Seth Harris

Movie Review – Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity (1944)
Written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler
Directed by Billy Wilder

Damn, that was a good movie. You will, of course, feel like you’ve seen and heard this before, which speaks more to the profound influence this entry into the film noir genre has had on the culture. It’s said to be the movie that set the standard for all film noir to come after. A few months ago, I watched the pilot episode of Columbo and was reminded of how similar the murder plans are. You may recall The Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple or The Man Who Wasn’t There, both obvious nods to this masterwork. I can’t express how satisfying it is to finally see a film held up as a significant part of the canon and see that it truly lives up to the hype.

Movie Review – Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1960)
Written by Richard Brooks and Sinclair Lewis
Directed by Richard Brooks

When you look at the Joel Osteens and megachurches of our time, you need to understand they came out of the evangelical Christian movement. This fire & brimstone rhetoric taught people that the path to material happiness was through submission to the Lord primarily through giving up their income to the Church. Little was offered in exchange, save a euphoric fervor that lasted long enough for the revival grifters to make tracks to the next town. Then the wave of spiritual enlightenment faded, and the townspeople waited until the next grinning preacher came riding into town with promises of a cure for what ails you.

January 2020 digest

Features
The State of the Blog 2020
Most Anticipated Films of 2020
Even More Anticipated Films of 2020
My Favorite Anti-War Films
Short Film Showcase 2020 #1

Movie Review – 8 Million Ways To Die

8 Million Ways to Die (1986)
Written by Oliver Stone, Robert Towne, and R. Lance Hill
Directed by Hal Ashby

It’s pretty clear by this point that Hal Ashby’s career as a successful filmmaker was over. His glory had been in the 1970s, and now the 1980s were eating him alive. 8 Million Ways to Die is nothing like the way an old Ashby film felt. There’s no thoughtful contemplation or a focus on character. This is noir storytelling full of all the tropes and cliches you might expect. The treatment of women is disappointing when you look at more liberating pictures like Coming Home or Harold and Maude. This is the final journey of Hal Ashby, one into mediocrity.

Movie Review – The Shaggy D.A.

The Shaggy D.A. (1976)
Written by Don Tait
Directed by Robert Stevenson

I remember watching the original Shaggy Dog film as a kid and enjoying it quite a bit. I remember memorizing the Latin incantation and playing the film out with my siblings. Now it’s been twenty-plus years since I last saw that movie, and I never happened to sit down and watch the follow-up. By this time, the original Wilby Daniels, Tommy Kirk, had been arrested for marijuana possession, and thus his career with Disney was terminated. In 1976, Dean Jones was a go-to in the studio’s acting stable, and so he was put into the role.

Media Moment (02/01/20)

So A24 is looking at developing the film Under the Skin into a television series. I have to say that is an unexpected move but I am sort of into it. The film, based on the novel by Michael Faber, is a minimalist creepy horror picture about an alien walking the Earth disguised as a human. Her purpose is to seduce people and bring them in as food for her own species. The movie doesn’t have much dialogue and relies on the powerful mood developed by director Jonathan Glazer.

Short Film Showcase 2020 – #1

We’re starting off the short film showcase this year with a trio of fantastic animated films.

The Hill Farm (1986, directed by Mark Baker)
Mark Baker is the creator of Peppa Pig, but before that he made some fantastic animated shorts that played at festivals. This one tells of a few days in the life of a farmer and the visitors who come to their farm.

Movie Review – The Slugger’s Wife

The Slugger’s Wife (1985)
Written by Neil Simon
Directed by Hal Ashby

I truly despise this movie. It makes it hard not to dislike Hal Ashby entirely because it is so against everything he made at his peak in the 1980s. The characters are vapid and unlikeable. The story is terrible. I am still trying to make sense of how we ended up here. It’s honestly even more flabbergasting than anything we’ve seen before from Ashby. It is at complete odds with the moral sense the director brought to his early films and is absolute dreck.

Movie Review – Antrum

Antrum (2018)
Written & Directed by David Amito & Michael Laicini

The subtitle of this found-footage horror movie is “The Deadliest Film Ever Made.” I don’t think it rises to that level, but it does deliver a compelling piece of meta-fiction. The structure of the film is bookended with faux-documentary segments giving the fictional back history of Antrum and giving a slight analysis of what we see. The majority is the infamous film itself, an attempt to recreate a grindhouse tone of horror, cheap and nasty, with hints of potentially real danger.

Comic Book Reviews – Jughead’s Time Police (2019)

Jughead’s Time Police
Reprints Jughead’s Time Police #1-5
Written by Sina Grace
Art by Derek Charm

In the 2010s, Archie Comics underwent a major reboot that saw new variations on the iconic character and his friends spinning out. It began with Afterlife with Archie, a Walking Dead-esque mature horror take on the students of Riverdale. Since then, there have been several supernatural books as well as some updated humor books, trying to make Archie relevant for the 21st century. Jughead has been the star of his own rebooted title plus an alternate-reality horror book, Jughead: The Hunger. Time Police may sound like one of these new ideas, but it is a reboot of a mini-series from the 1990s.