I intended to do the Dr. Who double feature, but got off the train and discovered that I had misplaced the festival pass/ticket I had picked up on Friday. It was no big deal - I actually had that one because I had forgotten to bring the one I had printed out when purchasing a pass on-line - so I opted to head home and grab that, after a stop at the comic shop, I picked that up, put it in a lanyard and headed back for part 2.
No big deal there; I saw Dr. Who and the Daleks a couple of years ago at the Brattle. The interesting thing was, as soon as that popped up, there was demand to have it at the Marathon the next year, and I argued that it would be kind of tacky to do that sort of repeat. It was announced anyway, but didn't wind up on the final schedule (a documentary on the series and its fans was canceled because of weather), and I always wondered what happened there.
Semi-random thought: I would kind of like to see this offshoot of the franchise revisited somehow. I'm no particular supporter of fan-films, but I might be convinced to make an exception here, especially if Roberta Tovey were to come out of apparent retirement to reprise Susan as the current Dr. Who traveling with her own grandchildren. This would also be a fun crossover with the current series in a parallel-universe crossover story. Probably more feasible in the comics, though, since you could use Cushing's and Tovey's likenesses there and just pick up where the movies left off, perhaps with the unfilled version of "The Chase".
(I'm available and would work cheap, Titan!)
Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2015 in Somerville Theatre #2 (SF/40, DCP) & 22 March 2015 in Jay's Living Room (refresh, DVD)
I'm curious what would have happened had Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. been the hit its producers had hoped for. Would the "Dr. Who" film series have overshadowed the television series, or would they have boosted each other? Would it have moved on from Peter Cushing in the same way the character was reinvented every few years on television? No way to tell; this second film in the franchise was the last to be produced for theaters until 2013's Day of the Doctor, which was part of the original series rather than an offshoot. Like its predecessor Dr. Who and the Daleks, it's a fun alternate take on the series and not a bad Sixties sci-fi movie in its own right.
Once again, Dr. Who (Cushing) is taking his time-and-space machine built into a police call box out for a new adventure, this time heading for 2150 AD with granddaughter Susan (Roberta Tovey), niece Louise (Jill Curzon), and Tom (Bernard Cribbins), a policeman who thought he was jumping into an ordinary phone booth. Once then, though, they find that the planet has been invaded by the Daleks, cruel aliens so encased in armor that they look like robots. They are occupying London and enslaving humans, either to work in a nearby mine or as "Roboman" enforcers, though there is also a dogged resistance.
The movie starts with a cold opening that the current iteration of the television series would really tip their caps to - start looking like a cops-and-robbers movie, throw the main character for a loop when he stumbles into something strange, sending the action off in another direction. Things continue in that same vein in the future, with director Gordon Flemyng keeping the script by Milton Subotsky (adapting Terry Nation's original BBC teleplays) moving at a brisk pace, especially while concentrating on action that is fairly intense for being intended for kids. Flemyng and company single a bit later on when they veer into slapstick territory; it's well-executed but arguably misplaced in a movie that had been driving forward at a good clip. There's also a sense that Subotsky struggled in the second half, when one can see characters and subplots being added and just a as quickly discarded (perhaps a remnant of the original serial structure) while plot holes are waved away a bit too vigorously.
Full review at EFC.
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2015
Thursday, September 04, 2014
This Week In Tickets: 25 August 2014 - 31 August 2014
Spent more time than I'd like trying to have every ticket touch the day it was used, but then you can't and there's that big space in the corner...
I wasn't going to do the Doctor Who season premiere in the theater, but then I saw it was remembered that Ben Wheatley was directing and figured, what's twelve bucks? The really crazy thing is that a lot of people seem to have done so; the 7pm show was expanded to two screens, which means about three or four hundred people decided to do the same at Boston Common, plus however many folks were at Fenway, Assembly Row, and the further suburbs. That's despite it being shown on free television a couple days earlier.
Crazy, really. I joke about how the stuff I loved as a kid is ridiculously popular now, and where were all the cute college girls in costumes paying cash money to watch this thing when I was a teenager?... But, really, it's kind of amazing.
Tuesday, I took the long train to Chestnut Hill, because if I'm going to pay 3D money for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, it may as well be at the fancy place. Just barely made it because I was hit with a couple of delays on the T, and it took until a couple minutes in to get the 3D properly turned on, but it's looked pretty good.
Then came a long weekend, and checking out four movies that hit the multiplexes but apparently had nobody reviewing them for eFilmCritic - The November Man on Thursday, As Above, So Below on Friday, Kundo: Age fo the Rampant on Saturday, and Raja Natwartal on Sunday. The big surprise among them was As Above, So Below, a pretty standard-looking found-footage film that benefits from having Perdita Weeks and just works in terms of getting the scares it wants.
That one was meant mostly to serve as a warm-up for the only midnight show I got to at the Somerville this summer, The 'Burbs, and at first it seemed like I was planning things right - have the soda at 10pm so that the caffeine is hitting the system around midnight, but it's amazing how quickly one can go from chugging along to just dragging. It lasted right into the next day, as I was feeling pretty sluggish while watching Kundo, although I arrived back from Revere just in time to catch the last screening of "Monty Python Live (Mostly)" in the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount. First time I've been there in a while, but then, they did stop having a regular film program, and I haven't yet made it to the "Bright Lights" series.
Another packed house for a thing I have liked since I was young, and I wonder if Emerson managed to get the late booking (most places, including ArtsEmerson screened this in late July/early August) for incoming students. I'm guessing that's who a lot of the folks in there were, including a couple with the weird habit of announcing everything they recognized. Did they have girlfriends who weren't fans or something? Even in that case, I'm not sure what calling out "The Parrot Sketch!" gets you.
Doctor Who: "Deep Breath"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 August 2014 in AMC Boston Common #14 (Fathom Events, digital)
I've been looking forward to the new series of Doctor Who in large part because of Peter Capaldi and once again havingthe actor playing the part be discernibly older than I am the part played as an eccentric uncle rather than a potential boyfriend, or at least closer to that ideal. Given that Capaldi is a life-long fan of the show, having things move toward the original series excited me.
Well, it's not a total throwback; even though I half-suspect that the BBC suggested that the producers not worry about cutting it too much so that they could have the feature-length episode for theaters, leaving it kind of air-filled at a few moments, it's still running at a pretty frantic pace - a nice feat for an episode that, when you get right down to it, is rather dedicated to making a case that shouldn't have to be made - we've seen enough regenerations to know that the initially-prickly new guy will eventually be revealed as kind of a softie underneath, and basically the same person you've been following for the last X episodes/years/decades. It even goes so far as to basically borrow plot and villains from an earlier new-series episode. Why not just run with it?
Still, it's a fun episode. It's got a dinosaur (two, if you count Lady Vastra)! Capaldi, in the midst of talking about who he is as the new Doctor, does a very nice job of establishing the character, and while it seems like Clara is being reconfigured just as much as the Doctor (this repeated characterization as a control freak seems like a break from the caretaker of series 7+), Jenna Coleman is making it work. And while this was never going to be a full-fledged Ben Wheatley movie - he and Amy Jump didn't write it and he is making it for a much broader audience than his usual - but it's got a moment or two that I don't think a standard TV director would have gone for, with some jumps over the filler bits (I wonder what this would have looked like cut down to a more-standard 50 minutes). Having seen "Into the Dalek" since, I'm curious how others will handle the other Missy appearances; how many other directors will go for straight "I don't care if you don't get it right now" instead of "interesting, right?"
Also worth noting: The cinematic presentation was in the a roughly 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but the television presentation was HD-standard 1.78. I wonder which one Wheatley was framing for.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 26 August 2014 in Showcase Cinemas SuperLux Chestnut Hill #3 (first-run, RealD)
Crazy, isn't it, that the sequel to a movie which was a huge deal ten years ago can become a "just another" movie, even though Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller have still turned out something that looks and feels like nothing else out there aside from the first and Miller's The Spirit, and those weren't in 3D. But in that time, Zack Snyder has had picked up the "make it look exactly like the comics" ball, run with it, and moved on, which means that the gimmick isn't enough - to be as well-remembered as the first movie, it's going to have to be better.
And, unfair as it is, it's not. It's got some impressive pieces: Eva Green absolutely insists on grabbing the audience's attention, just leaning into the pulpiness of the material; if this is how Miller and the pulp authors he's emulating think of women, so be it, that's what she'll deliver. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Powers Boothe are good enough in their story that it's a bit of a shame they don't get to play off each other more. Rodriguez is one of the best at using 3D and he's at least enthusiastic where the pulp action is concerned. Rosario Dawson remains fantastic, even if she's in a role that's as ridiculous as her costume.
What's missing, then? Some sort of satisfaction, I think - not one of the four stories really has the "f--- yeah!" moment that makes the suffering that comes before - or the inevitable going down swinging - worth it. There are stabs, but they're not enough. Circumstances have hurt the cast, too: Dennis Haysbert replaces Michael Clarke Duncan, Josh Brolin takes Clive Owen's role (although that's got an in-story explanation), Brittany Murphy is gone, Bruce Willis is sidelined. Jessica Alba is a better actress than she was, but too much of the last act rests on her.
I'm a bit tempted to take out the old DVD of the first movie and see if it holds up, or if all the issues from the new one are there, but it was just different and exciting in 2005. But then, what good could come out of that?
The 'Burbs
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 August 2014 in Somerville Theatre #3 (Midnight Specials, 35mm)
Like a lot of folks who really like movies, I'm always a bit puzzled why Joe Dante hasn't had more mainstream success. He's certainly made movies that people love, and his film-nut tendencies don't tend to wedge themselves in to an extent where audience feel put off when they don't get the reference, even when he is clearly making movies about movies. All his movies tend to be genuinely funny or scary as need be, and he's got a knack for making silly work that few other filmmakers do.
And that latter part may almost work against him - he can make movies that, even if they aren't targeted entirely to kids, certainly play well for them, which means that when he makes something like The 'Burbs, which is not just for adults but actually kind of hostile in tone, people don't know what to make of it. Dante and writer Dana Olsen aren't coating this particular look at suburban isolation and paranoia with any sort of fondness, and even though there are some pretty great gags in it and a mystery worth unraveling, it's not hard to see audiences coming away from it feeling like they're being accused. This is in fact the case, but not many filmmakers do it quite so flagrantly.
It's a bit of a shame that it can be so off-putting, because Tom Hanks is kind of great in it, hinting at the edge he would have in some of his later roles at a time when he hadn't really moved far outside of the audience's comedic comfort zone yet. There's a fun ensemble around him, and Dante uses what theater manager Ian Judge described as a long-standing set on the Universal lot extremely well - its half-familiarity and the way the camera flits around it help with the movie's accusatory tone, making this a little more our neighborhood.
I must admit, I do enjoy the cheerful, friendly Joe Dante (or at least the one who doesn't mess around scaring the audience) a bit more than the guy who made this movie. I'm still pretty fond of it, but I wonder if this is what pushed him to the side in Hollywood more than anything else.
Monty Python Live (Mostly)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2014 in the Paramount Theater's Bright Screening Room (special presentation, digital)
I've got the Monty Python Instant Record Collection buried in a pile of CDs somewhere, but I always considered it a bit of an oddity; my impression of the troupe always came from the Flying Circus and Holy Grail, and I never thought of them as the group that performed Eric Idle's funny songs as opposed to the sketch-comedy troupe led by John Cleese and Graham Chapman. This live special, though, leans pretty heavily on Idle's music, with plentiful use of a chorus line to cover changes between skits. On the one hand, that means fewer moments with the surviving members of the troupe (including Carol Cleveland) actually on stage, but on the other, I feel happy for the dancers - how often do they actually get to be funny in their job?
As to the material... There's something definitely odd about watching all these routines that a couple of generations of high school/college kids memorized only to see the performers stumbling on, because they're septugenarians and their repetition of the material was for the most part done forty-plus years ago. There are uncomfortable moments when it feels like we might be seeing the beginning of the end for John Cleese, as the oldest member of the group seemed to forget his lines the most, although in that case it certainly helps to be playing against partners with the same kind of sharp comic timing and just generally be able to turn it into a self-referential bit about how the audience knows the material anyway.
And, let's face it, the stuff is still funny, even if this isn't quite the best possible version of it (live performance is nice, but being able to get it right and edit the best bits of each take together doesn't hurt). The performers have all had intriguingly different and successful careers since Python, but they still seem to have a fair amount of affection for the material and each other - Terry Gilliam especially seems absolutely delighted to be working with his old friends again, even if Cleese sort of seems to have a "not going to let people see me excited" thing going on. I do think that the moments when they go off the script we all know are the ones I enjoyed the most, whether it be Michael Palin covering for Cleese's flubs or a video bit with Professors Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking that has fun with nitpicking the science of a silly song.
When the live reunion shows were first announced, I seriously considered a London vacation to see them, although the money wasn't quite there and, besides, they were smack in the middle of the Fantasia Festival. I kind of wish I had - given that I was born in 1973, this was pretty close to a literal once-in-a-lifetime event, and being there would have been an extra jolt. In the future, I'll watch the sketches off my trusty 16-DVD set, but it was certainly neat to see this once.
I wasn't going to do the Doctor Who season premiere in the theater, but then I saw it was remembered that Ben Wheatley was directing and figured, what's twelve bucks? The really crazy thing is that a lot of people seem to have done so; the 7pm show was expanded to two screens, which means about three or four hundred people decided to do the same at Boston Common, plus however many folks were at Fenway, Assembly Row, and the further suburbs. That's despite it being shown on free television a couple days earlier.
Crazy, really. I joke about how the stuff I loved as a kid is ridiculously popular now, and where were all the cute college girls in costumes paying cash money to watch this thing when I was a teenager?... But, really, it's kind of amazing.
Tuesday, I took the long train to Chestnut Hill, because if I'm going to pay 3D money for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, it may as well be at the fancy place. Just barely made it because I was hit with a couple of delays on the T, and it took until a couple minutes in to get the 3D properly turned on, but it's looked pretty good.
Then came a long weekend, and checking out four movies that hit the multiplexes but apparently had nobody reviewing them for eFilmCritic - The November Man on Thursday, As Above, So Below on Friday, Kundo: Age fo the Rampant on Saturday, and Raja Natwartal on Sunday. The big surprise among them was As Above, So Below, a pretty standard-looking found-footage film that benefits from having Perdita Weeks and just works in terms of getting the scares it wants.
That one was meant mostly to serve as a warm-up for the only midnight show I got to at the Somerville this summer, The 'Burbs, and at first it seemed like I was planning things right - have the soda at 10pm so that the caffeine is hitting the system around midnight, but it's amazing how quickly one can go from chugging along to just dragging. It lasted right into the next day, as I was feeling pretty sluggish while watching Kundo, although I arrived back from Revere just in time to catch the last screening of "Monty Python Live (Mostly)" in the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount. First time I've been there in a while, but then, they did stop having a regular film program, and I haven't yet made it to the "Bright Lights" series.
Another packed house for a thing I have liked since I was young, and I wonder if Emerson managed to get the late booking (most places, including ArtsEmerson screened this in late July/early August) for incoming students. I'm guessing that's who a lot of the folks in there were, including a couple with the weird habit of announcing everything they recognized. Did they have girlfriends who weren't fans or something? Even in that case, I'm not sure what calling out "The Parrot Sketch!" gets you.
Doctor Who: "Deep Breath"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 August 2014 in AMC Boston Common #14 (Fathom Events, digital)
I've been looking forward to the new series of Doctor Who in large part because of Peter Capaldi and once again having
Well, it's not a total throwback; even though I half-suspect that the BBC suggested that the producers not worry about cutting it too much so that they could have the feature-length episode for theaters, leaving it kind of air-filled at a few moments, it's still running at a pretty frantic pace - a nice feat for an episode that, when you get right down to it, is rather dedicated to making a case that shouldn't have to be made - we've seen enough regenerations to know that the initially-prickly new guy will eventually be revealed as kind of a softie underneath, and basically the same person you've been following for the last X episodes/years/decades. It even goes so far as to basically borrow plot and villains from an earlier new-series episode. Why not just run with it?
Still, it's a fun episode. It's got a dinosaur (two, if you count Lady Vastra)! Capaldi, in the midst of talking about who he is as the new Doctor, does a very nice job of establishing the character, and while it seems like Clara is being reconfigured just as much as the Doctor (this repeated characterization as a control freak seems like a break from the caretaker of series 7+), Jenna Coleman is making it work. And while this was never going to be a full-fledged Ben Wheatley movie - he and Amy Jump didn't write it and he is making it for a much broader audience than his usual - but it's got a moment or two that I don't think a standard TV director would have gone for, with some jumps over the filler bits (I wonder what this would have looked like cut down to a more-standard 50 minutes). Having seen "Into the Dalek" since, I'm curious how others will handle the other Missy appearances; how many other directors will go for straight "I don't care if you don't get it right now" instead of "interesting, right?"
Also worth noting: The cinematic presentation was in the a roughly 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but the television presentation was HD-standard 1.78. I wonder which one Wheatley was framing for.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 26 August 2014 in Showcase Cinemas SuperLux Chestnut Hill #3 (first-run, RealD)
Crazy, isn't it, that the sequel to a movie which was a huge deal ten years ago can become a "just another" movie, even though Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller have still turned out something that looks and feels like nothing else out there aside from the first and Miller's The Spirit, and those weren't in 3D. But in that time, Zack Snyder has had picked up the "make it look exactly like the comics" ball, run with it, and moved on, which means that the gimmick isn't enough - to be as well-remembered as the first movie, it's going to have to be better.
And, unfair as it is, it's not. It's got some impressive pieces: Eva Green absolutely insists on grabbing the audience's attention, just leaning into the pulpiness of the material; if this is how Miller and the pulp authors he's emulating think of women, so be it, that's what she'll deliver. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Powers Boothe are good enough in their story that it's a bit of a shame they don't get to play off each other more. Rodriguez is one of the best at using 3D and he's at least enthusiastic where the pulp action is concerned. Rosario Dawson remains fantastic, even if she's in a role that's as ridiculous as her costume.
What's missing, then? Some sort of satisfaction, I think - not one of the four stories really has the "f--- yeah!" moment that makes the suffering that comes before - or the inevitable going down swinging - worth it. There are stabs, but they're not enough. Circumstances have hurt the cast, too: Dennis Haysbert replaces Michael Clarke Duncan, Josh Brolin takes Clive Owen's role (although that's got an in-story explanation), Brittany Murphy is gone, Bruce Willis is sidelined. Jessica Alba is a better actress than she was, but too much of the last act rests on her.
I'm a bit tempted to take out the old DVD of the first movie and see if it holds up, or if all the issues from the new one are there, but it was just different and exciting in 2005. But then, what good could come out of that?
The 'Burbs
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 August 2014 in Somerville Theatre #3 (Midnight Specials, 35mm)
Like a lot of folks who really like movies, I'm always a bit puzzled why Joe Dante hasn't had more mainstream success. He's certainly made movies that people love, and his film-nut tendencies don't tend to wedge themselves in to an extent where audience feel put off when they don't get the reference, even when he is clearly making movies about movies. All his movies tend to be genuinely funny or scary as need be, and he's got a knack for making silly work that few other filmmakers do.
And that latter part may almost work against him - he can make movies that, even if they aren't targeted entirely to kids, certainly play well for them, which means that when he makes something like The 'Burbs, which is not just for adults but actually kind of hostile in tone, people don't know what to make of it. Dante and writer Dana Olsen aren't coating this particular look at suburban isolation and paranoia with any sort of fondness, and even though there are some pretty great gags in it and a mystery worth unraveling, it's not hard to see audiences coming away from it feeling like they're being accused. This is in fact the case, but not many filmmakers do it quite so flagrantly.
It's a bit of a shame that it can be so off-putting, because Tom Hanks is kind of great in it, hinting at the edge he would have in some of his later roles at a time when he hadn't really moved far outside of the audience's comedic comfort zone yet. There's a fun ensemble around him, and Dante uses what theater manager Ian Judge described as a long-standing set on the Universal lot extremely well - its half-familiarity and the way the camera flits around it help with the movie's accusatory tone, making this a little more our neighborhood.
I must admit, I do enjoy the cheerful, friendly Joe Dante (or at least the one who doesn't mess around scaring the audience) a bit more than the guy who made this movie. I'm still pretty fond of it, but I wonder if this is what pushed him to the side in Hollywood more than anything else.
Monty Python Live (Mostly)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2014 in the Paramount Theater's Bright Screening Room (special presentation, digital)
I've got the Monty Python Instant Record Collection buried in a pile of CDs somewhere, but I always considered it a bit of an oddity; my impression of the troupe always came from the Flying Circus and Holy Grail, and I never thought of them as the group that performed Eric Idle's funny songs as opposed to the sketch-comedy troupe led by John Cleese and Graham Chapman. This live special, though, leans pretty heavily on Idle's music, with plentiful use of a chorus line to cover changes between skits. On the one hand, that means fewer moments with the surviving members of the troupe (including Carol Cleveland) actually on stage, but on the other, I feel happy for the dancers - how often do they actually get to be funny in their job?
As to the material... There's something definitely odd about watching all these routines that a couple of generations of high school/college kids memorized only to see the performers stumbling on, because they're septugenarians and their repetition of the material was for the most part done forty-plus years ago. There are uncomfortable moments when it feels like we might be seeing the beginning of the end for John Cleese, as the oldest member of the group seemed to forget his lines the most, although in that case it certainly helps to be playing against partners with the same kind of sharp comic timing and just generally be able to turn it into a self-referential bit about how the audience knows the material anyway.
And, let's face it, the stuff is still funny, even if this isn't quite the best possible version of it (live performance is nice, but being able to get it right and edit the best bits of each take together doesn't hurt). The performers have all had intriguingly different and successful careers since Python, but they still seem to have a fair amount of affection for the material and each other - Terry Gilliam especially seems absolutely delighted to be working with his old friends again, even if Cleese sort of seems to have a "not going to let people see me excited" thing going on. I do think that the moments when they go off the script we all know are the ones I enjoyed the most, whether it be Michael Palin covering for Cleese's flubs or a video bit with Professors Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking that has fun with nitpicking the science of a silly song.
When the live reunion shows were first announced, I seriously considered a London vacation to see them, although the money wasn't quite there and, besides, they were smack in the middle of the Fantasia Festival. I kind of wish I had - given that I was born in 1973, this was pretty close to a literal once-in-a-lifetime event, and being there would have been an extra jolt. In the future, I'll watch the sketches off my trusty 16-DVD set, but it was certainly neat to see this once.
Saturday, December 07, 2013
This Week In Tickets: 25 November 2013 - 1 December 2013
Busy week, and I really didn't even get to everything I wanted.
For instance, I had ideas about getting to Boston Common in time to catch something in the 7pm slot before the great big Doctor Who: Day of the Doctor 50th Anniversary Special at 10pm (for which I had purchased my ticket weeks ago, lucky that they decided to put late shows on after the 7:30pm ones sold out in a matter of hours). Didn't happen; work kept me late and it would have been a tight squeeze. Still, I'm tremendously glad I went to this. Yes, it was paying $18 for something I had sitting on my DVR from two days earlier, but it looked great on the big screen even beyond the 3D actually being quite good, and it was fantastic to see it in a theater filled with fellow enthusiasts. Not necessarily a lot of other "loved it since Tom Baker & Peter Davison" fans - fezzes outnumbered scarves by a healthy margin - but, hey, it was late. Although, man, where were all the cute girls who loved Doctor Who when I was fifteen?
That was a lot of fun; Tuesday's Gathr preview of Cold Turkey really wasn't. It's the sort of drama about a dysfunctional family where one wonders if there is any affection along any axis at all, and the details are not interesting enough for good drama (or funny enough for good black comedy). There was also a little bit of bait and switch there, as some of the advertising said "from Academy Award Winner Peter Bogdanovich", but he was just there as an actor, not writing or directing.
Real-life Thanksgiving caused the rest of the relatively unusual schedule: We were told to work from home on Wednesday because of a great big incoming storm, but between it being less of a big deal than reported and the usual email to knock off a couple hours early with the holiday coming up, I was able to catch the matinees of The Blue Dahlia & The Glass Key and still have time to get to the comic shop and knock off early for the earlier-than-necessary bus to Maine. I always forget that Dad's wife Barbara's family tends to arrive and eat late, so with my brothers all scattered to have Thanksgiving with their wives' folks, I could have gotten that extra couple hours of sleep.
Friday morning was actually spent on laundry, noteworthy because the washing machine in my basement up and died a couple weeks ago, and the landlord is still sort of plotting just how to get a new one into my basement (nobody seems to know how the one that's there was installed, even though the house is too old to have been built around it). So drag clothes a mile, wash (and sit around waiting), drag them back even though they're sodden and heavy because there's nothing wrong with my dryer. Still, I was able to get to Homefront - a Jason Statham action movie solidly in the "better than it could be but still kind of just average" range - and then hit Frozen at the same theater soon after. That one was pretty great, as was the short playing before it, Get a Horse!.
Saturday was another split, with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Brattle followed by Black Nativity downtown. The former is a sort of quiet classic, while the latter didn't quite do it for me, though I might have enjoyed it more without a couple of twerps making me have to really concentrate on the movie rather than just watch it.
Sunday was meant to be another two-movie day, but after Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Brattle, I went back home, had a bit of a completely-unrelated headache, and just didn't feel like going out. It got kind of rainy, too, if I remember correctly.
Worrisome: No Christmas shopping was done amid all this, and I have a ton of brothers and nieces. I tell myself that I'll do it all on vacation and then fill in blanks later, but that didn't exactly work out well in London last year.
Doctor Who: Day of the Doctor
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 November 2013 at AMC Boston Common #16 (Fathom Events, DCP)
Given how many of us showed up for this - Boston sold out six screenings that night, and the total box office take on relatively few screens nationwide was second to only Catching Fire - I've got to think the BBC will be doing this again. Maybe not in 3D, but why not make next year's Christmas Special or the rumored Dalek two-parter directed by Kevin Wheatley a cinema event? It would have my money, especially if it's as good as this one.
Not that Day of the Doctor is necessarily perfect; as it introduces the three separate strands being followed by three incarnations of the title character (John Hurt, David Tennant, and Matt Smith), it feels like it's trying too hard to give them equal time. What's going on with Smith and Jenna Coleman's Clara is current, what's going on with Hurt and Billie Piper's not-actually-Rose is obviously important, but what's happening with Tennant and Joanna Page's Elizabeth I really seems like filler, even as it does flow into the rest of the story. It's also, inevitably, fairly heavy on the recent history of the show despite being meant to celebrate a half-century.
But when it works, it does, and it's pretty clever about it. There's plenty of fun and humor in how Tennant and Smith play off each other, and John Hurt does a great job of making "missing" version of the character still unmistakably The Doctor, even if he is different enough that we can fully understand why the ensuing "regenerations" have tried to forget ever being him (The Doctor, for the uninitiated, appears human but is actually a time-traveling alien who can, when overtaken by age or injury, regenerate his body into a new form, which also changes his personality a bit). Writer Steven Moffatt uses this as an interesting way to comment on the difference between the show's current incarnation and the original run, and then uses the climax to quite possibly roll those changes back, hinting that the next few years could be old-school.
Plus, it's a big, fun adventure. Not for newbies, perhaps, but once one knows the concept, the story unfolds in clever (and surprisingly fair) ways. It's never overly solemn but often very funny, and the BBC spent a bit of money on it, making a movie that plays much bigger than the TV show without feeling unlike it. Director Nick Hurrian and d.p. Neville Kidd also do a very nice job of shooting in 3D; it's probably one of the best-looking 3D movies to come out this year, integrating it into the story without it seeming particularly gimmicky.
And, hey, any show that gets the audience to go absolutely nuts twice (at "All Thirteen!" and "The Curator") is certainly doing something right!
"Get a Horse!"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 November 2013 in Regal Fenway #3 (first-run, RealD DCP)
I could have sworn I'd read something about "Get a Horse" in one of the Fantagraphics collections of the Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse comic strips, but a quick flip through them doesn't turn anything up. Still, those collections are a big part of why I had a good time - although I suspect the likes of Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, and the like have shown up in Epic Mickey or other games, but the throwback characters making an appearance - and then jumping into the three-dimensional world as rips appear in the movie screen - was part of the fun.
Of course, the big fun is the way director Lauren MacMullen and company use the the third dimension to set up a non-stop stream of slapstick. But the three-dimensional stuff is also where the short hits a snag: The black-and-white, two-dimensional, traditionally animated footage looks so much better than the CGI animation; it feels unlimited and unbounded, while the three-dimensional versions of the characters seem to be using Nintendo-quality models. It's not quite as stiff as the digital Mickey that appeared as part of the Oscar broadcast a few years back, but still, when the screen gets completely torn away to reveal the fully three-dimensional, CGI world behind it... Well, if you read the whole thing as a sort of metaphor for the transition from traditional cel-based animation to digital, it doesn't exactly feel like progress, especially on the heels of Laika's The Boxtrolls trailer.
Frozen
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 November 2013 in Regal Fenway #3 (first-run, RealD DCP)
It's strange - Disney has been making princess-themed stories for young girls for about seventy-five years, and this is the first one that really seems to focus on sisterhood as a theme. I don't know if my brother and sister-in-law are still trying to avoid Disney Princess stuff for their girls, but even if they are, this is one I could see them being deemed okay. Sure, it doesn't pass the "no missing parents" test (though it looked like they were on the right track early), but it hits a lot of the right notes otherwise.
First off, it's a great, fun little movie; directors Jennifer Lee & Chris Buck do a great job of introducing the audience to princesses Elsa & Anna right off, and they sell us on Anna quickly: There's tragedy and hurt in her background, but she's still incredibly optimistic. Kristen Bell does great voice-acting work there, and throughout, making Anna a scatterbrained but charmingly determined girl. She plays off the rest of the characters well, whether it be Santino Fontana as the handsome prince, Jonathan Groff as the affable ice merchant she meets searching for her sister, Idina Menzel as Elsa herself, and Josh Gad as Olaf, the snowman who accidentally came to life when Elsa froze the kingdom.
What's great, though, is how the relation between Anna and Elsa forms the core of the movie. I bet there's a draft of the screenplay where Elsa's big song, "Let It Go", is the villain number, and even in the movie as it is, it threatens to go there, because don't most villains start out confused, fearful, and just feeling better not living by the rules and restrictions others have set for her? And that would be the easy way to go, but the filmmakers have a twist or two more in store, including a subversion of the usual Disney ending to a fairy tale story that made me want to stand up and cheer for their commitment to staying on the right message; I can't imagine how women and folks trying to raise independent girls will take it.
And even if that stuff doesn't register - the movie is downright gorgeous and funny from moment one, in the same style as Tangled. The animation is as flawless as you'd expect from Disney, and I daresay they're approaching DreamWorks territory in taking the mandate to make films in 3D and using it well. Characters like Olaf who could be annoying are endearing, and while it's not quite perfectly paced, it's never far from something really funny, beautiful, or endearing happening. I'm not sure it's quite my favorite of Disney's new wave - Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph were movies I absolutely loved - but then, I'm a 40-year-old male with no kids. The audience that it's made for, my two-to-seven-year-old nieces, will eat it up, and it's quite likely that they can do so without their parents worrying about the message sent so much.
(Says, again, the 40-year-old guy with no kids, whose thoughts on what's good for young girls are, at the best, speculative.)
For instance, I had ideas about getting to Boston Common in time to catch something in the 7pm slot before the great big Doctor Who: Day of the Doctor 50th Anniversary Special at 10pm (for which I had purchased my ticket weeks ago, lucky that they decided to put late shows on after the 7:30pm ones sold out in a matter of hours). Didn't happen; work kept me late and it would have been a tight squeeze. Still, I'm tremendously glad I went to this. Yes, it was paying $18 for something I had sitting on my DVR from two days earlier, but it looked great on the big screen even beyond the 3D actually being quite good, and it was fantastic to see it in a theater filled with fellow enthusiasts. Not necessarily a lot of other "loved it since Tom Baker & Peter Davison" fans - fezzes outnumbered scarves by a healthy margin - but, hey, it was late. Although, man, where were all the cute girls who loved Doctor Who when I was fifteen?
That was a lot of fun; Tuesday's Gathr preview of Cold Turkey really wasn't. It's the sort of drama about a dysfunctional family where one wonders if there is any affection along any axis at all, and the details are not interesting enough for good drama (or funny enough for good black comedy). There was also a little bit of bait and switch there, as some of the advertising said "from Academy Award Winner Peter Bogdanovich", but he was just there as an actor, not writing or directing.
Real-life Thanksgiving caused the rest of the relatively unusual schedule: We were told to work from home on Wednesday because of a great big incoming storm, but between it being less of a big deal than reported and the usual email to knock off a couple hours early with the holiday coming up, I was able to catch the matinees of The Blue Dahlia & The Glass Key and still have time to get to the comic shop and knock off early for the earlier-than-necessary bus to Maine. I always forget that Dad's wife Barbara's family tends to arrive and eat late, so with my brothers all scattered to have Thanksgiving with their wives' folks, I could have gotten that extra couple hours of sleep.
Friday morning was actually spent on laundry, noteworthy because the washing machine in my basement up and died a couple weeks ago, and the landlord is still sort of plotting just how to get a new one into my basement (nobody seems to know how the one that's there was installed, even though the house is too old to have been built around it). So drag clothes a mile, wash (and sit around waiting), drag them back even though they're sodden and heavy because there's nothing wrong with my dryer. Still, I was able to get to Homefront - a Jason Statham action movie solidly in the "better than it could be but still kind of just average" range - and then hit Frozen at the same theater soon after. That one was pretty great, as was the short playing before it, Get a Horse!.
Saturday was another split, with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Brattle followed by Black Nativity downtown. The former is a sort of quiet classic, while the latter didn't quite do it for me, though I might have enjoyed it more without a couple of twerps making me have to really concentrate on the movie rather than just watch it.
Sunday was meant to be another two-movie day, but after Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Brattle, I went back home, had a bit of a completely-unrelated headache, and just didn't feel like going out. It got kind of rainy, too, if I remember correctly.
Worrisome: No Christmas shopping was done amid all this, and I have a ton of brothers and nieces. I tell myself that I'll do it all on vacation and then fill in blanks later, but that didn't exactly work out well in London last year.
Doctor Who: Day of the Doctor
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 November 2013 at AMC Boston Common #16 (Fathom Events, DCP)
Given how many of us showed up for this - Boston sold out six screenings that night, and the total box office take on relatively few screens nationwide was second to only Catching Fire - I've got to think the BBC will be doing this again. Maybe not in 3D, but why not make next year's Christmas Special or the rumored Dalek two-parter directed by Kevin Wheatley a cinema event? It would have my money, especially if it's as good as this one.
Not that Day of the Doctor is necessarily perfect; as it introduces the three separate strands being followed by three incarnations of the title character (John Hurt, David Tennant, and Matt Smith), it feels like it's trying too hard to give them equal time. What's going on with Smith and Jenna Coleman's Clara is current, what's going on with Hurt and Billie Piper's not-actually-Rose is obviously important, but what's happening with Tennant and Joanna Page's Elizabeth I really seems like filler, even as it does flow into the rest of the story. It's also, inevitably, fairly heavy on the recent history of the show despite being meant to celebrate a half-century.
But when it works, it does, and it's pretty clever about it. There's plenty of fun and humor in how Tennant and Smith play off each other, and John Hurt does a great job of making "missing" version of the character still unmistakably The Doctor, even if he is different enough that we can fully understand why the ensuing "regenerations" have tried to forget ever being him (The Doctor, for the uninitiated, appears human but is actually a time-traveling alien who can, when overtaken by age or injury, regenerate his body into a new form, which also changes his personality a bit). Writer Steven Moffatt uses this as an interesting way to comment on the difference between the show's current incarnation and the original run, and then uses the climax to quite possibly roll those changes back, hinting that the next few years could be old-school.
Plus, it's a big, fun adventure. Not for newbies, perhaps, but once one knows the concept, the story unfolds in clever (and surprisingly fair) ways. It's never overly solemn but often very funny, and the BBC spent a bit of money on it, making a movie that plays much bigger than the TV show without feeling unlike it. Director Nick Hurrian and d.p. Neville Kidd also do a very nice job of shooting in 3D; it's probably one of the best-looking 3D movies to come out this year, integrating it into the story without it seeming particularly gimmicky.
And, hey, any show that gets the audience to go absolutely nuts twice (at "All Thirteen!" and "The Curator") is certainly doing something right!
"Get a Horse!"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 November 2013 in Regal Fenway #3 (first-run, RealD DCP)
I could have sworn I'd read something about "Get a Horse" in one of the Fantagraphics collections of the Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse comic strips, but a quick flip through them doesn't turn anything up. Still, those collections are a big part of why I had a good time - although I suspect the likes of Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, and the like have shown up in Epic Mickey or other games, but the throwback characters making an appearance - and then jumping into the three-dimensional world as rips appear in the movie screen - was part of the fun.
Of course, the big fun is the way director Lauren MacMullen and company use the the third dimension to set up a non-stop stream of slapstick. But the three-dimensional stuff is also where the short hits a snag: The black-and-white, two-dimensional, traditionally animated footage looks so much better than the CGI animation; it feels unlimited and unbounded, while the three-dimensional versions of the characters seem to be using Nintendo-quality models. It's not quite as stiff as the digital Mickey that appeared as part of the Oscar broadcast a few years back, but still, when the screen gets completely torn away to reveal the fully three-dimensional, CGI world behind it... Well, if you read the whole thing as a sort of metaphor for the transition from traditional cel-based animation to digital, it doesn't exactly feel like progress, especially on the heels of Laika's The Boxtrolls trailer.
Frozen
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 November 2013 in Regal Fenway #3 (first-run, RealD DCP)
It's strange - Disney has been making princess-themed stories for young girls for about seventy-five years, and this is the first one that really seems to focus on sisterhood as a theme. I don't know if my brother and sister-in-law are still trying to avoid Disney Princess stuff for their girls, but even if they are, this is one I could see them being deemed okay. Sure, it doesn't pass the "no missing parents" test (though it looked like they were on the right track early), but it hits a lot of the right notes otherwise.
First off, it's a great, fun little movie; directors Jennifer Lee & Chris Buck do a great job of introducing the audience to princesses Elsa & Anna right off, and they sell us on Anna quickly: There's tragedy and hurt in her background, but she's still incredibly optimistic. Kristen Bell does great voice-acting work there, and throughout, making Anna a scatterbrained but charmingly determined girl. She plays off the rest of the characters well, whether it be Santino Fontana as the handsome prince, Jonathan Groff as the affable ice merchant she meets searching for her sister, Idina Menzel as Elsa herself, and Josh Gad as Olaf, the snowman who accidentally came to life when Elsa froze the kingdom.
What's great, though, is how the relation between Anna and Elsa forms the core of the movie. I bet there's a draft of the screenplay where Elsa's big song, "Let It Go", is the villain number, and even in the movie as it is, it threatens to go there, because don't most villains start out confused, fearful, and just feeling better not living by the rules and restrictions others have set for her? And that would be the easy way to go, but the filmmakers have a twist or two more in store, including a subversion of the usual Disney ending to a fairy tale story that made me want to stand up and cheer for their commitment to staying on the right message; I can't imagine how women and folks trying to raise independent girls will take it.
And even if that stuff doesn't register - the movie is downright gorgeous and funny from moment one, in the same style as Tangled. The animation is as flawless as you'd expect from Disney, and I daresay they're approaching DreamWorks territory in taking the mandate to make films in 3D and using it well. Characters like Olaf who could be annoying are endearing, and while it's not quite perfectly paced, it's never far from something really funny, beautiful, or endearing happening. I'm not sure it's quite my favorite of Disney's new wave - Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph were movies I absolutely loved - but then, I'm a 40-year-old male with no kids. The audience that it's made for, my two-to-seven-year-old nieces, will eat it up, and it's quite likely that they can do so without their parents worrying about the message sent so much.
(Says, again, the 40-year-old guy with no kids, whose thoughts on what's good for young girls are, at the best, speculative.)
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Schlock Around the Clock: Carnival of Souls, Spider Baby, Phantasm 2, Dr. Who and the Daleks, and Dredd
I'm sure that the Orson Welles Theater in Cambridge wasn't the only independent theater that had B-movie marathons under the name of "Schlock Around the Clock", but there are apparently still some fond memories of that even though the place burned down decades ago. The Brattle revived the tradition last year in something close to its original form - more an overnight than a 24-hour marathon, and I'm guessing folks liked the idea more than the execution, since it mutated into a weekend film series for 2013.
That's cool with me; I think I realized a few months ago that the definition of middle-age is still wanting to see the midnight movie but really wishing it started at 8:30pm or so. This was a pretty easy set of movies to catch, even around baseball returning and other things I wanted to see. I didn't catch all of it - I'd seen the Sunday matinees at sci-fi marathons in the past and hadn't particularly liked them, so decided to watch some baseball after Renoir, and opted for the new Evil Dead instead of the one-off showing of Drafthouse Films's "Trailer War" compilation on Saturday. I wanted to see Evil Dead with a crowd and, besides, two hours of trailers is a lot and I think it was the only digital thing on the schedule.
The big chunks of 35mm on the schedule, at least, was awesome. Carnival of Souls and Spider Baby were both new restorations from the UCLA archive and looked gorgeous. According to Brattle creative director Ned Hinkle's introduction, director Jack Hill was apparently tickled to hear that someone was showing the movie and emailed to thank the theater, which is pretty cool. The Phantasm II print was also a lot better than they were expecting - if it's the one used for the new Blu-ray, that's going to look pretty sweet.
The Dr. Who print wasn't the greatest, but it was a good-looking original IB Technicolor print, complete with British Board of Film Censors approval on the front, that the Brattle now owns themselves. That means they'll certainly be pulling it out for a 50th-Anniversery-of-Doctor Who event this fall, and the sci-fi festival will probably try to get their hands on it soon enough (wait until 2015, guys; too soon otherwise). Fun to see after spotting this while I was on vacation in London last year. I forget whether that one or the Dredd print was the one where whoever had projected it last forgot to label the reels, so they had to guess the order between the first and last. Got it right, at least.
In short, it was a pretty enjoyable weekend, even if it was a lot of nuts coming right after BUFF.
Carnival of Souls
* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
A lot of time when writing about horror movies, I lament that there's not necessarily any underlying logic to their mythologies, even in strictly metaphorical terms - it's just scenes that are creepy stitched together in a way to keep the audience off-balance. That is 1962's Carnival of Souls in a nutshell - a bunch of random spooky scenes that somehow become a movie out of director Herk Harvey's sheer force of will.
It starts with some boys-versus-girls drag racing which ends with the ladies' car being forced of a bridge into a river. One of its occupants, Mary Henry (Candace Hillgoss), makes it back to land. Six months later, with no memory of the incident, she's taken a job as a church organist off in Utah. It's strictly a job to her, to the consternation of the minister (Art Ellison). She initially rebuffs the maternal nosiness of her landlady (Frances Feist) and the more intimate interest of her neighbor (Sidney Berger). She's drawn to the shuttered fairgrounds just outside the city, and soon starts to see visions of the dead even as people seem to act as if she's not there.
Herk Harvey and writer John Clifford make some choices with Carnival of Souls that seem quite peculiar to the audience that has seen a lot of movies - especially genre films - and knows what makes them tick, either instinctively or analytically. Right away, we see the boys who ran the car in which Mary was a passenger off the road lying to the cops about how the incident went down, which seems to set up a revenge scenario - but, no, Mary just leaves town and neither she nor the film looks back. Maybe this connection she has with the dead will help solve the mystery of this haunted place? No, not so much. For better or for worse, these threads only the slimmest of connections.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
Spider Baby
* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
Spider Baby is subtitled "or, the Maddest Story Ever Told", and while that probably wasn't necessarily the case even when it was filmed or released (three and a half years later)... It is a weird one, no question, still able to raise some eyebrows forty or fifty years later with its particular madness that leaps between daffy and downright disgusting.
Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) has been taking care of the residents of Merrye House for generations now, a kindly caretaker of a family whose particular condition has them start a horrible mental regression as they enter their teens. Not knowing this, distant cousins Peter (Quinn Redeker) and Emily Howe (Carol Ohmart) come to collect the building as an inheritance only to discover that there are still Merryes there - spider-obsessed Virginia (Jill Banner), slightly more responsible Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), and hulking brother Ralph (Sid Haig). Staying overnight may not be the best idea.
For all the nasty things that go on in Spider Baby, it's actually disarmingly sweet much of the time. Lon Chaney Jr., who spent much of his career portraying hulking, intimidating monsters, plays Bruno more as a fussy, loving caregiver than anything else, patient with his charges even if he is exasperated, awkwardly trying to shield them and their cousins from each other. Polite but vaguely threatening would be the usual way to play it, but having Chaney of all people play uncomfortable but kind of funny is doubly odd.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
Phantasm II
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
In general, it's probably not a great idea to settle in for a sequel without having seen the predecessor, especially when dealing with a filmmaker with as peculiar a vision as Don Coscarelli. But, hey, the Brattle didn't book the original Phantasm before this twenty-fifth anniversary screening of Phantasm II, did they? So, sure, maybe this thing makes sense with a bit of context, but I'm guessing it's still downright weird.
There is a helpful recap, showing how nine years ago, only two people survived when The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) - an extradimensional alien disguised as an undertaker - came to their town. Now Mike (James Le Gros), who was just a kid at the time, is being released from an asylum to hook up with Reggie (Reggie Bannister) to follow the Tall Man's trail. He's got a psychic connection to a girl in Oregon, Liz (Paula Irvine), where the Tall Man seems to be setting up shop Add one hitchhiker by the name of Alchemy (Samantha Phillips) and a bunch of flying balls armed with knives and lasers, and you've got yourself a fight.
Give Don Coscarelli credit - he does not stint on the strange. Casting Angus Scrimm as a murderous undertaker is something anybody might do, and taking the next step to reanimating corpses isn't that far out. Coscarelli, on the other hand, adds premonitions, portals, and more to the hovering Sentinel Spheres and shrunken dwarf minions inherited from the first movie. As Mike and Reggie follow the Tall Man's trail, it leads through a series of destroyed towns, giving an apocalyptic feel that horror sequels with their boosted power levels and accumulating mythology should have more often, but seldom do.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
Dr. Who and the Daleks
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
Alternate realities are a staple of science fiction, and this movie (along with its sequel) are an interesting example of the idea - not so much because its characters explore parallel universes, but because they're a strangely skewed version of a sci-fi favorite themselves. The first movie based upon the TV series Doctor Who changes almost every detail in ways that the fans will likely have trouble looking past, but is kind of fun if they do.
Here, Dr. Who (Peter Cushing) is an elderly, eccentric inventor who has built a machine that can transport people anywhere in space and time with the help of his granddaughters Barbara (Jennie Linden) and Susan (Roberta Tovey), a child genius. Not quite so bright is Ian (Roy Castle), Barbara's new boyfriend, who accidentally activates it, sending them to another planet. They opt to explore a little bit, finding a strange city populated by the Daleks - warlike creatures who travel within personal armored vehicles to protect against radiation.
I know, fans, believe me, I know - that's not the way the characters were portrayed in the series at all! But put fifty years of surprisingly consistent continuity out of your head, and it's not really a bad set-up: The precocious/curious kid with an indulgent, kind of doddering grandfather who nevertheless makes the suitor for his quite capable adult grandchild nervous and accident prone dynamic is arguably a more cohesive, entertaining unit than that presented on the show in its early years.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
Dredd
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
I don't really need to restate what I said when I saw it last fall, other than to point out that I'm going to be asking people to produce their ticket stubs for this when they complain about Hollywood putting out brainless, boring action pap for the next couple of years (stubs for The Raid will also be accepted). It's good stuff that did everything right but which nobody went to see.
And it's still pretty good. The action was just as hard-core as I remembered, and everything still looks good in 2D 35mm, even if some of the effects were better in 3D. It's a crying shame that we almost certainly won't get a sequel on film (movie-continuity stories apparentlly are planned for the pages of Judge Dredd Megazine), because I kind of wanted to see what these guys would do with the Dark Judges and other more broadly sci-fi concepts.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
That's cool with me; I think I realized a few months ago that the definition of middle-age is still wanting to see the midnight movie but really wishing it started at 8:30pm or so. This was a pretty easy set of movies to catch, even around baseball returning and other things I wanted to see. I didn't catch all of it - I'd seen the Sunday matinees at sci-fi marathons in the past and hadn't particularly liked them, so decided to watch some baseball after Renoir, and opted for the new Evil Dead instead of the one-off showing of Drafthouse Films's "Trailer War" compilation on Saturday. I wanted to see Evil Dead with a crowd and, besides, two hours of trailers is a lot and I think it was the only digital thing on the schedule.
The big chunks of 35mm on the schedule, at least, was awesome. Carnival of Souls and Spider Baby were both new restorations from the UCLA archive and looked gorgeous. According to Brattle creative director Ned Hinkle's introduction, director Jack Hill was apparently tickled to hear that someone was showing the movie and emailed to thank the theater, which is pretty cool. The Phantasm II print was also a lot better than they were expecting - if it's the one used for the new Blu-ray, that's going to look pretty sweet.
The Dr. Who print wasn't the greatest, but it was a good-looking original IB Technicolor print, complete with British Board of Film Censors approval on the front, that the Brattle now owns themselves. That means they'll certainly be pulling it out for a 50th-Anniversery-of-Doctor Who event this fall, and the sci-fi festival will probably try to get their hands on it soon enough (wait until 2015, guys; too soon otherwise). Fun to see after spotting this while I was on vacation in London last year. I forget whether that one or the Dredd print was the one where whoever had projected it last forgot to label the reels, so they had to guess the order between the first and last. Got it right, at least.
In short, it was a pretty enjoyable weekend, even if it was a lot of nuts coming right after BUFF.
Carnival of Souls
* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
A lot of time when writing about horror movies, I lament that there's not necessarily any underlying logic to their mythologies, even in strictly metaphorical terms - it's just scenes that are creepy stitched together in a way to keep the audience off-balance. That is 1962's Carnival of Souls in a nutshell - a bunch of random spooky scenes that somehow become a movie out of director Herk Harvey's sheer force of will.
It starts with some boys-versus-girls drag racing which ends with the ladies' car being forced of a bridge into a river. One of its occupants, Mary Henry (Candace Hillgoss), makes it back to land. Six months later, with no memory of the incident, she's taken a job as a church organist off in Utah. It's strictly a job to her, to the consternation of the minister (Art Ellison). She initially rebuffs the maternal nosiness of her landlady (Frances Feist) and the more intimate interest of her neighbor (Sidney Berger). She's drawn to the shuttered fairgrounds just outside the city, and soon starts to see visions of the dead even as people seem to act as if she's not there.
Herk Harvey and writer John Clifford make some choices with Carnival of Souls that seem quite peculiar to the audience that has seen a lot of movies - especially genre films - and knows what makes them tick, either instinctively or analytically. Right away, we see the boys who ran the car in which Mary was a passenger off the road lying to the cops about how the incident went down, which seems to set up a revenge scenario - but, no, Mary just leaves town and neither she nor the film looks back. Maybe this connection she has with the dead will help solve the mystery of this haunted place? No, not so much. For better or for worse, these threads only the slimmest of connections.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
Spider Baby
* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
Spider Baby is subtitled "or, the Maddest Story Ever Told", and while that probably wasn't necessarily the case even when it was filmed or released (three and a half years later)... It is a weird one, no question, still able to raise some eyebrows forty or fifty years later with its particular madness that leaps between daffy and downright disgusting.
Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) has been taking care of the residents of Merrye House for generations now, a kindly caretaker of a family whose particular condition has them start a horrible mental regression as they enter their teens. Not knowing this, distant cousins Peter (Quinn Redeker) and Emily Howe (Carol Ohmart) come to collect the building as an inheritance only to discover that there are still Merryes there - spider-obsessed Virginia (Jill Banner), slightly more responsible Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), and hulking brother Ralph (Sid Haig). Staying overnight may not be the best idea.
For all the nasty things that go on in Spider Baby, it's actually disarmingly sweet much of the time. Lon Chaney Jr., who spent much of his career portraying hulking, intimidating monsters, plays Bruno more as a fussy, loving caregiver than anything else, patient with his charges even if he is exasperated, awkwardly trying to shield them and their cousins from each other. Polite but vaguely threatening would be the usual way to play it, but having Chaney of all people play uncomfortable but kind of funny is doubly odd.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
Phantasm II
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
In general, it's probably not a great idea to settle in for a sequel without having seen the predecessor, especially when dealing with a filmmaker with as peculiar a vision as Don Coscarelli. But, hey, the Brattle didn't book the original Phantasm before this twenty-fifth anniversary screening of Phantasm II, did they? So, sure, maybe this thing makes sense with a bit of context, but I'm guessing it's still downright weird.
There is a helpful recap, showing how nine years ago, only two people survived when The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) - an extradimensional alien disguised as an undertaker - came to their town. Now Mike (James Le Gros), who was just a kid at the time, is being released from an asylum to hook up with Reggie (Reggie Bannister) to follow the Tall Man's trail. He's got a psychic connection to a girl in Oregon, Liz (Paula Irvine), where the Tall Man seems to be setting up shop Add one hitchhiker by the name of Alchemy (Samantha Phillips) and a bunch of flying balls armed with knives and lasers, and you've got yourself a fight.
Give Don Coscarelli credit - he does not stint on the strange. Casting Angus Scrimm as a murderous undertaker is something anybody might do, and taking the next step to reanimating corpses isn't that far out. Coscarelli, on the other hand, adds premonitions, portals, and more to the hovering Sentinel Spheres and shrunken dwarf minions inherited from the first movie. As Mike and Reggie follow the Tall Man's trail, it leads through a series of destroyed towns, giving an apocalyptic feel that horror sequels with their boosted power levels and accumulating mythology should have more often, but seldom do.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
Dr. Who and the Daleks
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
Alternate realities are a staple of science fiction, and this movie (along with its sequel) are an interesting example of the idea - not so much because its characters explore parallel universes, but because they're a strangely skewed version of a sci-fi favorite themselves. The first movie based upon the TV series Doctor Who changes almost every detail in ways that the fans will likely have trouble looking past, but is kind of fun if they do.
Here, Dr. Who (Peter Cushing) is an elderly, eccentric inventor who has built a machine that can transport people anywhere in space and time with the help of his granddaughters Barbara (Jennie Linden) and Susan (Roberta Tovey), a child genius. Not quite so bright is Ian (Roy Castle), Barbara's new boyfriend, who accidentally activates it, sending them to another planet. They opt to explore a little bit, finding a strange city populated by the Daleks - warlike creatures who travel within personal armored vehicles to protect against radiation.
I know, fans, believe me, I know - that's not the way the characters were portrayed in the series at all! But put fifty years of surprisingly consistent continuity out of your head, and it's not really a bad set-up: The precocious/curious kid with an indulgent, kind of doddering grandfather who nevertheless makes the suitor for his quite capable adult grandchild nervous and accident prone dynamic is arguably a more cohesive, entertaining unit than that presented on the show in its early years.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
Dredd
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 April 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Schlock Around the Clock, 35mm)
I don't really need to restate what I said when I saw it last fall, other than to point out that I'm going to be asking people to produce their ticket stubs for this when they complain about Hollywood putting out brainless, boring action pap for the next couple of years (stubs for The Raid will also be accepted). It's good stuff that did everything right but which nobody went to see.
And it's still pretty good. The action was just as hard-core as I remembered, and everything still looks good in 2D 35mm, even if some of the effects were better in 3D. It's a crying shame that we almost certainly won't get a sequel on film (movie-continuity stories apparentlly are planned for the pages of Judge Dredd Megazine), because I kind of wanted to see what these guys would do with the Dark Judges and other more broadly sci-fi concepts.
Full review on eFilmCritic.
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