The Great VEWPRF Death March – He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special

He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special (1985 Dir. Bill Reed & Ernie Schmidt)

Cartoon Review: The Christmas Orange

The Christmas Orange (2002/ Bardel Entertainment/ Dir. Ian Freedman)

So here we have something so obscure that I may be the only person who actually bought the DVD. Not only am I the only owner of the DVD in America, I bought it 10 years after the product came out. And I only bought it for a few dollars, on a whim because I'd never heard of it and reviewing things that say "Christmas" on them is a thing I do. So I decided to give it a try. Given the product was only $6, given that it was a one shot for Canadian TV, and given that it was 10 years after it was first broadcast, I wasn't expecting to find a huge amount about the cartoon. It's based on a book, that's what I found out. It's not a bad product, we'll get that out of the way for starters. I'm not sure how good it is though. Let's examine The Christmas Orange...

Cartoon Review: The Fat Albert Christmas Special

The Fat Albert Christmas Special (1977/ Filmation/ Dir.Hal Sutherland)

Doing holiday specials is a tough gig. Quite often, they're produced as a fast buck idea. Something to throw at the screen during December, and if possible, break up the McDonald's Commercials a little. Most the specials I have seen, and I've seen WAY more than I should, fit into this category. Particularly existing properties, like the Smurfs or He-Man, fit this mold.

...

You know what? We're not going to mention another holiday special for the rest of this review. I'm going to show my hand early and just say it. This is good. I don't want to taint that by comparing it to something less good. If it's really good, it should be able to stand up on its own without putting something else down. And I think this is good, and I think it goes beyond a cynical cash grab, and I think it might really be worth your while.

Cartoon Review: The Snowman

The Snowman (1982/ TVC London/ Dir. Dianne Jackson)

This is a cartoon for which I have no nostalgia. I only saw it for the first time last year and was so exhausted that I fell asleep during part of it. If I can offer an untainted perspective on any holiday movie, this HAS to be it. I only bought it because it has a tremendous reputation. The fact that it came on a DVD with The Nuttiest Nutcracker had nothing to do with it. I still haven't watched that second feature, mainly because I watched the trailer. But we're talking about something that I've been told by English and Canadians is the height of their VEWPRF season. So I bought it and watched it, and now I shall write my review of that movie. How did I think it help up? You'll have to wait and see...

Cartoon Review: The Smurfs Christmas Special

The Smurfs Christmas Special (1982/ Hanna-Barbera/ Dir. Gerald Baldwin)

It wasn't supposed to be like this. My first holiday special review in two years... it was supposed to be a momentous occasion. It should have been filled with joy, and laughter, not this. I said some time ago that I was sort of done with reviews that only amounted to complaints. I mean... look, The Avengers happened and we're liking things because we like them again, not because we hate them and want to imagine we're superior to them. I want you to know, I started this with the purest of intentions. Sadly The Smurfs Christmas Special did not hold up.

There is no way to properly summarize this, no way to discuss it on its merits, or play on the themes. Mostly, because I have no idea what happened. The best I can hope for is a synopsis, going down the line point by point. Maybe, together, we can reach and understanding. Just remember the mantra "I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks!"

Skyfall Review (In Bullet Point Form!)

Short Version: I liked it, but with some reservations.

1. It feels like this movie was written for Brosnan. Or at least, like they started with a Brosnan script. Not in a bad way, not necessarily, but it feels sort of early in Craig's run for people to be accusing him of being too old for this shit. Also, ALL the computer talk is straight out of 1999.

2. It's interesting that in 22 minutes they told more of Bond's backstory than they did in 22 movies. As a result, Bond feels more like a complete character than he ever has before.

3. I was apprehensive about the inclusion of Q, however I was willing to see what they'd do. Bond and Q - together, they fight crime. He's a near perfect foil for this Bond, and the fact that Syd and I spent 10 minutes talking about his little "Q" mug proves they did something right.

4. The CGI Komodo Dragon was jarring and distracting, as was the CGI breath. I think because that was the only CGI in the movie, it really stood out.

5. Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Superman, Luke Skywalker, Black Dynamite, James Bond... anyone here NOT an orphan?

6. At one point, six to eight blackmen terrorists in black leather carrying machine guns come to a house in Scotland to fight a blue eyed hero and I turned to Syd and said "This just turned into a Jack Higgins Novel" and then it turned into Home Alone.

7. Bond didn't go into any kind of Gay Panic, instead he goes with it. I liked that. I'm not sure how to interpret his comment, but I don't think it matters. Either he's cool enough to play the guy, or he has played both sides of the field at one time or another. I don't much care, they both work for me.

8. Can just ONE bond girl live in one of Craig's movies? It was interesting the first two movies, but Bond's dick is clearly the Harbinger of Doom. 20 minutes after getting funky with Bond, you die. It's like The Ring or some shit.



Some Spoilers now follow...

Grump!

Holy Crab Cakes! I've not written a review for this month. Remember when I did them once a week? Yeah, me either. Work ate my life, and one day we'll have a discussion about depression when mixed with ADD. Enough of that though, allow us to discuss the subject of today's review. As I've said before, Thanksgiving is tough for a reviewer. There aren't many things out there because Thanksgiving is only a set holiday in America and Canada. As a result, you can't ship the special to Europe like you can with Christmas, so there is less value in producing it. Lest you think I'm exaggerating in this, let me tell you that the last time I was in France, half the shows on the tube were American. Our chief export to the world is cultural and no one wants to hurt their potential market. As a result, I've either reviewed all the Thanksgiving fare worth reviewing, or I can't get screen caps because my dvd player and the Simpson's Season 2 discs aren't getting along. So I'm kind of at loose ends now.

In the past, I would have suggested a raft or two of films you could watch when you had the four day weekend, but I feel like I've shot my bolt on that one too. If I'm going to give you movies to watch, I'm going to give you a real essentials list that will inform and educate while entertaining you. I don't really want to do counter programming right now, because I'm not in that mood. I don't know what to do and time is running out.

I could finally unleash some of my more bizarre fan theories at you, like how Interview With the Vampire and The Big Lebowski are essentially the same story told in different ways or how Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is a remake of The Wizard of Oz. I've got one that states that all the slasher movies from the 80s are in the same universe as Hostel and that they moved from providing an avenue for spree killers and adjusted as the market moved to give a place for torturers as well. There is even the really crazy one I have that says the entire James Bond series from Connery to Brosnan was the career of one guy and it's an unbroken continuity.

What I'm saying is "Give me a minute" because this is going to take a little while.

Wreck it Ralph Review - In Bullet Point Form!

I liked Wreck-It Ralph, let's talk a little.

1. I thought the opening short was too good. I thought it might diminish the feature. It didn't, but it was an utterly charming little bit of animation.

2. Going to have to buy this on DVD so I can catch all the little jokes and references they threw in.

3. "She has the most tragic backstory of all time." That line killed.

4. They did their homework. Even if the people who worked on this are all about my age and as such are gamers from when I was gaming, they did their home work. There are a lot of gags, references, and an overall understanding of how video games work here. These guys knew what they were doing.

5. Most the jokes were funny, most the characters were interesting, most the story works really well.

6. Some of the characters move like their video game counter parts would move. They have no middle animation they just go from their hands out, to their hands raised, just like 8-bit.

7. The one human gamer we really see was a girl... BUT GIRLS DON'T GAME! my mind=blown!

Now, below there will be spoilers.

Movie Review: Arsenic and Old Lace

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944/Warner Bros./Dir. Frank Capra)

A little while ago, I posted a list of movies that you can watch at Halloween that aren’t horror movies. When I posted that, I “missed” one important movie. I put missed in quotes because I didn’t miss it so much as decide that I would rather do a review on it. While not a perfect movie, nor even a perfect comedy, it is enjoyable and it does work as a film. It's one of m favorite Cary Grant performances, and that is really saying something. And hey, it takes place on Halloween!

Here's the thing though, the best thing to do would be to go into this movie totally blind. I'm going to spoil some things about this movie, but one of the biggest spoilers is on the back of the box. For best results, don't read anything and just go watch it. As of right now, it's on Netflix Streaming (but who knows what tomorrow might bring, right?) so just go watch it. Seriously, don't even bother reading this review because you should just go see it.

5 Non-Horror Halloween Movies

I like Halloween, a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. Syd also loves Halloween. The problem is, Syd doesn't like horror movies. It's a little hard to watch movies during the Halloween season if you live with someone who doesn't like Horror movies. So I decided to put together a list of movies that don't have to be classed as horror. That way, I get to get into Halloween, and Syd gets to sleep without nightmares. So as a result, I've got something that isn't scary. Now, there aren't rules to this, there isn't any science, I went by feel. The only explanation I can come up with, is an after the fact examination. Each of these feel Autumnal to me. They take place during the fall, or have strong themes of the supernatural. That's all I got. I like watching these during Halloween.

NOW! Allow us to, for a moment, start with the honorable mentions. Someone suggested The Nightmare Before Christmas while I was putting this list together. Syd had a complaint, "It's a Christmas movie." and with that, it sort of had to go. It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown was rejected on the grounds that Syd can't watch old Chuck get another bag full of rocks. She just can't take the bullying of Charlie Brown. The Godfather is something I always find myself watching during autumn, but it's not Hallow'een-y enough. Likewise, Ghostbusters was also suggested, but it just felt wrong. Yeah, it felt wrong, I go mostly by feeling on this sight, quit trying to imagine that I use any kind of science behind this. There is no science, no chart, no weighing of evidence. Feeling, gut, emotion. We went through a few others, but in the end I landed with these five.


1. Clue
A classic comedy, that didn't get the kind of love it deserved back in the day. Yes, it's based on a board game, but this movie is SO MUCH MORE! Clue is truly one of the funniest satires of both the mystery genre and the McCarthyism of the 50s. I'm not sure it actually takes place during the autumn, but it feels like it does. Also, most the characters are inside and the whole thing has a lovely warm feeling that I admire. There are few movies that are as much fun as this one. When I reviewed this a while ago, I was ready for it to have not held up, but it did. And it has the most manic dénouement in history with Tim Curry running around explaining the murder like mad. Ya gotta love that!


2. The Crow
Another movie I've reviewed, and still watch. I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but about 90% of the time I review a movie I have this feeling of "Well, I don't need to watch that again." that washes over me. And maybe 85% of the time I never do watch the movies again. Or at least, I don't feel an urge to watch them. This one, however, I found myself wanting to watch after the review. I went into the viewing, with the idea of watching it for a review, with the idea that I was going to sink myself into a crappy earl 90s nostalgiafest of not holding up years later. Strangely, not only did it hold up, but there were things I found that I appreciated about the movie that had never struck me before. Of course, by issues with depression didn't start until my 30s, so some of the things in that movie wouldn't have struck me until later. Since that review, I've pulled it out every Halloween Season and watched it at least once, if not twice. Yeah, I didn't much talk about the movie here did I? Aw well, click the link up there and read the review.


3. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Okay, so this is a midnight movie that plays on Halloween. What do you want from me? If you don't know what Rocky Horror is... I honestly can't help you. No, wait, I'll try. It's part sci-fi homage, part lunatic comedy, part polyamory romance, part exaltation of the joy of being yourself, part surreal examination of the sexual awakening of America, it's a musical and Tim Curry is in it. Again. What more could you possibly need? There is a lot more story than what ends up on the screen, so you'll need to watch four or five hundred times to get the full understanding. If you're a fan, you will have done this. Not sure why I've never actually reviewed this one. I've thought about it. I think I probably like it too much. There is a list of movies that I love, that I think I'll probably never actually review. I might, some day, which is why I've never done a "Movies I'll NEVER Review" list, because three days would go by and I'd find myself deciding to give Raiders of the Lost Ark the love it deserves. It's such an unrecognized classic! Seriously you have no idea how close to rhapsodizing it I was after seeing it on the IMAX screen last week. Only exhaustion stopped me. What was I talking about? Oh, right, Rocky Horror. Well, all that I said about Raiders also applies. I like it too much, I would just say things you've heard before.


2. Interview With the Vampire
Again, I'm not sure how Halloweeny this is, but I watch it at this time of year. Again, we've got themes of depression, the supernatural, and (oddly) polyamory. Huh, note to self, collect a list of movies that feature polyamory. This is another movie that I have watched each Halloween since the review. I actually haven't watched the Corman Poe movies that much since I reviewed them, and I think they all got much higher reviews than these two I've admitted to watching a lot more. Interesting that. I'm not sure what it says, but I do watch it. Probably because the movie is ridiculously beautiful, being more of a drama with a bit of supernatural themes than really a supernatural film. Everyone I have asked about this says it's not a horror film, that they've always felt it to be a dramatic period piece first and a vampire movie second. Oddly, I have real problems with the book. I tried to read it once, got the heavily abridged audiobook, and it's kind of terrible. Try cutting what, according to my unabridged audiobook, is a book that takes fifteen hours to read and squish it down to three hours. I'm only reading the whole thing for the first time right now. Interestingly, I don't find Louis as whiney as everyone else. I never found him whiney exactly, just ineffectual. I think he's supposed to be clinically depressed, but written by someone who either hasn't suffered from depression, or can't articulate the feelings very well. The movie is fantastic though, and you should probably watch it again for the first time.


5. Legend
Tom Cruise and Mia Sara fight TIM CURRY? What the shit? How many times is Curry going to turn up in this list? Well, as this is the last entry, it should be the last time. Again, the autumnal feeling is questionable, but I allow it because the only times I've ever felt like watching this movie is in the period between September 1 and November 30. So, I'm going with it. The supernatural is well represented, and there is a force of evil that has to be conquered. There is a lot of darkness, a great deal of glitter, and Tom Cruise in a mini dress. I don't know, it feels right, and it has Tim Curry in it! Has Tim Curry ever steered us wrong? I mean BESIDES McHale's Navy! And Congo... Addams Family Reunion, Oscar, Charlie's Angels, FernGully: The Last Rainforest... You know what? Never mind! Look, when he's good he's VERY good. You may be wondering why I don't mention The Shadow. I actually sort of like that movie. I've been thinking of a review for it. I like to defend the indefensible after all. Also, would have been a good one for this list. Another movie I associate with fall and Halloween.


Wait, I didn't put The Immortals in here? That actually takes place ON Halloween. Of course, it's also not a very good movie. That's probably why I didn't put it here. And yet, I have, so work out that little pair of ducks on your own.

Movie Review: The Adventures of Robin Hood

Movie Review: The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Adventures of Robin Hood/1938/ Dir. Michael Curtiz & William Keighley

Oh yes, the tights, we must always go back to the tights! Easy for a man to look tough wearing 35 pounds of rubber and latex armor, but it takes a real man to look badass in tights. Not just tights, but tights and what amounts to a velvet mini-dress. You could call it a shirt, or a jerkin, but if anyone wore it today, we’d call it a mini-dress. We’d also call it pretty hot if a girl wore something that short. Point is, TIGHTS! You’ve got to talk about the tights first thin out of the gate, because otherwise it becomes the elephant in the room. Beyond that, this is a pretty great movie. Yes, the costumes and manners make the Renaissance Festival look like Game of Thrones. Yes, it’s about as historically accurate as a Walt Disney cartoon. Yes, yes, yes I’ll agree to most the criticism… BUT! This is also the single best movie about Robin Hood, and is still the most iconic. There are only a few Robin Hood movies that are any good, and this is the best.

Movie Review: Windtalkers

Movie Review: Windtalkers

Windtalkers (2002/ MGM/ Dir. John Woo)

What happened to John Woo when he came to America? He had made some of the best action movies of the 80s and early 90s. Then he came to the US and had a string of near disasters and critical failures. That’s not to say his movies did badly. Mission: Impossible II actually did pretty well in theaters, despite what some smart ass critics thought of it. Face/Off was a big hit in the theaters and on video, as was Broken Arrow. None of them are really good movies though, and most have been rejected by Woo fans. Then this movie came along, which sank like a stone at the box office and heralded the beginning of the end for Woo’s American experiment. Allow me to state now, this is not a good movie. It will not be getting a huge score on the Graffiti Bridge Scale. HOWEVER! It won’t get a negative score, and that’s part of what I want to talk about here.

The Amazing Spider-Man review (in bullet point form!)

1. At no time did I ask the question "Why the hell would anyone do that?" when someone did something.

2. I like the evolution of the costume.

3. Andrew Garfield is a good Peter Parker

4. Emma Stone is a good Gwen Stacy.

5. Gwen Stacy only screamed once, and ANYONE would have screamed at that moment.

6. The decision to turn to hero rather than vigilante was hands down the best I've seen in a movie EVER.

7. Lizard was... eh. I liked him, he was okay, but he was just sort of... there.

8. I LIKED THE CRANE THING! Okay? I liked it, I thought it was cool. I know lots of people hated it, but I thought it worked.

9. Parker was a real nerd, and he did real nerd stuff.

10. I don't think I can watch the Sam Raimi Spider-Man again. At least, not anytime soon. It hasn't aged well and now it'll look down right campy.

11. Give Sally Field an Oscar. Give her all the Oscars. Give her the one for best lighting and shit. Seriously.

12. Syd said "Oh, so the Denis Leary looking guy was Denis Leary" during the credits. No shit.



So, I really, really liked The Amzing Spider-Man, and I would have liked to see ASM2, but I saw the trailer for The Wizard of Oz prequel, and now I hate all movies. I'm giving up on my hobby, I can't take the pain.

In fact, I hate everything, because it's all connected to that piece of shit.

And people were showing up for Batman as we were leaving. It doesn't start until 12, but they were there at 9:30 waiting.

I sort of wish I hadn't hated Batman Begins quite so much. I mean, it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen up to that point, but someone forgave its faults enough to make two more movies and I've been told people liked The Dark Knight. The problem is, I've absolutely hated everything Christopher Nolan has ever done. After The Prestige I blacklisted him and haven't watched anything since. I don't want waste time seeing something I'm 98% sure will have me shouting at the screen. And I’ve seen some of the scenes with The Joker, and predicted his movements* and spoke his lines** before he did in every single one. It never gripped me enough to give a shit.

*I knew what his magic pencil trick would be
**"You remind me of my father." "You hated your father." "I hated my father." "Fuck off."

Movie Review: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998/Universal Pictures/Dir. Terry Gilliam)

There are books that are difficult to translate into movies, and there are books that are more easily translated. I’m not exactly sure where Fear and Loathing fits in there, but it was at least fairly accurately translated. Not 100%, several things prevent it from reaching the full and complete accuracy that fans were hoping for. While some of them are choices made by Gilliam, many of them are just rights and budget concerns. However, as an adaptation of the book, it works. As something to get you interested in the greater works of Hunter S. Thompson, it is an excellent device. How does the movie hold up compared to the book? Let’s find out together, shall we?

Avengers Review - In Bullet Point Form!

So we saw The Avengers...

- I lost count of the amount of times people stopped using rifles during firefights because Pistols Is Better!

- Every time the characters started fighting, I wanted someone to pick Ryu so that the Marvel Vs Capcom feeling would be complete. Every big scene felt empty and flaccid to me, it had all the impact of watching someone else play a video game.

- Am, I only person who said "Tell me about the lambs" during the big tell me about the lambs scene?

- What military sky boat (a supremely stupid idea in the comics and worse in the movie) would have less failsafe and fall back precautions than a modern airliner?

- Does no one in New York City have any kind of self preservation sense at all? 15 minutes into a full blown alien attack and people are still gaping by windows hoping to get glass shards in the face.

- Those sky serpent things, were they some kind of left over design that Michael Bay decided not to use for the Transformers movies?

- A lot of the lines in this movie make no sense when you think about them. "They'll come." "How can you know?" "We'll need them." That's no kind of answer!

- I have a nifty shield! I have a magic hammer! I have super strength! I have a full blow Deus Ex Machina suit! I have a... 9mm pistol... I'm just here for T&A aren't I?

- So many of the jokes and quips fell flat for me that I started to resent the idea of laughing when one actually amused me. By the time Hulk punched Thor, I just sighed and looked away from the screen.

- And the guy who got Jossed was totally Jossed. That was not story supported, it was a cheap trick performed by a bad writer with no other way to make people care.

- Over all Joss Whedon remains a rather cheap hack with a rather shallow bag of tricks. If you like his bag of tricks, it's probably fine. I hate his bag of tricks and the movie was chock full of the things I don't like about his work.

Otherwise it was okay. I didn't want to kill anyone, I didn't want to ram chopsticks into my eyes, but Joss Whedon is still a shitty writer and I don't like his works, but this is the closest I've ever come to not hating every minute of it. If we'd been watching at home though, I would have walked out less than halfway through and not finished it.

Movie Review: Mobsters

Mobsters (1991/ Universal Pictures/ Dir. Michael Karbelnikoff)

We’ve probably talked about this before, but movies that took place before the fifties and featured guys in hats doing guys in hats things were very cool for about twelve minutes when I was a kid. For reasons I’ve never been quite clear on, I was very VERY into the time era that went from the 20s to the 40s when I was between the ages of 11 and 16. Maybe it was an obsession with old Warner Brothers Cartoons, maybe I got a taste of some really good Film Noir, maybe I just liked fedoras. Who can say? No, it’s probably not just the hats, I think it has to be the time period. You can’t just say “This has guys in hats” and get me interested, but you can say “It takes place in 1935” and I am THERE! Case in point, this movie. I pretty much have to put this thing into context, because without context it almost doesn’t/shouldn’t exist and in many ways it fails to make sense on its own. It’s not a good movie, but it’s too well made to be on any “So bad they’re good” lists, mostly it’s forgotten. Again, without context, you fail to understand why such talent would go to such wretched waste.

We can’t stop here Dave, this is Dalek Country.

We can’t stop here Dave, this is Dalek Country.

I was thinking of watching 2001: A Space Odyssey for a review, but I had a problem. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson dropped a seed into my brain, and I can’t think about the movie without dealing with that seed.

Allow me to quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas…

What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create… a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.

Sci-Fi was basically mired in that self-same belief for decades. If you read all of the Space Odyssey books, you find that there are more Monoliths are more numerous than just the movie makes them seem. There are many monoliths and the reason for them is that a super-advanced race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings sent them to earth was to advance our evolution from one stage to another. Eventually they decide we’re cool and let us into their mouse club just like a Monty Python sketch!

Now, do me a favor and go read the bit about the acid culture again.

I can’t get this idea out of my head that Arthur C. Clarke fell into the same sort of trap along with a lot of other writers. Star Trek does it, B5 does it, Dr. Who does it. Asimov doesn’t do it as directly, but he does some. So many of the writers, names and stories I’ve mostly forgotten now, so many aliens and supercomputers playing as a stand in for God. There seems to be this need to reach out to a god, or a super-advanced race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, or possibly just a really smart robot. Star Wars doesn’t, and I’ve noticed that’s one of the reasons some sci-fi fans hold it in contempt. You could argue that The Force is appealing, but I argue that it’s just a sort of unfocused spiritualism. More of a way to define the walls of the tunnel than any sort of light tender.

I have noticed though, that it happens a lot more with older sci-fi than the newer stuff. By newer I mean the mid 90s or so, because… you know. I remember some of Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick being very down on the idea of religion as a whole. English movies and TV shows were much more apt to say either there was no God, or we were alone in the universe during the 80s. Red Dwarf and Hitchhiker’s Guide come to mind. Rationalism came to Sci-Fi in the way the genre always pretended it subscribed to. A wave of atheism rolled in after a while, and then rolled back as people who should have embraced the idea of humanity doing it for itself drifted back into their deeply conservative ways while nominally holding liberal views. Gods and super-advanced races of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings were once again all the rage, lending a helping hand or leaving us in our purgatories with that unexplained polar bear.

So now, you can stand near a closed down book store, and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see that high-water mark. The place where the wave broke and rolled back. Or maybe there was no wave, maybe it was just a small ripple of rationalism in an otherwise over-godded pond.

So yeah, Hunter S. Thompson and Arthur C. Clarke referenced in the same post. Not everyone does that. Next time I’ll talk about what My Little Pony and the Russian Revolution have to do with each other.

There’s Always a Villain in Every Movie

I have a game I like to play during movies. Not all movies mind you, not even boring movies, although I do find I play it more there. Just movies that tend to fall outside of the simple good guy/bad guy structure. The game is simple, and it leads to some odd places now and then.

I impose a classic Hero/Villain structure upon the movie.

I decide who is the hero, by the simple expedient of “they’re the one we spend the most time with” and impose a villain with the criteria “they’re the one who is the most antagonistic over all to our hero” and away we go. I don’t allow that a movie has man against the elements, or he’s really struggling against himself or whatever. Nope, there is a good guy and a bad guy. Yes, in pure story telling terms I’m breaking down and over simplifying things, but it’s my watching experience and I can do what I want inside my own head. I’ve got a lot of processing power in my bean, if I don’t occupy it with trivialities; I turn back to evil again.

Take something like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Is there a hero? Well, yeah, Raoul Duke is the hero. It’s told in first person, he has to be the hero. So who is the bad guy? Well, the antagonist he spends the most time with of course. Dr. Gonzo is about a villainous as you can get, when you start to look at it that way. He is a demon that Raoul has brought along with him on this trip. Less so in the book than in Gilliam’s movie, but he is still portrayed this way in the film and that’s what we’re talking about.

You can change the dynamic of a movie when you start to watch it like this, because a villain is supposed to be evil. Once you’ve got it in your head that say Joe Pesci is the villain of Casino, that movie has an entirely different vibe to it, as it becomes the tale of a gangster deliberately screwing over a man he calls his friend, instead of inadvertently doing it. Yes, you’ve got to wonder how well he’s doing it, seeing how he turns out, but he could be doing it is the point.

Now of course, there is the opposite side of the game. Not exactly taking a movie that has a traditional good guy/bad guy structure and pretending there isn’t one, but looking at it from the other guy’s point of view. Let’s take Rollerball, for example. Flipped over like that, you have the tale of a tired and worried executive, trying to get on with the business of running the world for the benefit of all involved, and this prima donna sports star keeps screwing things up. Not only is he screwing things up, but he’s doing so for no better reason than his own self aggrandizement. It’s not always easy to do, because some actors play up being the bad guy too much. Anything where James Earl Jones plays the baddie is easily adapted to this idea, because he always played the bad guy as if he were the good guy.

Sometimes, these are the only things standing between people being able to enjoy a movie, and having to listen to me bitch about how substandard a movie is and how it fails on every step of the Bechdel Test. Most movies fail to pass that one, so it’s a depressingly easy go-to.

Movie Review: Rollerball

Wait, I've been away how long? It's been when since I last wrote a review? Where was I during that time. Oh yeah, that. Well, if I don’t get back on that horse, I may never get back on. The problem of course is that the longer you’re away, the bigger your return needs to be. I need to go either really obscure or really popular. The problem is that I also need to get back up to speed, so I’ll go for something in between. This is both obscure and popular.

Rollerball (1975- United Artists - Dir. Norman Jewison)

So this one has sort of an odd story. Rollerball was mentioned in the essay “You think that movie is bad?” and since then, Rollerball has become third in the list of search terms used to find this little blog. I found it sort of depressing that people might be coming here looking for a review of the movie and not finding one, despite it being one of my Sci-Fi Greats. So let’s talk about one of the truly great sci-fi/corporate nightmare movies. Really though, it’s just a dystopian movie because, there isn’t much that’s really advanced technology in the movie. Take away the strange TV sets and one scene with a laser gun and it could have happened in ‘75 when the movie was made. The only things that are required for this to become a reality are all social developments.