Film – Page 5

Star Wars Binge Week 2020: The Phantom Menace

Afternoon, all. Ol’ Ryan is on vacation this week, and a curious thought struck me just last Wendesday: I have nine days off before work resumes, and there are nine movies in the core Star Wars saga. So why not spend this week binging my way through them all? And of course, it would make sense to record my thoughts throughout this retrospective because… well, I have a blog, and what else am I going to do with it?

So with that said, let’s go ahead and dive into all the random thoughts that I had while watching Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace this morning. (Random thoughts are mostly in chronological order.)

How Can One Be Bored?

Over the last month and change, people all over the world have been self-isolating and/or forced to stay in their homes to stem the tide of the coronavirus. Along with that came torrents of social media post proclaiming how bored people were now that they were confined to their homes.

To that I say… how?

I genuinely don’t understand. Last week I was on vacation, and like most, I spent almost all of that free time at home. However, I had so much going on to keep me busy that I didn’t even make time to write up any blog posts. There are dozens of other things on my to-do list that remain undone, because even when you aren’t losing a third of your day to work, there just isn’t enough time.

The 13th, on a Friday!

It wasn’t until just today that it occurred to me, that of the 11 Friday the 13th films, not one of them is set at Christmastime. And while that’s fine, it seems like a missed opportunity. Doing the usual thing, but with a holiday theme, would be a easy sequel gimmick.

So I just picked one randomly to watch tonight, and ended up going with part 9: Jason Goes to Hell. Well, maybe not entirely randomly. I partly chose this one because it’s my least-watched entry in the series. I’m reasonably sure I’ve only seen it the one time. Twice at the very most.

There are lots of things to say about Jason Goes to Hell, but the important one is that it’s probably the most creative sequel of the bunch, narratively (I’d listen to arguments in favour of Part 5, though). This film posits that Jason is not, in fact, an immortal zombie who is back again, but rather a demonic being that can hop between bodies as necessary. They don’t use the body-hopping conceit as effectively as they could have (there’s never even an attempt at hiding Jason’s identity), but at least it gives a slightly less flimsy excuse than usual as to why he’s always back again.

The film kicks off in an unorthodox fashion, with the FBI trapping and exploding Jason into itty-bitty giblets. This is interesting, because it goes against the tried-and-true horror trope of nobody but the protagonist believing that the monster is real. This suggests that Jason’s rampage in the previous film (Jason Takes Manhattan) was severe and public enough that the government was forced to acknowledge it and take action. And I find that fascinating. Because I love overthinking silly horror movie plots.

Then it goes into some voodoo malarkey about how Jason had a secret sister, and that only someone from his bloodline can kill him for real. And now that the audience knows this, Jason does a hard pivot after a decade of random murder and starts homing in on his sister and niece. It’s also noteworthy that Jason has never been quite this smart before, as he uses his new body-snatching ability to strategically get himself close to his prey without drawing too much attention.

The body-swap is also very bad news for whoever is on the recieving end. Getting posessed by a murder-zombie is bad enough, but when he moves into a new person, the previous host regains consciousness for a minute before slowly and painfully melting into a puddle of goop. But it should be no surprise thag having an evil spirit take up temporary residence inside you will take a real toll on your body.

Anyway, Jason Goes to Hell might actually be one of the best Friday the 13th films just by virtue of having an actual plot. It’s not a great plot by any metric, but it gives the characters real motivation. This in turn means that there’s more to this movie than just waiting to see what creative way Jason uses to kill the next hapless teen. This may be the only sequel in the series where the plot doesn’t just get in the way of escalating kill scenes. I was hoping to exclaim that it also has character development, but no, that doesn’t happen. The main guy has a soft arc where he learns to stop being a coward, but that’s really it.

If I have to level one complaint at Jason Goes to Hell, it’s going to be that the final scene straight up doesn’t work anymore, due to the ravages of time. At the end, our heroes walk away into the sunrise as the wind blows dust and debris over Jason’s mask – all that is left of him after he’s pulled down to Hell by a throng of It From The Pit hands (amazing scene BTW). It’s at this point that the canny horror fan will expect Jason’s hand to rise from the earth and reclaim the mask, assuring audiences that another sequel is on the way. But we get a curveball when instead it’s Freddy Krueger’s hand that emerges and pulls the mask into the ground with his signature cackle. No doubt this was a major surprise back in 1989, but now that Freddy vs Jason has happened (and how long it took to happen), there’s no shock value and you’re just left thinking about how it doesn’t make any GD sense from a lore perspective.

There actually was something else that I thought warranted criticizm, but I forgot what it was while writing the previous paragraph, so I it couldn’t have been especially bad. There’s a ridiculous scene near the end where Jason is reborn with a fresh, new… decaying zombie body… but I actually like that scene because of how stupid it is.

At the end of the day, the important thing is that I’ve gained a new appeciation for this film. I may be one of the few, though, as Jason Goes to Hell was not well-received by critics (obvi) or regular filmgoers. They called the plot incoherent and didn’t like the supernatural angle, but I think that as the ninth entry in a series with little in the way of innovation, it was a noble attempt to try to add a little freshness. Maybe they didn’t stick the landing, or a lot of what came before the landing, but I like that someone cared enough to try.

Spooktober 2019 – A.M.I.

I’ll be perfectly honest here: I will 100% judge movies by their Netflix cover image. If that little picture and the title don’t immediately appeal to me in some way, I’ll never watch it (unless someone tells me to). If it doesn’t look good, I can’t even guarantee I’ll read the summary blurb.

So then how in the heck did I end up watching A.M.I.? Mostly because I do read the descriptions for any movies that are obviously about social media or smartphones to laugh/groan at how stupid they are. But then I saw that this one is Canadian, and also it’s only 75 minutes long. This was probably going to be one of those special terrible movies.

Let me tell you, it was special all right. And I’m trying to think of a way to make fun of it for being “special” without being offensive towards mentally or physically disabled peoples, but I cannot. So let’s just move on.

Spooktober 2019 – IT Chapter Two

To be completely honest, I went to see IT Chapter Two before the calendar rolled over to Spooktober. But you know what? I’mma count it anyway. We need more spookles on this here website. The more the better, I always say.

I was very excited to go see the first chapter of IT back when it released in 2017. I liked the original TV miniseries version, so I was very eager to see what it would look like with an inflated Hollywood budget. And you know what? I ended up quite liking the new one too! The kids were darn good actors, and I was very impressed with the monster effects. When Pennywise’s lips start to peel back and reveal those rows and rows of teeth? I love that visual. And I’m the kind of person who minimizes his use of the word “love” as much as possible.

The thing that I didn’t know going into that film is that it was only part one of two. I mean, knowing the original story, and that they didn’t show any of the characters as adults in the trailers, one could have inferred as much. But I never heard anything pre-release about a plan for a part two. So it was a happy surprise when the title card came up at the very end of the movie and we got the “Chapter One” reveal. Needless to say, I didn’t waste any time booking my tickets for the sequel.

If you have no idea what these movies are about or need a quick refresher, here’s a very basic plot summary: Children are disappearing in the town of Derry, and seven weirdo kids known as The Losers Club decide to investigate and stop it. The culprit is a clown called Pennywise (also referred to as the titular “It”), who can shapeshift to take advantage of his victim’s greatest fears. The first film ends with the Losers defeating Pennywise, and the second picks up 27 years later when It returns to start snarfing children again.

Spooktober Movies – The Thirdening

Shin Godzilla – You know, I was so sure that I had written about this last time I watched it, but I cannot find such a post in the archive. So I guess I didn’t!

Here’s the short review: Shin Godzilla is AWESOME.

Long version: This is a reboot of sorts, wherein Japan is only being attacked by Godzilla for the first time, and there are no other monsters, and it’s gone back to being more of a social commentary than a movie about guys wrestling in rubber monster suits. Only instead of being about the dangers of nuclear weapons, it’s about the ineptitude of the old Japanese government officials. Nobody is willing to act in a crisis, much less tell the truth about what is happening. It’s only when most… you know what, the rest is kind of a spoiler, and you should absolutely watch this movie to figure it out yourself.

Godzilla himself is pretty much as awesome as he’s ever been. I really liked the recent Amercian movie’s “tired old man” version of Godzilla, but this one is pretty dang baller, too. He’s got a number of new tricks up his… uh, scales? Well, different things happen. Radically different things. And then… no, no… I can’t spoil that, either.

I really love this movie, is the point I’m trying to get across. I can and have and will watch it again and again and again. What I really need to do is actually buy the damned blu-ray and mount it on my wall as a testament to this being my favourite Godzilla movie. The only issue I take with it is that the subtitles are white and not outlined, which makes them hard/impossible to read at times. Rookie mistake, guys. But still! Watch this dang movie!

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – This is the original, baby. I have the super-special metal case edition, with an entire extra DVD of special features I’ll never ever watch. I’d sure like that kind of edition for Shin Godzilla. I’d definitely watch those special features.

But anyway, I feel like you probably know this one. It’s fairly old. Kids on road trip find spooky old house, most are killed by mask-wearing psychopath, final girl learns about family of cannibals that kill and eat kids on road trips that pass by. Ta-dah! The last half-hour of the whole thing is basically just said final girl screaming her heart out while trapped by/escaping the crazies.

To be honest, I had a rough time getting through this one. I know it’s a classic, but I think it’s one of the classics best left remembered, and not re-lived. Maybe I’m just too desensitized to this kind of stuff to get anything out of ’em anymore, unless they’re one of my absolute favourites. Jason and Freddy still do it for me. Why not Leatherface? We may never know! I had something else to add… but it seems that I’ve forgotten due to overwhelming apathy. Oh well.

Spooktober Movies: The Second Edition

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack – I was looking for something a little different than the usual horror movie fare, and then it hit me: I never watch any animated horror movies. After a cursory Googling, it seems to be because there are very few animated horror movies. And most of them are anime. So with that limitation in mind, I set off to see what I could dredge up.

The first result that I found interesting enough to pursue was Gyo. This is a movie about fish that are attached to strange walking machines, which randomly start attacking Tokyo and other Japanese cities. It’s incredibly weird. Like, I expect anime to be weird, but this one is so far out there. Somehow, if a person is stabbed by the walking machine’s spidery legs, they contract a virus that makes them bloat up into a green mess, and then start farting and belching out a noxious gas. Then, they’re captured by the walking machines, which use said gas as a sort of energy source. None of it makes any sense, and at the end some guy makes an offhand remark about how the walking machines are not from Earth. Whaaatever. I really don’t like when the “it must be an alien” excuse is used to handwave away anything the writer can’t be arsed to explain, but then isn’t followed up on at all. Tell me more about the aliens, dammit!

Anyhow, the plot is about some girl who is on vacation, but then goes back to Tokyo to find her fiancée when the fish start attacking. Fish- and zombie-related horror ensues, that’s about as much as I care to describe. There’s plenty of violence and unsettling imagery, but it never gets overly gory. The bulk of the second act is mechanized sharks attacking the city, but you never really see anyone get bitten or anything. It’s mostly just gross, what with the gassy zombies and all. At one point there’s a walker that has captured dozens of zombos, which may be the most disturbing part of the movie. Also our heroine gets all groped up by a mechanized octopus, because it’s anime and of course that had to happen. I wouldn’t really say it’s worth watching, even if you really like weird stuff like this. I never felt compelled, and while I liked the nice, clean animation, that’s not really enough reason to spend to 90 minutes on Gyo.

Lily C.A.T. – My second choice for animated horror is even more sci-fi than the last, and significantly more enjoyable. This one is from 1987, and is very clearly inspired by the likes of Alien, The Thing, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. There’s even some talk about the effects of time dilation, which feels like it’s pulled straight out of The Forever War.

The story starts out with a number of volunteers taking off on a deep-space mission, off to explore a new planet, probably for colonization? I don’t think they ever said the exact goal of the mission. While the crew is sealed away in their sleepy-pods, the ship autonomously catches a hunk of space debris and pulls it inside. Obviously, we don’t learn what it is until later on, but it’s not long after everyone wakes up that people start dying left and right. Also their bodies vanish when nobody’s looking. Not only that, but it seems that two of the volunteers have gotten on the ship with false identities, and could possibly be out to cause trouble!

If you hadn’t come to this conclusion after that paragraph, this film is basically Alien. The extra-terrestrial in question isn’t nearly as iconic as the Xenomorph, but it’s definitely a force to be reckoned with. Should you need another reason to be interested in it, I don’t know if it’s because of the vintage, but it Lily C.A.T. doesn’t have that anime feel to it that normally turns me off. Like, there’s no close-up shouting, there are no gratuitous panty shots, there are no super-serious cliched lines. It’s very natural and could be done shot-for-shot in live action without looking or sounding odd. The one itty bitty nitpick I have is that there are several scenes where information is displayed through dialogue on a computer monitor, and those flash by way too quickly. You absolutely need to pause to actually read them, but thankfully they’re not overly important. I didn’t bother to pause at all, and don’t feel like I missed anything. At the end of the day, I’d definitely recommend Lily C.A.T.

It Came From Beneath the Sea – Switching gears completely, last weekend I felt like the best way to make use of my Sunday morning would be a good old-fashioned creature feature. So I pulled out this DVD from my library – one that I had purchased many years ago, but for some reason never got around to actually watching. The results were mixed!

This film comes from way back in 1955, which by my metric is the best decade for monster movies. You’ve got The Blob, you’ve got Them!, you’ve got friggin’ Godzilla. Whole lotta stone-cold classics. Sadly, I don’t think that It Came From Beneath the Sea really qualifies as a “classic” per se. While I absolutely appreciate the style of the film, it suffers from way too much in the way of people. By my estimation, it was nearly halfway through before we saw so much as a single giant tentacle. The monster didn’t even really get to wreaking havoc until the last quarter. Maybe the last third, to be generous. However, once the monster did show up, I was pleased as punch. The stop-motion effects are so delightfully quaint, but probably cutting-edge for the time, and I really can’t get enough of stuff like that.

As I said though, there’s so much focus on the characters here, and way too much time invested in the love story. And since it’s a 50’s movie, it’s not even so much a love story as it is the male lead forcing himself on the female lead until she decides to give in. She’s visibly disinterested for most of the run time, and I don’t think she was that into the dude even by the end. But whatever, it’s an artifact of the time. You can’t change history. At least they also spend a decent amount of time trying to explain the science of what’s happening, about how the monster came to be and why it’s attacking people. In the end, I think it’s worth watching if you’re into the genre. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but I don’t imagine that anyone who isn’t into monster movies would give even half a flip about this one. It’s alright, but not nearly good enough for mass appeal.

Spooktober Movies – Week 1?

Puppet Master – Since Netflix is apparently too good now to carry any movies from before 1990 (except for four Friday the 13ths), I took it upon myself to dive into my DVD collection to see what kind of forgotten treasures might be found. I was actually feeling a bit like it was a Return of the Living Dead night, but then The Puppet Master Collection found its way into my hands. A series of nine films that I’d never heard of and never watched. Seemed to be a good way to satisfy my cheesy 80’s horror jones.

The first Puppet Master was released in 1989, so I was mere months away from being a hypocrite. It’s also not an especially good movie. I probably would have been obsessed with it in my early twenties. If you hadn’t guessed, this film is about puppets who come to life and kill people. Oh ho! Only… the murderous puppets are an afterthought at best. There’s a convoluted plot that was boring as heck and barely made any sense, and that’s what the people who made this movie decided to focus on. Not the killer puppets. For some reason.

I would really like to write more about Puppet Master, and I might! It’s perfect for a full article! The thing is, to do that, I’d have to watch it again. And I don’t really want to watch it again. So we’ll see! For now, I’ll leave you with this fun fact: Twice, I accidentally typed out the title of this movie as “Pupper Master” and quite frankly, I think that would be a much better film. Just an hour and a half of dogs doing dog things.

Murder Party – I went home on Thanksgiving night with a little time to spare, and a strong desire to watch a Halloween-styled movie. It was already pretty late, so when Netflix showed me this one, with a runtime of an hour-fifteen, I figured it was a sign from up above. Or, given the season and subject matter, down below?

Murder Party is about a dopey guy who randomly finds an invitation to a, well, murder party, and decides to attend, rather than spending his Halloween watching horror movies and eating candy corn with his asshole cat. He quickly fashions a (rather impressive) suit of knight’s armor from a cardboard box and heads downtown to the party. There, he finds a group of young artists who immediately capture him and reveal that the plan is to kill him as an art project to win some kind of nebulous grant.

It turns out (and was no surprise after the intro) that this is actually a horror-comedy, which certainly helped boost my opinion of it. Quite frankly though, it was a bit of a dud. While there were a number of genuinely funny gags, it spent way too much time making fun of artists. Like, that was the entire middle of the movie. We basically lost the hapless idiot from the beginning for most of the film, as he was gagged and bound while the rest of the cast went on and on about meaningless crap. Then the group begins to unravel (like they do), killing each other and allowing our “hero” to flee so that the film can end on a bloody chase sequence.

Like I said, there are some truly funny parts sprinkled about -I laughed out loud a few times- but for the most part I never really got into it. Probably because I was mostly just playing Picross with the movie on in the background. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad movie; I sure many folks consider this a really fun no-budget slasher parody. I just didn’t really dig the main theme of pretentious douchebags self-destructing, and they made it such an important part of the movie that I can’t just gloss over it in favour of the more appealing parts.

Wherein there was plenty of breathing

I watched Don’t Breathe recently, which is a movie that piqued my interest when it was first released, but I never actually saw it. A film about three no-goodniks who set out to rob a blind man, I recall hearing that it was pretty good and had an interesting series of twists. So thank you, Netflix, for finally acquiring this one. I’m always happy to cross something off my To-Do list.

I wish I could say that Don’t Breathe met my expectations, but to be honest, I wasn’t really feeling it. That said, I don’t think it’s a bad movie, I think it’s mostly that I can’t maintain focus for that long while at home. I really do need to go see something in the theater to get the most out of it. Anyway, yeah, I was a little taken aback by the big plot reveals. Nothing totally out of left field, but they certainly kept it interesting. I mean, without the twists, this would have just been like a gritty, backwards Home Alone. And that wouldn’t have been good at all.

I’m going to spoil the heck out of this movie now, so maybe stop reading here if you care.

Continue reading Wherein there was plenty of breathing

Last Month in Movies – May 2018

Avengers: Infinity War – Luckily, it didn’t take me nearly as long to get to this one as it did to finally see Black Panther. Because holy cow this was probably my movie of the summer. But we’ll just have to wait and see how Solo is.

Let’s start off by saying yeah, there’s a lot going on here, and you’ve got at least a dozen movies to watch if you really want to understand what’s going on with most of these characters. But since I’ve seen them all (except Ant-Man, but he wasn’t in Infinity War) it was all good for me. To give the very most basic gist of it: you’ve got three groups of super-heroes going about their business to stop the warlord Thanos from exterminating half the life in the universe. Iron Man and friends in space out to stop Thanos at his base of operations; Captain America and friends on Earth trying to destroy Vision’s infinity gem to thwart Thanos’ plan; and Thor, Rocket, and Groot out in a different part of space on a quest to forge a weapon strong enough to defeat Thanos.

Despite having to jump back and forth between several different plot lines, Infinity War never gets muddled. A lot of characters barely get any screen time outside of fight sequences, but you expect that. I was just happy that Spider-Man and Dr. Strange got to be pretty focal characters. But speaking of focal characters, I think the most important thing to take away from this whole movie is Thanos himself. They did an amazing job of giving him a ton of personality and making him unexpectedly sympathetic even though his endgame is to exterminate 50% of all life. And it’s all in the sake of bringing “balance” to the universe, because his own home planet was destroyed by overpopulation. He’s not really evil, he’s just grossly misguided and unfortunately, has the power to achieve his goals. My knee-jerk reaction is that Thanos is probably one of my favourite movie villains of all time. Right up there with Darth Vader and Freddy Krueger.

TMNT: Out of the Shadows – I was browsing through my Netflix queue on a Friday night, and nothing there appealed to me. So instead I watched this. I think I made the right choice.

It’s the second live-action TMNT movie from Platinum Dunes, and hands down the better of the two. For one, the Turtles get a lot more screen time. Secondly, it’s got wonderful, cartoony incarnations of Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady. I also quite like Tyler Perry as Baxter Stockman. Shame they’ll never make a third movie, because I really want to see what they do with his mutated form. Anyway, this is one of those “fun summer action movies” which I guess wouldn’t grade as an Actual Good Film, but certainly I don’t regret having watched it three times now.

Deadpool – No, I hadn’t seen it until now. I know, I’m the worst. I had been meaning to forever, and only finally got around to it because a friend invited me to go to see Deadpool 2.

I liked Deadpool, but I think that too many people giving it too much praise made me go in expecting too much. Like, it was really good, but it didn’t change my life. I still think the Guardians of the Galaxy movies are the best Marvel has to offer and Thor: Ragnarok is the funniest. Also, I have no idea why being in the oxygen deprivation tube thingy made Wade’s skin all gross? Maybe I missed the line explaining it, or just don’t have the scientific knowledge, but it didn’t make any sense to me. Whatever.

I’m sorry, that’s too much complaining. Deadpool is great! Watch it!

Deadpool 2 – People seem to be pretty strongly split on it, but I am firmly in the camp that believes Deadpool 2 is highly superior to the first film. Because it is. That’s a fact.

While the first one was very good for an origin story (they’re always so formulaic), Deadpool 2 goes a long way to mix things up. …Okay, it does a few things here and there to mix things up. It still follows the typical superhero formula, but at least there are a few surprises along the way. Like how the whole X-Force thing plays out. I honestly didn’t see that one coming. And now I’ve kind of spoiled it for you by even saying that something unexpected happens. Whoops!

Anyhow, this movie obvious shines brightest through its sense of humour. The jokes are fast and furious, as expected, and there are plenty of great fourth-wall breaks. In particular, I was happy that there was finally a little payoff for DP whining about how there are never any X-Men besides Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead in Xavier’s mansion. And the mid-credits scenes… ah, beautiful! Yes, you may have heard some internet rumblings about some “fridging” issues, but to that I say… whatever. It’s not like it turned the movie into a clichéd quest for revenge. It broke Deadpool with guilt and pushed the plot along by making him be an even bigger jerk than usual. But that’s a whole other can of beans. For now, just know that I highly recommend Deadpool 2.

My Friend Dahmer – Somehow, Saturday evening has become a time where my mother and I watch movies together. Which is fine, except for our tastes couldn’t be any more different.

This is the story of Jeffery Dahmer, infamous serial killer and cannibal. Except it’s not really about all that stuff. It’s about how he was in high school. And, I wish I had know that ahead of time, just so that I knew nothing was really going to happen. My mom also wishes she knew, because she never would have even watched the film in the first place.

I don’t think it’s bad. It’s an interesting look at how this guy was before he was a monster. And he was still a big ol’ weirdo, though mostly in ways that wouldn’t make you think he’s someone to be afraid of. At least until later on when he starts being preoccupied with what people an animals’ insides look like. I do wonder how much of this is factual and how much was played up to make a more captivating movie. In either case, it made me wonder how Dahmer would have turned out if he’d had a more stable family life. You know, nature versus nurture and all that. But I guess that’s why it’s a debate; we’ll never really know which way the other path would have gone.