Category Archives: Movies

Not Every Aspect of a Franchise Should be Mined

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In May, Variety reported that Warner Brothers Studios had announced a new The Lord of the Rings live-action feature to be released in 2026 The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt For Gollum.

To be produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Andy Serkis very little is known about the plot or details of the feature but there are reasonable guesses that can be made.

In the first book of the series The Fellowship of the Ring Gandalf tells Frodo that he and Aragorn had searched for the creature Gollum but that the enemy found him first. In both the film adaptation and the novel this is entirely an off-screen second bit of exposition, but it is a hunt for Gollum and likely the source of the new film. (Though I suppose it is possible that you might build an entire movie around the River folk hunting for Gollum the murderer.)

Making a story work around Gandalf and Aragorn’s search is a tall and tough task. We know they fail; we know they are unharmed and any new or side characters introduced will be treated with life expectancy of a Trek Red Shirt.

I can tell you one thing from Gandalf’s recounting of the hunt that will not make it into this feature, the evidence that Gollum ate babies will be excised.

This is an image, empty cribs left in Gollum’s wake, that haunts me from the novel and one of the reasons why Gollum never achieved any sympathy from me. The wanton murder of children strips any character of any slim hope of redemption. (Yes, I am looking at you Frankenstein’s monster. Life is tough and you were treated horribly but nothing excuses the murder of children.)

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On RDJ’s Return to the MCU

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At the San Diego Comic Con, it was announced after much speculation that the critical role of Dr Doom for the Fantastic Four will be played by Robert Downey jr. This set off debate and speculation about strange possible connections between Tony Stark and Dr Victor von Doom.

Dudes, RDJ is what is technically known as an actor, people skilled in performing characters in fiction. Characters plural.

It used to be much more accepted by audiences that an actor stepping into a role even in a continuing franchise was a new person even if that actor had played someone different in the same franchise before.

Granted this was much more common in television than in film but it was true in film as well. Charles Grey could both be Bond’s contact in one film and then Blofeld in another. Maud Adams could be Bond’s girl in two different movies, and no one asked how she survived her death in the earlier entry because she is playing different characters.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has recycled actor in earlier production. Gemma Chan is both a Kree Warrior and an eternal robot. Alfie Woodward is both a street level criminal and a mother who worked hard for the state department putting her sun Charlie through school. Michell Yeoh is both a Ravager and an elder is a mystic Asian village. Robert Downey jr, while being the most high-profile actor to play two utterly critical and central roles, is following in an established performing arts tradition.

RDJ is a talented actor able to inhabit a number of unique characters. His turn in Oppenheimeris fantastic and I look forward to his portrayal of the vain, villainous, and compelling Dr Doom.

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Reboots, Remakes, and Reimaginings

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Later this month Apple TV+ will begin streaming the television series Time Bandits from series creators Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. The series is a reimagining of the 1981 fantasy film by Terry Gilliam and against centers on a young boy’s adventures through time with a rag tag collection of misfits that have stolen a map indicating fractures in history/

There are voices raised in alarm and protest over the remake of what some hold as a dearly beloved classic. I watched the original film during its theatrical run and to this day quotes from the script still spring from these lips. (Most often, “Stay, Guard the Map,” whenever I leave anything on a table or such.)

That said I am no distraught over a remake. While it is often a cheap ploy to grab an already existing audience for more cash remakes are not always an evil thing. The admired classic film The Maltese Falcon which propelled Humphrey Bogart to stardom is not only a remake but the secondremake of that story. The earlier two adaptations failed to catch fire with audiences.

But remakes can also be horrid affairs that fail to understand the source material of the original. In 1965’s Flight of the Phoenix when the pilot is pointing out flaws in the plan to make a new airplane from the remains of the crashed one with the survivors strapped to the wings, he insists that the injured man cannot be expected to do that. The aircraft designer says that the man will die before the work is completed and therefore is not a factor. He is cold, it is calculating but he is not cruel or evil but simply dictated by reality. In the 2004 remake he shoots and kills the man, a dramatic and terrible interpretation of the text.

King Kong 1933 is an impressive achievement of technical filmmaking and transcends the simple adventure story envisioned by its creators. The 1976 film has none of the charm or heart of the original and the 2005 version while indulgent clearly has heart and a deep adoration for the source material.

Remakes like any artistic attempt are inherently neither good nor bad and only time will answer of the Time Bandits series meets expectations.

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Gaiman, Hero Worship, and Human Frailty

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Numerous people throughout fandom are shaken to their cores as allegations are leveled at yet another beloved icon this time Neil Gaiman. I will not be going into the accusations as I have too little knowledge of what is precisely asserted to have an educated opinion.

Neil Gaiman has been a beloved writer in the genre spaces for some time. There have been numerous stories of his kindness and repeated examples of how he has brightened the darkness for other, often with wise comments on this mad industry and its often heavy psychological toll.

However, I am reminded of a bit from the MCU series Loki when the titular character comments that ‘No one good is truly good and no one bad is truly bad.’

We are all shades of gray. Darkness and light lives in every person’s heart. We all have an impulse to be compassionate and caring and we all have impulses to hurt and dominate.

It is now likely that Gaiman will join a terrible list of former artistic talents such Joss Whedon, Roman Polanski, or Kevin Spacey. What are we to learn from this?

I think Frank Herbert, a beloved writer in his own right may have already tried to teach us something about this with Paul Atriedes. Heroes are dangerous to your health.

There is a school of criticism where it is considered critical to separate the artists from the art. Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains an outstanding example of writing with an empowering message about feminine strength told through the lens of superheroes and monsters. Gaiman’s writing about love and the fantastic remain unchanged, the text of the stories and novels are precisely the same as they were last month before this knowledge came to light. Polanski’s adaptation of Macbeth or his cinematic genius directing in Chinatown still speaks truth the corrupting nature of power despite the man’s vile actions as a rapist.

I am not here to tell you to not read or consume any particular artists work because of their reprehensible personal nature. That is a decision each person must make for themselves. It is the personal moral quandary of the audience. What I can say is that the work does not change.

What we should strive to do always with the artistic products we adore because they speak to our very souls is to never forget that all artists are human. All humans are flawed and never construct fantasies of perfect for the flawed people of this planet.

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The Importance of the Denouement

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Once the story and plot have concluded all that remains for your prose or film is the denouement. This is a vital element of storytelling and one that if missing can seriously unsettle a reader or audience.

The purpose of the denouement is that it provides the space and time for the emotional climax of the tale to flower. If the story is a tragedy, it allows the audience to feel the weight of the loss or the futility of the character’s resistance to their fate. If the story has a conventionally ‘happy’ ending, then the denouement allows the audience to bask in the victory and empathize with the characters journey.

A denouement can be extremely short, sometimes in film a single freeze-frame can provide the emotional closure a story requires. Most are short segments that simply allow the reader or audience to cool down from the heat of the climax. An excellent example of this in film is Ripley’s recorded message in the original Alien. After igniting the engines, she has defeated the monster and there is no more plot to complete. However, ending the film with her watching the Zeta Reticulian parasite ejected in the void would have been unsatisfying. Our hearts were beating too fast to end it there, the denouement was absolutely essential.

Of course, a denouement can be overdone, creating a sense that a story or film never ends. The best example of that is the conclusion of The Return of the King where it felt as if the film had ended several times because the director was insistent on getting to the novel’s final line. That extended denouement did not work for everyone.

And when the denouement is all together missing the ending feels abrupt often leaving a reader or audience confused and shocked.

An American Werewolf in London has no denouement and nearly everyone the first time that view it are stunned by the unexpected and nearly slap in the face manner in which the film goes to credits and end song.

Think about your denouement and what you need it to do and how you will achieve it.

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Movie Review: The Bikeriders

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Exploitation movies are ones that often focus on outcasts and other characters not part of ‘mainstream’ culture usually with an emphasis on violence, drugs, and sexual activity.

Slice of Life Movies are a genre that are more staid, calm, and depict the day to day living of a set of characters usually family or close friends without a plot that presents some existential danger.

By Focus Features – IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74764749

The 1960s and 1970s saw a marked growth in exploitation cinema including the ‘biker’ subgenre and the withering of the Slice of life genre so one might expect 2024’s The Bikeriders to be a modern interpretation of exploitation but in reality it is a slice of life where the family is the chose family of the motorcycle club The Vandals.

Inspired by the photobook and interviews found in The Bikeriders as photojournalist and author Danny Lyon and his immersion into the real-life motorcycle club The Outlaws, The Bikeriders is fictional with fictional characters closely modeled on reality.

Told primarily by way of interviews that narrate flashbacks the film follows the growth and eventually degeneration of The Vandals as its nature and membership changed during the late 60s and early 70s. The story’s principal point of view is that of Kathy Bauer (Jodie Comer), her love and marriage to Benny (Austin Butler) and the man that divides Benny’s loyalty the club leader Johnny (Tom Hardy).

While there is some violence in this film it is not exploitative and it is not glorified. The Bikeriders at its heart seems to the be about the hole at the center of modern masculinity. Johnny starts the club on a whim and Benny’s deep laconic loyalty is never fully explored. For both these men and most of the members The Vandals fills some missing emotional need, a need that neither man ever explores or voices but drives them to lethal dangers just the same.

This is not a film that wears its thesis statement on its sleeve. The message is left entirely up to the audience for interpretation. Life and death seemingly come at random without reason or meaning throughout the story and there is scarcely any plot. It is a character study of particular people in a particular time, one that will play quite well on streaming at home.

The Bikeriders is not for everyone, but it is an interesting film with vividly drawn characters that remain with after the reels have stopped spinning.

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John Grant: a Study in Masculinity, Arrogance, and Self-Loathing

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Last night in preparation to listening to the podcast The Evolution of Horror‘s discussion I re-watched 1971’s Australian social horror Wake in Fright.

Spoilers

The film, based on the novel of the same title by Kenneth Cook, follows young schoolteacher John Grant on his scorching Christmas vacation. After losing all his money gambling Grant is stranded in the town of Bundanyabba in the parched Australian outback. He descends into a multi-day drinking binge with local men, partakes in a cruel, vicious kangaroo hunt that is more slaughter than hunt, and a likely drunken homosexual assignation. After failing to kill himself and spending the rest of his vacation in hospital Grant return to the even smaller town where he teaches and rents a room answering queries with, yeah, he had a good holiday.

From the moments we meet Grant silently waiting out the end of the school day so he can flee just like the children he teaches it’s clear that he harbors a deep disdain for the people of the outback. This is not alienated by the somewhat larger town of Bundayabba ‘The Yabba’ and he treats these townsfolk with similar condescension. Grant’s action however reveals him to be no more intelligent and in fact less so that the locals enjoying their drink and gambling when he loses all of his travel funds playing ‘Two-up.’ The ancient saying is that pride goes before the fall is concretely fact for the character of John Grant.

While the character displays a deep abiding disdain for the locals, he is shown repeatedly lacking the internal will to resist their peer pressure. He introduces himself as John Grant but when the local cop more than once calls him ‘jack’ a common enough nickname for people named John, Grant never corrects him, despite never during his staying introducing himself that way. Again and again Grant when pressed by other men caves to the pressure to drink, a strong indication that internally Grant is incomplete and possibly at war with himself.

During an evening of binge drinking Grant is led for a nighttime stroll by the adult daughter of one his mates. Janette in a direct and forward manner attempts to seduce Grant into sexual intercourse but after wordlessly and timidly complying he is unable to perform, scrambling off the prone woman to vomit. It is interesting that in a film that stays with John during his multiday alcoholic binge and takes to the effort to deal with going to the toilet the only depiction of retching is when he is sexually engaged with the film’s only substantial female character. Even after his same-sex drunken encounter where many movies would insert a reference to the character vomiting, Wake in Fright does not. John Grant’s sexuality is left an unanswered question with a very reasonable interpretation being that he is deeply closeted and in the hyper-masculine world of the Australian Outback quite self-loathing.

Masculinity plays an important element in Wake in Fright. It is always men who insist on John joining them in drinking. It is men who question why John would prefer talking with a woman to drinking. It is to men that John seems always trying to prove himself with boasts of his skill with a rifle and eventually with his attempt to match their physical prowess wrestling with and slaughter by hand with a knife an injured and immature kangaroo. John’s holiday plans had apparently been to travel to Sydney and be with Robin and yet the entire time he is stranded in ‘the Yabba’ he never attempts to call her for assistance. In the novel is apparently clear that the phot he carries is of a woman he has seen, knows somewhat but is not romantically involved with. The film never directly touches on this fantasy of a romantic relationship, but his visions of ‘Robin’ are never full scenes but something more like a teenager’s imaginings. It is what John Grant thinks being masculine is and something he can’t achieve.

Wake in Fright ends ambiguously on the nature of Grant’s character. The audience has no clue is his comment that he enjoyed his vacation was simply a polite but meaningless response or if in retrospect he did enjoy his sojourn to ‘the Yabba.’ There are dramatic gestures such as tearing up the photograph of Robin or any overly emotional reaction to the town on his return. Any change, revelation, or acceptance of Grant’s character by Grant is purely internal for John Grant alone.

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The Most Unlikely Movie I want to See This Year

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It’s not The Bikeriders which looks fascinating though I suspect I am going to have trouble with the accents. No, the movie I am almost certain to make a trip to the cinema to watch is MaXXXine the direct sequel and third film in the ‘X’ franchise.

A24

When X originally debuted in 2022 I had little interest in seeing it. Slashers are my least loved genre of horror films and nothing in the advertising gave me any reason to suspect that X would pierce that disinterest. Then a number of horror cinema podcasts began touting the movie’s style and quality and I relented taking in a late-night screening at my local multiplex.

X bored me with cliche character acting in stupid manners that no actual person would. It was repeat with the tropes and worn-out ideas from countless other slashers with only the barest of novelties.

Fine. The movie was not for me, and I chalked it up to learning where my tastes differed from those on the podcasts. The prequal film Pearl came and went without sparking any interest in me and this year we get MaXXXine which follows the sole survivor of X and her quest for fame in Hollywood.

Something in these trailers have hooked my attention and curiosity. The cast looks fantastic and despite my utter disappointment with X and its illogical script I am being pulled into MaXXXine’s orbit.

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The Birds is Overrated

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The podcast The Evolution of Horror for its current season is covering horror films in which nature is the source of horror with Nature Bites Back and last week’s episode reached Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds.

Universal Studios

While I am familiar with the movie and even have some vague memories of it playing on the television while I was present, I cannot actually say that I ever watched the film in its entirety. Now I have and my verdict is that it is vastly overrated.

I am a fan of slow-burn horror which is what The Birds should have been but there is slow and there is full stop dead in the water. The first half of the film is socialite’s Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) and her jesting infatuation and meet cute with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). She follows him to his weekend home in the idyllic coastal village of Bodega Bay just north of San Francisco. Meets his former flame, his little sister, and cool, aloof mother. It is nearly 50 minutes into this film titled The Birds before the first bird strike occurs. There had been no real build-up to this, no ominous images of avian observation, in short from the master of suspense there had been no suspense.

The second half of the film is the building level of bird attacks that comes in widely spaces waves with the attack at the restaurant and gas stations providing the most dramatic clips. (It also displays Bodega bay’s fire department as incompetent as they attempt to use direct water sprays to fight a class B fire.)

The films 3rd act retreats to a siege story as the principal characters become trapped in a house, boarded up tight against the flocking fatalities. Then after suffering one last massive valley from the birds the characters in the lengthy pause between waves get into a car and drive away.

I am not bothered by the fact that the cause of the attacks is unknown. I am not bothered by the fact that there is no clear indication that the attacks actually ever end. That sort of ambiguous ending is something I can very much get behind. I am bothered that the characters’ survival and escape has nothing to do with the characters and the choices that they make. There is no moment of decision. No moment of insight. No moment when someone is terribly torn between what they want and what needs to happen. The birds pause and the characters drive away, utterly and completely devoid of agency on any of the characters’ part.

The Birds is a film I shall not watch again.

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The Watchers are Best Unobserved

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I am most intrigued by horror films and stories that swing for unusual concepts and ideas. When the trailer for The Watchers dropped it peaked my interested but cautiously.

New Line Studios

The Watchers is the story if Mina (Dakota Fanning) an American woman living in Ireland avoiding the traumatic memories of her mother’s death. While transporting a Sun Conure to a distant zoo Mina becomes stranded in a deep and threatening forest. One that voice over prolog has already painted as not appearing on any map and that draws damaged souls. As night falls Min discovers a concrete structure and warned to flee inside before the daylight is gone or she will die.

Inside she meets the other people trapped by the forest. Ciara (Georgina Campbell) the surviving spouse of a couple that had become stranded in the forest. Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) a rebellious local and Madeline (Olwen Fouere) an older woman who holds the knowledge of the rules that keep them alive. Each evening ‘they’ strange unseen creatures come to the structure and spend the hours of darkness observing the people on display. No one has ever seen the creatures and to be caught outside after dark is to die, as what happened to Ciara’s husband.

This premise, adapted from a novel by A.M. Shine, holds tons of intriguing promise. There are mysteries to uncover. Who are the watchers? Why do they spend their hours watching the trapped humans? What is the nature of the forest and where did the shelter come from?

A premise such as this lives or dies on the answer to those questions and how those answers are discovers. The Watchers fails on both counts. The answers are inconsistent even within the story’s own logic and most are vomited at the audience by way of ‘info dumps.’ when your 3-act movie has a massive info dump in the third act you know that it has failed at the most basic level.

In addition to the supernatural elements The Watchers expects the audience to accept situations that are utterly beyond credibility. There is no way in hell a professors University office remains untouched, unused for 14 or 15 years so a character as go there and discover the story’s final twist.

The greatest failing of The Watchers is not the clumsy exposition or the bluntly illogic f it backstory and construction but rather that the characters are flat, uninteresting, and devoid of any characteristic for which someone forced to endure a screening might find some form of emotional engagement. I never once cared what happened to anyone in this movie. Throughout the screening I was more concerned about getting some sleep unreservedly uninterested in any of these people’s outcomes.

I can find no reason that anyone should endure this movie.

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