This Week in Geek (3-9/11/24)

"Accomplishments"

In theaters: It seems the massive popularity of Taylor Swift is creating a small boom in making pop stars main characters in movies. We had Trap earlier in 2024, and then Smile 2, which aside from the pop star lead, is essentially the same film as Smile 1. It's still about a Smile Virus/Demon infecting those who see something traumatic (the gory death of the previous host) and can't get it out of their minds (nor their previous traumas) and go on to stage the next trauma for the next host. It's still about the fear of trauma, of accidentally seeing something that will add to your burden, indeed the reason many people don't want to watch horror films. It may be a bit better than the original. Naomi Scott acquits herself quite well as a dancer/singer/recovering prima donna. The camera is often loopy, creating an askew universe that makes you question reality. The Smile Demon sure is a big troll, to its victims (including a character from the previous film, as connective tissue) and to the audience. The jump scares are well-staged (well, at least *I* jumped out of my skin several times and wasn't too mad at it). I bet Lady Raven would have made short work of the evil entity.

At home: Before The Artist, I only knew Jean Dujardin for very dumb French comedies (some of which he made with the same director!), but he's really quite good in Hazanavicious' tribute to American silent and early 30s cinema (there's a big dose of that, or am I the only one who sees the two leads and the dog as a reference to The Thin Man movies?). He gets to do physical comedy and in the back half of the film, strong brooding drama. The Artist has a lot of competition in its category - Singing in the Rain and, more recently, Babylon, but also "stars past their prime" films like Sunset Boulevard and Limelight (surely, the best of all the films named) - and at first, despite some clever touches (like references to speaking peppered throughout), I wasn't sure it would transcend its gimmick. But making a silent film in the 2010s about the advent of talkies IS a nice idea, and Dujardin's lack of voice is due to his professional inertia, a prideful refusal to change with the times that's perhaps universal, so it does eventually win me over. With no small help from Bérénice Bejo's up-and-comer Peppy Miller who is both beautiful and charming (and wouldn't have gotten the job if it weren't a silent, presumably, being French-Argentine - the silent era had some advantages in terms of casting, at least).

In Repeat, a scientist finds a way to talk to the dead (from his garage!), which fuels his obsession about his missing (perhaps dead) teenage daughter and puts his marriage and his tenure at risk. Of course, there's something more going on, and I think the audience is well ahead of the character in figuring out just what his machine actually does. There's a last minute exposition scene, but I would have been fine without it. Though the science is completely imaginary, I like these kinds of scientific puzzles, and the family drama is well played too. Science-fiction cinema has kind of split between the spectacle blockbuster (which has more to do with special effects than ideas) and the indie Twilight Zone/Outer Limits/Black Mirror direct-to-streaming feature that's exactly the opposite. Repeat isn't without its plot holes, but it's a pretty tight SF thriller about the remorselessness of the universe and its rules.

Brian Hennant (co-writer of The Road Warrior) would end up leaving The Time Guardian as director and disown it, and yeah, this Ozploitation sci-fi flick IS a mess. if it manages one thing, it's ripping off as many movies as possible. It's a little bit Terminator, a little bit Road Warrior, a little bit Logan's Run, a little bit Back to the Future, a little bit Blade Runner, a little bit Smokey and the Bandit... and the sci-fi fashions are all over the place too. One might still be interested because of its cast: Carrie Fisher (at times in a painted-on breastplate) and Dean Stockwell (phoning it in, or at least never finding his footing), but it's mostly about Tom Burlinson being butcher than butch (while doing a Michael Biehn impression) and easily love-struck Nikki Coghill fighting cyborgs or corrupt local cops in the South Australian desert. The movie's big idea - an entire city that can time travel - is lost in the boring violence, and one wonders why a time travel element was needed at all.

Timescape, or as it was originally called, The Grand Tour, is David Twohy (Pitch Black)'s first film and... it's a really good one! Jeff Daniels is the single father of Ariana Richards (later of Jurassic Park, she even does the famous head turn), renovating a bed and breakfast overlooking a small town. Though they suffered a tragedy, they have a very nice relationship, threatened by some calamity heralded by a bunch of weird tourists who are obviously from the far future crashing the B&B. It really feels like the premise resolves itself by the mid-point, but that's when things get the most interesting, and Daniels may have to take time travel matters into his own hands. Not just to save lives, but to redeem himself and expunge (retcon?) his guilt stemming from the aforementioned tragedy. Set-ups and pay-offs are like clockwork, and I absolutely love the unforeseen ending.

I don't think Serena and the Ratts (sounds like an 80s post-punk band) completely works, but I give it points for trying. Two assassins (including burnout Serena) are hired by activists to kill the scientists who have built a time machine before they send someone back in time to change history. Or have they already been screwing with history and this isn't our first loop through events? Truth be told, though it seems to make promises by showing sequences that are chronologically out of order, it's more of a hit man story (by way of Nikita) than a time travel one. Except philosophically, or perhaps metaphysically. What's unfortunate about that is that the film doesn't really know how to make action scenes work within its budget, and these just feel fake and lifeless. Not everything pays off either. And as for the intellectual ideas, they can come across as a bit pretentious, but I ultimately liked what the film had to say and how its climax and coda said it. It's not what you expect and that's an important factor in low-budget, indie science-fiction.

Not entirely sure what to think of Damon Packard's Foxfur, a trippy voyage through space, time and dimension that references popular conspiracy theory fodder, but ultimately ends just a little too soon as I exclaimed "That ain't no kind of explanation!" Foxfur is moving through the multiverse, and is even played by several actresses. Similarly, people in her life my sport a different haircut from scene to scene or find themselves in entirely different circumstances. The people who aren't "in the know" act like phone zombies or spout the same basic phrases over and over, robbing conversation of any meaning. Some worlds are our own, some are quite fantastical. There's a real playfulness to this one-hour film, even if it doesn't always translate into laughs (the sped up camera, the weird and obvious padding to make characters overweight). As for effects, they are generally cheesy, but we quickly understand that they are meant to be representational as opposed to literal - this is a movie that uses a Bogglin as an actual monster! I am a little disappointed by it ending on a question mark, but anything this intriguing gets at least a pass from me.

In terms of the buddy cop formula, Stakeout does it better than most. Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez are both slobs, but Estevez less so... they don't overegg the pudding in terms of creating a comedic contrast between two people who have worked together for years. There would be osmosis there, after all. They lead messy lives which puts them on a seemingly pointless stakeout duty, watching a woman (Madeleine Stowe) whose ex-boyfriend just escaped from prison. To our surprise, perhaps, it's Dreyfuss who falls in love with her, can't help meeting up with her, and risks life and career over her. She says she's got impeccable taste in men, but everything points to the opposite. Still, it's an interesting romance, and leads to some comedy (as does the stakeout, with its night shift/day shift rivalries). When it tries to be an action film, it feels a little ridiculous, though the climactic sequence is actually pretty good, making good use of the geographical location (bonus points for taking place in Seattle and not one of the typical cop flick cities). Nothing too challenging, but it's got a good hook and once they stop ogling girls through a telescope, it's a fun ride.

Books: Paul Cornell's last Doctor Who novel is the Eighth Doctor Adventure The Shadows of Avalon, an easy sell for me in the sense that I like him as a writer, but a hard sell at the same time because it features magic in the world of Doctor Who, which is one of my bugbears. A sort-of, kind-of, not-really sequel to Battlefield, the Doctor, his companions and the Brigadier (reeling from the loss of his wife) are sucked into a world of Celtic myth and faeries. There are a couple of fun Time Lord villains manipulating events, the TARDIS is destroyed and a new one dreamed up, and Compassion goes through her "big change". But ultimately, this is about "moving on" from grief, or a life crisis. It's true of the Brig, who takes it out on Avalon by suicidally commanding modern forces against the Unseelie Court (it leads him somewhere, but boy, it's tough to read). And it's true of the Doctor who, after several adventures where he questions his own agency, finally gets out of his existential funk. He's much more active in this book and that's what we want from him, writers! With some important events in the series, and the Brig getting a strong final chapter, The Shadows of Avalon is worthy of notice, and its back half is especially exciting.

RPGs: Once a month in game time, I have to do a short Torg Eternity session with the player who left his Ayslish Paladin in charge of the Fairy Tale Barony at the end of a campaign. He's in a unique position to change the status quo in that region, after all. I state his kingdom's resources, give him a few plot hooks to choose from and a hand of cards to play on macro-moves (so for example, scouting another zone with an army only requires a single Stealth roll - it's meant to be quick and descriptive), then he makes choices based on those. Results were positive!

Osfrid did well. He first scouted the Viking ports of the nearby zone (in Northeastern Sweden) with animals out of the fables and found that, as his intelligence suggested, Uthorion had pulled his ships out of there to use in the invasion of Iceland the previous month. His army of Wonderland cards was almost caught after a bad roll, but in Torg, card play is key. Literally in this case! The card soldiers flattened themselves face up in the snow and weren't caught. Osfrid then led his forces into the port, captured the small garrison there and had the reality weavers in his company spin them in cocoons. The Baroness was along for the ride with her power to change someone's origin Cosm, and so those Aylish Vikings were turned into Core Earthers who could then "dream" the Fairy Tale world into the zone. A sweep of all the principal towns made the zone transform (this happens over a month). That sweep rolled so high, I had, by the Laws of Aysle, to give him a magic item - a Circlet of Leadership, which seems quite appropriate. But when they got home, Osfrid learned that the Akashan refugees on his territory, tired of waiting for territorial grants, sent their own expedition westward (led by another of the same player's former characters!), but for what purpose is a mystery held for next time...