Month: November 2019

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening dev. Grezzo (2019)

I was uncertain if I could count this as new fiction, but it’s a complete remake and I haven’t had qualms with including remakes of other media. This is the essential Link’s Awakening experience complemented by the expected visual and sound upgrades for the Switch, as well as a few new characters and areas to fill out the new world. I still choked up when I heard the new rendition of The Ballad of the Wind Fish, which I was afraid would somehow be negatively affected by the changes. It sounds just as good, a new version of Kazumi Totaka’s original music that still evokes the sense of ephemeral friendship and loneliness brought about by the game. There’s also a version with lyrics that’s okay, but I prefer to listen to the music without the words. This cover with vocals but no lyrics is great. I had forgotten that the revelations at the end of the game are not revealed suddenly, but in trace amounts. It’s not even subtle in the lead-up to the end and that somehow makes it all the more sad. The player may choose not to proceed and merely exist in the world as it is, but I suspect few players make that choice.

Scream 3 dir. Wes Craven (2000)

I watched the first three Scream movies. I’d seen the first two before and they were nostalgic and strangely self-aware to my modern eyes, more than I remember them being when I first watched them in the 90s. This third movie has the inevitable problem of being too self-aware, going so far that it becomes a bad parody of a parody. I saw one comment that said we may as well go watch Scary Movie and I understood their point.

Candyman dir. Bernard Rose (1992)

I always confused this movie with The Lawnmower Man for obvious stupid reasons, and I’d never seen either one. I’m glad I chose this one when it crossed my path on Netflix. Rose does interesting stuff with exploring the economic disparity between people living in the projects of the time and those that were too far removed to notice. Mirroring the situation by having Helen’s apartment building be a duplicate of those developed for the projects highlights something that I always noticed as a kid. The houses on one block may be identical to houses a few blocks over, but somehow one neighborhood is “nice” and the other is not. The horror elements are pretty light and a welcome introduction to this Candyman mythos that I’m sure was amplified to create a franchise of it.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie dir. Vince Gilligan (2019)

Fucking movie subtitles, I tell ya. I hate it. Everyone knows it’s connected to Breaking Bad! Beyond that, though, I think Gilligan delivered the best possible version of this movie. It’s a long epilogue to the series that finally lets up on Jesse’s torment. Gilligan confirmed in interviews that he had a darker ending in mind for the movie but everyone he consulted more or less asked if he was insane. Jesse’s character, and the audience, needed this movie to be different from the television series. Walt’s dead, good, now wrap it up with Jesse. The trials he faces felt genuine to the material and I just enjoyed its Western leanings.

Ex Machina dir. Alex Garland (2014)

This is a movie where I asked, out loud, “What the fuck are you doing?” when the protagonist makes his choices. It feels like a situation where a normal person would balk at the ideas presented by the antagonist, but then most movies would end quickly if normal people were in the central roles. Isaac did his job in the role of the sociopathic rich guy, but Gleeson and Vikander were an interesting pair. Gleeson’s appearance and the whole thing really made it feel like a long episode of Black Mirror, which is probably something I say a lot when watching science fiction these days. I used to hate robots, and the idea of robots, but now I think it’s inevitable.

Under the Skin dir. Jonathan Glazer (2013)

This was a good double-feature after Ex Machina. Vikander’s role as Ava in that movie is about freeing herself from the confines of her masters (both played by men in the movie) to explore the broader world, while Johansson’s goal is entirely based on her ability to move about the world and hunt men. Both characters use their sexuality to achieve their ends, and while the directors did well with the material, I can’t help but wonder how women in the director roles would have presented these ideas. Glazer’s approach with this movie is to create dread and then make us realize how little it takes to be a human being.

Taking Lives dir. D. J. Caruso (2004)

Another movie about assuming a role and concealing what’s real about ourselves. This movie’s antagonist does what he does as compulsion driven by a desire to be anyone but himself, but they do this at the expense of Jolie’s protagonist. I’m sure it’s meant to punch up the finale by dragging down the protagonist before elevating her, but it wasn’t executed well. The twist in the plot was also telegraphed too far in advance and just drowns the mystery.

Mystic River dir. Clint Eastwood (2003)

Sean Penn is an asshole, yeah? That’s all I could think about as I watched this movie. I recall how much praise the movie received at the time of its release, but all I could think was, “Sean Penn doesn’t have to go far to pretend to be an asshole.” And while you’re sympathetic to his problem (the loss of a daughter, again, which is always a minus for me), he’s still an asshole. Every character around him is meant to bolster the idea that he’s done the best he could with what he got, and what he did with that is become an asshole. Tim Robbins is more sympathetic by design, given his tragic role, and Kevin Bacon is just a by-the-books cop. The movie rhetorically asks, “Isn’t it tragic that life can be fucked up?”

Mandy dir. Panos Cosmatos (2018)

I made the mistake of watching this movie over the course of two lunches, and pausing at the exact right moment to highlight that this is actually two distinct movies. The first half is a surreal and beautiful exploration of life in some out-of-the-way rural part of California, out in the north-east, probably, beyond the valleys and Interstate 5. The kind of idyllic existence I used to dream about. Riseborough shone through as the titular character, although certainly a pixie dream girl. I instantly recognized her from the Black Mirror episode, “Crocodile,” which I’d recommend. The second half of the movie is a revenge and gore tale on par with something from Sam Raimi, and you’d think Cage would be the best choice for the role but he was distracting.

The Lighthouse dir. Robert Eggers (2019)

People laughed and sighed through the movie, and I didn’t get why. There were certainly comedic parts but it didn’t feel like a comedy. Then I saw comparisons to Dumb and Dumber and understood it. It does have a strange dynamic where the two characters behave like a comedic odd couple, pushing each other around and poking at the sore spots out of boredom. One aspect that I had issue with is the presentation of the supernatural elements that haunt the characters on the island. Eggers’s previous movie, The Witch, was also heavy on the psychological torture imbued with the supernatural, but the conclusion of that movie is very different from this one. I think I’ll be glad that he took this movie in a slightly different direction, but I’ll need to watch it again.

Cheers – Season 1 (1982-1983)

Season 1 has that distinct hokey quality that I expect from shows with laugh tracks like Friends, although one episode stood out to me. In the episode called “The Boys in the Bar,” a friend of Sam’s comes out as gay, and the way the bar patrons deal with their homophobia by trying to ostracize a group of men they think are gay feels like it sympathizes with their desire to keep gay men out of the bar. It just doesn’t age well. The conclusion of the episode reveals that the gay men they were afraid of were in their midst all along, which feels less about showing that anyone can be gay and that’s okay, and more about fanning the paranoia straight men already felt. Shows like Friends fared no better with the topic ten years later. The writing is solid for a sitcom, however, and it’s becoming clear why the show was a success and how it set us up for the sitcoms we’d see in the 90s and beyond. It’s a touchstone of the genre for sure.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening dev. Grezzo (2019)

I was uncertain if I could count this as new fiction, but it’s a complete remake and I haven’t had qualms with including remakes of other media. This is the essential Link’s Awakening experience complemented by the expected visual and sound upgrades for the Switch, as well as a few new characters and areas to fill out the new world. I still choked up when I heard the new rendition of The Ballad of the Wind Fish, which I was afraid would somehow be negatively affected by the changes. It sounds just as good, a new version of Kazumi Totaka’s original music that still evokes the sense of ephemeral friendship and loneliness brought about by the game. There’s also a version with lyrics that’s okay, but I prefer to listen to the music without the words. This cover with vocals but no lyrics is great. I had forgotten that the revelations at the end of the game are not revealed suddenly, but in trace amounts. It’s not even subtle in the lead-up to the end and that somehow makes it all the more sad. The player may choose not to proceed and merely exist in the world as it is, but I suspect few players make that choice.

Scream 3 dir. Wes Craven (2000)

I watched the first three Scream movies. I’d seen the first two before and they were nostalgic and strangely self-aware to my modern eyes, more than I remember them being when I first watched them in the 90s. This third movie has the inevitable problem of being too self-aware, going so far that it becomes a bad parody of a parody. I saw one comment that said we may as well go watch Scary Movie and I understood their point.

Candyman dir. Bernard Rose (1992)

I always confused this movie with The Lawnmower Man for obvious stupid reasons, and I’d never seen either one. I’m glad I chose this one when it crossed my path on Netflix. Rose does interesting stuff with exploring the economic disparity between people living in the projects of the time and those that were too far removed to notice. Mirroring the situation by having Helen’s apartment building be a duplicate of those developed for the projects highlights something that I always noticed as a kid. The houses on one block may be identical to houses a few blocks over, but somehow one neighborhood is “nice” and the other is not. The horror elements are pretty light and a welcome introduction to this Candyman mythos that I’m sure was amplified to create a franchise of it.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie dir. Vince Gilligan (2019)

Fucking movie subtitles, I tell ya. I hate it. Everyone knows it’s connected to Breaking Bad! Beyond that, though, I think Gilligan delivered the best possible version of this movie. It’s a long epilogue to the series that finally lets up on Jesse’s torment. Gilligan confirmed in interviews that he had a darker ending in mind for the movie but everyone he consulted more or less asked if he was insane. Jesse’s character, and the audience, needed this movie to be different from the television series. Walt’s dead, good, now wrap it up with Jesse. The trials he faces felt genuine to the material and I just enjoyed its Western leanings.

Ex Machina dir. Alex Garland (2014)

This is a movie where I asked, out loud, “What the fuck are you doing?” when the protagonist makes his choices. It feels like a situation where a normal person would balk at the ideas presented by the antagonist, but then most movies would end quickly if normal people were in the central roles. Isaac did his job in the role of the sociopathic rich guy, but Gleeson and Vikander were an interesting pair. Gleeson’s appearance and the whole thing really made it feel like a long episode of Black Mirror, which is probably something I say a lot when watching science fiction these days. I used to hate robots, and the idea of robots, but now I think it’s inevitable.

Under the Skin dir. Jonathan Glazer (2013)

This was a good double-feature after Ex Machina. Vikander’s role as Ava in that movie is about freeing herself from the confines of her masters (both played by men in the movie) to explore the broader world, while Johansson’s goal is entirely based on her ability to move about the world and hunt men. Both characters use their sexuality to achieve their ends, and while the directors did well with the material, I can’t help but wonder how women in the director roles would have presented these ideas. Glazer’s approach with this movie is to create dread and then make us realize how little it takes to be a human being.

Taking Lives dir. D. J. Caruso (2004)

Another movie about assuming a role and concealing what’s real about ourselves. This movie’s antagonist does what he does as compulsion driven by a desire to be anyone but himself, but they do this at the expense of Jolie’s protagonist. I’m sure it’s meant to punch up the finale by dragging down the protagonist before elevating her, but it wasn’t executed well. The twist in the plot was also telegraphed too far in advance and just drowns the mystery.

Mystic River dir. Clint Eastwood (2003)

Sean Penn is an asshole, yeah? That’s all I could think about as I watched this movie. I recall how much praise the movie received at the time of its release, but all I could think was, “Sean Penn doesn’t have to go far to pretend to be an asshole.” And while you’re sympathetic to his problem (the loss of a daughter, again, which is always a minus for me), he’s still an asshole. Every character around him is meant to bolster the idea that he’s done the best he could with what he got, and what he did with that is become an asshole. Tim Robbins is more sympathetic by design, given his tragic role, and Kevin Bacon is just a by-the-books cop. The movie rhetorically asks, “Isn’t it tragic that life can be fucked up?”

Mandy dir. Panos Cosmatos (2018)

I made the mistake of watching this movie over the course of two lunches, and pausing at the exact right moment to highlight that this is actually two distinct movies. The first half is a surreal and beautiful exploration of life in some out-of-the-way rural part of California, out in the north-east, probably, beyond the valleys and Interstate 5. The kind of idyllic existence I used to dream about. Riseborough shone through as the titular character, although certainly a pixie dream girl. I instantly recognized her from the Black Mirror episode, “Crocodile,” which I’d recommend. The second half of the movie is a revenge and gore tale on par with something from Sam Raimi, and you’d think Cage would be the best choice for the role but he was distracting.

The Lighthouse dir. Robert Eggers (2019)

People laughed and sighed through the movie, and I didn’t get why. There were certainly comedic parts but it didn’t feel like a comedy. Then I saw comparisons to Dumb and Dumber and understood it. It does have a strange dynamic where the two characters behave like a comedic odd couple, pushing each other around and poking at the sore spots out of boredom. One aspect that I had issue with is the presentation of the supernatural elements that haunt the characters on the island. Eggers’s previous movie, The Witch, was also heavy on the psychological torture imbued with the supernatural, but the conclusion of that movie is very different from this one. I think I’ll be glad that he took this movie in a slightly different direction, but I’ll need to watch it again.

Cheers – Season 1 (1982-1983)

Season 1 has that distinct hokey quality that I expect from shows with laugh tracks like Friends, although one episode stood out to me. In the episode called “The Boys in the Bar,” a friend of Sam’s comes out as gay, and the way the bar patrons deal with their homophobia by trying to ostracize a group of men they think are gay feels like it sympathizes with their desire to keep gay men out of the bar. It just doesn’t age well. The conclusion of the episode reveals that the gay men they were afraid of were in their midst all along, which feels less about showing that anyone can be gay and that’s okay, and more about fanning the paranoia straight men already felt. Shows like Friends fared no better with the topic ten years later. The writing is solid for a sitcom, however, and it’s becoming clear why the show was a success and how it set us up for the sitcoms we’d see in the 90s and beyond. It’s a touchstone of the genre for sure.