10 for 10: Oops all Carpenter

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

In this edition: some films of director John Carpenter!

1. Dark Star - 1974, d. John Carpenter - tubi
2. Someone's Watching Me - 1978, d. John Carpenter - rental
3. The Fog - 1980, d. John Carpenter - rental
4. Escape from New York - 1981, d. John Carpenter - DVD
5. Christine - 1983, d. John Carpenter - netflix
6. Starman - 1984, d. John Carpenter - CTV
7. Big Trouble in Little China - 1986, d. John Carpenter - DVD
8. Prince of Darkness - 1987, d. John Carpenter - rental
9. They Live - 1988, d. John Carpenter - youtube
10. In the Mouth of Madness - 1992, d. John Carpenter - DVD

Preamble:
The podcast Blank Check (hosted by actor Griffin Newman and The Atlantic film critic David Sims) is a podcast I enjoy where they talk about directors, deep diving into their filmographies film-by-film, looking at those who were given "blank check" status to make a film (or many films) where sometimes those checks cleared, and sometimes they bounced, baby.  Their most current series, at the time of this writing, is a dive into the films of John Carpenter (if that weren't obvious by my setup) and I've been, for the most part, watching a new Carpenter film each week.  I missed out on Assault on Precinct 13, and I passed on both Halloween and The Thing -- both Carpenter's unrivaled masterpieces of horror -- which I've seen many many times and didn't need to rewatch in order to sit in on the conversation.  

Were you to have asked me three months ago, I would have proclaimed myself a fan of John Carpenter's.  What I've realized in following along with the podcast, though, is I'm not as big a John Carpenter fan as I thought I was.  In my list of 10 up for commentary here, four of them I had never seen before, and of the remaining 6 only Escape from New York and Starman had I seen more than once.  Does that sound like a fan to you? 

I came into Carpenter in my later teens in the 1990s.  The first film I had seen of his in the theatre was Village of the Damned which came with the director's ownership (eg. John Carpenter's Village of the Damned).  I must have know about Carpenter already by this point, but I'm completely at a loss to either remember what of Carpenter's films I had seen or why (I saw Starman numerous times as a kid, but don't think I picked up on who the director of that film - or any film for that matter - was at that point).  Clearly the not-so-greatness of Village didn't dissuade me from seeking out more Carpenter and finding the films of his I love, enough to follow him through both Vampires and Ghosts of Mars.  That tail-end trifecta, Village, Vampires and Ghosts are three of Carpenter's weakest works, and yet that was my prime exposure to him, and I can distinctly recall rooting for each of them to be a win.  I have no idea why I was so invested and likewise I don't know.

Looking back, Carpenter's filmography is a wildly mixed bag.  His prolific output from Assault through to They Live, that's 12 films in 12 years, and they vary between outright genre classics, top tier cult status, watchable stumbles, and maybe a slight misstep in the case of the lengthy TV docudrama Elvis (which I didn't see but by all accounts is pretty tedious viewing).  But through it all is a craftsman, a man who is direly efficient at getting what he wants out of his films, except maybe the budget.

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Carpenter's inaugural feature film, Dark Star started life as a featurette made by Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon when they were film students.  It was so well received that a distribution company picked it up and had the pair blow it out to feature length.  In a meta sense, it's a fascinating archeological artifact of science fiction, the prototype for more humour-laden scifi like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf, and even the foundation of O'Bannon's later work with Alien can be seen here.

But at the same time as it blazes trails it's also very much an overlong, padded out student film that looks like MTS3K fodder and sounds awful with, at best, middling performances. O'Bannon for decades has assured that it's a comedy, as if begging you to believe him, but if people miss that fact it's because, well, it's not finely crafted as such. There's some conceptually funny stuff (in particular the malfunctioning bomb with an AI that just wants to do its job already) but there's also a lot of "comedy" bits from guys who don't seem to have a well-honed sense of comedic structure or timing. Certainly Carpenter as a director isn't terribly known for his sense of humour.

In all it feels like a prototype, a proof of concept. Others have come along and certainly improved upon it since (in some cases vastly), and it only sporadically entertains (it gets tedious frequently, much of which I believe is inserted footage and not the original student film stuff). I'm curious if the O'Bannon/Alan Dean Foster novel is, in any way, an improvement.

If this were to be redone, the only casting I could see working would be to get the entire Always Sunny In Philadelphia crew on board. Charlie Day as Pinback, Glenn Howerton as Talby, Rob McElhenny as Dolittle and Kaitlin Olson as Boiler, with Devito as the Bomb(s).

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Before Halloween exploded, Carpenter struggled to get films made.  He wrote and sold scripts (The Eyes of Laura Mars for example) but he really wanted to direct them.  When the opportunity to direct his script for the Giallo-esque thriller Someone's Watching Me to network television, Carpenter apparently didn't hesitate. 

Lauren Hutton explodes in the role of Leigh, a network news producer newly relocated in LA from NY.  Hutton plays Leigh with a razor-sharp wit and general sardonic demeanor.  She's playful, confident, assured, and aware.  At her new gig, the network stud does his damnedest to hit on her and she delivers a masterclass in shutting him down.  Living alone, she fills the space frequently by talking to herself, a habit both endearing and useful, as it lets the audience get inside her head, and occasionally receive expository information.

What Leigh doesn't know is she's become the object of obsession from an onlooker in the apartment complex across the street from her, and she slowly becomes more and more aware as strange mail and phone calls start occurring.  

As freaked out as she is, Leigh isn't the type to just sit back and take it from anyone, so she, her new boyfriend, the dull, curly haired moppet Paul (David Birney), and her new best friend from work, Sophie (Adrienne Barbeau) begin investigating themselves, in spite of very real danger.

As an aside, Sophie is a lesbian, an out and out lesbian, which is kind of shocking for a 1970's era network TV movie, and more shocking for it's decided lack of homophobia.  During a great exchange between Sophie and Leigh while eating dinner and discussing their dating situations, Sophie points out that Leigh doesn't seem intimidated by her, to which Leigh replies matter-of-factly, "I'm with men all the time, and they don't threaten me, so why should you?"

The lack of police protection for women being harassed in the 70's is very upsetting (I'm aware it's not exceptionally better today) and the intensity of being stalked, the psychological toll, is palpable.  It's really rough watching Leigh go from lively and vigorous to demure and breathless, her agency and liberty robbed. 

Of course it's all set up to the climactic showdown, with misdirections aplenty (the sudden arrival of Seinfeld's "Uncle Leo" Len Lesser is unintentionally hilarious if you throw in a "Jerry, HELLO!" into the mix).  While the mystery is very involving, and Carpenter's direction definitely borrows from the chruch of Dario Argento, the final confrontation between Leigh and her stalker is brief and lackluster, and about the only thing (besides the clear commercial break edit points) that really stick out as "made for TV".  It's otherwise a tremendously engrossing thriller.

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While Carpenter certainly brings a lot of mood to the piece, The Fog it's a groggy mess of a film. Carpenter navigates the small coastal town of Antonio Bay adeptly, giving us a sprawling cast, but beyond Jamie Lee Curtis' Elizabeth -- a confident, liberated hitchhiker -- there's not much in the way of character building in this ensemble.  There's no central figure to guide us through the events, and without really building out the personalities of the townsfolk, there's very little to glom onto.

The reveal that the fog is a smokescreen for murderous, vengeful ghost lepers pilgrims sounds more absurd than it is actually presented, yet the spirits are far too visually and physically present in the film (knocking on doors, bursting through glass).  The obvious costuming and their tangibility within the world destroys their mystique as malevolent spirits.  The effect of the fog rolling in on the bay, lit with an eery deep forest green looks good though. Beyond their murderous intent, the film never clearly defines how or why they cause the metaphysical chaos they do (consisting mostly of knocking out electricity).  Given how they kill so tangibly, the electricity thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Adrienne Barbeau introduces us to the film, in voice over, as she hosts her radio show.  Barbeau's radio voice is so smooth with a little sultry, making it easy to understand why people would listen to her.  Barbeau is great, certainly the most compelling performer in the film (she should have been the main protagonist and focus of the film), up until the fog rolls in and she loses her cool, then she delivers a literal hot mess of a performance. I don't even know what she was doing there up on top of that lighthouse. 

Carpenter's score is a little plain here and he frequently returns to familiar notes from his Halloween theme which only calls out the stark differences between the two films, one a genuine masterpiece, the other decidedly not.

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After establishing a fruitful working relationship on the Elvis TV movie, Kurt Russell returns to Carpenter's fold, destroying his squeaky clean Disney-bred image as Snake Plissken, a tough-as-nails, one-eyed ex-marine-turned-thief who, we quickly learn, is notorious in both the law enforcement and criminal communities, not that his reputation matters much in getting him out of trouble.  

When the President's plane is hijacked on his way to a peace summit, the President (Donald Pleasance) escapes with a briefcase full of materials that would go a long way to de-escalating tensions around the globe.  However, his escape pod lands in Manhattan, which has been cut off from the world and acts as a national prison.  Snake Plisskin is deemed the only man capable of getting the president out alive, and, if he were to go rogue, well, they implant a bomb in him set to go off in 24 hours, so no dawdling. 

The formulae for Escape is sort of a mix of "the gauntlet" and "travelogue" with a "ticking clock" element, all about the strange people to meet, the unusual situations that occur, and the trouble to avoid or escape along the way to achieving a final goal in a set time limit.   Snake himself isn't very trustworthy, but in Russell's hands he's got charm, swagger and a likeable vulnerability.  In modern action movies, the protagonists have become impossible heroes, capable of living through most any event (surviving nuclear blasts in refrigerators, say).  Plisskin is very much still human, still capable of being injured, still succeptible to being tricked and deceived.  He's just a little more competent, a little more street wise, and a little more lucky than most.

Carpenter's films often have a very cynical streak to them, his vision of humanity seems to be one of disdain, distrust and full of selfishness.  This is on full display with Escape, not only in its villains, it's city of criminals, but in the law enforcement and even Plisskin himself.  Plisskin is an anarchist with an out-for-himself/watch the world burn view.  Yet the difference with Plisskin is there's sort of an integrity to his cynicism, willing to pass up a payday if it means he can punch a dickhead in the face.

By modern standards, this is barely an action movie, there's really not a lot of action happening. It's genre trappings and skewed view of 1988  (not even ten years in the future at time of release) give it a very unique sensibility that make it a tonal contemporary to Mad Max and precursor to Robocop.  It's so early-80's it hurts, Carpenter's score is still epic, and it's just an all-time landmark genre film.  The most disappointing thing about it has nothing to do about how its aged and everything to do with the fact that there's not a half dozen more Plisskin films in the world.  Unfortunately, Escape didn't really do much business at the box office, but it would quickly become a home video hit as VHS rentals took off (a repeating pattern for Carpenter).  It would be 15 years before Snake would return, and that, my friends, was way too long.

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I've been done with Stephen King adaptations for some time now, and watching Christine only served to remind me why.

This film opens on a automotive assembly line in the late 1950's, playing "Bad To The Bone" over the opening credits.  That song would be driven into the ground by a film called Problem Child a decade later, and rendered songa-non-grata following the various Problem Child sequels.  It's a song that screams hack, and too on the nose to put in any film where someone (or something) that should be innocent is an evil piece of shit.  In this case it's a 1958 Plymouth Fury, and it murders a man, ridiculously during its detailing.

25 years later, the fury is a rust bucket that becomes the object of affection for prototypical dweebnerd Arnie Cunningham.  Arnie starts to work the car, prettying it up, restoring it, and with the love he gives it, it in turn gives it back by murdering Arnie's tormenters.  There obviously something evil about the car, but why? How?  This film doesn't care.

Arnie ostensibly falls under the sway of the malicious red beast, to the point where Arnie becomes just as much a "shitter" as the bullies, if not moreso, being an atrocious friend to handsome popular jock Dennis, and an even worse boyfriend to Leigh.  

The problem with this film is its entirely unlikeable cast of characters.  Arnie's parents are kind of awful, so you feel for him on that, and his bullies are unusually cruel and vicious.  But even Dennis, who becomes the de facto protagonist, is by modern standards the definition of toxic male, and this film is loaded wall-to-wall with toxic masculinity.  Leigh has very little agency, and her becoming Arnie's girlfriend (after a boost of confidence from Christine) never really makes sense beyond the plot needs her to.

There's a couple stunning visual sequences in this, the scene of Christine chasing down one of the bullies, cornering him into a tractor trailer loading bay and then forcing herself deeper and deeper into the too-small bay is just a very intense and exciting scene.  Christine's self-repair "show me" sequence is also just astounding marvel of 80's practical visual effects but they're not enough to make for an appealing, rewatchable film.

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As a kid, I contextualized the world through what I knew from comic books. Therefore, Starman was a DC Comics superhero, and with that context this movie was never not a disappointment to me. Jeff Bridges is an alien with a limited supply of deus ex machina beads to use throughout his journey, beads that are effectively his superpower. But he's no hero, just an alien observer who gets stranded and needs a ride from the grieving widow whose husband's form it has reconstructed. Of course he's being chased by the government threatening his end goal, reaching a rendezvous point for a lift home before he dies.

It's two subgenres mashed into one, the good ol' American road trip, and the foreigner/alien learning to love America/Earth despite encountering so many awful things (eg. typical American/ human aggro bullshit). Carpenter's distaste for government and military structure are in fine form here, actively chasing the alien not as a threat but an object of study (the autopsy table was prepped). The threat is real.

At one point our two white leads manage to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup that is carrying Mexican immigrants. There's no allegory put into play here with Starman's illegal alien status but I really wish there was some engagement on that (the scene is mainly used to detail that Karen Allen's character wanted to have a baby but couldn't, foreshadowing a not-unexpected plot development).

I really didn't like Starman as a kid, Jeff Bridges character tics always bothered me, but mostly I found it boring. There's little action to speak of, it was just E.T.(another movie I wasn't fond of as a kid) but with grown ups. Watching it for the first time in maybe 30 years, I appreciate Bridges' performance more, and was a little more engaged with the emotional arc, but it's still 2 hours of cliches that remain pretty unexciting. Not unwatchable (Bridges is really hot, and Karen Allen is just an adorable freckleface and the two of them together could never be unwatchable), it's just unexciting. I think what it needed was a throughline of purposeful subtext, but it seems mostly to be a character driven story and genre exercise.

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I bought the special edition (Anchor Bay?) release of Big Trouble in Little China in the early 2000's without having ever seen the film. This was during a time where I was buying a lot of DVDs, amassing a collection particularly focused on films with genre or cult status, and the ones that had plenty of special features.  I was a real sucker for special features.

I honestly don't remember watching Big Trouble, though, until years later when my wife (then still my girlfriend) looked through my collection and said we needed to watch it.  Honestly I think I bought too many movies and just never got to watching it.  Or maybe I did and it just didn't leave an impression.

That said, watching it with my wife, who was already a big fan, didn't transcend anything for me.  I don't know what I thought of it, except that it was kind of disappointing for me.  I saw in it ambition that fell short, a big action movie that had to be scaled small due to 80's budgetary concerns.

Rewatching it again for the first time in more than a decade, I realize now why it's the cult film it is, and I get it on a level I didn't get it before. It's a comedy, derived from the 1930's Howard Hawkes style that Carpenter reveres, with the two motor mouth romantic leads who can't shut up about themselves, but are completely in over their heads and oblivious to how out of their elements they are.  

Jack Burton is the third great character in his trifecta of awesomeness with Carpenter.  He's a loud-mouthed, high-on-himself truck driver who thinks he's the hero of every situation he enters.  In this film he becomes embroiled in a kidnapping plot when he witnesses the kidnapping of his friend Wang Chi's (Dennis Dun) newly-arrived-from-China fiancee.  Burton talks a big game, constantly trying to take the lead, despite not knowing the culture, the terrain, the people or the language.  Wang Chi is the competent one in the pairing, the one with fighting skills and the one who's able to navigate through Little China, but he's also the one focused on the mission, with everything at stake, no ego involved.  Wang is also stuck keeping Burton out of trouble, not only because of Jack's ineptness, but also because he's so distracted by Gracie (Kim Cattrall), a moon-eyed, tough talking modern woman who seems to be giving Burton every opportunity to play the knight in shining armor, but it's a task too much for him.

Carpenter was inspired by the more fantastical kung fu films like Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain, and while, yes, there is definitely appropriation happening in the story from Carpenter and screenwriter W.D. Richtor (creator of Buckaroo Banzai) it's also one that's innately aware, and intentionally aimed to flip the script on how American appropriation of other cultures was handled on screen.  While Jack Burton (with Russell adopting both the swagger and patois of John Wayne) believes he's the hero, the script and the story know better, that he's the sidekick at best.  He's a tourist bumbling through a world beyond his understanding, and he's just a big dumb American galoot, too stupid to realize how big the trouble he's in is.  The film is almost entirely devoid of racist or xenophobic sentiment and it generally respects the culture it is appropriating and the people its presenting on screen.  Dun, Victor Wong, James Hong, Donald Li and even the three mystical elementals all get to be fun characters in their own right (and the elementals even change into suits out of their more traditional warrior garb), and really only Jack and Gracie are the butt of any jokes here.

A lot of the effects and action has aged poorly, but the greatest special effect is the rat-a-tat dialgue and the subversion of convention.  Even by todays standards the subversion is still pretty sharp.  This one's great, and pretty special.  I need to watch some of these Howard Hawkes films Carpenter is so enamored with....

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I was absolutely certain heading into Prince of Darkness that I had seen it before, that at some point in my excursions into Carpenter's filmography.  Nothing in the film was familiar to me, except that it was kind of a similar set-up to Assault on Precinct 13, with the protagonists trapped inside a building by outside forces, only for the malevolence to rise from within.

A priest like figure dies, the last of The Brotherhood of Sleep.  He leaves behind a secret in an abandoned monestary, a vat of ooze, sealed from within. Donald Pleasance plays a different priest who enlists the help of quantum physics professor Victor Wong and his students to help scientifically understand.  Once all the scientists have set up, the priest explains that within the vat is pure evil, and tells the story of the Devil and Jesus and aliens and oh my, that went off the rails quick.  It's a delight.  Not so delightful is the tedious romantic entanglement between the mustachioed Jameson Parker (Simon & Simon) and classmate Lisa Blount interrupts the first 20 minutes of the film (but then I've argued earlier about films without central characters ... what do you want me to say?) but once we start diving into the fantasy-religious exposition and the science gobblety-gook, it gets real good.

Soon the malevolent goop escapes and starts infecting people, turning them into killers, and people start getting picked off as the danger intensifies.  Of course, they're getting picked off in isolation so for two acts, nobody is really fully aware of the threat beneath them.

This film toes a fine line between silly and creepy and it works regardless on which side of the line it steps on.  I love the silly, overblown horror that is kind of laughable, but I also love the intensely creepy scenes like the ooze dripping upward to the ceiling, or the guy made out of bugs, but especially the effective and disturbing Brotherhood of Sleep dream sequences various characters keep having.  Carpenter filmed the sequence on videotape, then filmed the videotape on a tv screen for the dream sequence and just aesthetically it's utterly creepy, the accompanying voice, with its manipulated pitch and static takes it over the edge...and each time we see this dream sequence, it gets a little longer, reveals a little more, until the final scene of the film where we get the whole message.  What does it mean? I dunno, but it's creepy as shit and I love it.  But the most disturbing effect in the entire film, above and beyond, is Parker's thick, blonde mustache.  It's like something that shouldn't exist, and yet there it is.

It's far from a perfect film, but it's entertaining and it crafts its ensemble of characters 200% better than The Fog so there's a little more to connect with. 

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They Live is so awkwardly thin in character and story, yet so rich in subtext, style and world building, that it's easy to see why some find it so easily dismissable, and others think it's a classic.

Its message is sardonic and blunt without offering solutions or alternatives, but it's interesting(/depressing) that the same worries that we have today -- systemically classist structures, the environment, and a broken, abusive police system -- were just as evident 30 years ago. I do enjoy Carpenter's continued showcasing of anti-establishment behavior and his distrust of capitalism, although They Live certainly toes a line that makes it easy to see how the wrong people got the wrong message from it.  Scenes of the protagonist shooting up a bank or media outlet are potent, especially given the hyperawareness of acts of gun violence that happens in America time and again. 

Roddy Piper is the unlikely protagonist of the film, but, dare I say it, he's really good in the role.  Apparently Carpenter gave Piper a lot of leeway in crafting his character, Nada, and Piper brought a lot of his own transient and road-weary experience to it.  Piper's really great in his moments where he's observing, just a guy who's constantly checking the scene around him, having likely falling into a bad one more than a few times.  He stumbles upon the resistance to the invisible, invading forces, and upon adopting a pair of their special glasses, begins to see the truth of the world: alien capitalists have come to Earth to take all out money, keep us placated with distractions, and change the environment to better suit them. 

If only all our problems were so simply directed.  That Carpenter points to an "other" as the cause of all the problems would be problematic if he didn't also identify the complicity of most of society to go along with and turn a blind eye to the greed, corruption, placation and not really desire change because it doesn't benefit them to.  The conversation hasn't really shifted in 30 years.

Roddy Piper and Keith David's alley fight remains one of the best cinematic fights ever, just absurd and creative, with the make-up artist doing a, ahem, bang-up job showing the progressing consequences of the fisticuffs.  Even if the rest of the film didn't entertain, there's no way to not enjoy this sequence.

The opening ten minutes surprisingly reminded me of last year's Oscar winner Nomadland, as if Carpenter was ready to talk about the transient, displaced, exploited workforce decades ago, but also couldn't get past his genre impulses to make something more direct and dramatic.

Despite its iconic one liner about kicking ass and chewing bubblegum (as well as a few other classics from the Piper archives) this film doesn't aim for comedy, it's a satire, through and through.

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In The Mouth of Madness was another of those DVD acquisitions two decades ago, but one I did watch with relative immediacy, once. My longstanding memories are of it being effectively creepy in its depiction of someone going mad, and having a generally favorable impression of it.

In the years since, I built up the horror of In the Mouth of Madness to greater degrees than the film actually presents, which was kind of dismaying in returning to it.  It's not nearly as grotesque or upsetting as I recalled, and to be honest, very little of the imagery of the film stuck in my mind.  The rewatch, however, revealed that it has a very satisfying build-up, even in the midst of some disarmingly ugly 90's sets, wardrobe and hairstyles. 

Sam Neill plays an insurance investigator who is checking into a publisher's claim that their number one selling author, a horror writer that exceeds even Stephen King within this reality, has disappeared with his new novel's deadline fast encroaching.  Neill gets into some uncomfortably lumpy flirting with the author's editor, who has also been tasked with accompanying Neill on his seek-and-find mission.  Meanwhile, in the early 90's that surrounds them, there's a hot streak of madness breaking out that may or may not be related to the missing author's output.

They wind up in the author's fictitious village where things take a turn for the unbelievably bizarre, the brazenly weird, and the gut-grindingly upsetting.  Neill thinks it's all a put on, for show, a promotional trap, but the editor knows this place she's never physically been all too intimately, it's straight out of the novel, and ultimately we realize, so is Neill.  He's a character who has broken into reality and brought madess with him.  By the end, the snake eats its own tail.

A lot of films try to show a character's descent into insanity, but few are as effective at conveying the dizzying betrayal of logic and the world around them like this feature.  Many directors, David Lynch for instance, play hard at trying to mess with the audience directly whereas this film messes with its character foremost and the audience vicariously.

It works best when Neill discovers the little nonsensical clues, a tear in the fabric of reality, the mad people with the double pupils, the person on the bike, the soft clues of weary, bleeding eyes.  When it gets broad and overt it deflates the tension if only because the set lighting is too revealing.

Clearly this is Carpenter's tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, while also toying with Stephen King's mystique and story cliches.  If anything, the film is too impatient, it gets to the darkness and the madness within its small town too quickly.  There should be more awkward character interaction, more small-town weirdness to discover.  Since it sets itself up as a mystery, there is an expectation as to how it plays out, but once the insanity kicks in, all the clues and weirdness and mystery don't amount to much but uncomfortable nonsense.  It's the point but it's hard to accept

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Postscript
What surprised me most about following Carpenter's filmography along with Blank Check was the revelation of how generally unsuccessful Carpenter's films were at the box office.  Halloween was naturally his largest hit, but he never really had another one of that same size or success.  And yet, in spite of exceptionally low box office grosses, Carpenter has become a fan favourite director, with most of his films preceding the 90's having a cult following.

Selecting posters for this blog entry was pretty easy.  I went with the most iconic ones, and for me those were the ones I would see every time I went into the video store.  It's really a shame that he didn't have that immediate success with his big swings, like Escape, The Thing and Big Trouble.   The world really needed more Snake Plisskin, Macready, and Jack Burton, it needed more of that Carpenter/Russell collaboration. 

Carpenter seems happy making music and touring with his son.  I don't know if he misses directing, but he never got the respect, nor the budgets he deserved, and for most of his career behind the lens, he was ahead of his time.

31 Days of Halloween: The Taking of Deborah Logan

2014, Adam Robitel (Escape Room) -- download

Found footage. Its now a standard horror trope, or more accurately, its now a very tired standard trope in horror movies. If your movie doesn't have a gimmick, you can always fall back on the FF. But we seem to like them. But even so, I still prefer the actual "found" footage, as opposed to just doing the fake documentary style, ala What We Do In the Shadows. At one point, I even said of this movie, "Found footage implies everyone died and they find the camera...."

Mia, Gavin and Luis are shooting a documentary on Alzheimer's Disease, and the subject of their film will be Deborah Logan (Jill Larson, All My Children). He daughter Sarah (Anne Ramsay, Mad About You) has arranged for it to happen, mainly for the promised money, and probably for a bit of human contact since she and her mom live alone, without anymore help in a somewhat isolated area. Deborah is a "proper old lady" and considering the aspects of her disease, she can be incredibly demanding of things being exactly as they should be. The idea of a documentary crew living in their house with them, filming for weeks as the disease progresses seems like a horror story of awkward encounters unto itself.

But of course, because of the sub-genre, things start being weird when the cameras capture not just strange behaviour, but downright eerie. The first thing they see is Deborah going from the kitchen floor to standing on the cabinets in a single "frame" -- she does not climb or use a chair, she just appears. Gavin the sound guy is creeped out.

The house they live in is large, old and mostly shut down. Rooms sit unused and there are many many storage spaces, eventually inspiring Luis's, "How many attics does this place have?!?" It made me wonder if this movie had some influence on the more recent dementia-as-supernatural-horror movie Relic. But in this one, the house is just eerie, not supernaturally influenced.

In one such attic sits the abandoned ancient phone switchboard system that mom used to run a business with. During one incredibly spooky encounter with the plot, they hear mom talking in an otherworldly voice, in French. Mom doesn't speak French. That leads to some research into her clients, where they learn of Evil Dr. Desjardins (pronounced day-har-deen for some confoundingly probably American reason) who had been caught performing weird rituals.

Eventually the movie ends up not being about what is captured on camera, but has to stick to the gimmick and they just chase Deborah and Sarah around with their cameras, even when she is hospitalized. Yeah, I am not sure any hospital would allow them to shoot inside, let alone mount ceiling cameras.

There is one cute scene where Gavin does the atypical horror movie reaction, and just packs up and leaves. He doesn't know what is going on, nor does he cares. He's just getting fuck out of Dodge.

There are some pretty decent scares, and while the whole supernatural "explanation" is muddy at best (but not as muddy as Relic was) it does provide some pretty fucking weird shit centered around snake focused rituals. I am sure unhinging your jaw like that must have hurt like a summabitch.

I hate when movies do things, solely for the sake of the gimmick, but have no point in being in the movie. The aforementioned hop-up-on-the-cabinets scene has no purpose. Sure, Evil Dr Bad French had possessed mom, but is he just fucking with the camera crew, or does standing on kitchen fixtures serve some purpose in his ancient rituals? 

But "not bad" is the mantra we say at the end of these movies, as we got a few scares out of it, and at least the acting from mom was pretty on point.

Annette

 2021, d. Leos Carax - amazon prime

Oh, it's 5am, I've got a toothache that may or may not be sinus related, and my BPPV dizziness is still a problem.  Can't sleep.  What better time to write about Annette... a bizarre fever dream of a film that is daring if only that it dares you to like it.

If you haven't heard of Annette yet, well, that's because in spite of it's rousing debut at Cannes (where Carax won the Award for Best Director), Amazon acquired it and has spent little money or effort to promote it.  But, having watched the film, I can see why.  Outside of the film nerds who will actively seek out a Carax film or be up on the conversations of current film, this is not a movie for the masses.

Annette is a musical, co-written by Carax with Ron and Russel Mael, otherwise known as the band Sparks.  The band was the subject of a wonderful documentary earlier this year from Edgar Wright that exposes every reason why people would love them, but also reveal what might turn people off off them.  Both are very much at play in Annette.  Sparks' music, having evolved dramatically over a 40-year, 25 album career, is lyrically and sonically playful, accompanying an art house sensibility that seeks to challenge an audience as often as it wants to pleasingly wiggle into their ears.  Much is the same with Annette, though Sparks jump from the album format (which in my approach of their discography, only occassionally have a theme) to having to walk through a fully story to tell, and while they're doubtlessly up for the task, that's not necessarily the same as being up to the task.

The film's opening is its most alluring aspect, starting with a plea to the audience over the production studio cards, to stop being distracted, just stop breathing even, and listen.  As the screen brings into view a building's exterior, with flashes of sound meters overlayed, a fuzzed out version of a French ditty briefly plays.  Smash cut into the studio, where the director Carax and his daughter sit behind the panel of dials and switches, the band before them, tuning up to start, and then they start, by asking...singing "So may we start".  But one verse into the song, Ron and Russell get up from behind their instruments, without breaking rhythm, and venturing out of the studio, followed by their negligee-wearing backup chorus singers.  Outside of the studio they are joined by the main players in the cast - Adam Driver, Marian Cotillard, Simon Helberg - and a six pack of children chorus singers.  As they close out the song, Driver and Cotillard are provided with wigs and wardrobe before Cotillard hops into the back of a black SUV, and Driver onto the back of a motorbike, where he drives off, the song fading out and the singers waving "Bye Henry", and "Bye Ann"

It's an invigoratingly meta opening that, moments later is completely undercut by one of the worst cinematic tropes: the movie stand-up comedian. The "movie stand-up comedian" is typified by being fatally unfunny, and yet getting rousing rounds of laughter out of the audience.  Here, Driver is the comedian, Henry McHenry (for real), and the film posits him as a superstar standup in the abrasive, confrontational vein of Andrew Dice Clay or Sam Kinison, the kind of comedian who achieves fleeting fame based on a stage persona moreso than comedic chops.  There's a cult of personality to Henry McHenry which clearly a large audience has bought into, yet as Henry does his routine, which breaks in and out of song as well as call-and-response with the audience, it's clear Henry hasn't really bought into himself.  He lacks confidence.  And his material is, truly, direly unfunny.  But Driver has the rhythms down (he thanks Chris Rock and Bill Burr in the closing credits), he certainly knows the role he's playing, and he plays it well.  It's just a reminder of the distance this film holds you to, as well as the meta filter it doesn't even want to shake.

Henry is in love with Ann, an rising star in opera.  He's in awe of her talent, and watches dotingly as she dies for the audience on stage, in what seems like a nightly routine for them both.  They break into song together, the errantly repetitious "We Love Each Other So Much", in which the pair sing the title phrase in unison over and over for four minutes as they wander through differing scenes, ending in a fleshy, raw sex scene where their passionate undulating still takes a side seat to their repetitive singing.  Sparks' catalog features many a track with similar adventures in repetition, to similar jointly impressive/annoying effect.  Here, in context of the story, it's presented in earnest, but in hindsight it's evident the two are more trying to convince themselves, as well as the audience, that they do indeed love each other, so, so much.

Post coitus, Henry strikes a Nosferatu pose and attacks Ann with tickles.  It's an intentionally uncomfortable scene that doesn't want to distance itself from insinuations of rape.  Whether sexual or not, it's made clear this is an unwanted physical assault, and Henry doesn't seem to notice.  The film challenges the audience to try and marry this grotesque display with the minutes before imploring that they "Love Each Other So Much".  

As the film progresses, Henry's doubts about his relationship and himself seep in.  Ann is pregnant and Henry worries about his suitability as a parent (spoiler alert, he's no good).  It's also becoming more and more evident the film is not a "two hander", with mutual focus on both Henry and Ann, but the Henry McHenry show.  His anxieties, fears and self-absorption push Ann out of focus, and, eventually, off a boat.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Ann gives birth to Annette, who comes out of the delivery room very obviously a doll, her static face and articulated features obvious.  There's no denying the intent here to try and pass this doll off as a real child, except that the performers all treat it as such.  As time passes in the film, Annette grows and her movement becomes very marionette like ("mari-Annette"...huh, I *just* got that).  The intonation is that, to Henry (since he is our focal character, unfortunately) she is a prop in his life, and later, a puppet.  She's not so much a person.  And that attitude is reflective back on his relationship with Ann.

There are these godawful news reports throughout the film that simultaneously act as exposition, transition and as a world building, how the outside world see Ann and Henry as a couple.  Like "the movie stand-up comedian", "the movie news anchor" is one of those things that films so often can't seem to crack.  Acting is a different skill than stand-up or hosting a news program, and writing jokes and news script is a different skill than writing a screenplay.  The thing is, it seems like Carax wants these things to feel as fake an awful as possible, as he toys with edifice continually throughout the film (in on of the films better examples, Ann performs her opera on stage, in front of a huge crowd, the artificial set intoning a forest but certainly not mistaken for a real one...but the camera pans around and Ann steps through what should be the back of the stage, the framing of the set into a real forest, lost in her performance for minutes, before returning to stage and her adulation).  But I digress.  A news report informs us of Ann's meteoric rise in the world of opera and celebrity, while Henry's career is stagnating, his stage shtick becoming more and more niche.

Henry, spending more time with Annette, less time performing, less time with Ann, gets lost in his own insecurities, and takes to drinking.  Ann falls asleep in a limo to a performance, awakening to a news report that many women have come out with accusations against Henry, only to awaken again to a very different news broadcast.  Was it real, these allegations against Henry, or is it Ann's only subconscious becoming heightened and aware of Henry's true nature.  The film doesn't conclusively answer that.  It never outright addresses allegations arising from Henry's past, but it's a clear demarcation point in the film's view of Henry.  And it's followed by a disastrous performance in which Henry talks about killing his wife with tickles, to the discomfort of the audience.  It's the final nail in the coffin of his career.

  Driver is a massive man, tall an broad and with intense facial features, but we had to trust the film that despite his toxic stage persona, he loved Ann and that his parental anxiety was coming from a place of love.  Following the "allegations" dream sequence/news report/musical number Henry is only monster, seen as nothing else.  A news report tells us there's troubled times between Henry and Ann, and that they're taking their child on a boat trip.

Smash cut to stormy waters, a small boat on portentously stormy seas.  Waves swell ominously against the window as Ann tries to put Annette to sleep, Henry is nowhere to be seen.  Out on the deck, the very staged deck with a projected backdrop of rolling waves so grand they tower over the leads, the tops of the waves never visible.  Lighting flashes.  Henry's been drinking, Ann tries to get him inside.  Henry wants to dance.  It's an aggressive, ugly, and, foremost, artificial confrontation, leading to Ann's accidental?/intentional? push overboard.

The film has just passed its halfway point and Ann is dead, but she will haunt Henry through Annette, and when Annette sees the night sky, she sings with Ann's operatic pitch.  

Henry is a single father believing he has no love to give and that he's unworthy of receiving love.  His fortunes and purpose ebbing, he tries to sink himself into Annette, into being a dad, but loving doesn't come naturally to him.  And upon discovering Annette's night-sky-singing he does the fatherly thing of turning her into a freakshow, a commodity to be exploited, taking her around the world, joined by "The Accompanist" (Helberg), who until this time was only seen in the opening chorus, and one subsequent interlude where he briefly sings an introduction to himself.

The Accompanist is in with Henry because he loved Ann, and he cares for Annette.  He's there to ensure that she is safe, advancing his own career as a conductor is a side effect but not his focus.  Over the global travels, Henry abandons Annette with The Accompanist as he parties and sleeps around, fueled by self loathing, but not self awareness.  The Accompanist clearly becomes Annette's parental figure, and he later discerns that he may actually be Annette's biological father.  When he raises this possibility to Henry, it engrages him to the point of murder which Annette witnesses but Henry covers up.

Having earned their riches but also louder voices decrying Annette's exploitation, Henry decides on one last, grand, final show at the "Hyperbowl" (hyperbole) and a reluctant Annette refuses to sing.  A crowd, starting to turn, is silenced when Annette reveals that her father kills people.

A few years later, Henry is in jail, visited by Annette.  We see the Annette doll on the prison stool displaced by a young girl, a real girl, no longer under Henry's control, no longer his puppet.  The pair sing a powerful and intense duet.  Henry looks to Annette, perhaps his child, perhaps not and questions if he can actually love anything.  Can't he love her?  She gives him his answer. No, he has nothing to love, because he's incapable of it. (The young girl, Devyn McDowell, is a powerful singer for a child, if not the strongest actor)

Over the closing credits, the cast and crew walk down a hill with paper lanterns, reciting in unison a goodbye to the audience.

It's a film that starts strong and finishes strong but it's everything in the middle that make it hard to accept.  It's clear that central piece where Ann seems to be confronted with her husband's past is pulling in all the weight of of the #metoo movement, but buried in obfuscation it doesn't reckon with the actual power of the movement.  The storyteller's decision to focus on Henry to start, and then double-down on it for the second half is I think its critical flaw.  It's never asking us to sympathize with Henry, and I'm not sure it even cares enough to ask us to understand him.  It's like we're just supposed to buy into the spectacle of the destructive, toxic white male.  It offers very little insight or message beyond just a thin character study of a man of little substance.

I need to stop talking about movies for what they *should* have been and just look at them for what they are.  But Annette missed a real opportunity to reckon with the subject matter it just skirts around.  At that mid point, Ann should have been actually confronted with her husband's past.  Up to this point we could still believe it possible that Henry did really love her and was trying to be a good husband and father, but imagine the potency of Ann having to reconcile the man she knows with the man he was, and perhaps still is.  What does Ann have to deal with, both publicly, privately and internally.  Can she trust Henry anymore, his secrets unveiled?  Can she trust him with their daughter?  Who is he?  

The first half, following that opening "So May We Start" is kind of boring, frankly, visually interesting but not exciting.  The boat sequence is utterly dynamic and it does enliven the production, but the second half falls kind of lifeless again as we're asked primarily to invest in a doll's safety and security in the care of a cowardly, murderous parent. There's a very different way to approach that second act, shifting focus from Henry to Ann, but chooses the wrong route, by keeping the worst character as the focal figure.  It's like Carax and the Maels were incapable of envisioning the female perspective, and it makes for a more unlikable and, frankly, vapid story.  

The production, however, is anything but vapid.  It's full of intrigue and intent, piling metaphors on top of each other.  Carax certainly has vision, and it's evident he prides himself on being a visual stylist and artist.  He certainly has the skills to pull off his vision, and it's an impressive achievement, it's just unfortunate it's in service of a story without true purpose. 

And it's really, really weird that he dedicates this film to his daughter.

31 Days of Halloween: The Hole in the Ground

2019, Lee Cronin (Ghost Train) -- Netflix

Faery Tale, Fairy Tale, Fae, Fey, Fairies and Faeries. All the myriad spellings and mispellings I use to refer to the little folk of UK mythos. While watching The Hole in the Ground I could not help but think back to The Hallow from our 2016 run, about a black fungus goo that takes over people, but made a thin connection to the Fae and changelings, and the taking & replacing of children. Most of my fey posts are going to be more fantasy related, but every so often someone does something to connect horror to faery tales, and not in the Grimm Bros sense, but in an exploration of the ancient sources of what could have eventually evolved into the typical fairy worth being avoided.

Sarah (Seána Kerslake, Creation Stories) has moved to the country with her son Christopher, to an older house on the edge of an old forest - well as old as Ireland can get. But still, tall stands of pines loom on the horizon (as only forests in horror movies can) and its the sort of place you shouldn't wander at night, even if there aren't any predators left in Ireland. She has had a rough go at it, an abusive husband and having to leave a life behind. There must be an entire sub-genre of single mothers moving to the country to escape toxic men; sad it exists enough to be a trope.

Things start up when Sarah finds the titular big fucking hole in the ground, off the beaten path, in the forest. This is the kind of sink hole that you call the authorities about. Its massive, swallowing up everything for about fifty feet, and still sucking down soil and trees. But no, she just ponders it nervously, and tells Chris to never go into the forest by himself.

We also get a sub-plot about the local crazy lady, a neighbour, who was said to have "accidentally" run over her son after claiming he was no longer her son. Changelings and a hole in the ground, perhaps what was once a mound? Yup, Unseelie abound!

Eventually Chris must wander into the forest he shouldn't have, as what shows up next is a well enunciating, attentive and well behaving boy -- not Christopher. He also makes frienthds easily, which is something boys in these movies never do. Very very quickly Sarah figures things out, freaks out in public and challenges the kid. Changeling Chris does not handle it well, tossing mommy around like a rag doll. But she has drugged him, and is able to lock him up in the cellar before he can kill her.

And now she has to check out the hole. Seriously? I get that she needs to find real Christopher, but its been days, if not a week or more. The poor kid, if at the bottom of that hole, is likely DEAD. Also, evil fairies? I would think him eaten. But nope, she jumps into the hole and is sucked into the slimy underground where she finds her half-buried son. She drags him out, chased by more of the ugly not-human creatures, escapes, but not before she sees one wearing her face.

The last little bit of the movie is just a "she escaped! happy ending!" that ignores all the realistic things that would have happened after she pulled her son out of a hole in the ground. She's back in the city, things are happier, Christopher is alive and well. I get that these movies always have to solidify the happy ending, but this all seemed so tacked on.

But still, this was a fun, if not novel, little film. But considering the role the hole (hee) played in the movie, I wish it had been... more addressed.

Horror, Not Horror: Werewolves Within

 "Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold.  I'm not a big horror fan (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.

2021, John Ruben - netflix

So let's say you're tasked with writing a screenplay for a film based off a tabletop game where the participants try to work out who amongst them is the murderer...or werewolf...or both.  Where do you turn to for inspiration?

Werewolves Within is written by comedian/author Mishna Wolff, and stars comedy performers Sam Richardson, Milana Vayntrub, Michaela Watkins, Harvey Guillén, Sarah Burns, Cheyenn Jackson and others.  Nobody is a huge name, but most of these are probably "hey, it's that guy from that thing" and they're all dependable character actors and comedic presences.  Altogether, that spells a very different "horror" movie, except that's the bait-and-switch.  Werewolves Within is not a horror movie at all but a sort of madcap "whodunnit" (or perhaps "whoisit") that quite clearly takes its inspiration from the 1984 board-game adaptation classic (yeah, I said it) Clue.

Clue was a murder mystery comedy filled with bigger name comedic players all portraying characters with outsized personalities in a film whose whole point was to toy with the audience by creating an unsolvable mystery (one whose obfuscated clues could still work with no less than three different endings).  Werewolves Within doesn't go quite as ambitious as to have three different endings, but it works very hard, and very adeptly, at making everyone in the closed door/confined small town mystery a viable suspect to be the werewolf.  Grudges are set-up, fraught histories established, tensions are played out, and the acrimony is fierce, thinly veiled under neighbourly pretexts.  It doesn't take much for everyone to throw everyone else under the bus and point fingers (and guns...small town America is well armed).

Beyond just the delightful hysterics, and the ever-so-adorable will-they/wont-they of perky/confident mail carrier Vayntrub and stammering/optimistic new-to-town Ranger Richardson, there's a scathing view of America in a microcosm, taking aim at both the extreme right and left, and the people that exploit them, as well as jabs at science vs superstition/faith/belief, and the bitter cynicism directed at positivity and earnestness.  In the end, the philosophy is kind of that America will wind up eating itself as proven by the Grand Guignol of mishaps and murders that take place in the third act of the film.

This is a damn fun movie, just super entertaining with winning performances all around, and still managing social commentary without shoving any particular agenda down the viewer's throat, except maybe perhaps just be genuinely nicer to each other.  I could see this being as beloved as Clue, if only we weren't so inundated with content all the time.

BUT, hey, is it horror?

Nope, it's comedy, it's farce, and maybe even mystery, but it's not horror.

[Toast's take: we agree]

31 Days of Halloween: Doctor Sleep

2019, Mike Flanagan (Gerald's Game) -- Netflix

So many movies blur together when doing this month of watching, not just the movies I am watching for this year, but clearly the movies from previous years. While I enjoy the whole endeavour, enjoy the bad with the good, even enjoy the standard structures of the heavily "meh", I have to say I do love when some things emerge so strongly, stand out so much, that I am left thinking about them after.

Gone are the days from when I was the Stephen King fan (I bet you thought I was going to mention having been a movie fan again, didn't you?), and would have read every single one of his books as soon as the hardcovers hit the shelves. I knew this book was the sequel to The Shining, but I could not conceive of a continuation of the story that could be satisfying. This one definitely does it, takes the world that King introduced and expands upon it, moves it from one occurrence to a world of astonishing and terrible possibilities.

And yet, this was not a world present in the original Kubrick film. While I will never lose my absolute fascination for the movie, it is not something I am often eager to watch again. Its an impactful movie, somewhat too much for me. I think it really, truly represents fear for me. And yet, I cannot claim it did justice to the world King established, as Kubrick's film is less about Danny's shine, and more about Jack Torrance's utter collapse into insanity by way of an evil hotel.

And yet, Flanagan takes what we know from Kubrick's film, and adds back in all of the King magical realism elements. This is not just a world where a haunted house drove his father to madness, but a world where Danny "Doc" Torrance's supernatural powers both protect him and utterly endanger him. Its not just one kid, and one old man, but a world of people with powers, and monsters that prey on them.

The movie begins with Danny barely escaping the trauma of the hotel, especially since it follows his mother and him to Florida. But the spirit of Dick Halloran appears to give Doc a few tricks to protect himself. Alas, while he may be protected from the evil that the Overlook spawned, he is not able to escape his shine. And it haunts him constantly, driving him into the bottle. Eventually his running away takes him to New Hampshire, where he meets a kind man and a kind doctor, and they coax him into an AA meeting where he is saved. He also meets a nice little girl named Abra who lives far away, but not far enough away to stop her shine from being so bright that she can chat with Danny.

Alas someone, something else catches scent of her as well.

If there are those who shine bright, there are those that desire it. They are monsters, proto-vampires, humans that have learned to sup upon a particular byproduct of fear & pain that those who shine produce. They call it steam, and it feeds them, giving them long life. They may have once been people, but that time is past. They are boogeymen, the slayers of children with the shine.

Flanagan does not so much as make a horror movie, as he does a thriller about people with powers, good and evil, fighting it out. As I have commented about Flanagan's Absentia, there is a layer of heroic adventure behind the story. This was epic Good vs Evil, where the Good side does not shirk from its responsibility even when all can be lost. I absolutely loved that King and Flanagan could be so on the same page on how to present the next chapter for The Shining.

The Good here is Danny and Abra, two very bright shines. The evil here is called The True Knot, a group of wanderers in rotting RVs and camper vans, channeling the Travelers of UK infamy, especially so with their leader Rose (of the Hat) lilting a touch of an Irish accent, and displaying the affectations of Roma (Gypsy) folk. She is old, but some of her band are even older, maybe thousands of years old. But she is the most powerful and decides that she has to take Abra, for Abra's steam will be strong enough to sustain them for a very very long time. Rose and her people are not bad folk, but they are evil through and through, though I doubt they see it of themselves.

The movie does a full circle back to the Overlook, now abandoned, and to defeat the monster Rose, Danny has to release the monsters from the Overlook that he caged up all those years ago, with the help of Dick. Rose may be powerful, but she cannot stand to the utterly pure Evil that the hotel represents.

This movie was over two and a half hours long, but I didn't feel the time pass. It kept me attentive, but usually Ewan McGregor can do that. And Rebecca Ferguson as Rose, is just so beautiful and so dangerous, and so charismatic. They played off each other so well. I have heard there is a three hour version out there, and now I have seen the primary release, I shall endeavour to find and view this other Director's Cut. But not soon, I have much to let settle in.

Double Oh...25: No Time To Die

2021, d. Cary Joji Fukunaga

SPOILER WARNING! past here there be spoilers

No Time To Die Preamble:

Originally slated for a March 2020 release, the final chapter of Daniel Craig's career as James Bond was delayed again and again and again.  Nobody knows why.  No one.  It will remain an all-consuming mystery for all eternity.  When historians look back to 2020 and 2021 all they will be thinking about is "why did they keep delaying that Bond flick?"

I can't say whether the film's year-and-a-half delay created more excitement or not for me, or for the filmgoing crowd in general.  The ebbs and flows of COVID-19 (what'sthisnow?) caused a reactive  cycle of opening and closing of cinemas, but the idea of going anywhere with crowds seemed an uncomfortable proposition.  Post-vaccination, things have opened up more broadly, people are becoming more and more used to doing public activities, but it's baby steps, and, at least for myself, I had to settle into the idea of going to a movie theatre and feeling both safe and comfortable sitting there for two or more hours in the same room as other people.  With these sort of social anxieties, the unknowns of being in public, there was no excitement for any movie, and I've definitely avoided the theatres for a lot of the big tentpole films I really wanted to see (Shang-chi, The Suicide Squad).

My return to theatres was prompted by a friend looking for someone to join him in seeing the latest Halloween movie.  This was definitely not an expected draw, but the simplicity of it, a social activity prompted by another, with transportation and tickets taken care of, for a film I had no real desire to see seemed kind of the optimal way to get back in front of the big screen.  If I felt anxious being in the theatre, it wouldn't matter if it impacted my enjoyment of the film (plus it would be a horror movie, so maybe my environmental anxiety would enhance the experience?).

The funny thing is, in anticipation of going to the film, I started getting comfortable with going to the movie theatre altogether, and that led me to look at what else was out that I was itching to see.  Of course, the latest Bond was top of the list of what was currently playing, plus it was already a couple weeks into its run, and seeing it on an off-day, like Thursday, would mean less crowds.  And the rest of the family, all of them, were into the idea of going to see it, so suddenly it became a family affair.

Amazingly I had managed to avoid doing much deep-diving into No Time To Die in the nearly three-year lead-in to actually seeing it.  I watched the trailer when it was originally released, once, and kind of let it sit.  I had vague ideas about what it could be but I had kind of let go of those by the time I got to my seat.  I sat in the theatre and just let the film do what films should do...take me away from my reality for its 2 hours and 40 minutes.... 

As noted with my Spectre entry for "Double Oh..." I seem to like each entry of the Daniel Craig era more with each successive viewing.  Do I think that Daniel Craig is the best Bond ever? An undecided probably. Spectre was such a let-down after Skyfall (my favourite Bond film) and I've watched it twice since and softened on it.  I was wary that No Time To Die would be more Spectre, more attempts at tying a neat little bow on the Craig era.  The strained efforts to connect all the threads in Spectre was what soured that movie, would they attempt more here?

 
Villains: 
Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) is the main villain of the piece, and he's... underwhelming.  Something definitely happened in either the scripting or editing where we lost a lot of what Safin's deal was.  The film opens strongly, differently, with a flashback to young Madeleine Swann, daughter of Spectre/Quantum agent Mr. White and an early encounter she has with Safin.  He's there to kill White's family, because White killed his (and he bears the scars of his survival on his face, under a noh mask) She shoots him twice but he gets up an walks away from this assault (watching the film I was expecting Safin to have some form of immortality or regenerative capability, which I thought would be the crux of the film...it didn't occur to me he had a bulletproof vest on).  Despite his objectives he saves her when she falls through the thin ice on a lake. 

Past this 10 minute prelude, we don't see Safin again for another 90 minutes, which is a long time to go without seeing the main villain.  Bond movies do tend to do this, though, where the villain is more of a string-puller than physical presence in the film.
Safin re-emerges into Madeleine's life decades later, having secured Project Heracles, the maguffin of the film, for his own use (it's a bio-weapon comprised of nanites that can be programmed to attack and kill an individual based on their DNA) and used it to kill the majority of Spectre's agents at a party in Cuba. 
At first he tries to call in a favor from Madeleine, but then just uses threats to coerce her into attempting to assassinate Blofeld.
Later he kidnaps her (and her daughter) taking her back to his island lair, which is in disputed waters between Russia and Japan.  It's an island that houses a former nuclear missile base, and it's irradiated with poisonous plants and toxic water.  It's a very fitting Bond villain base.
We never get to the crux of Safin.  He's fueled by revenge when we first meet him, but what his plan is with Project Heracles is kind of a mystery.  I mean, he plans to decimate the world, but why is not entirely clear.  Malik plays him with a calm, patient demeanor which heightens his intensity, and his child endangerment tactics are pretty creepy, but I really struggle to fear him.  His obsession with toxins and poisons never really comes into play, which it probably did in an earlier script, or perhaps longer cut of the film.  If there were massive revisions to the story or big edits to not make it a 3-hour movie then Safin surely was the character that suffered the most in it.

Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) is the Hannibal Lecter of the film, except that he's just as feckless and impotent as he was in Spectre.  The measures of his imprisonment here implies he's the most dangerous man alive, with higher precautions than we see in Silence of the Lambs or the Winter Soldier's containment in Captain America: Civil War but it's kind of all-for-naught.  There's an awareness here to how limp he was as a villain in the previous film, and this film uses that to its advantage.  His personal connection to Bond gets under Bond's skin...he's a nuisance, but hardly the most dangerous man alive.  His presence is only here to show us that there are greater evils, and that the enemy of my enemy does not make them my friend.

Primo (Cyclops) (Dali Benssalah) is an assassin with a false eye.  The false eye is connected to one that Blofeld wears, allowing Blofeld to observe the world.  What Blofeld doesn't know is that Primo is a double agent, working for Spectre, but also against Spectre for Safin.  He's kind of a non-presence.  If not for the fake eye, and tier2 henchmen competency, you wouldn't really notice him as anything different from all the other mooks that Bond and company kill.   He has a pretty great death though that works extremely well for his one gimmick.

Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen) is introduced as a CIA colleague of Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), intoned to be a nepotism case.  Ash introduces himself to Bond as a big fan with an excess amount of excitable energy.  He's there with Wright to recruit the retired Bond in helping to recover the Project Heracles scientist Valdo Obruchev from Spectre. Of course, Ash is a turncoat, and when Bond returns, Ash shoots Leiter which makes him the worst villain of this movie.  Despite his rage, Bond doesn't rush out to seek revenge for Felix...he's got too much on his mind, but when he runs into him later...well, let's just say Ash gets what he deserves.  It's a great scene.

Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik) is the thrice-kidnapped scientist for Project Heracles. Dencik plays him like he's in a totally different movie, a crazy Russian accent and a wide-eyed nervous motor-mouth energy. I'm not sure if it works in spite of  He's ready to report to whomever will keep him alive up until Nomi gets ahold of him, and yeah, he's racist.  He gets the harshest death in the film, but acts a fitting rebuttal to the racist reaction to Lashana Lynch being cast as 007.

Bond Girls:

Is Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) the first holdover love interest for Bond?  Why yes she is.  In 24 films, the woman Bond ends up with at the end of a movie is rarely even mentioned nevermind seen (only Tracey and Vesper had ever been mentioned again).  So that's a big deal.
Not only that, for the first time ever a Bond movie opens with a sequence that has nothing to do with Bond directly.  The cold open is a flashback (only Casino Royale opens with a flashback which is a nice bookend to the Craig years) revealing Madeleine's rather upsetting childhood.
We catch up with Bond and Madeleine in modern day as they attempt to move forward in their life together.  Madeleine brings Bond to Vesper's tomb where it explodes and Blofeld sets her up to appear as if she's a sleeper agent.  Bond, having been betrayed once before (and visiting Vesper's grave brings that to the forefront of his mind) can't be certain that Madeleine isn't a Spectre agent.  There's some great, great acting between Seydoux and Craig as she implores him to believe her and he can't trust himself enough to trust her.
So it kind of sucks that she then disappears from the film following the the opening credits for what seems like an hour as the film jumps 5 years into the future (another first for a Bond film).  When we see Madeleine again she's introduced as Blofeld's psychiatrist, the only person he will talk to (which seems quite fitting for Blofeld frankly).  Bond's reintroduction to Madeleine is painfully awkward ("Dr. Swann" he said, choking on his false pleasantry with a faked smile, and reaching his hand out for a shake that wasn't returned), but it's not long before his heart has melted again and all he wants is to protect her.  As much as Bond and Swann didn't really work perfectly in Spectre, Craig really sells Bond's emotional investment.  Seydoux, for her part, effectively portrays a woman who knows she needs to keep her distance.
The reveal of Mathilde, Madeleine's child is a shocker, and the child's piercing blue eyes clearly tell the audience she's Bond's child, despite Madeleine imploring that she's not.  When Safin, earlier, threatens Madeleine's loved one, he clearly knows of her child (but we the audience, not knowing, think it's Bond he's referring to).  And so it's not long before he comes calling.
The film always undermines our expectations for Madeleine, by placing her in typical woman-in-peril situations, which would be totally eye rolling if she weren't capable of dealing with them on her own, which she does.
As much as the film rotates around Madeleine, and both Craig and Seydoux do very well at trying to sell a bond (no pun intended) that they share, it's still feels like a script necessity rather than a fully tangible connection.  The foundation is still all built out of Spectre which never really sold them as a viable relationship, and certainly doesn't stack up to the same steamy connection that Bond had with Tracey or Vesper.

For all the "controversy" (by which I mean a bunch of internet manbaby idiots who try to gatekeep properties to some bullshit white, masculine ideal by complaining and harassing) surrounding Lashana Lynch being the new 007 in No Time To Die, the film never even contemplates offering her up as a replacement for Bond.  She's just the new agent with the "Double Oh" number.  M proffers to Bond "You thought we would retire it?" and the thought of there being a tuxedo with "007" and "Bond" printed on the back like some espionage jersey lifted to the rafters of MI6 makes me laugh.
But Nomi is a tried and true "Double Oh", skilled and capable, with the same wry sense of humour.  She introduces herself to Bond in Jamaica after finally tracking him down for M, bringing him out of years of hiding, but he's not requested to come back into the fold, instead challenged to stay out of the way.  Bond, in accepting Felix's offer, has a semi-friendly rivalry with Nomi, and their dynamic is really quite fun, neither bitter nor sexist.  Likewise there's no really any winking "girl power" or stick-it-to-them aspect to Nomi, she's just cool, stylish, and capable.
The only down side for me was I was hoping for more of a spotlight for Lynch, where she's left kind of as an aside.  She never gets a big action sequence, and certainly nothing like what our next Bond Girl does.

Muh, muh, muh, muh my Paloma (Ana de Armas).  I love palomas, they're one of my favourite drinks.  Tequila, grapefruit, salt, yum.  Now, I'm trying to resist being gross, so let me just say de Armas' Paloma is seriously the highlight of No Time To Die.  She's introduced to Bond as a fresh-out-of-training CIA agent, and Bond's contact in Cuba.  She's wearing a stunning low-cut, vibrant blue dress, and guides Bond to a closet where she starts to undress him.  Bond mistakes her forwardness for a come-on, but it's just awkwardness as she tries to get him dressed for their Spectre infiltration.  Her reaction to the pass Bond makes on her is hilarious (she basically says "ew, gross" without being offensive).  Also, this is de Armis' second team-up with Craig, after Knives Out, so they already have an establish acting rapport.
Now, the set up with her giggly, fresh-meat, sex-bomb appearance and back story is a stark counter to so many other Bond Girls who are basically there for Bond to sleep with, and their competency is often called into question.  Paloma, though, just grows and grows and grows every second she is on screen, to the point that she's even more effective than Bond in the big brawl with Spectre.  Her hypercompetence, countered with her boundless positivity is utterly delightful.  For decades they've been trying to find a Bond Girl to spin off into their own film, and Paloma is it.  Make it happen Broccolis!

Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) is back in a small supporting role, mainly sharing scenes with M, Q, Nomi and Tanner.  I really like Harris as an actress, and she's a fine Moneypenny (I like how she lures Bond out to "dinner") but it's such a small role.  I always want a little more out of it.

Theme/Credits:
Truth, I did a bathroom break during the credits sequence so I can't comment at all on what happens because I saw only scant seconds of it.  Now, Billie Eilish's theme to the film came out back in February 2020, so we've had a long time with it, and it's not a bad torch song, but it doesn't have the pop-swells of the best Bond themes.  There are hints of "Writing On The Wall" from Sam Smith, which gives another connective thread to Spectre, but it at least Eilish's song builds to something which Smith's song never did.  It's not as dull as Smith's effort (which, I know, isn't saying much), but it doesn't reach for epic territory like the best Bond themes.  It's ultimately kind of a let down as a sendoff for Craig ...it's fine for just another Bond theme.



Bond:

Daniel Craig was in it to win it with this one.  Able, willing, and more than ready to say goodbye to Bond, Craig invests his body and soul into his last outing and it shows.  Though physically still as beefy as ever, his face is wearing his age, which is partly just how Craig looks, but also he uses it to show a weariness in Bond, a fatigue for all he's gone through.  Where both Skyfall and Spectre directly comment on the idea that he's getting to old for this shit, here it's more emotional.  He was more than happy to give up the life, seemingly.  He's given it up three times now in five films, but he always comes back to it.  Part of what Craig is able to do is show that Bond is incapable of hiding from what he was raised and trained to be, as much as he wants to escape.  What was evident in the early scenes with Madeleine is that he's allowed himself to be as happy as he's ever been (which was with Vesper) but he's let his guard down again.  Madeleine is set up to apparently betray him, in a sequence and setting that offers cruel parallel, a synergy between the sequence in which he discovers Vesper's betrayal and he thinks that Madeleine has betrayed him.  He still wanted to love Vesper despite her betrayal, but she didn't feel she was worthy of it and she died so that Bond could be free.  With Madeleine's "betrayal" he's caught at his most vulnerable, and his guards go up instantly.  He loves Madeleine too much to be objective, and at the same time I think he realizes he'll never escape his past, so he has to set her free, both for his own well being, and hers.

So 5 years later, when she returns, Craig does sell the hurt and pain and joy and awkwardness of seeing the love of his life, the woman he let go once again.  This is probably the most character-focused and emotional Bond movie ever, and clearly Craig relishes diving into that part of the character.  Even meeting Nomi, and learning he's been replaced as 007, it has a greater impact that I think Bond thinks it should.  Without Madeleine to take him away from the life, what life has he had?  As we saw in Skyfall, and again here in Jamaica, when Bond is liberated from his work, he descends into vice - drinking and women primarily.  Rather than having a life, it feels like Bond is just waiting to be found again.  As much as he protests against Felix's advances, it's clear it's exactly what he wants...until he sees Madeleine again.

Once Madeleine enters the picture and he realizes that she's connected to the events of the film, his objective has little to do with the safety of the world, and everything to do with the safety of Madeleine, and later Mathilde.

Bond's connection to Safin is, really, nothing, except in understanding that Safin has traumatized Madeleine in the past, and continues to haunt her.  Safin, of course, is a dead man regardless of whatever evil scheme he's trying to perpetrate.

I've mentioned a couple firsts for this Bond, and it's the first time that Bond has died, and it was, for me, a shock.  In the way they present it, Bond's death is an inevitability, so when it happens, there's still a sense of disbelief but also acceptance.  Bond's luck has run out.  But infected with a Heracles virus that is tailored to Madeleine's DNA (thus affecting her and Mathilde), Bond knows that in spite of being out of time to escape, there's no sense in trying if he can never be with these people, and that even his presence in the world could eventually kill them.  There is no choice for him, he sacrifices himself so that the people he love can have a future.  It's sobering but sweet in a way.  I don't like it, but I do accept it.

Movie:
No Time To Die is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, but somehow I never felt it.  It's an incredibly propulsive work.  There's one sequence late in the film with Bond stalking through the enemy lair taking out henchman after henchman which does get tedious but it's the only 2-3 minutes that drag.  

In spite of the villains being rather lackluster and the main villain plan being somewhat leftfield, the film is very, very grounded in its emotional connection.  Bond's connection to M, Moneypenny, Q, Tanner, Felix, Madeleine, Vesper, and ultimately Mathilde, it's all there, and it drives the film in a direction that few other Bond films even dare to broach.  Even Bond's "revenge" films don't feel grounded in any real emotional connection, but the Craig films have always looked inward.  Bond is kind of a sad figure in the Craig movies and he's at his saddest here, but trying to put on an outwardly brave face.

The action sequences in this film are phenomenal, and rarely overstay their welcome.  Because of the emotionality of the film there's a greater intensity to the action, an actual feeling of stakes.  Despite not having Roger Deakins as DP, No Time To Die rivals Skyfall in its beauty (maybe just a little less).  There's perhaps the best forest action sequence this side of Return of the Jedi, just lush, green and gorgeous.  The early action sequence in various Italian locations are just lovingly crafted and adoringly shot, perfect for armchair tourists like myself. 

The villain's lair, estabilshed inside an old missile base, is grand in scope, but has more than just a concrete bunker feel.  There's multiple environments within the base and so many threats...unfortunately the toxic and poisonous environment isn't used to an effective payoff (again, probably a sacrifice of script revisions) but it's really neat in how it's both set decorated and shot.

What I didn't like, I mean viscerally reacted to, was the killing of Felix.  That one upset me. But otherwise, I quite loved the film, and the experience of the film, and how it caps off a very special era of Bond. 

Q-Gadgets:
I really enjoy Ben Whishaw as Q, and I like how each of the past three films have given little hints at who this character is when he isn't around Bond.  A whole sequence takes place in Q's home, where we find him cooking for an incoming date, and meet his cat.

He doesn't have much to present in this film.  The only real gadget is the watch which contains a small electromagnet.  It's an untested prototype so Q can't even really tell its effectiveness.  Bond finds out not once, but twice.

Nomi takes the lead of the two seat glider that they'll need to use to infiltrate Safin's base.  It falls out of the back of a carrier plane and goes low and silent on approach, but also becomes a submersible.  It's pretty sleek, but only has a short sequence and shelf life.

Classification [Out of 01.0]: 00.7

BONUS: Ranking Bond Update:
1. Skyfall (01.0)
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (00.9)
3. Casino Royale (00.9)
4. The Spy Who Loved Me (00.9)
5. License To Kill (00.8)
6. Quantum of Solace (00.8)
7. For Your Eyes Only (00.8)
8. Tomorrow Never Dies (00.8)
9. Thunderball (00.8)
10. No Time To Die (00.7)
11. Goldeneye (00.7)
12. From Russia With Love (00.7)
13. Moonraker (00.7)
14. Live and Let Die (00.7)
15. Dr. No (00.6)
16. Diamonds are Forever (00.6)
17. The Man With The Golden Gun (00.6)
18. The Living Daylights (00.6)
19. Goldfinger (00.5)
20. Spectre (00.5)
21. Die Another Day (00.5)
22. A View To A Kill (00.4)
23. You Only Live Twice (00.4)
24. Octopussy (00.2)
25. The World Is Not Enough (00.2)