Films and Feelings

      I've been trying hard to find to see if I can't find a way to talk around the Scream 7 situation with all its associated turmoil. On the one hand, congrats to Neve Campbell for holding her ground until Paramount recognized her contributions to the franchise. On the other hand, it's a shame they had to drown Melissa Barrera in order to welcome her back into the fold.      But these kinds of contradictions, they follow both the slasher genre as a whole as well as this franchise specifically. I definitely have mixed feelings about the delight that comes with watching this movie in the theater as the audience all winces in unison while Ghostface delivers a particular nasty cut to a young girl who certainly did not deserve to be vivisected this way. The franchise itself has mixed feelings about the fandom it engenders, punishing the mania that springs up in the wake of humans being hacked to death--while also very much depending on it.  So it's perhap...

     There's a quote from critic Mark Caro that I think about a lot. I shared it back when I did my critical survey of Pixar movies . Writing about Finding Nemo , Caro wrote in the  Chicago Tribune in 2003 , "Classic film eras tend to get recognized in retrospect while we take for granted timeless works passing before our eyes. So let's pause to appreciate what's been going on at Pixar Animation Studios."      I think that captures the aspirations of all active-minded media consumers. Or at least, it ought to. "This good thing won't last forever, so savor it before the sun goes down."  Modern Times (1936)      But this is also a very hard mindset to access in an online culture that is always seeking to stamp labels and scores on a thing before we shove it on the conveyor belt and move on to the next parcel.       It's something I have been thinking about for the last year or so as the completion of the Stranger ...

     The thing about any figure as iconic as The Wolf Man is ... you already know how his story ends because there's only one way it can end. Much in the same way that any "King Kong" movie has to end with the ape falling off of the Empire State Building. Any other ending just feels incongruent. Grafted from some other story. The equation can only produce a single sum. As Maria Ouspenskaya warned us in the original Wolf Man, "So tears run to a predestined end."       I'll break the film critic's seal here a little and say that, if you love the Wolf Man figure, then you already know what happens to him at the end of Leigh Whannel's film, and you already basically know why.       But I don't for a second count that as a bad thing. Reinvention is easy. Doing your homework, that takes commitment. And Whannel's new film does its homework.     Here, our Wolf Man is Blake, a loving father living in the city with his daughter, Gi...

    I'll forgive you if you forgot this movie was coming. After shelving this project some two years ago, Warner Bros. has remained awfully mum about when we could expect to see Salem's Lot , only to decide to drop it on MAX with little more than two weeks of preparation, a bewildering practice that perhaps says more about the state of Hollywood at present than the content of the film itself.  But that's not the ravenous evil that we're here to discuss today.      In Gary Dauberman's adaptation of the famous Stephen King book, author Benjamin Mears returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem's Lot, or "Salem's Lot" to the locals, imagining that it might help spark an idea for a new book. How was he supposed to know that his hometown chose this of all days to start playing host to an ancient evil, one bent on spreading its illness into every home? Overnight, Salem's Lot is in the grip of darkness, and only Ben and a paltry group of makeshift vamp...

I remember back when I reviewed A Quiet Place Part II , the thing that was on my mind a world crawling out of a global pandemic.  I now dive into Michael Sarnoski's newest take on the mythology with A Quiet Place: Day One having just this morning heard the news that a certain convicted felon is being granted immunity for his involvement in trying to overthrow democracy, and I am left wondering (not for the first time) what surviving in a world that already balances on borrowed time even means. This is more or less the mindset of the film's protagonist, Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient who was already done with existing well before killer aliens started dropping out from the sky. The only things she cares about in the world are her "emotional support" cat, Frodo, and getting a taste of some proper New York pizza before this cancer takes her, alien invasion or not! While the rest of the city is running off to catch the last boat off Manhattan, she just digs deeper ...

       Ever since Sidney Prescott asked audiences nearly 30 years ago "how do you gut someone?" with such disgust, the "Scream" franchise has forced a stab-hungry audience to question how they could ever entertain a ritual so violating as the gruesome act taking someone else's life.  Last year, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett delivered arguably the franchise's strongest offering yet. Strong because the film played its game very well. These guys also know that subversion in film is fun, certainly, but also that films which sell themselves on their subversion tend to be very hollow. You need a strong thematic lifeblood and a cast of characters to root for. If your audience is more excited about the cut-up bodies than the victors, you have a problem. This is where the newer films, including this most outing, have found their strength. Scream VI sees the survivors of the last installment making a fresh break in New York City. Sam, Tara, Mindy, and Chad a...

            There tends to be a divide between horror fans and horror skeptics. As someone who, as I’ve mentioned multiple times on this blog, only crossed that divide in recent years, movies like  Train to Busan  fascinate me endlessly. But genre is only one of the divides this film crosses.               The movie follows single-father and businessman, Seok-woo, as he takes the train with his daughter, Su-an, to drop her off with her mother in Busan. The train leaves the station just as a zombie outbreak takes hold across the country, and the train is overcome with the ravenous undead. Seok-woo and Su-an are locked on the train with the zombies barely contained in the adjacent cars. Seok-woo has no idea how he’ll ever bring his daughter to safety, but if either of them are going to make it out alive, he’ll have to learn to depend on the other passengers.   ...