Buys
On a friend's recommendation, I got Ben Riggs' Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, looks like a fun read.
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: If you liked Black Panther and are looking forward to Wakanda Forever, why not go see its historical inspiration? The Woman King presents an idealized view of the Agojie, the warrior women of the Dahomey Kingdom (today: Benin), as they fight slave traders from neighboring tribes and Europe. I say idealized, because 1) the fighting is amazing and pushes this from "war film" to "action movie", and 2) they give the best intentions to Dahomey's leadership regarding slavery, but in reality, they only stopped (briefly!) because of Abolitionist blockades. Revisionism or not, it makes for a rousing experience. Viola Davis is a powerhouse as the Agojie general, leading a strong cast just as her character does an army. We're introduced to this world through a raw recruit played by Thuso Mbedu, but the movie juggles a lot of characters effectively - three veterans and three recruits in particular - and was weakest where they forced a relationship between Davis and Mbedu that felt a little too Dickensian for my tastes. But as I've often said, Africa is the next big geographical story engine and I'm always happy to go back to the continent for more.
At home: Disney+'s Halloween trifle, Werewolf by Night, is a very fun almost-hour starring three characters from Marvel Comics' supernatural side that I want to see again. So it's a success (if not a triumph), and Gael García Bernal is a real get for the lead. If I'm not giving it full marks, it's that it doesn't commit to anything wholeheartedly (except entertaining its audience). It's a Universal Monster pastiche, but beyond the credits and black & white (note also that the comic magazine WAS in black & white), it doesn't do much to create the illusion of an older film - the action, effects, camera work and storytelling are strictly modern. It has its horror moments (and more gore than what you expect from the MCU), but it's ultimately too silly and jokey to provide any real chills. And in terms of bringing the comics to life, creative license is in full effect and it's sometimes debatable if they're done better than the source originals. Well, in the case of Jack, yes, I think this is a fine interpretation. Regardless, let's hope these three aren't relegated to annual specials; they deserve more.
I Morbed so you wouldn't have to. What's wrong with Morbius exactly? Well, the main problem is that's it's incredibly generic. If I told you the premise, you'd reasonably come up with this exact scenario - a superhero origin wrapped in a monster origin (they're the same, don't you know), with a bad guy with the exact same abilities, using them for selfish ends. Not that I'm throwing Matt Smith under the bus. He's the best thing about this flick, and the only actor giving more than one expression. Why do they pay Jared Leto the big bucks anyway? He's a pain to work with and he phones it in. The humor in the script certainly falls flat because of him. He's not funny. Directorially, it's not of much interest either (has the Sonyverse decided that its house look would be freeze frames in the middle of frenetic action? Venom had that too). I knew I was in for something shoddy when the characters referred to the Nobel Prize and the Noble Prize, honestly. There are lots of plot holes, things that work only the way they do because the movie wants them to, and the effects on the powers are nonsense. What's with the smoke trails on everything? Sure, vampires can turn into fog, but not "living vampires" born from a (pseudo-)scientific bat serum. Damn, I just realized we're unlikely to see Man-Bat in a movie because of this pale lemon...
Man, I really liked Wolfen. If Anne Rice's Lestat inspired White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade role-playing game, this has got to be part of the inspiration for their follow-up, Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The combination of werewolf-adjacent horror and police procedural is very interesting and allows the film to get away with not showing the monster for a surprisingly long time. A great use of very cool locations around New York that you're not used to seeing (which is saying a lot for one of cinema's most filmed cities). And in psychedelic Wolf-o-Vision too! The dialog crackles and the cops' gallows humor gives it the bent of a dark comedy. Plus, check out this cast: Albert Finney (who's always got food in his mouth, which is thematically appropriate), Diane Venora (who I wish they'd done a bit more with, that super crime computer she's in charge of is a weird element), Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines, Tom Noonan, I mean come on! This a great stuff! An underrated neo-Noir hybrid.
While The Blob's 1988 remake uses a lot of the same beats as the original, it does so with pleasantly wry humor and through a demented post-The Thing lens. The characters and their sleepy, off-season town are introduced effectively. A meteor falls from the sky carrying a blobby organism, and boy, that blob does NOT WASTE TIME killing the citizenry in crazy, splashy ways, essentially by DISSOLVING them in the squishiest, goriest manner. Every kill is different and insane, and there are many times when I couldn't tell you how the effects were achieved (which is always a plus). Like sure, Kevin Dillon (yes, from Entourage) is no Steve McQueen, but it being the 1980s, his motorcycle action is a little more high-octane than it ought to, and that's for the good. Shawnee Smith (who would become a steady face on TV, and also star in the Saw movies) is more memorable as the would-be cheerleader in distress who also knows how to shoot a machine gun. Look, I don't know what happens in ski resort towns in the U.S. I was raised in a Canadian one. The 1958 Blob was one of the first monster movies I ever saw, so I spent decades dismissing the remake as unnecessary. I was wrong. It's hugely entertaining.
The monsters are usually symbolic of some destruction wreaked by humanity in Ishiro Honda's kaiju films, and in Dogora, it's mineral exploitation. The diaphanous creature from space (was it an inspiration for 2022's biggest movie monster?) sucks in carbon from the air, turning diamonds and coal into dangerous twisters. The creature is unusually beautiful and the effects among Honda's best. I just wish there had been more of it, and of Akira Ifukube's great score too. It's reminiscent of his Godzilla classic, but different enough to hold its own. What I can't quite recommend - as is often the case in these things - is the human story. The diamond angle gives us jewel thieves and the a couple of cops - one, Japan's most ineffectual detective, the other, shifty Westerner who calls himself a "diamond G-man" and plays a convoluted game that may well lose the audience. It certainly did me. Or perhaps I didn't care enough. In kaiju fashion, the coppers' investigations dovetail with the scientific community and military's efforts to stop this thing (its great weakness might as well have been pulled out of a hat). It's kind of doofy and fun, but seeing as the monster plays like an invisible force at first (ha, "seeing"), there's too little of it to really balance out the necessary human shenanigans.
The Hidden is a good title considering that it's a sci-fi horror film hidden inside an action cop movie. If you're catching this without forewarning, there's absolutely no reason to think it's going to have that squishy turn. We join the story in the middle of some guy's Grand Theft Auto rampage, we meet the cop who's after him (Michael Nouri) and later the oddball FBI agent (Kyle MacLachlan) who was after him and still is because the violence is something passed from one person to another. I don't want to say too much about what that something is (keep it hidden, if you like). It makes for entertaining fare, with lots of action and mayhem. So much so I dare say it's a bit too long, even at 96 minutes. You're about ready for the heroes to catch up to the culprit, but then remember they set up that whole political event subplot so of course, there needs to be another leg in the chase. I make it sound pretty predictable, but it does have some surprises in store for its audience. A fun hybrid.
Normally my dislike for Paul Schrader and his gross Lolita obsession keeps me away from his movies, so I fully admit I simply didn't notice his credit when I put Cat People on my "Octhorror" watch list. But perhaps the fact that he didn't write the script and the genre stylings would take the edge off. After all, horror films are supposed to make you squirm and sex is one of the tools they use. Well, no overt Lolita character in this one, but we do get bestiality and incest, and when you think about it, the virginal cat woman is a bit of a Lolita even as an adult (AND laughs at how her foster father groped her), so Schrader's doing his thing even in this context. He probably thinks he's so shocking. Meh. I'm much more disturbed by that grotty zoo where animals are forced to sit on cement floors in tiny brick booths - movies with a lot of animal action always make me wonder about their treatment, so I'm never at ease - and at least that WAS a set, not a real place. Different enough from Val Lewton's original to stand on its own, it's got some good gore moments, and visually, the Doctor Who fan in me sees how it most assuredly inspired the show's last classic story, "Survival", which was broadcast a year later. However, I take exception with the cat woman's final choices, which are so Schrader as to kill my enthusiasm for it. If women exhibit any sex drive, then they are dangerous monsters, and like Golden Age Wonder Woman, they should learn to submit to the male sex drive and only so bound can they be fulfilled. Schrader's sexual politics are so damn icky, I just can't. If I'd set up a reaction camera, I would probably find that I frowned every time a girl popped out of her bra like she was in a Porky's or something.
Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage follows in the slime trail of his Basket Case, and indeed has all the same features (crazy camp gross-outs and a parasite puppet) and flaws (bad acting, loud screaming, the puppet is inherently silly...), but in this case, I think those flaws overtake and overwhelm the features. It's the story of an immortal brain parasite that "juices" its host in exchange for human brains to eat, a metaphor for how drugs destroy lives. Our hero trips balls through most of the flick, but still has the wherewithal to throw himself an intervention. Is it too late to save his loved ones from his new buddy's insatiable hunger? Where I had a lot of fun with Basket Case, Brain Damage annoyed me more than anything. Maybe it tried too hard to recapture the feeling of Henelotter's opus. Maybe the "message" was too trite and obvious (yet, a bit confused as well, as sometimes it seems to be about sex addiction or repression - I guess all the 80s anxieties). And to my ears, the synth music was at odds with the horror we should have felt during a kill. A mixed bag.
Despite the nudity on the poster, I wasn't expecting Jean Rollin's Fascination to have this much erotica. It's in fact more erotica than it is horror, and one wonders why Brigitte Lahaie wasted her time getting dressed at all. The story: In the early 20th Century, a criminal runs into a chateau to hide from angry peasants, and right into the arms of two beauties who are members of a blood-drinking cult. It's an intriguing coven-adjacent take on vampirism, and when it's doing horror, it works well. I just resent at least SOME of the sexual interludes that go on too long and don't contribute much to the story. The thief is a right git, so we don't care what happens to him (or hope it's the worst), and the ladies seem to be vessels for whatever symbol the director wants to apply in this tract about the meaning of blood. Life/death. Lust/Love. The heart pumping as true feeling/biological symptom. Some nice shots in there, but it's hard to get a handle on any of the characters in this situation.
Joel Potrykus' first feature-length project with Joshua Burge is Ape, about an unsuccessful stand-up comic, brow-beaten by life, who eventually snaps. Sound familiar? We've had two such films in recent years: the criminally overrated Joker and the even cheaper indie The Improviser. And while those films made the stand-up extra cringy by insuring the jokes weren't funny, that's not the case with Trevor in Ape. I think the material's pretty good! Certainly better than his one cohort's. But playing in front of small, apathetic audiences gives you the feeling of bombing regardless, which is the more realistic experience. Potrykus prefers vignettes to a more forceful plotline, which works here because these play as absurdist comedy bits, like a stand-up set, or an improv show. The movie is much like the antics presented - people taking their frustration out through performance and giving the audience the finger. When Trevor snaps, he kind of becomes the people's hero, it's the confidence to fight back. He snaps...up! As to what his encounters with people in costume (the eponymous ape, a wolfman, the Devil), I'm not entirely sure what these mean, but I don't think I mind, y'know?
If there's a common element in most of Joel Potrykus' films, it's that they show a protagonist living alone and getting up to the kind of shenanigans only extreme boredom and isolation could lead to. Perhaps it's why they seem to take place before the Internet - the characters stuck in the VHS/music tape era despite the films coming out in the 2010s - it's too much of an anti-boredom machine. And if idle hands are the Devil's plaything, maybe that's why he tends to show up in these films. In The Alchemist Cookbook, Ty Hickson's Sean is alone in a camper in the woods, doing "alchemical" experiments and eventually calling on the Devil (therrrre he is) to make his dreams come true. He's pretty disturbed, and so metaphorical demons become literal ones. There's a strong, meaty role for a cat in this, since Sean needs someone to interact with from time to time - excepting interruptions from his cousin Cortez - and honestly, my attention started to wander once the cat wasn't in it anymore, but resurged at the very end for the final confrontation between confusion and evil.
Joshua Burge can't help but accept a challenge in the never relaxing 2018 Potrykus flick Relaxer, so he finds himself stuck to a couch until he beats Nintendo's issue of Pac-Man. Y'know, before the Y2K bug destroys his ability to play the console. What unfolds is more about surviving while never getting up from one's seat than it is about the video game itself, and it's taken to such extremes that it becomes rather hallucinatory. Is it happening anywhere but in his head? I don't self-identify as a gamer - I got months, if not years, between bouts of video gaming - but I know what it's like to obsess over something and not seeing the time go by. At the darkest limits of that reality are stories of gamers who died in front of their TV (it doesn't matter if it's real or urban legend). Burge's character Abbie is visited by various others who try to prevent him from succeeding, mostly unlikable jerks which annoy the audience as much as they do Abbie and that's a minus for the film. A plus is that you've never seen this story and you don't know where it's going. Another personal apocalypse set in slackerdom from Potrykus, and it amusingly seems to be set in the same universe as The Alchemist Cookbook.
A rare Joel Potrykus film with more than one protagonist, The Thing from the Factory by the Field is too short at 26 minutes. I say that because I really wanted to see what happens next - no interest in developing into a feature, Mr. Potrykus? It starts with four teenagers in a field, conducting a hardcore initiation rite for their potential new band member. It's hilarious, features great banter, and is realistically the kind of thing teens might get into, kind of creating their own myths and traditions in the absence of any structure or culture. So pure Potrykus, then. When something falls from the sky, evidently from the sinister factory nearby, they immediately bill it as a demon from hell, then weirder things happen, and I feel like the production could have had a lot of fun working out the consequences of the short's climax. I wanted more time with these characters, and more world-building too. Not to say I didn't enjoy the punchline that serves as an ending, but I wanted more.
Gaming: I'd been delaying finishing Ubisoft's Watch Dogs 2.0 because I was enjoying its rendition of San Francisco so much, but there, it's done. 100% completion except for taking a selfie with someone puking in the background (near impossible to find) and the online co-op stuff (I'm too sporadic a gamer to pay for subscriptions). The original Watch Dogs (set in Chicago) had a cool hacker spin on the Grant Theft Auto formula, but WD2 improves upon it in every way. There's more humor (WD1 was over-serious), and your avatar, Marcus, is supported by a very cool, diverse group of hackers. I enjoyed spending time with them, whether taking down the data miners controlling every facet of our lives, or just screwing around grabbing collectibles or putting graffiti on the Golden Gate Bridge. Though the game is now 6 years old, the character acting was great, the city and countryside (San Fran, Silicon Valley, Marin and Oakland are all represented) look extremely good. Lots of detail and you could conceivably spend time watching civilians doing all SORTS of stuff. The vehicle handling is some of the best I've played in a sandbox game too. And in terms of experience, I think these games are better than the GTA franchise because there's a lot of puzzle solving (how to get to places, stopping enemies through cameras before getting bloodied in there, and network bypass puzzles) that turn every collectible into a mini-game. So when you just want to relax and explore, rather than complete missions, there's still lots to do. The best compliment I can give a game like this is that once it's over, I want to pull the trigger on DLC packs that offer bonus missions (though they're not usually worth the asking price - time to move to London instead?).
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