Sgt. Rock Will Save Me

Sgt. Rock Archives Volume 2; written by Robert Kanigher and Bob Haney; illustrated by Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Irv Novick and Jerry Grandinetti (1960-61; collected 2003): Second volume of the adventures of DC's Sgt. Rock and Easy Company in various WWII theatres of war sees Joe Kubert become Rock's primary artist and Robert Kanigher the primary writer.

War stories meant for children and early teens portray war as violent but bloodless, though Kubert's evocative, gritty art nonetheless makes war look pretty hellish. Sgt. Rock's adventures always tended to have a fabulistic quality, in part because like superheroes, Easy Company had far more adventures than could reasonably be accounted for in the chronology of the 'real' world. Instead, the reader gets bracing fables about courage, teamwork, and heroic death.

All of this is narrated by Rock, who sprinkles lessons-learned throughout that narration, explaining why and how he does certain things. Kubert's art is really the star here (ably replaced by Irv Novick, Jerry Grandinetti, and Russ Heath in a few issues).

Kubert was already the comic-book master of suggestion by the time the early 1960's rolled around, the art stripped down to lines and spot blacks, nothing fussy, nothing busy. The faces of the soldiers are distinct, unique, and careworn in places. The backgrounds are detailed when they need to be and suggestive when they don't. The machinery of war looks, for the most part, realistic without drawing attention to itself with too much wanky detail. The overall effect is smooth and memorable, almost soothing -- a textbook example of a comic book meant for children that could be enjoyed by adults, something we see almost nothing of today. Highly recommended.

No Exit

Spider, written by Patrick McGrath, based on the novel of the same name by Patrick McGrath; directed by David Cronenberg; starring Ralph Fiennes ("Spider" Cleg), Miranda Richardson (Mrs. Cleg/Yvonne/Mrs. Wilkinson), Gabriel Byrne (Bill Cleg), Lynn Redgrave (Mrs. Wilkinson) and John Neville (Terrence) (2002): David Cronenberg, bless his soul, likes to go places other filmmakers don't, won't, or can't. In the case of Spider, he heads back into the territory of Dead Ringers, giving us a horror story in which there is no catharsis, no growth, and no hope. It's an astonishingly bleak film.

Ralph Fiennes, complete with hair that was apparently an homage to Samuel Beckett (the playwright, not the Quantum Leaper), plays the titular schizophrenic without the bells and whistles someone like, say, Robert DeNiro might have demanded. There's no showiness, no look-at-me-acting scene of yelling or imploring the audience for empathy. Spider is almost completely mute, and when he does talk, he mumbles incoherently.

Spider's been released from a mental asylum into a halfway house when the movie begins, in a rundown, vaguely 1980's-looking urban England. His nickname comes from a tendency he's had since childhood to weave elaborate webs out of string and pieces of rope. He's a pattern maker. But he's also schizophrenic. The patterns he makes, the viewer needs to remember, may look sound, but they're inherently flawed.

The movie takes us through Spider's reminscences of his childhood, of what seems to be an ogre-ish and unfaithful father and a saint of a mother. How reliable are Spider's memories? Therein lies the mystery of the movie, inevitable as death. This isn't a movie to enjoy in a normal way -- it's horrifying, and there's no attempt to make Spider warm and cuddly, a Hollywood madman. He's very sick. And schizophrenia doesn't spring from some easily understandable childhood trauma: it's a disease, a cancer of the mind.

I was exhausted by the end of the movie, and that was from watching it in 20-minute increments over several days. But it was a good exhaustedness. But this isn't Rain Man or A Beautiful Mind. There are no easy life lessons here, no Nobel Prize, no well-meaning brother who learns valuable things from someone with cognitive difficulties, though there are, even for Spider, flashes of clarity amidst the crushing horror. And the clarity just makes the horror worse. Highly recommended.

Grotesque

Stardust Memories, written and directed by Woody Allen; starring Woody Allen (Sandy Bates), Charlotte Rampling (Dorrie), Jessica Harper (Daisy) and Marie-Christine Barrault (Isobel) (1980): "Tell funnier jokes!", the aliens tell filmmaker Sandy Bates during this movie. Bates is plagued by the feeling that he needs to move beyond comedy into more meaningful drama. Of course, Allen himself was plagued by the same feelings in the late 1970's, which led to the depressing, Bergmanesque Interiors (1978), which Allen did after his biggest commercial and critical success, Annie Hall.

And pretty much everybody hated Interiors.

Stardust Memories uses Bates's attendance of a weekend celebration of his movies at the Jersey Shore Hotel Stardust as the loose frame for a tour through Bates's memories, dreams, nightmares, and creative problems. It's a riff on Fellini's 8 1/2, and Allen and his casting director fill the movie with grotesques. This is one of the ugliest, weirdest looking crowd of extras and minor roles ever assembled. Is this how Bates and, by extension Allen, views his fans and critics? Good question.

But the movie also pokes and prods the pretensions of Bates, who is not, the film also seems to suggest, the deep thinker he wants to be. There are some very funny setpieces throughout this film. There are also some tedious sections. The whole thing seems fascinating but somewhat inorganic, though the ending clarifies a lot of the prior murkiness. Recommended for Woody Allen fans.

The Invisible Batman

Batman Unseen; written by Doug Moench; illustrated by Kelley Jones (2007-2008): Throwback to Moench's 1990's and 1980's work on Batman, some of it with Jones as illustrator. Batman, plagued by doubts about the efficacy of his Batman persona when it comes to frightening an increasingly unfrightened criminal lot, faces an invisible enemy -- a scientist driven crazy by his invisibility serum.

1980's Moench creation Black Mask, one of Gotham's criminal kingpins, plays a supporting villainous role. Jones's art is as interesting and grotesque as it's ever been, and Moench's Batman is a lot more human than most recent incarnations. The invisible villain isn't all that interesting, and Batman seems to have way more trouble fighting him than one would expect. Not a high point for either creator, but certainly diverting. Lightly recommended.

The 2009 Horror

The Best Horror of the Year Volume 2 (2009) edited by Ellen Datlow (2010) containing

*Lowland Sea by Suzy McKee Charnas
The End of Everything by Steve Eller
Mrs Midnight by Reggie Oliver
*each thing i show you is a piece of my death by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer
*The Nimble Men by Glen Hirshberg
*What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night by Michael Marshall Smith
Wendigo by Micaela Morrissette
*In the Porches of My Ears by Norman Prentiss
Lonegan's Luck by Stephen Graham Jones
*The Crevasse by Nathan Ballingrud and Dale Bailey
The Lion's Den by Steve Duffy
Lotophagi by Edward Morris
The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall by Kaaron Warren
Dead Loss by Carole Johnstone
*Strappado by Laird Barron
*The Lammas Worm by Nina Allan
*Technicolor by John Langan

Big, big improvement on the first volume of this series, with a lot more excellent stories and fewer boring ones. I've starred the high points, which run the gamut from near-future apocalypse ("Lowland Sea" by Suzy McKee Charnas) through a bad night at the movies ("In the Porches of My Ears" by Norman Prentiss) to, well, a bad night ("What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night" by Michael Marshall Smith).

The Toronto-set Gemma Files/Stephen J. Barringer story does a lovely job of combining both the structure and the content of new media with one of the oldest structures for a horror story (the epistolary format), while John Langan's story presents us with a mountingly dread-filled college classroom lecture on Poe. Recommended.

Don't Mess With the One-armed Man

Bad Day at Black Rock, written by Millard Kaufman and Don McGuire, based on the story by Howard Breslin; directed by John Sturges; starring Spencer Tracy (John Macreedy), Robert Ryan (Reno Smith), Anne Francis (Liz Wirth), Dean Jagger (Tim Horn), Walter Brennan (Doc Velie), Lee Marvin (Hector David) and Ernest Borgnine (Coley Trimble) (1955): Great, terse, tense showdown movie of the 1950's that can be read (like High Noon) as a parable of the Red Scare and its attendant McCarthyism.

It's late 1945, and Spencer Tracy's Macreedy is a WW2 vet of the Italian campaign looking to give a posthumous medal to the father of the Japanese-American soldier who died saving his life (though not his left arm). So Macreedy comes to the small Southwestern desert town of Black Rock by train (a train that hasn't stopped there in four years), only to discover that the soldier's father is missing and the town itself is run by criminal Reno Smith.

The action that ensues over the next 24 hours (or 82 minutes of film time) sees the initially depressed and passive Macreedy eventually rediscover his will to live -- and his contempt for bullies, cowards, and murderers. The aging, overweight Tracy initially seems like an unlikely action hero, but he eventually shows why you don't mess with Spencer Tracy. And that includes you, Ernest Borgnine!

The direction by John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven) is taut, setting the growing suspense against the widescreen Cinemascope background of the desert, the distant mountains, and the sky. The writing is solid and understated. The acting throughout is superb, with a lot of solid actors old (Tracy, Walter Brennan as the town doctor, Dean Jagger as the browbeaten sheriff, and Ryan) and fairly young (Borgnine, Anne Francis and Lee Marvin). Unlike High Noon, this film allows the growing heroism of its protagonist to effectively rally the decent people of the town to him. It's an interesting contrast to observe. Highly recommended.

Don't Drink the Water

Bananas, written by Woody Allen and Mickey Rose; directed by Woody Allen; starring Woody Allen (Fielding Mellish), Louise Lasser (Nancy), Carlos Montalban (General Vargas), and Howard Cosell as himself (1971): Allen's second movie as (co-)writer, director, and star is a jolly romp through military dictatorships and the CIA agents who propagate them.

Allen's Fielding Mellish starts off as a tester of ludicrous products, moves on to being an anti-war protester to satisfy his girlfriend (Lasser), and eventually becomes the leader of a small Central American country through an improbable series of events.

Like the Marx Brothers at their peak (Duck Soup comes to mind), Allen just keeps throwing verbal and physical humour at the screen -- if one joke fails, don't worry, another will be along in a few seconds. What may surprise many viewers unfamiliar with early Woody Allen is what a gifted physical comedian he was both in and of himself and in terms of setting up ridiculous situations for slapstick. The political satire of pretty much every portion of the spectrum still holds up today.

Also welcome is Howard Cosell as himself, delivering colour commentary on political rebellions, assassinations, and sex acts for ABC's Wide World of Sports. Highly recommended.