Seth Harris

Movie Review – Fatso

Fatso (1980)
Written & Directed by Anne Bancroft

In 1980, Mel Brooks started his own production company, Brooksfilm. Under this umbrella, he would produce pictures like The Elephant Man, The Fly, and many of his own films like Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. The very first movie released from Brooksfilm would be Fatso, the directorial debut of Brooks’s wife, Anne Bancroft. Despite her very Anglo sounding name, Bancroft was really Anna Maria Louisa Italiano, and so her film is reflective of her very traditional Italian upbringing in New York City. Accurately, we see the toxic effect of a culture so centered around consumption using food to soothe anxiety and stress, while never tackling the underlying issues. The result is an incredibly mixed bag of tonal inconsistency and a lack of a clear point of view on the characters and themes.

Movie Review – Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story

Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story (2020)
Written by Ron Cicero
Directed by Ron Cicero & Kimo Easterwood

I was ten years old when Ren & Stimpy debuted, but I was never anything close to a fan. This was simply because I lived in a rural area that didn’t even have cable lines running to the houses on my street. We were a single income household with four kids, so my parents didn’t really see a value in paying for satellite service either. So for me, this whole phenomenon passed me buy despite my being the right age to become enamored with the series.

Comic Book Review – Wonder Woman by Mike Deodato

Wonder Woman by Mike Deodato (2016)
Reprints Wonder Woman #85, 90-100, 0
Written by William Messner-Loebs
Art by Mike Deodato

Not many collections I’ve reviewed spotlight the artist, but in my journey through Wonder Woman’s post-Crisis career, we have reached the era where things get weird. These comics were published in the mid-1990s when Image Comics had a profound effect on the industry. Image was founded by a collective of artists who left the big two companies and created imprints under this single umbrella. They were people like Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, and Rob Liefeld, who had very distinct and oft-criticized art styles. Deodato is very much a student of these artists, and it shows in his work, which we will get into later.

Movie Review – The Empire Strikes Back

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Written by Lawrence Kasdan & Leigh Brackett
Directed by Irvin Kershner

The Star Wars movies are always viewed collectively as trilogies, but I thought it would be interesting to examine one in isolation, as the product of a year in a landscape of other movies. Empire Strikes Back was released at the start of summer that also included The Blues Brothers, Airplane!, Caddyshack, Friday the 13th, and The Shining to name a few. It’s no surprise that the second Star Wars film dominated the box office and was the number one hit domestically and internationally. I’d be willing to bet people saw Empire that hadn’t seen the first picture as that is something that happens today with all sorts of film franchises. I have to wonder what a person like that thought as they were watching. I think the film does such an excellent job communicating who its characters are that even if you don’t get every detail, you understand from an archetypal perspective what is going on.

TV Review – Homecoming Season 2

Homecoming Season 2 (2020)
Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez
Written by Micah Bloomberg, Eli Horowitz, Zachary Wigon, Sarah Carbiener, Erica Rosbe, Casallina Kisakye, Evan Wright, and Patrick Macmanus

Choosing the perspective of a story is incredibly important. Deciding who will unroll the narrative for us affects how we perceive every character and each plot beat. Who ends up being seen as a hero or villain can subtly shift. The showrunners behind Homecoming decided to make the central character in their second season someone we had never met before. On top of that, she has amnesia and can’t even remember her name. By doing this, we are immediately sympathetic to her because we have no idea what is going on. By the end of the season, we know everything while she is still stumbling in the dark.

Movie Review – Ordinary People

Ordinary People (1980)
Written by Alvin Sargent
Directed by Robert Redford

American culture still has problems talking about mental health, but it was considerably more complicated when Ordinary People came out. This was also the directorial debut of actor Robert Redford, who founded the Sundance Institute, a non-profit dedicated to helping independent filmmakers create their work. Redford always stood out as an actor who physically appeared as the atypical Hollywood glamor star but who chose work that didn’t always focus on his looks. Throughout the 1970s, he picked smartly written work closely tied to his political and philosophical views. With his first gig as a director, he managed to make a film that would never be a crowd-pleaser but focused on essential issues that movies often sidestepped.

Comic Book Review – Booster Gold: The Big Fall

Booster Gold: The Big Fall (2019)
Reprints Booster Gold V1 #1-12
Written by Dan Jurgens
Art by Dan Jurgens & Mike DeCarlo

The 1980s are remembered as a decade of gross corporate excess in the United States. Ronald Reagan became president and opened the doors to deregulating the financial sector. American Psycho is a great satirical take on the results of letting Wall Street run wild on American wealth. In DC Comics, they indulged in the excess with the most massive comic book crossover to date, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This featured heroes from across the multiverse in a battle beyond time and space. The result was a condensed timeline where they managed (or in some cases failed to accomplish) populating the single remaining Earth with legions of heroes. The character considered to be the first post-Crisis one is Booster Gold, a mystery man who encompasses all the corporate greed.

Movie Review – Little Woods

Little Woods (2018)
Written & Directed by Nia DaCosta

Some people live on the fringes, always one lay off, or one missed payment away from complete devastation. They can live anywhere, big cities, or barren rural landscapes, a forgotten class perpetually kept in poverty because the system demands someone to populate the very bottom. For these people, affordable health care and full stomachs are about as real as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Those luxuries are something other people have, the forgotten bottom sit in waiting rooms for eight-plus hours only to be handed a bottle of opioids and told to move on.

Media Moment (08/14/20)

Against all logic & reason, AMC Theaters are reopening 100 locations on August 20th. For that one day, tickets will be sold at 15 cents advertised as a “1920s price”. It’s clear the dirt cheap ticket price is an experiment to see who is willing to go out in the pandemic to watch a movie in a theater. Prices after will be $5 as the chain shows old films like Black Panther, Back to the Future, and The Empire Strikes Back. Disney is still adamant they will open The New Mutants in whatever theaters are open on August 28th.

Movie Review – The Changeling

The Changeling (1980)
Written by William Gray & Diana Maddox
Directed by Peter Medak

Does tragedy make a person more open to other planes of existence? If we come close to death or experience, profound loss, are we then able to brief make out the shades of another world that exists within our own? The Changeling explores these ideas in a tightly crafted and well made haunted house picture. Long before the days of Blumhouse, this was a movie that trafficked in many of the same tropes and themes but didn’t need to lean into empty jumpscares or tired formulas to keep audiences interested. That isn’t to say this is a perfect film, but it is made by people who understand what is genuinely horrific about existence.