Cap'n Howdy Presents: The 14 Best Films I saw in 2012 (Part Two)

 I believe when we left off, the Cap'n was lamenting that of the first seven "Best Of 2012" movies that I only had existing reviews for two of them (The Avengers and Cosmopolis) whereas the second half of the list includes only one movie I haven't already reviewed. How silly of me not to, you know, split up the writing duties between the two pieces, but as it turns out I have plenty to add about the films that made this list.

 If the theme of Part One was "surprises" - and, looking back it it, it clearly was movies I didn't expect to be blown away by - Part Two is comprised of films that I had a strong inclination I would enjoy, but that surpassed even that. It's also become clear that more than a few of these films are ones that people I know (and whose opinions I often respect) REALLY hate. One in particular looks to be a repeat of one of my top picks from last year, and we'll address that accordingly. To save some time, I'm going to let the links to the original reviews do most of the heavy lifting this time and focus my energy on additional reflections now that I've had some time to digest these films and to study reactions from around cinephilia.

 The difficult bit is figuring out where to start, so maybe I should get the most controversial choice out of the way first:


 Looper - To be honest with you, I was expecting The Master or Cosmopolis to be the movie I had the most disagreements about this year. Even Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained seem to have a healthy debate surrounding them, but I'm continually surprised by the immediate and negative reaction I get for suggesting Looper was one of my favorite movies of 2012. It's akin to my inclusion of Drive in last year's list, when I discovered that many good friends really and truly hate that film, often for the very reasons I enjoyed it.

 I get the impression that people don't like Looper because the time travel logic is nonsensical, or that the resolution of the story leaves audiences feeling like they wasted their time, or that (in the words of an acquaintance of mine) the film felt like someone was shooting "a first draft."

 Needless to say, I don't agree, but this is a much more hotly contested movie than I had any idea after seeing it. Whether you left the film feeling ripped off or wanting to see it again immediately, I guess it's better to feel strongly about it than to feel nothing, but for my money Looper was worth revisiting. I think that Rian Johnson sets up a world with its own rules about time travel, sticks to them and tinkers with themes set up in the film in clever ways. He also leaves a few elements ambiguous (I find it amusing that in his downloadable commentary, Johnson is fascinated by the "Kid Blue is Abe" theory but doesn't say one way or the other). I've given Prometheus grief for intentional ambiguity, but since Looper is a self-contained story that is pretty clearly about closing Joe's "loop," the story elements not specifically addressed don't fall under the "kick the can down the road" sequel-izing that Prometheus and Tron Legacy are guilty of.

 You'll notice that in my original review I posited a theory that can't possibly be right. One commenter suggested another theory, so I checked to see if that held any water.

This is the comment:

 I saw this posted on another blog about Looper and watched the movie again and realized yup this person has got it right: ( I was a bit uncomfortable with the thought of Joe sleeping with his mother but turns out he didn't at all)

"I'm going to throw everyone for a "loop" no pun intended. If anyone paid attention, Young Joe slept with a hooker whom had a daughter named: SARAH. "Sarah" was the girl looking after Cid. Considering the hooker knew what Young Joe did, and that Old Joe went after the hookers daughter(Note long hair of the kid the hooker carrys to the room, it's blonde.) as one of the three targets this leads you to one conclusion. The hookers daughter is the Sarah watching the young Rainmaker. She herself looped back to change him from a young age, remember Cid stated that, "Sarah's a liar, she's not my mother. My mother was killed." and Sarah stated she was trying to raise him properly. Boom, now you know how Sarah know's what Looper's are.

I caught it the first round. If I hadn't heard the hooker state her daughter's name was Sarah, I would of never of caught it." 

 Unfortunately, none of this is true. I literally just finished watching every scene that Piper Perabo's Susie is in the film, and she never once says her daughter's name. The child is also not blonde, but brunette (which helps the argument because Emily Blunt / Sarah's hair has brown roots). Rian Johnson is actually pretty tricky in avoiding Susie's daughter's name, even in the deleted scenes, but when you look at the age matches Old Joe finds, two of them are visible:

 The cagey bit is leaving the bottom one off (and the edit happens right before the bottom picture gets close), but since Cid is one of the possible choices and the other possibility was the boy that Old Joe kills, I think we're meant to believe that Megan Richardson is Susie's daughter (even though the address doesn't match). So that doesn't help my theory or the reposted comment theory, but I guess if you hate Looper for "not making any sense," then this is only going to bolster your case.

 Fair enough. I'm not going to try to argue with you about whether every plot point makes perfect sense or not, or in failing to do so that it means the film is terrible (and I've heard that a lot). I still think that Johnson sets up the universe well, raises the stakes in a compelling way, and tells an interesting story that leaves you asking questions. Are the answers to those questions in Looper? Well, I've seen it several times now, with and without the commentary/ies, and I find there's something new to discover every successive time. For me, that's successful, but I get that for others, the film collapses under its own logic. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.


 Moonrise Kindgom - While I will continue to debate with myself what my favorite Wes Anderson film is, I'm settling down comfortably with saying that Moonrise Kingdom is his best made so far. For a film that's set in the period that Anderson fetishizes unabashedly in all of his other movie (the mid-1960s), Moonrise Kingdom manages not do feel bogged down by its period trappings. I don't mean to diminish Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic, et al, but Moonrise Kingdom's cast of characters feels less like a motley collection of "let's see what these types would be like together" and more like an ensemble that fit together in the story. In particular, I like the way the adults are continually flummoxed about how they're supposed to handle Sam and Suzy's determination to stay together, in particular Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) and Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton). I don't think I mentioned it in the old review, but the scenes with them talking to Sam's foster parents and Social Services (Tilda Swinton) over the phone made me laugh as hard as anything in the film.


 Argo - Ben Affleck made a Zero Dark Thirty that doesn't seem to bother the people bothered by Zero Dark Thirty. Does that make sense? I don't wish to diminish his truly engrossing, exceedingly well made retelling of a declassified true story by implying that because it doesn't address torture that the film is somehow "less than" another movie that retells something more recent. Not at all. Argo is Ben Affleck firing on all cylinders, and while I enjoyed Gone Baby Gone and really enjoyed The Town, that didn't prepare me for how accomplished his third directorial feature is.

 The parallels to Zero Dark Thirty are inevitable - both deal with CIA Operatives who, in real life, tenaciously pursued their goal and succeeded when nobody believed they could. One was made with the cooperation of the individuals involved and the other wasn't (if you don't already know which is which, go check - you might be surprised). Both manage to keep the audience engaged in the narrative, to give them a laugh or two, but to then turn that switch and be genuinely suspenseful even when we know what happened. Zero Dark Thirty is harder to watch, but don't take that to mean I'm suggesting that Argo's palatability (probably not an actual word) means it should regarded with kid gloves. I've seen it twice, and it holds up both times. Hopefully we can get over this "Ben Affleck who stars in crappy movies" stigma and begin to enjoy his second life as a director of high quality films. We know what he can do, and I look forward to seeing him top himself after setting the bar this high.

  The Master - If Cosmopolis is a hard movie to like, then The Master is its mercurial cousin. Paul Thomas Anderson continues to push his films further away from the concept of conventional narrative and towards specific types of character studies, of dichotomies. Since Punch-Drunk Love, he's edged away from the "three act" structure of conventional cinema and instead hones in on two specific archetypes, pits them against each other, and plays out the result in front of us. The films don't so much end as they drift off, and even more so than There Will Be Blood, The Master is less about the lives of Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as it is the specific intersection of their paths for a period of time lasting no longer than two or three years. We learn as much about Freddie as we're ever going to before he meets Lancaster, and what little we know about "the Master" comes from the way that other people react to him.

 I can understand the frustration from audiences (and working at a theatre where The Master was playing, I saw it first hand), but I don't believe the point of the film was to tell a story about these two men - any more than the film is a meditation or expose on Scientology - so much as it was to throw the embodiments of two essentially divergent philosophies together and allow them to coexist for as long as humanly possible. Or perhaps you'd like to think of The Master as the Id and the Ego clashing, as the Super Ego strains to separate them, all the while acknowledging a futility in fighting their codependent addiction. In the end, they both get what they want, and unlike most Hollywood films that turns out not to be each other. Eventually I hope to be able to talk to more people who have seen The Master, as so far it's been a limited sample size.

 Skyfall - It took MGM going bankrupt to settle the Daniel Craig as James Bond run of 007 films. Like another movie on this list, the down time helped, rather than hindered, the end result, because for all of the promise of Casino Royale and all that Quantum of Solace failed to build on, Skyfall at last figured out how to bring Bond full circle. Yes, it borrows a bit liberally from The Dark Knight in its villain's story structure (I'm sorry, but it's hard to watch the interrogation scene and not see Javier Bardem giving his best take on the Joker), but where it stumbles in some places it excels in others. Yes, Silva sometimes resembles a certain Clown Prince of Crime in his philosophy and execution, but his reasoning for it is more sound in the Bond universe, and his maternal fixation to M (Judi Dench) elevates some of the "copycat" mechanics of the plot.

 But besides all of that, Skyfall is a cracking good James Bond film that feels like it's a James Bond film. Gone are many of the Bourne-inspired aspects of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, and in its place are clear action sequences, clever quips, and nods to the earliest of 007 films that serve a purpose beyond just referencing the series. Skyfall ends in a comfortable nook that should have James Bond fans very excited for what's to come, because it's the promise of what we've been looking forward to married to the series that brought us here in the first place. The revelation of who a certain character is caught me completely off-guard because of how well Sam Mendes, John Logan, Robert Wade and Neal Purvis built their arc (I'm being cagey just in case you haven't seen it and want to) in the story. Needless to say that we end Skyfall in a very familiar location with a fitfully intriguing dynamic moving forward.

 It's fair to mention that there isn't a "Bond Girl" in Skyfall, not in the conventional sense or really in any way that you'd define the character type. There are characters that would seem to fit into those roles, but without spoiling too much, neither of them actually where you think they'll be. Instead, Skyfall focuses more on Bond's relationship with M, with Silva's relationship to M, and briefly where Bond himself came from (all the while debunking the long-standing theory that "James Bond" is a code name assigned to 007 agents). On the other hand, I can't gripe too much with a movie that brings back Q and the Ashton Martin and has refreshingly clever things to do with both of them.


  Django Unchained - I don't know that I have a lot more to add to my review of Django Unchained. It is, bar none, the most fun I've had watching a Quentin Tarantino film, and that includes the giddy experience of watching Pulp Fiction when I was far too young and that first audience reaction to Kill Bill Part One. It still makes me chuckle that Tarantino brazenly gets away with using a Jim Croce song and it's totally appropriate for the montage he includes it in. That, even more than the Rick Ross or the James Brown / Tupac Shakur mashup, made me laugh out loud in the theatre. If you want to read something silly, Google Armond White's critique of Tarantino (and more specifically, of Samuel L. Jackson), "Still Not a Brother." It's hilarious in the way that almost everything Armond White writes is, and if you haven't heard of the intentionally contrarian reviewer before, it's as good a place as any to learn what he's all about.

  The Cabin in the Woods - I was watching Serenity the other night, and when I finished it made sense to watch some of the extras again. In particular, I wanted to watch them for the conception of Joss Whedon in 2005, when he was still mostly known as the guy who made Buffy and Angel and Firefly. He had a small legion of devoted fans (of which the Cap'n counts himself, to a degree) that helped turn the cancelled Firefly into Serenity, which didn't set the world on fire (at first, anyway - today it has a solid fan base I run across frequently). Whedon made Dr. Horrible and Dollhouse, and then 2012 happened.

 Now he's the proven box-office commodity / smash hit director slash writer of The Avengers, a movie that really shouldn't have worked and even then shouldn't have worked as well as it does. The world is his oyster, but it's funny to think that because MGM went bankrupt, the Whedon-scripted / Drew Goddard-directed meta-horror film The Cabin in the Woods went from coming out to relative anonymity in 2009 (when it was made) to being a preamble of sorts to the blockbuster to come. And honestly, if I really had to choose between the two, I'd give the edge to The Cabin in the Woods.

 I've mentioned it before, and because horror films are something of a specialty for the Cap'n, I come back to it a lot, but The Cabin in the Woods doesn't necessarily deconstruct or redefine horror films in the way that I think some people believe it does. That fact, counter-intuitively perhaps, actually helps the film more than it hurts it. Scream was a deconstruction of slasher films while also being a slasher film. The Cabin in the Woods slaps the structure of "Scooby Doo" on top of the concept of horror archetypes - trust me, you'll have a hard time finding a horror film that corresponds closely to the "rules" of Cabin, especially The Evil Dead - and then uses that pretext to explore what audiences expect in scary movies.

  The Cabin in the Woods is clever as a meta text not because of how it deconstructs the genre, but in exploring why the genre persists when people firmly believe that it's the bottom of the barrel in "entertainment." Whedon and Goddard throw in a few specific references (a Pinhead stand-in complete with puzzle box) but by and large focus on the broader purpose of horror, and of audiences who don't get what they want. Look at it this way, complaining about the way the movie ends is really making their point.

  Had The Cabin in the Woods been released in 2009 or 2010, I'm not sure how people would have responded to it. That was still in the height or remakes and Saw-mania, and I think that unlike some movies that sit on a shelf for a few years, Cabin benefited from being able to wait until a lull in horror trends. The impact was that much stronger last April, because not knowing what I was in for made all the difference that first time.

 And yes, to be fair, it was following Lockout, the worst movie I saw in 2012, but I've seen The Cabin in the Woods three times since that fateful weekend, and I tell you with confidence that it still delivers the goods and rewards multiple viewings. So, sorry Avengers, but in the battle of Whedon projects, you come in second this year... 



 * I'll include the link down here, although I generally disagree with everything in this review and don't necessarily see the connections he tries to make with other films listed.

Cap'n Howdy Presents: The 14 Best Films I saw in 2012 (Part One)

 Why fourteen? That's an excellent question, dear readers. It was actually going to be thirteen, but I forgot to include a movie in the "Middle" section and figured "oh, what the hell?" and decided to include it here. We can pretend there are fifteen if you'd like, and I'll just leave an open spot at the bottom for you to fill in with your favorite movie that I overlooked (for example: Life of Pi, The Grey, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Battleship...), but for now I'm cutting it off at fourteen.

 Because fourteen reviews, even in a smaller than normal for the Cap'n format, is going to mean a lot of digital real estate, I'll break this up for you into two parts. Trust me, your eyes will thank me.

 As you might have heard, this would have been here a week sooner had I not been privy to a movie that hadn't been released yet and accordingly put the Cap'n under embargo. As it shifted the entire dynamic of what I considered to be the "Best" of 2012, naturally I had to wait, and in the interim most of you have since seen it. So you don't have to wait to find out what it was (or don't want to guess), we'll start the list with that film.

 The list is in no particular order, because how the hell am I going to rank such disparate (but excellent) experiences against each other?

 Here are the first seven:

 Zero Dark Thirty - I'm going to sidestep all of the debate about the politics behind killing Bin Laden or the implied advocating of torture in Kathryn Bigelow's partly-fictionalized telling of real events because it doesn't matter in this sense: the noise surrounding the film does not, in and of itself, change the fact that Zero Dark Thirty is a riveting, intense, and compulsive "edge of your seat" experience for two and a half hours. I found myself getting dragged into the ancillary issues when talking to people who hadn't seen the film, mostly because once you have it's pretty clear that the concept of "advocating torture" or "enhanced interrogation" in the film itself is overstated.

 Zero Dark Thirty is, at its core, a procedural about obsession, personified by "Maya" (Jessica Chastain), a CIA operative who fixates on the notion of finding Bin Laden's courier and killing the leader of Al Qaeda. That's it. Other members of the team come and go - some live, some die, some come back, but Maya is relentless and single-minded in her quest to track down a man she isn't even sure exists and then "kill Bin Laden." Chastain is fantastic in the film, and if for nothing other than the scene near the end when she realizes what her myopic view on the "war on terror" cost her as a human being (we know almost nothing about Maya at the outset and learn very little over the course of the film) I firmly believe she deserves an Academy Award.

 As I said in the first paragraph, Zero Dark Thirty is an intense experience. From the opening, when we hear (but do not see) 9/11 from first responder phone calls and voice mails to the harrowing final thirty minutes - where we follow Seal Team Six (led by Joel Edgerton) into the compound - the film is gripping and relentless. Despite knowing what happened, I found myself wrapped up in the film and unable to divert attention during the raid, and that's just the capper to an already gripping film. It never feels inauthentic, even when you start recognizing actors like Jason Clarke, Mark Duplass, Harold Perrineau, James Gandolfini, Stephen Dillane, and John Barrowman (yes, Doctor Who fans, Captain Jack Harkness has a small role as the CIA Director's assistant).

 I didn't honestly think that Zero Dark Thirty was a movie that I wanted to see before it came out, but I have to admit that I'm glad I did watch it. It's an excellent companion piece to a movie on part two of this list, also based on CIA operations, and while that one has a little more humor and might be seen as more palatable to most audiences, if you have the stomach for a terse, unemotional thrill ride, you must see Zero Dark Thirty.

 The Avengers - Because of how long ago it was since I saw The Avengers, I tend to forget about it when talking to people about my favorite movies. That's a mistake, because there's a tact implication that I somehow don't think that The Avengers isn't quite an achievement and also immensely satisfying as a comic book movie. I'm not in love with qualifying it as a "comic book movie" as though it makes it "less than" normal movies, because with one or two exceptions, The Avengers was the most fun I had watching a movie this year.

 To be greater than the sum of your parts, especially when those parts included Iron Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, and... uh, Captain America (okay, I didn't love Captain America) is impressive in and of itself, but to take those films and create a narrative that feels like a natural continuation of each of the individual story lines (especially Thor) is really something. It feels like old hat congratulating Joss Whedon for finding a way to balance so many disparate elements (and it won't be the last time I do it in this recap), but I'll be damned if he didn't manage to avoid getting bogged down in back stories and interpersonal relationships and get straight to the point, delivering a cracking fun experience along the way.

 Does it all make sense? No, not really. It's easy to nitpick things like "I'm always angry" or laughable expository lines like "Loki! Brother of Thor!" but Whedon keeps the story moving along at a brisk pace for the first and last third of the film, only slowing down on the airship to let the superhero dynamics play out in the dysfunctional way only he could imagine. It's a long film that rarely feels long, punctuated with good action, great special effects, and big laughs (it took most audiences until the second time they saw the film to hear Hulk say "Puny god" because they were laughing so hard). For sheer popcorn entertainment value, The Avengers handily takes the prize over The Dark Knight Rises, and while I've seen both films more than once already, The Avengers will probably get the edge when I'm ready to watch one of them again.

 Lincoln - So I meant to put Lincoln at the top of the "Middle" after 21 Jump Street, and despite my misgivings about how Steven Spielberg chooses to end the film (take a guess), there's something I liked so much about this film that I'm actually comfortable putting it up among the very best.

 Picture in your mind "Steven Spielberg's Lincoln": life story, big speeches, struggles with the Civil War, internal debates about emancipation, and you know, ending how it's going to end. Now throw out almost all of that, because Spielberg and Tony Kushner instead took Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals and focused in on the month of January, 1865, as Lincoln is trying to effectively end the Civil War by cajoling Congress into passing the Thirteenth Amendment. Specifically, the House of Representatives. While there's more going on in the background of Lincoln (including a delegation of Confederate leaders preparing to negotiate peace and Robert Todd Lincoln's determination to serve for the Union army), the film is narrowly focused on passing the amendment that outlaws slavery.

 Does Spielberg sneak in the Gettysburg address? Kind of - the film begins with Abraham Lincoln talking to a few soldiers, two of whom nervously recite most of the address, but we never hear Daniel Day-Lewis say it. Instead of a "greatest hits" approach, the film is more interested in pursuing what Abraham Lincoln was willing to do in order to ensure that his "bending of the law" through war powers would become a permanent legal decree in the United States, and if that meant hiring men to grease the right palms, he wasn't wholly opposed to it. Lincoln asks William Seward (David Strathairn)  to hire a trio of unsavory types (played by Tim Blake Nelson, John Hawkes, and James Spader, who provide much of the comic relief in the film) to entice several members of the Democratic party (played by the likes of Walton Goggins and Michael Stuhlbarg) to vote for the amendment, one vigorously fought for by Abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones).

 And that's the film - it's about the President's willingness to do what he has to do in order to pass what he firmly believes is right, even if it means politics making strange bedfellows. It's not at all what I expected from the film and to be quite honest was less reverential than I'd assumed it would be. Lincoln is portrayed as a man who wants desperately to do right, even if it means ending the war on his terms and not through more readily available means. Aside from the foolish decision to extend the ending beyond January of 1865 and unnecessarily jump forward three months, Lincoln is a refreshingly unexpected take on the historical biopic.

 It also has just about everybody in the movie. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not by much. When David Costabile (Gale from Breaking Bad) and Adam Driver (from Girls) are in the same movie, that's no small feat, but here are some of the recognizable names in Lincoln that I haven't already mentioned: Hal Holbrook, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jackie Earle Haley, Bruce McGill, Sally Fields, Jared Harris, Lukas Haas, Lee Pace, David Oyelowo, and Dane DeHaan (from Chronicle and Lawless). That's Spielberg, I guess; he can get anybody for his movies.

 Killer Joe - This is a tough film to watch, but damn was I impressed by the end result. William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) re-teamed with writer Tracy Letts (Bug) to adapt his stage play and it's a nasty slice of neo-noir the likes of which haven't been seen since Joel and Ethan Coen made Blood Simple.

 On the surface, it's a pretty basic film noir structure: a down on his luck loser, Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch), owes the wrong kind of people more money than he has, so he talks his old man Ansel (Thomas Hayden Church) into killing his mother (Ansel's ex-wife) to collect the life insurance that's in Dottie (Juno Temple) - Chris' sister's name. Since they don't want to be directly involved, Chris heard about this detective, Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) who moonlights as a hitman. The only problem is that they don't have the money Joe demands up front, so the deal's off. But Cooper takes an interest in Dottie, and provided they put her up as a retainer, he'll do the job.

 There are some nasty twists and turns, involving Chris' unhealthy interest in his sister, Dottie's unpredictable social awkwardness, and Ansel's new wife Sharla (Gina Gershon), but the real treat of Killer Joe is watching McConaughey's titular character dance around this family, who are in way over their heads. It all comes to a head during a particularly brutal dinner scene near the end of the film, one that almost assuredly earned Killer Joe its NC-17 rating. I'll just say you'll never think of KFC the same way again. I won't pretend that this is a movie many of you will be able to handle, but if you like your neo-noir gritty and southern fried (i.e.: you really like Blood Simple), Killer Joe is essential viewing.

 Dredd 3D - I had no interest in Dredd whatsoever from the period it was announced to the point the press screenings started. Perhaps it was the memory of the Sylvester Stallone farce from 1995, or the uninspiring announcement of Karl Urban as Judge Dredd (sorry, but when you have Doom and Pathfinder on your resume, Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings get cancelled out), but I assumed it would be another low-rent, lame-o post-action comic book adaptation that would fade away into that good night. I couldn't have been more wrong.

 The first indication that Dredd was more than just a quick cash-in on a vaguely recognizable comic character were the surprisingly positive reviews from just about everywhere. Then I heard that Urban never took the helmet off, which sounds minor but is actually quite a significant indicator that the source material was being taken seriously. Coupled with a hard "R" rating for what turns out to be pretty graphic violence and a plot structure not unlike The Raid: Redemption, Dredd started to look like it could be a pretty damn good movie.

 Sure enough, it's better than pretty damn good. while limited in scope, the decision to focus on Dredd "training" potential Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) and ending up under siege by drug manufacturer Ma-Ma (Lena Headey)'s gang operation in Peachtree Tower is exactly what this film needs. It's not an "end of the world" scenario or a super villain that our heroes have to contend with; it's just the bad luck of the call that Anderson decides to answer out of any number of crimes in progress in Mega City One. We're allowed to acclimate to the world of the film with our main characters in small doses, seeing Dredd and Ma-Ma through the eyes of Anderson, a rookie who can't pass her exams but who gets a shot because of her psychic abilities. And she makes the best of it, even when the decisions get tricky (like when she realizes the husband of a woman who helps them is a perp she killed in cold blood).

 The "Slow-Mo" drug that Ma-Ma is introducing to Mega City One gives us the opportunity for even more violent moments in an already excessively violent film, but it's a satisfying kind of excess. Dredd is the sort of action movie that understands sometimes it's best to strip away all of the subplots and gimmicks and just deliver on the goods. It does that, and not at the expense of anything. It's stripped down but not "no-frills". Just "no crap," and that turns out to make a big difference in the quality department.

 The Perks of Being a Wallflower - While it wasn't my intention to have this half of the list be movies I wasn't overly enthused about initially, Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of his novel wasn't high on my list of "to see"s late in 2012. While not having read the book was probably a factor, I was more turned off by the trailer, which seemed to be marketed to the same demographic that eats up The Hunger Games and Twilight. It's not that I don't understand that it has its purpose for that generation, but it's not my cup of tea. What I didn't know about The Perks of Being a Wallflower turned out to make all the difference.

 Rather than being a movie about what it's like to be a teenager in 2012, Perks is Chbosky's story of what it's like to be in high school in the mid-1990s. Appropriately, the story of Charlie (Logan Lerman) coincides almost exactly with when I was a freshman in high school, and the film immediately was more resonant. It's not that our experiences were the same (aside from having friends involved with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, they aren't at all), but it brought back memories of what it was like to be that age in that time. It's not just the "no cell phones or internet" or any of the other generational shifts between 1990 and 2012, but it was funny when Charlie, Patrick (Ezra Miller), and Sam (Emma Watson) hear David Bowie's "Heroes" while driving around and they don't know who it is. It takes them a year to find out, which isn't as outlandish as you might think for the time period.

 I can't say that I loved the sharp left turn the film takes in the final act (even if it slowly laid the groundwork over the course of the story), but Chbosky's self-adaptation stuck with me long after I finished the movie, and that counts for something in my book. The Perks of Being a Wallflower has the ability to make an emotional connection with the audience, one that overcomes any hiccups in the story structure. Also, I appreciate the inclusion of Paul Rudd and Tom Savini as teachers at Charlie's high school. The former I knew from the trailer, but the latter was quite a surprise, much like Melanie Lynskey's cameo that weighs heavily on the second half of the film.

Cosmopolis - I'll close this first list out with one of the two movies I've actually already reviewed. I watched David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis again not too long ago, and I think I like the film more, even as it aggressively works to keep you at arm's length. I totally understand why people would opt to put it on their "worst of" lists, and while I disagree, I don't dismiss the negative reactions. One has to work very hard to find the inherent value in Cosmopolis, and even then it always threatens to slip away from your grasp, to leave you adrift in a sea of seemingly pointless philosophical meandering, often for its own sake. So yeah, I can totally understand why it may not be worth the effort. I'm still working on what the extended effort on my part towards the film amounts to, but I feel like I'm getting there, and that the time spent in DeLillo's world as told by Cronenberg through Robert Pattinson is worthwhile. In the words of Radiohead, "I might be wrong," but it's a risk I'm willing to take.

Horror Fest VII Day Two: The Cabin in the Woods

 Oh, kiddos! I know! I sure thought that this year, of all years, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was going to make it! But it got bumped... for Moontrap. Yeah, let's just blame Moontrap for it and not my inability to stay up late any more.

 Once upon a time, believe it or not, Horror and Summer Fests were and ALL NIGHT activity. No joke. There was a time, when the Cap'n and friends were younger than they are now, when I could actually watch movies until six or seven in the morning, go to bed, wake up five hours later, and start all over. Seriously, though: I have hazy memories of watching Friday the 13th Part 2 as the sun was coming up during Summer Fest or nudging Neil and Cranpire to wake up as Shark Attack 3: Megalodon reached its absurd crescendo (and if you've seen the movie, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about) at six thirty in the morning. That used to happen.

 But not so much any more. Now we're older than we used to be, and it's much, much harder to keep things going past midnight. Three is usually the threshold, even on a weekend, and when everybody else takes off, it's difficult to talk myself into pushing that extra mile, even for you, dear readers.

 So Cap'n Howdy is a lame-o and you aren't going to get the Halloween III: Season of the Witch write-up you were so desperately hoping for. Or the one for The Silent Scream (featuring The Boogens' Rebecca Balding). If you'd like I can repost my review of The Woman in Black and we can pretend folks stayed awake for it. Because, believe me, if they had, they wouldn't have slept at all that night. Hell, if The Boogens hadn't happened, there's a good chance V/H/S could have ruined some golden slumbers on Friday. But that's what horror movies are supposed to do, dammit! They're supposed to scare the crap out of you and keep you up all night. That and Hobo Bug Juice, but with less vomiting on the former and probably more on the latter.

 There's a reason they don't make Mountain Dew: Game Fuel Orange any more, and I'd like to think it's because someone found out we were mixing it with Wild Irish Rose and putting it in Styrofoam cups for your endurance pleasure. That's surely why nobody makes Sunkists Floats anymore - TripWIR was too much for any one human to handle.

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 Where was I? Oh yes, the closing film of Horror Fest VII - Cap'n Howdy's New Nightmare, which surprisingly didn't feature a single Nightmare on Elm Street film (partly because we watched Part 4 - The Dream Master during Summerfest 4). I am here to add a few thoughts to The Cabin in the Woods, mostly to my initial write-up, which gave Four Reasons to See The Cabin in the Woods (Again), which I did.

 Tonight was actually the fourth time I've seen the film (the fifth if you count watching it with the commentary). I saw it again in theaters, and then on home video and Blu-Ray (clearly the same thing so ask no follow up questions there) and I took advantage of the "pause" button to scour the background for details. And while I still haven't found the Unicorn Tapestry (and I will!), I did see a lot of the other triggers for various monsters (including what I believe would unleash the Dismemberment Goblins, the evil doctors, and possibly the sexy witches that we'll see when The Cabin in the Woods makes its way to Skinemax).

 I guess I forgot to mention this when I did the original write-up of The Cabin in the Woods, but the very first time I saw it there was some grousing online about what the "electrical disruption" was that prevented the cave-in and how it came from "upstairs." It was a plot point people seemed to believe was abandoned or never really explained in favor of getting Marty and Dana into the facility and unleashing the monsters. However, the second time I saw the movie it was abundantly clear what happened, and there was no secretive conspiracy being used to undermine the facility from within.

 So "upstairs" is the cabin and the entire area surrounding it, and since the electrical disturbance happens after Marty disappears, it's pretty clear that the wires he was playing around with that lead him to find the elevator are what prevents the cave-in from happening. There's no reason to resolve that story downstairs because the characters it impacts don't meet Marty until it's too late, so it's entirely up to the audience to put it together. Sneaky...

 I still feel like the film is more a commentary on horror in the abstract than attributable to any single film, and that it models itself more on Scooby Doo character tropes than a particular horror film or series, but that doesn't bother me. Most of the horror theory I read in college and continue to study now begins with broad notions and pulls portions of specific films in as it suits them (for example, the idea that "Final Girls" have gender ambiguous names, which I'm sorry, but how many guys do you know named Laurie, Nancy, or Alice - Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th, the "big three" for Final Girl theory). It's okay that The Cabin in the Woods is more "about" horror in general than it is about a specific set of tropes you see over and over again. Believe me, I spent the whole weekend watching horror movies and The Cabin in the Woods meta-narrative doesn't map onto any of them, even The Mutilator.

 Still, it's a clever idea and it has something to say about audiences and our relationship to the films we watch, which puts it ten to twenty notches above, say, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which talks a lot ABOUT horror tropes but doesn't really have anything to say about them (other than to make up a trope - the "Ahab" - that only exists in the Halloween films).

 Alas, kiddos, it's pushing 2 in the morning, and as much as I'd like to wax the philosophic about this, the Cap'n is no spring chicken anymore. I'm older, and wiser, especially enough to know better than to ever take on the McGangbang Challenge again... that took years off of my life!

Four Reasons to See The Cabin in the Woods (Again)

 I caught a little grief for reviewing Lockout instead of The Cabin in the Woods following a successful (?) double feature of the two last month, but after spending a few days wading through various reviews of the film, ones approaching it from nearly every angle, it seemed unnecessary to weigh in. I also didn't want to choose between writing "Just See It!" and not explaining too much about the film, or diving into an all-out spoiler fest, which is basically the only way you can really get into why The Cabin in the Woods is worth seeing to horror fans. At this point, I think we're far enough away from the film's release that I can openly dance around plot points without ruining your experience of the film. It's not actually a facetious suggestion when someone says "the less you know, the better" for The Cabin in the Woods, but at this point either you've watched the film or you'll check it out on home video.

 The Cap'n fully intends to watch it again on Blu-Ray, probably a few times, and here are four reasons why:

 1. It's Not Exactly a Horror Movie - One of the first things I told people was that The Cabin in the Woods is a movie about horror movies. While it does follow the structure of some horror films, it's simultaneously a comedy that explains the absurdity of things that happen in horror movies, the way characters behave, and provides a rationale for the necessity of those things to happen. On more than one occasion a friend assumed The Cabin in the Woods must be a documentary, but the truth is that it's more of a "meta"-film along the lines of Charlie Kaufman or Michel Gondry. The film is about horror films, about audiences, and ultimately, about itself. A little further down I'll get into more specific ramifications that come from The Cabin in the Woods' "meta" message.

 In the meantime, I look forward to watching the film again because it is more of a comedy with horror elements (like Shaun of the Dead) than a horror comedy (like Dead Alive). It plays with horror conventions, both real and generally assumed tropes about what "horror films" are all about in an entertaining manner. Writer Joss Whedon and director / writer Drew Goddard are able to build tension while also sneaking in well placed laughs (primarily by juxtaposing the "cabin" section with the mundane "underground" team). Because I didn't know exactly what I was walking in to (I deliberately avoided any spoilers or information), the discovery that The Cabin in the Woods isn't so much a horror film as a riff on the idea of "horror films" was refreshing. Knowing the direction the story takes, I'm quite excited to sit down and see it again.

 2. Pay Careful Attention to Plot Construction - The Cabin in the Woods takes audiences on a ride, one that we're familiar with and take such pleasure in seeing subverted that we forget what we already know. Goddard and Whedon's screenplay is designed so well that you forget deliberately contradictory evidence to the "archetypes" each of the protagonists are supposed to represent. Dana (The Virgin) is going to the cabin in order to forget about a disastrous affair she was having with one of her professors. Holden (The Scholar) is introduced catching a football and described as having "the fastest hands on the team," while Curt (The Athlete) is giving Dana tips on better theory to read for her classes. Jules (The Whore) and Marty (The Fool) both require assistance from "Chemistry" (the hair dye and laced marijuana) to ensure the fulfill their archetypes, although it ends up backfiring with Marty, making him immune to other chemically induced "twists."

 This actually pays off later when The Director (Sigourney Weaver) admits they "work with what we've got" when Dana scoffs at being "The Virgin." Because The Cabin in the Woods is so successful at setting up established tropes about horror films and selling them with the characters we're presented, it's possible to forget that half of the "archetypes" don't actually fit.

 Now, Cabin does take some liberties the with concept of "horror tropes" and plays more on what people assume are tropes rather than what horror films actually present. This is not to say that the Virgin, Athlete, Whore, Scholar, and Fool don't appear in some variation in a lot of horror films, but that exact combination may not map on to slashers films in the way that non-horror fans assume. For example, the most obvious visual connection in the film is to The Evil Dead (arguably the best "cabin in the woods" entry) which doesn't map onto those "types" at all. If you followed The Evil Dead by Cabin in the Woods rules, Ash would be the "virgin" who makes it to the end and is killed. Now if I asked most fans of the Evil Dead series, Ash would fit the "Fool" type, especially as we move into the sequels.

 The Cabin in the Woods seems to take its archetypes from Friday the 13th Part 3, which does mostly have those "tropes" but also several other characters. Honestly, I can't think of a movie that actually follows the ritual required in Cabin, but I appreciate the idea. It's designed for audiences who are midway to serious horror fans and who don't mind that the rules are built more on a general premise than any specific film. Although, since I mentioned The Evil Dead, let's move to the next point...

 3. Easter Eggs - Aside from the obvious Hellraiser reference, there are a number of other nods (some subtle, some blatant) to other horror films, many of which are included on "the Board." The team gets together and has a pool based on which menace will be unleashed on the students, and there's a whiteboard with most of the options available. Here's the best shot of the board I could find:

 I mentioned The Evil Dead because the "board" lists both "Deadites" and "Angry Molesting Tree" as options, which implies that both Evil Dead films could theoretically have been previous "rituals" conducted for the "Ancient Ones" (maybe before they put in the lake). Based on the possibilities (as well as some of the choices we see unleashed later in the film) you could also argue that Jack Frost, The Strangers, Wrong Turn, The Deadly Spawn, The Cave, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Dog Soldiers, Diary of the Dead, and every Full Moon "evil dolls" movie ever made were variations on previous rituals. Those are the direct ones without covering more vague listings like "vampires" or "sexy witches". Beyond that, Goddard has indicated that the triggers for every single monster on the board is in the basement, which gives us plenty of incentive to freeze frames. I don't know about you, but I fully intend to find the "unicorn tapestry".

 Meanwhile, I really want to see the other countries and their contending rituals, because other than Japan's "stringy long haired pale ghost" trope from the late 90s / early 00s, I didn't quite catch what was meant to represent other forms of "foreign" horror. I thought I saw a Gothic castle and maybe a troll, but that's also one I look forward to examining more closely.


 4. Implications About Horror Before and After This Film - That's a little vague as a category, but I'm not quite sure how I'd sum up what The Cabin in the Woods says about the relationship between audiences and horror films in one sentence. During Jules and Curt's sex scene, Hadley (Bradley Whitford) and Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) tell Truman (Brian White) that "we're not the only ones watching" and you've "gotta keep the customers satisfied" when he questions whether she needs to show "the goods." In the context of the film, you could argue that they're referring to "The Ancient Ones," but as we won't be introduced to the concept of their manipulation as part of a predetermined ritual, the dialogue reads as a direct commentary on the audience. We, the viewers, are watching The Cabin in the Woods expecting the same adherence to "formula" (in this case, T&A) as "The Ancient Ones".

 So who's to say we aren't "The Ancient Ones"? I mean, once you get past the Lovecraftian assumptions that follow any concept of an "ancient" force in horror, an idea so pervasive beyond Lovecraft's fiction that it made it all the way to Guillermo Del Toro's comic book adaptation Hellboy. Sure, I was hoping that's what The Director was talking about, but it's not what we got. We got a giant hand smashing the cabin (and presumably, destroying the world) when it didn't get what it wanted. If that isn't a metaphor for internet-age fandom I must really misunderstand bloggers and "geek" sites. I'm not saying that it's the only way to read this, but if you've spent any time reading sites that build up movies to impossible expectations and then relish their downfall in comments (and yes, I would include my reaction to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World fans bashing The Expendables when the former belly flopped). Better still, there's the contingent of "complain about remakes / sequels" that also won't go see movies that don't fit into that mold or will instead complain about how those movies "probably suck". This is the mentality that plays into the end of The Cabin in the Woods, when the "Ancient Ones" don't get their ritual exactly right so they destroy everything. Better still, the protagonists let it happen in what is arguably the funniest nihilistic ending in a long time. It doesn't even give us a coda to let us down easy like Dr. Strangelove or Heathers - it's just "SMASH!"

 Now I don't think that The Cabin in the Woods is going to have the kind of impact that a Scream did. For one thing, while the people who did see it really enjoyed it (or enjoyed it with reservations or didn't like that it was a comedy but mostly liked it), it doesn't seem like The Cabin in the Woods is having the same draw that Scream did. Scream ushered in a wave of self-reflexive horror movies, mostly lousy knock-offs that didn't understand what Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven were commenting about - and I'll include Scream 2 and 3 in that list - and that became the dominant trend until the J-Horror remakes took over with The Ring. At this point in horror, we're seeing the concept of "torture porn" dying off as we move further away from the Saw series, and the remake craze is finally losing some steam after the unwatchable Nightmare on Elm Street two years ago.

 Right now things are up in the air: are the slow burns of Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) where things are headed? The splatterfest throwbacks of Adam Green (Hatchet) or Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2)? Are the French or Spanish super gore / disturbing films ([REC], Martyrs, Inside, High Tension) going to prevail? Are the "Masters of Horror" and the "Splat Pack" all done with? Is All the Boys Love Mandy Lane ever going to come out in the U.S. and would anybody watch it? Are anthology films like Trick 'r Treat, Chillerama, and V/H/S going to usher in a comeback? Is Insidious bringing back haunted houses? Is Hammer films poised to fill the void? Or is horror going to get wrapped up in this "exploitation" craze in the wake of Grindhouse or Hobo with a Shotgun (go look up "The Disco Exorcist" on YouTube).

 I'm not really sure where horror is going. The truth is that all of these directions seem to be happening at once without any clear "trend" to speak of. That's probably a good thing, although it refutes the idea that horror can be distilled into archetypes for a ritual purpose. To bring it back to the idea of "the audience" and expectations, I was surprised to talk to people who were unaware of horror theory. They had never considered that horror provides a cathartic release by building up tension and by facing viewers with their worst fears, only to allow them to return to the comfort of daylight at the end. I guess I've spent more time poring through books like Screening Violence, The Monster Show and Projected Fears because of classes I've taken and an interest in why people are drawn to the horrific. I can see how avoiding horror altogether might also cause people to be surprised that it does serve a sociological purpose - or at least there are scholars who make the case it does.

 The Cabin in the Woods asks us "what would happen if the characters rebelled?" What if the catharsis didn't happen and evil won? In that way, the film is an extension of Michael Haneke's Funny Games, a film I didn't like because the director chose to impose his disdain for audience expectations on viewers, to rub their nose in it. The point in both films it that audiences are complicit in the formula a movie follows: if you expect it, they (the studios / creative forces / etc) will give it to you. Both films deny you what you expect (to some degree) to make you question your role as the voyeur. The Cabin in the Woods cheats a bit by giving you what you want but also telling you that it's happening while you watch it, but I don't know that audiences are going to be looking for more films like this. It may be a one-off that makes horror fans more demanding of what comes next, which may simply result in more "smashing". We'll see.

May the 4th... Be with Marvel!

 Again, take that George Lucas. That will keep me satisfied considering that I forgot that in trading up from a dead phone to a newer one that I inadvertently chose the one that gives Lucasfilm kickbacks. Anyway, so as you may or may not be aware, The Avengers opens on Friday (or Thursday at midnight, if you aren't one of those "technicalists" who keep late hours and prefer to think of the next day some time around dawn when you're heading to bed). It is a movie where comic book characters we've been getting to know cinematically for the last four years get together to save the Earth, and if not that, presumably avenge it.

 I can't imagine anyone who is predisposed to seeing Marvel's The Avengers based on the comic book Marvel's The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes does not know who Joss Whedon is, but for the rest of you he's the semi-classic definition of a "cult" hero. The reason that most of you wouldn't know who he was is because if you've heard anything he's created, it's usually in a derisive way, like "oh, the guy that Fox hires and then cancels his shows" (Firefly, Dollhouse), or "the guy who made a TV show out of that Kristy Swanson movie" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), or "oh, guy who had the spinoff of that Kristy Swanson thing with the guy from Bones" (Angel). Maybe it was "the guy that made that movie all those nerdy 'browncoats' wanted me to see but nobody got around to it" (Serenity). Actually, it's probably that "guy who did the musical thing with Neil Patrick Harris that's on Netflix that I didn't see because my annoying nerd friends told me 'OMG it's like the best EVAR!" (Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog).

 By the way, I'm not actually bagging on Joss Whedon for any of this, so there's no need to point out that he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and wrote the movie which was taken away from him and Donald Sutherland refused to use Whedon's dialogue or that you tried your best to get your friends to see Serenity and wrote letters to save Dollhouse and Firefly and that you saw every episode of Buffy and Angel and you've read Whedon's run on The Astonishing X-Men. It's cool. I get it. There's a copy of Serenity behind me and Firefly is upstairs. I'm not trying to get your goad, folks*. This is for people who read this entire paragraph and said "what now?" There is very little "public perception" of Joss Whedon, but even as a fan of the Whedon-verse, I can understand why some people feel we're insufferable in our geekdom.

 So where was I? Ah yes, okay Joss Whedon is a writer / director / creative force known to a devoted audience and then not so much by the rest of the world. The Avengers is in almost all certainty going to change that. Then people might finally stop mentioning his period as screenwriter-for-hire / script doctor (Speed, Toy Story, Waterworld, X-Men**, Alien: Resurrection to name a few) and he'll have some leeway to do whatever he wants and also get to make blockbuster comic book movies if he feels like it. This is a good thing, by the way, as he is a tremendously talented fellow that has mostly been just under the radar for the last decade.

 I thought it might be fun to revisit the path to The Avengers by looking at reviews for Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger before we get to the main event. And even though I've already seen The Avengers, for reasons I can't get into or discuss at the moment, I'm going to see it again before giving it a proper review. To prove to you that I'm not pulling your chain, here's something that nobody else has mentioned about the film: Harry Dean Stanton has a cameo that's all the funnier because there's no good reason why Harry Dean Stanton should be playing a security guard having a conversation with Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) after the Hulk falls from the sky.

 The other fun thing about this recap is that I never actually reviewed Iron Man 2, so you'll get a fresh look at it two years later as I'll be watching it again in the next day or two. Tomorrow, I'll put up a vintage double feature review of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, and then on Wednesday I'll get you a new Iron Man 2 review, followed by Thor on Thursday (how appropriate) and Captain America on Friday. Then we'll close out the week with The Avengers on Saturday. In the mean time, go see The Avengers this weekend. I think you'll really like it. Except for Professor Murder. I can almost guarantee he's not going to like it at all.




 * If I were going to do that, I'd mention that I am not a huge fan of Whedon musicals, which means I don't like Dr. Horrible and I really didn't like "Once More with Feeling". Flame on.
** He is singularly responsible for the notorious "do you know what happens when a toad is struck by lightning" line, which in his defense would sound a lot funnier delivered by Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Spoiler of the Day: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

 Paul Reubens dies, but very, veerrrrry slowly - not even the credits can kill him. Buffy takes a few years off, regenerates into Sarah Michelle Gellar, and begins life anew on the WB. Rutger Hauer, wounded, but not dead, begins riding the rails in hopes that he can buy a lawnmower. Instead, he finds a different path...


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Hobo with a Shotgun.

Two Reasons I Don't Always Understand Geek Culture

 The Cap'n is, unavoidably, a geek. While I don't always identify as such, it's hard to write on a blog where you adopt the moniker of a demon from The Exorcist and plaster artwork of Dr. Re-Animator and The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman on the page. I try to mix up the content, but let's be honest here: after devoting a weekend to a "virtual" version of a horror film festival I usually host in person, I bounced back with a documentary about what Conan O'Brien did after NBC dropped him for Jay Leno. While I haven't read many comic books in the last year, I still watch movies about them, and am looking forward to Joss Whedon's The Avengers.

 However, I don't always understand my geek brethren; there are things about the internet in particular - the nesting place of the "geek" - that seem counter-intuitive to what people claim they want. Today I'll take a look at two things that don't really make sense to me, especially in a time when "geek" culture seems to be getting everything they want from major studios and television networks. I'd normally do four, but the first two were so long that I thought I'd cut it in half.

 1. "We want to see it, but we're not going to go see it!" - I call this the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World effect, although you could just as easily replace that with Kick-Ass, Serenity, Your Highness, or a dozen or so other movies designed specifically for a geeky demographic. You can't throw a rock without hitting someone complaining about how Hollywood is constantly recycling, remaking, or re-imagining something from the 1980s. Now, it is true that this happens with increasing regularity, in part because people go see these remakes. I mean, why not? They already know the title, vaguely remember the story, and it beats going to see something else.

 The chatter is loud and not necessarily without cause, but then when a project that comes out that ISN'T a remake, re-adaptation, retooling of something we've already seen, or even just not another "reboot" of a series we're invested in, the same geeks crying out suddenly get very quiet about putting their money where their mouths are. I was very, VERY hard on Scott Pilgrim fans in particular because instead of going to see the movie they constantly hyped as "finally, something that isn't like everything else," they instead stayed home and complained about how stupid it was that people went to see The Expendables instead. It's not Sylvester Stallone's fault that you didn't go see you new favorite movie, nor is it Julia Robert's fault with Eat, Pray, Love. I have tried to move away from using Box Office figures as a barometer for anything, but if you read "geek" coverage of Scott Pilgrim vs the World after the first two weeks, you'd think that it was hovering right below the aforementioned films. Nope. Scott Pilgrim vs the World came in behind The Expendables, Eat, Pray, Love, The Other Guys, and Inception. Inception is, by the way, an exception to the rule, although the "it was overrated" chants are getting louder every week.

 Mind you, it's not just Scott Pilgrim: Sucker Punch, a film that caters to geek fetishes, was also widely ignored by its target audience. Serenity, a film based on Joss Whedon's short-lived Firefly, apparently had a legion of fans called "Browncoats" who went to the free screenings the summer before the film came out, and then were so enthusiastic that they didn't go see it again. Or tell their friends to see it. Or tell anyone to see it, even though you'll be hard pressed to find a Firefly fan who won't talk about Serenity until they're blue in the face. So if you're this enthusiastic about a film, this excited for an alternative to the "same old thing," something directed to the very vocal internet, why is it you're happy to let the film die a lonely death in theatres, complain about the films people went to see while you stayed home, and then wait for the Blu-Ray? Eventually they'll stop listening to your pleas, stop catering to your whims, and then you're left with the same old thing.

 Don't believe me? Look at Universal: they're smarting from the Scott Pilgrim debacle, coupled with big losses for Your Highness and modest returns for Paul. Now that Comcast bought the company, they've already put Guillermo Del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness on indefinite hold, and have delayed further development of Ron Howard's adaptation of The Dark Tower series. These are two highly sought-after geek adaptations, and considering how much muscle they have behind them, the reason they've been put into development hell has a lot to do with the "We want to see it, but we're not going to see it" precedent.

Normally, when Guillermo Del Toro wants to adapt H.P. Lovecraft in a big budget, R rated horror film in 3D with the backing of James Cameron and star Tom Cruise, a studio isn't going to say "no" to that. Del Toro is the only "x" factor there, with his critically popular but financially modest films, including Universal's disappointing Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The argument was that Universal was concerned about the "R" rating, but it's not as though high profile projects with an "R" rating haven't performed well for them. The concern seems to be that the geeks clamoring for this film might not bother showing up (again), so why invest that kind of money when the precedent says there's no good reason to?

 The Dark Tower series is even more ambitious: Howard wants to adapt the entire series, split up between films and a running TV series that would bridge the movies. Javier Bardem is virtually a lock for Roland, and yet Universal is hedging about "the budget." Why? Again, because even with someone as reliable as Ron Howard and his long time producer Brian Glazer, there's concern that the people who claim to want to see this (the geeks) might be so fickle that they just won't show up. It's killed potential series before: just look at The Golden Compass, or Push, or Jumper, or I Am Number Four. Relative quality aside, those were designed to be "first chapters" in longer narratives, and they probably will never be. Even the geekiest of all geek properties, Tron Legacy, was met with derision by geeks and Disney is debating how much of a budget cut a third Tron will get, if they make it at all.

 It turns out that "if they build it," geeks won't come. Even if they love it. That boggles my mind. The negativity surrounding "bad" films is understandable to a point, but if you're just going to blow off genuine olive branches from people who speak your language, what exactly do you expect to be on the big screen next time?

2. TV Wasteland...? - We live in a time where television is littered with "geek" friendly shows: zombies, alien invasions, dinosaurs, time travel, super heroes, galactic battlestars, and even a "monster of the week show" that's really just about monsters. Oh yeah, and Doctor Who is back. So is Futurama. And yet, week after week, I come away enthusiastic from another episode of a show I enjoyed only to find the internet is littered with nit-pickers complaining about how that great episode was actually "underwhelming" or "lame." I was just looking to see if I missed some small detail, but instead have to wallow through criticism of the "revelation" that ended season six of Doctor Who (okay, the first half). How The Walking Dead is "boring" or "not what we wanted," etc.There was a television show about THE TERMINATOR, and all people did was complain about it.

 I'll freely admit that the ending of The X-Files and Lost disappointed me, and I've made it clear why, but one of the reasons I try really hard not to critique individual episodes before the show is over is because I like to give the creators the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are making it up as they go along, maybe not. Thanks to the internet, I now know that by the time I get to the end of Battlestar Galactica, more likely than not I'll feel cheated. I didn't want to know that, but shy of never visiting any "geek" site and totally avoiding my friends, it's almost impossible not to be inundated with negativity during a period where networks are actually catering to the audience that shouts the loudest. It's no surprise that shows don't last long when the feedback they see is negative. I'm already worried about Torchwood: Miracle Day, the return of a series I thought was really finding its footing, because the buzz around the first few episodes is not good. Ugh.

 This is hard for me, because I realize that I am essentially complaining about complaining. I'm throwing my two cents into a bottomless pit of negativity, but I just don't understand what's going on here. This is as good of a time to be a geek as humanly possible, and instead of celebrating it, there's a ceaseless echo chamber of backhanded compliments and outright hostility directed at people like us, who grew up watching the same movies we did, and are now trying to represent that point of view for the rest of the world. Now we're at a point where Patton Oswalt (perhaps with tongue in cheek) is suggesting that geek culture "needs" to die so that we can learn to appreciate our roots. The relative quality of films and shows are no longer important, because they all "suck" to people who can shout the loudest. When asked for an alternative, they ask for something and then blithely ignore the result.

 I don't understand you, geeks. I am trying. I thought I was one of you, and I tried to make my own rules clear: there are movies I am interested in and ones I'm not. I'll try to branch out every now and then, and whenever possible not look at gift horse in the mouth. I know that movies like Machete and Black Dynamite and Hobo with a Shotgun were catered to my demographic, and while I maybe didn't love everything about all of them, I try to be clearer than "it just sucks and you suck if you like it." I genuinely wanted to understand what it was about the Saw films that people gravitated towards - it didn't work for me, but obviously they have a strong following. I will ceaselessly sound the horn for films that I think people would really like; films you might not see or know about otherwise. I didn't ask for Scott Pilgrim, so I didn't see it, but I sure as hell was enthusiastic about Tron Legacy and I sure as hell saw it in 3D on an IMAX screen. I backed that geekdom up, and I need to do the same for The Tree of Life soon.

 To close, I don't want to criticize the internet critics, the home of geekdom in its many forms. I just want to understand what's going on here: it's an almost unprecedented time to enjoy having geeky interests, so why is the target audience ignoring it in droves, flooding message boards, and unleashing on people for not doing it for them? 

Retro Double Feature Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman Returns

 This is a true story of one of the coolest (and when you think about the age-to-film relationship, strangest) double features I've ever been privy to in theatres. The only other double feature that springs to mind in the same ballpark is Death to Smoochy and Panic Room, and considering I saw them as a young adult, the edge still goes to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman Returns.

 Here's the brief back story: My parents were going to a dinner party or... something. I'm not really sure, but it was the kind of social function that a 13 year old and his 11-going-on-12 year old brother would stick out at. They decided it was best to take us to Waverly Place, home of a multiplex that's not a gym, buy tickets for two movies playing in close proximity to each other, and let us walk from one screen to the other between them.

 Why Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman Returns? Well, there's a good chance we'd already seen Batman Returns when it opened, so they figured we'd be okay watching it again. We both liked Batman, after all, so that one made sense. Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Okay, I don't really know. Maybe the PG13 didn't worry them too much, maybe the comedy looked fairly innocent - I mean, it's a Valley Girl who learns she's the next in a long line of vampire killers. It had Luke Perry and Donald Sutherland and Paul Reubens. And Rutger Hauer - I mean, we'd already seen Blade Runner, even if we didn't understand it, so we knew most of these actors. It was a comedy about vampires, and the other options at the time were Universal Soldier, Mom and Dad Save the World, Boomerang, A League of Their Own, and Cool World*. Maybe the times just lined up right.

 This is going to sound odd, but I don't blame my reticence on watching the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the movie of the same name. I actually like the movie, or at least with the last time I saw it all the way through, which was probably ten years ago. Maybe it doesn't hold up, and maybe (okay, almost certainly) the series aged better than the film, considering it's Joss Whedon's unfiltered version of the Buffy mythos. Still, I have a fond place in my heart for the goofy charm of Kristy Swanson fighting Rutger Hauer at the prom, or of Paul Reubens losing his arm and his prolonged death scene (which extends beyond the credits).

 Whedon fans are well aware that Fran Rabel Kuzui and Donald Sutherland did some serious tinkering with his original screenplay, taking the story less seriously (or at least, overplaying the "tongue in cheek" aspects). The series was designed to reset perceptions about Joss Whedon's character, and it seems like the movie now has a bum rap (it has a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.3 rating on IMDB). I enjoyed it enough in the theatres that there's a copy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer around here somewhere on VHS, and now I want to watch the film again...

 At the end of Buffy, we walked across the lobby and waited for Batman Returns to start. Since it came out almost a month before, we must have seen the film before, but I honestly can't remember what the reaction to seeing it a second time was. Instead, I frequently drift instead to The Nightmare Before Christmas, a movie we was in the same auditorium a year and change later**.


 I really had to think carefully about Batman Returns, because while I know that was the movie we walked across the lobby to go see, it just didn't make sense. My lingering sensation of Batman Returns is that it's a Christmas movie - that's when the film is set, Burton adopts his muted visual palette to include snow caked Gotham City and transitions the visuals to match the frigid tone of the film. Yes, Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) is sexually charged, and the Penguin (Danny DeVito) is appropriately animalistic, but after Batman Returns begins on a Charles Addams inspired pre-credits sequence with the Cobblepot family (Paul Reubens and Diane Salinger), the film takes a persistent, emotionally frozen turn that bothered audiences.

 This is all the more surprising because Batman Returns was released in June of 1992, in the middle of the "Summer Season," where it seems the least appropriate. I genuinely had difficulty reconciling my memories of Batman Returns as a movie (tonally, at least) with when I saw it on the big screen. It didn't seem possible that Warner Brothers would want to release a "winter" movie in the summer, but they did. Batman Begins makes sense, as does The Dark Knight, which are movies piping with steam or basked in sunlight. Even the cartoonish Batman & Robin, with Mr. Freeze as the villain, feels more appropriate to release in June than Batman Returns.

 Speaking of appropriate, I mentioned in my Army of Darkness Retro Review that there was a semi-stringent policy about what the young Cap'n could and could not see during my teenage years (Army of Darkness and The Crow: "no", Pulp Fiction: "yes"), but having seen both films now over the years, Batman Returns is thematically more "adult" in tone than the exaggerated Army of Darkness. It's a continuation of themes of disfigurement, abandonment, and psychosis from Batman, and one could argue as "dark" as the ending of Edward Scissorhands, which I also saw at a young age. One might argue that in the late 80s and early 90s, what was considered "family friendly" was a little more lenient in terms of violence and disturbing content, which might explain the eccentricities of people around my age.

 Either way, I still watch Batman Returns, still enjoy it more than any of the other cinematic iterations until The Dark Knight, and also plan on watching it again soon. In fact, I might stage a "double feature" event for both films so that everyone can enjoy the "related by Paul Reubens, mostly" pair. Let's pencil that in sometime soon, shall we?


* By the way, I'd say by 1993 we'd seen all of those movies, save for Boomerang and probably Cool World. We saw A League of Their Own at Mission Valley. I'm pretty sure I didn't see Cool World until high school, and to be honest I sort of wish I had never seen it.
** Which is, by the way, how that the film was much more kid-friendly and less frightening than I hoped it would be. Once I moved past that initial disappointment, I was and remain a huge fan of Tim Burton and Henry Selick's stop motion masterpiece.

Blogorium Review: Thor

I'm of two minds when it comes to reviewing Thor, because as much as I want to convey to readers that the movie is not only watchable, but eminently better than the garbage passing itself off as "summer entertainment" year after year, I also feel a responsibility to point out that half of the film is much better than the other. I feel this is directly attributable to Thor's director, Kenneth Branagh.

Branagh, whose output varies from the likes of Dead Again to a remake of Sleuth, is best known for his Shakespearean films - Henry V, Hamlet, Love's Labours Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It (as well as appearing in Othello) - and the influence of the Bard on his adaptation of the Nordic-God-Turned-Marvel-Comic-Hero is apparent throughout the film.At least, part of the film.
 
  In the realm of Asgard (one of the nine cosmic realms), Odin (Anthony Hopkins), King of the Gods, is preparing to step down and enter Odinsleep - his period of hibernation - but first must decide which of his sons to hand the throne of Asgard to. His oldest son, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is brave, if stubborn, whose rule may be undermined by a sense of entitlement. His youngest son, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) spent his life living in the shadow of Thor, and while his mischievous nature is recognized, his desire to win Odin's approval is evident. When the Frost Giants invade Asgard and try to steal back the Casket of Ancient Winters (their power supply), Thor disregards Odin's wishes and travels to Jotunheim with Loki, Sif (Jaimie Alexander) and The Warriors Three - Volstagg (Ray Stevenson), Fandral (Joshua Dallas), Hogun (Tadanobu Asano) - in tow to destroy the King of the Frost Giants (Colm Feore). Furious, Odin strips Thor of his powers and orders Heimdall (Idris Elba) to banish his son to Earth.

 And that's the first half hour or so of Thor. That doesn't take into account astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), her advisor Dr.Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård), and assistant Darcy (Kat Dennings), who discover Thor while searching the deserts in New Mexico for wormholes (or, as the film insists on calling them, "Einstein-Rosen bridges*"). No sooner have they found the brash, unruly son of Odin than Mjolnir, Thor's hammer, also falls to Earth and is discovered by S.H.I.E.L.D., headed up by Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), who continues to appear in all Avengers-related Marvel films.

 The New Mexico part of the story, including a well-staged action sequence involving Thor, the S.H.I.E.L.D. team (including an extended cameo by Jeremy Renner, who will play Hawkeye in The Avengers**), is unfortunately the half of the film that doesn't really work. It's clear that Branagh is more interested in the Shakespearean power play at hand in Asgard, where Loki assumes power as Odin collapses after banishing Thor and proceeds to manipulate events in order to keep his older brother from ever returning. What happens on Earth, the place where Thor learns humility and earns his "God of Thunder" powers - which should be the most important part of the film - takes a back seat to Asgardian politics.

 Portman and Skarsgård are wasted in roles that serve no purpose: Jane Foster's developing romance with Thor never really makes sense because there's no story arc to support it. Selvig seems to exist in order to bridge Norse mythology to the story at hand (as is evidenced by the many times Skarsgård is forced to mention or read tales of the Viking Gods during the film), and for one good scene where he (badly) lies about Thor's identity to free him from S.H.I.E.L.D. captivity. There's also the after credits tease, but I'll get to that in a minute. I have no idea why Kat Dennings is in the film at all, as Darcy contributes nothing to the story unless the three screenwriters (plus two credited "story" writers) felt the pressing need to have three people discover Thor.

 Gregg is, as usual, fine as the "been there, seen that" second hand man of S.H.I.E.L.D. This time, he's on his own (Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury doesn't show up until later), and makes a credible Earth-bound foil for Thor, I guess. Since Thor pretty much gives up on beating goons after failing to raise Mjolnir, it's hard to really say. Again, the Earth-bound business feels perfunctory, second to the far more interesting Asgard story.

 Branagh seems to be more comfortable with Hopkins, Hiddleston, Hemsworth, Elba, and Renee Russo (who I didn't even recognize as Odin's wife Frigg) and the power struggle between father and sons. It's as though he's reveling in a pulp fiction twist on King Lear, and the film comes to life during throne room conversations. That's not to say that the Asgard half of the film isn't without its problems, though - another Branagh idiosyncrasy pops up that further confuses the narrative.

 Audiences have some idea when they are introduced to Loki that he's supposed to be the villain: his posture is slightly stooped, his hair is slicked back and his sullen, sunken eyes just scream "bad guy waiting in the wings!" But when the time comes for Hiddleston to shift from younger brother with an inferiority complex to full on baddie, Branagh doesn't convey that. This shouldn't be surprising: Branagh also devoted as much of his Hamlet as possible to give nuance to Claudius, typically portrayed as the moustache twirling villain. And there's something to be said for nuance, for giving a villain dimensions, or even to make him sympathetic, but Loki is such a muddled antagonist that he's never a genuine threat for Thor.

 In fact, Loki doesn't actually behave in a villainous manner until the after-credits sequence (directed by Joss Whedon, it turns out), where Selvig is summoned by Nick Fury to examine the Cosmic Cube. This brings me to another problem that isn't Branagh's fault, per se, but more attributable to Marvel Executive Producer Kevin Feige: the "set-up" effect.

 To be fair, Thor integrates Marvel characters (specifically Avenger-related) in a less intrusive way than say, Iron Man 2: there are small asides that indirectly mention Tony Stark and Bruce Banner; there's the aforementioned "Hawkeye" scene, and The Cosmic Cube is their way of anticipating the Captain America film to come. Nevertheless, the cumulative effect is that Thor on Earth isn't really about Thor among humans, but as laying the groundwork for The Avengers, right down to the last thing he says to Agent Coulson before leaving for Asgard.

 Okay, so I've nitpicked Thor as a way of addressing why there's a small (but vocal) backlash against the film online, so why do I think it's better than most summer entertainment? Well, the Asgard sections of the film are very good, as is the battle with the Frost Giants. Hemsworth and Elba are both great; Hopkins hasn't been this watchable in a while, and while they don't make much of an impact in the story, Sif and The Warriors Three have a natural chemistry with Thor that hints at a stronger relationship than we see in the film.

 The film is also funnier than this recap might suggest, and the laughs are much needed considering how much "fish out of water" plot is glossed over. The effects are impressive, particularly the Bifröst and bridge of Asgard. More to the point I feel the need to stress that there actually IS a story in Thor, which is more than I can say for a lot of "summer movies." It may not be the perfect comic book movie, but if you don't mind the imbalance of interest on Branagh's part, there's a lot to enjoy in Thor.





* I mention this because Ain't It Cool News, of all places, has an actual astrophysicist that breaks down the science of Thor here, and it seems like while the name is appropriate, it's really just a fancy way of saying "wormhole."
** I mention this because Coulson never actually uses his Avengers moniker, so either you know about the casting or are enough of a Marvel fan to know why he chooses a compound bow over sniper rifle. Or both, I suppose. Otherwise, it's just "hey, why is Jeremy Renner in this movie?"