This Week in Geek (12-18/02/23)

"Accomplishments"

In theaters: M. Night Shyamalan's take on torture porn, Knock at the Cabin feels most like Signs, a gripping thriller set during a "genre event" (here a potential Biblical apocalypse), showing us only the periphery (I'm sure Gerard Butler was out there trying to save the world), though it's actually the center of the hurricane. So far so good. Four strangers show up at a cabin in the woods, insisting the family there (a same-sex couple and their little daughter) sacrifice one of their own to stop doomsday. And all seven actors are quite good, especially the conflicted Dave Bautista, and the actors playing the couple (Ben Aldridge and Jonathan Groff), keeping a high emotional intensity throughout. This will be a test of faith and love and humanity, and for the most part it works. Had it sustained its ambiguity, it might have provided a shock to the system, but there's only really one way to go, and once on its tracks, you know every stop the train must make. There seems to be an attempt at inserting things that have greater thematic meaning (the grasshoppers, for example), but don't. I further dock it for the outrageously bad news reports that are crucial to the plot. They seem to have been beamed in from a parallel universe inhabited by bad actors.

At home: The second season of Leverage: Redemption provides 13 episodes of the warm blanket this show has become for many of us, which is too say fun television that doesn't take itself too seriously, but still provides catharsis by attacking real issues created by rich a-holes, and characters we've long enjoyed (plus Our Mister Wilson who feels very much a member of the team by now). It's Mission: Impossible as a comedy, and that's always gonna be great, even if sometimes the writing is a bit "for television", and not every caper is a winner. The season makes particular delves into Elliot's and Sophie's lives before they joined the team, and these two become two sides of the "Redemption" coin, giving the show's new title a meaning that's a bit deeper than it was in Season 1. Some strong villainy takes us into a nail-biting final two-parter, and a fun episode along the way is the one where we see the team's actions through normal people caught up in events (it just doesn't go 100% on their POV, which is too bad, but it's still a good kind of unusual).

Identity is just a very fun thriller by James Mangold, at first setting up a series of crashing dominoes that strands a group of disparate people in a motel during a rainstorm, and among them is a serial killer, so they soon start dropping like flies. And look at this cast: John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, John Hawkes, Alfred Molina, Clea DuVall, Jake Busey... all very recognizable and difficult to see as disposable. And a surprisingly large number of cast members could be the killer. By the time you think the film's spent its inventiveness in lieu of slasher tropes, it pulls its big twist (but not its ONLY twist), at which point, the movie should be over, but no, it finds a way to keep its stakes alive. I was ahead of the movie by maybe 5-10 minutes, I'll admit, but I still didn't see where it was ultimately going. In the early aughts, audiences were hungry for big twists (thanks, M. Night! or do I blame Fight Club?), and this one certainly has an entertaining one. It seems to have fallen behind the couch, however, and remains worth discovering.

I don't know why Boccaccio '70 is called that, given that it was made in 1962 and doesn't have a frame tale like Boccaccio's Decameron or anything, but it's an anthology film about the uses of sex and the fear of sex, presenting four short films, mostly in the comedic vein, by two of Italy's best known auteurs, and well, two I've never heard of (the only film I've seen between the latter is a terrible Goldie Hawn vehicle). And when I saw short films, I don't really mean it. Clocking in at nearly 3½ hours, Boccaccio's four tales could each have been their own movies without breaking a sweat. The anthology is too long for casual viewing, and the chapters just a touch too short for feature length. It's an odd beast. But is it good? I think each of the four pieces are worthy, though the less known directors provide the weakest pieces. Monicelli's Renzo and Luciana, about newlyweds struggling to get their lives started peaceably is nice slice of life, but doesn't really have much of an ending. Meanwhile, there's a reckoning to be had between husband and wife after a sex scandal breaks in Visconti's The Job. While it benefits from a young Romy Schneider's performance, it takes a long time to take off, but it also has an excellent (and sad) ending. Fellini's The Temptation of Dr Antonio is a delightful farce about a prude who feels antagonized by what he sees as a debased world and is particularly tortured by a giant, sexy billboard selling milk. Really very cool special effects accompany this mad satire, and Fellini throws in a bunch of visual double entendres. A lot of fun. And I've never disliked a collaboration between De Sica and Sophia Lauren. In The Raffle, she's part of a travelling carnival which sells lottery tickets where she's the prize. It's a fairly thin story, but she has such an amazing presence, it hardly matters. Perhaps one to watch in pieces?

Julie Christie won an Oscar for Darling, and she is indeed great in Schlesinger's tell-all-type story of a girl who chases her dreams in jetset 1965, defaulting to glamor when she can, but forever doomed to jump from man to  man, and circumstance to circumstance, driven by an unhappiness. Ultimately, luxury is an empty ambition and dissatisfaction its own kind trap. There are some good directorial ideas throughout, from the freeze frames that turn the film into a photo shoot, to the tipsy party where Christie's Diana is being mocked. And yet, I just couldn't get with this one. I felt completely divorced from its decadent world and what's important in that era. I wouldn't call it dated, because the pursuit of celebrity is still an ongoing concern, and the style is fairly modern, but it does feel like it's speaking to another time. Percussive and even transgressive in '65, I just found the skipping around over a few years to be rather interminable. Perhaps these are lessons/topics that have been explored so much since then, I became impatient with it.

With Billy Wilder on the writing team and Howard Hawks directing, Ball of Fire has some pretty good DNA, but this is a minor effort by the two of them. Or perhaps I'm not big on Gary Cooper's folksy persona; never have been. He plays the youngest of a group of encyclopedists (and the one with the most romance potential) holed up for years in a house and whose study of American slang makes him intersect with tough-talkin' dame Barbara Stanwyck, who is equal to herself, which is to say, she's great as usual. But this is one of those screwball comedies that also partakes in the Noir, so she's involved in a crime plot (just how exactly isn't terribly clear), so she's more than happy to hide out in the encyclopedia house and generally disrupt affairs with her charm and party girl attitude. There are some fun bits, but at two hours, it's a little long for a comedy, and I never really buy into Cooper as a linguistic genius (and there's a LOT of that). A perfectly pleasant experience, but a little overstuffed.

There's enough insanity in Murder, He Says that I have to give it my recommendation. The glow-in-the-dark poison alone... Fred MacMurray plays a pollster who stumbles on a giant house filled with hicksploitation types after a stolen stash of cash. Only the dying granny knows where it is and she leaves the secret with him. Hilarity ensues. It's a bit shouty - the whip-crackin (literally!) mom can get particularly aggravating, but the film's bonkers energy sells the cartoon characterizations and slapstick action, which provide a lot of amusing and memorable sequences - the lazy Susan, the hay bales, even something as simple as sitting on an old couch becomes an excuse for physical humor. Because he's been in a mix of comedies and very notable dramas, MacMurray probably doesn't get enough credit as a comic actor, but here he's clearly doing his own shtick and pratfalls and having a lot of fun doing it. It's a lot of fun to WATCH him doing it too.

Every year since the holiday was instituted, we've used Family Day Weekend to run a movie marathon (some franchise or theme). This year, I convinced my friends to do a Star Trek one since they have either seen none or few of the pre-Abrams movies (I know!). We had to do it on Friday night and Saturday because they have families to cater to at SOME point (right?), so it wasn't going to be an all-inclusive. I chose Space Seed as a context episode, ST II-IV, ST VI, Fist Contact and Insurrection, so skipping the bad ones ("but Insurr--" SHUT UP, I LIKE IT). But it doesn't stop there. Light cosplay (the Starfleet colors) was a must, and the food also showed its Trek flavor. Pictures follow:

But wait, there's more! When you came in, you picked a random card that decided your Trek culture and either gave you a super-power or something to do:

It hints at a couple other features, like the gift envelope each person got on their way out, containing some movie-related CCG cards, Trek stickers and stamps; AND Cry Bingo, which tracks how many times I shed a tear during any given movie. I promised to fess up no matter how embarrassing. You put your name down next to a movie, points equal to weepy moments (filled 'em in, I'm obviously a wreck, don't know what happened during Search for Spock, honestly).

For the record, the winner was the Hot Squad's Amélie. On the line was the Spider-Cup (which we use for all these silly events), converted for the occasion into the Klingon Cup!

What's it gonna be next year, and will it be this involved? I don't know, but probably not!

Books: I did it in reverse. I watched Prime's Reacher show, THEN checked out the first Reacher novel the season was based on. Very close, but the show probably improves on Killing Floor by injecting more life into the other characters and if you think Reacher stumbling upon the murder of his brother is an insane coincidence, there's an even crazier one late in the book. Where the book improves on the experience however is that it's told in the first person, so you get access to Jack's thought process, which is denied us in live action seeing as he's a rather silent fellow. And he thinks in short bursts, simple sentences and phrases. It makes the prose fly by, and the action sequences pretty exciting. Even though I knew the plot already, the back half of the book was still a page turner. Now, I know the other books in the series AREN'T written in Reacher's voice, which is perhaps too bad because it had a distinctiveness, but it will mean he doesn't get so much second-hand information. Am I up for another? Yes. I think Lee Childs' first book was fun enough to warrant it.