Three Films Make A Post: One hell of a rodeo.

Lasso (2017): If you can’t beat the competition in the backwoods slasher space with your movie’s quality, there’s always the time honoured use of the gimmick. So, as the title promises/threatens, Evan Cecil’s Lasso is indeed a backwoods slasher movie with rodeo and cowboy themed kills. Some of them are even pretty fun in an at once pleasantly nasty and ridiculous way. But alas, that’s all the film has to offer, for the characters are as bland and generic as you’d expect – having one arm isn’t a character trait, you know –, the plotting is by the numbers at best and stretches out nothing to great lengths at its worst, while actual suspense is absent.

Still, this one could have been much, much worse.

Spy Game (2001): For a Tony Scott movie, this spy affair with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt (two guys who managed to get impressive careers out of pretty faces, an understanding of how to best utilize their limited ranges as actors, and clever choice of roles) is downright sedate. It’s clear that Scott at times tries to emulate the style of classic 70s spy films with early 2000s technology, but he’s still not a terribly great choice for a spy film that isn’t going bigger than James Bond all of the time. Scott’s too showy a director to provide the subtlety a good espionage movie needs, even the sort that’s a third of an action movie, and simply not thoughtful (as a Scott detractor, I’m tempted to say not intelligent, but I didn’t know the guy, so…) enough to get into the questions of personal ethics, political expediency and morals the best of these movies explore. Though he is clearly trying, and not vomiting stupid camera tricks into my eyes for most of the film’s running time, so that’s a plus.

(Tyler Rake) Extraction (2020): I’m actually rather happy that Netflix is putting money into higher budget action movie fare like this, but Sam Hargrave’s Extraction doesn’t really scratch the action itch like Netflix’s Indonesian and Filipino examples of the last few years do for me. It is clearly trying to go as all out as these films, but there’s a strangely bland quality to the action, rather as if you were watching drafts for a nasty, bloody action movie than the actual thing.


The by-the-numbers script by Joe Russo (who has done much, much better in the in theory much more restrictive superhero genre) certainly doesn’t help, nor does Chris Hemsworth’s not exactly exciting lead performance. And at this point, Hemsworth is good when he has the right script to work from, but can’t make a film look better than it actually is.

Three Films Make A Post: The struggle is real.

Witches in the Woods (2019): I can appreciate that this film directed by Jordan Barker does try to use the metaphorical power of witch lore to explore very contemporary ideas about feminism (really, the #metoo movement in this case), class, and race. Unfortunately, the idea is much better than the execution, for Christopher Borelli’s script is about as good at actually writing the characters involved and their relations as the scripts of 80s slasher movies were. Believing that these specific people are supposed to end up in the same SUV looking for hot snowboarding action and have ever been friends is honestly a bridge too much to cross for my ability to believe any damn nonsense a movie tries to sell me. Making matters worse is of course that an 80s slasher could easily get away with this sort of thing because the characters were not really what those films were about.

This one, on the other hand, is supposed to be about the social and the psychological, so not delivering on these things marks complete failure. Even ignoring this, the film’s horror stylings are bland and conventional, and there’s nothing to see here but some pretty young things who probably deserved to be in a better movie.

Tone-Deaf (2019): Keeping with films I didn’t enjoy at all, here’s Richard Bates Jr.’s movie about an intolerably annoying young woman (Amanda Crew) renting a house in the country for a weekend to get over her life being crap and to have a different place to stare at her phone from encountering an equally insufferable old guy (Robert Patrick) with a tendency to break the fourth wall right into the camera who has found the new hobby of murdering people. I have no idea why I should care, or what the film’s permanent shifts between blood, the flattest jokes outside of a pancake, META!, and whatever the director/writer wanted to shove in next are supposed to achieve, but I’m sure everybody involved thinks this one’s really, really clever, given all the smug mugging into the camera the film and the actors do.


Blackhat (2015): On the other hand, I thought Michael Mann’s generally maligned crime and action movie that presses an actual performance out of Chris Hemsworth instead of a star turn is rather good. After the horrors of Miami Vice, Mann has returned to his old tricks – actors doing ACTING in diners, hoisting enough detail into a film to make the silly perfectly believable – and come up with a film that’s about as realistic a portrayal of international hacking shenanigans as Hackers was, but that creates its world with such drive and force, I even found myself buying into the even more improbable finale in which Hemsworth – genius hacker and action movie badass at the same time – does manly shit wearing phone book armour.

Three Films Make A Post: Working here can be murder.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017): In another example to disprove the curiously much-vaunted nonsense that Marvel’s superhero movies don’t leave space for their directors to express their individuality, Taiki Waititi’s Thor movie is very much a Taiki Waititi Thor movie, featuring exactly the style and tone of humour you’d expect from the director. While I would have preferred someone to actually succeed at a Thor movie going for the big and operatic tone the best of the source material tends to have and actually succeed with it, I take a fun, fast and brilliant to look at SF action comedy with pleasure, even though I don’t enjoy it quite as much as James Gunn’s Marvel SF action comedies, which feel just a bit warmer to me. Which is to say that I had a lot of fun with Ragnarok’s loving and silly plundering of Greg Pak’s fine Hulk and Walt Simonson’s transcendentally brilliant Thor runs.

The Cradle Will Fall (1983): In a very different time, medium, and budget bracket, often great TV director John Llewellyn Moxey shot this adaptation of a Mary Higgins Clark potboiler about a brilliant assistant DA with tragic past-based commitment issues (Lauren Hutton) coming head to head with a mad scientist doctor (James Farentino). This certainly isn’t one of Moxey’s best movies, mostly thanks to a script that never quite seems to be able to hold tone and focus, a problem that’s further exacerbated by the need to shoe-horn various character from the soap “Guiding Light” into minor roles. From time to time, Moxey gets the opportunity for one of his patented classical suspense scenes, but much of the film seems fixated on the elements of the plot that are the most conventional and least interesting. Despite a spunky turn by Hutton and some joyful scenery chewing by Farentino, the whole thing never really comes together as a suspenseful narrative.

The World Beyond (1979): Staying in US TV movie land, this is the second of two abortive TV pilots about the adventures of Paul Taylor (the brilliantly named Granville Van Dusen), who is commanded by visions of dead people to protect the victim of the week (here portrayed by JoBeth Williams) from supernatural forces.


The plot sees Van Dusen and Williams fighting a mud golem on an island off the coast of main. Director Noel Black does some pleasantly atmospheric work with the locations, and seems to enjoy the sort of macabre little events that warm my heart too, so you bet there’s a mud golem hand staying active after having been cut off, an occult dabbler causing the whole affair, and some simple yet pleasant moments of classic suspense. There’s no depth to it, of course, but as an hour of spooky entertainment, even in the badly looking version recorded from TV and dubbed from what I suspect to be an EP VHS tape that’s the only way it is making the rounds, is well worth one’s time.

In short: Thor: The Dark World (2013)

I’m actually a bit embarrassed for Kenneth Brannagh that a – talented – journeyman director like Alan Taylor is able to make a decent Thor movie for Marvel, where the so-called artiste’s attempt was mostly an example of bored indifference, wasted actors, and of how to make expensive effects look a lot like cardboard.

Don’t get me wrong, this second Thor movie is generally cute instead of riveting, fun instead of exciting, and really not very rich on interesting subtext, which does keep it far from being one of the first rate superhero films, but, unlike with the one that came before, I was enjoying myself tremendously watching it. This Thor movie also makes good use of an actually pretty wonderful cast, and is generally giving the impression the people on screen are having fun doing what they do. Why, even Anthony Hopkins seems to be awake this time around, and Hemsworth and Hiddleston are the two actors we saw in the Avengers instead of the ones looking awkward and dull in Brannagh’s film.

Add to that how much imagination The Dark World shows, how many lovely nods towards Kirby and Simonson it contains, and how it dares to be silly without being embarrassed about it, and you find me rather happy with it even though it doesn’t try to be a superhero version of A Tale of Two Cities (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,superheroes,alan taylor,chris hemsworth,natalie portman,tom hiddleston,christopher eccleston

In short: Thor: The Dark World (2013)

I’m actually a bit embarrassed on account of Kenneth Brannagh that a – talented – journeyman director like Alan Taylor is able to make a decent Thor movie for Marvel, where the so-called artiste’s attempt was mostly an example of bored indifference, wasted actors, and how to make expensive effects look a lot like cardboard.

Don’t get me wrong, this second Thor movie is generally cute instead of riveting, fun instead of exciting, and really not very rich on interesting subtext, which does keep it far from being one of the first rate superhero films, but, unlike with the one that came before, I was enjoying myself tremendously watching it. This Thor movie also makes good use of an actually pretty wonderful cast, and is generally giving the impression the people on screen are having fun doing what they do. Why, even Anthony Hopkins seems to be awake this time around, and Hemsworth and Hiddleston are the two actors we saw in the Avengers instead of the ones looking awkward and dull in Brannagh’s film.

Add to that how much imagination The Dark World shows, how many lovely nods towards Kirby and Simonson it contains, and how it dares to be silly without being embarrassed about it, and you find me rather happy with it even though it doesn’t try to be a superhero version of A Tale of Two Cities.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,superheroes,alan taylor,chris hemsworth,natalie portman,tom hiddleston,christopher eccleston

In short: The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Warning: it is utterly impossible to speak of Drew Goddard's and Joss Whedon's The Cabin in the Woods without spoiling it at least a little, even if one is only coming to gush for a few hundred words in the vaguest of terms one can get away with, so if you want a completely undiluted experience, just go and watch it - it's definitely worth it.

And now to the gushing: imagine, if the Scream films had been made by someone who wasn't satisfied to stop at pointing out its genre's failures and then just repeat them without any actual change except for the pointing and laughing. Imagine a film that not only points out these failures, but actually uses them as the logical base of its plot, criticizing and deconstructing the mechanisms of large parts of the horror genre as seen on film, and giving voice to the unease the ritualization of a sometimes frightfully conservative genre can produce in a fan whose ethical convictions are anything but close to that conservatism. Now imagine the same film still being utterly in love with the horror genre, paying homage to other films in it with conviction and style, and being able to fuse this love and its critical spirit into a movie that also always works as a horror film (which also means that you can read the movie as one of the more depressing films you'll see this year).

You got that? Well, you might have just had a nerd religious experience, or you now have a mental picture of The Cabin in the Woods, only without the fact that the film is also funny as hell, subtle when you're not looking, has an obvious political subtext, and never looks down on its audience or its chosen genre even though it sees some of what's wrong with it.

Technorati-Markierungen: in short,american movies,horror,comedy,drew goddard,joss whedon,kristen connolly,chris hemsworth,fran kranz

In short: The Avengers (2012)

Sometimes, it's easy being me. I'm not one of those cult movie fans always in desperate need to proof they're part of the cool kids (not unlike certain friends of art movies who would not be found dead ever being entertained by a movie, or smiling watching one), so I can allow myself to like those blockbuster concoctions that are good, or - as is the case here - pretty fucking great.

Given the overabundance of money director/writer/king of nerds Joss Whedon had to blow up (often quite literally,) it's not much of a surprise The Avengers' spectacle is fantastic to watch. Although even that part is not always a given if one keeps the body of work of Michael Bay in mind, who knows how to make big explosions and giant robots boring. Whedon, on the other hand, knows how to make the big and loud things big and loud and actually interesting.

Not surprisingly, he also understands that the big and loud things become inherently more interesting, more fun and more important to an audience if you anchor them in smaller and quieter moments that are in reality much more important, and therefore spends as much - if not more - time and effort on these.

As an old comic fan, Whedon also inherently gets what his characters are about (so no Bendis-style Captain America silently condoning torture, and no Kenneth Brannagh-Thor as a jock with a hammer), and uses this knowledge, a cast that can act their asses off if given the opportunity (and isn't by the way, Mark Ruffalo the best Bruce Banner you've seen, and Scarlett Johansson a much more convincing Black Widow than anyone could have expected?), and a script that manages to squeeze an insane amount of subtlety in to make what would in a lesser movie be just the connecting tissue between action scenes sing.

Other typical Whedon virtues are also in and accounted for - the quick and clever dialogue, the sudden reversals of genre tropes, and the ability to naturally shift from comedy to tragedy and back again in the course of two lines of dialogue. The real beauty of the film is how well this aspect of The Avengers connects with the more usual blockbuster virtues, as if having a heart and a brain and big explosions in a movie wasn't a big thing.

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