Oculus (2013)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane

Have I Seen it Before: Yes! So odd that I come to a movie for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods that I took in on my own and hadn’t recommended for the show.

Did I Like It: That isn’t to say I don’t recommend the movie now. It may be one of the most well-calibrated horror movies I’ve seen in a good long time. There’s just enough squeamish self-mutilation in it to set ones teeth on edge. There’s just enough jump scares to occasionally spike one’s blood pressure. There’s just enough palpable dread—of a Lovecraftian, except without the Lovecraftian bullshit, type—to only occasionally make the viewer question the real estate choices of the characters. Throw in a dollop of kids in absolutely hopeless danger to bring it all home.

But really? It’s a film about childhood trauma, in which the flashbacks to that trauma take place at a time when I was in college. So, now I’m thinking about the passage of time, and my own eventual demise. You know, horror stuff.

There’s a quieter subversion going on here, as well. Casting Gillan, already at this point a likable presence in genre entertainment, as a cold, deflated obsessive already puts the audience that would have come in for this film off balance. Flanagan walked here so Gunn could run with Gillan in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and its sequels.

I’d be tempted to lament that there was—or hasn’t, until this point—been a sequel to the film. It gives the ending shots of the film a particular melancholy that might not be satisfying to all audiences, but I ultimately think the futility of trying to deal with the mirror is key to the whole affair. It’s only a little bit about trauma—as many, many horror films are now about—but its far more about obsession.

And all of this, brought to you by the people that bring you wrestling. No, really. Look it up.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (2023)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like it: After somehow still missing Black Widow (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and Eternals (2021), only to then sit through the middling experience that I wouldn’t have partaken in if I wasn’t trying to kill a few hours in the midst of an oil change that was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania (2023), I could feel the urgency of the MCU beginning to melt away from me.

But I’m glad this one brought me back. Had it not come out on the weekend I wrapped up a semester, I might have chosen something else to try and relax after 16 weeks of endless discussion board posting, but that would have been a mistake.

I’m still ruminating on this one several days after taking it in, but it’s tempting to say this the best entry in the Guardians trilogy. That statement becomes only more amazing when I can also honestly say that the film is the least funny of the three. It is not a film at all interested in delivering laughs, though. It has far loftier ambitions to go straight for pathos and not let go. It also significantly helps matters that the movie is pointedly uninterested in being beholden to setting up future installments of the larger series. It has proven time and again to be a crucial flaw in some of the studio’s films, including Iron Man 2 (2010), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), and yes, just as recently as Quantummania, and Gunn’s final Marvel film manages to not only duck that problem, but make a strong case for the fact that Gunn had been forging a mini-cinematic universe within the larger MCU. And now Gunn can move on to bigger—and one could dare hope better—things.

Somehow a Marvel movie has made me even more hopeful for the future of DC movies, which is not an arrangement of words that make any sense in that order, but when delivered in context is a delight.

Now just release Batgirl, and we’ll be more than fine.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

Director: Jake Kasdan

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: Yes.

Did I Like It: I can’t say I was ever in a market for a sequel to the Robin Williams vehicle Jumanji (1995). I can’t even imagine anyone who was aching for a second installment. And that may be the secret to the twenty-year-plus after the fact sequel: Proceed only when expectations are non existant.

It also helps to make the film in a genre completely different from the original. Many have tried for the post-modern riff on The Breakfast Club (1985). They even tried to force the Power Rangers into that mold one time. Here, it largely works because the film is not coming from the same stable of filmmakers that make every other modern entry of hum-drum spectacle (I’m looking in your direction, Zach Snyder), but instead someone with legitimate comedy credentials in Kasdan (Orange County (2002), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)). 

It also helps that each of the key cast members are playing against type. Black and Hart’s performances might have been one-note jokes that would have lived and died in the trailer for the movie, but they are legitimately funny screen presences, so that helps. There are few actresses who can be pointedly easy as the eyes and still believably act like they were never aware of it, but Gillan is that performer.

And then there’s The Rock, or at this point we should really call him Mr. Johnson. That he could come from the world of professional wrestling and still be an engaging and charming leading man in action movies makes him singular in his field. That he is able to evoke the nebbish and not take his macho image at all seriously puts him far above most of his action star brethren. Only Schwarzenegger has credibly brought his presence to comedy, and even he has never done so completely divorced from his image of the Austrian Oak. Somebody like Stallone has never gotten close.

It didn’t have to be a Jumanji film; it’s merely a film far more enjoyable than it had any right or expectation to be.

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

Director: Jake Kasdan

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Missed it in the theater. May be missing a lot of movies in the theater for a while. Sigh. 

Let’s not get into that right now.

Did I Like It: There is nothing wrong with this second (third?) movie in this series. It’s reasonably funny. It is adequately filled with the kind of adventure-film tropes one would expect from the series. The stars are all people I would have no trouble watching in really any movie in which they might appear. 

To that note, Warner Bros. would be insane to not let Karen Gillan play Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (Oracle?) in a movie, and let her direct it, but Warner Bros. has been pretty thoroughly insane in their missed opportunities with that character so far. 

Dwayne Johnson continues to make his wrestling career an afterthought for his career, playing equal measures weirdo and pulp hero. He could have been an unbelievably awesome Doc Strange, were it to come to pass, but it seems like we’re going to get stuck with some merely competent former wrestler/actor like John Cena or Donald Trump*.

Let’s not get into any of those things right now.

But all of this was present in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017). The film explores some new territory with its characters, bringing in the energy of Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, and Awkwafina into the mix. Ultimately all of these new additions and how they play into the film came fully delivered with the film’s first trailer. Upon watching that trailer, I thought this new film would be as fresh and exciting as the original (second?) film.

As it turns out, it’s more of the same. Not a complete condemnation, but not a delivery on the promise it once showed.

*Yes, absolutely, that was low hanging fruit. Did it make me smile to type it? Also, absolutely.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Kurt Russell

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. And I’m only 50% sure that’s a comment on how this film is very much More Of The Same in relation to the original Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

Did I Like It: It’s good, but I’m surprised to report that it hasn’t stuck with me like some of the other films in the MCU.

And to add a statement like that doesn’t feel fair. I can’t fault the film in any way. The movie is generally amiable and funny throughout, and it manages to avoid the occasion Part II curse of Marvel movies and is happily content to not need to set up much for future films. 

As a matter of fact, there are several elements of the film that are candidates for the Greatest Of All Time. The opening credits are a big ball of crowd-pleasing joy. It possesses far and above the greatest Stan Lee cameo in any film ever. Peter Quill (Pratt) exclaiming “I’m going to make some weird shit!” is as fine a creative mission statement as we’re ever going to get on film. 

One might think that the reliance on Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) for much of the action and plot would be cloying, but I’m of a mind to believe the market research dictating that idea was right on that money. Anyone who insists they aren’t entertained by Groot is hiding something. Maybe they aren’t charmed by the toddler tree, but if that much is true, they probably have a couple of bodies buried in their backyard.

I also appreciate that Quill’s walkman actually sounds as crappy as a walkman ought to sound in the instant before Ego (Russell) destroys it, but only because it resolves one of my nitpicks from the original film.

As I type all of this I begin to realize that maybe on this viewing the movie will stick with me more. It deserves to.