Month: December 2016
2016: My Favorite Documentaries
Meet the Patels (2015, dir. Geeta and Ravi Patel)
Ravi Patel is in his 30s and unmarried. So is his older sister Geeta. This fact is driving their parents crazy and they both have ignored their traditional views on the matter. For the purposes of this documentary, Ravi decides to humor his parents and let them lead him down the traditional path of Indian arranged marriage with the stipulation that he get the final say on things. This was funnier than most scripted comedies I saw in 2016 and is feel good while not being pandering or saccharine.
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon (2015, dir. Douglas Tirola)
These days I don’t think we quite understand the impact that print media can have on socio-political issues. The counterculture of the 1960s was the percolator for the ideas that took the soft humor of the Harvard Lampoon and transformed it into a truly iconoclastic work of media. The documentary traces those early days to the big time of the late 1970s to present day where the prestige of the Lampoon has been heavily diluted by big Hollywood. There are a lot of problematic people here and the Lampoon is not presented as without flaws.
\Finding Vivian Maier (2013, dir. John Maloof, Charlie Siskel)
One of my favorite styles of documentary movies is when the filmmakers present the audience with a mystery and the film is how their investigation unfolds. Here we have John Maloof discovering an overwhelming collection of photographs and negatives then using crowdsourcing to uncover the artist behind the work. I won’t spoil revealing who Vivian Maier is other than you get introduced to an incredibly complex woman with a fascinating story.
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014, dir. David Gregory)
If you saw John Frankenheimer’s 1996 adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau and thought the film was just laughably bad you haven’t seen anything. This film details the plans and ultimate failure of the original production, how ex-director Richard Stanley hung around despite being fired, how nature itself turned on the production, and just how such a horrifically terrible movie was made. This works as a nice counterpoint to last year’s Jodorowsky’s Dune as examples of great films that were never made.
Author: The J.T. Leroy Story (2016, dir. Jeff Feuerzeig)
I’ve never read any of the works written by J.T. Leroy but was vaguely familiar with their existence and autobiographical nature. Leroy was apparently a wunderkind, contacting a few author he liked as a teenager in the 1990s and submitting stories that came from his life as the child of a sex worker and as a transperson. Eventually, Leroy ends up in Italy meeting with Asia Argento to develop a film based on his work. However, something seems off and this documentary unfolds the entire convoluted, shocking, and captivating story of who Leroy really was.
DePalma (2015, dir. Noam Baumbach, Jake Paltrow)
Back in 2010 I did a two-month long look at the films of Brian DePalma going back to Sisters and up to present day, some films missed along the way but perfect for me to seek out at a later date. This film is simply an interview with the director intercut with file footage and clips from his films. He talks about the film industry and how you try and make the films you want, how you compromise with studios, and how sometimes you just settle for a smaller audience to make the movies you want. If you are a fan of his work then this is an essential film.
Weiner (2016, dir. Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg)
WTF Anthony Weiner?! I can remember being empowered by the former congressman’s firebrand speeches on the floor of the House. When the news came he was caught up in a sex scandal I, like many who liked him because of his policy views, tried to say we all do regrettable things and hoped he’d get a second chance. With this documentary and more recent news, it’s apparent that Anthony needs serious psychiatric help. In this surprisingly intimate film, we see the relationship between him and wife Huma Abedin as it faces challenges that push it to the breaking point. By the end of the film, it is very obvious his career as a politician is likely over.
Finders Keepers (2015, dir. Bryan Carberry, J. Clay Tweel)
You’ve seen the news items before. Usually under the banner of “News of the Weird” or tagged onto the end of the 6 O’Clock News as a fluff piece. This documentary takes one of those brief stories and explores the humans behind it. Shannon Whisnat was at an auction and bought a grill. He brought the grill home and found a human foot inside. The story of how this foot came to be in this grill is funny, shocking, and heartbreaking. Finders Keepers explores issues of grief, class, and humanity and truly surprised me with what a complex and touching film it was.
Tickled (2016, dir. David Farrier, Dylan Reeve)
Much like Finders Keepers, this starts out as a News of the Weird-type of story. Australian journalist David Farrier stumbles upon Competitive Tickling videos online and thinks it’s an interesting enough story to do a piece on and contacts the organization behind them. His reply is full of homophobic vitriol at the openly gay reporter and instead of dissuading him it strengths Farrier’s resolve to uncover what is really going on with these videos. This path brings Farrier and his co-director to the States and reveals a tragic story of the exploitation of the poor at the hands of a wealthy devil.
Welcome to Leith (2015, dir. Christopher K. Walker, Michael Beach Nichols)
Leith, North Dakota seems an unlikely place for an explosion of tension. When white supremacist Craig Cobb moves to town most residents don’t really know who he is. Once his background and intentions in buying up property are revealed the townspeople, all white save one, unite to push Cobb out. The filmmakers evoke a powerful horror film tone and let the tension simmer on screen. There are some genuinely frightening moments of confrontation at city council meetings between Cobb and the residents. He builds dossiers on these people and uses past tragedies as ways to push their emotional buttons. The film feels incredibly relevant as we struggle to figure out how to occupy the same space as people practicing vile beliefs.
2016: My Favorite Comic Books
My Top 10 Favorite Comics I Read in 2016
The Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez-Walta – Without a doubt the best take on The Vision since his creation and arguably one of the best comic runs we’ve ever had. From the first issue to the twelfth the story was tightly plotted and centered around characters. It ended up reading more like a wonderful HBO drama than a traditional superhero comic. Check out my review of the first trade here.
2016: My Favorite Television
My Top 1o Favorite Television Series I Watched in 2016
Westworld Season 1 – Not a show just about man and technology, but something deeper about what it means to be human and the role suffering plays in our humanity. Check out my full review here.
Pop Cult Book Club Review #6: The Visible Filth
The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud (This Is Horror, 2015)
One trend I’ve noticed almost my entire time on the Internet in places like 4chan or seedier corners of Reddit is gore posting. Not once has the idea of looking at the human body in various states of mutilation struck me as intriguing. The times I’ve accidentally stumbled upon these pictures have left me frantically trying to scrub their afterimage out of my brain.
In The Visible Filth, Will, the bartender at a dive in New Orleans stumbles across a bedazzled cell phone after a fight in his place of work. Taking it home with the intention of finding the owner he stops in his tracks when text messages and strange images are sent to the device. Eventually, Will and his live-in girlfriend see a series of images that imply a ritual killing. Despite the mystery, the story is not concerned with solving the case, rather looking at the way we get lost in despair and pain.
Will comes home to find his girlfriend lost in an internet rabbit hole of investigating a book glimpsed in one image. She is never close to finding any closure or answers and seems to be physically deteriorating as a result. Ballingrud grounds the work by continually shifting the focus back to Will’s feelings for a frequent bar patron, the person whose relationship status never seems to line up with yours. There’s also one of the participants in the bar fight who lives in an apartment over the bar. Will visits and finds the man refusing to go to the doctor as the wound from a broken glass bottle festers and grows worse. The story would also suffer if we didn’t have a believable character making believably foolish choices. In this situation, we would all be tempted with curiosity to look again. It’s a lot packed into 68 pages.
The Visible Filth delivers something imperative that a good horror story needs: Incompleteness. A piece of mystery writing gives you a series of steps and then an answer. Horror should give you some of the steps but never answer. The horror is the ambiguity of what you witness. The story behind the photos on the phone are never going to be explained, and as a result, they haunt you and keep picking away at your sanity, at your trust in the reality of the external world. And Ballingrud’s external world is very textured and visceral. The opening of the text lays out a tactile space where the story will unfold:
The roaches were in high spirits. There were half a dozen of them, caught in the teeth of love. They capered across the liquor bottles, perched atop pour spouts like wooden ladies on the prows of sailing ships. They lifted their wings and delicately fluttered. They swung their antennae with a ripe sexual urgency, tracing love sonnets in the air.
I can’t think of too many better ways to convey a sense of filth. We’ve all been in this bar. The sticky floors our shoes cling to. The every present stench of background cigarettes. The watery slosh of cheap beer. The sense of place is so strong and claustrophobic at times. Similar scenes take place at Will’s apartment with briefly glanced figures in the shadows. The Visible Filth will put you in the shoes of its protagonist: uncomfortable, left without answers, everything a good horror story should be.
2016: My Favorite Video Games, Music, and Books
My 10 Favorite Video Games I Played in 2016
Civilization VI – For some foolish reason, I didn’t think I would get hooked on this sixth installment in the series. How wrong I was. 36 hours may not be most for some people, but for my more restrictive gaming schedule that is quite a bit. I have barely scratched the surface of Civ VI but I know it will be a game that eats up my life in big chunks.
Continue reading “2016: My Favorite Video Games, Music, and Books”
Movie Review – Blair Witch
Blair Witch (2016, dir. Adam Wingard)
It’s been 20 years since Heather Donahue and her fellow filmmakers disappeared in the woods around Burkittsville, Maine while in the pursuit of the legend of the Blair Witch. In 2014 her brother James found footage online that appears to show Heather alive and well in a rundown house. He takes off to investigate for himself along with three friends, one of whom is making a documentary on the process. They join up with two Burkittsville locals and begin what will be their last days working closer to discovering the secret of these haunted woods.
I was excited when I heard director Adam Wingard and his writing partner Simon Barrett were behind this Blair Witch sequel I was more excited than I might have normally been. I am a big fan of their previous films You’re Next and The Guest, both of which take their genre tropes seriously while having still having a sense of fun about the proceedings. I have been relatively lukewarm about the Blair Witch films. When the original came out, I was 18 and completely got caught up in the faux-realism the filmmakers used via the internet to promote the story. When I finally got to see the film I was pretty let down, and it began my decades-long dislike of the found footage genre. The second Blair Witch film is best left unmentioned as it is just a terrible and un-scary movie.
Sadly, this iteration of Blair Witch ends up being another dull entry into the franchise. My biggest issue with the entire film is the conceit behind the found footage storytelling. There is absolutely no reason why this couldn’t have been a third person film. We get a scene attempting to justify the constant recording where Lisa, the film student friend explains to another character why it is so important she records everyone. She ends up bringing along a drone camera and little ear piece cameras so that coverage can be a bit more expansive. But like all found footage horror films it devolves into either dreary boredom intend to convince us of “how real” the story is or shaky images so incomprehensible there’s no point in watching.
The seeds for a good horror story are here though. The film embraces the role of social media in horror by having the inciting video for the investigation come to James via social media. The mythology of the Blair Witch is restated from the first film, but with a little more clarity. Characters ask the kind of questions we would when told stories like these and get answers that make sense. There is an interesting angle of time not moving in a standard linear fashion once you reach a certain point of the woods and that is a fantastic element of the picture. Rustin Parr’s vanishing house is another classic horror trope that has lots of potential. I was reminded, albeit very briefly, of House of Leaves.
The acting is not atrocious, it feels perfectly adequate which is a pretty big disappointment compared to films like You’re Next and The Guest which had some very solid performances. I’m not sure how choreographed or improvised the film was because of its found footage moments but I can’t help but think that hindered the actors from doing better work. The final moments of the film continue the same well-tread formula we see in found footage horror constantly. The characters are worked up into a frenzy as they have finally confronted the Big Evil so all we get is screaming, barely audible dialogue, and overly shaky camera footage.
For now, I think the Blair Witch franchise should go back to being dead. There is not much meat on the bones because it feels at the end like pretty much any generic local legend. The one element that interested me the most, the concept of time moving at different speeds in the woods for different people had potential but wasn’t enough to make this movie even remotely enjoyable.
Movie Review – Star Wars: Rogue One
Star Wars: Rogue One (2016, dir. Gareth Edwards)
Jyn Erso is an orphan, the daughter of a man vital to the success of the Galactic Empire. Her whole life has been spent on the run and now, forcibly united with the Rebel Alliance, she has a chance to reunite with her father do some good. She’s partnered with Rebel officer Cassian Andor and droid K-S20 with more joining along the way. Rogue One is Disney’s first dip in the water with the idea of doing Star Wars films outside of the standard trilogy format. This particular story focuses on the events that led the Rebels to obtain the plans for the Death Star in the first Star Wars film.
The visuals of Rogue One are possibly the best we’ve ever had in a Star Wars film. Director Gareth Edwards has a background in special effects which he has used extensively in his previous two films, Monsters and Godzilla. He seems quite adept at conveying scale through his camera and likes to have large monolithic objects looming menacingly in his backgrounds. The Death Star looks the best it ever has and feels like a truly powerful construct which helps understand the Rebellion’s deep fear. Many of the battle scenes are shot from the ground troops’ point of view, so machines like the Imperial Walkers feel like the colossal weapons of devastation they are intended to be. The final battle sequence taking place on the ground of an Imperial controlled planet and in the space above is full of momentum and energy. The Rebellion’s gear and ships looked perfectly weathered and worn evoking the iconography of the original trilogy.
Rogue One also does some of the most world building a Star Wars film has done in awhile. In the first 15 minutes, we visit five planets, four new and one familiar to fans of Episode IV. We see locales probably spoken about in expanded universe media but never seen on the big screen. As a result, the galaxy feels even more expansive and dense. There are hundreds of alien species glimpsed in crowded bazaar type locations. We see the larger operations of the Empire and get the sense of a truly dominant widespread force to be reckoned with. The film manages to connect up with the moments right before the opening crawl of Episode IV, and I think it adds to the momentum of events in that original film. We understand the anger and frustration of Vader and the urgency of the Rebellion.
The problems with the film lie in character development. I can say that when the film concluded, I didn’t feel any connection to a single one of our main characters or side characters. Jyn Erso is the most problematic because the character never establishes a goal or purpose. She only gets pulled along by the Rebellion but never actually seems to get fed up enough to leave. The biggest pain I had was the lack of a believable bond between her and her father. The first scene we see them in they are getting torn apart by the Empire. It would have been nice to have had a scene, maybe a flashback, that showed the relationship they shared. Instead, we get a brief, poorly written moment on Coruscant where her father just says “He’ll always protect her.” A scene on their moisture farm where he teaches her some childhood lesson tied to the theme of Hope might have helped.
Rogue One does touch on the effects of war on soldiers when Cassian Andor speaks about how he’s done morally reprehensible things in the name of the Rebellion, and this haunts him. However, he pretty much just says this rather than the film showing us how PTSD affects him. That’s a big problem throughout the movie, all of its themes and messages are delivered with such a blunt hammer they lack any emotional weight. Now, I know Star Wars is not known for its complexity, but for a film that is choosing to take on a dark, heavy tone it fails to deliver acting or plotting that matches that tone. It seems to be a common problem with Gareth Edwards’ work that he can give us beautiful, massive visuals but doesn’t really know how to direct a great performance out of his actors. Instead, we get some laughable corny speeches, an element that has never really had a place in Star Wars. Typical military briefings and conversations have been pretty to the point with one newbie (Luke or Finn) chiming in about how they could help.
Because of this lack of character development and connection with the audience, I started to see the film as a whole as a collection of incredibly impressive fan films. The battle in Jedha. The first test of the Death Star. The X-Wing fight above Scarif. These are the types of short films made by people in the special effects industry or who love to make props. Very impressive feats of skill and craftsmanship but the heart of the story and the characters is lacking. There were some very distracting fan nods which you’ll know when you see them. A lot of viewers have negative feelings about the CGI used to put Grand Moff Tarkin in the film, and I agree it looked like a character from a CG-cutscene in the middle of a live action scene. They recast Mon Mothma with an actress who didn’t exactly resemble her and it worked fine. I think they could have done the same with Tarkin and it would have been less distracting.
There’s been a pretty obnoxious trend to quantify Rogue One in the canon, particularly in opposition with The Force Awakens. That placement is all going to depend on your own personal metrics for what makes these films good. In my personal opinion, TFA is a better film than Rogue One because it has charismatic, complex characters in Rey and Finn. Jyn is a blank wall of a character, and I suspect this lies more in the script and direction of Edwards than it does Felicity Jones. But at the end of the day there just is no point in trying to say one Star Wars film is better than another. I think the more valid metric is to ask “Did this film accomplish what it set out to do?”
The Force Awakens was a reboot, not of continuity but of tone. It was intentionally made to follow so many original trilogy beats as a way of re-establishing the franchise and bring both old and new fans into the fold. From what I have read about Rogue One the intent was to tell a very personal, darker story about the War side of Star Wars. And in my opinion, it failed because it never made me care about the characters. Rogue One failed to tell a more human story set in the Star Wars universe. But we have to accept that as with all studio franchises there will end up being such a large pool of films that some will be missteps, people will have different preferences as to what they like. Hell, I could care less if a 20-something says they love the prequels. Everyone can have the films they like.
Rogue One was an incredibly tentative experiment with Star Wars. My hope is that the Han Solo film pushes the boundaries further and that we have additional films that increase the quality and play with what Star Wars can be. From early buzz and interviews with Rian Johnson, he is primed to make Episode VIII go beyond what we have become used to, and I can’t wait.
Movie Review – La La Land
La La Land (2016, dir. Damien Chazelle)
Two aspiring young people in Los Angeles, Mia and Seb pursue their individual dreams and their paths continually cross. Mia (Emma Stone) is an actress who seems to never get a callback to a single audition and when she does she’s dismissed before getting a chance to read. Seb (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz pianist who wants to live up to the quality of his idols but ends up playing Christmas carols at a cozy dinner spot in the evenings. The duo isn’t sure if they want to be a couple and the story is rife with an interesting variety of musical styles, many reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein.
La La Land is unashamedly a musical. The opening moments are a sweeping crane shot of a traffic-jammed freeway where the motorists depart their vehicles for a song and dance number that evoke a slick Gap commercial. Eventually, the music settles down when the story of Mia and Seb comes into focus, and we don’t really get a showstopping number for the rest of the pictures. Instead, we have duets that appear to have been filmed in very intimate and loose ways. The piano duet of “City of Stars” has the actors sharing a piano bench and it’s obvious that Gosling flubs a couple lines eliciting a chuckle from Stone.
Director Chazelle paints his film in Cinemascope, a 2:35:1 aspect ratio that evokes the iconography of 1950s studio cinema. Set pieces embrace artifice with stages covered in grass apparent as the two soft shoe across them. There are fantastic flights of fancy, particularly during a date to the Griffith Observatory, where Mia and Seb end up waltzing across the galaxy. The whole tone of and look of the picture doesn’t so much as resemble Singin’ in the Rain, but rather films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It’s a very stylized French palette, especially in the film’s dreamlike final number. In fact, the film feels much more of a tribute to dance once it gets past its opening numbers than old Hollywood Musicals.
The weight of the film rests on the shoulders of Gosling and Stone. There are supporting characters, but the film refrains from developing any b plots. We have Gosling’s sister and just the lightest touch of her engagement and subsequent marriage. There’s Stone’s trio of fellow actress roommates who show up for a bit but then fade from the story. It never feels like sloppy writing, though. The intent that this is Mia and Seb’s story feels tightly focused. The chemistry between the leads is excellent. They seem like a real couple, and a scene that serves as the pivot in the plot shows just how real this relationship can feel. We’re witness to such an intimate, cringing personal argument between the two. The choking back of tears, the narrowing of eyes in anger, words spoken to cut deep then immediately regretted. Painfully real.
What I loved most about La La Land was the theme of compromise threaded throughout. The opening number, “Another Day of Sun” might have the tone of an upbeat, showstopping musical number but a closer listen to the lyrics reveals the central conflict of the film:
I think about that day
I left him at a Greyhound station
West of Santa Fé
We were seventeen, but he was sweet and it was true
Still I did what I had to do
‘Cause I just knew
Summer: Sunday nights
We’d sink into our seats
Right as they dimmed out all the lights
A Technicolor world made out of music and machine
It called me to be on that screen
And live inside each scene
Later we have Seb walking alone along a pier quietly singing “City of Stars” to himself with these darker lyrics standing out:
Is this the start of something wonderful and new?
Or one more dream that I cannot make true?
The entire focus of La La Land is on having big dreams and the compromises and choices involved in making those dreams come true. In a lot of ways, the film is saying “You can’t have it all” so you need to prioritize and figure out what is important to you. It is also speaking out the people with dreams to know that life will be challenging and that finding the core of why you had this dream in the first place is essential to getting through the hard times. La La Land does not have a happy ending. Characters make some of their dreams come true, and they learn something about what’s important. Damien Chazelle has made what I’d dare say is a perfect film, visually rich, sonically beautiful, and a story that acknowledges the romantic nature of dreams and the grounded way we have to live life.
Movie Review – The Autopsy of Jane Doe
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016, dir. André Øvredal)
Our film opens with a scene that immediately ropes us in. Triple homicide. The old couple who lives at the residence. A plumber who was servicing the house. No signs of forced entry. The strangest thing in a very strange crime scene turns out to the half-buried body of a young woman, not a mark on her. The protagonists of our story are Austin Tilden (Emile Hirsch) and his father Tommy (Brian Cox), the latest in a family line of morticians. They have a contract with the local police to do forensic work in their morgue with an emphasis on just determining the cause of death. The body of Jane Doe arrives late one night, and they begin to find strange marks and injuries on her that lead into a night of terror.
Autopsy marks the follow-up feature by director André Øvredal who last brought us, Troll Hunter, a Norwegian horror film that offered a smart take on the found footage genre. Whereas Øvredal wrote Troll Hunter, this time he directs a script by a writer from Once Upon a Time among other television work. The premise for this horror flick is great. Tons of questions are raised from the crime scene alone, and the first half of the film compounds those questions as strange things are discovered in the body. However, when the horror tropes start to kick in the film begins to feel painfully formulaic. There is one particular misdirect/death that happens about ⅔ through the film that had my wife and I both, groaning. It comes out of nowhere and feels logistically impossible that this person could have been in this place at that time. Definite plot convenience to shock the audience with a twist kind of territory.
The film does offer a few jump scares but overall chooses to focus on the creeping dread the autopsy causes. The condition of individual organs don’t make sense. Objects are found in her stomach that should have been digested by now. Bones are broken in very specific ways. We also spend a lot of time developing the father/son dynamic but that seems to peter out when the script decides it’s “horror time” and we have dead bodies wandering around. These are two very good actors that aren’t given much more than moments to react in the script.
Owlen Catherine Kelly plays Jane Doe, and it is a very challenging role because it would seem she just has to lay there naked and motionless for the runtime of the film. Øvredal takes advantage of a film technique called the Kuleshov effect. The idea is that by juxtaposing an expressionless face with other images, you can influence the audience’s perceptions of what emotion the face is showing. Very clever cuts are made from supernatural, spooky events, to the morticians, and finally to Jane’s face causing that expressionless face to feel more and more sinister as we get deeper into the film.
Overall, I was incredibly disappointed by this film. The clips that had been shared online came from the first half which is brimming with potential and has a lot of the elements in place to be a great horror film. My only guess is that the writer didn’t know where they were going with that first half and, instead of working out some clever way to bring these elements together, just went with tired old horror cliches and an incredibly unsatisfying ending.
PopCult Reviews 