Legion

Year 3, Day 285 - 10/12/11 - Movie #998

BEFORE: From a tricky Devil to an angry God - and as I approach the end of the chain, let's discuss the end of the world, shall we?

The ubiquitous J.T. Walsh from "Needful Things" was also in "Sling Blade" with Lucas Black (last seen in "Friday Night Lights"), who appears tonight, all growed up.

THE PLOT: A group of strangers fight for the welfare of humanity.

AFTER: This starts out like a premise from "Twilight Zone" - a group of strangers in a remote roadside diner just before Christmas, who suddenly lose TV, radio, phone - all contact with the outside world.

Hmm, Dec. 24, a desert setting, and a very pregnant unwed mother? It starts to seem sort of biblically familiar. But when a couple of plagues and the angel/demons show up, the diner's patrons start to realize that the chapter at the other end of the New Testament might be more relevant.

Then a rogue angel shows up, and makes some of the same salient points about religion that I discussed yesterday. Good news is, God exists. Bad news is, he's kind of pissed off. Ready to scrap this whole humanity experiment and start over. Well, we gave it a good run, but I guess we just disappointed God in the end (or, did he disappoint us?).

Either way, it's up to a few stragglers to defend the diner and allow the child to be born, because apparently history repeats itself. This means the film mostly deteriorates into a shoot-em-up, and I kind of wish it had stuck to the philosophical stuff.

NITPICK POINT: If God really lost his faith in humanity, and felt there was no point in saving the world, why even allow the possibility of a savior being born? Isn't God, like, infallible or something? So how can there be a defect in his wise and wonderful plan? For that matter, why create angels (or humans) that disobey His rules? Damn, it's like I'm back in Sunday school again, asking tricky questions.

Also starring Paul Bettany (last seen in "The Tourist"), Dennis Quaid (last seen in "Suspect"), Kate Walsh (last seen in "Kicking & Screaming"), Charles S. Dutton (last seen in "A Time to Kill"), Tyrese Gibson, and Kevin Durand (last seen as the Blob in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine").

RATING: 6 out of 10 highway maps

SPOOK-O-METER: 8 out of 10, some really creepy demonic characters in this one.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I've got to suspend the project for another few days, since New York Comic-Con starts tomorrow, and I've got to be up bright and early to load a van. I maybe working long hours at the convention, and I'll be pretty tired, so the easiest thing is to finish the chain by watching the last two movies early next week. Now I'm sorry that I took that week off in September, since I apparently miscalculated the number of days I'd have before Comic-Con.

Needful Things

Year 3, Day 284 - 10/11/11 - Movie #997

BEFORE: I watched a whole bunch of Stephen King-based films last year, but this one came into my possession after October was over. A character carries over (Hmm, who could it be?) and we go from Christopher Plummer to Amanda Plummer, father to daughter. Have they ever acted in a film together? Well, if not, then Christopher was in "Twelve Monkeys" with Bruce Willis, who was in "Die Hard" with Bonnie Bedelia (last seen in "Presumed Innocent"), another of tonight's stars.

THE PLOT: Leland Gaunt comes to a pleasant little New England town, and opens a store.

AFTER: Yes, a nice little country store, run by a man who seems to know exactly what you want to buy, and what you're willing to do in return for it. Plus he seems to keep the thermostat turned up very high in his store, wonder what's up with that?

I like the notion that it doesn't take much to plunge a small town into chaos, the mysterious stranger sets just a few small things in motion, playing upon people's petty feuds and typical grievances, and things spiral out of control quite artfully. So everyone is living pretty close to the edge, and they just need a little push. Seems about right.

I'm kind of reminded of that guy a few years ago who started with a paper-clip, and made an internet trade for a pen, then traded the pen for a doorknob, traded that for a Coleman stove, and kept trading up until he got himself a house. The Stranger works with something akin to the same principle here - set a little chaos in motion, and eventually the souls will come. Except he does it with about the same bluntness that Tony Soprano's crew used to take over that sporting goods store.

It makes sense that the Devil (come on, you knew it was the Devil, right?) would thrive on chaos and pettiness - it was probably too obvious to have people sign those soul-binding contracts. Why go to so much trouble with those legal documents, when this is so much easier, and probably a lot more fun? Does it surprise anyone that the Devil is a sadistic bastard? Yes, in addition to being pure evil, he's also not very nice. Seems about right.

Oh, but he LOOKS nice. He's a kind old man, an innocent shopkeeper. What, did you think he'd look like a twisted demon with horns and a tail, holding a pitchfork? That's so 12th century. He's going to wear a nice suit, drive a bitchin' car (vanity is a sin, after all) and act like your best damn friend. Again, makes perfect sense.

And he's played quite artfully here by Max Von Sydow (last seen in "Minority Report"), the same guy who played Jesus in "The Greatest Story Ever Told". From Father Merrin in "The Exorcist" to Emperor Ming in "Flash Gordon" - that's what you call RANGE, kids. He can play sinner or saint, and everything in between.

So far, this is my favorite Stephen King story, of the ones I've seen, anyway. I like what it says about human nature, though it's a stretch to think that the Devil is actively tempting people on such a concrete basis. As the priest in this film says, if you believe in God then you must believe in the Devil. The reverse is true, so if the Devil's walking around, it proves the existence of God, right? But what if John Lennon got it right - Imagine there's no heaven...no hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today. (and not beating the crap out of each other)

I was raised Catholic, and in my own New England hometown there were a number of other churches. But I knew my parents wouldn't bring me to the "wrong" church, so I had to be going to the right one, and all those other churches and temples were somehow less "right". See, that's the kind of stinking thinking that's got the world where it is, and it leads to people blowing up buildings and each other. Maybe all of the faiths are right, maybe NONE of them are right. Each person has the power to think for themselves, and reject dogma that doesn't make sense, or seems like a fairy story.

The Devil, if he exists, doesn't need to do jack squat, not when religious people argue over fine points of irrelevant moral codes. My god can beat up your god, when both religions preach non-violence? Ridiculous. End of rant.

You know what you never see in a spy film or a comic book? Someone about to take over the world in a calm, rational manner. The super-hero or super-agent would burst into the villain's lair, and after the villain details his plans (and they always detail their plans) to loan money to Greece, leverage the U.S.A.'s debt to China, etc. etc., the hero would be forced to say, "Hey, that could work! And it's all perfectly legal. Good luck with that, I'll just let myself out." Nope, you never see that.

Also starring Ed Harris (last seen in "The Right Stuff"), J.T. Walsh (last seen in "Miracle on 34th Street"), and Don Davis (last seen in "Omen IV").

RATING: 8 out of 10 parking tickets

SPOOK-O-METER: 6 out of 10. What's scarier than the Devil is how low humanity can go.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Year 3, Day 283 - 10/10/11 - Movie #996

BEFORE: From the freakshow to a traveling carnival, and another film from a director who I've met. I got Terry Gilliam's autograph at a book signing years ago, and my boss has had a few professional dealings with him since. I didn't have this film on my list of horror films, but after reading the plot summary, I found it might be just the film I need to fit here and bridge the topics.

Linking from "Freaked" is simple, since Randy Quaid was also in "Brokeback Mountain" with Heath Ledger (last seen in "A Knight's Tale").

THE PLOT: A traveling theater company gives its audience much more than they were expecting.

AFTER: As I approach the 1,000 film mark, I've been building a list of the films I've seen from the IMDB, so that I can get an overview on the ratings, and how my ratings compare to the public's average scores. It seems like I gave out a lot more 7's and 8's back in Year 1, and I'm not sure whether that's because my general outlook toward movies was more favorable, or since I had a larger list, I was able to select better films.

And this film puts me in a delicate spot, because I like Terry Gilliam, and he's made some of my favorite films - "Time Bandits", "Brazil" and "12 Monkeys" are all contenders for slots in my all-time Top 10. And much respect for his work in Monty Python, on the TV or the big-screen, it's all good.

Something started slipping, though, with "Adventures of Baron Munchausen", which was still a great film, but I started to get the sense that the fantasy elements were starting to overtake the narrative ones, and that the director might have started to lose a little perspective on what works and what doesn't - and then came that documentary "Lost in La Mancha" that showed him struggling with the concepts involved in trying to make a new version of "Don Quixote". So, I worried about, and avoided, films like "Tideland" (still on the list, though).

The fantasy sequences in "Brazil" were brilliant allegories, and were used to enhance the main storyline. In "Baron Munchausen", "Fisher King", and even "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", the fantasy/drug-induced sequences were gradually taking over more and more of each film - to the point where I'm not sure if the man can make a straight, narrative film anymore.

Which brings us to tonight's film - a large majority of which takes place in a fantasy world, which might be inside the mind of Dr. Parnassus, or it might be some cosmic limbo where people's fates get decided, or possibly both. The title character can't resist making wagers with Mr. Nick (the Devil), and the commerce they trade in is the souls of other people.

As near as I can tell, Parnassus's carnival transports them to this other world, where they are given some form of choice, and one choice brings them to hell, and the other..., well, that's where things get fuzzy. Parnassus's original bet with the devil was that he could get people to choose imagination and wonderment over darkness and evil, but is that still the choice? With such broad visual allegories in the fantasy world, I honestly couldn't tell which choice would lead to what.

If you're going to detail some Faustian wager, it might help to clue the audience in on exactly what the rules are, and how this crazy process works. Now I've got to go to the message boards and try to figure out just what was happening, and what it all means.

Gilliam, of course, was dealt a bad hand when Heath Ledger died before completing the film - so we'll never know how good the film could have been, if more scenes with Ledger would have made the whole deal more coherent. Other prominent actors famously stepped in to complete his scenes, and fortunately this was easily acceptable by stating that the character's appearance changes within the fantasy sequences, with the world's appearance being dictated by the imagination of the at-risk soul.

When you consider the fragility of life, imagine the heartless choices that a producer or director has to make, which are often dictated by money rather than human sensitivity. Do you shoot your film in sequence, or work the scheduling in such a way that all of an expensive (or high-risk) actor's scenes are together? Do you increase the chances of getting the film completed, but compromise the artistic process?

Still, that being said, I desperately wanted some more coherency from this film, to go with the stunning visuals. Way too much oblique allegory - what the heck does it all mean?

Also starring Christopher Plummer (last heard in "9"), Johnny Depp (last seen in "The Tourist"), Jude Law (last seen in "The Aviator"), Colin Farrell (last seen in "S.W.A.T."), Tom Waits (last seen in "The Cotton Club"), Verne Troyer (last seen in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"), Andrew Garfield (last seen in "Lions for Lambs"), Lily Cole, with a cameo from Peter Stormare (last seen in "Bad Boys II").

RATING: 3 out of 10 gondolas

SPOOK-O-METER: 2 out of 10 - some creepy fantasy sequences, and a not-at-all-scary devil.

Freaked

Year 3, Day 282 - 10/9/11 - Movie #995

BEFORE: Two weeks ago, I knew exactly how I'd finish up the chain for the year, what my last 15 films were going to be. But sometimes watching a film sparks a connection to another film on the list, and I can't help but wonder if I should change the plan. Usually I've got a blank day or two in a month, so adding a film has little impact - but with the end in sight, if I add a film, I've got to delete another and push it into next year's plan. This is what happened after watching "Cirque du Freak", I was reminded that this film was on the list, though I had it in the "miscellaneous" category instead of horror. Back to back freakshows, I can't pass that up. And tomorrow's film is another last-minute addition, so I've got to cut two films from the final 7.

Linking's a snap, though, since Josh Hutcherson was in "Journey to the Center of the Earth" with Brendan Fraser, who was in "Furry Vengeance" with Brooke Shields.

THE PLOT: A vain actor, his best friend, and an activist end up at a mutant freak farm run by a weirdo scientist.

AFTER: Well, just like with a real freak show, you pays your money and you takes your chances. Now I'm regretting wasting one of the last slots of the year on this one.

The film is directed by Alex Winter, more famous as Bill S. Preston, Esquire from the "Bill & Ted" films. I met him a few times, for a few years he lived in the same NYC building as my boss, and so I'd occasionally share an elevator with him. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and it wasn't too hard to imagine that the elevator was a time-traveling phone booth, but I digress. Every New Yorker probably knows where a celebrity or two lives or hangs out, so maybe it's not that big a deal.

Unfortunately, it's tough to see just what he was trying to make of this film, it's almost got the tone of an "Airplane" or perhaps "Rocky Horror Picture Show", but what is it supposed to be a spoof of? Monster movies in general? Some of the designs are inventive, some seem to be tributes to the work of artist Basil Wolverton, but the humor is just strange, a lot of it seems to come out of left field, and a lot of it ends up missing the mark.

It's one of those films where I'm left scratching my head, wondering what the point was. Toxic chemicals are bad? Duh. Freaks are people, too? Nah, that doesn't seem right. Mostly this seems like it was designed to waste 80 minutes of people's time. Well, at least that's kind of short, it could have dragged on longer, I suppose. Geez, you know it's bad when the best thing I can say about a movie is that it was over pretty quickly.

Also starring William Sadler (last seen in "Kinsey, but more famous for playing the Grim Reaper in "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey"), Michael Stoyanov (last seen in "The Dark Knight", but more famous for being the older brother on "Blossom"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "Christmas Vacation"), with cameos from Mr. T (last seen in "Rocky III"), Morgan Fairchild, Bobcat Goldthwait (last seen in "Blow"), Deep Roy, Calvert DeForest (better known as Larry "Bud" Melman), and yes, that's supposedly an uncredited Keanu Reeves (last seen in "The Day the Earth Stood Still") as the dog-faced boy.

RATING: 2 out of 10 macaroons

SPOOK-O-METER: 3 out of 10, only because toxic mutations are kinda gross.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

Year 3, Day 281 - 10/8/11 - Movie #994

BEFORE: OK, I admit it, I screwed up - I forgot to check the celebrity birthdays for October, and if I had, I would have arranged these last few movies completely differently. I could have watched "Memoirs of an Invisible Man" today and given a Birthday SHOUT-out to Chevy Chase, and "Lord of Illusions" tomorrow on Scott Bakula's birthday would have been nice. Plus, I missed Neve Campbell's birthday by ONE DAY when I watched "The Craft", and there's an actress in tonight's film whose birthday is Oct. 11. So I temporarily forgot how well that system worked for the last 9 months, but it's too late to fix it now.

Backtracking out of the classic films, Norman Kerry was in "Tanks a Million" with Noah Beery, Jr., who was in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" with Burt Reynolds, who was in "Boogie Nights" with John C. Reilly (last seen in "The Aviator").

THE PLOT: A young boy meets a mysterious man at a freak show who turns out to be a vampire. After a series of events Darren must leave his normal life and go on the road with the Cirque Du Freak.

AFTER: It seems an odd bit of casting, choosing John C. Reilly to play a vampire, since that type of character is generally not known to have a sense of humor. His presence does lend an accidental comic overtone, but it's an indirect one.

This movie sort of suffers from that indecision of not knowing whether it wants to be a comedy with action and horror elements, or a horror story with comic elements, so it ends up being something of an in-between muddle, afraid to push too far in any one direction.

Plus, there's a lot of work to be done on the part of the viewer, keeping all the vampire rules straight, plus the freakshow rules. A lot of vampire movies, like "Underworld", "Blade", and even "Twilight" (I presume) come along and try to re-invent the wheel, adding daystalkers and serums and all kinds of new powers. This one places an importance on sharpened fingernails, running at super-speed, and the importance of cutting off ties with family and friends.

Plus there's a vampire council, and a difference of opinion about whether vamps should kill their prey, or just drink enough blood to get by. The ones who believe in killing are called the "Vampanese", which just sounds awkward. Plus there are full vampires and half-vampires - the half-vamps can stand daylight, and guard the coffins of the full-on vampires.

The freakshow has a wolfman, a bearded lady, a guy who can eat and regurgitate anything, plus a woman who can regenerate her limbs. What, no human blockhead? No sword swallowers?

And overseeing everything is a big man named Mr. Tiny. His first name creates a play on words that makes him seem very important, but they never explain exactly who he is (Death? Fate?) or what his ultimate plan is, but he does seem to have one.

It seems like such a simple story - boy runs off and joins the circus - but there's so much going on, and so many details (most of which seem very extraneous) that the movie just gets bogged down in its own mythology. I guess this is based on a series of young adult books - did they try to cram all the details from a set of books into one movie?

Also starring Chris Massoglia, Josh Hutcherson (last seen in "Journey to the Center of the Earth"), Michael Serveris, Ray Stevenson (last seen in "The Other Guys"), with cameos from Patrick Fugit, Colleen Camp (last seen in "The Ice Storm"), Ken Watanabe (last seen in "Inception"), Salma Hayek (last seen in "54"), Orlando Jones, Frankie Faison (last seen in "Down to Earth"), Willem Dafoe (also last seen in "The Aviator"), Jane Krakowski (last seen in "The Rocker") and Kristen Schaal (last seen in "Dinner for Schmucks").

RATING: 5 out of 10

SPOOK-O-METER: 4 out of 10. The vampire stuff is pretty tame, but the werewolf is quite intense.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Year 3, Day 280 - 10/7/11 - Movie #993

BEFORE: From a genetic freak to a deformed one, both characters like to conduct experiments - one in a lab, and the other with musical casting ones at the Paris Opera House. Both characters live with little contact with the outside world, and both are motivated by the fairer sex. Am I reaching?

Linking actors from "The Fly II" is going to be tough, but here goes - Lee Richardson was also in "Brubaker" with Robert Redford, who was also in "Little Fauss and Big Halsey" with Noah Beery, Jr., who happened to be in the 1941 film "Tanks a Million" with Norman Kerry, who plays Raoul in tonight's film. So there.

THE PLOT: A mad, disfigured composer seeks love with a lovely young opera singer.

AFTER: I've seen the Broadway production once, and again done by a high-school cast, plus I watched the 2004 film version with Gerard Butler. So I doubt I'll find anything new in the story tonight, this is purely a follow-up for the sake of being a completist.

It's significant to note the date of this film, 1925 - that predates "Dracula", "Frankenstein", "The Wolf Man" AND "The Invisible Man". So this really kicked off Universal's parade of movie monsters, and served as the high watermark for the career of Lon Chaney.

It's also interesting to note what elements of the story were dropped from future incarnations of the story - Andrew Lloyd Webber was right to jettison Raoul's brother and Carlotta's mother - really, they serve no purpose in the story, and they're both not missed.

Future versions also portray the Phantom as a mainly attractive fellow, except for a few scars. Chaney's Phantom is a true fright, he looks like Voldemort in the middle of electro-shock therapy. I got chills when Christine ripped his mask off, and I've seen that bit dozens of times.

The ending was a little rough as well - the Phantom doesn't fare so well in this one. In the Webber version he's left alone in his underground lair, but in this one he's quite graphically beaten by a mob and tossed into the drink. Sorry, spoiler alert.

I watched a restored version, with constant music throughout (sometimes warranted by the scene, sometimes incidental) and while it wasn't completely colorized, every scene change was punctuated by a change in tint - so the underground scenes were tinted purple, the stage performances were pink, etc. Slightly more interesting than watching black and white.

But it still seems a bit futile to portray operatic performances in a silent film - audiences couldn't hear the singers, so how did they know whether Christine was better than Carlotta? Maybe this is what motivated them to add sound to the pictures, and then to invent color.

RATING: 3 out of 10 trapdoors.

SPOOK-O-METER: another 3 out of 10.

The Fly II

Year 3, Day 279 - 10/6/11 - Movie #992

BEFORE: Well, the movie did set up its own sequel pretty well. Actor John Getz carries over, along with stock footage of Jeff Goldblum and a Geena Davis look-a-like. The audience was probably desperate to find out - what does a half-fly baby look like? They pulled the same stunt on the "V" mini-series back in the day...

THE PLOT: A few months after a hideously deformed Seth Brundle was mercifully killed by his lover Veronica, she dies giving birth to Seth's son Martin. Martin is raised by Seth's evil employer Anton Bartok, who requires Martin's help to solve the problems of the Telepods, believing the Telepods are the key for worldwide domination.

AFTER: I'm left wondering just how necessary this film was - I'm thinking, not very.

What does it really have to say about genetics, or science tampering with nature, or anything, really? The central character is about 1/4 fly (I guess...) - is that really enough to justify him becoming a genetic freak? Would the recessive genes really take over when he hit adulthood.

Which, in this case, is about 5 years - he ages at an accelerated rate, like the kids on soap operas so they can get them into dating storylines quicker. (Kids on soap operas age faster, and people in comic books don't age at all.)

Speaking of comic books, I was just telling someone yesterday about a Spider-Man storyline called "Disassembled" a few years back, in which Spider-Man mutated into a giant spider, and after emerging from a cocoon-like state, Peter Parker looked normal, but had gained the power to shoot webbing from his wrists (to more closely match the Spider-Man seen in the Raimi movies). Problem was, the different Spider-Man writers apparently didn't communicate with each other, and 6 months later they did a storyline called "The Other", in which Spider-Man appeared to die, but instead entered a cocoon-like state, from which he emerged with even more new powers. The character determined it was probably a "once-in-a-lifetime" event, except a nearly similar event had occured just a few months prior. Whoopsie.

Anyway, the Spider-Man stuff is bogus, because a bite from a spider wouldn't change someone's DNA. How many people have been bitten by snakes and not turned into snakes, or snake-men? I know, it was a radioactive spider, but radiation doesn't give people powers or change their DNA, radiation makes people sick. But I guess The Amazing Cancer-Man wouldn't sell many books.

As for Martin Brundle, who spends his nights in a windowless room, with little contact with the outside world, conducting pointless experiments to keep himself entertained - I feel ya, buddy.

Well, keep working on those teleporters, you'll get it right eventually. And at least sadistic security guards, and people who are cruel to lab animals get what they deserve, we hope.

Starring Eric Stoltz (last seen in "Rob Roy"), Daphne Zuniga (last seen in "The Sure Thing"), Lee Richardson (last seen in "Prizzi's Honor").

RATING: 2 out of 10 hidden cameras

SPOOK-O-METER: 4 out of 10.