The trailer for Halloween Kills was released yesterday and it was greeted with a fairly positive reaction on twitter. A lot of people commented on the fact that Michael appears to be extremely angry in this trailer which …. I don’t know. I’ve always felt that Michael’s come across as being pretty angry, or at least that’s been the case ever since the first sequel. In Carpenter’s original film, Michael just come across like a soulless manchild playing an elaborate and deadly prank. But in every film since then, he’s come across as being someone who definitely has some anger at the world. Don’t even get me started on the version of the character who appears in the Rob Zombie films. You don’t kill Danny Trejo unless you’re pissed off about something.
All that said, Michael certainly does kill a lot of people in the trailer below. I guess that’s a good thing. In the past, I’d probably comment on how intense the kill scenes look but I have to admit that, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a little bit less enthused by graphic violence. Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in right now. By the time October comes around, I’m sure I’ll be more enthusiastic about watching the elderly get murdered. We’ll see.
Halloween Kills is set to be released on October 15th of this year and here is the trailer!
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
115 years ago today, Billy Wilder was born in what was-then Austria-Hungary and what is today Poland. Having started his film career as a screenwriter in Germany, Wilder fled to the United States after the rise of Hitler. (Many members of Wilder’s family would subsequently die in the Holocaust.) He went on to establish himself as one of the great studio directors, a filmmaker who could seemingly master any genre and whose films were often distinguished by an irreverent wit and a welcome skepticism when it came to accepting any sort of conventional wisdom. He made the type of films that could only be made by someone who had seen humanity at its worst but who also understood what people were capable of at their best. Wilder made dramas that could make you laugh and comedies that could make you cry. He was a master filmmaker, one whose work continues to influence directors to this day.
Today, in honor of Billy Wilder’s legacy, the Shattered Lens presents….
4 Shots From 4 Billy Wilder Films
Double Indemnity (1944, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: John Seitz)
Sunset Boulevard (1950, dir by Billy Wilder, DP; John F. Seitz)
The Apartment (1960, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: Ernest Laszlo)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: Christopher Challis)
Today is an unofficial holiday for everyone who loves a good cult film because the one and only Bruce Campbell is 63 years old today! Whether he’s battling Deadites or making a cameo appearance in a Coen Brothers film or just being himself, it’s impossible not to love Bruce Campbell. In many ways, he epitomizes everything that people love about the movies. He’s a good actor, he’s a good storyteller, and — perhaps most importantly — he’s smart enough not to take himself too seriously.
In honor of Bruce Campbell’s birthday, here’s one of his best moments. From ArmyoftheDead, it’s the Battle of the S-mart. Hail to the king, indeed.
Last night, as I sat down to watch the 1987 Canadian film, BlueMonkey, I found myself singing a song in my head:
How does it feel When you treat me like you do And you’ve laid your hands upon me And told me who you are?
I thought I was mistaken And I thought I heard your words Tell me, how do I feel? Tell me now, how do I feel?
Unfortunately, it turned out that the only thing BlueMonkey had in common with the classic New Order song, BlueMonday, was an enigmatic title. Just as the song never really mentions anything about Monday, BlueMonkey does not feature a single monkey. One minor character does mention having a dream about a monkey but, otherwise, there are no monkeys in the film. Speaking as someone who believes that almost any film can be improved the presence of a monkey, I was disappointed.
(Seriously, Nomadland would have been a hundred times better if Frances McDormand had a pet monkey.)
What BlueMonkey does have is a lot of blue. The characters wear blue shirts and some wear blue uniforms. Another wears a blue hat. The film takes place in a hospital where almost all of the walls are painted blue. Even worse, the majority of the film’s scenes are saturated with blue lighting.
Here’s just two screenshots:
Seriously, some scenes were so blue that I was reminded of John Huston’s decision to suffuse ReflectionsinaGoldenEye with the color gold. Personally, I think Huston made a mistake when he did that with Reflections but I can still understand the reasoning behind the decision and I can see what Huston was attempting to accomplish. The blue in BlueMonkey feels like a distraction, as if someone realized, on the day before shooting, that the title didn’t make any damn sense. “We’ll just make the whole movie blue!”
The problem, of course, is that the film goes so overboard with the blue lighting that it actually becomes difficult to look at the screen for more than a few minutes. I had to keep looking away, specifically because all of those blue flashing lights were starting to make me nauseous and were on the verge of giving me a migraine. At times, the image is so saturated in blue that you literally can’t make out what’s happening in the scene. Of course, once you do figure out what’s happening, you realize that it doesn’t matter.
BlueMonkey takes place in a hospital. A handyman has been having convulsions after pricking his finger on a plant that came from a mysterious island. Perhaps that’s because a mutant larvae is now using his body for a host. The larvae eventually develops into a giant grasshopper — NOT A MONKEY! — who stalks around the hospital and kills a few people. The Canadian government is threatening to blow up the hospital unless something is done about the blue grasshopper.
It’s a Canadian exploitation film but Michael Ironside isn’t in it so it somehow feels incomplete. That said, John Vernon plays a greedy hospital administrator and it’s fun to watch him get irritated with everyone. A very young Sarah Polley has an early role as an annoying child. There’s actually several children in this film and you’ll want to throw something at the screen whenever they show up, that’s just the type of film this is. (Some of my fellow movie-watching friends were actually upset that the children survived that film. I wouldn’t go that far but I still found myself hoping John Vernon would tell them all to shut up and let the adults handle things.) Susan Anspach plays a doctor, showing that anyone can go from FiveEasyPieces to Canadian exploitation. The film’s nominal star is Steve Railsback, playing a cop who comes to the hospital to check on his wounded partner and who ends up on grasshopper duty. Steve Railsback has apparently said that he’s embarrassed to have appeared in this film. Consider some of the other films that Steve Railsback has appeared in and then reread that sentence.
In the end, BlueMonkey doesn’t add up too much. There’s no Michael Ironside. There’s no monkeys. There’s just a lot of blue.
The 1986 film, Rad, tells the story of Christopher “Cru” Jones (Bill Allen). Cru lives in a small, kind of ugly town in middle America. Cru has a job delivering newspapers so, every morning, he rides around town on a bicycle and he throws rolled-up copies of USAToday at people. He throws the papers fairly aggressively and doesn’t seem to have much concern about riding his bike through backyards or using his bike to jump over (or sometimes, onto) cars. And yet, no one can stay mad at Cru because he has a plucky, can-do attitude and he can do all sorts of tricks on his bicycle.
Cru has a decision to make. He can either go to college or he can compete in a bicycle race. If he goes to college, he might actually be able to get a career and actually have a future. If he wins the bicycle race, he’ll get a car and $100,000. His mother (Talia Shire) feels that Cru should go to college. Cru, however, says that his gut is telling him to enter the race….
Hey, Cru, your gut is lying to you! Seriously, I’m all for Cru competing and showing off how good he is at a rather mundane and kind of boring sport but college is college. There’s a scene early on in the film where one of Cru’s classmates is talking about all the schools to which he’s applied. “UCLA, Princeton, SMU, Harvard….” Cru rides by and laughs but, 35 years later, who do you think currently has the nicer house?
Of course, despite his willingness to give up his future for $100,000 and a new car, it turns out that Cru might not even be able to compete. The race’s evil sponsor (Jack Weston) is determined to make sure that his tea, wins the race and he keeps changing the rules to prevent Cru from being able to enter. He demands that Cru find an official sponsor so Cru starts his own business. He then demands that the business be worth at least $50,000! Cru doesn’t have that type of money but — wait a minute — is that Ray Waltson, playing an eccentric businessman!? Maybe he’s got $50,000!
Still, does Cru have the confidence necessary to enter the race and beat the best in the country? Don’t worry, Cru’s little sister designs a t-shirt that reads, “Cru is Rad!” Seriously, just try to beat that encouragement!
Anyway, you may be thinking that Rad sounds like it’s a pretty silly movie and it is. Having now watched Rad, BMXBandits, and Quicksilver, I am ready to announce that, in the 80s, there was absolutely no way to make BMX racing cinematic. At the end of the movie, Cru performs a series of tricks while the end credits role and, instead of being impressed, you just notice how much Cru is struggling to maintain his balance. Neither Bill Allen nor Bart Conner (who plays Cru’s main rival) have much screen presence and the whole film just looks and feels cheap.
And yet….
To be honest, it’s difficult to really dislike Rad. For all of its many flaws, it’s all just so damn sincere. Cru just wants to win that race so badly that it’s hard not to root for him and it is kind of touching to see the way the entire town rallies around him. While the lead racers may have been blandly portrayed, Talia Shire, Jack Weston, Ray Waltson, and Lori Loughlin all turn in effective performances. In fact, you could probably argue that Talia Shire is almost too good in her role. She so effectively portrays the anguish of a mother watching her son throw his future away that you really do find yourself worrying about what’s going to happen to Cru when he’s older and he can’t get a job because he blew off college. (I’m going to guess that Talia Shire’s presence in this film is due to the fact that it was produced by her late husband, Jack Schwartzman.)
Rad is sincere and unpretentious and rather silly. Like a lot of 80s movies, it’s got a good soundtrack. It especially makes good use of the song SendMeAnAngel. There’s also an out-of-nowhere scene where Cru and Lori Loughlin do a series of impromptu freestyle bike tricks on the middle of a dance floor and it’s just surreal enough to be memorable.
Rad is a simple but inoffensive tribute to throwing your life away.
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
94 years ago today, Lucio Fulci — the maestro of Italian genre filmmaking — was born in Rome. Fulci would go on to direct some of the most visually stunning (and, occasionally, most narratively incoherent) films ever made. Fulci worked in all genres but he’ll probably always be best remembered for launching the Italian zombie boom with Zombi2. His subsequent Beyond trilogy continues to fascinate and delight lovers of both horror and grindhouse filmmaking.
Lucio Fulci, needless to say, is a pretty popular figure here at the TSL. In honor of the date of his birth, it’s time for….
In Those Who Wish Me Dead, Angelina Jolie plays Hannah, a smokejumper who is haunted by a mistake that led to a family dying in a forest fire. All of her recent psych evals seem to indicate that Hannah is self-destructive and a danger to herself and potentially others. Of course, it doesn’t help that Hannah keeps doing things that are self-destructive and that put her and potentially others in danger. She’s watched over by her fellow smokejumpers and her ex-boyfriend, Ethan (Jon Bernthal). Even Ethan’s pregnant wife, Allison (Medina Senghorse) is looking out for Hannah.
Hannah, meanwhile, finds herself looking out for Connor (Finn Carter), a young boy whose father has been murdered by two ruthless assassins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult). Because the boy has evidence that could lead to the downfall of an evil mob boss (played by Tyler Perry because, hey, why not?), the assassins search for Connor and they even set a forest fire to cover their tracks.
Trapped in the wilderness, Hannah, Connor, Ethan, and Allison have to somehow survive until the fire burns itself out and the smokejumpers can reach them. Meanwhile, the two assassins are closing in….
I was initially pretty enthusiastic about the prospect of watching Those Who Wish Me Dead on HBOMax but, ten minutes into the movie, I found myself wondering if maybe I was watching something that was made in 1998 and somehow not released until 2021. Everything about the film — from Hannah’s tortured backstory to the verbosely evil assassin played by Gillen — felt like it belonged in a direct-to-video thriller or maybe in a pilot for an old USA Network show starring Cynthia Rothrock and Lorenzo Lamas. It was very easy to watch this movie and to imagine Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze showing up as brothers fighting “the wildfire of the century!”
Oddly enough, Angelina Jolie probably could have starred in the 1998 version of this film. That’s how long we’ve been taking it for granted that Angelina Jolie can confront any crisis or any villain and basically kick its ass. That’s a huge reason why I was so looking forward to seeing Those Who Wish Me Dead. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to watch Angelina Jolie play an action hero and the fact that she was doing it in a film directed by Taylor Sheridan just made it all the more exciting. Unfortunately, though, Jolie doesn’t seem to be particularly invested in Those Who Wish Me Dead. There’s not much of the unpredictable spontaneity or the sense of danger that, in the past, made Angelina Jolie one of the most exciting actresses around. It’s easy to imagine that, just a few years ago, Jolie could have worked wonders playing someone as openly self-destructive as Hannah but, in Those Who Wish Me Dead, she instead often seems to just be going through the motions. If anything, Aidan Gillen makes a bigger impression, despite the fact that he’s just playing a standard bad guy.
(Speaking of bad guys, why is Tyler Perry playing a crime lord? There’s nothing menacing about Tyler Perry. The fact that Perry only appears in one scene makes his miscasting all the more obvious. As soon as you’ve said, “Wait — why is Tyler Perry in this movie?,” he’s gone. Perry needed at least two extra scenes where he could have killed someone or at least maybe cursed a little or anything else that could have established him as someone other than Tyler Perry making a strange cameo appearance.)
Taylor Sheridan both directed and had a hand in the script. Sheridan previously wrote Hell and High Water and Sicario and both directed and wrote Wind River. These are three of the best films of the past decade and, yet, in the early scenes especially, Those WhoWish Me Dead almost feels almost like a parody of those previous films. The early scenes, where Hannah hangs out with the other smokejumpers, especially ring false, with the blue collar dialogue feeling forced and artificial. Sheridan does better when directing the action scenes but there’s still an overwhelming blandness to the whole film. There’s too much talent involved for Those Who Wish Me Dead to be terrible but, at the same time, it’s hard not to feel that there’s also too much talent for it to be this forgettable.
Free Guy is due to be released on August 13th. It stars Ryan Reynolds as a cheerful bank teller who discovers that he’s just a character in a ….
“Wait a minute, is The Truman Show?”
No, no. The Truman Show was about reality TV and it starred Jim Carrey, who was kind of annoying in the film, if we’re going to be honest. Free Guy is about someone who discovers that he’s a character in a video game and it stars the always wonderful Ryan Reynolds! So, as you can see, they’re totally different. Plus, The Truman Show was all about Truman trying to reach the real world, whereas Free Guy features Reynolds taking control of his artificial reality.
“So, it’s like The Matrix?”
Well, maybe. But it seems to be a lot less pretentious.
Some things just make you cringe and that was kind of my reaction after watching the teaser for the upcoming musical adaptation tick, tick …. BOOM! I say this as someone who likes musicals, though I should admit that I usually prefer to see them on stage as opposed to on film. On stage, it’s very easy to get caught up in the magic of the music and the dancing. On film, it’s more of a balancing act. Just one misstep on the part of the filmmakers can doom the entire enterprise.
Despite my own less than enthusiastic reaction to the teaser, there are quite a few people who do seem to be looking forward to tick, tick …. BOOM! Not only is it the feature film directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda but it’s also based on both the work and the life of Jonathan Larson, the writer and composer of Rent whose tragic death contributed in no small amount to that show’s legendary and rapturous initial reception and continuing popularity.
While I’m sure some people initially assumed that this musical was an adaptation of the 1970s Jim Brown film, tick …. tick …. tick, it’s actually something very different. In tick, tick …. BOOM!, the very talented and guaranteed-to-win-an-Oscar someday Andrew Garfield plays Jonathan Larson, who is portrayed as being nearly 30 and frustrated that he has yet to write a masterpiece. He can hear the time ticking away. Well, you can see for yourself in the teaser below. Now, as I said earlier, this teaser made me cringe but it’s hard for me to explain why. I think some of it is because the trailer has a definite Smash-feel to it. In case you’ve forgotten, Smash was the heavily-hyped and ultimately very poorly planned NBC series that spent a good deal of it’s second season following the production of The Hit List, a show that was obviously very much based on Rent. The scenes of Garfield exhorting the wonders of bohemia have a very Smash/Hit List feel to them. My other problem is that “Boy Genius” line which is just such an obnoxious line.
But who knows! There’s a lot of musicals coming out this year and tick, tick …. BOOM! does look a bit better than Dear Evan Hansen. Here’s the teaser:
tick, tick …. BOOM! will be released on Netflix this fall. Considering the wonders that Netflix did for The Prom, well …. let’s just hope for the best.
I will admit that I was a little bit concerned when I first heard about the upcoming Fear Street trilogy, just because the whole thing sounded a bit like American Horror Story and I was worried that the end result would be more Ryan Murphy-like than R.L. Stine-like. Even though Murphy wasn’t actually involved in the production of the film, American Horror Story, with its heavy-handed approach and it’s somewhat condescending attitude towards the genre, has influenced several recent horror films and series and very rarely has that influence been for the better.
However, I just watched the trailer for the Fear StreetTrilogy and it looks pretty good. It looks like they captured the feel of Stine’s books while also thematically updating them a bit for the present age. It also looks like they avoided most of the overly cutesy stuff that often makes American Horror Story such a struggle to slog through. The trailer features plenty of scenes that will warm the heart of any regular reader of R.L. Stine’s. There’s Sunnyvale! There’s Shadyside! There’s a witch! There’s a dark and haunted night! There’s mayhem on a school bus! There’s a mall massacre! There’s a haunted camp! There’s a bloody murder! There’s teenagers in danger! There’s a man with an axe! There’s a landline phone!
Anyway, Fear Street is actually three connected films. Much like the Red Riding Trilogy, each film takes place in a different year but they share certain characters in common and they all add up to tell one big story. They were originally scheduled to come out last year but, like so many films, they were delayed by the pandemic lockdowns. (Ironically, they were delayed because they were originally meant for a theatrical release. However, the delay was so long that 20th Century Fox’s deal to distribute the films expired and they were then picked up by Netflix. So, even with the pandemic ending, the Fear Street Trilogy will still mostly be seen by people sitting in their living rooms. Seriously, just think about how much fun your lockdown would have been last year if you had three new R.L. Stine movies to watch. Sometimes, life is unfair.)
The three films will be released during the first three weeks of July, on Netflix! Here’s the trailer:
Through the Shattered Lens 