Seth Harris

Zootopia (2016, dir. Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush)

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Zootopia is the story of Judy Hopps, a bunny who travels from the farm to the big city with one dream: to become a police officer and make the world a better place. The force is made up of much larger beasts (lions, tigers, bears, etc.) and Judy is put on meter maid duty. This innocuous job leads her into the path of con-fox Nick Wilde and on the trail of a missing otter. The duo explore the various boroughs of Zootopia and travel deeper and deeper down a winding trail of mystery and political intrigue. Along the way, they discover the harmful power of stereotypes and work to recognize each other as unique animals.

The world of Zootopia, a place where predators and prey live in harmony, is well built. A lot of time was spent on worldbuilding and it shows. Much like Pixar films where every frame is filled with details, Zootopia gives us a city that is populated to the gills. I started to think about how much fun it would be to explore this world in a well made video game and see all the corners the film didn’t have the time to reveal to us. We spend most of our time in Savanna Central, the most diverse borough. However, we also visit Tundratown (hope to an homage to the Godfather), the Rainforest District (which features one of the most thrilling action sequences of the film), and Little Rodentia (a miniaturized version of Greenwich Village, home to mice, shrews, and voles).

About halfway through the film, I immediately began to think about Black Lives Matters. The main plot of the film is touching upon current events: Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, the continuing violence and racial profiling of police against black people. The film does this in an unexpected way. Traditionally, predators have been presented, not just in Disney productions but all media, as bloodthirsty villains (Shere Khan, Scar, The Big Bad Wolf, the list goes on). Zootopia clearly wants to challenge that assumption as a way to talk to adults and kids about the destructive effects they have on individuals. All Foxes are crafty and liars, right? Lions just want to tear apart the closest gazelle. It would have been so easy for the film to become heavy handed and obvious with its themes, but the screenplay handles them masterfully. You’re not being preached at, you’re being told a well developed story about two individuals whose perspectives are changing.

Disney Animation doesn’t seem to have the prolific output of Pixar, but when they do release a film it’s of the highest quality (Tangled, Frozen). Zootopia is definitely one of the best and fully realized films that have released to to date. The film never panders to its audience and adheres to presenting a well developed narrative with a rich cast of characters. While the film isn’t art house animation, it never backs down from dealing with difficult and complex ideas.

DC Rebirth Week #3

Author’s Note: I include Action Comics and Detective Comics because their creative teams did not directly work on last week’s Superman and Batman Rebirth issues. I won’t be following those titles here on the blog, but may read their full storylines and review them at a later date. So for now, just a quick look at how they are starting their Rebirth storylines.

Action Comics #957 (Writer: Dan Jurgens Artist: Patrick Zircher)

Might be my second favorite of this week but also the one I feel the most trepidation. action
Returning for the tenth time or so to write Superman is Dan Jurgens, most famous for penning the now classic Death and Return of Superman storyline. The pace of the comic is just right, lots of stuff happens and many plots are set up. This feels the most like classic DC in the Rebirth roll out. The big plot points are Luthor taking up the mantle of Superman, using his time with Justice League as leverage, and Pre-New52 Superman finally making his debut in costume. I am very interested in finding out where this story will go but am praying this isn’t going to be another hard reset to status quo in a year’s time. We’ve seen Luthor in this role not to long ago (Paul Cornell’s run on Action kept coming back to me as I read) so I want to see something familiar but with fresh new direction.

Aquaman Rebirth (Writer: Dan Abnett Artist: Scot Eaton, Oscar Jimenez, Mark Morales and Gabe Eltaeb)

aquaman I felt like I was in familiar territory because this issue seems to tread the same notes most modern Aquaman stories always do: Hey, he’s a super serious hero, you guys! This need to make meta-commentary on jokes about Aquaman does more to diminish the character than just telling good stories about him. This comic also didn’t seem very open to new readership with some elements, like the Deluge, not being defined well or the reveal of the villain at the end feeling awkward. At the end, I felt like it was all set up for Aquaman to just fight one of his old villains again, but not the sense that something new was going to happen. Probably my least favorite of this week’s releases.

Detective Comics #934 (Writer: James T Tynion IV Artist: Eber Ferreira, Eddy Barrows)

If this series had to get a new title it would be Batman Family. The conceit of Detective Detective-934 appears to be a focus on a team of Bat-related characters. Featured in the series will be Batman, Batwoman, Red Robin, Spoiler, Orphan, and Clayface. Clayface is the interesting outlier, a character shaped more by his appearances in the 90s animated series, than much of anything in the comics. His role in the team hasn’t been revealed yet but Tynion does a good job of making him sympathetic right from his first moment in the film. I used to truly hate the work of artist Eddy Barrows but he has made some significant improvements. Action feels fluid and energetic and the world is full of detail. There’s a slot of story potential for the interaction and relationships between these characters and this will be one I continue following.

The Flash Rebirth (Writer: Joshua Williamson Artist: Carmine di Giandomenico)

It can be argued that DC Rebirth #1 was a Flash-centric story, with its lost Wally West at the heart of it all. The Flash Rebirth is an interesting artifact in that it takes place before, during, and after the events of DC Rebirth. Right away Williamson is making the title new reader friendly by using a contemporary murder scene to recap Barry Allen’s own loss of his mother. It would be easy to just make the comic a facsimile of the popular tv show but effort is put into referencing those important elements but keeping the comic its own. There are a couple beats that take us out of the story, the Barry/Wally reunion retold and Barry’s visit to Batman who happens to be analyzing that familiar smiley face pin. Artist di Giandomenico was someone I didn’t care for much on the recent X-Factor title for Marvel, but here his style lends itself to the spend and energy of the Flash. While not a singularly cohesive story, Flash Rebirth is a good introduction to the character.

Wonder Woman Rebirth (Writer: Greg Rucka Artist: Liam Sharp, Paulo Siqueira)

The award for most meta Rebirth comic this week goes to Wonder Woman. From page one, Greg Rucka is bringing up the contradictions and fluctuations in this character’s past. Rucka’s past work on the title also dealt with finding a unique place for Princess Diana in a world of supermen. And he did a great job at it, playing up her role as a warrior and an ambassador to the world of men. Right away Rucka is saying we are going to examine this character again and redefine her. Another thing I loved was the use of multiple artists. Often new artists pop up in a jarring non-essential way, but here we switch to a new artist the moment Diana dons her new costume. If you really want a comic that is beckoning you in for a new story,but with recognition of the history that has come before, this is it. You also have a great pedigree with Greg Rucka at the helm. The ongoing series will be doing something a bit odd, alternating issues between the present day story and a Year One origin reboot. Definitely on my list to follow. Hands down the best release of the week.

Next Week: I will be at Origins most of the week so I’ll be reviewing weeks 4 & 5 together in two. Titles will be Batman #1, Green Arrow #1, Green Lanterns #1, Superman #1, Titans Rebirth, Flash #1, Aquaman #1, and Wonder Woman #1

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016, dir. David Green)

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I was 7 years old when I first glimpsed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As I was flipping through the channels one summer morning I came across the opening credits of the series. I remember having trouble remembering the four nouns of the title, referring to them as simply the Ninja Turtles. Eventually, being an imaginative DIY-er, I made a mask out of a piece of purple cloth and re-purposed a green backpack and taped together cardboard paper towel tubes, and I spent hours in the backyard acting out the stories I saw. In 1990, my sister won advance screening passes via the local Fox Kids Club to the TMNT film. I loved the Turtles. But it hasn’t been something that has stuck with me, they’ve never had the complexity that makes me want to revisit them often.

The most recent film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, is the follow up to the successful 2014 reboot. The new film finds the Turtles continuing their life underground in the daytime while protecting the citizens of New York City during the night. After Shredder escapes from police custody, our heroes find themselves pushed out into the spotlight and their group goes through the inevitable existential questioning found so often in superhero sequels. Added to the mix this go round are Stephen Amell as the hockey stick wielding Casey Jones and the mutants Bebop and Rocksteady (played to perfection by Gary Anthony Williams and WWE’s Sheamus). Plus, Krang the Brain and the Technodrome make the slightest of appearances for the third act.

Out of the Shadows is not a great movie, but it is a big improvement on the 2014 film. One of the biggest complaint, and one I shared, about the first was that it was too April O’Neil focused with the Turtles in the background. For the second film we get a lot of time with the heroes with April being featured alongside them in a sort of sidekick partnership with Casey Jones. As previously mentioned, Bebop and Rocksteady are perfect recreations of their cartoon counterparts. They are buffoonish henchmen who bumble through their job with Shredder always on the edge of ending their lives, but strangely keeping them around.

My biggest issues with the film come from the overflow of content in the script and how a lot of these plot points aren’t able to be developed. Krang is the biggest example of someone who shows up in the first act to get the plot rolling, vanishes until the third act, and ends up just being a CGI punching bag so the film can have the big finale battle in the skies over New York City. Another problem I had was that right from the start of the film, April O’Neil uses her sexuality to get access to important information to the plot. It doesn’t come up again, but it is a rough start for her character. April has never been a character who flashed her midriff or seduced men. She’s an experienced reporter and it’s a shame that her opening moment in the film were so reductive.

The Out of the Shadows will feed that nostalgic itch of people who grew up with the cartoon series. It is also a big, loud dumb summer blockbuster but maybe a little less than other films under the Michael Bay banner. It’s considerably shorter than Transformers and their ilk, so that gives the Turtles a greater sense of energy and movement towards the finale. I don’t have expectations that we’ll ever have a deep, meaningful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, it was a concept developed as a parody of ninja comics in the mid 80s. But what has been made is a very fun, light movie.

Warcraft (2016, dir. Duncan Jones)

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Few video game properties come to the table with a such a dense lore and mythos as Warcraft. I never really played the original real-time strategy Warcraft games, but I did put about two years worth of time into World of Warcraft, even grinding two characters to the level cap of 90 at the time. During those two years of play, what I enjoyed most was the exploration aspect. Every time my character entered a new zone it was exciting to see what monsters lay in wait, what treasures there were to find, and it was always great to spend time seeing all the beautiful design put into the world. The film Warcraft was announced ten years ago but has languished in development until the last couple years. After a decade of development, what did we end up with?

Warcraft, directed by Duncan Jones, tells the stories of the war between the human and the orcs of Azeroth. As a result of a demonic plague, the orcs construct a portal that brings them to the world of Azeroth. Souls are needed to open the portal again and bring the orcs who stayed behind. The humans immediately want to drive the orcs back and thus the war begins. The cast is filled with many confusingly similar bearded men and some beautiful animated motion capture orcs. Also, Paula Patton is a half-orc with some very distracting tusk prosthetic.

Warcraft is an utter mess of a film. This rests entirely on the screenplay which failed in something that should have been easy. The IP has thousands of years of established lore and they picked a very meaty chunk of that history. The only work the screenplay had to do was character development and it completely fails. Instead, the film is constantly jumping from location to location never allowing us to really get to know or care about the characters. The dialogue is also painfully cliched. As a knight is leaving a curious mage behind in a mystical library he turns around to utter, “And while I’m gone…try not to touch anything” followed by the mage causing a minor accident. None of the dialogue differentiates the characters or gives you a sense of who they are.

The look of Warcraft also always been exaggerated and cartoonish. This does not translate well into live action. The entire look of the Alliance armor and much of the architecture is cringeworthy. The orcs look wonderful, though. The cgi used for the other side of the film’s war is exceptional and the facial expression that comes through is quite an achievement. The orcs are also far and away the most interesting part of the film and we do not spend enough time with them. It’s essentially a 60/40 split in my opinion between humans and orcs.

For viewers unfamiliar with the world of these games, I can only imagine what a confusing, mind boggling film this must be. I have a passing familiarity with many of the characters and bits of history so I was able to feel my way through events in the film, but even I had moments of confusion about who was who. There’s an emphasis put on the importance of Durotan’s newborn orc son which will play strangely to newcomers. Easter eggs abound for the fans, which is no surprise, but when the core of your narrative is near impenetrable to people who have never played the game you have problems. Sadly, if the acting had been more over the top, a la the Dungeons & Dragons film, Warcraft might be a fun “bad” movie, but everyone is so dull and uninteresting. And worst, it’s almost as hard to tell the litany of bearded white men apart as it is the orcs.

Duncan Jones is not a bad director. His debut feature, Moon, is one of the best independent films of the last decade. His mainstream follow up was Source Code, not a terrible film but fairly forgettable. He is thankfully returning to his roots with Mute, which he calls a follow up to Moon. What he presents us with in Warcraft is very confounding. The only conclusion a viewer could come to is that Jones struggled to bring his own stamp to the film, and it was inevitably overtaken by studio notes and the marketing department. What we’re left with is a film that so desperately wants to be the start of a new franchise but doesn’t have a hook to bring in the audience you need to do that. The film is doing amazingly well in China so there may actually be more. Let’s hope they put character first and use those individual, interesting personalities to help us care about the lore, not the other way round.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016, dir. Nicholas Stoller)

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In the last 15 years, the Apatow film troupe has become a dominant force in American film comedy. We won’t go a year anymore without one or two films produced by Apatow and starring one of his regulars (Seth Rogen, James Franco,etc.). And it is very understandable that the viewing public has gotten to a point where they feel a bit..annoyed at a perceived repetitiveness in the work being produced. I’ve managed to watch a large number of these films, not due to a strong love of Apatow’s work, but due to that previously mentioned prevalence in our culture, and I’ve come away with some mixed thoughts and feelings about them, Neighbors 2 being a prime example.

Neighbors 2 continues the conflict between Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) with Teddy (Zac Efron). This time a sorority moves next door just as Mac and Kelly have gone into escrow on their house in preparation for a new baby. The sorority is led by Shelby (Chloe Moretz) and they all end up in a series of comedic set pieces where characters go over the top and slapstick comedy ensues.

Much of Neighbors 2 is a retread of the first. We just have a new organization, this time made up of young women, who are causing the exact same sorts of problems. Mac and Kelly enlist their friends for help. The couple deal with their own feelings of inadequacy as parents. Thematically they are the least interesting part of the film. From a larger perspective, this is almost a meta-commentary on these actors being pushed aside for the more interesting ideas and themes that come out of what Zac Efron and the sorority members are doing.

Hands down, it is Teddy, Efron’s role, that makes the film worth watching. I wouldn’t say I am a fan of Efron, his choice in films has led us down very different paths. But here he is presenting an examination of the very type of person is likely perceived to be. Early on, we have a scene between Teddy and his former frat brothers from the first film. Everyone is growing up with steady jobs, careers even, and now getting married. Teddy still works at Abercrombie & Fitch and, due to the criminal record he got from the first film’s exploits, has a difficult time finding work beyond customer service. While the film plays this for comedy, Efron manages to bring some levity into these circumstances. Teddy is a dudebro still clinging to his past while everyone around him is moving on. He doesn’t cling to his fraternity days for a sense of glory, we are very quickly shown he wants to be part of a family.

The story of Shelby and her sorority is also set up right away with a ton of empathy. In an orientation meeting for an established sorority on campus, Shelby learns that by-laws make it impossible for women to throw parties so they are forced to attend frat parties. A visit to one leaves Shelby turned off by the exploitative nature of these parties towards women and she ends up finding some strong friendships among fellow female party goers. This is the impetus for their move next door to Mac and Kelly. By the end of the film, I didn’t have much sympathy for Mac and Kelly who, if we look at the generational lines laid by the film, would be the characters I was expected to side with. They are my contemporaries experiencing many of the same life changes I am.

However, Shelby and her friends’ struggle to carve out a piece of the college experience that represents their ideals of female empowerment and to not be viewed as “Hos” for the “Bros” is a much stronger theme. There is a moment in the film where Teddy begins to reminisce about the parties he threw and quickly realizes women were literally labeled “hos” at every single one. His personal realization is played both for laughs and with some poignancy. While he and Shelby are only separated by a handful of years, ideologically and sociologically, they were light years apart. Never once is Shelby’s point of view used to lampoon social justice or feminism, the sorority sisters are funnier than the older characters and evoke a greater sense of empathy.

Neighbors 2 will not change your life. It will likely make you laugh a number of times. What I came away with was a sense of freshness to the Apatow films. Director Nicholas Stoller is responsible for what I believe is the criminally overlooked Forgetting Sarah Marshall, another film that deals in a grown man not blaming women for his problems, but learning to admit his own part in why a relationship crumbled. These films are often marketed with an emphasis on the slapstick, over the top, gross out humor present in them. But given a chance, I think you’ll find something much more thoughtful and refreshing than presented in the marketing.

Tabletop Review – Dead of Winter

Dead-of-Winter-A-Crossroads-Game Dead of Winter is a board game from Plaid Hat Games, designed by Jon Gilmour and Isaac Vega. There are a lot of board and card games on the market in the zombie genre, so seeing yet another one might be a turn off. However, Dead of Winter brings some incredibly fresh and interesting elements to the table.

Each player controls two members of the survivor colony. There is a wide variety of characters with very distinct personalities communicated through the art and their special abilities. This adds a role play element that elevates the game above simply strategizing. There is also the Crossroads deck. Each player turn, a card is drawn and at the conclusion of the turn the condition on the card is checked. If the condition was fulfilled the card is read and a piece of story is presented. The card offers the player a number of options, many options provide a new resource with a consequence or they can walk away, gaining nothing but staying safe. Added on to all of that is the Crisis deck, from which a card is drawn at the start of a round. Resources are required to stave off the Crisis and players can add to that during their turns. If they fail to add the required number of resources a horde of zombies is added to the table.

The game comes with a number of objectives that vary in length, depending on the time you have to play. Each player also has a secret objective that they must complete in addition to the Main Objective to win the game. The interesting twist is that a betrayal card is placed in the deck of objectives at the start of the game. This means someone may be out to sabotage the colony leading to bluffing becoming a part of play. Each round players roll their Action Dice and then take turns spending them to perform actions (Searching, Attacking, Barricading, etc.). If a player suspects there is a traitor they can even call a vote to Exile. After each player has gone, there is a Colony round where resources are accounted for, zombies are added to the board, and other housekeeping is done.

dead-of-winter-1 We’ve played Dead of Winter twice, once as a two player game and most recently with three players. My wife and I invited over a coworker, Tiffany, who is a big fan of zombie media, particularly The Walking Dead. Dead of Winter does a great job in recreating that group tension from shows like TWD. For our game, we used the recommended Main Objective of collecting sample from zombies to develop a cure. The first round of play was everyone getting used to their choices of actions and we managed to stave off the first crisis. What I enjoyed most was that almost every Crossroads card pulled came into play which created a lot more dramatic tension. I remember one of the my characters stumbled across an abandoned oil truck which would have brought a cache of Fuel into the colony (used to make multiple moves around the board during a turn). The catch was that the noise from the truck would bring half a dozen zombies to the outskirts of the colony, putting us on the verge of being Overrun. If a location is Overrun, the character with the lowest Influence is automatically killed, no way to avoid it. I decided against taking the tanker and a few turns later we had a Crisis that needed Fuel to stop it. Those sorts of moments make the game very re-playable because consequences for decisions always have an interesting way of coming back to haunt you.

Dead of Winter merges elements of role-playing with board games in a way I enjoy. The Crossroads deck is the jewel of the game because of the way it puts so much immediate pressure on the player and provides consequences for the rest of a gaming session. Plaid Hat has an expansion, The Long Night, in production at the moment that will also work as a stand alone game. The Long Night adds a new location Raxxon Pharmaceuticals, plus new characters, objectives, Crossroad cards, pretty much more of everything. With so many interchangeable components Dead of Winter has hours and hours of replay-ability and will push players to think beyond one or two strategies as Main and Personal Objectives change.

Dead of Winter can be purchased at Cool Stuff Inc. for an incredibly discounted price. The best I’ve seen to date.

DC Rebirth: Week #2

Superman: Rebirth (Writer: Peter J. Tomasi Artist: Doug Mahnke)

superman rebirth Of the four titles, this felt the least like the beginning of something new, or the reintroduction of some element from DC Comics past. The story focuses on the Pre-New 52 Superman and Lana Lang unearthing the recently deceased Superman’s ashes. Lana made a promise that if he died before her, she would make sure his remains were with his adopted parents, The Kents, in Smallville. The two characters talk about old Superman’s experience with death and rebirth, and he’s pretty insistent this world’s Superman is going to be reborn eventually. It comes across a little meta-contextual about the silly nature of death and rebirth in comics.

The story feels like an epilogue to the previous Superman story arc, rather than the beginning of something new and interesting. There’s never an effort made to establish what made the dead Superman such a great hero or why the old Superman is a great replacement. The story keeps things simple but didn’t do anything to get me excited about the large range of directions the Super-titles are going this summer.

Batman: Rebirth (Writers: Tom King, Scott Snyder Artist: Mikel Janin)

batman-rebirth-1 This was much more interesting and fresh than Superman: Rebirth. Tom King is able to reinvigorate some elements of the Batman mythos. The most stark change is to Calendar Man, a jokey gimmick whose crimes revolved around the seasons or holidays. Now Calendar Man is like Cronenberg body horror, his body shedding its entire skin seasonally. The best Batman villains are ones that unsettle us. With the whole Batman concept being so deeply embedded in human psychology, having horrors that poke around and disturb our minds is when the series shines.

The issues also brings in Duke Thomas, formerly of We Are…Robin. In that series Duke was part of a group of young people who adopted the Robin moniker and iconography to fight street crime. Duke responds to an invite from Batman and the two form what is much more of a mutual partnership rather than a lead hero/sidekick dynamic. Thomas gets a new costume, but no codename established yet. Batman: Rebirth is more about tone setting than plot development. It give a very clear sense of what Batman in the Rebirth period will be

Green Lanterns: Rebirth (Writers: Geoff Johns, Sam Humphries Artist: Ed Benes, Ethan Van Sciver)

GLs_RB_Cv1 What this issue has going for it are two very underdeveloped characters. Simon Baz was introduced in 2012 but fell off into obscurity after a year. Jessica Cruz was introduced a year ago as Power Ring, the host to an otherworldly evil. In last week’s Justice League #50, she shook off her possession and was rewarded with Green Lantern ring. The two leads are used to emphasize the GLs as space cops, with a very reluctant and combative partnership.

It’s difficult to tell here what Sam Humphries brings to the table because so much of this reads like classic Geoff Johns GL storytelling.There is a lot of plot setup: reveal that the Guardians of the Universe have a super secret ring, references to the Dominators and the Manhunters, and some GL history dropped. Other than the characters, this doesn’t feel like much new. It feels like a return to the Johns era GL stories that started back in 2005 until he left the title in 2013. There’s an effort to set up the Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps series as well. I am looking forward to seeing more of our two leads but not sure about the rest.

Green Arrow: Rebirth (Writers: Benjamin Percy Artist: Otto Schmidt)

Of the four Rebirth one-shots, this one felt like the best blend of a fresh style of writing while incorporating classic DC elements. The classic element is front in center in the form of a rekindling of the relationship between Green Arrow and Black Canary. There’s fun banter back and forth between these two and that makes the book. It’s also a done in one story, while the other Rebirth titles are just setting up their core titles.

What’s also interesting is how Green Arrow’s Seattle is fleshed out here. We’re given a very creepy, sinister underworld populated by tree house villages of homeless people and sewer dwelling Nosferatu-like creatures. I’m hoping Percy continues exploring this darker side. I was also unaware that Percy had already been writing Arrow for the last year. This one-shot now has me wanting to go back and explore that year of work.

Holidays (2016, dir. Various)

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Valentine’s Day (written & directed by Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer)

St. Patrick’s Day (written & directed by Gary Shore)

Easter (written & directed by Nicholas McCarthy)

Mother’s Day (written & directed by Sarah Adina Smith)

Father’s Day (written & directed by Anthony Scott Burns)

Halloween (written & directed by Kevin Smith)

Christmas (written & directed by Scott Stewart)

New Year’s Eve (written by Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer; directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer)

These days the horror anthology is quite popular. I’d say their revival started with 2007’s Trick R Treat, though in the low budget independent world they never went away. Some popular recent ones have been The ABCs of Horror 1 & 2, V/H/S 1, 2, & 3, A Christmas Horror Story, and Southbound. You know what they all had in common? They’re mostly awful. You get a good segment here or there, but it’s not a complete collection of great horror. I can see the appeal of this type of movie. In the YouTube age, short form entertainment is in high demand so many viewers probably sit down with the mindset of “If I don’t like this in fifteen minutes I’ll be seeing something else”.

Holidays is another horror anthology that suffers from this problem, and has some of the worst segments I’ve seen in a modern horror anthology. The bookending stories are terrible and in particular Kevin Smith’s contribution is pointless garbage, that he also manages to also shoehorn his untalented daughter into. The concept of Holidays is just that: Holidays. Each horror short is themed after a particular holiday. Lots of potential, eh? Of the eight short films included here there are only three good ones. Those three are really good though. Worth paying money to sit through the five other pieces of crap?….ehhhhh.

Let’s be positive though. We’ll talk about the good stuff.

Easter is from the writer-director of The Pact, a pretty decent horror film from a few years back. He knows how to pace things, he knows what ambiguity is. He takes horror seriously and doesn’t view it as gory comedy, like some others in this collection. Easter goes to some really weird places and it leaves us with lots of questions. On the surface we get a very silly monster, but the things he does and says overcome his silly nature and make him really creepy and unsettling. You’ll think about this one more than most of the others.

Mother’s Day is a little predictable. And it’s the second film in the anthology to deal with an evil pregnancy. St. Patrick’s Day also features an unwanted pregnancy but ends on such a stupid, ridiculous note you’ll want to get your tubes tied (snake with a pompadour, really movie?). Mother’s Day is about a woman who gets pregnant every time she has intercourse and has had two dozen abortions. Her doctor can’t figure out why she is so overly fertile so she sends the woman to an isolated commune for holistic healing. Like I said, the plot is pretty predictable but at least the acting and directing show some skill.

Father’s Day is the best film in the collection. Like seriously, turn off the movie after you watching this one. They get progressively worse. Father’s Day is about a young woman who receives an audio cassette recording from her deceased father. Turns out he didn’t die like mom told her. The recording leads her to the last place she saw him and she retraces his steps. This is actually a horror film. It has character development. It has a plot that we can’t predict and a resolution we don’t see coming. It doesn’t think horror stories are one big bloody joke. There’s no gore. It ends in a really really ambiguous way.

Horror anthologies have a shitty trend of thinking the only way you tell horror stories is to make them into jokes with gore. That’s not scary. Horror should be the opposite of comedy. Comedy is set up and then pay off. Horror should be 90% set up and then most of the time not even give pay off. That’s what makes it horror. You don’t get the clean resolution so it gets stuck in your brain and creeps you out every time you think of it. I recommend those three segments, so if you can somehow find them separately online or can get someone to pay for your rental of Holidays watch them. But skip every other segment in this collection.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016, dir. Dan Trachtenberg)

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Out of nowhere, in March of 2016, J.J. Abrams announced a sequel to Cloverfield had been made in secret. Cloverfield was a found footage movie released in 2008 under similar secretive methods. And I hated the original, mainly because it was yet another found footage movie. It had characters who made stupid decisions that merely happened so that the next plot point was possible. It lacked a meaningful resolution and didn’t even leave things ambiguous enough to think about after the film was over. So, you could say I was cautious about 10 Cloverfield Lane.

10 Cloverfield Lane has incredibly loose ties to the original, and I wouldn’t even call it a sequel, more of a distant relative. It’s not found footage (thank god!). It has characters making intelligent decisions. It has themes and layers of plots and even an ending with some ambiguity. Its story is clearly focused on Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a young woman running from her fear about a relationship who ends up, after a car accident, trapped in a survival bunker. She’s told by the owner of the bunker, Howard (John Goodman) that he rescued her and that outside the bunker there’s been an attack on the entire nation. These claims are backed up by Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.), a contractor who helped build the bunker, that yes, something bad did go down. Claims are made that the air is toxic and everyone is kept locked up inside. But there’s more going on here below the surface.

The film was the first major feature from Dan Trachtenberg. I’ve been following Trachtenberg since way back in 2007 t0 2012 when he was a part of the Totally Rad Show, a web series that reviewed popular media of all kinds and was a sort of inspiration to me. I was very happy with the work our director delivers. Every actor delivers a believable and nuanced performance. The film is full of clever camerawork and pacing, that never comes across as showing off. Everything here is a completely solid piece of tense thrilling film making.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the big star of the show. One thing I look for in actors, to really see how good their performances are, is to watch them when they are not the one talking in a scene, when their job is to react. Winstead gives a perfect emotional performance and has a quite a few scenes, the majority of the third act for instance, where she only gets to emote and react. It reads as very real and honest. John Goodman was given a tricky role, he has to play someone we need to trust and believe while simultaneously being unhinged. Up until the final moments of the film it is impossible not to have an internal debate about what is really going on with his character.

The plot has three very clear levels: what is going with Winstead’s character emotionally, the interpersonal conflicts between the three characters in the bunker, and the larger global situation outside the bunker. All three are developed wonderfully, given just enough that each deserves. Where the original Cloverfield came across as a glorified amusement park ride, this picture knows character development is key so that when the bigger, spectacular elements start happening we actually give a damn what happens to the people on screen. In an age where we have films that end in citywide killfests, it’s refreshing to have a movie approaching the same world ending subject matter in such an isolated, quiet way.

Keanu (2016, dir. Peter Atencio)

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I honestly never thought much good would come out of MadTV. The series debuted when I was 14 and it quickly became that show I watched the first half hour of until SNL came on at 10:30. Key and Peele weren’t in that original line up, they came around by the time I was in college and lost interest in watching any of MadTV. I was a little surprised when Comedy Central announced in 2012 that Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele were getting their own series I was pretty surprised. Not anything against them, I just didn’t think of MadTV as producing anyone or any material that was all that lasting. I was very wrong.

Now that their five season run has wrapped, the duo is trying to bring their distinctive comedy style to the big screen. Their first outing is Keanu, a very strange little film that is deeply inspired by John Wick. Peele plays Rell, fresh off a break up who is encouraged by his friend, Clarence (played by Key) to get himself together. Rell’s relief from grief comes in the form of an adorable kitten he names Keanu. What he doesn’t know is that Keanu has ties to both the Mexican and Los Angeles crime cartels and this send our two protagonists into a comic-ly absurd tribute to action movies.

It is very obvious that both men and the director love movies. Early on, Rell is making a calendar featuring Keanu in iconic film scenes each month. Posters cover walls referencing 1990s action and gangsta films. When Keanu is taken by Cheddar (Method Man) he’s renamed New Jack. Two murderous brothers are featured throughout the film and they harken back to both Boondock Saints and the early work of Robert Rodriguez. However, this is not a parody of those films but more a tribute mixed with the banter of Key and Peele.

The key to the film lies in the interaction between our leads. Key and Peele have such excellent chemistry together that I could sit through a long drawn out dialogue just between them and be perfectly happy. The film even manages briefly to recreate the road trip moments from the television series. They also play with the idea of “blackness” for a large majority of the film. Both men have addressed through their comedy how being biracial was a challenge to them growing up. In Keanu, they must journey into Blip territory (all the people who got kicked out of the Bloods and Crips) to a strip club with a rather unfortunate name. Once inside, they have a conversation about how to talk to the people their and they devolve into movie studio “blackspeak”. So, while tipping their hat to early 1990s crime films they enjoyed they also take time to acknowledge the absurdity of the portrayal of “black thugs” on the screen.

The film does have its lulls and can sometimes feel like a sketch from their series drawn out for too long. The third act gets very messy and lacks clear plot focus. There are a couple character setup to be the villains who fizzle out and the film pulls someone out of left field to serve as the big bad of the climax. Our main characters get satisfying endings, though a romance subplot feels forced onto us but isn’t too terrible. Keanu is a great first outing in feature films for Key and Peele. I think they have a lot of potential, given some more tighter plotting, to produce some very watchable and re-watchable comedies.