THREE FILMS - MAGGIE, DEMONIC, EXTINCTION

MAGGIE

Arnold Schwarzenegger as a farmer in the Midwest (good casting LOL) dealing with his daughter who has been bitten during a zombie-like disease outbreak and is slowly turning into one.  Low budget and more of a human drama than a horror film although it contains one of the grosser visualizations of the zombie virus – Skin turns black, eyes cloud over and eventually turn black too, bits of skin falls off, people start to smell like meat to the infected.  Also odd little detail – virus also makes crops die.  It’s thoughtful and definitely something different but also has really long stretches where nothing happens and we stare at the barren countryside.  The director should have stuck with George Romero as an influence not Terrence Malick.  Original but dull.

DEMONIC

A James Wan production that is better than the uneventful piffle of THE CONJURING but not anywhere close to the disciplined creepiness of INSIDIOUS.  A twist ending that can be seen ten miles away anchors this haunted house/demonic possession tale.  Not much to recommend other than the dual narrative style in presentation of the story.

EXTINCTION

A found footage film about dinosaurs in a remote part of the jungle has been done before (The superior THE DINOSAUR PROJECT) and this film adds nothing new.  The plot takes a very long time to get to the dinosaurs and then only shows them in a few scenes.  I give the filmmakers credit for using mostly models instead of CGI but there just aren't enough exciting scenes to make up for the long slog to dinosaurville.   

  

TWO FILMS - TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER, IT FOLLOWS

TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER

Sly documentary from Nick Broomfield that uses the Grim Sleeper serial killer case in South Central Los Angeles (murders of  young black women, some prostitutes but a lot who weren’t ) to discuss racism in America.  This is done by showing how the police were indifferent to murders in a poor black neighborhood, how they had a number of chances to catch Lonnie Franklin the Grim Sleeper killer but didn’t bother (One of the victims who escaped was able to tell the police what street Franklin lived on and still nothing), and how many people knew something was wrong with Franklin or had runs in with him but since the police were not bothering to investigate, they were never interviewed.  Bloomfield’s framing of interviews is brilliant and he is able to get valuable information out of interviewees.  The sleeper is a metaphor for white indifference or even collaboration with black suffering ends up being a damning indictment.  The refusal of the police or the mayor’s office to speak to Broomfield speaks volumes. 

 IT FOLLOWS

Sometimes a movie comes out that receives universal praise that I just don't get and this was definitely the case here.  Boring, flat, filled with unlikable characters - at least in slasher films all the annoying teenagers get killed.  The long camera angles and weird sounds were irritating not arty.  I think the director saw a lot of John Carpenter films but missed how Carpenter built tension. The filmmaker was perhaps trying to say something about promiscuity and/or sexually transmitted diseases but that's all lost in this nothing movie.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

AVENGERS : AGE OF ULTRON was great fun of course, loud and a bit too long but still much better than the first Avengers film.  Liked their take on Ultron as voiced by James Spader. I also liked Paul Bettany’s Vision (A favorite Marvel character of mine). Overall, quite a better film than the first Avengers movie because it had a more interesting story and better use of heroes (Captain America especially).  What I did not like – Bruce Banner and the Black Widow having a romance is stupid as was killing Quicksilver.

I sometimes wonder when watching a film like this if this is the same viewing experience as watching a movie in the past with acting and transitions and real characters?  This is more like cartoon on steroids with revved up action scenes and so many special effects of an incredible nature that the end result is like being on an amusement park ride rather than taking in and sorting out in your head the details of a film.

One thing that really showed ignorance of the comic book universe was the Hulk vs Hulkbuster scene which ends with Iron Man knocking out the Hulk. Now the Hulkbuster armor is big and powerful but when they met in the comics(WORLD WAR HULK series and earlier) the Hulk usually triumphed with ease. The Hulk’s power is fed by unlimited rage. It’s basically boundless. Now way he would be defeated like that, don’t care how good Iron Man’s armor is. Comic book continuity fail!

THE L SHAPED ROOM - MOVIE VS BOOK

THE L SHAPED ROOM directed by Bryan Forbes is a great film – A well-constructed commentary on the sexual mores of the pre-swinging 60’s, a nice character study of people living in a boarding house, and a reasonably measured love story.

I basically like everything about the film but recently I read the book the movie is based on and I noticed something that would have made the film better.

In the book, Leslie Caron’s pregnant unmarried protagonist Jane is neither French nor beautiful which makes a lot more sense when considering the character’s backstory (A virgin until 27, raised by repressive parents)

Leslie Caron is a beautiful woman.  No amount of dressing down will ever change that.  It’s a little harder to believe in her in this role after reading the book despite liking the film and her performance.

One area where I think the movie is better is in the relationship between Jane and the other boarders especially in the Christmas party scene with Cicely Courtneidge’s version of  “Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty” which was sampled on the song The Queen is Dead by The Smiths but which is not in the book.

Reading the book doesn’t change my enjoyment of the film although it might have had I read it first.  It’s a tribute to a filmmaker that he can change the meaning of a book through casting and other choices and still produce something meaningful

  

FIVE FILMS - THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER, THE WRECKING CREW, GORE VIDAL: UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, BACKCOUNTRY, MUCK

THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER

Take the surreal nuttiness of the cartoon which is often quite adult but skillfully hidden in a children’s show multiply it by 100 and you have this film – One of the most successful TV shows to movies I’ve ever seen.  It works because it pumps up in exaggerated fashion everything that is great about the Spongebob cartoon and fills each moment with hilarious lunacy.  For adults as much as children.  The talking dolphin from the future was my favorite character.

THE WRECKING CREW

Enjoyed greatly this documentary about the team of studio musicians who played on many famous recordings in the 60’s in Los Angeles.  Nice to see a documentary about music that does not overanalyze events and lets the music partially tell the story.  I also liked the reality exposed of working musicians (often without any credits on a record as they were sometimes taking the place of the listed band members) as opposed to rockstars.  I knew a lot of the history already as it is an interest of mine but the story is covered in an organized and succinct way. 

  

GORE VIDAL: UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA

Not a fan of Vidal’s writing at all but that’s okay because that’s not what this documentary film is about.  Rather the subject is American foreign policy, the building of empire, through Vidal’s eyes sprinkled with bits of his personal history.  I totally agree with Vidal’s summation of US history and the idea that events (wars, assassinations etc.) are not a matter of conspiracy (conspiracy used here as a smear word by those pushing an official line) but people working together who just happen to share the same sociopathic outlook on life. The debates from the 60’s between him and William F Buckley Jr. would make a great film in itself.  A viewpoint as told through a story – well done.

  

BACKCOUNTRY

If they ever give an award for best bear attack on a human being in a movie, this film is a shoo-in.  A couple gets lost in the woods, encounter a creepy hiker and a few other foreshadowing events that ultimately add up to nothing.  The bear scenes are truly horrifying and scary, the rest is cliché – Why do people always fall down and hurt themselves in the woods?  Thrilling in places but not consistently.

MUCK

I did not understand this film at all which purports to be the first in a trilogy first made that is as it is actually second in order.  Having already encountered some unknown horror in a swamp, the surviving group of teenage partiers now have to fight a group of cultists.  Plenty of violence and deaths and it is well paced but I would have preferred they start at the beginning as it often felt disjointed and impossible to follow. 

TIME TRAVEL IN THE MOVIES

Saw TIME LAPSE which isn’t a time travel movie in the literal sense.  The plot is about a machine that takes photographs of events occurring 24 hours in the future.  It was an interesting film with a Twilight Zone episode premise that perhaps dragged out the story too long and reduced the impact of the twist ending.

This got me to thinking.  Time travel is an intriguing premise for a work of fiction both for reproductions of historical epochs pre-camera or pre-film and for the various conundrums and paradoxes raised by time travel.

Probably the best film I’ve seen of the latter is the 2007 Spanish film TIMECRIMES which is not only ingenuously twisty but a seat of your pants thriller.  The tale of a man who one day witnesses what he thinks is a crime and follows the aggressor into the woods only to discover a time travelling snafu that ultimately involves three different versions of himself.

To be totally honest with itself, a time travel movie has to throw logic out the window but still compensate the audience with a clever and interesting film.  I think TIMECRIMES does this better than any time travel film I’ve ever seen.  Things happen quickly and you try to follow the many wild changes in narrative while keeping track of what is actually going on and where we are in the story’s looped storyline. 

Other great time travel movies?  Well 1960’s THE TIME MACHINE with the recently deceased Rod Taylor is an awesome futuristic tale.  Its special effects have survived the test of time.  The remake sucked.  TIMECRIMES is also being remade as an American film.  I am sure it will suck also.  Go into the future and then go back into the past and show the sucky remake as proof it should not be made.   

FOUR FILMS - THE PYRAMID, MR DYNAMITE, CUB, BEWARE OF MR BAKER

THE PYRAMID

What starts off as a run of the mill found footage horror film albeit with higher production values as it is set in a pyramid in the Egyptian desert turns into an interesting and imaginative horror film replete with cool monsters and sinister traps.  Enjoyable fluff with quite effective jump scares in places. 

MR DYNAMITE

This excellent documentary effectively covers every facet of Brown’s career from tough childhood to musical heyday to the huge reach of his musical influence to his complicated personality and development of a sometimes contradictory political consciousness.  Lots of great archival footage.  More than makes up for the antiseptic toothless Brown bio pic that came out last year.

CUB

The plot of this Netherlands horror tale is quite simple – A boy scout camping trip in the French countryside is menaced by a feral boy and a full grown serial killer.  In what seems to be a theme in this run of movies I am writing about, there are some gruesome traps here and it has a nice dark ending.  Much of the rest is standard horror and no explanation is offered for anything that is happening.  A good timekiller movie with well paced action.

BEWARE OF MR BAKER

At the beginning of this documentary about drumming legend Ginger Baker, he swats the filmmaker in the face with his cane.  I can understand why.  While this is an interesting movie about an  ultimately self-destructive musical genius, the director fills it full of distractions such as animation and attempted psychoanalysis of Baker.  A lot more music and a lot less the other stuff (Baker's years in Africa in particular were very interesting and I would have liked to hear more about that) would have made this more than just an entertaining film.