This Week in Geek (9-15/10/22)

"Accomplishments"

At home: As a comics reader who fondly remembers John Byrne's fourth-wall-breaking Sensational She-Hulk comic, I was hard-wired to enjoy the MCU's She-Hulk, Attorney-at-Law. Yes, the uncanny valley of the effects takes a little getting used to - She-Hulk is often a cartoon character - but I love Tatiana Maslany and for budget reasons, she has to be Jennifer Walters a good part of the time. This is unlike the comic, but I'm glad it's so. Now, new fans are going to look at this and think it's PG-rated Deadpool, but She-Hulk's "reality check" ability pre-dates Deadpool's (and was still already derivative of Ambush Bug's over at DC). All those Z-listers and morts (Daredevil excepted - and if Matt Murdock's new series at all uses the more fun-loving version of the character, I will applaud) are also part of Sensational's formula. But what sets it apart from the other MCU shows is that it's not a "story arc", but rather a character development arc. So episodes aren't strung together in a straight plot line, bur act more like comedy set pieces - the one where Jen goes to a wedding, the case of the polygamous immortal, the supervillain therapy circle, and so on. Sometimes the show feels like it's searching for its identity (but essentially, Ally McBeal with super-powers), it seems to introduce too many supporting characters, and it's more clever ha-ha than knee-slappingly funny, but it's fun and goes after exactly the people who were bound to go after it (and did, stupid meninists, you're so predictable they made a show about it). I'm all for more.

Prime's big budget-busting prequel to the Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power is surprisingly legit, considering that they didn't the rights to the Silmarillion, etc. and had to invent incidents around the LotR appendices. WETA Workshop without a doubt helps the series feel like it's of a piece with the Peter Jackson trilogies, and while Bear McCreary's music isn't as iconic as Howard Shore's, he showed with Battlestar Galactica that he could do "primeval Earth" very well. I'll probably gain a better appreciation for it when I plug the soundtrack into my ears. Seeing as the movies are super-long, I could imagine thinking of this 8-episode spurt as 2 of a prequel trilogy (I suggest "The Second Age" and "The Rise of Mordor" as subtitles, but I'm no Tolkien expert). Detailing how the rings came to be (duh!), the show is a Middle-Earth-spanning epic with various leads and stories. A war-like Galadriel is obsessed with bringing Sauron to bloody justice (the season teases us with various possible identities, all ironic enough to keep us guessing). Elron has perhaps the best plot line as he tries to convince his best friend, a dwarven prince, to help save the elves from falling into shadow with new-found mythril. The men and women of Numinor play a part, as as certain Isildur must come from their stock. And then we have the inventions, including nomadic Hobbits who find a man fallen from the sky, and the most compelling new character, an awesome elven ranger, Arondir, defending the Southlands from Orcs trying to turn the territory into what we know as Mordor. It looks great, mostly if not always sounds like Tolkien's writing, and should reward fans of the Peter Jackson films (and probably the books' readers, though the nerdiest may quibble). But of course, it's a prequel, so a lot of what we're seeing is foreordained, not so much what will happen, but how it will. That's always going to undermine the interest in this kind of project.

Now that we know what The Capture is about - part of Series 1's mystery was discovering its basic premise - Series 2 of the BBC's taut cyber-thriller can just be itself and is the better for it. The first series ended on a cynical downer, but as we head into the second, we understand that it wasn't so cynical after all. Lots of twists in this one as DCI Rachel Carey infiltrates her former opponent's organization, but also must play ball when a threat to national security arises where deep fakes are used to destroy or prop up politicians. Paapa Essiedu joins the cast as the MP at the center of events and makes for a compelling second hero. If the series' point is that we shouldn't trust anything we see second hand because electronic manipulation is a concern, it does this with its story telling as well - nothing is as it seems, ever, and that makes for great binge watching. And while some of the tricks fall into the category of near future SF, there's stuff here about manipulating elections that feels very real indeed. Could there be a third series? I feel like we got our ending, but DCI Carey has a sudden look on her face at the end that might promise something.

John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness is definitely a strange animal, interpreting the Devil and supernatural forces as quantum mechanics, as university grad students conduct an experiment in an old monastery where a secret order has been keeping a reservoir of some kind of evil water (a friend of mine calls it the cursed jam jar). A time travel subplot, Alice Cooper skulking around the ramparts, and lots of heady talk about theology and science. Ultimately, it's the triumph of mood over story, because though it takes a while for things to start happening, and once they do, you're not sure you know what is, there are plenty of great shots and bug photography to make you squirm. The world building is pretty fascinating and makes for an unusual take on tropes well worn during the Satanic Seventies. When compared to the rest of Carpenter's canon, on the surface it's not unlike In the Mouth of Madness, but feels like Assault on Precinct 13. Its third act becomes a relentless "zombie attack" in an enclosed space.

There's never been a Park Chan-wook movie I didn't like, and Thirst is no different. His take on vampirism is very original, and no surprise, visually arresting. Imbued with themes of guilt (the Catholic kind in particular), appetite and self-denial, Thirst tells the story of a priest who martyrs himself for a medical experiment, but survives as a saintly blood-sucker. But his saintliness is tested when he falls in love with a married woman whose own "thirst" at first seems to be sexual, but I think is more about the thrill of partaking in forbidden fruit. The insane, illicit romance will make them cross lines they should never have crossed and send us, the audience, into directions we didn't think were even available. Yes, I wish they'd done more with the ghost subplot that's triggered by their actions, as those are some of the most memorable bits, but this is a movie that doesn't play by the rules. You're never too sure what happens next and its mean streak of dark humor balances well the serious - even tragic - matter of people negotiating between their bodies and souls. Is it a satire on Christianity, or does it embrace its tenets? A little of both, I think. Worth reflecting on.

Though it falls on the thriller side of things, Lady in a Cage is SHOT like a horror film and so I see it as such. Part of the sub-subgenre of disabled women under threat during home invasions (The Spiral Staircase, Wait After Dark), it plays out more like a precursor of The Purge than either of those films. Olivia de Havilland is trapped in a home elevator, like a canary suspended in a cage over her living room, during a power outage and is soon assailed by several groups of looters - among them a young James Caan (it's his first feature) - whose truancy borders of madness. From the off-putting opener to its final moments, Walter Grauman directs Lady in a Cage as if set in a corrupted, hellish world where everyone is a monster of some kind. Even de Havilland may, in some fashion, deserve what's happening to her. It exploits many fears - enclosed spaces, heights, abandonment, the Red Scare - but foremost among these is the rich's fear of the poor. At one point, you think the film dated in its politics, but no, I think its portrayal of humanity at large's inhumanity subtly attacks that middle class world view. And for 1964, the violence (implied and on camera) is pretty shocking.

It's nice to see Louise Fletcher in a horror movie where she's a positive, non-creepy character but... Strange Behavior (AKA Dead Kids, AKA Small Town Massacre) just didn't work for me. The local campus' psychology department is running experiments in behavior modification (read: brainwashing) and making kids kill other kids (among the crowd is Marc "Jimmy Olsen" McClure), which is an original way to trigger a slasher plot, but by the end, it's turned into a cop on the edge story (if anyone thinks Michael Murphy can fit that bill), taking matters into his own hands for crimes unsolved from long ago. It's pretty messy. But I might have let the unusual structure pass as something original if the kills hadn't been so inept. There's an unforgivable torpor in the horror acts, with hits landing slowly or ineffectually, cut-aways to hide the fact the production didn't have retractable blades, and the wrong music layered over the suspense. As a result, it's dull and lacking in scares. Add some bad dubbing over the New Zealand accents of bit parts and you have something that feels way too amateurish for its main cast and general production values.

In Roadgames, Stacy Keach is driving a meat truck through Australia, shadowed or shadowing a creepy green van he believes is driven by a serial killer. Is it true, or a has lack of sleep turned one of his "road games" into a believable hallucination. Even we're not sure at times. With the help of his pet dingo and a hitchhiker played by Jamie Lee Curtis, he might get to the bottom of it. This is one of those Outback movies that make the place incredibly unfriendly, a trope I often find frustrating (not just for Australia, just generally), but it does contribute to the psychological horror of the piece, which is otherwise pretty tame. I enjoyed spending time on the road with these characters (dingo included), and if it has few proper chills, it works as a character-driven comedy about the kinds of things one does to keep oneself awake and entertained on the road. Boredom is the real horror. That's where your mind plays tricks on you. If they ARE tricks.

Britain's answer to Nightmare on Elm Street, Dream Demon, stands on its own, in my opinion, as it's about something completely different, namely bridal anxiety. I believe this is the reason every male character in the piece is a cruel piece of shit, to highlight the bride's misgivings about her choice to marry a war hero. There may also be something else there under the surface since she's matched to a now-American orphan, herself looking for answers about her past in the very house our bride has received as a wedding present and which is no doubt responsible for vivid night terrors that seem to encroach on reality. Dream Demon introduces Jemma Redgrave, now a Doctor Who star, daughter of Vanessa, but also Timothy Spall as a creepy paparazzi (he was the more unexpected in this genre of film). The bad dreams play out as a haunting and are of variable terror, but when they work, they really work. That opener alone is worth the price of admission.

The Mysterians is much like other Ishirō Honda films - an assembly of scientists, soldiers and journalists sit in rooms discussing how to best address a destructive force until well-made miniatures are deployed, the message is a warning about how science is used (and yet it is our salvation), the aliens look like us in funny costumes, and there's even a giant monster because of course. Through in one of the great kaiju heroes and maybe I'd be into it more. While there's always some charm to Honda's work, and the opticals are quite cool here, the action is repetitive, and he trots out the hoary old cliché that Mars wants our women (or it would be Mars if the astrophysics weren't so naively bonkers). Of note are the aliens' uniforms who look like those of G-Force (the old anime series), but it wasn't enough to rescue the Mysterians for me. I know I'm not exactly being fair considering that, in this genre, Honda only has Godzilla and Rodan under his belt at this point. Let's just say there are better movies ahead.

While a perfectly acceptable boy and his dog story (for kids who love scary movies), Tim Burton's Frankenweenie is also a love letter to monster films, Frankenstein obviously, but also The Mummy, Dracula, Godzilla, The Invisible Man, Gremlins, and more. Many of the characters are cast have names pulled from Gothic horror and/or are cast as actors from Universal films - they do something really clever with the kid drawn (sculpted?) as Boris Karloff, for example - and Burton gets a double reference out of using Martin Landau (who played Bela Lugosi in his Ed Wood) for the Vincent Price lookalike. If you're a fan of the old movies, you'll smile and nod knowingly throughout. As a stop-motion follow-up to The Nightmare Before Christmas, it's charming and heartfelt (though another hit job on cats - they get little respect in most dog movies), and a novel way to remake Mary Shelley's classic without hitting the same exact themes (though the dangers of playing God are still a big part of it). Bonus points for the gorgeous black and white.

Justin Lin's first movie (co-directed with Quentin Lee), Shopping for Fangs, is a low-budget, but stylish, majority Asian-cast indie about self-discovery (a great subject for one's first feature), but also the communicability (or infectiousness) of things other than diseases - ideas, fashions, violence too. There are three characters whose stories bump up against one another. Trihn is a a rock'em sock'em gun-toting waitress whose interactions are mostly with a young John Cho; she's know who she is because she created herself - she's a character. Phil is a shy, frustrated wage slave who believes he's suffering from a bout of lycanthropy, but could he just be so fed up with life's disappointments that he's ready to become someone else? (I was 27 when I became a werewolf, so I relate.) And Katherine is a lonely married woman who you MIGHT suspect as another werewolf because she has long blackouts that should worry her more than they do. Each of them represents a different level/stage of choosing, so it all works thematically, even if you often wish it didn't feel like different movies brushing up against one another (the Pulp Fiction influence is real, but the genre mixing pushes us away from the Avery/Tarantino connection). I had a lot of fun with it regardless.

Sometimes you just want to listen to intelligent film makers have a conversation... In Double Play, James Benning visits old friend Richard Linklater in Austin and discuss their films and process in fairly casual circumstances, some obviously engineered by documentarian Gabe Klinger (unless they always play catch and basketball when they see one another). I didn't know Benning, so I discover him here as an autonomous indie maverick whose experiments with form look very interesting. Earlier films look quite baroque, but later fare has a painterly quality that seems even less eventful than Tarkovsky's long shots. Intriguing, but his films aren't available on my streaming platforms. Linklater is, of course, one of my favorite film makers, so anything he has to say interests me. Klinger's choices - movie clips, venues for conversation, etc. - show an understanding of both directors' work and tries to capture the leitmotifs inherent in their films, repurposing them to make the convos happen in a shared space between their universes. It's well done if (perhaps necessarily) lackadaisical.

In terms of career restrospective/biopic documentaries, Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny is pretty standard - behind the scenes footage, talking heads, etc. - and doesn't go to in depth on any given project (up through finishing Boyhood; the film was put together while he was shooting Everybody Wants Some!). Still, if you're a Linklater fans, you'll immediately perk up when you favorite movies are discussed and his collaborators from those films show up to discuss his ideas and process. It's just that if you want to know more about a film, you'll have to find a more specific making of. Here, we barely glance at the origins of, and reactions to, a film, with very little in between. And so what's more interesting in this context is perhaps the biographical data, except that personally doesn't interest ME much (just like I don't care about the details of Shakespeare's life or any other creative type, unless the life was the art - Wilde's for example). But Dream is Destiny could do worse than scroll us through the filmography, put each film in context, and make us want to watch them all over again.

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