The Godfather Part II (1974)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Diane Keaton, John Cazale

Have I Seen it Before: At 202 minutes, it is quite a commitment, and yet I make that commitment as often as I possibly can.

Did I Like It: What kind of sociopath would I be if I said no? 

Of course, The Godfather Part II is a great film. There is no reasonable way to deny this, and I wouldn’t try to do so, even if I wanted to. What’s more, anything that could be written about this film has already been done so. It is a dense, rich meal of intrigue, tragedy, and machismo. Coppola’s output may have fluctuated fairly wildly with his fortunes in Hollywood, but when his story is done he will have still made several truly great films, and a couple of bottles of affordable, yet drinkable wine.

And so, on my twentieth or so screening of this film, I am mostly struck by little moments or feelings as the film unfurls. 

Pacino’s unrelenting, patient ruthlessness. He is equal parts cautionary tale and towering example of not taking shit from anyone. It’s the final eerily quiet performance from the man before he started shouting in Dog Day Afternoon and has yet to stop. Actually, I suppose he starts #yellingpacino in this movie in a few scenes, primarily when confronted with the attack on his Tahoe compound and later when he is confronted with the fact that, despite his machiavellian perfection in ealing with the underworld, Kay Corleone (Keaton) sees right through him and will not abide his opportunistic evil.

James Caan’s cameo in the final scene, along with the pointedly unknowable absence of Marlon Brando. Paramount, Coppola, and Brando could not come to any sort of an accord to get him to make the small appearance, but if you ask me, Michael’s story is more complete if he is completely removed from his father for the runtime.

And speaking of tragedies with fathers, the small moment of this film that sticks with me forever is seldom written about, but for my money is the linchpin of not just the film, but the entire Corleone saga. The family boards a train leaving Sicily and Vito (De Niro) tells his youngest son to, “Say goodbye, Michael.” Can’t distill the series down more perfectly than that.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018)

Director: Peter Rida Michail, Aaron Horvath

Cast: Greg Cipes, Scott Menville, Khary Payton, Tara Strong

Have I Seen it Before: No, and I’m sad that I hadn’t.

Did I Like It: There’s not a moment where this movie has any interest in annoying me. Your mileage may vary, but you’d be wrong.

There’s no denying that Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is not meant for me, but I’m still content to take it for my own. It is often childish, including both what might be the longest sustained fart joke in the history of the movies, and a prolonged gag that involves the misuse of a stage toilet, but I don’t care. As a longtime enthusiast of superhero films, this film bewitched me at nearly every turn. I have next to no awareness of the Teen Titans team before this screening, and next to no knowledge of the television series Teen Titans Go! that spawned the movie. From the opening vanity cards featuring a willfully daffy Daffy Duck, to Robin’s final, desperate attempts to get kids to think about something as the credits threaten to eclipse the film, I am now a Teen Titans fan. Also, the animation legacy of Warner Bros. and DC is strong, even if their live action division can’t quite get it consistently together.

As such, it will prove difficult to provide an in depth analysis of why the film works so thoroughly. Therefore, I will leave you with an impassioned plea to go see the movie, and a list of mildly spoiler-adjacent things that piqued my delight during the tragically slim 88 minute running time.

The opening shot is of someone flipping through a comic book, a la a different comic book label’s various movie ventures.

Nicolas Cage is Superman. Everything is great.

No joke, I'd watch an Alfred movie.

A quick, although not slavish reference to Animaniacs. I, and nearly everyone my age appreciates that.

A Stan Lee cameo. Even if it would be on a list of growingly finite such appearances, it was a nice little gag.

An extended Back to the Future (1985) riff that either makes a substantial argument that this film may be less for children born in the second decade of the twenty-first century than it might seem on the surface, or that all people of all ages love Back to the Future, and Universal Parks had no right removing The Ride from their catalogue.

And, for the sheer tonnage of self-reverential jokes about superhero movies, it does not include an obligatory tag scene. One might think of that as a missed opportunity, but for me the film has engendered such consistent good will, that I’m willing to dub it as bold instead.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, and (sigh, and not a good one) Jared Leto

Have I Seen it Before: Well, it's desperate to make me feel like this is a movie I’ve seen before, but…

Did I Like It: I’m absolutely the wrong crowd for this movie, but strangely, i liked it better than some other movies that shall go nameless. I’m not sure if that’s any kind of endorsement or not…

We are beset (or should I say we are receiving a bounty?) of “legacy-quels” lately, new entries in movie series that come roughly ten years or more since the last entry of the series. Older stars come back, more than likely for a quick paycheck. The movie usually has a mind to hand the baton to a new generation fo heroes that could carry on with additional sequels, should the exercise in nostalgia prove to be profitable. Many times there is some canonical jiggery pokery to remove more embarrassing entries from the collective consciousness. Creed (2015), Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Halloween (2018), Star Trek (2009), X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014), Tron: Legacy (2010), and… ahem… Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (2008). 

Some times the films are quite enjoyable, and inject new life into movie series long thought dead. Often Harrison Ford is in them. I’m still waiting for Die Hard In A Presidential Library, Son of Fugitive, and Still Witnessin’.

And so we are brought to Blade Runner 2049. I’m late to the party, mainly because it is with some shame that I admit that the original Ridley Scott-directed film has never done much for me. I’ve never really cared about picking apart the various different versions of the film. I’ve never really been concerned whether or not Deckard (Ford) is actually a replicant or not. If I’m reaching for a loose Phillip K. Dick adaption, I’m much more likely to reach for Total Recall (1990) or Minority Report (2002). 

So, when met with a legacy-quel to a film for which I don’t have a lot of affection, what is there for me to enjoy. Inevitably, this type of film trades in wholesale nostalgia for the previous films in the series, so if Villeneuve and company are doing the job Warner Bros. hired them to do, I’m not going to like what they are cooking. It’s nearly guaranteed.

And yet, the film does reach for more plot than fashion, and for enough of a new aesthetic (in parts) that I dare say I enjoyed myself. Does that mean the film is successful in its goals? I’m not entirely sure. You may have to ask someone with affection for Blade Runner. I’m not that guy.

The Predator (2018)

Director: Shane Black

Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Jacob Tremblay, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown

Have I Seen it Before: It’s a brand new type of movie for the series, but I can’t say it’s anything brand new in the entirety of film.

Did I Like It: It’s agreeable enough, except for in those parts where it goes out of its way to not be so, so I can’t really say I recommend it.

I complained that Aquaman (2018) was so mired in a retro aesthetic that it keeps me thinking about all of the stylistic choices and wanting me to exist in the movie. The Predator deals in a similar milieu, and yet feels more successful, or at the very least more natural in that regard. 

Perhaps this is because James Wan and company are imitating what they had seen and enjoyed when they were younger, making the whole exercise a little derivative, whereas Shane Black was at the forefront of the aesthetic he is reaching for in this film, and so it feels more like a return to form than an homage.

And yet, can one now even approach liking a film that is so gleefully mired in misogyny and in narrow minded views about the mentally ill? Is it possible to enjoy a film with an almost purely tasteless sense of humor, as long as I acknowledge that it is, in fact tasteless? That might be possible, but it would need to more strongly commit to its various sins than what is on display here. The mentally ill are regularly mocked, and yet the film wants us to think it believes that people on the autistic spectrum are not disabled at all, but only does so when it is either convenient for the plot, or there’s a real danger we might find one of its leads unlikable. It can have things both ways.

And it often does try that, attempting to be an Amblin-esque story about a mop-headed child of divorce turning out to be the most cosmically interesting being in the solar system, while at the same time being a mental-illness-based rehash of the Dirty Dozen, accept this time they are fighting a pair of extraterrestrials in dreadlocks.

If the film could decide what it wants to be, I might be more inclined to decide whether I like it. Other films might attempt to straddle such wildly divergent attitudes or genres, but if I’m spending the entirety of the film thinking about these seems and not enjoying the movie—especially when the movie has such a preposterously breakneck pace as this one—it probably tells you something about whether it truly succeeds or fails.

Glass (2019)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, there are parts of this movie I’ve absolutely seen before.

Did I Like It: I really want to. Desperately, even, and for the most part I think I’m right there. It might have helped if I had walked out about twenty minutes before the end.

A sequel to Shyamalan’s Unbreakable (2000) is one of those unattainable dreams in movies. Like a Star Wars sequel trilogy, or Patrick Stewart’s return to Star Trek, or a fourth Indiana Jones film…

Oh, wait.

They haven’t announced a Batman Beyond film starring Michael Keaton yet, have they?

Actually, the tale of how Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (2008) came to be is what I think of most when I think of Shyamalan’s latest, Glass. For years, the first question the Indy team had to answer whenever they showed their faces was “When is the fourth movie going to come out?” Usually, the answer was a shrug. Then, after getting the question for 19 years, they finally “made good” on the “promise.” Say what you will, no one’s been asking for an Indiana Jones 5 after that.

So, to will it be with any future Unbreakable movies, and our lack of demand for more sequels, sadly, has little to do with the fact that most of the main characters are “dead” by the time the end credits roll around.

For 3/4ths of the movie, everything is grand. I’m eating a hot ham and cheese on a pretzel roll, drinking a glass* of beer, my wife is by my side, and Bruce Willis is protecting the streets of Philadelphia. All is well with the world.

Even when Willis’ Dunn, the Hoard (McAvoy), and Elijah “Mr. Glass” Price, are all stuck inside a mental asylum, the movie is filled with the mix of pulp philosophy and mind games that I would expect from such a movie.

And then our super powered comic characters break out of their respective prisons, and the roller coaster flies right off of its rails. The notion of a secret organization sworn to suppress super-normal activity, nor Glass’ mission to reveal the truth to the rest of the world is all well and fine. Unfortunately, the execution of that endgame is what leave me wanting. I’m sorry, Night. I wanted to believe you could stick the landing. Maybe its the natural tendency for the part three of a trilogy to be a letdown, but this isn’t working for me. 

There’s no catharsis. We are told to believe that superheroes are real and they could be anywhere, but anyone who might be a superhero is dead by the end of the film.

The ending also finds time to beggar all logic when it isn’t underwhelming. Why does this secret organization committed to snuffing out potential superheroes just kill their targets the moment they captured them? With only a few videos posted to youtube serving as the evidence of the extraordinary people, aren’t the Brothers of the Clover (my name for them, I guess, they’re jammed into the end of this movie all of a sudden) going to be able to spin their way out of this problem with a few well placed Fake News hashtags? And, not for nothing, it’s only about 85-90% clear that Dunn and Crumb are actually dead at the end. There’s no real indication they are alive either, just questions.

And maybe the questions are the point? Maybe the ambiguities will make the film age better on repeat viewings.

Maybe we’ll live to see David Dunn again.

So, when’s the fourth movie coming?

*Hey! That’s the name of the movie!

Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (2015)

Director: Jeremy Coon, Tim Skousen

Cast: Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, Jayson Lamb, Angela Rodriguez

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, I’ve seen the original movie many times, but that doesn’t feel like it needs to be said.

Did I Like It: I mean, I liked the original movie, but that doesn’t feel like it needs to be said. The film is well made, but I’ll work out my specific feelings about it all down below.

The following review has been adapted from a blog post entitled “Movie Theaters of Days Past: Circle Cinema (Just Off of 1st and Lewis),” previously published on July 31st, 2016.

I saw Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made. Whoo, boy. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this film. As the man who was once the boy that would conquer Hollywood with nothing more than his intermittently reliable wits and a camcorder, the movie struck a chord. 

In fairness, that chord often led me to mutter, “Jesus, guys. Move on.”

While the documentary delves into the making of the lions’ share of the subject’s efforts to cobble together a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the main thrust of the narrative deals with their attempt, over twenty-five years after they “finished” their movie, to film the one scene** they could never finish. The level of obsession these people had for their project is something I might be able to call commitment, if it weren’t for the fact that they spent their time (and, admittedly, their love) making a movie that was made quite well before. Say what you will about my occasional forays into filmmaking, but I was absolutely making my own movie. I also never almost lost my job over it. Maybe that makes me a sell-out, but if these guys could make an original film, I would have been far more sympathetic to their plight.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

Director: David Yates

Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou

Have I Seen it Before: At the time of this writing, it was a new release. If it counts for anything, I certainly haven’t seen it since.

Did I Like It: I’ll let the review speak for itself.

The following review has been adapted from a blog post entitled “Movie Theaters of Days Past: Eton Square (51st and Memorial),” previously published on August 6th, 2016. 

So, I saw The Legend of Tarzan. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot more to say about the film than that, but here we go.

Shot with the certain misty production-designed panache that Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) made fashionable and Avatar (2009) made de rigueur, the film is an inoffensive action piece that nearly completely disappears from memory the moment you exit the theater. 

Of note, I completely didn’t notice that Margot Robbie played Jane until I collected my thoughts just now and did a quick IMDB search. Not for nothing, that’s a fair indication that she may have a longer career ahead of her if I don’t automatically think “Oh, Margot Robbie is in this movie” the moment she comes on screen. Here she has managed to not be dragged down by the mediocre film around her, while she is also managing to close out the summer by being a scarce bright spot in a train wreck like Suicide Squad. 

Also, I was more than a little surprised to learn that both the character and actions of Samuel L. Jackson’s character were taken from history in a baffling move somewhat akin to the title card at the end of Bloodsport (1988), that claimed the film was based on a true story. 

Otherwise, the film will probably be forgotten pretty quickly. If you look at the box office returns, then there’s something to the notion that people largely forgot the film before its release date.  

Venom (2018)

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Cast: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, and Tom Hardy as himself.

Have I Seen it Before: Honestly? I thought I was going to get away with never seeing it, but here we are.

Did I Like It: There were long stretches where I might have been willing to go along with the proceedings, able to write it off as a well-meaning b-movie with some a-listers slumming it through the run time, but it’s not nearly bonkers enough to offset its thorough commitment to being mediocre. To put it succinctly? I’m not sure what the hell I was suspecting, but no.

I don’t like Venom. I think the whole idea is pretty stupid, and Sam Raimi’s work in Spider-Man 3 (2007) leads me to believe that I may not be alone in that assessment.

The thought that I might enjoy Venom, this new Spider-Manless version of the character seemed preposterous on spec. Upon watching any of the trailers, it nearly seemed like the the movie was being made less as an attempt to make an actual film, or because of love for the character, or even just to keep the rights from reverting to Marvel, and more that it was made as part of massive prank on behalf of Sony and Columbia Pictures.

I wrote recently about how Aquaman seemed intent on wrapping itself in an aesthetic that would be more at home in a film released in the 80s, this film seems just as manic in it’s desire to be a film discovered in a time capsule that was buried in 1997. Which is kind of like trying to pull off the same trick, but without any of the charm. Dodgy CGI, a base-guitar-heavy score, all culminating in an Eminem-penned track over the end credits that helpfully retreads the plot of the film I just saw. In fairness, I’m not sure what I was expecting from a movie based on the most 90s comic book character outside of Spawn or Withcblade, which I’m pretty sure is actually a thing.

Much has been made about Tom Hardy’s swing-for-the-fences-post-modern-Al-Pacino performance as both Eddie Brock and his best-good black goo. I’m frankly not seeing it. He spends the entire first act of the film reaching for that fabled arena of overacting wherein he appears to be performing in scenes from an entirely different film. This would be all well and good (or well and good enough) if the central conceit of the film isn’t completely reliant on Brock’s transition to the alien head-biter. With this lack of a transition, all we’re left with is a litany of CGI characters that aren’t all that impressive, and seeds for a sequel that I still don’t care about.

I’m having a Spider-Manassaince as of late, with the exquisite Playstation 4 game, the vibrant and beautiful Into the Spider-Verse, and the forthcoming Far From Home, but unfortunately, I don’t think Eddie Brock should come along. At least with the success of this film, the MCU version of the web-head is relatively inoculated from having to trudge his way through his own symbiote related storyline.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves

Have I Seen it Before: I’m sorry, I got distracted by the question. I heard a voice whispering for me to see him, whatever that means.

Did I Like It: At this point, I may be burned out on the Dracula mythos (for any number of reasons). But even so, this movie is interested in doing a lot things not necessarily seen before in Dracula films, that I think it all holds together.

First of all, this movie is a marvel of casting. Between Cary Elwes, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Richard E. Grant, and Billy “The Motherfuckin’ Rocketeer” Campbell, the call sheet is like a mid-90s party and everyone is invited. 

Even Keanu Reeves, who history and assumption assumes is miscast in the role of Jonathan Harker equates himself well in the proceedings, if his British accent is occasionally wavering, but not in a Kevin Costner sort of way. Gary Oldman is a well-oiled acting machine, bringing vivid life to all of the dread count’s various shades. The only member of the cast who seems in over their head is Sadie Frost as the ill-fated Lucy Westerna. One can’t help but wonder if a bigger star, like a Michelle Pfeiffer* or Julia Roberts** might have offered a more memorable performance.

The movie that surrounds these performances feels a little long, even though it comes in at just a little bit over two hours. This may be a byproduct of the Coppola aesthetic. Still, there is a playful quality about the film. Beginning with an aesthetic pulled directly from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1992), slowly but surely transitioning into a more modern (or at least, modern for the time) monster movie with sumptuous photography and makeup work meant to startle more than inspire dread. Coppola loves movies so dearly, and he wants us to love this one too. His efforts at seduction are mostly, if not entirely successful.

*Although in that universe, we would have likely been deprived of her performance in Batman Returns, and I don’t think that is a Faustian bargain I am willing to make.

**Which I’m not that in favor of, mainly because Julia Roberts has been and always will be a frightful bore. Prove me wrong.

Batman & Robin (1997)

Director: (trying to control my rage) Joel Schumacher

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Uma Thurman

Have I Seen it Before: It’s a little shocking how many times I’ve actually said it.

Did I Like It: What kind of a question is it.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “What Schumacher’s Batman & Robin got right” published 05/22/2016.

WARNING: Heresy and rubber nipples lie ahead.

It's 3AM. My stomach is a churning miasma of unsettling notions. Naturally, my mind wanders to the work of Joel Schumacher. They go together like nausea and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. Between the rubber nipples and cascade of puns that have become the stuff of legend, Schumaucher's contributions to the legend of the Caped Crusader are uniformally seen as the dark ages for the Dark Knight.

Here's the unfortunate secret that most bat-fans wouldn't dare admit, unless they're waiting for an industrial-sized dose of Peptol Bismol to kick in:

There are some things -- just a few, mind you -- that Joel Schumaucher not only got exactly right about Batman, but in fact did better than in any other Batman film to date.

I had to be wrong, so I went ahead and did the one thing I should never do: I re-watched the damned movie. Thankfully, the world is not completely upside down. Batman and Robin is just as bad, if not worse than you remember. The movie is congenitally unable to latch on to anything resembling a story arc for its characters. Every quip falls flat. It's kind of a miracle that even the law of averages wouldn't have given the movie some semblance of wit at some point in the proceedings.

Maybe it is all because the film was more of a toy commercial than it was a major motion picture. I tend to think it was because Schumaucher and company came to the conclusion (perhaps rightly so) that superhero films are for kids. Where they went off the tracks and never bothered to look back is determine that because these films are for the under-15 crowd, then it doesn't matter if the film sucks. It doesn't so much matter that the film is bright and campy and doesn't take itself too seriously. It's of far more importance that the film just sucks.

And yet, as I watched the movie again today, there they were, those few scant things that, while they hardly elevate the film in any measurable way, do show some semblance of awareness for what Batman is and can be.

1) The Batman does not kill.

Quick. Go watch every Batman movie, and then go read every Batman comic in existence. I'll wait. Done? Notice anything? The main theme people come away with is that in publishing, Bruce Wayne is bound by a particular code, springing from his origin at the end of Joe Chill's gun. Put simply: The Batman does not kill.

Except, no one bothered to inform the various screenwriters who have handled Warner Brothers' number one franchise. In Batman (1989) Bat-Keaton specifically tells Jack "I'm going to kill you," and he damned sure he puts a grapelling hook to good work to get the job done. 

In Batman Returns (1992) Bat-Keaton again dispatches Louie De Penguin with a carefully orchestrated wave of bats and a steep fall. Don't even get me started on the circus strongman that blew up real good for the capital crime of asking Batman to hit him. 

In Batman Forever (1995) Iceman-Batman flung Billy Dee Tommy Lee Jones from a tall height* even after Robin O'Donnell learned the important lesson of sparing one's enemies. 

In Batman Begins (2005), Bale-Bat does go out of his way to not directly kill Ra's-al-Gon-Jin, but he's pretty content to not save him, when he had plenty of time and resources to do so. 

In The Dark Knight (2008) Bale-Bat returns to fling Billy Dee Tommy Lee Eckhart from a tall height** after spending the entire movie not killing Ledjoker, despite literally everyone being fine with that possibility. 

In The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Batman drops a thermonuclear bomb into Gotham Harbor, thereby ensuring that the next seventeen generations of Gothamites can look forward to a litany of thyroid problems, if they're lucky. 

And finally, in Batman v Board of Education: Dawn of the McMuffin (2016), Batman's antipathy for guns didn't get translated to the other 807 plot points, because Batfleck is more than content to drop a few no-names in the pursuit of... Kryptonite? Barely a month out of seeing the movie, it already feels like a blur.  

Sense a pattern here? Batman and Robin is the only post-Adam West cinematic outing where Batman does not kill. One point for Schumaucher and company. Brings the score to 787,231 to 1, but at least it won't be a shut out. 

2) Who is Batman? 

By the time the fourth film in the series begins, everyone should know. It doesn't take much to find out. Alfred Pennyworth, Vicki Vale, Jack Napier, Selina Kyle, Oswald Cobblepot, Max Schreck, Dick Grayson, Edward Nygma, Harvey Dent, Chase Meridian, Ra's Al Ghul, Rachel Dawes, Lucius Fox, Coleman Reese, Talia al Ghul, Bane, Selina Kyle (again), Non-Robin, James Gordon, Clark Kent, and Diana Prince. Through the course of the Bat-films, all of these characters have figured out Bruce Wayne's secret. Here's the question: are there any other characters in the Batman universe? Outside of Bat-mite and Aunt Harriet, does anyone not know? 

There's only one film where Bruce Wayne's secret identity isn't sussed out by the villains or his girlfriend (or some mixture thereof). Which film is that? You guessed it. Batman and Robin. Yes, Barbara Wilson trips over the truth***, but I'm grading on a curve here. Give me a break.

3) At least they didn't run out of money.

I don't think anyone is going to get this far into this blog post and get the idea that I'm actually defending the core of this movie. It's a completely wrongheaded cluster of half-baked almost-ideas, packaged into a cheap sausage casing of '90s fashion. It's the cinematic equivalent of haggis, although saying that does a grave disservice to a sheep's stomach filled with food you wouldn't otherwise want to look at.

But at least they, you know, finished the movie.

It's not neccessarily high praise to say that Warner Brothers didn't just cut their losses and release a rough cut of the turd they had in the oven, but it does make it, fundamentally better than other fourth entries in superhero franchises. Superman IV is content to just use the same footage of Christopher Reeve flying towards the camera, and has a climax that confirms the long-heard suspicion that Mariel Hemingway can breathe in the vacuum of space. It's important to keep things in perspective.  

There are a lot of other examples from there. The villains' origins are -- if goofy -- more or less correct. The mythos isn't contorted to make it so that Mr. Freeze is the one who pulled the trigger on Thomas and Martha Wayne, even if that would've been one hell of a flashback. The Schumaucher movies also make Gotham City appears as if it may have the actual scope of a major metropolitan area, even if that city might be a maddening mish mash of Greek statues. In retrospect, Burton's movies look like they take place on a remaindered set from a dinner theater production of Our Town. The movie tries to be funny, which isn't the worst thing in the world. Batman can be funny. Adam West as Batman is funny. The problem is that the movie only tries, and forgets to bring the laughs. It is an important distinction. 

So, maybe Batman and Robin is the worst. Making movies is hard. We can't imagine what they might have been up against, and even if Schumaucher's myopia is to blame, there are far more serious sins in the world. Don't believe me? Go watch Superman IV: The Quest For Peace one more time.

* A lot of falling deaths in these movies, no?

** Sound familiar, no?

*** Again, it's not like a lot of deductive reasoning is applied; she uses an infinite amount of password tries to unlock an interactive CD-ROM.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, and Darth Vader as Himself.

Have I Seen it Before: Hell, I’m tempted to go watch it again right now.

Did I Like It: Lemme go grab the blu ray…

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “Some Sort of Pre-Sequel: Thoughts on spoilers and Rogue One” published 12/18/2016.

So here we are, once again faced with a new Star Wars movie. I’m doomed to spend a day having to sheepishly admit—like somebody living under a rock their whole life—that I haven't seen all of the Star Wars movies yet.

But I suppose this time things are different. For one thing, the new movie, Rogue One, takes place before the beloved trilogy. It’s not really a sequel, per se, but more of a pre sequel. If only there was a simpler term for such a thing.

Ahem.

What is the same is the communications blackout most of us put ourselves in before squeezing in a screening. We're more worried about spoilers than we are about fake news articles*. I'm with you on this front. I've tried to avoid spoilers for Rogue One whenever possible, but there's got to be limits. Some things aren't spoilers. Some things are just predictable. But just because an ending is predictable, does that mean the movie itself is no good? We spent three prequel** movies knowing the fate of Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and company, and that is pointed to as one of the many reasons those films don’t work. 

Now I, before seeing the movie, have decided that most of Rogue One's heroes are not long for the galaxy. I'm not a soothsayer, nor am I an insider. I just don't remember seeing Felicity Jones or Tudyk-bot*** in A New Hope (1977), and logic alone dictates my conclusion. Does this make the movie doomed, like its prequel progenitors****

Now, I have written all of the above words before seeing the movie. I intend to continue my thoughts after I have finished watching it. See you on the other side.

***

Look at that, I was right. They all died. And yet, I think the movie largely works. Yes, Peter Cushing 2.0 seems like he is straight out of an above average video game cut scene, and the less said about retro Carrie Fisher, the better*****, but the whole package is satisfying.

It’s a satisfying movie, for no other reason that we got Darth Vader back, if only for a few moments. He has a brief interlude in the middle of the movie, wherein he exchanges villain-speak with Big Bad Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), which isn’t terribly thrilling beyond James Earl Jones’ welcome return. Later, though… Oooh, boy. He makes a return to the film in a big way. In that moment, he is not the dimwitted Lothario/precocious column of nonsense of the prequels. Nor is he the conflicted dead-beat dad of Empire or Jedi. He is the same mysterious figure that emerges from the myst in the first minutes of A New Hope. He is Darth Vader. The moment you hear that breathing and the see the red light of his saber, there is little else to do but hope that you had your affairs in order. I could have watched that scene over and over again for two-and-a-half hours******.

Would any of this have been ruined had I not surmised the fate of most of the characters? The ending is inevitable, but our heroes make every moment count for as much tension as possible. At the end of the movie, I’m about ready to believe these people just might make it. Also, Chirrut Îmwe is one with The Force, and The Force is with him.

So if Rogue One is a thrilling edition to the canon, and it doesn’t take much to figure out how the movie ends, then what excuse did Episodes I-III have? Were they just terrible? Was it all Hayden Christensen’s fault, even the movie he wasn’t in? The world may never know…

It was Jar-Jar. We all know it was Jar-Jar’s fault*******.

*#2016sentences

**Oh, I get it…

***Tudyk always dies. Too soon? #leafonthewind

****Pre-prequels? I’ll stop.

*****But these are nitpicks. In that spirit, here are some more thoughts along the same line. I think that the Artoo/Threepio cameo was extraneous, if for no other reason that there was a much better opportunity for them to appear in the corridors of the Tantive IV (yes, that is the name of the ship, look it up) in the final moments. They could have bickered just the same, and to the same effect, and it would have made more sense. Also: Oh Jek Porkins, Where Art Thou? #williamhootkinsforlife. One last one: Why didn’t Hannibal Lecter both know that he put the flaw in the Death Star design, and where that flaw was located? Because the movie would have been a lot shorter that way, that’s why.

******Not really.

*******#1999sentences

Split (2016)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, and (dun dun dun!) Bruce Willis

Have I Seen it Before: I thought I was done with M. Night for several years now. People said I needed to go see it.

Did I Like It: They were right.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “Surprise! On M. Night and his rebound.” published 02/05/2017.

NOTE: SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS FOR SHYAMALAN’S LATEST MOVIE, Split (2016) follow. Also, I’ll talk about significant spoilers for plenty of other movies including Arrival (2016), Midnight in Paris (2011), and Back to the Future (1985). However, if you haven’t seen Back to the Future, what in the absolute hell are you doing reading my blog? Go watch Back to the Future. I don’t even know what to do with you anymore. Have you watched it yet? Okay, now we can get on with the blog.

Surprises in movies are a rare thing.

I spent last week heralding the art form of the movie trailer, but movie previews do have the tendency to load up the prospective movie goer with too much information. Honestly, when was the last time you went into a movie and didn’t know nearly everything about what you were going to see? It’s a rare thing to be surprised by a movie.

The stories of the test screenings for Back to the Future are an interesting example of the opposite phenomenon. A California audience was brought into the screening and told nothing about the film that would follow, besides that Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd is in it. Could you imagine how that movie played without any additional information? It’s a light and breezy 80s teen comedy for the first half an hour, before the very fabric of the space-time continuum is up for grabs.

Surprise time-travel may be one of my favorite things in movies. Arrival does it well, and Midnight in Paris singlehandedly elevates the late Woody Allen catalogue based solely on the device.

Then Lora informed me that she had both a) been spoiled on Split’s surprise ending and b) I would love the ending.

I had been pretty cool on M. Night Shyamalan’s work in recent years. Since I guessed—and then immediately dismissed—the twist ending of The Village I’ve had the feeling that his work was going downhill pretty fast. The Visit (2015) was a return to form for him, but I felt like he may never reach the zenith of his output, Unbreakable (2000)…

More about that in a minute.

With Lora giving it her now-spoiled seal of approval, I thought only one thing could force my wife to guarantee that I would love the movie’s inevitable twist ending. McAvoy’s split personalities would somehow be tied to some bending or breaking of the rules of the fourth dimension. That’s fine, I guess, but I wasn’t sure how they could possibly fit such a plot development into the movie.

Turns out I was wrong, but Lora was right that I loved the twist that was in the movie.

Ever since Shyamalan completed Unbreakable, there have been whispers about a potential sequel. The principals involved were game, but the original box office receipts were tame, especially compared with the money explosion that was The Sixth Sense (1999). It seemed like an Unbreakable 2 would join the ranks of Ghostbusters 3*, The Rocketeer 2**, or the Star Wars sequel trilogy*** as things that were just never going to happen.

But the moment that McAvoy’s Kevin Wendell Crumb escapes authorities for one final discussion with himself and the supernatural beast that lies within, a very familiar James Newton Howard score begins to play. That can’t be right, I think. Then we cut to a diner, where a news report of the events of the film plays out. Someone mentions that it reminds them of that crazy terrorist in the wheelchair they captured fifteen years ago. No one remembers his name.

“Mr. Glass,” David Dunn replies, looking an awful lot like Bruce Willis. “They called him Mr. Glass.”

Boom. Credits.

I’m the only one laughing in the theater. Some fifteen-year-old in the front row who thinks he is the smartest entity currently alive cries out, “DID ANYBODY GET WHAT THAT WAS ABOUT?”

“YES!” I cry, happy to engage with someone who was likely too young to possibly understand what was happening.

“OKAY, SO WHAT HAPPENED?” the little shit retorted.

“GO WATCH UNBREAKABLE!” I tell him.

“OH, OKAY,” the little kid says. An unspoken “old man river” is appended to his dismissal.

My unbroken trend of wanting to get into shouting matches with strangers after movies conclude aside, I’m blown away by this movie. It’s a solid Hitchcockian-with-a-touch-of-the-supernatural yarn, something that by this point Shyamalan should be able to do quite well. 

But, as with all great twist endings, the final moments of the film make it something else: a surprise sequel to Unbreakable.

A. Surprise. Sequel.

Has that ever been done before? Dan Aykroyd shows up for a cameo—ostensibly as Ray Stanz—in Casper (1995) but that is more of a gag than a greater link to a larger mythos. Robert Downey Jr. reprises the role of Tony Stark for the first time in The Incredible Hulk (2008), but that little easter egg was well-advertised in the initial push to create hype around the then-embryonic Marcel Cinematic Universe…

But this? I legitimately don’t think anyone has ever made a surprise sequel before. Maybe I’m wrong. If I am, let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I’ll be watching my well-loved Unbreakable blu-ray and waiting patiently for the climactic showdown still to come between David Dunn/Everyman/Security Man and Kevin Wendell Crumb/The Beast/The Hoard.

*For the record, <I’m fine with the remake>, but that doesn’t diminish how much I would have enjoyed seeing another direct sequel with the players still all in there prime. Probably by 1995, that was never going to happen.

**Which might still happen! Believe!

***Wait, what?!

A View To A Kill (1985)

Director: John Glen

Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, Grace Jones

Have I Seen it Before: It’s Bond. It’s a lock. I’ve even sat through the shitty ones.

Did I Like It: It may be the only Roger Moore I can say I actually like.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies?” published 04/23/2017.

Roger Moore is my least favorite Bond. Yes, that includes the dour Timothy Dalton, the dim-eyed Australian George Lazenby, Peter Sellers, and… ahem… Woody Allen. That being said, not all of his movies are that bad. In fact, I’d be willing to say of his seven times at the end of the gun-barrel sequence, I actually like as many as two of them.

This—Moore’s final outing in the role—ranks dead last of the series on Rotten Tomatoes*, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Everyone knows that Roger Moore actually went into outer space in one of his movies, right?

Beyond obvious better candidates for worse Bond movies, A View to a Kill has a lot going for it. The theme song, from film composer John Barry and British group Duran Duran is a pure New Wave confection. The action sequences, culminating in a shoot-out at the Golden Gate Bridge is fantastic, and lest we forget: CHRISTOPHER WALKEN IS A BOND VILLAIN. Has there ever been an archetype that an actor was more destined to play than Walken playing one of the heavies in this film?

Critics point to Moore’s advancing age (57 at the time of filming) as contributing to the film’s underlying incredulity. For me, though, Roger Moore always brought a certain older quality to the role. Even in Live and Let Die (1973), he seemed stiffer, more mature than any of his brethren did in their initial movies. Besides, I think an increasingly geriatric Bond is an interesting idea, although I will admit both that I may be alone in this thinking, and that the movie—and the series, for that matter—never bothers to acknowledge that Bond might age.

But, come on! The man went into space in one of his movies! Why? Reasons, that’s why. As long as Moonraker (1979) exists, I can’t accept that this movie is the franchise’s nadir.

*Not including the strange-but-watchable off-brand Never Say Never Again (1983), or the afore-alluded-to comedy version of a multi-car pile up that was Casino Royale (1967).

The Cable Guy (1996)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Mann, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: It’s one of my favorites. Fight me.

Did I Like It: Don’t make me say it again.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies?” published 04/23/2017.

Remembered mainly for Jim Carrey’s then-record twenty-million dollar paycheck, Ben Stiller’s second venture in the director’s chair was almost immediately dismissed upon release as “too dark,” “bleak,” and “not containing nearly enough scenes of an adult male attempting ventriloquism via his buttocks.” For my money, though it is not only a great film, it is the best film that writer Judd Apatow, director Stiller and star Carrey has yet to make. 

Yes, it is the pitch-black tale of a cable installer gone rogue who injects himself into a hapless customer’s life, a la The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992). It’s more thriller-esque elements are tempered by an all-consuming sympathy for both of its main characters. Both Steven (Matthew Broderick) and the alias-laden titular Cable Guy (Carrey) are woefully unable to relate to people outside of television*. Broderick’s character has the capacity to change and be better by the end of the movie, whereas Carrey is a far more broken, far more tragic character. We, the pop culture obsessed inevitably fall on a spectrum somewhere between the two leads, and we can only hope that our lives are a little more Broderick and a little less Carrey.

Also, it has one of the greater homages to “Amok Time” ever produced—what’s not to love? Seriously, go give the film another look, and if you still hold as low an opinion of the movie as you did twenty years ago… Well, then, just keep it to yourself. I really like it.

But we can all agree it’s better than Zoolander 2 (2016), right?

*Remind us of anyone?

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

Director: Jonathan Frakes

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, F. Murray Abraham

Have I Seen it Before: Over twenty years ago, I opted out a date with my first girlfriend to ensure I saw this one opening weekend. So yeah.

Did I Like It: How many new episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation are we likely to get? Don’t answer that question just yet… Picard is coming back…

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies? Part Two, But With No Electric Boogaloo.” published 04/30/2017.

I’m not sure why the ninth film in the series—the fourth to feature The Next Generation crew—gets shit on so much. This is especially true when the series also includes the two-plus hour sleeping pill that is The Motion Picture (1979), the sloppy ode to mountain climbing that is The Final Frontier (1989)*, and that testament to uninspired mediocrity that was Nemesis (2002).

The most frequent complaint I hear about this movie is that, after the epic battle across time and space in First Contact (1996)**, this follow-up is less an actual movie, and more a very basic, episode of the television series upon which it is based. To that, I ask: Why is that a problem? If anyone reading this has ever taken in any random episode of The Next Generation*** and not enjoyed it, then, maybe your problem with Insurrection is that you just don’t like Star Trek that much.

The ancillary material for the film is even better. The late Michael Piller wrote a no-holds-barred account of his experiences writing the screenplay. It’s one of the truly great screenwriting books, ranking right up there with William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade. It’s only recently available, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

*Which I actually kind of like, and almost made its way onto this list, except that I get that the movie doesn’t work for the most part. 

**I realize now that movies may have began and ended for me in 1996.

***First season being the only exception, naturally.

Multiplictiy (1996)

Director: Harold Ramis

Cast: Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton

Have I Seen it Before: “We’re going to go eat a dolphin, Steve” was a common refrain in my house growing up.

Did I Like It: Math dictates it is terrific. Allow me to elaborate.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies? Part Two, But With No Electric Boogaloo.” published 04/30/2017.

Speaking of 1996 films featuring multiple roles played by the stars of Batman (1989), this movie is pretty great, too. Directed by the late, great Harold Ramis, Michael Keaton plays a man slowly realizing he doesn’t have enough hours in the day to meet all his obligations. After taking a contracting job with a lab working on experimental cloning procedures, he finds the perfect solution. With two of him around to work and take care of the kids, everything should be fine. It isn’t enough, and another clone is needed to pick up the slack. Then the clones feel like they’re overworked, and they start cloning themselves. Hilarity ensues. Actually, as the 90s nostalgia industrial complex is now in full swing, a more horror-based remake of the same concept might actually work.

Some might claim that everyone involved has done better work—Ramis probably put the high-concept comedy genre to bed with the one-two punch of Ghostbusters (1984) and Groundhog Day (1993) but do not let this take diminish from the film’s accomplishments. The special effects—while not overwhelming—still hold up. Often when one actor has to interact him or herself, the eye-lines never quite line up. It’s clear that the scene was shot at two different times, and the film has been processed to within an inch of its life. Just watch any episode Star Trek: The Next Generation wherein Data’s evil twin brother, Lore, shows up for great examples. In Multiplicity, it really feels like Keaton is sharing the frame with himself.

Which brings me to my real argument for why this film is loved far less than it ought to be. Now, I’ve had a theory going for a number of years that the presence of Michael Keaton in a motion picture automatically adds 15% quality to the final product. Now, this movie has 4x Keaton. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the film at a dim 42%. Therefore, with four Keatons running around, the movie actually deserves a 102% rating. If you are not interested in the only movie that garnered a 102% on the tomatometer, then I don’t know what to do with you anymore.

Mars Attacks (1996)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Benning, Pierce Brosnan, Everyone

Have I Seen it Before: Oh Sure.

Did I Like It: It’s exactly the movie it wants to be, and if some people can’t appreciate that, I certainly can.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies? Part Two, But With No Electric Boogaloo.” published 04/30/2017.

Quick. Name your favorite alien invasion movie of 1996. The Arrival starring Charlie Sheen. Close, but not quite. Contact? Not an alien invasion movie, and wasn’t even released in ’96! Come on, folks. Get it together! 

Of course, most of you named Independence Day, and you’re still wrong. Roland Emmerich’s urban destruction-fest is so removed from any sense of irony, that it’s almost impossible to bear. On the other hand, Tim Burton’s running B-movie homage—à la the epic comedies of the ‘60s like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)—has a cast of what feels like thousands. Pam Grier! Tom Jones! Quarterback* Jim Brown! Also, Jack Nicholson channels his inner Peter Sellers and pulls double roles as the beleaguered American President James Dale, and casino developer Art Land**. What’s not to love? 

Apparently, in the golden age of irony that was the 1990s, there wasn’t room for such a movie. But guys (and ladies), let’s get real. It’s a big Tim Burton movie that doesn’t have Johnny Depp putting a new wig through a shakedown cruise***. How many more of those are we likely to get?

*Which I'm told is some kind of footballman.

**Were the movie made today, those two roles could be filled by the same character. Courage, folks. We’ll get through this together.

***To be fair, Nicholson goes through at least two wigs in the movie, but it’s not like that became his whole life from that point on.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride

Have I Seen it Before: Once in the theater, and once on blu ray.

Did I Like It: I’m pretty effusive about the film in the earlier review above, but considering I’ve only glanced at it a couple of times, maybe it had less of an impact than I originally thought.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “But My, Oh My, How Delicious The Cheeseburgers Will Be: The Future Of Cinema?” published on 05/28/2017.

Saw Alien: Covenant this week. The movie flew under my radar for the longest time, despite my love for the first two films of the series, and my not-quite-hate for Ridley Scott’s previous re-entry into the Alien universe, Prometheus (2012). But, when the opportunity comes to take off work a little early and catch a matinee, I am helpless against the prospect’s siren song*.

So, much to my surprise, the movie is actually good. It’s not an earth shattering revelation of a movie—for such an experience this year, you’re probably going to have to begin and end with Jordan Peele’s debut masterwork, Get Out—but it certainly irons out some of the more forgettable moments that muddied reactions to Prometheus, extending the philosophical rumination on the origins of man in a bleak universe to its natural, psychotic conclusion. It manages to be the kind of head trip that Prometheus so desperately wanted to be, without unravelling into a pointedly turgid lecture more at home in a freshman philosophy course.

And yet, there’s a lot that’s even more familiar about the movie. An egg opens up. The egg spits out a creature that is equal parts spider and Georgie O’Keefe painting. A little guy bursts out of one of the human guys. The little guy grows bigger, uses it secondary head to eat a few other guys. Acid is spilled, airlocks are blown, and everyone goes back to cryosleep, perhaps never to wake up again. It’s the same old story, a fight for love and biological weaponry.

Yes, I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve also eaten plenty of cheeseburgers before**, but it is rare that you eat a cheeseburger that is exceptionally well made, just as it is equally rare that a fairly basic monster movie is made as well as Scott and his crew made Covenant.

And that’s when a borderline-depressing thought occurred to me: the franchise movie is dangerously close to becoming a legitimate form of artistic expression. Sure, this summer we’ll be waylaid by inevitable crap like The Emoji Movie and Michael Bay’s latest attempt to make a Transformers film that isn’t technically a violation of the Geneva convention. But Ridley Scott—a legitimate and respectable filmmaker—has made his plans known to spend a sizable chunk of his twilight years trying to make more Alien movies, an effort many of us can agree he near-perfected in his first attempt nearly forty years ago. Kenneth Branagh went in a few short years from forging full-text productions of the Bard to making Chris Hemsworth a household name in Thor (2011). Sam Mendes made Oscar-bait like American Beauty (1999)***, then made 1 1/2 great Bond movies. Christopher Nolan moved from indie darlings to Batmen, and continues his quest to put the genie back in the bottle with the upcoming Dunkirk. Hell, movie news sites were abuzz just a few months ago with talk that Aaron Sorkin took meetings with Marvel Studios for some unknown project.****

I suppose this all means that original big-budget movies are going to be harder to harder to find. For every Pacific Rim (2013) there’s going to be a Pirates of the Caribbean: One More and Johnny Can Get The Rest of His Wigs Out Of Australia. That’s pretty measurably bad, mainly because I was holding out for 2Dark 2Shadows: Basically Just Mortdecai With Different Opening Titles.

But, it could also mean that the big tentpole movies will be better, on average. That has to be good, right? I mean, an Aaron Sorkin-penned Iron Man 3 would be… Well, it’d have a lot more references to Gilbert and Sullivan than the rest of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that has to count for something, right?

*See my ill-advised venture to watch this years undeniably weird, yet nearly shot-for-shot remake of The Breakfast Club (1985), entitled Saban’s Power Rangers.

**Probably too many; I get it.

***We could go on an on about whether or not American Beauty is a good movie. It’d make a half decent blog, if it weren’t for the fact that my answer would be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. (Note from 2019: There’s no way American Beauty is any degree of watchable anymore. I’m reasonably sure about that.)

****Yes, every individual named in that paragraph is a man. That’s another issue entirely, and one that Hollywood is working fairly slowly to fix.

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

Director: John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, George Miller

Cast: Vic Morrow (RIP), John Lithgow, Scatman Crothers, Dan Aykroyd

Have I Seen it Before: I think it’s probably safe to say that I’ve 

Did I Like It: You get four chances to like it, and I would say I get the job done about half the time.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “Do You Want to See Something *Really* Morbid? Why the Ends Almost Never Justify the Means” published on 07/02/17.

I’m a big fan of The Twilight Zone. I’m such a big fan of the show that I’ve been known to suggest fisticuffs whenever the honor of Rod Serling is impugned*. “To Serve Man,” “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, “Time Enough at Last”. These are truly great episodes of television.

And yet, efforts to re-capture the magic of the original TV show have often floundered. Sure Zone inspired a pinball machine that is the absolute pinnacle of that art form, but both attempts to bring the television series back—in 1985 and 2002—are less than memorable. Maybe the advent of color removed all magic from the concept**.

When the movie powerhouse of Steven Spielberg and John Landis attempted to make an anthology film based on the series, the reaction to the film was equally tepid. 

In some cases obliquely, and in others much more directly, Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) offers remakes of four classic episodes of the TV series to varying degrees of effectiveness, and for that matter, sheer horror. 

The strongest segment among them is the last: a manic, claustrophobic redux of the Richard Matheson classic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” with John Lithgow as a naturally neurotic replacement for William Shatner. The gremlin on the wing of the plane in this version is far less laughable than the demented Lamb Chop of the original episode, and is more a terrifying, self-aware wraith ready to set up a homestead in your nightmares.

Moving backwards both in chronology and quality, Kathleen Quinlan stars in a re-constructed “It’s a Good Life”, the tale of a young boy with nigh-omnipotent powers and the destruction he leaves in his wake. Joe Dante (Gremlins, Innerspace) brings his penchant for cartoonish malevolence to bear here, but it is an aptitude that doesn’t come to full fruition until Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). The ending Dante and company choose for the tale—wherein the kindly school teacher (Quinlan) tries to temper the god-boy’s misanthropy—falls short of the ending that appears in the original episode and skews a little too close to the happy-happy Spielbergian ideal so prevalent in the 80s.

Which makes sense, given that Spielberg’s own entry for the film is such a concentrated package of pathos that it almost warrants a dosage of Humalog packaged with every DVD. Scatman Crothers gives a group of residents at an old folks home the opportunity to reclaim their childhood, quite literally. It’s precious. And that’s all fine. Spielberg’s gonna Spielberg, especially pre-The Color Purple (1985), but you should at least be prepared.

And then there’s director John Landis’ (Animal House, The Blues Brothers) opening entry in the movie. It’s the least conceptually sound of all four stories. One imagines that this is because it has the least to do with one of the original TV episodes. Bill Connor (Vic Morrow) is an unrepentant racist and basket case who finds himself tumbling through time. With each Quantum Leap like jump, he finds himself as a different oppressed minority. At the end, he watches his friends shrug through his disappearance as he is taken away to a concentration camp in Nazi-era Europe.

It’s kind of a muddled mess, although it does have the virtue of having the classic hopeless-turn-as-moral ending that made the TV series famous. There is a reason both for its messiness and its bleak ending. It’s more horrifying than any moment in the finished film, I assure you. 

I made reference to the incident in <last week’s blog>, but in the early hours of July 23, 1982, on the final night of filming for the segment, an accident occurred that took the lives of three actors.

Accounts vary, but these are the generally accepted facts. The final shooting involved a massive sequence that would find Morrow’s character saving two Vietnamese children from a village under attack by American helicopters, after which he would be redeemed and return to his life reformed after only a half-hour or so of trauma. 

With a helicopter hovering nearby and explosions igniting all around them, Morrow crawls out into a small lake with a child in each arm. One of the pyrotechnic explosions caused the rear rotor on the helicopter to fail. The craft spun out of control and crashed into the nearby lake. The pilot and other crew members on board the chopper survived with minor injuries. On the ground, the helicopter decapitated Morrow and one of the child actors, 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le, and crushed the other child actor, 6-year-old Renee Shin-yi Chen. Rolling cameras from at least three different angles caught the whole sequence of events. The internet has archived this footage for all time, because of course it has. Several industrious online editors have even managed to enhance the footage frame-by-frame, because of course they have. I don’t recommend seeking out the footage for yourself. Just… Trust me.

Under “normal” circumstances, this would be a horrifying tragedy, but it gets worse from there. Some insist that Landis—in complete disregard of any semblance of safety—tried to order the lethal helicopter to an altitude even lower than the already dangerous 25 feet it maintained above the ground. Landis denies this, and instead points to the error of a special effects technician and a mis-timed explosion as the sole causes for the accident. The producers and director further disregarded safety and labor laws in a number of other ways. Child actors weren’t supposed to work in such close proximity to that degree of pyrotechnics; the filmmakers did anyway. Child actors weren’t supposed to work at such a late hour; the filmmakers paid their parents under the table. Landis copped to this much but, again, insists to this day that those factors had nothing to do with the actual accident.

NTSB inquiries labeled the event an accident, although they significantly changed their rules regulating helicopters on film sets. Civil cases took several years to settle with the families, while Landis and four other crew members were placed on trial for manslaughter. Amid some degree of controversy in the pre-OJ world, the five were acquitted of any criminal wrongdoing.

Even if I accept Landis’ side of the story and that every moment of the incident was beyond any reasonable control, I can’t imagine having blood on my hands for one of my own silly projects, regardless of how it turned out. Maybe it’s a shocking, potentially overwhelming story, but whenever I think about the Twilight Zone movie and the accident that accompanied it, I try to find some object lesson in the events. Maybe it’s that being creative is great, but being a human being is probably far more important.

*Don’t believe me? I issued just such a challenge on Friday. Twice. I will defend Mr. Serling’s honor, so help me Krom.

**To be fair, I think conversion away from black and white not only diminished attempts at remaking the Zone, but television, film, photography, and the entirety of human civilization. I’m willing to admit I might be alone there.

Justice League (2017)

Director: Zack Snyder credited, Joss Whedon with the assist

Cast: Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Ciarán Hinds, Henry Cavill

Have I Seen it Before: The better question is whether I’m ever going to feel compelled to watch it again.

Did I Like It: It’s… not the worst. As long as we live in a world with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) or Batman & Robin (1997), we can live secure in that knowledge.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “Okay, Warner Bros. Time for us to have another one of those little chats.” published on 12/03/2017.

Hey, Warner Bros. It’s been a long time. No, I still don’t think the name “Martha” is a sufficient plot development around which to build an entire screenplay, but I don’t want to talk about that. We’re friends; we’ve been friends for a long time. Let’s talk about something else.

So Justice League is a thing. You went waaaaay simpler on the title. That’s good. 

You picked up Joss Whedon for some relief pitching. Tragic why it came to that point, but I think you hired the right guy to finish the job. 

Wonder Woman (the film) and Wonder Woman (the character) are legit, and you doubled down on that. Good; very good. 

Danny Elfman’s doing the score? Is he going to bring back his theme from Batman (1989)? He is? Well, you’ve got a hit on your hands if I’ve ever heard of one.

What’s that? Why wouldn’t you use the Flash you have set up on television? He’s even super dimension-hoppy… Fine, whatever. Flashpoint will sort this all out.

Who’s the villain? Steppenwolf? Like “Born to be Wild”/“Magic Carpet Ride” Steppenwolf? No, he’s a… with horns, you say…? Oh, a helmet. Like the dude at the beginning of Thor: Ragnarok? No, not like that… Why not use Darkseid? You’re wanting to tease that out. :sigh: That’s fine, we can’t blame you for aping a format that certainly has worked for the other guys. Actually, I can blame you for that, but we’ll get to that later.

Wait… What’s that about Henry Cavill’s mustache?

An actual frame from the movie.

The same frame, unaltered. Don’t look it up. Just trust me.

Oh, Warner Bros, you sweet, innocent, beautiful summer child. What have we learned?

All Newhart-esque riffs aside, Zack Snyder’s third film with Superman as a character* is out now, and is fine. While it certainly doesn’t have any of the bewilderingly bad choices that Martha v Martha: Dawn of Martha had**, it still isn’t nearly as thrilling as Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, but plays it far safer than the interesting-in-concept, but uneven Man of Steel (2013). Is it a step in the right direction for the floundering DCEU? No. It actually moves the proceedings back to the gestalt of Mommy v Mommy: Mommy of Mommy; as it turns out, Wonder Woman was the step in the right direction. That right direction, as it turns out, would be to make a bunch (and not just one) really watchable movie, then try to bring those disparate elements into a huge crowd pleaser. If only there was somebody out there that had already done this. That would be marvelous.

And that’s where I come in with some thoughts about the future of the DCEU, especially in light of League’s anemic box office. The internet has already buzzed about the possibility, and several news items have indicated that Warner Bros. may be thinking in this direction, but it may be time to abandon the Marvel business model. DC might have had a chance at being the second person to the party, but too many missed opportunities, murky creative strategies, and well, let’s face it, Marthas mean that DC may never truly get it together. The massive superhero movie continuity may not be possible to replicate. Heck, any massive movie continuity is not likely to have the benefit of a Robert Downey Jr. opening salvo, and thus, falter. Just ask the poor, maligned Universal monsters, who—despite their proud tradition of creating the idea of a cinematic shared universe before 1950—have had to endure now two false starts in twice as many years at uniting their stable of characters.

So don’t try, DC. Be weird. Don’t worry about setting up the next movie. In fact, it might be better if you’re no 100% sure what the next movie will even be. That Scorcese-produced Joker movie? I’d rather you didn’t go back to that well, but as long as Jared Leto stays home, I’m in. Flashpoint could cleanse the palette, give Affleck a dignified*** exit, allow Gal Gadot to keep making Wonder Woman movies in perpetuity, and restore Henry Cavill’s upper lip to its once-humanoid glory…

But what do I really want you to do DC? What is the only Christmas wish this boy has on his list?

You know what I’m about to say.

Last year, I wrote <here on the blog> about how I would have preferred DC handle its shared universe. It didn’t involve Affleck, and it didn’t really involve Batman, per se. You didn’t take that course here, but if you are truly giving up the ghost on being Marvel-lite, can I ask for one movie to be included in your increasingly Elseworlds-esque slate…

Batman Beyond… with Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne. You can even bring back Danny Elfman to do the score.

Get that done, Warner Bros., and everything will be forgiven. Including any and all Marthas that may come up between now and then.

*Spoiler alert? Can something be a spoiler alert if the bit of info is built out of pure inevitability? These are the questions I ponder at night when sleep eludes me.

**Although it still did manage to include an irritating tag scene with profoundly miscast Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor.

***He wants a “cool” way out of the role, and presumably never have to talk about it again, but I think the “best Batman to never be in a good Batman movie” can be erased from existence via the Cosmic treadmill, right?