premise of this first in the series seems to stem from the same historical incident as James Clavell's story for Shogun. A Dutch ship is possibly selling firearms to a rogue state that could give them the potential power to overthrow the Shogun.  Ichibei is hired to prevent the sale from happening by any means necessary.

Ichibei suits up, assembling his armory of transforming weapons and hidden gadgets like an 18th century Japanese super-spy. It could only have been better if there was actually a quartermaster there who were devised these gadgets and explained their use to him.  He sets out on his mission using disguises, lies, and trickery, as well as lightning fast reflexes, expert swordsmanship, and a butt load of super-spy testosterone to make his way to his destinations.

Much like Sean Connery's Bond, Ichibei is a lustful being who thinks he's god's gift to women. In this same movie he tricks one woman into sympathy fucking him by pretending to be a blind man, and fights a female ninja who he'd rather be kissing.  There's a lot of that "the lady doth protest too much" attitude here where Ichibei forcefully kisses someone but though they initially resist, they ultimately cannot resist his manly manliness (and what a man, as a clowning, Don Knotts-esque sidekick catches a look at Ichibei's dick in the lavatory and is beyond impressed and effusively complimentary). This film, and the series, is not the best at serving its female characters, though Ichibei is less handsy in the subsequent films. It's one of the unfortunate ways in which it's in fitting with the Bond-ian stereotype.

Also like Bond films, Killer's Mission gets pretty convoluted plot-wise, as the political side of things weaves its way through multiple double-crosses and some shifting of allegiances where the motivation isn't entirely clear.

What the film lacks in plot clarity and respect for women, it almost makes up for in style. It's score is so 60's espionage with emphatic, propulsive guitars and horns (with just a little bit of surf energy), that it sets the vibe. The character, the swagger, the "romance" and even the almost free-flowing nature of the mission all have that 60's super-spy tinge to it, but in the guise of Japanese samurai tropes.

It's the staging though that evokes Westerns. The fights all have a dusty showdown nature to them, the camera closing in on Wakayama's eyes like he's Clint Eastwood, he will quickdraw his sword and return it to his sheath like a sheriff will his six-shooter in a showdown shootout.  It's hard not to be charmed by the mishmash.

The subsequent films in the series, then, are that much more a disappointment in their abandoning or the spy genre. While the music cues remain very brassy, the second, and especially the third in the series lean more into to the samurai-meets-western.

Of the three, I think The Fort of Death is my least favourite, primarily because it is effectively a lower budget, more primitive riff on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It's the knock-off version, like Orca to Jaws, or Battle Beyond the Stars to Star Wars. It seems cheaper, more exploitative, and yet it's also not without its excitement or charms. While it mostly abandons the super spy element it adopts the 50's/60's British-esque war movie into its repertoire.

A coalition of farmers is being taxed literally to death by its regional lordship. They've protested and pleaded but their lordship has his own political aspirations, and whatever he achieves will be on the backs of the working class. They either fall in line, or get shut down. Though it doesn't pay much, and Ichibei is not a man to interfere in politics, he cannot dismiss the suffering of others, nor can he abide bullies.

He gathers a team, including his ninja love interest from last film (though their relationship has seemingly gone largely platonic since then) and they descend upon the fortified wall. Ichibei takes command and organizes the people, their few fighters, and the unruly ronin who have gathered.  They would be overwhelmed by the lord's forces if not for the gatling gun Ichibei has brought with him (possibly recovered from those Dutch traders he defeated in the prior film?)

There's something about gunplay in a samurai film I really, really don't like. Obviously guns were a game changer after ages of swords and arrows, and this ugly progression naturally would hit Japan's shores, but there's something so much more elegant and tangible to swordplay and arrows that is lost when you have people falling over after being hit with invisible bullets. The special spray of arterial blood is lost as hammy extras overplay their falling-over-after-being-shot moments.

That said, it's still pretty exciting, and has kind of a first-person-shooter feel to it when the forces are just so overwhelming that they're pretty much flooding the frame of the camera and being shot by Ichibei's gun at point blank range.  It does feel effectively overwhelming.

In terms of Ichibei being the number-one-lover-man-in-Japan, the film turns the tables. A widow in the village assaults Ichibei, taking his pants off while he sleeps and tries to force herself upon him repeatedly as he attempts to flee. It's played semi-comedically, but assault is assault. It's not right when Ichibei was doing it in the prior film and it's not fair play to have the tables reversed.  Another widow, who has gone mad following the deaths of her husband and baby, also assails Ichibei, and literally throws him around, mirroring his first encounter with his ninja love in Killer's Mission.

The film ends with a field of dead and the ruins of a community. An inspector from the Shogunate finally arrives to assess the conflict, but obviously too late to do anything about it. It's a dark note, left with the little promise of the children of the village emerging and being embraced by the farmers of neighboring communities.

These films do not shy away from being critical of government, and the corruption that lies within. Ichibei is often an agent for the government but he is not of the government.

Eight Men to Kill opens with a gold heist, which makes its way to Ichibei doubly so. First the government implores his assistance in recovering the gold as it's crucial to staving off an economic collapse. Second, a witness to the heist found a gold piece and swallowed it, but it's causing severe intestinal issues and Ichibei needs to operate on him.  Operations on screen before sterile environments really wig me out.

So Ichibei suits up and heads out to discover the whereabouts of the gold. He meets and kills and helps many people along the way. Unlike the first film, which establishes Ichibei as a sort of solitary badass, and the second film where he's like a military general, here he's a man for the people. His mission to recover the gold is so he can get a cut of it to fund more medical outposts in the region, something he criticizes his government contacts for not doing.

Eight Men to Kill is framed almost entirely as a western. The score still retains its super-spy tenor, but mixes in a lot more Morricone influence than before. The visuals are exceptionally dusty, and even the Japanese villages seem to be staged more in a way like Western towns, ready for a showdown.

There's also a lot more gunplay. While The Fort of Death was wartime gunplay, along with swords and arrows, there's more gunplay than swordplay here, a lot of horse chases as well. It's more American/spaghetti western than jedaigeki. Even Ichibei's outfit looks more gunslinger than samurai (he actually looks more like the Friendly Giant, if I'm being honest.) The mustard coloured outfit and the shaggy near-afro screams early 1970's.

While the first film was complicated by its political intrigue, here's its complicated by the ever-shifting allegiances of the characters. Everyone's shifting who they are aiding and it's not like they're double-agents, they just keep shifting sides. In the end I really lost track of who was supporting whom and what individual motivations were.

On the women front, again, not great. Ichibei threatens a sex worker who has info about the gold. She refuses to give up her knowledge and offers herself to him basically as a distraction. About the only Bond-ian element remaining in this film is the fact he fucks the villainess so good she immediately falls in love with him and leads him to the man with the gold, and she starts acting irrationally out of her uncontrollable affection for Ichibei.

The end of the film is very dark, and once again reiterates this films seemingly connective tissue about governments needing to be for the people and not exist for power, wealth and control.

Despite being the most misogynistic of the three films, Killer's Mission was the most successful at what it promised on the box (and honestly the misogyny of the film is absolutely aping James Bond, in an almost child-like, they-don't-really-know-what-they're-doing fashion) and the one I liked the most. I wished they had stuck with the super-spy genre and leaned into its tropes more. Period-specific super-spies may not be all that accurate but it's pretty goddamn fun. 

Chambara films already have a western feel to them as is, so leaning more into the Sergio Leone of it all isn't really redefining the boundaries of samurai movies... or maybe it's that I just care less about westerns than I do about spy movies.

These three films aren't great cinema, they aren't giving Kurosawa any challenges. They're pulp, their entertainment, and much like Ichibei himself they get the job done pretty efficiently (all of them clocking in around 90 minutes).  Yet, I really would like there to be more of these. It's surprising there weren't more of these, or that they didn't go on to be a TV series like Lone WOlf and Cub or Zatoichi. 

31 Days of Halloween: A Quiet Place: Day One

2024, Michael Sarnoski (Pig) -- download

The first and second movie create a post-apocalypse world, one where I can only assume that the monsters won, and the surviving human beings are just hanging on until they are killed off. This movie picks up on two world-building elements from the second movie: they arrived on falling stars, and they cannot cross water. If you get on a boat to somewhere they didn't crash down, then you ... have safety?

But that's not this movie. This movie is NYC and the Day It Happened.

Samira (Lupita Nyong'O, Us) is dying of cancer and lives in a run-down hospice outside the city with lots of other dying, older, folks. You get the sense this is a place where poor people without anyone else go to die, alone. Samira is angry and vitriolic, but can you blame her? Even so, care-giver Reuben (Alex Wolff, Old) does his best to tolerate her attitude and announces they are going to The City for "a show", and yes, they can get pizza on their way back. Ah, the highly touted pizza of NYC; to be honest, I wasn't all that impressed.

This is the type of establishment I was talking about in my last post, where characters are built well in short, compressed time, but without any trappings. If this was a feel-good cancer movie this opening would have been top heavy with more emotion, many more tropes and extraneous characters. Instead we get a bit: Samira is angry and in constant pain, Reuben is still a friend despite her saying otherwise.

Once in the city, where the monsters arrive, where the killing begins, where the End of the World starts, it is a road story wrapped in a monster movie. Samira has no desire to leave the city, to survive; she just wants to head to Harlem, to the pizza place she used to go with her dad. That is the opposite direction from where everyone else is heading, to a south end pier, a boat to an island presumably. 

The walk to Harlem reminded me much of the journey in the movie that started this blog, Battle: Los Angeles. Along the way she gets a hanger-on, Eric the Lawyer (Joseph Quinn, Stranger Things), but her only real constant companion is her cat, the only one she truly cares about. But there is bonding to be had, one last vestige of human contact and tenderness. 

And there is a little bit of world building to be had -- the monsters grow pumpkins? We had always seen them snatching away people but we never saw what they did with them. I assumed they were just eaten but maybe they were just fertilizer? But, alas, no significant blanks were filled in, no hints that these creatures probably didn't arrive by accident and maybe are the cleansing protocol sent by another more advanced lifeform?

In the end this was not the equal sequel to the first two movies, despite Nyong'o's admirable performance. There just isn't enough of a movie here, and the tension of first two is not repeated, and if anything, this was a more straight forward monster movie. That said, I have never not enjoyed such movies, so got what I wanted, more or less.

31 Days of Halloween: The Beast Within

2024, Alexander J Farrell (documentary Making a Killing) -- download

I have always enjoyed a horror movie that establishes itself strongly in the mundane, often introducing a family in a grounded manner, doing so better than other genres because the actual meat of the movie is usually so far removed from said family dynamics. What do I mean by this? A crime movie, if it shows a family in the establishing phase, they will always be either a cop family or a criminal family, inherently tied to the genre, and therefore beholden to the tropes. Many of the horror movies we watch, and I enjoy, just have "a family" or "a couple" and the horror element is put upon them.

This is not that movie. From the get go we see a family in distress tied directly to whatever is happening to them. They live in isolation, somewhere in the wilderness of England, maybe near Scotland? Willow (Caoilinn Springall, The Midnight Sky) has breathing issues and is often seen dragging a bottle of oxygen with her. She sees her mother depart with a pig in a cage. When mom returns, sans pig, she tries to act normal but there is tension everywhere: tension between mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) and her father Waylon (James Cosmo, The Hole in the Ground), Imogen trying to act normal through pained expressions, Willow sensing the adults anxieties but not understanding what is going on.

When the dad Noah (Kit Harington, Eternals) finally appears wrapped in a bloody bear-skin rug (coat ???) he wants things to be normal, but they aren't. It is without spoiler warning that the movie presents itself as a werewolf movie. But immediately I am asking, "Wait, are they doing an allegory for familial abuse?" All the trappings of an abuser are there, including the being sweet when chooses to be, being all about protecting (and keeping) his family, and the sudden bursts of anger & violence. Imogen is played like someone at the centre of a true horror movie, and Cummings portrayal is probably the most true to how this movie was pitched -- that she is living each day as if she was in a horror movie.

And yet the movie plays itself as a werewolf movie up until they "oh no, they are going to fucking do it..." final scene. Yeah, the whole movie was an allegory. No werewolf, just an abuser. And it wasn't even a particularly good werewolf movie as it had to rein itself in to not be too monstrous, because the message would be lost if a monster in reality (an abuser) was less horrible than a fantasy monster. But no, the movie was a failing on all ends.

KWIF: Inside Out 2 (+5)

 KWIF = Kent's Week in Film.

This Week:
Inside Out 2 (2024, d.  - Disney+)
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023, d.  - Netflix)
Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins (2021, d.  - Netflix)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, d. Tobe Hooper - Tubi)
Memories of Murder (2003, d. Bong Joon-Ho - Tubi)
The Hidden (1987, D. Jack Sholder - BluRay)

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I'm reminded of the scene in The Empire Strikes Back  when Luke espies a dark cave that seems to be drawing him in. He asks Yoda "What's in there?" to which Yoda replies "Only what you bring with you."

As much as I use movies for escapism, I feel like approaching every new movie is very much the same scenario as that Force Cave. What one experiences, and how one reacts, is entirely shaped by what you go in with. Because of course it is.

With Inside Out, I literally went into the film with my child who would have been six-years-old at the time. I couldn't help but see my child as Riley, despite their being younger than the child in the film, and I empathetically experienced all those primary emotions the film presented in their primordial state. I was familiar with them all as exhibited by my child. If I wasn't a father, I don't know if my reaction would have been more stilted, kept at a distance, as Toasty's was.

I approached Inside Out 2 with reluctance. Pixar has developed a pretty uncomfortable dependence on sequels, which, despite not being overwhelmingly diminishing returns, it's just unfortunate that the new ideas aren't coming as quickly in the company's second 15 years as they did in their first.  I wondered what a second Inside Out could bring to the table that the first one didn't.  Surprisingly, the answer points to Toasty's complaint about there "only being five emotions representing everything for everyone". 

In the summer between grade school and high school, Riley hits puberty, and everything changes. Introducing Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarassment.  These new emotions come in boldly and brashly, taking over the controls, supplanting the more rudimentary emotions that got Riley this far, and it couldn't be more disastrous as Riley's core beliefs start forming about herself.

Anxiety (an exceptional vocal performance from Maya Hawke) exiles Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, and it dominates Riley's personality, leading her to do many an awful thing, like abandoning her friends at hockey camp to go hang out with the high schools girls she idolizes, where she perpetuates lies to seem part of the gang.  As Joy and gang try to work their way back to central control, they start to see the dramatic changes in Riley's mind with Anxiety in charge. The sar-chasm was a particularly inspired touch.

I did not watch Inside Out 2 with my child, now a year older than Riley in the film. I wish I had. The film made massive box office this past summer, and I know it clearly resonated with my child's peers (their friends were going back to theatres for second and third viewings), but they seemed disinterested, probably because it wasn't anime.  My child has General Anxiety Disorder, and so watching a film where anxiety governs the actions of a child certainly has resonance for me. I also witnessed the horrendous turmoil that the surge of pubescent hormones had on them and their peers. It was two years of excruciating, soul crushing, heart-wrenching capital-"d" Drama that swung many of those kids I've known for decades onto dark paths of bullying and fighting and running away from home because they just can't process what's happening to them.

Inside Out 2 sort of dumbs down those conflicting, raging, hormonal emotions into individualized, personified beings that mess around with an increasingly complex inner world. It doesn't provide answers so much as awareness, it provides a mirror to view those emotions one may not understand, and encourages introspection.

The Inside Out films are about connecting and relating to the emotions of adolescence, both for those going through it, and for those watching others go through it. For those who are sans children in their life, it may provide a portal to connecting to those past emotions, or it may just not connect. It is a series dealing with the inner emotionality of a girl, and it doesn't cover all bases. It may not represent those dealing with young boys, or trans children, or neurodivergent children, or account for cultural differences. Again, we can only view these through the lens of what we take with us.

I took with me my parenthood, and it delivered an experience I could very much relate to.

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I threw on Bumblebee for Lady Kent a few weeks back, in part to share with her it's pretty radical awesomeness as both an 80's-styled throwback, an actually good Transformers movie, and a great showcase for Hailee Steinfeld, an actress we've both really come to enjoy over the years. Also, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy, and that, indeed it was a good film. 

It's good, maybe even great. 

I gave up on Transformers after the second one (yet, I still reluctantly watched the third, and enjoyed it?), but since Bumblebee I've also started reading the Skybound Transformers series by Daniel Warren Johnson, and it's created a little (all)spark of fandom in me that wasn't there before.  The comic has just passed its first year of publication, so it wasn't a thing when Transformers: Rise of the Beasts came out, so I didn't have any desire to see this in the theatre. Or watch it on VOD.  Even when it first cropped up on Netflix, exported from Paramount plus, I still waffled. It certainly wasn't priority watching.

Honestly, I put it on as something to fall asleep to.  I guess to its credit I didn't fall asleep. 

Taking place in 1994, Rise of the Beasts finds.... you know what, I'm not going to bother explaining the plot in any great detail. It's overly complex and kind of dumb. It has transforming robots chasing after two halves of a Maguffin that can open up a wormhole in space (we're back to LASERS IN THE SKY in 2023!?!) and draw forth the Galactus of the Transformers universe, Unicron. It wants to eat our planet. It's ups to Optimus Prime and his small band of Autobots to team up with some transforming robot animals to save the Earth.

The film is messy. It's overstuffed with robot characters who have a bit of personality but not much else. There's no character journeys here As with all previous Transformers movies I've seen, even Bumblebee, these films seem afraid to make the robots the lead characters of these films. Instead they opt for human leads for us to invest in. Sometimes it works, but not often. 

It works here... to a point. Anthony Ramos' (Hamilton) Noah Diaz is a veteran who has returned from the service but is finding employment hard. His mother is pulling double shifts, and his little brother has a sickle cell disorder and the bills are piling up. That this film gets so heavy with systemic racism, veterans issues, economic disparity and the failings of privatized health care in its opening act was absolutely impressive. Ultimately, with Noah's brother's health failing he has no other choice but to turn to crime for money. He goes to steal a Porsche which winds up being Mirage (voiced by Pete Davidson, Bodies Bodies Bodies), a playful, trusting Autobot who takes a shining to Noah.

Meanwhile Dominique Fishback (Swarm) plays Elena Wallace, a grad student working at an intern at a museum where she has proven herself to be the smartest person in the room but her whitelady boss takes all the credit and gets all the reward. Once again, this film is very much pointing at systemic racism, though it never really examines it beyond that. It's not like it's dealing with parallel issues between the Autobots, Decepticons and Maximals.  

In this opening act, the human drama was really good, and both Ramos and Fishback were very likeable in their roles, but as soon as they come to play with the Transformers, there's a pretty big disconnect between what the humans are capable of doing versus the big shape-changing robots, and that disconnect gets bigger and bigger the more shape-changing robots appear on screen, and we have two very crunchy/squishy humans in their midst. 

As noted, the robots have so little to contribute. They're the good guys and the bad guys, but these films seem afraid to focus on them as complex beings. Optimus Prime is a total asshole in this one, and he learns a lesson about trust and allyship but it feels sooo forced.  Bumblebee gets seemingly killed shortly after he first appears, which, with this being an legit sequel to Bumblebee seems like a slap in the face ...if it actually meant anything emotionally, which it does not.  Beyond Noah's relationship with his brother, there's no emotional connection to anything in this film, and even his relationship with his brother doesn't really connect to his motivation to venture with giant robots to Peru to fight a planet-eating threat.

The film has an incredible dad-rap hip-hop soundtrack. Every track is a bop from back in my heyday of the genre. But it's all just artlessly tossed into the film, when it could have been so, so, so gooood by timing the beats to actions or connecting to the sentiment of the scene. Alas, this is not an Edgar Wright or Quentin Tarantino production.

It's passably watchable as entertainment, but not impressive in the slightest.

[ToastyPost - we agree...it doesn't suck but it's not great]

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Oh, and just like stupid prequels/origin 
stories of old, Snake doesn't get his
iconic looking helmet until the final scene

I followed up one Hasbro property with another in the same sitting. Like Rise of the Beasts I started the stupidly backwards-titled Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins expecting to fall asleep to it. It was successful, but moreso because I started it after midnight and was utterly exhausted by that point.

Of all the hundreds of G.I. Joe characters, Snake Eyes is at best in the middle, but more likely the middle bottom of my rankings list. I never connected with ninja stuff in general as a kid, and, in the 90's, he was forced down our throats as "the cool one" or "the extreme one" like Wolverine or Ghost Rider. I frequently rebel against any effort to tell me what's cool. Not sure if you noticed.

What's definitely not cool is this G.I. Joe origin for Snake Eyes. It's a spectacularly muddled mess of a film that misses the mark of pretty much everything it is trying to do. Origin story for the silent, scarred, commando ninja: modest fail. Complete reset of the G.I. Joe franchise: total fail. 80's ninja throwback movie: utter fail. Modern action-fantasy franchise movie: epic fail.

Its a film that doesn't exist to tell a specific story, but instead do everything it can to build a franchise out of that story, and it's like Hollywood never learns. The Mummy. Green Lantern. Man of Steel. Iron Man 2. Madame Web. Hobbes and Shaw. etc. etc.  With this film, the moment it tries to plug in G.I. Joe and Cobra, what tenuous treads that were holding the thing together fall completely apart. 

From the onset we learn that Snake Eyes' father was killed in front of him and he's been angry and vengeful ever since. He's developed into handsome Henry Golding (Last Christmas), but also a fierce fighter besting everyone he comes across in illegal fighting venues, until one day he is given an offer: work for this stranger and he will be given the man who killed his father.

So he works for the stranger's criminal enterprise, only to quickly betray him by helping Tommy, a spy, escape. Tommy is who Joe fans will know better as Storm Shadow. He is intended to be the leader of his ninja clan, Arashikage, who are also allies of G.I. Joe and protectors of a sacred stone of power. Snake Eyes is actually a double agent, working for the stranger to infiltrate the clan and steal said stone.  The stranger, it turns out, is Tommy's uncle who was cast out of the Arashikage for being a selfish dick...or something.

Snake Eyes wrestles with acceptance in the ninja clan, and the dangling carrot of the man who killed his father. But barely.

The film conveys through dialogue the fact that Snake Eyes is torn between his loyalty and his thirst for vengeance, but it never actually feels like the character has this turmoil, mostly because it's too busy with dumb setpieces and inane character decisions to let the emotions settle.

Spoilers, if you care, but the final act has Snake Eyes betray the clan, steal the stone, hand it over to Tommy's uncle, who is going to wield it to destroy the clan, and then give it to the the Baroness of the terrorist organization Cobra. Snake Eyes is then given his dad's killer, only to learn he is a Cobra assassin. In other words, Snake Eyes has just done the bidding of the group that killed his father. So after freeing the assassin (what?) he turns around to try and save the Arashikage with Tommy, who now hates him so much. 

Scarlett joins the fight out of nowhere (what?) and Baroness is betrayed by Tommy's uncle so she sides with Scarlett and Snake temporarily (what?) and Snake says "Yo Joe" for no reason (what?) and Tommy uses the stone to kill his uncle and is told that he's broken a most sacred Arashikage vow, and now can no longer lead them, and he's so mad and hates Snake Eyes now so much and Scarlett recruits Snake Eyes to G.I. Joe but he's got to go find Tommy first, and he's now allying himself with the Baroness, and this movie is so, so dumb.

I didn't even get into Akiko, the head of Arashikage security who is absolutely terrible at her job. She falls for Snake Eyes and does some very stupid things blinded by her attraction. Pretty much everything everyone does in this movie is because it's in the script, not because it feels true to their character. Even after spending two hours with him, I never got a sense of who Snake Eyes was as a person, what his ethics were. Nobody should trust him, yet, everyone does, and it's pretty much all of their undoing. Snake Eyes could be considered the villain of the piece, not by intention, but by action.

It's an ugly looking movie for the most part. It's shot like a cheap European direct-to-VOD action movie. The only thing that saves it (well, nothing actually saves it) are gorgeous sets and some cool motorbikes. This made my brain hurt.

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I've blathered on too long about movies about toys that I have no energy to talk at length about the grandpappy of torture porn horror, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

I've avoided this film my whole life. The title in itself just sounds completely unappealing. Who voluntarily wants to see something with that title? I know there are people who do, I'm just not one of those people.

I've been pelleted with Leatherface imagery for much of my life, and that just doubled down on my "no thank you" stance towards this film.  

So what prompted me to watch this? It was Electric Boogaloo, the documentary on Canon films. In there it mentioned how the Canon-produced sequel to TTCSM was more of a satirical horror film in the Evil Dead 2 vein, and that piqued my curiosity. But in the weeks since, I forgot they were talking about the sequel and not the original.

Four college kids are in a van, going to rural wherever to visit a family-owned property. Along they way they pick up a weirdo hitchhiker who does some weird stuff before being kicked out. Then they stop at a gas station with no gas, before heading up to the abandoned house. The kids start exploring the property and two of them are killed by a disturbed man in a butcher's gown, a wig and a mask made of flesh. Then other go searching for them and are killed with a chainsaw, until only one of them is left. She is chased after, caught, and forced to sit through a torturous dinner scene with the guy from the van, the guy from the gas station, the human leather-face chainsaw murderer, and a feeble and decrepit old man who seems barely alive. She eventually escapes, frustrating the leather-faced one.

I wasn't bored, necessarily, but I found the whole movie to be tedious. I was intrigued by it initially, as the opening moments with is screeching flash-bulb imagery have been so iconic in the horror genre, but I've just never witnessed their origins. The sequences in the van, the easy, rambling conversations, then the weird encounter with the hitchhiker are well done if not necessarily well performed. There's a lot of capital-"a" Acting happening there.

I by the time the kids encounter Leatherface, I wasn't feeling the build of tension, and at no time was I ever really scared by the events. I guess watching this film after sort of knowing about it for over 40 years, it all just seems inevitable. 

The final act is 25 minutes of Marylin Burns (as Sally) scream pretty much non-stop. I'm sure if I were in a theatre witnessing this for the first time in the 70's or 80's, as a younger person less experienced with cinema, this would have been pretty intense. But now I just found it annoying. The prior kills were just so abrupt that they weren't really shocking or gruesome, and we're not really given much to invest in these characters so watching them die seems like a formality of horror filmmaking (this is how I feel about most slasher and torture porn horror). Sally's screaming ad nauseum is so grating... at a certain point what is it accomplishing? It's the only trick in her book. It is impressive work by Burns though, I must admit.

I mean, as a piece of horror history, I get its place. But what's its point? To horrify and disgust? Fine, but it didn't do that for me.

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After two not-great toy franchise movies and a classic horror film showing its age, I needed a palette cleanser. I needed something from someone trustworthy, something stimulating. I needed Bong Joon-ho.

I had no idea what to expect from Memories of Murder. It's an evocative title, but meaning what, exactly? Is it a character study, a drama about someone who has killed? Is it a psychological suspense film about a therapist and their disturbed patient? Is it a genre picture, where someone can enter peoples memories and finds a murderer within? I wouldn't put any of these past Director Bong.

But Memories of Murder is instead the director's tribute to grotty 1980's and '90's suspense procedurals, like Witness, Bad Lieutenant, Blue Velvet, or half the Coen Bros output from the era.  

It's 1986 and a woman if found dead after an assault, left in a drainage ditch in rural Korea. The crime scene offers few clues. A short while later, after a rainfall, another woman is found, but the local police forces are so inexperienced they're unable to keep the evidence untainted and the crime scene clear. A suspect, a mentally impaired young man, is brought in for questioning, and coerced after days of abuse, into giving a confession. A new recruit from Seoul does his own investigation, leaving the dirty cops to their dirty deeds. The boy, once brought into the open, it turns out, has an alibi they didn't bother to check.

They try to catch the killer, knowing he will strike next during the rainfall, and some actual detective work yields the potential for clues, but they're just too many steps behind. It's never quite clear if the killer knows they're looking for him, but it still feels like a cat-and-mouse game, mostly as it involves two very different Detectives with two very different procedures for solving crimes. But over time Detective Park's corrupt, gut-feeling tendencies start to give way to Detective Seo's evidence and tactics based procedures. Conversely, Detective Seo, once he locks in on a target, embrace Detective Park's shadowy tendencies and it's up to Park to be the rational one.

It's not that we have not been aware of the corruption within policing institutions in the past, but it seems only in the past 5 years has it becomes part of the conversation, out in the open. Policing institutions are given so much latitude to abuse and circumvent the rules set out for them, and even calling it out changes nothing. This film, from 21 years ago is keenly aware how these abuses in the name of justice come about, and unlike a lot of American "copaganda" it's not forgiving in the slightest for it.  

It presents our Detectives as humans, for sure, but people who are allowed to let their bases impulses be acted out with impunity, and feel justified for it. It shows how the police look at everyone outside of them as something else, not equals, but others. They see a population fill with potential perpetrators, potentials suspects, potential victims. 

The tone of Memories of Murder is grim, but also blackly comical. Before Detective Seo arrives, the police are buffoonish. We can see the ineptness and laziness at play. It'd be funny if it weren't so upsetting. Plus Detective Park, ostensibly our protagonist, is pretty terrible. A misogynist, an abuser of power, and maybe even a little dumb...he's not a likeable character, and yet in the body of Song Kang-ho (a mainstay of Director Bong's work), he's compelling. You want to hate him fully, but there's just a little something there that you're kind of charmed by, even though you should know better.

If this movie has a more direct parallel than the 80's and 90's movies it's inspired by, it would be Zodiac. I have to wonder if David Fincher was directly inspired by Director Bong's work here, because they feel like kin.

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The Hidden is an 80's cop movie that Director Bong definitely wasn't using as inspiration. 

Sgt. Beck (Michael Nouri, Yellowstone) has been chasing a man all over town, a seemingly everyday, average, genteel citizen who all of a sudden snapped and starting assaulting, murdering, robbing and terrorizing Los Angeles, often with a smile on his face. Eventually the law catches up to the man, and he winds up in the hospital in a coma, with no answers to give for his sudden shift.

FBI Agent Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan, The Flintstones) turns up at the precinct and has Beck assigned to him. Turns out Gallagher was  looking for the same man man...shortest lived partnership ever. Except that when the accused turns up dead in his hospital room and his roommate is missing, going on his own similarly violent and impulsive spree, things for Beck and Gallagher seem to be just getting started.

The film's not shy about it, it's an alien parasite hopping from body to body. Yeah, sounds absurd, but holy hell is it a fun 97 minutes of nearly flawless filmmaking telling the story. There are no false moves in The Hidden, at no point am I screaming "come on" at people who should know better, at no point is the suspension of disbelief I've granted the film stretched even close to the breaking point. It seems like every question that should be asked by a police detective is being asked, and even when the answers are skirted by Gallagher, it's clocked by Beck.

MacLachlan plays Gallagher like a true weirdo (like a warmup for Twin Peaks), and Nouri's glib yet analytical nature isn't ever fooled, but his intuition is telling him something.

It's not the prettiest film, but Sholder never reaches too far. He's not trying for anything fancy, he's just telling a fun story and he does it very, very well. 

In Men In Black, Vincent D'Onofrio delivers the greatest alien-in-human-disguise performance in cinematic history. In The Hidden we have the prototype for that very performance with Willaim Boyette's turn as the alien-in disguise. Boyette's physicality and verbal ticks and little nuances are all just divine. Three other performers - Chris Mulkey, Claudia Christian and Ed O'Ross - all deliver exceptionally fun performances as the skin suits.

In my memory, having last seen this film in the mid-1990s, this was a much more serious production, not the rollicking buddy cop romp where they're chasing an alien terminator through the streets of L.A. But yeah, it's a romp, just a straight up better-than-a-B-movie/not-quite-an-A-movie grand time of film, with perfect vibes.

Pairs well with: They Live, but honestly, I think it's an even superior film.

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