Holidays

Still just chugging through 2016 releases over here. This is a horror anthology on Netflix - you know the drill, a collection of five or six horror shorts from different directors, much like V/H/S and its ilk - where all kinds of different holidays get the horror treatment. There were eight in total, meaning no short was more than fifteen minutes long or so. Here, let's tackle them in order.

"Valentine's Day"

An unpopular girl bullied by the rest of her swim team pines obsessively for her coach. This whole short seems to exist for the sake of a graphic punchline, but I'm okay with it! Sets the table appropriately. Felt like the kind of thing one of us might have tried to get away with in multimedia class (Keith, specifically?) but with actual production value.

"St. Patrick's Day"

Takes place in Ireland (of course) and the only scary moments involve a stereotypical "ginger" girl stalking her teacher and just looking creepy as all hell with a yellowy smile planted on her freckled face under wiry blonde-red hair. Gah! This one quickly gets campy and absurd, but in a head-slapping way fit for the holiday it honors.

"Easter"

So, what are the two symbolic representations of Easter? The late Jesus Christ and the Easter Bunny. And what are those, to a little girl? They're a man who came back from the dead and a giant furry thing that sneaks around your house at night. Holy shit, if any holiday was ripe for the horror treatment, it's this one! Probably the scariest of the stories - monsters, darkness - but also the slightest, thematically. (Which is saying something. All of these were slight.)

"Mother's Day"

A woman who gets pregnant every single time she has sex ends up kidnapped by some sort of witch covent in the desert. The payoff was weak as hell, which is a shame, because, well, what a set up.

"Father's Day"

All suspense, start to finish. Definitely the creepiest and most suspenseful of the shorts. Not worth describing - you've just got to see it.

"Halloween"

Ugh... Yeah, this was Kevin Smith's segment. It was absolute nonsense, which is what he specializes in now. It didn't even make sense. To his credit, he doesn't rely on a single preexisting Halloween trope, instead making a "horror" vignette about cam girls. This wasn't the worst of the shorts, but it was certainly the dumbest.

"Christmas"

Oh hey, Seth Green's in this one! A recognizable actor! Felt very Black Mirror - a man goes to desperate lengths to acquire a virtual reality headset for his son for Christmas, and when he tries it out  for himself he sees some pretty fucked up shit. I liked this one a lot, but that's maybe just because this is my favorite genre of horror - a blend of psychological and sci-fi.

"New Year's Eve"

An awkward first date turns into an, uh, unforgettable New Year's Eve. Best use of a New Year's countdown I've ever seen!

In the end, it's a mixed bag of "something for everyone." You've got some absurdly campy shit, some monster jump scares, some Black Mirror, some axe murder - none of it was great, but the variety alone makes this an easy collection to take in. I can't "recommend" it, but I had more fun with it than I did with V/H/S even if it feels like a lesser overall experience.

Split

Saw this last night with my sister. I know most of you haven't seen it yet, so no spoilers here, and a very brief recap.

1. James McAvoy was great. His was the only good performance, but it's more accurate to say he was giving half a dozen good performances.

2. Thought this was good, campy fun for about two thirds of its run time and then the third act breaks into something completely unexpected and substantially less clever than I hoped for.

3. About twenty minutes in I was convinced I knew "the twist" (every M. night movie's got one, come on, that's no spoiler) but the elements I thought the twist affected were, like, completely abandoned in the third act (as referenced above). So now I'm left with a theory - an unconfirmed twist I still believe could be true, really - and I'd love to talk about it with the rest of you. So, Keith, Trev - see this movie! See it so we can talk about it. Please!

This has also inspired me to go back and see a lot of the Shyamalan movies I missed out on before - notably, The Village, The Visit, and yes, even Unbreakable.

The Day the '60s Died

Fell down an Internet wormhole tonight - as one does - and wound up watching this entire hour-long PBS documentary on YouTube. Learned a lot. Was shocked and scared by how relevant and pertinent the events of Spring 1970 seem today, with the nation as divided as I've ever seen it and a legitimate animosity between the two factions. It's not the shootings or the Vietnam War protests that got to me - that's just 20th century American history at this point. Rather, it was the public reaction to the shootings. Polls showed a majority of Americans in 1970 thought that the students were more responsible for their own deaths than the National Guardsmen who fired upon them. "Should have killed them all," said plenty. This, even though a majority of Americans also didn't think we should have gone to Vietnam in the first place. Imagine that culture! Imagine a world where a significant group of people could oppose something, but then also find it justifiable to kill other people voicing such dissent. You think we're slipping into fascism now? Jesus Christ. To recap - in 1970, the American people were far more annoyed by the anti-war movement than they were by the war, even though a majority of them opposed the war. Wow!

Zooming out a bit - and this documentary kind of hints at this and sets it up without overtly focusing on it - Nixon and the Republican Party came out of this thing smelling like roses. Two years later, Nixon won reelection with over 500 electoral votes, and the GOP was able to finally capture blue collar white Americans from the Democrats - sound familiar? - a key demo they'd retain for decades, because blue collar white workers were fed up with rich college kids protesting, rioting, and sowing discord in America. (Okay, this is starting to feel too currently relevant and foreboding again. Time to stop.)

Here's the whole thing, right here. Check it out:

Sing Street

This was good. School of Rock was better. God Help the Girl was better. But this was good.

Twin Peaks: Season 1

I've been putting this one off for a while. Beloved '90s shows from Seinfeld to The X-Files have had a track record of disappointing me, and Sween's review a few years back wasn't exactly glowing, and for as much as I loved Mulholland Drive I worried that David Lynch wouldn't really be, you know, full blown David Lynch on network television in 1990.

But, here I am, through the first season of Twin Peaks - the good one, the short one - and, okay, yeah, I can see why everyone loved this so much. It's... weird. Delightfully weird, and unapologetically soapy. It's simultaneously about twenty years ahead of its time (only recently have even cable TV shows been allowed to be so strange and off-putting) and about twenty years younger than it looks in so many places - lily-white and set in the rural Pacific Northwest in some sort of alt-1990 still stuck the '50s. The dream sequences are what the show's most known for, but it's the little moments that really sold me on how weird and surreal this show is. Music plays and a guy breaks down crying in a crowded room then starts dancing all alone. A professional detective says goodbye to another one and then grabs his nose. A father, mourning for his dead daughter, grabs a photograph of her and just starts spinning in circles. It's all so wonderfully Lynchian, as is the recurring theme that plays nearly constantly in the background - the smooth, jazzy, film noir riff that really underliens what a goddamn mystery the whole thing is.

Who killed Laura Palmer? I've got no ideas, but frankly, I don't even care. What amazes me about this show is how unique it is today, let alone back in 1990. It is a treat to look at and to listen to, no matter how much or how little sense it's making. Rumor has it that things go downhill quickly in the second (and final) season, but with a revival slated for later this year on Showtime I'm interested in seeing it through. Hey, worst case, this becomes another X-Files experience that I throw on in the background and pay half attention to. I can swing that for 22 episodes, no question.

Firewatch

I listened to GameTimeBro podcast recapping the best games (three people played) for 2016. Lurking somewhere near the bottom was this guy. Struggling to find the next game to play... I settled on this. (Note: I coughed up $20 for this when only two days later Steam dropped the price by half. FML.)

OK, since building my own PC, I've been on the search to find games that truly punish my high-end GPU to make the most of my 4k screen (a whooooole lot of humble bragging going on here). Games like Skyrim and Doom (2016) both look incredible (shit... have I even posted in either one of those games?), and Resident Evil 7 was beyond-belief gorgeous. However, taking a step back from ultra realistic graphics, I found myself appreciating the art design of this game just as much as the other triple-A titles listed above. The colors and sprawling atmosphere of the park totally sucked me in as I found myself lost in a world of nature bound in surreal color.

The gameplay itself isn't anything to speak of. It's mostly a dialogue selector accompanied by exploring/navigating an uncharted map. But the point of this games (and others like it) is to experience the narrative in a way that's different from movies or novels. A way some might see as slightly more immersive. 

So, then... How was the story?

The story was good. Actually it was really interesting the more and more I think of it (having only beaten it yesterday). Your character is one that's running away from life's problems by spending the summer isolated off from the real world as a park ranger in the middle of a giant nature preserve. Your best friend turns out to be your boss and fellow ranger. Delilah, stationed across the way whom only keeps in contact via walkie-talkies. What really gets the story going is while out on a routine check to stop some kids from having a good time, your character encounters signs that there might be a nefarious third-party lurking in these (now) ominous woods. Before you know it you're attacked, and the story evolves into a tale of paranoia and suspicion that someone is out to get you. 

While I'm very impressed that they did a lot with what seemed like so little in this game, the climax felt underwhelming. Not that I needed a big fight scene or a giant explosion to cap this adventure off, but it just felt like my character wasn't rewarded in any capacity. Hell, I didn't even get to meet Delilah! I'm well aware that wasn't the intension of the creators here. To be fair, it's still a good ending that beautifully ties in the thematically problems your character is struggling with (e.g. isolation, running away from your problems, etc.). In many ways, by discovering this mysterious third party (ok, we've all played this, so I'm not spoiling anything) -- I mean Ned --  we learn that he's no different from your character. In fact he might be a premonition of what you could become if you stay on this path of trying to escape your problems instead of dealing with them.

It's not a bad ending. It's a fitting ending. Unfortunately, it's just not my preferred ending. However, it is an ending that really made me think and dwell over the consequence of trying to take easy path to avoid confrontation and responsibility. And if that's what the creators were aiming for, then they succeeded. 

Back to GameTimeBro... I'm not sure I would have put this in my top-10 list (if I've even played ten games from 2016), but I am glad I've experience it. 

I just wished I hadn't paid $20 to do so.

Everest

Because it's a snow day, mo'fuckas! I'm kind of torn on this one. On one hand it's a competently made dramatization of a famous climbing tragedy, and at least respecting it feels like the right thing to do. On the other hand, it's got so many characters to serve (kill) that it doesn't really feel like any one climber's story, at least until the end when one of them survives with an assload of frostbite and makes it home to his wife.

Don't get me wrong - making real life tragedies into big-budget movies is as American as apple pie, and it's not surprising that the 1996 Everest disaster became a movie, just that it took so long to become one. But I still find myself asking what the point is if you aren't going to take any artistic liberties. Respect for the victims, sure, I get it - let's show them dying exactly how they did, no embellishing - but there's very little drama in this disaster movie. I can't help but think of the last movie I saw with Jake Gyllenhaal freezing half to death after a natural disaster - The Day After Tomorrow. That shit's ridiculous as hell, but at least it was entertaining. At least I was legitimately rooting for Jake and his friends to survive. That sounds horrible, and I probably didn't word it right - this is, again, a movie about real people who died real, tragic deaths - but my point is that the movie does nothing to make you feel the disaster as it closes in. It's played as straight as a documentary, for the most part. And I get it, I do - too much schmaltz or heartstring tugging and they'd get accused of milking a real tragedy. But isn't that already what they're doing? Showing, and profiting from, dramatic reconstructions of real people's real deaths? I dunno - I'm still struggling to understand why this got made. What is the story here? What is the narrative? It doesn't feel like it should be enough to just say, "these were some ambitious people, and then they all died." I mean, that's a movie to make, sure, but it's nihilistic in tone, which this one wasn't. Gah! The more I write the more lost I am. Where's the thread? Who's the hero? What's the moral?

Trev's Movie Dump: January 2017

Are we done with these? The "dumps," I mean. Seems like we were committed to spooling out our collective film and TV rantings into these meaty dumps for a while. Now, I see we're going back to our consistent yet pellet-sized droppings. I'm not complaining or anything. It's just...

Eh, I'll complain about anything. I really just need a hobby. You know, something besides writing on this blog. Anywho...

Moana

Disney has been killing it this year. Especially their animation division -- I mean, they're even giving Pixar a run for their money. Pixar for Christ's sake! (I think I ranked Moana and Zootopia both over Finding Dory this year -- but, hey, they're all great movies.)

This film is more of a Disney classic. Your standard, delightful musical following the princess-who's-not-a-princess on an almost fairly tale-like adventure. The music is excellent (a tip of the hat over to Lin Manuel-Miranda for help on that one), and voice acting is spot on. Sure, the Rock isn't the best singer, but he's great in his role of Maui -- the demigod who's completely full over himself despite sending the world into crisis mode. Best scene? It's got to be when Moana and Maui venture into the underworld (at least I think it was called that) to steal back Maui's weapon from a treasure hoarding crab voiced by Jemaine Clement. One of the film's best diddies is in this scene. My only complaint would be that our heroes' time in this world lasted just a tad longer.

Hell or High Water

Many, many people have recommended this film to me. A modern day western, as it's been explained. Well, I'll continue on the trend of recommending this film to others like it were a goddamn chain letter. 

This film is slow burn that's beautifully shot with even more mesmerizing performances. I think this totally deserves the Oscar praise it's received, and wouldn't be entirely surprised if it went home with best screenplay -- I say still having yet to watch all the nominations on that list. 

Don't Breathe

Sam Raimi and Frede Álvarez are teaming up again after the Evil Dead reboot no one asked for. This time to tell a story about a couple of Detroit-based robbers who get word that some blind ex-military guy is secretly holding only a small fortune hidden in his house somewhere. Seems like it's going to be an easy job (despite them not knowing the layout of the house at all, nor where the money could be stashed -- I mean, what if it's in a safe no one knows the combination to?), but these are a naïve group of kids. 

The film was shot fairly well, and the story definitely has some sharp turns that will leave you screaming at your TV, "NO! God, that's soooo gross!" However, it's not a great film. Certainly not a film worthy of all the hype it received over the fall when we had other superb horror films this year with the likes of The Witch and The Conjuring 2 -- the verdict is still out on Quija 2: Origin of Evil, but the critics certainly didn't hate it. Perhaps I'll get to that film soon. Perhaps not. 

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

Normally, I'm all about a Tom Cruise action film. The Mission Impossible franchise is a ton of fun! Then Jack Reacher came along and it felt like he was Ethan Hunt's vagabond cousin taking a year off from spy-work to just travel the countryside. Still fun, just toned back a bit.

Then they decided to give Reacher a sequel. (Not surprising. It is a book series after all.) But a poor move. I could not get into this movie for the life of me. They keep the idea that Jack Reacher is this tough-as-nails fighter who's existence is more myth than man. The army couldn't hold him, so he broke free and now he cruises the country looking to take down any bad guy that has the misfortune of getting in his face... whether that be some jerk at the local dive bar or corrupted government official. 

Where this movie switches things up is exploring the dilemma of can this machismo man actually find and hold onto love, or -- dare I say -- a family? The story forces Reacher to do two things. First, he's got to defend and clear the name of this military operative (whom he has a crush on) that's been wrongly accused of a crime. And, second, Reacher learns that he may have teenager daughter whom he also needs to keep safe from the bad guys. 

My major complaint is that these two conflicts (defending his love and his daughter) don't work well together. Either have the story about finding/saving your love, or a story about reconnecting/protecting your daughter. But squeezing in both feels like neither one is served properly making the whole story weak. I could see what they were trying to go for with this whole "family" idea. Reacher and his love both work to keep the girl save and now this loner actually has a family, but it just doesn't land well. 

When in doubt... make it simple. I think this film could have borrow from that logic. 

Speaking of logic... we don't need a third movie. Spoiler: Reacher's supposed daughter is not his daughter so I think we can call it quits here. 

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris

Two and a half years ago, Sween and I took down the quick and easy Lara Croft and the Guardians of Light, an arcade-style Tomb Raider game with a fixed camera and isometric views. This game is that game's sequel, and once again it was a five-hour eperience that we co-opped our way through over two nights. This one allowed for as many as four players to partake, it seems, and I'm curious how different the game would have been with four people and not two. More enemies? Harder puzzles? We'll never know!

Anyay, I think - think! - I remember the last game being more of a puzzler than this one, and so I think I liked it better. But only barely. This one was also glitch-ridden, although it wouldn't shock me in the least if the last one was too.

Will there be a third Lara Croft and... game? And if there is, will anyone else join us in a playthrough? For ten bucks or so, these have been pretty fun little experiences so far.

Café Society

Over on Letterboxd I said, of this one:

Fifty-some-odd movies into his career, Woody Allen's got nothing left to prove to anyone (aside from, well, you know). Dude's been churning out a movie a year for a long time now, always with an impressive cast of established actors taking their turns being in a Woody Allen movie. Every so often one of his films still leaves an impression on the zeitgeist and earns some recognition and acclaim, but most of them are nothing special, nothing new, just another Woody Allen movie, ho-hum, your mileage may vary. Anyway, Café Society is a comedy about a Jewish guy's romantic mishaps and it's set in the 1930s in both New York and Los Angeles. It was fine! Nothing special, nothing new, just another Woody Allen movie, ho-hum, your mileage may vary.

Blech. Not my best work, but you know what? I think I made my point.