Deep Cuts

Film: Crimes of the Future
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

David Cronenberg is long thought of as the king of body horror for good reason. He’s been off that trend for some time, doing much more mainstream films like Eastern Promises and A History of Violence that have some horror elements but aren’t really horror films. He’s also not done much for the last decade, so Crimes of the Future was kind of a surprise. It’s a pleasant surprise in a lot of respects. First, I’m always happy to see Cronenberg behind the camera, even when the results are less than great. Second—and importantly—this is a return to what Cronenberg is known for, and that’s exciting.

Crimes of the Future feels like the culmination of a lot of Cronenberg’s work from his body horror days. Certainly, the idea of things going on inside the body is a theme that runs through his work up to the point of eXistenZ. There is a lot here in terms of bizarre organic machinery, much like eXistenZ, Naked Lunch, Videodrome, and Dead Ringers. There’s a lot of connection between sex and pain/death, like Shivers and especially Crash. This might be the most Cronenberg film ever made. It hits all of his tropes.

Here, Kitty Kitty

Film: Cat’s Eye
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Ah, the horror anthology, my old nemesis. Horror lends itself naturally to the anthology format specifically because horror specifically allows the writer to go right for the jugular and bring the scares. While it certainly helps to have characters who we care about when it comes to horror stories, often all we really need to have is someone we can relate to in any way put in danger. So, the idea of the anthology is to put folks into those situations and rush to the good parts. Ct’s Eye follows this format in a way, but does a few things differently. For starters, the screenplay was written by Stephen King, with the first two stories adapted from two of his short stories.

There are a few things that Cat’s Eye does really well. The first is that, while there is a connecting story that runs through the entire film, not a great deal of time is spent on it. All of these bits involve a cat (who also appears in the first two stories and is feature in the third) being urged on by Drew Barrymore to seek her out and save her. Second, there are only three stories here, and with a 90+ minute run time, we get a good amount of time with each one.

Our Mother of Perpetual Sorrow

Film: The Lost Daughter
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

I haven’t been putting up a lot of reviews lately, and I always have intention to change that. Life, work, all the rest get in the way. Here it is October and I still have nearly half a dozen Oscar films to finish up, which means getting through at least one more this month if I want to get done by the end of the year. So I picked The Lost Daughter for no reason other than it was one of the longer movies I had left, and I knew I was going to watch it eventually anyway. I went into this cold, knowing only that it earned Olivia Colman another Oscar nom. I like Colman, but it’s hard not to see her right now as one of the Oscar flavors-of-the-month.

The Lost Daughter is a slow movie, one that is contemplative, but not in a direction that is comfortable or easy. Leda Caruso (Colman) is on vacation in Greece. She is a noted translator and successful university professor. She has a run-in with a vacationing family, but then ends up redeeming herself when their young daughter goes missing at the beach. Leda finds the girl, but also steals the girl’s beloved doll for reasons that are initially unknown.

Lament-able

Film: Hellraiser (2022)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on Fire!

I’m always a little leery of remakes. Oh, sure, there are some really good ones, but you probably already know the obvious examples that I would cite here. It always feels like there are too many remakes, though, as if studios are much more comfortable going with a story they already know (or a property they already know) rather than doing something really new. So it is that we come to the 2022 Hellraiser, which is honestly less of a remake and more of a completely new story with the same name attached to it. I think the idea here might be to take a step away from the original series, since the original Hellraiser franchise went hard off the rails in the third movie.

It's honestly hard to say if this is the start of a new franchise or the continuation of the old one. We have a new Pinhead, though, so it does feel like a fresh start and a reimagining. The concept of the Lament Configuration and the presence of the Cenobites (all but two of which are completely new) is really the only carryover from the original film, though, so this probably should be considered a new adaptation completely separate from the originals.

Meta-Analysis

Film: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

Movies that have meta moments have existed for a long time. The script is mentioned in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and literally appears in Robin Hood: Men in Tights and (I think) one of the Austin Powers movies. The screenplay also appears in a much darker way in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. But then there are movies that are meta in other ways. Scream has a lot of meta in it, and Being John Malkovich eats its own tail ouroboros-like. But I don’t know that I’ve seen anything go as meta as The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

In this film, Nic Cage plays Nick Cage, who is essentially an alternate universe version of himself in most relevant ways. That means he’s had essentially the same career and has performed in the same movies, but nothing else is really the same. His personal life is completely different. In the film, Nick has an estranged teenaged daughter (Lily Mo Sheen) and an ex-wife (Sharon Horgan) who is constantly frustrated with him, mainly because he is so inept at personal relationships. His daughter is frustrated with him as well because everything is about him—what he thinks is introducing her to what he likes she sees as him forcing his opinions on her.

What I've Caught Up With, September 2022

Despite the small number of posts in September, I got through a lot of movies from this list. On the television front, I also got through Loki, Ash vs. Evil Dead (which I did not like as much as I wanted), and Justified, which has a Games of Thrones-ian body count. I was also out for some time visiting family in North Carolina, and managed to get out just before the hurricane hit. Be safe out there, folks--the weather is nasty and getting nastier.

Some 'Splainin' to Do

Film: Being the Ricardos
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I’m slowly working my way through the Oscar movies on the list, and of them, Being the Ricardos is the one I was the least interested in at this point. Naturally, that then became the one that I needed to get through. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also one of the longest ones I had left. Since I started this blog, I’ve tried to remove longer movies when I could, almost as a sort of nervous habit just to get them done.

Why was this one I was less interested in? Two words: Nicole Kidman. I don’t really have anything against Kidman—when she’s good (as in, say, The Others), she is very good. But as Lucille Ball? This seems like terrible casting in a world where Debra Messing exists. It feels like a bit of stunt casting. As good as Kidman can be at times, she feels like a terrible choice for this. The rest of the casting is good—Javier Bardem works very well as Desi Arnaz and J.K. Simmons is perfectly cast as William Frawley. But Kidman really rubs me wrong here.