I Saw This!! - Nextflix Fix

Daredevil (season 1)

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (pilot +2 episodes)

Sense8 (season 1)
Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp (8 episodes)

Master of None (season 1)
With Bob and David (4 episodes)
Jessica Jones (season 1)


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If we've learned anything from the past two years of Marvel Studios' television efforts, it's that it operates best when confined.  Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to challenge the audience to enjoy it week to week, like some sort of sick dare.  The demands of filling out a 22-episode order while dovetailing in precisely-timed plot elements from the cinematic world is definitely more hassle than it's been worth.  Even with focused story lines it seems like an aimless show, and for some time Marvel's television wing looked dire.   Then Marvel's Agent Carter came along with an 8-episode order, tightly plotted with clear focus, and was one of the most exciting and entertaining shows of the year (if not exactly a ratings blockbuster).  Daredevil season 1 appeared on Netflix in May with a 13-episode order and played out more like a mini-series or, well, 13-hour movie rather than a TV show.  It was definitely built for binge-watching, as is the Netflix way.

If each of Marvel's films are supposed to tackle a particular genre (Ant-Man is a heist film, Guardians of the Galaxy a space opera, Captain America: Winter Soldier a 70's spy thriller, etc) then Daredevil follows that lead by being a heavy, HBO-style, R-rated crime drama, and it does it very, very well.  While the first season does act, in a way, as an origin story, it's decidedly not the focus.  The first episode opens with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) already in disguise, battling on the streets and docks of Hell's Kitchen, while trying to establish a respectable law firm with his best buddy, Foggy Nelson (Eldon Hensen).  The tagline could easily be "what he can't do in the courtroom, he does on the streets", but that's terribly lame and thankfully they didn't use it.

The show manages to worm its way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe quite easily, by noting that Hell's Kitchen has fallen on hard times once more (after years of gentrification) in the two years since the alien invasion of New York that occurred in The Avengers.  A coalition of crime lords has taken up residency and sliced up the neighbourhood, but it's a fragile arrangement which breaks easily when a masked vigilante starts to expose their weaknesses to each other. Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) negotiates these frailties and establishes himself as Kingpin, despite wishing to stay in the shadows.  The show could have so very easily painted Fisk as a larger-than-life villain, but D'Onofrio finds an extremely vulnerable core for the character.  He's a man who's doubtlessly smart and ruthlessly brutal, but he's got a tortured past, and a new love in his life who, more than anyone and more than anything, he wants her respect.  How the show negotiates Fisk, and just as much how it validates his relationship with Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) is its most deft and brilliant touch.  Vanessa is not in the dark about what Fisk does, and she's not an accomplice either.  She's a woman who understands power and is willing to support the man she loves in his misguided campaign to remake Hell's Kitchen into more than it ever has been.

Murdock and Nelson are joined in their firm by Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) as their clerk, whose own experiences with the corrupt landlords of Hell's Kitchen draws her deeper into the conspiracies of the criminal underworld.  She gets some assistance from Ben Urich (a fantastic Vondie Curtis-Hall) but knows she's way in over her head.  The show gets a lot of credit for showing Karen's resiliency as well as giving her character-defining moments that are completely separate from the main character.  She gets a really nice arc.  Foggy's character moments are more defined by his relationships with Matt and Karen, but the episode where Foggy has to deal with discovering Matt's vigilante activities, his supernatural abilities, and face a history of lies is one of the absolute best dramatic hours of the year, and certainly a trope of superhero storytelling that rarely gets explored with such depth and emotion.

The series sells itself beautifully at the end of episode two, with a knock-down, drag-out, one-take, no-cuts hallway brawl between Daredevil and a gang of thugs. I'm certain it takes inspiration from a similar scene in Old Boy, and perhaps the confined-space fights of Snowpiercer and The Raid 2.  Through flashbacks with Matt Murdock as a young boy, we learn of his relationship with his father, a boxer who wasn't the greatest but could always take a punch and would always finish a fight standing), so the Daredevil mantra is "get back up, never quit", and boy does the show ever show Matt taking a beating.

The show deals with many themes: fathers and sons, friendship, secret lives, and the power of the truth, among others, and they're all quite deftly handled.  If the show falls flat at any point, it's in its final moments, the rather unclimactic final battle between Daredevil (finally in full costume) and the Kingpin.  Its an event that seems like an afterthought, occurring in a plain back alley without much flare at all.  A big action setpiece wasn't exactly called for, but something a bit more elaborate, a bit more in scale of the show was certainly more deserved.


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I have no shortage of love for stories and characters.  If I could do nothing else in life but read and watch and consume, I would actually be quite content.  I endeavor to do so, often, but as real life busies up, investing too much thought and time into a character or a world becomes more and more difficult.  So when something captures my attention and makes me not just love it, but fall in love with it, that's a pretty special moment.  I kind of had that earlier this year with Peggy Carter, which put on display the character's immense strength that Captain America: The First Avenger never truly let resonate.  The show also gave glimpses into the character's vulnerability (not weaknesses per se), showing that she wasn't Thor or the Hulk or even Captain America, but still a regular (if exceptional) person. 

Phryne Fisher is very much a character in the same vein as Peggy (or perhaps it's vice-versa), a tough as nails, whip-smart, resourceful, witty, utterly charming and disarmingly attractive (moreso because of her personality) woman who, like Peggy, exists in an era where women were almost unanimously deemed the inferior sex and could only contribute to society in a limited manner.  Why Peggy butts heads with the establishment, in no real position to affect dramatic institutional change, Phryne is wealthy enough that the establishment at least has to pay attention to her, if only to humor her (but even by humoring her, she gets exactly what she wants).

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is, on the one hand, a by-the-numbers Poirot or Miss Marple-like light detective series based off a character who originally appeared in a modern series of novels.  On the other hand, it takes place in the early 1920's in Melbourne and deals with stories that era-authentic novels wouldn't touch, such as mixed race marriages, homosexuality and abortion (that's just in the first three episodes).  It's a tad revisionist, in a way, but it's also heartening to see stories such as these which take a more liberal standpoint than society at the time was actually willing to consider.  That these stories still echo the modern day just highlights their ingeniousness in construction (if not exactly groundbreaking execution).

I would call Phryne an epic woman, not just a detective but a real Jacqueline-of-all-trades, in the James Bond fashion.  Her roots in the world run far and deep, and she can not only handle an airplane and her liquor, but she can handle herself.  She's glamorous and sexy but unafraid to get her hands (or clothes) dirty.  She unapologetically enjoys recreational sex and drugs, which implies a cavalier attitude, but the truth is she cares deeply about people and society, even when she doesn't agree with them.

Essie Davis radiates intense amounts of charisma every moment she's on screen.  She commands the screen so resoundingly that as unbelievable as Phryne Fisher should be, she makes her not only work, but captivating.  The rest of the cast is charming as well, a solid supporting ensemble to the last, but there's no doubt that Davis is the star of the show, and, along with her leading turn in the sleeper hit The Babadook, she should be crashing Hollywood any minute now as the next big bad in a Marvel movie or starting an action franchise of her own.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries only holds the barest thread of ongoing narrative, as such it doesn't command a binge watch.  It's more of an apertif, an amuse-bouche, something sweet and flavourful to savor on occasion.

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When Sense8 debuted, it did so to a lot of confusion.  Advance reviews were middling at best because reviewers seemed to have been given only the first three episodes of the globe-hopping sci-fi epic, and it became utterly evident that the fourth episode was truly the series' lynchpin.  In that fourth episode the crux of the series is laid bare, the mythology explained and the threats were made real.  Even with that clarity, the show would still be a difficult one for many to grasp, as it played heavily with themes of gender and sexual identity, and asked its viewer to invest in a cast that honestly had never been presented before, all while toying with the science fictional concept of a group mind.  It's not an easy sell.  People coming into it based on the names attached -- Matrix creators Lana and Andy Wachowski, and Babylon 5's J. Michael Straczynski -- maybe were expecting something more pulpy, more space operatic, more fantastical, and surely there was some disappointment in that.

Yet Sense8 delivered roughly 12 hours of "television" (it's Netflix) that was rich and diverse in character and story, presenting an unfamiliar world (both real visions and made-up constructs) that took the viewer on a trip to different lands (from Mexico City to Nairobi to  Berlin to Mumbai) and into different cultures, which seemed just as much the point as the story it was telling.  Of equal importance was having a trans woman as one of the main characters (Nomi's story no doubt was particularly personal to Lana Wachowski).

The sexuality, particularly of the gay and trans characters, was prominently on display, almost to a point of not having much straight sex represented at all.  It's hard to say that it wasn't confrontational, showing Nomi and Amanita mid- and post-coitus, nor is it easy to think that showing an honest romantic and sexual relationship between Lito and Hernando wasn't a decided choice.  But the world is better for them, not only as titillation, but as habituation.  If we can get used to graphic violence as we have over the past few decades, then relatively truthful depictions of queer relationships should be just as easy.

For all its progressiveness, Sense8 isn't a flawless show.  There's elements of its international cast that seem reductive and stereotypical, as well, the show has a bit of difficulty juggling its ensemble episode-to-episode, while equally maintaining a consistent narrative.  Some of the characters have more engaging stories than others, though a lot of that seems to be in the eye of the viewer, as I've discovered in many conversations on the series.  But there's no doubt that by the end of episode 12, it feels like it finally found its footing, and "season 1" ends on what feels more like a mid-season break then truly the end of its first run.

Season 2 has been greenlit, and I await it with much anticipation

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I missed out on the sketch comedy of The State entirely.  It was a product of the mid-90's MTV original programming push (which also saw the likes of The Real World, The Ben Stiller Show, and Singled Out come to air), filling the gap as the outre sketch-com of record between the Kids in the Hall and Mr. Show with Bob and David.  But in Canada we didn't have MTV at that time, we had MuchMusic, which was (for better and worse) not the same thing.  I wasn't even aware of The State or its 11-member crew until I started delving into the comedy podcast surge circa 2009.  Then suddenly it seemed the influence of The State was everywhere.  Reno 9-11 was probably the most prominent, but faces and names like Ken Marino, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, David Wain, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black just kept cropping up over and over again, especially in those comedy podcasts.  I had barely, if ever, heard of these guys, and yet they were revered, legendary almost, and one of the repeated works of note was something called Wet Hot American Summer ("Wet Hot" for short).

When I finally got around to watching Wet Hot, I found it amusing, but not the groundbreaking comedy that it had been touted, and not something I went back to.  Yet, there was a charm to it -- a cast (which also included non-State players like Molly Shannon, Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce, rounded out by future celebs like Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks and Amy Pohler) that seemed fully invested in the bit (of 20 and 30-somethings playing high-school age camp counselors), and an absurdity that is both subversive and overt -- something that over time cemented itself in my mind as representative of the cult classic it had become.

The Netflix follow-up series, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, despite all my podcast listening, snuck up on me, a genuine surprise when I caught wind of its existence only a few weeks before its release.  No only was the entire cast returning, but it was expanding, ballooning out of control almost with guest shots from some of my favourite comedic actors and podcast personalities (H. Jon Benjamin, Michaela Watkins, Randall Park, Jordan Peele, Weird Al, Kristen Wiig) .  Yes, even those big time celebs - Banks, Cooper, Pohler, and Rudd - were back in, with cast member from Mad Men (Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Rich Sommer) joining the fray too.  Even if it was a trainwreck, it would still be a sight to behold.

It's anything but.  Certainly it's not everyone's cup of tea, but nearly fifteen years after the release of the original film, for the same cast to return to the same roles, in ostensibly a prequel is a delightful slice of mad genius. With eight half-hour episodes, First Day acts as ostensibly a four-hour movie rather than a TV series proper, and it features a wealth of comedic performers, writers, and directors at the height of their ability.  Even at 4 hours, it feels even more focused than the original Wet Hot and the narrative arc is thoroughly more satisfying.  It deftly manages to speckle itself with references to the original film without lazily relying upon "remember this" punchlines or stalling the film with in jokes that stifle the comedy.  I didn't have a fresh viewing of Wet Hot under my belt so most of the references flew over my head obliviously, not as curiously stilted lines.

Perhaps the most amazing feat of First Day is the way creators Wain and Showalter negotiated the cast, where obviously many of the bigger celebrities only had limited days to work on the film.  There are times the absence of a character on screen is felt, or the continuity of the narrative as it jumps between scenes and sets feels highly incongruous, but then that's also part of the absurdist charm.  When one of the goals is to create, cast, reherse, and perform a complex musical in the span of 8 hours, logic and time get thrown out the window.  Likewise, rationalizing these largely 40-something performers playing teenage counselors is also something one has to let go of, or rather appreciate the intent therein.

I revisited the original Wet Hot after watching First Day and found it a more rewarding experience as a result.  Unlike some comedies which tend to cannibalize their source material, First Day expands and enriches the ridiculous world of Camp Firewood.  The story of Wet Hot doesn't scream for more, but the experience certainly does.  It would be wise for Wain and Showalter to find another genre worth lovingly parodying, Christopher Guest style.

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Master of None creators Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang have created the perfect anti-cringe comedy. 
After Seinfeld emerged as one of the biggest TV comedies of all-time, the language of humour on TV changed.  With peers like The Larry Sanders Show and successors like Curb Your Enthusiasm and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the genre of "cringe comedy" has become a staple of television.  At its purest it's about awful people doing bad things or being involved in bad situations, both of which they should be smart enough to avoid.  With this kind of humour there's the inevitability, that the characters are going to get found out, that everything's going to fall apart, and in that tension of waiting for it to happen they find humour.

Almost every sit com treads in this style of comedy, though it's more often than not the single-camera comedies as opposed to the traditional 3-camera, "live in front of a studio audience", situation comedies that play deeper into the genre (the conventional sitcom generally wants you to like their characters, while a single camera comedy wants you to like them too, but also hate them just a little bit).  This expectation of things going wrong, of heightened comedic situations, is the norm on TV, which is what makes Master of None so intriguing.

 It's a show about nice people living normal lives, having conversations (sometimes mature, sometimes silly), exploring ideas and being almost 100% relatable even if they're in different careers, living in different cities, and having different cultural backgrounds.  It's a show about many things, but the key is understanding, and to have a central character, Ansari's Dev, actually show an aptitude for learning, growth, and change as a person is almost shocking in a world where sitcom characters generally need to be stagnate.

Ansari is one of the biggest touring stand-up comedians in North America, and having been a fan of his for over a decade now I've watch him evolved from a comic who had a delightful skewered view on observational (and sometimes political) comedy into someone with a genuine interest in society and how it works, examining the way people are different, the same, and how they connect on those grounds, as friends, lovers and enemies.  This perspective informs both Dev and the show as a whole.  Each of its 10 episodes is themed, from children to parents, dating to cohabitating, not always original topics but explored in the most unique of ways.  The inaugural episode, for instance, opens with Dev having sex (when's the last time...or the first time even...you've seen an Indian character on TV having a sexual relationship?) only to stop and worriedly proclaim that the condom broke.  This leads to a frank, yet funny, examination about what the fallout could be and whether taking the Plan B pill is the right decision (again, one waits for the cringe factor to arrive, never to appear).  From there Dev explores with his friends the idea of what it would like to be a dad, from the perspective of people who are in no stage of life to be parents.  The show then takes Dev and friends to a children's birthday party (where in a normal cringe comedy, the childless adults tend to make it an event to exhibit extreme self-centered behavour, here it's really an exploration of parenthood from outside eyes) and follows it up with Dev taking a friend's children out for a day around New York (again, where you're trained to wait for something bad to happen, like the kids running off, or getting hurt, here it's about Dev understanding how exhausting kids can be).  Even as the show explores this topic of kids and parenting, it's smart, insightful, but doesn't come to any pat, definite answers, but there's sincerity and some consolation in watching people explore those thoughts and ideas in an honest manner.

The show continues like this for its remaining nine episodes, exploring its themes with the same forthright nature.  The best episodes have a tremendous amount of heart, such as Dev and his friend Bryan, both first generation Americans, exploring their parents origins from India and Korea, having been afforded the luxury of detachment from  their parents hardships (Ansari's own mother and father play Dev's parents, and while they're not naturally gifted actors, they emit a tremendous amount of charm).  A later episode, titled "Indians on TV", explores the very issue of how Indian characters are portrayed on television, quite hilariously, but also with much provocation, calling out the industry for demanding any Indian-American actor use "the accent".  There's so many things happening here you just don't see on TV and done so in a manner that defies convention.

Despite tackling a new theme each episode, there is a through-line in the series of Dev's relationship with Rachel (the ridiculously adorable Noel Wells), as it goes from the inaugural episode's drunken hook-up to their fraught cohabitation.  The chemistry is amazing between Wells and Ansari, making it utterly easy to invest in their relationship, which results in one of the most rewarding romantic comedies in some time (but don't let "rom com" scare you off, it's more in the Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater style than a Katherine Heigl joint) .  At ten episodes, Master of None is too good to have this short a run.  I caught wind that more episodes are being written, and by all accounts it sounds like feedback for the show has been quite positive, so I'm hoping a second season (if not multiple seasons) is swiftly announced as this is a show with a voice that needs to be heard.  Plus it's got incredible style and great taste in music.

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I brought up Mr. Show with Bob and David earlier in relation to The State as seminal sketch comedy programs of the 1990s.  The implication there is I was on top of the Mr. Show show scene at the time, but truth is I largely came at it from behind, with the DVD releases in the early 2000s.  Not only wasn't I really invested in Mr. Show when it ran, but I'm not even certain I liked the show on DVD...not at first anyway.

Mr. Show was very conceptual comedy, and not necessarily an idea that universal.  They tended to be concepts that made creators Bob Odenkirk and David Cross laugh because they tweaked their particular skewered sense of comedy, pop culture and society.   It took me multiple viewings of Mr. Show's four-season run on DVD to really get the majority of it, but even then it was in large part thanks to the spectacular commentary tracks that I actually felt a part of the joke.  In those commentaries, Bob, David and their cast of writers and performers sat down and doled out stories behind the sketches which brought them to life in a way that they didn't have on their own.

This isn't to say that Mr. Show wasn't funny on its own, because it was, but the true depth of many of the sketches would only reveal themselves if you knew the points of reference or even the frame of mind of their creators.  Without the context, Cross, Odenkirk and company come across as alternately angry or silly, dishing out skit with bite, or ridiculous skits about people falling down (or sometimes just crude, base humour put into a context where its not usually found).

The four-episode Netflix reunion,  ...With Bob and David picks up from Mr. Show as if it hasn't missed a beat.  The majority of the cast and crew has gone on to do their own things -- with Odenkirk breaking out on Breaking Bad into Better Call Saul, Cross featuring in countless movies and shows not to mention his tremendous standup, Paul F. Tompkins having become one of podcast's premiere improv and character comedians, and Tom Kenny making a mint from voicing Spongebob amongst others -- they all come together to reunite and get back to the same vision they had before.  One would think that as they grew and changed as people that their comedy would be somewhat different, but it's pretty much the same.  It's barbed and ridiculous in equal measure, the types of characters one could expect (hateful, self centric people are commonly thrust into situations which they can only make more awkward) are plentiful. 

While the majority of sketches feel like par for the Bob and David course, there are a couple of standouts, including Better Roots, a filmed piece that finds its director whitewashing Alex Haley's roots to make slaves into "helpers" and make the white farm runners look like kind, generous employers (super funny dude Brandon Johnson gets a fantastic lead role here).  Another posits what the "Jew-run Hollywood" would look like if it were "Muslim-run Hollywood" instead.  While not outright hilarious, they are provocatively funny, and somehow feature a sensibility of smart and stupid in some common measure.

The 4-episode season is remarkably brisk, an over-before-it-began kind of feeling, but at the same time it does feel quite special to get this diverse range of talents together, including appearances from most of the original supporting cast (notably missing Jerry Minor, Sarah Silverman, and Jack Black).  There's a behind-the-scenes making-of "5th episode" that, like the audio commentaries on the DVD of yore, provide a peek into the process.  In one particularly delightful moment we see Cross' interview casually interrupted by Odenkirk as  imprompteu through a sketch idea for a few minutes.  It's incredible watching them work through these things in these moments, and a delight.  To see the ideas gestate, it's almost better than the polished product (at times it is).

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If you don't know Marvel's Jessica Jones prior to watching Marvel's Jessica Jones, don't feel bad.  She's a fairly nominal character in Marvel's vast comics pantheon, but giving her a spotlight in the company's "Cinematic Universe" will bolster her to superstar status, if not quite in the same range as Iron Man and Spider-Man, but certainly becoming as familiar a name as Daredevil or probably even Ant-Man.

Jessica Jones emerged as a product of Marvel's "MAX" line of comics, one that allowed creators a bit more liberty with sex, violence, and language than your average tights-and-capes book.  Like the TV show, the comic book (titled Alias, which could not be used for the Nextflix series for obvious JJ Abrams reasons) is about a private detective with a past as a short-lived superhero.  The TV series keeps the relative broad strokes of this story and character intact, including an awkward relationship with Luke Cage, but it forges its own path.  Where the comic seemed predestined to be a semi-conventional P.I. TV series, this series forgoes the "case-of-the-week" setup, instead driving forward through its 13-episode order with a stronger, singular thread.

The show finds Jessica haunted by a past trauma, having been held captive by a man named Kilgrave for six months up until he was run over by a bus.  Kilgrave had the ability to have anyone do as he wishes by simply telling them what to do, and Jessica was under his every whim, a plaything he professed to love.  Time has passed but the scars run deep and now Kilgrave has re-emerged, back from the dead.  Jessica is torn between fleeing and hunting the sociopath down.  It's only the case of another of Kilgrave's victims, heading to trial for murdering her parents, that gives Jessica the fortitude to fight.

The show does a remarkable job building the threat of Kilgrave over the first three or four episodes, with only hints and occasional visual cues of the man himself.  Even once revealed, Kilgrave is easily the scariest villain in a Marvel story to date, and the nastiest predator one could imagine.  Kilgrave is given a couple of episodes focus, even a slight moment of redemption, but the show knows well how to toy with its audience.  Casting beloved Doctor Who David Tennent, with his considerable charm, was a brilliant move as he brings that same Doctor charm, but utterly twisted.  His backstory is made clear and even provides some sympathy, but the show treads it well, saying that sympathy is not enough.  Kilgrave does what he does because he knows no other way, and he's incapable of really trying.

The intention of the show is clear though, this is a story about sexual abuse, domestic violence, and emotional abuse.  It's not the specifics that a Law & Order SVU seems to uneasily delight in, but rather the emotional impact that one has both during and after such an incident, as well as the persistent power one's abuser still has even after the abuse has seemingly abated.  We wade right into Jessica's post traumatic stress right away, but we find the hero within almost instantly in her willingness to sacrifice her own comfort in order to help a stranger who faces a similar situation.  Kristen Ritter, makes for an unlikely superhero, but a winning flawed protagonist.  She captures the attitude, the bitterness, the pain and anger, the desire and drive to do good mixed with the need for self-preservation, it's an award-worthy performance (no doubt to be overlooked because of the genre).  She's the lead of the show, 100%, and she earns it every step of the way.  She's given a love interest in Luke Cage, with whom she has a complicated back story, and their union is fraught with difficulty (it's uncannily like the story of Another Earth though I suspect utterly unintentional), but there's definitely something that works, and Ritter and Mike Colter have a crackling energy between them.

The supporting cast is largely great, and their storylines play out almost universally well.  Eka Darville plays Jessica's strung-out neighbour Malcom, who makes a pretty dramatic transition in the series (though it peters out towards the end), and Rachael Taylor is fantastic as Trish "Patsy" Walker, Jessica's best friend and media personality (Trish is the show's MVP, getting her own very rewarding storyline somewhat independent of Jessica's).  Carrie Anne Moss takes on the role of high-powered lawyer Jeri Hogarth, whose affair with her secretary turns to the messiest of divorce proceedings, all of which gets integrated into the crux of the show's first season, at times awkwardly and at times quite brilliantly.

Like Daredevil before it, if there's a flaw in Netflix's plan for these Marvel shows it's forcing them into a 13-episode format.  Both series start to wear around episode 9, and then have a rough race to the finish.  Episode 9 here borders on being a terrible episode in an otherwise great series, starting with a riling-up-the-mob sequence that's straight out of a 1930's Universal Horror movie.  The show from thereout loses its tremendous forward thrust as it starts to pad out the episode with more asides for its tertiary characters.  I think at 10 episodes Jessica Jones would have had a perfect run, but as is there's at least two "we got Kilgrave...oh, he's escaped" scenarios too many.

But that's a quibble.  It's amazing we now have at least four superhero shows with female showrunners (Arrow, Peggy Carter, Supergirl, Jessica Jones), and Melissa Rosenberg manages to acquit herself of writing the Twilight movies quite nicely, showing more of her experience with Dexter instead by heading another binge-worthy series.  Some are calling Jessica Jones the best Marvel yet, and I can't really agree, since I enjoy the big, brassy, expensive spectacle of the films fart too much, but it's certainly got a case for best drama and best series.  Not having piles of history and expectations behind her has its advantages.

The Martian

2015, Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise) -- cinema

The Martian was my favourite book this year and I was rather stoked it was being made into a movie. The book read like a movie, being an incredibly lean story focused on the steps of his survival and little else. It was lauded as a love story to science, but really it is quite the fantasy, despite the hard science that is under the microscope on almost every page. For one, Mark Watney is so incredibly upbeat and positive, you think he was made of antidepressants. Secondly, the idea the world would pull together to rescue a lone man from Mars is ridiculous. Had it happened in our world they would have turned off the monitors and waited for him to die. But the fact a book was written with unabashed optimism and hope was an utter delight. I just gobbled this story up with a smile on my face and chuckles out loud on the bus.

This is not Matt Damon's first time being an astronaut marooned on a planet, as he was the asshole scientist who manipulated his rescue in Interstellar, killing a man and himself in the weak willed attempt. And let's not forget Saving Private Ryan. As the meme said, the American government has invested a lot in saving Matt Damon.

But he is perfect as Watney, quick with the smile, the crude jokes & language and believable with the science talk. He's relatable. He's just a likeable guy.

If you haven't seen the trailer, he ends up stranded on Mars when a freak storm (even freakier considering Mars' air density doesn't allow such storms) slams a communications antenna into him, knocking him out and killing his suit monitor. He appears dead to the rest of the crew and they have only minutes to escape. They do. The third mission to Mars ends on a depressing note.

But he wakes up, blood having congealed enough to seal the suit, along with the shrapnel, and he is able to get to the habitat. Alive but trapped with little food and no communication, how is he going to survive the four years until the 4th Mars mission? With SCIENCE of course! This book/movie is made for all the people who love the Internet celeb of Bill Nye, who listened to Quirks & Quarks on CBC and who loved the McGyver aspects of Myth Busters.

The story condenses down to Watney figuring out how to solve those greatest problems: food (requring water) and communication. Most other needs are filled by the redundancy of the mission and most of the equipment is made to last years. Unfortunately the only collection of music he has is disco; Mark hates disco. Ridley Scott brings the greatest of the science scenes together with great flourish, but less exposition. We get he is doing sciency stuff even if we never have it explained.

And to fill in the drama, he constantly flips back to Earth and how they are dealing. In a movie that could have been made of one star, he fills the supporting cast with recognizable faces; kind of annoyingly so in making Mindy Park white (MacKenzie Davis from Halt & Catch Fire) and Kapoor being played by (*checks spelling*) Chiwetal Ejiofor instead of an Indian actor. I would have gone with Irrfan Khan, from Jurassic World. But it works; the scenes at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Labs are enthralling, as all the alpha nerds have to band together to help plan the rescue of Watney. Of particular note, was Donald Glover as the math nerd who figures out a key calculation for getting the mission ship back to Mars in time. Scott makes all of this very low key drama, very dramatic indeed. You know the end of the movie is going to be He Is Rescued but you are still carried along with the failures and recoveries.

Also, and I have mentioned my love for it before, but again we have a lovely sense of physical design going on. From Watney's spacesuit to the rover trucks to the HUDs used in the from-the-camera-view scenes where they make use of Watney's exposition -- the look & feel of the movie is just yummy. And let us not forget Fake Mars. This is the most colourful Mars we have seen before, not all red, all the time. There are gradients to the horizons and big, massive landscape shots that are really meant to inspire us to go there. I do hope that someone's Flickr feed from Mars happens in my lifetime.

I loved this movie, if you haven't gathered it yet. From a story, its all rather simplistic and doesn't have a lot of nuanced characters, nor would it have had any time to develop any. But the blatant optimism and love of ingenuity spoke to me. Yeah me, the not so optimistic guy. Can't deny I love it when I see it, because I see so little of it in real life. Go see the movie. And read the book, yet another example of a success in self publishing, which started as a blog entry!

Double Oh...24: Spectre

Spectre Preamble:

Oh man, this is my first "Double Oh..." entry for a brand new Bond movie... but that doesn't make it all that much different from most of my "Double Oh..." entries, considering that most of them I did were after seeing a Bond movie for the first time.  The only difference this time is I don't have dozens of "ranking Bond" lists and years of reviews and other dissections as background noise.  All I really have is first impressions.

In anticipation of seeing Spectre I rewatched all of the Craig 007 films again.  I like each of them more and more each time I watch them.  There's a fluidity between them that's uncommon for the Bond series otherwise, a connectedness that the series had always tried to distance itself from previously.  Whether it was being too mired in formula, or too concerned with passing the torch at any moment, or too reactionary to the popular cinematic trends of the time, I don't know.  The novels (from what I've heard) had a strong sense of continuity, something this series of Bond films is doubling down on,

Anticipation was high, but what I had to expect, I don't know.  I've tried to avoid rumor mongering but the intonations that this would be a remake of On Her Majesty's Secret Service had reached my ears and it disappointed me.  Of all the Bond films, it's OHMSS that is least demanding a remake.  The imagery (and music!) of the trailer and TV commercials hinted at a lot of things that could be OHMSS, but seeing as that film was about Bond falling in love, then having his lover murdered on their wedding day, that arc seemed covered by Casino Royale already, and not really worth retreading.  But, thankfully, that wasn't the case...

Enough preamble, let's get to the structure.

Also TOTAL SPOILERS AHEAD
(don't say I didn't warn you)

Villains:

Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) returns to close out the arc he started in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace only here, he's no adversary.  No friend either.  He's connective thread, but wonderful connective thread, bridging the earlier Craig movies with this one.

Mr. Hinx (David Bautista) is the burly mountain of a man that's just sheer physical force, with sharpened, painted thumbnails for gouging out eyeballs.  He's an impressive physical force and an ace race car driver, and seems capable of tracking Bond anywhere he goes.  I want to like Hinx, but I think Bautista was wasted in the role.  He gets the physical aspect down pat, such as in the train fight sequence (just one of many callbacks to other Bond films, this I think mooning squarely at From Russia, With Love) where he's just a rampaging ogre (and Bond's ineffectiveness seems equally hearkening to his fights with Jaws...don't be surprised if Hinx returns in the next one)... but Bautista, who showed such incredible comedic timing in Guardians of the Galaxy has one line here, and that's a swear word poorly dubbed over to say "Shoot".  It's a shame.

Yes that's Sherlock's Moriarty, Andrew Scott, as Max Denbigh, the new dick in charge of MI5 who is give greater powers and becomes the new C (M's boss).  He's hell bent on a new coalition amid 8 other countries intelligence gathering organizations, and decommissioning the double-oh program.  It's really the latter that makes him a villain, but the plotline of the former is teased with such insidiousness that it's no surprise that he's a mole for Spectre.  I mean, anyone who watched Sherlock would suspect him anyway, he just seeps vileness.  It would have been more interesting had he been an unsuspecting patsy of Spectre's, completely unaffiliated.

And finally there's the big man himself, Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), who pulled a total Kahn-berbatch and kept saying "I'm not Blofeld".  Well, no big surprises, he is Blofeld.  He's kind of wasted here, teased out early on, clearly the head of Spectre, with uncanny awareness of all of Bond's actions, but later revealed to be a quasi-adoptive brother believed to have perished.  That there's an approximate familial tie between Blofeld and Bond isn't necessarily the problem, but the level of hate Blofeld has towards him is never truly realized by Waltz.  He cheerfully revels in his role as lord of an omnipresent supersecret superpowered superevil organization, but how that relates to Bond (the fact that he claims it's almost all been done to throw in Bond's face) doesn't truly play.  It's like Waltz is caught in between the old school Connery villains who like to toy with Bond like a Cat with a Mouse and the very personal villainy of Javier Bardem's Silva, and can't really pick which is priority (not that the script seems decided one way or another).
In the third act, when Bond and Dr. Swann make it to Blofeld's super-secret Spectre lair, Bond finds himself in a torture chair, about to be killed but manages to escape with Swann and blow up the whole compound with, ultimately, one bullet.  There's such a hearkening back to Blofeld's past lairs here, the monitoring room full of dutiful workers, cast in steel grey floor-to-ceiling is so retro, as is Blofeld's nehru jacket, that it's as much aping as homage. Of course the compound had to go up in flames, but so quickly after its introduction was the ultimate disappointment..it's a really neat set they seemed utterly rushed out of.  That Bond and Swann leave in a helicopter with no escape action sequence (the film was already long enough, yes) was also surprising.  The whole Blofeld story felt like it needed a lot more time.  Waltz's presence isn't felt nearly enough.  If Mendes really wanted to capture elements of Connery's Bond he should have presented more than a few cutaways to what Blofeld was up to when Bond wasn't around.  As such Denbigh seemed to get all that cutaway focus, so he should have been the major villain...and Blofeld only teased, spared for the next one.

Bond Girls:

Much ado was made in advance of Monica Bellucci since she's the oldest Bond girl to date (it's an dumb marker that she's been saddled with because it shouldn't matter).  Her role as Lucia Sciarra is unfortunately tiny, she's only featured in two scenes, but she's pretty great in both of them up until the make-out scene with Bond.  I just didn't feel the two characters connecting, Craig seemed like he was more going through the motions than genuinely attracted to this woman.  But then the character is all about pumping women for information, coldly, without remorse.  The scenes with her, the funeral and at her home, are the most beautifully shot of the film, keeping up with the incredible work Mendes and his cinematographer did with Skyfall, I just wish the passion that the camera implies as Bond and Lucia make out against a wall-sized mirror was actually there between the actors.

Lea Seydoux plays Madleine Swann, Mr. White's daughter and a worthy romantic foil for Bond.  She's been trained by her father from a young age to protect herself, but all to aware that her father was into bad business that she wanted no part of (despite also being keenly aware of his love for her).  Then Bond comes along dragging her (kicking and screaming mind you) into the business.  They have a connection, as she's quite keenly aware of what kind of man he is... like her father, capable of very bad things, but also quite capable of very big love.  There's a good dynamic that builds between them but it doesn't quite feel romantic.  It feels comfortable, but the romance feels like something necessitated by the script and less organic between the characters.  When Swann tells Bond she loves him, it comes out of left field.  And when she walks away from Bond it feels awkward, and not such a big deal for him.  And when Bond walks away from MI6 for her, it seems like something he's doing for himself, and not necessarily anything to do with being in love.
There's the feel of On Her Majesty's Secret Service at play.  In that film, Tracey was also a tough woman, the daughter of a criminal, and she too rescues Bond on occasion.  Blofeld kills her in the end, which this film leads up to but goes another way (again, that arc already done with Vesper).

Theme/Credits:

The title song, "Writing on the Wall" by Sam Smith is, well, abominable.  It's just not very good.  It builds then falls, then builds again, then falls, and over and over.  There's no climax, or break out, it's all a long tease, and unpleasant.  It has a haunting element to it, the orchestration is superb, and Smith has an impressive falsetto, but there's no payoff, and no hook.


The opening credits, on the other hand, is the best ad for Kraken spiced rum.  I love octopuses and octopi imagery, so this opening credits crawl really, really did it for me.  They brought back the titillating silhouettes (and tossed, for the first time, a naked Bond into the mix... I keep wondering when we're going to see a title sequence with naked silhouetted men bounding about, willies flapping in the breeze) and there's a needed but somewhat ineffective recapping of the previous three films.

Bond:


As I'm writing this up, I'm noticing what I hadn't noticed before, that it's failures may not be so much the script, the action, the direction, or the other actors, but perhaps it's Daniel Craig.  It's evident Mendes wanted to go for something of a more playful Bond film, hitting later Connery or Moore-style, with a bit of cheekiness in the action, gadgets, and Bond himself.  But Craig seems to be either reluctant or unable to really sell that lighter side of Bond.  Connery had that glint in his eye, a little twinkle that allowed him to be brusque but playful.  Moore was mostly playful but could occasionally deliver a moment of threat and danger when he wanted.  Craig seems to have difficultly getting out of brooding Bond, of exhibiting emotion.  That feeling of watching Connery sleepwalk his way through Diamond Are Forever seem to creep into Craig's performance here, but not always...just most of the time.  It's like he knows his character and the film is trying to push his character against type.  At times he's a willing participant, at other times it seems he couldn't be invested less in what he's doing.  When it comes to Oberhauser/Blofeld, I never felt he was moved by his resurgence, but then it could be that it was Oberhauser killing his own father out of jealousy for his relationship with Bond that steeled Bond's detachment from people.

Bond is only given a couple scenes with M, Moneypenny, and Q, and it's to the film's detriment.  There's a sense of comraderie (even antagonistic comraderie) that just doesn't have time to revive itself by the time they're reunited for one scene in the last act.  Craig and Ralph Feinnes established a pretty good dynamic in Skyfall and it feels at ease here, respectful but totally not friendly.  It should have been allowed to flourish, rather than falter.  I think had Denbigh's play for power been the main thrust as Bond rooted out Spectre in his own organization with M and  Moneypenny and Q as direct support, the film would have played a lot better, and leaving Blofeld as the mastermind of a massive criminal organization too big to be easily dismantled for another film would have been the smarter move.  The Blofeld story provided some narrative thrust for Bond's character here, but in a sense it detracted from the connection he was supposed to be forming with Swann. 

The way the film ends, with Blofeld captured, and Bond riding off into the sunset (I told you, spoilers) with Swann seems oddly conclusive for a Bond movie.  It really does wrap up this quartet of film with a little bow, and in a way leaves the series open for subbing in a new Bond in the next one with the same supporting cast.  All the delving the Craig movies did in digging into Bond's backstory and family mythos can be dispensed with, and a new Bond can get to work with his crew of M, Moneypenny and Q, in the structure of Bond of old almost without missing a beat.  It really seems fit for new blood at this point.  It's not that I don't want to see Craig in another Bond movie, but if the next one is going to be his full bore (pun intended) Diamonds Are Forever I'd just rather not.

Movie:

Would it surprise you, given all my kvetching above, if I said I didn't hate this movie?  Because I didn't.  But I went into it wanting to love it.  With Mendes' Skyfall (which I still need to give a proper "Double Oh..." entry, as right now this site only holds my first review of it) being one of my favourites of the series, and without question being the most visually impressive of the entire series, I was expecting more of the same.  One of the common complaints about Skyfall was that it was teasing the old Bonds too much, that it was too in-jokey or borrowing too much from the past.  I thought that it managed to be its own movie, its own story (and a rather engrossing one at that) while still paying homage to the past in fun ways.  This one, however, felt less homage and more rip-off, really trying to capture a Bond sensibility that the Craig films shied away from unfortunately to its detriment. 

It all starts with the pre-credits action sequence in Mexico during the Day of the Dead festival.  Mendes captures the glamor and revelry of the festival with extreme beauty.  It's nothing I've ever experienced in real life, but it looks amazing.  It's like being at a Comic Con on Hallowe'en.  Everyone's dressed up but there's absolutely nothing commercial about it... the skeletons and wardrobes and masks and face paintings are so individual and so diverse, despite being of the same ilk.  It's all black and white and grey with these great pops of color.  And the massive crowds, Mendes captures the scope of the festivities so incredibly well.  Then Bond goes adding a wrinkle of chaos by accidentally exploding a building and narrowing escaping death after the rooftop he's standing on collapses and a convenient sofa breaks his fall.  It is a wonderfully orchestrated action and comedy sequence, with the beats of each quite distinct, but Craig stepping up off the couch really recalls Moore for the first and only time this movie.  It leads to a chase through the crowd and ultimately a fight aboard a helicopter (I forget how many helicopter sequences Bond has had now, but this one seems to be visually alluding to the opening of For Your Eyes Only to some degree) but it's here that the film has its first falter.  That Bond keeps attacking the pilot, putting himself and the teeming masses of Dias De Los Muertos revelers in jeopardy feels too reckless even for him.  That the sequence ends with him flying off in the copter, and not returning to the woman he left in a hotel room earlier in the sequence is the most decidedly un-Moore Bond thing and was the tip off that despite his best intentions Mendes doesn't quite get that style of Bond movie.

There's a lot to like in this movie, and even the stuff I don't like I don't hate, I just wish they'd made different choices, in some cases slight ones, in others much larger ones.  There's a lot of complaints laid down on Quantum of Solace for being too thin on plot and too action focused, but it was made during a writer's strike and really works as balls out action and stripped-down Bond plot.  Here there's almost too much plot and definitely too much focus on the action, with not enough attention to relationship building, particularly between Bond and Swann, but also Blofeld and Bond.  These things do work to an extent (perhaps just conceptually) but execution wise they don't have the attention they deserve.  And when Bond winds up in the villain's lair, and that whole aspect feels entirely rushed, that's a problem.  I think about Bond at Silva's abandoned island, and the wonderful chemistry between Craig and Bardem that's allowed to breathe, while at the same time presenting two characters with familiarity with one another by sheer fact of the roles they have played in the service of M, and the way they play back and forth off one another.  In the mix of that there's moments the film gives to Craig to service the arc of the character being a bit out of condition for the job, and it all works so beautifully to fulfill the story.  Here, Bond, Swann and Blofeld share the same space, and Waltz tries his damnedest to inject a sense of familiarity between the characters, and a sense of meaning and purpose to their gathering together, but it never actually comes.  The whole arrival at the isolated base of operations, just Bond and Swann with no back-up, leaves the question dangling exactly what Bond's plan is (he says he might not come back, so is his only goal to kill Oberhauser?). 

But I'm bitching again. 

Bond's infiltration of the Spectre gathering is one of my favourite parts of the film.  The shadowy organization's nefarious dealings are driven in, highlighting exactly how deep their tentacles run in society, and the challenge ahead of Bond in weeding this organization out of global commerce and politics will take more than just cutting it off at the head.  As such, his commitment to destroying Blofeld should then be personal but Craig didn't sell that angle enough.  It's a nice touch that Bond tosses the videotape of Vesper's interrogation aside, a sign of his having moved on, but at the same time every death close to Bond (that Oberhauser has taken responsibility for) seems to have steeled him even more, such that wanting straight up revenge, rather than doing the job doesn't come across.

Q-gadgets:
Bond gets an exploding watch and a really cool car with ejector seat, tailguns, flame throwers and another custom switch that's a pretty good gag too.  I have to admit, the tricked out car feels out of place in these Craig Bond movies, but also was a welcome sight.

Classification [out of 01.0]: 00.5 - This one may grow on me in time, but I feel let down right now.  I'm going to scour the reviews and read all about the Sony email leaks and studio notes and other scandalous sundries and just fill my noggin with useless trivia.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Eden Lake

2008, James Watkins (The Woman in Black) -- download

A movie back from when Michael Fassbender was still a relatively unrecognizable face.... wait, what? Fassbender was Azazael in that British TV show Hex ?!?! My power of recognition has failed me !!

Ahem.  So, the final one. The last of the series. The best for the... oh  no, not really. In fact, it flew in the face of everything we avoid in this series, i.e. torture porn, but we couldn't stop watching. It was not a great movie but it was gripping, and I really had no clue where it would go, given this was not from the Fassbender star machine.

Fassbender and Jenny (Kelly Reilly; Mary from the RDJ Sherlock Holmes) are on a weekend trip to a flooded quarry where he and his scuba buddies used to go. Its a remote place, a romantic place away from civilization. Keyword civilized. This movie is the British equivalent to the American movies where people vacation in Alabama foothills and bump into banjo playing rednecks. But the rural chavs they run into are a hell of a lot more menacing than any inbred yokels.

It starts with foul mouthed kids at the beach. After a bit of a confrontation and Fassbender's attempt to be a diplomatic 90s guy, avoiding violence but only garnering more, the kids steal their car and gear. One accidental dead dog later and the leader of these kids is going nutzo. They chase the couple through the overgrown public park with intent to kill. What started as relatively harmless harassment becomes murderous torture, after they capture Fassbender and the leader records each of his minions cutting or stabbing him, so none will be exempt from the action. Jenny has to watch from her hidden viewpoint.

It was a gruesome movie where the city dwelling upper middleclass folk fear for their lives against the underprivileged. Really, that was the message. Even the quiet nerdy kid betrays Jenny when set against the sociopathic kids, and only gets a bucket of gas on his head for reward. City folk always feel a sense of superiority when comparing themselves to the country living folk, especially if none of them are stereotypes of friendly farming. This just took the idea and ran with it, and I know at least a few people who would probably never go camping after seeing this.

The movie does something unexpected for me, as I hadn't reminded myself Fassbender was still relatively unknown. They kill him. Sorely wounded during the stump & barbed-wire torture, he actually passes when Jenny runs for help. And after he dies, they pore the before mentioned gas on him with the idea of burning all evidence of their crimes. Jenny escapes, runs for the rest of the night before being rescued by the brother of one of the kids, who is out looking for them --- its after dark, after all and they are kids all alone in the woods.

And then she is brought back to the house so she can rest, cleanup and call the cops. Until she realizes the parents of the rambunctious psychos are all in the room with her. How do you think that will turn out?  Exactly.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Late Phases

2014, Adrián García Bogliano -- download

So, follow werewolves on a train with werewolves in a retirement village. Yes, seriously.

In the world of indie horror, often the concept is king. The execution is secondary, because getting enough funding to hire & film is primary and what is left over is used for effects and whatever. This time it really shows. They pump all the budget into the skin ripping scenes, ever popular since The Howling and very very little to the actual were. Its a little better than the man in a fur suit from Blood Moon but not much better.

Marmy downloaded this one because it stars Nick Damici from Stake Land. He is not old enough to be playing the retired Vietnam veteran in this movie, but add a bit of white makeup to his hair and we are supposed to buy it. I didn't.

Basically a young guy, Ethan Emry who bought it after only one episode on The Walking Dead dumps his dad in a nice, small retirement village on the edge of a big, bad wood. Residents keep on being eaten by a wild dog, one that jumps fences, plows through doors and rips the residents to shreds. But the local sheriff doesn't care. At first I thought he must be in on it, but no, the movie isn't that smart. They want to stress this is the place where people go to die and dispense with any plot holes that might create.

Its a terrible movie. Damici shows up, angry at his son, angry and snippy at everyone else, but kicks it into high gear after hearing his neighbour torn apart. Oh, forgot to mention -- he is blind and refuses a cane (even though its been years) and only gets really angry after his dog is torn apart. No, this is no John Wick. So, Viet Vet (are Vietnam vets still a thing in anyone's mind?) finds the local silver bullet smith (yes, the town has one) and goes up against the born again Christian werewolf, said man in the fur suit. And some senior citizen weres he creates for good measure. The vet defeats them and dies in uniform. Sigh.

Days of Halloween 2015: Howl

2015, Paul Hyett (special effects guy on a ton of stuff) -- download

Speaking of werewolves; werewolves on a train !!  Followed soon after by weresnakes on a... ahh, skip it.

Yeah, this one, in premise, is kind of lame. Its a closed room story where a train breaks down in a wooded area with a legendary breakdown years ago, where lots of people unexplainedly died. Guess what, this one will probably be unexplained as well.

The thing about werewolf movies is whether you go Full Wolf or not. Most go mid-Wolf, which is a hairy human body with a wolf head. Some have the conversion to full, because its easier to CGI in stunt wolves. And then some go with the icky hybrid, some they can highlight that they have a good special effects guy. And considering Hyett's background in rubber monsters, this one better look good. They kind of do, in that weird, elongated merging of beast and man look.

So, commuters on a train to or from London... I have to admit, I only wandered in after the credits had rolled. It was the end of this run and I was running out of energy and not committing [ed note. kind of like writing these]. And I didn't think that this was going to require a lot of brain investment. I missed how the train breaks down, but driver (8?) Alfred the Butler (Sean Pertwee playing the recognizable face) gets out to inspect. Munch munch. Yes, he only took the role as a brief appearance; easy paycheck, his name on the credits did their job. Now onto munching the unknowns.

Closed rooms always have a rag taggle of people -- the asshole, the whiny bitch (get it get it !!), the old folks and the tough guy. And of course, the middle of the road man or woman -- usually the hero(es). They are all jammed together, annoyed their commute home has been interrupted followed by annoyed they are all being eaten. They squabble, bitch at each other and only after a few losses, band together to defend themselves. P.S. Why do they continue to sit with their backs to the many many windows on a train?

Like most horror movies of this ilk, the monsters hide in the bushes until a key point in the story, and then we get a full on reveal. We get to see the monster effects in its full glory, and while technically its rather good, man are they icky. Think elongated beast people with not wolfy but bestial heads, pale skin and long claws. As the train is not expected to have a lot of silver bullets, this myth is sidestepped and they just smash a were until he is pulp. I never understood how massive amounts of damage were not going to kill a monster only susceptible to one element -- either you go with instantaneous healing or unbreakable skin. But if you crush his skull with a fire extinguisher, I am not sure how you heal that.

This movie was as fun as you would expect a "werewolves on a ________" movie to be, with no real introspection on the genre, just slashing, munching tension and action.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Wer

2013, William Brent Bell (The Devil Inside) -- download

More werewolves!

Back when Marmy and I were getting to know each other, she mentioned a vampire interest. It was the Anne Rice era, so I bought her some books. Lots of books. In contrast, I mentioned my love of werewolves and she got me a copy of The Werewolf of Paris. I loved it. But this is how memory works; I was convinced it was a fictionalized account of the Beast of Gevaudan, an historical account of a large wolf in south-central France, that killed many people. Alas, no, no connection at all. Memory can be funny that way, as I now have no recollection of how I even know about this beast.

Wer is about a rather bestial looking man charged with the horridly brutal deaths of some campers, including their young son. The camping area happens to be near Gevaudan, which made me chuckle. AJ Cook (from Criminal Minds) is the American working as a defender in France and takes on this case; her focus is human rights issues, cases where it's likely her client will be taken advantage of. Talan suffers from a form of porphyria, which until now I knew only to be the vampire's disease, responsible for his abnormal hair growth and enlarged bone growth. Even without the accusations, Talan is a monster, over 6 feet with massive hands and a bestial look.

Of course, he is the monster.

The movie really picks up once it dispenses with the pseudo science misdirection and pseudo found footage. He doesn't so much as wolf out, but grow a little larger, a little hairier and immensely stronger. On France national TV he tosses about SWAT cops (hmm, I need to Google the French version) smashing them like so much rag dolls. AJ is no longer seeking to protect him but feels responsible for letting it get this far, including the fact her ex was scratched and is showing signs of the same infection. OK, a little pseudo science is left.

I never expect werewolf movies to be good, but if they have something I can sink my teeth into -- get it get it -- then I am happy. The depiction of Talan (talon! get it get it) is wonderful, a truly wolfish man with the strength of a bear. The brief scenes where his bones crack and reform as he expands are well done, subtle, without any skin pulling and shredding.

The movie ends with a cliffhanger, or at the very least, a hint of an opening to a sequel. There is a market for these movies in Europe, in Uwe Boll proves anything, and it was decently done instead of his horrendous productions.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: No One Lives

2012, Ryûhei Kitamura (Versus, The Midnight Meat Train) -- download

I haven't asked myself, "What has the director of 2000's Versus been up to?" but I should have. I loved that movie.

Too bad it was this.

Not that it is terrible, it just isn't very expansive. It fills the gap of serial killer versus reprobate criminals that we didn't know we needed. But it doesn't go for entirely stylish or any sense of new. But there is the keyword versus so there is that.

No need to do a detailed recap or plot; I am just going to spoil the hell out of it.

Luke Evans (he did this right after The Raven) is a serial killer who collects beautiful young women, converts them and has them help collect the next in line. They are eating at a diner when they run afoul of some thuggish criminals who don't all get along. Do criminal gangs ever do? Lee Tergesen (who will always be Chett from Weird Science [TV not movie] to me) desperately tries to steer them away from the handsome stranger but nope, they have to mess with him. Flynn, the sociopathic takes Evans and his girlfriend and, inadvertently, the girl he has in the trunk of his car. Of course Evans escapes.

Thus begins a typical slasher style flick where the Bad Guy (Evans) picks off the "kids" one by one. But the kids are also bad guys, so we are left with a weird sensation of not being sure who to root for. No, not the debate where a couple of the kids are assholes, but these are out and out Bad Guys, burglars and murderers.

The movie is kind of gleeful in its dispatch of the kids (might as well continue to call them that), especially one particular gruesome scene where Evans emerges from the oversized body of one of them, naked and covered in blood. Like all psychopaths, he is calm and creative, dispatching each in his own particular way.

The hitch for the audience is that the girl in the trunk is also trying to escape both parties, and is rather resourceful herself.

As I said, its not an entirely bad movie, just not very expansive. And not completely innovative enough to fit into my purview of Small Film. It chooses to be gleeful, but I would have wanted it to be a little more tense, a little more filled with fear and rage. Alas, everyone is doing the utmost to be cool and charismatic.

In the end the girl in the trunk escapes.... and so does Evans. Sequel !!

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Hidden

2015, The Duffer Brothers -- download

Full disclosure. I may have marked these things for the date they were watched, but I am writing them days if not weeks after. Life, procrastination, whatever.

So, how appropriate that as I start a new po-ap (post apocalypse) game (Fallout 4) I am writing a bit on such a movie. A family living in a bunker, fearful of creatures that are stalking them in the world above. Short of food, low on patience, doing their best to stay positive. At least in the game, they get to come out.

There is something about bunker movies. Ever since Graig and I saw The Divide, the idea has sat in the back of my mind. Not that the idea has been captured a lot on film. But the isolation, the scarcity and the close quarters are something that make my gut twist. I wonder how the idea of bunkers ended with the close of the Cold War but we still tell  tales of them, which often leads to these bunkers being stale holdovers, replete with the aged resources. Will there ever be more tales of new bunkers, where people ride out the zombie plague or comet fall? Does the one from Lost count?

Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood) and Andrea Riseborough (Oblivion) are keeping their daughter safe in the dark. The bunker is not so far below ground as they are not aware of the surface, so every day, nighttime or not, they keep alert to whomever could be hunting for them. The Breathers have been looking for them ever since whatever happened on the surface. We get the impression the Breathers may be monsters or merely the hungry infected. The family has rules: stay calm, stay quiet, stay alert and don't talked about the Breathers.

We get the occasional flashback, as the family deals with the breakdown of their stable if utterly soul sucking life. We learn of a disease, a distant thing but something looming closer. I have always liked the way information seeps in slowly, via the Internet and news, when we know that news would spread over social media like wild fire. Nobody would not know if something big was going on. Between flashbacks we see things going wrong, rats eating their food and fire destroying some prized possessions. And fire means smoke, and smoke escapes. And can be seen.

SPOILERS. Do I have to keep doing this?

The third act of the movie is the twist, the alteration of the direction the movie had taken. The Breathers have found them! And guess what, as I was beginning to suspect, they are not so much as monsters as they are.... us. Soldiers, the American government, are who is looking for them. Normal people. And if the soldiers are the normal ones, then... oh wait, that means... wow. Yep, the flashbacks to a disease spreading and the subsequent firebombing and blocking of the mountain pass reveal our lovely family to be the monsters. "Stay calm" was not just a way of staying hidden but kept the real horror of the disease in check -- rage virus. They suddenly get all veiny and powerful jumping on the pursuing soldiers, ripping them limb from limb.

I loved it, it was quite the turnaround. And so we didn't lose complete faith in the family, they are are able to draw it back, rein it in after the soldiers are dispatched. They may be the infected but they are still people. Somewhere in there. Hidden.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Bone Tomahawk

2015, S. Craig Zahler -- download

Yeah, Bone Tomahawk is more thriller than horror but it pushed all the buttons that a good horror movie should --- it elicited fear, tension, sympathy and gut churning revulsion at events taking place. It is a cowboy movie set near the end of the cowboy era, very close to the turn of the century. Life is more civilized than we expect from the Old West but not entirely so. But damn does Kurt Russel's Sheriff Hunt wear a tie nicely. And the moustache from The Hateful Eight.

Starting this one over; lost the thread of what I was saying. Part of writing these in blog post format, and not in any formal 'review' style is not being attached to any rules of what I am saying. But sometimes I have more to say than a simple recap; I want to actually have something to say.

The centre of this movie is a walk, a long, stressful, tension filled walk. A focus character has a broken leg that, frankly, needs sitting down. This is not the usual guts n grit character who walks off a bullet wound; well he is, but the point is that he shouldn't. Farmer O'Dwyer broke his leg falling off the roof and has what is technically called an open fracture, i.e. the bone came out. He really shouldn't be heading off as part of posse, but his wife has been taken. He's getting her back.

Taken by white painted, howling like beasts from hell, cannibalistic indians whom The Professor, the educated native in town, calls Troglodytes. David Arquette, playing his usual wrinkly nosed scuzzy character, led them to this town when he and his bushwhacking partner blundered into their burial grounds. Probably not burial grounds but that is the trope term for sacred lands marked by skulls and standing stones. The trogs attacked town to take back Arquette and took O'Dwyer's wife (town doctor) and the deputy as well. Sheriff Hunt, O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson) and gentleman gunfighter John Brooder (Matthew Fox) head out, along with unrecognizable Richard Jenkins as Chicory, the old coot.

And they head west, into the hills, at first by horse, then through mischance, on foot. Horseback is bad enough for O'Dwyer but on foot is nigh impossible. Sweating, gritting teeth and sucking it up is what he does. And every rest, he collapses into exhaustion giving us time to listen to these cowboys have some of the best dialogue I heard all season. This may not be Tarantino but damn, its decent writing.

When O'Dwyer rebreaks his leg, and has to be left behind, I was on my last frayed nerve. Maybe it was the weeks of tense movies and intentional on edge feelings, or maybe its just the usual from work, but I was tense. And we haven't even met the cannibals yet. Yet, as his friends wander into the forsaken land to take on the trogs, he crawls after them.

The encounter with the trogs, the expected climax to the movie is just horrid. These are not just psychopathic cannibalistic indians gone wrong. They are all about the terror they cause before killing and eating their prey. They have modified their bodies with claws and horns and bones in their throats that allow for hellbeast howls. And titular bone tomahawk is used for horrific purposes. Of course, O'Dwyer rescues his wife but not without cost.

When the movie ended, we both let out a sigh of relief. It was intense. And I hope we get to see more movies with Kurt Russel's moustache.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Infini

2015, Shane Abbess -- Netflix

P.S. This is more recap with commentary, because I enjoyed so many of the little elements of this movie, but not the movie as a whole.

Monsters in Space !  Ever since Alien, the sub-genre of scifi horror feels required to play against it as a benchmark. Usually, they involve monsters that eat people or zombies or infections; in other words, anything that could be done on our home planet, but even more fun when transplanted onto an otherworldly location. I am OK with that, as I am always happy to toss a bit of space opera into my cereal bowl. Spaceships, technical readouts, pew pew guns and the cold dark of space. And the challenges of getting out there, of course.

Infini uses a rather unique idea of space travel, dispensing with big expensive spaceships travelling slowly via sublight engines or WHOOSHing via some sort of FTL -- this world uses teleportation. Transporters, or more precisely digital disintegration, transmission and reassembly move people and equipment from Earth to Out There. How they overcome the transmission speed issues (again, FTL ?) or deal with the aspects of souls or accidents where there ends up two of you, is not covered.  Neither is how they discover their transmission points. But this is common place tech, still dangerous, and there is always that chance you come through with your brain a bit scrambled.

Whit Carmichael works for a security company; dangerous work, but he needs the money as he has a new baby on the way. His first day on the job blows, as a squad returns from a mining planetoid with a case of the crazies. Guns fire, alarms go off, contamination is identified and the entire west coast base is being sterilized, lethally. With fire. But via a bit of jiggery pokery, a coworker activates Whit's teleport device and, poof, he is off to the mining complex, where it cannot be worse than what just happened to his base.

Flip scene to an east coast base where the Search & Rescue team is being scrambled. They got wind of the events on the west coast and are being sent to find any survivors at the mining base. Why? Why not just avoid the contaminated place? Because someone there has setup an automated transport of volatile substances which could take out a good amount of Earth upon arrival. So, go there, find survivors, turn off the automated transport. Search & Rescue also means armed to the teeth.

The team teleports and ... well, due to some unstable time dilation, its actually about a week since things went awry, even though its only been minutes since the west coast facility was turned into cinders. The base is a mess -- no oxygen, no power and bodies everywhere. In true Aliens fashion, the soldiers hack this terminal, flip this switch but are have no luck. But with the flashing of some terribly dated screens (separate commentary on how in order to reflect on Alien, all readouts have to look like 80s tech) and the sound of a dot matrix printer, bing! suddenly everything starts coming on. Whit was hiding inside the computer room, the sole survivor of the catastrophe here and had gone to computer school before finding more lucrative work in security. And he has a tale to tell, of people going mad, with his only recourse of blowing all the air out, freezing the crazies solid. He had mad computer skilz.

Thus begins (yeah yeah, long recap already, for just the setup) a typical infection / possession story, as once again the arriving team begins to go crazy and begin killing the others. But some don't go bonkers as quickly as others, so even though Whit knows he is infected, he wants to stay calm and try and work out what is going on. There is lots of gritting of teeth and fighting, weeding the team down to Whit and one other. Along the way they find out that the resource the mine had been digging up was also a lifeform that had the ability to take over and mimic cells it infected. But no, not a rehash of The Thing, but more taking control of the body from the inside out -- assimilation through biological replacement. All the meat of the movie is rather bland, typical of other movies, but then... the end.

You would think they would have the typical ending where they identify that this infection cannot be allowed to reach the Earth, that the only solution is for everyone to die. But no, Whit as the sole survivor just has an argument with himself, yelling to the he who he is becoming, and then slitting his own wrists.  He makes a very good point, that an alien life form that is smart enough (or engineered well enough) to replicate the cells of and become the host lifeform, then why does it have to use VIOLENCE to direct that assimilation? There are so many ways first contact could happen.

Maybe it was angry at being used as a power source, or maybe it was at the core of human beings to turn to violence, so the aliens just used that. But whatever the reason, Whit gets through and bing! everyone is alive. It was only a bad dream! Whit is confused, as his arm his healed but the sticky dried blood is still there. And everyone who was killed, or he killed, is standing there. And ready to go home. Teleportation in 10 minutes.

What? What about the evil, assimilating ice cube aliens? Did Whit get through? They obviously repaired everyone's dead bodies but ... but ... they can still come through and take over the Earth, right? Did Whit's monologue break the (newly formed) hearts of these aliens and convince them of the sanctity of life? As the gang fades away, Whit looks up to see said alien jelly ice cube creatures in  the shape of human beings. All is well.

Groan.

Neat idea, badly played out, but neat idea.

Discuss.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Demonic

2015, Will Canon -- download

Found footage. Yeah yeah, another season another, "its OK, its bad, its a novel use, its oh so tired." Meh, skip it. Its now no less a valid trope in horror movie making than The Last Girl, which also implies you can play around with the idea. Its no longer just the idea of piecing together a story purely from the footage that was found.

In Demonic, in the 80s, a girl invited a bunch of friends over to her lovely country house and then slaughtered them. Only one lived, and not the murderer. These days the house has been left untouched and unsold and is the local creepy place. A neighbour is sent by his wife to investigate some screams she heard from over there. And guess what, he finds bodies! And even stranger, he actually calls the cops before going deeper into the house and thus does not become a cliche opening murder scene.

Cop Frank Grillo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) shows up to find the scene -- bodies everywhere, obviously who were doing some sort of paranormal investigation. All but one. They drag him out, handcuff the poor kid, who is in shock, and begin the interrogation. And we flashback to the found footage, seen through the cameras of these college kids who are investigating the haunted house.

John, the survivor, is coaxed to venture into this house, by his girlfriend and her friends, because he has been having visions of his recently departed mother in that house. You see, she was the survivor of the 80s murders there. Instant conflict comes in the addition of ex-BF of John's GF running the investigation, and man, is he a dick. After a brief visit to the gas station trope, they set up in the house.

These kids are serious paranormal investigators, with all the right equipment, previous experience and some knowledge of spirit mythology & the other side. There were some ritualistic connections to the murders here and they hope to summon a spirit, but protect themselves from whatever evil caused the infamous acts. They know how to find the sensitive spots, summon ghosts and how to record them.

The movie progresses, flipping back and forth between, the cop investigating and the haunted goings on in the house, things get creepier and creepier. It does a good job of actually making us nervous, with creepy rooms and scare jumps and really, tangible stuff to scare the pants off these kids. And yet, they won't leave. Dickish Ex won't lose his valuable time just because the ghosts are a bit violent, but then they realize it had never been a seance for the recently departed, but a ritual for summoning something much worse. And guess what, they are recreating that fateful night.

You would think a movie like this would be all about the kids being killed off, one by one, but once its revealed that something much much worse than a ghost is involved, the movie shifts focus back to John and two more survivors, one being the dick. Demon possessed? GF is pregnant? The shift to a setup for forthcoming movies, or at least a legacy we can speculate about is great. So, they summoned a demon, the cops all saw the events happen, and cannot deny. What now? What goes into the report? How do they close the murder case? From a spooky ghost movie, I would swing the sequel into a haunting action movie, but that's me.

I liked this one, but as Kent knows, likely only because I was already spinning the continuing story in my head. Still, its decently done.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Henjel gwa Geuretel

2007, Pil-sung Yim -- download

Or Hansel & Gretel.

Again with the family focus, I really need to think back on western culture horror movies to see if the focus on family situations is as prevalent an element of their culture. Of course, many are seated in the conflicts between families, but I find that that is more about the development of the characters involved, rather than the primary focus. You build good characters by giving us something to connect to, and family situations lend to that.

But in South Korean horror cinema, there is so much of the centre of the plot connected to family. Lost family members haunting you, families broken apart, children needing parents, parents missing children etc. I know you cannot separate the culture from the cinema, and maybe it is my own distance from my family, but I don't find connection with these stories.

This movie starts with Eun-Soo wanting to deny the child he has sired while traveling to see the mother who never cared for him. He gets in a car accident (distracted driver!!) and ends up wandering the wrong way in the wood. Out of the dark comes a red riding hood, just a misdirecting cue as she actually leads him back to her isolated gingerbreading decorated home. Gingerbreading, not gingerbread. No big bad wolf in this tale.

He finds himself in the perfect home with the perfect family, three lovely kids, two lovely parents. The home is decorated in toys, with a sign post stating House of Happy Children. In fact, the next morning he sees exactly how dedicated this household is to happy children, as breakfast is basically cakes and sweets. We immediately get the feeling of him being fattened up for the oven, and assume a witch is involved.

But no, things may have some connection to the tale but this is not a mere retelling in another culture's setting. The tale of Hansel & Gretel is just a frame work here, a context to build weirdness upon. There is something dastardly going on with those kids, and their desire to place Eun-Soo as their new parent figure (he is both stern and protective), but there is no evil witch. But trapped in a house and trapped in the woods he is. This story is more akin to that old Twilight Zone episode, It's a Good Life.

Bad things happened to these kids in their past, very bad things. And for some, completely out there, reason Santa Claus appears and gives these kids a mystical power of control over their own reality. Or maybe it came from within, or another mystical source that appeared in their minds as Old Saint Nick. No matter, these kids have the power of wish, a bad exposure of what adults are capable of but a desire to live perfect child lives. Eun-Soo accepts this, proffers them that reality can be better, while acknowledging his own familial desires.

So, there is horror, scares and horrible dealings, but the laser focus of this movie is these kids and their desire to be a family. It just doesn't connect with me, and while the gestalt of the movie is not bad, this focus kept on pulling me out. These kids have the power to control reality, and Eun-Soo could be exploring that, making use of it, for his end and for their betterment. But no, the movie really only wants us to sympathize with the little monsters and hug them. But dude, they fed you their previous father!

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Blood Moon

2014, Jeremy Wooding -- download

So, low budget does not always mean low quality. In this case, very much so. Imagine a group of RPGers got together and decided to play a game of Boot Hill (the 1980s old west RPG) but mix it up with a bit of Halloween flavour -- add werewolves. Then they decide to LARP it. Then they decide that was so spectacular, it should be a movie. And that movie goes to Cannes and gets a distribution deal. I am not saying that is how this movie was made, but damn, that was how it felt. That was how it was scripted, directed and acted.

A stage coach full of travellers ends up in an abandoned town where they are set upon by some cartoon bank robbers, or at least that is what they sounded like to me. And I mean, close your eyes and think back to all those overly exaggerated cowboy villain voices you hear in cartoons -- now apply it to a couple of recognizable supporting actors playing the Norton Brothers. The only thing they were missing was the hat with the front flap folded up. The stage coach crowd consists of a marshall and his new wife, a preacher, a newspaper man from England, a sexy widow and a well dressed gun fighter. Almost immediately they are besieged by the werewolf. And killed off, so we don't get confused with too many NPCs.

Meanwhile a Sheriff from a nearby town is tracking the bank robbers with his drunken Indian sidekick. Other than being an offensive stereotype, she also exists to be exposition on Native American skinwalkers, so the movie can claim to have some mythological relevance to the Old West.

The movie wants to be a Bottle Episode, or single location, as the focus takes place inside the saloon in the abandoned town, with a limited number of characters in conflict with each other and the external danger.... but they keep on going outside. They also don't seem to be very scared. Oh the gunfighter should be the fearless one, as he seems to be the DM's favourite NPC with a mysterious, possible mystical background, but everyone else should be peeing their pants. Nope; everyone has no issue bucking up to fight the big hairy.

Said gunfighter also keeps on spouting a line that I think the writers believe we should know. When asked where he is from he answers, "I'd tell ya, but I don't think you'd have heard of it." Three times. Anyone know where that is from? Consider they make a tenuous connection to The Lost Boys, as the gunfighter was apparently on his way to Santa Carla to fight red eyed demons. Maybe it is a cowboy movie reference.

As for the werewolf himself, calling it a man in a rubber suit would be complimentary. It is a man in an old gorilla costume with a bad rubber werewolf head. It was just terrible, not even good enough to be considered a Halloween costume. From what I read elsewhere, even the director was not aware at how bad it looked till he saw it in a screening. See? The power of the table top RPG !

Now, normally, werewolf movies end with the reveal, changed back to human scene, and we recognize the werewolf from somewhere. Nope, other than the drunken Indian, who happened to also be a skinwalker, or half-skinwalker or whatever, hearing another wolf howl at the end, once the besieging werewolf is dead, the movie ends. Not sure if they understand how movies are supposed to end, but if it was just the DM pushing himself back from the table, all makes sense.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: The Final Girls

2015, Todd Strauss-Schulson (Betas) -- download

Downloading is getting confusing these days. I see a trailer on Apple Trailers or IMDB, and I think this movie is about to come out in the theatres. Then I almost immediately see a copy on the download sites. I understand, some Straight to X might get a trailer, and get released to the OnDemand services almost immediately, and then that means, gets ripped almost immediately. But some, like The Final Girls, I was pretty sure was getting wide theatre release. And yet here it is, a great media rip up for the viewing.

And don't get me started on the way Amazon does TV.

Anywayz, yes, I did expect to try and see The Final Girls in the cinema. Don't get it confused with Final Girl or the other movies that also play on the trope -- that in horror movies, there is usually a last girl who survives, by virtue of her virtue, and defeats the bogeyman. In The Final Girls, Taissa Farmiga is Max, the daughter of a woman who played a not so virtuous girl in this world's analog of Friday the 13th. She didn't survive, in the movie or long into Max's life, and now we have Max being dragged / guilted into attending the local rep theatre's showing of her mom's movie. Local celebrity and all.

An accidental fire leads the group of friends and frienemies through a tear in the screen and into... yep, you guess it, the movie. In a great introductory sequence, the group encounters the van with the kids from the movie, on their way to the summer camp to be slaughtered. At first they are just confused, but 92 minutes later, they are even more confused. Let's ignore the timing ignores In Movie time for running time, but along comes the van again, repeating the scene until they climb into the van to join the kids. At that point, they realize the only way out of the movie is to live through the movie, by surviving until the end, when the Final Girl kills that camp's bogeyman.

This movie was a lot of fun, as it balanced the weight of the film between the absolute lunacy of what these camp kids represent, blatant non-real chances for the "real" kids to go home, and the death and fear going on. They stand by and watch one couple die in the woods, pretty much assuming they are not characters, but observers, immune to the deaths that are coming. Or are they? Do they tell these kids what is going on and help them, or do they just run the movie to the end?

The sweet scenes between the daughter and the character who looks like her mother are odd, as the movie attempts, only somewhat successfully to add emotional weight. The camp kids are even more caricatures of real camp kids, then they are in any of the movies we have seen, but does that mean they deserve to die, even fictionally? Once things go kind of sideways, then they become as immersed in this world as the camp kids and all questions of what is real or not are abandoned.

The movie doesn't actually ever give a reason or an explanation for what is happening, just leading you from the camp into the sequel, leaving you to decide whether these kids were already dead in the theatre fire or all this is truly magical realism. But really, who cares but my brain, as the fun is in seeing how they handle the bogeyman, right down to the gearing up montage and the creative deaths scenes.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Let Us Prey

2014, Brian O'Malley -- download

Another cheat. But maybe one I won't need, as Marmy has been getting us to watch some doubles to fill in.  Oh well, cannot get enough out of my queue and onto the screen. This screen; we already did the widescreen.

Now, how's that for weird. When we started watching Last Shift, the movie that started this whole season of horror, we immediately asked, "Is this an American remake of Let Us Prey?" that we had watched earlier in September. Both begin with a young woman starting her first shift at a local precinct in a small town, this one being in Scotland. And I started the draft of this writing with the title Last Shift, instead of the proper one.

But really, Let Us Prey begins with Liam Cunningham, the Onion Knight, crawling out of the ocean in a heavy overcoat and lots of premonition.

PC. Rachel Heggie is beginning her first shift, and is welcomed by Sgt. MacReady. And if by welcomed, you mean berated and screamed at, the you would be correct. Like Sgt Cohen, who welcomes Jessica in the other movie, MacReady is a pock marked asshole. It doesn't help that on her first night, Heggie is dragging in the local asshole who almost hit a stranger on the road, in a case of reckless driving. They toss him in the clink but actually cannot find the stranger, Liam, until he appears at their door acting all mysterious. And just about begs to be tossed in the clink himself, right next to the man who almost hit him.

For her first night, things get pretty intense, as the jail begins to fill up and Liam acts more and more creepy. For a stranger with few words, Liam seems very aware of the sins people are committing. And likes to tell them how very aware he is. This includes the town doctor and MacReady himself. And yet, he is completely fine with Heggie, who has flashbacks to having been abducted when she was a child. Obviously protecting people had an origin story for her. As the night progresses, it becomes very clear Liam is definitely here for some retribution, and not the earthly kind.

Liam Cunningham has the intensity to pull off being a rather biblical entity out for punishment, and the coat doesn't hurt at all. As the movie falls into a pattern Simon Pegg would be fond of, Heggie maintains her cool and picks up on the cues Liam is giving. In the end, as the world burns down around her, he gives a choice, once I was rather surprised she accepted.

This was a fun movie, if not overly complicated. Bad guys get punished, and not without just merits. For a small sleepy Scottish town, there is a lot of nasty evil going on.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Hausu

1977, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) -- download

Back to the terrible (not the future), but finally, we get to see the classic Japanese surreal horror movie that is in turns fascinating and so very very terrible. It is your classic movie to be seen in a rep cinema with friends and copious amounts of alcohol.

P.S. I have called it by the Japanese name, but in reality, it is billed as House even in Japan. I just don't want to confuse it with the 1986 movie, which is apparently not a remake.

So, 1970s Japan. The special effects are not so special but the kink we know well is already in place. As are many of the tropes we know well today. Add to that some references to WWII and atomic trauma, and it actually had some current affairs for a bad movie about heads biting bums.

The girls are named Gorgeous, Fantasy, Melody, Kung Fu, Prof, Sweety and Mac, as translated by our subtitles loosely adapting the descriptive names in Japanese. Its school year's end and everyone is planning their summer holidays. Gorgeous is going with her dad to a resort town and most are joining Mr Togo in summer camp. I am never sure if Mr Togo was a teacher or a boyfriend, but whatever he was, it was wildly inappropriate. But Gorgeous's plans are foiled by her dad's new fiance (a new mom he found in Italy) and summer camp being cancelled. All the girls end up going to Gorgeous's Auntie who she hasn't seen since her mother's death.

The psychadelia begins right away. Nobuhiko is having a ball. The travel montages are a mixture of bad backdrop scenes (you know, badly painted canvasses representing the passing countryside) and scenes where we supposed to think its a backdrop, but its an actual painting on the roadside. This is his hint he will be messing with us.

The house is your typical menacing, rundown place on a hill in the countryside which is hard to find until you go the gas station run by the creepy guy. Sorry, I mean watermelon stand run by the creepy guy. Its Japan; they have their spin on the tropes.

Auntie is old and in a wheelchair, but inviting. In traditional fashion the girls dive to help clean house and prepare dinner, as Auntie makes disconcerting references to how tasty the girls look. The first to go is Mac, who is still hungry and goes after the watermelon being kept cool in the well. When Fantasy goes to find her, she gets bitten by Mac's decapitated but still quite ambulatory head, bitten on the ass. But Fantasy sees things so everyone dismisses her.

And then one by one, things go batshit. Sweety is beat up by futons & bedding to be turned into a doll. The girls sniff her panties to confirm its her. Kung Fu defends herself from chopped wood, loses her skirt and spends the rest of the movie running around in only panties. Gorgeous, who if this was an american movie would be the Final Girl, is... well, it involves her aunt's dressing table, mirror and makeup. And a terrible special effect that is her being consumed by ... fire? I have no idea, but she is missing. All the while Auntie has jumped up from her wheelchair and is dancing. And in case we didn't get it, we get a scene of her chowing down on Mac's limbs.

I forgot to mention the white cat that found her way to Gorgeous's bedroom at the beginning, into the train car when the girls were coming to Auntie's home in the country and finally, into Auntie's lap. Nobody ever asks why but guess what? That cat is Evil with green blinking eyes that initiate a lot of the batshit events.

I am not sure now, as I write this, that things were supposed to have a surreal aspect. I think it was more meant to be scary as all hell but the special effects are so terrible, things seem to drug induced to not be way out there.  I get Melody being eaten by a piano, but what is with the psychedelic lit up keys and her chomped off fingers continuing to play?

The thing that surprised me most about this movie was the familiar kink of current Japan fiction. Fan service, ala panty shots galore, is ever present but some "clothes ripped off" nudity was not expected. I get it, 70s horror movies in America were doing it then, having the bad girls murdered while changing or sexing it up, but this is very much the form we see in all the anime and schlock horror movies of today. Just wasn't expecting it to be a thing of the 70s as well.

In the end, this is a very very bad movie but so enjoyable because you are never sure what is intentional or what is just someone's attempt at shock or eeriness. P.S. We never do get to know why Mr Togo, the creepy old guy coming to find them, was meant to do because he gets turned into a bunch of bananas by Creepy Watermelon Guy.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Crimson Peak

2015, Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) --- cinema

Finally. Finally a great movie. What a relief.

P.S. Peak, not plural, not Twin Peaks reference.

Crimson Peak is a creepy gothic romance period piece. Let's get that straight. It is not, primarily, a horror movie. It is a throwback to the period storytelling where the setting and the characters were much more important than the ghosts, with often the latter being metaphorical in nature - as in main character Edith Cushing's novel. But don't get me wrong, there are some very fucking scary ghosts in this movie, but their impact on the story is not as important as the setting and characters.

Oh, the setting. We know well del Toro loves to set dress, but once he gets the story to the Cumberland region of England, it is just jaw dropping. A crumbling, and I mean holes in the roof crumbling, old stately manner on a snowy moor in the middle of  nowhere is where we spend much of the movie. Edith and her new husband Thomas Sharpe (run away! Its Loki in yet another disguise!) move here after the unfortunate death of Edith's father. The Sharpes, Thomas and sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain in a role that was channeling Eva Green) are down on their luck and seek the infusion of Edith's inheritance. Nefarious plans! Creepy family! Even more creepy house!

This house! Sinking into the red clay bogs, it has sucked up and is expelling the clay -- the walls literally bleed red at random intervals. They cannot afford to repair, so everything is in a state of haunted house disrepair yet they live in it all by themselves. No servants to get in the way of their dastardly plans. There is a creaking, swaying elevator that goes up to the attic workshop full of creepy toys and down to the cellar with the clay pots, that look more like places to punish wayward wives. And moths have made their home everywhere, fluttering and flitting about in the dark shadows like so many shades of death foretold. And yet, in all that, it is so beautiful in its decay, so well laid out with the hints of glamour once was.

del Toro tells a tale of wife beset by her husband and his sister. At first we suspect the ghosts may wish her harm, as they are the scariest spectral entities to haunt the screen since Mama, of which del Toro had his fingers in. But in gothic fashion, the people involved are the true villains. Poor Edith, will she escape the clutches of the Sharpes? Well, if still-playing-American-even-in-England Charlie Hunnam as Dr. McMichael has a say!

I have to watch a currently set movie with Mia Wasikowska to see if she is unfairly type cast. Ever since we saw her in Jane Eyre she has been in period pieces. And I kept on turning my head slightly to the right, thinking this movie was her Alice in Wonderland character learning just how nasty the real world can be. But she is fabulous here, not a truly weak willed wallflower as the role is meant to be, but very much in control of her fate. She doesn't really need to be rescued by Charlie, just requires a bit of assistance. She has it in hand.

So, for the Halloween season, I think it is the perfect choice. Hauntingly beautiful as it is haunting. And yes David, I am pretty sure I saw a blurry image of you in the background, over someone's shoulder.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Suburban Gothic

2014, Richard Bates Jr. -- download

Follow up a bad movie with a terrible movie. Way to trend David.

We almost turned this comedy ghost story off but I wanted to see how it ended, despite cringing and yawning through just about every scene. This indie comedy struck me as a director doing his utter best to be edgy and appeal to the horror film fest circuit to at least get a distribution deal. Grabbing Matthew Gray Gubler, best (only?) known for being the genius on the spectrum profiler on Criminal Minds and Kat Dennings doing her best fashion goth look, and whom I am beginning to accept is entirely one note in all of her roles and finally, Ray Wise, who shall forever be cast in cast in comedy horrors, Bates then wastes the skills of all involved on a painfully self-indulgent movie.

This movie played bingo with indie cred. It had a weird character, a prototypical hipster wearing thrift store finds and being painfully alternative, despite it only leading him back to the bedroom in his parents house. It has an abrasive bartender who says she doesn't want sex with said main character, but ends up having it with anyway. Bright colours! Weird connecting scenes where people act strange for no reason! Oddball small town characters! Wasted cameo by John Waters! Racism as humour! It felt like someone saw Odd Thomas and decided it needed to be merged with a John Waters film, but only put as much effort into it as convincing John Waters to waste his time on camera.

Plot? Kid has an ability to see ghosts, long suppressed by his blood pressure meds, actually antipsychotics. Returns home to his childhood bedroom (cute cut scene of a millennial just expecting work as exec), finds unearthed child casket in back yard and has to solve / foil haunting. In the end he finds purpose by opening a ghost investigator business. It as if Bates actually thought they might get an online TV or movie series deal. Or just a painful closure of millennial with no prospects finding his niche.

Should have turned it off.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: The Voices

2014, Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) -- download

What makes a good horror comedy? Subverting the tropes?  Working entirely within the tropes but putting a good comedic spin on it? Good jokes? Wry humour? Gross outs? Of course, we know the answer is never one of those things specific. Maybe Kent can weigh in more, as he is the comedy guy, but I always find myself not sure whether a premise is going to work. And even if it makes me laugh, its not always a good comedy, let alone a good movie.

If you run with the premise, The Voices is about a schlep of a guy working at a factory who hears his dog & cat talking to him. The cat, standard marmalade tom has a Scottish accent. The dog, a big rolly polly mastiff with drooping eyes and jowls, has a cartoony big galoot voice. Both are just the our main character Jerry's voice, i.e. Ryan Reynolds having some fun. Jerry is a little unbalanced, and not because the pets talk to him, but because of what they ask him to do. The dog is a nice guy, and the cat is expectedly an asshole, a sociopathic one to boot.

This movie looks like it wants to be set in North England, in a small factory town with all kinds of outrageous characters working there. Yet, its probably just somewhere in the midwest. Gemma Arterton is the extroverted office worker he has a crush on. Anna Kendrick is the introverted office worker who has a crush on him. Neither seem to notice Jerry is not just a handsome nice guy but very very much off. I am not sure if I bought into the fact Kendrick could like him in that way, despite that being Ryan Reynolds.

On a fateful night Jerry has to drive Gemma, ok her name is Fiona, home from a night out. Its pouring and she has no choice. She is flirty, dismissive and drunk. When she sees him deal with the deer they hit on the slick, rain obscured road, she really really sees how off Jerry is. And he has to kill her.

The movie is funny. The cat is funny. The talking heads in the fridge are funny. The acting is decent and the script is as well, if familiar. But it is just not a very good movie. Again with the not so good, not so bad. I am getting a bit frustrated. Even the break with the splendor of Spring, we are getting shelved with bad attempts to do out of the ordinary, comedy horrors.

And I am not really sure why the movie had to end with a song & dance number. Really really not sure, other than to highlight, "Hey look at us, a fun quirky movie! Songs! Dance! Those are fun right!"

Another celebrated director saddled with a crappy followup American movie.