The Girl with All the Gifts (2016) + Logan (2017)

Posted in****/****, 2016, 2017, Action, Drama, Horror, Road Movie, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller, Zombie

Logan

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS
***/****
starring Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Glenn Close, Sennia Nanua
screenplay by Mike Carey, based on his novel
directed by Colm McCarthy

LOGAN
****/****
starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Dafne Keen
screenplay by Scott Frank & James Mangold and Michael Green
directed by James Mangold

by Walter Chaw Movements start this way, with one or two events that could be thought of as coincidence in response to some greater trend in our culture, perhaps–or, more likely, in response to some greater corruption. I’ve long referred to movies, especially genre movies, as indicator species in our cultural swamp. They’re the first to show evidence of introduced toxins; at minimum, they’re the first major art form to disseminate warnings widely. Jordan Peele’s sleeper hit Get Out is just the latest in a recent spate of pictures that have caught the zeitgeist. Test the theory: would it have been as popular in another time? Movies are not unlike Percy Shelley’s “dead thoughts… Like wither’d leaves” carried on divine winds to quicken new births. It’s a florid reference to justify an unpopular concept. Not religious in any way, I find sublimity in the idea that human hands work in concert sometimes, and the close study of their products can provide insight into the world as it is, not simply as it was. Find in James Mangold’s Logan and Colm McCarthy’s more or less contemporaneous The Girl with All the Gifts (hereafter Girl) complementary, near identical concepts executed in largely the same way–proof for me of a body politic reacting in concert to poison. As grim as they are (with Logan actually verging on vile and mean-spirited), they are nonetheless, to me, evidence of at least some collective immune response. Artifacts of resistance left for the anthropologists. Despite their apparent nihilism, they are proof, as referenced explicitly in Girl, of hope.

Passengers (2016)

Posted in2016, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

Passengers2016

*/****
starring Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne
written by Jon Spaights
directed by Morten Tyldum

by Walter Chaw The problem with Passengers isn’t that it’s appalling. The problem with Passengers is that it doesn’t have anything to say about being appalling and so proceeds to do stuff with levers and buttons while the lockstep narrative soldiers through to a weird cameo and a happy ending, sort of. Think The Wizard of Oz if it never pulled back the curtain, leaving Dorothy dead and her friends vivisected by an army of newly under-employed flying monkeys on their next impossible mission. It’s an artifact that’s more interesting, in other words, as an example of corporate groupthink in matters of consumer art–of how Kathleen Kennedy talked about women being “unready” to direct her blockbusters when Morten Tyldum gets the keys to the kingdom for directing mathematicians running around in The Imitation Game (actually, Passengers kind of makes her point), and how retrograde sexual attitudes are still and always the default panic position. Watching it, I was reminded of a brilliant Nell Scovell article published right before the election about how Trump Tower is in a strange state of disrepair: a broken elevator, empty trophy cases, a public garden eternally under construction. There’s something about immense hubris we like to see take on water. It’s the premise for Douglas Adams’s prehistoric PC game “Starship Titanic”, where you find yourself the lone entity on a malfunctioning passenger liner. Adams, needless to say, handled it better.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Star Wars, Theatrical

Rogueone

Rogue One
***½/****
starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Alan Tudyk
screenplay by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy
directed by Gareth Edwards

by Walter Chaw A deep cut for Star Wars fanatics, Gareth Edwards’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story also happens to be the single most topical fiction of 2016, talking as it does–in bold, melodramatic strokes befitting a space opera–about the importance of rebellion in the face of fascism. “Order,” says Empirical stooge Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). “Terror,” corrects brilliant weapons engineer Galen (Mads Mikkelsen). And the representative of the fascist regime smiles, as though it were all just a matter of semantics, this idea that terror and order are opposite sides of the same devalued coin. He’s engaged in a kind of political double-speak, in gaslighting–things that until this year were the scourge of banana republics and other backwards backwaters. The Empire that Krennic represents needs Galen to help them complete their Death Star superweapon, with the ’80s-era Reagan/Thatcher rationale that overwhelming destructive deterrents are the only way to truly keep the peace. Galen is compelled to cooperate to keep his daughter, Jyn (Felicity Jones), safe and anonymous in the protection of violent revolutionary Saw (Forest Whitaker). The rest is Jyn’s quest to clear her father’s name by stealing plans for the Death Star and delivering them to a fractured resistance that isn’t entirely sure if it wouldn’t be a good idea to give the Empire a chance. You know, maybe they won’t do all the things they said they were going to do?

Chopping Mall (1986) [Vestron Video Collector’s Series] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2016, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi

Choppingmall2

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Kelli Maroney, Tony O’Dell, John Terlesky, Dick Miller
written by Jim Wynorski & Steve Mitchell
directed by Jim Wynorski

by Bryant Frazer Chopping Mall is not the shopping-centre slasher movie its title suggests. Here’s what you really need to know: It includes a scene where a woman clad in light-blue Playboy panties runs screaming through the spacious halls of the Sherman Oaks Galleria in a hail of laser fire, chased by a killer robot resembling a cross between a Dalek from “Doctor Who” and Number Five from Short Circuit. The opening sequence features Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov in a cameo as their Paul and Mary Bland characters from the cult classic Eating Raoul. The always-game Barbara Crampton, who had just shot Re-Animator, takes her top off. And, like the maraschino cherry on top of a soft-serve strawberry sundae, the great character actor Dick Miller plays a crusty janitor who trash-talks one of the malevolent tin-can tyrants like a Jet giving the finger to Officer Krupke.

Fantastic Fest ’16: Short Films

Posted in2016, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '16, Film Festivals, Horror, Mexico, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

Ff16shorts

Givertaker **½/**** (d. Paul Gandersman)
A nice, compact cautionary tale featuring a novice witch who takes vengeance on her buddies only to find there are Shadowmen living under other people's beds. I wish the lore were better developed, but it's paced beautifully and the young cast is game and lively. I wanted more, and I don't often feel that way.

TIFF ’16: The Bad Batch; Colossal; Jackie

Posted in2016, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Canada, Chile, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Romance, Sci-Fi, Spain, Thriller, TIFF

Tiff16badbatch

THE BAD BATCH
**½/****
starring Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves
written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour

COLOSSAL
**/****
starring Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Stevens, Tim Blake Nelson
written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo

JACKIE
***½/****
starring Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, John Hurt
screenplay by Noah Oppenheim
directed by Pablo Larrain

by Bill Chambers Three very different #TIFF16 films–a postapocalyptic cannibal western (The Bad Batch), a modestly-scaled kaiju eiga (Colossal), and a period docudrama (Jackie)–form a trilogy in my mind thematically linked by crestfallen female protagonists who discover reserves of strength in dire situations. The Bad Batch is the only one of these movies directed by a woman, though, and dare I say you can tell, not only in how the camera softly caresses Jason Momoa’s Olympian contours, but also in the way the framing and blocking of the heroine imply the constant peril of being a woman. Working through the neophyte filmmaker’s genre playbook, director Ana Lily Amirpour follows up her vampire movie A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night with this dystopian flick most reminiscent of the Australian strain in terms of vibe/aesthetics, what with its shantytown sets, symbolic names, and obligatory feral child. (The only thing missing is a car fetish.) Winsome Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) is exiled to the other side of some Trumpian fence in Texas with only the clothes on her back and a tattoo that identifies her as an undesirable (or bad batch). Almost immediately she’s dragged away to a cannibal camp, where they chop off her right arm. Missing a leg, too, by the time she escapes, she finds refuge–and prosthetic limbs–in the village of Comfort, whose denizens mostly give her space. Time and body-image issues stoke her desire for revenge, however, putting her on a collision course with Momoa’s Miami Man, a brilliant sketch artist who’s also a fearsome, unsympathetic consumer of human flesh.

Telluride ’16: Arrival

Posted in****/****, 2016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Denis Villeneuve, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Telluride, Telluride 2016, Thriller

Tiff16arrival

****/****
starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker
screenplay by Eric Heisserer, based on the story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang
directed by Denis Villeneuve

by Walter Chaw Based on a humdinger of a Ted Chiang short story called “Story of Your Life,” Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, while changing a detail here and there, distils the emotionality of the story, honours the science of it, and goes places the premise naturally indicates that it might. It clarifies without simplifying. It posits as its hero Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams, who has never been better), a brilliant linguistics professor enlisted by the military to try to communicate with the things in the giant spacecraft that have appeared in twelve different locations around the planet. Not all of them, mind–just the ones in Montana. The others are their problem. Arrival suggests that the first complication of this story of our lives is that there are pronouns other than “us” in matters of international import. It reminds of The Abyss in its tale of an alien arrival that requires human cooperation, but whose purpose doesn’t appear to be to coerce a response through a show of force. They just hang there, waiting for us to learn their language. That’s an important point. It’s something to think about.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) [Special Edition] – DVD|[Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2016, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Romance, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory

Buckaroo2

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Buckaroo Bonzai
***/****
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
DVD – Image B Sound B Extras B-
starring Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum
screenplay by Earl Mac Rauch
directed by W.D. Richter

by Walter Chaw It isn’t so much that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (henceforth Adventures) is hard to follow, it’s that it’s hard to assimilate. Once you’re drawn into the deadly serious heart askew of W.D. Richter’s film, its Gordian plot begins to unravel, its tangled web unweaves, and it becomes clear that the most disturbing thing about this legendarily convoluted camp masterpiece is that it makes perfect sense. That moment of clarity occurs somewhere in the middle of the fourth viewing, and while I can’t necessarily guarantee that the trial is worth it for everyone, it was for me. Adventures reveals itself as a commentary on racism, an exploration of Communism in the Reagan era, a surprisingly influential genre piece, and a sly statement on early-Eighties excess and malaise. What I’m trying to say is that the film is holding my brain hostage, and I would like it back.

Suicide Squad (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller, Will Smith

Suicidesquad

½*/****
starring Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman
written and directed by David Ayer

by Walter Chaw Ugly garbage that will make a lot of money, David Ayer’s Suicide Squad begins where Batman v Superman left off by positing that in a world without its big, mopey, solipsistic, Byronic Boy Scout, there will come a time when the good guys (i.e., us) will need to enlist the help of a bunch of psychopathic mutants and contract killers to protect our way of life. It’s a little bit like Escape from New York but not cool and not fun; and it’s a little bit like a satire, except that it’s more of a documentary. Marvel films are aspirational and DC films in this new cycle are diseased and beaten. Both are bloated beyond repair and slavish to a core fandom they daren’t betray, making them essentially unwatchable along their tentpole storylines–though you want less to kill yourself after the Marvel films. The bright light lately has been one-offs and side projects: Marvel’s television universe, for instance, has blossomed on Netflix and DC’s own TV series “The Flash” and “Supergirl” seem to hear the music. Then, of course, there’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The only thing worse than the kernel of an idea at the centre of Suicide Squad is its unlikely choice of writer-director to bring it to life, Ayer, perhaps the most vile, pessimistic filmmaker in the United States, whom Warner Bros. has given the task of appealing broadly somehow with this material: a little softening here, an extra scene/hero moment there after gauging the breakout star from the reaction to early teaser trailers. If you’re going to hire Ayer to do this, make it a hard-R and take out the yuk-yuk comedy. He’s not funny. He’s not for kids. The strain of pleasing dozens of masters shows. It shows in the select mix of fondly-remembered oldies à la Guardians of the Galaxy, and it shows in the flop-sweat of an entire production so badly compromised by its too-big star and its too-threatened masculinity.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Idris Elba
screenplay by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung
directed by Justin Lin

by Walter Chaw The cultural watershed isn’t when it’s revealed that Sulu (John Cho) is gay, but rather a moment just before that, when an interracial couple–an Asian man and a white woman–are used as an example of a “good” relationship. I’m Chinese, my wife is a tall redhead. When my kids watch Star Trek Beyond, it’ll be the first time they see their parents reflected in a major American tentpole. There are a lot of things wrong with Star Trek Beyond, which at its best is great in the same way that David Twohy’s The Chronicles of Riddick is great–and at its worst is bad in the same way the last film in this reboot series is bad (that is, self-conscious and fan-pleasing, torturously so). But when Sulu is given the one, true, rousing hero moment in the piece, it speaks not just to the vision of a multicultural United States that Lin’s The Fast and the Furious movies proposed, but also, perhaps, to the real impact of an Asian-American director behind the camera. It makes sense that a Lin-directed Star Trek would make Sulu the hero; I just wasn’t expecting to be so affected by it.

Equals (2016)

Equals (2016)

Posted in2016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi

*/****
starring Nicholas Hoult, Kristen Stewart, Jacki Weaver, Guy Pearce
screenplay by Nathan Parker
directed by Drake Doremus

by Walter Chaw Drake Doremus’s Equals is Gattaca and Equilibrium and THX 1138 and Code 46 and Michael Radford’s great 1984, all mashed up into an easy-to-conceptualize and even easier to swallow twenty-something romance that posits simply that love conquers all. It’s inoffensive at all times, is only “science-fiction” because there’s a blue filter on the lens, and offers so little that is its own that it’s easy to miss an exceptional cast doing exceptional work. Equals is another prize example of one of those movies that people will struggle to remember (like Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go–just like, in fact) or come upon some time later on down the line only to remark how such-and-such is a big star now and how you never knew so-and-so was in this and, hey, how is it they got so many amazing folks in such a blah picture; did it even get a release?

Ghostbusters (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

Ghostbusters

*½/****
starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones
written by Kate Dippold & Paul Feig
directed by Paul Feig

by Walter Chaw Sort of the George Cukor to Melissa McCarthy’s Katharine Hepburn, director Paul Feig has shown over multiple collaborations that he knows how to make a Melissa McCarthy vehicle pretty well, perhaps explaining why none of the other funny people in his Ghostbusters reboot are funny in the slightest. “Melissa McCarthy vehicle” is a low bar besides, if a reasonably lucrative one–a low bar matched by the low bar of Ivan Reitman’s terrible but revered original film. Reitman’s Ghost Busters (’84 spelling, to be anal and to differentiate the two titles) shares a cultural space with other terrible movies like The Goonies and Purple Rain and pretty much everything starring Bill Murray before Quick Change. It’s an aggressive movie, painfully unfunny, and for a few months when I was 11, it was the best thing I’d ever seen. 11-year-olds are very smart at being 11 and very stupid in almost every other respect. I didn’t know a ghost was giving Dan Aykroyd a blowjob until years later, after I’d had one. Oh yeah, I said, that ghost gave Dan Aykroyd a blowjob. Was it to save herself from getting “busted”? That’s a pretty sexually violent pill in the middle of all that arrogant improvisation. Think of it as a slave narrative where a slave woman gives a slave master a blowjob in the middle of a montage. Right, I get it, it’s a comedy, lighten up; but Mel Brooks it ain’t. What I wouldn’t have given for a scene in the new film where one of the women receives cunnilingus from a member of the tormented undead. That would’ve been pointed, taboo, and smart. Looking at it again years later, the best part of Ghost Busters is Rick Moranis, because Rick Moranis is the best part of every movie he’s in. He always plays a real character. He’s never too good for the material.

Knightriders (1981); Monkey Shines (1988); The Dark Half (1993) – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2016, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: George A. Romero, Disability, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Stephen King, Thriller

Knightriders1

George A. Romero’s Knightriders
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A
starring Ed Harris, Gary Lahti, Tom Savini, Amy Ingersol
written and directed by George A. Romero

MONKEY SHINES
*½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil, Joyce Van Patten
based on the novel by Michael Stewart
written for the screen and directed by George A. Romero

THE DARK HALF
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, Julie Harris, Michael Rooker
based on the book by Stephen King
written for the screen and directed by George A. Romero

by Walter Chaw Knightriders, George A. Romero’s very own Fast Company, is another of the earnestly socially-conscious filmmaker’s earnestly socially-conscious films, though one without the benefit of a metaphor that holds any kind of water. It doesn’t even have an argument that makes sense. It feels like Romero over-identifying with the topic and losing the thread somewhere along the way–and padding the runtime with far too many pedestrian bike stunts. There’s something to be said for personal projects (Romero’s work seems like it’s all personal, frankly), but with that intimacy comes real peril. I will say Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a no-kidding masterpiece. It’s one of the best films ever made and perhaps the single most important Civil Rights picture, too. I’m partial to his Day of the Dead as well, for the cleanness of its execution and for the interesting things it has to say about identity and the military-industrial complex. It’s fair to wonder, then, if Romero is tied so inextricably to the zombie genre not because (or not just because) of timeliness (and that he essentially invented an entire subgenre with a legion of imitators), but also because without zombies, his stuff is only leaden and clumsy. Without zombies functioning as they do, as both grand bogey and versatile metaphor, Romero’s weighed down by a lethal payload of well-meant proselytizing, and just like that the flat artlessness of his films feels less “spartan” on purpose than “affectless” by accident.

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

Id5

*/****
starring Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Maika Monroe
screenplay by Nicolas Wright & James A. Woods and Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich and James Vanderbilt
directed by Roland Emmerich

by Walter Chaw About a third of the way through the slog of Independence Day: Resurgence (hereafter ID4.2), the hopelessly misguided and bellicose POTUS (Sela Ward), dressed smartly in a pantsuit with her hair pulled back in a severe-but-sensible bun, makes the first of a couple of really, really stupid mistakes before being executed off-screen by the alien scourge. And good riddance, for in her place rises man-of-action legacy POTUS Whitmore (Bill Pullman), suffering from some kind of alien-inflicted dementia but, you know, a man who hears voices and occasionally lapses into a coma is still better than a woman, amiright ‘murica? High five. There’s also a younger, less-demented POTUS on standby, Adams (William Fichtner), who is also obviously preferable to a woman. (High five.) There’s a heroic team of fighter pilots that reminds me a lot of the Thunderbirds or the Power Rangers (because there’s a Chinese one–the surprise is that her plane isn’t yellow), and then there’s Whitmore’s now-grown daughter Patricia (Maika Monroe), who gave up flying to care for her demented father but is back in the cockpit again, though she still needs her flyboy fiancé, roguish Jake (Liam Hemsworth), to save her in the end and she STILL almost shoots him because she’s scared and has a vagina. This is Roland Emmerich’s world. Try to keep up.

Midnight Special (2016) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2016, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Road Movie, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Midnightspecial1

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Shepard
written and directed by Jeff Nichols

by Walter Chaw Jeff Nichols’s Midnight Special is beautiful. It’s a film about aspiration and sacrifice. It believes that the world is still a mysterious place anchored by love and hope and devotion to simple ideas about how hard it is to be a parent–and how important. It’s about nurturing a thing with all your heart and letting it go when it’s strong enough. It’s about listening when it’s the last thing you want to hear; it’s about believing there’s a future for your kids even if all evidence seems to suggest the opposite. It’s like Tomorrowland in many ways, but mostly in its suggestion that there’s a place maybe where things feel like they used to feel when you were a kid and everything was still possible. Even though nothing made sense, things would make sense one day when you were big. Midnight Special deserves its comparisons to films like E.T. and Starman and especially Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It works in the same small places with ordinary characters who grow to fill larger, echoing spaces. Nichols puts us in medias res with Roy (Michael Shannon) and his best friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) on the run from cult leader Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard), having fled at some point before the movie starts with Roy’s son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher). We learn it was around Alton’s oddities that the cult largely formed. We learn that Alton’s oddities are perhaps supernatural, or extraterrestrial, or interdimensional. It doesn’t really matter. They’re profoundly strange, and there are times it appears that he’s able to tell a little of the future.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) [Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Blu-ray Disc, FFC Must-Own, Sci-Fi, Star Trek

Khan1

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, Ricardo Montalban
screenplay by Jack B. Sowards
directed by Nicholas Meyer

The film portion of this review comes from a piece originally published in July of 2000 that also critiqued the A/V quality of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan‘s very first DVD release. I opted not to repost Vincent’s comments on the DVD proper because they no longer seemed relevant, especially in this context.-BC

by Vincent Suarez Legend has it that, despite the popularity of television reruns and the stunning phenomenon of “Star Trek” conventions, Paramount green-lighted Star Trek: The Motion Picture only after the success of Star Wars, in an envious bid for a sci-fi blockbuster of its own. In the minds of many fans and critics, however, director Robert Wise delivered a film that more closely approximated Star Bores. (For the record, I love the film’s slow pace and its oft-neglected reprisal of themes from my favourite classic “Trek” episode, “The Changeling.”) While not the huge grosser the studio was hoping for, fans turned out in strong enough numbers to warrant a sequel, and a cash cow was born. There have since been eight additional films and three spun-off television series, but the most brilliant Trek effort remains that first sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Bride of Re-Animator (1990) [3-Disc Limited Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in1990s, 2016, Arrow Video, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Brideofreanimator1

H.P. Lovecraft’s Bride of Re-Animator
**/**** Image B+ Sound C Extras A-
starring Bruce Abbott, Claude Earl Jones, Fabiana Udenio, Jeffrey Combs
screenplay by Woody Keith and Rick Fry
directed by Brian Yuzna

by Bryant Frazer Bride of Re-Animator is surely one of the biggest missed opportunities in the history of franchise filmmaking. Stuart Gordon’s 1985 classic Re-Animator wasn’t a fluke–it had been lovingly developed over a number of years by Chicago native Gordon, who initially planned to make it with his Organic Theater buddies. When they demurred, it was just dumb luck that landed the project with producer Brian Yuzna at the genre sausage factory that was Hollywood’s Empire International Pictures. The sequel, on the other hand, was developed as a directorial vehicle for Yuzna, who claims time constraints related to the financing precluded Gordon’s participation. So screenwriters Rick Fry and Woody Keith, who wrote Yuzna’s directorial debut, Society, hacked a new script together in a big hurry. The end result is hard to consider on its own merits because of the big question mark for Re-Animator fans: What could this have looked like if the original film’s creative team had been in charge?

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

Xmen8

***½/****
starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac
screenplay by Simon Kinberg
directed by Bryan Singer

by Walter Chaw I know the sample size is small, but Bryan Singer’s X-Men prequel trilogy (we’ll call it his, since he produced Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class), culminating now in X-Men: Apocalypse, is the far superior prequel trilogy. If you were so inclined, you could find in them–and in all of Singer’s work (just like Victor Salva’s across the genre divide)–assimilation melodramas: tales of the struggle with being born different, complete with abilities and…urges. There’s explanation there of why Singer’s films are always about alienation, best when dealing with teens, and critical of the laws and systems that would condemn things that are natural as criminal. Matt Zoller Seitz recently wrote about the problem with believing that Woody Allen is likely a child abuser/pedophile and still watching, still sometimes enjoying, his movies. I was taken with how the stain of that knowledge on the viewer never really goes away. When I watch Singer’s work, which I tend to like a lot, never more than ten minutes go by without me wondering whether what people have said about him being a serial abuser and statutory rapist is true. If it is, it complicates this reading of his films. He’s a little like Elia Kazan in that respect; I wonder if their message is meant as apologia–if it’s repugnant in its human fascination.

The Stuff (1985) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2016, Arrow Video, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi

Thestuff1

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B
starring Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garrett Morris, Patrick O’Neal
written and directed by Larry Cohen

by Bryant Frazer “Enough is never enough.” So goes a key advertising tagline featured in The Stuff, a bracingly contemptuous critique of consumer culture from Larry Cohen–a man who knows a thing or two about exploiting mainstream tastes. Well regarded among B-movie buffs as a master of high-concept screenwriting coupled with low-budget execution, Cohen was, in his 1970s and 1980s heyday, what auteurists call a smuggler: a writer-director who embeds subversive social commentary in otherwise innocuous genre storylines. The Stuff‘s science-fiction scenario offered some bare-bones corporate intrigue along with a few opportunities for the special make-up effects team, but it also lampooned the businessmen who hawk goods of dubious quality and the haplessly credulous populace that lines up to buy them. The film’s eponymous grocery product is a mysterious but plentiful and apparently tasty substance that burbles up, unbidden, from beneath the earth’s surface. Capitalism being what it is, the distinctive white gloop is quickly productized and monetized by a corporation that doesn’t realize (or doesn’t care) that The Stuff seems to move with a mind of its own.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Posted in2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical, Thriller

Cap3

**½/****
starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Brühl
screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

by Walter Chaw The Russo brothers’ Captain America: Civil War (hereafter Cap 3), better titled “Captain America: Gosh, That’s a Lot of Characters” or “Captain America: Spider-Man,” is an hour of dull exposition, an hour of fanboy service, and an absolutely fantastic half-hour of Spider-Man (Tom Holland). It continues storylines of which I have no memory while giving more and better time to women characters after the kafuffle around sterilizing Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in Avengers 2: Gosh, That’s a Lot of Characters, thus making her a “monster.” Chief benefactor of that largesse is Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), “Wanda” to her friends (not only are there too many characters–most of them have two names), who struggles through a fetishist’s idea of a Russian accent and carries the introspective weight of the 2010s on her shoulders. The film is about two things: Like Batman v Superman: 9/11 Has Made Us Monsters, it’s about the casualties of superpowers waging war with one another over civilian populations; and it’s about the role of Western determinism in our current state. It’s like Skyfall in that way, positing that the West has a moral responsibility to police the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world would like to be policed or not. It’s a theory that only works if the West holds fast to its evergreen ideals of truth and justice. This is different from the solipsistic, Byronic nihilism of BvS, because the character of Captain America (Chris Evans) is so explicitly child-like in his goodness that he becomes the manifestation of an idea every action in the film either runs in conjunction with or in tension against. Superman, too, should have represented that ideal, but alas, on Zack Snyder’s watch, he’s just another emo Spidey.