Shocktober Revisited: The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror (I-XXIV)

 This originally appeared in TV Talk as two parts in 2011.


  I am both old enough to remember a time before The Simpsons and still young enough not to have understood its impact on television or, eventually, on the show itself. At the time, anyway. Now it's easy to look back and understand why I stopped watching the show around season 12, then would check in sporadically, only to eventually give up around season 17 or 18. The show just wasn't that funny anymore. A brief flirtation with The Simpsons Movie and the show's shift to HD collapsed midway through the Blu-Ray of season 20, and I'm fairly content saying that I don't watch The Simpsons anymore. They recycle their own jokes now, unironically aware of what South Park already knew: "The Simpsons did it!"

 You can actually trace the downward trajectory through the first ten Treehouse of Horror's (which, oddly enough, are all called The Simpsons Halloween Special on the title card, but not on IMDB or the boxed sets). For those not familiar with the concept - in season two, The Simpsons introduced a yearly Halloween special. It was always a triptych, and they all typically involve the following: 1) a Twilight Zone redo, 2) a film parody, 3) a literary interpretation, 4) Some variety of social commentary (this happens increasingly as time goes by).

 People tend to be hard on the first few seasons of The Simpsons, but the first Treehouse of Horror isn't actually all that bad: there's "Bad Dream House," a Poltergeist/Amityville homage; "Hungry are the Damned," a Simpsonized twist on "To Serve Man," and an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," wrapped around by a story of Bart and Lisa trying to scare each other.

 From there on out, there are a number of great moments: send-ups of King Kong, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Fly, The Omega Man, Godzilla (kind of), and The Indestructible Man; versions of The Monkey's Paw, Frankenstein, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Dragonwyck; and Twilight Zone episodes Little Girl Lost, It's a Good Life, Living Doll, Terror at 20,000 Feet, and The Little People.

 What I noticed though is that there's a steady decline starting with Treehouse of Horror VII (season 8), which stands out for an otherwise pretty stellar season (Hank Scorpio, Mr. Sparkle, Larry Burns, the Insanity Pepper episode): I could have sworn the "Hugo" evil twin segment happened later in the series' run, the "Little People" segment runs out of steam, and the Bob Dole / Bill Clinton Kodos and Kang story is a non-starter. It hints at the dull-witted political commentary to come, reaching a nadir in the late 2000s with a "War of the Worlds" / Iraqi Invasion segment.

 Treehouse of Horror's VIII, IX, and X are all hit and miss, but indicate a downward trend: for every "Homega Man" and "Fly vs. Fly," there's a pointless cameo by Jerry Springer or Regis Philbin (the Springer being a serious low point in the show's pop culture commentary), and things just fall apart in season 11. Again, I'm a little surprised by this because while it's nowhere in the same league as season 8, the next-to-last season of The Simpsons I watched entirely had at least given up on a semblance of plot, instead trying to out-surreal itself with each successive episode.

 It turns out that when that's the case, when making Santa's Little Helper say "Chewy?" and introduce Tomacco into the mix, that a Treehouse of Horror is going to struggle in comparison. Not only is it the first time the show directly references Kodos and Kang as not fitting into the Halloween milieu (something they would continue to do from what I've seen), the segments just aren't any good. The parody of I Know What You Did Last Summer sputters to a conclusion and is more fixated on the developing "Jerkass" Homer that characterizes seasons 12-onward. "Desperately Xeeking Xena" is a dumb comic book parody that also doesn't know how to end, so it settles for random: see, Xena can't fly, but Lucy Lawless can! That's the joke! The only thing funny about the "Y2k" segment comes in retrospect: notice Mark McGwire and Mel Gibson on the "best of humanity" rocket.

After Treehouse of Horror X, I can only say I remember parts of XI and XII: I'd honestly thought "Day of the Dolphins" came sooner than it did, the Ghost Dad parody doesn't stir much other than Homer dying on a piece of broccoli twice, and I have vague memories of Pierce Brosnan as the voice of a house that hates Homer. I don't recall the Harry Potter parody at all. From there on out, I understand they've spoofed Transformers, 28 Days Later, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, The Dead Zone, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Most Dangerous Game, A.I., The Blob, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Twilight. Mmmhrm...

Believe me, I'd love to jump on them for more movie parodies, but going back and looking at it, the Bram Stoker's Dracula send-up was right after the movie came out, and they weren't wildly removed from A Nightmare on Elm Street's sequels at the time either. What I can say is that I laughed less and less from Treehouse of Horror VI to X, and I laughed quite a bit during VI. The episodes are a fine time capsule of where The Simpsons was, what the writers found amusing, and which elements were emphasized - story, character, parody, or randomness.

 At a certain point, I simply stopped watching The Simpsons - it was likely in the early 2000s, when the repetitiveness of the stories became too taxing and I just gave up. Every now and then, I'd notice a Treehouse of Horror episode (in particular, ones that aired after October), but didn't pay them much mind. However, it seems unfair to start reviewing these episodes and not try to cover them through the present, so the Cap'n soldiered on. I was left with a "good news, bad news" scenario: the good news was there were flashes of my favorite Treehouse of Horror's, but the bad news was they were often fleeting, and a rarely did one of them lasted for an entire segment of its episode.

 Things get off to a shaky start in Treehouse of Horror XI with a parody of the Bill Cosby movie Ghost Dad, but evens out with the final segment, the aforementioned "Night of the Dolphin," which manages to fit in nods to Jaws and The Birds and has a fitfully dark ending. The middle segment, "Scary Tales Do Come True," is symptomatic of a problem that plagues the latter Treehouse entries: many of the parodies are tangentially (at best) tied to horror.

  A Hansel and Gretl meet other fairy tales would make sense in the context of other Simpsons anthology episodes (which have covered works of literature, myths, or Biblical stories), but it begins a trend of moving away from Twilight Zone stories and horror films to other parodies - some of which don't even make sense. But Transformers? Mr. and Mrs. Smith? The Harry Potter spoof doesn't even get a pass because if you took that, "Scary Tales Can Come True," and "Four Beheadings and a Funeral", a Sherlock Holmes / Jack the Ripper story, and put them into their own anthology.

  I'm more willing to give the Mad Men-esque spoof "How to Get Ahead in Dead-vertising" because it at least continues the trend of zombie celebrities, even if it is just a variation on the Homer the Grim Reaper segment from XIV. However, "Bartificial Intelligence" doesn't make any sense in a Treehouse of Horror, and a Golem story (like "Hex in the City") eventually shifts from possibly horror related to cheap ethnic jokes. A Fantastic Voyage (really?) spoof turns it self around into a variation on Treehouse of Horror II's "Homer and Burns share a body" joke, followed by a song-and-dance vaguely reminiscent of the "Bart Simpson's Dracula". "The Ned Zone" never really goes anywhere, and "Married to the Blob" starts great but falls apart long before Dr. Phil appears as himself. A Tales from the Crypt-style opening sequence falls apart as soon as Smithers appears, which is a shame.

 The nadir of the latter Treehouses is"The Day the Earth Stood Stupid," a segment that seems to be a take on Orson Welles' infamous "War of the Worlds" hoax, but then devolves into a boneheaded (and woefully unfunny) critique of the War in Iraq, with Kodos and Kang arguing about who said they would be "greeted as liberators" and ends with an awful "hearts and minds" gag. Of course, if you like Kodos and Kang, then stay away from "E.T.: Go Home" which seems promising but quickly goes south.

While there are some serious lowlights, it is fair to mention that there are some sporadically clever segments: there's the spot-on Hitchcock homage "Dial 'M' for Murder or Press # to Return to Main Menu," a pretty good take on Dead Calm (although I can't imagine most fans getting that reference) marred only by a pointless A Clockwork Orange reference ("Simpsons did it!"), the Twilight parody actually has a few good jokes, as does Pierce Brosnan's evil house in XII. While I don't love "Frinkenstein", it was amusing to hear Jerry Lewis as Professor Frink's father gleefully collecting organs at the Nobel Prize ceremony. "The Island of Doctor Hibbert" and "Survival of the Fattest" are pretty good, and the 28 Days Later "tainted Krusty Burger" segment is great but drops the ball at the end.

 The closest thing other than the Hitchcock segment is an almost perfect send-up of Charlie Brown cartoons called "It's the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse." For a while, it sustains the animation style, but overuses a few obvious gags (Marge's trombone, for example) and breaks the tone with Nelson and the bullies before halfway redeeming itself with a racist pumpkin ("all pumpkins are racist; the difference is I admit it!"). The Grand Pumpkin and Tom Turkey's screams of "Revenge!" still make me chuckle.

 At times, the choices of Treehouse of Horror movie references boggles the mind, as is the case with XXII, which opts to parody 127 Hours and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, turning the latter into a series of fart jokes involving an incapacitated Homer. It then closes on a pot shot at the already forgotten Spider-Man Broadway musical. The final segment turns Ned Flanders into Dexter in "Dial 'D' for Diddly," which I guess they chose the title for after forgetting they'd already used that Hitchcock reference. In truth, I'd just as rather not mention Treehouse of Horror XXIII, which I had to look up to remember - the Paranormal Activity is borderline unbearable, and the Back to the Future-inspired "Bart and Homer's Excellent Adventure" doesn't remotely qualify as horror related. The inclusion of a Mayan calendar joke to open the episode and a totally forgettable "black hole" opening segment are best left to be recalled
fuzzily.

 Perhaps the most notable element of Treehouse of Horror XXIV is the extended opening directed by Guillermo Del Toro: it manages to include references to all of his films (closing with a couch gag that ties directly into Pan's Labyrinth) and a number of horror films that influenced him. It does set the tone for what is (at times) a disturbingly violent episode, perhaps no more so than during "The Fat in the Hat," a Dr. Seuss inspired story of trick-or-treating. Take your pick at what's more upsetting that Homer as the titular character does, but I think killing Mr. Burns (as a vulture) and feeding him to the homeless (uncooked) might do it for me. Or skinning Moe and wearing him as a coat. It's surprisingly dark, even for The Simpsons. Comparably speaking, the parodies of Freaks and The Thing with Two Heads are tame, if also violent. Unfortunately, "Dead and Shoulders" is likely to remind you of not one, but now two other similar stories (Treehouse of Horror II and XV).

  Watching the back stretch of the Treehouse of Horror episodes, I can see many of the things I've noticed while popping in on The Simpsons over the years after no longer being a regular viewer - jokes are periodically funny, but often are followed by something that reminds me of a better Simpsons episode. The "jerkass" phase of Homer Simpson is abundant in many of these episodes, and it's more grating than hilarious. The pop culture references become more obvious and get lazier as time goes on, and much of the sharp writing of earlier years is undermined by lazy shortcuts or, worse, an inability to stick the landing. While I don't plan on watching the show regularly again, it was nice to catch up on what used to be a Halloween institution, and I'll try to catch XXV (airing this weekend) to see if an upswing is ever in the cards. Call me hopeful - it might be...

Shocktober Review: In the Mouth of Madness

 True story: the Cap'n has often mentioned, but never officially reviews John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. There's no good reason why I haven't; it was on my "Top Ten Horror Movies" list, I played it for college students during a pre-Horror Fest III event, and generally speaking I think of it fondly. Hell, when I picked up the Blu-Ray, I thought I'd throw it on just to check out the picture quality and ended up watching all the way until Sutter Cane first appears. The phrase "this is reality!" comes up frequently in conversation with friends (to be fair, we talk about Lovecraft quite a bit). For its twentieth anniversary, it only seems fair to actually talk about In the Mouth of Madness, my second favorite entry into Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy."

 Many years ago, back in the early days of the internet, I remember going to an H.P. Lovecraft fan site and looking at the "adaptations" section, only to find that the entry for In the Mouth of Madness goes out of its way to insist that Carpenter's film is in no way "inspired" by Lovecraft and was clearly more influenced by Stephen King. Because, uh, King is mentioned by name in the film? Because it sort of sounds like his name? I hadn't laughed that hard since a Cliff's Notes knock-off insisted that MacBeth's "parade of Kings" was in no way Shakespeare flattering the royalty because "he was above such things." So In the Mouth of Madness is not directly lifted from a Lovecraft story (true), but it shares locations, character names, and thematic elements that come from his stories. Let's not forget the direct passages from "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Haunter in the Dark" attributed to Cane. It's as clearly tied to the concept of "cosmic horror" as Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy is, and that doesn't get brushed away into the broom closet.

 Perhaps it's because In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter at his most unabashedly pulpy (at least, until Vampires). This is the last of his great run that began with Halloween and came crashing down with Village of the Damned (the less said about Ghosts of Mars and The Ward, the better), but as I mentioned in the Horror Fest III recap, it's "quaintly 90s." It represents the last of an era of "contemporary" horror films that don't have any version of cell phones, the internet, or digital anything. I'm not actually sure how you would make In the Mouth of Madness today, as some intrepid Sutter Cane fan would have easily found (and posted) the map to Hobb's End online well in advance of the publication of his final novel.

 That's also why In the Mouth of Madness still works, because at first, we're not entirely sure what's happening to John Trent (Sam Neill). We know he's in an asylum (Arkham, if you were curious), and that he's been admitted under the care of (sic) Dr. Saperstein (John Glover) - hello, Rosemary's Baby reference - and that "things are really going to shit out there." When Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) comes to visit, we're introduced to the flashback of how insurance investigator Trent ended up unleashing the "Old Ones," with the help of literary agent Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) and, inadvertently, Arcane publisher Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston). But it's a slow burn - aside from the framing device, most of the first thirty minutes of In the Mouth of Madness are procedural. This is punctuated with moments of violence, or hallucinations and, in one case, and old Carpenter favorite - the "double dream" fake-out.

 Well before we're aware how much influence Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) has over the story we're being told, a sense of unease permeates In the Mouth of Madness. It's arguably more effective than Prince of Darkness, which attempts to set the same kind of tone of foreboding menace. Carpenter and screenwriter / former New Line President Michael De Luca (who often doesn't get the credit when discussing this film) wisely frame the film through the perspective of the pragmatic John Trent. He's trained to spot a con, to find the angle in any story too good to be true, and the "disappearance" of Cane in anticipation of his novel In the Mouth of Madness is one he can't pass up. Not that, if you take the ending at face value, he ever had any choice, but his stubborn insistence on what is "real" juxtaposes nicely with the increasingly impossible world he finds himself in. Paired with Styles, Trent becomes the Dana Scully to her Fox Mulder, in some improbably warped version of The X-Files.

 Cane's novels have an "effect" on readers, one that slowly works on Trent as he does "research" - Carpenter sets up the overlapping dreams as being grounded in reality (an overzealous cop beating some kid in an alley) and slowly distorts it, introducing imagery we'll see later in the film. In the Mouth of Madness benefits greatly from multiple viewings, as Carpenter and De Luca set up much of where the story's going well before Trent and Styles leave to find "Hobb's End," the fictional town that Cane is believed to have disappeared to. There are a number of other, smaller, details, like Trent's asylum and hotel room number or the color of everyone's eyes being tied directly to something Cane says that you might not catch the first time through. In many ways I think that Carpenter improved on the weaknesses of Prince of Darkness and made In the Mouth of Madness a stronger film for it. This could, to be fair, also have something to do with my affinity for Lovecraft, whose influence hovers over every minute of the film.

 This brings us back to the distinction between Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft. In the Mouth of Madness presents us with a sort of hybrid of the two - a wildly popular horror writer whose fiction is tied together by a sense of impending doom. It's an unofficial version of Lovecraft's mythos, to be sure, but De Luca and Carpenter are treading into the territory of the "normal man who stumbles into a vast conspiracy of cosmic proportions and goes mad" almost from the end of the opening credits. This is not a story of good vs. evil (which, I would argue is a hallmark of King's novels, if not his short stories), but of inevitability, of humanity realizing its insignificance in the presence of the "Old Ones," for whom Cane is a conduit. (If you're SPOILER averse, I'd skip the next sentence) As tends to be the case for the poor sap who wanders headlong into the Mythos, Trent eventually succumbs to his own madness, embracing his fate and transforming in a final audio cue. His hysterical laughter while watching the film-within-a-film (that is the film we're watching) is all the more telling. He's just a pawn. Embrace the change.

In the end, Carpenter might have one too many visual or editing flourishes (the kid on the bike, for example), but In the Mouth of Madness is one last great salvo from a director who would largely fall off of the cinematic map by the end of the 1990s. Sam Neill is great as the hard boiled-ish type who slowly but surely melts down in the presence of something more ancient, more powerful. I've always been shaky about Julie Carmen as styles, but as time passes I find her less grating. And how can I finish without mentioning Wilhelm Von Homburg, aka goon from Die Hard but more importantly as Vigo the Carpathian? He has a small role in Madness as the father of a boy that Cane takes in Hobb's End, and his two scenes ("Cane! Give me back my son!" and "I have to, he wrote me this way") are memorable in a film full of chilling moments. It's certainly the most pessimistic of the Apocalypse Trilogy, but if you're going to follow The Thing and Prince of Darkness, why leave any trace of hope?

Shocktober Revisited: Cronos

Review originally appeared in 2011.

When I reviewed Let the Right One In in 2009, I brought up four really great vampire movies (of which Let the Right One In would be a fifth): Martin, Near Dark, Nosferatu, and Shadow of the Vampire. It's time to add another film to that list; Guillermo del Toro's directorial debut, Cronos. Like the other films listed, Cronos is a non-traditional vampire tale, a story centered around immortality with a price, one that touches briefly on addiction and centers - as many of del Toro's finest films do - around a child.

The girl in question, Aurora Gris (Tamara Shanath), lives with her grandparents: Grandmother Mercedes (Margarita Isabel) and Grandfather Jesus (Federico Luppi). Jesus Gris owns an antiques shop, and he brings his inquisitive granddaughter along while the store is open. One day, he discovers a small, scarab-like mechanical device inside of a statue of an angel. The following day, Angel de la Guardia (Ron Perlman) arrives to buy the statue for his uncle (Claudio Brook). The device, it seems, was created by an alchemist (Mario Iván Martínez) in 1535, and was lost after his death in a bank collapse - in 1937.

Jesus is surprised that the device attaches itself to his skin, drawing blood, and immediately removes the Cronos device - until he notices that its brief contact to his skin removed years of aging from his life. He begins, to the chagrin of Aurora, to continue using the device, developing a taste for blood - needed to power the device - and becoming addicted to the inevitable transformation the scarab brings him. Unfortunately, De la Guardia is perfectly aware that the device should have been in the statue, knows what the Cronos device can do, and sends Angel to find Jesus at any cost.

At the risk of spoiling anything else, I'm going to stop there; viewers watching Cronos benefit best from the least amount of spoilers possible. Guillermo del Toro makes the best of his low budget and tells an intimate, disturbing fairy tale about losing a member of one's family without necessarily losing them (again, I'm trying to avoid spoilers) while making the best of his bilingual cast (Perlman speaks almost entirely in English, save for a few intentionally bad lines in Spanish). The effects are particularly impressive: del Toro gives us glimpses inside of the Cronos device, hinting at an insect-like creature that lives inside and perhaps(?) facilitates Jesus' transformation.

The film is going to appeal to Guillermo del Toro fans who gravitate towards The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, rather than the grand scale Blade II or Hellboy films. This is not to say both won't find something to enjoy in his first film; traces of del Toro's later films exist throughout Cronos, both thematically and in imagery he's drawn towards. It stands proudly alongside his later work, but also fits in nicely with the atypical vampire films listed in the first paragraph. It also shares a connective tissue with another film, one released a decade before, by an equally well regarded "cult" director.

(Semi-spoilers ahead) Criterion released Cronos on the same day they issued a Blu-Ray upgrade for Videodrome, and its hardly a coincidence: late in Cronos, there's a moment that mirrors Cronenberg's 1983 film where the protagonist reaches into his stomach, feeling past his old skin and discovering his "new flesh." The parallels, even though they may end differently (Cronos opts for closing imagery similar to Nosferatu's and one that would be used later in Shadow of the Vampire), almost certainly left an impression on the Criterion team, and their simultaneous release allows audiences to discover intertextuality where they would not think to look otherwise.

2013 Recap: The Final Stretch Before the "Best Of" (Part Four)

 At long last, the recap of what constitutes "the middle" is nearly over. Comparing this project to last year's one post, title and quick synopsis / review, I think I'm happier to spend the time giving you a better idea of the strengths and weaknesses of each film, and explaining why they're worth seeing, but not quite the best movies I saw last year. Hopefully the feeling is mutual, but if not, I can go back to the old way next year.

New York (and Jersey) State of Mind.

 As much as I personally enjoyed Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha, it's been a struggle to recommend it to friends. I'm not really sure who will like it and who won't; Baumbach and Greta Gerwig's distinctly American version on the French New Wave might strike a lot of you as precious and contrived. Some might find it annoying and might be turned off completely by the title character (Gerwig) and her inability to commit to any one direction in life. I say this because that's consistently been the criticism from people who hate it (and I mean HATE). Others take umbrage with its adoption of the FNW aesthetic, arguing that the film is a weak imitator that can only be enjoyed by those who aren't versed in Truffuat or Godard or Malle. Maybe that's so, but I'm not convinced of that argument. Maybe Frances Ha has to catch you in just the right mood.

 It is true that Frances (the character) is an acquired taste: a late 20-something woman who drifts from roommate to roommate, convinced that she wants to dance but doesn't want to branch out and choreograph for herself. She needs money but doesn't seem interested in taking a job that's practically handed to her, and is willing to go back to her Alma mater and work as an RA / waitress while her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) is planning to get married and move to Japan for work. Her roommate Benji (Michael Zegen) calls her "undateable," and on a whim she decides to fly to Paris, only to sleep through most of her two day vacation. So yes, there's a lot of Frances Ha that goes nowhere and if you don't take to Gerwig from the beginning, it might be a lost cause, because you're in for a long 86 minutes.

 On the other hand, if it does strike your fancy, you'll find a lot to enjoy in what is an essentially jubilant and upbeat take on the quarter-life crisis. Baumbach borrows music from The 400 Blows, Bed and Board, Contempt, and King of Hearts to set the tone, and the film is, to me, structured a bit like Vivre sa vie, although nowhere as depressing. Rather than break the film into chapters, Baumbach divides each  chronological section of Frances Ha using a title with Frances' current mailing address. Gerwig is in every scene of the movie, and while the character can sometimes be infuriating, her performance as Frances is always riveting. But I'm still not sure how many of you are going to take to the film, so if you watch it and hate it, don't say I didn't try to give you a head's up.

 Don Jon, the Jersey equivalent of Frances Ha (sort of but also not really) is the directorial debut of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who also wrote and stars in the film. Like the titular character, Don Jon has confidence to spare, and the film is tremendously charming, which is a good thing. It stumbles a little bit on the back end (I'll get to that in a moment), but for most people you won't even think twice about it. The trailers have been misleading you into thinking it's just about Gordon-Levitt trying to date Scarlett Johansson while also having a porn addiction, but that's less of the story than you might be expecting.

The running theme(s) of Don Jon is mostly concerned with objectification and routine, specifically by Jon (Gordon-Levitt), who likes his life to follow a certain order. We never see the "work" part, but that's followed by going to the club with his boys, picking up a girl (always given a numerical score, and Jon only takes home 8's or better, which is why they call him the "Don"), watching porn, going to church, confession, dinner with the family, and then the gym (where he says the Lord's Prayer and his Hail Mary's while working out). Repeat. He likes his sex like he likes his porn, to follow a certain routine, but the sex never seems to match up to the porn, so he'll often get out of bed after hooking up with a girl and watch some pornography while she sleeps in the other room.

 This you probably knew from the trailer, and that he also meets Barbara Sugarman (Johansson), the rare "10" that Jon knows he wants immediately. But Barbara isn't so easily won over, and the "Don" has to play the long game to win her over, which begins disrupting his routine. She doesn't like that he cleans his own apartment. She wants him to go to school in order not to be a bartender forever. She really objects to the porn, but Jon keeps watching it on his phone (sometimes at school). But her friends like Jon and his family loves her, and most of the things she wants are improving his life, so how can he complain? He likes porn, she likes dumb romantic comedies (one of the ones they go to see in the movie stars Anne Hathaway and Channing Tatum in amusing cameos), what's the difference? It's all fantasy, right?

 And then Don Jon takes a left turn, introducing a character you don't see in the trailer and whose name you'd certainly recognize if I told you (her name is on the poster, by the way). That's where the movie starts to diverge from whatever you expected based on the trailer. I don't want to say too much because not knowing is Don Jon's greatest strength - leading you into thinking this is one kind of romantic comedy and then heading in another direction midway through. Let's just say that Jon's routine starts to come apart a little bit, and maybe that's not such a bad thing for the "Don."

 If anything, I wish Gordon-Levitt had been willing to go a little further than he does; I kept waiting to see where the story was going, to see what he had up his sleeve, only to realize that Don Jon was going to be far more conventional than I'd hoped for. The ending isn't bad, necessarily, but it's safer than I was expecting, more fitting of the typical "three act structure" romantic comedy that the movie seems to be poking fun at and less willing to really take the genre to task. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't end the way you'd assumed based on the trailer, but by mentioning that there's another character you haven't seen in the previews, you can probably guess what happens.

 Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a fine job directing, even if the writing is more conventional than the Cap'n would have liked. I'd also like to give him kudos for casting, especially with Jon's family. Not only was it nice to see Tony Danza and Glenne Headly again (I can't remember anything I've seen her in since Dick Tracy), but along with Brie Larson, they felt like a real family sitting down for dinner after church. Everybody has great chemistry and the fun is infectious, so I have the feeling you'll come out of Don Jon smiling, as long as you can handle fleeting glimpses of porn. Guys, I guess you should be prepared to address that question if you watch this on a date. That's your head's up.

Science Fiction Double Feature

Is Pacific Rim just a dumb, loud movie that caters to the twelve year old boy inside of 20-30 something nerds that like to see robots fighting monster? Probably. Are the characters, at best, wafer thin with ridiculous names you wouldn't say out loud even if you could remember them? Almost certainly. Did Guillermo del Toro decide to make a silly movie inspired by Japanese kaiju pictures when he left The Hobbit and At the Mountains of Madness was to dark and too scary for a major studio? Pretty much. Do I care? Not really.

 Pacific Rim is about as close as the Cap'n will ever get to watching a Transformers movie, and I've already watched it twice on Blu-Ray. That in addition to the first time I saw it, and I tend to show people who are on the fence about seeing it the fight in the middle of the movie where the kaiju attack Hong Kong and Gypsy Danger comes in to save the day. That scene is a good barometer of whether you're going to want to watch the rest or not, but the truth is that Pacific Rim lets del Toro indulge in his compulsive and obsessive world building (complete with body parts preserved in jars and parasites that live on the giant monsters and their usefulness to the black market) while also feeding a basic need for destruction on a massive scale and robots punching monsters, which is really why this film is a popular as it is for a very specific subset of geeks. I don't feel guilty about enjoying it, but I couldn't possibly defend it if challenged. It's a smart dumb movie, or vice versa. Take your pick.

 Gravity has some truly inspiring camera work and visual effects, and watching the movie is like riding on a roller coaster with more suspense than an Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece. I can totally understand why it took Alfonso Cuarón seven years to make this, and some of the camera work and (seemingly) unbroken takes are genuinely impressive. It was everyone's favorite movie this summer, the "must see" event that friends and family and audiences in general couldn't get enough of, and now I'm not hearing so much about it. It didn't make my "Best Of" at any point, really, despite its myriad of achievements and how gripping the entire film is. Why?

 Some people have trouble with the liberties taken with the science, but the whole Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeting brouhaha didn't phase me much. It's a movie and of course Cuarón was going to take some shortcuts to streamline the narrative, so things get a little fuzzy with the "scientifically accurate" part, although I can't honestly remember that being a bragging point. I think the problem, for me, goes to the story. It's far, far too simple, and no amount of visual flair or tension or long takes is going to overcome that fact that when Gravity is over, there's not a lot to hang on to. Yes, I thought the scene where Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is spinning and can't stop and Cuarón pulls all the way inside of her helmet and back out was really cool and I feel her dizziness and disorientation too, was great stuff. But I didn't care about her dead daughter, or when she detaches from Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and he floats off to near certain doom. The isolation of space, the silence, was impressive, and Bullock's desperation to stay alive and to not die out there, I liked, but I couldn't tell you anything about why she needed to get back to Earth.

 Gravity is wholly successful at being a movie you want to watch, and to experience, even if it seems thoroughly implausible at times. On an IMAX screen, I'm sure it felt like "you are there," particularly in those first person perspective shots of trying to grab the space station(s). It's a triumph visually and in design and execution. There are shots in the film that continue to impress me when I think about them now. But the longer I go since I've seen Gravity, the more fleeting my engagement with the predicament of Stone and Kowalski is, so while I remain dazzled with what Cuarón achieved visually, I'm less enthused about the whole package.

Based on a True Story but Actually (kind of), This Time.

 Previously on Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium... documentary recap! While not all of the movies covered in the recap were from 2013, it does reflect how I feel about Rewind This! and Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. This section should be about the documentaries I didn't get around to seeing but wanted to, like Blackfish, The Act of Killing, and Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, all of which I hope to watch in the new year. Maybe We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, but I did just watch the fictionalized / Cumberbatch-ized version, The Fifth Estate (not in time for the recap) and it was just okay.

 What I left off of the documentary recap (for space, mostly) were two other documentaries I saw in 2013 - Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie and Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th. I feel like the latter should (and probably will) get its own post some time soon, but I thought we could spend this time together covering them as I think you would enjoy one or the other based on its subject matter.

 I remember The Morton Downey Jr. Show existing, kind of; I was still pretty young and it ran for less than two years, but the cultural impact of his talk show paved the way for Jerry Springer's three ring circus a decade later. He also played a version of himself on one of my favorite Tales from the Crypt episodes, "Television Terror," so I was interested to learn more about the man who never quite moved out of his father's shadow. Also, Evocateur begins by drawing parallels between Glen Beck and Morton Downey Jr. with "man on the street" interviews with Tea Party Patriots members and Downey audience members. And then it ends with a Downey-fied version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show's "Science Fiction Double Feature." What's not to like?

 Well, Morton Downey Jr., for starters. Whether his TV act was just that (an act) or not, there does seem to be a great disparity between the activist of the 1960s who wrote a book of poetry and supported the Kennedy's and the foul mouthed, caustic, abrasive radio turned talk show host who berated his guests until they walked out. Meanwhile, he took his show on the road and recorded a folk album with a long time friend (from what you hear in the movie, it's pretty terrible). The documentary covers Downey from all angles - friends who knew him before and during the show, executives, producers, audience members, and impressively, some of the guests. Alan Dershowitz and Gloria Steinem appear on camera and seem to have fond memories of sparring with Downey on the air.

 Not appearing, but a large part of the discussion, is the Reverend Al Sharpton, whose continued presence on the show during the Tawana Brawley case helped increase the prominence both of him and Downey. The legendary brawl at the Apollo Theater during one of Downey's live tour is given a new perspective from the point of view of the show bodyguard, who considered it to be more of a "party" than a riot. Throughout the documentary there's a discussion of what was real and what was exaggerated on the show and whether its host even believed what he was saying. Interspersed between are animated segments that reminded me a bit of American: The Bill Hicks Story, as well as readings from his book "Quiet Thoughts" Make the Loudest Noise (published under Sean Morton Downey). There's never a dull moment in the documentary, and worth checking out.

 Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th is the follow-up to Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy from Daniel Farrands, and at nearly seven hours, it would be hard to argue that it wasn't exhaustive and thorough. I liked it, but not as much as Never Sleep Again, and it's not so much that I enjoy A Nightmare on Elm Street more, but that I feel like Friday the 13th has been covered more often in different places.

 To start with, the documentary's title comes from Peter Bracke's excellent oral history of the films (a coffee table book you can still find on Amazon, by the way), but in addition to that, unlike most of the Nightmare DVDs and Blu-Rays, the Friday the 13th films have always had some degree of "making of" documentaries for each film, so there's a built in familiarity with some of the stories being told (in comparison, the only part of Never Sleep Again that I knew very well was the section about the first film). Crystal Lake Memories also (sparingly) re-purposes footage from His Name Was Jason, a much shorter Friday the 13th series documentary also directed by Farrands, and for Freddy vs. Jason, portions of Never Sleep Again (although the focus skews heavily on Jason this time, understandably).

 There's still a LOT to learn here, and like Never Sleep Again, my least favorite Friday entries often produce the best stories (parts V, VIII, and the remake). If you're a fan of the series who hasn't read or seen tons of anecdotes about Friday the 13th, there's going to be a lot to love here (and if you're lucky, maybe you can score a copy with the bonus disc that includes another 4 1/2 hours of additional interviews), but die hard fans should know that there's a good deal of ground covered here you already know, as entertaining as it is to hear again.

Where Have You Been?

This last section is designed to cover directors I'd been waiting to see follow-up well known (or at least, well liked by me) films or, in the case of one of them, return to making a style of movies most thought he'd long abandoned. In any other sense, these films have almost nothing in common, but you have to close out somewhere, right?

 I had been waiting for a long time for Shane Black's next film after the riotous, irreverent, clever take on detective films, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and finally got it in the form of Iron Man Three earlier in 2013. Like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, it takes place during Christmas, has deceptive narration, and doesn't take itself, the source material, or even the films that preceded it in the Marvel Universe too seriously. The last part was a serious sticking point for hard core Marvel fans, as Black's insouciant attitude towards The Mandarin soured many a fanboy and the internet is still screaming about how Black and Ben Kingsley "ruined" their favorite Iron Man villain.

 Black's sense of humor seems to mesh very well with Robert Downey Jr.'s "take nothing seriously" portrayal of Tony Stark, and the two were a fantastic pair in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang eight years ago, so I wasn't worried in the slightest about Iron Man Three. What surprised me was the other side of the coin: Stark is visibly traumatized by the battle at the end of The Avengers, has night terrors, and is obsessed with perfecting his armor in order to be ready for when (not if) it happens again. Instead of an alien invasion, Stark finds himself picking a fight with international terrorist The Mandarin (Kingsley) while Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) fends off the advances of Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a scientist who has his own history with Tony. Along for the ride are Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), re-branded as the Iron Patriot, and one of Killian's former associates, Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), who is more than a little worried about her boss's association with The Mandarin.

 Much credit is due to Black for doing two things you should never do: 1) keeping Stark out of the Iron Man armor for most of the middle of the movie and 2) introducing a kid "sidekick" for Tony during the same stretch of film. Not only is Stark forced to be more resourceful, but we see how he deals with someone that, in a million years, Tony would never pair up with but has no choice. And rather than being the typical obnoxious child, Haley (Ty Simpkins) goes toe-to-toe with Tony and their bickering manages to avoid most of the problems with involving a kid in the story.

 The film is loosely adapted from the Extremis story in Iron Man, but it's probably going to be remembered less for the balance of action and comedy and more for the introduction of The Mandarin and the (SPOILER) subsequent revelation that he's just an actor playing the part of a terrorist. Comic fans hated Black taking down the Mandarin mythos and revealing him just to be some guy hired to be the face of the operation, and I get it. It's a huge bait-and-switch and no amount of theorizing that "Trevor Slattery" is "actually really The Mandarin doing a double fake-out" is going to assuage taking the piss out of the villain.

 All the same, I must say I really enjoyed Iron Man Three (spelled that way in the closing credits, which means it's how you should address it, mmkay?) and Black's foray into the Marvel Universe. Based on interviews where he was asked, it sounds like he doesn't really want to do any more Marvel movies, so I look forward to whatever he's up to next. Let's just not take another eight years, if that's cool.

 While on the subject of Marvel directors, Joss Whedon surprised everybody in 2013 by revealing he had, mostly in secret, already completed his next film, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. Filmed entirely at his house (where he staged regular Shakespeare readings with friends) and starring vast swaths of cast members from the Whedon-verse, Much Ado About Nothing is a breezy, enchanting modern take on the Bard that, thanks in large part to its location, brings a sense of intimacy to the story. It's also a marked contrast to The Avengers and Serenty in scope, and closer in execution (if not tone) to his television work.

 For those who didn't read the play in high school, here's as quick of a recap as I can give: Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) has arrived at the home of Leonato (Clark Gregg) after a successful campaign in battle, bringing along his brother, Don John (Sean Maher), and associates Benedick (Alexis Denisof) and Claudio (Franz Kranz). Claudio is taken with Leonato's daughter, Hero (Jillian Morgese) and hopes to marry her with the help of Don Pedro, and Benedick is a self professed bachelor who likes nothing more than to bicker with Hero's cousin, Beatrice (Amy Acker). Leonato and Don Pedro decide to conspire to bring Benedick and Beatrice together, with the help Claudio, Hero, and the rest of the house. Everything seems to be going well until Don John and his friends Conrade (Riki Lindhome) and Borachio (Spencer Treat Clark) decide to disparage the honor of Hero and ruin the wedding, but with the assistance of two bumbling offices, Verges (Tom Lenk) and Dogberry (Nathan Fillion), all might not be lost...

 Whedon makes an interesting decision at the beginning of Much Ado About Nothing to explicitly show Beatrice and Benedick's romantic history preceding the story, which is (maybe) hinted at in the play but never stated. It adds an additional layer to the banter between Acker and Denisof (who already had great chemistry on Angel, sorry but I am a nerd). It takes a moment to adjust to Shakespearan dialogue in American dialect (the last time I heard it presented that way was in the awful 2000 version of Hamlet), but once you've settled in the presentation and black and white photography seem perfectly natural. Whedon once again indulges in including a song in the film ("Say No More") and while he didn't write it, for some reason I just can't get into the presentation of music in any of his projects, which makes a critical scene early in the film more of an annoyance for me than it should be. But that, I know, is completely my issue and won't affect many of you at all. Just know that "Once More with Feeling" and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog are not my favorite Whedon related projects. Technically I suppose Much Ado About Nothing is supposed to be a 2012 film, but there wasn't anywhere I could see it before 2013, so that's how I'm counting it. It's a welcome change of pace from an always unpredictable voice in geekdom.

 As divisive as Iron Man Three and Frances Ha are likely to be (for different reasons), I think Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives is going to take the cake. If you hated Drive (and I know several people who were quite vocal in their disagreement over its place in my 2011 "Best Of" list), you're really going to hate Only God Forgives. If you liked Drive (as I did and continue to), there's still a very good chance you're going to hate Only God Forgives. It's even less direct in where it is going, even more abstract in its storytelling, and even more withdrawn in its performances. The subject matter is consistently brutal and borderline abhorrent, and the violence is more extreme. There are no characters worth pulling for, and nobody really wins in the end. So that's your warning. That said, I think I really liked it. Didn't love it, but I'm pretty sure I really like it.

 Only God Forgives has less of a story than Drive, and that's saying something. Where Drive was a neo-noir that followed the wrong character (traditionally speaking, the Bryan Cranston character should have been the protagonist based on most noir conventions), Only God Forgives is a revenge film where the person seeking revenge a) doesn't want to and b) is grossly outmatched in his opponent, but he's been coerced into doing it, so things probably won't end well.

 Julian (Ryan Gosling) lives in Thailand with his brother Billy (Tom Burke), and runs a boxing club that's also a front for drug deals. Julian fancies himself a fighter while Billy has tastes that run... dark. While out one night, Billy decides to hire an underage prostitute and then kills her, which brings the attention of Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), the "Angel of Vengeance" of the police force. Chang brings the girl's father to the scene of the crime, and allows him to kill Billy as retribution, but then cuts off the father's hands for not protecting his daughter in the first place. Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), arrives not long thereafter, and immediately begins browbeating Julian about the death of his brother. She's their mother, and has an unhealthy (at best) relationship with her boys, and a particularly strange attachment to Billy (let's just say she brings up their respective, *ahem* lengths while at dinner with Julian and a stripper he's pretending is his girlfriend).

 When Julian isn't acting fast enough in taking revenge, Crystal hires his associates to do the job and kill both the father and Chang, and it doesn't end well. Chang is a brutally efficient killer with a stringent moral code. When he's done committing horrific acts of justice, he sings karaoke. Julian has premonitions of losing his beloved hands to Chang, but is pressed onward by his warped mother (also revealed to be the boss behind the drug dealing) to murder the police officer. Julian tries to fight him and loses (badly), but presses on, even though no good can come of this.

 Every character in Only God Forgives is unlikeable, from the practically comatose Julian to the loathsome Billy to the repressive to the point of extreme outbursts Chang. Crystal is probably the worst of all of them, egging Julian on to kill someone he can't hope to defeat, but she's seeking retribution for her dead son. Then again, Julian's in Thailand because Crystal asked him to kill his own father and he did it. Nothing about Only God Forgives is pleasant, but there's a strangely hypnotic quality in Refn's opaque presentation of what little story there is. It's a march towards inevitability, to be sure, but one that transfixes. And one that most of you will find every bit as loathsome and unappealing as its protagonists.

 Ryan Gosling is nearly motionless for long stretches, to the point of appearing catatonic. Pansringarm is stoic, even during moments of violence, and the juxtaposition in the karaoke lounge doesn't waver much from that. On the other hand, the nearly unrecognizable Kristin Scott Thomas oozes malice and manipulates everyone in her sight, breaking the formality. I don't suppose the droning score will help, or the mostly neon lighting, or the long opening section (in what is a fairly short movie) where nothing happens. The only appeal, I suppose, is if you desperately need to see Ryan Gosling get his ass handed to him, because that does happen. Otherwise, I would proceed with caution - this is going to be a seriously divisive film for years to come.

 On the opposite side of the spectrum, I never thought I'd seen the David Gordon Green who made George Washington, All the Real Girls, and Undertow again. After Pineapple Express, Green seemed to be enjoying making high concept lowbrow comedies that people really didn't warm to, like Your Highness and his ill-advised remake of Adventures in Babysitting, The Sitter. For a stretch there, one could assume he was happy making comedies for major studios. But then again, you know what they say about assuming...

 To everybody's surprise, Green announced he'd already finished a new movie, filmed on the low down, and would be releasing it in 2013. Prince Avalanche, based on a Swedish film called Either Way, is David Gordon Green returning to minimalist storytelling, to his independent roots inasmuch as that's possible, and it's a fine return to form. I also didn't know Either Way existed, so there was no basis for comparison in my mind while watching it, if that's a mitigating factor for anybody.

 In the summer of 1988, after wildfires ravaged the Texas country side, Alvin (Paul Rudd) is working on repainting the roads out in rural areas. He brought along his girlfriend's younger brother, Lance (Emile Hirsch), in part because he asked but also because Lance is a "city boy." Alvin is surprised and disappointed that Lance has no idea how to fish or fend for himself, but Lance is just interested in getting to the weekend so he can go back to town and get laid.

 That is, without spoiling anything (if that's possible), the plot of Prince Avalanche. While there are a handful of other characters (a Truck Driver played by Lance DeGault and a mysterious Lady played by Joyce Payne), the film is largely a two man show. But boy howdy is it a joy to watch Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch bounce off of each other for 90 minutes. Their relationship is predicated entirely on the fact that the older Alvin is dating the younger Lance's sister, and they listen with amusement to the other rambling on about their big plans. Alvin wants to learn German and move away, and he's saving up to make that happen, while Lance is excited to go to the not-quite Miss America pageant where he's pretty sure he can hook up with one of the losers.

 If you're in the mood for a small movie that's more character driven than narrative, I think you'll do very well to watch Prince Avalanche. With Rudd and Hirsch starring, I suppose it's somewhere between and "indie" movie and a major release (it's something I think we would have had at The Galaxy), and it's the best thing Green's done since Pineapple Express. And if you didn't like that, I'd happily tell you this is as good as All the Real Girls, if even more limited in scope. That's not a bad thing, by the way. Prince Avalanche also makes me want to seek out Either Way, which is something to do between now and Green's next film, Joe,  another drama with Nicolas Cage. Count me in.

 This is it. We've finally made it to the end of the middle, as strange as that sounds. All that remains now are the final twelve, the best of the best. My favorite movies of 2013, and as we've built towards them, you can imagine how enthused I am to share them with you. Most of them I've already seen more than once, and I've been driving my friends crazy for the last three months to see all of them. But that you must wait a little bit longer for. Not too long, but a little suspense will do you good...

Cap'n Howdy's (Back)Log: Documentary Recap!

   While it may come as a surprise to readers that the Cap'n spends time watching more than just schlock, more often than you'd expect I'll sit down and watch a documentary. What you may notice is that I don't often write about them, usually because I don't feel like rehashing what they're about. Ultimately, the question is whether there's something new to learn about the subject that you didn't already know (if you knew anything about it in the first place), and I suppose that most of the below succeed in that category to one degree or the other. In this instance, I'm including these mini-reviews to let you know they exist, because I hadn't seen or heard too much about them prior to screening.

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters - It's hard not to see this movie and draw parallels to The King of Kong, because they are, in essence, about the same thing. Tetris fan Pat Cotri discovers that while there are a number of rankings on various sites, there has never been a tournament to determine a champion for the game, so he organizes one and invites various "masters" from around the world to compete. Looming over the entire event is the question of whether Thor Aackerlund, the legendary wunderkind of the Nintendo World Championships of the 1990s, will return from a self-imposed exile in order to join the tournament.

 Where Ecstasy of Order differs from The King of Kong is that there's no "David vs. Goliath" angle, ala the Billy Mitchell / Steve Wiebe high score battle. These are evenly matched players who accomplished extraordinary feats with the game of Tetris (the NES version, for those curious), including the rumors that Thor not only reached "Max Score" but has more lines than anyone on the "Kill Screen," - the point at which lines begin to fall so fast it's nearly impossible to line them up.

 Rather than deal with human conflict, Ecstasy of Order centers around technique, about the approach to Tetris, and about the many ways players accomplish feats most of us didn't know where possible. It becomes a bit hypnotic, and that's well before the demonstration of the "invisible pieces" version of Tetris appears in the film. I won't reveal who does and doesn't make it to the tournament, let alone who wins, but I appreciated the level of respect among competitors. The title of Tetris Master is no misnomer in this case.


 Rewind This! - A documentary about VHS tapes and the people who love them? Yes indeed, my friends. Designed as a love letter of sorts to a (mostly) defunct staple of home video, Rewind This both covers the history of the videotape, its rise and fall, and the fanatics who go out of their way to collect the obscure and the bizarre releases that will in all likelihood never be released again. As somebody who grew up during the era of home video (and who has more than a few VHS tapes at home), it's nice to see that the love for the format still exists, even though tapes have a worse chance than vinyl of enduring over time. The very things that come up about why VHS is so endearing - the tracking lines, the wear over parts of the film replayed repeatedly - are the very reason that they don't last. Tapes wear out, break, and can sadly be erased at a moment's notice.

 Now that hasn't stopped me from keeping the ones I have (and coveting the one VCR I own that still works) but the truth is that it's harder to maintain this medium. The nostalgia factor and the access to titles that, quite frankly, have and probably will only exist on tape is the driving thrust behind the documentary (not to mention a continuing thread on series like Red Letter Media's "Best of the Worst" or Everything is Terrible), so it was nice to see a celebration like Rewind This!. VHS essentially launched home video, and it was (and, I suppose, is) the longest running format to date. After all, DVD barely made it ten years before Blu-Ray began chipping away, and who knows how long that has before digital or the next innovation takes over? Eventually we may come to a point where the tapes no longer play, and Rewind This! might go from a love letter to an archive of a lost era, but in the meantime, it really got me jazzed to fire up the VCR again...

 41 - I didn't know much about George H.W. Bush - as a President or as a man - when I watched 41 so in that regard this HBO documentary was informative. It's much more focused on Bush as the man rather than as the public servant, and surprisingly doesn't cover much of his time as President (or, for more obvious reasons, his period in the CIA). If you don't know much about him or his family history, it's certainly worth checking out, but don't expect much in the way of political gossiping, ala Clinton's My Life. Other than a very curt mention of how he "doesn't want to talk about" Ross Perot and the 1992 election, Bush is remarkably magnanimous towards most of the people he worked with. You also won't learn too much about what he thinks about George W. Bush, or Jeb for that matter, but there's plenty about the dogs. I don't mean to undersell the documentary as fluff, because it really isn't - you'll learn a lot about Bush's personal history and home life, but there's a limit to the political lessons to be gleaned from the experience.

 Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic - Showtime produced a rather thorough documentary about the life of Richard Pryor, from his earliest stages of comedy right up until his premature retirement due to advanced MS. I must admit to being surprised at how much of Pryor's career I wasn't aware of, in particular the period before he dropped out of comedy to reinvent himself in anonymity out west. There's a great deal more to the "freebasing" incident that led to burns all over Pryor's head and body than one would think based on more cursory career retrospectives, and certainly more about how he lived after MS sidelined him (something even a heart attack couldn't do earlier in his life). I'm not sure that I'd ever seen footage from the failed attempt at Live on the Sunset Strip that preceded the concert film we all know, but it's fascinating to see his awareness that it's just not happening. My only gripe is that among all of the other comedians, celebrities, friends, and lovers interviewed, I don't understand why Dave Chappelle was included if he only appears twice in the documentary, for a total of less than two minutes. Both times he appears the comments are more conjecture than insight, and it seems like a waste of Chappelle to bring him in only to add nothing.


Necessary Evil: Super Villains of DC Universe - My familiarity with the villainy of the DC Universe is mostly limited to Batman, with a smattering of Superman and Green Lantern antagonists thrown in for good measure. Other than knowing the names Manta Ray, Black Adam, Reverse Flash, and Gorilla Grodd, I don't know much of anything about them. I'd like to say this documentary helped, but while a lot of DC antagonists are included, the focus sways heavily on psychoanalytical reasons for villains to exist and how each DC hero's rogues gallery is uniquely suited towards them.

 This is not to say that the documentary, narrated by Christopher Lee, isn't interesting, but if you're looking for more than the most cursory discussion of major villains, you might wish that this could be spun off into a series. Lex Luthor and the Joker get most of the screen time, and that's not actually that much, because at a little over 100 minutes, there's more of a focus into breaking them down into types with the occasional brief overview of characters like Man-Bat or Harley Quinn (again, Batman characters I already knew about).

 I'm not certain who this documentary is for, either, considering that many of the participants - including DC executives, artists, writers, voice actors, and people who on the surface have next to nothing to do with the comics (WWE Superstar CM Punk shows up once specifically to mention Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, and nothing else!) - talk about major characters as though fans have never heard of them. Doomsday's entire first appearance is covered, up to the death of Superman and an explanation of what happens if you kill Doomsday. Perhaps Necessary Evil was designed as a primer for readers of DC's new-ish "52" re-launch. I'm not sure. It's fun to watch, but I must admit that it amounts to little substance by the time it ends.


Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown - There's a lot of substance at hand in this documentary about one of the titans of horror writing. Yes, Stephen King sells more and Clive Barker is more disturbing, but the influence of H.P. Lovecraft permeates every crack and crevice, every darkened hallway of horror to this day. What I wasn't expecting from Fear of the Unknown, what turned out to be the most welcome, was how in depth the coverage of Lovecraft's personal life and how they influenced his writing. The documentary moves in a basically chronological fashion through his life, but takes detours to analyze major stories in depth with a who's who of writers, directors, and historians.

 Among the interviewees are Lovecraft biographer S.T. Joshi, writers Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Peter Straub, and directors John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, and Guillermo del Toro, all of whom bring a wealth of knowledge about the author and his stories. Carpenter tells the story of how, as a child, he read The Rats in the Walls in a horror anthology and its lasting effect on him. Much to my surprise, the racist tendencies in Lovecraft's writing isn't glossed over and discussion and contextualization of his opinions on immigration appear throughout Fear of the Unknown, often with a more frank and less apologetic tone than might be expected. The analysis of the stories is most welcome and the participants go well beyond rehashing the Elder Gods mythos in bringing insight to Lovecraft's many phases of writing. Also, make sure to watch the extra interviews if you pick up the disc to hear Carpenter discuss In the Mouth of Madness, Gordon explain why his adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth is called Dagon, or about del Toro's (currently) aborted attempt to adapt At the Mountains of Madness.


Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony - Well, maybe this should be called "the Extremely Unexpected Pre-teen to College-Aged Male Fans of My Little Pony," because at least at the outset, that's what Bronies seems to be about. This documentary is all over the place, and while I suppose it is enlightening, I'm not sure what audiences are supposed to take away from it, other than adults watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

(After doing a little research, it looks like the documentary was originally going to follow John de Lancie at conventions (he appears on the show as the voice of Discord) but when the Kickstarter campaign ended considerably more successful than anticipated, the scope changed. I'm not sure it was for the better.)

 Bronies is a schizophrenic film, one that starts with a montage of teenage guys talking about how weird it is that they like My Little Pony ("it's for little girls") and then later the persistent argument is that it shouldn't be weird but gee, isn't it so weird you guys? It's never a Trekkies level of "freak show" documentary* but I really think that if people didn't continually mention how weird people must think it is even though it's totally not and we should get over being prejudicial about the fact that adults watch cartoons for kids, the message might just sink in for itself. Seriously, all the documentary really needed was the scene where the dad of one Brony who doesn't know how to feel about his son liking the show talking to another dad who embraces his son's fandom. It says more than a dozen talking heads repeating ad nauseum that "there's nothing 'weird' about it" and that bullies should stop picking on Bronies. Yes, we got it. Please can we not keep reminding the audience that it's not weird that people are geeky about things. Most of them - particularly ones who are inclined to watch a documentary about Bronies - are going to move past the "weird" phase quickly.

 That said, the increased scope does mean that while the focus is all over the map, there is more of an international vibe to the film. Bronies follows an Israeli DJ who makes music based on the show, a couple in Germany who make their own figurines, a young man in England with Asperger's who travels to Manchester for his first convention, and stateside, a fan from a small town in North Carolina who is incessantly bullied for proudly displaying his fandom for the show. Hearing what the show means to all of them is worthwhile, and while I don't necessarily think it's "weird" for adults or young adults (we don't really meet adult fans until well into the movie) to like a cartoon, I get that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is probably viewed differently than Invader Zim or SpongeBob Squarepants (shows that started airing when I was well into my twenties).

 Interviews with de Lancie and voice actor Tara Strong are valuable, as well as insight from creator Lauren Faust, but I think Bronies tries too hard to be too many things - a late inclusion that "oh yeah, adult women like My Little Pony: Friendship is magic, too!" seemed, well, odd, as though the focus needed to shift once more well into production. This is a side note, but I could tell it was a Kickstarter funded production when the movie ended with nine minutes to go, and sure enough, eight of those nine minutes were names of people who helped to fund Bronies. I hope they don't mind that I skimmed that part - normally I watch the entire credits of a film out of respect for the people who made it, but even the Cap'n has limits. Still, enlightening, I guess, in that I a) had no idea there was a new My Little Pony show (and I worked in a toy store!) and b) that it had unexpected adult fans. Good on you, Friendship is Magic!

* In truth, nothing is ever as strange as the Trek-themed dentist, and yes, I get that initially My Little Pony cosplay just looks like neon "furries," but I've seen weirder examples of fandom. Like Steampunk. Yeah. Steampunk Comic Book Cosplay. That is a real thing.

Blogorium Review: Pacific Rim

 So by now you've heard of this "Pacific Rim" movie; you probably didn't see it, but you've heard of it - I think I can count on one hand the number of people I know who saw it, including me. That's okay, because I totally get why you didn't go see it, and I kind of sympathize. You see, the Cap'n was torn about seeing Pacific Rim myself (tense switch!). Since you've heard everybody else's opinion, I guess you can hear my rationale and then maybe I'll talk about the movie. But it was pretty good if you aren't feeling patient (but be patient. C'mon.)

 On the one hand, I've seen every one of Guillermo del Toro's movies, and really liked to loved most of them. By most, I mean that some of the more "mainstream" joints aren't my favorites. I like Hellboy a lot, but I don't love it. I really don't like Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I enjoy Blade II and it's definitely better than Blade and Blade Trinity, but it's not my "go to" movie in his collection. If I'm being honest, I'm much more inclined to sit down with one of the more intimate, "smaller" films like The Devil's Backbone and Cronos. Pan's Labyrinth too, but I can't honestly call that a "small" movie. Maybe less epic in scope than Hellboy, right?

 Even though I don't enjoy Hellboy II, it didn't stop me from seeing it in theaters, just like I did with Hellboy. I support Guillermo del Toro whenever I can because he brings a distinctive vision to his films and is fond of fully fleshed out worlds, well beyond what happens in the direct narrative. When possible, I try to support the films he produces, like The Orphanage (pretty, pretty good) or Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (pretty, pretty okay) - I haven't seen Mama yet, but I'll get around to sooner or later.

 The problem is that I don't really care about "Giant Robot" movies. I didn't see the Transformers movies, and while I often cite my polite disagreement with Mr. Michael Bay about what constitutes a "movie," I also never really gave a shit about the source material. I had a few Transformers, including the one that was a boombox, but... eh. My tolerance level for robots beating each other up is pretty much however much of Robot Jox is left on the Sci-Fi Channel late at night*.

 As much as I'd like to pretend this wasn't the case, kaiju movies are also not really my bag. I like the first Gojira movie, but not so much the sequels and definitely not Godzilla 2000 or Final Wars or the Matthew Broderick one. I guess I kinda liked Mothra and Gamera  and maybe Destroy All Monsters! but I'm not a devotee to this stuff. That's more of my brother's wheelhouse. In fact, he should probably review Pacific Rim for you guys, but since he's not here, I'll do it.

 So you know my handicaps going in: will watch any Guillermo del Toro joint, but don't care about giant robots and am politely ambivalent towards kaiju. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm so ambivalent that on this very blog I mistakenly used the term "gaijin" ("non-Japanese" / "alien") interchangeably with "kaiju" ("giant monste"r?) because I didn't realize the difference. Sorry, astute readers. That must have been very confusing. Anyway, my desire to support the director (and co-writer) did win out over the non-appeal of giant robots fighting kaiju. And you know what? It's a pretty good movie.


  While I never saw the Transformers movies, I do remember hearing how fucking stupid they were from people I did know who still saw all three of them. This (and Robot Jox, and let's be honest, Real Steel) confirmed my theory that Germans Love David Hasselhoff... wait, no... that movies with giant robots fighting each other or monsters is just going to be inherently moronic. And if I'm going to watch inherently moronic, I can do it with more entertaining films.

 Luckily, Guillermo del Toro didn't get that memo, so he approaches Pacific Rim from a non-sarcastic direction, leaving irony behind and just focusing on building a world where giant monsters come up through the pacific ocean via a "breach" and start destroying things. How would we adapt? Would be build giant robots to fight these monsters? Sure, why not? Would it work? Pretty well, at first. Would we get complacent because said monsters are losing? Probably.

 That's the prologue to the film, which I appreciate - 99% of the time in this modern world of "franchise building" in movies, the first ten minutes would be the entire movie. They would intentionally withhold information or set things up with no intention of paying them off in the two hours of THIS movie, but instead save it for the inevitable sequel. Not when del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham are making the movie - they give you some well designed exposition dump and then drop us into the height of humanity's hubris.

 We meet our protagonist, Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) and his brother what's his face (Diego Klattenhoff) as they take their Jaeger (giant robot), Gypsy Danger, out for a stroll around the coast of Alaska. SPOILER ALERT FOR THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES: They then get their asses handed to them by a kaiju who also kills what's his face and leaves Raleigh in a bad way.

 (Note: I had to look up the name of the character that Hunnam was playing because I couldn't remember it. Honestly I don't remember hearing it much because, let's be honest, it's a pretty stupid name)

 We jump forward five or six years when the governments have given up on Jaegers to defend us from kaiju (who get designations not unlike hurricanes: category 4, etc). Instead they're going to just build huge walls and hope that does the trick, until one of the kaiju cuts right through one in Sydney ("like butter") and luckily the Ausrtailan Jaeger manages to beat it to death. This gives Stacker Penetcost (Idris Elba - seriously, that was his character's name?) his one chance to throw a last ditch effort to use Jaegers and bombs to close the breach once and for all, so you know he's going to have to recruit Raleigh out of retirement.

 And just describing that sounds stupid. But somehow when you watch Pacific Rim, the inherent silliness of the plot just makes sense. They explain "drifting" - the process two Jaeger pilots use to control the machine in tandem - well enough that you buy it would kill someone to do it alone. Basically it amounts to a mind meld but if the connection is strong enough they can work in unison, so lines like "I'm in you brain, remember?" don't feel so dumb as they do out of context, like in this review.

 Look, I'm doing a bad job of not making Pacific Rim sound as dumb as you thought it did when you decided not to see it, but it's really a lot of fun to watch and not just because "Robot punch Monster! Yay!" I'm sure that on some level, Pacific Rim does appeal to our "Lizard Brain" sensibilities, but del Toro also includes all of his favorite fetishes in the film, like Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), who deals in kaiju body parts on the black market. Or the dueling scientists (played by Torchwood's Burn Gorman and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Charlie Day) who should just be comic relief but do actually impact the storyline in important ways. Day's subplot, in fact, is probably more interesting that just watching Jaegers filled with Chinese, Russian, and Australian stereotypes punch kaijus.

 The main event is still seeing how Gypsy Danger gets back in action and how Raleigh gets his groove back with the help of his new co-pilot, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), who has a similarly traumatic experience in her life, one that may or may not include a crab kaiju and a mentor character who plays a prominent role in the film with a name that rhymes with Packer Spentaflossed. I will say that the fights deliver, are mostly coherent, and more importantly don't feel like CGI for 20 minutes at a time, which they almost have to be. I will fully admit to being totally invested in the fight between Gypsy Danger and 2 kaiju in Hong Kong, right up to and including the "no way they put that weapon in there!" moment.

 The characters are, by and large, not developed or at best wafer thin, but they serve the story well. At least one of two of them get moments that give you some perspective on why they do what they do, and some of them even change a little bit during the story. Honestly, I think I liked Day's Dr. Newton Geiszler the most, followed closely by Hannibal Chau (who explains why he chose that name), which works out because they're on-screen together for a healthy chunk in the middle of the film. I even cared about Mako's back story and liked that she's as much - if not more - of a liability than Raleigh is inside of Gypsy Danger. The ending was satisfying, and despite it being reasonably well wrapped up, could be okay with more adventures in this world.

 Which is a shame, because there's no way that's going to happen. Why? Because people thought "wow, that looks like a stupid movie" and went to see Grown Ups 2 instead. Sometimes I sarcastically point out that Box Office Numbers are the C.R.E.A.M. of Studio Executives lives, but in this case it's probably true. To them, this movie failed only slightly less than The Lone Ranger, and it gives them a rationale to argue that Guillermo del Toro is better suited to make "smaller, " "art house" fare that critics love and nobody loses millions of dollars on, rightly or wrongly.

 And that's fine, because as we've established, I REALLY like those movies. But I wouldn't have minded seeing what del Toro's version of The Hobbit looked like, and I desperately wanted somebody to give him the chance to make a big budgeted, hard R version of At the Mountains of Madness. He couldn't convince Universal to give him the money to do it even with Tom Cruise starring and James Cameron producing, so the implied "failure" of Pacific Rim isn't going to bolster his case. That kinda sucks, if you ask me. And you don't have a choice because I'm the one writing this.

 Thanks for sticking it out to the end, by the way. I'm sure some people left during the preamble, but you didn't. So thanks for that. You should go see Pacific Rim, because I bet you'd enjoy it. I mean, before long it'll be at the $2 theater which will no doubt make your decision easier, but I implore you to check it out. It's much better than you assumed it would be, and probably better than I thought it might be. I'm not even going to use the "it's not perfect" qualifier because perfect movies are pretty hard to come by as it is, and that shouldn't diminish the really damn good ones by comparison.

 So go see Pacific Rim - if you already saw the Transformers movie, you owe your brain that much. If you haven't seen a Transformers move - kudos to you! Go see Pacific Rim to celebrate it! 



 * Wait... they changed the Sci-Fi Channel? To what? You mean where all those shitty "Crocappotamus vs Ninja Squirrel" movies play? Bummer.