Körkarlen

And then there are some nights when you sit down to watch a silent Swedish film that is spiritually ripping off A Christmas Carol, but if the Ghost of Christmas Future is the only one who showed up to berate Scrooge, and if Tiny Tim were a consumptive self-deluded Salvation Army worker.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and Sister Edit is dying, while David Holm is getting drunk in a cemetery. What do these scenes and people have in common? This informs the entire plot of The Phantom Carriage, except for the part about the carriage itself, which we are notified in Act I is driven around all year helping Death to reap souls, by whoever died closest to midnight the previous year. (If nobody dies on New Year’s Eve, I think the previous person keeps the job? This doesn’t seem a likely scenario, however.)

At first, as per my cheeky but fair summary above, I did not consider this to be a horror movie. Just because there’s a horse ghost and a guy in a hood with a sickle, it was still mostly a drama about bad decisions. But somewhere in the second half, it goes dark, and it goes hard, and I gotta say, in the end I was impressed. Between the depth of darkness and the (for 1921) technical prowess of the special effects, I can understand how this has turned into a classic’s classic. (You know, people in the industry love it, people outside the industry never heard of it. Like the anecdote about how only 300 people heard The Velvet Underground’s first album, but every one of those people went on to form a successful band.)

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

In December, Game Pass got a big Day One release[1], Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. This is a graphics intensive first-person puncher in which Indy races a rival Nazi archaeologist to solve the mystery of why Vatican giants are stealing cat mummies. Aside from the punching and the field archaeology, it’s mostly a puzzle and collections game, which is a style I’ve been enamored of for most of my adult life, and then I’ve been enamored of Indiana Jones for even longer.

So you can imagine how cool it was to see the introductory scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark in a somewhat controllable scenario, before the actual game (set a year later in 1937) kicked off. From there, it’s all a Nazi-punching, globetrotting, graverobbing good time, interspersed with cut scenes that really could have come right out of an unfilmed script.

Plus, there are definitely plots left unresolved enough for a sequel or at least a substantial DLC release. …which they might make me pay for, but I hope not! Especially because I might fall for it, you know? This thing was like catnip, as evidenced by my 100% completion and 970 of 1000 gamerscore points over the course of a month and a half. I basically never finish AAA games anymore, but, here we are.[2]

Downsides: I can only think of one, which is the game started nagging me to move forward / how to move forward, much too early. I like the idea of the helpful voice, whether internal or external, telling you to investigate the thing you might have not been able to find or understand. But wait like 5 minutes, not 30 seconds. (And then the time I really did need help, there was no help forthcoming, which is also sort of a problem when you’re nagging so hard the times I don’t.)

[1] This is to say, for those out of the loop, it arrived on Game Pass the same day it became available to purchase outright.
[2] Continuing to help: DLC = DownLoadable Content, ie expansions instead of sequels; gamerscore is points that mean functionally nothing that you get for completing main or side plots, or doing difficult or implausible things that the designers thought were funny. (Bragging rights, maybe? But functionally, worthless.) AAA = I don’t know what exactly, just big budget big studio or something,

The Curator

A book has been sitting on my nightstand instead of my to-read shelf, for somewhere between one and a half to two years. Long enough that the top part of the pages are yellowed from the sunlight through the window behind my nightstand. I got it from someone for my birthday or Christmas, and I honestly don’t know who or why. Did I put it on a wishlist? I cannot rule this out, but I don’t know why I would have. And yet I cannot think of another reason it would have appeared, and nobody has asked me about it in the meantime.

But appear, it did.

The Curator, by Owen King[1], tells the story of a fictionalized probably European, probably 19th Century independent city[2] in the throes of revolution. See, the rich but liberal students at the University, after an inciting event, have taken it into their heads to free the extremely poor people in “the Lees” from their oppressors among the nobility, and the attempt is astonishingly successful, except… now what?

In the midst of these happenings, a maid lately employed by the university named Dora finds an opportunity to look into her older brother’s mysterious final moments, from when he died during her childhood, by becoming the owner of the newly vacated Society for Psykical Research, in which he had spent some time before that death and the complete failure of her family’s fortunes. Alas for her plans, it has burned completely to the ground, one odd doorframe in the middle notwithstanding, and so she becomes the Curator of the National Museum of the Worker next door, instead.

The remainder of the book, in a meandering style that the jacket copy accurately yet somehow non-pejoratively calls Dickensian, explores her new museum, and a city and its inhabitants in rudderless transition, and the mostly poor folk religion surrounding the many, many cats in the city, and the strange disappearances that are beginning to mount up, and the Morgue Ship that used to reside in the harbor as a penny dreadful curiosity until it got swept up in the inciting event I mentioned earlier, whereupon it disappeared, except rumor has it all those disappeared people are being abducted onto the ship as a part of their disappearance. Which is ridiculous, of course.

By way of recommendation, I must say that it’s been a while since I’ve been so invested in the fate of a new-to-me character, and almost all of the characters had something endearing to offer. I’m somewhat surprised I haven’t seen more noise around this one.

[1] of the Maine Kings. You might know him from his collaboration on Sleeping Beauties.
[2] Or I suppose it’s the capital of a fictionalized country? On the one hand, it never seems like more than a city and surrounding estates, but on the other, it has a king. Those kinds of details hover in the no-man’s land between sparse and irrelevant.

Mama (2013)

If I remember correctly, the random elements of this week’s movie[1] were “witch” and “Latin-American”. Mama is definitely a Latin-American movie, sort of. It was produced by Guillermo del Toro on the strength of a two minute film by a guy from let’s say Colombia, about two young girls who, upon realizing that Mama is back, quickly plan their escape. It is easily findable on YouTube and well worth the watch. That said, it’s not immediately apparent to me that anyone from that short is attached to this movie, and, well, del Toro or not, that’s problematic? Also, not a witch to be found, although there’s certainly a witchy vibe.

Anyway.

After the 2008 housing market crash, this investment firm guy kills his business partners, and then kills his (ex?) wife, and then takes his daughters (ages 3 and 1) on the run. All three completely disappear, but the dude’s brother never gives up looking for the girls, and they are found 5 years later, living ferally in a cabin in the woods near where the father had a spin out in the ice car accident.[2]

So the brother and his thoroughly not into kids rock band girlfriend win custody over the protests of the dead mom’s sister, and work to rehabilitate them from feral to, you know, whatever 6 and 8 year old girls are on any given day of the week. And I know what you’re thinking: this could be any family drama. What you don’t know is that someone or something, which they call “Mama”, was in the woods with them this whole time. And just because they left the woods, that doesn’t mean she’s done with them yet. …or with anyone who stands in her way. Spooky!!

I did not hate the way this ended, and I expected to. Which is not low praise.

[1] Reference: the week in question is 4/12/2021
[2] To be clear, the car is found the same day as the girls; it’s not like people knew about this in advance but never glanced around.

Fast & Furious

Finally, after one side movie that was only a sequel for one character and one side movie that was basically its own thing (and for no apparent reason), The Fast and the Furious has a true sequel with all of the original characters involved[1]! It is, how you say, about time.

The wildly original title, Fast & Furious, conceals a halfway decent plot. Paul Walker has been reinstated to law enforcement, as part of the FBI. (Or maybe he was in the FBI in the first place? Impossible to know.) He is honestly still no better of an FBI guy than he is an actor, even though five years have passed in the story world and eight I suppose in the real world. But that’s okay, because he can still drive. Vin Diesel is still on the run from the law and still using fast cars to jack trucks. So nothing much has changed, despite the two prior movies that would pretend a lot has happened. I’m not saying they are eminently skippable, but… oh, wait, no, I totally am saying that. It’s the central thesis of this paragraph, in fact.

“Halfway decent plot,” I said. So, after being on the run for all these years, Diesel’s Dominic is back in LA investigating the murder of a close friend. Meanwhile, Walker’s Brian is investigating a Mexican drug lord who is trafficking a lot of heroin across the border, somehow. They are suddenly thrown together when Dom’s murder and Brian’s infiltration end up at the same street race audition to be one of the drivers for the drug lord’s smuggling operation.

Can they get hired so their investigations can continue? Can they get over the sins of the past and learn to work together again? Can they stop destroying so very many fast cars? Can Brian finally seal the deal with Dom’s sister? Can Dom seal the deal with Gal Godot[2]? Oh, right, and can they solve their cases?

The answers to these questions might surprise you, but, well, I bet they don’t. That’s okay, though, as they are mostly not the point. The point is car stunts and an incremental progression in the lives and relationships of these characters. And, the movie finally delivers on that second thing, in a way that episodes 2 and 3 decidedly did not. Hooray!

[1] Okay, that was 2009, which is as of this writing a pretty long time ago. But it is “finally” in my personal chronology. So.
[2] In what is essentially her first role. Who knew?

Creep 2

Because of an intriguing series on Shudder, I believe I mentioned that I watched Creep a few months ago. In addition to that show, there was also a sequel, and now I watched it too! Please note that this review will include spoilers for the first movie, although I think not any for Creep 2, which wears its premise on its sleeve with no coyness of any kind.

There’s this lady Sara with a youtube series called Encounters, where she trolls weird lonely people posts on Craigslist so she can film it, and gain a viewership via awkward art. And she comes across the eponymous creep from the first movie, now going by the name Aaron, who wants to tell her his story about being the most prolific unsuspected serial killer in history. We as the audience know this is almost certainly true, but she as the unwitting subject of her own film does not, and that is the tension of the movie.

It’s hard to judge the effectiveness of the first movie’s “is he or isn’t he” premise, since I already knew. So take it with a grain of salt when I say I liked this one better. But the character in the first movie was definitely going against his own instincts way past the point of believability, even if (and this is key), the creep had just been an awkward dude who wasn’t going to murder anyone. Whereas Sara definitely knows he’s hinky and troubling right out of the gate, but she keeps staying because this is the fulfillment of her dream, and she deems the payoff worth the risk.

And so they dance back and forth, and I can honestly say that at no point did I know how the movie would turn out. When you consider that this film came between a prior movie and a six episode TV series, that’s kind of impressive?

Southbound

The most recent [new] podcast movie was Southbound, a mix of anthology and psycho killer… which tracks, yeah. There’s this DJ being creepy on the radio while five stories play out along the same highway, in sequential, minimally overlapping order. I liked this conceit exactly once, as that was the time the interaction was direct, instead of incredibly indirect, nay, practically forced.

So anyway, the stories are as follows:

  1. Two blood- and regret-covered men are forced to face their demons, literal and metaphorical alike.
  2. A lady rock band on tour breaks down, and gets the wrong kind of help.
  3. A dude hits and tries to save a pedestrian, more or less in Silent Hill.
  4. A dude tries to rescue his sister from monstertown.
  5. A family is attacked by strangers.

Aside from the tenuous linear timeline that connects these stories, an even more disappointing facet of the movie is that the latter two stories don’t really involve anyone driving down a highway. If you cannot maintain the theme of your anthology for more than three-fifths of the movie, that is a pretty bad compromise someone made along the way.

…okay, I’m going to stop now, because I have some regrets about what just happened. Anyway, the first and last stories did not make a lick of sense, I think mostly by virtue of not being written as though someone would ever need them to, but the other three ranged from decent to pretty darn good. It’s just the wrapper that is annoying me here.

Shook (2021)

Is it low-hanging fruit to go after a social media influencer type as the victim of a “let’s play a game” horror movie? I mean, nobody likes them[1], it’s easy to play around with the idea that they’re self-involved and deserve whatever they get, and you can either go with a redemption arc or a just desserts arc, with equal facility.

Mia is just such an influencer. And one of her influencer… friends? co-workers? was just murdered by the dog killer that has been stalking town for the last few weeks. So instead of going out to party, she has decided to stay in and watch her sister’s dog while the sister is out of town getting medical tests. Which brings in a whole subplot about how her family has a genetic disease that results in full incapacity followed by death, and it has no treatment, and their mother has already died of this, but the sister was fully in charge of the parental care while Mia went to college to become an influencer[2]. And unless the medical tests go well, Mia will be in charge of sororal care before very much more time goes by. And who knows who might eventually care for Mia?

So there Mia is, watching the dog while her influencer friends nag her about coming to their party, which is just the three of them sitting in a living room broadcasting themselves hanging out. (The friends consist of her bestie, her boyfriend, and her frenemy who is clearly trying to win her boyfriend away.) And then she loses the dog, and a creepy dude friends her on the social media account, and calls her, and apparently lives across the street, and it quickly becomes clear that she is being taunted and stalked, which has her well and truly Shook. And then before you know it her friends and her dog and her sister are all in danger, and she alone can save them. Or at least some of them, since she mostly has to choose one or the other.

And this is the meat of the flick. Can she save any of her friends? Can she save her sister? Can she save herself?

Can she save the dog?

[1] Other than the countless thousands of followers who result in them having influence in the first place, sure. Be all technical, why don’t you?
[2] I have no idea what classes you take for this (other than marketing of course)

Star Trek: Section 31

People have been lining up to deride Section 31, the most recent Star Trek movie that was originally supposed to be a TV series instead, and yeah, it definitely feels like a two episode pilot in a lot of ways. But is it really worse than Star Trek V? It seriously isn’t. Come on.

This is not to say the movie isn’t problematic. As a story, it’s perfectly fine. You take an anti-hero you’re already familiar with from previous stories, and she’s played by Michelle Yeoh in full scenery-chewing mode. And then you enlist her in a Suicide Squad caper with several other misfits-in-search-of-redemption, and they’re off to save… I dunno, probably the quadrant? …from utter destruction, in about 90 minutes. Dark antihero capers full of impossible odds, inevitable betrayals, and sudden death are cool.

But, and this is a big enough but that Mix-A-Lot is contractually obligated to like it:

But, this is Star Trek. Section 31 is the least Roddenberry thing that was ever introduced into Trek, and The Suicide Squad is about as big of a tonal mismatch with Trek as I can imagine, even when I acknowledge the existence of Section 31. (Which, if you don’t know, is the Federation’s black ops division.) So… yeah. As a story, it’s fine, like I already said. As a Star Trek movie… I’m glad they didn’t make it a series instead.

Wicked: Part 1

The disclaimer is this: I saw Wicked (the stage musical) at Fair Park in Dallas some years ago. There was this amazing moment when the power went out due to a spectacular thunderclap, and whoever was playing Elphaba made a perfect in-character joke that I can only remember the feeling of, but not the content. It is a tragedy. But the point is, I know this story, and normally would not do a review.

However, it is the case that Wicked is a story that has substantially built upon the musical’s foundations. Due to pulling more material from the book? I cannot remember it well enough to say, sadly. But all the same, there are things worth talking about between them. And I’m qualified to do it!, since we watched a bootleg copy of a show from the original run, after we got home from the theater last night.

First of all… for being Broadway, man, that was a sparse and boring stage the majority of the time. Of course a movie and a special effects budget is going to surpass a stage, for the visual telling of a story. But like, I look at Hamilton and the staging is just so good that effects and period architecture would feel extraneous. Whereas, and okay being a fantasy setting certainly makes a difference, but the staging in the movie outstripped the Broadway version in every way, so extensively that I feel like I’m kicking Kristin Chenoweth in the voice just by saying so. It’s simply not a fair comparison.

Anyway, I was saying it’s longer, and boy is it longer. This Part One is like 15 minutes longer than the entire show, and it only covers Act One. And I’ll be real, yes, they could have trimmed it back some. But lavish pointless dance numbers aside, almost everything they added provided more and better context. Fiyero meeting Elphaba before he met anyone else? Adding the poppies into the Elphaba and Dr. Dillamond scenes? The backstory on the introduction of Elphaba’s hat? All of these were small but mighty improvements to the story, well out of proportion to the effort involved.

Lastly: Ariana Grande does an amazing job of channeling Chenoweth’s bubbly blondeness, while Cynthia Erivo actually surpasses Idina Menzel, I think, perhaps not in the singing[1], but in the acting. Not that Menzel was in any way bad, but she always looked so happy when she was singing, regardless of the context. Erivo’s stone face rarely cracks, and it means a lot when it does. Because, honestly, what would she have had to be happy about for the majority of her life?

To sum up: unless they somehow dramatically foul up Part 2, this will be the definitive version of the story, just as Judy Garland’s 1939 outing will always be the definitive version of the mirror story. And yes, that’s meant to be high praise.

[1] Although I wouldn’t want to judge that contest