Quasi

Year 16, Day 286 - 10/12/24 - Movie #4,871

BEFORE: Yeah, this one doesn't look like a horror movie, either - it's a very tenuous connection because ihunchbacks are sort of a staple in horror movies, always serving as those deformed lab assistants working for mad scientists like Dr. Frankenstein and such.  And I think back in the day Lon Chaney played Quasimodo in an early film version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", one which IMDB classifies as a horror film. Of course it's based on a classic French novel by Victor Hugo, but I bet the early 20th century Hollywood versions got it all wrong and made Quasimodo out to be a shocking monster.  Then of course in 1996 DisneyCorp. came out with their version, which recast him as the hero of the story, part of their new mandate to stop making films about beautiful people and try to be more inclusive, but the film had animated singing gargoyle characters in it AND changed the novel's ending to a happy one, so really, most people don't even talk about that version any more. 

This new version is a satirical comedy from the Broken Lizard guys, the ones who made "Super Troopers" and "Beerfest" and "Club Dread" and "The Slammin' Salmon", which are all films that i enjoy and watch every time I see they're on TV.  OK, maybe it took a couple tries to enjoy "The Slammin' Salmon", but after watching it with my wife I got there, so I'm willing to give these guys the benefit of the doubt.  When I heard they made a new film about Quasimodo, I figured I'd have to watch it as soon as possible, and so today is "as soon as possible" - still, it took me a year and a half to be able to link to it. 

Brian Cox carries over from "The Water Horse".

THE PLOT: A hapless hunchback who yearns for love finds himself in the middle of a murderous feud between the Pope and the king of France when each orders the hunchback to kill the other. 

AFTER: Yeah, this was about what I expected - damn, I really was hoping for a better film experience tonight, but this film just does NOT reach the quality level of Broken Lizard's previous films. "Super Troopers" (and its sequel) were just brilliant, like I saw that film at the Sundance Festival back in 2001, and I had to tell everybody about it when I got back to NY, how it was one of the funniest films I'd ever seen, and it's endlessly re-watchable, as I said. I'll watch that or "Beerfest" or "Club Dread" any time they're on, and I've seen each one at least a dozen times.  

(They opened a new German restaurant out in Stony Brook, Long Island, called Schnitzel's, and I said we had to go there because it was no doubt a reference to the fake restaurant in "Beerfest", which was called "Schnitzengiggles". Yeah, they serve beer in a boot and the staff at the restaurant seems to be in on the joke, because they host beer stein holding competitions and the servers wear punny t-shirts. There's also a restaurant out in Ronkonkoma called Shenanigan's, which is the name of the fake restaurant mentioned in "Super Troopers", but we haven't made it there yet.)

Anyway, "Quasi" kind of let me down because it's just not as funny as those other Broken Lizard movies, so I'm kind of upset that they spent a couple years making this one, when they could have been filming "Potfest", the proposed sequel that they teased at the end of "Beerfest".  Hey, it's legal now in a lot of places, so why not?  Is watching people get stoned just not as funny as watching them get drunk?  Because it worked out OK for Cheech & Chong.  

I don't think they kept anything intact from the original VIctor Hugo novel, like where the hell is the Notre Dame cathedral and why is Quasimodo a low-level torturer and not a bell-ringer?  He makes references to "growing up in a bell tower", but the whole point of the original story is that he does the bell-ringing job that nobody else wants to, because it would probably make them deaf, plus he serves in sort of the "Phantom of the Opera" role, being the guy backstage who calls everyone to church with the bells, and if you take that away from the character, what are you left with, besides a whole lot of nothing?  

In the novel he falls in love with a Gypsy girl, and, well, let's just say it doesn't end well, not for him or her or anyone, really, because 15th century France really sucked. In this film Quasi is enamored by the Queen, but of course she's totally out of his league - or is she?  Maybe she's into freaky stuff with freaks, they kind of suggest that here in this film that's set back then but has all their characters acting like modern people, with a nod and a wink.  Satire may be set centuries ago in the past, but it's meant to be a commentary on the time it was made, which is now.  So sure, let's make fun of kings and popes because they're not as powerful as they used to be.  And let's make fun of torturing heretics and people dying from the plague and how kings abused their power, because it's what Mel Brooks and/or Monty Python would do. 

Each member of the Broken Lizard troupe plays at least two characters here, which is a very Monty Python-type thing to do.  Back then for "The Holy Grain" and "Life of Brian" it was quite possibly just a cost-cutting measure, they couldn't afford to hire more actors so each Python guy needed to play at least three roles.  I was pretty confused as a kid, because even then I wanted to know the name of every actor, and I didn't quite understand why the actor who played King Arthur also played a castle guard with the hiccups and the middle head of a three-headed monster knight.  Didn't this bother anyone else?  Just me, a 12-year-old kid?  (And that ending of "Holy Grail" bothered me, too - but Eric Idle was on the talk-show circuit last week explaining that, yes, well, they did run out of money at that point. Explains a lot.)

I wish I could say that "Quasi" makes some valid points about the futility of the feudal system or the ridiculousness of the Pope or religion, or what happened in old-time Europe when the King disagreed with the Pope, and people died as a result.  But no, it's all for laughs here as people get tortured and killed just because the people in power want to act like spoiled children.  OK, great, go for the humor, but then why isn't this film funnier?  Because comedy isn't easy, that's why, if it were then everyone would do it and everything would be funny, and it's just not. Even experienced comedians make bad comedies that aren't very funny, because that's subjective and it depends on connecting with the audience, and you just don't know if a film is going to succeed at that, until it doesn't.  

Plus they made the same mistake here as Disney did back in the mid-90's, they gave it a happy ending - by which I mean that the evil men who were in power die, and Quasimodo somehow comes out on top and finds love and also, against all odds and through unfathomly impossible plot twists, also becomes king.  So the whole point of the novel is missing here, which is that the system in 15th century France would totally prevent a deformed bell-ringer or a Gypsy girl from getting ahead.  The deck would have been totally stacked against them, and success was not an option. Let's be real for a second. 

This one's good for a couple quick laughs, but I don't see this becoming any sort of cult classic or repeat favorite.  Feels like some people spent so much time working on their basic cable TV sitcom that they forgot how to make a funny movie. 

Also starring Steve Lemme (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Jay Chandrasekhar (ditto), Paul Soter (ditto), Kevin Heffernan (last heard in "Scoob!"), Erik Stolhanske (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Adrianne Palicki (last seen in "John Wick"), Eugene Cordero (last seen in "When in Rome"), Marcus Henderson (last seen in "Pete's Dragon"), Gabriel Hogan (last seen in "Head in the Clouds"), Hassie Harrison, Gabrielle Lane, Michael Yurchak (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"), Phil Hudson, Richard Perello (also last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Ken May.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Belon oysters

The Water Horse

Year 16, Day 285 - 10/11/24 - Movie #4,870

BEFORE: All right, I'm betting this one won't be very scary, because obviously it's going to be about the Loch Ness Monster, and the poster makes it look a bit like a re-telling of "Free Willy".  But I've done two movies about sea monsters already this year - "The Sea Beast" and "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken", so that will probably be a whole category at the end of the year, sea monsters and mermaids and selkies and yeah, giant sharks.  Sometimes they're monsters and sometimes they're not, it just depends on the film.  I'm surprised that we still call these films "monster movies", isn't that just a bit perjorative?  You'd think by now the P.C. police would have stepped in and demand that we call them "non-human creature films" or "films about differently genetically endowed life forms perceived to be monstrous by non-aware people". I mean, sure, CGI monsters have rights too, umm, don't they? Maybe not. 

Ben Chaplin carries over from "Dorian Gray"

THE PLOT: A lonely boy discovers a mysterious egg that hatches a sea creature of Scottish legend.

AFTER: Yeah, this was as bad as I figured, they tried to cutify the Loch Ness Monster by showing what it would have looked like as a baby (If it existed, which it probably does not) and a young Scottish boy finds its egg on the seashore and takes it home, then he inadverently causes it to hatch, and now he's got a baby sea monster running around his family's home - what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? 

This film is set during World War II, and just days after finding the egg and hatching the creature (which he names "Crusoe", not "Nessie") a group of Scottish soldiers sets up camp at his family's estate, because of the strategic location of Loch Ness nearby, and the chance that German submarines may invade Scotland from the ocean.  Yeah, I just checked the map, that seems unlikely due to the position of Loch Ness on the map - why would the Nazis go all the way around England, past London, and invade the U.K. from the north, through Scotland?  That seems unlikely, but even if they would (which they wouldn't), Loch Ness is quite a ways inland, wouldn't it make more sense for the army to set up their guns and their observation point at Inverness to the north or Fort William to the south?  Just saying. And why target Loch Ness and bypass Edinburgh, or Glasgow, or, you know, LONDON?

I don't think that the MacMorrow family owns this big estate, it belong to Lord Killin, whoever that is, and I'm not sure what the relationship is, I guess Charles MacMorrow, Angus' father, was the handyman at the estate, and where Lord Killin is, I have no idea.  But Charles went off to war a year ago, and his son Angus is counting the days on a calendar until his tour of duty is over, but then later in the film Angus' mother lets slip that Charles was lost at sea after his ship sank, and that was more than a year ago.  So no, I don't think he's coming home, but I guess if they acknowledged his death then the family couldn't live on this estate any more?  A new handyman comes to replace Angus' father, which would only be a problem if Angus was storing some kind of baby sea monster in that workshop...

But Lewis, the new handyman happens to know what the creature is, it's a legendary Water Horse, which the story says is genderless, and each creature lays one egg before it dies, so its child is born an orphan.  And as a baby that Water Horse doesn't know how to eat or take care of itself, so it's no wonder that the species is rare and endangered, because it's quite dumb and over time that species would starve to death, right?  Like by the time it figures out how to swim and eat fish, it's too late. Anyway, Angus cares for the creature and feeds it apples and puts a bandage on the cut on its back that he probably gave it when trying to crack open its egg. 

Now he's got to raise this sea monster and prevent his mother from seeing it, because she's very strict about not having pets, and also he's got to keep it away from the Royal Artillery Troops, who have been hunting deer in the nearby forest and would probably love to hunt a dinosaur or Water Horse or whatever the hell Crusoe is.  So Charlie and Lewis have to keep it hidden, even though it's growing at a phenomenal rate, must be all that garbage it's been eating, who knows.  But the Army's mascot bulldog, Churchill, keeps destroying the kitchen and the dining room whenever it chases the sea monster, god damn it, this it a Loch Ness Monster film, not a Tom & Jerry cartoon.  

Lewis and Angus take Crusoe in a truck over to Loch Ness, thus fulfilling the prophecy that they didn't even know about - and Crusoe takes to the water almost like he was made for it, which he was. Later, when Angus sneaks off to the lake - because who wants to do stupid army chores and learn some discipline, am I right - he goes for a ride on the Loch Ness Monster, and Crusoe kind of forgets that Angus needs to breathe air once in a while.  But this is probably the highlight of the film, a thrill ride on the back of a sea monster while exploring the depths of Loch Ness.  There are ruins down there, a sunken ship with a treasure chest, and so on. 

Captain Hamilton of the Royal Artillery seems to have a thing for Angus' mom, so he tries to discredit the new handyman as some kind of non-veteran or deserter, to no avail.  Then he takes the MacMorrow family to a hill overlooking Loch Ness so he can demonstrate the artillery by firing shells into the lake, because what better way to keep your outpost's location secret than by blowing a bunch of nothingness up?  The shells come a bit too close to Crusoe and manage to change the docile creature's temperament, which only goes to prove that MAN is the ultimate monster, not the monster itself.  Sheesh, give me a break. 

Meanwhile, two fishermen who encountered Crusoe face-to-face have no luck taking a photograph of the monster, so they create a wood-frame silhouette of a sea monster's head and take the famous photo that has been all but debunked over the years.  Right, because the photo was faked but that also means that the sea monster is real.  Again, give me a break. That's like disproving the famous footage of Bigfoot by finding the costume somebody wore when filming it and then deducing that Bigfoot simply MUST be real, but that doesn't make any sense. 

Finally the soldiers come to hunt the sea monster and prove its existence, of course by trying to kill it.  (Again, man is the monster here, he kills anything he doesn't understand...). But the McMorrows and Captain Hamilton, having seen the creature up close, help it to evade the army's net and get out into the open sea.  So it really IS like "Free Willy" in the end.  Angus grows up and never sees the creature again, but he's got a hell of a story to tell any tourist who wants to hear it, and also a few who don't. 

Again, I fondly remember the day when monsters were monsters and we didn't have to justify them or cute-ify them or explain in movies why they weren't monsters at all, they were all just horribly misunderstood.  The woke-ness started a couple decades ago, it turns out, before Godzilla and Kong were defending Earth from the BAD giant monsters and the Sea Beasts were hunted to near-extinction for a totally B.S. reason.  Did the Loch Ness Monster NEED a back-story where it looked like an ugly Pokemon and grew up faster than anyone thought it could?  Umm, no, it probably did not, mostly because it's not real.  

Also starring Alex Etel (last seen in "From Time to Time"), Brian Cox (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Emily Watson (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), David Morrissey (last seen in "Welcome to the Punch"), Priyanka Xi, Marshall Napier (last seen in "The Light Between Oceans"), Joel Tobeck (last seen in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Erroll Shand (last seen in "Slow West"), Craig Hall (last seen in "Pete's Dragon"), Geraldine Brophy (last seen in "King Kong" (2005)), William Johnson (ditto), Ian Hancourt (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Eddie Campbell (ditto), Bruce Allpress, Carl Dixon, Nathan Christopher Haase, Megan Katherine, Lorraine McDonald, Edward Newborn, Louis Owen Collins, William Russell, Ben Van Lier, 

RATING: 4 out of 10 pints of McEwan's at the pub

Dorian Gray

Year 16, Day 284 - 10/10/24 - Movie #4,869

BEFORE: I'm sorry that I'm kind of jumping all over the horror map here, started with ghosts and moved on to zombies, then some straight up killers (political and non-political), then came some sea monsters and a giant ape, then back to ghosts or ghost-demon or whatever that was last night.  I can't help it, I've chosen the actor links as my organization system, and I have to go where that takes me right now.  All brands and flavors of horror are accepted here, no film gets turned away for its subject matter, it just has to be spooky in some way.  Look, I don't limit my documentaries by subject matter, I'll watch a doc on any subject, as long as it interests me in some way. I tend to gravitate toward rock stars and actor bio-docs, but just this year I watched one about the Mars rover, a couple about Trump, one about people with strange last names, and one about the guy who started Nathan's hot dogs. 

I'll go wherever that linking muse takes me, that's my point. And the horror genre can work the same way, films can be animated, or comedy-horror or monster-horror or even a doc about filmmakers like Spielberg or De Palma who directed horror films have qualified, if needed. Whatever keeps that chain going can be OK, I might even slip in a superhero film like I did "Morbius", if it seems spooky enough AND it keeps the chain alive (or undead).  Tonight it's a film based on classic lit that may not be outright horror, but it's freaky and hopefully spooky. OK? 

Rebecca Hall carries over again from "The Night House". 

THE PLOT: A corrupt young man somehow keeps his youthful beauty eternally, but a special painting gradually reveals his inner ugliness to all.  

AFTER: Of course, I'm somewhat familiar with the "Picture of Dorian Gray" storyline, though I've never read it, you just pick up things by osmosis sometimes.  I've never watched a film version of it either, unless you count the character's appearance in the movie "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", which seems to have fallen out of favor for some reason, but it was based on a comic book that had THREE volumes, and the film only dealt with the first one.  It's not too late, somebody could still make a sequel with Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and the Invisible Man fighting off the aliens attacking from Mars as in "The War of the Worlds".  Sure, I get that Sean Connery's no longer available, just replace Allan Quartermain or bring him back from the dead and played by a younger actor, I'm fine with it either way, but let's get to it!  Replace him with John Carter of Mars, I don't care. 

The one character who can't come back for the sequel would be Dorian Gray, who crumbled to dust after being forced to look at the portrait of himself, which had taken on all his injuries and aging that he somehow managed to deflect on to the art.  But of course that "Extraordinary Gentlemen" movie was a bastardization, with Stuart Townsend playing Dorian, and I've never bothered much to find out what takes place in the REAL story, the only novel written by Oscar Wilde.  I've seen other films based on Wilde's plays, like "An Ideal Husband" and "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "A Good Woman", but never tackled any version of "Dorian Gray" until tonight. 

My first question is, where did the story idea come from?  My first thought is that it came from Wilde's own vanity, perhaps looking in a mirror and seeing signs of his own aging, and wishing he could stop it. Or did he see someone having their portrait painted, as was the custom of the time, and notice the fact that the portrait would never age, while the person would, and hey, there's maybe a story there, what if it worked the other way around?  It turns out my second guess is very close to the mark, in 1887 he watched a female friend having her portrait painted and remarked in jest that it was tragic, that the painting will never grow older but the subject would, and right away his brain reversed it and he had the idea for the story.  

Now, the story went through some changes, apparently after Wilde had written it as a short story, his publisher took out any references to homosexual desire, because that sort of thing would have marked the book as "indecent" and might have prevented publication.  But by 1891 the novella had become a longer novel, twenty chapters but still light on the gay stuff. It wasn't until 2011 that the "uncensored" version of the book was published, and the parts of Wilde's story about the artist, Basil Hayward, having romantic feelings for Dorian Gray were restored.  Whether this is for the better, it's not for me to say, like I'm all for the artist being in love with Dorian, but somehow the art displaying Dorian's age might be tied to him selling his soul, so I don't know how close anyone wants the gay themes to be to the work of the Devil, just saying. 

But to what extent is the story meant to be taken seriously, and how much of it is metaphor about the purpose of art in society, the value of beauty, and the role of an artist in creating a portrait of someone.  Somehow the creation of this picture freezes Dorian in age and beauty, and is that ultimately a good thing or a bad thing?  Did he make a deal with the Devil just by saying so, is that the way the world works?  If Dorian could stop aging just by having his portrait made and wishing it to be so, why didn't anyone else seem to be able to do this?  

More to the point, are we supposed to take Dorian's actions as "evil" or just that of a young, wanton man in Victorian England who falls in with a bad crowd, and uses his money to pursue beauty and pleasure in all of its forms?  Would he be considered "good" if he settled down, married a woman and remained faithful to her, until they grew old together and one of them died?  Is that course of action "good" just because society says it is?  While pursuing hedonistic relationships with many women (and men) without any boundaries, is that considered "evil"?  I think there's a slippery slope there, and we should probably resist putting the good/evil labels on any relationship choices, because it's not the Victorian Age any more, we went through a whole sexual revolution and people fought for gay rights and we've come too far as a society to revert to "marriage good, orgies bad". It's a whole new ball game out there, some people live in thrupples and some people are polyamorous and gender-neutral and so maybe Dorian Gray was just 130 years ahead of his time, as Oscar Wilde may have been. 

Dorian experiments with every vice out there, but the effects are not reflected on his own body, they appear on the painting instead.  So he's forced to remove the painting from view and hang it in the attic.  Basil, the painter, wants to include it in a gallery show but Dorian obviously refuses.  When Basil realizes why, he urges Dorian to pray for salvation, but Dorian blames his fate on the artist and kills him. Meanwhile, James Vane is out to kill Dorian for breaking the heart of his sister, Sibyl, who was engaged to Dorian then drowned herself when he called off the wedding.  Well, she was playing Ophelia in "Hamlet" when they met, so that seems kind of fitting.  Anyway, Dorian decides to travel and see the world, returning to London 25 years later to find that all of his friends are now old, though he has remained young. 

He takes up with Emily, the daughter of his best friend, Henry Wotton, the one who told him to pursue beauty and pleasure in the first place.  Umm, except he's not crazy about Dorian dating his own daughter, it turns out, probably because he knows what Dorian is capable of.  But Dorian is trying to straighten out and fly right, whatever that means - only Emily is curious about what's stored in the attic and why she's forbidden to go up there. Gray is reminded of how cruel he was to Sibyl, as her brother James makes another attempt to kill Dorian for it. Meanwhile other people are looking at old photographs of Dorian and wondering how he managed to not age over time.  All this leads to Henry sneaking into the attic and finding evidence of Basil's murder, then exposing the covered-up portrait which seems to growl and nearly come to life, and it's angry.  The only possible response is to try and kill it with fire, and hope that does the trick. 

It's a little tough to discern what lesson, exactly, we're supposed to take away from this story.  Don't make a deal with the Devil?  Umm OK, I won't. Don't have your portrait painted with those paints that will steal your soul and make the painting age in your place?  Sure, I can do that. Learn to grow old gracefully? Well that seems more reasonable, but does anyone ever really do that well? I mean, we're all getting older every day, you can't stop it. I've got another birthday coming in 10 days, so yeah, I'm aware but as Indy said, it's not the years, it's the mileage. Growing old sucks, but it does beat the alternative. 

Also starring Ben Barnes (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Barbie"), Ben Chaplin (last seen in "The Dig"), Rachel Hurd-Wood (last seen in "Peter Pan" (2003)), Johnny Harris (last seen in "The Last Days on Mars"), Emilia Fox (last seen in "Blithe Spirit"), Fiona Shaw (last seen in "IF"), Maryam d'Abo (last seen in "The Living Daylights"), Caroline Goodall (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Michael Culkin (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Pip Torrens (also last seen in "Easy Virtue"), John Hollingworth (last seen in "Napoleon"), Nathan Rosen, Jeff Lipman (last seen in "United 93"), Louise Kempton, Douglas Henshall (last seen in "Twice Upon a Yesterday"), George Potts (last seen in "The Son"), David Sterne (last seen in "The Protégé"), Louise Rose, Aewla Huillet, Jo Woodcock, Max Irons (last seen in "The Wife"), Lily Garrett, Emily Phillips, Hugh Ross (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Andrew Harrison, Daniel Newman (last seen in "The Dark Knight Rises"), Tallulah Sheffield.

RATING: 5 out of 10 imported cigarettes in a silver case

The Night House

Year 16, Day 283 - 10/9/24 - Movie #4,868

BEFORE: I'm in "Phase 2" of the October horror chain, remember that I cobbled this year's programming together from four small chains once I realized that my planned large one wasn't going to work, there was a big gap.  Well, four little chains is going to get the job done, and then I'll assess what's left for next year, and I'm still adding to the list all the time, so maybe I can put another chain together next year, who knows?  The same people keep popping up in horror movies again and again, so it must pay well.  I know Bruce Campbell has done a bunch of them, I'd love to put the spotlight on him next year if possible.  All I have right now is a bunch of little chains, two or three films here, maybe four over THERE, but you never know, they could come together.  Or I could force them together, whatever works. 

Look at yesterday's movie, they trimmed their main cast down to maybe three or four name-brand actors, and then maybe a dozen other people I'd never heard of.  That was enough to link in and out, because I only need two connections.  Hell, sometimes I only need one, if it's a good one.  So Rebecca Hall now carries over from "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire", today's film also has only three or four actors I've heard of, but I only need to put it between two other films with Rebecca Hall and we're good to go. 

I also just went through the fims that are new to streaming this month, and as you might imagine, there are a lot of horror movies premiering on every platform, so all I can do is list them right now, and I'll go through the cast lists when I can.  Now that I have Christmas sorted, it's more important to go through cast lists of romances for February and then docs for the Doc Block. 

THE PLOT: A widow begins to uncover her recently deceased husband's disturbing secrets. 

AFTER: in this horror film, a widow named Beth is still going through the stages of grief after her husband committed suicide.  When we first meet her she's still in a form of denial, like she just wants to watch movies alone at night and she's just phoning it in at her teaching job.  One parent complains that she gave her son a failing grade, however it was a case where the teacher wasn't in that week to grade him, because well, the husband thing.  So Beth gives the teen a B, but also gets real bitchy about "Well, my husband shot himself, so I don't really care, and your son's grade doesn't matter in the long run."  That's actually good, I think that counts as the bargaining stage, so it's a sign of progress.  

Beth also starts talking to herself as she starts going through her husband's notebooks of planned architectural projects, it seems he was working on plans for some weird labyrinths and hidden rooms or something. Still possibly OK, maybe he had a weird client or he was just working through some ideas.  But when Beth has a vision at night of women running across her lawn and jumping into the lake, then imagines lights from a house across the lake, she goes to investigate and finds another house, very similar to her own, in the process of being built.  Was her husband building an identical house across the lake for some reason, and if so, what could possibly be the reason?  

Then Beth sees a photo on his phone of a woman in a bookstore, it looks like herself, but she can't be sure. A search of her husband's hard drive reveals dozens of photos of women who look sort of like her, and all that can't be good, either.  At best he was having affairs with women who reminded him of his wife, but then, what's the point of that?  Maybe he has a "type", but what exactly was he up to before he died?  Once doubt has crept into her mind, she starts seeing shadows in the windows and silhouettes of her husband in various furniture, and so there's either a ghostly presence in the house or she's going insane, or maybe both are possible.  

Nobody sees the bloody footprints on the dock but her, however her neighbor says he once saw Owen in the woods at night with a woman who looked a bit like Beth, and also Owen confessed to having dark impulses that he was trying to control.  Oh, great, it's the other thing. Or maybe it's something even worse than that.  But by the time Beth manages to figure out exactly what the entity haunting her house is, it might be too late to stop it.  Or perhaps there's nothing there at all, which is kind of even scarier. 

This one won't exactly hit you over the head with horrific stuff, it's more a psychological thriller, but then that's what I would expect a horror film that played at the Sundance Festival to be.  What is happening right now, and what's causing it?  Is her house really haunted, or is it all just her imagination?  What is a "waking dream" anyway, and could it come from lack of sleep and anxiety after one's spouse dies?  And is there an upside to having a second house just like your first?  Can you just go there for a change of pace once in a while, or if it's just like the first house, is there no point in that?  I guess it's got a different view of the lake, but who cares about that?  Jeez, just sell the duplicate house and take the win.  Or sell them both and start fresh somewhere else, maybe that's a better idea. 

Also starring Sarah Goldberg (last seen in "The Hummingbird Project"), Vondie Curtis-Hall (last seen in "Blue Bayou"), Evan Jonigkeit (last seen in "Together Together"), Stacy Martin (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), David Abeles (last seen in "Begin Again"), Christina Jackson, Patrick A. Sova, Crystal Swann, Catherine Weidner, Laura Austin (last seen in "Alone Together"), Jacob Garrett White, Samantha Buck (last seen in "Private Life"), Lydia Hand, Lea Enslin, Amy Zubieta, Allie McCulloch.

RATING: 6 out of 10 home movies

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Year 16, Day 282 - 10/8/24 - Movie #4,867

BEFORE:  It kind of feels like I JUST watched "Godzilla vs. Kong", but that was THREE years ago. Yeah, it turns out it takes time to do all these special effects and stuff, so from a filmmaking standpoint, that's not a LOT of time, but it is a lot of people-hours working on a movie, like thousands and thousands even.  Also, I'm worried about how quickly my life is passing by when it feels like I watched a movie just last year and it turns out to be three years ago.  Not a good feeling, especially with another birthday coming up. 

Dan Stevens carries over again from "The Sea Beast". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Godzilla vs. Kong" (Movie #3,966)

THE PLOT: Two ancient titans, Godzilla and Kong, clash in an epic battle as humans unravel their intertwined origins and connection to Skull Island's mysteries. 

AFTER: Ah, yes, the movie franchise that's chock-full of junk science - the world is hollow, somehow there's air and light down there in the core and a whole lot of space, not magma or molten rock or anything like we've been led to believe.  There's a whole country-sized piece of land, actually two, that Kong can jump between, plus all kinds of wild animals for him to fight and eat, and somehow he doesn't get crushed by the massive gravity that one would expect to encounter in the center of a planet.  Also, every direction here should be UP, like Kong should be able to stand here in the middle of the world on some kind of round sphere and go UP to reach the surface, but for some reason up is down and down is up and there's a world-within-a-world, and there are vortexes that will take you up to the surface at super-speed, so sure, add teleportation to the mix, why not?  

But let's posit for a moment that if down somehow is up (which it's not) and the people and monsters are standing on an interior world within the Earth, with a lot of empty space (again, impossible) and if you think of the world as a hollow tennis ball, then everyone would be standing on the interior surface of that tennis ball, assuming there's some kind of gravity inversion (which, like everything else, is not possible).  So their UP would be a direction leading toward the center of the earth - therefore a vortex to the surface world would be in their ground, not their sky.  They would then have to go DOWN to go to the surface, not UP, because down is up, remember?  So this movie can't even stay consistent with its own impossible science. 

I don't know why THIS all bothers me, and not the fact that there are giant monsters roaming the earth and also living inside of it.  But really, I should probably start there, because the franchise has set things up this way on this alternate-Earth where ancient monsters walk the Earth and destroy cities at random (or is it?).  Those first two "Godzilla" movies of the current franchise had me thinking that since the giant lizard only destroyed liberal cities (Boston and San Francisco) that he was just a giant metaphor for Donald Trump.  OK, and if I continue the metaphor than maybe "Godzilla vs. Kong" was a symbolic representation of the 2020 election, with Kong standing in for Biden.  Sure, they're both very old, they've maybe lost a bit of the pep in their step, and we have questions about what Kong understands at the end of the day.  

But since the two Titans had to work together in "Godzilla vs. Kong" to defeat Mecha-Godzilla, my metaphor really doesn't work any more, because I can't see Trump and Biden working together to do anything, really.  And now in the next film they have to work together again to defeat a giant ape called Skar King and an ice dragon named Shimo, which is kind of like a "polar" opposite to Godzilla. (Pun intended.)

But man, it's a LONG build-up to the action here. We watch Kong have a dental appointment, for real, that's how little is going on at first. Meanwhile Godzilla is going around the world taking in energy from other Titans like Tiamat, and also absorbing radiation from a nuclear power plant, he's getting ready for something, we just don't know what. Kong's down in the Hollow Earth zone and Godzilla's up on the surface, and we're told that since these two can't really get along, it's best for humans if they stay separated.  So Kong has a separate adventure where he learns that he's not the last of his species after all, there are dozens of other apes held in captivity in Hollow Earth, the Skar King has them all moving rocks from this pile over here to THAT pile over there.  Well, I guess it's better to rule in Hell than be subservient in Heaven. 

Kong takes on the Skar King and his ice-lizard Shimo and gets a bad case of frost-bite. If only he knew another giant lizard that could help him fight back and free the ape tribe.  Oh well, I guess we should stop wishing for things we can't have.  Meanwhile a group of humans stranded in Hollow Earth learns that similarly the young Jia is not the last of her tribe either, because a bunch of telepathic Iwi people have been living there for centuries, waiting for the prophesied day when they could send out their distress call and find the lost member of their tribe who could control the new Mothra.  

Kong finally gets in touch with the new, energized Godzilla, and, OK, it doesn't go well and there go the Egyptian pyramids (visit them while you can, people!) but finally all three hero Titans get on the same page and head BACK down to Hollow Earth (there's just a LOT of comings and goings here in this film, you can't tell me there wasn't a simpler way to tell this story).  Then the good monsters and the bad monsters teleport back up to Rio de Janeiro, because that's a city that none of them have destroyed yet. The two sides are pretty evenly matched, until the good monsters decide to change opponents and the ice dragon decides to change sides. Skar King gets frozen and shattered, Kong becomes the new leader of the giant apes, and Godzilla returns to the Colosseum in Rome for a nap. Not kidding. 

What happened to all the other people who were in the previous "Godzilla" and "Godzilla vs. Kong" movies?  I'm thinking about the characters played by Alexander Skarsgard, Kyle Chandler, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Eiza Gonzalez, Demian Bichir, Julian Dennison and even Ronny Chieng?  Were there massive layoffs at the Monarch Corporation?  Did all the investigative reporters who follow the giant monsters suddenly all decide to make career changes?  Can you really consider this the next legit film in a franchise when only like three characters carry over from the last one?  I guess I really don't have much choice here. 

And God damn it, if Kong and Godzilla can put aside their differences and work together to save the planet, why can't our two political parties? 

Also starring Rebecca Hall (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Brian Tyree Henry (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Kaylee Hottle (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Alex Ferns (last seen in "The Batman"), Fala Chen (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Rachel House (last seen in "Next Goal Wins"), Ron Smyck, Chantelle Jamieson, Greg Hatton, Kevin Copeland (last seen in "Muriel's Wedding"), Tess Dobré, Tim Carroll, Anthony Brandon Wong (last seen in "The Invisible Man"), Sophia Emberson-Bain (last seen in "San Andreas"), Chika Ikogwe, Vincent B. Gorce (last seen in "Aquaman"), Yeye Zhou, Jamaliah Othman, Nick Lawler.

RATING: 7 out of 10 flattened buildings (that Christ the Redeemer statue somehow manages to survive, I think)

The Sea Beast

Year 16, Day 281 - 10/7/24 - Movie #4,866

BEFORE: One week into the Shocktober, horror chain, about three weeks to go because I'm taking time off for NY Comic-Con, so really, I'm looking forward to No-Movie November because I'm going to get something of a break, I can catch up on sleep and maybe think about busting into some TV series, like "Agatha All Along" or the new season of "Only Murders in the Building"', not to mention "Echo" and "Ms. Marvel" and "The Penguin" - all I managed to watch in late August was the final season of "Pennyworth", which I missed when it first aired.  So yeah, still have some goals, plus I'm going to have to get into the backyard and cut back all the weeds and ivy that took over this summer, after the rainy season ends and before the cold weather starts, if it comes. 

Today I bought Halloween candy, and really, a lot of thought has to go into it now.  The last two years I leaned heavily on lollipops, either Tootsie Pops or Dum-Dums, which are very cheap, I can get a bag of 200 for like $10, but last timeI sat on the porch next to a basket of lollies and there just wasn't a big crowd coming around, then I got stuck holding all these stupid lollipops, so I just brought them into work and dumped them in the communal candy jar.  This year I'm only buying candy that my wife and I like, so if it's leftover at least we'll enjoy it.  So I got a big bag of Kit Kats and fun-sized Hershey's chocolate (for her), two kinds of Reese's peanut butter candy (for me) and Almond Joys (for the trick-or-treaters, if they show up).  That seemed like it was mostly for US, not them, so I added a small bag of Butterfingers and another of Nestle Crunch bars, and I'm sure we'll eat those too, if nobody rings the doorbell this year.  I probably overpaid but hey, at least I won't have 100 lollipops left over that nobody wants.  

Dan Stevens carries over from "The Rental".  

THE PLOT: When a young girl stows away on the ship of a legendary sea monster hunter, they launch an epic journey into uncharted waters - and make history to boot. 

AFTER: I know, I know, it seems weird that one animated movie about sea monsters ended up in the Halloween chain and one didn't, but that's the way the linking links. "Ruby Gillman" was a little more cartoony anyway, and also was set in a fictional animated high-school setting, so I'm fine with that one ending up in September.  And it served a purpose as the lead-in to "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret." so really, all is forgiven.  All animated movies will get judged together in their own category at the end of the year, anyway.  

Things were different back in my day, I can tell you that for sure. Back then you could tell, especially in animated movies, who the villains were.  They looked all ugly like the Wicked Witch of the West, or the evil queen in "Snow White" when she turned into that hag.  Or Frankenstein's Monster, or Nosferatu, you just KNEW they were evil because of how they looked.  Or maybe they looked good once but got scarred, like the Phantom of the Opera or they just had giant teeth or claws or something.  And if they were a giant monster, like a dragon or a giant ape, forget about it, that's clearly the villain of the piece.  But something changed with those giant monsters, maybe it was somewhere around the 1977 "King Kong" where people started to see things from the monster's P.O.V., I mean Kong's just a giant ape, it's not his fault that he's enormous and he can't walk down the streets of NYC without crushing a bus or two.  It's PEOPLE who were the real villains by taking him off of Skull Island and bringing him to the urban jungle, where he clearly didn't belong and didn't know his way around. 

Zombies are brainless, they're destructive, sure, but they're not responsible for their actions because the virus took over.  Ghosts, too, they're exempt, but "We Have a Ghost" is kind of what I'm talking about here, the ghost isn't scary at all, though he tried to be - he was just confused, that's all. Ah, but serial killers, there's the real menace, because they could be anybody, anywhere, hiding in plain sight, and once they start killing they'll be compelled to continue.  

But with these animated and "New Disney" films, there's been a real attempt to spin these stories the other way, and find reasons why the villain is NOT such a villain.  "Maleficent" and "Cruella" are two great examples, I couldn't believe they wanted to justify Cruella's behavior by giving her such a sad back-story and also making another character an even badder bad guy.  This was the woman who wanted to make fur coats out of puppies, in case we all forgot.  And now the animal rights people have probably affected this film "The Sea Beast", in which the lead character, a trained sea monster hunter, eventually comes to realize that they're just giant animals, they're not evil, they're just trying to defend themselves, put food on their family's underwater tables and in the end, they shouldn't be hunted for their horns or their skeletons or lamp oil or whatever, but we should learn to live in harmony with them, or else leave them alone. 

Come on, you just knew it was going to end this way, right?  We're a couple generations removed from the hippie-dippy 1960's, but the influence is still there, our parents or grandparents were the ones who tuned in and dropped out and decided that touring with the Grateful Dead wasn't just a fun thing to do, but it could also become an occupation and/or a community.  Reduce, reuse, recycle and treat animals like they're living creatures who deserve to grow up free-range and maybe not eaten. I know, I was raised as a meat-eater so I'm probably never going to change, but sure, save the cats and dogs and sea monsters, and I'll get back to you about the chickens and the pigs later, after breakfast maybe. 

Can you imagine reading "Moby Dick" and rooting for the whale?  Well, yeah, probably, these days kids are forced to read that book and they approach it TOTALLY different than their grandparents did. Time goes by and things change, and the general consensus now is probably that Moby Dick is the hero and Captain Ahab is the villain, also society is to blame for condoning the slaughtering of an entire species for ambergris and lamp oil.  OK, but what about "Jaws" (and by extension, "The Meg")?  Do we want to root for the SHARK in that movie?  Maybe not now, but give it a few generations and who knows, maybe.  Maybe WE'RE the bad guys for putting our tastiest people out in the shallow water near the beach where the sharks come by to snack.  It sounds ridiculous, but if you believe in God's plan, God created sharks too, and he gave them several rows of teeth for some reason, so why not go for a nice swim, I'm sure God will protect you, but remember, he also works in "mysterious ways".  

"The Sea Beast" also goes a little too far, in my opinion, in showing a "more perfect" version of the 1800's, or whenever this is supposed to take place - or is this set in some fantasy land that never existed?  Anyway, back in the 1800's society just wasn't this racially integrated, and also women would NOT have been part of a sailing vessel's crew.  Sure, we love to look at the past with rose-colored glasses, and sure, it would have been great if there was more equality back then, however, we all know there wasn't, so this is a fantasy film, in more ways than one.  And for a young black girl to join the crew of a ship, well right there are three reasons why it just wouldn't have happened.  Why pretend otherwise? 

The legendary Captain Crow is still searching for the giant Red Bluster that took his left eye many years ago (shades of Ahab's leg and Captain Hook's hand, I suppose) but after getting nearly killed battling a green sea monster, Crow starts talking about retiring and turning the ship over to Jacob, who he considers his adopted son.  Just ONE MORE mission, to catch that Red Bluster and prove that the old monster-hunting ways are still a good idea, what could possibly go wrong?  The King and Queen, meanwhile, want to replace the aniquated wooden vessels like "The Inevitable" with a new, top-of-the-line modern naval vessel "The Emperor".  Right, because techonological progress doesn't happen gradually, it's a very quick jump in this fantasy world from wooden ships to metal ones, let's just skip a few steps in-between, OK? 

But Jacob and the young stowaway Maisie get swallowed up by the Red Bluster, who carries them in its mouth back to its island, where Maisie gets a chance to bond with it and remove all the harpoons sticking out of it, once she's convinced Jacob to stop trying to kill it.  Really, one man with a spear is going to take down a sea monster 100 times his size?  It's just not logical. Eventually they convince the giant beast (now just called "Red") to take them back to civilization, where they make a speech about not killing the beasts any more, and not funding the monarchy's monster-based industrial complex any more.  Wow, it's really a "woke" movie about the futility of hunting sea monsters, isn't it?  They really went there...

I hear the next "Jurassic Park" movie is going to be all about dinosaur rights, I mean humans cloned them and brought them back, so we should really give up half of our land and resources because those dinos are large and hungry, plus they never asked to be cloned back into existence.  Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to find out what happened to that frozen ancient mammoth they found a few years ago in the now-thawing ice.  I thought they were going to let a few lucky people find out what mammoth meat might taste like, and well, let's just say I'm interested.  A new meat that nobody's tasted for a million years?  Yeah, sign me up. Sorry. 

The original plan was to have this film link to "Ghost Ship", also starring Karl Urban - however, remember I made a mistake when I first set up this chain, and it turned out that "Ghost Ship" was a dead-end, it didn't link up to anything else on my list.  So I had to cut that film and switch around the order of the Dan Stevens films so I could create another path, one that would then link up with another of my horror mini-chains, to form the almost month-long horror-baed programming this time around.

Also starring the voices of Karl Urban (last seen in "Acts of Vengeance"), Zaris-Angel Hator (last seen in "Morbius"), Jared Harris (ditto), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Helen Sadler, Xana Tang (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Brian T. Delaney, Ian Mercer (last seen in "The Legend of Tarzan"), Shannon Chan-Kent, Jim Carter (last seen in "Wonka"), Doon Mackichan (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), Rajia Baroudi, Kathy Burke (last seen in "Pan"), Paul Chowdhry (last seen in "Cruella"), David S. Lee (last seen in "Geostorm") 

RATING: 5 out of 10 kegs of ale (yeah, there's also quite a bit of drinking in this movie for kids...)

The Rental

Year 16, Day 280 - 10/6/24 - Movie #4,865

BEFORE: Anthony Molinari carries over from "The Forever Purge", where he played the unforgettable character "Mercenary #1".  I'm a bit concerned, because this looks like it might be the shakiest connection of the year so far - I'm trusting the IMDB here, because that's an uncredited role, he doesn't appear in the credits on-screen at the end, it means he was added later, perhaps claimed a role in the film himself, and that's not always accurate.  I'm going on faith here, I've contributed so many updates and changes to IMDB listings myself, particularly documentaries, so I'm hoping that's created enough good karma over the years that Mr. Molinari was really somewhere in "The Forever Purge".  

His part in "The Rental" is also uncredited, so it's a double whammy, twice the opportunity for the link to not be valid.  In tonight's film he plays the perhaps-equally- unnoticable role of "Man".  Yeah, this could be where my linking fails me, but since I was kind of Frankenstein-ing three smaller horror chains together this year, I was forced to depend on this link just to hit my quota and make everything work out.  So here's hoping.  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Barbarian" (Movie #4,558)

THE PLOT: Two couples rent a vacation home for what should be a celebratory weekend get-away.  

AFTER: Well, I worried for nothing, maybe, because Anthony Molinari does have a big role here, if the IMDB and the other parts of the internet are trustworthy, I just can't say what it is. "No spoilers" doesn't really work very well any more, because any time I look anything up, or even dub a film to DVD, there are bound to be spoilers.  Thank God this film's on Netflix, so I could go in almost completely cold, and not see anything before I was supposed to see it.  But damn, how do I even talk about it now?  

It was just over a year ago that I watched "Barbarian", another film that starts with the same premise, "Hey, let's rent an AirBnB, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?"  And that film itself was kind of a repeat of "Alone Together", a romance film that, like "Barbarian", started off with two people accidentally renting the SAME AirBnB for the same time period, but damn, there could not be two films that start off the same with totally different endings.  

In a similar way, "The Rental" kind of starts off like a relationship-driven movie, there are two couples, the guy from "The Bear" and the guy from "Downton Abbey" are brothers, and Charlie, the older brother, wants to celebrate a big business deal he just made, so he rents a beach house and brings along his wife Michelle, his brother Josh and his business partner (who is in a relationship with his brother).  Right from the start, I thought that Charlie and his business partner, Mina, were a little too chummy, I thought they were a couple because of the movie's first scene, where they're looking at beach house rentals together, something a couple might do.  

Then, after spending a couple days together at the beach house, with some people wanting to relax and others deciding to party with drugs and booze, it seems like Charlie's really got a thing for his business partner, because their partners go to bed and they end up in the hot-tub together.  I think there was a "Seinfeld" episode about something like this move called "The Switch", and as we all know, in the history of relationships, nobody has ever been able to pull off a successful partner switch.  Sure, maybe it's the booze and the ecstasy, but what's the plan here, start a new relationship with his brother's girlfriend and tell his wife to date his brother?  It's never going to work out, feelings are always going to be hurt. 

But you know, hot tubs and showers, people getting high and getting loose, things are bound to happen, and then the next morning there's regret and shame and an unwillingness to deal with what happened. Michelle and Josh go off on a hike, and Charlie and Mina are left alone in the house, they agree that their affair was a one-time thing and could never happen again.  Sure, sweep it all under the rug, that should work, there's no way the events of this vacation could come back to haunt them.  But you know it's going to, whether this is a relationship movie, or a horror movie, it's going to come up again, it's just a matter of time.  

Then suspicious things start to happen - during one of her dozen showers over this two-day weekend, Mina thinks she spots a camera in the shower head and a wire coming from the wall - that would mean that someone's been spying on them, and has footage of the affair, which moved from the hot tub to the shower, of course.  And there's a crawl-space beneath the house that's got a keypad lock on it, there's probably a room down there with a dozen monitors for hidden cameras and somebody making their own porn movies.  Sure, could happen, probably does happen.  Then Josh's dog goes missing, and they weren't supposed to bring a pet to the AirBnB in the first place, now they can't ask the surly racist caretaker if he's seen their dog, because that would tip him off that they broke the rules.  

But they need the caretaker to fix the hot tub, so reluctantly they ask him to come over, and when they confront him, things get out of hand.  That's all the plot I'm willing to divulge, but come on, you know it's October and this is a horror movie, not the relationshippy film it started out as, so probably it's not going to end well, is it?  That is one "Switch" that does really work here, that it starts out as one kind of genre film and ends up being another, though it really takes some time, you might think that the film got misclassified because it's such a slow boil. But once things start to happen, they really happen.  

The scariest thing is, with modern technology most of this, if not all, is quite possible. In the old days people had to build elaborate two-way mirror set-ups to be total pervs, but cameras are micro-sized now, and transmit wirelessly, and it's not too far of a stretch to think that this all really could happen.  Most people's lives might not be worth spying on, but then again, you never know.  This film was released in the summer of 2020, so at the height of the pandemic, a bit of bad luck there.  But it's on Netflix now, so be sure to catch it before it goes away.  And if a listing on AirBnB seems too good to be true, maybe it is. 

Also starring Dan Stevens (last seen in "Her Smell"), Alison Brie (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Sheila Vand (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Jeremy Allen White (last seen in "Movie 43"), Toby Huss (last heard in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"), Connie Wellman and Chunk (the dog). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 "Bro"-related puns