Eight is Enough

Dracula (1931): adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston from the play by Garrett Fort adapted from the novel by Bram Stoker; directed by Tod Browning; starring Bela Lugosi (Dracula), Helen Chandler (Mina), David Manners (John Harker), Dwight Frye (Renfield), and Edward Van Sloan (Van Helsing): This stagey, bloodless Dracula was a big hit in 1931. It has the hallmarks of early sound film -- that super-heavy, static sound camera pretty much necessitated a nearly immobile, stagey shot. 

Bela Lugosi is great, especially in the first section set at Castle Dracula. Dwight Frye is a hoot as Renfield, the foundational figure for so many crazed characters to come in horror movies. Once the action moves to England, things become a bit tedious. And the censorship people ensure that Dracula dies off-screen with barely an "Argh!" to mark his passing. F.W. Murnau's bootleg Dracula, Nosferatu (1922), is a far superior work, as are many of the later adaptations. Still, Lugosi remains a bracing presence. Recommended.

John Carpenter's Vampires (1998): adapted by Don Jakoby from the novel by John Steakley; directed by John Carpenter; starring James Woods (Jack Crow), Daniel Baldwin (Montoya), Sheryl Lee (Katrina), Thomas Ian Griffith (Valek), Tim Guinee (Father Guiteau), and Maximillian Schell (Cardinal Alba): One of John Carpenter's crappier offerings. Oh, sure, it has its moments. But it's crippled by a totally uninteresting vampire antagonist (Thomas Ian Griffith), sloppy writing, and the perplexing choice to have Daniel Baldwin play a character named 'Montoya,' complete with dyed-black hair to, I suppose, trick the audience into thinking Baldwin is Hispanic. The treatment of women is a bit... problematic, given that women in this movie are either prostitutes or vampires (or in Sheryl Lee's case, both).  I was entertained, but not a lot. Lightly recommended.

Krampus (2015): written by Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields, and Todd Casey; directed by Michael Dougherty; starring Adam Scott (Tom), Toni Collette (Sarah), David Koechner (Howard), Emjay Anthony (Max), and Conchata Ferrell (Aunt Dorothy): Michael Dougherty's ode to Gremlins isn't as good as Gremlins (which was also set at Christmas), which may be more an indictment of studio interference than anything else. Krampus, which visits the Germanic anti-Santa Claus on a small American town that has forgotten the meaning of Christmas, needs sharper editing in its first half, which seems to run on forever while we wait for Anti-Claus to show up.

Thankfully, Krampus and his twisted minions -- horrible snowmen, horrifying toys, homicidal gingerbread men, and a really nice looking evil Christmas-tree Angel -- do arrive to scare and stalk Adam Scott's family, who are too angry and fractious for The True Meaning of Christmas to take hold. There are some lovely effects both mechanical and CGI animating the various monsters, including Krampus itself. And there's a real sense of menace as things roll towards the end.

Depending on one's interpretation, Krampus either manages a treacly happy ending, a slightly menacing happy ending, or a refreshingly bleak ending in which not even a baby is safe from damnation. Seriously. At 100 minutes, Krampus feels about 15 minutes too long and two sugar packets too sweet for some stretches. But I still enjoyed it. I also enjoyed that it offers an odd commentary on this year's U.S. election: Republican or Democrat, Krampus is taking none of your self-serving bullshit if you're committed to a world where only money matters. Recommended.

The Forest (2016): written by Nick Antosca, Sarah Cornwell, and Ben Ketai; directed by Jason Zada; starring Natalie Dormer (Sara/ Jess Price) and Taylor Kinney (Aiden): Dull film set mostly in Japan's 'Suicide Forest' (but filmed in Serbia) wastes a solid turn by Natalie Dormer as twin sisters. That this movie is actually inferior to the straight-to-cable, bafflingly titled The Last Halloween/ Grave Halloween is an extraordinary feat of wasted opportunity. Among other things, features characters following a river by walking away from said river at a 90-degree angle. OK! Not recommended.

Joy (2015): written by Annie Mumolo and David O. Russell; directed by David O. Russell; starrimg Jennifer Lawrence (Joy), Robert De Niro (Rudy), Bradley Cooper (Neil Walker), Diane Ladd (Mimi), Edgar Ramirez (Tony), Virginia Madsen (Terry), Isabella Rossellini (Trudy), and Dascha Polanco (Jackie): Another enjoyable David O. Russell/Jennifer Lawrence/Bradley Cooper movie, not up to the standards of American Hustle or Silver Linings Playbook but still solid, quirky drama. 

It's all expressionistically based on a real person, nearly broke new Jersey housewife Joy, who's suppressed her creative and financial acumen for much of her adult life until she invents a new type of mop. With some aid and a lot of the exact opposite of aid from family members and friends, she eventually becomes a home-shopping success. 

The acting is fine -- fine enough that it sometimes takes time to register what utter dinks Joy's father (De Niro), his new girlfriend (Rossellini), and Joy's half-sister can be, and are, most of the time. A story of female empowerment through engineering and financial acumen is a pretty unusual thing. And the legal ins and outs of patent law end up being pretty gripping. The ending needs more work, and the partial-flashback-with-narration structure never quite seems to gel. Nonetheless, Lawrence is splendid, as is most of the supporting cast. Recommended.

Jack Reacher (2012): adapted by Christopher McQuarrie from the novel One Shot by Lee Child; directed by Christopher McQuarrie; starring Tom Cruise (Jack Reacher), Rosamund Pike (Helen), Richard Jenkins (Rodin), David Oyelowo (Emerson), and Werner Herzog (The Zec): Surprisingly fun thriller with 5'7" Tom Cruise playing novelist Lee Child's 6'4" hero Jack Reacher. The Usual Suspects screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie knows how to write a decent script and how to direct it. A long cameo appearance by Robert Duvall is a bit wonky. Surprisingly for a modern thriller, there's neither any real development of a love interest for Reacher -- he and Rosamund Pike remain platonic pals -- nor any touchy-feely character development for Cruise's character. He's just a hyper-competent guy living off the grid. Recommended.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014): written by David Koepp and Adam Cozad, based on characters created by Tom Clancy; directed by Kenneth Branagh; starring Chris Pine (Jack Ryan), Keira Knightley (Cathy Muller), Kevin Costner (Thomas Harper), and Kenneth Branagh (Viktor Cherevin): Paramount attempts to reboot the Jack Ryan franchise by moving the characters about 40 years forwards in time and turning Ryan from a naval expert to a financial wizard. The first half actually goes pretty well, with Chris 'NuCaptain Kirk' Pine playing Ryan as a sort of Captain Kirk of the banking system. Indeed, the relationship between Pine and his CIA recruiter-turned-controller Kevin Costner plays an awful lot like the Kirk/Pike relationship in the 2009 Trek reboot. Kenneth Branagh, slumming again, does an able job. But the script goes completely awry in the second half, degenerating into an endless car chase that satisfies not at all. And let's face it -- computer-based financial warfare just isn't as interesting in a cinematic sense as a submarine chase. Ultimately, not recommended.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959): adapted by Peter Bryan from the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle; directed by Terence Fisher; starring Peter Cushing (Sherlock Holmes), Andre Morrell (Doctor Watson), Christopher Lee (Sir Henry Baskerville), Marla Landi (Cecile Stapleton), Ewen Solon (Stapleton), and Francis de Wolff (Dr. Mortimer): Zippy, relatively faithful Sherlock Holmes movie casts an energetic though diminutive Peter Cushing as the great detective and Christopher Lee as the target of the Baskerville curse. This came from Hammer Films, generally best known for horror in the 1950's and 1960's -- indeed, the interiors of Baskerville Hall previously served as Dracula's home in Horror of Dracula. As usual for Hammer, the movie looks great and moves with great pace to its conclusion. It's a shame Hammer didn't make more Holmes movies. Recommended.

Oscars and Monsters and Poor Career Choices

The Revenant (2015): adapted by Alejandro Inarritu and Mark L. Smith from the novel by Michael Punke; directed by Alejandro Inarritu; starring Leonardo DiCaprio (Hugh Glass); Tom Hardy (John Fitzgerald); and Domhnall Gleason (Captain Henry): Set in early 19th-century Montana and South Dakota, The Revenant is an odyssey of survival and revenge for guide Hugh Glass, played almost silently by Leonardo DiCaprio in a role that won him his first Best Actor Oscar. 

There's nothing wrong with that acting -- boy, does Glass suffer, and boy is he covered in filth and wounds for most of the movie! Alejandro Inarritu won his second straight directorial Oscar (the first was for the previous year's Birdman), and he certainly puts on a grimy, Sublime, haunting show of photography. Vaguely based on a true story, The Revenant is the Western as horror movie with more than a hint of a Republic serial re-imagined as being deadly serious yet, through the sheer accumulation of unfortunate events, almost comic as it reaches its end. 

Glass is a Beckett character, crawling through the muck, transforming into the vengeful 'dead' man of the title. Tom Hardy has never been better as pragmatic trapper Fitzgerald, Glass' nemesis in the movie (though not in real life). Some trimming might have helped -- by the time Glass and the horse go over a cliff, my suspension of disbelief had been exhausted. Recommended.

The Thing (1982): adapted by Bill Lancaster from the novella "Who Goes There?" (1938) by John W. Campbell Jr.; directed by John Carpenter; starring Kurt Russell (MacReady); Wilford Brimley (Blair), Keith David (Childs), Richard Dysart (Copper), and Donald Moffat (Garry): Alien (1979) was a great screech of cosmic horror mingled with body horror in the best Lovecraftian tradition. The Thing is its thematic sequel, taking fears of bodily invasion and transformation and making them even more horrifying and goopy. 

The Thing was adapted previously by Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks in the 1950's as a sort-of Cold War paranoia thriller with an evil carrot rather than an evil, well, disease. This version is truer to John W. Campbell Jr.'s 1938 novella in terms of location (Antarctica, not the Arctic of the 1950's version) and monster (a body-invading, endlessly replicating Thing rather than a vampiric, Frankensteinian Creature). The Hawks film was much truer to the character dynamics of Campbell's novella, where manly, competent men met a terrible threat with overwhelming, intelligent, manly camaraderie.

Here, our heroes are fractious as per the model of the Nostromo's crew in Alien. Given that the Thing could be any one of them (or even all of them -- it's just that invasive!), their paranoia is understandable. But they still team up to battle an alien invasion. One of the things that makes The Thing stand out even more now is the lack of references to the characters' lives outside Antarctica: one imagines that, remade today, there would have to be some motivations assigned to the characters for their resistance to the invasion. 

Because people don't do things in NuHollywood unless there's a wife or child involved. This lack of 'personal motivation' makes The Thing bracing in my estimation -- the men are trying to save the world with no possible hope of rescue or survival. And even the most grumpy among them realize the scope of the Thing's danger and set to work. It's almost like people can do things for the common good without specific personal motivation!

The actors (what a cast!) are great, the creature effects still chilling and awful, the scenery still Sublime, the whole thing still rousing and disturbing. What's weird is that The Thing is hopeful about humanity in a way few horror movies allow themselves to be. But avoid the dopey 2011 prequel! Highly recommended.

Misery (1990): adapted by William Goldman from the novel by Stephen King; directed by Rob Reiner; starring Kathy Bates (Annie Wilkes); James Caan (Paul Sheldon); Richard Farnsworth (Sheriff Buster), Frances Sternhagen (Deputy Virginia), and Lauren Bacall (Paul's Agent): Kathy Bates deservedly won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Annie Wilkes, self-proclaimed "number-one fan" of historical romance writer Paul Sheldon. And James Caan is really good as Sheldon in a role that confines him to bed and wheelchair for much of Misery's running time. 

This is one of a handful of the sharpest adaptations of a novel by Stephen King, alternately funny and horrifying in a way that replicates King's prose. King signed off on Rob Reiner directing after the success of Reiner's previous King adaptation, Stand by Me, the movie from the novella that gave a name to Reiner's production company (Castle Rock). William Goldman and Rob Reiner tone down some of the novel's more gruesomely baroque moments (bye-bye lawnmower!), but there's still lots of body horror to go around. Bates' Wilkes is a menacing but at times oddly sympathetic character -- it seems at times that she's fully aware of what a monster she is. Highly recommended.

Sisters (2015): written by Paula Pell; directed by Jason Moore; starring Tina Fey (Kate Ellis) and Amy Poehler (Maura Ellis): What a dreadful movie, dreadfully wasting a talented cast in a misbegotten attempt to put smart comic actors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in a raunchy attempt to duplicate a Judd Apatow film. Or maybe Seth Rogen's Neighbours. It's awful. An immensely talented cast is awful. The writing is awful. The desperate mugging and improvising by the cast is awful. There are laughs scattered throughout, but it's agony to reach them. Possibly the worst 'major' movie of 2015. Not recommended.

Gods of Egypt (2016): written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless; directed by Alex Proyas; starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Horus); Brenton Thwaites (Bek); Elodie Yung (Hathor); Bryan Brown (Osiris); Chadwick Boseman (Thoth); Gerard Butler (Set); and Geoffrey Rush (Ra): That none of the major characters are played by Egyptian, Persian, or Arabic actors stirred something of a media firestorm. The moviemakers may have welcomed this -- Gods of Egypt wasn't going to get any buzz for actually being good. What the Hell happened to Alex (The Crow, Dark City) Proyas in the last 15 years? Great Osiris! 

The set design and CGI are the most interesting things in this movie which, like Disney's Aladdin, riffs without credit on those two old Thief of Baghdad movies by centering its story on a thief (Bek) who gets caught up in wacky supernatural adventures. The cast keeps a straight face. They should get awards for that. Not the worst big-budget, CGI spectacular ever made -- its dopiness is pretty much in line with about a hundred other gods-and-monsters movies from the 1960's and 1950's. 

The movie would be much more interesting if the Egyptian gods all had their animal heads for the entire running time rather than just when they're fighting. And given that the gods have gold running through their veins (and I assume arteries), what's their body temperature? For reasons unexplained, the great serpent Apophis looks an awful lot like a Dune sandworm on steroids, marking the sandworm's second unlikely cameo in an 18-month period (the first being in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies). Lightly recommended.

Churchill's Secret (2016): adapted by Stewart Harcourt from the novel by Jonathan Smith; directed by Charles Sturridge; starring Michael Gambon (Winston Churchill), Romola Garai (Nurse Millie Appleyard); and Lindsay Duncan (Clemmie Churchill): Prime Minister Winston Churchill suffered at least two debilitating strokes in June 1953, two years after being re-elected in 1951. The public didn't know this until decades later, as it was covered up. This partially fictional film details Churchill's recovery, with the narrative focused through a fictional nurse who cares for Churchill at his ancestral estate while he convalesces. It's a typically fine BBC/PBS production with beautifully modulated performances throughout, most notably by Romola Garai as the fictional Nurse Appleyard and Michael Gambon as Churchill.  Churchill's warts -- especially his problematic family life -- are on full display, though the entire effort really serves to humanize him. Recommended.

The Magnificent Seven (1960): adapted from the Akira Kurosawa film Seven Samurai by William Roberts; directed by John Sturges; starring Yul Brynner (Chris); Eli Wallach (Calvera); Steve McQueen (Tanner); Horst Buchholz (Chico); Charles Bronson (O'Reilly); Robert Vaughn (Lee); Brad Dexter (Harry); James Coburn (Britt); Vladimir Sokoloff (Old Man); and Rosendo Monteros (Petra): By my count, this is the second major Hollywood MetaWestern (after Shane). That is, what seems like an elegy for the vanishing American West of the late 19th century -- so vanishing that most of the action takes place in Mexico! -- is also an elegy for the American Western movie. In 1960, Westerns were well on their way out. The Magnificent Seven celebrates their strengths while also pointing the way towards the relatively brief renaissance of the grittier, grimier, more morally ambiguous Spaghetti Western that would soon rise and then quickly fade.

These are still the clean-cut cowboys of the 1940's and 1950's Western. But the early scenes that introduce protagonists Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner focus on how these two gunslingers really have nowhere to go in the increasingly civilized American West -- the only job available for McQueen in the American border town at the start of the movie is as a grocery clerk. When three Mexicans from a village annually looted by bandido Calvera and his men meet with Brynner to offer him money to solve the Calvera problem, Brynner accepts. And has little problem rounding up the other six members of his merry band.

The rest, as they say, is movie history. There's almost no blood or gore in the film. However, Sturges stages the deaths of those Magnificent Seven who don't survive the final battle with Calvera in various, almost mournfully abject ways, never moreso than with one gunslinger who collapses into an upright fetal position against a wall. It's not that much of a cinematic leap from The Magnificent Seven to the more graphic and downbeat The Wild Bunch, set even later in the Western period and offering a continuation and an amplification of this movie's elegaic qualities while also offering a revisionist take on Western morals (and clothing styles).

This is a fine movie -- stylistically still very much a last gasp of classical Hollywood cinema. The cast does lovely work, from Brynner and McQueen as the greatest of the enlisted gunslingers to Horst Buchholz as a young gunfighter from Mexican heritage. The musical score by Elmer Bernstein is also pivotal. This is the rare remake of a foreign film (Kurosawa's Seven Samurai) that works beautifully on its own. Highly recommended.

Foul Play (1978): written and directed by Colin Higgins; starring Goldie Hawn (Gloria Mundy); Chevy Chase (Tony); Burgess Meredith (Hennessey); Brian Dennehy (Fergie); Dudley Moore (Stanley Tibbetts); and Billy Barty (MacKuen): Foul Play's writer-director Colin Higgins also wrote Silver Streak and Harold and Maude, and was writer-director of 9 to 5. That's a pretty solid resume for Higgins, who died at the age of 47 in 1988. And Foul Play is still a lot of fun. Foul Play was slightly retooled to be a star vehicle for both Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase, the latter coming off his single, hyper-popular-break-out year on Saturday Night Live. I'm pretty sure Chase's pratfalls in this movie were written for him. 

The movie itself is quite charming, though there are a couple of jarring bits of violence amidst the goofball stuff. And there are Hitchcock homages galore. Burgess Meredith slathers it on a bit too thickly as Hawn's lovable Irish neighbour. Billy Barty and Dudley Moore have terrific supporting roles (this was Moore's American movie debut), with Moore's work pretty much getting him 10 and Arthur. I still think Dan Brown stole the Albino in The DaVinci Code from this film. I mean, there's even a papal assassination plot and an anti-Catholic organization in this movie! And Billy Barty! Goldie Hawn is super-cute. Chevy Chase is Chevy Chase. Recommended.

The Horror Out of Space

John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (2001): written by Larry Sulkis and John Carpenter; directed by John Carpenter; starring Natasha Henstridge (Lt. Ballard), Ice Cube (Desolation Williams), Jason Statham (Sgt. Jericho), Clea DuVall (Kincaid), Pam Grier (Commander Braddock), and Joanna Cassidy (Whitlock): Grungy, grimy sci-fi horror-Western from the great John Carpenter. It's worn really well, possibly because it's the antithesis of today's PG-rated, CGI-heavy action movies. The cast is a hoot. Teaming up the Amazonian blonde Henstridge (Species) with Ice Cube is all sorts of awesome. 

There's some smarts in the movie's back-story, and some thrills in the various explosion-heavy battles with the monsters on Mars. One sometimes wishes for better monsters. So it goes. The premise works as a weird sort-of-sequel to Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit (a.k.a. Five Million Years to Earth). Carpenter worked with Kneale while producing Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, for which Kneale wrote a screenplay that he then took his name off because of concerns about the film's violence. Hmm. Recommended.

Alien: 2003 Director's Cut (1979/2003): partially based on the stories "Black Destroyer" and "Discord in Scarlet" by A.E. Van Vogt; written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shushett; directed by Ridley Scott; starring Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), Tom Skerritt (Dallas), Veronica Cartwright (Lambert), Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), John Hurt (Kane), Ian Holm (Ash), and Yaphet Kotto (Parker): As a restored, director's cut on BluRay, Alien looks terrific. It's like a whole different movie, with the looming alien ship and surrounding wasteland dominating the proceedings (and dwarfing the puny humans) in the first half. One forgets how gradually things build: it's nearly an hour before the real horrors erupt, but once they do, they come in a flurry. 

The cast is uniformly fine. The Director's Cut adds in several scenes in which the cast interacts, countering the crew's isolation from one another in the original cut. Yaphet Kotto's Parker benefits most from the restoration -- he's clearly the second protagonist now after Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. Like her, he's also the voice of Reason throughout the film. 

The set design and Ridley Scott's shooting of it is another character in the movie. The future has never looked like such a combination of the Gothic and the industrial. And there's the Alien itself in its various manifestations, kept off-screen or only partially glimpsed until the climax. It's still a masterpiece of design based on H.R. Giger's creepy ideas. 

The re-insertion of a scene that prefigures the colonist-stocked alien 'nursery' of Aliens is the most gratifying addition, especially for those of us who first encountered the scene in Alan Dean Foster's novelization of Alien way back in 1979. A Lovecraftian, haunted-house-in-space masterpiece that's probably still Ridley Scott's best movie. No sequel or prequel has surpassed it in terms of a horror movie that combines the cosmic with body horror. Highly recommended.

Spies and Aliens and Witches, Oh My...

Starman (1984): written by Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon; directed by John Carpenter; starring Jeff Bridges (Starman/Scott Hayden), Karen Allen (Jenny Hayden), and Charles Martin Smith (Mark Shermin): Not normally known as a director of warm dramedies, John Carpenter took on Starman to ensure he could keep getting funding for the horror movies and thrillers (and one never-made supernatural Western, Diablo) he preferred. The result was Starman, a science-fiction movie that nabbed a rare major Oscar nomination for an sf film -- a Best Actor nom for Jeff Bridges.

And Bridges is great as an alien being pretending to be human so he can make his way to a rendezvous in Arizona with his mother-ship. He takes on the appearance (and, thanks to a lock of hair, the DNA) of the dead husband of Karen Allen. Having watched the alien's rapid growth in her living-room, Allen knows he is an alien. Their relationship drives the rest of the film, as they drive to Arizona. Basically, it's ET meets Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

As noted, Bridges does fine work as the alien, managing comedy and pathos when required and doing an awfully good job of suggesting a creature learning to use a body (and language) on the fly. Allen is also solid, as usual -- as in Raiders of the Lost Ark, she makes for a non-cookie-cutter leading woman. The government forces are, as always, bad. However, the lead scientist played by Charles Martin Smith is sympathetic. It's politicians and the military and not the forces of science who are the bad guys. In all, this is very good movie that's aged surprisingly well. Highly recommended.

The Blair Witch Project: written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez; starring Heather Donahue (Heather), Joshua Leonard (Josh), and Michael C. Williams (Mike) (1999): Maryland: home of the Terrapins, the Ravens, The Wire, that weird state flag, and a homicidal witch. The Blair Witch Project is the most influential horror movie of the last 40 years, as it made the found-footage film the go-to vehicle for filmed horror pretty much up to the present day. It also suggested that less was more both in terms of putting graphic images on the screen and in terms of budget.

And despite a couple of verisimilitude-harming flubs (yes, it's those guys fishing in two inches of water again near the beginning), it's a fine piece of work. Of course, it's hard to separate the film from the hype surrounding it in 1999. But watching it for the first time in at least 15 years, I'm struck by what a fine piece of mounting suspense it represents.

The three actors we spend most of our time with, those three film-makers lost in the demon-haunted woods of Maryland back in 1994, are utterly credible. They're not all that good at camping or hiking. Their growing panic seems genuine -- The Blair Witch Project is a really fine study of how group harmony can disintegrate disastrously under pressure. There's even a tie-in to the 2016 presidential campaign, as the growing resentment directed towards director/group leader Heather by her male partners-in-film-making seems at least partially a result of sexism towards female leaders. And there's that witch, of course, that deadly metaphor for hidden female power revealed and aimed at the patriarchy.

There are problems, but forgivable ones, especially in a movie that cost about $10 to make. I'd have liked more scenes shot in thicker portions of the woods during the day-time to add some atmosphere and menace to those day-time hiking excursions. That they're traipsing through some very thin growth isn't a plot problem -- it's not like witchcraft is contingent on Old-Growth forests. But there is a dearth of mood in some of those day-time scenes. 

The night-time scenes are well-imagined, though. I especially like how the sounds that terrify the campers on the first three nights all seem to involve massive, unseen beings crashing through unseen trees. It gives an almost Lovecraftian feel to those moments, an idea of something much larger and much worse than a witch walking somewhere behind the trees.

And so we leave our campers, forever stranded in woods they can't seem to walk out of, no matter how long and how straight a bee-line they make in any one direction. Oh, sure, it's hard to believe that someone doesn't put down a camera (or pick up a weapon) as things get closer and closer to that much-discussed ending. So it goes. And those little hand-prints on the walls, when they come, are as awful as anything gory one could depict. Highly recommended.

Spy: written and directed by Paul Feig; starring Melissa McCarthy (Susan Cooper), Jessica Chaffin (Sharon), Jude Law (Bradley Fine), Miranda Hart (Nancy), Jason Statham (Rick Ford), Bobby Cannavale (Sergio De Luca), Rose Byrne (Rayna Boyanov), Alison Janney (Elaine Crocker), and 50 Cent (Himself) (2015): Hilarious spy spoof takes full advantage of Melissa McCarthy's outsized comic talents by making her hyper-competent, if occasionally a bit over-matched. 

The supporting cast is pretty much uniformly well-served as well, whether it's Jason Statham spoofing Jason Statham or 50 Cent supplying a winning cameo. Paul Feig, who did similar writing/directing duties on previous McCarthy movies The Heat and Bridesmaids, has become a gifted comic voice with a particularly appealing manner with women. If the new Ghostbusters is this good, people will be happy. Highly recommended.

Kitschy Kitschy Cool

Big Eyes: written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski; directed by Tim Burton; starring Amy Adams (Margaret Keane), Christoph Waltz (Walter Keane), Danny Huston (Dick Nolan), Krysten Ritter (DeeAnn), Jason Schwartzman (Ruben), Terence Stamp (John Canaday), and Jon Polito (Enrico Banducci) (2014): Tim Burton goes low-key in this movie based on the true story behind the Keane paintings (and prints, posters, postcards...) that dominated many a living-room or rec-room in the 1950's, 60's, and 70's. You know the images when you see them: sad-looking children with gigantic eyes staring straight out at the viewer.

The story behind the paintings was interesting enough that this is a remarkably faithful-to-life movie. Amy Adams is terrific as Margaret Keane, who painted the paintings but allowed her husband, played by an equally terrific Christoph Waltz, to take credit for them for a decade while she churned them out. It's a remarkable story, and Burton hasn't been this controlled and considered as a film-maker since Ed Wood: he lets the story tell the story, keeping camera fanciness and baroque flourishes absent from the movie. He also gets terrific performances from everyone. Highly recommended.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch: written by Nigel Kneale, John Carpenter, and Tommy Lee Wallace; directed by Tommy Lee Wallace; starring Tom Atkins (Dr. Daniel Challis), Stacey Nelkin (Ellie Grimbridge), Dan O'Herlihy (Conal Cochran), and Wendy Wessberg (Teddy) (1982): Ah, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which I've managed to miss despite wanting to see it since it came out in 1982.

Far and away the most hated Halloween movie, possibly because it's not really part of the series -- the original Halloween's Michael Myers does show up on TV in the movie, because the first two Halloween movies are indeed just movies in the universe of Halloween III.

Nigel Kneale of the great British Quatermass series wrote the original screenplay. He asked to have his name taken off  Halloween III: Season of the Witch because he thought the finished product, rewritten by producer John Carpenter and director Tommy Lee Wallace, was too violent -- but it's still recognizably Kneale at points: quite enjoyable, often clever. 

It's dazzlingly cheap looking in a way specific to films of the 1970's and early 1980's, to the extent that it almost looks as if it were shot on videotape. And the bizarre plot, which involves evil robots, malign mass-produced Halloween masks, and a magically apocalyptic use of Stonehenge, ultimately makes the whole thing seem like a Philip Hinchcliffe-era Doctor Who serial in which Doctor Who fails to appear. 

Halloween III: Season of the Witch is also a product of its time in that the lead, Tom Atkins, would never be the lead in a movie today, even if he shaved off his adorable cop mustache. But he's very likable, never moreso than when the filmmakers have him running around in a too-tight windbreaker that keeps riding up on his stomach. You may best remember Atkins as the father in the frame narrative for Creepshow, though he's done tons of film and TV work.

Next to an awful lot of horror movies, Halloween III: Season of the Witch seems unfairly maligned. Recommended.

Action Allegories

The Purge: Anarchy: written and directed by James DeMonaco; starring Frank Grillo (Sergeant), Carmen Ejogo (Eva), Zach Gilford (Shane), Kiele Sanchez (Liz), Zoe Soul (Cali) and Justina Machado (Tanya) (2014): The second Purge movie ditches the name actors and heads to the streets for the near-future America's favourite annual pastime: raping and killing without consequence for one night of the year. 

Instead of one somewhat unlikable upper-middle-class family under siege, we get the tried-and-true Stagecoach formula of disparate strangers bonded by shared danger. It works beautifully. There's nothing subtle about the Purge movies, in which the poor are victims of violence and the State loves it. But there is something bracing about this movie, something very early John Carpenter in its angry protagonist, known only as Sergeant (for his former rank as a police officer).

Frank Grillo nails the frustrations of a man who doesn't want to be a hero but is forced to because of his own morality. The four people he leads on this little night-sea journey are appealing. We even get periodic left-wing civics lectures from Zoe Soul's Cali. The allegory is paper-thin but surprisingly sturdy: it all seems like a brand that's built to last, a similarly agit-proppy successor to Carpenter's Escape from New York and They Live. Recommended.

Snowpiercer: adapted by Joon-ho Bong and Kelly Masterson from Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette; directed by Joon-ho Bong; starring Chris Evans (Curtis), Kang-ho Song (Namgoong Minsoo), Ed Harris (Wilford), John Hurt (Gilliam), Tilda Swinton (Mason), and Octavia Spencer (Tanya) (2013): Visually startling and dumb as a post. 17 years after a 2014 attempt to stop global warming freezes the Earth, humanity's survivors live on a train that never stops chugging along through an icy landscape that stretches throughout every continent on Earth (well, except Australia -- the train doesn't go there). Mad billionaire Wilford connected nearly 500,000 kilometers of railway track some time before everything got really chilly and then  got a bunch of people together on his train. 

At the front of the train, the engine and the rich people. At the back of the train, the poor. Captain America Chris Evans leads a rag-tag group of poor people towards the front of the train in hopes of overthrowing the existing social order. Shenanigans ensue, many of them very cleverly staged. Characterization and subtlety (not to mention science and engineering) aren't parts of the program. It's not science fiction. It's barely allegory. The dialogue thuds along. Tilda Swinton plays Tilda Swinton playing a Tilda Swinton character.

If Michael Bay had directed this rather than the critically beloved Joon-ho Bong, I think the movie would be reviled for being stupid eye candy. It's a movie that gets small, detailed things right within a much larger framework of gross unbelievability: those 500,000+ kilometres of track, for example, are needed so that it takes exactly a year for the train to complete one circuit while traveling at a relatively constant 75 kph. Why? Um, so they can celebrate New Year's Day every year at the completion of the circuit? So it goes. Lightly recommended.

Three

They Live, written by John Carpenter, based on the short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson; directed by John Carpenter; starring Roddy Piper (Nada), Keith David (Frank) and Meg Foster (Holly) (1988): John Carpenter's snarly dystopic satire looks as fresh and relevant now as it did in 1988. Maybe moreso, given the increasing ascendancy of corporations Uber Alles in the interim, the Occupy movements, and all the other stuff that's happened since then.

Wrestler Roddy Piper makes an engaging hero as Nada, an umemployed manual labourer who arrives in Los Angeles looking for work and instead discovers a conspiracy aimed at destroying the middle-class and working-class. Nada's a man of action (he is played by a professional wrestler, after all), and soon he and his initially reluctant compadre Frank (the always marvelous Keith David) are going toe-to-toe with the Secret Rulers of the World.

Is this a perfect movie? No. Some of Piper's witticisms fall pretty flat, though others ("I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum.") have justifiably become classics. The cinematography looks amazingly crummy, which fits the film without necessarily being intentional (Carpenter's films often look crummy, as if they were shot on videotape and then transferred to film).

Nonetheless, this is one of the two or three best science-fiction films in the sub-genre of Paranoid Conspiracy That's Actually True. It may not look as good as The Matrix, another film in that sub-genre, but the eight-minute fight between Nada and Frank, as Nada tries to get Frank to on the sunglasses that allow a person to see what's really going on in the world, beats almost any fight sequence I can think of for sheer stubbornness on the part of both the characters and the filmmakers. Highly recommended.


　

The Muppets, written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, based on characters created by Jim Henson; directed by James Bobin; starring Jason Segel (Gary), Amy Adams (Mary), Chris Cooper (Tex Richman), and the Muppets (2011): The Muppets return to the big screen after more than a decade away thanks to the slightly unlikely Muppet-love of Jason Segel. It's great to see all of them again, and the gossamer-thin plot doesn't get in the way of an assortment of great Muppet moments and the occasional song. Segel, Adams, and Cooper strike just the right note of earnestness mixed with gently self-mocking metafictionality. Recommended.

　

Waiting for Guffman, written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy; directed by Christopher Guest; starring Christopher Guest (Corky St. Clair), Fred Willard (Ron Albertson), Catherine O'Hara (Sheila Albertson), Parker Posey (Libby Mae Brown), Eugene Levy (Dr. Allan Pearl) and Bob Balaban (Lloyd Miller) (1996): It's Blaine, Missouri's 150th anniversary, and resident little-theatre guru Corky St. Clair will write and direct a musical tribute to the history of the small town. Oh, boy, will he ever.

Writers Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy hit pretty much all the right notes in this affectionate but clear-eyed tribute to the delusions that theatre can bring on in people who long to be something other than what they are, even if they dream of being something they're not actually good at. It now looks like a satire of the American Idol generation, though of course it isn't -- in tone and execution, it hews closer to Stephen Leacock's scathing, sympathetic Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Highly recommended.

Why Go There?

The Thing, written by Eric Heisserer, based on the novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell Jr. and The Thing (1982), written by Bill Lancaster, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Kate Lloyd), Joel Edgerton (Sam Carter), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Jameson) and Ulrich Thomsen (Dr. Halvorson) (2011): Totally pointless prequel to John Carpenter's gory, gonzo adaptation of John Campbell, Jr.'s 1938 sci-fi-horror novella "Who Goes There?", which itself bore more than a few suspicious resemblances to H.P. Lovecraft's 1936 sci-fi-horror novella "At the Mountains of Madness." Here, we follow the adventures of the (mostly) Norwegian Antarctic base scientists who first discover the eponymous Thing and who, reduced to two guys in a helicopter at the very start of Carpenter's Thing, try to stop the creature from reaching the American base of that film. Got all that?

Carpenter's film wasn't truly great -- the dialogue and plotting needed a bit more zip for that -- but it was improved immensely by its cast of character-actor All-Stars and its ground-breaking alien special effects work, which still looks amazingly creepy and goopy and disturbing even now. Unfortunately, the CGI here suffers from underdone CGIitis, with the alien, while far more complex in several of its manifestations, lacking weight and heft regardless of its size on the screen.

It doesn't help that the Thing has lost about a 100 IQ points, bursting out of hiding at several points when pretending to stay human would have secured its supposed goal: getting off the isolated Antarctic base to a more populated place with better transporation options so that it could, given its biology, eventually replace everything biological on the planet with itself. Instead, it pops out at inopportune moments so often that one eventually believes that it's actual purpose on Earth is to run around scaring people and breaking shit.

The people aren't much brighter. At one point, a group of them locks two suspicious helicopter-crash survivors in a shack because doing so will protect the group in the event that the survivors are really the Thing. But we've already seen the Thing shoot twenty feet into the air and through a roof from a standing start inside a giant block of ice that it's been trapped in for 100,000 years. How is the shack going to stop it? Oh, well.

Perky young protagonist Mary Elizabeth Winstead (the roller-skating, Amazon-package-delivering love interest in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) plays a character from the Bones school of incredibly young bone experts. Everyone else is pretty much interchangeable except the actor who played Mr. Eko on Lost, criminally underused here, and the guy playing the base commander, the latter of whom looks like Sting during his Mandolin-playing German-pimp stage. Boy, Sting makes a lousy Antarctic base commander. No wonder the Police broke up. Not recommended.