Movie Review of Moonwalker

My sister came over today for human interaction during the pandemic, and as she needed a wholly distracting movie, I decided to pull out all the stops, and put on Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. This movie, which he put out in 1988, is, in a word, weird.

In fact, when summarizing the “plot” of the movie, it ends up just being a list of things that happen. Music videos after music videos, then Michael Jackson saves some kids from Joe Pesci, and turns into a robot alien before shunting the kids off into his greenroom while he does a final concert. But, to experience it, is simply baffling, especially for the unprepared.

In the hindsight of “Leaving Neverland“, along with the court cases, it really casts some of the scenes, especially the ones with children, which are just so strange, in a different light.

I think that it actually tells us a lot about Michael Jackson, his ego, the way that he compares himself to Ghandi, Jesus, and Martin Luther King Jr. But confusingly, the strange, and very childish plot, mixed with the number of music videos make me wonder who in fact the movie is targeted to, besides fans of Michael Jackson. There seems to be no unifying target age between any of the segments.

In the end, it’s a curiosity with some decent songs, including the quite snappy, Smooth Criminal music video, though the ‘interlude’ part of it is also on the spectrum of weirdness. Check it out once if you like his music, or really want to watch something bizarre.

A movie review of a rare obscure movie gem: The Convent

In the song “Prince of E-Ville” by Combichrist, there is a breakdown wherein a couple of lines from a movie are said.

A female voice laughs, “Could you be any more Gothic-pretentious?”

Another female voice haughtily exclaims “How dare you speak to the prince of evil that way you slut!?”

The first voice answers again incredulously, “The prince of evil? You work at fucking dairy cream.”

I heard this song in my industrial teen years, and could tell that the line must have come from a movie (in fact the whole song is actually about the movie in question). Eventually my curiosity could no longer take it, and I had to find out what movie it came from, because that short exchange was so great that I just had to know the context around it. I was not disappointed.

So after much furious googling, I finally discovered that the lines came from the horror film, The Convent. This movie ended up being my favorite horror film, once I finally managed to see it.

As far as horror plots go it’s not too complicated, a bunch of demon nuns haunt an abbey, and want to incarnate the anti-christ. A bunch of college kids go to the nunnery, and come across a few cultist kids who summon back the demon nuns. Some of the surviving kids get the survivor of the first incident to help them burn down the abbey in a blaze, though a number of the kids are of course killed.

I love this movie because of its execution, in fact, the movie is so solidly made that there is little that I can criticize about it, except for maybe that some of the sound during the transformation sequences is a little loud compared to the rest of the movie, and that the stereotypes are a little on the nose, though what one might expect from a late 90’s movie playing on 80’s tropes. The movie is not expensive, nor is it masterfully shot, but it is certainly entertaining, and contains some of the best dialogue in a horror film that I’ve seen, such as the amazing exchange. “My brother’s going to be the new anti-christ?” “Afraid so.” “Mom’s gonna be pissed!”

The effects are as good as they need to be to get the point across, with a sort of neon, glow in the dark, metal-rave aesthetic to it.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother to write about a movie like this, since it would be extremely difficult to get your hands on as an audience, but fortunately, cheaply licensed horror films are practically part and parcel of Amazon’s video service, which means that you can rent or buy this enjoyable little gem to add to your collection, or maybe just check out for a few laughs.

Review of the anime movie Redline (2009)

When I think about how much I like this movie, I’m surprised that I haven’t written a review of it before now, of course, there’s a number of movies this applies to, so I’ll be sure to do those pretty soon as well.

Redline, is quite simply a movie about a car race in space. First showing the qualifying race, the lead up to the big race, introducing the racers and setting some stakes. The last half is just the race itself, in essentially its entirety. It seems perhaps even too simple to be exciting, but the movie’s art style, with its bold lines, and beautiful and unique animation helps contribute to the engrossing world that is rapidly thrown together for your enjoyment.

Redline never overstays its welcome, clocking in at a perfectly welcome 80 minutes or so, it’s definitely no Irishman, and every minute is well-used in that time frame. This movie does well at the movie maker’s mantra, “show, don’t tell”, with mountains of details that add depth and richness to the world, even enhancing additional viewings of the movie.

My only real negative thing to say about this movie is the shoehorned in romance, which is told nearly completely in flashback, and makes the final moments of the movie feel a bit trite, and only adds additional complexity to a story that already may be on the edge of over-complexity with the whole military-robot-planet-secretly-developing-a-treaty-violating-bio-weapon bit being lightly explained as it was. The movie could have used a few minutes to explain that a bit better, or to expound on the love story, or to even give a minute or two of race epilogue, but even with that in mind, the story is quite well told, tight, and the animation and music make for a generally thrilling watch experience that I would highly recommend! You can add it to your collection on Amazon, or buy the Blu-Ray on Amazon here!

I finally saw Swiss Army Man…

Back around the time that the movie came out, I remember seeing promotional materials for it, and thinking that it looked good, if somewhat strange. Unfortunately, I was unable to see very many movies at that time, so it fell to the wayside on my watch list.

Then I saw that the movie was released on Netflix, and I got excited to finally get to see it, so I added it to my list, and then… I put it off. I’m not really sure why, though it seemed that every time that I passed it I had some excuse not to watch it then.

Well, this week, I didn’t have much excuse. During the pandemic I’ve still been working, but nearly a week of dog sitting removed any pretense of an excuse not to put it on. My regret? Taking so long to see it.

Now, this movie was strange, bizarre, sweet, creepy, funny, and most impressively an elevation of the fart joke into a work of art. I’m honestly not sure what I expected of the movie. It’s a magical-realistic movie about a man finding Daniel Radcliffe’s dead body, and using it like a Swiss army knife in various ways to help him survive, as well as deal with the issues that drove him to the wilderness in the first place.

The movie was beautiful, funny, wholesome, and managed to nearly make me cry from its earnest and innocent perspective. Much of the movie, it’s impossible to tell if our protagonist has lost his mind, or if the body of Harry Potter is actually interacting with him. This dilemma is continued through the entirety of the movie, before it resolves at the end.

Normally, I would talk about the plot more, but it’s difficult to talk about as the movie is as much about the feelings it evokes as the story itself. I think that the way that this movie ties its elements together masterfully however, such as the music, which often includes chanting lyrics that reflect the shots or the themes of the scenes.

If you’re looking for a strange escape on Netflix and are tired of the more grounded content, Swiss Army Man should definitely be your next pandemic movie.

Another Streamed Movie Review: The Girl With All the Gifts

“The Girl With All the Gifts” was another movie that I saw on Netflix in my attempt to watch things and not become depressed in our current global state. I should really read synopses before I watch these movies. I gotta say that this one was also far more engrossing than I expected it to be. I honestly thought that it was going to be a more enclosed movie, about more abstract things like “The Platform” was, based on the opening, which has a woman teaching to a bunch of highly-restrained children. Turns out that I happened to pick a movie about a pandemic. This one was hard to watch, not because it was bad, but because of how hard it hit our conversations about the coronavirus, and how to deal with it, the race to create a vaccine, and the possible risks to participants in those trials, and the consequences of letting an infection run wild, to build herd immunity, and the risks that may also entail to society as a whole, and the opportunities that an apocalyptic event can have to shake up the institutions of society and start fresh, a movie about the struggle between old ways of doing things, and radical young generations who may want to burn down the old world.

A well-told story, visually engrossing, that deals with some now very real topics, well-acted, including solid performances from the numerous child-actors that appear, and plenty to mull over when it’s over, I find it hard not to recommend seeing this in our current state, if only to consider some of the questions that it raises, and how we see those choices in hindsight.

The Platform: A Muddled Metaphor

So, I’ve actually been pretty busy during the pandemic with working, doing my job as an essential delivery person, so I have had surprisingly little time to write much, or even to catch up on my massive to-watch list. However, I have attempted to watch a few things during my downtime. Recently, I saw The Platform on Netflix, and I have got to say that I was pretty engrossed. I expected that this movie would simply end up being background noise to my evening, but I found myself actually engrossed in the film. First, there was the dubbing, which was okay, not amazing, with what felt like stilted voice work, but this was something that I could adjust to after just a few minutes.

The premise of the movie was pretty simple, about a platform full of food that descends down a pit, with each level getting the leftovers of each of the above floors. After a month, the positions of each person are shuffled. I was totally on board with the movie so far, a pretty clear metaphor for class, with elements that help exaggerate some of the behaviors that we see. The desire to be near the top, to have the luxury of choice and abundance, those at the top who feel the fragility of their position, and seek to diminish those below them, lest they fall to their level, they gorge themselves, because they do not know where they will be a month out. Those who are lower down, where food is scarce or non-existent do what they must to survive, or die from starvation or despair. Then those who survive, if they move up, feel pity only for themselves, and refuse to consider those below them. The protagonist of the story, armed with a copy of Don Quixote , becomes an all-too-obvious messiah figure, even growing a scraggly beard, taking on the challenge of redistributing the food to those below him, riding the platform all the way to the bottom.

Now, this is where many reviews stop, covering the first hour of the movie, and praising it for what gets called “masterful allegory”, but each seems to neglect the last half hour or so of movie, and where the movie almost entirely falls apart. There are threads in the movie that are confusing, such as the Asian woman who never speaks, but murders her way through much of the movie, looking for her child. A lot of the metaphor falls apart on the descent, and leaves our protagonist at the bottom of the pit, walking off with a ghost, before the child ascends the pit, a message to the people at the top… What that message is, I honestly had no idea at this point. The whole thing gets the point across, the difficulty of redistributing resources in a society, how unfair our class structure is, and the depths of poverty that those in the middle, or those who are part of the system are unaware of, but the last third of the movie both seems to bash you over the head with its message, while at the same time throwing in so many elements and messages that the final notes of the movie are confused and unclear.

In conclusion, it is certainly an interesting movie, and worth watching for its visual style and story telling. However, I would not use this movie as my go-to allegory for class disparity, with it’s heavy-handed imagery, eventually becoming too muddled to illustrate what could have been a poignant commentary.

Simulations and Storytelling

I have often heard it said that video games were going to cause people to hide away and just play video games their whole lives. Every year for decades now, you hear about some new study or article related to the psychological effects of video games on today’s youth, from the pitfalls of Mario, to nightmares of Five Nights at Freddy’s “Purple Guy”. The root cause of these fears stems from the power of simulations. The fear that bothers me the most however, is the first mentioned, that people will immerse themselves too deeply into their simulated reality and will no longer wish to return to “the real world”. I however, have good reason to believe that while there will always be some for whom that will ring true, that it will never become wholly true, and that is, the power of storytelling.

 

First, I would like to dispel the notion that such a fear is at all a new phenomenon. People have said the same thing about movies, TV, books, and I am sure that it’s been said even about the theater in the past. After all, are they nothing more than less immersive simulations? The ability to interact with video games though, put them into a class of their own. It provides the ability to re-experience the game in a different way, with the ability for the player to set for themselves arbitrary goals within the game, with whole communities being formed around some of them, such as the speed-running community, with subcommunities formed around specific games, series of games, or even around a particularly popular runner. Video games themselves though, as a medium, have gotten better over the years, contributing to this fear. Games get more addicting, and you hear about kids who refuse to do anything other than play Fortnite, or Minecraft, or whatever their particular game of choice is, with no sign that games will get less immersive, or less designed to consume players’ time and money in the future.

 

There are however,  a few reasons why I believe that this will not come to pass. The first of these reasons is our love of telling stories as humans. It is not enough for us to merely experience these simulated worlds, but as natural storytellers, we cannot help but to return from our adventures, to tell others of our journeys and mishaps. Open-world gaming has become increasingly popular in recent years, with the staples of this genre of games being Bethesda games, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout, the increasing complexity of the newer releases of Dwarf Fortress, and of course, as anyone can guess, yes, Minecraft. The expansiveness of these worlds, along with elements of randomness, along with individualized objectives, gives seemingly infinite possibilities for storytelling. Much of my high school experience with my nerdy friends, was recounting our latest exploits from the weekend, or late into the night. More recently, this kind of desire for unique and more challenging experiences with old favorites has led to the creation of “randomizers”, which hack ROMs for old games, particularly Pokemon and Zelda games, and randomize certain elements within that game to provide a new, perhaps more or less challenging experience. The meteoric rise in the number of people on YouTube uploading these kinds of videos is testament to the desire for these fresh, unique experiences, in this case by recycling old content, and adding the missing piece.

 

This also shows the other side, of this, and that’s, people want to hear those stories as well. They don’t want to just experience a game vicariously through another person, but they want to hear and see that person’s own stories too. We want to listen to stories, perhaps more than we want to tell them.

 

Some people became couch potatoes after the advent of television, and some became gamer hermits after the creation of video games. Further in the future still, there will be those lost to the more immersive worlds we create in the future, but, even if all of our needs are met while within those worlds, there will still be reasons to return to reality, to share our experiences in those worlds, whether that experience is educational, enlightening, terrifying, comedic, or just generally unpleasant. The final stage of the hero’s journey, is the return home where the hero is changed in some way, and I think that for the moment in our evolution, that this is inescapable for all but a few whose natural obsessiveness will just need an outlet for.

 

/rant

Well… It Was Definitely Solo

Yes, the Disney Star Wars movie involving the titular character, but also, the state I saw it in, as there was not a single other person in my showing. On the other hand, Avenger’s: Infinity War, had at least a dozen people enter the showing right next door in the short time that I was out in the hallway of the theater.

This movie at this point has nearly left many of the theaters in my area, just a few weeks after its release.

After seeing it though, I have to say that it honestly wasn’t terrible. Sure, the movie wasn’t particularly necessary, and it was chock full of fan service, but as a “solo” film, it was solid. The characters were likable and compelling, the story was pretty interesting, and well structured.

It can be difficult to judge a movie such as this on its own merits, since it has so much lore built up over the course of the series, and while one can argue that it explains too much of Han’s backstory before A New Hope, by itself, leaving much of the time between the two void of character development or stories, taken just by itself, it was pretty entertaining.

I definitely recommend seeing it once it’s out on Netflix or Blu-ray.

A Middling Marvel Movie: Antman and the Wasp

After The Incredibles 2 just a few days ago, I decided to see another superhero movie sequel made by Disney, Antman and the Wasp, and I was… underwhelmed.

Yeah, it had some funny moments, and of course Paul Rudd is still endearing and lovable, and the action scenes were pretty solid and cleverly done, but it didn’t feel as layered or as smart.

Even compared to other more mainline Marvel films, this one didn’t have the visual impact of, say, Thor:Ragnarok, and lacked the same humorous enthusiasm as the first Antman movie. The question on everyone’s mind after Infinity Wars Part 1, was where was Antman during that conflict? Well, that question is answered, though you have to sit through the whole movie to watch the minute or two long end credits scene.

I was quite surprised at the audience for the screening that I saw. Several families with small children were in the movie, which was surprising considering the occasionally strong language, and the science jokes which, to be honest it seems went over the whole crowd’s heads, as the only science jokes they laughed at were the ones where people didn’t understand the science talk that was going on, but still, did not really seem to be the kind of movie to bring a six-year old to, as one little girl proudly told me before the movie.

In all, I would only give the movie a 5.5/10. I don’t really recommend seeing it in theaters, and I honestly don’t think that it would keep kids interest incredibly well, as was evident by the events of my own showing. Wait for it to hit Netflix, and if you’ve got kids, go see The Incredibles 2 instead.

An Incredible Review for Disney’s Incredibles 2

It has been a bit since I’ve had time to go to the movies lately, but at the moment, there were just too many tempting choices to not carve out some time for myself to go to the theater. What to see on a Saturday night though? The First Purge? Too political. Ant Man and Wasp? Too crowded. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom? I’ll pass. I was looking for a bit of escape, and Incredibles 2 ended up not being the correct choice for that.

It was a strange experience for me. The movie has been out for a couple of weeks already, and so had plenty of open seats, especially at a 10:30PM showing. Probably a dozen seats or so were filled, with only a couple of children.

This sequel to the movie 14 years ago picked up on literally the day that the previous movie ended on, and the beginning of this movie strips away the progress that the family seemed to make at the end of The Incredibles, bringing us back to the harsh reality that performing heroic acts was still illegal, and that the family was acting outside of the law.

This movie was dark, and real, creating a surreal experience, where characters are coded for so many different representations within the United States at the moment. Mr. Incredible is coded for the manufacturing worker that has lost his work, the stay-at-home fathers who are now raising their children, while Elastigirl is coded to be the entrepreneurial mother, who gets the opportunity to raise the status of the family, and becoming the breadwinner for the family. The arguments between them, the sexism of Mr. Incredible from a previous era, the cynical use of Elastigirl as representative of using women to sell ideas.

This movie that I had chosen had smacked me in the face with layers upon layers of interpretations, and I just find myself thinking about Screenslaver and how we consume media. The emphasis of critical thinking, the views of those with wealth, and influence, and where power really lies in society. It’s maddening to continue listing them, and to explain them might take a whole book, and that would just be for a set of relationship dynamics and ideas, and would only be a small portion of what this movie has to offer to analyze.

This will definitely be a movie that I will need to watch again to get more out of, and look forward to doing so, probably at least a dozen more times in the next few years.