Movie Review – The Fits

The Fits (2015, dir. Anna Rose Holmer)

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Toni, an eleven-year-old girl, is very focused and determined when it comes to working out with her brother at the local community center’s boxing gym. She even stays after to help him wash towels, replace water cooler jugs, and get a little extra training. However, she’s recently been intrigued with a competitive girls’ dance team that trains in the larger gym at the community center. Slowly, Toni begins to be torn between these two worlds and witnesses girls on the team seemingly falling ill to strange trance-like seizures.

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PopCult Book Club Announcement #7

A Once-Crowded Sky by Tom King

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He was definitely my favorite comic book writer of the year thanks to Omega Men, The Sheriff of Babylon, Batman, and The Vision. Once I saw he had written a superhero-themed novel I decided to give it a chance.

“King’s story revolves around the only superpowered hero left in the world—the one who stayed behind with his wife when all the others sacrificed themselves to save the world. As a strange new violent terrorism begins destroying parts of cities at random, PenUltimate needs to decide whether he wants to be a hero again…an enjoyable postmodern superhero story.” (Washington City Paper)

2017: My Most Anticipated Films

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Presented in no particular order, with brief commentary

Star Wars Episode VIII (Directed by Rian Johnson) – This is a pretty obvious one. I loved The Force Awakens but am interested to see the new ideas that Johnson has teased. Johnson also has a tremendous track record: Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper. I expect some interesting takes on the criminal elements of the galaxy.

Alien: Covenant (Directed by Ridley Scott) – I was pretty disappointed with Prometheus and I think it goes beyond simply expecting an Alien film. My hope is that of the inconsistencies present in Prometheus have been addressed. The Alien universe has the potential to be a great horror sci-fi landscape again and crossing my fingers that this will do it.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos) – The Lobster was a wonderful film that did fall apart in its second half. Despite that, I really love Lanthimos’ work. Dogtooth remains a powerfully disturbing film that had something to say. My hope is that Lanthimos finds a way to retain his incredibly dry sense of humor and pair it with something a bit tonally different from his previous work.

Mute (Directed by Duncan Jones) – I tend to view 2016’s Warcraft as a weird misstep in an otherwise interesting career. Jones returns to his science fiction roots with this “spiritual” sequel to Moon. Forty years from now in Berlin, a mute bartender (Alexander Skarsgård) searches for the woman he loves and two strange American surgeons (Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux) seem to be tied to her whereabouts.

Blade Runner 2049 (Directed by Denis Villeneuve) – Villeneuve is arguably the best working director we have at the moment. Prisoners. Enemy. Sicario. Arrival. (I haven’t seen Incendies yet). He hasn’t made a bad film. As long as the studio allows him to have the majority of creative control I suspect this sequel will turn out to be one of 2017’s best.

Thor: Ragnarok (Directed by Taika Waititi) – My hope is that Marvel learned some lessons by pushing Edgar Wright out of the Ant-Man film and will allow Waititi to have fun with this film. The strongest aspect of the Marvel films, IMO, is that each franchise has its own tone and style. The news of this film’s connections to the Planet Hulk story arc makes me even more excited for it.

Spider-Man: Homecoming (Directed by Jon Watts) – This is one where the director doesn’t get me too excited, but the incorporation of Spider-Man into the MCU has me expecting great things. Tom Holland demoed his Spider-Man in Civil War and sold me on it. I’m not expecting a film masterpiece but just an enjoyable, comprehensible Spider-Man film.

It’s Only the End of the World and The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (Directed by Xavier Dolan) – I devoured Dolan’s filmography in 2016 and am excited that we have two films coming to American screens in 2017. End of the World pairs the director with some French acting giants (Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard, Lea Seydoux). John F. Donovan will be his first English-language film and has him working with Jessica Chastain among others in the story of the media bringing down a famous actor.

Baby Driver (Directed by Edgar Wright) – Wright is probably the best comedic director we have working right now. Baby Driver will be his second non-UK film and is set in New York City centered around a young man who becomes involved in a bank robbery. This premise in another director’s hands would have me luke warm but I know Wright will deliver something amazing.

Logan (Directed by James Mangold) – The first trailer we’ve seen of this film has me more excited than I expected. I haven’t seen The Wolverine and don’t really feel a need to. But the tone evoked in the Logan trailer has me on board. If the film lives up to the strength of the trailer then we have a very powerful, moving film on our hands.

Annihilation (Directed by Alex Garland) – I have read 2/3 of Jeff VanDeMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy and this has the potential to be a deeply disturbing and visually interesting film. It’s being helmed by Garland who delivered one of 2015’s best with Ex Machina. He definitely knows how to create science fiction cinema that plays with ideas rather than spectacle which is what this story needs.

The Shape of Water (Directed by Guillermo del Toro) – Not much is known about this film except that it’s set during World War II in America. Michael Shannon is in the cast which has me sold, plus Doug Jones is back likely to play some sort of creature. I wasn’t a huge fan of Crimson Peak but del Toro is always an interesting director.

Blossoms (Directed by Wong-Kar Wai) – Wong-Kari Wai is a director who can be frustratingly aloof in his work but always produces something that is hypnotic. This film is based on the novel by Jin Yucheng and tells the story of a hundred every day people living in Shanghai in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. How the director will choose to adapt this work should be fascinating.

Okja (Directed by Bong-Joon Ho) – Most people would probably cite The Host or Snowpiercer as their favorite Bong-Joon Ho work, but his Hitchcock-ain thriller Mother will always be my favorite. This latest flick is billed as an action-adventure about a little girl protecting her giant monster friend from an evil multi-national corporation. Possibly a twist on The Host?

The Trap (Directed by Harmony Korine) – Nashville native Korine delivered one of the strangest and most enjoyable IMO films of 2012, Spring Breakers. This will be him moving towards a more mainstream audience with a very violent, revenge film. The cast includes Idris Elba, Al Pacino, Benicio del Toro and more. 

Under the Silver Lake (Directed by David Robert Mitchell) – It Follows is one of the best horror films to come out in decades and director Mitchell’s next project will be tackling a classic L.A. Noir story. Plot details are sparse but his minimalist tone and strong visuals will be an interesting match with the genre.

The Nightingale (Directed by Jennifer Kent) – Coming off the critical acclaim of The Babadook, Kent takes on Australia’s dark colonial past. Set in Tasmania, the film follows a woman determined to get revenge on a soldier for a terrible act of violence he committed on her family. She enlists an Indigenous tracker to help her and through these characters, the horrors of the British Empire are explored.

The Death of Stalin (Directed by Armando Iannucci) – No one writes political satire as biting and funny as Armando Iannucci. The creator of The Thick of It and Veep adapts a graphic novel about the finals days of Stalin and the chaos of his regime after he passes. If his previous work is any indication this film will be absolutely hilarious and clever.

Nosferatu (Directed by Robert Eggers) – The Witch was one of my favorite films of 2016 and Eggers seemed like a veteran filmmaker. His next project is a remake of the first vampire film. Like with The Witch, I expect a lot of sincere period accuracy that helps immerse us in the world and horror elements that aren’t overt and paced very meticulously.

A Cure for Wellness (Directed by Gore Verbinski) – Verbinski is most known for his work on Pirates of the Caribbean but I always think of him as the director behind films like The Ring and The Weatherman. I suspect this film could be quite a great big budget horror film, a rare thing these days. 

2016: My Favorite Documentaries

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patelsMeet 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.

 

 

lampoonDrunk 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.

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\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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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My Top 10 Favorite Comics I Read in 2016

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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.

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Pop Cult Book Club Review #6: The Visible Filth

The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud (This Is Horror, 2015)

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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

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My 10 Favorite Video Games I Played in 2016

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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.
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Movie Review – Blair Witch

Blair Witch (2016, dir. Adam Wingard)

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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.