KWIF: I Saw the TV Glow (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. Been busy with TV, particularly a binge watch of season 5 of Lego Masters Australia which I found all-consuming most of the week, and a Mike Flanagan series the week before. But this isn't KWIT, it's KWIF.

This Week:
I Saw the TV Glow (2024, d. Jane Schoenbrun - Crave/HBO)
Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024, d. Brian Taylor - rental)
Hard Target 2 (2016, d. Roel Reiné - Netflix)

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I Saw the TV Glow is bound to perplex some people...maybe even most people who watch it. It is a highly stylized psychological horror film that acts primarily as - but not exclusively as - a Trans allegory. Actually, it's not even allegory. The text of it seemed so overt to me, but I also went into the film knowing only that it had something to do with Trans identity.  I can't imagine what most cisgender people who went into this without the Trans coding knowledge just what exactly they might make of it. 

But with the knowledge, I picked up on the subliminal very early. In the opening moments as young 11-year-old Owen is watching TV, a commercial for a Buffy The Vampire Slayer-esque program (by way of Canadian-produce kid's horror) "The Pink Opaque" provokes a reaction out of of their otherwise slack-jawed viewing. Later he's with his mother at a high school where she is voting to re-elect "the saxophone man", so that alerts us to it being around the start of Bill Clinton's second term. But in the booth, Owen's mom lets them press the voting buttons, and even though they knows who they're supposed to be pressing the button for, their finger starts trailing off for other options. "Don't ask, don't tell" is hard to ignore when his name comes up in an LGBTQ-framed context.

Milling about afterwards, Owen meets Maddy, a grade niner reading the season 1 episode guide to "The Pink Opaque". Owen is curious. Maddy, at first dismissive, senses something in Owen and engages. Owen can't watch the TV show she loves and she can sense that it will come to mean as much to Owen as it does to them. Owen fakes a sleepover at a friends in order to get to Maddy's to watch the show. It's a revelatory moment for Owen and a bonding moment for both. Two years pass and Owen is in high school and though they don't socialize together really, but Maddy leaves Owen messages and tapes of the show, and they start hanging out together to watch the show, season 5.  Late in the school year Maddy says they're skipping town, escaping it's small-minded trappings as well as an abusive stepfather. They encourage Owen to come with them, but Owen gets scared and tells on themself to get grounded so they can't be with Maddy when they leave.

Then Owen's mom dies, leaving them with their abusive, neglectful father. Shortly after that Maddy disappears, their TV set on fire in the back yard. Eventually everyone thinks Maddy is dead. And then "The Pink Opaque" is cancelled.  (The question I ask, was the burning of the TV in response to Owen's betrayal or was it in response to the cancellation, or are both, effectively, one-and-the-same...how real "The Pink Opaque" is is part of what makes this film so layered and fascinating)

This is the first half of the film, roughly, and generally. It's very much vibes...the music and the score, the neon haze and/or crackle of TV static as illumination sources. It's almost as if Owen and Maddy were floating between two worlds. Maddy says that, sometimes, "The Pink Opaque" feels more real than real life. 

The film is beautiful and atmospheric. It's patient and full of surrealism. It blurs lines between what we (and Owen) are seeing and what Owen is feeling (and therefore what we should be feeling). It's a difficult thing to really catch onto unless you understand Owen, the quiet, apologetic, mumbly kid trapped in their own head, narrating their own life from the inside. If you get the meaning it's like being sliced open and having your guts spilled out. Jaden Smith, who plays Owen, captures this hesitancy so effectively, as if Owen is this awkward bag of flesh and bone that seems to keep moving in spite of itself. 

The second half of the film jumps another 8 years ahead in time and we observe Owen's life...without Maddy, without their mother, as if there's nothing left in the world for them, but they keep going through the motions anyway. Owen is now in their early 20s, and their asthma is affecting them so direly that it's like they can barely breathe. But it's not asthma. Their skin is literally choking the life out of the not-Owen person within. Strange events keep happening to Owen, strange apparitions of TV static or pink haze that seem so alluring and yet Owen is so utterly wary.

And then Maddy, but not Maddy, returns. They return for Owen, but not Owen. They return for Isabel, the main character of "The Pink Opaque", but Owen is confused and doesn't understand. Not-Maddy tries to explain, to relate their life since they left this shitty town and its constricting mindset. Layers of analogies that should punch through only seem to make Owen dizzy, unable to accept anything they are saying.

More time passes, Owen ages faster than the rest of the world around them. They are trapped in a cage of their own making. Revisiting "The Pink Opaque" exposes to Owen an entirely different show than what they remember, something far more juvenile (much more the cheap Canadian Are You Afraid of the Dark, less of the Buffy), and containing none of the importance and meaning that it did to them for so long. They are lost in the world they've built around themselves, still apologizing for their existence.

I can tell you the broad beats of this whole movie and it won't even elicit a tiny fraction of the actual emotional wallop the film does. I was devastated throughout watching this film, tears streaming from my eyes uncontrollably. For an hour or two afterwards I just couldn't compose myself and I would still find myself sobbing in response to the intention of the film.

If you don't get it, it's not easy to explain. From a very high level, it's a film about being trapped. The Trans and non-binary messaging is the foremost intention, but the resonance, the emotion of feeling trapped, just in general, should feel at least somewhat familiar to most people. And finding escape, in television, in friendship, in shared experiences is so liberating to a point, but it's not everything if you're just not able to live life as you want to live it.

I refer to both Owen and Maddy as "they". When I call Owen "they/them" it's because there is who Owen really is and who they are pretending to be. Maddy's more subliminal story is about them understanding that they're not the lesbian everyone (including themself) though they were in high-school, but non-binary.

This definitely falls under the "horror, not horror" moniker, as there are no scares and not even really scary moments, but as a whole it is horrifying just the idea of being trapped in one's own skin, to have to wear not just an image, but an identity that is inauthentic, and to be aware of it, whether suppressing it or confronting it on a day-to-day basis. The film could have went really far into outright horror with metaphors of body dysphoria but Owen has so buried their authentic self that it's only in the films final moments that Owen is directly addressing that side of it.

After that the very end is so painful to watch if you are connecting with what you're looking at, a human in such excruciating emotional turmoil, a cage not entirely of their own making, but one they do actually have the key to escape from. It would be sad if I didn't have such empathy for Owen...instead it's heartbreaking.

The film has definitely connected with some (like me) and puzzled others, but it didn't break out into a cultural phenomenon, nor even a cult one...yet.  There's a lot of David Lynch in this, but where Lynch often doesn't seem to know where his ideas manifest from, leading to stories and scenes that are inexplicable, here Schoenbrun seems to know every intention they have in every moment, and every scene. There is not a single piece of absurdism or surrealism that doesn't have a specific purpose.  I felt a kinship between this and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Schoenbrun themself has also said Donnie Darko was a big inspiration. The inspirations are many beyond that. And it transcends them all. 

Maybe my favourite film of the year? I regret not seeing it in theatre.

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When Hellboy debuted in comics in, I want to say, 1994 (what, research?) I was very much in. I loved the artwork of his creator Mike Mignola a tremendous amount and the mythos of the world of Hellboy expanded beautifully. Very quickly Hellboy became the best original creation of the 1990s.

But Mignola wasn't content to let Hellboy remain his sole vision, and the world of Hellboy grew, the stable of writers and artist participating in telling the legacy of the character expanded, and soon I was overwhelmed. I wouldn't say it was a deluge, but it was much more than I was prepared to take in. I don't know if any of it was watered-down, but I felt my connection to the character slipping.

The first Guillermo Del Toro movie re-sparked an interest, but my re-approach of the comics only showed me how far behind I had fallen and it felt daunting to catch up. The second Del Toro movie dove into fantasy in a way I couldn't connect with and I pretty much left Hellboy behind after that. That was 16 years ago.

I tried to watch the 2019 Neill Marshall-directed, David Harbor-led Hellboy feature and I just could not get into it. It's in a very small group of film that I've started watching and never finished (like, count-on-one-hand small).  I liked Harbor as replacement for Ron Perlman, but that's about it. This new, very low-budget (about 20 million) Hellboy is at the very least much more watchable than that.

Here Hellboy and fellow Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense Agent Bobby Jo Song are trying to take a demon spider back to home base, but get derailed. They're stranded in the Appalachian Mountains, coal mining territory which, they learn is besieged with witches. A World War II veteran, returning home after a long absense, seems to have much familiarity with what's happening and why. He tells the story of the Crooked Man, one of the first settlers to reach American shores, who played both sides in the Civil War, who was hanged for his treason and greed, but was given the task of collecting souls for the devil, with payment of one penny per.

Witches seem to be in vogue right now (see also Agatha All Along, Star Wars: The Acolyte for just two prominent examples) almost with a sympathetic eye towards them. Here, however, they're nasty creatures with nasty ways of dealing with things nastily, treating witches as humans-turned-creatures, less as humans transcending humanity.

Hellboy here is played by Jack Kesy, an actor I'm not all that familiar with (though I did watch some of the first season of The Strain which he was the lead in). He's seemingly emulating Ron Perlman's depiction of the character, and I'm not sure if that's for "consistency" (from the producers/director) or lack of his own definitive take. It's a good performance, even if he's not quite got the same presence as Perlman or even Harbor. 

Of the other key performers in the film  Adeline Rudolph as Bobby Jo I thought was the strongest actor in the film (and maybe got a little swooney over). She's a novice to the field, primarily an in-house researcher, and so Hellboy is quite protective of her (he's also a little swooney over her, but subtly). I also liked Jefferson White as Tom Fennell, the not-a-witch-man returning home and finding his old world in a bad state and feeling very much responsible.  Even the old, blind reverend, played by Joseph Marcell, is low-key incredible.  It's a good cast overall.

The film is, at 20 million, cheap for these kinds of things, and it feels it. In his review Toasty [we agree, almost] cites "fan flick that had been given a budget", and for sure it feels that way especially in its opening prologue where it uses a lot of unrefined cgi-effects to, well, ill-effect. I would say extract the prologue altogether and it would be a better film, but it does circle back into the story and is sort of necessary. I really wish they figured out a practical effect for that spider instead of a cheap digital render.

Most of that "fan film" feeling falls at the feet of director Brian Taylor, a filmmaker who has been in the Hollywood system since 2006's Crank, a movie I very much did not like. He made a lot of films with Crank co-director Mark Neveldine, including Crank 2: High Voltage, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and Gamer, all of which I very much did not like.  I have seen some of Taylor's solo work, like some of the TV series Happy! (which I also did not like) and Mom and Dad (which I found ok). 

The feeling of a Taylor-Neveldine film was one that is frenetic, high energy, but not in a controlled way. It's ADD on acid, just out of control and I found them very unpleasant to watch. Taylor on his own is more toned down but he still doesn't seem to know how to resist constant cutting between obtuse angles and weird stylizations with little consistency or always carrying purpose. Here, with probably one of his lowest budgets, but highest demands on that low budget, his lack of stillness winds up looking quite cheap quite often. That said, he also captures some fairly stunning shots, and there are some very visually striking frames in this film. Buuuut, for every one moment framed so acutely, there are two that are not, and they can be distracting.

As Toasty opined, it "presents as a horror movie but without embracing it". And that's true. But in true Hellboy sense, at least that of what I remember of Mignola's 90's works, it was always a bit more "supernatural adventure" than "horror". This lives in a John Carpenter's Vampires vein, and in that vein it works for me. It's not a spectacular production, but I think for what Hellboy has been in film in the past, we've hit the right budget and style to be an ongoing franchise of 20 million dollar direct-to-streaming productions, especially if it's going to have Mignola and long-time collaborator Christopher Golden on scripting duties.  It's not rekindled a fervour in me to start cramming more Hellboy comics in my diet, but I really would watch more of these it they can sustain this upper-echelon-of-90's-DTV sensibility.

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I'm writing these in reverse order of what I watched them in. I watched I Saw the TV Glow immediately after watching Hellboy: The Crooked Man, and within literal seconds of Shoenbrun's film starting I said to myself, "this is what a real movie looks like". Not to diss Taylor any further, but there's an assuredness to Shoenbrun's craft that Taylor just never had. Oh, Taylor's work has often seemed cocky, but it rarely backs that cockiness up with ...well, being objectively "good".  But compared to Roel Reiné, Taylor looks like Scorsese... at least he's getting 1 out of 3 shots that are really something appealing to look at (and most of the rest at least have some level of competency even if they are erratic and sometimes ugly), watching Hard Target 2 was even like watching a fan film. At least fan films the people involved care about what they are trying to do. I think Reiné, whose credits include The Scorpion King 3, Death Race 2 & 3, SEAL Team 8: Behind Enemy Lines, 12 Rounds 2: Reloaded, and seemingly a dozen other cheap-and-quick in-name-only sequels and/or paycheck vehicles for action movie has-beens and never wases.

Now, I've said it before, I inexplicably enjoy the "most dangerous game" man-hunting-man movies, so seeing a Scott Adkins sequel to the not-a-classic classic John Woo/JCVD film Hard Target pop up on Netflix's "coming soon" roster made me uncontrollably "oooh", and click that "notify me" button. You can bet I watched this dogshit as soon as possible. 

It was on a sick day. I laid in bed, not wanting to move. The only reason I finished this film is because I let myself be held captive by it. It's definitely not a so-bad-it's-good, it's just bad. Bad-bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. Stupid, and bad. And cheap. Lazy. Dumb. Nonsensical at times.

There's a whole world of direct-to-video/streaming/on-demand filmmaking that's been in operation since the 80s. Before that it was sci-fi and horror B-movies, or cheap foreign knockoffs, or Spaghetti westerns as opposed to the regal American ones. There's always been a place in cinema for this type of garbage. But ever since the digital age made the "film" part of filmmaking unnecessary and the accessibility of editing and other digital tools a thing of the past, these types of movies have gotten so cheap, and churned out so lazily that I fail to see how anyone gets any joy out of watching them, nevermind making them. They're soulless product that are soon to be even further deprived of soul by being entirely AI scripted. We probably won't even know the difference.

Scott Adkins is, in this sphere of modern direct-to-whatever a well known and respected commodity. He's a fairly handsome guy, not too shabby an actor sometims, and he's fucking fit at hell and loves doing stunts. In this film, the stunts seem like an afterthought so they're as cheap and lazy as everything else in the film. 

As far as the man-hunting-man element goes, this is a copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a ....well, you get it. Nothing, absolutely nothing original is happening here that has not been done in another story of this type, and any attempt to add "flavour" to this by way of some form of romance or intrigue or political message is handled, well, stupidly as to make the effort irrelevant. 

We know Adkins is going to escape his very stupidly set up predicament. We know hes going to give his ill-gotten riches to his newfound local lady friend, and we know his comidically burdensome guilt that he carries is going to be absolved by an external force rather than any internal resolution. Its climax is one of the worst boat chases I've ever seen ending in one of the stupidest standoffs I've ever seen. 

I couldn't watch 2019's Hellboy for more than 30 minutes but I watched all of this garbage? I must have been sick....

3 Short Paragraphs: Dollman

 1991, d. Albert Pyun - Tubi

Back in the 1980's and 90's sci-fi and superhero stuff was on such a downswing in spite of successes like Star Wars and Batman that the major Hollywood studios didn't really invest in that "nerd shit".  Instead, if you were a sci-fi and high-concept action movie nerd, you had to look to the low-budget, direct-to-video end of the spectrum for your entertainment. There were whole production houses, like Canon Films, Roger Corman's (RIP) New World Pictures studios and Full Moon Entertainment that were more than happy to fill the void with thrifty genre pictures that were generally hastily written and even more hastily shot and assembled.  A fan at the time would have to invest their own brain power into filling in details and dream of bigger, more grandiose adventures and bigger, more grandiose set pieces.  Because most of what you would get would be thrifty shit like Alber Pyun's (RIP) Dollman.

I remember seeing this for rent at my local comic shop that doubled as a Laserdisc and B-movie videocassette rental place. I was always intrigued by the cover, but just knowing that it was not the DC (formerly Quality Comics) character Dollman (of the Freedom Fighters team), it greatly lessened my interest. Like watching Nemesis last week, I'm pop culture touring through a bit of Albert Pyun's filmography after listening to a podcast about the director, and, so far, two films in, I'm not at all impressed.

This film opens with some matte shots of an alien world, and then some poorly constructed sets that merely hint at being another planet, where a criminal on the run takes hostage a family of fat people (and they cannot stress enough that they are fat, dozens of references from seemingly every character) in a laundromat. Suspended cop Brick Bardo (Tim Thomerson, Nemesis) walks on the scene to do his laundry (that's about the closest the film ever gets to clever or funny) and Dirty Harry's up the place. Then his floating-head nemesis escapes from police custody with an anti-matter bomb (or something) and he gives chase in his cruddy-looking spaceship. They wind up on earth where they discover they are 1:6th scale beings. Bardo rescues a neighbourhood watch organizer from being murdered by some drug fiends, and then becomes embroiled in stopping the drug gang altogether (led by Jackie Earle Haley, A Nightmare on Elm Street) despite being 12-inches tall. With a big ol gun and a big ol attitude he stops them all dead, all by hisself.  This is a dull, boring, unadventurous movie. I was hoping all these years it would be a low-budget Honey I Shrunk the Kids or even somewhere close to on par with the classic Incredible Shrinking Man. But no, it's more interested in aping Dirty Harry than anything sci-fi oriented. Bad!

KWIF: Next Goal Wins (+4)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie in which he writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else he watched that week, he just does a quick little summary of his thoughts instead of calling his mother. He must have been an evil bebe. 

This week:
Next Goal Wins (2023, d. Taika Waititi - Disney+)
Delicatessen (1992, d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet et Marc Caro - AmazonPrime/the binder)
Nemesis (1992, d. Albert Pyun - Tubi)
Requiem for a Dream (2000, d. Darren Aronofski - the binder)
Tokyo Godfathers (2003, d. Satoshi Kon - the shelf)

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There is a consistent rhythm to the dialogue of Taika Waititi's residents of American Samoa which is not to dissimilar to the rhythm of the Maori denizens of most of his New Zealand films... full of charm, good nature, and prepetual sense of positive optimism. That type of dialogue, and general nature, is something that Michael Fassbender's reluctant, angry, drunken, heartbroken, belligerant coach just is incapable of joining in on. In part because that is what the role calls for, and partly because this type of comedy is definitely not Fassbender's baileywick.

It results in the character of Thomas Rongen, a real life man who was basically left no other options than to coach the worst national team in international soccer/fütböl, taking a very expected white man's journey of learning and growing by embracing a culture other than his own. It's a true-ish story but that doesn't make it any more played out as a story. 

The thing is, knowing exactly what the journey would be deflated almost all expectations of true drama, and so the film  left with promoting the charms of the various actors playing the denizens of American Samoa, and every single one of them seems like someone you would just delight in being in their presence. It speaks to the dark place Coach Rongen had to be in to take so long to embrace it.

Waititi's film isn't a triumphant return to form by any stretch. It's a pretty wobbly narrative, a skeleton of story upon which hangs mere ribbons of characters, most of whom are teased with inner lives, but really none of which are not explored to any satisfaction. Yet it's not the nearly unwatchable mess of Thor:Love and Thunder, which was about as big a narrative and tonal misfire as we've gotten in the past 5 years.

I laughed a lot, and even cried a couple times. When a character explains to Coach the third gender of the island -- fa’afafine -- as a flower that makes our lives more beautiful, that got me real good. It takes Coach a little longer to come around, and given the increasingly crass and dangerously incendiary attacks by political and religious leaders on the trans community as a mode of riling up and distracting their followers from real issues affecting them, it makes for the film's most direly uncomfortable moments. The film takes place in 2011, which in the course of trans awareness was an eon ago, so Rongen at first is dismissive or insensitive or even aggressive about it, before befriending and mentoring Jaiyah (played by the stunning and charming Kaimana in what should have been a breakout role) as team captain, embracing her as its clear her community does.

I can see the editing lines of the film, the truncated drama, the expurgated character arcs, and half-remaining narrative framework in the remnants of Next Goal Wins. What is left is a mostly breezy picture about a group of people aiming for a low-stakes victory and probably being quite fine whether accomplishing it or not. I'm not sure I want to see the no doubt 30-minutes-longer version whose island breeze levity gets dragged down by too much emotional weight.

It's fine! Really!

---

Delicatessen is a film I've been meaning to watch for 30 years, and, in fact, have had a DVD of it in the binder for 20 (but, sadly, in another region format).

In an amber-drenched, wet and smoggy post-apocalyptic France, we find amidst the ruin an isolated square where, beneath a tenement house, a butcher shop sells human meat. The meat is sourced primarily by drawing in unsuspecting victims with an ad that promises room and board in exchange for building upkeep labour. The meat's consumers, primarily, are the building's odd motley of tenents.

Enter Dominique Pinon's Luison, an out-of-work clown who starts charming many of the locals (though others don't sway from their meat cravings and keep their distance). Luison makes a connection with the butcher's mousy daughter who wants to save him from his fate. She enlists the rebel Troglodites who live in the sewer to kidnap Luison, and all hell breaks loose in the building.

Until the third act, the film is largely comprised of a series of vignettes that form a picture of the people of the building and a sense of this should-be-horrible world they exist in. Yet Jeunet and Caro inject this bleak landscape with a sense of whimsy and playfulness (accompanied by a winkingly jovial Parisienne score) that undercuts any and all darkness.

It does feel like the film is biding time though to get to its rollicking third act which takes its multi-level set piece and absolutely wrecks it in gloriously practical fashion. It's wondrous to behold and elevates this film from pleasant curiousity to sheer joy.

Jeunet and Caro cast, dress and style their band of actors like human cartoons. You would think given their various exaggerated features they were shot with a fish-eye lens to further accentuate their unique traits, mais non, they are just that fascinating to look at...or at least feel that way given the directors' lovingly curious way of capturing them on film.

This would program well as a triple feature with Kung Fu Hustle and The Shape of Water.

---

I was listening to a podcast in which a trio of cult cinema fans (and professional screenwriters all) were nerding out over their love of Albert Pyun movies. Pyun has nearly 50 film directing credits (and a few uncredited efforts), of which the vast majority were released direct-to-video. The most "famous" of his features would be the Jean-Claude Van Damme feature Cyborg, and the not-even-laughably bad Captain America from 1990.

The funny thing was, as big a fan as these commentators were, they still could acknowledge that the majority of Pyun's work was, bluntly, pretty bad, but that the director has a penchant for getting putting a little more into some of his films, and getting a little more out of them, that his DTV contemporaries.

Nemesis was touted as the spotlight film for Pyun's filmmaking zeal, and, to be blunt, it's a pretty bad story about a largely nonsense war between humanity and cyborgs that is definitely riffing on both Terminator and Blade Runner, but having a fraction-of-a-fraction of the not just budget of either, but attention to detail in world building.

For starters, they get the definition of cyborg completely wrong. They call what are essentially sentient robots, "cyborgs" when the lead character, Alex Rain (the charmless Olivier Gruner), a "cyborg" hunter is himself a true cyborg, comprised largely of cybernetic parts. It's a maddening that a DTV genre movie that relies upon exploiting nerds for profit could get this one concept so wrong.

I won't go into the specifics of the story because the filmmakers didn't really seem to care, so why should I?  But within the first 30 minutes, Alex has been nearly killed and rebuilt twice, retired from his job and pulled back into it, and sent on a mission to do assassinate a "cyborg" rebel leader only to switch sides when he learns the truth. It's storytelling whiplash that would be infuriating if there was any sense of a character in Alex Rain at all.  Gruner seems to wrestle with any dialogue (it's clear English is not his first language) and cannot conjure up any sense of emotion. He does look good with his shirt off though, and it's off a lot.  

It's also insane how the film keeps pairing Alex up with characters and then killing the sidekick or companion off. It robs the film of any meaningful relationships for Alex, and pretty quickly you stop even trying to care about anyone that may pop up on screen, even plucky Max... Max Impact.

For as inane as the story is, and as checked out as I was, by the third act I was finding myself charmed by the film's action gusto. As noted, Pyun gets a lot out of his minuscule budget, and manages a pretty relentless stream of action sequences. They are not exceptionally well shot, but there are some clever flourishes amidst them, including one atop a collapsed building, one while two characters slide down a very long and wavy industrial (and very muddy) slide while shooting at each other, and a sequence in which Alex repeatedly shoots the floor out from under himself to descend four stories and escape a trap.

Then there's the big finale which results in Alex fighting a stop-motion robot skeleton which is not something you see anymore and for as silly as it looked, it was twice as charming.

Beyond Gruner, the acting is bad, but due to the script being so awful and the majority of the movie's dialogue being captured in post.  But we get small appearances from Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the ever reliable Tim Thomerson, a blink-and-you-miss-it Jackie Earle Haley appearance (I didn't even notice), and even a very nude, very young Thomas Jane.

I see the appeal of Pyun's work, but if this is the best of it (as per the podcasters' claims) I don't know that I could stomach anything much further down the quality scale.

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(filed under: horror,not horror)

I was 24 when Requiem for a Dream came out, and it was one of the scariest, most intense, viscerally upsetting films I had ever seen.

I felt scarred, yet I listened to the soundtrack (Clint Mansell with the Kronos Quartet) I don't know how many times. I couldn't brave watching it again however.

So why now? Same thing that triggers most of my movie watching these days: a podcast. The Blank Check crew were stating that Satashi Kon's Perfect Blue had an noted influence on director Aronofski, specifying that Requiem was a benefactor of Aronofski's fandom. I wanted to see if I could pick up on that now, having just watched Perfect Blue a few weeks ago.

But I don't really see it at all. Perhaps I just havn't studied either film enough to really plot the parallels.

Aronofski does have a playful lens and a feathery touch with the editing throughout the film but the playfulness lessens and the editing becomes more intense as the severity of the story escalates. I liked the splitscreening, and doubtlessly the quick cut montage of the heroin process is going to be Aronofski's most lasting contribution to pop culture.

I was sucked in by the showiness early on, thinking that it would allow me to sail unscathed through to the finale but damn that third act, as cartoony as it gets, remains scarring enough to want to wait another 24 years for another rewatch.

Ellen Burstyn is still incredible, Jared Leto is just this side of trying too hard, Marlon Wayans is great but the character gets short shrifted in the story department, and Connelly's performance breaks me. 

Oh, and how had I completely forgotten about Christopher McDonald's TV pitchman? The DVD menu screen only comes up after being forced to watch a minute of McDonald's infomercial, and then it lands on the active "order now" screen where the menu is slyly buried. One of the all-time great DVD menu screens for sure.

But is it horror? Not traditionally, but yes.

---

I can't exactly recall when it was that Toast and Marmy screened Tokyo Godfathers for me, but I would hazard a guess that it was circa November 2005, where I needed to crash on their futon for a week.

I imagine I made it clear that anime wasn't my thing, and they must have made it clear that Tokyo Godfathers wasn't your typical anime.

My recollection of the events and characters of the film was naught, but the impression it had lasted these past two decades. I tried to coax my anime-loving kid to go see the film in the theatre this past holiday season, and they passed. Mainly because I didn't sell it very well. But I was disappointed we didn't go.

I had forgotten that the godfathers were not, in fact, three older, unhoused men but only one middle-aged unhoused man, a slightly younger trans woman, and a sixteen-year-old runaway. I had also forgotten it was, in fact, a Christmas movie, with elements of Buddhism and Shintoism that occur during the same week.

In the film, this rag-tag trio discover a baby abandoned amidst the trash (there is so much trash in this film). Hana, who had just been wishing to have a baby for Christmas, is overjoyed by the miracle. Both Gin and Miyuki think they should take the baby to the police, but Hana, herself having grown up a foster child, implores them to care for the baby, at least for Christmas so as not to forever ruin the holiday for the child. Hana names her Kiyoko.

Left with a bag full of clues, the film follows the trio for a week as they do their own search for Kiyoko's family. Throughout the search, there are numerous incidences of coincidence and happenstance that would feel far-fetched if not for the fact that the film is treading heavily in "the magic of Christmas".  I think many of the coincidences would usually annoy me, but director Kon is so adept at finding themes and meaning that most of the coincidences have deeper meaning for the story or a character, or both.

It is a remarkably compassionate and considerate movie. It humanizes its unhoused characters with great empathy without hiding any of their flaws or blemishes. Gin is a drunk, Hana is an impulsive loudmouth, and Miyuki may have some undiagnosed mental health issues. These traits, along with stubborn pride, seems to be keeping these characters on the streets. Gin, for all his flaws, is riddled with regret over his lost daughter, and definitely sees Miyuki and even Kiyoko (and perhaps even Hana) with that lens. Hana is full of love and affection, and shovels it out to all three of her found family in heavy doses in her own unique way. Miyuki is a scared, lost child, and needs her surrogate parents more than she cares to admit.

On Hana, Kon sort of conflates trans and drag as being the same thing, which obviously they are not. And while Hana is called a drag queen and has a community of drag performers she is a part of, she is very, very clearly a trans woman whom Kon has a tremendous affection for. Hana confidently and unwaveringly identifies as a woman, and her drag home seems to be more a safe place of acceptance.

The "one-crazy-night"-like scenarios they find themselves in are indeed maybe a little wild and crazy, yet still feel grounded. The impulse would be to ask why this is animated, as opposed to live action?  Animation allows the audience just enough distance reality that it demands one accepts and invests more into the characters. Animation makes it easier to live in the discarded world that the Godfathers find themselves in. In live action, we would be too confronted with the unpleasantness of all we throw away, that we discard and don't want to think about anymore. 

The colour tones Kon and his team of animators use for the characters is not vibrant, a lot of autumn tones, but the lights of the city are dazzling, so there's both a dinginess and a shimmer that play off each other. It is a beautiful movie visually and in its soul. I love it, and it's long overdue as part of my holiday viewing regimen.

I have loved each of director Kon's movies so far, but this is the clear frontrunner for me, definitely the sentimental choice. Paprika is going to have to do something pretty exceptional to unseed it (and while I hear Paprika is a mind-blowing exceptional movie, I wonder if the hype is maybe too much...we'll see next weekend).

 [hey, Toasty has a review! Of course we agree!]

3 Short Paragraphs: 21 Bridges

2019, Brian Kirk (lots of TV including Game of Thrones) -- download

The only thing I really knew Chadwick (why not just Chad?) Boseman from before the Marvel movies was Gods of Egypt, so yes, entirely forgettable. But since then, well... there is nothing else; he is just T'Challa and I have trouble seeing him as anything else. Especially when he speaks out loud. Not that I expect an African accent to come out of his mouth, but to hear him speak American just sounds... off. That said, he's doing his best to build a career in spite of Marvel, with a smattering of crime movies since he first appeared in Civil War; 21 Bridges is the latest.

The character is set in stone as the son of a murdered cop who grows up to be the detective with the reputation for not just pulling his sidearm, but putting the bad guys down. He believes in justice, he believes in just retribution. They play this like it will be a key point to the story, but its just a plot device for him to be used. When eight policemen are gunned down during what appears to be a botched robbery of a drug dealer, he is called in because every cop in NYC wants these criminals dead, and who better to do it. He is the blunt weapon for their blue rage.  That is, until he notices something was off about this whole deal and he needs the gunmen alive in order to unravel the mystery.

This movie is crafted in the shadow of cop movies of old, back in the time when the NYC was infamous for its corruption and dirty cops. Its not a spoiler, as the idea is pretty much written in neon from the beginning. But that's not the point, as it is about determining what the conspiracy was as opposed to foiling it. Boseman, like Taylor Kitsch and JK Simmons, get interesting characters to play, but not much use is made of them.  We get hints of where a much more interesting movie could have gone, such as making the criminals somewhat sympathetic, or the actual title of the movie, where Bosemen gets brief permission to close all access and egree points to Manhattan. But then they just rush to the conclusion of a Straight To crime flick.

3 Short Paragraphs: You Might Be the Killer

2018, Brett Simmons (Animal) -- Shudder

A couple of years ago Chuck Wendig (author, Zer0es)) and Sam Sykes (author, Aeons' Gate series) wrote an epic Twitter conversation that went viral. The format was Sam, a new camp counsellor, was reaching out to his friend Chuck on how to deal with a murder spree at his camp. Through the pithy back n forth inherent in Twitter, they explored and subverted the tropes of the summer camp slasher movies. It was kind of brilliant and right down my dark, dead end alley.

And then someone decided to make a movie about it, starring Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods) and Alyson Hannigan (BtVS) as Sam and Chuck, respectively. Kranz gets to be Sam the (now) seasoned camp counsellor and Alyson is Chuck, who works at a local popculture store -- you know, those places that have evolved out of the neighbourhood comic store, selling all sorts of genre collectibles, games and comics. She's the horror trope expert being sought advice from. Someone is killing all of Sam's fellow camp counsellors, and he is not sure what to do. There is also the issue of his headaches and that he is covered in blood.

This is a fun little movie, about par with much of the genre it is exploring. Being all meta like, it is more chuckle worthy than scary, but it still is able to pull a good amount of tension and anticipation from what should be a pretty straight forward story. Without giving too much away, we end up not really sure if we should root for Sam (the idiot who put on the evil mask) or let him become the "victim" of the Final Girl. Given that I am treating horror-focused streaming service Shudder like my corner video store, where spending $3.99 for an OK movie was fine & dandy, I was happy with the movie even if it was not revolutionary.

10 for 10: Cleaning Out the Cupboards

[GK] 10 for 10... that's 10 movies which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?  

[DP] Yes! Yes it is. But it is also over an hour all by itself, and I think it can only properly be done all in one sitting. [edit: of which I failed at immediately]

[DP] I need to reboot this post and delete what I wrote and start again.

[DP 2 months later] Anytime now....

aaaand GO.

Zootopia, 2016, Byron Howard, Rich Moore (Tangled, Wreck It Ralf) -- download

This was the latest Disney animated movie, at the time. Its a world of anthropomorphic animals all living together in a peaceful, predator-friends-with-prey city. And then something goes wrong, that draws out the more animal instincts of the city's predators. Judy the Bunny (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the farm girl who has come to the city with the idea of being a big city cop, but really, who is she kidding? She's a coot wil bunny wunny. And Chief Bogo (Idris Elba, water buffalo) is pretty much convinced of bunnies-cannot-be-cops idea. But then she gets caught up with a con artist fox Nick (Jason Bateman) and uncovers a rather disturbing plot.

Charming. That is the primary thing I can say about this movie. Really, everything is just likeable, not all that memorable but definitely likeable. The most memorable thing is a gag that is probably going to show up again and again in pop culture --- when Judy and Nick set off a howl to distract a bunch of wolves. Once one gets going, they all get going. Ow ow ow owwoooooooo. Heh!

The theme sitting behind it all is racism, that nature does not predetermine who you really are. Isn't connecting that to racism, kind of racist? But seriously, it was about pre-judging people by their ... nature? Predators are born predators but in this world, can be mean, nice or plain goofy. But does that carry over as a metaphor to people? Nobody is born a certain way, we attribute stereotypes to them based on real or imagined history.

Wait, kid's movie!  Charming! Fun! Funny!

Bonus points for Shakira as a pop star gazelle and Peter Mansbridge as Peter Moosebridge. (9:03)

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London Has Fallen, 2016, Babak Najafi (Swedish movie Sebbe) -- download

Antoine Fuqua did the first movie, Olympus Has Fallen, a throw away actioner piece that I remember being rather upsetting due to all the collateral damage. Still feeling sensitive about that these days. But it was a memorable movie, one of those that comes as the better of its Evil Twin Movie White House Down, where a single man must save the President of the United States when his White House (not actually burned during the War of 1812) is attacked by foreign terrorists. Gerard Butler is that man, a Secret Service guy who has a history with the President.

Wait, we already did that movie so THIS movie is still about Gerard Butler, still about Aaron Eckart as POTUS and still about terrorists attacking him. This time he's at a funeral in the UK, when the terrorists attack London. Boom boom boom boom. Explosions all over the city cut it off while killing other key dignitaries, including the Canadian Prime Minister. Sure, Gerard saves him but not our guy. Anywayz, the President is taken (tee hee) and Gerard must get him back.

The motivations were shaky this time, and unlike the first, it's not as much a contained movie. All of central London becomes his locale, as Mike Banning (Butler) must fight his way to  the stronghold of the terrorist. Do we ever remember the actual motivations of the Bad Guys? Does anyone remember why Hans Gruber took over the Nakitomi Building? Anywayz, Banning shoots, explodes and fights his way to the centre and saves his President again.

If not for Butler's charm, I really had no reason to see this movie. OK ok, I still like city destruction. And this one was disaster movie like in its display as the collateral damage is much hidden. It didn't feel as personal as the first. (9:50)

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Victor Frankenstein, 2015, Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin) -- download

McGuigan was once considered to be the next Guy Richie, which is both disingenuous (he also did superhero movie Push) and insulting consider Richie's state these days. But here he is helming the movie that was supposed to be the next in line for the Universal Monster Movie franchise. We have the completely forgotten Wolfman, the maligned Dracula Untold and now we get a Frankenstein movie, but not at all about The Monster but about The Man. And its as much comedy, as it is drama. It is never horror nor action.  Weird.

[DC: Aaaaand we forget this one as well, as The Mummy comes out soon to Start the Universal Monsters Franchise]

I honestly want to join the camp that believed this movie should have been called Igor, because it is really about him. Daniel Radcliffe plays a circus hunchback being abused by his employers / owners when he is rescued by madman student Victor F. Victor has recognized something great about Igor and after he spirits the young man away, he points out that Igor is not a hunchback at all. In possibly the most revolting scene I have ever watched in a A List movie, Victor points out the massive cyst on Igor's back and drains it by hand. With the addition of one back brace, a cleanup and a nice suit, Igor becomes a man about town. And Victor's assistant.

Victor is hated by students and teachers alike, and his father Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance). He has been experimenting where people shouldn't and Inspector Moriarty (Andrew Scott) is determined to reveal the ungodly nature of his experiments. When you see the monkey, you might agree with him. But Victor needs to make his monster, to prove his father and the world wrong. Alas, Igor begins to suspect that doing this might just be.... wrong.

What I didn't get about this movie is how it tried so hard to be grim and funny at the same time. And there was no way this could connect to any coming movies. It was just... odd. (9:55)

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American Ultra, 2016, Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) -- Netflix

The premise of this movie is rather familiar fun -- a well trained assassin/spy/hitman/gun-fu expert is hidden in plain sight as a stoner kid (Jesse Eisenberg) working at an all night convenience store in the middle of rural nowhere America. He doesn't know what he is. He is an impressive stoner that really wants to take his similarly stoner GF (Kristen Stewart) on a trip but has massive panic attacks when he tries to enact the plan. She understands, but you can see the pain in her.

And then, out of the blue (its always out of the blue) he is triggered and takes down two trained agents. He is triggered but he doesn't awake to who he is. What he is, is a deactivated American agent hidden away until they need him, or they need to get rid of him. The latter bit is in play here, as a ladder climbing CIA flunky (Topher Grace) decides to clean up the failed hidden spy plan by killing Eisenberg. Topher's rival, who worked closely in the plan, fully triggers Mike (Eisenberg) to allow him to protect himself.

Weird; not sure why I watched this because I am rather not fond of the two leads. Topher is always a fun, manic bad guy but combining stoner personalities with two people I don't like surely would lead to a movie I would not like?  Lo, behold -- I liked it ! It is well played out, well scripted and artfully playful. There is wit and heart behind how the mains are handled and even Stewart is likeable. And, of course, who wouldn't want to watch Walton Goggins play another looney tunes bad guy? The Laugher is probably my favourite of his characters, even his bit role from the Bourne movies. (9:23)

[DP] So far, I am not hitting a full 10 mins before I get distracted by the clock and have to stop short.

MI-5, 2015, Bharat Nalluri (The Crow: Salvation) -- Netflix

Straight To, this is a generic spy movie done by... waitasec, the guy who did The Crow: Salvation way back when?  Wow, I guess this guy is still working after all this time. Good for him.

Anywayz, John Snow (Kit Harrington) comes to us as a disenfranchised MI-5 agent tasked by a disgraced MI-5 leader (generic British TV guy #132, Peter Firth) to help clear his name and catch the Bad Guy Walter O'Brien (Elyes Gabel). He gets some help from Tuppence Middleton and a familiar cast of other British regulars.

This movie wants to be Bond or Bourne but is really more tailored to look like those popular British MI-5 TV shows, which is not surprising consider one of the most popular is called Spooks and this movie is called Spooks: The Greater Good in Britain. Is it a spin-off? Who knows. But anywayz, there is global travel, a skilled but disenchanted agent, assassination attempts, old white guys with shadowy pasts and lots of gun play. What there isn't much of is originality.

Google google. Oh! So it is based on the TV show, so at least I caught that look n feel. But its funny, because I don't have much more to say about the movie because it was MONTHS ago that I saw it and I don't have much of a feel for it anymore. It's weird, because it keeps on merging in my head with another movie that will end up in another of the 10 for 10 segments, again about disenfranchised agents, one with Pierce Brosnan called The November Man. (9:20)

The Huntsman: Winter's War, 2016, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan (visual effects guy) -- download

OK, I should have seen this in the theatre, because you are probably aware I am a fan of the first one. And yes, The Huntsman who is the character played by Chris "Thor" Hemsworth also played a Ranger NPC in one of my D&D games. Anywayz, it just never happened and we ended up downloading it as soon as it appeared online.

This should have been a prequel proper, as the Evil Queen died in the first, and to be honest, from all the trailers I assumed it was. But no, its not. It is a sequel to the first, despite it depending a lot on a lot of prequel based details.

In this one, The Huntsman has clearly forgotten his love for Snow White (Kristen Stewart) who does not appear in the movie at all, so they decide to explore his connection to his dead wife, the wife whose death left him a slovenly drunk in the first movie. We knew he was a disaffected soldier, but what we didn't know is that he was a soldier in the army of the Evil Queen's (Charlize Theron) sister, the Winter Queen Freya (Emily Blunt) along with his wife Sara (Jessica Chastain).

There is a weird weird prequel backstory where Huntsman and Sara are children captured by the Queens and trained to be ninja samurai ranger soldiers in this Not Earth fairy tale world. At some point in their future they rebel and Sara is killed, while he is thought killed as well. Lo, Sara is also not dead and when we are tossed back to the sequel, she hates her husband because he left her. And now she is tasked with killing the rebels who killed Freya's sister and her army.

This one tries to repeat the beats of the first, again by including CGI enhanced dwarves and some magic and some Ranger style fighting. Jessica Chastain is not a good immediate choice for this character, but to be honest, she can make just about anything believable these days so I went along with her. She will also probably show up as an NPC in one of my games.

Not much else stuck but that they had to really push hard to get Theron back as an Evil Queen who, well who ends up fighting against her sister. I guess Theron is the Eviller Queen. Movie ends up happily ever after but still forgets Snow White is alive. (10:26)

Tracks, 2013, John Curran (We Don't Live Here Anymore) -- Netflix

Walk across the desert. Its something I would love to do, well if my feet would start to cooperate with me again. Walking used to be a great therapy for me; I could do it for hours. Then I (or retail) ruined it. I don't enjoy walking as much as I used to, whether my feet are working or not.

Tracks is the Australian Wild.  It is about a woman trying to truly discover herself by walking a good distance. Except that Robyn Davidson is not taking an established hiking trail; she is crossing a massive Australian wasteland to the ocean. Why? Don't quite remember why and if I say it has something to do with her mother or family, I fear I am more remembering the Cheryl Straid story. But it was family related, definitely about personal discovery.

The biggest difference is that this is the 70s. Maybe self discovery was at its height back then, but the idea of wandering off in a direction because you could was not entirely there. There is something to say for her white privilege taking a part in contributing to her success. She wanders off at the beginning to learn about camels from a man who raises camels. Camels are good if you are going into a desert, even if that desert is Australia's west. But without the privilege she was born into, could she have done what she did? Doubt it.

While she is walking, or riding, Kylo Ren chases her down. First he is doing a story for National Geographic, but soon he is in love with her. Mia Wasikowska is Robyn, always the reserved beauty without all the trapping of Hollywood. She is convincing as the woman who is just going to do this, despite what men think women can do. Even when she bumps into despair, she continues. At that point, what else can she do. But with the friendly help of some Aboriginal men who accept her journey, despite being a woman, she gets to the ocean. A bit more brown for her efforts.

So, what? What did she gain, what did she learn? We never really know. This is about the journey. We don't get the benefit of Cheryl Straid's remembrances and by the time we are deep in Robyn's story, we are there in the moment, which is really all we need to be in. (9:57)

Survivor, 2015, James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) -- download

What movie was this again? Oh yeah, another Straight To thriller from Britain. This one has Pierce Brosnan and Milla Jovovitch. Milla is a security officer working for the American Embassy or Consulate in London. She is set to go to a party, but gets delayed by something present related and BOOM the place is blown to bits. The party was for her coworker Bill, and Bill was actually tagged to set her up to be in the explosion, because she was so good at her job monitoring visas into the US. They end up trying to frame her for the explosion.

So, Milla is on the run and she still needs to investigate the explosion and why her own coworker tried to have her killed. That brings the bomb maker, Pierce known as The Watchmaker, into play. He is named because he is a well known hitman. Pierce seems to like the idea of playing skilled assassins. Which works for me, since I had him as my James Bond RPG main character.

Milla ends up chasing him back to the US, in a pseudo-Bourne style international chase. She has determined they were trying to get Brosnan into the US so he could set off a very large bomb in NYC's Times Square during the New Year's Eve festivities. She has to find him and kill him.

This was decently done, but I so easily tire of these movies that want to be better, but don't really know how. C'mon folks, make a new style thriller that doesn't try to be a Bourne mimic. Let's find another style and roll it out, don't recreate just create.

Milla does these rolls well, being able to absorb the action and the drama well. Of course, Brosnan does a serviceable job. Everyone else is .... supporting. I don't even remember any names or faces, but for Robert Forster, the 60s 70s actor that Quentin Tarantino resurrected. Oh, and Dylan McDermott. (10:34; most of it trying to recall details)

Open Grave, 2013, Gonzalo López-Gallego (Apollo 18) -- download

This was supposed to be a Days of Halloween choice but ended up being seen much later. Its weird, but I always mixed up this movie, in my head, with the Italian schlock horror Cemetery Man and even envisioned that Sharlto Copley was doing a remake / reboot of that old movie. But no, its not even remotely related not even in plot or style. The only thing they have in relation is a main character in a pit with dead bodies. And I cannot even say in confidence that Cemetery Man has such a scene.

So, yeah, Sharlto wakes up in a pit full of bodies. He doesn't know why he is there. He doesn't remember much. Not even who he is. But he yells and screams until someone shows up and tosses down a rope. He is pulled out, dragged back to a house full of a bunch of people who also don't remember who they are. They argue, they fight, they wander the house looking for clues as to who they are and why he was in a pit full of dead people.

I loved it. The tension, the questions, the worry and mystery. I have always loved locked room movies.

They continue by wandering the environs around the house, a sort of forested waste land empty of people or civilization. They find ruins, ruins locked up but a kid hiding within. More mysteries grow up, more bits are revealed but only a bit of memory comes up in flashes of the past. As time progresses and paranoia and violence continues, they run into even more violent strangers, a sort of fast zombie emerging from the memory loss plot.

This turned out to be a wonderful post-apocalyptic flick and zombie plague combined. Copley is great, his paranoia and fear palpable. I realized with this movie that I am a fan of the guy, and someday I have to go on and on about Powers the Sony TV show adaptation of one of my favourite comics. The guy has done a lot I have enjoyed after  the very South African heritage of District 9. (9:46)

Warcraft, 2016, Duncan Jones (Source Code) -- download

OK, ok. Everyone knows Warcraft for World of Warcraft which in video game years, is already an ancient idea. We played the MMO for years, and I rather enjoyed the world it was set in. But I also played the isometric strategy game waaaaay back in the PC days when it was about peons and poking sheep. Not that way you pervert, but poking them until they explode. Again, not that way pervert.

I am still weirded out when they take a franchise that was super popular almost 10 years ago and suddenly get around to making a movie of it. I am also weirded out more by the idea that Duncan Jones of Moon and Source Code helmed the movie. In today's era of Assigned Directors I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised, but hadn't he already setup he could do a good Hollywood thriller when left alone? Anywayz, I was also worried that this would be studio meddling out the wazoo. I wasn't disappointed in that aspect, as this is an incredibly unbalanced movie that seems more about setting up a franchise of its own than being concerned with making a decent standalone movie. Remember Producers, if you want an example of perfect standalone movies that launch a phenomena, you need to look no further than Iron Man.

Again, surprisingly, this one reaches back to the plots from the early games as they explain how the Orcs (wonderfully CGI orcs) arrive in the world of Azeroth (human world) from their own Draenor. The orcs have destroyed their own world with bad magic and are raiding into lush, new ones to survive as a species. Their initial incursion kills lots of humans and the King has to respond.

Meanwhile one orc Durotan has realized their own dark wizard is responsible for the downfall of Draenor and wishes to stop him before he does the same to Azeroth. For some reason, not all orcs are ravaging monsters like we game players know, and maybe its all because of the influence of the dark magic. Which, if Durotan succeeds here, then won't that make the coming games/stories/movies moot? No matter, well established drama and tortured main characters on both sides.

So, this movie establishes that the melding of CGI and human characters can be done. This was the science fiction future I was told about as a kid, and this is the first real full example of it. Too bad its such a sloppy, ill conceived, obviously meddled with production of a movie. (10:02)

Zombie^5

I watch a lot of zombie movies. I didn't realize how many till five queued up in my To Be Written list. Some are good, most are bad. Very very few are great. The genre is mostly played out but it will always linger in the back of the horror genre, at least until The Walking Dead finishes its run. Until then, media will continue to milk its inky black blood.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, 2016, Burr Steers (17 Again) -- download

P&P&Z tackles something most zombie fiction doesn't even attempt to -- what were the creatures before they died / changed and how much of them is left over when they become such? Oddly enough, it is often the comedies that explore this aspect. The serious ones always stick to the unsettling aspects of the horde.

The movie, one that Marmy hates in concept but will never see, comes from the book which is a tongue in cheek retooling of the Jane Austen novel.  It was literally developed title down -- here's the title, write a book for it! Insert zombies & ninjas into the Austen milieux! While definitely full on rotting tongue in decaying cheek, it is a serious movie; not comedy.

Like in World War Z, the apocalypse begins in China. And spreads quickly, on trade ships, around the world. Post war, England has to be ever watchful of another rising and has trained its youth in the art of combat. Wealthy go to Japan, while the middle class only get Chinese training. The poor get eaten.

The movie intertwines the core Austen story with an uglier plot, one where someone wants the rise of the undead to succeed. As I mentioned, the zombies retain their memories and intelligence; they just are overwhelmed by a desire to eat your face and yes, they rot. Some worse than others. Some people believe the undead can be redeemed, through religion or reason. Others believe they are the next step in mankind, and are leading the dead to organize. Thus we get an OK action movie, to foil the evil plot, mixed up with a love story.

Pandemic, 2016, John Suits (The Scribbler) -- download

Meanwhile this gives us just another tired concept zombie flick. The concept at play? The video game motif -- we see everything through helmet cams, all the action at the end of a FPS gun. There's never been a good use of this. I will tell you how well Hardcore Henry does it when I finish watching that movie.

The sub-genre is infection with defined stages. Stage one is common cold-like symptoms; the final stage has a raving eating machine awakening from a death-like coma. There are no walking dead, just people with a disease. This is the most tragic of the zombie sub-genres, as so many have to die just so uninfected humans can stay alive.

This is a terrible movie that badly mixes personal drama (i just want to get back to my daughter!) with... wait, that's not this movie that is the last bad zombie flick I watched, Re-Kill, which also had a tired concept at the core of its plot.  So, this movie IS about personal drama and that's pretty much all. Dr. Lauren, who is really not a doctor at all but someone who stole the credentials of one to join a team, to hunt down her family, sacrifices all of said team (including Alfie Allen, redeemed villain is his schtick now) to reunite with her daughter. Considering she pretty much destroys the protective detail of the place she wants to get her daughter into, there is not very much hope in the end.

I was never sure why the movie spent so much time on the prologue scenes, setting up the stages of infection and some mystery around the final stage. Sure, we get some [REC] style night-vision camera shots of a monstrous final form that sniffs us out, but it's not really at the core of the movie. Other than the title, the pandemic is barely explored. This is the issue of low budget Straight To movies, in that there are ideas but nobody has the money nor the inclination to explore.

And gawds, I hate when the posters have nothing to do with the movie.

[REC] 3: Génesis, 2012, Paco Plaza ([REC]) -- Netflix

Speaking of [REC], I did [REC] 2 back during this blog's first run of 31 Days of Horror.  Paco, co-director along with Jaume Balagueró, did all three movies. The third is considered the "origin" movie, thus the tag Génesis. As in, the genesis of the infection, not biblical reference to Genesis, despite what the character in the movie says. Really, this is more a Revelations thing.

The last movie ended revealing demonic influence on the evil zombie virus thing. It's rather unique in current zombie fiction but was the primary source back in the 80s/90s proto-zombie movies.  At a wedding, inside a walled compound, the infection, or demonic influence, slowly takes over the uncle of bride Clara until the dancing is in full swing. Then he bites another and BOOM, raving, biting, killing monsters in bad wedding attire. There is a mix of the sub-genre -- are they dead or merely infected? Well they are getting their throats torn out, before they turn, so a little of column A and a little of column B ? The fun thing is when you look in the mirror and see demonic, cadaverous creatures!

Yeah, this movie is fun. It tosses the tense, paranoid aspects of the first two movies on its head for a butt-kicking zombie-killing romp, including gearing-up scenes. Clara only wants to be reunited with her new husband Koldo. And no bloody scary wedding attendee will stop her! Chainsaws, swords and guns are picked up and dropped as the two wedded ones, and their tag-along crew of survivors, attempt to reunite. Meanwhile, a priest has discovered if you read prayers over the loud speakers it disables the zombies. Not that it really helps people much, but it does move the plot along and expand on the core conceit of the sub-genre. And, alas, it does not help the two lovers after they find each other.

Cell, 2016, Tod Williams (Paranormal Activity 2) -- download

This one was based on the only real zombie fiction that Stephen King did, but it approaches the genre in much the same way Guillermo del Toro did vampires -- through the use of a unique viral infection. The virus in question is passed through the cellular network and leaves behind only violent, mindless creatures. King wrote this over ten years ago, just before the era of touch-screen smartphones, but after the full assimilation of cell phones in general. It's not a comment of the overabundance of cellular communication, but a blatant exploitation of the paranoia around it.

The movie follows a handful of survivors, people who were not using their phones at the time the infection was transmitted. Clay Riddell, played by Straight To king John Cusack only wants to get back to his wife & son. We get a typical road story with not so typical infection background material. We also get a muddled ending without any closure.

It's a terrible terrible movie. Cusack and Samuel L Jackson *ahem* phone in their acting and the convoluted & mysterious conspiracy plot by Stephen King is inserted between incredibly boring scenes of people walking in silence or babbling on about stuff we are supposed to care about, but really don't -- character development!  The director almost seemed to think he was directing The Road, but without the great weight of the source material. But are we surprised? There is already a track record of terrible material being spawned from Stephen King books. For every five that are rotten, we get one that is OK and even rarely, a great one.

P.S. What is up with the movie posters? They are all uniformly terrible. And why attack choppers?

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Christopher Landon (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones) -- Netflix

Pulling a night of video store movie flipping on Netflix led us to this one, which is weirdly called Scouts vs Zombies on their titling. I guess the actual title is too much of a mouthful? Anywayz, this is mid-budget comedy hinged on the idea that if they are always prepared, are they prepared for the zombie apocalypse? Short answer -- no. They require a butt kicking cocktail waitress in a pushup bra to encourage them.

This is a movie meant for teenage boys. Along with the core idea of long term friendships, there are tons and tons of immature references -- some funny, some cringe worthy but most just *yawn* on the level of fart jokes. The cocktail waitress is supposed to be some sort of empowerment of women comment, but the actress can barely run in her boots and once her shotgun runs out, she depends again on the teen boys. Really, she was just an excuse to look at cleavage. And a pseudo older woman fantasy?

The zombies in question? Boring, run of the mill fast moving, eating machines. Like most of the low grade examples of the genre, they really don't matter, as the are only antagonist fodder around the jokes and action scenes. But the idea that a bunch of teenage boys would have no issues destroying the entire class of bullies gone zombies is worth a smirk or two. At least they do attempt to rescue some of their classmates.

It makes you wonder why I am watching these movies, when I am pretty assured most will be terrible. I guess, even at their worst, I am comfortable enough and familiar with the beats and tropes of the genre. I know the rise of the tension well, and even at their worst, they touch on it. At my core, I am terribly frightened by the horde but aside from The Walking Dead few examples of the genre touch on this horror for me.

Am I looking for jewels in the trough? Or do I just like what I like...

DC Animated times 4

Son of Batman (2014, d. Ethan Spaulding) - netflix
Justice League: War (2014, Jay Oliva) - netflix
Batman: Assault on Arkham (2014, Jay Oliva, Ethan Spaulding) - netflix
Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts (2015, Butch Lukic) - Teletoon

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DC Entertainment's direct-to-video animation wing has been steadily cranking out animated features for almost a decade now, with seemingly more and more productions being released each year.  Despite being a pretty huge DC fan (well, I was anyway) and was a fairly religious watcher of their animated output (particularly their Batman and Superman animated runs leading into Justice League in the 90's and early 2000's), it didn't take long before I not only stopped buying their new animated movies but began ignoring them altogether.

Though originally starting as original stories, or at least semi-original stories inspired loosely by existing story lines, the run of DC Animated movies quickly devolved into lazily adapting existing stories.  I had read most of the stories being adapted (or I purposely skipped them for disliking the creative team) so I had no real need to invest any more time or money into these animated features.  The features I had seen to that point, like Justice League: New Frontier, Green Lantern: First Flight or All-Star Superman just didn't feel very satisfying.  They took long form stories and compressed them into a rougly 75-minute animated feature and that compression never seemed to serve the story particularly well.  The fact that there was no continuity between features and the voice casts would change dramatically from one to the next also didn't help maintain my interest.  The biggest problem I saw at the time was they were adapting fairly recent stories, one which were already well enough told and available, when they could have gone back into DC's deep, deep repositories and found some vintage stories and updated them for modern audiences but in a new medium.

The final straw for me was when The New 52 hit (wherein DC Comics cancelled their entire line of books and relaunched their entire universe with different and in some cases radically altered versions of their characters) and the DC Animated features coming out were reflecting these so very recent stories.  I was already quite disinterested in the New 52.  Animated adaptations seemed like the furthest thing I was interested in.

So, after so long, why the recent spell of DC Animated watching?  I'm not exactly sure. Partly a burning desire to watch something with superheroes in it, and having only a shorter amount of time to spare, and even a little curiosity.

Of the four I watched in the past two weeks, Son of Batman is perhaps the most egregious example of what I dislike about these animated features. It runs at a stilted pace, the characters don't feel connected to one another at all, and the animation gets lazy (when the man-bats spew out of the ocean there seems like hundreds of them taking to skies as the same animation repeats itself, but moments later it only looks like a couple dozen actually flying out there, with what looks like the same image of Man-bat repeated over and over but at different sizes to fake out some depth).  There's a lot of animated nonsense, things happening on screen to create action or visual drama but are utterly pointless, and a lot of egregious death but with no real sense of any relevance to death.

  This film is a very loose adaptation of Grant Morrison's initial Batman run from a few years back (though he's not even given story credit) which introduces Bruce Wayne's son, Damian, into the DCU.  It was a storyline I wasn't very fond of, but this is a poorer rendition of it.  The voice casting isn't bad (Jason O'Mara makes a decent Batman) but again, it just doesn't feel like the actors are relating to one another (in all likelihood they're recording their lines separately) and there no warmth at all to it.  Plus, they didn't even have Damien do his trademark teeth-sucking "tt".

But it was watching Justice League: War and noting Jason O'Mara again as Batman that I realized that this current spate of DC Animated movies was looking to tie together as a cohesive universe, using a consistent voice team and  a small stable of directors).  The "War" story is based off the first story arc of the New 52 Justice League, by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee.  That storyline also served as a complete reintroduction to the DC Universe for the readers at the time, so there was a lot of groundwork it was trying to lay.  A lot of that ground-building spills into this feature, such that there's no sense of familiarity between the characters (Flash and Green Lantern have met prior though), everyone gets an introduction but few get an actual story (pretty much only Cyborg and Shazam have what could be described as a character arc here).

War isn't terrible, it's almost saved by a surprisingly quippy Green Lantern (a role usually reserved for the Flash), but at the same time it doesn't really fulfill the needs of a movie very well.  It feels like a pilot episode of a new program, introducing things, but unsure of itself or where it's really going to wind up.  The post-credits sequence hint at Aquaman's arrival, leading into the Justice League: Throne of Atlantis feature released this year (based off another comic-book arc from the same series).  Likewise Son Of Batman received a sequel this year in Batman vs Robin, again loosely adapting events from the Morrison run, and followed by Batman: Bad Blood to come next year, delving into Morrison's Batman and Robin run wherein Dick Grayson takes over as Batman and Damian's mentor.

Stepping aside from adaptation though, there's Batman: Assault on Arkham which actually takes place in the Batman/Arkham video game universe, something I'm largely unfamiliar with.  This film is largely a Suicide Squad movie, with Batman taking a supporting role, and what it does so brilliantly is manage to navigate all three of the DC Comics Universe, the classic DC Animated Universe and the Arkham videogame universe almost effortlessly.  Returning is the ultimate Batman voice actor, Kevin Conroy, as well as CCH Pounder returning as Amanda Waller, while Troy Baker does a mean impersonation of Mark Hamill's Joker, as does Hynden Walch of Harley Quinn pulling back the DC Animated vibe into it, while the look and feel draws completely from the video games (though it's not nearly as dark, the character designs, including Batman's weird pupils, are here), and overall it feels like a Suicide Squad story (more modern Squad than classic '80's but still not bad).

Son of Batman was a pretty bloody affair, but it was also blindly so.  As characters wound their way through piles of ninjas, cleaving them with swords, or tearing down man-bats, they were so faceless that they were the utmost of expendable, and their fights were meaningless.  In Assault on Arkham, we're watching bad people (the Suicide Squad is a team of criminals who are forced into serving the government to perform dirty tasks for which they need maximum deniability) invade a maximum security criminal asylum in order to achieve their objective (finding a particular Maguffin) but obviously things aren't clean and the bad people start killing prison guards.  Though sometimes played for laughs, each guard killed feels like a tiny punch in the gut.  We're along for the ride with Deadshot, Harley and company, and as such we're rooting for their success, in a way, but at the same time, it's almost better if they're stopped.   Which is why Batman flits around in the background.  By having a real hero partiicpate in the proceedings it continually reminds us just how bad the people at the center of the story are.

Assault on Arkham is a definite "mature audiences" picture, and not for the kids.  There's excessive violence and plenty of swearing and it feels quite natural.  It feels like an "R" rated production that isn't held back by anything, allowing the creative team to tell the story they set out to tell.  That it's an original story is also definitely in its favor as it allows for an "anything can happen" vibe.  Set loose from the constraints of any continuity it really does manage to surprise and occasionally shock, but it also entertains quite well to.  The action sequences are not only well done, but inventive, with more than a few moves that I've never seen before (Batman's facepalm to Harley was a classic).  Quite easily the best of the DC Animated features to date, one I'd more than likely revisit multiple times.

Finally, there's Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts, the first of a new line of direct-to-video movies meant to promote and sell toys, namely the awfully ugly Batman Unlimited line.  Normally a new toy line gets an accompanying Saturday morning or weekday cartoon to keep the toys fresh in kids minds, so this tactic of forcing them to buy it is kind of counter-intuitive.  It presumes buy-in on the toy line in advance, rather than promoting it.

This new Unlimited series takes place in an alternate world (well, even more alternate than usual superhero stories), one where there's flying cars and all building seem to be sky scrapers and the police aren't that keen on superheros.  It's sort of a Blade Runner/Fifth Element  kind of vibe.  This story finds Batman, Nightwing, Red Robin, Flash, Green Arrow (the latter two included more than likely because of their prominent TV series) squaring off against the Penguin and a cadre of animal-themed villains (including Cheetah and Killer Croc) and a trio of robotic animals, as they try to suss out what is their master plan.

Though the futuristic setting is kind of ho-hum, and the costume designs are largely terrible, this wasn't actually that bad of a feature.  It's pretty juvenile compared to most other DC Animated features, but that's for the best given what its purpose is.  The characters, even Batman, are pretty light on their toes, so there's a lot of fun quipping and creative fights happening on screen (plus the Flash is very much a Wally West-style Flash, so that's welcome any day), and the overall scenario is kind of silly in a big, grand, 1960's suppervillain manner, so it pretty much demands that you don't take it too seriously.  Good for the kids, for sure

Overall, beyond Assault on Arkham these DC Animated features haven't exactly inspired me to dig deeper into the back catalog, but now with such easy access as they crop up more and more on Netflix, I just might when I'm bored or short on time.