"Accomplishments"
In theaters: While I liked at least half the Resident Evil movies as the dumb action movies they were, Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil is better than those, while not entirely doing away with the dark comedy of the franchise. (I mean, though the game is scary - not that I've ever played it - it still takes place in "Raccoon City", so I don't think we can really take things too seriously.) I love a wintry horror film, and certainly, this can be called Cregger's version of The Thing. Austin Abrams is a medical courier who has to drive up a mountain (The Shining?) for a delivery, in what turn out to be a zombie apocalypse scenario. Cregger has a lot of fun making him try action hero things that don't work in the real world (nor in this one), and there is certainly some "video game plotting" going on (which, these days, isn't relegated to video game movies). Our boy's arc is that he has a pregnant girlfriend, but is afraid of change, which is a pretty basic metaphor in a movie about mutation. The previous year's Exit 8, a Japanese movie also based on a video game, did the same thing, right down to the phone call and the imagery that kept invoking birth, children and failing fatherhood. Of course, it's an arc that might not be resolved in a Resident Evil set-up. Either way, it's a lot of fun, well shot, with lots of laughs and creepy gross-out effects.
At home: Ray Romano's Somewhere in Queens (he co-wrote it, directed it and stars in it) is a matter-of-fact comedy about not feeling seen. He's the invisible man in his large, extended family, lowest man on the totem pole in the family business, having made the mistake of being born "the sensitive one". Living vicariously through his son, a star athlete, who has his own problems - anxiety and extreme shyness - is a refuge that might prove toxic. Laurie Metcalf - kind of manifesting her inner Edith Bunker - is good as well, as the mother who has her own reasons for keeping her son around. Enter the boy's new girlfriend, an outspoken free spirit who immediately disrupts the world order, but Romano doesn't let the set-up run away with the tropes it suggests. The movie is more realistic than that. I found myself laughing out loud several times at the observational humor, and though the ending was rather poignant. A nice little surprise. Romano should do more behind the camera.
Set in the Thatcher era, Blue Jean is an authentic-feeling lesbian story about a a Phys. Ed. teacher (Rosy McEwin) who has to hide her identity at work lest she be laid off in the wake of governmental condemnation, her life complicated when one of her students walks into her favorite gay bar. She has no business being there, but will she tell? Can you trust an angsty, angry teenager to keep a secret when her teacher perhaps doesn't take her side in the systemic bullying she's suffering at school? Jean doesn't always do the right thing, but the slice of life drama shows us a world of mistrust and paranoia - still true in many corners, or simply replace homosexuality with trans identity - that explains, if not excuses, the misbehavior. It's easy to judge from the future. McEwen is very good, but the MVP for me is Kerrie Hayes as her long-suffering girlfriend, who may or may not be able to take this "closeting" for much longer. Her back and forths feel entirely real to me, and never slip into the kind of melodrama such situations often provoke.
Danny DeVito was the king of black comedy in the 80s and 90s, and Ruthless People is kind of his first vehicle for it. He plays a rich dick who wants to kill his wife (Bette Midler), but she's kidnapped by people he once screwed over and held at ransom. But it's perfect, because he has no intention of paying it. Now, normally, this kind of "take my wife, please" comedy doesn't generate much interest, but it quickly becomes a comedy of errors of the highest degree, and it's really fun to watch the misunderstandings develop. One of the amusing things, of course, is the NON-ruthless people: Judge Reinhold and Helen "Supergirl" Slater as naive, kind-hearted kidnappers really at the mercy of Midler's vicious character, and often at the wrong end of Home Alone-style slapstick. Throw in DeVito's girlfriend and her dumb lover (the sultry Anita Morris and Bill Pullman at his blondest) and THEIR scheme to get his millions, and the complications pile up. And so from potentially trite beginnings (the 80s-ness is irritatingly strong with this one), the film blooms into a punch-the-air revenge/heist comedy that's still a lot of fun today.
[2014] Skeleton Twins: All I knew about this movie was the bit where the characters lipsync to Starship, and I was surprised to note it wasn't the movie's climax. Either way, it's emblematic of the best thing about it, which is Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig just having enormous fun together. The moments of "yes, and" speaks to their great chemistry, and the laughs look genuine. You can believe they are brother and sister, if not by blood, then by SNL. Both performers are adept at drama, and more than that, seek it out (Barry, Welcome to Me). The eponymous twins reunited after a decade essentially thanks to their self-destructiveness - almost simultaneous failed suicide attempts on two coasts. as they start taking care of each other, their dark pasts are exposed to the audience, and their presents to one another. It's dark, but not hopeless; sad, but also charming. What they have, by virtue of who is playing them, is the ability to laugh at the world, and it might be warm enough an ember to keep them going.
[2015] A Man Called Ove: In this black comedy, a widower tries to commit suicide to rejoin his wife, but he keeps getting interrupted by the gated community he continually rails against, in particular the new neighbors who very naturally become his co-dependents. It's through others that we come to love Ove, a curmudgeon and stickler for the rules, in their assuming he's got a big heart under that grumpy exterior, and being proven right. Or through his wife's eyes in flashbacks that explain his particular attitude, though she is largely a manic pixie dream ghost, attaining sainthood in his mind, a monument to the woman she loved. One images she was rather more like the Iranian neighbor played by the most excellent Bahar Pars - a fount of kindness, yes, but also someone who can put her foot down and make him behave. You chuckle at his "get off my lawn" personality initially, but the last chapter of Ove's life is quite poignant.
[2016] Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: What if Tim Burton made an X-Men movie? I'm being facetious - this is based on a book - but whatever the value of the source material, it's pretty clear the movie was an attempt to get the Harry Potter crowd. it feels a lot like that first HP (derogatory), with tons of weird stuff that's meant to be charming (I suppose) and special effects, and while I'm not saying there's no story, it's VERY slow to pick up. There's just an incredible amount of lore, and we're in expository mode for two full acts. The movie keeps explaining things, sometimes the same thing multiple times, sometimes explaining things that are extremely obvious. Things only really start moving in the third act, but there's eye-rolling exposition right up to the end credits. It's really boring. It's too bad because it's filled with actors I generally like, although only Eva Green as Peregrine herself gives us any actually emotional moment. I find it quite annoying that a lot of the Brits are using awkward American accent, and a lot of the Americans are using awkward British accents. Ridiculous. But then, late-era Burton seems to mostly cast for whoever has the biggest eyes.
[2017] Marrowbone: A British family flees their serial-killing father to America, where they have an ancestral home that's begging for a haunting. A pretty big cast for it, too (it's still early for Mia Goth). Though the film takes place in the 1960s, the look of it - I suppose largely due to the house, but a lot of the actors are (or will be) period piece veterans, so perhaps that tricks the mind - makes us feel like we're at the turn of the century. it certainly motivates a Gothic atmosphere perfect for sustaining a dark mystery. What happened the day a man shot at the family? Is there really a ghost in the attic, or is it a manifestation of their filial anxiety? Are the sins of the father visited on the child metaphorically or literally? Kyle Soller (Andor) plays the lawyer who could turn their lives upside down (man, he's got the entitled creep casting locked up). Keeps you guessing.
[2018] Mid90s: Starts with Jonah Hill throwing as much 90s stuff at the screen as possible (but no Chromium Age comics?! For shame!), ends like a Scared Straight PSA. In the middle is 11-year-old Stevie whose main interests are skateboarding and self-harm. His main character trait is bowing to peer pressure. He falls in with a group of "bad influences", older skaters who talk a lot of shit and make him do things he's too innocent to try. I find none of this personally relatable - I'm not a 90s kid either, so the nostalgia is ineffective - but it shouldn't prevent me from enjoying a movie. I do like the naturalism - most of Hill's performers don't appear to be practised actors, recruited among the skating community, I imagine - but I didn't entirely connect with it. It just tries too hard to be edgy (the kids' conversations are often foul and bigoted, lots of R-words and F-slurs, there's an underage sex scene, etc.), but in the end, it's just a soft R after-school special, and the ending doesn't really hit. Honestly, it needed more Katherine Waterston.
[2019] The Assistant: Julia Garner gives a powerful, yet fragile performance as a personal assistant (what we used to call a secretary) for a never-seen Hollywood mogul, evidently meant to represent a Weinstein. A toxic world of micro and macro aggressions, where one walks on egg shells to keep one's job, and told with such naturalism, I was both triggered by the office sounds and reminded of Akerman's Jeanne Dielman. Indeed, I wondered if that connection would lead to a cathartic moment, or if the raw naturalism would win and tell us "that's that". Adapted from interviews with film industry assistants, there's a lot of unaddressed weird stuff that's specific to that world, but my mom was a secretary, and trust me, the stuff she came home with, there are times when, if I had been a completely different person (and older), I would have walked into a couple of attorney's offices swinging a bat. #MeToo came out of Hollywood, but it doesn't just speak to that environment. There's something about positions that are innately submissive and servile that plays into a corrupt work dynamic, and which must be fought against. Seeing it in all its gritty, mundane detail is a necessary first step. And you know, the thing that I most got out of this is just how AWFUL office predators are AT THEIR JOBS.
Books: The Eighth Doctor's still stuck on Earth without his memory, but now it's the 1980s in Lance Parkin's Father Time, and he's really made a home for himself. The novel is actually divided into three separate "episodes", covering different parts of the decade, starting with a UFO story in small-town Britain, leading to the Doctor adopting a young girl who becomes his daughter over the course of the story. Miranda is a pretty cool character we get to see grow up, and though her destiny is wrapped up with the UFO people's, she's still - by upbringing if not blood - the fruit of the Doctor's tree. Semi-companion Debbie Knight is also quite well drawn. Doing this as three separate incidents allows for a lot of action and resolution - it moves like a freight train - and my only real problem with Parkin's writing is that the 80s references get a bit too nerdy. Characters discussing George Perez's art on New Teen Titans is the kind of stuff that just calls attention to itself. This, and all the Star Trek references, is a better NINETIES emulator, honestly. By then, Tarantino had made that kind of thing cool. Here, it feels a little patronizing to the suspected audience. Still a very fun book, coming at a point where the "Earth arc" could have been losing steam.
I can't say I'm a fan of the Hernandez Brothers, not because I'm adverse to their indie style, but I never got into Love & Rockets at the time, and I don't know how interested I've ever been in their long-running soap opera comics. Could be in my future still. But reaching for something of their in a genre I more regularly consume - the sci-fi story of Citizen Rex - hasn't been conclusive. The soap opera element is definitely there, in the number of characters whose stories criss-cross in a distopian future where activism is centered around robotics - robot rights, keeping humanity pure of cybernetic parts, etc. - and the result is out of focus. We follow this news/gossip blogger and his robot assistant (she reminds me of Irma from the Space Ranger comics) exploring a conspiracy that involves, well, a LOT of things, but nominally, a famous robot who dropped off the side of the Earth and is now back to make a statement. That statement is muddled, and there's a lot of exposition to explain and re-explain what's going on. I needed the art to be more "designed" (like the cover feels), but I don't dislike how gooey it is. It's just a bit too loose for this kind of science-fiction. And as for the writing, there are some very clever bits, but it's too text-heavy and the story is one weird thing after another, leaning towards the surreal. I needed to be streamlined, but I'm not sure the Hernandez style would allow it.
RPGs: We played Masks this week--well, not quite. After only a couple sessions, the players were still exploring the system, but our GameMaster, using the Apocalypse system in other games, with other groups (cheating on us???) was getting more and more disabused with the ruleset and decided to change it. So we went for Fate - which I always wanted to try (in fact, had contemplated for several games that never worked out) - the option that would least disrupt our gaming style. It's also rules-lite, but more traditional in application, with very loose character creation, important for my Dial H hero (or else I might have been stuck statting out 20 characters in advance). And it worked fine, we're still learning its ins and outs, but I didn't feel a big difference, which is optimal. Of course, we spent much of the session on subplots - meeting Nightwing, going to dinner with our foster child member Telkine's family (and the girl who fancies herself her boyfriend, from which we extracted a lot of comedy), and finally discovering the disruptive Wonder Twins were now enrolled in our school. Nightwing warned us off ever accepting them in our team, but my character questions that (three isn't much of a team), while Hawkgirl doesn't trust them, and Telkine has a funny feeling when he touches them, like he's a Wonder Triplet or their version of Gleek, or something. So the action bit came late - a Warworld subsidiary attacking Midway City "recruiting" gladiators, and Zan and Jayna (sorry, Zane and Jenny) trying to help, but mostly getting in our way. I... didn't dial the right identity for this, so it took me a round of screaming "WHY?????" at the sky before getting ideas. Meet Memory Lad:
Origin: You have to understand that an early RPG love was the Marvel Super Heroes RPG's Ultimate Powers Book. Yes, it had all the boring powers like energy blast and telepathy, but also some really weird ones, like (and this is what I based Memory Lad on) the ability to recall any ancestor (or in this case, reincarnation)'s lives and manifest their skills and abilities. Not great against a giant UFO armed with drones, but it's very "Dial H".
Best bits: Since the very presence of Hawkgirl proves humans and Thanagarians reincarnate between their species, I suggested I had a Thanagarian ancestor who, like her, had natural wings. So I grabbed a nightstick, pushed all the skills into the fighting range (my past life's abilities) and flew into the fray, jamming the stick into our of the spherical drones, turning the stick into a mace that could shoot lasers at the rest of the swarm. Then, after Telkine was thrown at the ship by Zan and had to slice into it with his TK field lest he smash into it, I joined him inside, and with the memories of the ship's layout taken from a Civil War ancestor who had been similarly abducted, freed all the captives/slaves. Good bits as a normal teen, too. "H" and Hawkgirl have very different styles of humor well-deployed at the buffet dinner, and I channelled all the terrible things that happened to me in gym class into our badminton meetcute with Jayna.
Comments
Post a Comment