"Accomplishments"
In theaters: My patriotic pride is always triggered when I hit upon a stealth Canadian movie. With Aubrey Plaza's participation in My Old Ass, it didn't seem like we'd get a Canadian story (even if shot in Canada, most movies hide it with American references), but it's unashamedly Canadian. And Plaza isn't in it A LOT, though she gets some of the best scenes. Her younger self somehow summons her older self (Plaza) on a drug trip, in the last few weeks before she heads off to university. What message would your older self send your younger self if this really happened? And would your younger self listen? A better question might be, would you listen your younger self? In a world where young people are often dismissed (that's the true ageism, folks), I like the inversion we get from the poignant climax. Young Elliott (Maisy Stella, who gives off Final Girl vibes) is hard to like at first, but she grows on you. I wish the script wasn't so keen on saying various characters look like each other when they really don't, but don't let it distract you. All in all, a pleasant watch that's never quite as original as its premise would have it. There are some laughs and some tears, and a basic coming of age story, you know the drill.
At home: October! As is my custom, I'm watching at least one horror film each day, so put your blood-proof ponchos on!
Taking from lupine folk stories, Alice in Wonderland and Little Red Riding Hood, The Company of Wolves is a surreal Russian doll of a film that may or may not take you out of the dream at the end. In the present day, a girl dreams of a fairy tale forest and the small village within. In the dream, her grandmother (Angela Lansbury!) tells her stories about werewolves, which are dramatized before our eyes. Will Dream Rosaleen also fall prey to the wolf within? What about Waking World Rosaleen whose subconscious is weaving all this up? The film looks gorgeous, and the surrealism provides anachronisms and oddities through which we might understand Rosaleen's world, without making it opaque. You'll also see some cool effects, not quite on the level of American Werewolf's, but in that style, and more demented. It's an anthology film of sorts, but the larger dream has a definite story, and if the frame tale therefore has one, it's about embracing - or fearing - our darkest impulses.
Werewolves are a threat you can actually plan for. They're on a schedule. And that's proven in Late Phases, in which an irascible blind veteran moves into a gated retirement community under threat from nosy neighbors and one or more lycanthropes... the night of a full moon. After a savage attack, he uses the next month to prep, and that's what we mostly see. Not just prepare for another attack, but prepare his soul in case (as he expects), he doesn't make it out alive. Always happy to see Tom Noonan, here as the priest with a past who enjoys that creepy Noonan ambiguity. Because the attacks are bookends, the main emphasis is on character and how a Vietnam vet might feel that he got a raw deal, but still believe in the principles that made him join the service in the first place. I don't know if I would have revealed who the werewolf was as early, or matter-of-factly, as they did, but it's not a deal breaker for me. And interesting take on a common monster story.
We meet so many characters in the first few minutes of You're Next that I was initially a little lost. It resolves itself into a well-to-do family dinner in a grand old house, and I'm not sure I care what happens to any of them when a bunch of slashers with animal masks come to Purge them. While there are some good, gory gags, I decided my enjoyment would be predicated on the revelations the film had in store for us. Who are these mysterious killers, and more importantly, why does the Australian lead (Sharni Vinson) act like she was the final girl in a previous slasher film? The answers are... just okay. Nothing to write home about, and I think it might have been more interesting to just not say. Windgard would do better with The Guest (before being handed the keys to the Godzilla/King Kong franchise). For fun, note horror director Ti West (X) as a member of the dinner party.
When I was a kid, probably 10 years old, I saw The Black Pearl on TV, in a French dub, and it really left its mark. The giant manta ray was MY Jaws. The tarantula sequence was MY James Bond deadly trap. I thought the story of a young pearl diver was just so exotic. As an adult, whenever I found a notice about the film, it was to say how terrible it was, which only made me more keen to see it again. It was never released on video, and so I waited. Turns out, the good ol' French dub is on YouTube. It's not a great print, but what can you do? And it's amazing how CRISP my memories of its key moments still are. It really imprinted on me, and so I have more affection for it than I should. It naturally feels like a throwback, a Boy's Own Adventure(TM) where a teenager wants to do what's best for his family and village but brings them a curse along with the title pearl. It's most interesting when it's doing tropical folk horror, and I will readily admit that it can otherwise be a little dull. The narration is intrusive. There's a lot of padding via underwater fauna documentary footage (though it does feed the creep factor). And most egregiously, the funky score goes against the exoticism and makes it sound like a 70s cop show.
Big improv vibes coming off Scare Me, a low-means horror comedy signed Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within) who also stars with The Boys' Aya Cash and SNL's Chris Redd. An anthology movie, in a way, with him as a would-be scriptwriter of little talent and her as horror novelist whose first book has become a bestseller, in a woodland cabin together during a power outage, trying to scare each other with horror stories. That's really it. We're not transported elsewhere. There's no extended cast. They have to mime the story, do the voices, help (or brutally criticize) each other to give the stories shape, and as imagination takes hold, the sound and lighting catches up and we see/hear a little more. I offer the alternate title Who's Afraid of Virginia Werewolf?, because it not only feels like a play, but as the night progresses, lines are crossed, and the characters may in fact take the game too far. And so like an improv show, you've signed a contract with the performers to let their imagination do the work normally done by sets, costumes and effects. You're drawn in. And like the best improv shows, the laughs are balanced with serious moments and ambiguities to dissect afterwards.
Well, The Stuff is the kind of bonkers genre film-making one should expect from Larry Cohen, replacing blood and guts with foam in terms of gore, as if he'd just watched some 1960s Doctor Who story and though, "hmm". Because yes, foam CAN be effective gore. At the intersection between The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the movie features a Marshmallow Fluff-like substance coming out of the ground (Quatermass and the Frozen Treat) which proves addictive. Oh, and it turns you into a zombie-like "Stuffy" who spews Stuff around like a broken Ponderosa ice cream machine. Michael Moriarty is a charming industrial spy who teams up with a marketing maven and a kid without a sweet tooth to take the empire down, with the help of Paul Sorvino's insane survivalist Colonel. It's mostly silly and that's why it's enjoyable, with a couple of crazy scares like the Stuffy reprise of Johnny Depp's death in Nightmare on Elm Street, and as an audience member, you'll fall into two categories. Those who really want to taste the Stuff, and those who will be put off any like product in the refrigerator. I thought it looked disgusting myself.
King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen is a really great portrait of the B-movie maverick who gave us such not only weird cult classics like Q, The Stuff and It's Alive, but also helped launch the early 70s blaxploitation wave. And he never heard a "you can't do that" that didn't make him want to "do exactly that". The documentary talks to him, people he worked with behind and in front of his camera - his fanciful accounts sometimes at odds with his stars', but I don't know that I trust Fred Williamson's immense ego any more than Cohen's Stan Lee-isms - critics, and other directors of his generation. It's a loving look at a guerrilla film maker and unique voice in the industry, but it's also damn fun! Crazy stories abound and I'll be damned if it doesn't make you want to watch (or rewatch) a lot of the movies (or even TV shows) he wrote and/or directed. RIP Larry Cohen (died 2 years after release).
If you love 1980s American action films, In Search of the Last Action Heroes is a fun and pretty comprehensive clip show of the era, not forgetting what came before and what came after (or came elsewhere, especially in Asia), but definitely centered on how we got to the 'roided-out 80s, how it peaked, and how it eventually dwindled, but left its stamp on movies. It's a loving tribute, by the film maker through the various talking heads (all industry pros, from the era or inspired by it), with a certain level of disdain (but not too much) for the action films of today. Did I learn anything new? Not a lot, even if it's nice to see it all in context, and there are perhaps a couple of minor classics in there that it alerted me to. Somehow, it made me more sympathetic to Scott Adkins. A good reminder to watch more of Cynthia Rothrock's catalog. That's the kind of thing I was left with.
You could almost get whiplash watching The Mechanik (AKA The Russian Specialist) due to its terrible editing. It just never knows how to get out of a scene (or even a moment), affecting unnatural dissolves like it's always going to commercial, as well as bad video slow-motion and confusing jump cuts, Maybe the script was just too thin to live in any non-action moment for very long, and certainly, the characters are all ciphers, except maybe Ben Cross as Dolph Lundgren's partner. Even the villain is only really memorable because he has a memorable scar (though I might remember him for being such a poor shot). Lundgren is credited for "Story", but it's really just "The Punisher is roped into rescuing a girl from the Russian mob's human trafficking operation", a standard action movie thing (it came out the same year as Taken, for reference), and making the hero good at fixing vehicles is a very slight twist. We're left with the action, which is fine. A lot of boring gunplay, though the cat and mouse game in rural Russia (played by Bulgaria) is pretty good comparatively. The direction (by Lundgren!) tries hard at times, with beauty shots of the countryside and and unusual angles, but it's only a small facet of a generally remedial effort.
Which of these is the least believable thing about Black Water? A. Van Damme, the "Muscles from Brussels", having a name like Scott? B. That one shot of Alabama standing in for Cuba? C. The incredibly spare submarine control room? The answer is D. Jasmine Waltz, with her plastic surgery looks, as a low-level CIA agent. She can't sell it, but the script doesn't think Agent Tyler is very effective either. You're basically just waiting for Dolph Lundgren to get let out of his cell on this black site sub so he can help JCVD. He's clearly having a lot of fun in this spy thriller version of Die Hard on a Sub, and - this is going to sound weird coming from me, perhaps - I wish he had had more scenes! Easily the best character in the lot. In terms of action, this is a movie that's learned something from John Wick without being beholden to it, and the director's background as a cinematographer means it looks pretty cool. What it really needed is a better sense of the sub's geography. As it is, it's hard to know where we're going or how the goodies and the baddies aren't crossing each other's paths. Definitely NOT shot on a sub.
"Louis Burke" doesn't sound very Québécois, but that's Van Damme's name in Death Warrant. He's a Canadian cop who's tracked a serial killer to L.A. and as an "unknown", is roped into going undercover in a prison to see who's been killing the inmates. Perfectly reasonable premise and a perfectly reasonable prison where the inmates seem to be in charge. Oh, the screws are pretty mean, but gen pop seems to be whatever the cons want it to be, kind of like an interior Mad Max. Cynthia Gibb is the green assistant d.a. who poses as his wife (and gets sexually harassed by just about everyone, it seems), and Robert Guillaume is a nice surprise as one of the convicts who dares help Burke in his mission. The extended action set piece at the end, dependent on a bonus villain that doesn't really come as a surprise but still feels shoehorned in, sort of loses the plot, unfortunately. But in terms of absurd action flicks, you could do worse.
People should stop debating whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie as it will never hold a candle to Invasion USA in that respect. Chuck Norris plays Chuck Norris from Chuck Norris jokes, a Chuck Norris that is imperturbable in the face of danger and speaks seldom except to deliver a cracker of a line. He's a former government agent who catches alligators as his retirement plan, get me? Richard Lynch is his opposite number on the Soviet side, who stages a large number of terrorist attacks on American soil when the country is at its least wary - Christmas! The fear makes people riotous, and the violence takes care of itself - man, this is a little too prescient given current Russian interference schemes. Of course, this isn't about hacking or fake social media accounts, it's about explosions and wow, the destruction budget on this is through the roof. Even the machine gun action stuff I usually find boring is exciting thanks to some squibtastic sequences. How does Chuck Norris do some of the things he does? Who cares. Why can't we hear the war outside an office building while the leads creep around so they can shoot each other with bazookas? WHO. CARES. Go with the absurdity, and please don't hurt my pet armadillo! The epitome of 80s American Action B-Cinema.
Books: Though nominally the first of several Hoke Moseley novels, the protagonist in Willeford's Miami Blues is Freddy, the violent thief and con man who eventually steals Moseley's badge and starts acting like a corrupt cop. We seem to always be in medias res when it comes to Moseley and his world, intersecting with a gritty police procedural, various investigations we never get closure on, etc. But this is an upending of the crime novel in many ways. The cop and the criminal are pretty inept (I can see how both Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino list Willeford as an inspiration), and the action is motivated (and solved!) largely by an accumulation of coincidences. The two leads tend to merge, have the same thoughts, trade possessions and even identities. To my eyes, this is also a satire of the ultra-conservative values of the early Reagan era. The characters are bigoted, but fools, and the controlling relationship between Freddy and the prostitute he turns into a homemaker is a broken mirror of some kind of 1950s ideal. It subverts normality by making sociopaths try to live normal lives, masculinity by portraying a kind of failing machismo, and capitalism by drowning us in brand names the characters care too much about.
I quite enjoyed Nick Walter's Eighth Doctor Adventure, Dominion, which starts with a bang - a wormhole forms inside the TARDIS, whisks Sam away, and absolutely trashes the time machine - and then drops the Doctor and Fitz in rural Sweden, where experiments gone wrong have made Swiss cheese out of reality. Our gaze will eventually fall on the Dominion, a very weird little world that is sometimes hard to imagine, but I think Walters does his best. I've read more abstract descriptions in Doctor Who books, and the prose is straightforward enough that it's not really a problem here. For a first-time Doctor Who writer, Walters impresses. There are some lines in the novel that NuWho episodes would be lucky to have (I reference the post-2005 series because it often makes the same kind of evocative statements about the Doctor and his world), and some great chapter headings too. It's kind of too bad they didn't use the TARDIS' distress to change its interior though. I think after 22 books (plus a few NAs), and three years since the TV Movie, the old girl could have done with a makeover. Or perhaps I'm not that big a fan of the cathedral look.
RPGs: On Torg Eternity - Agents of S.H.I.F.T. this week... Our tour of the Living Land continues with a portal dropping the team into swampy, flooded Chicago. Home to cryptid-tastic Fish Folk who worship a Cthuloid monster from a now-dead world, and death-worshiping edeinos armed with bone-forged weapons. One small problem is that the Frankenstein's player was going to be hours late, but okay, something makes him deviate within the portal and he'll drop out of the sky as soon as he logs in. It DID have an effect though, because he's the one empathetic character and might have stopped the absolute psychopaths on the team from killing the one source of information they come across. The family that was saved in the previous episode are left in the hands of SHIFT agents, except the 17-year-old son Wes, who joins the group as part of the Monster Hunter's Enthusiastic Assistant Perk. I played up the hero worship, but the Hunter needs to find things for his mentee to do other than stand there in the middle of danger. Note that the campaign book fully expects the family to stay behind in the Land Below. Absurd. Very heavy on fights (though I always try to build in some alternatives), this one, with a double final battle on top of the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower. It was pushing 11 PM, people were tired and even crabby, and I was so intent on getting to the end rather than pause mid-fight, that I made the mistake of forgetting someone prayed to Lanala (via Cosm card) for help - could have ended things with a lightning bolt - but in the off-stage epilogue, this is how the Nightmare Tree on top of the tower was destroyed (after the PCs took its dimthread out of Dodge).
Best bits: The Monster Hunter caught a mishapping Realm Runner by the arm when he was falling between two ship hulks in Lake Michigan, dislocating it. The Leopard Warrior is still getting some high damage scores, such as when he ripped five Fish-Folk a new stomach pouch with one running slash of his claws. The cultists' prisoners were the father-son/caveman-Core Earth team that played the very first Day One adventure that kicked us off, so there was incentive to save them. The Monster Hunter cut the cable they were suspended on with a deadeye shot and pulled them up as the Frankenstein was cannonballing into the Lovecraftian horror (it quickly left, it didn't like his taste). The two one-shot characters returned to help against undead edeinos via a Connection card played by the Realm Runner. And the players were smart enough to go after the death cult priests to disrupt their control of the undead warriors.
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