Silver Screen in a Red Envelope: A Diary of Time Wasted

 Happy Valentine's Day! I like watching Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, and David Warner (LOVE David Warner! He's brilliant in Big Finish audios!). The premise of this strange romance is that a friend of H.G. Wells (quiet, awkward and very british McDowell) is Jack the Ripper (sinister, solemn, and intimidating David Warner) who steals Wells' time machine to evade the police, and ends up in the 1970s. Wells follows him, and they both come across Steenburgen's character. Romance and adventure ensues. Also murder. Murder ensues. One of the best things this film does is not making the Ripper sympathetic, even though he's given a face. Unfortunately, the film has a weakness. Although I generally enjoy a mix of genres (this one tosses science fiction, romance, adventure, and detective fiction into a lovely genre salad), the balance and the transitions don't work well for a contemporary audience. Back then, perhaps, it was okay to abandon the life-and-death strugg...

Recently a friend of mine acquired a brilliant step-daughter in the most perfect way possible. This new family has the same difficulties that I find in my own household, und zwar, that I love horror movies but I can't find anybody to watch with me. A few weeks ago my friend invited me over to watch with her step-daughter a film I'd never seen: The Turning (2018). Of course I started thinking about Henry James's novel, and rereading it. I've also been listening to a couple of brilliant podcasts, including Monster, She Wrote (named after a book which collects significant horror-related texts written by women) which has forced me to read more Daphne DuMaurier. Yes. Forced. And there's another podcast called Nightlight which has pushed me into the edgier realm of horror by black writers. I have truly enjoyed finding a new world to connect to, and another cultural milieu. But the best thing about this new world is that it has brought so much good writing and amazing a...

This post is all spoilers all the time. I am going to spoil the whole movie. This movie depends on suspense, so if you intend to see it, do not read these spoilers. If you're "meh" about it, then by all means, proceed. Solver's plot is a lot like a video game in two specific ways: firstly, it's a series of puzzles much like any of the MYST series, or any other adventure puzzle solver (Rhem, Obduction, The Island of Dr. Brain, etc.), and secondly, there's a princess to rescue. This is not a trope that I love. In this opinion, me and Feminist Frequency are totally synchronized. Although the cast includes some racial diversity, the two main characters are young, thin, and white. *shrug* My real gripe is about the ending. The whole plot revolves around a search for a mind-control device, both by the main characters who are enjoying solving the puzzles that his dead grandfather left in an old cabin, and the baddie (and his two female accomplices) who wants to ...

I am going to preface this review with the disclosure that I lost my meds last week, haven't been able to refill the prescription, and am consequently watching films with my emotions rather than my logical criticism. Unicorn Store was written by Samantha McIntyre, directed by and starring Brie Larson, and full of a great cast of stars and character actors. The story follows the young woman Kit who has been kicked out of art school for metaphorically spreading Craft Herpes (glitter). She returns to her parents' basement and takes a temp job to assuage cultural expectations, but also responds to some really daringly designed invitations to check out The Store, where she is offered her very own unicorn, if she can meet the stringent requirements. The cast are really great, but an awe-filled mention must go to Christy McIrwin, who decorated the set, and Mirren Gordon-Crozier who designed some of the most incredible costumes. These things must be seen to be believed. This isn...

This delightful story, based on a book by John Bellairs which I have treasured from early childhood, lends itself well to film. I was inclined to like it before I had heard anything about its production, although I had all the usual trepidation when one hears that someone else has picked up your favorite glass figurine and is tossing it around like a beach ball. I loved it. I loved the steampunky vibes. I ADORED the cast's chemistry. The story remains largely true to the book. Lewis Barnavelt, newly orphaned, comes to live with his odd uncle, and discovers that he and his purple-obsessed neighbor practice real magic, and are concerned about a mysterious ticking noise (a clock, obviously) in the walls of the large mansion they inhabit. The story includes a few moral lessons for children and adults. For adults, the clear message is "give children information." Lewis's uncle's determination to hide the worrying truth from Lewis is a direct cause of the near-cata...

Back when this film came out, like a decade ago, everyone seems to have put all their energy into debunking this weakly-supported "hoax" and then patting themselves on the back and denigrating Olatunde Osunsanmi (the director) for being so pretentious. That sort of critique seems to have been a waste of time, and those reviews don't age very well at all. But they are just reviews, and not analyses. Have I reviewed this film before? Maybe my initial reaction was just the same. This is certainly not the first time I've watched it, but I have been having thoughts. I dislike documentaries, because although they may have genuine footage of non-actors (which The Fourth Kind did not possess, the acting cast being split into two groups: the recognizable faces of the reenactment, and the relatively unknown actors who played the "original" footage. The two groups often acted the same script, and the film was shown side-by-side, which not only effectively masked ...

I mentioned to a digi-friend the other day that I'd watched this film, and he said he had too, but that the twist was obvious. I get irrationally angry at people who think that that is an appropriate critique. It's a film. Of course it's obvious. What was he expecting? So I told him that if you want unexpected, your best bet is real life. And then I thought about what made me upset. I enjoyed watching the film. I actually looked up the plot on Wikipedia so I knew what to expect. I like films better when they're spoiled for me. And while I understand that lots of people are not that way at all, I wonder if, when we complain that we saw something coming, what we mean is that the film bored us so much that our minds skittered ahead to fill in the blanks. For filmmakers, the ramifications of that possibility are that their burden is to keep the viewer's mind engaged in the present: interested in what is on screen rather than trying to create suspense with emptiness....

Okay, this film has some serious drawbacks for many different kinds of fans. And the people involved in making it. It sees Henry Jones, Jr. older, facing the logical aftermath of one of his failed relationships, and allows a resolution satisfying to some of us in the aging fanbase. In that aspect, this film is well-grounded. As I am frequently a liberal buzz-kill for many a dudebro power-fantasy franchise, I liked it. I want to see more of that, and yes, Marion's character can change that much in the intervening years. I've changed more than that in the last three months. Indiana Jones is dragged into his cold-war anti-russian shenanigans by a greaser and prep-school dropout (Shia LeBeouf, whose acting I do not dislike as much as the internet tells me I should), and goes continent hopping to the nostalgic sounds of your childhood. This film tones down the "native savages as interfering goons" trope, but is still marred by the three or four scenes of it that remai...

I have been writing about my Netflix DVDs for several years. I keep my DVD account despite the convenience of streaming video because I seek out the strange and innocuous, and streaming video panders to the masses. It has been my personal experience that not everything life-changingly good is packaged as a blockbuster, and released in the last six months. Sometimes it comes in a little red envelope, and with a title nobody you know has ever heard. Netflix is celebrating twenty years of shipping the silver screen to millions of people in little, red envelopes , and they have invited me (and many others, I'm sure) to earn rewards by writing about it. #ad Well, as Talbot Mundy once wrote, "A teller of tales should tell them." I started this blog because I wanted to keep a diary of all the wonderful (and not-so-wonderful) things I found to watch, because I wanted a place to rediscover the pieces of cinematography that have made their mark on my taste and psyche. I love w...

Robert Morse starred in this adaptation of a novel by Evelyn Waugh with a cast that included Jonathan Winters (in two roles), Milton Berle, James Coburn, John Gielgud, Tab Hunter, Roddy McDowall, Robert Morley, and Liberace. The female characters were more or less unknown, because bleaugh. Meanwhile, THIS MOVIE IS WEIRD. And when I say weird, I'm not kidding. It's odd in that way that isn't quite odd enough. It's itchy, but not painful. This film had a solid budget, so it's not B-movie "we couldn't afford mainstream so we milked it," and nor was it a Blake Edwards "flamboyant for then, downtown for now." There's just something unnervingly off about this film, like something from Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected  but woven through the whole thing, not just the murderous twist ending. Maybe it reminds me a little of Doctor Strangelove (1964). The story is about a truly terrible young English poet who appears in Hollywood to ...

SPOILER ALERT. ALL THE SPOILERS, ALL THE TIME. I liked this film, not least for the lighting contrasts. I think that mysterious writing under black light is possibly a bit cliched at this point, but I still like it in horror movies. It does strange things to shadows, and this is a film where shadows matter. The story revolves around a young adult living away from her mentally ill mother and her still-dependent younger brother. She must return to her home and the trauma there when the dark thing in the family home begins interfering with her brother's ability to function at school. I wanted the dark thing to be a metaphor, like The Babadook  (2014). I think dark things are meaningful. But the backstory was character-based rather than allegorical. Characters are this film's strong point. The boyfriend was not a tool, and not stupid. The female protagonist was in control, decisive and flawed. I think that all the humans were more or less sympathetic. I *spoiler immediately ...

This horror/comedy about a fraudulent [aren't they all?] and unsuspecting ghost hunting team that is hired to expel a "real" ghost is in fact, one of the [intentionally] funniest haunted house films I have ever seen. I watched and rewatched it - totally unconcerned that easy answers were complicated by light-hearted carelessness rather than deliberate obfuscation that most horror films rely on as a stamp of their dedicated post-modernity in a subgenre that remains stubbornly twentieth-century. The script is witty, the ending ironic, the ghosts just ever-so-slightly slapstick (with the occasional jump scare, because that sort of thing BELONGS in horror/comedy, and not in straight horror). It hits some very comedic notes with each of its anti-heroes as they confront a series of antagonists, living and dead. Anyway, I made my roommates watch it, and they don't like horror. So they didn't like it. But I LOVE scary movies, and this is probably in my top ten favor...

This film , the delicate and calmly paced Netflix poem, features more than one first-person voice-over introduction, a practice I often dislike. But in this case, although the script is possibly heavy-handed, it is not insipid. It gives the whole story a very literary tone that I enjoy. This tone continues as a significant character, Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss), was a novelist by trade before she came to need a hospice nurse (Lily, played by the stoic Ruth Wilson). The muted tone continues dominating the film as its most significant feature. With little color, little noise, it aptly captures Lily's own experience nearly alone in a haunted house as she slowly experiences the deaths that she has come to live with, to come closer to understanding what that means, what those deaths were. And as she learns, so do we. It is an experience. Like a perfectly prepared meal, it is not designed to be inhaled. If you like quickly-paced adventure/slashers, this will not satisfy you. It is a ...

*contains spoilers* *this blog ALWAYS contains spoilers* This movie wishes it were The Babadook (2014). The mysterious figure that haunts anyone who knows his name. . . But the Babadook was a symbol of depression (or homosexuality, if you read it like many a tumblrite), and that's just too. . . surreal for Stacy Title, director, or Jonathan Penner, who wrote the screenplay, (and whose names are a bit on-the-nose, really). Emotional logic is still logic. I think the strongest thing this movie has going for it is the postmodern resistance against making sense of things. We never hear any explanation for the coins or the train imagery or the finger scratches in the stone. I mean, Elliot, the main character, asks, but Mrs. Redmon (Faye Dunaway) either never answers, or we don't hear it through Elliot's hallucinations. And the film consistently insists that the murder perpetrators "aren't mad," which is a nice gesture for those of us forced to protest the stigm...

This apocalyptic science fiction/alien invasion film begins with three Americans, a tall woman with an Australian accent, and a Swede with a bad goatee who are nearly the only survivors of an invasion of Moscow. [sarcastic sidenote: Because clearly the Moscvich wouldn't have a clue where to hide.] The tone is muted and reminds me of earlier Asylum productions, which it resembles in dialogue as well, though Asylum films are less predictable. This film had brighter colors and much higher production values than Asylum films, and some of the imagery was remarkably picturesque. The aliens were frightening in a rather sanitized way, and even unique. The plot required little science, which all seemed to be a variation on an ancient theme: [spoilers immediately ahead] Aliens invade, all the token people of color die (even the English-speaking ones), the surviving white people discover the alien weakness and band together - developing sexual or romantic tension -, and the film ends w...

This isn't a review. I'm forced to watch this little stinker, so I'm going to live-blog the experience so you can all enjoy it with me. THIS POST CONTAINS SERIOUS SPOILERS. Although, to be honest, you'll probably see it all coming anyway. Cliche #1: old guy who can kick your ass Cliche #2: dragon in a cave Cliche #3: men=good, woman=bad (and mother and witch archetypes, but it's a genre *shrug*) Cliche #4: seventh son of a seventh son. This one might actually be a trope, but the world building gives no reason for its existence. Cliche #5: mother's amulet - clearly a Chekhov's Gun Cliche #6: witch who possesses unnatural/immortal beauty Cliche #7: old guy with practical priorities Oh my gosh. A Tavern labelled "Tavern"!? *sigh* Terry Pratchett's Mended Drum is the pinnacle of tavern-naming genius. Cliche #8: beautiful girl being burned as a witch (damsel in distress) Cliche #9: teasing the sexual tension (when Tom meets whatshernam...

Okay, clearly I'm the kind of person who likes a little quirk with her Christmas. There's a few facts about me you should know before you take any of my recommendations: 1) I hate Santa. Seriously. I'm convinced that the tradition, however kindly and warm-hearted it began, has become a tool for undermining the true faith and confidence of child-type persons everywhere. Santa=Satan. Just call me the grinch and get over it. I'm absolutely what the Grinch would be, if he had been raised Calvinist. The Grinch is also not on this list. 2) I have a severe distaste for Frank Capra.  It's a Wonderful Life is NOT on this list. 3) I have never seen  National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation , and I didn't see  A Christmas Story until I was well too old to think it was funny, or develop any warm memories. That's at least five Christmas Classics that aren't making this list. You're bound to think one of them is the shizzle. Are you still with me? Let's get...

I'll be honest: I watched this film because I adore Brad Dourif, and I'm happy to say this film shows him doing his best thing - shouting "No!" and curling into an agonized ball. Well done. I am satisfied. As a horror film, this movie is creepy enough, I suppose. People act violently, unkindly, and unpredictably. Truly, though, Last Kind Words was much more deeply tragic than frightening. The pace was slow, and the scenery artistic. The whole thing just felt so sad. All the misery, the pathetic lives, all the perpetuated violence, made the film feel whistful, and heartwrenching. It was too gentle (in plot progress, if nothing else) and too human to frighten me. It reminded me of lynch photography (for obvious reasons), and struck me not for its supernatural/unnatural danger, but for its entirely understandable, if sometimes overwhelming, pain. As Sam Winchester says once, "they're just people!" And people do horrifying things to other people. And it bre...

This 2013 (remarkably recent) film possesses a fine example of my favorite pet peeve - the failed beefgeek. Seriously, putting an over-tanned beefcake in pathetically large and decades out-of-date glasses does not make him capable of performing geekery. If you want us to believe your character scored over 2400 on the SATs, hire an actor capable of pronouncing technobabble, and then GIVE HIM TECHNOBABBLE. (I mean, provided you can write it. If you can't write it - just stick to what you know. Write average characters). Really. Technobabble is SEXY. Why do you think we all go nuts for Benedict Cumberbatch? It isn't his cartoony lips, I swear. It's what comes out of them. Although: points for making your character look incapable of slapping somebody hard enough to make a sound. Sorry to start a review on a low-note. As a thriller and a mystery, this film passed! It was at least average, if not slightly above on the "smart protagonist" score (that chick was written st...

This 2002 horror story was entirely adequate, although (and this is difficult to say, because I have always hated people who say this) not actually very frightening. The storyteller/director made an interesting decision to keep the nature of "them" and the fate of their victims from the audience until the last few moments of filming. That decision makes sense, because the explanation doesn't allow for the characters to discover it: they're not some legend that can be googled, which is a nicely realistic, if sort of frustrating touch, because it doesn't allow any intellectual movement - which impedes plot movement.  We WANT to know what things are and what they want. Words like "eat us" are thrown around, but without any kind of substantiation, even at the end. People just disappear, after being very, very frightened. Although understanding the nature of a thing makes it less frightening (which clearly isn't the direction to go, here), even progress t...