This Week in Geek (7-13/10/19)

"Accomplishments"

In theaters: I am quite ambivalent about the Joker movie, so don't expect a glowing review from me. First, let me say that Joaquin Phoenix's performance is unimpeachable. And sure, the picture's look is strong, with Gotham City being played by a well-reproduced 1970s New York. But I have two problems with the flick, and they bothered me well beyond the 2-hour experience. First is how derivative it is. Todd Phillips' hard-on for 70s cinema is obvious, and at his most clever, he uses the Exorcist stairs to evoke something (well, almost, we'll get to that), but otherwise, as everyone's said, he's doing Scorsese (in particular Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy), but also Fight Club, Frank Miller (ugh, can't we get away from Year One's specifics even once in these movies?), and a couple seasons of Gotham. In fact, I often felt like this was just a Gotham episode writ large. The other more important problem is that Joker pretends to have a message, or messages, but it's really not about anything (so the very meaning of the word "pretentious"). It never closes the deal on anything it might have to say. It's not really about we treat the mentally ill, because it's ultimately a cartoonish and negative portrayal of mental illness. It's not really about the making of a serial killer, as it's so keen on Joker staying sympathetic, it avoids any real shock to the audience's system (and does a hit job on the Waynes so he can never ever stop being a victim no matter what). It's not about how we should be kinder to one another and punch up rather than down, because the film itself makes fun of a minority character in a "punch-down" kind of way, a darkly comic moment that is sadly one of the only moments of comedy in the film. Because it's not a comedy, not even a dark one, and Joker's line about his life that's in the trailer comes out of left field and isn't earned. It's not even  really a subversive Joker origin story, chickening out of its twist connection between Joker and the eventual Batman (then still polluting Batman's origin story by not understanding the power of its simplicity as part of a by-that-time interminable coda because WE NEED THAT MONEY SHOT! No we don't). Hey, I would probably have criticized that too, but at least it would have meant Joker completed a pass on SOMEthing. I think the film is actually summed up in the preachy but confused scene where Joker denies twice that he's not political and doesn't care about anything, as bookends to a sermon that's entirely political. I kept waiting for the movie to decide what it was about, but it isn't about anything but itself as a product (look at me! I'm a serious alternative to MCU-type, four-color action comedies!). Whatever dude, I'm not buying it.

At home: As Spooktober continues... Bad Samaritan is a thriller with a serial... something (not telling) at its center, David Tennant having proven he can do terrifyingly creepy with his turn in Jessica Jones. I don't think this performance quite achieves Killgrave's level, but it's in the ball park, a man of monstrous precision who will do anything to keep his psychopathic freedom going. Robert Sheehan (from Misfits and The Umbrella Academy) plays what he plays best, i.e. a sympathetic dirt bag. He's the thief who breaks into the villain's lair and is then haunted by the chained-up girl he couldn't save. It's a great premise, and both characters live in our technology-savvy world, but the film's techno-thriller elements don't prevent it from making good use of its wet, snowy Oregon locations. But though it definitely has its moments, it's not quite as suspenseful or creepy as it wants to be, perhaps because we're following too many people (including law enforcement), or perhaps because the villain's origin story is so thin. Either way, Bad Samaritan is a movie that's fun to watch, especially if you like the actors (given my predilections for SF, you can imagine I did), but it's not entirely satisfying.

George Romero's Season of the Witch (AKA Hungry Wives) looks like it's his take on Robert Altman's Images which came out the same year, plus witchcraft. It's less subtle and more visceral (maybe those come hand in hand), but the result is much the same. It's about a despondent, bored housewife whose loneliness causes her to go mad. In this one, the madness is represented by fish-eyed nightmares filled with creepy imagery and odd electronic noises like a '70s Doctor Who episode that's gone off the end (the sound design is strong throughout). Even once she's communing with the Devil, having found her power, a power that scares her, Romero leaves it ambiguous as to the nature (or supernature) of what we're seeing. So it's a satirical piece of suburban existentialism that constasts male and female agency and updates the Salem trial stories to a modern, liberated context. Nice use of Donavan's song too. We're only two movies away from Romero's better-known debut, Night of the Living Dead, here, but I dare say this is just as great. FAVORITE OF THE WEEK

Resident Evil: Extinction, the third in the series, is slim on plot, but not on action, and it skips ahead to Mad Max-style postapocalypse without passing Go or collecting its 200$. As usual, I can't quite tell if this (or any other element, really) is because that's how the game franchise rolls or what. I'm just not enough of a gamer. I'm taking these as a watcher of movies and that's it. Well, as a movie, it kind of ignores the promises made in the previous one's conclusion, but only kind of. Alice doesn't become a sleeper agent for the Umbrella Corporation, but their attempts to control her remotely are part of the plot here. (Now THIS one's got a doozy of a cliffhanger!) Carlos is back, but Valentine is not, replaced by Heroes' Ali Larter as Claire, showing you have a much better chance of surviving the T-virus if you're a badass babe. Some good zombie attack action in the desert (question: if the whole world has been turned into a desert, why does the movie need to take place in Nevada, which already looks like that?), simple but bold world-building, and though I wouldn't say Extinction is on the same level as his Razorback, director Russell Mulcahy knows how to light for horror, keeping one foot still in the genre even if it's essentially an action series.

Peter Jackson's Bad Taste is a relentless series of action and gore gags, and in that epithet, we find the action-comedy-sf-horror flick's biggest weakness. Not its cheapness, which Jackson overcomes with fun gags, cool/gross practical effects, and kinetic camera movement. Its relentlessness. There's SO MUCH of it, as opposed to character development (which maybe the actors couldn't carry off) or even proper exposition and set-up, that my attention tended to waver or turn off around the middle. And yet, Jackson kept bringing me back with another weird thing. It's the story (such as it is) of cannibalistic aliens who more or less act like zombies (bearded Peter Jackson is one of them)... it's all just an excuse to cut people up, shoot people up, and blow stuff up, really. I enjoyed the references to Doctor Who (including a beardless Peter Jackson, as New Zealand's answer to Rick Moranis, playing a scientific adviser with a tell-tale scarf - no, I didn't recognize him). Fun for what it is, but what it is is a promising young director screwing around in his back yard with friends.

2018's Suspiria takes Argento's original's premise, mythos and characters and makes something completely different out of it, the biggest divergence being Suzie's agency and role in the drama. Guadagnino sets his story in 1977 Berlin, the year the original came out, and my reading of it is consequently mostly political. The fact that the film keeps referring to Nazis with Berliners living in the shadow of the Nazi regime (i.e. the Wall, and indeed divisions are a leitmotif), an ancillary character having lost a wife to the concentration camps, and "former" Nazis still holding office, becomes a mirror for the dance academy, and explains the revolution of the ending. I think the movie is largely about national guilt and a new generation wiping away the previous one's sins by taking power themselves so they can eventually birth a new Germany. Mothers and the replacement of mothers by daughters is certainly a theme. The body is also a recurring element, which makes sense for a story about dancers studying in a building that seems almost alive. There's a lot to unpack in this Suspiria, almost too much in fact. I'm not sure Guadagnino really makes the grotesque climax work, for example, and that's in part due to our having to process final act revelations (which are earned). Definitely still works as a conversation piece though - we were still at it the next day. But is it scary? It has its moments. It never gets better than Olga's fate, which is a masterful use of dance, percussion and editing, but the rest of the film shows the director can make us edgy with camera movement, sound, and nightmarish imagery. Sustain it, maybe not. When his interests shift to the old doctor, for example, the editing remains great, but the tension evaporates. It's not clear until late in the game what his role actually is. Ultimately, I think this is a better, richer story than the original, even if Argento's is the more iconic horror film. Good on Guadagnino for going his own way and not trying to ape a master. His Suspiria might otherwise have been redundant and unnecessary. Instead, it stands on its own two feet.

Them! but replace the ants with rabbits. That's Night of the Lepus. The reason to watch this is the premise, which is ludicrous, with giant rabbits attacking people and reproducing at an alarming rate in the American Midwest, though I might not have checked out this crazy creature feature if not for the participation of Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelley, who are, let's be honest, too good for this movie. It's likable enough, I suppose, even if Lepus often has a hard time marrying shots of the killer bunnies with the human actors. We get a lot of close-ups of rabbits with gore on their mouths, or else quick attacks by guys in mascot costumes, but we're forced to cut away immediately so as not to give away the game. That takes away from the visceral immediacy the movie might have needed. And you know what? Seeing the grasslands overrun with fast-running rabbits was a lot scarier than the slow-motion giant versions loosed on model farms by stupid kid shenanigans. Make this normal-sized rabbits attacking in swarms and you have the makings of real terror. As is, it's an ok monster-hunting adventure, but I feel like its memorable more for the idea than the execution.

Safe in Hell is a pre-Code sizzler about a girl who leaves her old boyfriend for dead in a building fire and hides out on a no-extradition Caribbean island, after marrying her current beau. Her promises of fidelity are tested at every turn by a cast of men frequenting the same hotel/bar, but the intrigue of the film is actually seeing how far she'll go to keep her vows. Tragedy may well ensue, but the movie has a lightly comic touch in the second act, as many of her suitors have zany personalities. I also have a  lot of affection for the lively barmaid played by Nina Mae McKinney. This movie really belongs to Dorothy Mackaill, who's very strong compared to most of the no-names she's playing off against (the man she's devoted to is especially bland, and it looks like the island's executioner and main antagonist climbed out of a dumpster). She's good, and the direction is good, with lots of great shots and moments. So it's a little unfortunate that the sound is sometimes distorted, though the dialog came out of the early talky era unscathed at least.

Irma Vep is the name of the character in the silent film Les Vampires. Maggie Cheung plays herself, contracted to play Irma in a remake. Cue meta-text about film-making, in particular French cinema, but I can't decide if it's meant to be a manifestation of the director's agon, working in the shadow of the French New Wave, a criticism of those directors' later work (I see a lot of Godard in the director here, though he is played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, Truffault's alter ego in his films), or a tribute to that seminal era (with the behind the scenes stuff essentially inspired by Day for Night). It just plays as a massive inside joke, one I don't have the culture to get. Maggie is of course great in it, though her not speaking French means the director speaks in heavily accented English I couldn't really understand without subtitles, though maybe that's part of the joke. Osmosis between her and her character is almost a thing, such as when she spies on the director's wife, and maybe the film industry is populated by vampires, who knows. It's not that movie is ambiguous so much as it is unclear. I have an idea for the an extra 5 seconds after the ending that would have said something more conclusive, but alas. Interesting, but I can't tell if it doesn't give up its secrets easily enough, or if it doesn't really have any to begin with.

I love The Green Death. It has a special place in my heart and was a family favorite back in the day (which for us was the late 80s, watching it over dinner on YTV). You can find my episodic reviews elsewhere: One, two, three, four, five, six. Some time ago, I traded in my original DVD copy for the Special Edition, which of course has all the stuff that was on the original release, plus  more. Repeated material includes: A spoof news item about Global Chemicals presented by Mark Gatiss with several of the actors reprising their roles; interviews with James Sloman (co-writer), Stewart Bevan (Cliff Jones), and Colin Mapson (special effects, who even makes a giant maggot for us); a commentary track with Katy Manning, Barry Letts and Terrence Dicks; and the usual trivia track and photo gallery. The Special Edition adds a supplementary track on episode 3-5 with Tony Hadoke moderating a talk with Richard Franklin (Yates), Mitzi McKenzie (Nancy), and Mapson, while episode 6's features Manning and Russel T. Davies; a full making of, which uses some of the interviews previously included; a Wales Today news item (real, this one) about Jon Pertwee inaugurating a park where the old mine used to be; clips from Katy Manning's next project, Serendipity; and a featurette about how RTD came to relaunch Doctor Who (I guess on the basis of Wales' involvement), which is pretty great. The release also includes the episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures that focuses on the return of Jo Grant, which I of course already have in my SJA adventures, but I'm glad is here for the obstinate out there who won't give the show a proper chance. Oh, and there are two Easter Eggs: continuity announcements from the TV broadcasts, and an outtake from the sketch.

Mission to the Unknown is a Doctorless Doctor Who episode that served as a prequel to The Daleks' Master Plan. It does not exist in the archives. But a group of students and graduates from Lancaster University have recreated it (and I guess it's authorized too, with Nicholas Briggs doing the Dalek voices as well) and made it available on YouTube. Using the camera script, telesnaps, photos and surviving audio, they've done their best to recreate the episode and though there are differences in costumes, props and sets, it really does have the look of an old Hartnell story, right down to the camera bumping into something. It also means it has a very slow pace at times, and I think I liked it better on audio only (maybe because the voice-over links talked over the silences), as my original review attests. Not being able to make a Terry Nation script sing takes nothing away from the achievement. The making of does reveal that some liberties were nevertheless taken, using modern equipment to make the episode, and even resorting to model shots to save money on the sets. Well, saving money makes it Doctor Who, doesn't it? I think that if the BBC would release a mostly-animated Master Plan, it could do a lot worse than to put this version of Mission to the Unknown on the disc, though I can't see this as a proper way to restore episodes that have the main characters in it. (Unless maybe you're going full tilt and restaging them with David Bradley, but that's crazy talk.)

Best Believe I Watched Keanu 'n' Charlize

If you can stand too-close-to-real-life Johnny Depp creep-acting (and I'm pretty sure I can't), The Astronaut's Wife is a thriller with potential. It certainly manages to maintain a disquieting atmosphere throughout through Charlize Theron's point of view. She plays the eponymous wife of an astronaut who came back from a mission somehow different, and soon becomes pregnant. The key moment is when a woman in her pregnancy support group says she feels separate from her husband because he can't possibly understand what she's going through, and that's more or less the feeling that manifests. Saddled with a vague back story of mental illness, we're led to wonder if Charlize is imagining some of this of it there really is a secret invasion from outer space (so The Devil's Advocate with aliens instead of demons), so it became a waiting game for the final twists to see if the picture actually worked. It almost does, but no, it doesn't. It so wants to be Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the 1979 truly scary one), it hurts. But its empathetic set-up does not earn its twist (and also much too obvious) ending.

Commitment to your movie marathon is watching a cheap indie effort like Me and Will because Keanu Reeves appears as part of his band Dogstar on stage in the opening credits. The film is an attempt by schlock horror queens Sherrie Rose and Melissa Behr to write, produce and direct themselves in straight drama and... it's not half bad. On the acting side of thing, they do a good job and create sympathetic, albeit damaged, characters. The title is a bit of a pun, since "Will" (Behr) is more or less the motivation for the road trip, and the one trying to keep her rehab roommate from slipping into her cycle of self destruction before they complete their quest for the fabled motorcycle from Easy Rider. I like its indie spirit, but the direction is schizophrenic; they've got good ideas, but they don't all belong in the same movie. It starts off looking like softcore, but thankfully moves on from that, but it moves on again and again from what it was doing. They also manage to get some known faces into the film, from the look of it for about a half-day's work each (except McDreamy who's there in a before they were stars capacity). It doesn't always work and doesn't really know what to do with its ending, but I can appreciate that it's a personal vision and much better than I supposed from its initial look and credentials.