Tag Archives: Paramount+

A Quiet Place: Day One

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I have long claimed that in virtually all zombie movies[1], the zombie part should be considered a setting, Space movies, Westerns, zombie movies, etc. The zombies are where the movie happens and the circumstances the characters are baselined against, but the movie isn’t about the zombies. It’s about whatever the characters are going through plus whatever metaphor the writers / directors want to shoehorn into those plot events and that setting.

The new A Quiet Place movie from last year seems willing to let those weird quadruped aliens that can hear really well and not see so great, so as long as you’re silent you’re safe from them? I was saying, it seems willing to let their alien invasion become a new such setting. We’ve moved away from the “end of the world through the eyes of this one family” viewpoint of the first two movies, in favor of, superficially, a more global approach. Want to see how hard it is (or, perversely, how easy it is) to be quiet in Manhattan? Let’s show invasion day from right there, and give you an idea of just how much noise 8 million people can make, even and perhaps especially when they’re not supposed to.

But the real movie isn’t about this at all. It’s actually about dying. …okay, yes, tons and tons of people die in this movie. But I mean, it’s about being in hospice, and knowing you’re going to die, soon, and wanting to do that one more thing you have on your bucket list while trying to decide if you’re willing and able to let go, not that you have much choice, and anyway, what about your cat? Who’s going to take care of your cat? This is so much bullshit.

The real movie, I was saying, is about that. The “you’d better be quiet” quadruped aliens are simply the backdrop against which this quotidian internal drama is taking place. As always, the sound design for these movies is superb, and even if there are things that happened that I am categorically unwilling to believe if I stop and let myself wonder about them, the movie works so well on an emotional level[2] that I’m willing to handwave those things and let them lie.

[1] Okay, probably not Return of the Living Dead
[2] Helped along, to be sure, by the acting talent of Lupita Nyong’o and also by the extremely intimate size of the cast

Smile 2

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Remember Smile? Demony thing stalks and/or possesses a hospital trauma therapist who has just witnessed a horrific act of self-harm, and the main symptoms of said possession, prior to gruesome death, are losing time and seeing people oversmile creepily at you everywhere you go?

Smile 2 is very much like that movie, only instead of a deep metaphorical dive into the personal costs of providing mental healthcare, it follows a Taylor Swift-level superstar who lost everything to drugs and alcohol and is staging her comeback. Only, she makes a single impulsive (and low-key bad) decision that puts her in the wrong place at the extremely wrong time, and now people are smiling creepily at her.

Where the first movie was deeply horrifying and also an unpredictable mindfuck, this one is… well, the mindfuck part is gone because we know for sure that it’s real even if the afflicted character doesn’t, and the horror is not precisely gone, but it just feels mean-spirited this time. Not like it could happen to anyone, but like it is happening to this character because she deserves it. (Wondering whether she actually does deserve it or not honestly misses the point.)

In conclusion, not every horror movie needs to be a franchise.

But, if you’re into body horror, there was some stuff with hair that was really making me squirm.

Star Trek: Section 31

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People have been lining up to deride Section 31, the most recent Star Trek movie that was originally supposed to be a TV series instead, and yeah, it definitely feels like a two episode pilot in a lot of ways. But is it really worse than Star Trek V? It seriously isn’t. Come on.

This is not to say the movie isn’t problematic. As a story, it’s perfectly fine. You take an anti-hero you’re already familiar with from previous stories, and she’s played by Michelle Yeoh in full scenery-chewing mode. And then you enlist her in a Suicide Squad caper with several other misfits-in-search-of-redemption, and they’re off to save… I dunno, probably the quadrant? …from utter destruction, in about 90 minutes. Dark antihero capers full of impossible odds, inevitable betrayals, and sudden death are cool.

But, and this is a big enough but that Mix-A-Lot is contractually obligated to like it:

But, this is Star Trek. Section 31 is the least Roddenberry thing that was ever introduced into Trek, and The Suicide Squad is about as big of a tonal mismatch with Trek as I can imagine, even when I acknowledge the existence of Section 31. (Which, if you don’t know, is the Federation’s black ops division.) So… yeah. As a story, it’s fine, like I already said. As a Star Trek movie… I’m glad they didn’t make it a series instead.

Smile (2022)

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Based on the year of release[1], I wonder if this was a late in the game victim of Covid? I ask this question because the first time I learned there was a movie called Smile was when I saw the previews for Smile 2 in the theater earlier this year. Which is weird; I don’t often completely miss the existence of horror movies. (Of course, maybe I missed it because of how few previews I see anymore, too,)

Anyway, the setup for the movie is as follows. There’s this ER psychiatrist who is asked to handle a newly intaken woman who has had a really bad few days since she watched one of her professors beat himself to death with a hammer. Over the course of their conversation, the patient claims to be entirely sane but hunted, and describes the nature of the hunt. Then she suffers a really spectacularly dramatic seizure, after which she stands up, smiles widely, and slits her own throat. Then, the movie’s title card appears.

The remainder of the film follows our psychiatrist as she gradually begins to break down, while the viewer is left to wonder whether anything is actually happening beyond her own deteriorating mental health. I mean, other things happen too. But mostly trauma, and trauma response, and a shameful lack of empathy from the majority of the characters. As a psychological horror movie, it really is outstanding, and all the moreso horrific as you come to the dawning realization that, yep, this is what would happen. Way more adversaries than helpers in the world, you know? Alas.

[1] In fact, there is a second horror movie named Smile that came out in 2022. I cannot do much about this, except never watch it I suppose, because how then would I differentiate?

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

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Another few weeks, another new Mission Impossible movie. And boy are these things getting more and more serialized!

Fallout concerns itself with all the[1], ahem, consequences of cutting the head off the Syndicate serpent in the prior film. You see, all the employees left adrift were themselves well-trained spies, so they just kept on keeping on, and now Ethan Hunt and his team have to secure a few loose nuclear weapons.

Blah blah action-cakes and chases and things, but here’s what I found most interesting about this movie after you cut past the (at this point) recycled world-in-danger plots and revenge plots and double crosses and explosions and all: Tom Cruise isn’t smirking his way through each threat anymore. I’m not sure if it’s that he’s older, or that Ethan is older[2], or that the writers want me to buy that there’s more on the line than there used to be, despite prior plots centering on a highly transmissible and extremely deadly synthetic virus and on global thermonuclear war, and Ethan not having all the answers with a snap of his fingers is the way they thought of.

Whatever it is, I liked seeing them have to work for it this time.

[1] oh hey, I just got the double entendre
[2] Yes yes, Tom = Ethan, but I really do think there’s a meaningful distinction to be drawn between the two possibilities. Tom being older is about him also having a more realistic world view and admitting that all of these things shouldn’t come so easily as they do, even in a fantasy action world. Ethan being older is about his growing awareness of his own mortality in a body that is beginning to run out of steam a little faster than it used to, as well as his growing awareness that nobody can maintain a win streak forever.

Pearl (2022)

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I should say first that this post contains semi-spoilers for the movie X, which I watched as the first half of a Friday night double feature last night. So if you read beyond this paragraph, I recommend you have seen that movie first.

So in X, our first viewpoint character is the recently cocaine-addicted stripper / girlfriend of the strip club owner, named Maxine. She wanders around the farm where she is shooting her first feature porn, in short overalls and nothing else, except when she’s skinny-dipping or sleeping or on camera, if you know what I mean (and I think you do). At one point, she crosses paths with Pearl, the wife of the owner of the farm. Pearl is ancient in a way that people made up to be old look moreso than people in real life ever seem. But Pearl still has… longings. She shows to Maxine pictures on the wall of herself in the full bloom of girlhood, before her husband went off to World War I, and tells Maxine that she should appreciate it while she’s got it, because someday she will end up just like Pearl. And the image on the wall photograph is the spitting image of Maxine, in a way that I thought was clever and telling; but in reality I did not know the half of it.

For you see, Pearl and Maxine were played by the same actress, one Mia Goth. And in the wake of that stunning realization, we learned that Ti West had made a prequel named Pearl, immediately after X was finished while they were still in New Zealand. And it was also available for streaming, so we immediately watched the next entry in what appears to be a trilogy, although Maxxxine isn’t out until later this year.

I spoke at length about the visible influences on the prior movie, so I should say of this movie that it has the imprint of The Wizard of Oz all over it. The palette is just drenched in oversaturated colors, Pearl in a dress on her bicycle immediately evokes Miss Gulch[1], and there’s a scene with a scarecrow that I really should let you experience for yourself.

Anyway, as the daughter of German immigrants near the end of the Great War and the height of the Spanish Flu, Pearl is having a rough time. She’s married, but her husband is off to the war. She hates the farm, but is trapped there by circumstance and her mother’s iron will. All she really wants is to show the world her dancing talent, get into the movies, and never come back home again.

If only her father weren’t crippled. If only people weren’t so distrustful of her German mother. If only she were free to do whatever she wanted.

If only she were sane…

So, down to the nitty gritty. This movie isn’t as tightly plotted and nowhere near as unsettlingly filmed as X was. The end of this movie as it relates to the beginning of the prior movie, it just makes no sense at all. I cannot imagine how you get from here to there. And yet… Mia Goth just sold Pearl to me, in a way I’m not entirely sure I would have believed was possible. Her  descent, her yearning, to be accepted, to be loved, to be free. It was what you would call, if it were the kind of movie people took seriously, a tour de force performance. I am truly impressed by this actor, is what I’m saying.

And my god, that smile. You’ll know the one I mean.

[1] Margaret Hamilton when she was in black and white in Kansas, instead of black and green in Oz

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

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It has been an extremely long time since I’ve seen a new Mission Impossible movie. I dropped out right around the time they had finally gotten good, with consistent recurring characters and deep continuity and such. Of course, since I dropped out then, I only barely knew this had even happened. But there’s a new two-part… episode? I don’t really know what to call it when a movie is “to be continued” like the one I’m describing purportedly is (since I haven’t seen it yet, you see). But anyway, middle of this two-parter, and also all of the movies are extremely accessible right now, so I’ve watched a lot of them. (Rewatched, for 80% of them so far.)

The first one is from the ’90s, and it was goodish then but terrible now. The second one has a better plot, and is about the same on quality[1]. The third and fourth ones I’ve reviewed, and what you need to know is that the third one is where the continuity starts and the fourth one is the first that goes crazy with action quality that has now become the other hallmark of these movies, plus also where they prove there is continuity.

The fifth one, Rogue Nation, improves on continuity, in the sense that half of the plot is a direct sequel to and explores the consequences of number four. The other half, as with all of these movies, is Ethan Hunt trying to match wits with a world-spanning criminal mastermind and/or organization. The stakes are globally lower but have almost never been personally higher for the team, and also there are a lot of cool physical challenges (like in the fourth movie where he jumped around on that tall building in Dubai) and chases and insane plans that had better work the first time, or else someone gonna die. (Maybe Tom Cruise, if my understanding of who performs his stunts is correct.)

I guess what I’m saying is the plots are (in modernity) pretty decent, but far too intricate to actually try to summarize, plus spoilers, plus also all you really care about when you see these movies is what crazy thing Cruise will do next, and my point is: they are still delivering the goods.

Also though, what this really does is make me excited to get around to watching the Fast and Furious series, which is more or less the same. Early movies that are too old to be what you want today, plus weirdly low stakes compared to what will come later, but in the meantime with a huge focus on family and keeping everyone alive, instead of “whatever, y’all are spies, you’ll probably die soon” that you otherwise see in this kind of movie. I like it here, and I expect to like it there.

[1] except too much Face/Off energy; John Woo made that movie once and did not need to make it twice

The Lighthouse (2019)

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The podcast I’ve been listening to determined that their theme for “this” week should be Edgar Allan Poe crossed with an aquatic monster, and as you may or may not know, there’s not really a lot of that. Which is how I learned that his last unfinished story is about a guy on remote lighthouse duty. Lighthouses in the past, you see, were mostly manned by practically nobody, in long shifts. I guess via the Navy?

So anyway, these two guys (a master and an apprentice, but for lighthouses instead of ruling the galaxy) named Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson arrive to a remote island off the coast of New England, in artistic black and white, and proceed with their month or so shift at keeping the light on for passing ships. The thing is, the ocean and the seagulls and the mermaid figurine and the solitude and the lack of solitude gradually take their tolls on the sanity of one or both men, and in conclusion, I would really love to read Poe’s original story, wherever it is catalogued in Dream’s library. It would not have been this movie, but I believe it very much might have been in the spirit of this movie. Or perhaps more accurately, The Lighthouse is in the spirit of Poe.

Scream VI

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The Scream movies have always been extremely meta. So by the time you’ve gotten to the sequel of the reboot sequel (requel, apparently?), well, there’s no way to be surprised at just how far up its own ass the movie, nay, the franchise, has crawled. Which, I hasten to clarify, is not necessarily a bad thing. I, for example, am still not allergic to the tightening gyre of Gen-X self-reflection, nor will I judge harshly any movie that stabs quite so many people quite so many times.

There’s just one problem with Scream VI, which I must unfortunately put underneath the spoiler tag.

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Rosemary’s Baby

So we’ve, uh, fallen behind on this movie you’ve never seen that matches a theme each week website challenge thing. Week six, where last we left off in October, was something from their top 250 horror films, as rated by site users I guess? Anyway, I had seen the top five, and six and seven weren’t available for streaming, but number eight was Rosemary’s Baby, one of those classics where you more or less already know what happens because of cultural osmosis of so many subsequent references and homages, but you never know what’s actually going to happen, you know?

The jam is this: Rosemary and her financially successful but critically failed actor husband move into an old apartment building in Manhattan, one of those places where you already cannot believe how enormous the place is[1] even before you learn that it was at some point in the [recent?] past split in half from the apartment currently housing the elderly and somewhat kooky childless neighbors. Also, they (Rosemary and her husband) want to have kids.

The thing is, you know what’s going to happen next. I knew what was going to happen next. Everyone knows! My daughter knows, and she was born this year. It’s like Rosebud, you just… know. But at the same time, it was fun to pretend I didn’t know how it was going to turn out.[2] The things I found out along the way were things I didn’t know, but probably should have.[3] And at least one thing I found out but probably shouldn’t have known, which is I’m guessing this may be the first movie that did the trope where you solve the anagram that clues you in about whatever evil thing is going on by digging out a copy of Scrabble and just fiddling with the tiles. So add that to the list of countless tropes this movie has generated.

All in all: it’s very definitely a snapshot of a different time, but it’s mostly timeless, and also it’s mostly or entirely good. I understand why it is the eighth most well-regarded horror movie on this one movie website, is what I’m saying. Solid acting, solid script, solid atmosphere, exquisite final ten minutes. Would watch for the first time all over again.

[1] But at least it’s not like Friends where, how do they afford this? Because of the financially successful acting career and all, although also one of the Friends apartments would fit in the living room of this place, so
[2] And okay, I didn’t, not exactly.
[3] The next footnote is spoilers about things I found out.[4] So don’t read it if you care about spoilers for a 55 year old movie.
[4] Like, I didn’t know she had the world’s worst husband, who among other many sub-par qualities had as his go-to excuse for something that was, uh, pretty bad, his go-to excuse for it was “I went ahead and had sex with you even though you had passed out [after eating a drugged dessert that I insisted you eat even though because I knew it was drugged].” (Like, he didn’t spousal rape her, but he claimed he did, because the alternative was worse. …although I guess they don’t sound as close together in badness in 1968 as they do now? But credit where it’s due, even in 1968 she was all “that wasn’t cool, bro” about it before shrugging and giving up instead of not being concerned in the first place, like I expected in the moment. And I didn’t know, but absolutely should have, that when she went to a medical professional for help, he would immediately betray her. And I didn’t know that the relationship with her husband would play as so loveless and mechanical, which I at least believe was on purpose? There are things in the last scenes of the movie that make me think so.