Easier Said Than Done

Film: Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

Gore Verbinksi has a surprisingly good track record as a director. Not many people could create an entertaining movie out of a Disney ride, after all. Verbinski’s latest, Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die, is a similar sort of project. This is a movie that shouldn’t work in a lot of ways, but does in spite of itself. It’s also a movie that you can point to when people complain that all movies are the same or that Hollywood is just producing remakes and sequels.

That said, there are certainly going to be people who will tell you that Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die is in many ways a very long episode of Black Mirror, and there are certainly times when that seems to fit. There are also moments where it is far too surreal for Black Mirror, but much of it has the same feel. It’s darkly comic like many episodes and is very much a warning against technology, AI in specific. And there are strong connections to other movies and stories. There’s a lot of 12 Monkeys here just for a start, and the opening sequence is reminiscent in many ways of Pulp Fiction.

She's Got Those Baby Blues

Film: Die My Love
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

Remember a few years ago when Jennifer Lawrence was the flavor of the month? It was right around 2012 when she was in both The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook, even though her real coming out party in Hollywood was her role in Winter’s Bone. She’s not that anymore, which is probably a good thing. In a sense, she has the ability to do what actors like Daniel Radcliffe and Kristen Stewart have—she can basically do what she wants and take whatever roles she feels like. That brings us to Die My Love, which is essentially a movie about post-partum depression.

Another person who has that same ability to pick projects that they want because they don’t really have to worry about their career is Lawrence’s co-star for this film, Robert Pattinson. Why am I talking about this? Because it’s important to have these people in the industry so that films like this get made. Die My Love was never going to be a box office smash. You need people who don’t care about how much money a film will make, who might even be willing to take scale for a film that has less big hit appeal but much more artistic credibility.

New List, Who Dis?

Film: Predator 2
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Just like almost every May, the They Shoot Zombies list of 1000 most highly acclaimed horror movies has been revamped and retooled. This year, the list returned six films previously cut and added another 26, many of them from the last couple of years. There were a few older brand new additions, though, including Predator 2. This seems like an odd addition. It’s much more a science fiction/action movie than a horror movie, although there are certainly some clear horror elements. Anyway, I figured this would be a good way to herald in the new version of the list.

The original Predator was released in 1987 and presumably took place in 1987. The sequel, released three years later, takes place in that far distant future for the time of 1997. In this world, Los Angeles (and presumably other parts of the country and world) has become a war zone of criminal gangs fighting each other and the police in broad daylight. Into this rides our good cop Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover). Our opening sequence will show him taking out a number of criminal thugs, not realizing that there’s also our title character in the mix.

Koi Pond

Film: Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ( Amélie et la métaphysique des tubes )
Format: Blu-Ray from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

Ray Bradbury said in interviews that he has distinct memories of being not merely an infant, but of being days old despite being told that this is essentially impossible. I say this because it’s going to be relevant to Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ( Amélie et la métaphysique detubes in the original French). This is a story a very young child, essentially in utero until 3, from that child’s perspective. Little kids have been in movies before, and have even been main characters in movies before, but this feels like the first time that a film has been narrated from this perspective.

What this means is that our title character, Amélie, is going to have an adult vocabulary, but a child’s version of the world around her. Specifically, this means that she is going to be a solipsist for the bulk of the film, which takes place between her second and third birthdays. Amélie is difficult to like initially because of this. It’s not inaccurate, but it is frustrating. Amélie is entirely self-absorbed, which makes her a difficult narrator.

Last Rites

Film: We Bury the Dead
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

There are times when I look at a film that a lot of the world outside of the film needs to be addressed. That’s definitely the case with We Bury the Dead, and it has nothing to do with the plot of the movie (although having the U.S. kill everything on the island of Tasmania certainly feels relevant). No, this is about the star of the film, Daisy Ridley. We need to take into account the toxicity of many an average Star Wars fan, who will reflexively hate anything Ridley touches for years specifically because they object to the character she played in some movies. We Bury the Dead is a great example of this—critic approval is almost double that of average viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, and while that does happen, many times it happens because of people who have an agenda.

The idea of We Bury the Dead isn’t going to be immediately obvious, but we’re going to figure it out as the audience in the first few minutes. After seeing a bit of the relationship of Ava (Ridley) and her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), we find out about the inciting incident of the film. The U.S. has accidentally tested a new weapon on Tasmania, destroying the city of Hobart and killing everything else on the island. Clean up teams are sent in, and Ava volunteers, because her husband was on a work trip on the southern end of the island. In her orientation, we learn that some of the brain dead bodies are waking up—while disturbing, most of them are peaceful.

Dennis Miller? Really?

Film: Bordello of Blood (Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood)
Format: DVD from Manteno Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, and honestly, it’s been a few days since I’ve watched anything. I’ve been out of town for a bit and have not really had the opportunity to do much but yardwork and grading papers for the last week. May has really gotten away from me, and all of the progress I made last month catching up on the goal of 400 movies/year has melted away. So I’m trying to get back to it, and a short, goofy horror movie seems the best way to do it. And so we have Bordello of Blood. To give you an idea of exactly how goofy this is, it’s also known as Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood. Yep, it’s an extension of the Tales from the Crypt show.

There is something that you’re going to have to get prepared to deal with right off the top. There was a short period of time where Dennis Miller was post-SNL Weekend Update and pre-right wing conservative clown and Bordello of Blood falls right in the middle of that. What that means for you if you’re going to watch this is that Dennis Miller is going to be the good guy. Honestly, that fact played a lot better 30 years ago when this was new than it does now.

Welcome to the Loony Labyrinth

Film: Dave Made a Maze
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

You have to love it when someone comes up with a completely bonkers premise for a story and then pulls it off about as well as it could be done. Dave Made a Maze is a film that shouldn’t work. It’s marginally a horror movie, although the violence is clearly cartoonish and the blood is literally replaced with yarn and glitter. It’s a comedy because there is a lot of humor here, but it’s not really a horror comedy. The closest genre that it fits in is magical realism. We have characters who live in the real world but have an experience that cannot really be explained as anything other than magic. It’s just a hell of a lot weirder than the more standard magical realism films like Field of Dreams, Life of Pi, or Midnight in Paris.

Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) comes home from a weekend to discover that her artist boyfriend Dave (Nick Thune) has built a small maze out of cardboard in the middle of their living room. Dave has a history of not completing projects, and the maze that he has created for him feels like a genuine breakthrough. The problem is, as he tells Annie, that he hasn’t finished the maze and he’s lost inside it. This seems patently ridiculous, as the maze appear to be about 20 square feet of cardboard boxes. When Annie tells him to just come out, he refuses to destroy the work, and also tells her that he’s lost inside the maze and can’t get out. Adding to the confusion, when Annie shakes the cardboard exterior of the maze, she can hear machinery and more rattling inside.