Movie Review Brainstorm: (1965)

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Warner Brothers

Jim Grayam (Jeffrey Hunter, a year prior to his turn in Star Trek’s 1st failed pilot) discovers Lorrie Benson (Anne Francis) passed out in her car stopped dangerously on a railroad crossing. Jim moves the car second ahead of a speeding train and returns Lorrie to her home and her possessive and domineering husband millionaire Cort Benson (Dana Andrews). Eschewing any monetary reward Jim is pulled back into Lorrie’s orbit when she insists on his attendance at a party while her husband is away. Jim and Lorrie begin a torrid affair. (Tastefully off screen as the production while weakened still ruled in 1965.) Benson learning of the affair, deploys his wealth and contacts to destroy Jim’s life and the couple begin to plot their escape with the murder of her husband.

Directed by William Conrad who is best known as an actor, Brainstorm is a tight and fairly entertaining late film noir. There is enough flair in the presentation that make one regret that Conrad’s turned more to performance and less towards direction. Somewhat hampered by the jazz score, as many lesser budgeted films of this period were, the movie still is bolstered by fine performances and reveals that organically develop from the noir plotting.

Anne Francis is quite convincing as Lorrie the trapped spouse of an emotionally abusive man. Her character is not the conniving plotted femme fetal of film noir but rather a sympathetic and terrified woman desperate for escape, but ultimately too broken to stand on her own.

Jeffrey Hunter threw himself into the part of Jim Grayam. Skilled at portraying deeply internal characters here Hunter not only employs those talents but in the film’s third act get to let loose and devour the scenery with deliberately overly expansive performance.

Dana Andrews turns in a perfectly acceptable performance, but his character is one there to drive the plot and as such is the least developed of the core three.

Sam Leavitt’s cinematography is not particularly atmospheric nor is it overly pedestrian but rather balances neatly between the two.

Brainstorm is part of the Criterion Channel’s Hollywood Crack-up collection, a compilation of films dealing with madness and mental manipulation. Before this set appeared on the channel I had never heard of Brainstorm (1965) but I do not regret the one and three-quarters hours I spent Sunday evening watching this piece of cinema.

Brainstorm is currently streaming on The Criterioon Channel.

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Villainy in The Wicker Man (1973)

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(Spoilers for a 57-year-old film)

Another May 1st has come and gone the fictional anniversary of the loss of Sargent Neil Howie West Highland Police to the neo-pagan cult on Summerisle.

The Wicker Man is considered one third of the ‘unholy trinity’ of British Folk Horror films along with Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Witchfinder General. Of the three films The Wicker Manis by far my favorite and the one that intrigues me the most.

Canal Studios

After being lured to the produced producing island of Summerisle by a bogus missing child case, Sgt Howie (Edward Woodward) is burned alive as a human sacrifice by the island’s neo-pagan population lead by the community and religious leader Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee.)

The question of villainy in this story is an interesting one. Clearly deceiving Howie, subjecting him to secrets tests to determine his suitability as a sacrifice, and then burning him alive to appease the goddess of the fields are not the actions of a good and heroic people.

Howie however while less overly threatening or dangerous displays a willingness and a conviction that the people of Summerisle must be brought to a Christian heel, to be compelled to live in a manner consistent with his interpretation of his religion. His disdain and intent to bring ‘the authorities’ to Summerisle precede any knowledge of actual wrongdoing or violence. Had there been no missing child and Howie had stumbled upon Summerisle he still would have scampered off to bring official action against the people.

It is in these two diametrically that I see the real villain of The Wicker Man; dogmatic conviction.

Blind obedience led the neo-pagans to horribly slaughter a stranger for the island’s religious practices and that very same straitjacket of belief would have led Howie to force his interpretation of morality upon the island.

The small ‘l’ libertarian in me finds all parties in the film to be utterly horrifying, with the neo-pagans only marginally more dangerous.

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Movie Review: Argylle

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From Director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jason Fuchs comes the action/comedy spy flick Argylle.

Apple Films

Ellie Conway (Brice Dallas Howard) author of a series of very successful spy novel featured super spy Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) finds herself perused by assassins because her novels have been recounting actual events and missions and now a shadowy agency believes that she has the key to locating the story McGuffin. A lone agent Aiden Wilde (Sam Rockwell) attempts to protector her and find the McGuffin in time to win the day.

Argylle starts off in the fictional world of Elle’s novel with vastly exaggerated action and daring feats in theory setting up a dual setting for the film, the over-the-top world of Elle’s imagination and a more grounded reality if her life. This is not what happens the ‘real’ world that Elle’s inhabits is just as exaggerated and requires the same impossible suspension of disbelief as the adventures of Agent Argylle requires.  At one point as we watched the movie at home I turned to my sweetie-wife and said that I missed the grounded realism of Marvel’s Black Widow. (Which we watched the next night as a palate cleanser.)

Despite having a number of cast member that I truly love watching, Bryan Cranston, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L Jackson, and the incomparable Catherine O’Hara, Argylle with is inconsistent tone, contradictory plot and story lines, proved to be a slog to watch. The production design made no distinction between Elle’s imagined events and the supposedly real ones giving the entire movie a sameness that served no purpose. A number of the settings were crafted from CGI and not actual location but with a level of artificiality that created a ‘uncanny valley’ when looking at valleys and not just people.

I can find nothing to recommend in Argylle and it pleases me that my sweetie-wife made the call that we waited until streaming to watch this piece of dreck.

Argylle, should you wish to torture yourself, is streaming on Apple TV+.

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On Fictional Cursing

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Recently on the social media sites where writers congregate there has been a small discussion on the subject of invented curses. Should a writer just use the curses that everyone uses and is familiar with or invent new one for their fantasy and far-future settings.

Invented cursing like artificial slang is a very touchy thing to pull off. Those of us geeks old enough to remember the original run of Battlestar Galactica recall the programs invented curse words like ‘frak’ and ‘feldercarb.’ (I am not cure of the spelling of that last one.) Which were one-for-one replacements for ‘fuck’ and ‘bullshit.’

This ‘just replace it with an invented word’ style of fictional cursing misses the point and understanding of cursing. Cursing is transgressive.

Cursing is about violating the ‘good taste’ and decorum of your culture. It is shocking and emotionally powerful because it is breaking norms and rules. If all you do is change ‘fuck’ to ‘frak’ then in effect you are saying that this alien culture thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of years in our history is just the same as ours today. Possessing the same values the same taboos and therefore the same sense of what is proper and polite.

That’s just lazy.

Plus, it misses the chances the golden opportunity for the writer to show us something about the new culture without stopping for exposition.

A culture with a lot of religion on its history or its current make up will have curse derived from that sense of religion.  No culture that doesn’t have some belief in torturous punishment through damnation is going to have the curse ‘damn you.’ If a culture places no important on familial bloodlines and lineages, then they are not going to use ‘bastard’ as an insult.

Star Trek’s Vulcan are a fiction race that prides itself on total control of their emotional reaction to the point that they insist that they have no emotions. Displaying and suggesting a Vulcan has displayed emotion would be an insult and transgressive. While they are not given to angry outbursts, I could see a Vulcan character calmly looking upon an enemy and saying,’ I have no doubt that gives you,” then with a pause for emphasis ‘joy.’ A stinging insult and rebuke delivered with a flat affectation.

So, think about the cultures your create and then ponder deep on what they consider transgressive and there you will find you curses and insults.

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Where the Alien Franchise Went Astray

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As I write this people across the internets are celebrating the 45th anniversary of the release of Alien, a science-fiction horror film that spawned sequel after sequel and nearly countless knockoffs and imitations.

20th century films

In my appraisal there are only two Alien films of quality, Alien and Aliens. James Cameron wisely decided when he wrote and directed the sequel to the original film that his was not to be horror but action/adventure with only tone of horror. With the conclusion of Aliens Ripley’s story came to an organic and satisfying end. Healed from her traumatic encounter with the Zeta Reticulian parasite and with a new composite family there should have been no more to tell for this woman.

Naturally the studios screwed that up and insulted the audience along the way.

With the next film, Alien3, a production that had a hard release date before it has even a story treatment much less a script, after abandoning such vaunted SF concepts such as wooden space stations crew by technophobic monks, the producers opened the story by killing Ripley’s new family.

The producers considered the audience suckers for investing any emotional energy or commitment to these characters. The lesson is quite clear. Nothing you care about matters. No victory is lasting, all happiness is fleeting, we bring you only despair. Is it really surprising that this production is the one that introduced sexual assault to the franchise?

The proper course after Aliens would have been to craft new stories about new characters. The bold and correct choice would have been to even abandon the parasite as the central threat. Horror repeated becomes adventure and further repeated become dull. This is of course not what the studio did, instead, reviving poor Ripley from her demise and adding scores of parasites in a futile attempt to create a sense of danger and dread where only lame action now existed.

Two ‘prequel’ movies have been produced, a pair of Alien vs Predator movies have squeezed a little more cash from the concept and this year, yet another movie will be released but everything after Aliens has been crap.

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Pleasantly Surprised

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Last week I returned to a manuscript I hadn’t touched in something like three years. My plans are to prep it and send it out to small press publishers of SF novels.

Naturally, I had to review it to make sure that I had the correct file and that there weren’t any major glaring embarrassing errors lurking in the text.

While I am tweaking a sentence here and there, just a really light edit, overall, the text is reading just fine. In fact, I find myself pulled into a story that I already know quite well. Not only am I not unhappy with the work I am quite pleased with it.

This may all be self-delusion. The creator is often the worst judge of the creation but three chapters in and I really am very happy with my writing.

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After ‘The End’

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Sometimes when a film has finished the credits have scrolled into history my mind ponders the next sequence of event for the characters. I am not speaking of sequel stories and further adventures but rather the immediate fallout of the events that just transpired.

67 years ago this week a classic of American Cinema was released to theaters 12 Angry Men, the story of a jury originally deadlocked 11-1 in favor of a murder conviction that grapples with prejudice and racism as they search for justice and their own souls. *spoilers* bit by painful bit the jurors uncover doubt in the prosecutions seemingly open and shut case until after conquering their own biases they reach an acquittal. The story ends with the jurors going their own way on a rain-soaked street as sunlight returns to the world.

I adore this film. Masterful writing, acting, and filmmaking in a tightly confined location. I do also ponder what the newspaper the next day looked like. The case against the young defendant looked so absolute, so solid. No one writing about the case or reading about would have been treated to the deep discussions and debate over evidence that in the public eye had seemed so certain and incontrovertible. I have no doubt that there would have been excoriating opinion pieces about an idiot jury that let a killer walk free, opinion pieces that might have proved quite popular.

Another movie that sparked fascination in what transpired after the final reel is the Cohen Brothers’ neo-noir Blood Simple.

A tale of lust, greed, and murder Blood Simple is a salute to classic film noir but one that isn’t like its predecessors constrained by the ‘Production Code.’

In the film one of the protagonists takes what he assumes is a corpse to a field to bury it. The person isn’t dead but gets buried anyways. Horrific. However, it’s not the gruesome nature of the killing that really set my mind wondering but rather the ‘hiding’ of the body. When I said it was in a field you might have imagined an open stretch of unused land, perhaps in a secluded forest. Nope. This is a farmer’s freshly plowed but not yet planted productive land. It’s a striking visual, the parallel lines of the plow interrupted by the stark unique rectangle of a grave, but what happens the next morning? I imagine a tired farmer ambling to his field to begin the daily work and stopping shocked at the sight of a grave in the middle of his future corn field. This ‘hiding’ isn’t going to last twelve hours as it’s almost certain that the county Sheriff is going to be involved very quickly.

It’s this sort of pondering that prompted me to write an epilog to my horror novel. Perhaps, if it sells, the editor will ask me to cut the epilog but I knew that had I read or seen my own story I would have been wondering how, with so many dead people scattered about the town, did the protagonist not spend the rest of his days answering very difficult charges.

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Another Movie Review: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

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This past weekend was a two-movie weekend and after seeing Abigail on Friday evening Sunday morning me and my sweetie-wife took in Guy Ritchie’s latest film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. (Henceforth referred to as The Ministry.)

Lionsgate

The Ministry is a highly fictionalized retelling of Operation Postmaster and early mission by the Special Operations Executive to degrade Nazi U-boat operations in the Atlantic. The supply vessel Duchessa D’Aosta carries vital equipment and provisions for the U-boats and because the ship is in a neutral Spanish harbor off the coast of West Africa a direct military assault could bring Fascist Spain into the war on the Axis side. Instead, a very small team of disreputable agents lead by Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) is sent in to destroy the ship at anchor. Operating out of uniform in in a neutral port if the teams is captured torture and death await them.

From its opening musical score and its poster art The Ministry is like a classic ‘Spaghetti Wester’ melded with a World War II action flick. The heroes all possess fantastic skills and preternatural cool. Plans go awry, the enemy is more skill and numerous that expected, schedules are disrupted and through it all March-Phillips and his team of Nazi killers remain steadfast, committed, and collected.

This is not a movie with deep social commentary or complex questions of morality, it is a romp, a fun couple of hours watching incredible competent men and women handle adversity and challenges in the manor of our fantasies. Aside from the theater’s sound system being way too loud I had a quite enjoyable time with this movie and as long as you do not go in with expectations of reality, I think you will as well.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is currently playing in theaters.

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Movie Review: Abigail

Universal Pictures

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From the creatives at Radio Silence that brought to life the delightful horror/comedy Ready or Not comes their latest bit of cinematic fun Abigail.

If you have seen the trailers, then you know the core concept: a gang of professional criminals kidnap a young girl in hopes of a massive payoff but discover to their horror that she is in fact a vampire and they must now fight to survive their criminal enterprise.

The film and the trailer, with their tongue pressed firmly into their cheek, makes liberal use of music from Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake a nod to Universal granddaddy of Vampire films 1931’s Dracula which used the ballet’s themes as its score.

The film is led by Melissa Barrera as ‘Joey’ the most sympathetic member of the kidnapers and who displays the most concern for Abigail before they learn of the girl’s true monstrous nature. Joey contends for leadership of the gang against ‘Frank’ (Dan Stevens) a former police officer and the most hardened of the criminals.

Abigail, like Ready or Not before leans more towards the comedic than the horrific. The writers and directors display an utter lack of concern with the quantities of cinematic blood that they explode across their frames. There are twists within the simple and contained plot of the film but none that aren’t easily deduced from clues contained with the movie’s trailers. The film can be seen as the love child of The Usual Suspects and an over-the-top Hammer movie.

The cast is uniformly good with particularly standout performances from Kevin Durand as ‘Peter’ the dimwitted muscle of the group and Alisha Weir as the title character Abigail. Weir shows remarkable range for so young a performer going to terrified child to threatening monster in the space of a breath.

Abigail is a not a deep film that comments on the ineffable nature of the human condition but rather is something fun the be experienced and enjoyed. The filmmaking is clever and competent enough that things are established but not so blatantly as to be obvious. This is a film that will be best enjoyed in a theater with a crowd of people laughing and screaming with the rapid onscreen escapades.

Abigail is currently player in theaters.

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Consider the Transporter in Star Trek

CBS Home Video

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Developed as a means of sidestepping the impossible production challenge of landing a ship every time the characters went ashore in Star Trek the transporter is a marvel of impossible science and utterly fantastic energies.

The show’s lore the transport converts the target’s, usually a person, matter into energy, beams it to a distant location, then reconverts that energy back into matter precisely recreating the person at the new location.

Let’s sidestep the ‘Ship of Theseus’ question if the reconstituted person is actually the same person or not for another essay and focus on the physics of this process.

Einstein revolutionized the world with his understanding that energy and matter were equivalents as set forth in the world’s most famous equation E=MC^2. The energy value of a mass is equal to that mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.

Let’s put a 50-kilogram (110 lbs.) person on the transporter and set them down.

50 kg converted entirely to energy becomes 4,500,000,000,000 megajoules. Such a number is simply beyond human comprehension. It is the equivalent 71 thousand Hiroshima bombs delivered instantaneously as a beam to a distant location. If the transporter chief held a grudge against the person on the planet that had sold him a crummy watch, he could deliver 71 thousand Hiroshimas.

There is a reason why in my Space Opera role playing games when I have introduced a transporter like device it has never ever been of the variety that directly converted matter to energy and back again. Star Trek would have been far better served if someone had decided early on that the transport simply created a gate between places and saved us from both bad technobabble solutions to problems (we’ll just put the doctor in and reconstitute her from an early pattern) and not introduce a weapon of such scale and destruction.

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