"Accomplishments"
In theaters: I'm going to spoil suprise elements of Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger in this review, so if you expect to see it, maybe skip to the next paragraph and do yourself a favor. Yeah? Okay, let's go... The problem with satire is that it's not easy to laugh at, especially when it mocks the current day. It's going for smirks, not smiles, and for laughs that are closer to dry coughs. The more cartoonish and obvious it is, the more annoying it is, and in this era of already cartoonish politicians who defy absurdity, it's hard to caricature the caricatures. And I think Iñárritu understands this, and places Digger in the conversation about whether it makes sense to laugh at those politicians when they are as dangerous as they are ridiculous - do we risk softening them somehow? I thought long and hard about why Digger turns out to be a secret play inside a film, and I think it's Iñárritu's way of having his cake and eating it, too. To soften the blow of the "cartoonish satire" by acknowledging that it IS trite and silly, but that people still need that catharsis, and so what does it mean (for the actor played by Tom Cruise, in full Tropic Thunder mode, here) to supply that demand. And in a more general way, does it make sense for our demands to be fulfilled if they are going to ruin us. That softening of the blow worked for me, as I loved the almost Wes Anderson-like theatricality, but in the final analysis, it means that, instead of hating it (like I did the similar Don't Look Up, which didn't have this device), I don't have any great feeling to express.
At home: I realized And Soon the Darkness was a British film when Terry Nation's writing credit came up. He created the Daleks, Blakes' 7, and... this. Though honestly, the sunlit thriller is more of a directorial effort than a writerly one. It's all about atmosphere. The plot is fairly thin on the ground. Two British young women go cycling through Europe and find themselves on a stretch of road where a murder once happened. One of them disappears, the other tries to find her and meets a number of sinister characters in the area, and one of them, surely, did it. With very spare dialogue, much of it in a French the girl doesn't quite understand (which may also be true of audiences, subtitles aren't provided, my bilingualism came in useful), is part of the suspense-building. Are the locals actually up to no good, or is it just the language barrier creating a misunderstanding? We keep revising who we want on our suspect list based on reaction shots. I don't think the film exacty plays fair with us - not without stronger explanations - and it takes a while to get where it's going, but it does look quite good. That last shot of the victim, for example, is wonderful.
In a way, Race with the Devil is a great ad for RVs, because that thing keeps on ticking through the whole movie. But it's not a great ad for RV life, though if you stay on the main roads, perhaps you'll have a better chance of avoiding catching cultists in the act and attracting their ire. Two couples (biker Peter Fonda and slightly psychic Lara Parker, and mechanic Warren Oates and his wife Loretta Swit) see their vacation ruined by a wide-ranging, pervasive witch coven that includes a heck of a lot of brawny stuntmen among their number. Hey, so mote it be, y'all. As it turns into a bit of an action film by the third act, these do come in useful, but it does mean the ending is less than satisfying. It's a horror ending, but the leads are a little too heroic to take this lying down (they're half playing detective throughout the ordeal), so it just feels abrupt. Quite fun, but the pay-off is almost like they ran out of money.
It's hard to be entirely positive about a creature feature when the creature is so poorly realized, and Dark Age's giant crocodile is unfortunately extremely passive despite at least one nasty kill that left me with my mouth hanging open. They can make his tail wag, open his mouth, and close his eyes, but he's mostly a great big plastic floater. Where the movie wins us back is in its reversal of the Jaws paradigm. Instead of being monster hunters, our heroes are a conservation agent, an anthropologist, and two Aborigine guardians of this sacred animal, and (as perhaps usual) humanity is the real monster - the poachers, the land developper). It makes for a fairly interesting story that has some connection to Native Australian myth and tradition. Beyond the rubber creature, Dark Age's biggest problem is the white folks' characterizations, which are either one-note, or vascillate between two notes without proper motivation (consider, in particular, Cathy's reaction to the croc even after seeing it kill), but it's still better than most films of this ilk, and the effects aren't even as bad as I was led to believe.
It's kind of weird to find Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender in a hicksploitation-adjacent movie like Eden Lake, but I guess 2008 is fairly early for both of them, and they certainly lend some gravitas to what's happening (and Reilly, all grubbed up, in that dress, is damn near iconic). They play a couple on a getaway trip to a woodland lake and who soon fall prey to a gang of teenagers from the encroaching suburb, led by a psychotic boy. With Fassbender wounded, it's up to Reilly to get help or revenge, and there's something satisfying about her being school teacher or daycare worker going after kids, though the irony doesn't entirely connect (the kids are too old compared to her charged, for one thing). What it does connect to is the common fear of encountering young hooligans who don't respect you or the rules, and are more or less untouchable because of parental protection, and though the set-up is that of a thriller, its destinations are those of a horror film. And it's a problem. I think we're set up for a more cathartic journey than the one we ultimately get.
Alice Lowe triple-threats Prevenge into being, a revenge slasher motivated by the voice of her character's unborn child. To say what the psychotic voice is motivated by would constitute a spoiler, since part of the fun is elucidating just what triggered these events, but we CAN say that each victim is a kind of comic creep who meets, at least in terms of black comedy, a deserved gory fate. As in her later Timestalker, Lowe makes her character (Ruth) adopt different identities, as if never satisfied with just the one performance, but it never comes across as sketch, just necessary disguise. Obviously, it's a horrorish look at postpartum psychosis, but also plays on the idea that children take one's life over, and ask a lot of the parent (usually stopping short of murder). I especially enjoyed the leitmotifs playing across the run time - spiders have a different meaning once we know what's going on, as does the idea of cutting the chord.
What if Hal Hartley made a vampire film? It might look like Michael Almereyda's Nadja. I mean, it has a couple of Hartley regulars, that kind of oblique dialogue, and the askew humor I associate with Hartley's films (Peter Fonda's Van Helsing on a bike, the way it keeps building to a genre trope before breaking with a funny line or abrupt score drop-out). Either way, it's an arty New York vampire story, partly based on André Breton's surreal vampire novel about Dracula's daughter, here falling for and enthralling the wife of Van Helsing's nephew. It's in black and white, and uses pixelated video to represent the kind of evil aura coming off hungry vamps (or so I interpret). There are many beautiful shots, but not those ones - they certainly date the film. Oh, and producer David Lynch randomly pops up as the morgue attendant. It's vampires seen through the lens of New York nights, where "zombies" merely lack sleep, and sophisticated vamps want your blood, attention, love, or else they'd be home sleeping. It's just weird enough to recommend, but it can be slow and pretentious. Are you wearing a black dress right now? Then you might be in the right mood.
At only 20 minutes, the portrait of one of China's last remaining "hopping vampires" in The Last Jiangshi is necessarily furtive, but it's kind of sweet. It's the current day, and a documentary film making student is shooting the "last days" of an actual centuries-old jiangshi (as popularized by Mr. Vampire in 1985, and indeed, the Tao Priest in THAT film appears in that same role!). The vampire doesn't photograph well, but he films fine, and we might imagine the same story without the fantasy, replacing the jiangshi with, simply, a senior who has almost no one left, and fears he won't be remembered. Film can immortalize, in a nicer way than an undead curse, but same difference. It's a way to say hello and goodbye to the world. Here I am, I lived, I exist still, and now forever. Farewell, remember me through this document if not through our real-life encounters. And we'll agree to the distorted view, it's the price you pay.
Books: As the Eighth Doctor finally ends his Slow Path exile in Escape Velocity, it might be worth noting that I didn't get impatient with the "season", and throughout this one, I was looking forward to seeing how he'd get back aboard his TARDIS with Fitz (he does!) and regain his memory (he doesn't really). A secret space race is happening in 2001, helped along by two factions of the same alien species, intent on going back to their fleet and either recommending or discouraging invasion. Fitz has just been dropped off and gets ensnared in the story while waiting for his rendezvous with the Doctor, and meets future companion Anji Kapoor who is introduced here. She's a fairly typical companion - smart, brave, forceful, and has no wish to be lost in time - nothing here disabuses me of this notion gleaned from future books I've already logged. It makes for a pretty good action story, and writer Colin Brake weaves in a lot of pop culture references thanks to Anji's boyfriend, who is a sci-fi nut, but also Doctor Who inside jokes, and a cinephile's chapter title scheme. An enjoyable read, though nothing groundbreaking.
Fantagraphics's second collection of Liniers's Macanudo - The Way of the Penguin - is as wonderful as the first, and I might even love it more, I don't know. All the recurring characters are back, but the penguins get special attention, so the collection's title is apt. In addition to the strips that may end in a punchline, or may just illustrate a quote, a design idea, or a love of nature or reading, Liniers experiments with longer stories (where they published as strips over the course of several days?), and also has a few new "series" to offer - dead authors writing books in 2020, and annoying superheroes. I don't know if reading it in October gave me this impression where the first collection didn't, but Liniers's work has perfect Halloween vibes, as it's filled with witches and monsters, but not the scary kind. Absolutely charming.
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