Monthly Archives: October 2022

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2022: Dr. Henry Frankenstein, Dr. Henry Jekyll, Dr. Sam Loomis, and Professor Van Helsing Talk Halloween

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The following mock interview contains real quotes from the characters in the movies. So, while the interview is my creation, the quotes are real. Enjoy!

Welcome to another Halloween Special interview! I’m Michael Arruda, and tonight my guests are four esteemed doctors from the movies, Dr. Henry Frankenstein from FRANKENSTEIN (1931), Dr. Henry Jekyll from DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941), Dr. Sam Loomis from HALLOWEEN (1978), and Professor Van Helsing from DRACULA (1931).

Tonight, our four esteemed guests will speak on the popularity of Halloween and the public’s love of horror. Who better to analyze our love for all things macabre than these four intellectual gentlemen?

Welcome, gentlemen, and thank you for joining me tonight.

JEKYLL, FRANKENSTEIN, LOOMIS, VAN HELSING: Thank you for having us. Good to be here.

MICHAEL: All right. Let’s get right down to it. Why is Halloween so popular? Why does the public crave all things horror?

DR. JEKYLL: I’ll start. We’ve all had thoughts that we didn’t want published or shouted out loud. And we certainly have had desires that are not confined to a drawing room.

MICHAEL: Are you saying that we love Halloween and all things spooky because we’re secretly repressed?

DR. JEKYLL: Let me put it this way: good and evil are so close as to be chained together in the soul. Now, suppose we could break that chain, separate those two selves – free the good in man, and let it go to its higher destiny and segregate the bad.

MICHAEL: And Halloween kind of does that, right? It’s our way of going all in with our dark side and having fun with it?

VAN HELSING: You’ll die in torment if you die with innocent blood on your soul.

MICHAEL: This is getting very deep. It almost makes Halloween sound dangerous.

DR. FRANKENSTEIN: Dangerous? Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn’t care if they did think I was crazy.

VAN HELSING (to FRANKENSTEIN): I may be able to bring you proof that the superstition of yesterday can become the scientific reality of today.

DR. JEKYLL: But, after all, that’s the problem of civilized man’s soul, isn’t it? That good and evil are constantly fighting one another?

MICHAEL: I dunno. I mean, I think we have worst problems than that. Anyway, we haven’t heard yet from Dr. Loomis. Dr. Loomis— is he asleep?

DR. FRANKENSTEIN (nudges Loomis): He’s just resting. Waiting for a new life to come.

(Everyone laughs)

MICHAEL: I have a feeling we’re boring you, doctor.

LOOMIS: You have the wrong feeling.

MICHAEL: Do you have anything to add to what we’ve been saying about Halloween?

LOOMIS: What more do you need?

MICHAEL: I don’t know. Do you agree with what these folks have been saying, that Halloween is almost a necessity for our survival, a way of satisfying our need to visit the dark side once in a while?

LOOMIS: I was told there was nothing left; no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this… six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and… the blackest eyes – the Devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… evil.

MICHAEL: Are you saying that if Michael Myers had been allowed to trick or treat as a kid, things might have been different for him?

LOOMIS: You may be right.

MICHAEL: That’s hard to believe.

VAN HELSING: The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.

(Awkward silence)

MICHAEL: Let’s shake things up a bit. Favorite Halloween candy?

VAN HELSING: A moment ago, I stumbled upon a most amazing phenomenon. Something so incredible, I mistrust my own judgement. Look.

(VAN HELSING reveals a king size chocolate bar.)

MICHAEL: That is amazing. King size chocolate bars are a rarity these days.

(HENRY FRANKENSTIN opens a package of gummy worms, takes one out, and dangles it in front of the others.)

FRANKENSTEIN: Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!

(DR. JEKYLL reveals a flask full of liquid and drinks it down.)

MICHAEL: Dr. Jekyll likes adult candy, I see.

(JEKYLL begins to transform into MR. HYDE before their eyes.)

JEKYLL: I’ve done nothing. I’m Dr. Jekyll. I’m Dr. Henry Jekyll. I’ve done nothing. I’m Dr. Jekyll. I’m Dr. Henry Jekyll, I tell you. I’ve done nothing. You’re looking for a man named Hyde. Hyde! I’m Dr. Henry Jekyll. I’m Dr. Jekyll, I tell you! I tell you, I’m Dr. Jekyll! I’m Dr. Henry Jekyll!

(Now fully MR. HYDE, he grabs his cane and bolts from the studio.)

LOOMIS: He’s gone! He’s gone from here! The evil is gone!

MICHAEL: That was unexpected. Sort of. How about you, Dr. Loomis? Any favorite Halloween candy?

LOOMIS: Thorazine.

MICHAEL (laughs): I hope you’re joking. We’re almost out of time. So, do you have any costumes picked out for this Halloween?

(HENRY FRANKENSTEIN takes out a photograph and shows it to MICHAEL)

FRANKENSTEIN: That body is not dead. It has never lived. I created it. I made it with my own hands, from the bodies I took from graves, from the gallows, anywhere! Go and see for yourself.

MICHAEL: Sure. Where is it?

(FRANKENSTEIN starts to answer, but LOOMIS interrupts him)

LOOMIS: I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall…

MICHAEL: Who? The guy in this picture?

LOOMIS: …not seeing the wall, looking past the wall; looking at this night, inhumanly patient, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off. Death has come to your little town. Now, you can either ignore it, or you can help me to stop it.

VAN HELSING: Gentlemen, we are dealing with the undead.

MICHAEL: Are you saying the body in this picture is… undead?

(VAN HELSING nods)

MICHAEL (to FRANKENSTEIN): You really struck gold here. Not only did you create life, you created immortality.

FRANKENSTEIN (jubilant): Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!

MICHAEL: Wow. We’re finishing up here on a high note.

(HENRY FRANKENSTEIN hands out glasses and starts pouring champagne.)

MICHAEL: I can’t think of a better way to end this interview. A toast anyone?

LOOMIS (raises his glass): He came home!

ALL: He came home!

MICHAEL: Cheers! Thank you all, and good night!

—END—

THE SOUND OF 007 (2022) – Documentary Chronicles the Stories Behind the Music to the James Bond Movies

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Bond. James Bond.

Bet you like the sound of that. And I bet you can’t hear those lines without hearing the signature James Bond theme playing immediately afterwards.

That’s one of the many on-target points made in THE SOUND OF 007 (2022), a new documentary by director Mat Whitecross that is now available on Prime Video, which chronicles the stories behind the iconic music in the James Bond movies.

The point that the music to these films is every bit as important as the James Bond character, the actors who played Bond, the action, and the overall adventures in each movie, is both true and pretty much unique to this film series. While other film series have notable and recognizable music— the STAR WARS franchise for example— more has been done with the Bond music, and it’s difficult to think of the movies and the character without the iconic theme.

THE SOUND OF 007 explains the origin of that signature theme, and tells the story how producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman hired Monty Norman to write the music for their first Bond movie, DR. NO (1962), and Norman, who till this day still receives sole credit for the James Bond theme, wrote many of the Jamaican songs for the movie, including the catchy “Underneath the Mango Tree,” but he was struggling with the overall music score, so Broccoli and Saltzman hired John Barry, and Barry took what Norman had started and tweaked it, and thanks to the efforts of the two, an iconic theme song was born, and the rest, as they say, is history.

THE SOUND OF 007 does its best to cover the music to all the James Bond movies, but there are so many, and so the film struggles to do justice to them all, and so I’m sure there will be certain fans who will be disappointed that their favorite score wasn’t given ample time in this documentary. But the film has its heart in the right place and does a decent job in its 90-minute running time covering most of the music in the James Bond movies.

It addresses multiple fronts: the actual scores, the theme songs, which became an entity in and of itself, and the process of hiring performers to sing these theme songs, which the film explains, for the producers, became almost as important as hiring the right actor to play Bond himself.

This process really started in GOLDFINGER (1964), which really is the quintessential James Bond movie of the 1960s Sean Connery era. Everything in this movie works, including the music, and it pretty much defined James Bond for a generation. GOLDFINGER was the first Bond movie where composer John Barry was allowed to also write the theme song, and when Barry chose Shirley Bassey to sing the song, it became a huge hit. Barry also incorporated elements of the theme song into the score for the film, a first for a James Bond movie.

THE SOUND OF 007 contains a lot of fun anecdotes. When Shirley Bassey asked John Barry what the song “Goldfinger” was about, since he really didn’t know, all he could tell her was it was about the villain in the movie, so think of the villain. Other anecdotes include Tom Jones nearly passing out when singing and holding the incredibly long note on the song “Thunderball,” Barry telling Bassey to think of the male sex organ when singing “Diamonds Are Forever,” and Michael Caine, who was John Barry’s roommate in 1964, telling a story of how he was kept awake all night by Barry playing the piano, and when he awoke the next morning and asked Barry what he was playing, he answered his new song, “Goldfinger,” and he played it for Caine; so Caine said he was the first person ever to hear “Goldfinger.” And he heard it all night.

The film talks about how the Bond music changed over the years, how Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” was the first rock song to be a James Bond theme song, and how Bill Conti’s score to FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981) was the first score to use disco elements. The film makes the point that the James Bond music followed the trends of the time, and so the music changed with the different periods in history, taking on different sounds in the 1960s, 70s, 80s. 90, and 2000s.

The movie spends a lot of time on the music to the latest Bond movie, NO TIME TO DIE (2021), both on the theme song by Billie Eilish, and the film’s score by Hans Zimmer. While this makes sense since this is the latest Bond movie, I found these stories the least interesting in the documentary. I mean, they were fine, but they didn’t deserve nearly a third of the screen time of this movie. There’s a lot of other James Bond movie music that was barely mentioned here and could have been covered rather than spending so much time on NO TIME TO DIE, films like THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974), which has a great theme song which wasn’t even mentioned, although singer Lulu, who sang the song, is interviewed, but not about her song, and Madonna’s “Die Another Day,” which also wasn’t covered.

But other than this, THE SOUND OF 007 is an excellent documentary and does a very good job covering its subject. Its coverage on composer John Barry is the film’s best part, and every James Bond movie fan needs to know the story behind the Bond movies’ most famous composer. It also does a nice job with the rationale behind the controversial scoring to Daniel Craig’s first James Bond movie, CASINO ROYALE (2006), in which the James Bond theme isn’t played until just before the end credits. I enjoyed this portion of the documentary because this decision in CASINO ROYALE has always been one that I really liked, and it was fun to listen to composer David Arnold explain the reasoning and tell the story of how emotional it was to finally blast that theme song just at the right moment in the movie, and as a fan of CASINO ROYALE, I have to say I completely agree with what Arnold did with the music in that film. It works tremendously well.

All in all, I really enjoyed THE SOUND OF 007. If you’re a fan of the James Bond movies, you will enjoy this one too. And even if you’re not a fan, it’s worth a look, as its stories of how John Barry in particular used some innovative methods to create his film scores, are both interesting and informative for all movie buffs and scholars.

To tweak a famous phrase from GOLDFINGER:

Do you expect me to talk?

No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to— SING!

THE SOUND OF 007 sings, and then some.

I give it three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful

WEREWOLF BY NIGHT (2022) – Marvel’s Werewolf Movie a Visual Treat but Not Exactly Horrific

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WEREWOLF BY NIGHT (2022) is a curious creature.

This very short movie, which runs only 55 minutes and is a standalone film, not an episode of a TV series, is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s also a horror movie. Based on Marvel’s Legion of Monsters comic series, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT is being billed as an action, adventure, horror comedy.

Talk about your vegetable soup!

Anyway, I’d been hearing a lot of good things about this one, mostly from horror fans, who have been saying WEREWOLF BY NIGHT reminded them a lot of the classic black and white Universal monster movies. Sadly, I didn’t see or feel that connection. The only similarity I saw between the two was they were both shot in black and white. For me, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, which premiered on Disney Plus and is now streaming there, plays like a Disney/Marvel family friendly hybrid with a few mild and tame horror elements thrown in. While I appreciated the visual elements of this movie, I was basically unimpressed with just about everything else.

Indeed, the best part about WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and the main reason to see this one is the work by director and music composer Michael Giacchino. Giacchino is one of my favorite film composers working today, and he has composed a ton of memorable movie music scores, including music for THE BATMAN (2022) and THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER (2022). He has written the scores for other Marvel superhero movies, for the recent JURASSIC PARK films, for the recent PLANET OF THE APES series, for the recent STAR TREK movies, and on and on! Two of my favorite Giacchino scores were in horror films, the Hammer vampire movie LET ME IN (2010), and one of the all-time best giant monster movies, CLOVERFIELD (2008). His very memorable theme in CLOVERFIELD doesn’t appear until the end credits, but it’s worth the wait. He also wrote a pretty memorable score for ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016).

So, yeah, he’s scored a few movies.

WEREWOLF BY NIGHT is Michael Giacchino’s directorial debut, and it’s a good one. Visually, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT is a real treat to watch. The black and white photography is atmospheric and effective, and Giacchino even includes a la STRANGER THINGS the grainy look of film, even inserting the infamous cigarette burns— the little dot in the upper half of the frame– which used to appear in all movies to alert projectionists that it was time to start the next reel. Of course, there’s no need for those anymore since today’s movies are all digital. Giacchino does use some color, most notably for the very red bloodstone, which is integral to the movie’s plot.

Oh yes. The plot.

It’s pretty standard and also at 55 minutes pretty quick.

Basically, a group of infamous monster hunters gather at the castle of the recently deceased Ulysses Bloodstone, the most famous monster hunter of them all. These hunters are all tasked with hunting a very dangerous creature, and the one who slays the beast, will inherit the glowing red bloodstone, which will give its owner the power and right to be the master monster hunter. Blah, blah, blah.

The two main characters are Jack Russell (Gael Garcia Bernal), a hunter who isn’t quite who he says he is, and Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), the estranged daughter of the deceased, and these two form a pact during the hunt to work together so Elsa can get the bloodstone, and Jack can get what he really wants.

Things don’t go as planned, and during the film’s second half, the werewolf element finally emerges.

Since this is based on the Marvel comic by Gerry Conway, the screenplay by Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron pretty much tells an action-adventure story. While the horror elements are there, they are downplayed. The film also contains some witty snappy dialogue which Marvel superhero movie fans have come to expect.

But since I am also a huge fan of werewolf movies, I have to say that the werewolf stuff— both the actual werewolf and all of the werewolf sequences in this movie— was a bit of a letdown. I wasn’t impressed with the actual werewolf, and the scenes were just meh. The biggest problem I had with the werewolf scenes comes down to the movie’s plot, about hunters trying to slay a beast, which isn’t even the werewolf, by the way. The story is all rather mediocre.

But Giacchino’s work behind the camera is definitely not mediocre, nor is his music score, and it was fun to watch how he integrated the music with his film direction. The timing was impeccable.

I enjoyed watching WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, even though I found its story to be something of a snooze, and as such, and I for one was glad it was only 55 minutes long.

I give it two and a half stars.

—END–

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT: THE MIST (2007)

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My two favorite works by Stephen King are his novel Salem’s Lot (1975), which I read when it first came out when I was eleven years old, and it scared the crap out of me, and his novella The Mist (1980).

So, when the movie version THE MIST (2007) came out, I knew it would be hard-pressed to meet my expectations because I enjoyed the novella so much, and while I generally liked the movie, I didn’t love it.

Part of this is because of my love of the novella itself, but another more important part is the movie version simply isn’t as intense as King’s original story, even with its infamous changed and much darker ending. Having re-watched the film for the purposes of this column, my opinion remains unchanged.

In THE MIST, a mysterious mist covers a small Maine town after a ferocious thunderstorm, and a group of townspeople including David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his young son find themselves trapped inside a supermarket with giant carnivorous insects and other unseen nasties hovering outside in the fog, creatures that are not only waiting to eat people who venture outside, but also that are actively trying to break through the glass of the market and get inside.

It’s a great premise for a story.

THE MIST was written and directed by Frank Darabont, who also successfully adapted a couple of other Stephen King stories for the big screen, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994) and THE GREEN MILE (1999). Darabont is also the man who developed and created the TV show THE WALKING DEAD (2010-2022). THE MIST shares a common theme with THE WALKING DEAD, as both stories follow a group of survivors as they try not only to deal with the supernatural threat in their world, but also the threat from other humans who lose their sh*t when the world as they know it comes to an end. They even share some of the same cast members, as Laurie Holden (Andrea), Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale), and Melissa McBride (Carol) all have roles in THE MIST.

But THE MIST is not as intense as THE WALKING DEAD, nor is it as intense as the novella on which it is based, which has always been my problem with this movie. It’s generally enjoyable and scary, but it never really gets under your skin or goes for the throat, with the exception of its chilling conclusion. But so much before that, like the all-important sequences in the grocery store, is talky and drawn out.

The most frightening part of the movie version of THE MIST is not its monsters, but human character Mrs. Carmody, played by Marcia Gay Harden, who delivers one of the best performances in the movie. Mrs. Carmody believes the mist and its monsters have happened because her Old Testament vengeful God is angry with humanity and is exacting revenge. To appease her God, she begins to seek followers inside the supermarket, and there’s talk of offering a sacrifice to God to show him that they are faithful. This character remains frightening today as in recent years both religious and political extremism has grown more aggressive and violent.

Also memorable is character actor Toby Jones as Ollie Weeks, the supermarket employee and character audiences probably most identify with, as he is just an everyday loyal worker who finds himself stepping up and taking on a leadership role. I always enjoy Jones’ work, and his credits are too numerous to list here, but his performance is one of my favorite parts of THE MIST.

WALKING DEAD veterans Jeffrey DeMunn and Laurie Holden are also really good here in their roles, which almost seem like warm-ups for their roles on the blockbuster TV series.

Andre Braugher is fine as the annoying Brent Norton, and in the lead, Thomas Jane is okay as David Drayton, but I’ve always found his performance, with the exception of the ending, to be, like the rest of the movie, lacking in the necessary intensity. Supposedly, Frank Darabont wanted Jane to star as Rick Grimes in THE WALKING DEAD. Based on his performance here in THE MIST, I’m glad the lead role of that zombie series went to Andrew Lincoln instead.

Of course, you can’t talk about THE MIST without talking about the ending. The ending to the novella simply had the characters exiting into the mist, and their fate was left for the reader to decide, which was something that worked for me. Darabont famously changed the ending, which gives the film an incredibly dark finish, which for many fans, made this movie something extra special. Indeed, even Stephen King is on record as saying he loved the ending to the movie and wishes he had thought of it. As endings go, it is incredibly grim, and again, since I loved the entire novella so much, I prefer its original ending to the one in the movie. Let’s put it this way. It’s the ending which prevents me from wanting to watch this one over and over, as it’s such a complete downer.

But there is one positive that I took from this depressing ending as I watched the movie again here in 2022, a time when extremism is running rampant throughout the world. On the one end in THE MIST, we have the extremism of Mrs. Carmody, which is easy to see, and on the other end, at the film’s conclusion, we witness an extreme decision made by David Drayton, which at the time, seemed like the best decision, in spite of how excruciatingly painful it would be, to make. But moments after pulling the trigger— eh hem— on this decision, Drayton sees that it was so very wrong, and he falls to his knees and screams in agonized horror. So, the ending, in spite of the fact that I don’t really like it, does speak, like the rest of the film does, to the importance of avoiding extremism, whether that be extreme beliefs or actions. If Drayton and those in the car with him, had only expressed a bit more faith in humanity, their fates would have been different.

THE MIST is a well-made, frightening horror movie. For some, it’s an exceptional horror movie. For me, it remains just very good, because its source material, Stephen King’s novella of the same name, is far superior.

Either way, THE MIST is worth a look, and its ending is one you definitely need to experience at least once, and then as you walk away from the end credits, you can ask yourself, would I have done the same?

—END—

HALLOWEEN ENDS (2022) – Final Film in HALLOWEEN Franchise Much Better Than Expected

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HALLOWEEN ENDS… we can only hope!

Actually, I’m a big fan of the HALLOWEEN series and have been since seeing John Carpenter’s classic HALLOWEEN (1978) at the movies when it first came out, a long, long time ago. That first movie remains my favorite, and truth be told, most of the sequels and re-imaginings have been pretty bad, but I’ve enjoyed most of them, as guilty pleasures, I guess. I’ve had this conversation with friends, but one of the reasons I’ve always liked the HALLOWEEN movies even when they’re not that great is because of John Carpenter’s iconic HALLOWEEN music score. As soon as it starts playing on the soundtrack, I’m in!

And the music was about the only thing I liked about the reimagined sequel HALLOWEEN (2018) which brought back Jamie Lee Curtis to the series and told her character’s story about how she had been dealing with the fallout from Michael Myers for forty years, a film which pretty much ignored all the sequels and tried to be a sole sequel to the 1978 film. It was a worthy idea, but the script was pretty bad, and the film a disappointment.

I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed the sequel to that movie, HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) more than the 2018 film.

Now comes the “final” installment in this new HALLOWEEN trilogy, HALLOWEEN ENDS— who is coming up with the titles to these movies?— and all three movies were directed by David Gordon Green.

HALLOWEEN ENDS is not getting good reviews, but I’ll cut right to the chase: I actually liked this one better than HALLOWEEN KILLS, which makes it my favorite of this new HALLOWEEN trilogy.

One of the biggest reasons I liked this one? It tries a lot that is new, and so if you are expecting two hours of Michael Myers vs. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, that’s not what you’re going to get. I’m sure some fans will be put off by this. I wasn’t, mostly because what was in its place were story elements that were all rather intriguing.

HALLOWEEN ENDS opens in the here and now in Haddonfield, Illinois, the small town which seems to have been forever cursed by Michael Myers, with a different take on the babysitting trope, as this time the babysitter is a young man, Corey (Rohan Campbell). Corey is babysitting a bratty little kid who tells Corey he’s not afraid because Michael Myers doesn’t kill kids; he kills babysitters! Ouch! Before the night is over, the boy locks Corey inside an attic room. When Corey kicks the door open, tragedy results, and the little tyke is killed in front of his parents’ eyes who have just returned home.

Cue opening credits.

Usually, introducing new story elements and characters isn’t the best idea in a third film in a series, as you want to know what’s going on with the characters from the first two installments, but it somehow works here in HALLOWEEN ENDS, and Corey becomes an intriguing character. Even with all the Michael Myers history, Corey is now considered the town psycho after he is not convicted of murder. He’s the recipient of massive hating and bullying, and he has a mother who would be right at home being best friends with Norman Bates’ mother.

One thing HALLOWEEN ENDS gets right is it paints a portrait of hatred and vindictiveness in our modern-day culture, and I think it nails this throughout the movie. It reminded me a little bit of what Sandra Bullock’s character went through in the excellent Netflix movie THE UNFORGIVABLE (2021), where Bullock played an ex-con where pretty much everyone in society decided her crime was unforgivable and treated her like dirt.

When we finally catch up with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), she’s living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), and the two are trying to live their lives in Haddonfield after the events from the last movie where Allyson’s mom and Laurie’s daughter was murdered by Michael Myers. Laurie is writing her memoirs, and we learn that Michael Myers has disappeared.

When bullies actually push Corey off a bridge, he finds himself left for dead on the banks of the river. He makes his way into an underground tunnel and there discovers— you got it! Michael Myers has taken up residence underneath Haddonfield! When Myers attacks Corey, their eyes lock, and a strange thing happens. Is it a meeting of the minds? Does Myers see a fellow psycho? Or is the evil that inhabits Myers now transferred to Corey? Whatever the answer, Corey finds a newfound power, and an ally, and together they go on a vengeance killing spree.

Around this same time, Allyson meets Corey, thinks he’s cute, and pursues him, and the two characters grow close, finding common ground in their disdain for Haddonfield, and they speak openly of blowing everything up and then leaving for good. This story arc is rather interesting, as it brings together a Michael Myers disciple and Laurie’s granddaughter, now both working together for less than noble purposes.

Of course, Laurie disapproves, especially when she begins to receive Michael Myers’ vibes when she looks at Corey. As she says, she sees Myers’ eyes in Corey’s eyes. There’s a neat scene where Laurie looks out her window and sees Corey standing by some hanging laundry which mirrors a similar scene in the original HALLOWEEN.

Corey eventually wants more power, and battles Michael Myers and steals his mask, in effect becoming a new Michael Myers. But HALLOWEEN ENDS isn’t SON OF MICHAEL MYERS, and good old Michael isn’t interested in retiring just yet.

And Michael is old, as he should be in his 60s right about now, and the film stays true to that notion, and we see a killer who isn’t a young man anymore. That’s not to say he’s not in killing shape. He’s just a demonic killer who’s now in his 60s, which is something else about this movie that I liked.

HALLOWEEN ENDS makes good on its title and goes out of its way to make sure that Michael Myers isn’t coming back ever again—almost to a laughable degree—but never say never. This is the movies, after all, and anything can happen in the movies.

Also, as Laurie says in her voice over narration from the memoir she’s writing, evil never really dies. It just changes shape, an intriguing notion and choice of words, since Michael Myers is often credited as The Shape in the HALLOWEEN movies. Which is a neat way of wrapping up this series, with the idea that Michael was just a temporary shape of evil, housing some demonic entity, which may in fact live on even after its host body has been destroyed.

I thought there was a lot to like about HALLOWEEN ENDS. The screenplay by Paul Brad Logan somehow kept this story fresh throughout. I really didn’t think I was going to enjoy the story about Corey, but it works. I also thought Logan nailed the hate and vindictiveness in our modern-day society. Townpeople call out Laurie and blame her for their woes, because she had the gall to irk Michael Myers, rather than just leaving him alone.

One thing that doesn’t work, however, is the notion that this is a long-standing battle between Laurie and Michael. Sure, he attacked her in the original movie, but if anyone was truly his adversary, it was his doctor, Doctor Loomis, played by the late great Donald Pleasence. The idea that Laurie and Michael are bitter adversaries really was concocted for this trilogy.

Jamie Lee Curtis is fine, playing Laurie for what seems to be the final time. But one of my favorite performances however belongs to Andi Matichak as Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson, who is a much more interesting character, and her flirtations with evil and “burning down” Haddonfield are some of the more interesting parts of the film. Rohan Campbell is also very good as Corey, the misunderstood youth who becomes a Michael Myers disciple.

David Gordon Green’s direction isn’t bad. The film takes its time, which might turn off audiences, but it didn’t bother me because the story was firing on all cylinders. How does it stand up as a horror movie? Not bad. It’s not all that scary, which is not a good thing. How does it rank as a HALLOWEEN movie? It’s the best of this latest trilogy, but it still pales in comparison to John Carpenter’s original.

That being said, it was still way better than I expected, and so I have few complaints about this one. If you’re going to call your movie HALLOWEEN ENDS and plan to end a franchise, this was certainly a fitting way to do it. Then again, maybe it was just that iconic music score working its magic again…

Either way, this series started back in 1978, and although this installment actually included some new ideas, most of the films have not, and so on that note, I think it’s time we put this series to bed. So while I like this one, I’m still hoping HALLOWEEN ENDS lives up to its name.

I give HALLOWEEN ENDS three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful

SMILE (2022) – Decent Horror Movie Provides Some First-Half Scares

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Yes, smiles can be creepy.

And SMILE (2022), a new horror movie now playing in theaters, takes full advantage of that fact. For two thirds of its running time, it delivers some genuine scares and a very interesting premise, before it falls off a bit with some over-the-top and unintentionally laughable special effects and a plot in which its characters seem to figure things out long after the audience does.

For while, SMILE reminded me somewhat of a better horror movie from a few years back, IT FOLLOWS (2014) as both movies had a creative and rather unique plot. In IT FOLLOWS, in what served as an allegory for the transmission of stds, the supernatural threat was passed on from person to person through sexual contact. The entity in IT FOLLOWS would slowly follow its victims, a relentless pursuit which would only end in either the victim dying, or, if the victim had sex with someone, then the entity would be passed on to that person and would stalk them.

Here in SMILE, the entity feeds off trauma, and it stalks its victims through suicide. Each victim, who sees random and oftentimes people they know smiling at them strangely, are driven to commit suicide, and the person who witnesses the suicide is the next to be stalked. The difference between the two movies is that in IT FOLLOWS, the teenage characters aggressively attempted to fight back and figure out ways to stop the supernatural stalker, whereas here in SMILE, it takes forever for the characters to figure out what’s going on, and when they do, for some strange reason, they fail to act on it.

In SMILE, Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) treats a young woman who insists she’s not crazy, that she is being stalked by a real creature that appears like ordinary human beings only with a sadistic smile. While Rose tries to treat her, the woman suddenly shrieks that the creature is in the room with them, and she brutally slits her own throat.

A short time later, Rose begins to experience the same symptoms, having bizarre and frightening hallucinations of people she knows smiling threateningly at her. To make matters more complicated, when Rose was a child she witnessed her abusive mother commit suicide, so when Rose begins to act unhinged, her sister, her fiancé, her boss, all believe it’s the result of childhood trauma. The only person who does believe her is her cop ex-boyfriend, Joel (Kyle Gallner), and he helps her investigate the strange goings on, and they discover a trail going back a long time of suicide victims who were witnesses to other suicides. Rose then uses this information to fight for her life.

For a while, SMILE was firing on all cylinders. I was enjoying the story, which had a premise I found rather interesting, and the scares were there. Early on, there were some frightening scenes, spots where I actually jumped.

But when Rose finally figures out what is going on, and it becomes clear that the supernatural entity goes from one body to another after its current host’s suicide is witnessed by someone else, the story takes a hit because you expect Rose to realize this and make it her strategy to isolate herself, to get away from any other people in order to strip the creature of its calling card, but by the time she decides to do this, it’s way too late.

Plus, the film makes the dubious decision to include some over-the-top gross out effects which seem like they jumped off the set of a Tim Burton movie. Members of the audience actually laughed at these effects, which I’m sure wasn’t the intention.

Writer/director Parker Finn has written an intriguing horror tale but unfortunately his main characters suffer through a major case of the stupids and don’t figure things out until long after those of us sitting in the audience have done so. He does craft some frightening scenes early on, and I liked this, but the film doesn’t hold it together for its entirety, slowing down and becoming much less frightening as it closes in on its end credits.

SMILE is an okay horror movie that provides some decent scares for this Halloween season, even though in its latter half there isn’t all that much to smile about.

I give it two and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful

AMSTERDAM (2022) – Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington Lead All-Star Cast in David O. Russell’s Lighthearted Murder Mystery Period Piece

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AMSTERDAM (2022), director/writer David O. Russell’s first film since JOY (2015), is loosely based on a true story, a political conspiracy in 1933 known as the Business Plot, where wealthy businessmen and bankers plotted a behind-the-scenes coup d’état to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and replace him with a military general.

With its all-star cast, led by the triumvirate of Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington, combined with its artful cinematography capturing 1933 New York and its impactful and hopping screenplay by David O. Russell, AMSTERDAM largely entertains for all of its two hour and fourteen-minute running time.

The movie gets off to a lively start as we meet Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) in 1933 New York. Berendsen is a doctor and World War I veteran who treats his fellow veterans who returned from the Great War with unspeakable scars, injuries, and pain. So much pain. Berendsen is always looking for more powerful drugs to help his patients deal with the pain, and he himself lost an eye during the war, and his back is terribly scarred and twisted, so much so he has to constantly wear a back brace. Bale with his character’s glass eye and odd manner of speaking channels a lot of Peter Falk throughout his performance. When they are later trying to solve the mystery, it was easy to imagine Columbo on the case.

Burt and his fellow veteran and best friend from the war Harold Woodman (John David Washington), an attorney, are hired by Liz Meekins (Taylor Swift), the daughter of their former commanding officer, to look into her father’s death, which she believes is the result of foul play. And when Liz is pushed in front of an oncoming vehicle and murdered right in front of their eyes, they realize something big is going on.

Burt, who narrates the movie, then says it’s time for some background information, and the film jumps back in time to 1918 where he and Harold are cared for in army hospital by a nurse Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie). The three become inseparable, and their friendship blossoms as they spend a magical period shut off from the rest of the world in Amsterdam. But they pledged to always be there for each other. And so eventually when the action returns to 1933 New York, Valerie re-enters their lives as they, in the process of investigating their former commanding officer’s death, uncover a vast conspiracy against the United States government.

All of this sounds serious, and some of it is, but the screenplay is anything but a straight drama. It’s quirky and humorous, generating enough clever laughs to keep this one lighthearted throughout.

The biggest story with AMSTERDAM is its cast, both its three main players and the supporting cast of actors. Anytime you have Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington sharing ample screen time in your movie, chances are things are going to be purdy darn good. And they are.

Christian Bale is a phenomenal actor, and his performance as broken Burt Berendsen drives the entire movie forward. With his quirky Peter Falk-style delivery, Bale is watchable throughout. The same goes for Margot Robbie and John David Washington. The three of them deliver throughout this movie.

The supporting players also make their mark. Probably the two best supporting performances belong to Rami Malek as Valerie’s manipulative brother Tom, and Anya Taylor-Joy, who other than Bale, delivers hands down the best performance in the movie, as Tom’s eccentric wife Libby.

It was fun to see Mike Myers back on screen again, playing a British intelligence officer named Paul Canterbury, in a role which would have been perfectly suitable for Michael York a few years back. Myers and Michael Shannon, who plays Canterbury’s American intelligence counterpart, share lots of scenes together and seem to be having a great time as the two men who steer Burt and his friends towards uncovering the conspiracy plot.

Chris Rock in limited screen time gets some genuine laugh out loud moments as Milton King, one of the other soldiers in Burt’s and Harold’s platoon. Timothy Olyphant is also memorable under heavy face-altering prosthetics as Taron Milfax, a villainous henchman and murderer. And Zoe Saldana is enjoyable as a beautiful coroner who has eyes for Burt.

By the time Rober De Niro shows up as the level-headed general who refutes the coup, the film has lost a lot of its energy and pizzaz. While it remains entertaining throughout, the first two thirds of AMSTERDAM are much more energetic than its third act, which slows down as all the answers are revealed.

And David O. Russell’s screenplay keeps things simple. When De Niro’s General Dillenbeck delivers his much-anticipated speech, the words he uses to explain the evil that these men plan to do sounds like he’s speaking to a room of first graders. I suppose this is better than an explanation that is unclear and cryptic, but things are explained in straightforward simplistic black and white terms, in language that definitely calls to mind current events and what was attempted in the United States on January 6, 2021.

Overall, I enjoyed AMSTERDAM quite a bit, and I liked it better than Russell’s previous two movies, JOY and AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013). My two favorite Russell movies remain THE FIGHTER (2010) and SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012), but AMSTERDAM is right up there with them.

The 1933 New York sets, costumes, and cinematography were so authentic, I half expected to see King Kong rampaging through the streets on his way to the Empire State Building.

AMSTERDAM covers more than just its murder/coup plot, as it touches upon love, relationships, race, and art. At the end of the movie when Valerie and Harold have to leave the country, because they know their mixed-race relationship will not be allowed in the United States, it’s a powerful point that not many movies have felt comfortable making, and when Burt vows to work towards changing things, so his friends can return and live in this country freely, it’s a bittersweet moment because while we have come a long way, we still have a long way to go.

But the overall feel of this drama/comedy period piece is definitely on the lighter side, and the film provides plenty of humorous moments and laughter, most of it of the quirky variety, and it all works, even if the final third of the film slows down somewhat.

AMSTERDAM is well worth the visit.

I give it three stars.

—END–

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful

LOU (2022) – Allison Janney Solid in New Netflix Action Thriller

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LOU (2022), a new action thriller now streaming on Netflix, isn’t half bad.

Which, of course, also means, it’s not half good!

What are you going to do?

LOU stars Allison Janney… who looks like she walked off the set of an episode of THE WALKING DEAD…as a rough and independent woman named Lou living with her dog in the Pacific wilderness on an island off the coast of Washington. She is somewhat of a pain in the backside.

She rents out a home on her property to a single mother Hannah (Jurnee Smollett) and her young daughter Vee (Ridley Asha Bateman), and when she nearly runs over Vee with her pick-up truck, she is chastised by Hannah for driving too fast, to which Lou replies that Hannah needs to teach Vee to look after herself and not run out into the road. Hannah does not like Lou, but Vee kinda does.

But when one night during a major storm, a man breaks onto the property and abducts Vee, Hannah turns to Lou for help, and it’s a good thing because at the very moment Hannah was banging on her door, Lou was seconds away from committing suicide. It turns out the man who abducted Vee is the girl’s father, Philip (Logan Marshall-Green), and he is an ex-Green Beret, so Hannah warns Lou that they can’t take on Philip on their own, which is a problem since the power is out, and they can’t call the police. But Lou ignores the warning and vows to track Philip immediately. Why? Because Lou is ex-CIA.

Let the chase begin!

If only the plot had been this simple, LOU would have been highly entertaining. As it is, it’s not bad, but the screenplay by Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley makes things complicated and convoluted when it turns out that Lou is also Philip’s father, which makes her Vee’s grandmother, which makes the entire plot suddenly fall into the overused trope…this time it’s personal!…which by the time all is revealed, makes everything that happens in this one less credible and less believable.

Why couldn’t Lou just be a pain in the ass old lady bitter from her CIA past who just when she was about to end it all, finds one last moment of redemption, as she uses her skills to save a little girl from her crazed ex-Green Beret father? That would have been an exciting and worthwhile story to tell. Instead, she’s a manipulative mother, whose son is not only trying to get back at his ex-wife, but also his mother. It’s PSYCHO Plus!

It’s also a bit too much to swallow.

The story takes place in 1986. Not sure why. In terms of plot, it does give Lou some historical CIA missions to be bitter about. In terms of the movie, it provides an excuse to have lots of 80s songs on the soundtrack, which definitely helps.

Allison Janney, who did not star on THE WALKING DEAD, but did star on the classic series THE WEST WING (1999-2006) as C.J. Cregg, is terrific here in the lead role as Lou, and she’s also believable. Even as she deals with arthritis, she makes for a realistic bad ass who is believable kicking the butts of much younger adversaries. Janney has been making movies regularly, having appeared in BOMBSHELL (2019), I, TONYA (2017), in which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Tonya Harding’s mother, and THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (2016), to name just a few.

Jurnee Smollett is also believable as Hannah, the mother who had no idea her landlady was really her mother-in-law and the root of her crazy ex-husband’s problems. We just saw Smollett in SPIDERHEAD (2022), the Netflix thriller in which she co-starred with Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller.

Even better is Logan Marshall-Green as Philip, the volatile ex-Green Beret who abducts his daughter as part of a plan to blow up everyone he used to love. Not exactly daddy day care here! But Marshall-Green is really good in the role, and my favorite part of his performance is he somehow actually makes Philip somewhat sympathetic. He makes the guy human, and when he talks about his pain, and what his mother did to him, he’s believable. This is no surprise, because Logan Marshall-Green also delivered a standout performance in the superior independent horror movie from a few years back, THE INVITATION (2015), in which he played the lead role.

Matt Craven also stands out in a supporting role as Sheriff Rankin, the island sheriff who knows his people and rushes to help Hannah and Lou even as he is warned by the CIA to keep away from scene.

LOU was directed by Anna Foerster, and there are no complaints here. The action scenes are realistic, and some of the sequences are rather suspenseful. There’s a neat sequence where Lou and Hannah have to cross a dilapidated bridge that I thought was particularly effective. Foerster also takes full advantage of the Pacific Northwest scenery, especially during the scenes with the big storm.

Other than its convoluted plot which gets in the way of the true story here, the one about Lou and her attempts to save an abducted child, LOU works, making it for the most part a satisfying and entertaining action flick, anchored by a solid performance by Allison Janney in the lead role.

I give it two and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful

BLONDE (2022) – Netflix’ NC-17 Rated Fictional Account of Marilyn Monroe Major Disappointment

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Some movies have “it.” Others don’t.

BLONDE (2022), unlike its subject, Marilyn Monroe, doesn’t have “it,” which is too bad because Ana de Armas is terrific in the lead role as Norma Jean, aka Marilyn Monroe, but this fictional account of the life of Monroe based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates just never came to life for me. It didn’t grab me at the outset, nor did it pull me in later as it went along, and for a movie that runs nearly three hours, that’s a long time to be uninvolved. A very long time.

The first issue I had with this movie is why do we need a fictional account of the life of Marilyn Monroe? Wasn’t her real life fascinating and tragic enough? I couldn’t really wrap my head around the idea. Sure, it’s based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel, but again, why? I was especially distracted by this in this day and age where a growing number of political leaders make their living promoting fictional accounts as true, and so this whole notion didn’t sit well with me here in 2022. That being said, I went in with an open mind, and was ready to enjoy this one regardless, but the film itself prevented me from doing so.

BLONDE, which is rated NC-17 for strong sexual content, nudity, rape, and child abuse, is now streaming on Netflix and playing at some theaters. Most of the content here is typical of R rated films. The one exception is a rather vulgar scene between Monroe and JFK, vulgar in the way the President treats Monroe. But this is all fiction so… it doesn’t resonate as it otherwise would.

The film opens with a young Norma Jean living with her alcoholic and abusive mom (Julianne Nicholson), giving the film a very unpleasant first few minutes which seem to go on forever before finally cutting to an adult Norma Jean (Ana de Armas) as she first breaks into the film industry. And in this story, she gets her first role after being raped by the studio head. He has his way sexually with her, and then he gives her the role. Again, fictional account. This never happened.

The rest of the movie follows Monroe’s traumatic life and career, following its factual path through movies she made and the lovers she had, but all with a fictional twist, right up until her tragic death in 1962 at the age of 36.

BLONDE tries to be stylish, and director Andrew Dominik mixes black and white cinematography into the mix, as well as different variants of color photography, and even inserts de Armas into real scenes from Marilyn Monroe’s movies where de Armas stands side by side with the real actors from those movies. Yet, none of this worked for me. In terms of style, BLONDE is vastly inferior to another bio pic from earlier this year, ELVIS (2022) by Baz Luhrmann. That film had me hooked within its opening seconds and it never looked back. BLONDE, in spite of all its technical innovations, labors from start to finish.

A large part of the problem is its pacing. It moves like a snail, and never builds on what has come before it. It just moves from one plot point to another. It really could have used some serious editing.

There are some impressive acting performances. I’ve been a fan of Ana de Armas for a while, and she is making a ton of movies these days. We just saw her in THE GRAY MAN (2022) and before that in the James Bond movie NO TIME TO DIE (2021). Her performance as an A. I. being was one of the better parts of BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017).

Here, she gives it her all as Marilyn Monroe, and at times she is good enough to lose herself in the role, and you think you are watching the real Monroe. Other times, however, de Armas’ Cuban accent is still detectable. If BLONDE had been a better movie, this distinction would have worked better because it would have supported the notion that this is a fictional account and not a true biography, but the film just isn’t up to the task, and so I imagine de Armas’ accent will only irritate Marilyn Monroe fans.

Bobby Cannavale turns in a fine performance as the “Ex-Athlete,” based of course on Joe DiMaggio, who famously married Marilyn Monroe, and Adrien Brody is even better as “The Playwright,” based on Arthur Miller, who married Monroe after she and DiMaggio divorced. Neither one of these two have much of an impact here though, since neither actor is in the movie all that much.

The screenplay by director Andrew Dominik based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates falls flat, and then some. I was amazed at how much I did not like this movie. Considering the subject matter, Marilyn Monroe, the actor in the lead, Ana de Armas, and the impressive looking cinematography.

None of it comes together. The story struggles. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the narrative because it’s a fictional account of a real person, and so these traumatic events which shaped Monroe’s life— didn’t actually happen, at least not in the way as depicted in this movie.

For me, the bottom line is this: did this really happen to Monroe? No. So, why do I care?

The short answer? I don’t.

So, in spite of tremendous potential, BLONDE was a huge disappointment.

Monroe and her fans deserve better.

I give it one and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful