Shocktober Revisited: Galaxy of Terror

 In my continued efforts to turn left when you're expecting me to go right, I have opted to review Galaxy of Terror (aka Planet of Horrors and Mindwarp: An Infinity of Terror) instead of Ben-Hur. It is true that I watched them back-to-back, and just like you got a write up for Lockout instead of The Cabin in the Woods, we're going to focus on the much schlockier part of a double feature again. The good news is that you don't have to be drunk to enjoy Galaxy of Terror, a Roger Corman produced flick that's just barely different enough from Alien to not be a ripoff.

 The funny thing is that the presence of James Cameron as production designer and second unit director actually lends credibility to the case that Aliens is a ripoff of Galaxy of Terror. It's not a case many people are making, but I'll explain what I mean in a bit. Corman commissioned Mark Siegler and Bruce D. Clark to create a movie about a mysterious planet where something sinister (alien perhaps?) has wiped out an expeditionary crew and is now preying on the rescue team. It's not exactly Alien, but if you were to say "give me a movie that's like Alien but isn't Alien," you might end up with Galaxy of Terror.

 When he loses contact with the last ship sent to the planet Morganthus, the Planet Master (SPOILER HIDDEN) informs Commander Ilvar (Bernard Behrens) that the Quest will be dispatched to discover if there are any survivors. The Planet Master assembles a hand-picked team to land or Morganthus: Captain Trantor (Grace Zabriskie), the lone survivor of an older disaster, Baelon (Zalman King), her first officer, Cabren (Edward Albert), Alluma (Erin Moran), a pyschic, Dameia (Taaffe  O'Connell) and Ranger (Robert Englund), engineers, scientists, and medics for the team. Also along for the ride are Quuhod (Sid Haig), a weapons expert who specializes in crystal throwing stars, Cos (Jack Blessing), a rookie, and Kore (Ray Walston), the cook. They find what remains of the crew on Morganthus, as well as a mysterious pyramid that hides their deepest fears inside...

 So the first thing I think I should mention is the cast. If you were reading the synopsis and saying, "Wow! He's in this? She's in this? Holy cats, they're all in one movie?" the answer is yes. It's a who's who of "Hey, I know that actor / actress," including people who would become Freddy Kreuger, Captain Spaulding, Sarah Palmer, and the creator of The Red Shoe Diaries. Or, maybe they'd already been Joanie Cunningham, My Favorite Martian, one of Blansky's Beauties, or uh, Eddie "Green Acres" Albert's son. It's an eclectic cast for a film that's best remembered for a woman having sex with a giant meal-worm.

 Actually, for a film made with very little money (somewhere between 700,000 and 1 million dollars), it has a ton of production value, a pretty good story, some interesting (and gruesome) death scenes, and despite the Giger-esque pyramid design, some neat designs. While Cameron was heavily involved in the look of Galaxy of Terror, I don't want to overshadow other Corman team members: Robert and Dennis Skotak, Alec Gillis, Al Apone, R. Christopher Biggs, Brian Chin, Ron Lizorty, Randall Frakes, Tom Campbell, and Rick Moore. It's interesting that some of the people involved in Galaxy of Terror would go on to work on effects for Aliens, because while Morganthus is supposed to be reminiscent of Ridley Scott's "alien" landscape, it looks much more like Cameron's vision of LV-426 from the 1986 sequel.

 Watching Galaxy of Terror, all of the exterior scenes, either mixed with models, rear projection, or both, is eerily reminiscent of the film Cameron would make five years later. While the interior of the Quest looks like a budget-modified version of the Nostromo and the pyramid has designs "inspired" by H.R. Giger (and, at times, Forbidden Planet and The Black Hole), the exteriors of Morganthus are going to seem more like a dry run for the "game over" scene in Aliens. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is an amusing parallel considering that Galaxy of Terror was conceived as a way to cash in on the success of Ridley Scott's Alien.

 Now, it is fair to mention that this is a movie where a giant maggot strips down Taaffe O'Connell, lubes her up, and then has sex with her (and they both seem to be enjoying it). It's a movie undercut by comical sound effects (especially during Bernard Behrens' death scene) and even though the story is more interesting that just being stalked by an alien, the ending is abrupt and anticlimactic. There's a character that, despite clearly still being alive, just disappears before the final confrontation, never to be heard from again. This is, make no mistake, still an exploitation picture, so most of the more intriguing concepts from Siegler and Clark tend to get swept aside for gore and (sporadic) nudity. Corman famously shot most of the "rape" scene because Clark refused to, and both director and writer objected to its presence in the film. In the end, it's such a bizarre scene that I had a hard time being disturbed by it, something I was expecting coming into the picture.

 Galaxy of Terror is a gory, schlocky, occasionally impressive slice of exploitation best enjoyed late at night, after a few beers (well, maybe you do need to be a little drunk) in the company of friends who don't mind their science fiction / horror on the cheap side. It's the kind of movie I'd imagine people who would come to Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium would watch, because why not? Between this and Lockout, it's not even a discussion. Bring on the space monsters!

Shocktober Revisited: It Follows

For at least the last decade, there seems to be a concerted push to anoint one horror movie as the next "classic": the genre reinventing, flying-under-the-radar take that will usher us out of this endless trend of remakes and PG-13 zombie/vampire/werewolf teen-friendly tripe. Sometimes, the hype is justified (The House of the Devil, The Cabin in the Woods), sometimes not (Hatchet, Behind the Mask*), but I think it's safe to say that we're not going to get rid of the PG-13 horror trend any time soon. In fact, there was a trailer for the Ghost House Pictures remake of Poltergeist in front of the movie we'll be discussing today. It Follows has been riding on a groundswell of praise from horror fans, and Radius / TWC is finally listening to audiences and putting the film in theatres, as opposed to dumping it on VOD. By the time the Cap'n heard about it, It Follows was already being labeled "this year's The Babadook," and I was a little worried about going in with heightened expectations, so I just stopped reading about the film. Does it live up to the hype?

 (if you really don't want to know anything else, skip to the last paragraph, but the short answer is "yes.")

 Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is a college student living at home with her mother and younger sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). She's been on a few dates with Hugh (Jake Weary), and is thinking about taking things to the next level, but Hugh's behavior is a little strange. He seems to see people that Jay can't, and is always in a hurry to leave wherever they're settling in. But she decides to sleep with him, and as she's relaxing in the back seat of his car, Hugh knocks her out with a rag and chemicals. She wakes up tied to a wheelchair in the abandoned remains of a hotel, with Hugh pacing the building, looking frantically for... something. There's something following him; it's slow, but it's not dumb, and it's going to kill him, so he passed it on to Jay. If she wants to live, she has to pass it on to someone else, or it comes after him. It can look like anyone, but if it's feeling cruel, it will look like those you love most. She's tied down to prove that he's not making this up, and before long, someone - or something - slowly walks up to where she is...

 We already know what the "It" is capable of from the opening sequence, which also establishes writer / director David Robert Mitchell's visual style: long, unbroken takes, using the most of the wide screen composition. If it helps, think of Halloween, and understand that I know how lofty of a comparison it is to make. Mitchell walks us through the moment of panic for "It"'s last victim - Hugh's first attempt to pass it on? - as she tries to escape from her house, to drive to the beach. And then a smash cut to the next morning. The stakes are established. Once Hugh explains the rules, we know what Jay is up against. We'll learn a little more about the "It," but not directly from the characters. It Follows is a film heavy on inference, on visual clues rather than exposition dump scenes. What you take away from the film depends heavily on how carefully you're paying attention.

 Mitchell packs plenty in the frame to pay attention to, as Jay and her friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Kelly, and neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) try to find Hugh, who rented his place in Detroit under a fake name and presumably skipped town. When the threat could be anything, it's a demented version of "Where's Waldo" in the frame - who's really a person? Who is it? Early on, Mitchell makes it abundantly clear, but towards the middle of the film, he starts playing with the audience. Much later in the film, "It" takes the form of someone we've only seen in photographs, and he relies on the viewer to have been observant. You don't need to know who it is - or was - but it's a bonus that weighs in It Follows' favor.

 There are many things about It Follows I'd like to talk about, but would risk SPOILING plot points. Boiled down to its core, the film is a very straightforward variation on the horror trope of "Sex = Death," one that's been analyzed ad nauseum in college courses the world over. It Follows will likely join those thesis proposals, in part because Mitchell takes a very ambiguous approach to how and what we find out about the threat. They "why" is abandoned, strictly speaking, which distinguishes the film from many of its modern brethren. A reductive reading would call it "The Ring as an STD," but remove all of The Ring's second half - there is not history here. Jay only traces it as far back as Hugh (real name, Jeff, at home with his mother) - he got it from "some girl at a bar." We have some idea of what happened to Annie (Bailey Spry), the girl from the beginning, after Jay's attempt to pass it on goes horribly wrong, but it's only in flashes. What it wants is up to us to decide, and why the rules are the way they are is similarly up to interpretation.

 Instead of devoting most of the film to monster lore creation, Mitchell spends almost all of It Follows dealing with Jay's fragile emotional state, as she struggles with how to deal with her state. It's a curious wrinkle that all of the sex in It Follows is consensual, and yet Jay is clearly left violated in every situation (one in particular is left to the imagination, only holding on her face before and after she swims out to a boat). Does she want to pass this curse on to someone else? Does she want to die? There seems to be no way to stop "It," and only the "infected" can see it. "It" can see them once they've passed it on, but it isn't interested. Not yet, anyway. You can drive and get ahead for a while, but it will always be right behind you, walking slowly, emotionless.

 The inevitability of the threat could be a detriment to It Follows: in a more conventional approach, like the Final Destination series, it simply becomes an excuse to put Grand Guignol kills on display, character development be damned. But the death toll is relatively limited in It Follows, and they both count, emotionally. One sets the tone for the film, another gives us a vague insight to the first death, although what you take away is largely a matter of interpretation. I give the lion's share of the credit to the cast, although Mitchell certainly gives them plenty of time to breathe and to exist on screen. As a matter of fact, it's refreshing to see a group of young actors who don't look like the Hollywood Casting Template for Horror Films (see anything released by Platinum Dunes), and instead a cast that look like normal teenagers, that act like normal teenagers.

 I say this knowing full and well that I just saw Maika Monroe in The Guest, playing a character just a little bit older than Jay is. I saw her in The Bling Ring, too, but didn't remember he when I saw The Guest. Monroe, like the rest of the kids (adults don't factor into It Follows in many ways, aside from two, meaningful moments involving the "It") is totally believable as Jay, a young woman thrust into a situation she doesn't understand and forced to cope with it. She doesn't magically become Nancy Drew or Buffy when "It" appears. She gets frightened, panics, makes bad decisions, and when she tries to help it doesn't always work. Likewise, Sepe, Luccardi, Gilchrist, and Zovatto aren't just assigned "types." They're Jay's friends, and despite the fact that Mitchell sets Greg and Paul against each other, the end of the film still isn't as apparent as I thought it would be.

 Arguably the film's weakest moment comes from Paul's plan to stop "it" by electrocution in a public swimming pool they all went to when they were younger. The plan doesn't really make sense - the pool is too big, for one - but they aren't aware of what Jay and the audience know. We know that when she tried to shoot "it" (and as she just learned how to fire a gun a few hours before, she's a terrible shot), that didn't work. Mitchell foreshadows their plan with a shot that seems to be out of place in the film - the smaller pool out back that Jay enjoys swimming in, inexplicably ripped open - but it makes sense only in retrospect. That might have worked, but in their desperation, Paul's plan backfires and it ends up hurting more than just Jay. The only thing that works in the scene is the final shot, where Jay looks into the swimming pool and sees something the others can't, an image left open to your own interpretation.

 The pool sequence is a minor stumble, but one I feel like I should point out. Mitchell and It Follows bounce back with a less conventional, more ambiguous ending that left some of the audience disappointed. Then again, I made the deliberate choice to see It Follows with a more conventional audience just to see how'd they would react. I could have seen the film at a smaller, art house theater with a more enthusiastic crowd, but it seemed like this would be an interest test case to see how the multiplex crowd reacted to less mainstream horror. They liked it while the film was going on, but seemed dissatisfied that it didn't end on some grand show down, the kind I imagine the remake of Poltergeist will (their enthusiastic reaction to the trailer was also telling).

 But here's the truth about the internet hype machine surrounding independent horror: it only works for people who are seeking out the kind of movies that are like It Follows. The buzz is not going to change the minds of people who get impatient with something different from the formula, or something as stripped down as It Follows. And that's great. It really is, because I wouldn't have known about It Follows otherwise, and I will see it again. I want to see it again, because there's so much that Mitchell packs into the frame that I know I missed some of it. I want to pay closer attention to the forms "it" takes, because they're careful hints about the creature's history. Or maybe not - it's clear halfway through the film that "it" can and will take the form of a previous victim. I want to see if I somehow missed something that led to the pool in the backyard being torn open. The sign of a great horror movie (or any movie, for that matter) is that you're thinking about it after the fact. That you want to watch it again, to dig through and pick up pieces you missed. It's what distinguishes It Follows from the more basic "Sex = Death" movies that are enjoyable, but disposable.

 I also have to point out how amusing it is to have Yara reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot on a clamshell phone, which is a minor subplot in the film. Nice touch.

 So if you're reading this review and wondering "should I see this or is it all sizzle and no steak?" the answers are an emphatic yes and an emphatic no, in that order. If you think you'd like It Follows, then yes, see it. If you liked The Babadook - which It Follows has a tonal connection to, particularly in how it ends - or You're Next or The Cabin in the Woods or The House of the Devil, basically anything that flew mostly under the radar as horror goes, go see it. I think you're really going to like it. Sometimes the hype is justified. That doesn't mean that It Follows is "game changing" or "genre redefining," two terms overused to help sell movies of this ilk. Much like Starry Eyes, another independent horror film that's flying under most people's radars, It Follows takes a concept you're familiar with and tells it in a unique way. I don't want to undersell this film, nor do I want to oversell it, because your mileage may vary. Don't seek out spoilers. Try to see it with limited knowledge. Which, uh, means not having read this review, I guess. Oops.



 * I realize this is going to be a difference of opinion, but I found nothing in either movie worth watching: Behind the Mask either doesn't understand or chooses to misrepresent slasher movie "tropes" in order to advance its narrative, and the first Hatchet film has extreme gore and nothing else going for it. I have not seen Hatchet II or III, but have yet to see a review that made me want to.

Blogorium Review: It Follows

 For at least the last decade, there seems to be a concerted push to anoint one horror movie as the next "classic": the genre reinventing, flying-under-the-radar take that will usher us out of this endless trend of remakes and PG-13 zombie/vampire/werewolf teen-friendly tripe. Sometimes, the hype is justified (The House of the Devil, The Cabin in the Woods), sometimes not (Hatchet, Behind the Mask*), but I think it's safe to say that we're not going to get rid of the PG-13 horror trend any time soon. In fact, there was a trailer for the Ghost House Pictures remake of Poltergeist in front of the movie we'll be discussing today. It Follows has been riding on a groundswell of praise from horror fans, and Radius / TWC is finally listening to audiences and putting the film in theatres, as opposed to dumping it on VOD. By the time the Cap'n heard about it, It Follows was already being labeled "this year's The Babadook," and I was a little worried about going in with heightened expectations, so I just stopped reading about the film. Does it live up to the hype?

 (if you really don't want to know anything else, skip to the last paragraph, but the short answer is "yes.")

 Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is a college student living at home with her mother and younger sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). She's been on a few dates with Hugh (Jake Weary), and is thinking about taking things to the next level, but Hugh's behavior is a little strange. He seems to see people that Jay can't, and is always in a hurry to leave wherever they're settling in. But she decides to sleep with him, and as she's relaxing in the back seat of his car, Hugh knocks her out with a rag and chemicals. She wakes up tied to a wheelchair in the abandoned remains of a hotel, with Hugh pacing the building, looking frantically for... something. There's something following him; it's slow, but it's not dumb, and it's going to kill him, so he passed it on to Jay. If she wants to live, she has to pass it on to someone else, or it comes after him. It can look like anyone, but if it's feeling cruel, it will look like those you love most. She's tied down to prove that he's not making this up, and before long, someone - or something - slowly walks up to where she is...

 We already know what the "It" is capable of from the opening sequence, which also establishes writer / director David Robert Mitchell's visual style: long, unbroken takes, using the most of the wide screen composition. If it helps, think of Halloween, and understand that I know how lofty of a comparison it is to make. Mitchell walks us through the moment of panic for "It"'s last victim - Hugh's first attempt to pass it on? - as she tries to escape from her house, to drive to the beach. And then a smash cut to the next morning. The stakes are established. Once Hugh explains the rules, we know what Jay is up against. We'll learn a little more about the "It," but not directly from the characters. It Follows is a film heavy on inference, on visual clues rather than exposition dump scenes. What you take away from the film depends heavily on how carefully you're paying attention.

 Mitchell packs plenty in the frame to pay attention to, as Jay and her friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Kelly, and neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) try to find Hugh, who rented his place in Detroit under a fake name and presumably skipped town. When the threat could be anything, it's a demented version of "Where's Waldo" in the frame - who's really a person? Who is it? Early on, Mitchell makes it abundantly clear, but towards the middle of the film, he starts playing with the audience. Much later in the film, "It" takes the form of someone we've only seen in photographs, and he relies on the viewer to have been observant. You don't need to know who it is - or was - but it's a bonus that weighs in It Follows' favor.

 There are many things about It Follows I'd like to talk about, but would risk SPOILING plot points. Boiled down to its core, the film is a very straightforward variation on the horror trope of "Sex = Death," one that's been analyzed ad nauseum in college courses the world over. It Follows will likely join those thesis proposals, in part because Mitchell takes a very ambiguous approach to how and what we find out about the threat. They "why" is abandoned, strictly speaking, which distinguishes the film from many of its modern brethren. A reductive reading would call it "The Ring as an STD," but remove all of The Ring's second half - there is not history here. Jay only traces it as far back as Hugh (real name, Jeff, at home with his mother) - he got it from "some girl at a bar." We have some idea of what happened to Annie (Bailey Spry), the girl from the beginning, after Jay's attempt to pass it on goes horribly wrong, but it's only in flashes. What it wants is up to us to decide, and why the rules are the way they are is similarly up to interpretation.

 Instead of devoting most of the film to monster lore creation, Mitchell spends almost all of It Follows dealing with Jay's fragile emotional state, as she struggles with how to deal with her state. It's a curious wrinkle that all of the sex in It Follows is consensual, and yet Jay is clearly left violated in every situation (one in particular is left to the imagination, only holding on her face before and after she swims out to a boat). Does she want to pass this curse on to someone else? Does she want to die? There seems to be no way to stop "It," and only the "infected" can see it. "It" can see them once they've passed it on, but it isn't interested. Not yet, anyway. You can drive and get ahead for a while, but it will always be right behind you, walking slowly, emotionless.

 The inevitability of the threat could be a detriment to It Follows: in a more conventional approach, like the Final Destination series, it simply becomes an excuse to put Grand Guignol kills on display, character development be damned. But the death toll is relatively limited in It Follows, and they both count, emotionally. One sets the tone for the film, another gives us a vague insight to the first death, although what you take away is largely a matter of interpretation. I give the lion's share of the credit to the cast, although Mitchell certainly gives them plenty of time to breathe and to exist on screen. As a matter of fact, it's refreshing to see a group of young actors who don't look like the Hollywood Casting Template for Horror Films (see anything released by Platinum Dunes), and instead a cast that look like normal teenagers, that act like normal teenagers.

 I say this knowing full and well that I just saw Maika Monroe in The Guest, playing a character just a little bit older than Jay is. I saw her in The Bling Ring, too, but didn't remember he when I saw The Guest. Monroe, like the rest of the kids (adults don't factor into It Follows in many ways, aside from two, meaningful moments involving the "It") is totally believable as Jay, a young woman thrust into a situation she doesn't understand and forced to cope with it. She doesn't magically become Nancy Drew or Buffy when "It" appears. She gets frightened, panics, makes bad decisions, and when she tries to help it doesn't always work. Likewise, Sepe, Luccardi, Gilchrist, and Zovatto aren't just assigned "types." They're Jay's friends, and despite the fact that Mitchell sets Greg and Paul against each other, the end of the film still isn't as apparent as I thought it would be.

 Arguably the film's weakest moment comes from Paul's plan to stop "it" by electrocution in a public swimming pool they all went to when they were younger. The plan doesn't really make sense - the pool is too big, for one - but they aren't aware of what Jay and the audience know. We know that when she tried to shoot "it" (and as she just learned how to fire a gun a few hours before, she's a terrible shot), that didn't work. Mitchell foreshadows their plan with a shot that seems to be out of place in the film - the smaller pool out back that Jay enjoys swimming in, inexplicably ripped open - but it makes sense only in retrospect. That might have worked, but in their desperation, Paul's plan backfires and it ends up hurting more than just Jay. The only thing that works in the scene is the final shot, where Jay looks into the swimming pool and sees something the others can't, an image left open to your own interpretation.

 The pool sequence is a minor stumble, but one I feel like I should point out. Mitchell and It Follows bounce back with a less conventional, more ambiguous ending that left some of the audience disappointed. Then again, I made the deliberate choice to see It Follows with a more conventional audience just to see how'd they would react. I could have seen the film at a smaller, art house theater with a more enthusiastic crowd, but it seemed like this would be an interest test case to see how the multiplex crowd reacted to less mainstream horror. They liked it while the film was going on, but seemed dissatisfied that it didn't end on some grand show down, the kind I imagine the remake of Poltergeist will (their enthusiastic reaction to the trailer was also telling).

 But here's the truth about the internet hype machine surrounding independent horror: it only works for people who are seeking out the kind of movies that are like It Follows. The buzz is not going to change the minds of people who get impatient with something different from the formula, or something as stripped down as It Follows. And that's great. It really is, because I wouldn't have known about It Follows otherwise, and I will see it again. I want to see it again, because there's so much that Mitchell packs into the frame that I know I missed some of it. I want to pay closer attention to the forms "it" takes, because they're careful hints about the creature's history. Or maybe not - it's clear halfway through the film that "it" can and will take the form of a previous victim. I want to see if I somehow missed something that led to the pool in the backyard being torn open. The sign of a great horror movie (or any movie, for that matter) is that you're thinking about it after the fact. That you want to watch it again, to dig through and pick up pieces you missed. It's what distinguishes It Follows from the more basic "Sex = Death" movies that are enjoyable, but disposable.

 I also have to point out how amusing it is to have Yara reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot on a clamshell phone, which is a minor subplot in the film. Nice touch.

 So if you're reading this review and wondering "should I see this or is it all sizzle and no steak?" the answers are an emphatic yes and an emphatic no, in that order. If you think you'd like It Follows, then yes, see it. If you liked The Babadook - which It Follows has a tonal connection to, particularly in how it ends - or You're Next or The Cabin in the Woods or The House of the Devil, basically anything that flew mostly under the radar as horror goes, go see it. I think you're really going to like it. Sometimes the hype is justified. That doesn't mean that It Follows is "game changing" or "genre redefining," two terms overused to help sell movies of this ilk. Much like Starry Eyes, another independent horror film that's flying under most people's radars, It Follows takes a concept you're familiar with and tells it in a unique way. I don't want to undersell this film, nor do I want to oversell it, because your mileage may vary. Don't seek out spoilers. Try to see it with limited knowledge. Which, uh, means not having read this review, I guess. Oops.



 * I realize this is going to be a difference of opinion, but I found nothing in either movie worth watching: Behind the Mask either doesn't understand or chooses to misrepresent slasher movie "tropes" in order to advance its narrative, and the first Hatchet film has extreme gore and nothing else going for it. I have not seen Hatchet II or III, but have yet to see a review that made me want to.

Some Other Movies I Saw in 2014 (Part One: The Less Worse, I Guess)

 It's fair to say that you might see the first few movies on this list and say "really, _____ made it on your 'Worst' list, but that didn't?" That's fair, I suppose; I could hide behind the veil of "subjectivity" and argue that this is my list, not yours, but the name of the blog isn't "General Cranpire's Den of Filmduggery" (note to Cranpire - that's a great title and you should use it, post-haste), so that should be obvious who the opinions belong to. Spoiler Alert: The Highest Bidder! But yes, okay, it's under a weird criteria that I determined where to stop the "worst of" without including one of last year's Liam Neeson movies (not the one where he fights vampires, I assume strictly from the title). That's how I roll, kids.


 So it makes sense to just get Non-Stop out of the way, and by that I mean mostly just link to my review from earlier this year. It was short enough to sandwich in with Bye Bye Birdie and Die, Monster Die!, so while I didn't hate it, clearly the movie didn't make much of an impression, review-wise: but, looking back at it, it's way longer than needs to be in a recap. This section of the review does seem to sum things up pretty well:

"It's almost ridiculous enough to recommend in and of itself, but the fact that the first half or so is also a decent game of "cat and mouse" works in its favor. In the "Liam Neeson, man of action" genre, it falls somewhere between Taken and Taken 2 - neither as enjoyable stupid as the former, nor as inane and redundant as the second [...] If you're inclined to enjoy movies like this, or saw the poster and said "I'll rent that," you're better off watching Non-Stop than, say, Drive Hard. If you're more predisposed towards, say, Neeson in The Grey, this is not going to be your cup of tea, but if you liked Flightplan... well, um, you liked Flightplan. Congratulations?"

 Fading Gigolo is a movie I'm guessing most of you didn't see, because it came out not long after last year's "is Woody Allen a pedophile or not" row that was everywhere between the Golden Globes and the Oscars but was pretty much gone by the time Magic in the Moonlight came out (a movie I'll be discussing in another part of the recap). At this point I'm going to stop talking about that, because I learned what a bad idea it is to mention the words "Woody Allen" or "Roman Polanski" and "controversy" on the internet. But yes, Woody Allen is in Fading Gigolo. He did not direct it - John Turturro did, along with writing and starring as the titular character, Fioravante. He's a florist, and his friend Murray (Allen) just lost his bookstore and needs money. Fioravante agrees to become an escort with Murray as his manager, in the service of eventually fulfilling the fantasy of Murray's dermatologist (Sharon Stone) and her friend (Sofia Vergara) to have a three-way.

 That's probably enough of a movie right there, but Turturro also includes an entirely separate plot about an Orthodox Jewish woman named Avigal (Vanessa Paradis) who Fioravante falls in love with, much to the chagrin of Dovi (Liev Schreiber), a community police officer. At some point, a council of Rabbis get involved, and it plays out like a bizarro version of being confronted by the mob, complete with Murray needing his lawyer (Bob Balaban) to save him from charges of being a pimp. It's a mostly harmless and sometimes amusing movie, even sweet sometimes, but not something that stuck with me for very long afterward. There's a better movie with John Turturro that will be showing up later in the recaps, so stay tuned for that.

 While we're on the subject of "better movies," I feel like there's a better movie somewhere in Alexandre Aja's Horns. Maybe it got lost in the editing, or maybe it's just inherent in the adaptation of Joe Hill's novel, but the finished product just don't quite work. It's as though Aja made a bitterly funny, black comedy, and also made a more generic, teen-friendly story of good and evil, and then smashed them together at the worst possible junctures. For the opening twenty minutes of Horns, you're probably going to think the movie is great: it has a wicked mean streak, Daniel Radcliffe is spot on as a guy everyone thinks is a murderer, that embraces the horns he grows and the power that comes with it. The way people react, first telling him their darkest fantasies and then acting on them when he says they should, is often hilarious.

 And then we hit the first of what turn out to be several, lengthy, flashbacks, giving us the backstory of Ig (Radcliffe) and Merrin (Juno Temple), leading up to her death - the one everyone assumes Ig is responsible for. Everyone, including his family - played by James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan, and Joe Anderson - is positive he did it and that he's lying, with the exception of his friend, Lee (Max Minghella). The "whodunit" is pretty easy to work out for yourself, even if Aja, Hill, and screenwriter Keith Bunin throw in a number of red herrings. I bet, without telling you anything else, you can guess who the real killer is. That's not the problem, so much as the flashbacks that put the mystery together. There's a massive tonal shift from black comedy to slightly tragic story of temptation and of good and evil (on a biblical scale), and for some reason, ne'er the twain shall meet in Horns.

 I can understand how it might have worked in Hill's novel - which I haven't yet read, but plan to - but as a film, the structure of the story is at times jarring and disruptive. Maybe there was no way to properly balance the two in a film, because Horns alternates between wicked and bland, between clever and obvious, without ever finding a good middle ground. There are some fantastic moments sprinkled throughout the film, and the cast is game for anything, playing both the best and worst versions of themselves as they encounter "evil" Ig, but Horns gets away from them. It's never quite the movie that it could be, so I'm left feeling ambivalent with the end result.

 Speaking of ambivalent, here's a good time to mention Bad Words, a movie people seemed to like a lot more than I did. While it's true that I liked Horrible Bosses 2 less than Bad Words, Jason Bateman is jerk instead of beleaguered everyman was not novelty enough to win me over what is essentially a one-note joke. If Bateman hadn't directed the film and the star was, oh, let's say Billy Bob Thornton, I somehow doubt anyone would even be talking about this, another film in the "bad" series of comedies. (For the record, that review is probably NSFW, just based on the first sentence).

  The best thing I can say about Automata is that it's a better version of I, Robot than I, Robot is. Actually, there are a lot of things to like about the film, which is not-so loosely based on I, Robot, but for some reason the film as a whole is underwhelming. There's little doubt in my mind that the film is trying to skirt by under the radar without people noticing the similarities to Alex Proyas', kinda loud, kinda dumb Big Willie Style / Shia LeBouf CGI action fest, including scaling back to rules of robotics from three to two (and changing one of them to suit the narrative - that robots can't self repair). It's a visual feast, for what I have to imagine was not a large budget (director and co-writer Gabe Ibáñez shot the film in Bulgaria).

 Stop me if you've heard this before: in the future, there's been a catastrophic global weather shift, which caused most of Earth to be irradiated. People live in cramped cities, with some living in zeppelin-like housing units. Robots help humanity, although they've so permeated the culture that they're considered just as useless as any of the other trash (shades of Elysium, if you remember that movie from, you know, last year). Cop Sean Wallace (Dylan McDermott) finds one repairing itself, and blows it away, causing the ROC Robotics Corporation to send insurance adjuster Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas) to investigate. What he finds could change the ROC corporation forever, as well as endanger his boss, Robert Bold (Robert Forster) and his wife Rachel (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) and their unborn son.

 And what does he discover (SPOILER???): that the robots are evolving, some past the point where they require humans at all. But they just want to be free, man. This doesn't sound familiar or anything, so I'm not going to belabor the comparisons to I, Robot any more. You get it. It's a more visually stylish, more sober approach to the story, after Jacq is rescued by the robots (one voiced by Melanie Griffith, who is also another character in the film, and one voice by Javier Bardem, although I didn't realize that until I saw his name in the credits). The ending is kind of predictable, but it feels like there's more at stake than in I, Robot, and that violent ends can and will come to any character.

 So why didn't I like it more? That is an excellent question, and I'm not convinced I can give you a good answer. Despite the fact that it does almost everything I, Robot does, but better, in part by giving is a Neill Blomkamp sheen or grime and decay over everything, there's something strangely inert about Automata. I can't quite put my finger on it, but instead of being invested, I found myself distanced, at times bored. It wasn't that you can see where the movie is going a mile away - that can be said of Horns, too, which is at least partly a fun ride - but that despite all of the effort into making the film look great, Ibáñez never quite makes the humans interesting. Banderas certainly gives it his all, but neither he nor the robots are all that gripping as characters. It's a very nice film to look at, and has a lot of things I would recommend about it, but I hesitate to recommend it over any of the better science fiction films released in 2014. And there were a lot, as you'll see when we get near the top of my list.

 There's a degree to which I enjoyed Batman: Assault on Arkham, one of the better DC Animated films that I've seen in a while. Despite the misleading title (this is, make no mistake, a Suicide Squad movie that Batman pops up in periodically), it's fast paced, sporadically funny, surprisingly violent, and pushes the PG-13 as far as they can with animated sideboob. Being that it's a Suicide Squad story - one tied to the Arkham games, and specifically Origins - the death toll is quite high, including many of the main characters. Unless you're a massive DC fan, you probably won't know many more characters beyond Harley Quinn and Deadshot. Maybe Captain Boomerang, and if you didn't, yes, that's a real thing. It has the odd distinction of having Kevin Conroy as Batman but not Mark Hamill as the Joker (although Troy Baker does a fine job) - also odd because Conroy isn't the voice of Batman in Arkham Origins, which ends with the setup for this movie. It's short, and I'm struggling to remember much more than a few offhand references to The Dark Knight and using the layout of the asylum you'll immediately recognize from the first game. So, uh, recommended?

 On that decisive note, we'll leave it here for now, but there's more. Next time, I'll move a little farther up the list, to mixed-positives that you might want to check out (with some caveats), although I have the feeling that one of them might be more contentious than anything included in this section. Until then...

Shocktober Review: Curtains

 Curtains is (by some) a much beloved slasher / thriller from the "first wave" that came in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th. Had I not known the story behind the film before watching it, Curtains may have been more confusing. Characters are introduced and then disappear at random, there are abandoned subplots and radical tonal shifts, and at least one kill that defies the laws of physics. And yet, I really, really enjoyed the movie. Frankly, considering its tortured production existence, I'm amazed the movie works at all, let alone as well as it does.

 Originally, director Richard Ciupka and screenwriter Robert Guza, Jr. designed Curtains to be a psychological thriller, one built around director Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) casting his film Audra. His original choice for the lead, Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) went so far as to have herself committed to an asylum for "research," but Stryker grew tired of her erratic behavior while locked away. He invites five women to audition at his secluded mountain home: actress Brooke Parsons (Linda Thorson), figure skater Christie Burns (Lesleh Donaldson), ballerina Laurian (Ann Ditchburn), comedian Patti O'Connor (Lynne Griffin), and aspiring actress Tara DeMillo (Sandra Warren). His sixth choice, Amanda Teuther (Deborah Burgess), never makes it to the house - she's murdered inside of her apartment.

 It seems like much of Curtains was supposed to be about Stryker's mind games with the girls, particularly after Samantha (who escapes from the asylum with the help of a woman whose face we never see) crashes the auditions, hoping to reclaim the role. Traces of that film are still in Curtains, but producer Peter R. Simpson was unhappy with Ciupka's early cut of the film in 1980 and brought the cast back together in 1982 to reshoot large portions of the film, in the hopes of making a more commercially viable slasher movie. The credits actually feature two separate production crews, and Ciupka had his named removed from the film (instead crediting Curtains to "Jonathan Stryker"), and while the seams are at times painfully apparent, somehow the bastardized hybrid of Ciupka and Simpsons visions works.

 Throughout Curtains, there is a palpable sense of tension, even during the prologue (introduced, as many transitions are, by curtains framing the image). Samantha is onstage, and clearly not impressing Stryker, so the two cook up a scheme where she goes "insane" and he sends her away for her own good. Unfortunately, being left to her own devices among actual mental illness does Samantha no favors. Whether Stryker expected her not to be able to leave or if it's just another game on his part, he simply gives up on his part of their charade. We never find out who helped Samantha escape - the scene is clearly designed to set up either a red herring or an accomplice - but her presence at Stryker's home doesn't amount to much by the end. There's some dramatic satisfaction on her part (contrast her first scene with Stryker with her last), but it's much ado over nothing.

 Similarly, the inclusion of Michael Wincott as Matthew, Stryker's groundskeeper, seems to be more important than his character ends up being. It's possible he never existed in Ciupka's cut - Matthew is mostly there for a sex scene with Tara in the hot tub and then to disappear for the middle of the film, only to show up (SPOILER) dead in a cut-away. There's even a scene where the masked killer watches Matthew ride off on a snowmobile that hints at a kill we never see*.

 After watching Curtains, I thought I had some idea of what was Ciupka and what was Simpson, but after watching The Ultimate Nightmare: The Making of Curtains, it turns out I had it all backwards. The opening and closing 15 minutes were all added by Simpson, which means everything in the asylum and all of the "prop room" scene in Stryker's garage weren't originally part of the film. The latter, I suspected, but the former was a little bit of a surprise. Apparently the dead giveaway in the very last scene is that one character's hair is considerably shorter, so I missed that. Chalk it up to me being invested in the story, or just no eagle-eyed enough.

 Ciupka explains that his Curtains begins with Amanda's dream sequence, but he isn't clear about any of what happens to her before the dream starts. Amanda's section in the film is limited to two locations (her apartment and the side of the road) and nobody else from Curtains appears. Most of the scenes play close to the "slasher" angle: Amanda is stalked by a man in a mask who, it turns out, is her boyfriend (she has a weird "rape" fetish that admittedly makes the scene a little uncomfortable), and wanders around drinking wine and reading Stryker's script. In what turns out (SPOILER) to be a dream, Amanda is driving to Stryker's house when she notices the creepiest doll ever in the middle of the road. She stops to pick it up, but it grabs her and won't let go, and then her car pulls forward and hits her - smash cut to waking up. The creepy doll is still next to her bed, and she's stabbed mysteriously by a stranger.

 It's odd, because it feels like this part was included post-completion, but according to Ciupka most of the middle of Curtains is his cut of the film. I had thought that Simpson used the reshoots to include doll and the mask Stryker has Samantha put on as the "tools" of the murderer. The doll shows up buried in snow when Christie goes to practice, and the killer is wearing the mask in every scene other than Amanda's death. It seemed like since we're introduced to the mask before we know what's it's in the house for, you can either take it as a red herring or a dead giveaway of the retroactive adjustments made in rshoots. But apparently that's not the case. Instead, quite the opposite. I'm looking forward to watching the film again and try to figure out how the original narrative worked (Ciupka doesn't mention his original ending, or beginning, for that matter, only the changes). A mystery inside an enigma wrapped in of a puzzle box, this Curtains.

 That said, I really don't have many problems with Curtains. It may seem like the jumbled nature of its production would stop the film dead in its tracks, but the truth is that Ciupka creates an off-setting tone, where it's unclear what is and isn't happening, and Simpson's more over, "slasher" sections are dripping with tension. At a certain point I didn't even mind the mishmash of styles, and despite the fact that much of the cast and crew don't have kind words to say about the end result, I really thought Curtains worked. It's the exception rather than the rule when it comes to this much interference and revisionism, but somehow, some way, it prevails as a pretty damn good entry when slashers were a dime a dozen.



 * Technically, Ciupka / Simpson intended for Matthew to be a body introduced near the end of the film, but not in the hot tub. His snowmobile-related death was replaced, in a manner of speaking, by making the Stryker's physically impossible fall out of one window and into another.

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: her

 This is it. I spent a long time going back and forth between The Wolf of Wall Street and her, between Martin Scorsese and Spike Jonze, and for a while there even Inside Llewyn Davis was in the mix, but when it comes down to it, my this was my favorite movie of 2013. It's as heartfelt, as thoughtful, as expertly crafted as movies come, and if we have to wait as long as we do for Spike Jonze movies (4 in 14 years!), then I'm okay with that. her is enough to chew on for a while, and I'm really looking forward to the conversations that are going to come out of it with my friends.

 For example, one of my very good friends is a Philip K. Dick scholar, and he's been looking forward to this movie for a while now. The implications of someone creating and maintaining a relationship with an artificial intelligence is right up his field of philosophical inquiry, and it's going to be an interesting discussion the next time we sit down after he sees her. (For those curious, the last time we talked about a movie was a lengthy debate over the meaning of Upstream Color, much of which influenced my review, but also drove the rest of the room crazy because they hadn't seen it). But I'm getting away from the point, which is the movie. Let's get back to her (and that's how it appears on screen, so I'm going to defy my spell check and keep it lower case).

 The trailers are a bit misleading, in that they set up the premise and leave it up to you to decide how the movie will probably play out. Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a bit of a social malcontent - he has friends, but doesn't hang out with them that much, he likes to be alone and keep up through his phone. He plays video games and doesn't really want to date since he's in the process of divorcing his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara). One day, while he's out, he sees an advertisement for a new operating system that's personalized to the user, and he decides to try it out. Based on a few questions, his OS, Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johansson) comes into being, and they hit it off. Samantha is capable of learning based on her experiences, and they get along well. She offers him insight into his life, and he is able to answer her questions about what it means to be. And before long, yes, they're dating. There's even a sex scene.

 And if you only know what you've seen from the trailer, there's a reasonable chance you might assumed it's going to be a comedy or some sort of dystopian horror story about an obsessive computer who loves a real person (think about that Treehouse of Horror where Pierce Brosnan's AI house falls in love with Marge), but that doesn't give Spike Jonze the credit he deserves. On paper, Spike Jonze movies sound like dumb gimmicks (you can crawl into John Malkovich's head! a writer and his identical twin brother struggle to adapt a book about orchids!) but he takes them seriously and brings a level of depth you might not expect, particularly from a Hollywood system that likes the easy option. This is the first time Jonze wrote the screenplay himself, and there's something intensely personal about it, something touching about the sentiment behind the synopsis.

 One of the first things you realize while watching her is that this is a near-future science fiction film, but not one that feels improbable. Everything is an extension of where we already are - the phones are a little smaller and have one earbud and can read you your email and respond to voice commands. Theodore works for a company called Beautiful Handwritten Letters .com, where employees are hired to craft personalized communication from one person to another, often for years at a time. Even his video game, which is projected into the room, doesn't feel too far off from some X-Box prototypes. Jonze sets the film in Los Angeles but shot parts of it in Shanghai to give the architecture a slightly more futuristic feel. It never feels like "this is the future!" but it's clear that her is a few years off, yet never unrelatable.

 I don't know why I was worried, but having just seen Scarlett Johansson in Don Jon, I started to worry that her might be headed in a similar direction, plot-wise, early into Samantha's relationship with Theodore. "She" talks him into going on a blind date (Olivia Wilde) and things seem to be going well but Theodore gets weird after dinner and things collapse. Theodore has been friends with Amy (Amy Adams) for a long time, and it's pretty clear that things aren't working out so well between Amy and Charles (Matt Letscher), and for half a second I was worried that this might be headed into more conventional territory, but Jonze avoids the easy "out." Amy and Theodore tried dating a long time ago, he explains to Samantha, but they could tell it just didn't work out. They have a much more platonic relationship, one as very good friends who feel comfortable talking to each other about things like dating an OS (which turns out not to be so uncommon in this world), but there's not a sense of a developing love triangle.

 There are opportunities for her to be broader and sillier, like the scene where Samantha brings over a surrogate (Portia Doubleday) because she can't be physically present with Theodore. Isabella, the surrogate, has been following their relationship from a distance and wants to be a part of it, but it's just too much for Theodore, and the result is painfully awkward and funny in a sad way. Isabella is genuinely devastated that he rejects her, and like the earlier "sex" scene between Samantha and Theodore, there's a level of intimacy that overcomes any inherent silliness of the premise. her could easily be a much dumber movie, and it's a testament to the care of Jonze and of the performances of Phoenix, Johansson (who replaced the on-set voice of Samantha Morton), and even Adams. They're all pitch perfect. Speaking of which, I won't say who else is in the movie, but pay attention to some of the other voices your hear (early in the film when Theodore is on the phone and then later in the cabin).

 Where it gets interesting in the latter part of the film involves the heavier science fiction and philosophical underpinnings of a relationship between artificial intelligence and a human. Samantha and Theodore are both capable of doing things the other can't, and as they begin to grow, unusual complications develop, several that I hadn't anticipated. It should have been obvious, in a way, considering how Jonze sets up society (mostly through showing, but never telling): Amy works for a game company that has a "mom" simulator as it's newest product, and it's established early on that an OS can communicate with other OS's, so the disconnect on both sides is apparent pretty quickly.

 Without spoiling too much, there are ups and downs, not limited to Catherine's reaction to Theodore's relationship, Samantha's increased capacity for knowledge, and a certain inevitability to growing apart. It's handled in such a down to earth, sincere way that nothing ever feels contrived or less than organic (odd, considering the very premise is in its nature partly inorganic), and the ending of the film is sweetly downbeat. Or sadly uplifting. Hard to say. What do they use on the Internet these days? It hits you in all the "feels." Yeah, that's the ticket. I know a few people who didn't connect with Theodore and Amy and Samantha, so there's a possibility that her won't click with you, but it sure did with me. It sticks around with you and makes you think about the film and the implications of the story and a whole host of other scintillating concepts that are hinted at but never spelled out. It's funny, and sometimes sad, but genuine. And that, when it comes down to it, is what makes a great movie. I think 2014 is going to have a difficult time topping that.

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: Stoker

 For a long time this year, Stoker was the strongest contender for my favorite movie of 2013. It's a testament to the movies to come that anything could unseat it, and while I don't think you'd argue with what's to come, that shouldn't in any way diminish what Chan-wook Park (Park Chan-wook?) accomplished in his first English language feature. I still marvel at his ability to misdirect repeatedly, to such a degree that I was never quite certain where Stoker was going. The Cap'n watches a lot of movies, and I have a bad habit of figuring out where things are going well before they get there, so when not one but two movies this year had me guessing right up to the very end (Upstream Color was the other film - it's no coincidence I mentioned Park in yesterday's review), it was a very good year indeed.

 India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is a bit reserved, to put it mildly; she prefers solitude, to be outside, and doesn't have much tolerance for her peers or her mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). The only person she really liked was her father, Richard (Dermot Mulroney), but he died very recently in a car accident, just before her eighteenth birthday. And yet, as was his tradition, Richard hid a present for her outside, but instead of a pair of shoes (as is normally the tradition), India finds a key inside. That's not the only surprise - after the funeral, she discovers Richard has a brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode), who is quite insistent on moving in and even more intent on befriending his niece. India doesn't trust Charlie, but is strangely drawn to him, and Evelyn takes to his presence immediately. But Richard's estranged brother comes with his own baggage, and somehow anyone who wants to talk to them about Charlie disappears mysteriously. What is he really after?


  From the set up (and most of that is on the back of the box), I wouldn't blame you for feeling pretty confident knowing where Stoker is headed, but as is the case with almost all of Park's films, the synopsis is just a springboard to dive further into the psyches of the characters. Remember that Park's previous film, Thirst, can be boiled down to "a Catholic Priest struggles with his faith when he becomes a vampire," which in no way prepares you for the wickedly funny and often dark places he takes you. And then there's the Vengeance Trilogy - Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance - all of which are more than the moniker would suggest. Fixed genres are not something that Park feels beholden to, much to all of our benefit(s). And yet, there's an inherent fear when a foreign director of such cult acclaim decides to transition to an English language film. The lingering memory of a Hard Target or a Mimic sticks with us. Maybe it's the language barrier, or maybe interference from the studio, but the shift almost always seems to be a bumpy one.

 So to my pleasant surprise, Stoker suffers from none of that. The screenplay, but Wentworth Miller (yeah, the guy from Prison Break) is well developed and takes left turns when you least expect them (let's just say that India figures out very quickly what Uncle Charlie's "secret" is, or one of them at least) and fits well into Park's propensity for the tragic. It's tricky to categorize Stoker: it's not exactly a thriller, nor is it really a drama. There are elements of horror, but Stoker is not a horror movie, much in the way that Thirst isn't really a horror movie either. Somehow, Park strikes a perfect tonal balance that keeps you off-guard, uncertain of what's going to happen next, and why.

 In some ways, Stoker reminds me of a Henri-Georges Clouzot film, although for the life of me I couldn't point out specifically why. Perhaps it's the tone, or the precision with which Park controls the camera (which always seems to be moving) to shift what you think you're seeing. While on the surface, Stoker appears to be a thriller that falls into the "mysterious relative who murders" trope, the film is really more of an exploration of India's budding sexuality, sometimes subtlety but at times rather bluntly (there are a few visual metaphors that couldn't possibly be taken to mean anything else). How the theme and narrative intertwine, and more importantly, how they play out, is the key to Stoker's success.

 Park also makes the most out his three leads, all of whom I hadn't thought much about in a while. After Watchmen, I'd mostly forgotten about Matthew Goode, and didn't realize that the limitations of playing Ozymandias didn't give me a fair representation of what he could do as an actor. Mia Wasikowska was a nice supporting part of Lawless, but I guess I still mostly associate her with Tim Burton's forgettable Alice in Wonderland. I'm not certain I can remember a Nicole Kidman movie I wanted to watch since Birth (to be fair, I haven't seen Rabbit Hole), and so I was coming in with (unfairly) middling impressions of the cast. Not to worry, as it turned out.

 Stoker is, without a doubt, Mia Wasikowska's film, from the first moment to the last, and India Stoker is a study in layers. There's so much we don't know about her that is slowly, deliberately revealed, that explains why she is at the beginning of the film. Some of it comes through flashbacks, but most of it Park reveals through dialogue and, later, action. The boys at high school are more than a little fixated on India, but like Mandy Lane in another genre twister, there's more than they bargained for behind the surface. The question is how does she react to what Charlie already seems to know? In what may be the first major turning point of Stoker, Park deliberately misleads you into thinking you're watching one sort of scene, only to reveal that it's nearly the opposite (I know it seems coy to keep dancing around spoilers, but you really should find out for yourself).

 There's more to Charlie than meets the eye, even if you think you have him figured out. That it takes nearly three quarters into the movie to find out what the key opens, where Charlie's been, and the deeply unsettling reason why is a testament to the deliberate nature of Miller's script and Park's direction. The final flashback that follows is haunting and quite unexpected, but informs what's to come for India and Evelyn, and the choices they'll have to make with respect to their visitor. The ending is satisfying, and inevitable, but still manages to catch you off guard, despite the fact that you've already seen part of it at the beginning of the film, a testament to how refreshingly off-guard Park can catch you.

 I'm still mightily impressed with Stoker and feel that from here on out any of the films mentioned are interchangeable as "favorite" of 2013. It really depends on what day it is, what I'm thinking about, and what mood I'm in. If you're in the mood for a slightly off-kilter film that doesn't need to fit into on particular category, or you're a Chan-wook Park fan that was on the fence, don't even hesitate to pick up Stoker. Go in not knowing much, and hopefully you'll have as much fun as I did watching the layers peel away.

 (interesting tidbit: Harmony Korine has a very small role as India's art teacher in the film, which is what led me to watch Spring Breakers shortly after I finished Stoker).

"U" is for Undefeatable

 Undefeatable falls into a category I like to call "good ass acting": you might be familiar with this, the most admired of acting styles from its many appearances in the non-sex scenes in porno. It's the kind of acting that originates from someone whose primary training came in another field - let's say, the martial arts - but who is called upon to deliver lines and carry the dramatic weight of a film, whether they can or not. Or maybe it's whether they should or not. Either way, the end result is often entertaining.

 (just for clarification, when I say "good ass acting," I do not mean "good ASS acting," like you'd see in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective)

 I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that most of the "good ass acting" in Undefeatable is a direct result of the fact that most (if not all) of the cast are or were primarily known for their fighting skills in 1993, with the notable exception of Cynthia Rothrock (China O'Brien), who was already a star in Hong Kong action cinema and had a string of B-movie hits in the U.S. I don't mean to insult her by saying she's probably the most naturalistic actor in the film, but it's really between her and Donna Jason (Abducted II: The Reunion).

  Everybody else falls somewhere between the "wooden line delivery" and "wait, is he acting?" spectrum. It's not on the same level as, say, a Miami Connection, but I'm not exaggerating when I say the most believable scenes are when characters are fighting or practicing. Everybody in this movie, be they underground fighters, college students, or psychologists, seem to have at least rudimentary martial arts skills.

 Rothrock plays Kristie Jones, a waitress who also gets in street fights for money. But it's not just because she likes beating people up - Kristie is putting her sister Karen (Sunny David) through college! When Kristie is busted by Sgt. Nick DiMarco (John Miller), Karen has to bail her out, but the sergeant takes a shining to her "hard luck story."

 At first, it was hard to tell what the hell Undefeatable was going to be about, because before we get to Kristie and Karen's story, it seemed to be a domestic drama about a woman named Anna (Emille Davazac) and her abusive husband "Ray" (Don Niam), who moonlights (?) as a brutal "death match" fighter. At the advice of Dr. Jennifer Simmons (Jason), Anna considers leaving Ray, and ultimately decides to after he rapes her while dinner is cooking.

 I hate to give a movie credit for something like this, but Undefeatable really does a great job of making a rape scene feel as uncomfortable as humanly possible, both for the victim and the audience. Yes, it SHOULD do that, because it's, well, rape, but not since Irreversible have I felt such a strong desire to fast forward to get this scene over with. Not only is it unbearably drawn out, but Ray keeps flashing back to beating a guy to death while calling Anna "Mommy." Perhaps it's a sign of how often it misses other narrative or cinematic benchmarks, but Undefeatable certainly makes you glad that only one of the many rapes that occur in the film is on-screen.

 Well, with that out of the way, luckily, Anna decides to leave Ray, never to appear in the film again. Ray doesn't take to Anna leaving him so well, even though she made him dinner (salad, steak, and wine!) so he spraypaints his hair red, but that only lasts for a few scenes. Fortunately, there's also childhood trauma flashbacks, unimpressive dining room trashing, and menacing shots of checking his mail to look forward to.

Oh, and Ray begins kidnapping any woman wearing a floral print dress, whether or not they look anything like Anna, because that's how he copes. In what is arguably the silliest example this, Ray (SPOILER) kidnaps Karen while a woman who looks more like Anna than she does is hitting on him outside of a grocery store. But, he politely turns down her offer to "come to my place for a drink" so he can (DOUBLE SPOILER) kill Kristie's sister. How else would our divergent plot lines come together?

 In another, mostly silly twist, Dr. Jennifer Simmons is not only Anna's psychologist but also Karen's professor, which is how Kristie gets tied up into the whole shebang. Wait, no, Ray killed her sister completely at random. THAT'S how she got tied up into it. Well, dramatic irony, I guess.

 Just so we're not hanging out with uncomfortable rape man the entire time (did I mention that his name is actually "Stingray"?), Kristie takes the law into her own hands and starts beating up any underground fighter who has a style similar to the way Karen was killed. This leads to a fight on top of barrels an one using improvised construction equipment. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the fighting, but director Godfrey Ho (Bionic Ninja) - under the pseudonym "Godfrey Hall" - has a bad habit of using slow motion for parts that aren't that impressive and cutting away from the cool moves.

 As fight choreography goes, there seems to be some impressive action on display, and because these are martial artists first (acting a distant second), everybody is doing their own stunts. But the shot composition and editing make many of the fight scenes look amateurish and laughable. I think I was supposed to be impressed, not chuckling.

 Oh well, Undefeatable is entertaining, even if not often for its intended purpose. While line deliveries are often so wooden that I couldn't believe that was the best available take, there's a certain "can do" attitude to the film that fights hard to keep you engaged. Most of the time, it's at the very least a compliment to the awkward construction of almost every dialogue scene, which makes it kind of like the kung fu equivalent of porn. If the porn was also shot poorly with the wrong parts accentuated. Anyway, it's not often you see a cop's partner shot in the neck and his only advice to his dying friend is "breathe, dammit!"

 If you've never heard of Cynthia Rothrock, and I guess I could understand how that's possible, Undefeatable probably isn't your best entry point into her filmography, but it's one you can work your way towards over a drunken weekend. Might I suggest pairing it with Tiger Claws II, featuring Expect No Mercy's Jalal Merhi?


 Up next: the beginning of the end for John Carpenter...

"N" is for The Night Porter

 I feel that you can hardly blame the Cap'n for taking his sweet time to watch The Night Porter. If you're one of the lucky everybody that hasn't seen Liliana Cavani's (Ripley's Game*) ode to self loathing and doomed relationships - for a very good reason - then I will give you just a taste of what you aren't missing. Criterion fans will no doubt want to put this back on the shelf with Salo and the other "Spine Numbers I'll Buy but Don't Actually Want to Watch."

 Speaking of which, I watched the Criterion disc - which shockingly has no extras - but didn't have access to the essay about why The Night Porter is worth watching, so I'm going to wing it. Instead of my normal "relatively well researched" review, I'm just going to reach blindly into the abyss that is The Night Porter's soul and reach several baseless conclusions. Why? Because even after I watched it, I still had to talk myself into not stopping The ABCs of Movie Masochism dead in its tracks. But seeing as the Cap'n does have such a thing as a "So You Won't Have To" category, it's high time I trotted it out again...

 The titular character is Max (Dirk Bogarde), who works in a Vienna hotel circa 1957. He prefers to live his life like a "church mouse," only exerting authority over subordinates at the hotel while fawning over regular guests. But that's because Max is harboring a secret - he's a Nazi, one who escaped at the end of the war and part of a small group dedicated to keeping their existence a secret. In order to do this, they meet in secret and work to have all traces of their deeds erased, ultimately purging their "sins" in a mock trial. Max's own "trial" is coming soon, but one chance encounter in the lobby throws his life into turmoil.

 Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) is visiting Vienna while her conductor husband (Marino Masé) is performing The Magic Flute at a nearby opera hall. When she and Max meet, they immediately recognize one another - she the daughter of a Socialist subjected to degradation and abuse at the hand of he, the "doctor" who used his position to film nude prisoners and sexually abuse them before execution. Lucia was the only one of Max's "patients" who survived. Max is fascinated, Lucia repelled, but their paths are destined to cross once more, despite the misgivings of his associates. She is, after all, the only link that exists between the life he had and the life in hiding he so desires.

 Let it be noted that my own distaste for The Night Porter is not universal - there are many who consider it to be a deep and thoughtful meditation on war crimes and guilt and nostalgia, and there's a section of the film that can only be called "Literal Biblical Allegory" involving Salome, John the Baptist, and Max's idea of a "gift" to Lucia. Plenty of the film is spent juxtaposing classical music, opera, and ballet with psychological and physical abuse on the part of the Nazis currently hiding in Vienna.

 I can only assume that nothing about The Night Porter is meant to be titillating, despite Rampling's state of semi-constant nudity in the mid-section of the film. Every scene between Rampling and Bogarde that hints at sexuality or eroticism is coupled with a corresponding flashback of Max sexual degradation of Lucia in the "medical facility" he operates.SPOILER ALERT) If it was meant to be shocking that she is ultimately as aroused by their shared history then the poster does a great disservice to that revelation. Advertising Lucia's fetishization as an SS sex-object might be effective to bring in crowds, but I strongly suspect that early in the film we're meant to identify her reaction to Max as traumatic and slowly build to the point where the flashbacks coincide with the present.

As it is,we come into the film knowing that Lucia returns to Max and that they resume their dance of sado-masochism (including broken glass, chains, and a sort of animalistic role playing). All of the flashbacks were merely a prelude, a history of Lucia's sexual awakening at the hands of the man who calls her his "Little Girl." It is also precisely at this point that The Night Porter runs out of steam.

 I suppose that I am missing some great metaphor at the heart of The Night Porter's second half, which involves Max and Lucia locked up in his apartment without food or contact to the outside world, for fear that his associates will kill her (and, undoubtedly, him). Their life in hiding is some bizarro world version of living in terror of the threat of Nazis during World War II, and I suppose on some level it makes sense, but it's predicated on a moment in the film that the audience desperately needs for the second half to have any impact.

 Remember that Max thought Lucia was dead, or at the very least that he'd never see her again. It's unclear the chronology of the flashbacks, but I'm going to venture a guess that the scene where's she's prancing around the SS nightclub singing (in German) while wearing an officer's hat, pants, suspenders, and nothing else, is at the apex of her assimilation into Max's fantasy world - the point that The Night Porter hints at and that Tinto Brass' Salon Kitty makes explicit - the decadence of the so-called "pure"Aryan army.

 What we never see, however, is the point at which the two are separated, and the circumstances that divide their twisted union (some might argue her brainwashing and sexual manipulation - she was supposed to be very young according to conversations between the Nazis in hiding), so reuniting as adults and making the determination to stay together (particularly on her part) loses any potency. If you want to argue that Lucia is exercising any sense of "agency" in the second half of the film - particularly as it lurches toward its inevitable conclusion - it might help to understand how she reacted to the end of the war, to liberation.

 It's clear that the Nazis aren't above killing anybody who could tie them to their war crimes, and Max kills the only man who could identify Lucia to his compatriots. The problem is that once the film shifts from twisted erotica to a game of "cat and mouse," Cavani injects no suspense into the proceedings. Instead we endure their slow starvation as we await the inevitable, which comes in a wholly expected way with little to no dramatic heft. If anything, we are relieved that The Night Porter is finally over, that the evil men who don't want to answer for their crimes kill off two people who found love - albeit a warped sense of "love" or co-dependency - in order to remain in the shadows.

 After nearly two hours of self loathing, degradation, abuse, sexual torture, and casual murder, all set to operatic tones and classical music, it's a relief to see them gunned down together. Now if only I cared that being reunited was significant to them. Oh well, I said I wanted to watch something I hadn't reviewed, and now I remember why I never wrote about it in the first place. Sometimes even the Cap'n doesn't have anything interesting to add to the discussion...

 I'll be back much sooner than it took between "M" and "N" with a look at a children's movie from the director of some of the most violent horror films you're likely to see. If you've paid attention to the clues in earlier reviews, I suspect you'll guess what it is.





 * No shit - she made Ripley's Game twenty eight years after The Night Porter, which is going to sound awfully coincidental when we get to "P"...

Blogorium Review: Dr. No

 Dr. No is the first James Bond film, and accordingly the first 007 film to feature Sean Connery as the super-spy for MI6. Of course, there is that 1954 teleplay of Casino Royale with Barry Nelson and Peter Lorre, but good luck finding that. With respect to the James Bond "canon" (read: anything in the 50th Anniversary boxed set from 2012), Dr. No is where it all begins, and while it is a comparatively subdued adventure for 007, Ian Fleming's creation is off to a pretty good start.

 It's difficult to view Dr. No separately from the other films in the series, particularly if you are (as I am) familiar with the tropes that came to be identified with subsequent adventures. Trying to remove the mental "checklist" of James Bond cliches while watching his first film is like trying to stay invested in Janet Leigh's story in Psycho, pre-shower - almost impossible. With that in mind, let's get that out of the way for those of you who count Skyfall as your entry point into the series:

 - There is no pre-credit action sequence, just the "gun barrel" opening followed by a colorful musical opening.

 - There isn't necessarily a "theme song" so much as the Bond theme playing over the credits, followed by an awkward transition to bongo drums and then "Three Blind Mice," which does payoff in the opening of the film.

 - M, Moneypenny, and someone who isn't exactly Q but who serves that purpose, briefly appear to give some context to MI6 before Bond is sent to Kingston, Jamaica for his mission.

 - There is not Ashton Martin, no gimmicky weapons, and very few quips from 007.

 - Bond is introduced playing cards (and winning), seducing the woman he played with, and almost immediately after we first see him, Connery utters the line "Bond, James Bond."

 - He likes his martini shaken, not stirred, although the first time anyone mentions it, the drink is "mixed, as you requested, not stirred."

  I'll address the "Bond Girl" in a bit, but that does cover the bases. Oh, if you're coming into Dr. No from Skyfall or the more recent Casino Royale, then the ouroboros-like continuity of the series might throw you a bit, as M insists that Bond abandon his Beretta in favor of the Walther PP7 at the beginning of the film. I realize that the way Skyfall ends is designed to reorient nu-Bond with the series as it began, but we must make do with what we're given, so do try to keep up*.

 In Kingston, Jamaica, British Intelligence Station agent John Strangways and his secretary are murdered while preparing for routine communication with home. MI6 Agent 007, James Bond (Connery) is sent to Kingston to rendezvous with CIA Agent Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) and discover who killed Strangways and why. Leiter suspects a mysterious figure named Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman) is planning to disrupt U.S. missile tests from the nearby island of Crab Key, where Strangways had been visiting.

 No sooner has Bond arrived than attempts on his life are made, from the men responsible for Strangways death, as well as a suspicious geologist who knows more than he's letting on. It's unclear who these men are working for at first, along with a photographer intent on getting Mr. Bond's picture. 007 is adept in a chase and can handle himself in combat, but has a nasty habit of letting important leads slip away from him or, more importantly, in getting himself captured.

 It turns out that the first time he's caught with a gun to his back that Felix Leiter is holding it, and that it's part of a misunderstanding, but this James Bond isn't quite as infallible as the one we'll see later on, even before Connery passes the torch to Roger Moore. He's a clever spy, and he covers his tracks, but he also makes dumb mistakes like drinking the coffee Dr. No's servants offer him. For every "cool" trick he uses, Bond tends get himself in trouble. Except, of course, when it comes to the ladies.

 Speaking of which, it's worth pointing out that Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) is almost totally unrelated to the main story of Dr. No. She comes across Bond and Quarrel (John Kitzmiller) by accident on Crab Key. She's visiting the island looking for shells, and just happens to walk onto the same beach where Bond is hiding. There's a half-hearted attempt to connect her to Dr. No's tendency to murder anyone who comes to Crab Key unannounced, but she is, by and large, a bystander who has no connection to the hero or villain.

 I was a bit worried when the mysterious "Chinese" scientist, Dr. No, turned out to be played by Canadian Joseph Wiseman, but a quick line explaining that he's "half Chinese, half German" covers up the fact that he doesn't look remotely Chinese. Besides, it's Dr. No's underground Atomic lair and metal hands that are of primary interest to audiences. Dr. No also suggests the existence of SPECTRE, the organization behind most of Bond's early battles, which I suppose the Skyfall set isn't going to know much about. As someone who entered the 007 series with From Russia with Love, it was nice to see the groundwork for the series being laid.

 The underground lair, complete with a nuclear reactor and decontamination showers is the closest you're going to get in Dr. No to the James Bond stereotypes lampooned in Austin Powers. Most of the film is Bond searching for clues in Kingston while avoiding assassination attempts. There's a car chase and a half, one fight scene, and a deadly tarantula. This is not to say that Dr. No isn't fun to watch, but if you expect all Bond films to be as bombastic as, well, most of the ones that follow the first film, you might be surprised. Comparatively speaking, Dr. No IS the "stripped down" James Bond film that modern audiences seem to think we're getting with each subsequent Daniel Craig outing.

 For my money, I'll take From Russia with Love or Goldfinger over Dr. No as preferred Connery 007 films, but as a starting point, it's easy to understand why audiences wanted to see more of James Bond after the first adventure.


* For those of you who haven't seen Skyfall yet, Bond (Daniel Craig) is introduced to Q (Ben Winshaw) for the "first time" and during their meeting, 007's new "Quartermaster" gives him a Walther PP7 that will only fire when he holds it. Q suggests Bond think of it "less as a random killing machine and more as a personal statement." I won't spoil the end of the film, but I think you'll find it links up with the Connery world of MI6 quite nicely.

Retro Review: Sex and Death 101

editor's note: In his continuing quest to re-post older reviews that never made it from the old Blogorium to its present home, Cap'n Howdy has been delivering piles of digital bits to me in the hopes I know what to do with it. Some movies are older than others, but most of these come from a period between 2006 and 2009, when the move took place. Enjoy

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It seems fitting that almost twenty years after his first screenplay, Heathers, writer Daniel Waters would return with a kind-of-sort-of sequel. Oh, I'm sorry; did you not hear about this? Sex and Death 101? Well, I won't lie to you and say "oh I followed it from day one", because it was a surprise to me too. The good news is that this kind of surprise is the good one.

    Roderick Blank (Simon Baker of Land of the Dead) is a normal guy living a normal life, about to be engaged when he receives an anonymous email. This email has the name of every woman he's ever slept with, and it turns out his fiance is number 29. On a list of 101. You can imagine where this is going, but you might be surprised where it ends up. The list comes from... well, I won't spoil that. Let's just say it involves Patton Oswalt and a white room. Again, that's only giving you part of the scenario.

    First things first: don't expect an actual sequel to Heathers with any of the characters or story returning. Sex and Death 101 is more of a thematic sequel to Heathers (if you want to even call it that). I bring it up only because much of the film is going to remind you of the dream sequences in Heathers, and in a good way. Much of the tone of Sex and Death 101 is bizarre but inspired black comedy, and more than a few times I laughed as hard as "I love my dead gay son!" in this film.

    The catch, and there is one, is that the movie is slow to get going. It wasn't until probably twenty minutes in or so that Baker really settles into the role and the film gets fun. In the meantime, there's the weird presence of Mindy Cohn (The Facts of Life) as his assistant and a supporting cast that includes "oh! that guy" or "hey, why do I know her?". Everything seems a little forced early on and I really thought I wasn't going to like this movie.

    But the Heathers connection gets a little clearer when Winona Ryder enters the story as Death Knell, a not-acutally-a-serial-killer who beds sleazy guys and puts them in comas. Her first real scene in the movie, involving a newstand owner, hints at where Waters actually wants to go with this premise, and things only get better from there.

    Waters wrote and directed Sex and Death, so much like Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, this is his undiluted vision. Every step of the story is filled with double-backs, fake outs, tricksy narration, and some really clever in-camera trickery (watch that bar scene about three quarters of the way in). His writing is still as sharp as ever, and for the first time in years you'll hear an actually clever OJ Simpson joke. Oh, and Patton Oswalt is in the movie, and a lot more than I thought he would be.

    Ultimately what compels me to recommend the movie is that it frequently zigs when you expect it to zag. The writing is clever, the casting at times inspired, and even though it starts and ends a little shaky, there's more than enough in between that you haven't seen in a long time, if at all.

    Sex and Death 101 isn't going to blow you away like Heathers, but it will amuse you. I get why it didn't have larger press, because this is the kind of movie that's a little too weird for the Superhero Movie crowd and more subversive than the "quirky" comedy fans are interested in. If you're willing to let the film settle in, you'll be in for a pleasant surprise, which is exactly what we hope for in "lost" movies.