“Titans” S1 Ep 10 & 11; “Koriand’r” & “Dick Grayson” Review by Case Wright Spoilers

Posted on August 12, 2019 by casewright

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Do you know the exact moment when you sold your soul? Or when your soul is forfeit are you so far gone that you don’t notice?

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Dick Grayson started as the damaged hero and ended with nothing. He’s a tragic hero whose pride destroyed him. He became seduced to believe that his pain allowed him to decide life and death, causing him to commit the paragon of sins: Patricide. As you look at the 11 episode arc, you see Dick losing his identity as Robin, and in doing so, he loses his moral compass and his soul.

I reviewed these last two episodes together because they flow as one episode. It could’ve been titled The Last Temptation of Dick Grayson. Unfortunately, he made the wrong the decision and we see his soul die. Not only was the story brilliantly written, but these two episodes had a creepy factor that was palpable. In fact, the story began and ended in a haunted house.

In the previous episode, Starfire starts choking Rachel. Dick and Donna burst in and Starfire stops, but the damage has been done and Rachel’s mom insists that Starfire leave. Starfire does and Dick and Donna follow. Rachel’s mom has successfully separated the group. We learn that Starfire is an Alien and needs to stop Rachel from unleashing her father Trigon who is basically the Devil.

Rachel has been trying to keep from using her powers because she can’t control them and they seem inherently evil because … well … they are. Rachel’s mom as it turns out is still all about Trigon AKA Satan and she really wants her some Satan. In order to do it, she needs to get Rachel to use her evil mojo and pull her dad out of a mirror. Rachel’s mom accomplishes this by infecting Gar through a haunted mirror. Rachel’s mom tricks Rachel into pulling her dad out of Hell because only he can save Gar. Well, she does and Gar is healed by Trigon, but evil is now unleashed upon us. How did this work? Rachel was manipulated and seduced. She knew that her father was likely pretty pretty bad, but she was willing risk us all to help her friend, making the act selfish, but disguised as altruistic.

Dick Grayson enters and he is in his idealized reality, but not all is well. First of all, he’s in Southern California, which is almost a hell dimension all on its own. Dawn is his wife and he’s got another baby on the way AND they both have left the hero business behind to pursue a life of….well let’s just assume real estate? They probably have some really cool pictures of themselves on local benches. In fact, Minka Kelly should really be on ALL advertisements at all times.

Jason Todd arrives in a wheel chair and informs Dick that Batman has run a muck, killing the villains instead of beating them to near death, which is …. better? Dick returns to Gotham and is continually manipulated by Satan that Bruce can’t be stopped without killing him. Dick fights his way through the mansion and upon seeing that Starfire was killed by Batman, he gives into his wrath and commits patricide. By giving into this final act of evil, Dick becomes Trigon’s minion. Dick even gets evil eyes, but I didn’t not to use a screen cap of that because it might spoil visually.

These episodes and the season as whole take a deep dive into PTSD and human weakness. Dick was filled with bitterness and pain and when he burned his Robin suit he also burned the last vestige of his hero identity. When he kills Bruce, he wasn’t in costume; he was just angry Dick Grayson who wanted to get back at his Dad. Dick answers the question for us posed at the beginning: we don’t know when our soul is forfeit because we left all our scruples behind getting to that point, therefore, we become a husk of a human being capable of anything.

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Shattered Politics #81: Charlie Wilson’s War (dir by Mike Nichols)

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I hate to say it but Charlie Wilson’s War did not do much for me.

I hate to say that because this 2007 film is fairly well-acted, well-directed, and well-written (by Aaron Sorkin, whose scripts usually get on my last nerve). And it deals with an important subject. Taking place in the 80s, the film details how a Texas congressman (Tom Hanks), working with a profane CIA agent (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and an eccentric socialite (Julia Roberts), managed to create popular and political support for giving weapons to the Afghan rebels who were fighting the Soviet invasion of their country. By doing so, Wilson helps to weaken the Soviet Union but, when his efforts to provide humanitarian aide to Afghanistan are less successful, he also contributes to the subsequent rise of the Taliban.

It should have been a film that I would normally rave about but … I don’t know.

I watched Charlie Wilson’s War. I laughed at some of Tom Hanks’s facial reactions. (Hanks is playing a womanizer here who may, or may not, have been high on cocaine when he first learned about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and it’s obvious that Hanks really enjoyed getting to play someone who wasn’t a traditionally upright hero.) As I watched, I again considered what a loss we suffered when the brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman died. And, as I watched Julia Roberts, I again wonder why, despite the fact that she’s from Georgia, it is apparently impossible for Julia to sound authentically Southern.

(Of course, I’m sure some would argue that Julia wasn’t playing Southern here. She was playing a Texan. Well, I’m a Texan and I’ve never heard anyone down here sound like that. Tom Hanks, meanwhile, actually managed to come up with a decent accent. Wisely, he underplayed the accent, whereas I don’t think that Julia has ever underplayed anything in her life.)

And, at the end of Charlie Wilson’s War, I knew I had watched a good film but it was also a film that left me feeling curious detached. To be honest, I almost think the film would have been better if Hoffman’s CIA agent had been the main character, as opposed to Hanks’s congressman. Hoffman’s character, after all, is the one who nearly lost his job over his belief that the Afghan rebels should be armed. All Hanks really has to worry about is whether or not he’s going to be indicted for using cocaine in Vegas.

However, I do think that Charlie Wilson’s War does deserve praise for one very specific reason. Excluding the films made by native filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson, Charlie Wilson’s War is one of the few films that I’ve ever seen that actually portrays anyone from Texas in a positive light. Even more shockingly, it’s a positive portrayal of a Texas politician!

(I know it must have been tempting to change history and pretend that Charlie Wilson was originally elected from somewhere up north…)

But, overall, Charlie Wilson’s War didn’t do much for me. But, if you’re into military history and all that, you might enjoy the film more than I did.

(Plus, all you boys will probably enjoy Emily Blunt’s scenes….)

At the very least, you can watch it for Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Film Review: Raze (dir by Josh C. Waller)

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have always had trouble working in a group with other women.

I wish that wasn’t true because it really is such a cliché, this idea that a group of women can’t get along for more than a few days or that we’re all always in some sort of passive aggressive competition with each other. And I still don’t think that’s true for all women but it’s certainly been true for me. For whatever reason, I seem to bring out the cattiness in certain people and, being the Irish lass that I am, it’s next to impossible for me to truly let anything go. I remember every smirk, every eye roll, and every piece of innuendo that I’ve ever suspected was whispered behind my back. It probably doesn’t help that I tend to be ultra-competitive about — well, about everything. That’s why I’m sometimes jealous of the way that men can apparently compete each other without taking any of it personally or even that seriously. Men can compete and remain friends with no hard feelings and I have to admit that I’ve never quite understood how they manage to do that. Again, I wish that wasn’t true because it really does play into the stereotypes and clichés that men have used to keep us “in our place” for centuries.

I found myself thinking a lot about my competitive nature as I watched Raze, the debut film of director Josh C. Waller.

In Raze, a centuries-old secret society has kidnapped 50 women and imprisoned them in an underground prison. As the leaders of the organization — the cadaverous Joseph (Doug Jones) and the deceptively maternal Elizabeth (Sherilyn Fenn) — explain, the women will spend the next two weeks fighting each other. Each fight will be to the death until only one is left alive. If the women refuse to fight, their loves ones will be murdered. If one of the women loses her fight, her loves ones will be murdered. The only way for the women to save their loves ones is to be the lone survivor.

Since the movie opens with the tournament in progress, we only get to meet a handful of the women who are literally fighting for their lives. Jamie (Rachel Nichols) was kidnapped from a bar after she made the mistake of telling a handsome stranger that she wanted to be a kickboxer. Teresa (Tracie Thomas) is fighting to save her husband’s life. Cody (Bailey Anne Borders) spends all of her time in her cell crying but still turns out to be a surprisingly efficient killer. Pheobe (Rachel Marshall) is a sociopath who, alone of all the women, is actually enjoying the tournament. And then there’s Sabrina (Zoe Bell), a former soldier and POW who is fighting to protect the daughter that she’s never met.

Probably the first thing that I should tell you about Raze is that it’s a violent film. It’s not just that there’s a lot of fights in the film. It’s the fact that those fights are so well-choreographed and the film’s cast so throws themselves into both their characters and the action on-screen that the violence feels real in a way that most film violence does not. I don’t think I’ve ever winced as much and as often as I did while watching the fights in Raze because I found myself feeling each blow and each kick. There are a lot of fights in Raze but they never feel repetitive because the viewers has an emotional stake in each and every one of them.

Thematically, Raze makes an attempt to turn the tournament into a metaphor for the battles that women have to fight every single day. Elizabeth and Joseph both assure the women that the tournament’s champion will come out of the ordeal as a stronger and more independent woman. It’s an idea that the film doesn’t explore as thoroughly as I would have liked but it’s still an interesting concept that made Raze a bit more thought-provoking than the usual genre piece.

Personally, I like films where women get to kick ass. That’s why I’ve been always been willing to watch the Underworld and Resident Evil films, despite the fact that most of them kinda sorta suck. That said, I prefer films where women get to beat up men and zombies to films where women beat each other to death. On the surface, Raze has a lot in common the “women in prison” films that Roger Corman produced back in the 70s. The main difference is that, in the Corman films, characters like Sabrina and Cody would never have consented to killing another woman. Instead, they would have teamed up with Pam Grier and taken down the Man.

Raze is a lot better than you might expect but it still definitely could have used Pam Grier.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #93: The Woods (dir by Lucky McKee)

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I turned over to Chiller and watched the brilliant 2006 horror film, The Woods.

Why Was I Watching It?

I ended up watching The Woods almost at random. I didn’t want to go out last night because it’s Texas-OU weekend and that meant that the streets of Dallas would probably be full of drunk people from Tulsa. Even more importantly, I couldn’t go out because I’m recovering from a sprained ankle.

Normally, under those circumstances, I would have watched and live tweeted an original SyFy film. However, last night, SyFy was showing Fright Night which I had little interest in sitting through. So, instead, I turned over to Chiller and decided to give The Woods a try.

And that is how I randomly discovered one of the best horror films that I’ve recently seen.

What Was It About?

The year is 1965. Angry teenager Heather (Agnes Bruckner) starts a fire in a forest. Frustrated by their daughter’s rebellious nature, her parents enroll her at Falburn Academy, a boarding school that sits in the middle of the woods. Because she is the only redhead at the school, Heather is an immediate outsider who finds herself being taunted by the blonde Samantha (Rachel Nichols) and called “Firecrotch” by her other classmates.

However, Heather has more problems that just a bunch of anti-redhead bigots. She has nightmares where voices seem to call to her from the woods. Her friends Marcy and Ann both disappear from their beds, leaving behind a pile of dead leaves. Meanwhile, the school’s mysterious headmistress (Patricia Clarkson) insists that nothing strange is happening…

What Worked?

I wasn’t expecting much from The Woods. After all, it was a film that was released straight-to-DVD in 2006 and Chiller doesn’t exactly have a reputation for showing the best films. But, oh my God, y’all — The Woods turned out to be such a good film! The Woods is an atmospheric and surprisingly well-acted film that’s full of haunting imagery and memorable details. Much like Dario Argento’s Suspiria (which has a similar plot to this film), The Woods is a triumph of both style and substance.

While the entire film is well-acted, special mention should be made of Patricia Clarkson, who gives a performance that is both menacing and humorous. Genre fans will be happy to see Bruce Campbell in the role of Bruckner’s well-meaning father.

Finally, I have to admit that, as a member of the 2% of the population who have been blessed with red hair, I have a special appreciation for this film. Behind all of the scares, The Woods provides a compelling portrait of the discrimination that those of us with red hair struggle with every single day. From the minute Heather enters Falburn Academy, she is the subject of constant prejudice because of the color of her hair. As someone who has had to endure countless comments about redheads not having souls, I both related to and appreciated the film’s sensitivity to those of us in the 2%.

What Did Not Work?

Over on the film’s imdb page, there’s some debate as to whether or not the term “Firecrotch” was in use back in 1965. Personally, I think that’s nitpicking. The fact of the matter is that anti-redhead prejudice has always been with us. If people in the 60s didn’t attack us by calling us “Firecrotch,” they undoubtedly called us something equally bad. As far as I’m concerned, the entire film worked perfectly.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

Almost the entire film was an “Oh my God! Just like me!” moment, largely because the main character was a redhead and had to deal with constant anti-redhead prejudice. (“Oh my God! Just like me!”)

At one point, Samantha taunts Heather by asking, “Is your pubic hair red?” which is the exact same question that I got asked several times throughout high school, though in my case, I was usually asked by a guy with a smirk on his face. (“You’ll never know,” I would reply.) Heather then finds herself being repeatedly called “Firecrotch” by people who are jealous of her red hair and again, oh my god! Just like me!

Finally, as I mentioned above, I sprained my ankle last Wednesday and, as such, I’ve spent the last few days recovering. Amazingly enough, about halfway through the film, Heather twists her ankle. She spends the rest of the movie either on crutches or painfully limping. Oh my God! Just like me!

(As a quick aside, can I just say how much I HATE crutches!? Oh my God, they’re the worst…)

Lessons Learned

I am tempted to say that the main lesson to be learned from The Woods is that it’s not easy being a redhead. However, I knew that before I watched the film. I also knew that you should stay out of the woods, which is the main reason why you’ll never catch me camping.

So, the most important lesson that I learned is that everyone should see The Woods.

Review: Conan the Barbarian (dir. by Marcus Nispel)

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Arleigh

In 1982 the duo of John Milius (director) and Arnold Schwarzenneger (actor) brought to the big-screen the first film adaptation of the classic, pulp character of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard. The Milius-Schwarzenneger Conan the Barbarian was an instant hit and classic. It also made Schwarzenneger into an A-list superstar who would rule the 80’s and 90’s. This film was followed up by a lesser quality, though fun in its own way, sequel in 1984 with Conan the Destroyer. Milius saw this franchise as a trilogy with the third and final film to be called Conan the Conqueror. But a sort of blacklisting of Milius as a filmmaker and Schwarzenneger moving onto other projects killed the planned third film. The start of the new millenium saw an interest in restarting the third film, but after countless delays and changes in filmmakers and stars the project was once again shelved.

In 2010, the franchise which launched an Austrian-bodybuilder into superstardom was finally greenlit, but this time around it would be a reboot of the series with the film hewing coser to Robert E. Howard’s creation and world-building than the Milius version of 1982. To bring Conan the Cimmerian to life would be Hawaiian-Irish Jason Momoa (of Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones fame) with German-filmmaker Marcus Nispel taking on the directing reins. The film’s trio of writers (Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Sean Hood) would literally take the world of the Hyborian Age which Howard had meticulously created for his Conan character and use that as the basis for this reboot.

Conan the Barbarian begins with a surprising introductory narration of the world of the Hyborian Age by none other than Morgan Freeman. This narration was one clue that while this film wouldn’t and shouldn’t be seen as thought-provoking and award-season fare it looks to try anything and everything to make it fun and relevant. The film succeeds in this respect in its own way. As we see Conan come into the world as a baby born of battle in the most literal way. It’s not often we see on the big-screen a pregnant mother delivering her child by way of battlefield C-section. From this moment forward this film will wallow in the bloody carnage and machismo-fueled world of Robert E. Howard to the nth degree.

The film’s Conan as played by Leo Howard as the younger version then to Jason Momoa as the adult version looks to be different than the Schwarzenneger one. While Momoa was still quite the physical specimen on the screen he also exuded a sense of fluid, athleticism like that of a sleek jungle cat whereas Arnold’s Conan was more of the big cat of the savannah. The stand out performance in the film comes from both Leo Howard (quite ferocious as the young Conan) and Momoa. The film lives or dies on whether we believe these two actors as the characters they inhabit. Not once during the near 2-hour running time do we not believe these two as Conan.

Conan the Barbarian as a film does have several weaknesses which could derail it for me. For one, the story itself is quite cliched as we see the typical hero’s journey coinciding with the goal of saving the world from an almost cartoonish villain (Stephen Lang clearly having fun as the warlord Khalar Zym) with an equally cartoonish sidekick (Rose McGowan who seemed out of place as Zym’s witch-daughter Marique). The story’s plot seems more geared like a video game where each sequence was there to put Conan in the best way possible to do what he does best and that’s kill enemies by the score and do it with bloody panache.

While the film will definitely not score very well with many people I think they will do so as they compare it to the original Milius film. I think the mistake they also will use as an excuse to not like the film is that it’s dumb and loud. I, for one, thought I would feel the same, but as I watched the film I acknowledged those very same criticisms, saw the flaws, but in the end I still enjoyed the film for what it was: an almost gleeful, throwback to the 80’s sword-and-sorcery exploitation film that tried to cash in on the success of the original Conan the Barbarian.

Nispel’s film may not stand the test of time as the original, but in the end he made a film that actually stayed true to the pulpy origins of the character (Robert E. Howard was never known as a subtle writer and this film reveled in his blunt-way of writing). This Conan the Barbarian was several steps above the usual sword-and-sorcery stuff which the SyFy Channel seems to churn out by the dozen each year and it’s steps below that of the original. What it does share with the 1982 film is a sense of fun even if it’s at the expense of story and character and at times I’m fine with that. Not everything has to be Inception or Pride and Prejudice.

Trailer: Conan the Barbarian

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Arleigh

1982 saw the release of one of the most iconic fantasy films ever with the John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenneger collaboration, Conan the Barbarian. There was a follow-up sequel that wasn’t as great as the first, but still did well enough that down the year there was talk of a third film to finish off the Schwarzenneger Conan trilogy. It never happened as the project continued to be shelved year after year until even Arnold himself backed out and thought a third film was never in the cards.

This trailer suggests otherwise though it’s more of a reboot to the Conan film franchise and sticks much closer to the character and world created by it’s creator Robert E. Howard. This film is directed by German filmmaker Marcus Nispel whose body of work tends to be in the genre arena like the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the Viking-Indians mashup story, Pathfinder. There’s also to be a new Conan in the form of Jason Momoa (who played the character of Ronan in the long-running scifi tv series, Stargate Atlantis) who is currently gaining some fans outside of his Stargate work due to his casting as the mighty Khal Drogo in HBO’s critically-acclaimed and very popular fantasy series, Game of Thrones.

This Conan the Barbarian remake looks to return the character to it’s Age of Hyboria roots. The trailer gives ample evidence of the film using much of the fantasy world Robert E. Howard created with long-lost civilizations, evil warlords, sorcery and, of course, fantastic monsters. While the trailer doesn’t show just how well Jason Momoa acts as the character Conan it does show that he fits the role the way Howard originally wrote him. While still having a muscled physique this Conan also is more agile and lithe than the Schwarzenneger iteration.

Conan the Barbarian is set for an August 19, 2011 release on both 2D and 3D screens.