Bird Box

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An unfortunate true thing about Bird Box is that it is highly comparable to A Quiet Place. Both are post-apocalyptic, both deal with unknowable, alien(?) menaces that cannot be opposed, both focus on a small number of survivors plus children trying to find a way to improve upon the new circumstances that they have already survived.

The reason this is unfortunate is because A Quiet Place is so much better. I mean, that’s fine for me! But it’s unfortunate for Sandra Bullock and Netflix. Because the thing is, Bird Box isn’t bad. The wrapper story about a woman and two children blindfolded in a rowboat going down a river is creepy as all get out, in part because there’s no way to tell what the hell is going on and in part because Bullock really pulls off her caretaker on the edge of terror role well. You can’t even really tell if she likes the children, only that she’s going to keep them alive if she can, even though there’s no threat the camera can see that would explain why she’s worried. Which adds to the creepiness, like I said.

But where Bird Box really shines is the main sequence, told in flashbacks as they drift downstream, where first the apocalyptic incident is revealed, and then a group of people hunker down in a house to try to wait it out. It is… huh. I just realized that it’s basically an extended homage to[1] Night of the Living Dead. Which is even worse news for Bird Box, because now it’s a mash-up of two superior movies, and it really serves no purpose at all.

I still liked it, but… man. That’s harsh.

[1] or rip-off of, if you prefer
[2] Man, people knew how to write movie taglines in the ’60s.

Night of the Living Deb

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I’m not sure how I waited so long to start paying for Shudder.

This is not to say that Night of the Living Deb was some kind of revelation. It really was, just as you would guess from the title, mostly a cheap knockoff of Shaun of the Dead. There’s this cute redhead total spazz[1] out on the town for the night, right? And she meets an engaged hottie in the midst of a break-up, and wakes up the next morning with no real memory of what happened, only now she’s in his house, and it’s super awkward, but also, oops, the zombie apocalypse happened overnight.

The biggest problem, I think, is that every actor who was not one of the two leads was at best phoning it in and more commonly just really bad. Also, the plot took a while to find legs enough to differentiate itself from Shaun beyond the “but with a lady!” twist that is I’m sure what got the investors (and lawyers!) on board. But by the beginning of act three, I actively enjoyed it instead of benignly tolerating, mostly because of Maria Thayer as Deb, who deserves a better career than she apparently has; I guess America gave away the spazzy redhead slot to Ellie Kemper before she knew there was only one such slot available to compete for.

[1] Which is to say, my type. I think this probably helped my overall opinion.

Aquaman

For once, my long delay in seeing a big event movie did not work against me! This is because, as nearly as I can tell, nobody else has actually seen Aquaman yet, so being a month late still gets me first out the gate. Exciting!

And a little sad, because this is probably second best of the, what, six now? DC movies that have come out. If you had asked me to predict that I would consider Aquaman a quality movie, after having considered him lamest of the lame all throughout childhood, well, that is not a prediction I would have made.

I mean, am I claiming it’s a great work of art? I am not. But it’s big, it’s bright, it’s flashy, it has an overstuffed with drama plot full of monologuing villains, lost heirs, fate of the world stakes, an (okay, this is more of a negative) overly-forced romance subplot… in short, it’s everything you want out of a comic book movie. Notably, it is not dark or grim or overwrought or in love with its visual or emotional sense of deep, unfixable misery. Y’know, not unlike the other really good DC movie.

So, yes, I did genuinely enjoy it. But even if I hadn’t, I would have probably rated it the second best DC movie regardless. Because now there’s a much smaller chance that Marvel will make a movie about the goddamned Sub-Mariner[1]. A victory for us all!

[1] Maybe that’s why I found myself actually liking Arthur Curry. Because Namor is a lot closer in tenor and attitude to King Orm than to Aquaman.

Ocean’s Eight

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The majority of plane trips beget a second plane trip, wherein you return to where you left from in the first place. As such, I watched a second movie on the way back from Chicago, and it was Ocean’s Eight. Pleasingly, this was a sequel to the Clooney Danny Ocean movies, rather than a remake. It picks up a few years after Gravity left off, with Danny Ocean dead saving his sister from a space walk gone horribly wrong and Sandra Bullock being released from prison (one presumes for an illegal landing?) with the perfect plan to steal a really expensive necklace at the annual Met gala, which is I guess an exclusive museum thing (fundraiser?) in New York that also happens in real life.

I think just to prove she can, Sandra (almost certainly not the character’s actual name) Ocean has decided to make her crew all ladies, and I cannot help thinking that was also the motive of whoever made this movie. Which is fine, because it was every bit as good as any of the previous sequels[1][2], and aside from saying she wants an all lady crew at the beginning of the movie, it’s never really brought up again[3].

After all the characters and marks are established, it’s, you know, a heist movie. I like them. You maybe incorrectly do not? It’s cool, tastes vary as they say. More importantly, it’s not a bad heist movie, so there you are.

[1] I maintain that the Ocean’s Eleven remake (I never saw the original with Sinatra and whoever) is in a class by itself.
[2] And let’s be honest, probably significantly better than 12
[3] I do not at all mind when movies are trying to make A Point, and I mind even less when it’s a point I agree with. I will, however, always mind when the movie is actually chanting to a drumbeat, “Look at this Point I’m Making.”

Tag (2018)

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At the end of December, I had a new experience! I have now watched a movie on an airplane. Benefit of not flying Spirit, I suppose.

I remember thinking the previews for Tag looked, well, good isn’t the right word, but entertaining and/or funny. Plus, I like tag. Too bad I didn’t do what they did, I might be more accustomed to necessary cardio. So anyway, there’s this group of friends who, as kids, played an essentially non-stop game of tag. And now as adults, they set aside one month of the year to continue the tradition. This, I think, covers all of (or possibly a little more than that) the “based on a true story” aspects of the film.

What’s left is Ed Helms and the guy from The New Girl and Hannibal Buress (I don’t know who he is) and (somehow) Jon Hamm on a quest to finally tag Hawkeye from the Avengers, who has never been tagged in the entire span of time they have been playing, for what I think are pretty obvious reasons. He’s definitely playing in the wrong league here, is all I’m saying. On the other hand, it’s nice to know what he was up to while absent from Infinity War.

There are a couple of subplots, but the meat of it is watching grown-ass men playing a ridiculously over the top kid game. If that doesn’t work for you, this won’t either. As for me: it was a better way to spend a flight than I’ve spent most of mine, so.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

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True confessions time: as of yesterday afternoon, I was four reviews behind. I have got to stop with this! But anyway, I tell you that mainly so you don’t think it took me until mid-January to see the latest Spider-Man movie (non-MCU).

Well, fuller disclosure still, I originally didn’t plan to see it at all, since animated plus non-MCU made me think it was a Sony kid movie instead of a serious comics movie[1]. But then early reviews were generally positive with a non-kiddy slant, and so there I was.

Into the Spider-Verse tells the origin story of Miles Morales, who you will remember from too many of my reviews to link to of Ultimate Spider-Man, after that time when Peter Parker got killed. Bendis did a good thing when he provided the Marvel Ultimate universe with a replacement Spider-Man, not just because Peter Parker had been the most important character in that continuity and the hole was painful, but especially because he provided someone who matched modern New York’s demographics. Not only does it embrace a broader audience, but it frees up a new story space, instead of just ending up with a clone[2] of the original.

I guess I jumped rather far afield. Anyway, the movie tells Miles’ origin story by way of Dumbo, while also introducing a concept I am decades from reading in print, about all the various earths where all kinds of other various people were bitten by radioactive (or genetically modified, or whatever) spiders, resulting in all kinds of new and bizarre Spider-People. This maybe sounds silly, but the Kingpin[3] and his crew are collectively such a powerful threat that the cross-dimensional team-up actually feels necessary.

Also: the little things they did with panel composition and lettering and the spider-sense were… a friend of mine said that he walked out of this movie with the knowledge that he had not previously seen a comic book movie, he had only seen movies about comic books. It really shows that the people who made this love not only the stories, but the medium as a whole. I really very much hope there’s a Miles sequel forthcoming. He deserves one, and so do we.

[1] I, uh, look. Shut up.
[2] It is important, comics being what they are, that I point out I mean clone in a metaphorical sense. Although a literal clone would be just as pointless.
[3] Oh, right. Kingpin is the big bad. He’s so much more effective here than he is in Netflix’s Daredevil. It’s not that Vincent D’Onofrio does a bad job, it’s that the Kingpin is a larger than life figure who translates to live action far less well than most other supervillains have done.

You Might Be the Killer

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So, let’s say you run a summer camp, and let’s say it’s been a really bad night at the summer camp, with teen counselors dropping like flies, and someone is about to try to burn you out of the cabin you’ve bolted yourself into. Maybe it’s time to take a deep breath and call your friend who works at the video store and get some calming, helpful advice!

This is the premise of an apparently off-the-cuff Twitter conversation between a guy who sometimes writes Star Wars books and another guy who I forget what. Which I think makes You Might Be the Killer[1] the first movie developed on Twitter? That by itself was enough to make me want to watch it. I had been a little sad about the spoilery nature of having read the conversation, but it turns out to cover not much more than the premise, which is kind of summed up in the title in the first place. I’m pleased to report they found room to maneuver, is what I’m saying.

But then they put it on Shudder, and I have a subscription to that! ….which was probably about a year overdue, if I’m being honest with myself, so thanks Joe Bob for forcing my hand last summer. Anyway, it’s a slasher comedy starring Fran Kranz (from The Cabin in the Woods) and Allyson Hannigan (from all kinds of things at this point, don’t act like you don’t know), and while it’s not quite the genius that I wanted it to be, it’s still pretty damn fun.

[1] I may have exaggerated about the calming effect of the previously mentioned forthcoming advice.

Halloween (2018)

Let’s be frank: there was very little chance of me not liking a Halloween sequel starring Jamie Lee Curtis. While I think Alien is the best horror movie ever made, I think that Halloween II is the best horror movie sequel ever made. And the original is in the top five anyway, probably number two.

Biases: acknowledged!

Given all that, I am of course a little disappointed that Halloween II got jettisoned from the canon. I understand why they did it, and I even approve. I think I’m willing to pretend that the one disputed fact is in line with these movies but that the events in the hospital are still canon. Because, it was so good.

Okay, enough about other movies. I appreciated a lot about what was going on here. They used the same font for the credits, of course the same music / composer, once again the only credit for Michael Myers was The Shape, there was even a dollhouse that I’ll swear was modeled on the original Myers home. What I’m saying is I appreciate attention to detail, and the moreso for the forty years gone since the original premiered.

Mostly, I liked the heart of the movie, this unstoppable collision between Laurie Strode and the boogeyman. It reminded me of Aliens in that way, now that I think about it. So, y’know, good company. And there’s a bit of style in taking the exact name of the movie that you are a sequel of. Halloween, and its sequel, Halloween. I dig it.

Emerald Fire

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I haven’t read anything but comics in about a week, because I’m behind on this book review. The irony is, of course: in what world am I worried about the quality of a Deathlands review that nobody cares about?

Emerald Fire was a mixed bag. I liked the setting (somewhere in Central America, for a change of pace) and the idea of helping local tribes against slavers trying to keep a silver mine running. I probably should mind the “American saviors of helpless natives” trope, up to and including the part where the albino kid was worshipped as their god. But that was overshadowed by the part where our heroes were nobly disgusted by all the ritual human sacrifice.

It’s like, in-world you’re descendants of the people who blew up the world, and your home stomping grounds treat life as cheaply as the rotgut that passes for liquor; and from the reader’s perspective, you’re a subgenre mashup of two barely respected literary forms. In each of these cases, you’re not good enough to cast aspersions at other cultures.

Of course, the problem here is, now I’m forced into the role of apologist for cultural relativism and human sacrifice, and that’s not very exciting for me. But man were they being holier-than-thou about it.

Oh, hey. One other random thing, regarding the cover. I wonder if they had this in mind for an earlier book, but it wasn’t ready in time or something like that? Because two books ago, there was definitely a fight with a giant mutant crab. There equally definitely was nothing crablike in this book. So!

Ground Zero

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Sometimes the title of a Deathlands book will make me scratch my head in puzzlement, since it seems like they just took a couple of random words, one of them semi-complex, and strung them together, irrespective of the plot of the book. Other times, such as Ground Zero, I’m pretty well on board.

See, our heroes have landed in what used to be Washington DC but is now simply referred to as the Washington Hole, what with how many missiles were aimed dead center of the seat of American government. So there’s a blasted pit several miles wide, a new volcano, Lake Potomac, and villes all around the pit where people still live and do business, since it was after all a populous area, pre-nuke. Yeah, ground zero works just fine.

That said, it’s really just a string of largely disconnected events, though I guess the second half of the book is tied pretty well together. Highlights include the most powerful mutant seer anyone in the series has ever met, a creepy zoo of rare oddities, a pivotal tornado, more signs of the samurai that rumors say have been all over the place lately, and most rare and wondrous of all, a bartender who remembers our heroes fondly from encounters past.