"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Josh Ruben has been doing good work in the horror comedy arena, and Heart Eyes is perfectly pleasant even if doesn't entirely work. The clever premise - a romcom mixed with a slasher flick (which acts like the third in a non-existent franchise) - requires a tight balance the movie doesn't always achieve. But it almost works. Heart Eyes is a good monster - until such a time as the movie over-explains itself, anyway - and our heroes, Olivia Holt an Mason "Core Four" Gooding are charming romcom characters partnering to defeat him (if, indeed, Gooding doesn't turn out to BE him). There's some fun subversion of romcom tropes as the party gets crashed by the slasher, but it still feels like the balance is leaning too far into the romantic comedy. And as the target of the lampoon, it's not where our interest really lies. Face it, horror fans are more likely to embrace Heart Eyes than romcom fans. Not to say it's perfectly gory, and that at least one wretched couple doesn't get their due (you want your slasher to be defeated, but also to kill the most repugnant characters). Also pokes fun at police vs. serial killer narratives. Amusing, but all over the place.
At home: I'll always be a sucker for the Apollo missions and therefore, was the the target audience for Fly Me to the Moon. Directed by Greg Berlanti of Arrowverse fame, it definitely has Berlanti-isms, like characters awkwardly finishing each other's sentences, but not too many. It's a romcom set around the first moon landing, with very pleasant actors doing a good job with the material, though for the most part playing fictional characters. It's actually distracting to know enough about the space program to see these people replace whoever was really present. There's actually a story to tell about how they sold the missions to the American public (and Congress) as interest waned, and those are the best bits, fictionalized in a single grifter character, and the way they tie it into the urban myth that the landing was faked is interesting and doesn't enrage me the way the conspiracy tends to. So it's perfectly fine, but it never really - obligatory pun incoming - lifts off.
Joan Micklin Silver's first film, Hester Street, will have you believing she made a silent film in the 1970s. That's just the opener - it's a talky! - but it does draw you into the 1890s in a clever way. It's an immigrant story, by way of Jews escaping the hardships of Eastern Europe, and Steven Keats is Jake, a Jew who prides himself on having turned himself into an American. Of course, it's a very ironic view of the "Melting Pot", and he only ever speaks to other Jews, and his "success" is far afield of the American Dream(TM). Things take a turn when his wife (Carol Kane) arrives in New York and takes a long time to acclimate. The impatient Jake becomes the villain of the piece - a bad husband and Ugly American(also TM) - and SHE becomes the lead. It's a very interesting structure that plays with your affections. And Jake may find out an Americanized wife is even more of a problem for him...
You know, I always thought Shelley Duvall and Veronica Cartwright should play sisters, maybe because I confused them as a kid. But I didn't know they were in a movie together! In Bernice Bobs Her Hair, they're cousins (and honestly, Polly Holliday as the mother/aunt makes three, this is impeccably cast). It's the 1920s, and Duvall is the gawky, boring Bernice, not having much success in High Society. Her catty cousin Marjorie (Cartwright) teaches her a few tricks and soon she might be the Belle of the Ball! Be careful what you wish for, Marje! A very witty film that has something to say about creating social tension to accrue popularity - teasing is fine, but going through with what you were teasing deflates the balloon - and there's something Wildean about what these folks consider "outrageous". I could have had it be a full feature, but at a pat 45 minutes, it's probably just right.
Joan Micklin Silver's second collaboration with John Heard, Chilly Scenes of Winter (AKA Head Over Heels) presents a mature take on the love story, one that hasn't worked out, but for no lack of Heard's character trying. Silver subtly deconstructs the romcom by exposing the grand romantic gesture as something ultimately futile, because a woman's heart isn't something to "win". The focus on him as our POV character - reeling from her absence and taking us into flashbacks of the relationship - doesn't negate HER life story, only helps to hide it. And if you let go of your movie expectations, you'll soon realize Heard is playing a smothering, jealous jerk. His feelings are genuine, but that doesn't give him a claim. Mary Beth Hurt, in his eyes, is just a step away from the manic pixie dream girl trope, but always fighting against the perception. Movies make these things seem uncomplicated; Silver restores those complications in a fairly witty way.
Another adult romance from Joan Micklin Silver, Crossing Delancey has Amy Irving (who I, probably unfairly, mostly know from De Palma 70s horror flicks) as a Jewish thirtysomething with ambitions beyond her neighborhood, nevertheless dragged back there for an arranged meetcute with a neighborhood boy, at her spirited grandmother's behest. Maybe what she doesn't want is what she really needs, and is motivated by the wrong things. If you left your past behind, would you be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if there were reason to return? Both she and Peter Riegert take part in this tug of war between one's rejection of a fix-up and the chemistry one might actually feel is there. If you want something to fail, it's pretty easy to achieve that, but can you walk it back? The principals are charming and very watchable, but it's theater actress Reizl Bozyk as the grandma who steals the show.
Peak Jerry Stiller, A Fish in the Bathtub might as well be The Frank Constanza Movie, if only George were played by Mark Ruffalo. He and real-life spouse Anne Meara are an aging couple who wittily bicker until it breaks them apart. Can their kids get them back together before they drive them crazy? The title fish acts as a catalyst, but isn't in it as much as I would like, and the metaphor is represents is a little vague. I suppose the fish is trapped in its own element, too big for its bathtub even if it isn't mistreated. Maybe. It ends up just being an eccentric element in an otherwise pleasant late-life crisis comedy. You root for Stiller even if he's ready to argue with the entire world, but also don't want Meara to settle for him if he doesn't make proper amends (mostly, for taking her for granted). The Ruffalo subplot shows his own marriage in trouble after one of his lusty clients puts the moves on him, even as his parents start to date outside their couple, so I suppose the film is really about knowing when you've got it good. As in most Joan Micklin Silver, gossip is pervasive and everyone seems to know everyone else's business.
[British Virgin Islands] A cute romance set set in the Caribbean, Virgin Island has American John Cassavetes and Englishwoman Virginia Maskell quickly fall in love after a sandy meetcute and decide to move onto a small desert island, without any thought as to how that would work. Troubles is, while there's no lack of problems facing the characters, they always get out of them easily. People are nice and helpful, things tend to fix themselves, and there's really only any kind of real excitement in the final reel. Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier are never not watchable and act as anchors, and Maskell is also pleasant, and that's the film's saving grace. It's certainly not the plot. (On a very personal note, I just finished reading the adaptation of the Doctor Who story "The Faceless Ones", and here's the airport commandant - Colin Gordon - as the Commissioner... does he never play roles that have first and last names?)
Let me run through some Caribbean shorts here...
[US Virgin Islands] The Most Basic Form of Mind Control Is Repetition is a gonzo film essay that ties film images to others and to real-world events, drawing a thick red string of coincidence/inspiration between them. Fun, despite the necessarily grim "real world" elements.
[Anguilla] Well, An Anguilla Adventure isn't a movie. It's a drone-happy tourism video that amounts to a lot of adverts for local businesses and products, and rather flatly narrated, at that. Yes, I get it, every place you go serves rum. Hilariously, the travel blogger's hard-coded subtitles for the natives writes Bob Dylan as Dillon. No disrespect to the island intended.
[Antigua and Barbuda] Taking Antigua's pre-Columbus name as a title, Dadli is a documentary not so much about the facts of a place, but about its soul. The impressions of a boy living on the island - and not the touristy side, either - gives an impressionistic sense of what it might be like to live there. Wish there had been subtitles to parse the accent. The island has some of the most beautiful donkeys.
[Montserrat] Despite its subtitle, Montserrat: Emerald of the Caribbean is not one of those dreaded tourism videos. Rather, it refers to the island's historical connection to Ireland, which is all very interesting, but in the back half of the documentary devolves into St. Patrick's Day celebrations that amount to a local variety show. Too bad. It had potential, especially given Montserrat was still recovering from a devastated volcanic eruption from 10 years before.
[Saint Lucia] The Fruit of Life is essentially a coconut oil commercial with a surprise machete murder in the middle of it.
Books: Conversations about the deconstruction of superhero comics that normally involve Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, should also spare a mention for Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme maxi-series. The fact that they normally don't lies, I think, in the fact that the scripting and art is much less sophisticated. Mid-80s Marvel through and through, it's recap heavy and very wordy. But the premise - Justice League analogs who decide to create a utopia by forcibly ending war, poverty, crime and disease - is one that would break normal superhero universes and was done again, perhaps to death, in the decades following (most successfully in The Authority). Gruenwald's other notable innovation is to make each issue take place a month from the last, over a real-word year. I liked the JLA remixes, and though the story heads for a necessary Big Fight(TM), the group's utopian solutions are interesting and should feel controversial. The collection also includes Captain American #314, a crossover with the main series, annoyingly tacked on at the back instead of when it's supposed to happen. Generally glad to have read it, but what would have blown my mind at age 14 now seems a little clumsy.
RPGs: On Torg Eternity this week... I'm hoping to restabilize when Acts ends soon because we've fallen into a pattern of ending them just before the climax, and thus starting on a big climactic battle when the players aren't particularly warmed up. Case in point, then apocalyptic end of a Tharkold scenario called "What Demons Fear", which had the scrawny brain guy faffing about against unkillable cyborg tanks while a combat-worthy bruiser jumped down into a missile silo to figure out the magical artifact opening a portal to an "archangel" that would have devastated the campaign world over time (I was ready for it, mind). But took it more slowly in the next Act, which took the team into the "World Between" (the underground dungeons beneath Aysle), setting up (or paying off) some NPCs, while the players mocked the fact that within minutes, they were on a side-quest (I like Aysle to feel like classic D&D in such ways, don't you know). Spending more time on social interaction at the top of what should be a medium-sized adventure will hopefully fix my timing issues...
Best bits: Missed opportunity for coolness - the Monster Hunter stuck his gun through the Frankenstein, in between some stitches, to use him as cover while he fired, but the latter ran off to do his thing before he could pull the trigger. The former wound up shocking out a cyborg with electric bullets, but it's not the same. The archangel turned the heavy cyborg's armor into tree bark, but the fight was over by then. Rendezvous in Tallinn, Estonia, a city that looks like it's right out of Aysle - players were awed by the fact it was a real, contemporary photo. The Freedom Magician used Mage Dark to good effect to get the jump on villains who had escaped from a previous mission. An elbow drop on a wounded, unconscious, defenseless wizard killed the guy, and as usual, while everyone was arguing about what to do with the shocked-out barbarian, the Monster Hunter impatiently killed him. The NPC ally almost left the party, but for a Persuasion roll; sociopathic PCs keep making their Corruption rolls. Bit of a surprise for a couple of players - brought back one of their one-shot PCs from the Day One adventures, but they'll have to act next session before he gets eaten by giant spiders.
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