Carrie (2013)

Year 14, Day 279 - 10/6/22 - Movie #4,262

BEFORE: OK, this is my movie for Thursday, October 6, and I did watch it starting on the night of the 5th.  But then I got busy on Thursday, so I'm not posting my review until Saturday, however this is STILL officially the Thursday movie.  What happened?  New York Comic-Con, that's what.  I trained my co-worker in the ways of the Booth Jedi - my last Padawan quit on me in February, and I had such high hopes for her. But this was his first time, and I didn't want his first time to be a bummer, like a 12-hour bummer, plus we only have one badge to share, and I didn't want to come into Manhattan JUST to get the badge from him, that would be stupid.  So I suggested that he come in at 8:30 to get to the convention at 9:00 am, and I'd take over for him at 3 pm, he'd step out of the Con, hand me the badge, and I'd finish out the day.  THUS, I would already HAVE the badge on Thursday so I could get in on Friday morning.  This meant I could also count the cash on Thursday night, put the booth materials away the way I like to do it, and also take all the valuable art home with me on Thursday, so, like the badge, I'd have it for Friday.  And elegant solution, but one that necessitated me working 2 1/2 days at the con instead of the planned 2.  It's all good, except for the parts of working long hours at a comic-con table that drive me bonkers. More on that in a bit. 

Julianne Moore carries over from "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Rage: Carrie 2" (Movie #3,957)

THE PLOT: A shy girl, outcasted by her peers and sheltered by her religious mother, unleashes telekinetic terror on her small town after being pushed too far at her senior prom. 

AFTER: The question to ask here, really, was, did we NEED a remake of "Carrie"?  Well, no.  And also, yes.  Really, the 1976 version directed by Brian de Palma should have been sufficient, it's a classic film, total iconic horror film, and in many ways it said all that needed to be said, and contained everything it needed to contain, and jee-SUS, who can complain about Sissy Spacek as Carrie, in her prom dress, covered in pig's blood?  Totally classic.  And for one young boy who caught that film late night on Boston's UHF Channel 38 that aired it, for some unknown reason, completely uncensored, it was very, umm, enlightening, shall we say.  At a time in my life when I really REALLY wanted to know what goes on in the girls locker room, and let's just say I got more than I bargained for.  (There seems to have been a bit of a competition, back in the 1980s, between Boston's channel 38, WSBK, which aired "Carrie" uncensored, and Channel 56, WLVI, which ran "My Tutor" uncensored.  Yes, I was watching and taping them both, and I was perhaps forever warped by them.  Come to think of it, both channels were trying to compete with HBO and Cinemax, and were resorting to desperate measures.)

But times change, some time after I moved out of the suburban Boston area, WLVI became an outpost of the CW, and WSBK got bought up by CBS News, I guess they're both somewhere on the cable dial still, but I have no idea where, I haven't had any reason to look for them when visiting my parents' house.  Dana Hersey of WSBK's "Movie Loft", which aired the 1976 film "Carrie" on that controversial night in the 80's, is now in the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame, and I guess that means that the nudity scandal blew over, or was never a big deal in the first place.  Perhaps I shouldn't have brought it up again - Mr. Hersey is apparently still alive (?) but he's probably well past retirement age by now, and I'd hate to see his golden years tainted by scandal. 

But 37 years later, somebody re-made "Carrie", and yeah, I think it was probably time.  The 1976 film used mostly practical special effects, and filmmaking technology has come a LONG way since then.  The remake could do all kinds of new things, and portray Carrie's telekinesis in much more powerful ways.  You need 30 knives to rise up simultaneously and all plunge themselves into the same person?  Not a problem.  You need a split to appear in the middle of a city street and chase down a speeding car, gradually turning into a giant chasm that will swallow up that car?  We can do that now.  I know, I know, just because you CAN do all these things it doesn't mean that you SHOULD, but the story calls for all of this, and it's damn cool what can be done know with the special effects.   

I also have to deal with the changes at New York Comic-Con - we moved our animation studio's table from the main show floor, where we had a primo booth for about 10 years, to Artist Alley, which is smaller, more intimate, and that change (which we made three years ago) had its ups and downs. When we had the booth on the main floor, we could sell all the DVDs and books we wanted, plus posters, shirts, we had a porn star signing one year at the booth, it was crazy fun.  BUT we also had to lug in our own tables and chairs, PLUS our boxes of merch, PLUS rent some A/V equipment if we wanted to show animation in the booth - it was a lot of work.  Moving to Artist Alley meant we had to sell mostly art (plus maybe a few DVDs) but in general, life became much simpler.  A table and two chairs is now provided for us, we don't bring in as much merchandise, just a few art portfolios, and the cost of the space rental is much less, which means that last year was our best ever, profit-wise, at NYCC.  

The 2021 convention was an anomaly, perhaps, because there was still limited attendance due to still following pandemic rules, and there were fewer booths rented out as well.  The main show floor had space to spare - built-in social distancing - and they were so desperate to fill the spaces that a Mendy's kosher restaurant (made famous on an episode of "Seinfeld") even opened up, not in the food court, but in the MAIN SHOW FLOOR.  It couldn't even serve food on Saturday, because of Kosher rules, so I don't know how it made any money, but it was kind of neat that it was there.  Now, today, I went back up on the main show floor and I didn't even recognize the place.  So many booths selling Funkos, trading Funkos, grading Funkos - what's with all the Funkos?  And there were NFTs, holograms, and tons of "mystery boxes" - who the hell drops $75 on something without knowing what they're buying?  It's crazy.  I used to eat Chinese food from the cafeteria on the lower level there, maybe some popcorn, and now IN THE BOOTHS they're serving Ramen soups, okonomiyaki (Japanese veggie pancakes) and octopus balls.  WHAT THE HELL?  I even passed one booth in the middle of everything, serving FUDGE.  Everybody in the world knows that comic books and fudge are natural enemies, and now this?  OK, so the fudge was colored like superhero costumes, so I guess it fits in, but it was $13 for two slices, basically half a pound, so that's way too expensive.  

It's not the NY Comic Con that I remember, that's for sure.  But that's the main show floor, I work in Artist Alley now - my point, however, is that change is inevitable and may not be to everyone's liking, but nonetheless, things change.  I was moaning a few weeks ago that I wasn't able to work in any "back-to-school" movies in September, but look, here's "Carrie" set in a high school in Anytown, USA - but probably Maine, because it's based on a Stephen King book. And from what I can tell, they didn't base the 2013 film on the 1976 film, but they went back to the source material, written by Stephen King in 1974, but set in the then-future year of 1979.  Some critics called the 2013 remake "unnecessary", but if you go back to the 1976 version after watching this one, you may disagree.  Progress is progress, and any great story that's nearly 40 years old could probably use a refresh. 

Some modern updates here, after Carrie gets her first period during gym class, and freaks out in the shower, here the girls don't just taunt her by throwing tampons at her, they also take a cell phone video of her, which is wrong on many levels - it's an invasion of her privacy, a form of bullying, and I think it's illegal to post a video online of someone showering without their consent.  Anyway, point in favor of the remake here. 

However, we have to also TAKE AWAY a point because if this film is set in a more modern time, then surely Carrie White would have been forced to take health class in high school, mandatory sex education and all that, so NITPICK POINT, she maybe shouldn't have been so clueless about her menstruation, she would have been told in this modern era that a girl getting her period is a natural part of life and growing up.  UNLESS Carrie's mother is so religious and hung-up then maybe she wouldn't allow Carrie to take sex-ed class, that's certainly possible. But if that's the case, maybe a line of dialogue that could have explained that would have gone a long way here. 

They hired the director of "Boys Don't Cry" for this remake, and I suppose that's fine.  But the theme of high-school bullying is a tough one, especially when it applies to girls, who we all now know are much crueler to each other than boys are.  Boys will punch each other, kick each other, bloody a few noses - but girls hurt each other emotionally, that does a lot more damage in the long run.  And Carrie gets bullied at school by other girls, then comes home and her religious mother accuses her of all sorts of things, and makes her pray in a locked closet.  Then it's back to school - poor Carrie just can't win.  And then when Tommy Ross asks her to prom, she can't believe it's for real (it's not) and she knows that if she says "Yes" it's only going to freak her mother out even more.  Sue Snell, Tommy's girlfriend, convinces Tommy to take Carrie to prom because she feels bad about the shower-room bullying - Sue's probably the only character in the film who's likable, maybe also the gym teacher. 

I don't think there are any issues with the chronology of "Carrie 2", which is a sequel that came out a few years before this remake.  There's a reference here when Carrie is arguing with her mother, suggesting that maybe her mother is upset because the telekinetic powers skipped a generation, or maybe came from Carrie's father's side.  It appears the latter is true, if Carrie's half-sister (same father, different mother) has the powers too, then they must come from her father's genetics. 

And DAMN IT, why does "Hubie Halloween" have a better angle on fighting back against bullying than "Carrie" does?  Hubie's mom showed us that all of the people who bullied him needed to be exposed, forced to reveal that they were all either victims of bullying themselves or they were secretly envious of Hubie and how decent of a human being he was.  They hated themselves and took it out on him.  Why can't "Carrie" search for meaning in a similar method?  Carrie's solution is to kill all her bullies, but the problem with that is they haven't learned anything, because they're super dead. And she's just kicking the problem can down the road a bit.  Look, if you're being bullied than wrecking prom and blowing up the school should be VERY far down on your list of potential ways to solve the problem, that's all. It does more harm than good in the end, but people have their emotional limits, I get that. 

NITPICK POINT 2: What's that sport the girls are playing in gym class?  It's not water polo, it's more like volleyball being played in the pool?  Is that even a thing?  Huh, pool volleyball is apparently an activity that exists... who knew? 

Also starring Chloe Grace Moretz (last seen in "Tom & Jerry"), Judy Greer (last seen in "Driven"), Gabriella Wilde (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Portia Doubleday (last seen in "Fantasy Island"), Zoë Belkin, Samantha Weinstein (last seen in "The Rocker"), Karissa Strain, Katie Strain, Ansel Elgort (last seen in "West Side Story"), Demetrius Joyette (last seen in "Owning Mahowny"), Barry Shabaka Henley (last seen in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back"), Arlene Mazerolle, Evan Gilchrist, Eddie Max Huband, Alex Russell (last seen in "The Host"), Connor Price (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Jefferson Brown (last seen in "Red"), Cynthia Preston, Philip Nozuka, Kyle Mac (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Max Topplin, Mouna Traoré, Derek McGrath (last seen in "Charlie Bartlett"), Chris Britton (last seen in "The Shack"), Hart Bochner (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Annie Chen, Natalie Dale, William MacDonald (last seen in "The Captive"), Michelle Nolden (last seen in "RED"), Irene Poole, Kim Roberts (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Vanessa Smythe.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Bible passages

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

Year 14, Day 278 - 10/5/22 - Movie #4,261

BEFORE: Steve Buscemi carries over again from "Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania". I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Buscemi earlier this year, though we weren't formally introduced, he came twice to the theater where I work part-time, once to attend a showing of the season premiere of "Russian Doll", and the second time he rented the theater to screen a film he directed for his friends, to get some feedback about it.  I can't say much more, because it looks like that film was released in Canada but not in the U.S. just yet.  But it was the sort of film that perhaps a lot of people made during the pandemic, where all the action takes place in one room of a person's house, and the plot dictates that other people call that person on the phone.  Yeah, it's been a tough two years for filmmakers - it's a bit odd that I've seen films that were very obviously MADE during the lockdown, but very few films ABOUT the lockdown itself.  I guess that means were so over it, or we heard so much about it every day for two years that no director wanted to make a movie about it, because the audience was burned out on that topic.  Also, films are meant to be entertaining, and the lockdown was anything but that. 

THE PLOT: A young boy tells three stories of horror to distract a witch who plans to eat him. 

AFTER: This is NOT the first film Steve Buscemi was ever in - BUT, I think it is the feature film debut of Julianne Moore.  And just in case you were wondering if those two people ever were in the same film as Debbie Harry and David Johansen, well, yes they were.  Welcome to the 1990's, when anything and everything could happen, especially in a film based on a horror anthology TV series that never took itself too seriously in the first place.  Remember "Twilight Zone: The Movie"?  This is sort of like that, only cheaper - and the TV show was like the syndicated knock-off version of "Tales from the Crypt".  

The TV show ran from 1983 to 1988, and nearly everyone who was anyone on TV made some kind of an appearance, from Jerry Stiller, Harry Anderson, Phyllis Diller and Dick Shawn down to Chuck McCann, Abe Vigoda, Paul Dooley and Lorna Luft.  This sounds a bit like John Waters' dream cast for his magnum opus. Robert Forster, Jerry Orbach, Divine, Tippi Hedren, and people who are now bigger stars, like Seth Green and Victor Garber. Seymour Cassel and Tom frickin' Noonan!  Bradley Whitford and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar!  Eric Bogosian, Colm Meaney and Yeardley Smith!  Not all on the same episode, of course.  But I watched a bunch of these episodes back then, late at night on the forgotten UHF channels, after everyone else had gone to bed, and I didn't even like horror movies back then!  But I had seen every episode of the classic "Twilight Zone" show and this seemed like the next logical step.

So "TFTD" got five seasons and a movie, that's not bad.  And there are three stories here (though the poster says four, that's counting the wrap-around) so if you don't like one, well, maybe the next one is more your style. Hope springs eternal.  The amazing thing here is that I avoided this film for, what, 32 years?  It just somehow never came up, but then I've got "Creepshow", another anthology on my watch list, and that seems to be taking even longer to link to. I've only got room this Shocktober for one anthology horror semi-comedy film, though. 

In the opening, there's a modern-day witch who invited her paperboy to stay for dinner, but she neglected to tell him that he's on the menu. She's been fattening him up with chocolate chip cookies (umm, how long has she kept him locked up?) and his only hope is to use the stories from this big book that she gave him to read to distract her, until it's too late to cook him for the dinner party.  She claims to have read the book before, but she also acts like she's never heard them before, so there's some inconsistency there. Well, I guess it is a rather large book, but this is still a clear rip-off of both "Hansel & Gretel" and "1,001 Arabian Nights". 

The first story is about a couple of Ivy-League graduate students, one of whom (Lee) just beat the other (Edward) for a notable scholarship, he got his girlfriend (Susan) to write a killer essay for him and also frame him for stealing some artifact. (Dude, you couldn't frame him yourself, you had to get your girlfriend to do that?  And you call yourself a MAN?). To get revenge Edward somehow gets a real Egyptian mummy delivered (this was 1990, before eBay even existed, so HOW?) and finds the scroll within its body that contains the spell for re-animation.  The mummy kills Edward and then Lee, in ways that are symbolic to the mummification process - this is a mummy with issues, it seems.  Then Susan's brother gets HIS revenge by chopping the mummy into pieces and burning the re-animation scroll.  I don't know, that doesn't really seem like an equal revenge - "You killed my sister and best friend, so I'm going to burn this piece of parchment!"  It's a bit uneven, I'm just saying.  This is allegedly based on a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, perhaps it made more sense in the original Victorian setting.  

The second story is "Cat From Hell", in which an old man hires a hit-man to kill a cat, because he believes that the cat is responsible for the deaths of his sister, her best friend, and the family's butler.  The old man ran a pharmaceutical company that tested drugs on cats, and believes that the cat is getting revenge for the deaths of thousands of other cats.  Or, you know, maybe the cat was just being a cat, and those people died accidentally.  But since this story was written by Stephen King, probably not. Anyway, the hit-man doesn't find it so easy to kill the cat, he tries choking it and shooting it, and nothing works, he's worse than Wile E. Coyote trying to kill the Road Runner.  But he never tried starving the cat and feeding it poison, just a thought. 

And the last story is about an unsuccessful artist who witnesses the killing of his friend by a giant gargoyle monster.  The monster spares his life, provided that he never tells anyone what he saw, or that he knows that gargoyles can come to life. That same night, he meets a beautiful woman and falls in love, and she also has connections in the art world, but eventually he feels compelled to tell her what happened to his friend the night that they met.  Yeah, that doesn't end well.

Hmm, a lot of mummies around here lately, werewolves and mummies have been dominant in this year's horror chain so far.  What's really weird is that there were three mummy characters tonight on "The Masked Singer", and one of the (incorrect) guesses was the three Lawrence brothers - Joey, Matthew and, umm, the other one. And Matthew Lawrence is also in tonight's film, which has a mummy in it!  That's just a bit too weird, almost spooky - but I know by now there are no coincidences, just happy accidents. 

Also starring Debbie Harry (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Matthew Lawrence (last seen in "Mrs. Doubtfire"), Christian Slater (last seen in "The Wife"), Robert Sedgwick (last seen in "The Last Thing He Wanted"), Donald Van Horn, Michael Deak, Julianne Moore (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), George Guidall (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Kathleen Chalfant (last seen in "Miss Firecracker"), Ralph Marrero, William Hickey (last seen in "Prizzi's Honor"), David Johansen (last seen in "Freejack"), Paul Greeno, Alice Drummond (last seen in "The Love Letter"), Dolores Sutton, Mark Margolis (last seen in "House of D"), James Remar (last seen in "Setup"), Rae Dawn Chong (last seen in "The Color Purple"), Robert Klein (last seen in George Carlin's American Dream"), Ashton Wise, Philip Lenkowsky (last seen in "Resistance"), Joe Dabenigno, Larry Silvestri (last seen in "The Warriors"), Donna Davidge, Nicolle Rochelle, Daniel Harrison, David Forrester, with a cameo from Vincent Pastore (last seen in "Walking and Talking")

RATING: 4 out of 10 art gallery patrons

Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania

Year 14, Day 277 - 10/4/22 - Movie #4,260

BEFORE: OK, you can maybe see why I'm doing things this way, because logically this should follow "Hubie Halloween" due to the Adam Sandler connection, right?  Only Adam Sandler's NOT doing the voice of Dracula any more.  I'm not sure if he quit the franchise or if they couldn't afford him any more, or if he just wasn't available, but they just hired a sound-alike Adam Sandler impersonator of some kind, who probably works on the cheap.  OK, so Kevin James then carries over as Frankenstein's Monster, no problem.  Wait, he's not in this one, either?  Too busy?  Too expensive?  I guess it doesn't really matter, the kids don't really care who does the voices, this would only be a problem if some idiot were linking movies by actor for some weird reason and needed to find a connection in order to continue with his nonsensical plan.  

Steve Buscemi carries over from "Hubie Halloween". No worries, I got this covered. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation" (Movie #3,376)

THE PLOT: After one experiment, Johnny turns into a monster and everyone else becomes human. Now it has to be seen whether they will be able to reverse this experiment. 

AFTER: I work in animation production, at least part of the time - or perhaps I should say that I work tangentially to animation production, I'm support staff for animators, doing office work and accounting and festival entries and script work and anything else I can get my hands on behind the scenes that isn't drawing or coloring or animating.  Someone at this studio art sale I was running last month asked what I did for the animator, and I started listing off job titles, and he cut me off about halfway through and just said, "So, you're like a Swiss Army knife for film production..." and I said "EXACTLY."  Actually my BFF Andy came up with that description for me a few years back, and it kind of stuck, and I don't really mind a bit.  But my whole career has been spent working for small shops and indie directors. 

I have a feeling that if I worked for a bigger studio, I'd have ONE job, and I'd be expected to do JUST that, and I'd be bored as hell.  As exhausted as I can get sometimes, the job is always changing and therefore always interesting, if nothing else.  The other thing is that this way I tend to avoid a lot of meetings, which would put me right to sleep.  There were probably a million meetings for just this one film about whether the story hits the right beats, and how should Dracula look when he gets turned into a human, should he have thinning hair and a pot belly and let's brainstorm a list of ways that being a human is worse than being a vampire.  Vampires have superhuman strength and hypnotic powers and they can turn into bats, which is all cool.  OK, now let's make another column for the benefits of being human, like now he can go out into the sunlight and he can swim and... OH GOD let me kill myself just to get out of this conversation or avoid this meeting.  

Then there had to be a meeting about what the human character is going to look like when he gets turned into a monster, and another one to cover what the monster characters are going to look like when they turn human.  Which is ridiculous because for some reason in the "Hotel Transylvania" series, the werewolf is always a werewolf and the Invisible Man is always invisible.  BUT in film history, the whole point of lycanthropy is that infected humans turn into werewolves only when the moon is full, and then they TURN BACK.  And the Invisible Man takes a potion and turns invisible, but then the potion wears off and he's VISIBLE again.  Why, in the other films in this series, were their bodies both stuck in the monster form?  They should both be able to turn back and forth, so it shouldn't be a surprise when their human forms are revealed.  It seems like maybe the scriptwriters were just lazy before, or the films didn't have enough time to devote to these minor characters.  

It's played for laughs here, but for three films the Invisible Man has been portrayed with a floating pair of glasses, that's all that we've seen of the character because he's invisible 24/7, and he's also been walking around the hotel NAKED.  This is...well, a bit odd for a children's film, not to mention inconsiderate, unhygienic and also a bit nasty.  Somebody needs to cancel the Invisible Man character, like immediately, he's perverted and disgusting if this is what he enjoys doing.  OK, we're a bit shocked to learn what this character really looks like, but why is HE shocked when he's suddenly visible?  Did he forget what he looked like, because he's been invisible for so long?  That doesn't seem possible. 

Similarly, Wayne, the werewolf father, is unrecognizable to his own kids once he turns back into human form. Umm, they're wolves, wouldn't he still smell the same, and sound the same, so why don't his own kids recognize him?  Are they that stupid?  Also, once he turns human, suddenly he doesn't have to look after his own kids and his wife has to do all the work?  That's a terrible cop-out from a story point of view and a bad example to show the kids in the audience.  Why wasn't there a meeting about THAT?  For that matter, why wasn't there a meeting about Mavis' terribly irregular bangs or Ericka Van Helsing's unusual bulging cheeks?  I noticed both things every single time in every shot, that means they're both distracting and should have been changed.  

There was also an opportunity to send out some kind of message about self-acceptance, like the previous films had Dracula dealing with his vampire daughter dating a human, so it was a cute little reverse on the tired old "I Married a Witch" or "Bride of Frankenstein" tropes, in this case a monster had to learn to accept a human into his family.  So it's OK to be a monster, it's OK to be human, family is about accepting each other the way we are, and all that was positive stuff.  But here suddenly it's a step backwards, Dracula has second thoughts about retiring and handing over his hotel to his daughter and her husband, simply because he's a weird human who's going to make all kinds of weird human changes to the Hotel Transylvania.  So.. then he's NOT OK with his son-in-law, after all, and all the Drac progress from before is undone.  Sure, it's OK for Dracula to date a human, and a former monster-hunting Van Helsing at that, but suddenly his human son-in-law isn't good enough?  What a hypocrite. Time for another story meeting.  

Drac makes up a phony story about some Transylvanian real estate law to avoid handing over the keys, so Johnny feels the need to seek out the mad scientist's help to turn himself into a monster.  Yes, because we should all subvert our true natures just to fit in, we should change our inner selves to make our parents or in-laws happy, because there's something WRONG with us.  Another terrible message to send out to the kids, especially during a time when kids might be struggling with identity issues, or LGBTQ issues, or trans rights are being threatened, this is hitting exactly the wrong tone.  What if Mavis were dating a woman, and Dracula couldn't accept that, and put pressure on her to date a man instead?  What if his daughter-in-law felt the need to transform into a man, or vice versa, just to make Dracula happy?  That would be wrong, right?  So then this is wrong too.  

But no, every other monster has to pay the price for Dracula's anti-human bigotry, and it's inconvenient for everybody, except maybe Frankenstein's Monster, whose dead flesh gets healed when he turns human, and he becomes quite attractive, by human standards.  So, umm, why does he want to turn back into a monster, exactly?  NITPICK POINT: For the FOURTH TIME, Frankenstein's Monster is just named "Frankenstein".  JE-SUS, that's the name of the scientist who built him, not the god-damned monster, what does it take for them to get this right?  Didn't we have a meeting about this?

And look, I know it's been a tough two years-plus. The COVID pandemic upended everything in everybody's lives.  But still, why doesn't a movie with vampires and werewolves and mummies and Frankenstein's monster ever get scheduled for an October release?  "Hotel Transylvania 3" was released on July 13, 2018, but it was a film about the monsters going on summer vacation, so it made some kind of sense.  For "Hotel Transylvania 4", the original plan was announced in February 2019 to release it in December, 2021.  In April 2020, the release date was moved up to August 6, 2021, then it got moved again to July 2021.  I know I saw movie posters for it when I was working in the AMC last summer.  But then due to COVID the release date got changed to October 1, 2021 - ah, now that makes sense!  Get the film out in time for Halloween season!  But no, it was not to be, all the theatrical release plans were scrapped and the film got released on Prime Video in mid-January 2022.  What a stupid way to run a studio, I'm just saying I could probably do a better job. But Lord help me, I don't think I could stand the meetings.  

Instead I'm about to spend three of the next four days setting up a booth and then working at New York Comic-Con.  It's exhausting during the busy times and mind-numbingly boring during the slow times.  But it's what I do, and this year I'm going to think to myself, "Hey, this could be a lot worse.  I could be stuck in the meeting from HELL debating what the Mummy should look like when he gets hit with a magic ray and turns into a 5,000 year old Egyptian man."

NITPICK POINT #2: Dracula, even after being turned into a human, and not willing to take responsibility for his bigotry and pride and faults, sets out on a quest with his now-monster son-in-law to find some weird crystal, deep in the Amazon jungle, that can fix things.  Only this quest could have been easily avoided, if he'd just owned up to his mistakes.  As we see later in the film, it needed to take all the monsters working together to complete the quest and solve the puzzle.  Why couldn't he just swallow his pride and ask for help, thus fixing the situation more rapidly?  For that matter, he could have gotten his vampire powers back more quickly just by finding another vampire to turn him into a vampire, because isn't that how vampirism works?  So much of this story is so poorly thought out, it's PAINFULLY dumb.  But I guess this all explains why they never released the film in theaters, it's so bad they probably felt the box office numbers would be an embarrassment, so sure, get it onto streaming ASAP so nobody will see the studio's failure in numerical form. 

Also starring the voices of Andy Samberg (last seen in "Brigsby Bear"), Selena Gomez (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Kathryn Hahn (last seen in "How Do You Know"), Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "Igby Goes Down"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), David Spade (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Keegan-Michael Key (last seen in "The Prom"), Brian Hull, Fran Drescher (last seen in "After Class"), Brad Abrell, Asher Blinkoff (last heard in "Sing 2"), Zoe Berri, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins (last seen in "Free Guy"), Genndy Tartakovsky (also last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Victoria Gomez, Jennifer Kluska, Asher Bishop (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Derek Drymon (last heard in "Turbo"), Aaron LaPlante (last heard in "Vivo"), Melissa Sturm (last heard in "The Mitchells vs the Machines"), Chloé Malaisé, Scott Underwood (last heard in "The Addams Family"), Michelle Murdocca, Will Townsend (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"). 

RATING: 2 out of 10 unsupervised werewolf pups. (Seriously? Resposible Mavis makes sure to bring other people's kids on the quest, but forgets about her OWN SON? Is there a "Home Alone" style short that shows what happened to Dennis, Winnie and their pets after their parents all left?)

Hubie Halloween

Year 14, Day 276 - 10/3/22 - Movie #4,259

BEFORE: Ray Liotta carries over from "Identity", he died four months ago, but he's still appearing in my watchlist films, and now he's going to make the year-end countdown.  I also want to send out an incredibly rare Shocktober Birthday SHOUT-out to Noah Schnapp, most famous for playing Will Byers in "Stranger Things", less famous for appearing in "Hubie Halloween" two years ago.  

THE PLOT: Despite his devotion to his hometown of Salem (and its Halloween celebration), Hubie Dubois is a figure of mockery for kids and adults alike.  But this year, something is going bump in the night, and it's up to Hubie to save Halloween. 

AFTER: Say something nice, say something nice... Well, at least I'm clearing the very silly Halloween films off my list first, like this one and "Muppets Haunted Mansion", which allows me to build up to the very scary ones for the week of October 31.  This is a film, however, which sort of toggles between being very, very clunky and being classified as "poorly written".  It can't really seem to decide if it wants to be funny or not, which is deadly for something billed as a comedy.  And then the main character is wildly inconsistent, he loves Halloween but he also hates being scared, because he scares so easily, so, umm, what is it that he LOVES about Halloween, exactly?  For some reason he's obsessed with rules and safety procedures, so he sets out to insure that everyone has a safe Halloween, but this makes him a total buzzkill, so everyone in town hates him?  Hubie seems to have forgotten that Halloween is supposed to be fun, just like the filmmakers here forgot that a comedy is supposed to be funny, or at least amusing. 

I guess this was aimed at kids?  There's nothing overtly violent or demonic about it, so it's kind of safe for the whole family, but I have no idea what kids find funny these days, they might find a film about a guy who takes Halloween too seriously and is a total downer to be, well, something of a downer.  Or a drag. Do kids still call things "downers" and "drags"?  Or would they say this is "wack"?  Wait, was "wack" good or bad?  Whatever the current slang is for "not funny", this is that. 

Adam Sandler used to be funny, I don't know what happened. Was it the giant movie deal he signed with Netflix that made him stop trying, like when your favorite indie band signs a multi-album deal with Epic Records and then their albums start to suck?  Or did Sandler just keep playing weirder and weirder characters, starting with Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore and The Waterboy through to that guy in "Punch-Drunk Love", Sandy Wexler and the desperate diamond dealer in "Uncut Gems", to the point where he stayed in his acting lane so long that it just became narrower and narrower, and he can't get out of it?  Because that would sort of lead him here, to playing Hubie Dubois, who's another non-grown-up man-child who speaks in a weird way and has trouble navigating the world of adults.  It's kind of an all-too-common theme for him, right? 

He's such a pain in the ass here that nearly everyone in the town of Salem, MA is tired of dealing with him, the way he reports every little infraction to the police, the way he lectures the school kids about Halloween safety when nobody asked him to, the way he SUPER over-reacts when something scares him, even if it's just a sudden movement or a loud noise.  Maybe if he just calm down for a few minutes or maybe get some therapy and get his sh*t together, then he wouldn't be such an easy mark.  Logically he should HATE Halloween, he should be like the Grinch but for October 31, but since he's descended from someone who was in the Salem witch trials long ago, he can't help but take it all to seriously?  Come on, is this even a thing?  

The one redeeming thing, and it's a small bit of redemption, is that eventually the film sort of treats Hubie's bullies correctly.  Note that he NEVER fights back, not even when people throw axes and large appliances at him while he's riding his bike across town.  Never an angry word or an obscene hand gesture from him, he just stays the course and stays true to himself, and he doesn't seek revenge.  Before the end of the film, it's revealed that all of his tormentors hate themselves in some way, or feel inadequate, and they're secretly jealous of Hubie's positive attitude.  This is spot on for most bullies, I believe, and kudos to the film for never showing Hubie getting angry or vengeful, or worse, training to fight back.

But the rest of the film is just plain stupid, from the tired "serial killer" P.O.V. shots to the lost-in-a-corn-maze bit, to the super-gadgety Thermos that Hubie "invented" that is more multi-functional than a Swiss Army knife. The Thermos is just one dumb idea in a film filled with dumb ideas, ones that never really come together to form something bigger than the sum of their parts.  It would make more sense to treat Hubie as if he's not just socially inept but also maybe learning-disabled or on the autism spectrum, somebody who's well-meaning but awkward in the way he goes about doing things, or just sees the world a bit differently.  But, again, to what end?  It's not for the sake of comedy, so for what, then?

It's a chance for all of Adam Sandler's friends and family to get together and have fun, I guess. I sort of admire the way he gets his kids involved in his movies, the whole thing feels like a family affair, but is that really the BEST way to make a movie?  It's nepotism at worst, and quite self-indulgent at least.  I'd rather acknowledge all of the tiny references to previous Adam Sandler films, along with shout-outs to films like "Jaws" and "Christine".  There surely must be a list of all the "Easter Eggs" (or "Halloween Eggs") in this movie posted somewhere. 

Also starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "Uncut Gems"), Kevin James (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Julie Bowen (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Steve Buscemi (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Rob Schneider (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Tim Meadows (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Michael Chiklis (last seen in "The Do-Over"), June Squibb (last heard in "Soul"), George Wallace (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Kenan Thompson (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Shaquille O'Neal (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Ben Stiller (last seen in "Locked Down"), Jackie Sandler (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Sadie Sandler (ditto), Sunny Sandler (ditto), Karan Brar (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Noah Schapp (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"),  Paris Berelc, China Anne McClain (last seen in "Grown Ups 2"), Colin Quinn (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), Kym Whitley (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Lavell Crawford (last seen in "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates"), Blake Clark (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Dan Patrick (last seen in "The Week Of"), Jared Sandler (ditto), Mikey Day (last seen in "Brittany Runs a Marathon"), Peyton List (last seen in "27 Dresses"), Tyler Crumley (last seen in "Driven"), Ella Stiller, Dan Bulla (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Tim Herlihy (ditto), Paul Sado (last seen in "The Clapper"), Yolande Bavan (last seen in "One True Thing"), Melissa Villaseñor (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Allen Covert, Martin Herlihy, Betsy Sodaro (also last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Juliette Pagano, Alaina Pinto, Ella Grace Helton, Lance Lim, Kelly Berglund, Bradley Steven Perry, Amber Frank, Karsen Liotta, Damien Di Paola (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), 

RATING: 3 out of 10 "Scream" masks

Identity

Year 14, Day 275 - 10/2/22 - Movie #4,258

BEFORE: Alfred Molina carries over from ""Don't Let Go" to tonight's short AND feature. That's right, I'm resurrecting the practice of watching a short before my feature, and both films feature Mr. Molina, but only the FEATURE will count in the standings for the most appearances this year. Yes, I never specifically stated that all of my "Movies" would be features, technically a short is a movie, too.  But if I count a short in one of my 300 slots, that feels like cheating.  So I'm going to watch it, but it doesn't count. Make sense? 

Tonight's short is "Frankenstein's Monster's Monster, Frankenstein".  It's on my Netflix list because it seemed like a horror movie, i.e. Frankenstein related, but it turns out to not really be a monster movie, and it's only sort of Frankenstein-adjacent. It features David Harbour talking about his father, David Harbour Jr. and some recently-found TV footage of a strange teleplay he was in that was loosely based on the "Frankenstein" novel, only just barely. 

I pegged this as some kind of vanity spoof project right away, because David Harbour's father's name is different in real life, a quick check of Wikipedia confirmed that his father's name is Kenneth, and is not an actor.  Also, quite obviously David Harbour is playing his "father here", the footage was digitally altered to look like an old lost kinescope or something, and then once you realize that, it's plain that nothing about this was meant to be taken seriously.  It's a "Spinal Tap"-like exploration of a non-real fading actor in the style of Orson Welles, someone who's a false idol with feet of clay, and the more he learns about his father, the less grand his legacy seems.  Harbour Sr. was forced to do commercials for a chain of beef Wellington restaurants, and made appearances on "Inside the Actor's Trunk", a TV show loosely about the craft. 

In the play-within-the-play, "David Harbour Sr." stars as Victor Frankenstein, who needs to secure funding from a woman who runs a research institute, and for some reason he thinks that by switching places with his assistant, Sal, this ruse will help with the fund-raising efforts - which really makes no sense, but then, nothing about this short really makes any sense. But that's what got David Harbour Sr. into Juilliard, only it turns out he didn't really go to Juilliard, and then it also turns out that he wasn't an actor and his name wasn't David.  Whatever, I just cleared another slot on my Netflix list so it's all good. 

I thought maybe this film might touch on a new angle to the Frankenstein story - like, which one is REALLY the monster, in the end?  But it just didn't go there, it had other ground to cover, I guess. Anyway, on to tonight's feature film. 

THE PLOT: Stranded at a desolate Nevada motel during a nasty rain storm, ten strangers become acquainted with each other when they realize that they're being killed off one by one.  

AFTER: I've gotten pretty good at spotting scams, e-mail ones of course, but this summer my wife and I did get tricked by a window repair service that we found on that home repair app. They seemed legit, got good ratings, so they quoted us a price and we put down a $500 deposit, and were told it would take about a month for the parts - we have about 7 busted cranks that open the windows, so why not get them all fixed in one go?  But a month went by and when we checked in, we were told their supplier lost the order, so they had to place it again.  Another month went by, then they were having supply chain issues, or something.  A month after that, they weren't answering their phone, and I realized we'd never see that $500 deposit back.  

I'm also entering film festivals for a director, just a couple hours work a week, but it helps me pay the bills, and I got a few requests from her to enter festivals that I'd never heard of, but before doing so I checked their web-sites, and on a few I couldn't find any evidence that an in-person screening had taken place or was scheduled to take place, so I wrote them off as "scam" festivals - sure, I realize many festivals switched to virtual screenings during the pandemic, that used to be a tip-off, but one festival had bogus "awards" given out according to their Instagram feeds, and I couldn't find any evidence on IMDB that those films even existed.  Plus all of their testimonials could be faked, you never know. So I stuck to only entering festivals that I'd heard of, ones that have been around for a few years and have something of a reputation - because you have to admit, it's a great scam, post a listing for a bogus festival, let 1,000 eager filmmakers pay an entry fee of $50 each, collect the $50,000 in entry fees, and then just never get around to holding an actual festival screening.  I kind of wish I'd thought of it, but nah, it's a really shitty thing to do. 

My point is that I don't appreciate fake-outs, being told one thing is happening when that's not really the thing that's happening, and that applies to movies, too.  I just went through this with "Sweet Girl" last week, and now here's another film that isn't exactly what it pretends to be at first. I won't spoil the twist here, because that's a shitty thing to do also.  But at the start this appears to be some kind of one-location murder mystery where someone is killing off the characters, one by one, and getting away with it, because the suspicion keeps falling on different people, some of whom then end up dead themselves, which means that there's still a killer on the loose, and it's probably who you'd least suspect.  

The opening of the film is flat-out ridiculous, as one traveler after another gets stranded near this Nevada motel, because of the terrible rain storm that's happening.  In the desert, mind you, although nowadays these terrible storms seem to be able to happen anywhere - but this was made back in 2003, before the worst of the climate change effects.  It's a complete cascade of failure as one person's bad luck affects the next, one woman loses her shoe from her car, which causes the next person to get a flat tire, which causes the next person to hit someone with their car. It's a series of unlikely events that gets more unlikely with each one added.  

Then once everyone is gathered at the same motel, more bad luck - a policeman escorting a prisoner from one jail to another gets simiilarly stranded, and suddenly his radio won't work, so he can't call for an ambulance for the struck motorist.  The convict is a psychopath who manages to escape, and then the body parts being found.  OK, no mystery here, the murdering murderer probably did the murder, right?  Wrong.  When he turns up dead, then clearly something else is going on, or somebody isn't who they say they are.  And somebody is leaving room keys next to each body, #10, then #9, #8 and so on - it's some kind of gruesome countdown?  What happens when we get to one, then everyone's dead, right?  Well, sure, and then it will be easy to know who the killer is, he or she will be the last one standing.

But then there's the fake-out, and probably the less said about it the better.  But it turns out that all of the stranded strangers have something in common, and that's statistically impossible.  That also suggests that something else is going on, other than what we've been told.  It's a bit of a shame, because I kind of liked where this one was going, I would have like to see where it was headed if it had continued as just a straight murder mystery story.  But it's not, and we shouldn't wish for things we can't have.  Let's just say that the "B" story is really the "A" story, and that's a bit of dirty pool.  You can get all high-falutin' and say that there are references here to Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" and Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author", or perhaps something by Jean-Paul Sartre, but I think then you'd be giving this film too much credit.  It's just a fake-out, most likely because the writer managed to paint himself into a corner, story-wise.  So he kind of had to break a window to get out of that room. 

Look, I get it, reality is a set of constantly-shifting sands.  And nothing is real, because it's a movie.  But ir a movie presents a different reality, it needs to stay true to it.  Doesn't it? 

Also starring John Cusack (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Ray Liotta (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Amanda Peet (last seen in "Trust Me"), John Hawkes (last seen in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"), Clea DuVall (last seen in "She's All That"), John C. McGinley (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), William Lee Scott (last seen in "October Sky"), Jake Busey (last seen in "The Predator"), Pruitt Taylor Vince (last seen in "Bird Box"), Rebecca De Mornay (last seen in "One From the Heart"), Carmen Argenziano (last seen in "Gone in 60 Seconds"), Marshall Bell (last seen in "The Last Word"), Leila Kenzle, Matt Letscher (last seen in "13 Hours"), Bret Loehr, Holmes Osborne (last seen in "All About Steve"), Frederick Coffin, Joe Hart, Michael Hirsch, Terence Bernie Hines, Stuart M. Besser (last seen in "Our Brand Is Crisis"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 unnecessarily complicated back-stories