Last week, I went to see What We Do In the Shadows.

I don’t know if I loved it the way some people do, but I certainly enjoyed it.

SUMMARY:

Viago, Vladislav, Deacon, and Petyr are all roommates. They’re also all vampires from various eras who haven’t quite adjusted to the current age yet. A documentary crew follows them as they attempt to navigate the complexities of modern life, like chore wheels and Google.

NOTES:

1. If I actually get my lazy ass off the couch to go see something, I figure I should probably write a review of it. But the truth is, I don’t know how much I really have to say about What We Do In the Shadows. It kind of struck me like a good sick movie. You know, when you’re not feeling great and you just want to lie down and watch really silly shit? I feel like this could be a totally good comfort movie. I could marathon it with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Clue, Spaceballs, and — if I was feeling particularly miserable — something more embarrassing, like Homeward Bound or The Chipmunk Adventure.

So far, this movie has received very high praise — people seem ready to hail it as the Funniest Movie of the Year, and to hell with the fact that it’s only March. I did like What We Did In the Shadows, but even as I was watched the movie, I remember thinking, This is funny and all, but I’m not sure it’s the end-all-be-all of parodies. And honestly, I still feel that way — although I will admit that I really enjoyed how the film wrapped up, like, it kind of made the whole movie for me. And I’m willing to believe that I could enjoy it more on repeat viewings..

2. Anyone who’s seen Flight of the Conchords or Eagle vs Shark is probably already familiar with these guys. This was my introduction, however, and it makes me marginally more interested in seeing more of their work. (Only marginally, though. I’m pretty sure there are no vampires in Flight of the Conchords.)

If you’re curious, my favorite vampire is probably Viago (Taika Waititi).

Viago is the fussy dandy of the group who lays towels down before killing his victims, in a not-always-successful effort to keep the furniture clean. He’s kind of weirdly adorable. I particularly loved how he kept awkwardly smiling at the cameras, particularly in the beginning of the movie.

Admittedly, Vladislav is a lot of fun too. I about died when he Vanna Whited his torture chamber. Also, he had the best vampire selfies.

3. What We Do In the Shadows does have a bit of a boy’s club feel to it, unfortunately, but I will give it this much: I like Jackie (Jackie van Beek) well enough, and I like how her story plays out by the end. Jackie is Deacon’s human servant, and I was sort of worried where they were going with her at first. Ultimately, though, it worked for me.

Other humans I enjoyed in this movie: Stu (Stuart Rutherford).

You just can’t help but like Stu. He is the most blandly affable character I think I’ve ever seen, and I’m not sure why he works so well, but he does. Everybody loves Stu!

4. Though I think my favorite people in this movie have to be the werewolves. I won’t say too much about them — there will be no Spoiler Section in this Baby Review — but I thought they were hilarious. This is easily my favorite vampire vs werewolf conflict ever.

5. Finally, the next person who betrays or disappoints me in any way? They will have to suffer the Procession of Shame. And if you’ve seen this movie, you know that’s not something that can just be walked off. The Procession of Shame is serious business.

It’s ridiculous, how much I want to sentence someone to this horrible fate.

QUOTES:

Deacon: “I think we drink virgin blood because it sounds cool.”
Vladislav: I think of it like this: if you were going to eat a sandwich, you would just enjoy it more if you knew no one had fucked it.”

Deacon: “When you are a vampire, you become very sexy.”

Anton: “Hey, don’t swear! What are we?”
Werewolves: “We’re werewolves, not swear-wolves.”

Vladislav: “Stu is the first human friend I’ve had in a long time. With humans, there is the tendency to die.”

Stu: “We can look at her photos, or we can poke her.”
Vladislav: “. . . yes.”

Nick: “I know you turned me into a vampire. Maybe don’t do that to him. He’s a vegetarian. The last thing he’d want to do is eat a live being or eat blood or eat meat.”

Viago: “If you’re going to eat a victim on my nice clean couch, put down some newspaper on the floor, and some towels. It’s not hard to do.”
Vladislav: “We’re vampires. We don’t put down towels.”

Jackie: “If I had a penis, I would have been bitten years ago.”

Vladislav: “You will not eat the camera guy. Maybe one camera guy.”

Viago: “Yeah, some of our clothes are from our victims. You might bite someone and then think, ‘Oooh, these are nice pants’.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Silly and enjoyable. Some of the jokes didn’t land for me, but overall I thought the movie was pretty funny. And I really liked the ending, which was nice. Nothing’s more frustrating than watching a good movie with a bad ending.

MVP:

Taika Waititi

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B+

MORAL:

Can’t we all just get along?

I’ve never read The Maze Runner and I didn’t hear particularly good things about the movie. And yet I watched it anyway and we all know why: Stiles.

The thing is, The Maze Runner actually has a decent amount of potential. Unfortunately, it fumbles that potential pretty hard all throughout the film.

DISCLAIMER:

I’ll hold off on any Big Time Twists until the end, per usual, but there may be MILD SPOILERS throughout the review, primarily for things that happen in the first ten minutes or so.

SUMMARY:

Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) wakes up with no memory, which is probably scary at the best of times. Unfortunately, this is far from the best of times, as he is immediately lifted up into a community of other amnesiac prisoners, all of the male gender, only to discover that his only chance of escape will mean running through a monster-infested maze that completely folds up at night.

NOTES:

1. I’m going to spend the next few thousand words or so criticizing this movie, so let me be clear about this: given the choice between watching The Maze Runner and, say, Red Riding Hood, I’d watch The Maze Runner again in a heartbeat. Some of the scenes are effectively claustrophobic and/or creepy. There are some fun action sequences. I didn’t always know where the story was going, which made it more exciting to watch. (I can’t say that I love where the story went, but still. Occasional suspense was there.) This isn’t a great movie, but at the end of the day, it’s a relatively easy way to spend two hours.

2. Still, it could have been a lot better.

Part of the problem I had with this movie was that I didn’t buy how a lot of the characters behaved. Take the Lost Boys, for instance. (My name, not theirs. Possible alternatives: the Golding Guys, the Conch Kids.) In the beginning, Thomas has a lot of questions about his situation, as you might, only no one will provide any straight answers. Which is fine if the characters have an actual reason to conceal information from Thomas, but as far as I can tell, they have no such motivation; they’re just concealing information from the audience. This leads to dumb moments like this:

Thomas: “So, what’s that giant thing over there?”
Alby: “Yeah, so, we only have three rules. The most important is this: you don’t ever go inside the giant thing.”
Thomas: “Okay, but that doesn’t actually answer my question. Forget it, I’ll just go take a closer look by myself.”
Chuck: “Dude, you can’t go in there.”
Thomas: “Why not? What’s in there?”
Chuck: “I don’t know. I mean, it’s a maze — shit, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that — but for some unspecified reason, only certain people get to go in there, and you’re not one of them. Also, it’s not safe right now.”
Thomas: “That . . . frustratingly non-specific. And I don’t know if I blindly trust you guys anyway, seeing how I’ve known you all for approximately fifteen minutes and you’re refusing to answer even my most basic questions. But fine, I’ll just walk a little closer.”

Thomas pokes around the Maze, acting like he might possibly step inside, despite the super vague warning of doom. Suddenly, Gally (Will Poulter) tackles him from out of nowhere, and the Maze entrance turns into a larger version of that garbage compactor room from Star Wars.

Alby: “You should be grateful. He saved your life.”
Thomas: “Dude, YOU could have done that without all the unnecessary manhandling. All anyone had to say was, ‘Hey, man. This is a maze, and it crunches at nightfall.’ Why is that so difficult? What is WRONG with you people?”

Okay, so Thomas may never have actually said of the sort, but he totally should have. There are a lot of moments like this throughout the beginning of the movie, and they’re supposed to build intrigue, but mostly, they’re just annoying.

3. The bland characters are problematic, too.

I’m aware I’m biased, of course, but I think Dylan O’Brien does what he can with Thomas — he does have a couple of reaction shots I like, if one regrettable chaaarge moment — but ultimately, there’s simply no making this guy interesting. Thomas is just a collection of YA tropes lazily assembled into a lead character. You know, he’s the Savior, the Special, the Chosen One. Only he has none of Buffy’s wit, Katniss’s fire, or Liu Kang’s bicycle kicks. Thomas’s main claim to hero legitimacy (and only actual character trait) is his curiosity. Alby specifically tells Thomas that he’s different from all the other boys, that unlike any of them, he actually asks questions.

And on the surface, there’s nothing wrong with that. Thomas’s instinct to always keep pushing further no matter the costs could be compelling, particularly when put at odds with Gally’s instinct to protect what he’s come to understand as home. Both boys essentially want the same thing — to save the others — but they can’t agree on how to approach it. Thomas wants to save everyone by getting them the hell out, while Gally wants to do it by keeping order, ensuring that no one else dies. What’s cool about this is that both perspectives are totally valid and understandable — or would be, if the writers bothered to give anyone in this movie character depth.

Thomas is bad because his supposedly insatiable, game-changing curiosity just reads like a pretty normal person asking pretty normal questions, which only serves to make all the other Lost Boys look like cowardly morons. But the writers probably fail the hardest with Gally.

You can tell Gally is going to be The Maze Runner’s King Douchebag the moment you meet him, which is unfortunate. The movie would be about sixteen times stronger if Gally was just this normal guy with, like, a personality and everything, who comes to hate Thomas for all the certain death he’s sure the dude represents to his people. Which, yeah, is basically what Gally says — but the problem is he says it long before there’s any real evidence to suggest that Thomas does present a real danger. Gally hates Thomas from the outset, and as his only character trait is assholitis, their entire conflict feels extremely manufactured for Maximum Drama. (To be fair, there is another reason Gally despises Thomas — but it’s pretty lame and unnecessary.)

4. To be clear, I don’t blame Will Poulter for this particular failure. I don’t blame any of the actors, actually; sure, nobody gives an amazing performance, but then again almost every actor is stranded with almost zero to do. I’m generally happy whenever Thomas Brodie-Sangster shows up, but Newt’s primary role in this movie is delivering exposition. Alby (Aml Ameen) and Minho (Ki Hong Lee) are both relatively likable (and yes, cute), but Alby is nearly as tropetastic as Gally, and Minho’s whole character arc basically takes place over the course of five minutes. I didn’t come to this movie expecting phenomenally well written characters or anything, but considering the movie clearly wants me to care about these people, this is some weak ass writing.

5. And I kind of wish we got to see more of the Maze itself.

Mind you, this is a relatively minor complaint, but we do sacrifice some time really exploring the inside of this Maze to focus on all the Lord of the Flies society shit, which would be fine if I BOUGHT any of the LotF society shit, but yeah. See the previous notes. In the meantime, this is a massive, moving, monster-filled maze we have here that represents the biggest obstacle to the boys’ freedom, and I just feel like there are missed opportunities to really make it this fantastic, gargantuan beast. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt to have Thomas actually get lost in it by himself a few minutes.

6. Finally, I feel that I’m left with a lot of questions by the end of the movie. This is somewhat understandable as there’s a sequel coming out later this year, and obviously some of those questions were intentional. But I’m not convinced all of them were. We get this Big Reveal at the end of the movie, right, and roughly a week after seeing it, I’m still like . . . Yeah, I don’t understand how this makes any kind of sense. At all.

I guess I’ll have to check out The Scorch Trials if I want any kind of elucidation. Unfortunately, I’m not Thomas — my curiosity isn’t insatiable, and while I could watch the sequel, I’m not sure I need to know the answers all that badly.

More proof that I will never be your Dystopian Hero.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

The first thing I don’t understand at all: why are there no girls except The One Girl?

Before I get into that, though, let me quickly take you through a rundown of the last twenty minutes: Curious Thomas leads most of the group into the Maze after he’s discovered a way out. Leader Alby is already inevitably dead by this point — I think one of the black characters makes it? — and Gally opts to stay behind with a few other boys. Lots of red shirts are killed on the journey, but the Lost Boys + Wendy finally make it out of the Maze and into some kind of basement. The part where they see an honest-to-god actual EXIT sign? Now, that shit is funny. More of that, please.

Anyway, they start walking through this creepy ass bunker. It’s primarily creepy because there are dead bodies all over it. We’ve seen the bunker before too — sans corpses — in Thomas’s dreams. See, throughout the film, Thomas has been dreaming about his past, and we eventually learn that he and Wendy — actually Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) — used to work for the bad guys! In an amnesia story! I’m shocked!

Yes, my ongoing disappointment with Group Amnesia Movies (or almost any amnesia movie, really) continues. They’re nearly always easy to predict. Protagonists have either voluntarily worked for the villains, or they only seemed like they were working for the villains, when they were actually secret good guys all along — either way, the twist is not surprising. (Weirdly, Thomas and Teresa seem to be do both. I’m assuming we’ll get more explanation in the sequel?) Meanwhile, if anyone else discovers that they were once a bad guy — and it will always be the person you suspect — they will immediately revert to their mustache-twirling villain status. Unlike clear protagonists, amnesiac villains rarely show the capacity for change.

To make that point clearer, let me try applying it to The Maze Runner directly. It’s pretty obvious from the get-go that Thomas and Teresa once worked for the evil company WCKD — pronounced Wicked, which only reminded me of this — but say that had just been what the movie wanted you to think. Well, then, the only other character who could work for WCKD is, of course, the chief antagonist, Gally. Despite the fact that this movie is chock full of amnesiacs, we all know that no one like Newt or Minho or Alby or Chuck will turn out to be secretly evil. Which is mildly disappointing because that actually would have been a surprise. And if Gally had been secretly evil, then he’d only have regained his memories and reverted to Super Evil. He wouldn’t be able to learn anything from the experience, like Thomas.

Anyway, that’s all off point rambling. Back to the story: Wendy and the Lost Boys watch a video where Ava Paige (Patricia Clarkson) explains the Truth About the Maze:  WCKD has put boys through dozens of horrible trials in the hopes of studying their brains to figure out a cure for this whole super terrible plague deal.

Is everything clear now?

No. No, it is not. I have many follow-up questions.

1. How much of that bullshit is actually true? Some of it seems to be, considering that the sky has indeed been scorched, but some of it clearly isn’t, as we’ll find out when Ava Paige turns out to be not so dead after all. I don’t object to the silly idea that the Maze was only THE FIRST TEST, or whatever. (Okay, I don’t object much.) But seriously, folks:

1A: If this has all been about finding the cure . . . I mean, the antidote’s the cure, right? (Oh, I forgot about that. Okay, so the Maze monsters — called Grievers for no particular reason that I can tell — sting people and infect them with this horrible veiny rage disease that’s nowhere near as impressive as the one in 28 Days Later. When Teresa enters the Glade, though, she finds two syringes worth of antidote in her pocket.) So . . . doesn’t WCKD already have what its looking for? Does the antidote not actually work on everybody? Are they testing who it does work on? Or is this antidote/cure just some new and very conveniently timed breakthrough?

2A: More importantly, isn’t this a ridiculously elaborate setup to figuring out how a disease works? Who even thinks of something like that?

Writer Joe: “Say, Writer Susan. Pretend you’re a pathologist and the WORST DISEASE EVER has hit the world. Are you willing to do some seriously unethical things to save the human race?”

Writer Susan: “You mean, like kidnapping people no one would look for, injecting them with this terrible disease, pretend that you’re actually curing them, that kind of thing?”

Writer Joe: “Yeah, just like that! Except I was thinking you’d also wipe all your test subjects’ memories and lift them, one by one and only once a month, into this glade thing right next to this super cool giant maze that would kind of, like, collapse in on itself at night and would totally be teeming with these bitchin’ robot monster guys who would occasionally, but not too often, sting the subjects with said worst disease ever. You know, for science.”

Writer Susan: “Gosh, Writer Joe. I appreciate your enthusiasm and out-of-the-box approach to problem-solving, but doesn’t that seem like a ridiculously expensive waste of time? How many years do you think it would take to make the Maze alone? Where are we getting the billions and billions of dollars we’ll need? Couldn’t that money be better spent on, well, anything?”

Writer Joe: “Now that you mention it . . . no. Definitely not, Writer Susan. Also, only dudes will be allowed in this giant experiment. BROS BEFORE HOS! Er. For science, remember.”

2. Seriously, why are there only boys in this experiment? Does the disease only target men? Are the girls tested somewhere else? Is there a second giant maze in the middle of a desert somewhere with Gale nonsensically shouting that Thomasina deserves to be punished for saving Abby’s life? And if so, why did Teresa end up in this Maze? Did she intentionally follow Thomas of her own accord, or did WCKD throw her in the Glade to punish the boys with her scary vagina? (It seems to be Gally’s theory, anyway.)

3. Why is it important that Teresa, Alby, and Gally are all American? After all, Thomas Brodie-Sangster gets to keep his British accent, and even if The Maze Runner takes place in America — which I’m not yet convinced it needs to — like, immigration is totally a thing that happens. More importantly, unlike Poulter and Ameen, Scodelario just cannot shake her English. (Ameen slips up occasionally, but all in all, he’s not too bad. Poulter’s accent seems fairly solid, although, admittedly, it’s hard not to tune out whenever he talks, as his dialogue is all the same anyway: “Thomas sucks! Girls don’t belong here! Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?”)

After they watch the video, Wendy and the Lost Boys are about to leave when who should suddenly show up but Gally! Why? Who knows? Maybe Gally did a complete 180 and decided he wanted to escape after all? Maybe Gally was like, “I hate these assholes, so I’m going to go kill the hell out of them, but I should really wait until they have a good head start and I have to fend off all the giant monsters by myself?” Whatever, he’s there for one Last Unnecessary Dramatic Showdown, and he’s especially crazy now because he’s been Stung. He tries to shoot Curious Thomas. Minho kills him, but not before the young, doomed Chuck can sacrifice himself by jumping in front of the bullet.

This is kind of sad — one of the best moments in the whole film is when Chuck’s dangling over a ledge or something and angrily snaps, “No shit!” as Thomas unnecessarily reminds him to hold on — but it’s not nearly as sad as the movie wants it to be. Part of the problem is the not-so-subtle foreshadowing, but I could’ve moved past that. My real problem with Chuck dying is that his death feels entirely cheap. I just don’t buy that Gally goes after these guys, not right here in the last two minutes of the movie. The moment is so clearly trying to tug my heart strings that my heart strings downright refuse to budge, even though Dylan O’Brien does his best by breaking down into tears, and like, big, messy tears, not this sole glistening diamond sliding down his cheek or some bullshit. (Which I feel I should at least praise because, as much as I hate this development, I actually do like Thomas’s reaction. It feels rare, when you get honest-to-god sobs out of a male protagonist in Hollywood.)

Immediately after that, these soldier dudes bust in and hastily take the survivors away. We find out that evil Ava Paige is alive after all, and Stage 2 is on like Donkey Kong. And until September, that’s about it.

CONCLUSIONS:

Like I said, I know this has been a pretty negative review, but it’s hardly the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It’s easy enough to watch. There are a few good moments here and there. The bunker with the dead scientists is genuinely creepy. But other than some weird logic issues that I’m not at all certain the sequels will fix for me, I’m just really disappointed by the lack of character depth in a movie that clearly wants to pretend its all about character. The movie as a whole feels a bit disingenuous, especially when it comes to Gally. And it’s disappointing, too, because I can so easily see how this could’ve been a much stronger film.

MVP:

You know, I just can’t give this to anyone. I don’t blame the actors, but the material really doesn’t give anyone anything to work with. No one stands out at all.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B-

MORAL:

You don’t have to be special to look special. Just surround yourself with really useless people, and you’ll seem amazing.

Also, if the acronym for your agency doesn’t spell out a thematically poignant and/or ironic word, you’re just not trying hard enough.

Splatterfest 2015 has come and gone. Junk food was procured and devoured, bad horror movies were rented and voted upon. The movie my friends chose to watch: The Beast Must Die, a 1974 horror whodunnit starring Grand Moff Tarkin and Albus Dumbledore.

The premise is fantastic, just full of cheesy good potential. There’s even a Werewolf Break! (It may be the best thing I’ve ever seen.) Unfortunately, the rest of the film . . . well, the rest of the film leaves a lot to be desired.

DISCLAIMER:

This movie is old like disco, not to mention actively terrible. SPOILERS will commence immediately.

SUMMARY:

Tom (Calvin Lockhart) is the Best Hunter Ever. He has bagged every type of prey out there, all except one: the werewolf! To satisfy this manly need, Tom researches a handful of people who could be werewolves and invites them all to his schmancy dinner party, intent on discovering the truth and killing the beast once and for all.

Naturally, shit hits the fan. Or it kind of taps the fan, anyway, after gliding there at a stupidly slow and leisurely pace.

NOTES:

1. The Beast Must Die is the quintessential example of a film that deserves to be remade: great concept, terrible finished product. Almost any remake at all would have to be an improvement. I think it might actually be a kind of mathematical impossibility, making a worse film than the original. And the good news is that some the fixes would be absurdly easy.

For instance: while making a film, try to remember that time is money, specifically your audience’s money, and your audience will not be happy if they spent any of their own for a ten minute opening scene that could easily have been two minutes instead.

Like so many before it, The Beast Must Die is a hapless victim of 70’s pacing. This is apparent throughout the entire film, which unfortunately stretches the story out over three nights instead of just taking place in a single evening, but at no point is the pacing more egregiously terrible than in the opening act, when Tom, our supposed first victim, attempts to escape what appears to be paramilitary forces in the forest.

Now, it turns out that Tom isn’t a victim, of course. He’s the millionaire testing out his new Werewolf Security Defense System, a system that includes a whole bunch of armed dudes, a whole bunch of awkwardly placed cameras, and an honest to God attack helicopter. This isn’t a bad reveal at all, except that it feels like the scene itself goes on for about 80 YEARS. Tom is caught and let go by the guards not once, not twice, but three times. He’s running for his life in weirdly random giant boots, at the kind of pace you might expect from a small child casually frolicking after butterflies. We also zoom in on the “hidden” cameras at least five times. The whole thing is awkward and slow as hell.

2. The car chase scene is honestly almost as bad.

So, the fake-out chase scene only ends when the armed dudes dramatically shoot the hell out of Tom in front of his party guests. The guests are appropriately horrified by this, although the fact that they run toward the gunmen instead of from them is a little hard to swallow. Regardless, Tom the Asshole reveals that he’s not dead. He also reveals his top secret purpose in inviting them all to his mansion. Understandably, they’re perturbed.

No one is more perturbed than Jan (Michael Gambon), who decides to hightail it out of there. Frankly, I think everyone should try to hightail it out of there, including Tom’s wife, Caroline (Marlene Clark), who didn’t know about her husband’s awful plans and, also, has this charming exchange with him:

Caroline: “Tom, what if the werewolf turns out to be me?”
Tom (with a finger gun): “POW!”

Leave him, honey. Leave him now.

Anyway, Jan takes off like any normal person would after his dinner host has calmly announced his intention to murder one of the guests. Tom, naturally, hops in a car to give chase. This filler scene lasts roughly three minutes but mostly seems to consist of three or shots over and over again, with Tom constantly taking supposed shortcuts that don’t seem all that short and really don’t manage to close the gap at all. Jan basically just gives up.

Once they’re stopped, Tom the Asshole tells Jan, “You’re trying to escape!” Jan does not immediately respond by saying, “Dude, I’m not a prisoner,” or “Hell yes, I’m trying to escape your violently delusional behavior!” And honestly, I’m not sure why. He just meekly goes back to the mansion. Meanwhile, this whole chase scene could have been an excellent opportunity for the dinner party guests to sneak away (“That right there? Exactly the kind of diversion we could have used.”) but they chose not to, presumably because Rich People Food is worth the risk of being horribly murdered? Seriously, guys. Either your host is crazy and liable to kill you, or your host is not crazy, and the guy passing you the salt is liable to kill you, by tearing out your throat and eating it as an appetizer. This is commonly referred to as a ‘no-win, let’s get the holy fuck out of here’ scenario.

3. I suppose I could potentially buy that the dinner guests would agree to stay one night. Dr. Lundgren (Peter Cushing), the werewolf expert desperate to get his hands on an actual live werewolf certainly would — but the longer this party goes on for, the harder it is for me to buy anybody else’s reactions.

It’s also just a terrible idea to stretch out this mystery into a three-night affair because it thins out all the inherent tension from the setup. The whole mystery, really, is pretty poorly plotted. For one thing, I completely forgot that one of the suspects even existed until he was dead. That’s kind of bad. For another, there’s really very little in the way of actual evidence or clues.

Now, I want to be upfront with you about this: it’s entirely possible that I missed some of the clues, partially because it was hard to hear the characters talking even with the volume at 70, and partially because my friends and I sort of gave up and chatted through a lot of the film. (Socially unacceptable, I know, but it really is such an insanely dull movie.) Still, there is precious little mystery to this whodunnit; rather, every suspect is introduced with a thirty-second bit of exposition on why they might be the werewolf (Jan is barred from some European towns where violent murders happened to coincide with his visits; Paul Foote once went to prison for eating human flesh, etc.) and sometimes the guests pass around this silver candle to see if anyone might die from it. (On the second night, Davina, I believe, suggests they play the “Candle Game” again, because nothing says riveting party game like a group of people sitting in a circle, literally just passing around a candle to see if anyone turns into a werewolf. Actually, I kind of want to do that for my birthday now.) That’s about as much time as The Beast Must Die really bothers to spend on secrets and suspicious behavior.

What would make this story far more effective is to cut all the worthless introductory exposition (as well as most of the film) and center the entire movie around dinner, where each of the guests slowly begin learning clues about one another as they (and we) try to figure out who the werewolf is. Actually, now that I think about it, why isn’t this movie shaped more like a How to Host a Murder party game? You guys ever play any of those? They’re the best! Each player is a murder suspect given a certain amount of info at the beginning, like the information you can publicly share, along with some of your dirty secrets you want to keep hidden. You’re also given clues that you reveal at specific times during the game, clues that will implicate everyone else in the murder.

The Beast Must Die could totally work that structure, with everyone interrogating everyone else, slowly revealing clues about one another until the very end . . . when dessert is served and a werewolf is revealed! It’d be like My Dinner With Andre, only there’d be a werewolf mystery in it! (Note: Clearly, I’ve never actually seen My Dinner With Andre, just Community’s tribute episode for it. Still, I feel pretty safe assuming the lack of werewolves.)

Obviously, The Beast Must Die would still be a ludicrous story, but it could be such a fun ludicrous story. It could be silly, engaging, and completely enjoyable. I would rewrite the hell out of this movie.

4. Although. It’s probably worth mentioning that if you’re hosting a dinner party in order to find out which of your guests is a werewolf, maybe it would behoove you not to tell them? Like, who does that? “By the way, I think one of you is a supernatural beast that I plan to murder before the evening is through, but I’m sure that won’t influence your behavior. Please carry on like nothing is wrong. Possibly I’ve put the werewolf among you on Red Alert, but I’m certain he won’t try to act even less like a werewolf than he normally would. Because I’m a hunter. I know these things.”

5. The werewolf’s reaction to all this, by the way, is to try and covertly kill Tom. He does a pretty poor job at it, but I’ll forgive him for now because accurately throwing an axe is probably harder than it looks and, presumably, he’s used to killing people with his teeth.

Tom the Asshole, however, has no such excuse.

Remember how I said in the summary that Tom was the Best Hunter Ever? Well, that summary was a blatant lie. Tom is an embarrassment to hunters. Tom is a FailHunter. He misses on multiple attempts to kill the wolf, even managing to blow up a helicopter in his attempt to bag the werewolf who — and this can’t possibly be stressed enough — is a practically a stationary target right in front of him. I’m sure he’s trying not to hit the pilot who’s busy been chomped on, but it’s like Tom goes out of his way to shoot his machine gun around the wolf. It is the most laughable thing you may ever see on film. There were a lot of jokes going around in this apartment, like the safest place for the werewolf to be is directly in Tom’s line of sight, or that if you want Tom to hit something, just dress up like a helicopter and wait.

Tom Newcliffe, clearly, is the Gilderoy Lockhart of hunters.

6. It should be said, though, that Tom actually does manage to intentionally kill four things in this movie, and two of them are even werewolves. Let’s go over them one by one.

Tom the Asshole’s First Victim: His Wife’s Dog

Yup. Sorry, animal lovers, but if you’re the kind of person who can’t make it through a movie where a dog dies, this isn’t the film for you. (Of course, I’m not sure who it’s a film for, exactly. Masochists and snarky movie reviewers, maybe?) Caroline’s dog valiantly attacks the werewolf, (temporarily) saving her life, but the dog himself is badly wounded and Tom, shockingly, manages to put it out of its misery without killing anyone else in the process.

Tom the Asshole’s Second Victim: His Wife

Alas, Caroline — the woman who has the serious misfortune to be married to this loser, not to mention the only person who can actually dress in this movie — is a werewolf. She’s not from the start, though; in this film’s one and only clever move, Caroline cuts her hand earlier at dinner, then gets infected with werewolf blood when she’s trying to help her dog. It’s a surprisingly well-handled twist, actually. Especially because while I considered early-on that there might be two werewolves, I never thought that one of those werewolves wouldn’t become one until after the story started. (Well, until Caroline’s reveal, anyway, since Caroline couldn’t have been the original werewolf.)

Caroline’s downfall comes when Tom the Asshole decides to take the Candle Game to the next level and makes everyone put a silver bullet in their mouth. Once Caroline fails this test, Tom kills her, despite the fact that Tom is almost entirely the reason Caroline turned into a werewolf in the first place. Seriously, who invites a bunch of suspected werewolves into their house anyway? Wouldn’t you send away your family before doing that, or at least ask their permission to have supernatural sleepovers? Tom, you’re not only the worst hunter; you’re the worst everything.

Tom the Asshole’s Third Victim: Jan the Werewolf

So, it turns out that Dumbledore is the werewolf! I’d like to say I called this, but I didn’t. (I think only Kirsten accurately guessed Michael Gambon.) I guessed Peter Cushing was the bad guy solely because he’s Peter Cushing, and I wasn’t giving the movie much credit, for what I feel by now should be pretty obvious reasons. I was less sure about Cushing’s guilt by the time the Werewolf Break came around, but I stuck with him anyway, mostly because there’s nothing more annoying than correctly guessing the killer and then changing your mind at the last minute.

Tom knows that Caroline can’t be the only werewolf because she was in the barn with him when the first werewolf attack attacked. He decides, for God knows what reason, that obvious red herring Paul Foote (Tom Chadbon) is our villain, but realizes his mistake when Foote is found dead.

Tom finally manages to bag the werewolf — three nights, five people, one dog, and one helicopter later — and we reveal that it was Jan all along.

Tom’s the Asshole’s Fourth Victim: Tom the Asshole

Alas! Tom was bitten in his final struggle with the werewolf and decides to kill himself rather than become a creature of the full moon. The full moon, I imagine, says, “Good fucking riddance, Tom. I didn’t want you anyway. Sweet dreams, ya dick.”

7. The best part of the movie, as previously mentioned, is THE WEREWOLF BREAK.

All movies should have werewolf breaks. Even if there are no actual werewolves in the movie.

What happens is this: the narrator — who has had no previous narration thus far — stops the entire film to give the audience thirty seconds to guess who the werewolf is. It is, in a word, hilarious. It is, in more words, the cheekiest, most unapologetic gimmick I’ve ever seen in my life, and I adore it. If the rest of the movie could be so brazenly ridiculous, it would be a lot more enjoyable to watch.

8. If you’re a fan of werewolf movies, you must know that werewolf makeup/special effects are pretty routinely terrible. The Beast Must Die didn’t even have the budget to splurge on awful makeup, though, so they just used a German Shepherd instead.

Honestly, I’ve seen worse.

9. The night-for-day shots, though, are intensely terrible. And you know this is bad because I don’t generally notice shit like that. It’s so light out in one scene that my first thought, honestly? “Wait, did we skip forward several hours with no transition and now it’s suddenly dawn, cause . . . no, no, it’s still supposed to be the middle of the night. Wow, that’s actually worse.”

10. Finally, this movie is not only a victim of 70’s pacing: it is also a victim of 70’s music and fashion.

The music . . . well, just listen to it. It’s, like, super funk. Werewolf Funk! That’s a cover band name if I ever heard one. Meanwhile, the 70’s fashion, man. It’s something special. And to be fair, Caroline really does have some incredible outfits. I’m particularly fond of her white dress and matching head wrap. (I’ve totally got a thing for head wraps.)

But everyone else? Not so much. Davina wears one downright horrifying dress, but it’s Tom who really shines here. First we have a Disco Dining Shirt . . .

. . . obviously spectacular, shortly followed by his Sleeping/Hunting outfit:

This one isn’t so much the outfit itself, but how he he puts it on, definitively, like, “Okay, I’m in my Badass Jacket and I’m ready to go some kick Werewolf Ass!” And then he just curls up in a chair and goes to sleep until his security associate, Pavel, wakes to tell him about possible werewolf action. It’s very weird. (I haven’t really talked about Pavel, but that’s okay. He dies too. Actually, he dies and gets his eye eaten. Poor dude.)

Tom also primarily wears black throughout the film until the last day, when he wears white and kills himself to stop from turning into a werewolf. Meanwhile, Caroline primarily wears white throughout the film until the last day, when she wears black and is killed because she turned into a werewolf. I feel, though I’m not sure, that there may be symbolism here.

CONCLUSIONS:

Well. It could have been fun. Unfortunately, it’s mostly just terrible due to the extremely dull pacing and, also, Calvin Lockhart’s acting. Not that anyone’s masterful in this, but most of Lockhart’s line deliveries are just excruciating, and since he has the majority of the lines . . . yeah, it goes poorly.

MVP:

Um . . . Peter Cushing, maybe? His primary role is selling exposition, which is hard even when you’re not being asked to explain how lymph nodes are vital in creating a werewolf, or something.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

D

MORAL:

If a man hires you because he wants better protection from werewolves, don’t take the job. If your host invites you to dinner because he thinks one of you is a werewolf and plans to kill you, make a coordinated effort to escape this lunatic together. If your husband invites people over to your house with the express purpose of killing one of them for fear they’re a werewolf, join the coordinated effort to escape and hire a divorce lawyer the moment you’re safe. If you’re a helicopter, sorry. You will inevitably blow up.

A side effect of falling hard for any particular fandom means that you will spend far too much of your time investigating any and all avenues of it. I fall in and out of love with fandoms the way most people fall in and out of love with, well, other people, and right now I am head over heels for anything to do with The Force Awakens. I even read a Star Wars novel, and I haven’t done that in probably 20 years.

Thus along with the Disney Princess Movie Challenge of 2016, I have also begun the great Star Wars Rewatch (that, presumably, everyone else did last year BEFORE The Force Awakens came out). That means I had to square my shoulders, face my fears, and watch a film I had not seen in a long time: Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace.

. . . yeah, it’s not great. There are definitely things I’m going to make fun of. Like, a lot of things. So many things. That being said, I’m not entirely convinced The Phantom Menace is quite the “involuntary twitching, brains leaking from ears, weeping blood, oh God, the horror, THE HORROR” experience people say it is, either.

DISCLAIMER:

We’re marking this one as a blasphemy, kids, since I didn’t despise The Phantom Menace with every fiber of my being like I’m obviously supposed to. (I won’t pretend I’m particularly kind to it, because I’m not. But I do actually try to be fair, especially since there are aspects of the film that I do enjoy.) Also, there are SPOILERS for all of the Star Wars movies except The Force Awakens.

SUMMARY:

Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his padawan, a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), are tasked to help negotiate a peace between the greedy Trade Federation and the Naboo. When that pretty much immediately fails, the two Jedi Knights must protect Naboo’s Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), but of course complications immediately arise, like broken hyperdrives, manipulative senators, and the first appearance of Baby Darth Vader (Jake Lloyd).

NOTES:

1. First things first: let’s talk about me.

I grew up on the original Star Wars trilogy as a kid, mostly when it used to play over and over on USA. I doubt I watched the movies in order. Probably in pieces, which is how I watched the majority of five seasons of BTVS, too, before we FINALLY got the channel that aired the actual show. There’s a more than decent chance that I couldn’t have differentiated one movie plot from the next for a long time and just considered it all one long film (much the way I still think of The Belgariad by David Eddings as being one massive book instead of five normal sized ones). And if I had to try and pick one that I liked the best, well, I’m not sure if it would even have been one of the original trilogy. I may very well have picked the TV movie Ewoks: The Battle for Endor instead, which I know is almost certainly an appalling thing to say, but I liked the Ewoks as a kid and it had a little girl as the main character, so, yeah. If I got to choose what we rented, we rented that.

Look, I’m not proud of myself, okay? I’m just trying to be honest here.

My point is this: I always liked Star Wars, but I didn’t love it, not as a kid, anyway. I didn’t run around the house pretending to be a Jedi. I didn’t constantly dress up as Princess Leia. (I think I might have once because I vaguely remember trying to figure out how to do Cinnamon Bun Hair? But I wouldn’t have called her my hero or anything.) And we didn’t have any Star Wars toys at all. I did read a couple of Star Wars novels and enjoyed them, but that’s almost certainly because my sister read them and I basically just read whatever she did for years. Not to mention, I didn’t fully embrace my inner geek until after high school, and while I always loved watching movies, I didn’t get super passionately analytical and fannish about them until roughly college, which is also about the time I really started figuring out what I liked and didn’t like in stories.

So, The Phantom Menace? I saw it well before I became a diehard nerd: I was thirteen at the time, and the lady I semi-regularly babysat for took Mekaela and me out to see it. (I really don’t remember why. But it was nice of her.) I watched the movie and I thought it was, you know, okay.

This is the first time I’ve watched The Phantom Menace all the way through since 1999, and while I’m going to take way more words to say it, my basic impressions have not entirely changed.

2. I keep changing my mind about how I want to approach this review. Maybe the easiest way to do it would be semi-chronologically?

Wait, we’re talking about trades routes and taxation? This is already putting me to sleep.

One of my biggest problems with this movie is pacing. The Phantom Menace is two hours and sixteen minutes long, but it actually feels considerably longer, alternating between spending too long in certain places and not nearly long enough in others. (Tatooine, for instance. For the love of Christ, save us from Tatooine.) And while it starts with an action sequence . . . I’m not particularly into it at all, and I’m not quite sure why. Is it because the Federation dudes are kind of annoying? Is it because the droids don’t ever feel even a little bit intimidating? Is it because the stakes just never feel terribly high, even though they should? Or is it just because I can’t concentrate on the story when I so desperately want to leap into the screen and cut off Ewan McGregor’s terrible little ponytail that doesn’t suit him at all? (Seriously, I could deal with the braid, but the braid and the tiny ponytail? No.) The mystery may never be solved.

3. Also, here’s something I think we should all acknowledge before we go any further: Qui-Gon Jinn is kind of a dick.

He’s a little condescending to Padmé while they’re on Tatooine, but his assholery really shines when it comes to Jar Jar. And I know, I know: we all hate Jar Jar. I’m not going to argue with you on that; in fact, we’ll get to the many problems with Jar Jar and the Gungans in the very next note. But Qui-Gon is a dick to this guy without much cause, like, pretty much immediately. Consider this:

Here you are, just chilling on your home planet, maybe picking some flowers or doing something else relatively innocuous, when all of a sudden an army of droids, a gigantic ship, falling trees, a bunch of huge, terrified wildlife, and a dude in a robe come running directly at you. The best thing to do, obviously, is turn tail and run yourself, but be honest: have you really never frozen in a situation where freezing was the worst thing to do? If you haven’t, be quiet; no one likes you and your perfect stress responses, anyway.

Anyway, so you freeze up, freaking out for fairly legitimate reasons, and the dude in the robe runs straight into you. You basically cling to him, terrified, because there’s not much other option at this point, and you both fall down, barely surviving being killed by the ship that passes just overhead. Obviously, you could have handled this better, and some irritation on the dude’s part isn’t entirely unreasonable, so when you express your gratitude and he responds with, “You almost got us killed,” okay, fine, that’s fair. “Are you brainless?” does seem like a harsh follow-up, though.

You are not brainless, so you remind him that you speak (in case he didn’t catch that before). And he says, “The ability to speak does not make you intelligent,” and okay, that’s it, that’s fucked up. Like, who says that to someone thirty seconds after you meet them? Especially if the person you’re talking to actually does have significantly lower intelligence, as Jar Jar pretty clearly does in this movie. Isn’t that kind of like going up to someone with a cognitive disability and saying, “Wow, so you’re retarded.” It’s pretty awful. At best, Qui-Gon is an elitist and an occasionally insensitive shit. At worst, he’s just a big bully.

It should also be said that Obi-Wan, too, is pretty much a dick. Hard to know if he was always this way or just learned under Qui-Gon’s terrible tutelage, but yeah. His first reaction upon seeing Jar Jar: “What’s this?” Not “Who is this?” or “What’s going on?” but “What’s this?” Mind you, Jar Jar is standing right there, but Obi-Wan ignores him entirely to ask Qui-Gon, and QG, in a dry, long-suffering tone, responds, “A local.” (Qui-Gon’s suffering, mind you, has been going on for roughly 25 seconds.)

And later on Tatooine, when Qui-Gon says he’s going back for unfinished business (picking up Anakin, although I’m completely unclear as to why Anakin didn’t just come along in the first place), Obi-Wan says, “Why do I sense we’ve picked up another pathetic life form?”

You know, I’ve got this manager at work, Tom, who likes to make passionate arguments in the Empire’s defense, and while I really hate to credit Tom with anything because some of his movie opinions are just terrible (hi Tom!!!), I’m starting to slightly see his point of view here because, based on this movie, the Jedi Knights are basically snobby aristocratic bastards with glowing phallus-shaped weapons to fully symbolize their dickery.

4. And then there’s Jar Jar. Oh Jar Jar.

I’m not really going to get into whether I think Jar Jar (Ahmed Best) is a racist stereotype or not. I feel like there are other people who are far more qualified to talk about that, and have. (Including Best himself.) I do, however, find him incredibly cartoonish and annoying, not quite to the point of madness, exactly, but my fingers may or may not have been curling inwards like talons.

I get that he’s supposed to be comic relief. I get it, but I hate it, like I generally hate all bumbling characters whose lack of intelligence and usefulness are, for some reason, supposed to be funny. Jar Jar feels very forced to me, like George Lucas really wanted to create a character who everyone would find Lovable and Endearing, presumably because people love nothing more than a hysterically inept sidekick? Obviously, Lucas rather wildly missed the mark here. In some ways, Jar Jar kind of reminds me of Neelix from Star: Trek Voyager. (Although, IMO, Jar Jar is much, much worse.) Both often feel more like mascots than actual characters, and the thing is, no one actually likes mascots. The best part of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is when Ace beats up the giant bird man.

5. It doesn’t help that we only really meet one other Gungan in this whole movie: Boss Nass. And despite the fact that he is voiced by the superb Brian Blessed . . . yeah, Boss Nass is pretty annoying, too.

Yes, yes, technically we see tons of Gungans, and there is one other Gungan guy with lines towards the end, not that I remember much about him. But for meaningful characters, it’s pretty much Jar Jar and Boss Nass, and Jar Jar is, at best, an overgrown child; Boss Nass, meanwhile, is proud and weak-minded and more full of bluster than anything else. It’s disappointing primarily because I want to be interested in the cultural rift between the Gungans and the Naboo; these are wildly different, segregated societies that obviously share a bitter history: the Gungans seem convinced that the Naboo look down on them, and the Naboo . . . I don’t know, maybe do look down on them? Their shared history is so poorly developed that it’s honestly hard to be sure.

Two disparate sides that have to come together to defeat a common enemy is classic storytelling and can be very engaging, but it works best when you understand where both sides are coming from, when you focus on how their history informs their complicated dynamic. Time should be spent developing both of these cultures so that, when they finally do agree to come together, it’s a Big Deal. Instead, The Phantom Menace decides to spend this time on podracing and introducing deeply uncomfortable UST between Baby Darth Vader and the Space Angel who’s twice his age. (Okay, not really, but we’ll come back to Anakin and Amidala’s peculiar relationship later.) As such, the whole conflict and resolution between the Naboo and the Gungans basically breaks down like this:

The Gungans: “The Naboo need help, and we’re not helping them because they’re snobby and mean to us sometimes, maybe.”

The Naboo: “The Gungans are obviously super annoying and useless (as evidenced by Jar Jar Binks and Boss Nass, the only representatives of their people) but we really need their help, so let’s just appeal to their vanity and pride. That way, we don’t all die.”

The Gungans: “Wow, you’re bowing to us now? Ha ha, now we’re talking!”

I said one of my biggest problems with The Phantom Menace was pacing; another one is seriously wasted potential. The Star Wars films have always been, essentially, action/adventure movies in space, but that doesn’t mean you can’t allot some time to flesh out relevant backstory and important character moments. (We’ll be coming back to this when I eventually get around to reviewing A New Hope, where a certain princess watches her entire planet blow up and doesn’t get even a second of screentime to process or grieve.) And almost everything I like or could potentially like about this story is either underdeveloped or weighed down by some pretty weak writing. Which is unfortunate because the plot of the story itself isn’t actually that bad.

6. The one thing I do love about the Gungans, though, is how awesome their hidden city is.

Isn’t that gorgeous? Seriously, I adore this design. I have many, many problems with this movie, but I generally enjoy the look of it. (Except the CGI, but I’m magnanimously trying not to hold that against a movie that came out in 1999.) Especially when it comes to costuming and makeup, which are of course superb.

7. We must now stop everything to talk about the many amazing looks of Queen Amidala.

Oh my God, I just want to be her. (Well, you know. Without the bullshit romance and tragic ending.)

I can’t help but feel like the fashion in SF movies lately has been a little lacking. Or maybe not that it’s lacking, exactly, just that it’s shifted in style: gritty apocalypses and dystopian futures are really in right now, so I feel like a lot of the costumes I’ve seen have been, you know, torn, dirty clothes and leather jackets and such. (And if they’re particularly fashionable apocalypses, maybe a mohawk.) The Hunger Games movies did have some spectacularly ridiculous costumes (mostly worn by Effie), but the majority of them were so lurid as to be a bit absurd. Which was fine, I mean, they were intentionally silly and I enjoyed them (especially the butterfly dress, ZOMG), but I’d really love to see more space operas with wildly elaborate fashion like this, fashion that’s meant to be taken a little more seriously. (Did Jupiter Ascending have fantastic costumes? I haven’t seen it yet, and admittedly, I suspect if you’re taking that movie seriously, you’re doing it wrong. But it does seem like the kind of story that demands elaborate costuming.)

I’m actually planning to cosplay somebody else from The Phantom Menace at Dragon Con, but if I had to pick one Amidala outfit . . . man, I don’t even know. I think it’s between Amidala’s black dress of fashionable mourning and the dress she wears to the Senate. Either way, I’d look great. And either way, my head would probably weigh a hundred pounds, but hell, it’d be worth it.

8. It also needs to be said: Queen Amidala and her handmaidens are so much more badass than I remember them being.

(Note: I’m mostly going to refer to Natalie Portman’s character as Amidala in this review, except for when she’s on Tatooine. Then I’ll call her Padmé. And maybe occasionally Padmé Amidala. Just to be confusing.)

I really love Natalie Portman’s performance as Amidala. I like how severe she is, how capable and commanding. She isn’t flawless, of course–she gets manipulated by the Emperor Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who I prefer to think of as Senator Smirk–but I really buy that moment when she’s at the Senate and is like, “Uh, no, I’m not just going to wait for you guys to dawdle while my people are being slaughtered. Kick this guy out!” (Although, does it seem ridiculously easy to anyone else, deposing the High Chancellor? One new queen is like, “This dude’s weak!” and everyone else is instantly onboard? I can’t help but feel like the Senate must constantly be changing leaders, if this is how they run things.)

Also, I love, love, love that Amidala is the one who’s responsible for coming up with the battle strategy on Naboo. And that the two asshole Jedi, so in tune with the ways and secrets of the universe, never catch onto her deception, not until she chooses to come forward. And then she and her handmaidens all take up arms when invading the palace. It’s pretty awesome.

I do wish that Sabé (the perfectly cast Keira Knightley, above left) had a little more to do as her own character, if only because there’s such interesting potential in her relationship with Amidala. Sabé is both decoy and bodyguard, and she has to be able to communicate subtly and effectively enough with Amidala that she can issue her Queen’s commands without ever giving up the truth about their identities. There’s just so much material to work with there; it drives me a little crazy that Star Wars–a universe in which men seem to make up primarily 99.7% of the population–finally had a set-up where two female characters could have had their own relationship/dynamic/subplot, only to not do shit with it, in this or any other movie. (Sabé disappears from the story after this film, presumably because in the sequel, Amidala leaves office/abdicates and becomes Padmé forever. I find it wholly disappointing. I never thought in a million years I’d be tempted to write The Phantom Menace fanfiction, but yeah. I kind of want the Spectacularly Fashionable and Dangerous Adventures of Amidala and Sabé, like, right now.)

As far as Padmé goes in this movie . . . you know, she’s okay, but she doesn’t have that much to really do. Amidala has this presence, you know, and she’s doing important things and has a vital role in moving the story along. By contrast, Padmé on Tatooine is just kind of along for the ride. She isn’t particularly annoying (yet–I know the worst is coming in Attack of the Clones), but there’s nothing very exciting about her, either; she doesn’t add much to that part of the story and really is only around so she can meet her future husband, Anakin. Which is awkward because he’s a child and Padmé kind of comes off like his glorified babysitter.

9. Shall we now talk about Baby Darth Vader?

So, Jake Lloyd himself is . . . okay. I mean, the kid’s, what, eight or nine years old? I try not to be too mean to child actors because, you know, most of us don’t spring from the womb as genius prodigies, and the amount of hate this kid must have felt from the world before he even hit double digits is insane. I feel bad for Ahmed Best, too, (sure, I can’t stand Jar Jar, but I wouldn’t want anyone but the current presidential candidates from the Republican party to suffer the level of vitriol Jar Jar gets) but at the very least, he was an adult. Most of us have to hit puberty before we deal with the kind of shit Jake Lloyd did.

Still, Anakin himself has serious problems.

It seems like Lloyd is playing him more or less the way he’s been directed to, but Anakin comes across as very, very young. Like he’s supposed to be nine, but I would have guessed six or seven, and a young six or seven at that, like, this is a spectacularly innocent little boy. For Christ’s sake, his first line is to ask a pretty girl if she’s an angel. Ugh. The running around yelling, “Yipeeeeee!” also kills me dead, not in the good way.

And unfortunately, Anakin just gets worse and worse for me as the story goes on, like initially I rolled my eyes a little, sure, but by the time we got to Baby Darth Vader accidentally launching into space and taking down the Big Evil Ship, I was like, “Okay, no. Just no.”

Cause sure. This seems credible.

Look, the Star Wars movies have always been relatively family friendly (or as family friendly as stories can be when whole planets get destroyed and evil fathers torture their daughters and amputate their sons), but having this child whoopsie-daisy his way into saving the day is just dumb. It doesn’t feel particularly Star Wars at all, actually; it feels like something you’d see in a movie meant for little kids and only little kids, the kind parents sit through and think, “Jesus, 99% of the time procreating was totally worth it, but this is the other 1%, and my brain is BLEEDING FROM DUMB.” And the adult fighter pilots are especially unconvincing as they’re forced to cheer in unison with Anakin’s delighted whooping. “Golly gee willikers,” they might as well say. “Where did that amazing hero pilot come from? Boy I’m glad he’s around to save our skins and render us fully grown and trained fighter pilots useless and obsolete!”

In a movie plagued with considerable flaws, Baby Darth Vader blowing up the droid control ship might actually have been my least favorite scene.

10. But I got a little off track here. Let’s go back to Tatooine and discuss how maybe making Darth Vader a precocious second-grader was, all in all, not the best idea.

Darth Vader pretty regularly makes Best Villain lists, and we all know why: because James Earl Jones is a god, an evil and wonderful god. And bad guy origin stories can be very powerful, depending on their execution; at their best, they are tragic and relatable and make you think how we’re all one wrong choice away from being what we despise. But at the same time, it’s helpful to find a thread of what we loved about the villain in their younger selves, some hint of who or what they could become. Maybe if Anakin was more like, I don’t know, a charming street kid who was basically on the side of good but had a hint of darkness to him, some sense of danger, an anger that went beyond a childish pout when he didn’t get what he wanted. Maybe if he actually seemed anything like a real child with kindness and meanness and mischief, instead of that super innocent wonder child that you really only find in Hollywood. Anakin turning out to be Darth Vader . . . it’s a little like finding out that Wesley Crusher from TNG turned out to be, I don’t know, Khan Noonien Singh or something. I mean, who would even buy it?

Be honest. “I’m with Starfleet. We don’t lie!” is about on par with “Are you an angel?” and “Now, this is podracing!” isn’t it?

11. And holy shit, how, HOW did I forget that Baby Darth Vader is actually Evil Jesus?

“I can’t explain what happened.” Neither can we, Shmi. Neither can we.

As explained in the Spoiler Section of my Force Awakens review, family and genetics in the Star Wars universe have always been desperately weird. So I wasn’t surprised when Qui-Gon Jinn, Rebel Jedi and Elitist Dick Machine, asked Shmi, “Who was his father?” Because of course the most special thing about Anakin had to come from his totally absent father. But that all takes on a whole other level of holy shit WTF when you find out that Anakin didn’t HAVE a father. Yes. The Force is Anakin’s father. The Force went ahead and impregnated Shmi without her knowledge or consent.

You know, there might be a decent essay in how the real villain of the Star Wars universe is the Force itself.

The best thing I can say about this whole what-the-fuckery is that virgin conception generally doesn’t lead to villains, like here you are expecting Jesus and instead you got the Antichrist. (Even if he is, unfortunately, redeemed six movies down the road.) In a way, it’s kind of hilarious. You’ve got to like a story where the prophecy about the Chosen One bringing balance to the Force only brings balance in the most homicidal fashion possible. (Unless you believe that Luke, instead, was the Chosen One. I’ve seen both interpretations.) Then again, a story about a misleading prophecy would work a lot better if we didn’t already know the end of the tale, right? I mean, I know dramatic irony’s a thing and all, but still. It seems ill-conceived because seriously. Virgin baby? Come on. That’s so intensely corny and unnecessary.

And here I had thought that the lasting power of Darth Vader’s spunk couldn’t get any funnier. Boy, was I wrong. I didn’t actually realize that Anakin was only half-human in the first place. (And by the time he dies, even less so. Anakin is maybe 1/4 human, 1/4 robot, and 1/2 God. Does that make Luke and Leia Skywalker 1/4 God? Ooh, neat.)

12. So. The less said about the midi-chlorians, the better, right?

Probably. But that’s not really how I do things on this blog, so: there are ways to mix science and spiritualism that are really very interesting. That’s not what The Phantom Menace accomplishes here. More than anything, it feels like an incredibly random, dumb, and unnecessary retcon, like weren’t we all okay when The Force was just an independent living energy between the spaces of things, not something you could connect to through a bunch of microscopic creatures who hang out inside of you, occasionally whispering the secrets of the universe or impregnating you without asking your opinion on the matter?

Even 13-year-old and considerably less critical Carlie thought that the midi-chlorians were bullshit. (It probably doesn’t help that anytime I think of microscopic creatures chilling inside somebody, I think of A Wind in the Door, which automatically makes me picture midi-chlorians as dragon-cherubim things. Actually, that probably makes the midi-chlorians far cooler than they have any right to be.)

13. It occurs to me that I still haven’t really talked about our future young lovers, Padmé and Anakin, yet.

In the interest of being fair:

A. According to this awesomely helpful chart, Padmé is only five years older than Anakin. She’s 14, whereas he is nine.

B. There is a huge bullshit double standard to take into account here. It’s generally considered normal for men to be ten, twenty, or sometimes even thirty years older than their female love interests, but when women are older than men, it’s suddenly considered creepy and weird.

C. In no time during this movie does Padmé actually look at Anakin like, “You know, that kid could be fuckable when he grows up.” Because that would be horrifying on levels unknown even to this movie.

On the other hand:

Natalie Portman was 18 when this movie came out and, unfortunately, looks 18. Of course, this isn’t uncommon in Hollywood, and in fact you see far bigger gaps between actors’ ages and their characters’ ages all the time. But not only does Padmé not look like a child, she doesn’t act anything like a child, either. She is a queen trying to save her people from annihilation. There are no scenes when she’s wishing she could be free to do what she wants despite her family’s wishes, for example, or thinking about boys, or playing with other children. Padmé Amidala is an adult character played by an adult actress, and there is a squick factor there when you know the story is going to eventually skew romantic.

I’ve already said how much I love that Padmé Amidala is a badass. I don’t have any particular need to see her secretly desire childish things, and if she were to suddenly start playing with Anakin (like, they played tag or got into a food fight or something), I wouldn’t buy it for a second because her people are supposed to be in this huge peril and she would seem like a pretty awful queen. But it would help me see the basis for a love story because, right now, I don’t feel like Padmé treats Anakin like a friend or equal. She looks at him like a child, almost like a charge, and there’s just something creepy about the idea of a babysitter hooking up with one of the kids she used to watch ten years down the road.

I’m not saying it’s an impossible love story, but I am saying it’s a difficult one and, from what I remember, Attack of the Clones falls down so hard executing it that it might very well be one of the most unconvincing romances of all time.

14. I forgot to mention this before when I brought up Shmi Skywalker, but can we all agree that Qui-Gon Jinn should have just brought her along when they left Tatooine? I mean, come on. I’m sure the Jedi are all Lawful Good and everything–which is probably why they’re almost entirely wiped out later, the losers–but who the hell is going to argue that rescuing a slave along with freeing her son was the morally wrong thing to do? And are we really concerned that Watto would somehow have been able to stop Qui-Gon, a powerful Jedi, from taking her? For that matter, this story would have moved along a lot faster if Qui-Gon and co. had just stolen the parts they needed early on. Again, I’m sure thievery would make them the bad guys and whatever, but it’s worth pointing out that Qui-Gon clearly has no problem trying to brainwash people into doing whatever he wants, which is a super creepy Jedi ability when you think about it. If Qui-Gon was willing to force Watto to accept useless Republic credits, is that really any better than just sneaking in and stealing what he needs in the middle of the night?

But seriously, it drives me nuts that they leave Shmi behind, and it drives me even more nuts that no one goes back for her. I mean, Anakin can’t yet, sure. He’s a baby. What the hell could he do? And Qui-Gon’s dead, which, as far as excuses go, is a pretty good one. But if Anakin couldn’t convince Obi-Wan to help out (which, unfortunately, is likely), then why the hell doesn’t Padmé do something about it?

Meanwhile, Baby Darth Vader asks Shmi, “Will I ever see you again?” Shmi asks back, “What does your heart tell you?”

“Nothing good, lady. Nothing good.”

15. I forgot to check exactly how many minutes we spend on Tatooine, but it feels like far, far too long, especially considering how little actually happens there. You can basically describe Tatooine in a single sentence: the good guys can’t afford the parts they need to repair their ship until they meet young Anakin, a slave incredibly strong in the Force, who wins them a bunch of money during a dangerous pod race.

The amount of time we spend here must be at least thirty minutes longer than the amount of time we spend at Coruscant, which is weird because getting Amidala to the Senate has been our heroes’ primary objective since almost the beginning, and they spend, what, ten minutes there? Damn it, I wish I had remembered to check. There’s a serious possibility that we spent more time watching the pod race (roughly twelve minutes) than we did at the Senate.

Like I said before, the pacing of this movie seems seriously off to me. We bring in a bunch of ridiculous and unnecessary stuff (like the prophecy, the godawful midi-chlorians), introduce too many callbacks (like, R2-D2 is fine but C-3PO feels like a huge stretch), spend a ton of time on comic relief shit that doesn’t even work (especially in the Big Battle, like, this is not the time to have Jar Jar comically failing at war the way he fails at everything in life), and we neither focus on any of the stuff that I would personally find interesting (culture clashes between the Naboo and the Gungans, the Republic’s apparent total disinterest in the awful things that happen outside of it), nor bother to ever elevate the stakes, like, everyone says that the people of Naboo are in mortal peril, but I’ve got to tell you: I never actually feel it.

I do enjoy how The Phantom Menace sets up Senator Palpatine, but for the most part there doesn’t feel like there’s much drive to this story, and that’s a problem in any movie but especially an action/adventure that’s longer than two hours.

16. Speaking of things that are said but not shown: I really wish that whenever Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan talk about feeling a disturbance in the Force or the like, you actually got to see them experiencing those feelings. I mean, I don’t want to see the Force or anything (I can only imagine the CGI horror), but, like, it’s just dialogue. My sister and I were talking, and she brought up a good point about how when Luke’s speaking to Leia telepathically in The Empire Strikes Back, we get a reaction shot where you can see that she’s hearing/feeling his distress call. It’s not even that big of a moment, but we’ve both always liked it, and I feel like The Phantom Menace needs something like that occasionally, some kind of camera movement or facial expression or anything besides just words. As it is, it kind of feels like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan sense things not because of the Force but because it’s in the script. (On the upside, these are excellent moments to take a shot if you’re playing The Phantom Menace drinking game, as I obviously need to do someday.)

17. Just because I haven’t mentioned it yet: I don’t particularly like Obi-Wan as a character in this movie, but I think Ewan McGregor himself is pretty great.

I have always loved how much you can hear Alec Guinness’s particular speech patterns in McGregor’s voice. And he’s believably emotional towards the end when Qui-Gon Jinn bites the big one.

18. Which brings us to maybe the very best thing about this movie: Darth Maul and the “Duel of the Fates.”

First, Darth Maul (Ray Park, with Peter Serafinowicz dubbing his dialogue) is such a superb, iconic villain. (Although, to be honest, I kind of forgot he had lines at all. I just thought he was the silent badass type.) His makeup is great. His acrobatic fighting style is awesome. He has the best lightsaber in the Star Wars universe, and he only blinks once, when he’s cut in half. Darth Maul is a vivid and fun character in what is, mostly, a fairly lackluster story, and I’m happy to discover that I don’t enjoy him any less now than I did 17 years ago. (Ugh, I feel so old. Turning 30, man. It’s all downhill from here.)

It’s also worth pointing out that the end battle between Darth Maul, Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon is easily one of my favorite fight scenes of all time. I love the choreography. I love the forcefields. I love that Obi-Wan keeps up the glorious tradition of characters in Star Wars nearly falling to their doom. (Twice, even.) And holy Christ, do I love the music. I fully plan to buy this song as a reward for finishing this ridiculously long review. And then, when I’m at work, I’ll put my earbuds in and walk the long, empty corridors of the hospital with my arms outstretched at my sides, striding towards fate and ready to kick its ass.

19. I find it interesting that Qui-Gon actually leaves behind a dead body. He doesn’t disappear the way Yoda and Obi-Wan do. He doesn’t fall into the darkness the way bisected Darth Maul or The Emperor does. He just gets stabbed, and his body is burned. For that matter, I don’t think his ghost ever pops up the way Jedi ghosts like to do. (I’m not sure about that, as it’s been forever since I’ve seen Attack of the Clones, and I haven’t actually watched Revenge of the Sith. But I get the feeling he doesn’t return.) It’s just interesting.

20. Finally, FINALLY, I will leave you with a small collection of even more random notes:

A. According to Wookipedia, Darth Maul somehow survived being cut in half, and I’m here to tell you: I reject this bullshit. I love this dude. He is supremely awesome. But he got cut in half and he is forever dead. Sorry, guys.

B. Yoda looks . . . really weird in this. He hasn’t gone full CGI yet, so presumably they changed to a considerably inferior puppet? Or the old puppet, like, eroded with time or something? I don’t really know what’s up with that, but I don’t like it.

C. Hey, it’s Mace Windu!

I don’t have so much to say about Mace. I just like Samuel L. Jackson, and it’s cool to see a black Jedi. Actually, to The Phantom Menace’s credit, I think this movie improves on the prior films’ roles for PoC and women. There are two black characters who have names and lines and everything. We’ve also got more than one woman with actual dialogue. We even have a woman fighter pilot who I forgot about, although since she’s outgunned and outflown by an eight-year-old child, I’m not sure how competent she really is.

It’s not, like, amazing, and certainly women of color don’t get much, unfortunately, but it’s still progress. (Or was back in 1999.)

D. More and more I’m convinced that the Jedi were kind of incompetent assholes. They think Anakin might be dangerous so they choose not to teach him, presumably believing that it would be safer if the kid with the ridiculous amount of power at his fingertips doesn’t get trained to safely use it? Yeah, that makes sense. Like, I know things turn out pretty poorly, but I don’t think that’s because Anakin is taught the ways of the Jedi. I think it’s because nobody saved his fucking mother.

I feel like I should say, in case Tom is actually reading this, I’m still not swung to the Dark Side of the Force. Blowing up whole planets is kind of a turn-off. But wherever the Morally Gray Side of the Force is, that’s where I wanna go. (Personally, I think that’s totally where Leia belongs. And Leia, clearly, is the best.)

E. Quick question: is there a deleted scene on Tatooine to explain why Qui-Gon and Anakin are suddenly running across the desert? Like, Darth Maul’s appearance comes off as super abrupt to everyone else, right?

F. Finally, it’s deeply important to mention that Baby Darth Vader pulls off the stupid padawan haircut much better than Obi-Wan ever did.

Oh, kid. You are blandly and cheesily written, but I suspect I will miss you by the time I get through the next movie. I am not looking forward to watching Attack of the Clones at all.

QUOTES:

Jar Jar: “Gungans no liken outsiders, so don’t expect a warm welcome.”
Obi-Wan: “Oh, don’t worry. This hasn’t been our day for warm welcomes.”

Ki-Adi-Mundi: “Your thoughts dwell on your mother.”
Anakin: “I miss her.”
Yoda: “Afraid to lose her I think, hmmm?”
Anakin: “What has that got to do with anything?”

Qui-Gon Jinn: “There’s always a bigger fish.”

Qui-Gon Jinn: “We’re Ambassadors for the Supreme Chancellor.”
Sio Bibble: “Your negotiations seem to have failed, Ambassador.”

Queen Amidala: “I will not defer. I’ve come before you to resolve this attack on our sovereignty now. I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee.”

Palpatine: “And you, young Skywalker, we shall watch your career with great interest.”

Obi-Wan: “You were right about one thing, master. The negotiations were short.”

SUMMARY:

I think the most frustrating thing about the story is all the unrealized potential. It’s not a deeply compelling movie, but it’s relatively watchable. It could just be so, SO much better than it is. Taking out the virgin birth, the midi-chlorians, Anakin’s fighter pilot sequence, and Jar Jar would be a big step in the right direction.

MVP:

Natalie Portman. But Ray Park is a close second place.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C

MORAL:

Er. We should do all we can to free slaves. You know. So long as they’re useful to us, anyway.

Also, the Jedi are dicks.

I’ve been excited about Arrival for months and had hoped to see the movie shortly after it premiered, but plans, being plans, naturally fell through. So Mekaela and I decided to watch it on Thanksgiving instead because, you know. First contact, and all that jazz.

I liked Arrival–it’s well-crafted and interesting–but, being the disappointment to the SF/F community that I so often am, I can’t quite say that I loved it like everyone else seems to.

SUMMARY:

Twelve alien spaceships land in twelve different countries on Earth. Louise (Amy Adams) is a linguist who is called upon by the US government in an effort to communicate with the aliens in Montana. Ian (Jeremy Renner), a physicist, also helps. Like, once. He’s helpful once.

NOTES:

1. There’s a lot I want to say about Arrival that I can’t, at least, not until the Spoiler Section. So instead, we’ll start with how roughly 90% of all the reviews I’ve read have made the point of explaining that this isn’t your typical shoot ’em up, laser-filled, alien invasion story. A representative example from Vogue:

        Arrival is one of the very best Hollywood movies this year, but it’s not remotely what you expect it to be. When you think of films about visitors from outer space, you probably conjure up images of the White House blowing up or goopy, big-teeth aliens jumping out of people’s bellies.

And I’m like . . . um, no. I mean, sure, sometimes, but it’s not all Independence Day and Alien, like, Close Encounters of the Third Kind anyone? Come on, reviewer, did you not see the same trailer I saw? Like, what about that preview screams goopy aliens and Roland Emmerich levels of destruction porn? When I saw that trailer, the first thing I thought was–okay, the first thing I thought was “OOOOH, alien languages,” but the second thing I thought was “so, this is the spiritual successor to The Day The Earth Stood Still, yes?” I didn’t believe for a moment that the aliens had come to blow up buildings and/or eat us.

And, hey, to be fair, maybe this reviewer didn’t see any trailers. I don’t know how that works; perhaps the majority of movie critics only saw the word “aliens” before sitting down for their early screening. But that’s kind of frustrating too, because that makes me feel like these critics just assume every SF movie is a shoot ’em up space flick, and that leaves me feeling pretty cranky. Because one, it’s so ridiculously not true, and two, I feel like it holds all science fiction at kind of a low bar, which gets condescending quick, like if a grown-up were to enthusiastically congratulate a child for adding 2+2 when the kid has already long since mastered long division. You know, I don’t wanna hear people telling me Arrival is great, you know, “for a science fiction movie.” Take that shit and shove it. (This assumption also seems to suggest that shoot ’em space movies can’t be intelligent at the same time, which is another annoyance for a different day.)

Of course, Arrival was also loved by all kinds of SF nerds, who described the film in similar ways: mind-blowing, heartbreaking, best movie of the year, etc. So the gulf between my mild reaction to the film and what feels like Everyone Else on the Planet’s wildly jubilant reaction to the film can’t be entirely explained away by non-nerd hyperbole alone. Though I wish it could. I’m critical by nature–it’s just my way–but I’m also fully capable of SQUEE and I genuinely like liking stuff. And I did like this one, just, nowhere near as much as most people, apparently. Which means getting to walk the tricky line between being critical and being defensive. Let me strap on my balance shoes.

2. Here’s something I really did enjoy: all the linguistics shit.

The reason I was so interested in seeing this movie wasn’t because it starred Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner (although that was a plus) or because it was based on a novella written by Ted Chiang (which I still haven’t read, since we’re putting all our Failure to the SF/F Community cards on the table today). It was, as I mentioned before, because I find the idea of alien languages fascinating, how they sound (if they sound), how they’re structured (do they have grammatical gender? What about gendered pronouns–and, for that matter, do they have genders and/or pronouns at all), are they built upon a shared understanding of specific narratives and imagery (DARMOK AND JALAD AT TANAGRA!) Alien languages are especially exciting in first contact stories, when there’s a mutual struggle for understanding and such a high probability of mistakes and mistranslation, so yeah, in this regard, Arrival is totally my jam. I was super interested in all of this, although I couldn’t tell you how realistic any of it was, as I am very much not a linguist. (Though I have friends who are! Robyn, if you read this review, I expect you to tell me your thoughts on this, and I care not that you’ve probably already had this discussion with everyone you’ve ever met, for I am, obviously, the most important person here.)

My only problem with the language stuff is the huge step we seem to skip in the middle. Like, obviously we’re not going to go over every bit of the communication process, not if we want to keep this movie under two hours (which, yes, we absolutely do), but for a movie that burns at rather a slow pace, man, we certainly rushed through the Learning Curve Montage, like, holy shit, our heroes practically have a pocket sized alien dictionary now, and I’m just like how? Again, I didn’t need to see Louise learn the meaning of every symbol, but I feel like we should have gotten to see the discovery of at least one or two of them, you know? Like, weapon, perhaps. Maybe we can see how the hell Louise translated a circle-y symbol thing into “weapon.”

Though I guess I should just be happy that no one translated anything through the Magic Power of Wind Knowledge.

3. The acting, at least by Amy Adams, is also phenomenal.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with the rest of the cast. Jeremy Renner is totally fine as Ian; it’s just that the role asks so very little of him. The same goes with Forest Whitaker, which is presumably why he attempts whatever random accent he’s going for. (I couldn’t say whether it’s a good accent or a bad one; I just kept noticing it because I knew that wasn’t his actual accent, and there didn’t seem to be any story-reason to have one at all, unless it’s a detail from the original novella.) And I actually like Tzi Ma quite a bit; he just doesn’t have a particularly large part in the movie, unfortunately.

Amy Adams, meanwhile, might be looking at a Best Actress nod, and admittedly, Amy Adams feels like she could be the next Meryl Streep, who sometimes seems to get Oscar nods just for rolling out of bed. Regardless, it’s a great performance. Adams is especially effective at conveying her increasingly distraught emotional state without constantly breaking down in melodramatic sobs, which I appreciated. She ranges between grief and joy effortlessly, and it’s her excellent performance that gives this movie heart. In the Spoiler Section I’ll attempt to analyze why I wasn’t as emotionally affected by this story as most everyone else, but what I can say here is that anything I did feel was almost certainly because of Amy Adams’s considerable talent.

4. Arrival has some wonderfully lovely cinematography.

It’s a beautifully shot film with some great design elements: I really liked the spaceships, as well as the aliens themselves. And the scene where Louise is boarding the alien structure for the first time is just awesome, like, the way the gravity shifts were done . . . brilliant. It really does a wonderful job putting the audience in Louise’s perspective.

5. Finally, I meant what I said in the summary: Ian strikes me as a little useless.

In some ways this doesn’t bother me, like, Louise is the real hero of this story, and that’s just fine. But the way Ian seems to frame it, both of them are giving equally important contributions, working together, the only two people in the whole military camp who have a clue what’s happening . . . and I’m like, I’m sorry, Ian, have you been doing something other than holding an iPad this whole time? I must have missed it. (Thankfully, he eventually does figure out something. Still, it seems to take an awfully long time.)

I have much more to say about Ian, his somewhat shaky narrative purpose, and the film as a whole, but unfortunately I can’t get into that without Spoilers. So let’s just get right to it, shall we?

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

Two things happen at the beginning of Arrival:

1. Louise’s daughter, Hannah, dies.

Cancer, naturally. Which isn’t to say that cancer isn’t awful because it absolutely is, and we’ve all lost at least one person–if not more–to it, haven’t we? It certainly seems that way most days. So, seriously, Fuck Cancer. But if aliens learned our history and culture from watching movies, you’d have to forgive them for thinking that cancer was the only fatal disease in the world. Hell, sometimes I think humans forget that too. More Americans (sorry, I don’t have global stats) die from sepsis than prostate cancer, breast cancer, and AIDS combined, but it’s pretty rare you see anyone dying from sepsis in a movie, at least not in movies that take place in industrialized countries in the modern day. You might see someone die of “infection” in a movie that takes place in the 1800’s or something, but rarely in the age of antibiotics, and almost never is it actually called “sepsis.” Not to mention, so many of these cancer deaths aren’t even about battling cancer itself: I think Hollywood just likes killing characters that way because a bald head and a hospital gown is such easy shorthand. You know, tragedy delivered. No exposition required.

2. As Hannah dies, Louise narrates a little about time, about beginnings and endings and that sort of thing, which is how I knew that this movie would have some kind of time twist . . . because, seriously, you don’t have an opener like that if you’re not going to play around with time travel or the story’s narrative order or something. I didn’t know exactly what the twist would be, although I’ll admit that I should probably have figured it out faster than I did. (I got sort of hung up on the idea that maybe the alien language dealt specifically with memory, that the key to understanding their language had to do with finding the context in your own past.) But yeah, something tricky with time was definitely afoot.

This is what was afoot:

That first scene we see of Hannah dying? That takes place in the future. She hasn’t been born when the aliens land because Louise and Ian don’t meet until then, and Ian, it turns out, is Hannah’s father. All of Louise’s supposed flashbacks to Hannah throughout the movie are actually flash-forwards. And it turns out that the aliens have come to Earth to give us the gift of their language, which allows those who understand it to also fully visualize time, which means forget trying to learn French from Duolingo; you learn this language and you can see the motherfucking future.

Also, it’s Louise’s glimpses into time that allow her to save the day, so to speak. General Shang (Tzi Ma) of China interprets the aliens’ message of “use weapon” as a threat and plans to attack them, with multiple other countries likely to follow suit. (Some American soldiers have already taken matters into their own hands and set off a bomb, killing Abbott, one of the aliens.) But Louise sees herself talking to General Shang in the future at some fancy diplomatic party, and he tells her the words that she needs to say to him in the present to make him stand down. When he does, the other countries also back down and begin talking to one another again. (In their paranoia, they’ve stopped communicating.) And thus the gift of the alien timey-wimey language is not lost.

Okay. There’s a lot to unpack here, and I have many, MANY thoughts. Let’s try to tackle them one at a time.

A. The idea of a language that can essentially open up time is just . . . cool. It strikes me as more of an artistic idea, rather than a realistic one, but I don’t care about that in the slightest. It’s just totally fascinating. ALL THE AWESOME ALIEN LANGUAGE STUFF.

B. I should’ve probably known that Ian was Hannah’s father earlier than I did.

Up till a certain point, there’s been no mention of a father at all; then, in one flash forward, Louise says something about Hannah’s dad being gone (apologies, I can’t remember the exact line) and I feel like that should have been the moment. Mostly, though, I was annoyed because I thought Arrival was just awkwardly trying to explain away Louise’s single mother status, and I was like, Why? She can just be a single mother; unless it’s relevant to the story, I don’t need to know a single thing about this guy/sperm donor. We don’t need a mean ex or tragic dead husband or anything like that. I do not require a justification or explanation for single parenthood.

But of course it is relevant to the story, something I figured out as soon as Louise tells Hannah in a different flash-forward that if she has a science question, she should go ask her father about it. Because, you know. Ian is very prominently a scientist. Like it’s one of the only things I know about him as a character. I’m a little surprised he doesn’t just wear a shirt that says SCIENTIST on it all the time. And, in fact, he’s about the only scientist character in the whole movie, (well, depending on how you define the study of linguistics–there seems to be some general confusion/dissent, but either way, it’s not like Louise can be the father too), not to mention that she barely talks to anybody but Jeremy Renner in this movie. Forest Whitaker, occasionally. So, yeah, it’s not a huge deductive leap to realize that Ian is the Unseen Daddy.

And once I realized that, I realized that every scene we’d had of Hannah so far (up to and including the first one with her dying) was actually taking place in the future, which meant that learning the alien language was giving Louise the ability to perceive time in a non-linear fashion. I assumed all this was pretty obvious, but if you missed it here (and hey, everyone has those days), then I figured you’d sure as hell get it when Costello (the other alien) tells Louise point blank that she is, in fact, seeing the future.

Despite this, the movie will absolutely refuse to tell us that Ian’s the father until almost the very last seconds, like it’s some kind of Big Reveal and not something I figured out roughly 45 minutes prior. They even, like, blur his face or give him a shadowy outline or whatever, and I’m just like, “Dudes, no. It’s Jeremy Renner. We all knows it’s Jeremy Renner. What are you even doing right now?”

C. Also, it’s gotta be said: Ian and Louise’s relationship is kinda bullshit.

Now when I say bullshit, what I really mean in this case is non-existent. Neither Louise nor Ian do anything in this entire movie that makes me think “couple” or “potential couple.” They really don’t seem to have any kind of romantic attraction or sexual chemistry between them . . . but he’s a guy, and she’s a girl, and we all know how this story goes, right?

Honestly, though, this could have worked for me. After all, I never saw this movie as an attempt to tell some kind of grand love story, and even if it was, this is the very beginning of their relationship, like, maybe Ian and Louise just fell into bed together after the aliens went away because, you know, ALIENS and intensity and extreme experiences and whatnot, and the actual romance part came later. I don’t think a smidgeon of romantic or sexual chemistry prior to that point would have gone amiss, but I could have easily forgiven it.

Except just as the aliens depart, Ian says this line: “You know what surprised me most? It wasn’t meeting them. It was meeting you.”

Nope. Uh-uh. That line is hot garbage. You do NOT get to say, ‘Baby, aliens were neat, but meeting you was a miracle’ unless you have some serious, serious foundation for that line. Cause, c’mon now. I’m sure Louise is a nice enough person and she’s obviously super intelligent and all that, but is she really more wondrous than aliens? ALIENS?! Jeremy Renner said that line, and I made an involuntary gagging sound in theater. Then I felt bad because what if this supposedly romantic bullshit was working for someone else, so I faked a few coughs and cleared my throat, pretending I was gagging for non-schmoopy dialogue related reasons, just in case I was ruining the mood for nearby audience members.

But seriously, guys, no. This is crap.

(Also, here’s to hoping against every fucking hope in the universe that this line wasn’t in Ted Chiang’s original story, because there’s a level of blasphemy I’m not actually looking to achieve.)

D. And while we’re on the subject of Louise and Ian, I absolutely take issue with some of their shitty off-screen decisions.

So, at some point after Hannah is born but before she gets sick, Louise tells Ian that their kid is going to die tragically young, and more to the point, that Louise always knew this, even before she agreed to have a baby. Now, it should be said that we don’t get to see this scene in question, so there’s very possibly context we’re missing here, like maybe Ian found out somehow, or Louise blurted the truth accidentally while drinking or something. I don’t know. But the way I took this upon watching was that Louise decided, for whatever reason, that she needed to tell Ian about the choice she made, and this seems like a blatantly horrible thing to do.

Like, I don’t mind that Louise chooses to have Hannah. (More on that in a later note.) But either you tell your partner before you have the baby so that you’re both on a level playing field when it comes to having all the facts before making such a Big Decision, or you never tell him, ever. I mean, why would you even do something like that? Of course Ian’s going to look at his daughter differently; of course he’s going to see a countdown clock hanging over her head. Whether you agree or not that Louise made the right choice, I think it’s entirely understandable that Ian thinks she made the wrong one.

That all being said.

Ian leaving Louise is understandable. But Ian also seems to entirely abandon Hannah too; as far as I can tell, he’s basically just gone, absent from several important moments, most tellingly, when Hannah dies. And that, that is unforgivable bullshit. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it would be to know that you were going to outlive your child, but to just take off, to punish her for having a terminal illness because you can’t face it?

Fuck you, Ian. That puts you as a prime contender for Chief Asshat for 2016.

And see, it’s shit like this that keeps me from feeling the warm fuzzy optimism I keep hearing from people on Twitter who loved this movie.

E. About that: as far as I can tell, there are two primary reason that people might find Arrival to be a particularly optimistic or inspiring movie.

E1. The story ends, more or less, with several nations cooperating with one another, giving the lovely but somewhat vague implication that this cooperation will continue on into the future and help achieve world peace and unity and all that jazz.

E2. The story ends with Louise choosing to have Hannah, basically deciding that love lost is better than never having love at all.

As to E1 . . . I mean, I can absolutely see the appeal of such a message, especially with the state of the world what it is today, certainly with the horrifyingly ass-backwards direction my own country is currently headed. These are frightening times, and I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing a few more optimistic SF stories painting brighter futures myself . . .

. . . but I can’t help but feel that this doesn’t actually get the attention it deserves in the movie, like, this feels very much like a back burner moral to me. There’s an implication of future unity, I guess, but if I had to give my opinion on the thesis of the film, it’s definitely E2, not E1. This almost certainly isn’t helped by the fact that, in a way, it doesn’t feel like the characters had to work particularly hard for that unity. I mean, I really enjoy the scene where Louise talks to General Shang at the diplomatic party, like, it’s a fun scene, and strongly reminded me of Inception for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on–but at the end of the day, humanity comes together because Louise says a handful of words to a Chinese general. That’s about it. I don’t get any real sense of people from different countries finding common ground or . . . I don’t know, I’m having a really hard time articulating why this doesn’t totally work for me. I mean, none of it’s bad. I just don’t feel particularly inspired by it, either.

Now, as far as E2 goes and love lost and all . . .

I mean, I get it, and that’s a decent enough moral. It’s nice to see this moral in a non-romantic context, for once. I don’t think Louise’s choice was selfish, and I do get the idea that it’s ultimately about accepting pain and loss as an inevitable consequence of love and joy, that she’d rather have her daughter in her life for a limited time rather than entirely erasing her from existence . . . but for me, I wouldn’t call that particularly uplifting. Emotional, sure–primarily because Amy Adams acts the hell out of it, not because of anything I think is inherent in the script. But I wasn’t terribly inspired, and I wasn’t really heartbroken, and–despite how many words I’ve now put into this review–I didn’t spend that much time after the movie obsessing about it the way I do with stories that really hit me. It didn’t even make me cry, and really, it’s not like that takes all that much. You know what made me tear up the other day? Practical Magic. I was appalled at myself. (I do so love that movie, though.)

Ultimately, I’m not sure why this story isn’t doing as much for me emotionally as it is for other people. Maybe it’s because there’s some niggling ambiguity on how much of this is her choice? The very structure of the story, particularly with the Fancy Party Scene, really seems to suggest a future more determined by fate than by choice . . . like I guess Louise could have chosen to not tell General Shang his wife’s dying words, but if she had, what happens to the future she’s already seen? Does it just disappear? Does she forget it? Does she see a new future? Because the thing is, it sort of seems like everything that happens, past or present, has in a sense already happened. Her glimpses of the future seem very pre-determined to me.

Unless Louise is getting glimpses of only possible futures, of course, something I’m usually in favor of . . . but here it doesn’t quite feel right, like, Louise is experiencing her timeline in a non-linear fashion, sure, but I never got the sense that she’s seeing multiple branches of the way her timeline could play out, probably because the audience only gets to see one possible future. Unless I missed something, of course. I suppose that’s possible, but so far as I recall, it’s not like Louise sees two possible futures and picks the one with her child in it. She doesn’t appear to see different paths and forks in the road so much as How It’s Going Down.

But the word “choice” is very specifically used, and if Louise didn’t have a choice–if she was just fated to have Hannah with Ian no matter what–like, that completely wipes out E2 as a moral. Because that message is entirely dependent upon free will; it doesn’t really work to “choose love” or “choose life” if you don’t actually have choices. Considering I see E2 as the film’s driving thesis, the idea of a pre-determined fate doesn’t really work for me at all, even though it seems to make the most sense by examining the actual logical events of the story. (I feel similarly about the theory I’ve seen once or twice that Louise has Hannah to make sure she doesn’t fuck up the timeline, like it’s a necessary sacrifice for the Greater Good. You could argue that, I guess, but I don’t see a lot of actual evidence in Arrival for it, and again, wipes out E2 and replaces it with a moral that’s really not touched upon at all. I guess the whole ‘I did it because I saw it happen’ reasoning could be why Louise tells Ian the truth about Hannah, but that does feel a little weak to me too.)

F. Another interesting thing to think about: I haven’t seen very many people talking about Arrival in a pro-life context, which honestly surprises me. I’m not saying the movie’s necessarily pushing a pro-life agenda–there’s no sweeping statement, no obvious pulpit anyone’s preaching from–but I do think it’s worth at least discussing. After all, Louise’s choice is an SF version of a moral and ethical decision that many actual women face: if you learn in your first trimester that your baby will be born with a genetic defect that will ultimately prove fatal and severely shorten her life span . . . do you still have the baby? Obviously, there are multiple medical, social, and religious factors to consider, and no two cases are the exact same, but no matter what those factors are, I believe the decision is a personal one; I am unequivocally pro-choice, and I wouldn’t presume to make that choice for any woman. And really, Louise never does, either: there’s no line in Arrival that says she’s making the choice that all good people should make, no quote about how God would want her to have Hannah or that not having her would be akin to murder or anything like that.

At the same time, there is a sense, isn’t there, that the filmmakers are not just presenting Louise’s choice as the right choice for her but as the moral choice we should all aspire to? And it just seems like an easy slide to me to put that into a pro-life context, where prospective mothers are told to embrace the child that they will give birth to, despite the severity of the problems that said child will face in its potentially shortened and quite possibly painful life.

I know it’s a thorny subject that people feel passionate about, and like I said, I’m not arguing that the people behind Arrival were actually using the film as a pro-life vehicle. (And also that some of you reading this might be in favor of such a message, anyway.) But I do think it’s a reasonable interpretation of the text, and at least worthy of some discussion.

G. Finally, I just wanted to say that while I get the aliens here are playing the long game–the extremely long game–and they have, at least, a teeny measure of self-interest, like, I wish there were more alien movies where the ETs didn’t come with any specific benevolent or malevolent purpose. You know? Sometimes, I wonder if there are real aliens out there who see our movies and get tired of the lack of nuance in their portrayal. Like, I’m just picturing the alien version of Twitter, which I imagine going something like this:

Gloop@NotYourManicPixieDreamAlien
Look, humans? I have a bone to pick with y’all today, so let’s just get to it: I didn’t come here for you.

Gloop@NotYourManicPixieDreamAlien
You’re always giving us the angel in the house vs. the fallen woman treatment. It’s bullshit.

Gloop@NotYourManicPixieDreamAlien
I’m not here to blow up your house & I’m not here to teach you a lesson, either. My people don’t even give gifts. Your traditions are weird.

Gloop@NotYourManicPixieDreamAlien
In conclusion: my journey across insane amounts of space and time isn’t necessarily about YOU, asshole.

Alien Twitter runs in chronological order, BTW. Just in case you were wondering. They’ve obviously evolved a little faster than the rest of us.

QUOTES:

Louise: “How about we just talk to them before we start throwing math problems at them?”

Louise: “Am I fired?”
Colonel Weber: “You’re better than the last guy.”

Louise: “Kangaroo.”
Colonel Weber: “What is that?”
Louise: “In 1770, Captain James Cook’s ship ran aground off the coast of Australia and he led a party into the country and they met the aboriginal people. One of the sailors pointed at the animals that hop around and put their babies in their pouch, and he asked what they were, and the aborigines said, “Kangaroo.” It wasn’t until later that they learned that “kangaroo” means “I don’t understand.”
Colonel Weber: “I can sell that for now.”
Louise: “Fair.”
Colonel Weber: “But remember what happened to the aborigines: a more advanced race nearly wiped them out.”
(Colonel Weber leaves)
Ian: “It’s a good story.”
Louise: “Thanks. It’s not true. But it proves my point.”

Ian:  “The next most plausible reason is that each of these cities had a hit Sheena Easton song in the 80’s, so we really don’t know why they chose those locations.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Solidly made film. Ambitious, well acted, very pretty, and just some awesome language stuff. But I don’t find it nearly as powerful as other people seem to, at least, not on a first viewing, and I’m not feeling particularly inspired to see it again anytime soon. Certain reveals don’t work for me, and neither does the love story (such as it is), and I kind of find Ian a problematic character in general: underwritten and a total tool, in the end.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B+

MVP:

Amy Adams

MORAL:

Choose love, even in the face of inevitable grief.

This is it! THIS IS IT! The last Disney Princess Movie! HA HA HA, no one can force me to watch a terrible punishment movie now because I am a WINNER!!!!!!

Ahem.

Unlike virtually everyone else on the planet, I’ve never actually seen Frozen before. Much to my amusement, I’ve heard wildly different reviews of the Disney juggernaut: the majority of my local friends found it hugely overrated, whereas a few of my less-local friends were ardent advocates of the film; one even made up this whole Frozen/Thor fusion musical called Thor: The Frozen World.

Going into this film, I figured I’d probably fall somewhere between these two extremes, and wouldn’t you know it?

Boom! Smack in the middle. I definitely enjoyed Frozen more than my local friends, but I probably won’t be feverishly brainstorming epic crossover musicals about it, either.

DISCLAIMER:

Always, always with the SPOILERS. Although to be fair, there actually are things to spoil in Frozen–or would be, if I wasn’t the last person in the galaxy to watch it.

Oh, I almost forgot: there are also SPOILERS for Enchanted, too. Sorry about that.

SUMMARY:

Elsa (Idina Menzel) has tried to repress her secret ice powers for years, but on the day of her coronation, they go haywire very, very publicly. She then runs away, unwittingly freezing the kingdom behind her. Her younger sister, Anna (Kristen Bell), goes to find her in hopes of mending their relationship and, also, thawing out the kingdom.

NOTES:

1. We should establish something very important right away: in this house, I am Elsa and Mekaela is Anna. This has absolutely nothing to do with our respective personalities (neither of us are really hyperactive enough to be Anna) or ages (which are actually reversed) and everything to do with the fact that I have Deadly Ice Hands that I’m happy to unleash at any given opportunity. During this movie, for instance, when I reached over and grabbed my unsuspecting sister’s arm with my ice cold fingers, yelling, “I AM ELSA!” while she cursed me and probably muttered about me needing to wear gloves for the 87th time.

2. But enough of that. Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?

My biggest problem with the whole movie happens in the first ten minutes.

So, okay. Elsa and Anna are cute little kids playing around in the palace with Elsa’s snow powers, when oh noes! Elsa accidentally hits Anna in the head with ice! (It’s mostly Anna’s fault.) The King and Queen take them both to the trolls, who fortunately can heal Anna. Unfortunately, the ice has gone into her brain, or something, so the Wise Troll Dude (Ciarán Hinds) recommends that the magic be entirely removed from her head; this includes even memories of magic.

And . . . look, the rules of any magic system or spell in a story are technically arbitrary, like, the writer can ultimately make up whatever they want because, you know, none of it’s actually real; it’s not like they’re getting legitimate medical facts wrong, or whatever. But they do have to execute it convincingly enough that the reader or viewer is capable of suspending their disbelief. And while I generally think I’m pretty good at suspending disbelief–so long as the rules are given to me up front–this doesn’t work for me here at all. When the Wise Troll Dude says, “I recommend we remove all magic, even memories of magic, just to be safe,” my immediate reaction is, “Why? No, seriously, why? That totally sounds like bullshit.” I wanted to point to my screen and yell “plot device!” Which isn’t always a terrible thing, like, I can appreciate a good McGuffin now and again. But if the thing that rings my Bullshit Meter is what’s causing the source of serious emotional conflict between two characters? Nope. I’m out.

I probably could have forgiven the unnecessary memory erasure . . . but then the King says they’ll continue keeping Elsa’s powers hidden from everyone, including Anna, and I’m like “WHY? Will Anna’s brain damage come back if she finds out that Elsa can do magic?” Because if it doesn’t–and spoiler alert, it totally doesn’t–then there is no fucking reason to keep this a secret from her.

3. In fact, the King and Queen have what we in the fanfiction community like to call A+ parenting because oh my God they suck.

Look, I know parenting’s scary and challenging and if I ever become one I’m going to make a whole host of mistakes and yada this yada that, but come on now. The King and Queen decide that the words “you must learn to control it” and “fear will be your enemy” actually translates to “conceal it, don’t feel it, don’t let it show.” If you don’t quite see the difference, let me demonstrate.

“You must learn to control it” and “fear will be your enemy” is basically a fancy way of saying “practice using your powers and maybe try to find some zen, because the more you freak out about them, the worse it’s going be.” By contrast, “conceal it, don’t feel it, don’t let it show,” is a philosophy that I would better describe as “entirely repress all your negative emotions until they inevitably implode and then you fucking freeze a whole kingdom because humans aren’t robots and your emotions aren’t meant to be caged in like that you poor poor child.”

So yeah. The King and Queen pretty much toss Elsa into a room for, IDK, ten years, give her a pair of gloves, and remind her to not feel anything because then she might kill someone. (But, you know. They do it kindly.) Worse, they either actively encourage (or at least don’t discourage) her self-imposed isolation from her sister, Anna, and since they’ve already basically cut the two girls off from the entire kingdom, neither Elsa nor Anna get any real socialization of any kind.

I want to tell you all how shocked I am that this stellar approach doesn’t pan out, and also that I have zero sympathy for the King and Queen when they abruptly die on a sea voyage, possibly on their way to Rapunzel and Flynn’s wedding. Because seriously, they are the worst well-intentioned parents in a Disney movie ever; most fairy tale parents have to actively try to murder their kids to fuck them up this hard.

4. Maybe if the King and Queen didn’t suck so hard, Anna wouldn’t be so desperate for love and attention that she decided to marry the very first man who was nice to her.

Luckily, everyone else in the movie gives her grief about this, and by everyone, I mean Elsa (who won’t provide her blessing, like the responsible older sister she is) and Kristoff (who’s hilariously, perfectly flabbergasted by the whole idea). I really love that this movie makes so much fun of a trope that Disney is so well known for.

As far as Hans (Santino Fontana) goes, I actually didn’t suspect him to be a bad guy, at least not initially. Which I know means I’m horribly gullible, but to be fair, Disney Princes usually aren’t villains. I did briefly wonder about the guy after Anna left him in charge, mostly because my immediate reaction was like, “Good job, Anna! Hope this total stranger doesn’t takeover or entirely ruin your kingdom or anything . . . huh. Hey, what if this total stranger actually does takeover or entirely ruin the kingdom?” Hans being secretly evil certainly seemed plausible after Grown Up Kristoff came into the picture, because he was clearly Anna’s true love interest, and one of the easiest ways to resolve a love triangle is to make one of the suitors secretly evil. (It’s what I call the Agatha Christie Method.)

But then Hans specifically didn’t murder Elsa when he easily could have, so I thought maybe he was more like James Marsden’s Prince Charming in Enchanted, nice and overly earnest and clearly a second banana love interest. (You know, like most of James Marsden’s roles. Look, I know I’ve made that joke before, but it’s just like “Sean Bean always dies” jokes. When the opportunity arises, I just can’t let it pass me by.) Only then Hans is revealed as EVIL ALL ALONG, and I was like, well . . . fine then.

As a Disney Villain, I generally like Hans. He’s not my absolute favorite or anything, but he’s pretty original for Disney, and the moment where he pulls back from Anna and reveals his true nature is pretty damn cold. Pun surprisingly not intended.

5. About Anna’s actual love interest:

Cute little Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) grew up to be a loner and occasionally a bit of a jerk, but I still like him because he makes me laugh. I’m generally fond of grumpy people, being relatively grumpy myself, and I like his whole shtick of talking to himself through his reindeer. And of course the aforementioned mocking of Anna’s true love, which, I mean, Anna is cute and super feisty and all, but yeah, you wanna get married to a total stranger, you deserve a little mocking. (Gentle mocking, though. Total scorn will remain with the parents, who are still the most to blame for this.)

6. Frozen is definitely more of a romance than Brave (where Merida had no love interest of any kind), but what’s pretty cool about this movie is that it’s telling two love stories, and only one of them is romantic. The other love story, of course, is about siblings.

(Point of interest: the last Disney Princess who had a sister was Ariel in The Little Mermaid, and the only other movie to feature siblings–that aren’t evil step-siblings–is Brave.)

I may struggle with the beginning of this movie, but the ending–where Anna sacrifices herself for Elsa’s safety–pretty much brings everything together for me. As soon as I heard that only an act of true love could save Anna, I obviously knew Hans wouldn’t be providing it, and that was well before he was revealed to be a bad guy. There was always the chance it was Kristoff, of course (just like True Love’s Kiss had to be given by Patrick Dempsey in Enchanted), but I was pretty sure it’d be Elsa instead; I did not, however, consider the idea that Anna would be sacrificing herself for Elsa rather than the other way around. I think it actually works much, much better the way they did it, and it’s a lovely, emotional moment. For me, it brings the whole story together.

7. The primary complaint one of my friends had about this movie was the music; she felt the song lyrics were all incredibly predictable. It amused me because she’d always mention it anytime the movie came up, although I was pretty sure that particular flaw wouldn’t bother me at all, if I even noticed it, which I can’t say that I did. I will say, however, that while the songs were mostly okay, the music certainly wasn’t a highlight for me; overall, I found most of the soundtrack relatively forgettable.

But of course we must talk about THE SONG.

I don’t have any young relatives (or at least not ones that I see on a regular or even semi-regular basis), and I rarely listen to the radio (I get most of my new music from from TV, movies, or friends’ recommendations), so unlike most people in the universe, I’ve probably only heard “Let It Go” maybe two or three times, and honestly, I’ve never much cared for it. In scene and with context, however, I definitely warmed up to it: it’s kind of a fun, rebellious, “fuck off, world” song and a really good moment for Elsa, who I wish had more actual scenes in the movie, especially because this is the only moment in the whole film she gets to show any glimpse of a real personality outside “self-sacrificing” and “misunderstood.”

That being said, unlike other Disney songs like, say, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” or “Mother Knows Best,” I’d probably never voluntarily listen to “Let It Go” on its own or gleefully sing along with it, either. Because honestly, even though I know the context now, when I’m just listening to the song on its own? Yeah, I still don’t really like it.

8. About our Disney Sidekicks: I like Sven. I don’t have a whole lot to say about Sven, but I like him. And then there’s Olaf (Josh Gad).

Olaf is a bit on the obnoxious side for me. He isn’t awful, and–much like with Iago in Aladdin–I can see how he’d be a big hit with little kids, but as a 31-year-old woman watching childrens’ films, he’s not my favorite, probably because the ‘snowman who longs for summer’ bit gets old for me before he even finishes his first song. I think the only moment where I genuinely like Olaf is the scene where he and Anna think Kristoff is delusional; otherwise, meh.

But this guy?

Can I keep him? I want one immediately.

9. Finally, a handful of random notes:

9A. All right, fine. My Icy Hands of Doom aside, I’m probably the Anna to Mekaela’s Elsa.

This is a fair representation of our childhood.

9B. Also going back to the beginning, I forgot to mention a couple of things:

One: the very first thing the Wise Troll Dude says about Elsa is “born with the powers are cursed,” which is just categorically not true. Obviously, you’re only cursed if you never learn to control your powers and your parents shut you away for most of your life and then somehow apparently expect you to eventually lead a country, like, oh, okay, parents, that’s a solid plan.

Two: I just want you to know that if this hadn’t been a Disney movie, I would’ve been sure that the saws at the very beginning were foreshadowing some serious bloodshed and mayhem. Alas. Twas not to be.

9C. It’s not a huge problem, but I kind of thought that Frozen might have worked a bit better overall if the prologue had included a scene establishing a national prejudice against magic or something, mostly because the kingdom turns on Elsa far too quickly for my liking. I mean, once she’s frozen the whole kingdom, I get it, but here it felt more like one drop of ice from her fingers and everyone was all “BURN HER! SHE’S A WITCH!” Which seemed excessive. Plus, if there was a dangerous prejudice against magic, that would make me considerably more forgiving of how the parents acted. (Not 100% forgiveness, though. Because seriously: ZERO REASON TO KEEP IT A SECRET FROM ANNA.)

9D. It should also probably be pointed out that while the ending of this movie is lovely, it would never have actually happened because Anna, clothed in only a lovely green dress and matching cloak, would totally have died of hypothermia well before she met Kristoff, much less found Elsa. Like, she’s not even wearing gloves. Lady gonna be losing some fingers at the very least. Even if she had miraculously survived, though, Anna and Kristoff absolutely would have died after they fell off that one cliff; like falling onto a pillow, my ass. Meanwhile, Sven the Reindeer would’ve absolutely bit the big one after he fell into the icy lake or whatever, like that whole BS about how we’ve pulled him out of the freezing water, so he’s fine? Nope. Sven the Reindeer died of hypothermia too. Winter has come. The end is nigh. Hold your friends while you still have them and enjoy your upcoming future as a popsicle, because nothing ends warm and fuzzy here, folks.

9E. Hey, Alan Tudyk is in this, and he’s playing the shmucky bad guy from Weasel Town! (Excuse me, Weselton. Does this constitute Disney poking fun at its own less-than-subtle naming practices? Probably not.) Anyway, it’s always nice to hear you, Alan Tudyk!

9F. Finally, here’s another thing Anna and I have in common: neither of us wake up well in the morning.

I appreciated this. Also: Anna punching Prince Hans off the boat at the end of the movie. That worked for me, too. Good job, Anna!

QUOTES:

(Olaf the Snowman has just been singing about what wonderful things will happen when summer hits.)
Kristoff: “I’m gonna tell him.”

Kristoff: “Hey, guys!”
Anna: “They’re rocks.”
Kristoff: “You guys are a sight for sore eyes.”
Olaf (quiet, to Anna): “He’s crazy.”
Kristoff: “Hey, whoa, I didn’t even recognize you. You’ve lost so much weight.”
Olaf (quiet, to Anna): “I’ll distract them while you run.”
Olaf (to rocks): “Hi, Sven’s family! It’s nice to meet you!”
Olaf (quiet, to Anna): “Because I love you, Anna, I insist you run.”
Olaf (to rocks): “I understand you’re love experts!”
Olaf (quiet, to Anna): “Why aren’t you running?”

Anna: “Elsa, it’s me, Anna, your sister who didn’t mean to make you freeze the summer!”

Kid: “Why do I have to wear this?”
Kid’s Mother: “Because the Queen has come of age! It’s Coronation Day!”
Kid: “That’s not my fault.”

Prince Hans: “I’d like to formally apologize for hitting the Princess of Arendelle with my horse. And for every moment after.”

Kristoff: “Now, that’s ice. I might cry.”
Anna: “I won’t judge.”

Kristoff: “It’s 20 feet of fresh powder down there. It will be like landing on a pillow, hopefully . . . okay, Anna. On three.”
Anna: “Okay–”
Kristoff: “One–”
Anna: “Tell me when. I’m ready to go–”
Kristoff: “Two–”
Anna: “I was BORN ready, yes–”
Kristoff: “Calm down.”

Kristoff: “What made the Queen go all ice crazy?”
Anna: “Oh, well, it was all my fault. I got engaged, but then she freaked out because I’d only just met him, you know, that day. She said she wouldn’t bless the marriage and–”
Kristoff: “Wait, you got engaged to someone you just met that day?”
Anna: “Yeah. Anyway I got mad, and so she got mad and then she tried to walk away and I grabbed her glove–”
Kristoff: “Hang on, you mean to tell me you got engaged to someone you just met that day?”
Anna: “Yes, pay attention. But the thing is, she wore the gloves all the time, so I just thought, maybe she has a thing about dirt–”
Kristoff: “Didn’t your parents ever warn you about strangers?”
Anna: “. . . yes, they did.”
(Anna, eyeing Kristoff, slides away from him.)
Anna: “But Hans is not a stranger.”
Kristoff: “Oh yeah? What’s his last name?”
Anna: “Of the Southern Isles.”
Kristoff: “What’s his favorite food?”
Anna: “Sandwiches.”
Kristoff: “What’s his best friend’s name?”
Anna: “Probably John.”
Kristoff: “Eye color?”
Anna: “Dreamy.”

Anna: “But I want to help!”
Kristoff: “No! I don’t trust your judgment!”
Anna: “Excuse me?”
Kristoff: “Who marries a man they just met?”
Anna: “It’s true love!”

Anna: “I’ll replace your sled and everything in it. And I understand if you don’t want to help me anymore.”
Kristoff (to Sven): “Of course I don’t want to help her anymore. In fact, this whole thing has ruined me for ever helping anyone ever again.”
Kristoff (as Sven): “She’ll die on her own.”
Kristoff (to Sven): “I can live with that.”
Kristoff (as Sven): “But you won’t get your new sled if she’s dead.”
Kristoff (to Sven): “Sometimes I really don’t like you.”

Kristoff: “You want to talk about a problem? I sell ice for a living.”
Anna: “Ooh, that’s a rough business to be in right now. That is really. Ahem. That’s unfortunate.”

Anna: “I don’t even know what love is.”
Olaf: “That’s okay, I do. Love is . . . putting someone else’s needs before yours, like, you know, how Kristoff brought you back here to Hans and left you forever.”
Anna: “Kristoff loves me?”
Olaf: “Wow, you really don’t know anything about love, do you?”

Anna: “Olaf, you’re melting!”
Olaf: “Some people are worth melting for . . . just maybe not right this second.”

CONCLUSIONS:

It’s a cute story, and I suspect I might like it more on a second viewing. I enjoy the banter back and forth between Anna and Kristoff, and I love the climactic scene with Anna and Elsa. But that beginning really does get on my damn nerves, and I do wish we got a few more scenes with Elsa. (Not that, apparently, she needed them, since from the way people talk about this movie, you might be forgiven for forgetting Anna’s even around. Still, it’s a balance thing for me.)

MVP:

Kristen Bell. She manages the perfect balance between being cute, feisty, and a little bit clueless, making Anna charming rather than obnoxious. I’m not sure every actress could’ve pulled that.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B+

MORAL:

Repressing your talents, your emotions, and your identity in general really never does you any good, kids. I know it all worked out eventually in this movie, but did there really need to be this much angst and (seemingly) eternal winter before that happened? I think not.

While waiting to see Wonder Woman (soon, it will happen soon), Mekaela and I went ahead and watched a different superhero movie, one that we never quite got around to seeing: Doctor Strange.

Ultimately? Meh.

SUMMARY:

Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a super smart surgeon who’s also kind of a jerk. After a car accident ruins his hands, he goes to Kamar-Taj in search of treatment; instead he finds a whole lotta sorcery and a Cause Greater Than Himself.

NOTES:

1. The good news is that Doctor Strange is the extremely rare superhero movie that’s actually under two hours long. I cannot stress enough how relieving that is.

Unfortunately, this movie isn’t paced all that well. I found the first third of the movie (origins, discovery, training) all a bit on the slow side, and though the story does pick up, it doesn’t leave much time for thematic resonance or character work. Basically every side character ends up feeling underdeveloped, and I never buy the emotional journey our hero makes–which is particularly unfortunate because Dr. Strange is already a pretty boring hero.

2. Cause here’s the thing: we’ve seen this guy before.

Strange is yet another Super Special Egotistical Asshole Who Learns To Be A Better Man. In superhero movies, we’ve got Tony Stark for that. In medical dramas, we’ve got Gregory House for that. In Benedict Cumberbatch roles, we’ve got Sherlock Holmes for that. And while I’m of the firm belief that adding magic to any universe automatically makes it better, Strange doesn’t have the humor, charisma, or emotional depth of any of these other characters. He’s about as generic of an SSEAWLTBABM that you’ll probably ever see.

There are tiny moments of potential for Strange. He brings up the Hippocratic Oath at one point, which could have been interesting (sure he’s an asshole and now a sorcerer suddenly embroiled in a magical war, but he’s also a doctor and sincerely believes in the sanctity of life), only for the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) to shoot that shit down cold. At another point, the Ancient One brings up Strange’s fear of failure, which the movie could have been building all along, balancing his massive ego with his deep-seated insecurity. . . but really, the only hint we have at that is how Strange won’t take cases that might mess up his perfect surgical record. Otherwise, there’s not much. And because his character development is all quick broad strokes with no real nuance, I don’t buy the moment where Dr. Strange Learns To Be A Hero. His journey has a beginning and an end, but the middle is a hurried, muddled mess.

3. As far as the other characters go:

The Ancient One

The Ancient One is described as “complicated,” but that mostly only works because Tilda Swinton can do enigmatic in her sleep. Her character does something which is kind of interesting but also isn’t given enough space. As a result, there isn’t that much to the Ancient One; she’s pretty easily summed up in one sentence. It’s really only Swinton’s performance that makes the Ancient One even remotely compelling, but since she shouldn’t have been cast in the first place . . . yeah, that doesn’t help much.

As a positive, I will point out that the Ancient One looks pretty badass while fighting in her yellow robes. I’d wanna cosplay that shit immediately, you know, if it wasn’t for all the whitewashing bullshit.

Mordo

Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is mostly interesting in comparison to the other characters; next to everyone else (particularly Strange and the Ancient One), he has a very rigid sense of what is right and what is wrong. I like that about him because it makes him unique, but he does feel a bit out of balance for me. It’s not really much of a defining characteristic in the first half of the film, for instance. And then I hated his very last scene: it feels like a HUGE unearned leap to me in terms of character development. There’s a lot of interesting potential in Mordo’s character, but I don’t like where they went with him at all.

Wong

I was super happy to see Benedict Wong here, not only because I liked him so well in The Martian, or because that meant we had two English actors named Benedict, but also because I was relieved to see an Asian actor actually speak in this movie. For a movie primarily set in Nepal (not to mention a third act in Hong Kong), you’d think there might be some Asian characters of importance, but really? Not so much. Even Wong isn’t as important as I want him to be: while it’s definitely an improvement over the comics (where I guess he’s a manservant?), Wong is a Master, the guardian of the library, and ought to come across as a stone faced badass who’s superior to Strange (who, after all, just started this shit); instead, Wong comes across more as Strange’s stone-faced lackey, mostly around to be on the receiving end of Strange’s incredibly weak jokes. It’s not an acting thing; it’s a writing thing. Wong has no real arc. He has no badass moment. It’s a little disappointing.

Kaecilius

Here’s a shocker: Kaecilius is not a hugely compelling Marvel villain. Unlike some other Marvel baddies, though–Malekith, for example–I think he had real potential to be, and not just because Mads Mikkelsen played him. (Though, obviously, that helps.) His actual backstory–family shoved in a refrigerator–is basically just one line of exposition and is pretty boring in and of itself, but his goals are unique: unlike other Big Bads, Kaecilius isn’t seeking vengeance. He doesn’t hope for world domination or godhood. He is seeking immortality, but not just for himself. This guy want to save the world by defeating time. “Time kills everything,” he says, and you know, I find that an incredibly sympathetic sentiment.

The problem is that this small exchange is basically all we get. Kaecilius has very little interiority. We mostly see him either fighting or striding around ominously. He doesn’t have much in the way of interesting dialogue. He certainly doesn’t have much in the way of actual personality, and he’s the very rare bad guy where I think a few flashbacks to his old life might have actually been a decent idea. (Where, preferably, we’d get a quick glimpse of his family members’ personalities too, like, I am absolutely NOT here for a no-dialogue, slow-motion shot of a beautiful woman laughing with golden light behind her as to indicate her benevolence.) Mikkelsen’s performance is fine and the goals are good, but the character itself just isn’t really there.

Christine

Oh, Christine.

Rachel McAdams does a fine job with the role–I actually quite like some of her reactions, particularly when she suddenly has to deal with her ex-boyfriend’s weird supernatural shit–but if Kaecilius has little interiority, Christine has zero interiority. She is the Love Interest and absolutely nothing else. She is around to represent Strange’s regret and secret capacity for love. She’s around because you don’t have a mainstream superhero movie without some kind of romantic lead. (Lead, she snorts. Pepper Potts is a romantic lead. Christine Palmer is a romantic supporting player.)

Even worse, Christine has really no bearing on the plot at all. It’s so easy to take her out of the story, people. It’s so absurdly easy. This movie would be at least 20% better if Christine weren’t actually a love interest but instead a totally platonic and long-suffering BFF who’s tired of putting up with Strange’s egomaniacal bullshit. Basically, Christine needs to be a gender bent Bones and Strange needs to be Jim Kirk, only a bit more of a dick. Instead, we get a half-assed barebones version of a love story that basically just drops out of the movie because someone remembered right, we should probably do something  about that Kaecilius guy. We’ll just pick this up again in the inevitable sequel.

4. One of Doctor Strange’s biggest claims to fame? Probably its visuals. Unfortunately, those didn’t all work for me, either.

Like, some of them are cool. I generally enjoyed all the astral projection stuff, and some of the fight scenes, especially the last battle scene. Mostly, though, I thought this movie was just WAY too in love with its folding-city Inception shit. Like, I enjoyed Inception too, but the movie was, what, seven years ago now? You’ve got to add a new element to it . . . but until that last battle, I didn’t think this movie did. Plus, there’s only so many times you can twist or bend a building around before your audience is like yes, yes, I GET it. You can fold spacetime. It’s all very cool, but can we do something else now?

Plus, Dormammu just looks ridiculous, right? Maybe some of the awesome visuals were lost in translation from big to small screen, but this guy? Oh my God, no. I don’t understand how I haven’t heard about this before: he’s like two steps up from the fucking Lawnmower Man. C’mon, who can take that seriously?

5. While I can’t go into too much detail before the Spoiler Section, here’s something positive I will say about this film: I genuinely enjoyed how Strange ultimately defeats the bad guy because it’s not a matter of who lands the last punch (or, I suppose, who casts the last spell). Instead, Strange pretty much saves the day by using his head. It’s part magic, part trickery, and part negotiation, and that’s the kind of solution I wouldn’t mind seeing more of in my superhero movies.

6. We must, we MUST, talk about the medical inaccuracies in this movie. Holy Jesus.

There are so many problems right here. Probably more than I’m even aware of.

(Warning for super minor spoilers here: more because I use a lot of detail, not because I discuss anything that particularly spoils the plot.)

Take the surgery in the opening act, for instance, the one where Dr. Strange diagnoses a patient’s real problem in five seconds flat and saves him from having his organs harvested ahead of schedule. (Something I’m sure that anyone working in the organ donor network just loved.) Now, I’m a unit clerk/errand girl. My job is to find stuff and deliver things and type shit. If I’m actually in the OR, something has gone horribly awry, so let’s all be clear: this isn’t my field of expertise. But.

There are four people in this OR. Dr. Strange and Dr. Love Interest are working on the patient. This is weird because Dr. Love Interest is an ER doctor, and you’d think they might need her in, you know, the ER, but whatever. I initially assumed the third person in the room was the anesthesiologist because, like, you obviously couldn’t do a surgery without the anesthesiologist present and surely even Hollywood knew that . . . but this turned out to be a charitable assumption because on the re-watch, I realized that this guy was probably supposed to be an OR tech or something, so, like, yeah. That’s a problem.

The last guy in the room is the doc who screwed up the patient’s initial diagnosis. This dude’s got a weird role in this movie, like, I don’t really understand what function he serves? And actually, this scene perfectly reflects that, since Dr. Screw-Up isn’t actually participating in the surgery at all; apparently, he’s here to scowl on the sidelines and be both a) kind of a jerk face, and b) the victim of Strange’s jerk face-ness. You might think I’m exaggerating about his lack of participation, but let me assure you, I am not: he is literally just standing in the OR, doing absolutely nothing–with, I might add, no gloves on. Not that you can’t enter the OR without gloves on: you can, and in fact, I’m pretty sure you always do. But you keep your hands up and then someone (presumably the OR tech) helps you get gloved and gowned up, right? This total fucker, however, just lurks by the wall like he’s a jealous teenager at a middle school dance. He even touches his presumably non-sterile watch with his ungloved hands.

Nothing about this makes any sense to me. If you’re hanging out just to observe, dude, stand in the corridor and watch from there. If you’re hoping Strange fucks up and are waiting to spring into action, DUDE. Now you have to go back out, scrub up again, and go back inside, where I guess the one OR tech will stop assisting in the middle of BRAIN SURGERY to help you, since there’s absolutely no one else who can do the job. Cause you know who else is missing from this scene besides the anesthesiologist? Nurses. Honestly, people. There are more medical workers in the OR for a routine C-section than there are for this super complicated brain surgery.

And that’s just the first five minutes of the movie. You think I’m done? HA!

Let’s next discuss the Super Helpful Physical Therapist. He’s the one who just up and gives Dr. Strange the file of an old patient who was paralyzed from the chest down but miraculously began walking again. Maybe, maybe, I could have bought Super Helpful PT showing Strange an X-ray that didn’t have anyone’s name on it, but since that wouldn’t help the plot along, Super Helpful PT apparently steals this poor dude’s records and just mails them off to Strange, name very much included–and presumably address too, considering Strange tracks down the patient in the very next scene (where he’s playing basketball, natch). Meanwhile, it’s important to note that Super Helpful PT tells Strange that doing this favor will be a chore, since it will take a while to get these records, but says, “If it proves your arrogant ass wrong? Worth it.”

Is it though, Super Helpful PT? Is it really worth it? Because breaking HIPAA law will not only get your ass fired, you can face huge fines and also go to jail. That’s right, asshole, you just committed a felony because one of your patients was kind of a dick. That totally sounds worth it to me.

Finally, we just have to briefly touch on the defibrillator scene.

Look, I know, I know, Hollywood is never going to learn how to use a defibrillator right, that they’re always going to depict them shocking a heart back into beating, even though that’s totally not how they work. And most of the time I roll my eyes and move on . . . but to hear Dr. Love Interest protest that she can’t shock someone’s heart because–and I quote–it’s BEATING?! Oh my God, NO, that’s what it’s supposed to be doing. Where did you go to medical school? What in the name of God is wrong with you?

(To be clear, unless I find something actually offensive–organ transplant teams being treated like ghouls, for instance–none of this stuff ever ruins a movie for me. Like, I’ve absolutely never been all “Jeez, this would have been a great movie, but they used the defibrillator wrong, so fuck you, you’re done.” I just have a lot of fun picking this shit apart. It’s like a very particular subset of nerd rage, equal parts incredulity and amusement.)

7. Finally, before spoilers, I’d like to say that I don’t think Best Sidekick of this movie would go to Mordu or Wong. I think it has to go Strange’s Coat of Levitation.

It basically saves Strange’s worthless life, which is the mark of any good sidekick. All the hard work, none of the credit: that, my friends, is the sidekick’s lot in this world.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

I already spent more time on this than I planned (which is exactly what I get for spending half the review on medical inaccuracies), so I’m just going to focus on a few key scenes. First the New York Sanctum fight between Strange and Kaecilius.

On one hand, I quite like this scene. Strange doesn’t totally know what he’s doing, which makes for a fun fight sequence. I particularly like the moment where he brandishes something that clearly alarms Kaecilius, only for Kaecilius to realize a second later that Strange has no idea how to properly use it. This is also the fight scene where the cape comes in and does its job saving Strange’s ass, which is cool.

Still, even with the cape doing the heavy lifting, Strange lasts way longer than the actual Master of the New York Sanctum, which, come on, this is some bullshit, right? Like Strange hasn’t actually graduated Sorcery School yet; hell, he’s only just passed that one proficiency that everyone else completed ages ago, and yet he somehow defeats two lackeys AND temporarily traps Kaecilius? Meanwhile, the actual Master dude gets taken down in, what? Seven seconds flat?

No. I don’t accept this. Crap like this is exactly why I don’t buy Strange’s unusual affinity for magic–because it’s such an obvious plot device to make Strange considerably more powerful than he actually should be at this point in the movie. I do not buy Strange’s survival here at all. (Maybe especially because he just up and gives the evil sorcerer who’s trying to kill him his name. Like come now, Strange. I get that you have a massive ego and all, but seriously? Don’t offer your name to people who want to murder you, especially if they can do so by magic. This is not a hard concept.)

Actually, a lot of my problems with this movie stems from not buying Strange’s heroic journey. The scene where the Ancient One is dying, for instance, and speaking with Strange in astral projection form, like, it’s not a bad scene. Both actors are good in it. But it’s also the scene where the Ancient One pretty much lays out the Moral of the Story, namely that death gives life meaning and not everything is about you. Which is fine, though gotta be honest: “death gives life meaning” stories? Not traditionally my favorite, like, I get why it’s an important human concept and all, but it doesn’t do much for me personally. I would totally be on Kaecilius’s side if, you know, he wasn’t murdering the shit out of people.

But anyway, I don’t have a problem with the lesson itself; it’s that, at this point, I don’t really believe Strange has learned it. I do not buy Strange’s emotional journey here. The arc has been sloppy, so the revelations don’t feel earned. It vexes me.

Let’s skip to the end now, including the big Hong Kong fight and Dormammu.

C’mon. How can you take that seriously. HOW?

This is a lot of fun. Going backwards in time finally gives the movie a new visual element, which I desperately appreciated. The best moment, though, is specifically how Strange saves the world: he comes to Dormammu, asking to bargain, and then traps Dormammu in that moment. Big D kills Strange an infinite amount of times, of course, but that doesn’t free him. His only recourse is to bargain with Strange after all, which, handily, both saves everybody and gets rid of Kaecilius and his pesky followers. It’s really a very clever scene, not to mention one of the rare moments where the humor in this movie actually works for me. I’d like it even better if I thought the movie had managed to nail the thematic arc of self-sacrifice, but we’ve been over that.

Despite the fact that Strange saves the day, Mordo takes off because he doesn’t believe in breaking the rules for any reason. Initially, I was okay with this (in fact, I was happy that there was a character who really worried about consequence, about cause and effect), but because I didn’t know Mordo was a Big Bad in the comics, I wasn’t at all prepared for his heel-turn villainy in the second post-credits scene, and I found it bitterly disappointing. I assumed that Mordo would come back in more of a reluctant ally role, and I thought that was cool because–despite not being fleshed out particularly well–Strange and Mordo’s dynamic was one of the more interesting and original parts of the film, and I was looking forward to seeing more of it. To find out that he’s going to turn Evil in a twist that I don’t think the story supports at all? Boo, sir. This is my displeased face.

Finally, I’d like to say that I’m happy Dr. Strange doesn’t heal his hands at the end of the movie. I was a little uneasy the whole film about how they were going to handle this particular trope, but I’m happy to say that Strange’s happy ending doesn’t rely on magically healing his nerve damage. That was something of a relief, at least. Doesn’t quite save the movie for me, though.

QUOTES:

Stange: “I’m breaking the laws of nature, I know.”
Wong: “Well, don’t stop now.”

Strange: “I’m not ready.”
The Ancient One: “No one ever is. We don’t get to choose our time.”

Mordo: “How’s our new recruit?”
The Ancient One: “We shall see . . . any second now . . .”
Mordo: “Oh no, not again.”

Strange: “Well, thank you for the books, and for the horrifying story, and the threat upon my life.”

Kaecilius: “People think in terms of good and evil, but really time is the true enemy of us all. Time kills everything.”

Strange: “Look at your face. Dormammu made you a murderer. How good can his kingdom be?”

CONCLUSIONS:

It’s frustrating. I like specific beats in this movie, but overall it just doesn’t do much for me. I’d watch it again if someone really wanted me to, but I can’t imagine doing it on my own. I recently spoke to some coworkers who liked this one because it felt different to them than other Marvel movies, but despite all the magic and CGI stuff, Doctor Strange feels a lot more generic than I want it to.

MVP:

Chiwetel Ejiofor, I guess? I clearly don’t like where his character goes, but I do like his performance. (Although I’m hard-pressed to think of a performance of his I didn’t like. Regardless.)

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B-

MORAL:

Oh, don’t be a selfish asshole. Not everything is about you, and when it’s your time, it’s your time. Embrace that, because, you know. MEANING.

I didn’t love John Wick the way other people did, but I enjoyed it well enough to Netflix the sequel. The verdict?

I liked it. Probably more than the first one, honestly.

DISCLAIMER:

Spoilers for the first film and I guess mild spoilers for this one? I mean, I won’t reveal the Big Stuff until the Spoiler Section, but I’m definitely gonna discuss some world-building details. Oh yeah, people. John Wick: Chapter 2 suddenly got world-building details like whoa.

SUMMARY:

John Wick tries to go back into retirement. It lasts for approximately six seconds before an old promise draws him in for one last job.

NOTES:

1. Should we begin with the inevitable comparison between Chapter One vs. Chapter Two?

There are things I like better about the first movie: enjoyable as this sequel is, for instance, I don’t think there’s anything in it that beats how cool this scene is. But there are things I like better about the sequel, too: namely, tone. Both movies are largely similar in many respects, but the first film is, for lack of a better word, a bit more serious. Aesthetic and colorful, sure, but serious.

This movie, by contrast, doubles down on its wonderfully silly assassin hotel from the first film and creates an entire criminal underground society that’s as elaborate as it is absurd. Visiting the Continental in Rome wasn’t a particularly large leap, no, but we also drop by honest-to-God criminal cartographers. Like, I gotta be honest: I wasn’t expecting that at all. We also do a quick tasting with the gun sommelier (played to wonderful effect by Peter Serafinowicz), and we introduce the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) and his whole pigeon system and network of informants posing as homeless New Yorkers. And then there are gold coins and assassin markers and an entire council called the High Table that rules this complicated criminal underworld.

John Wick: Chapter Two isn’t exactly campy. Like, there’s no wink wink, nudge nudge here: the actors play everything pretty straight–well, with the exception of Peter Stormare, who I’m fairly certain is biologically incapable of not chewing the scenery at every given opportunity–but the more elaborate this world becomes, the more you can’t help but laugh at its sheer ridiculousness. For others, that might be a detriment. For me, of course, it’s obviously a selling point.

2. Some other reasons I enjoyed Chapter Two a little more than Chapter One:

A. This film doesn’t have some of the plot conveniences that bothered me from the first movie. (Like characters surviving scenes they shouldn’t have walked away from.)

B. The bad guy doesn’t do a heel-face turn from Relatively Reasonable Dude to Total James Bond Villain. (Instead, our villain here is pretty consistently a slimy schmuck the whole way through.)

C. The dog doesn’t die. (Like, I’m just telling you that now. I was actually okay with this in the first movie, despite it being sad, but it would’ve just irritated the shit out of me in the sequel. Like, that shit’s just not necessary.)

3. Keanu Reeves is roughly the same here as he was in the first film. Mostly, I enjoy him (and it’s cool he does most of his own stunts), although there is one scene where John Wick’s screaming out his frustration, or whatever, and I couldn’t take it seriously at all, like, I definitely laughed out loud. Other welcome returns include Ian McShane, who is fabulous, of course, and Lance Reddick, who I just adore in these movies for reasons I cannot hope to properly articulate. Sadly, John Leguizamo has even less screen time than he did last go around, and, oh yes, I see Bridget Moynahan has come back for another six seconds of Dead Wife Nostalgia. Yay. Feel that female representation, folks.

We also have some newcomers. Bad Guy Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio) is kind of obnoxious, but serves his purpose well enough. Surprisingly, I’m not wild about Laurence Fishburne, despite enjoying the whole Matrix reunion–maybe because his performance actually does feel a bit wink wink, nudge nudge to me? I mean, it’s not terrible; it’s just that the lines seem to be one “motherfucker” short of being written solely for Samuel L. Jackson. Something feels slightly off. And I’ll admit, I don’t love Gianna D’Antonio (Claudia Gerini), either, for reasons I’ll attempt to work out in the Spoiler Section.

On the other hand, we do have some very fun newcomers, namely Ares (Ruby Rose) and Cassian (Common).

I basically love Ares, like, an assassin and loyal right hand woman with a whole androgynous vibe? I mean, YES. I don’t think she’s supposed to be deaf, unless the director is wildly overestimating how far two people can be apart in a dimly lit tunnel and still read each other’s lips, but she does use ASL to speak, which is pretty cool to see. Once again, John Wick is going for the flashy, colorful subtitles, but they don’t bother me this time around, perhaps because I was expecting them.

Anyway, Ares is pretty badass, which means John Wick: Chapter 2 has the exact same problem that the first movie had: I’m voting for the awesome lady who’s trying to kill our hero. I mean, it’s not a real problem, I know. I’m just saying that whenever John Wick and Ares square off, I’m absolutely rooting for the latter, just like I was rooting for Ms. Perkins the first time around. Basically, I’m just waiting for the spin-off with a female lead. Hm. Who would I want to be that lead, I wonder? Is Sarah Shahi too obvious? Ooh, how about Ellen Wong?

Meanwhile, I like Cassian as well, although admittedly not quite as much as Ares. Mostly, I like his motivations. I like when characters you enjoy are at cross-purposes for reasons that a) you can actually buy (and not cheap BS drama), and b) don’t boil down to just one person is Good and one person is Evil.

4. As far as the fight scenes go, overall, I like them. Actually, a couple are pretty fantastic: the whole scene at the club, for instance (I’m all about that club music), and also the mirror maze, cause, like, everyone loves a Mirror Maze Battle. There’s also a fight sequence on a staircase that I quite liked.

However, I did feel like the fight scenes occasionally ran a little longer than they needed to. It wasn’t a huge problem. I still enjoyed them well enough (they certainly had several “Jesus Christ, OW” moments, like, you could just see the fight choreographers dreaming up the best ways to make the audience cringe), but I did think they could be trimmed up a touch here or there.

5. Finally, before Spoilers, I just thought I’d mention that this movie basically begins with a ten-minute monologue on how ridiculously awesome John Wick is.

I mean, okay, it’s not actually a ten-minute monologue, but that’s kinda how it feels. Did you watch Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation? Do you remember Alec Baldwin’s line about how Ethan Hunt is the “living manifestation of destiny?” Yeah, this scene’s kind of like that, except there are, like, 25 additional lines on why you should be afraid that Baba Yaga John Wick is coming for your ass.

You know what I’d like to see? John Wick: Chapter Three partnering up with Dos Equis and working together on a marketing campaign that makes John Wick the new Most Interesting Man in the World, at least for a limited time. Cause let’s be real here: nobody actually cares about the current Most Interesting Man in the World, do they? And these could be really fun commercials/promotional tie-ins: like, “he can kill a man with a pistachio, and two at once with a cashew” or “he once stepped into a room and 17 men dropped dead from fear.”

I’m just saying. Think of the gloriously ridiculous possibilities!

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So, here are the basics: John Wick retired years ago, right? Well, it turns out that it’s hard for assassins to retire (go figure), and the only reason he managed it at all was because he gave a marker to Primary Villain/Awful Human Being Santino. Markers, it turns out, are basically like One Free Kill coupons for the criminal underworld. Once Santino heard that John Wick started killing people again to avenge his dog, he decided to cash in that marker. You see, Santino wants his sister, Gianna, dead so he can take her spot at the High Table. (It seems generally agreed upon that this would be disastrous, since Santino is such a total tool, although if I’m honest, I’m not entirely convinced that Gianna was such a rose, herself.)

So, Santino comes for a visit. Wick’s all “dude, I’m out” and Santino’s all “no one’s ever REALLY out” and Wick’s all “sorry, but no hard feelings, right” and Santino’s all “yeah, no, it’s cool, I’m just totes gonna blow up your fancy damn house.” Goodbye, House of Far Too Many Windows!

No longer having anywhere to sleep, Wick goes to the Continental for a bed and some free advice from Winston (McShane), who’s basically like “you were an idiot for giving this marker in the first place, but a deal’s a deal, and now you gotta pay up.” (But, you know. More British.) So, Wick leaves his dog with Charon (Reddick), and flies to Rome to get back into the game.

So, Gianna. Let’s talk about her for a bit.

Here’s pretty much what happens: Wick corners Gianna alone. They talk for a while, cause they’re friendly and all. Gianna realizes she’s doomed because John Wick is, you know, Satan Incarnate, the Merchant of Death, all that good jazz, so she decides to meet death on her own terms, i.e., she gets nekkid, jumps in the bath, and slits her wrists. Wick does shoot her in the head (for efficiency’s sake, I suppose), but not until Gianna is either unconscious or dead anyway.

I didn’t love this, while watching, and I spent a while trying to work through why. Here, I think, is the crux of my problem: if you switch roles and pretend Gianna was the client and Santino was the target, the scene wouldn’t play out the same. Maybe Santino would kill himself rather than futilely trying to survive against Dark Lord John Wick, but would he strip down first? Would we actually see his naked stroll to the bath? Would John Wick be so sympathetic he actually held Santino’s hand? Nah. I don’t buy it, not for one second. I think Gianna’s supposed to come across as all strong and tragically badass here, but that’s not how the scene reads to me. Mostly, it comes off as MALE LENS, SO MUCH MALE LENS, particularly since I can’t imagine Hollywood shooting this scene the same way with a dude playing the victim. It doesn’t kill the movie or anything for me, but it does slightly bug.

Anyway, action happens. I don’t have much interest in going over the whole movie, so I’m just going to hit some of the big plot points: Cassian goes after John Wick because he was hired to protect Gianna and isn’t pleased she’s dead. John defeats him, of course, by stabbing him in the chest. As a professional courtesy, however, he doesn’t remove the knife, potentially giving Cassian the chance to make it to a hospital and live. John doesn’t extend the same courtesy for Ares, unfortunately, stabbing her pretty much the exact same way but extracting the knife. I like to believe she made it anyway, though, and damn the physical impossibility of that. Not my Ares! I want you to liiiiiiiiive!

Eventually, super smarmy Santino takes refuge at the Continental. John Wick busts in, and while Winston tries to talk him down, Wick shoots Santino in the head. Mid-sentence actually, cause, you know. John Wick is the boss honeybadger, and he don’t give a fuck. It’s honestly pretty awesome: I just figured we’d end this movie with Wick super temporarily retiring again; instead, we leave on a big ass cliffhanger where John Wick and his dog get an hour head start on pretty much every assassin on the planet hunting them down. It’s kind of the best, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the eventual 3rd movie now.

Only maybe John Wick: Chapter Three can have a super badass assassin lady who lives? (And also isn’t a love interest?) I’m sad that my favorites always die, damn it.

QUOTES:

John Wick: “So I guess you have a choice. You want a war? Or do you wanna just give me a gun?”
Bowery King: “Somebody, please, get this man a gun!”

I liked it. I’d change some stuff with Gianna and trim the fight scenes a smidge, but it was a fun movie and a solid follow-up to the first film. And since I forgot to mention this before, I totally wanna be one of the old school, heavily tattooed, file clerk/switchboard operator ladies for this criminal underworld. These women showed up for maybe like ten seconds, and I was all, “Okay, one, that’s some badass cosplay that nobody would get, and two, Jesus, can I have a spin-off about these ladies too?”

It’s occurring to me now that my favorite parts about the John Wick franchise have basically nothing to do with John Wick himself.

MVP:

Ruby Rose

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B+

MORAL:

Don’t fuck with John Wick, Destroyer of Worlds, Bringer of Misery, GOD OF DEATH.

Mekaela and I have been binging Brooklyn Nine-Nine pretty much nonstop (seriously, it’s INSANE how fast we’ve gone through four seasons), so Star Trek has kinda fallen by the wayside lately. Recently, however, we did watch one episode that I’ve been looking forward to checking out since we started this TOS-watch.

Buckle up, kids: it’s the KHAN EPISODE.

DISCLAIMER

There will be SPOILERS for this episode and probably the Star Trek franchise in general. You’ve been warned.

WHAT GOES DOWN, BASICALLY

The Enterprise comes across the Botany Bay, a derelict space ship from the 1990’s–you know, back when the Eugenics War (AKA, Earth’s third and last world war) took place. I’m sure you remember it: 1992-1996, right between Step by Step and Daria. Anyway, there are faint life signs on the Botany Bay, so Kirk leads an away team over to investigate. Unhappily along for the ride is Lt. Marla McGivers, ship’s historian, amateur painter, and crushing blow to my feminist spirit.

The away team finds roughly 70 or so people sleeping in suspended animation. The commander himself is so damn handsome that McGivers can’t focus on anything but his hot body. This commander, of course, is Khan Noonien Singh, who our heroes wake up when they discover that his pod is malfunctioning. They bring him back to the Enterprise, where we eventually discover that not only is Khan a genetically enhanced “super man,” he was the last (and best) of the Earth tyrants to be overthrown. Naturally, Khan wakes all of his sleeping comrades and takes over the ship with the help of McGivers, who has been so quickly seduced by his old school negging and alpha man prowess that she’s sacrificed her career, betrayed her whole crew, and–oh yeah–committed treason, just to help out some dude she’s known for approximately ten minutes.

McGivers can’t quite watch Khan murder anyone, though–presumably, due to her weak, womanly heart–so she rescues Kirk before he can be executed. Then our captain fights our villain in a manly brawl–naturally–and pulls off an extremely unlikely defeat. Afterwards, Kirk decides that he’ll maroon Khan and his people on Ceti Alpha V, rather than putting them in a reorientation center. (Apparently, that would be a waste?) And rather than face a court martial, McGivers decides to go with him, which Khan is surprisingly chill with; he just quotes some Milton and saunters off.

At least, until 1982. Khan’s decidedly less chill then.

MY TAKE

Before I say anything else, let me say this: Ricardo Montalban is fantastic as Khan.

In fact, I like him here considerably more than I remember liking him in the second film. (Pipe down, Trekkies, I don’t think he’s bad in Wrath of Khan, just . . . like . . . he’s a bit campy, right? I mean, that movie’s got some serious camp. Most heartbreaking scene of all time, absolutely, but also? CAMP.) Here, Montalban is charismatic as hell. I wish he wasn’t playing a Sikh man, but you know. At least Khan’s not being played by a white dude yet? (Oh, Into Darkness, how you have failed us in so many ways.) Anyway, Montalban has a ton of presence here, and I can absolutely see why Nicholas Meyer tapped him to return as a villain on the big screen.

But.

It’s not just that Lt. Marla McGivers is the kind of female character that only a dude would write. It’s not just that she apparently falls madly in love with Khan before he’s even opened his mouth, or how she becomes even more irresistibly attracted to him once he insults her appearance, creepily changing her hair to suit his own preferences rather than her comfort. It’s not even the scene where Khan a) angrily pushes McGivers away after she rejects his embrace, b) insists she ask his permission to stay in the room, and c) painfully squeezes her hand so hard that she’s forced to her knees, all while demanding, “Open your heart to me. Will you open your heart?” It absolutely is all those things, but it’s also this: we’ve already done this sexist bullshit story.

Take away the eugenics, add a little psychic wonder, and we’re basically back to “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Consider this: Dr. Elizabeth Denner falls for Evil Asshole Gary Mitchell. Why? Who knows? That’s how fast it happens. Her passionate love for him (and her belief that he’s become a superior being, the next step in evolution) keeps her from acting even remotely professional. She quickly decides to abandon her career (and, presumably, family and friends) so that she can remain on a deserted planet with this guy for the rest of her life. Shit, she even does the same heel-face turn when Mitchell tries to kill Kirk. (Because we can betray our captains, no problem, but surely *gasp* not KILL them.) And yeah, there are differences here: McGiver’s facing a court martial, Denner isn’t; Denner dies at the end, McGivers doesn’t–at least, not until the 15-year interim between this episode and Wrath of Khan, that is.

Still, in the immortal words of Jed Bartlett: “It’s the same old crap all over again.” And with each and every episode, that’s becoming more and more disheartening. Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t under any illusions that a TV show made by men in the 60’s was going to conform to my ideals of feminism today, like, I expected shit like this. I just didn’t expect so much of it.

RANDOM ASIDES

Here’s my question after watching this episode: have men been freaking out about the death of masculinity since, like, the beginning of time? Like, I assumed that whole “men aren’t allowed to act like Real Men anymore because of PC culture grumble grumble” was a modern day invention, but that’s basically Khan’s whole deal in a nutshell, right? Considering he’s the bad guy, you’d think “Space Seed” would be a celebration of this futuristic “we try and treat people with respect and, also, not commit genocide” world, but honestly, I’m not so sure. Obviously, the speed with which McGivers falls in love with Khan is patently ridiculous, but I wonder if it doesn’t also speak to some male anxiety–and common false perception–that all women are irresistibly attracted to assholes, and if they wanna get a lady, they better start channeling their Inner Caveman right quick.

Bones is an absolutely badass in this episode. When Khan wakes up and holds a knife to his throat, does Bones freak out? Hell, no. He’s just all, “Well, either choke me or cut my throat; make up your mind.” Also? “It would be most effective if you cut the carotid artery just under the left ear.” It’s pretty great. Bones is definitely my MVP in this episode. (Probably because Sulu isn’t even in it.)

Sulu Watch: Let’s just assume he’s practicing more bare-chested fencing in his quarters. Also, some light botany.

Bones does back Khan up unnecessarily, though, like, I’m all for doctors advocating on their patients’ behalf, but seriously, if you’re up for reading tech manuals that are 200-years ahead of your time, you’re up for answering a few questions like “where are you from” and “did you happen to commit any genocides in your day?”

Also, possibly we should stop giving strangers blueprints for how to complete hostile takeovers?

Honestly, I’m pretty surprised Khan lets McGivers go with them, considering her betrayal is why their mutiny fails in the first place. More importantly, absolutely nothing happens in this episode which convinces me that Khan would become mad with vengeance years down the road. Like, he honestly seems pretty cool with getting dumped on a hunk of shitty space rock. You know, cause, it’s his shitty space rock. And as far as avenging his lady love McGivers, goes . . .

HA! I’m supposed to think Khan gives a shit about McGivers? Yeah, no. I don’t buy that bullshit for a second.

It’s been a few years since I’ve last seen Wrath of Khan, but one of the things I specifically remember about it is the film’s Battle of the Books: Kirk’s A Tale of Two Cities versus Khan’s Moby Dick. So, I was pleased to see Khan make a John Milton reference, not because I’m particularly pro-Milton (I read Paradise Lost once, six years ago, and remember almost nothing about it), but because I was excited to see that Kirk and Khan’s literary feud had even more literary references in its origin.

I’m mildly surprised that there are women among Khan’s small army of genetically modified warriors. I’d be more pumped about it if I didn’t highly suspect that the ladies were mostly around for breeding purposes.

I’m still waiting for Uhura to have plot-relevant things to do; in this episode, she’s mostly just around to get slapped by one of Khan’s soldiers. OTOH, she does have a pretty great “how dare you touch me, you ASSHOLE” look on her face after he does so. Which I found pretty fulfilling, even if she does have to immediately duck her head in horror when Khan (incorrectly) announces that Kirk is dead. Uhura also gets a tiny moment of background greatness when she watches Spock and Bones bicker back and forth, obviously amused.

I love the scene where Spock’s discomfited by Kirk, Bones, and Scotty’s admiration of Khan, though I’m trying to decide if I find it IC or OOC. On one hand, Spock definitely strikes me as a Dude of Principle, and I really enjoy his quietly astonished “gentlemen” when the other guys begin seemingly praising a genocidal dictator. On the other hand, it also seems to me that the logical guy would be the one to admire a dude’s strengths even as he stands against him; it’s the emotional people, you’d think, who’d be unwilling to see anything exemplary in a man so totally evil.

First Time We’ve Seen: Well, Khan, obviously. But more importantly, Bones doesn’t like transporters! Finally! I have been waiting for this cranky old man’s space phobias!

FASHION REPORT: When it comes to Khan cosplay, almost everyone focuses on his costumes from the movie, but there are some delightful gems in this episode, too. Like his hypersleep suit, which appears to be some kind of gold bondage gear covered by equally gold netting that’s reminiscent of Aquaman. His hospital gown, of sorts, is actually a light blue jumpsuit that stops short at the knees; it also has a deep, deep V that ends at his waist. His fancy dinner outfit, meanwhile, is a gold patterned robe with another deep V; his hair tie, you’ll be relieved to know, is also a matching gold. I’m obsessed with all of this.

Kirk records commendations for his bridge officers before he passes out and loses control of his ship. That’s nice. He’s a considerate boss, sometimes.

There’s a lot of outstanding dialogue in this episode. All of Bones’s “call me Dr. Badass” lines, obviously. I rather like when Spock’s all, “I’m surprised to see you, Captain, though pleased,” when Kirk turns out to be alive. I’m also a big fan of this exchange:

“Care to join the landing party, Doctor?”
“Well, if you’re actually giving me a choice–”
“I’m not.

Still, I think Line of the Episode will have to go to a different exchange between Bones and Kirk. Because it’s both amusing and gloriously cheesy, all at the same time:

LINE OF THE EPISODE

“He’ll live.”
“My compliments.”
“Oh, no, I’m good, but not that good. There’s something inside this man that refuses to accept death.”

Hm. It seems we’ve officially hit the point in this Mega Rewatch where I review movies I’ve actually already reviewed, albeit seven years ago. I first saw Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in theater, mostly on a whim; it also happens to be the movie that got me back into the M:I franchise.

It’s been some time since I’ve watched this one all the way through, but having just reread my original review of the film, I can tell you that, nearly a decade later, my opinions about Ghost Protocol are largely unchanged.

Year: 2011
Director: Brad Bird
First Watch or Re-Watch: Re-Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Other: Personal Collection DVD
Spoilers: Yeah. Though, honestly, I’m not sure how much there is to really spoil.

While John Woo and Mission: Impossible II are technically responsible for turning an espionage thriller into an action fest franchise, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is the first film in the series that’s actually a good action movie. There are things I’d change here, of course: our bad guy, Hendricks, is such an underdeveloped villain that he actually makes Philip Seymour Hoffman in Mission: Impossible III look faintly interesting by comparison. None of this is the late Michael Nyqvist’s fault, BTW; he’s given so little dialogue and screen time to work with that he never really had a chance of developing the character. I see a faint glimmer of Old School Bond Villain, maybe–certain line deliveries, the whole white suit–but it’s barely more than a vague impression. I’ve given Marvel a lot of shit over the years for their lackluster villains, but I think Mission: Impossible might be the franchise to beat for utterly lame bad guys.

Also lame: the twist that Hendricks is posing as his own right-hand man because seriously. Why? The Kremlin blowing up remains something of a CGI eyesore in what is otherwise a fantastically shot film. And while Paula Patton is fine in the role, Agent Jane Carter is very much the One Girl on the Team. She’s not terrible, but she does make me yearn for Ilsa Faust. That being said, I’d love to see all the Left Behind Ladies of the M:I Franchise make cameos in future films. I mean, I know that won’t happen, but it’d be cool to watch, like, Paula Patton and Maggie Q heading off for some mission at the beginning of M:I – 7. Or for Thandie Newton to show up and steal something and otherwise be a badass who doesn’t die.

Shifting gears to talk about what does work: well, quite a lot, actually. The action scenes in this movie are on point, especially everything that happens in Dubai. Watching Ethan step out of the billionth story window with nothing but his (soon-to-be malfunctioning) Grippy Gloves still makes me tense, which I think is impressive. I enjoy the fight scenes, too, particularly between a) Avenging Jane vs Lady Assassin, and b) Beat Up Ethan vs Beat Up Hendricks. More than anything, though, I really appreciate the easy humor that’s prevalent throughout this whole film: Sidorov’s face when he finds Ethan stranded outside on the hospital ledge. Ethan being taunted by the Malfunctioning Grippy Glove. Brandt’s total anxiety about jumping into a computer array. Luther mocking Ethan for actually saying “mission accomplished” out loud. And, of course, almost every thing Benji says or does.

A boring villain is always disappointing, sure, but to me, the combination of standout action scenes and laugh-out-loud humor more than make up for any lame bad guy.

Finally, a few asides:

1. Yay! The flash-forward opening credits are back!

2. Holy shit, I totally forgot how Ghost Protocol just brushes past Benji getting prison guards murdered. Like, I know we don’t technically see this one dude get killed, but . . . for real, dude gets killed.

3. Speaking of people who should be dead: Ethan goes legs first through a glass window, gets full on hit by a car, AND nosedives a car into, like, a 100-foot drop. Hendricks, too, should’ve died a good 30-minutes before he actually does; instead, he just walks off a car crash that would’ve broken his body into a billion pieces.

4. Now that I’ve seen Mission: Impossible – III, I’m even happier that Julia didn’t get killed in between movies, because while she only had one awesome sauce scene in that film, I absolutely hate that goddamn “axe the woman while no one’s looking” plot device. This will come up again in my eventual Fallout review, but I’m pleasantly surprised by how this franchise handles Julia and Ethan’s relationship over the space of four movies.

5. Ghost Protocol is obviously a hilarious title, but a more accurate one would still be Mission: Impossible – TECH FAIL. Or maybe Mission: Impossible – Fuck! Even In the Future, Nothing Works. (It could be the near-future. You don’t know.)

6. Up till now, it’s been incredibly easy to rank the M:I movies . . . but here I have a decision to make between this film and the original Mission: Impossible. Both are pretty solid movies in their own right, but they’re also going for wildly different tones, making it harder to pit them against one another, Ghost Protocol is definitely the movie I’m more likely to rewatch, but Mission: Impossible is almost certainly the more ambitious of the two. Both have their standout moments and amazing characters, just like both have their disappointing characters and obvious weaknesses.

I’m still not 100% about this, but for now, at least, I’ve made a decision.

The Current Ranking

1. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
2. Mission: Impossible
3. Mission: Impossible III
4. Mission: Impossible II

Escape Room

First Watch or Rewatch: First Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Other: Personal Collection DVD
Spoilers: Not really
Grade: Chocolate

I think my love of a) actual escape rooms and b) movies where strangers are trapped together and trying to figure out what’s going on, how they’re connected, how to get out alive, etc. is well documented by this point. So it’s no surprise Mek and I were on the verge of renting Escape Room when I actually received it as a gift. (Fun fact: Amazon hid the package so well that I didn’t find it until almost a week later, and only then because the sender–Infamous Tom–mentioned it offhand.)

Much as I’m drawn to these sorts of movies, they’re usually much more miss than hit, which is why I’m pleased to say that, overall, Escape Room is a hit for me. None of the actors are phoning it in, and I was especially excited to see both Deborah Ann Woll and Tyler Labine. The movie has quite a lot of energy: it’s fun, a bit ridiculous, hits all my claustrophobia boxes, etc. I like a lot of the dialogue, too, like, even the Asshole (there’s always at least one) is pretty enjoyable. I spent the majority of the movie rooting for almost everybody to survive, which makes for a welcome change. I have said it before and will keep saying it until I die: horror and mystery are almost always more interesting when likable–or at least funnier–characters are involved. Investment is higher, so tension and stakes are higher, too.

The conclusion, unfortunately, is easily the weakest part of this movie, which doesn’t come as a surprise; these kinds of movies almost always fall down at the finish line. Escape Room does a minor variation on a very common ending, and it’s . . . fine . . . but I’d really like to see something new here. Still, I had a pretty great time watching this one, and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys these kinds of cheesy fun thrillers.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

First Watch or Rewatch: Rewatch, sorta
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Amazon
Spoilers: Not really
Grade: Vanilla

I had zero interest in this movie when it came out. I’d never watched the original TV show, and the only thing I’d seen Henry Cavill in was Immortals, which I was very unimpressed by. Also, the reviews I’d seen were wildly underwhelming. So, I was surprised when I caught most of this on TV and found it unexpectedly charming–though, admittedly, I’d been on working on various things at the time and was only half paying attention.

Curious to see if I’d like the movie while actually paying proper attention to it, Mek and I rented The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and for the most part, I thought it was pretty fun. The story’s sorta whatever, like, I kinda checked out on the actual mission details pretty early on. But I thought both Cavill and Armie Hammer were kinda delightful and had great chemistry with one another. Hammer is weirdly endearing as this super strong Russian spy with fashion Opinions and an extremely short fuse; meanwhile, Cavill is playing the smooth-talking, ladies man, James Bond type at, like, 140%, and it’s hilarious. The whole movie is basically a parody played straight, which I enjoy, and I can’t help but wonder if the film’s poor reception had anything to do with critics taking it more seriously than was actually intended.

I do have some disappointments with the film: one or two lines didn’t land for me, like, I could go the rest of my life without someone’s mental health being blamed even in part on a mom who slept around. Jared Harris is wasted in this movie, and for some reason, I never truly warmed up to Gaby (Alicia Vikander), like, she was fine, but I really wanted to enjoy her character as much as the boys, and I just didn’t. OTOH, Elizabeth Debicki is all villainous and fun, and Hugh Grant is enjoyably British and snarky. That lucky bastard; he’s one of the very few actors in this movie who actually got to use his natural accent–which reminds me. Do . . . do British people think Americans pronounce the word “Nazi” as “NAT-zee?” Admittedly, my homeland is made up of about 87 billion different accents, but the only time I’ve heard that particularly pronunciation was when I watched Brad Pitt in Inglourious Bastards. Both Harris and Cavill did this, though, and it was very strange.

Overall, I enjoyed The Man From U.N.C.L.E., probably enough that I would’ve watched the sequel that Ritchie set up and never got, and certainly enough that I checked out Archive to see if there were any Solo/Illya fics. (There are! A fair few of them, in fact!) It’s a decent B movie, if you enjoy spy action-comedies, stylish Guy Ritchie movies, and/or attractive, antagonistic men forced to work with one another under perilous conditions. I mean, really. Who doesn’t like that?

As Above, So Below

First Watch or Rewatch: First Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Netflix
Spoilers: Very much so
Grade: Strawberry

So, this is basically Tomb Raider: The Horror Movie, or maybe Lara Croft: Get Me The Fuck Outta Dante’s Inferno. The first 2/3, I think, are pretty well-done: decent setup, claustrophobic as fuck–though, admittedly, I’m particularly susceptible to that kind of thing, like, no, thank you, I don’t do caves; that shit is for people who wanna die. There’s one scene in particular where Benji (Edwin Hodge) gets stuck and understandably freaks out, and man. That shit got me.

Unfortunately, I’m not quite as satisfied with the third act, and maybe that’s because I can be a literal, meat-and-potatoes kind of girl when it comes to storytelling, or maybe it’s just because, not having actually read Dante’s Inferno, I missed some of the more significant symbolism. Still, for my money, stories about atonement work a lot better when you actually spend some time on the sins your characters are atoning for. Which isn’t to say I needed the movie to stop so each person could have a five-minute monologue about their tragic backstory. It is, however, to say that when your characters start getting picked off by their own personal ghosts of Christmas past whilst traversing through literal Hell, I would like to know at least a little about those ghosts, or else what’s the point?

Like, Papillon works okay: we know he’s a kinda shady dude and he’s got the ominous burn scar on his hand, so maybe we don’t need to know the exact details of how he was involved with Dead Dude in Burning Car. But I shouldn’t have to go to IMDb trivia to get a vague theory about why Ominous Lady (with a baby, apparently, though I must have missed that) pushed Nice Enough Benji to his sudden doom. And Souxie’s death doesn’t work for me at all, considering she’s just abruptly murdered by Papillion’s dead friend. Like, wouldn’t such a death make much more sense for him? Moreover, the scene where Scarlett, George, and Zed confess their sins before taking their very literal leap of faith feels hurried and lacks emotional resonance–particularly on Zed’s part–because one, the whole third act feels a bit rushed, honestly, and two, the only confession that’s given any actual space is Scarlett’s. I feel all of this would play a lot better if each character was given an opportunity to confess their wrongdoing, and it’s only those who can’t admit it (like Papillon) who are brutally murdered as punishment.

Props to Zed for making it, though. I really didn’t think that guy had a–oh, goddamn it, yes, a literal chance in Hell. Happy for George, too, just cause I like him. (Though I still think the whole “shit, I grabbed the wrong Philosopher’s Stone” bit is more than a little silly. For me, at least, it doesn’t add much to the actual story.)

In the middle of working, seeing Hamilton, watching Good Omens, planning for the annual Clarion West Write-a-Thon, and writing “one quick Shadowhunters fanfic” that’s somehow exploded into the size of a goddamn novella, I’m afraid that my blog has fallen a bit by the wayside. Today, however, I have our next TOS recap, in which Kirk invites a killer space probe on board the Enterprise–his options are limited–and things go downhill from there.

Especially for Uhura.

DISCLAIMER

There will be SPOILERS for this episode and probably the Star Trek franchise in general. You’ve been warned.

WHAT GOES DOWN, BASICALLY

The Enterprise receives a distress alert from a system populated by four billion people, but when they arrive, they find that the entire species has already been obliterated by mysterious green bolts of energy. Naturally, the Enterprise is the next target. The ship is on the verge of destruction when Kirk finally attempts to communicate. The hostile alien initially responds in a 21st century Earth code; eventually, they’re able to establish a dialogue. The alien calls itself Nomad and agrees to come on board to talk to Kirk. Which is when it becomes apparent that Nomad is, in fact, not an organic being, but a little floating space computer.

Nomad continuously calls Kirk “the creator” and says that its mission is to sterilize biological infestations, or, in other words, destroy anyone who’s not perfect. This is bad news for Uhura, whose mind gets wiped, and also Scotty and several red shirts, who get flat-out murdered. Luckily, Nomad has handy resurrection abilities and brings Scotty back to life under Kirk’s orders. (The red shirts are less lucky. Also, Uhura, who has to literally be retaught everything she knows, and o-ho, will we be discussing that later.)

After initiating a mind meld, Spock confirms that Nomad is an ancient Earth probe whose mission was to seek out new alien lifeforms. After being hit by a meteor, however, Nomad somehow merged with an advanced alien probe whose purpose was to sterilize soil samples prior to colonization. Nomad’s memory banks were damaged and a new purpose was formed. The only thing keeping it from killing everyone on board (and/or killing everyone on Earth) is its mistaken belief that Kirk is Dr. Roykirk, its creator.

Of course, Nomad quickly starts doubting Kirk’s infallibility and takes over the ship. Kirk tells Nomad the truth, that he isn’t its creator and that it’s made multiple mistakes, which means it’s an imperfect creation that needs to be sterilized. Nomad has a can-not-compute meltdown, and they’re able to beam it out into space before it self-destructs.

MY TAKE

Man. This show really does love its Logic Bomb trope, huh? (I can’t say the same, myself, although I do think its handled marginally better here than in “Return of the Archons.”)

Mostly, this is a middling episode for me. The very best thing about it, by far, is that Spock has a mind meld with a space probe, which I suspect other people hate because it’s ridiculous, but I love because–well, because it’s a little ridiculous, sure, but also because I am, and forever will be, a sucker for weird telepathy shit. (Besides, I actually don’t think it’s inherently ludicrous, mind-melding with a computer. There’s an argument to be made for Nomad’s sentience, and anyway, there absolutely has to be fanfic where Data mind-melds with somebody, right?) If I had my way, Kirk would need to pull his BFF out of a dangerous mind meld every other episode. I specifically love that Spock gets so overwhelmed by this particular one that he says “um” as he struggles to formulate his thoughts. (Seriously, how often do you hear Spock use filler words?) He also gives his very best Dalek impression here. The whole scene is pretty delightful.

But my god, people. None of that matters because we have to talk about Uhura.

When we first see her after the mind wipe, Uhura is completely catatonic: standing there, blinking, an empty shell. The structure of her brain technically hasn’t been damaged, but she’s definitely been rebooted to factory settings. And like, that sounds pretty dire, right? Well, Spock doesn’t seem to think so. He’s all, “That’s cool. We’ll just reeducate her.” And Kirk’s like, “Sounds good. Bones, get on that.” And Bones is like, “No problem. Nurse, hop to it.” And I’m like, “Are you kidding me? What in the actual FUCK?”

Our reeducation scene consists of Nurse Chapel teaching Uhura how to read again via children’s e-books–I’m talking “see Spot run” here–and it’s just problematic on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start. For one thing, watching a white woman cheerfully praise a grown ass black woman for managing one-syllable words is just as cringeworthy as it sounds. For another, this scene is played as a comedy, with a confused Uhura looking directly at the camera as she mispronounces “blue” as “blue-y.” Jesus Christ.

This whole subplot really just doesn’t make any goddamn sense at all. Like, Uhura starts speaking in Swahili, right? (To which Chapel is all, “No, no, Uhura, English,” which, yeah, is definitely another yikes moment.) But while it is undoubtedly awesome to hear Uhura actually speak Swahili on screen–something I’ve read Nichelle Nichols herself pushed for–I’m left wondering, “Who taught her this?” Because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Christine Chapel, and language isn’t instinctual like breathing. Even our first language must be learned . . . unless . . . unless we’re saying Swahili doesn’t count as a real language, or that English is the only one that matters?

Seriously, this is just my face during this whole scene.

And sure, it’s great that Uhura shows an aptitude for mathematics and all, but hey, what about her fucking life? Does anyone tell Uhura about her friends, her family? How does she feel about these people, considering she has absolutely no memories of them? How does she see herself? Everything she knows about her life–her entire sense of identity, be it cultural, racial, religious, sexual, professional, gender, etc.–presumably comes from what Nurse Chapel could find in her Starfleet record. I mean, there is so much existential drama happening here, it boggles the damn mind.

Naturally, though, TOS wants nothing to do with all that. We don’t even see Uhura after this scene; instead, at the end of the episode, Bones informs Kirk that Uhura’s relearning her college education now and should be back on the job within a week. Holy Jesus, how much time has passed between these scenes? Is it still supposed to be the same day? Is Uhura, in fact, the smartest person to ever exist? (Obviously, the answer is yes.) And that’s it; that’s all we’re ever going to hear about this ever again.

This episode has broken me. I am officially broken.

RANDOM ASIDES

Literally the only good thing I can say about any of this is that Uhura and Chapel finally share a scene together, which means I don’t have to tag this review as a Bechdel Fail. Something like 30-episodes into the series, and I think this might be the very first time TOS actually passed this basic ass test.

Nomad initially goes after Uhura because it hears her singing over the comm. I’m amused by just how often Nichelle Nichols sings on this show. (Does anyone else in Trek sing so much? Robert Picardo on Voyager, maybe?) I’m considerably less amused, however by this exchange between Nomad and Spock, explaining why it wiped her brain:

“That unit is defective. Its thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me.”
“That unit is a woman.”
“A mass of conflicting impulses.”

Ugh. In a semi-related note, it’s pretty cool that Uhura can recognize old interplanetary codes–or at least she could. Christ knows if she can now. This fucking show, I swear to God.

Sulu Watch: Sulu’s contributions to this episode are minimal, although it is funny, watching him scoot backwards out of the way as Nomad floats right past his face. He then silently reaches out to warn an oblivious Uhura, all, Um? UM? Sulu also pulls Uhura away to relative safety after she’s been mind-wiped, while Scotty distracts Nomad by charging straight at it.

Season 2 really does seem to be doubling down on Scotty’s instinctive need to save damsels in distress, coupled with his complete and hilarious inability to do so. Here, Scotty gets immediately (if temporarily) killed for trying to save Uhura, but at least his–shall we go with chivalry? Sure, his chivalry is much less annoying than it was in “Who Mourns For Adonais?” Blindly charging a genocidal super computer isn’t the most strategic of plans, no, but considering Uhura is actively in danger at the time, Scotty’s “attack, attack!” instincts aren’t completely unwarranted.

Besides, when it comes to Worst Self-Preservation Instincts, Bones is the clear winner. He outright yells at Nomad after the probe kills/resurrects Scotty, and it’s up to Spock to pointedly ask “the Creator” if maybe he wants Nomad to wait elsewhere, you know, before the little fucker sterilizes the ship’s CMO unit, too.

The smug expression on Spock’s face when Nomad declares that he, unlike everyone else on board, is “well-ordered” is pretty priceless.

After hearing Nomad’s backstory, Kirk provides our episode title by recalling the legend of the changeling: “A faerie child that was left in place of a human baby. The changeling assumed the identity of the human child.” Though I’ve always been drawn to changeling stories, I’ll admit that I am definitely not an expert on European folklore . . . and yet I can’t help but feel like there is a very sizable leap from “space probe was knocked around by a meteor and merged consciousness with an alien probe, which led it to becoming a KILLER PROBE” to, uh, “some imposter faerie baby.”

FASHION REPORT: Mostly, I just need to note that Nurse Chapel has returned to us with new, two-toned hair: platinum blonde on top, yellow blonde on bottom. It’s definitely not my favorite hairstyle, but it’s worlds better than it looked last season.

The Enterprise Didn’t Stick The Landing: in its typically atonal fashion, the show ends with Kirk joking about how losing Nomad was difficult because, in a way, it was like losing his own prodigy child. “My son,” he says, as jaunty music plays in the background, “a doctor.” Meanwhile, I’m sure that the handful of permanently dead crew members–not to mention the entire alien race who got wiped out by Nomad–are chuckling over Kirk’s jokes in Hell.

LINE OF THE EPISODE

“My congratulations, Captain. A dazzling display of logic.”
“You didn’t think I had it in me, did you, Spock?”
“No, sir.”

I’ve never considered myself a science person, partially because I have no natural aptitude for it, partially because the science you learn in high school isn’t the kind of shit that interests me. (Well, mostly. We did get to learn forensics my freshman year, and I do remember enjoying it, even if I couldn’t tell a single fucking fingerprint apart.) But I am a science-fiction person, one who’s generally drawn to pro-science stories. We’ve talked about a couple of these already during our Year of Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon, for instance, and It Came From Outer Space.

Alas, we’re now heading back to the 1930’s, where science is generally not our path to enlightenment but to our downfall and destruction. Science is the method we foolishly use to try and control what mankind was never meant to master. Clearly, this is a pretty familiar theme: if Frankenstein is about trying to master death, then Jurassic Park is about trying to control life, and Deep Blue Sea is about trying to defeat dementia. Or sharks. The point is, progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged.

Enter . . . The Invisible Man.

Year: 1933
Director: James Whale
First Watch or Re-Watch: First Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Amazon
Spoilers: Very much so

What might be most striking about The Invisible Man is that, unlike some of the other Universal films I’ve been watching recently, it’s intentionally comedic. I wouldn’t necessarily say that all the humor totally works, mind. Jenny (Una O’Connor), for instance, is, uh. A lot. And there are tonal downsides to the comedy: on one hand, I’m a sucker for a good maniacal laugh–boy, is there a lot of it–and I do genuinely love some of the Invisible Man’s funnier lines, like his super casual plans to commit “a few murders here or there” during his proposed reign of terror. (His reign may be short-lived, but his kill count is impressive: 122 people, I think, most of them on a train.)

OTOH, Dr. Jack Griffin is actually a tragic character. His experiment went catastrophically wrong, yes, but not because he irresponsibly ignored significant findings or refused to do any research. His mistake seems understandable (well, mostly), and his madness is a direct byproduct of that one mistake. His homicidal mania is also curable, which makes it even more tragic when the police fatally shoot him instead. By making the Invisible Man’s villainy so cartoonish, though, it’s often hard to take the tragic parts seriously, particularly because we don’t get any real sense of Griffin as a character prior to his transformation. We only see Griffin’s face for the first (and last) time at the end of the movie, which, to be fair, is a striking shot. But it also means that the emotional weight of this story falls to Griffin’s fiancée, Flora, and his boss/almost-father-in-law, Dr. Cranley. Sadly, neither character is up to the task, as both have little to no personality and could easily be cut from the film, especially Flora. Cranley, at least, offers up exposition. Flora is so insignificant that she’s not even a damsel. She just drops right out of the movie until the very end, where it’s like, Oh, right. You exist. As far as I can tell, Flora’s only around because villains aren’t considered sympathetic if they aren’t in love with a pretty girl. (Love being an iffy term, of course, considering how abduction is often the way this “love” is depicted.)

Dr. Kemp, though, is a bit more interesting. Kemp is another scientist under Dr. Cranley’s employ, and basically, he’s a little asshole, making a play for Flora while she’s completely distraught over her missing fiancé. Said play goes like this: look, sweets, your boy was messing with forces beyond him and probably got whatever he deserved, but it’s okay because I’m here and I love you. Won’t you be with me? Thankfully, Flora rebuffs him (in the most weepy and flailing manner possible, of course), but I admit, I initially assumed Kemp would end up becoming more heroic later, so that he might manfully hold Flora when Griffin inevitably died. Instead, Kemp’s pretty much always a coward. That’s not really a knock; in fact, I did end up feeling sorry for the dude, if only because it’s clear that literally no one gives a shit if this guy dies or not. See, Griffin pays Kemp a visit and is all, “I’m about to take over the world, and you’ll be my Chief Henchman! You’re on board, aren’t you? Remember: I’ll kill you if you say no.” Kemp, understandably freaked out by this, first seeks help from his boss. It’s . . . less than effective:

Kemp: Remember how you told me not to warn anyone that our missing friend might be invisible and quite possibly insane? Well, he’s both, and he’s in my house, and he’s seeking literal world domination. Come. Save. Me.

Cranley: Sure, sure. Play it cool, man. I’ll come by in the morning.

Kemp: Fuck you, you’ll come by in the morning. There is a murderer in my house. Get your ass over here!

Cranley: Fine, but only because my daughter’s making me.

The police aren’t much better. When Griffin does threaten to kill Kemp (by 10:00 o’clock the next night), the cops are pretty dismissive. Kemp’s all, “Hey! HEY! I’m literally scheduled to be murdered here!” And the cops are like, “Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on, we’ll get to you.” Of course, they do come up with a protection plan/Invisible Man trap, but it kind of sucks and ultimately fails on both counts. Griffin traps Kemp in his car and lets it roll off a cliff, and pretty much no one ever mentions him again. So long, my dude.

In an Invisible Man remake–that is, one divorced from the Elisabeth Moss movie coming out later this year–I think you might need to do one of the following: either cut Flora and her father from the story and focus primarily on Griffin’s partnership with Kemp, or cut Kemp from the story and focus primarily on Griffin’s relationship with the Cranley family. Or, if you’re going to keep all three, then you need to do some serious rewriting so that each character actually contributes something to the plot. I will say, though, that despite the tonal and plot imbalances, I generally found this movie enjoyable enough. It’s never going to be a favorite, but doesn’t seem likely to hit bottom of the pack, either.

Some random notes:

1. Specific bits that work for me include a) everybody calling the tip line with absolutely worthless tips, b) Constable Jaffers–hilariously nonchalant about the reality of invisible people–asking, “How can I handcuff a bloomin’ shirt?”, and c) this bit of dialogue right before Kemp bites it:

Kemp: Griffin, I’ll do anything! Everything you ask me.
Griffin: You will? That’s fine. Just sit where you are.

2. I don’t know much about special effects in the 1930’s, but I have to imagine that the ones on display here–where a shirt runs around the room and the like–were pretty awesome for their time. So, that’s neat.

3. Lot of people in this one. Claude Rains, of course, plays the Invisible Man. It was only his second film role ever, and–holy shit, he’s Louis Renault in Casablanca? How did I not know that? Then, of course, we have Gloria Stuart of Titanic fame as our requisite love interest. Dr. Cranley is played by Henry Travers, who you might know better as Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life. Dwight Frye, who we’ll be seeing more of in Frankenstein and Dracula, has a tiny part in this. Hell, even John Carradine has a bit role.

4. The ending itself is a bit anticlimactic, probably because none of our major players are involved in capturing Griffin. Like, I don’t care about this dude and his barn–and apparently neither do the cops because holy shit, they just burned it down. Okay, now I do care a little. Like, I know dude’s getting a reward for providing valuable information and all, but Jesus. 9-11 calls are not supposed to go this way:

Citizen: Hello, police? Come quick. There’s a serial murderer in my barn.

Police: Huh. Well, it’s too hard, getting him to come out. Afraid there’s no other option but to burn the whole thing to the ground.

Citizen: Wait, what?

Like, this is not how you want cops to solve crime.

5. And, of course, at the very, very end, Griffin spends his dying breath lamenting that he played God, messed with forces he shouldn’t have messed with, blah blah, woof woof. There are times when that’s certainly arguable; this, however, really isn’t one of them. 122 people didn’t die because humanity was never meant to know the divine secrets of invisibility; 122 people died because Griffin was a secretive asshole and didn’t get a second opinion on his research. Cranley would’ve been able to tell him about the side effects of monocane; alas, Griffin never consulted his own boss and thus doomed everyone.

Mad scientists of the world, take note: at least get the second opinion before you disregard it entirely.

The Current Ranking

1. The Black Cat
2. Creature from the Black Lagoon
3. The Mummy
4. The Invisible Man
5. It Came From Outer Space

Valentine’s Day has come and gone, so you know what that means: HORROR MOVIES.

Dead Body

First Watch or Rewatch: First Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Other: Shudder
Spoilers: Yes, but only in the last two paragraphs.
Grade: Chocolate

To my surprise and delight, this low-budget indie is a pretty decent little slasher film. (And directed by a woman! Yay, more women in horror!) The premise, of course, is absolutely my jam: a bunch of high school graduates (and one older boyfriend) play Dead Body, where one person is secretly assigned the role of the murderer and “kills” someone, and everyone else has to figure out who did it–only then people actually start dying. This is a Golden Age of Detective fiction staple and absolutely the kind of morbid shit I would definitely play, so of course, Mek and I had to try this movie out. Where it shines best is dialogue, characterization, and surprisingly intentional humor: Dominic’s mostly relatable bitchiness about his uninvited guests (“I need to go set up the loft I wasn’t planning on using”) or Dwayne immediately going for hacksaws, hooks, and nail guns after finding the dead bodies. I also genuinely like how protective Marcus is of his weird brother. (Or friend? I was never actually clear on this.) And there are one or two big surprises here: one didn’t do much for me, but the other I LOVED.

The thing that wasn’t a surprise, unfortunately, is the identity of the killer. Which, hey, correctly solving a whodunnit can provide a glorious sense of satisfaction, or even vindication. Here, however, Mek and I were pretty sure about the killer maybe 25 minutes into the film and were all but proven right about 25 minutes later–which is still a solid 15 before the Big Reveal. Some of the setup is actually pretty clever, but there are a few missteps, which I’ll discuss in the next two paragraphs. Other disappointments: the opening scene doesn’t do much for me–we should probably cut the last 30 seconds at least–and the two foreign exchange students are barely even in this movie, which is especially annoying because they’re the only POC in the whole cast.

SPOILER territory: I initially assumed Marcus was the killer because he’s the Nice Guy Love Interest and I figured he’d brought Rumor along as an obvious patsy. However, suspicions were quickly transferred to Dominic, partially because finding him so suddenly dead was shocking enough to be suspicious, partially because of the Harvard motive (which I thought was nicely handled), and partially because I’ve seen enough movies/read enough Agatha Christie to know you can’t trust dead bodies. Even if I hadn’t, Kenji playing dead is pretty obvious foreshadow. I think that bit could probably be cut, along with the whole it was YOU line from the opening scene, and that moment when the camera lingers a beat too long on the hammer. (Because that’s how Mek and I went from, like, 90% sure that Dominic was the killer to 190%: he kills Rumor with the hammer obviously left behind.) If we really want Dominic to be a shock, we probably need another viable suspect and/or a costume change; alternatively, it might work to do the Big Reveal with Rumor’s death, so the audience finds out well before our surviving heroes. That way, we’d get to watch Dominic’s surprise/delight when his intended victims start killing each other out of paranoia. I’m kinda warming up to that idea, actually.

Finally, the two big surprises are the last-minute resurrections of Sarah and Marcus. Sarah is really interesting: for one, her survival is pretty shocking because she seems like such a Dead Meat character. (Shocking survival, as it turns out, became quite the theme of the evening.) For another, Sarah pulls a nail out of her own face to kill the bad guy. I thought the scene where Ilsa pulls nails out of Sarah’s face was pretty great, but this is just badass. Unfortunately, Marcus’s miraculous resurrection kinda feels like it’s just taking away from Sarah’s. I felt bad for the dude when he died, but once dead? Yeah, stay dead, my dude.

Overlord

First Watch or Rewatch: First Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Amazon
Spoilers: Yeah, sorry
Grade: Vanilla

I’m always excited by the idea of genre-blending, especially when mystery or horror come into the mix, but Overlord feels uneven to me. It’s strongest, I think, in the first act, when the movie is pure action/war drama. (Did anyone watch this movie without seeing the trailer full of spoilers? Cause damn, no one’s getting Nazi Zombie Shit from the first 20 minutes of this movie.) The plane scene is dramatic AF and the ominous clues in the woods that “something is amiss” are decent. I like most of the cast. Jovan Adepo gives an especially strong performance as our kind-hearted protagonist Boyce. I know Adepo primarily from a two-episode stint in Watchmen, and I definitely want to see more of him.

But we start hitting problems in Act II when our heroes make it to the French village. Part of that’s pacing: it takes way too long to for anyone to find all the horrific experiments. This movie is only 1 hour and 48 minutes, but boy, I’d have bet money it was a lot longer. And then, part of it’s content: I’m not sure Wafner (Pilou Asbæk, AKA, Euron Greyjoy) is doing much for me as a Big Bad, and I definitely found the coerced sexual assault shit completely unnecessary. (Boyce interrupts Wafner before he rapes Chloe, but this is still a yuck subplot and incredibly lazy writing.) The aunt, too, is much more foreshadow than actual character: she barely has screen time, much less dialogue.

Still, the worst problems, I think, begin after Boyce discovers all the Nazi Zombie Shit. The discovery scene itself is great: it’s weird, creepy, maybe a bit silly (I’m specifically thinking of the decapitated head pleading in French), but overall, just a lot of fun. And Boyce has spectacular reactions to the body horror/general impossibility; his freakout is super relatable, TBH. This is the moment the whole film has been building toward–which is why I’m just baffled by the decision to completely cut the tension by stopping for a 15-minute time-out, like, Overlord goes right back to straight-up war movie again, all unethical interrogations and “is it right to beat up a Nazi” and “do we even recognize ourselves anymore?” These are all perfectly fine themes that should not be dwelled on here, five minutes after this shit. And while we do kinda get back on track with the death/zombie resurrection of Chase (Iain De Caestecker), the film never fully recovers; instead, the whole third act loses its creepy body horror vibe and just becomes a really bad Resident Evil movie. It’s so bland and cartoonishly over-the-top that there’s just no tension at all. I was honestly bored, and that’s about the last reaction you want from your audience here.

Finally, some additional notes:

A. Secret histories, admittedly, are not always my bag, but I’m not sure that tying this story  to D-Day really does much for me.

B. I can’t decide if De Caestecker’s American accent is bad or if I’m just very aware it’s not his natural, lovely Scottish. I am fond of the actor, though. When Chase gets shot (inevitably, I mean, maybe don’t send the kid with the camera to secure the Big Bad Nazi Dude, FFS), I was all, “A-ha! This is why you cast De Caestecker, for the emotional death scene!”

C. Overlord’s “Holy Shit, This Guy Actually Lived!” is Jacob (Dominic Applewhite) and, to a lesser extent, Tibet (John Magaro). Tibet is the semi-redemptive asshole, whereas Jacob is Boyce’s buddy from the plane, the one who Boyce repeatedly promises, “I’ll be right behind you!” Obviously, I marked Jacob as First to Die. It is lovely to be wrong sometimes.

D. Alas, Private Dawson (Jacob Anderson) does not fare so well. Mekaela and I had just enough time to say, “Wait, is that Grey Worm?” before he blew the hell up. Sorry, buddy.

The Void

First Watch or Rewatch: First Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Other: Shudder
Spoilers: Yeah, sorry again
Grade: Strawberry

This one starts out so strong, but kind of spirals into an incoherent mess. Mileage is definitely gonna vary on that, depending on your A) tolerance for how much a story refuses to explain, and B) nostalgia for 80’s cosmic horror. I tend to be skeptical of the former and like the latter more in theory than execution. For example, The Void reminded Mekaela of Hellraiser, a movie I enjoyed for its aesthetics and not much else. (I’m tagging this whole review a blasphemy just for that sentence.) Meanwhile, The Void reminded me of Prince of Darkness, which I reviewed in great detail last year and, ultimately, didn’t love. Which is all to say I may not have been the target audience here.

Except . . . damn it, I still feel like I really could’ve enjoyed this movie. For starters, there’s an awful lot I do like about The Void. The initial setup and “WTF is going on here” mystery is a lot of fun. The look of the film is pretty great. I enjoy the whole cast. The reveal that our kindly old doctor isn’t just Dead Meat Walking but the actual Big Bad is awesome, especially since it comes after he does predictably “die.” Likewise, the reversal that our blatantly evil murderers from the beginning are actually good guys (well . . . good-sh) is pretty cool, too, although I do feel like their backstory gets a little lost in the chaos. The ending with the Sheriff and Allison is interesting, if sorta huh, and I’m fucked shocked that our ultimate survivors are the unnamed mute guy and Ellen Wong–people. I have finally found a Western horror film where an Asian woman lives. Holy shit.

Unfortunately, one of the main reasons Prince of Darkness came to mind wasn’t the portal sacrifice similarities or the supernatural pregnancy BS–more on that in a bit–it was the ominous cultists converging on the hospital. We know absolutely nothing about this cult, like, who the hell these dudes are, why they don’t bother coming inside, where they peaced out to at the end, etc. (Seriously, did the ascend or something? The fuck?) Apparently, this is one of the many things intentionally left open for the viewer to decide, but this viewer has decided: we learn nothing about these guys because the creators don’t care about these guys; they just needed something to trap the heroes in the hospital, and that’s it. In Prince of Darkness, the cultists are actually possessed homeless people, but they serve the exact same plot function, and IMO, that’s lazy as shit writing.

And therein lies my main problem with The Void; rarely does the script feel purposefully ambiguous and thought-provoking; mostly, it feels lazy, chaotic, and confused. The hallucinations in the not-exactly-there basement feel muddled. Most of what happens in the whole third act feels pretty muddled. And I’m especially disappointed by Allison, who starts out as a potentially interesting character and ends up just becoming a vessel, a body, a plot device rather than an actual person. Allison exists to A) draw our heroes into the Basement of Doom, B) add to our MC’s ongoing man pain, and C) give us some old-fashioned pregnancy horror, I guess? (She lost a baby prior to the story, so Big Bad impregnates her with monster juice, and she gets to die of symbolism. And getting chopped up by her tearful hubby, of course. Cool.) This is all especially tedious because we already have Maggie for the pregnancy horror, but I guess one eldritch nightmare birth where the mom/vessel violently dies wasn’t enough? Basically, this whole bit sucks.

Finally, additional notes:

A. I did actually enjoy the twist that Maggie was also a bad guy. I probably should’ve caught that, but I just assumed she’d have a gross demon baby, which, hey, that part was dead on. Poor Sarah got mighty ugly in her second life, didn’t she?

B. Much like with Grey Worm in Overlord, I had just enough time to be excited about Iris Rouse (Stephanie Belding) from Shadowhunters popping up before she got killed off. (Then transformed into an eldritch horror and then killed off again.) Sorry, buddy.

C. As always, doing clerical/errand work in a hospital hardly makes me a medical expert. And this story is admittedly set in some rural town in the . . . 80’s? 90’s? Still, I had a ball laughing at the medical inaccuracies in this movie. The aborted C-section wasn’t actually as bad as I thought (when you’re primarily familiar with a low transverse incision, a classical cut looks weird AF, like, Jesus, why are you all the way up there), although I highly suspect that whatever pain relief Kim used wouldn’t cut it for fucking surgery. But I straight up cackled when Allison walked to the med room, which appears to just be a basic supply closet where they keep narcotics unlocked on the shelf. Also, seriously, there’s only one patient here. Why the fuck are we keeping the supplies this far away? For that matter, why hasn’t the one and only patient in this hospital been transferred literally anywhere else? Like, I get the idea that this place is still supposed to be open for emergency services or something, but uh, dude’s clearly just an inpatient now. Ship that motherfucker out. And how in Christ’s name is anyone still working out of this hospital? Again, I get the idea–emergency services for locals while everyone else has moved off to hospitals that weren’t recently half burned down–but also, bullshit. The nearest hospital is only 20 minutes away, which of course is shitty, but shocking? In a rural county? HA. Hell, that’s the distance between the high school I went to and its closest hospital. Besides, the state of this place? No one should be working here. This especially kills me dead because the hospital I work at now has been temporarily shut down twice in the past few years just for smoke damage, much less a fire that actually destroyed part of the fucking building. These people have not heard of JCAHO, that’s all I’m saying.

D. Finally, more fun casting: our Big Bad is played by Kenneth Welsh, who I know from one episode of The Expanse but also from Twin Peaks, where he played Windom Earle. I had no idea that was the same guy! Meanwhile, Art Hindle, who was in both the original Black Christmas and the 70’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, has a small role here, too. Horror cameo casting is just the best.

Hello again! It’s been a couple of weeks, I know. I’m afraid I’ve been distracted by work and new fandoms and the like, but today I return to discuss our last official Year of Monsters movie: The Wolf Man. This is one of the few Universal films I’ve actually seen before, although not since high school. At the time, I’d found it very boring.

This time, well. Maybe a little bored? But also amused, surprisingly sad, and–in one noteworthy scene–downright incredulous.

Year: 1941
Director: George Waggner
First Watch or Rewatch: Re-Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Amazon
Spoilers: Absolutely

Our story begins when Larry (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns to live with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains), in Wales after spending nearly 20 years in America. (Apparently, this does not take place in England, as I’d originally assumed. You’ll have to forgive my confusion, as there are a bevy of accents in this movie, and I don’t believe Welsh is ever one of them.) The idea of Sir John being Larry’s dad shouldn’t amuse me nearly as much as it does, but I’d be hard pressed to come up with two white guys who resemble each other less than Lon Chaney Jr., a giant, and Claude Rains, an Englishman who stood at a whopping 5’7.” Rains is very English here, the kind of rigid, upper crust bastard who you can imagine saying things like “Pish-tosh! Werewolves? Stuff and nonsense, I say!” Meanwhile, Chaney Jr. is about as American as a dude can get, like, his accent seems almost aggressively American, somehow. Unfortunately, all their scenes together highlight another disparity: Claude Rains can act circles around Lon Chaney Jr.

As the titular Wolf Man running around the woods, Chaney Jr. is decent enough. As Larry, a dude who’s possibly been cursed with lycanthropy, or also possibly an accidental-murderer who’s going crazy . . . that, I’m less impressed with. I couldn’t take any of Larry’s (admittedly legitimate) freak-outs seriously, especially not when he tearfully confesses to Gwen. Like, I outright laughed when he yells, “No! It’s no use!” and runs out the door, which is obviously not the optimal emotional response. The Wolf Man is this great tragedy that, to me, feels considerably less tragic than it could have. Or rather, I do find the ending quite sad, but that’s entirely because of Claude Rains, who unknowingly bludgeons his son to death with the very silver cane that Larry gave to him for protection. I feel heartbreakingly sad for Sir John Talbot. Larry? Meh.

Admittedly, my apathy towards Larry isn’t solely due to acting; it’s also because the dude is, undeniably, a total fucking creeper. Let us discuss this by closely examining today’s lesson: How to Flirt With Larry Talbot.

Early in the film, Larry is repairing his dad’s awesome and hilariously large telescope, which he of course immediately uses to look around at all his new neighbors, including the pretty young woman who lives above the antiques shop. Gwen (Evelyn Ankers) is wearing a distinctive pair of earrings; this is important because when Larry makes his way over to the store, he asks to buy a pair himself, only he disregards all the available options before explaining the type he really wants: the earrings, of course, that she previously had on. And when Gwen’s like, “Sorry, we don’t have any jewelry that matches those extremely detailed specifications, you weirdo,” Larry actually says, “Oh yes, you have. You remember? On your dressing table up in your room.”

Ginny Weasley is all of us right now.

And then! And then! Larry, all supposedly charming and reasonable, actually asks Gwen if she’ll get her own fucking earrings for him! Understandably flustered at this point–because he’s being CREEPY–Gwen manages to say the earrings aren’t for sale. Super Smooth Larry, though, is all, “Well, guess I can’t blame them for not wanting to leave, cause they look so hot on you, babe.” Ugh. Ugh. Larry then proclaims himself to be a psychic (the kind who knows everything about beautiful women, natch), gets a crash course on Werewolf 101, offers up some terrible Red Riding Hood-related flirting, buys the silver cane that will later kill the shit out of him, and finally insists on a date, blatantly ignoring Gwen’s repeated refusals. Somehow, this is all supposed to be cute, presumably because nothing says romantic like Blatant Stalking.

Gwen, herself, is more or less fine, although I can’t say she has much in the way of actual personality. Her fiancé–yes, she has one–is even more of a non-entity, like, this dude is so irrelevant to the story I’m struggling to understand why they even bothered including him at all. The Drama, I guess, except there’s not that much drama involved? Most of the supporting cast isn’t that interesting, although Ralph Bellamy–who’s been in many a movie, but who I primarily know as that Old Guy in Pretty Woman–is decent enough as the stupidly tall and mildly antagonistic officer of the law.

The supporting cast members I really want to discuss, though, are Maria Ouspenskaya and Bela Lugosi. Lugosi is in this movie for five seconds, and he overacts every single one of them. He plays Bela (yes, really), a Romani werewolf who kills Gwen’s friend and bites Larry before Larry can successfully bludgeon him to death with the silver murder cane. Ouspenskaya, meanwhile, plays Maleva, Bela’s mother; this, despite the fact that the actress was only six years older than Lugosi, like, JFC, at least Claude Rains had 17 years on his supposed son. Come on, Hollywood. Get your shit together.

Maleva is far and away this movie’s most likable character, the self-assured mentor that unfortunately nobody ever listens to. She repeatedly tries to save Larry’s worthless ass, which is pretty sporting of her, considering he killed her son and all. First, she gives him an amulet that will protect him from the curse (an amulet which he immediately and uselessly bestows upon Gwen), and later, frees him from a bear trap before hunters can find and kill him. Maleva also tries to keep Gwen from running after Larry in the woods (Gwen refuses and immediately almost gets killed), and tries to push Sir John into admitting his own doubts, that perhaps he knows, deep down, his son really is a werewolf.

The scene between Maleva and Sir John lasts, like, a minute, but it is easily my favorite in the whole movie. Claude Rains is all stern protectiveness and staunchly repressed fear (he even says “rubbish!” much to my delight), while Ouspenskaya is both wry and awesomely disdainful. There’s a fascinating story between Maleva and Sir John, two parents who both want (and fail) to save their children. I’d actually be really interested in seeing a remake specifically focused on these two, rather than Creepy Larry and his boring, doomed romance. Alas, instead we got that Benicio del Toro movie that looked absolutely dreadful. (Maybe it wasn’t? But . . . yeah, it looked pretty bad.)

Some Random Notes:

1. The Wolf Man is not the first werewolf film ever made but the second. I considered choosing Werewolf of London instead, but this felt so classic; I couldn’t pass it up. Maybe I’ll watch Werewolf of London at a later date, and then presumably listen to some Warren Zevon.

2. Let’s talk Werewolf Lore!

The Wolf Man was an extremely influential film in regards to modern werewolf canon; however, there are some pretty noticeable differences. The full moon, for instance, is notably absent here (though that will change in subsequent sequels); instead, wolfsbane is the key to triggering the curse, as we discover in this not-actually ancient poem that’s repeated way too many goddamn times:

Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

Words have power in this movie, more than I might’ve expected from a werewolf story. Maleva has her own poem/prayer/spell that she says over the bodies of both Larry and Bela (with only very slight variations):

The way you walked was thorny through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Your suffering is over. Now you will find peace for eternity.

It’s only after she says this that the corpses return to their human forms. She also repeats this prayer/spell at one point when Larry, still alive and in his wolf form, is caught in that bear trap; it allows him to change back into a human and “find peace for a moment.” It’s never really explained if this is supposed to be Maleva’s own inherent magic, or some Romani spell work, or something that anyone could do, if only they knew the proper words. Still, I kind of enjoy it. I feel like I don’t see enough neat werewolf magic stories.

Other werewolf lore of note: silver, definitely. It’s what kills both Larry and Bela. Then we have the pentagram shit, and look, I will never, ever, ever be able to take pentagrams seriously as a werewolf thing, but I am mildly interested in werewolves who get these brief psychic glimpses of their next victim, like, it’s totally silly, sure, but the kind of silly I sorta live for. I am always, always here for the nonsensical psychic shit.

3. It’s sort of amusing that while Bela Lugosi’s werewolf actually runs around on all fours–like, you know, a wolf–Larry is a bipedal werewolf. I can never take bipedal werewolves seriously, although I’m starting to find it almost comforting, how ridiculous most werewolves in movies/TV look. Like, the decade doesn’t even matter.

It’s like a universal constant, something we can hold onto during these chaotic and trying times: werewolves are awesome, but on screen, they almost always look absurd.

Anyway. While the bipedal/quadrupedal thing is never explained in the film, most people seem to think it’s because, in an earlier version of the script, The Wolf Man was a psychological horror film, where the audience is never fully sure if Larry is actually turning into a werewolf or just thinks he is. It’s interesting, too, because you can still easily see the echoes of that story here, even though Universal clearly decided to go another way.

4. Gwen might not be a particularly interesting love interest, but I feel incredibly bad for the actress. By all accounts, Evelyn Ankers had a terrible time on set, from Lon Chaney Jr. continuously and vindictively pranking her, to passing out due to fumes from the fog machine, to–and I shit you not–being chased by a live fucking bear on set. She’s also the only main cast member who’s not named in the trailer, which, once you survive being chased by a bear? I think you should just automatically get first billing. (Instead, first billing went to Bela Lugosi, which, seriously. He is barely in this movie.)

5. Finally–actually, that’s it! We’ve made it through all twelve Year of Monsters movies, though there should be a bonus review up sometime next week, hopefully, due to the generosity of my friend, Rob. Until then, here is The Final Ranking, although I’ll be honest: I’m still definitely not sure about 7, 8, and 9 at all, and might order them differently on any given day.

The Final Ranking

1. The Black Cat
2. Creature from the Black Lagoon
3. The Bride of Frankenstein
4. Dracula
5. Tarantula
6. The Wolf Man
7. The Mummy
8. The Invisible Man
9. Frankenstein
10. It Came From Outer Space
11. Nosferatu
12. The Phantom of the Opera

Okay, I know. Halloween is over. Guess what? Horror Bingo continues until there’s a winner, and so far, it’s still neck and neck. The stakes are high! (There are literally no stakes of any kind.)

Happy November. Let’s twist this.

Happy Death Day 2U

Year: 2019
Director: Christopher Landon
First Watch or Rewatch: First Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Amazon
Spoilers: Yep
Grade: Vanilla

Happy Death Day 2U is an interesting sequel in that it slightly genre hops from “horror comedy with an SFF plot device” to “SFF comedy with vague slasher leanings.” I don’t know that it totally works for me, though. I really enjoy the embrace of parallel dimensions–it’s always fun to see what’s the same and what’s different in any given universe–but I’m also a tiny bit bummed by just how much of a backseat the whole slasher part takes. I was also a little disappointed when I realized that only Tree would get caught in the parallel dimension time loop. That’s what I’d been initially expecting, mind you, but then we began the movie with Ryan caught in his own time loop, and I had just long enough to think, Oh, that’s so INTERESTING, before we essentially just restarted Happy Death Day in Earth 2.

That being said, Tree’s reaction to realizing she’s back in the loop? Priceless. I still like Jessica Rothe as Tree, and a lot of the humor still works for me. (Some, admittedly, is a bit goofy for my tastes.) The emotional beats work too, mostly: I like that Tree is tempted to stay, though sometimes the swelling background music is trying way too hard; also, I definitely don’t care enough about Tree/Carter to make the World Where Mom is Alive vs. World Where Carter is My Boyfriend even remotely a debate. I also enjoyed getting to see the nicer, less homicidal Lori, though I do wish we had more time to spend on Comic Relief Scientist Friends.

I’m also still a little unsure about, well, most of the time/dimension mechanics, honestly. Why, exactly, was Ryan in a time loop again? Tree got stuck in hers when the quantum machine went off, but I don’t think it went off again, so . . . not sure? Also, while Alternate Ryan is interesting, I don’t know if he makes much sense, especially considering we get 2 Ryans in Earth 1, but only 1 Tree in Earth 2. I’m curious, too, about Alternate Tree, like, I get that her mind went traveling when our Tree came into the picture, but did she actually come back? Does she remember what happened to her? Would she have been stuck forever if our Tree decided to steal her life? It’s possible I missed some of these explanations, and even if I didn’t, I’m sure many would consider them nitpicks. But IDK. In some ways, Happy Death 2U is kinda intriguing; in other ways, I feel like there’s just so much more it could’ve played with and explored.

Cube

Year: 1997
Director: Vincenzo Natali
First Watch or Rewatch: Rewatch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Amazon
Spoilers: Yes, in this paragraph and in the trailer above
Grade: Vanilla

Cube came out when I was about 12, and I haven’t seen it since I was, IDK. 13? 15? It’s the first horror film I can think of, offhand, that uses an escape-the-booby-trapped-room set up; it’s also the oldest film I can remember that uses the Razor Floss death trope, which became popular a few years later. (Though if you can think of older films, please do let me know in the comments.) It’s definitely influential, and I can see why it’s gained something of a cult following. (Plus two sequels, neither of which I’ve watched.)

Some parts of this movie hold up better than others. I won’t pretend I can speak expertly about good autistic rep, but everything I’ve ever read suggests that the autistic savant character is a frustrating stereotype, one that’s become dominant in film and television since Rain Man. Some of the scene transitions are kinda laughable. Also, some of the actors are notably better than their costars, though I did have fun playing spot the actor. When I first watched Cube, the only person I knew was Nicole de Boer, who was on DS9. Now, I also recognize Nicky Guadagni from Ready or Not, David Hewlitt from Stargate: Atlantis, and Julian Richings, That Guy who pops up in every SF/F/H show that’s filmed in Canada. (You may also remember him from Urban Legend, which I just reviewed a few weeks ago.)

Still, it’s a fun concept and easily watchable, if you don’t mind how awful some of these characters are. Leaven, in particular, is so much worse than I remember, both incredibly whiny and also just a total jackass to Kazan. I enjoy how Quentin, a cop, is initially presented as the calm Good Guy, only for him to slowly reveal his true nature: namely, Sexist Murderous Dick. After all, the traps only kill 2 people; Quentin, himself, kills 3. I also like the twist that the rooms themselves are moving around. (Which, uh, the trailer just straight up spoils? Way to go, trailer.)

Cube is never gonna hit my personal Top Ten, but its influence cannot be denied, and it’s worth a watch if you also enjoy this type of horror. (Also, there’s apparently a new Japanese remake? Ooh, I hope it becomes available in the US. I want to check it out!)

Mayhem

Year: 2017
Director: Joe Lynch
First Watch or Rewatch: First Watch
Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Other: Other – Shudder
Spoilers: Only mildly
Grade: Vanilla

I mean, look. I could watch Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving running around being chaotic neutral all day. They’re pretty delightful here, talking metal bands and Dave Matthews Band in between murdering people with power saws. This premise promises, well, mayhem, and it certainly delivers on that front. There were definitely moments I laughed out loud, although annoyingly, I’m having trouble remembering specific ones right now. I did love the moment when Derek confronts The Reaper in his office. Also, Ewan asking, “Do you think I like the taste of kale?” Heh.

As an actual satire, I do feel like it’s missing something. Maybe it’s because I feel like there’s something of a missed opportunity with all the other mistreated coworkers, who are by and large just around for background gags or to act as no-name henchmen. Maybe it’s because almost everyone on the board of directors acts normal, despite the fact that they’ve also been infected. The only person really acting any different is our chief villain, John (AKA, The Boss), and even then he’s mostly just yelling more and doing a lot of cocaine. The film would be stronger, I think, if none of the bosses were infected, especially if they proved to be just as violent without the excuse of an infectious, inhibition-removing disease. I also can’t help but feel like Derek Cho is resting a lot on the legal precedent of one case, as if America’s justice system is just gonna automatically treat a person of color the same as some white guy.

So, yeah, I do think the satirical aspects of this script could be stronger. (Also, the accents, which is totally not a big deal, but like. Couldn’t this just have been an international company?) OTOH, if you’re mostly watching to see Steven Yeun absolutely flip his shit or Samara Weaving add another notch to her Fun Violent Ladies On Screen belt–and let’s be real, that’s absolutely why I watched it–I mean, yeah, it’s totally a decent movie to check out.