Frankenweenie

Year 5, Day 300 - 10/27/13 - Movie #1,568

BEFORE:  I forgot to mention that Tom Kenny was also in the cast list for "Hotel Transylvania", listed as, umm, "other voices", and he carries over into tonight's film, where's he's listed among "angry townspeople".  OK, it's a bit of a cheat since he didn't play a named character either time, but even if you don't allow me that, then Kevin James links through the film "The Dilemma" to Winona Ryder. 

THE PLOT:  Young Victor conducts a science experiment to bring his beloved dog Sparky back to life, only to face unintended, sometimes monstrous, consequences.

AFTER: This is the sort of film that an animation buff would watch, and then immediately wonder which company did the stop-motion animation, since there are probably under a dozen companies on the scene who could do this.  Tim Burton has now directed or produced three animated spooky films, and used a different animation company each time - for "Corpse Bride" he used Laika, a company I've worked for, and this time it was MacKinnon & Saunders.  If their style looks familiar, they've done quite a few commercials for Puffs tissues - and their style sort of replicates the old Rankin-Bass style from the old holiday specials, like "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".  Here, of course, it's used for something more spooky than Christmas-y.

This is the story of Dr. Frankenstein (again, see, it's the SCIENTIST, not the monster) transposed to middle school, where he and his classmates have to compete with science projects.  At the same time, his father wants him to be more involved with sports, so an ill-fated attempt at playing baseball leads to tragic consequences for his pet dog, Sparky.  This has a better message than last night's film, because nearly everyone can sympathize with the loss of a pet.  However, Victor doesn't let go, he uses science to re-animate the corpse of the dog.  I suppose anyone who's lost a loved pet would want to do the same.

All this is fine, until his classmates learn of the feat, starting with Edgar "E" Gore, who looks just like the classic hunchbacked Igor, and they try to replicate his experiment, with more terrible results.  I'm guessing that since this is based on a short Tim Burton made long ago, this is the part of the story that was added on, because it sort of feels like this is where the story takes a right turn.

There are plenty of Easter eggs, visual and verbal shout-outs to classic horror films, like the hairdo from "Bride of Frankenstein", a teacher who resembles Vincent Price, and a giant Gamera-like turtle, named Shelley (as in Mary Shelley).  But the later events in the film also serve to counteract the original message, which should have been about learning to let go.  Victor does not let go, and the film ends up contradicting its own point.

Also starring the voices of Martin Short (last heard in "Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil"), Catherine O'Hara (last seen in "Wyatt Earp"), Martin Landau (last seen in "The X-Files"), Charlie Tahan, Conchata Farrell, with a cameo from Christopher Lee (last seen in "Season of the Witch").

RATING: 6 out of 10 sea monkeys

Hotel Transylvania

Year 5, Day 299 - 10/26/13 - Movie #1,567

BEFORE:  I got a little sick yesterday after breakfast, probably one of those stomach bugs that's going around - I was just glad to know it wasn't the zombie virus.  Best thing I could do was to just not eat anything for 24 hours and clean out the whole system, which was easy to do since I didn't have an appetite anyway.  After doing that, I usually find that any food tastes amazing, no matter what it is. 

Linking from "Shaun of the Dead", Bill Nighy was also in "G-Force" with Steve Buscemi.

THE PLOT: Dracula, who operates a high-end resort away from the human world, goes into overprotective mode when a boy discovers the resort and falls for the count's teen-aged daughter.

AFTER:  This film was mostly fun, a bit too cutesy and completely not scary at all.  I don't know what it is about today's society where people feel that kids can't be "traumatized" by anything scary in a film.  Don't get me wrong, I was an impressionable kid and after seeing "Poltergeist" I had nightmares for a week - and after that I tended to avoid horror films, but that was my choice.  But to protect all children everywhere, they've now taken all the scariness out of vampires, werewolves, mummies, etc.  I suppose the process began with "Count Chocula" and "FrankenBerry" cereals, moved through "Young Frankenstein", and it's just kept rolling.  The scariest movie monsters of the 1930's, like Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster are now, quite literally, cartoonish.

(ASIDE: Yes, I said "Frankenstein's Monster", not "Frankenstein".  Because Frankenstein was the name of the SCIENTIST, not the monster.  The novel made a terrible mistake by not giving the monster a name, and people over time have confused the monster with the man.  But general laziness is not an excuse for continuing the mistake.  How many people worked on this film?  And not one of them could find the time to do a little research and find the correct name for the character?)

When I was a kid, there seemed to be a lot more fear in the Halloween, and not just because of erroneous reports of razor blades in apples and pins in Snickers bars.  For one day a year, we were allowed to believe that the veil between this world and the spirit world was thinner, and perhaps one could commune with spirits.  Fast forward to the present, and Dracula's throwing a birthday party for his daughter.  (OK, I suppose the process really began in the 1960's with the novelty hit "Monster Mash", which riffed off a similar theme.  It's hard to be scared of Dracula and the Wolfman when you think of them as part of a party jam band.)

But geez, what a way to cut all the scariness out of the "new" Dracula.  He a businessman running a hotel, he cares about his daughter, he even drinks a blood substitute - and he's afraid of humans?  What happened to Vlad the Impaler, feeding off of humans, and all that?  In fact all of the movie monsters are afraid of humans, including the Invisible Man, who technically is a human, and the werewolf, who used to be human - so you'd think they would at least know a little bit about human culture, right?

Well, the film doesn't really worry about any of the technicalities.  I admit there's some clever stuff in the hotel set-up, like having zombie bellhops and witches as maids (because they ride brooms, get it?) but nothing else really gets about grade-school humor level - which is their target audience, no doubt, but the best animated films also aim a little higher.  I suppose you can take some of this as a metaphor for parents letting go when their kids want to leave the nest, but this is an odd message in a film otherwise aimed at 8-year-olds.

Another odd message is implying that people will only fall in love once, and if they let that person get away, they'll never be truly happy.  What?  In a film that otherwise Hallmark-ifies classic monsters, why even suggest that people will be miserable when they grow up, and pining over lost loves?  That seems very out of place.

Dracula himself here fights against his own image - even within a cartoon that reduces him to a stereotype, his character complains that the world has reduced him to a stereotype.  The monsters come face to face with a group of fans, a MonsterCon of sorts, and this in itself is a little odd.  Do the monsters want to be loved, or feared?  There doesn't seem to be a clear answer, just contradictory logic.

Also starring the voices of Adam Sandler (last seen in "Reign Over Me"), Andy Samberg (last seen in "The Watch"), Kevin James (last seen in "Here Comes the Boom"), Fran Drescher (last seen in "Jack"), Selena Gomez, David Spade (last seen in "Reality Bites"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Never Been Kissed"), Cee-Lo Green, Jon Lovitz (last seen in "3000 Miles to Graceland"), Chris Parnell, Rob Riggle. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 flying tables

Shaun of the Dead

Year 5, Day 298 - 10/25/13 - Movie #1,566

BEFORE: The third "cult film" of the week - I know this one has a loyal cult following because I've often seen people at Comic Con dressed like the lead character.  And this may sound weird, but after watching this week's other cult classics, I'm anxious to get to films about zombies and vampires, because at least they tend to make some logical sense about how these creatures work and how to defeat them, right?

Linking from "Naked Lunch", there are a few different ways I can go - but let's link from Ian Holm through the "Hobbit" films to his co-Frodo, Martin Freeman, who's in this film somewhere.  (Peter Weller would also link to Simon Pegg through "Star Trek Into Darkness", for one)

THE PLOT:  A man decides to turn his life around by winning back his ex-girlfriend, reconciling his relationship with his mother, and dealing with an entire community that has returned from the dead to eat the living.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Hot Fuzz" (Movie #167)

AFTER: Ah, definitely the most fun movie I've seen in a while.  I don't think I'd programmed anything comic for the last month, so this sort of stood out in that respect.  Again, I tend to not watch straight horror films, and the whole zombie genre is one I've intentionally ignored - I haven't seen "28 Days Later" or "Evil Dead" or "Dawn of the Dead" or anything like that.  But I'm sure that the genre was just begging for a spoof.

Simon Pegg is best when he's playing these underdog characters, like he did in "Run, Fatboy, Run" - maybe not as much fun as he is in the "Star Trek" films, but he seems like a guy who knows how to have a good time, despite playing these hangdog loser types.  Nothing seems to go right for him, we see him screw things up with his girlfriend, his job and his mother + stepfather, and meanwhile we get to see bits of news reports in the background that something more sinister is going on, possibly due to an infection or some kind of space meteor - we're never really sure, but it's not that important.

Once Shaun wakes up and goes through his morning routine, only to find the streets deserted except for the start of the zombie horde - the film sort of takes an odd left turn, which is fine because the opening bits were all just set-up material anyway.  And then there's a bit of a learning curve while everyone figures out how to take the zombies down - namely cut off their heads or bash in their brains (geez, everybody knows THAT).  But eventually the Zombie nation keeps growing and growing, and our heroes are forced to take shelter in the local pub - makes sense, since the place is probably stocked with food and drink, and used to dealing with unruly crowds.  It's just too bad that the lights and the jukebox also attract the walking dead...

In fact there are some quite subtle jabs at not just zombie films (zombies are confused with tired and/or drunk people several times, and vice versa) but film language in general - an almost-complete sentence is formed from different TV clips as someone with a very short attention span is clicking around for information.  Nice touch.

And I can sort of see how this would get better after multiple viewings - once you know what to look for and how comic the tone is, there's probably a bunch of inside jokes that you can pick up, which I probably missed.

But of course I'm left with a lot of questions about zombies, which I don't expect this film to answer seriously, and I doubt that even serious zombie films tackle.  What do the zombies eat when they run out of human flesh?  Do they eat each other, or animals?  What's the life expectancy of a zombie, both with and without food (assuming it doesn't get its brain bashed in...)?  How much damage can be done to a person eaten by a zombie until he just plain dies, and doesn't turn into a zombie himself?  Clearly some more research into this non-real thing is required.

Also starring Simon Pegg (last seen in "Star Trek Into Darkness"), Nick Frost (last seen in "Paul"), Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis (last seen in "Nicholas Nickelby"), Bill Nighy (last seen in "Total Recall"), Dylan Moran, Peter Serafinowicz, Penelope Wilton (last seen in "The French Lieutenant's Woman"), with cameos from Rafe Spall (last seen in "Prometheus"), Matt Lucas (last heard in "Gnomeo and Juliet"), and Chris Martin from Coldplay.

RATING: 5 out of 10 shotgun shells

Naked Lunch

Year 5, Day 296 - 10/23/13 - Movie #1,565

BEFORE: This one's been on the books for a long time, because if I'm working thematically, how the heck do I link to a plotline like THIS?  I'm just going to lump it in with Hallo-weirdness and hope for the best.  Linking from "Repo Man", Harry Dean Stanton was also in a film titled "The Fourth War" with Roy Scheider (last seen in "All That Jazz" back in 2011).

THE PLOT:  After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally murders his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in a port town in North Africa.

AFTER: Umm, yeah, so THAT happened.  I've had to do a little background research on this film, only to find out that the original novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs was pretty darn un-filmable, being the loose narrative of a junkie whose chapters can be read in any possible order.  They kept some elements of the book, like Dr. Benway, and the fictional settings of Interzone and Annexia, but that's about where the similarities cease.

Director David Cronenberg daringly took these pieces and mixed in elements of Burrough's own life, such as accidentally (?) shooting his own wife while playing the "William Tell" game, and the main character here is also an author who ends up writing a stream-of-consciousness story called "Naked Lunch", but also worked in what this film is ultimately most famous for - giant bugs.

There's puppetry and FX worked in, since this film was made in the early 90's, before CGI was fully perfected.  This lends it a tangible, organic quality, but yet also makes things look a little low-rent by comparison.  I think they were going for something approaching "X-Files"-meets-"Brazil" status, with intelligent bugs using humans as agents to file reports, but everything's just so unclear and obtuse that it's darn near incoherent.  The audience is left to fill in a lot of gaps about what's going on, and what it all means, to the point of near madness.

Also, it's worth pointing out that this "bug powder" our hero uses to exterminate roaches also seems to have some hallucinogenic properties - he and several other characters become addicted to the stuff, regardless of its poisonous qualities - so there's the possibility that everything on screen after a certain point is not really happening, except in his own mind.  Perhaps he's seeing the giant talking bugs that also function as typewriters and other objects as his way of dealing with other stuff.  Who knows what goes on in the mind of a drug addict while using?

But the events in the real world that are then being clouded by the hallucinations are somewhat unsettling too.  It almost seems like the main character (possibly representing Burroughs himself) has come up with a convoluted way to explain his sexual and violent tendencies.  There can't really be justification for sleeping with another man's wife, or shooting your own wife so you can go have sex with younger men, but if there could be, a creative writer would be the one to find it.  But damn, what a long way to go to find yourself.  If that's really what's taking place here, and I'm not sure it is.

But unclear and obtuse is often confused with symbolic and artistic, and that's probably what pushes this film into the "cult classic" category.  Again, I'm not seeing it, probably because I'm stuck at the "WTF?" stage.  Sure, the whole thing's a metaphor, but for WHAT?  I guess when he enters "Annexia" at the end, that's a metaphor for becoming a writer, and Burroughs had stated that he never would have become a writer if he hadn't shot his wife.  Yeah, good luck with that - let me know how it goes.

Also starring Peter Weller (last seen in "Star Trek Into Darkness"), Judy Davis (last seen in "Marie Antoinette"), Ian Holm (last seen in "The Madness of King George"), Julian Sands (last seen in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo").

RATING:  2 out of 10 "Mugwumps"

Repo Man

Year 5, Day 295 - 10/22/13 - Movie #1,564

BEFORE:  Took a few days off and went to the Poconos, during which time I somehow turned a year older.  But it was good to get away, after somehow surviving New York Comic Con - knowing I was going to take a long weekend was something that was keeping me motivated.  We went to this little resort with cabins and a killer buffet, hit a casino for a few hours on Saturday, a couple of PA diners and then just generally lazed around and played iPad games until I could watch the Red Sox game.  That's a pretty darn good weekend, all things considered.  Now I'm refreshed and ready to watch 8 Halloween-type movies in 10 days - no problem.

Linking from "The Raven", Jack Nicholson was also in "The Missouri Breaks" with Harry Dean Stanton - as I proved last week.

THE PLOT:  Young punk Otto becomes a repo man after helping to steal a car, and stumbles into a world of wackiness as a result.

AFTER: I like to say it's impossible for me to make a mistake in my scheduling - just as it's weird when people say they go off to "find themselves".  Like, dude, you're right THERE - remember, wherever you go, there you are.  But this is a case where I think I mixed up what little I knew about "Repo Man" with what little I knew about "Eraserhead", another cult classic I hope to watch someday.

So, there's not much here that ties in with Halloween - no ghosts or ghouls or goblins, but there is weirdness, and I'll have to roll with that.  There's a Chevy Malibu with a glowing trunk that seems to disintegrate people who open it, and that's pretty weird.  And this takes place among the backdrop of a young man learning the ropes in the repo business - it's a stretch but I can console myself that as this guy is growing up and becoming (sort of) responsible, I'm dealing with another birthday.  (It's funny, I started this process shortly after I turned 40, and now that I'm 45, I'm feeling it would be more responsible if I stopped staying up so late watching movies...)

What does follow after the magical / mysterious / possibly alien car is found doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I don't think it's supposed to.  In the same way that the sorcerers' spells in "The Raven" can't be explained - magic is just technology we don't understand yet, after all.  It's also kind of hard to tell if this is supposed to be a comedy or not - it's more of a head-scratcher, and I'm hard pressed to figure out why this is considered a cult classic.

I can almost see how this inspired films like "Fight Club", "Pulp Fiction" and maybe even "The Big Lebowski", since they all have that weird sort of destructive tone to them, but I just don't think it's as good as those other films.

Also starring Emilio Estevez (last seen in "The Mighty Ducks"), Tracey Walter (last seen in "Mighty Joe Young"), Olivia Barash, Sy Richardson, Richard Foronjy.

RATING: 3 out of 10 slim jims

The Raven (1963)

Year 5, Day 290 - 10/17/13 - Movie #1,563

BEFORE: I was going ease into the Halloween films by linking to "Repo Man", but then I started to go through the cast lists for the upcoming chain, and who turned up but Nicholson again!  That moved this film right to the top of the list, creating a link from "The Border".

THE PLOT: A magician who has been turned into a raven turns to a former sorcerer for help.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Raven" (2012) (Movie #1,434)

AFTER:  (with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe)

Late last night, I watched "The Raven",
in my movie-watching haven,
In the man-cave of my house's lowest floor.

It's a low-budget horror movie,
from an era that was groovy -
The 60's, they were silly to the core.

In that decade Roger Corman
made himself the foreman
Of Poe adaptations, sometimes filled with gore.  

Though the poem's famous for its rhyming,
the film relies on comic timing
And Nicholson, at the age of twenty-four.

The lead is played by Vincent Price
(he spoke in "Thriller", made it nice)
Pining for the wife he did adore.

With Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre,
they had to add a lot of story
Because the poem's plot is such a bore.

The three play somewhat bumbling sorcerers,
who become, in turn, each other's torturers,
As a Gothic fortress they explore.

As they move on through the castle,
with traps that make it quite a hassle,
Searching for one's thought-dead love, Lenore...

The wizards' alliances are tested,
until all but one are bested
And the rest are lying on the floor.

Though the final battle was inspired,
by that time I was quite tired
My eyes closed, and I began to snore.

If you believe, though it's absurd,
that a man can turn into a bird
And come tap-tapping on a wizard's door...

Though I found it difficult  to believe,
watch this film on Hallow's Eve,
With all the silliness it has in store.

But if this poem has offended,
(Stick with me now, it's almost ended)
Just do this, and all is mended -
see what E.A. Poe intended
By picking up his classic tales of lore.

As for the movie, RATING: 4
(Quoth the reviewer: "Nothing more.")

The Border

Year 5, Day 288 - 10/15/13 - Movie #1,562

BEFORE: I'm back from New York Comic-Con, and I took an extra day to get back into a normal rhythm - normal for me, that is, which usually involves staying up really late and oversleeping.  I can't get away with that if I have to be in the convention center before the crowd each morning.  I've got new "war stories" to tell, but this is not really the appropriate forum.

Jack Nicholson carries over from "The Missouri Breaks" and starts the pre-Halloween chain - though I'm not going through "The Shining" or "Wolf", since I watched those already.  I've got another way to get there...

THE PLOT:  A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.

AFTER: This was a pretty straight-forward little character piece, with questions of morality as a border agent tries to do the "right thing", but finds that his definition of that phrase keeps shifting as the circumstances around him change.  He tries to avoid corruption, but it pays better and allows his wife to keep buying new furnishings.  But he draws the line at murder and baby-stealing, so he's forced to make a stand against his own co-workers.

I don't have much to add tonight, I admit I'm not bringing much to the table, maybe my head is just somewhere else or I'm still coming down off of Comic-Con.  Maybe I don't care about the whole immigration issue as much as I could, or should, I don't know.  Maybe I picked the wrong movie on the wrong night, or I'm just not feeling it for whatever reason.  Nicholson once said that this was the best movie he ever appeared in, and I'm not really seeing that.

Also starring Harvey Keitel (last seen in "Mortal Thoughts"), Valerie Perrine (last seen uncredited in "Diamonds Are Forever"), Warren Oates (last seen in "In the Heat of the Night"), Dirk Blocker, Elpidia Carrillo, Lupe Ontiveros.

RATING: 3 out of 10 coyotes