Seth Harris

Movie Review – Tigers Are Not Afraid

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2019)
Written & Directed by Issa Lopez

It’s hard not to be struck with the influence Guillermo Del Toro has had on this film and a handful of contemporary Mexican cinema. Tigers Are Not Afraid is full to the brim with knowing nods to The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. While Del Toro often uses the past as a setting to examine his ideas of innocence and darkness, writer-director Issa Lopez chooses the contemporary cartel crisis as the stage for her story. My biggest problem when we compare these works is that Tigers Are Not Afraid has issues with pacing that cut through what should be white-knuckle tension. This is a story about children in peril, men chasing after them with the intent to kill, and there are a lot of moments where this feeling is not conveyed on screen.

TV Review – Best of All in the Family Finale

Cousin Liz (Original airdate: October 9, 1977)
Written by Barry Harman, Harve Brosten, Bob Weiskopf, and Bob Schiller
Directed by Paul Bogart

Yet another cousin is introduced, this one has passed away off-screen. She’s from Edith’s side of the family, so she and Archie schlep out of Queens to attend the funeral and reception afterward. Liz was never married and had no children. Her closest relationship was with her friend and roommate Veronica. Veronica is deeply distraught over her loss and eventually confides in Edith that she and Liz were not roommates but partners, living as a married couple. Edith is stunned at first but quickly accepts this idea, telling Veronica she will let her keep a tea set that was initially bequeathed to Edith. Mrs. Bunker has immediate empathy and doesn’t see Liz and Veronica’s love as any different than she and Archie’s.

Movie Review – Between Two Ferns: The Movie

Between Two Ferns: The Movie (2019)
Written & Directed by Scott Aukerman

The way I consume comedy has changed in the last decade. When I was in college, it was about listening to albums, often bootlegged. I remember hearing and relistening to Dave Chappelle: Killin’ Them Softly, Patton Oswalt’s Feelin’ Kind Patton, and more. One comedian I discovered in those days was Zach Galifianakis. This was during his short-lived stint on VH1 hosting Late World, a talk show explicitly designed around him. Galifianakis was one of those comedians that made me think outside the album as the primary way to access a performer’s sense of humor and aesthetics. Galifianakis constructed a comedic persona, akin to Pee-Wee Herman or Steven Wright, something like themselves but unlike as well. His point of view came from a fascination with confident dumb people which is the person he plays on Between Two Ferns.

Comic Book Review – The Wild Storm Volume 3

The Wild Storm Volume 3
Reprints The Wild Storm #13-18
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Jon Davis-Hunt

Ever since Len Wein and Dave Cockrum introduced to the all-new all-different X-Men, comic creators had madly searched in vain for a creation that would shake the foundations of comics. Because they use this event as a template, the ideas they present are often teams of young, angsty heroes with as much interpersonal conflict as they have battles with supervillains. Gen13 was an attempt to freshen up the Wildstorm line at Image Comics, their first issue dropping in 1994. The presentation is dripping in both X-Men influences and MTV trends, one member is even named Grunge, a reference that immediately dated itself. The original Gen13 concept and execution is yet another reminder of why it was vital for Warren Ellis to freshen up the Wildstorm line with this sprawling, world-building maxi-series.

Movie Review – Support the Girls

Support the Girls (2018)
Written & Directed by Andrew Bujalski

Double Whammies is a sports bar modeled so directly after Hooter’s, the once-popular American chain, that most audiences will know right away what world is being explored in this film. Yes, there are twenty-something scantily clad women slinging beers and wings, but this isn’t an exploitative picture. Support the Girls is a story about working-class women, a companion piece in some ways to Soderbergh’s Magic Mike, though not as well-made as that movie. The central character is not one of the waitstaff mentioned above but manager Lisa, who is spending a day dealing with crises of small and earth-shattering potential. The conflict in every instance is deeply grounded, and human and Regina Hall’s performance as Lisa is the strongest element of this film.

Movie Review – In Fabric

In Fabric (2018)
Written & Directed by Peter Strickland

It’s difficult to determine when and where we are during In Fabric. This intentional disorientation helps add to the sense of the eerie and unsettling. The commercials on television are drenched in a 1970s hue, music synthesized and distorted. Yet at home, our characters appear to be living contemporary lives. The location is a fictional city of Thames Valley on Thames which may be rural or metropolitan. The adverts for Dentley & Soper’s department store are stylized occult rituals, the owner and his staff of mesmerized attendants invoking the customer to come and buy from their holiday sale.

Movie Review – Cinema Paradiso

Cinema Paradiso (1988)
Written by Giuseppe Tornatore and Vanna Paoli
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore

Cinema Paradiso did a lot of things. It garnered a lot of attention for Miramax, who distributed the film in the United States. By winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture and helped revive Italy’s faltering cinema industry which had once dominated cinema with the New Wave films. When you watch Cinema Paradiso, it feels like a template for audience-pleasing Oscar movies to come, but you have to remember the movie wasn’t made with those pretensions in mind. One thing it did not do was bring its director, Giuseppe Tornatore a large amount of attention, but it kept him working even today.

TV Review – Best of All in the Family Part 6

Archie the Hero (Original airdate: September 29th, 1975)
Written by Lou Derman & Bill Davenport
Directed by Paul Bogart

LGBTQ representation on television at the time of All in the Family was a mixed bag of either complete absence or as a villain and predatory. It was even worse when the idea of crossdressing or transvestitism came into the picture. At the time Archie the Hero aired there just wasn’t a language in the common parlance to talk about transgender people and terms got muddled with the two groups mentioned previously. Despite the confusion and lack of education, this is a part of a trilogy of episodes that handled the idea of non-conforming gender with a surprising amount of empathy.

Movie Review – To Kill a Mockingbird

While the larger world seems to be bathed in darkness these days I decided to do a small marathon at some point this year with films that don’t hide from the bleak parts of life but showcase how hope can emerge from such circumstances. Some of these are films I’ve seen before, some I never have. This will be the first collection of movies under the banner of Hope in the Midst of Darkness. As I learn of and remember more films that fit the moniker, I’ll return in batches of five or six.

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
Written by Horton Foote
Directed by Robert Mulligan

Author Harper Lee died in her sleep on February 19, 2016. The preceding year had seen the publication of her second novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” a text steeped in controversy and dubiously released to the public. HarperCollins had received a copy of the manuscript after Lee’s lawyer had found it while appraising the writer’s assets in 2011. Accusations were made that the lawyer had coerced and abused an elder, Lee’s health and mental state were said to be in poor condition in her latter years. The state of Alabama found these charges unfounded, but doubts still remain as Lee has consistently stated she had no additional novels to publish since Mockingbird. Since Lee’s death, more information has come to light that Watchman was an earlier draft of Mockingbird, but the damage had been done. Despite this abuse in her final act, Lee will still be remembered as the author of one of the seminal books of the 20th century, which became a critically lauded film two years after it’s publication.

Comic Book Review – The Wild Storm Volume 2

The Wild Storm Volume 2 (2018)
Reprints The Wild Storm #7-12
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Jon Davis-Hunt

One of the many plot threads running through Warren Ellis’ epic and intricate reboot of the Wildstorm universe is the internal politics of world-spanning conspiracies. Instead of presenting these as tense battles of control, Ellis chooses to frame them as the same sort of mundane office politics you might find in any cubicle farm. Jacklyn King is working her own angles at International Operations, putting together teams and performing investigations without her boss Miles Craven being aware, at least not at the beginning. The Halo Corporation has their own man on the inside, John Colt, who the readers meet just as he realizes he’s been compromised and has to shoot his way out before Adrianna can teleport him away. Yet, when Colt arrives at the Halo safe house, it’s played very nonchalantly, not the first time he’s gone through this. There is a mix of humor and horror in how people living these conspiratorial existences can come to find them so unimpressive.