An Adult's Perspective On: The Santa Clause

The Santa Clause

I'm 24 years old and I just watched The Santa Clause for the first time.

How I Never Saw It: I was a major Disney kid growing up, but I was really only interested in the animated films. Not only did the live action movies not get my attention, I also never watched Home Improvement growing up so Tim Allen was nothing but the voice of Buzz Lightyear to me. I even remember seeing commercials for The Santa Clause on TV and thinking it looked kinda funny, but not funny enough to sit and watch the whole thing. My parents must've felt the same way since we never owned it on VHS or DVD, and apparently none of my friends ever wanted to watch it either.

Why I'm Seeing It Now: It's the holiday season and I'm scrounging up the last few Christmas classics I still haven't seen before, this being one of them. I didn't think I was about to watch the greatest movie of all time, but I figured there must be enough Christmas imagery and holiday cheer that I'll enjoy the experience despite it really just being for kids.

What I Thought: I thought I was just gonna watch this movie and not talk about it, but about five minutes in I had to start taking notes, because this movie was made by and for insane people.

Look, if this is your favorite Christmas movie because you saw it as a little kid that's completely valid. I specified this being "an adult's perspective" for a reason, that reason being I have no nostalgia-colored lenses to see this movie through. I took it at face value and my face still hurts from it. I didn't just not like the movie, I was confounded by it. There are choices in here that make absolutely no sense, and I wrote down every thought this movie forced out of my brain.

Tim Allen plays a bad person. No stretch there. He starts the movie with lying to his ex-wife about there being traffic as he soars through the deserted freeway because he doesn't want her to know he made a speech at work before coming over to pick up his kid. Already, I'm confused. Why wouldn't he just say "Hey, I've gotta make a speech at work because I'm doing really well there, sorry I'm gonna be late." Is he trying to avoid the 90's trope of dad who puts work before his kid? I'm just gonna say yes because I'm only a minute into the movie.

He picks up his kid and we meet his ex-wife and her new husband, who's introduced as a horrible jerk who honks at them as they wait inside. I point this out because at no point after this scene is he like this. Neil (Judge Reinhold) is a psychologist and he's actually pretty patient and kind, with his only flaw being his attempts to talk the kid (Charlie) out of believing in Santa Claus (which is admittedly weird). He's never shown being the kind of person to honk at his family ever again after this scene.

So it's Tim Allen's turn to have Charlie for Christmas and he's horrible at it. We've gotta establish he's bad at being a parent so he can have an arc throughout the movie, so here you go. He burns the turkey, so he takes his kid to Denny's, a place that is already depressing enough on regular days of the year, let alone Christmas Eve. I'm stopping here because there's a weirdly racist moment where Tim Allen and Charlie walk into Denny's and it's full of Japanese businessmen. A waitress then asks Allen and Charlie if they're Japanese businessmen and they say no, then she takes them to the back where other kids and their single dads are, so we never come back to this room full of Japanese businessmen. But what was that? Is this a stereotype that the screenwriters made up? The shot lingers for a while like it's being played as a racist joke, but what's the joke even supposed to be? It's only there for 30 seconds but it's so bizarre that I can't stop thinking about it. Someone please help me make sense of this.

Later Tim Allen reads Charlie The Night Before Christmas and he tells Charlie that Santa's real. Then Santa shows up. Great, we're not wasting any time. Tim Allen's reasonably shocked and thinks Santa's a burglar. Tim Allen shouts at Santa and he falls off the roof instantly. Allen doesn't even really shout at Santa, he just calls up to him. Santa really shouldn't be that shocked, I would think this happens to him all the time, but apparently just him being acknowledged was so startling it caused him to lose his balance immediately and fall off the two story house and fall onto a bush coated in soft snow. This kills him. I don't think this would even kill a child, but somehow a grown man is dead from it. Allen finds his business card which tells him to put on the suit. Charlie points out the reindeer on the roof and they get in Santa's sleigh. The reindeer fart a few times, which isn't typical of the Disney brand so I wonder if that was Tim Allen's idea or if it was in the original script and the screenwriters fought to the teeth to keep it in.

Tim Allen takes Santa's sack and it causes him to fly. Charlie's amazed by this and Tim Allen proceeds to say that it's not weird for him because "I lived through the 60's." So now there's an LSD joke in this Disney children's Christmas film. Also, Tim Allen was born in 1953, so he was in high school when the 1960's ended, meaning not only is the joke about doing drugs, it's about a child doing drugs. And it's in the movie.

So I like that the the story's starting quick, getting right into the premise of "What if Tim Allen was Santa Claus?", but it almost feels like the movie's done out of order. Why are we seeing regular Tim Allen do Christmas first? I understand it's part of seeing his growth as a character later on, but we don't even see him physically start to transform into Santa Clause until over half way through the movie for the next year's Christmas. This premise must've seemed simple to the screenwriters at first, but as soon as they started working on it they realized just how overly complicated it has to be for it to make any sense. But even if the premise is hard to iron out logic for, maybe just have Tim Allen's house be the last one on Santa's list or something, because seeing him talk horribly to a little girl who's presents he's putting under the tree is pretty disturbing and sad to watch.

Also, it's during this sequence that I found out the CGI is terrible. This is 1994, a year after Jurassic Park came out. Disney was also having a renaissance in the 90s, so there's no reason for these embarrassingly cheap special effects. Fork over a little cash for your farting racist drug child Tim Allen Santa movie, Disney.

Moving on, they go to the North Pole and meet the elves, who are children. What. So elves are just little kids? Doesn't that evoke thoughts of child slavery? Did they just really not want to give little people actors jobs? What was the thought here? Not only is it strange, it's actually kind of creepy. Like, one of the elves is a baby. That's not just illogical because babies are terrible workers, but it's a chillingly surreal image, like out of a David Lynch movie. The only older elf is David Krumholtz as Bernard, whose name Allen purposefully keeps saying wrong because he's awful.

At this point I'll point out that I actually like these North Pole sets. They're a little cluttered but they're Christmasy and fun. This is the kind of thing I was expecting when putting on this movie. What I wasn't expecting is Tim Allen changing out of his Santa costume and a bunch of elves peeping on him from outside his door. What. Why. That's terrifying and implies that all of these elves aren't just little kids, they're perverts. But they aren't the only perverts, because then Tim Allen talks to one of the little girl elves and says "You know I must say, you look pretty good for your age." I get that the line is supposed to be innocent, but when it's Tim Allen saying it to a very young actress, it sends shivers down my spine.

The next day Tim Allen wakes up at his home and thinks this is all a dream, but his kid thinks it's real. Allen starts wigging out and his kid says that he knows CPR. WHAT KID IS THIS. He looks like he's 6, but he's weirdly intelligent and is apparently CPR certified. That's such a weird line to throw in because he's not saying it to be cute, he's deadly serious.

Anyways, then we cut to his classroom on career day and a fireman is telling the class about his partner dying from third degree burns.

..........

What is the tone of this movie supposed to be? I understand that family films should have jokes for both kids and adults with some jokes going over kids' heads, but that's not going to be one of them. Kids know what burns are. They have some idea of what death is. What maniac thought this joke was gonna slide in a Christmas Disney film for children? And the teacher's reaction is essentially ".....wellll okay then!" as if this was just "awkward." But it's not awkward. It's disturbing.

Then Tim Allen tries to talk to the class about working for a toy company, but his son tells everyone about last night and how his dad is really Santa. This concerns Tim Allen's ex-wife (who's dressed like Mia Wallace, complete with hairstyle) and her new husband (who's dressed like Bill Cosby, which was fun then but sad now), and causes a kid to ask the most glaring question in the whole movie: "So if I take you out, am I the new Santa Claus?" And then they cut to the next scene.

No.

Answer that question.

Because there's a lot of implications here. Like what if Hitler had killed Santa? Would Hitler become the new Santa? There needs to be background checks or something, because otherwise Disney is saying it's fine for Hitler to become Santa.

Anyways, the school's principal is also concerned about Charlie, so she brings in Allen, ex, and husband to talk about him. Allen doesn't take any of this seriously at all, and at one point sticks his tongue out at his fellow adults. He's truly an awful man, and I can't believe he has to be our protagonist.

Also, why are they taking The Sixth Sense route of making the kid look like he's psychologically damaged? That's not fun or Christmasy. That's very sad. How did no one come in and say "Hey your fun family movie about Tim Allen being Santa needs to not keep making people think about a child who's had a traumatic experience and now has psychological damage?" Everyone was just on board with choosing this angle.

More movie happens, Tim Allen keeps being mean to the new husband and keeps making fun of his sweater because Tim Allen isn't funny. Then he farts when he gets out of bed because the ADR people tried to make him funny.

Now, an hour into the movie, Tim Allen finally starts turning into Santa Claus.

He goes into work and people audibly gasp when they see he's fat now. Who does that? What human being could possibly be that rude? Then they keep staring at him as he eats his big lunch. Who are these people? Why are they so terrible?

Then at this meeting they introduce Santa in a tank for their next toy. Tim Allen points out all of the Santa inconsistencies with the ad except for the fact that SANTA IS IN A TANK. I know real life Tim Allen doesn't have a problem with this, but how does Santa Claus not see a problem here? Santa probably wouldn't want to see himself in a horrifying killing machine when he's supposed to be beloved by children all over the world. It's also weird because this means the screenwriters, producers, and Disney itself didn't see a problem with it either. And they're okay with Hitler Santa.

Tim Allen goes to the doctor who proceeds to not care that he's defying science by growing a beard and gaining weight in seconds, or that his heartbeat is to the beat of "Jingle Bells." He just sends Allen on his way like he stubbed his toe or something. Is this supposed to take place in our universe?

Then he's at the park alone watching his kid play soccer when a bunch of little kids start sitting on his lap. I don't know what you think of when you see a grown man with a beard and a bunch of children on his lap at a park, but let's just say the parents should be more concerned than they appear to be. Also, in the background of this scene there's an extra who is clearly an adult that goes on the slide by herself. WHERE ARE WE?

Then ex and husband talk about how they stopped believing in Santa Claus because he didn't give them what they wanted. So these are terrible people too.

Then they get full custody of Charlie and Tim Allen comes over unannounced which is super creepy. It was also at this point that I realized a full year had already passed. They really needed a better way of showing time passing, because I had no idea that had happened.

Then Tim Allen kidnaps Charlie and leaves. When the cops hear that a man who looks like Santa kidnapped a child, they all laugh. WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE LIKE THIS?

Also, the picture they have of Charlie is a really weird picture for a kid to have of themselves. It looks like the cover of his moody new solo album.

Then Tim Allen and Charlie and the elves walk and do a CHOREOGRAPHED DANCE FOR SOME REASON.

They make this all look like a fun montage but it's actually horribly traumatizing for the couple who just HAD THEIR CHILD KIDNAPPED.

This is the second time we're at the North Pole, and it's the point where I realized almost all of this movie is just custody battles. There's literally 30 minutes total of Christmas imagery in this movie. It's like if The Squid and the Whale was a Christmas movie.

Oh and then KIDS WATCH SANTA GET ARRESTED.

But ex is happy now and she burns the custody papers which I guess is how law works now. Also in this scene Judge Reinhold believes in Santa and then doesn't believe and then goes back to believing again in a way that doesn't feel like it was done on purpose.

Then the SWAT team shows up and they have multiple sniper rifles and a helicopter ready for literally one man.

Then Charlie turns down Judge's offer to become a psychologist, looks at Santa Allen and says "I think I'm gonna go into the family business." which heavily implies he's gonna kill his dad.

Then ex and Judge finally get what they wanted for Christmas, which means I guess the old Santa never got anyone what they wanted? Or maybe they were naughty that year? I don't know.

So anyway that's The Santa Clause and my brain hurts and I'm sad now.

Again, if you genuinely love this movie, that's wonderful.

For me it's occasionally unintentionally funny, but mostly just frustrating. I don't like it at all, but I'm not gonna say I regret watching it. After all, it got me to write something again.

Face/Off

Face/Off

This is the greatest movie I've ever seen in my life.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Netflix (if you haven't heard of it) is a very popular streaming service that offers a wide variety of movies and TV shows. Their TV shows are mostly pretty good. Their movies are, for the most part, pretty bad. "Straight to Netflix" is the new "straight to video" when it comes to their movies, which makes sense since Netflix has to constantly produce new content to stay alive. Luckily though, Netflix has a big enough audience that established filmmakers will occasionally work with them, which is how we end up with fun, oddball movies like Bong Joon-Ho's Okja, Noah Baumbach's The Meyerwitz Stories (New and Selected), Mike Flanagan's Gerald's Game, Macon Blair's I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind (which I still need to see), and now, The Coen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

I've seen all of the Coen Brothers' movies, since they're two of my very favorite filmmakers, and for the most part they're consistently great. Their classics have earned the title a million times over, their underrated movies deserve to be put up with their classics, and even the ones that aren't so good are still unlike any other movie that's being made today. Their unique brand of surreal-yet-understated comedy, typically in the midst of horrifically brutal happenings, has earned them their place in the pantheon of great modern auteurs, and it's played up to the highest degree in this movie.

This is a western anthology film, with the framing device being a literal book that features six short stories. The first three of these stories are completely wild and bizarre, while the last three are much more grounded but still have that strange tilt that you can expect from a Coen Brothers story. They're all visually gorgeous, thanks to cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (who also did the tragically underrated Inside Llewyn Davis), taking full advantage of every angle of the western genre.

Returning Coen players Tim Blake Nelson and Stephen Root are wonderful as always (those two specifically are more unhinged than I've ever seen them before and it's a treat to watch), and Coen newcomers are brilliant as well. Some actors in the film, like Tom Waits and Liam Neeson, are playing completely different types of characters than I've ever seen them play before, to the point of being nearly unrecognizable, which is one of my favorite Coen Brothers staples.

All of the stories have something great, or at the very least memorable, to offer. My favorite story is one with Liam Neeson and DUDLEY DURSLEY (Harry Melling), which is beautifully written and acted, and gives a brutal perspective on show business and its relationship with the public. I won't say more than that.

I'll leave the rest a surprise (and they're all surprising), because this is definitely a movie I recommend. As a whole it's tonally uneven, but that's what you get with an anthology movie. Even if you're not a fan of westerns or even the Coen Brothers, please click on this movie so that Netflix can find out how much more people like it when they present unique and interesting films like this instead of the onslaught of undercooked crap that they've been releasing recently.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Well folks, this is incredible. After only a year of doing this silly little movie blog, I've gotten to do something that I could never have imagined.

I was sitting in my humble North Hollywood apartment when I heard a sudden violent rapping on my window. I opened it up and to my utter surprise a brown and white owl burst into my room! I quickly grabbed some owl food I keep in my pantry and laid it out on my bed for the owl to enjoy. I then noticed a parcel that he kept clutched in his talons, and he must've noticed my noticing because he dropped it right in my hand a moment after I saw it.

It was a letter, addressed to "Jacob's Side of the Room." I peeled it from its seal and read it aloud to myself. It/I said: "Hello, Jacob. I hope this letter finds you well. I'm a big fan of your work and I've heard you're a fan of mine as well. I know you've read all of the Harry Potter series and are really trying to find time to read The Casual Vacancy and all the Robert Galbraith novels, but it's hard with all of the vague staring into the distance while listening to podcasts that you have to do. Since you're such a big fan, and you're on the Harry Potter-themed long-form improv team called Hogwash that plays every month in Santa Ana, CA, which I can find out more about on bestcoastimprov.com, it only seems fair that I repay you, since my putting something creative out into the world automatically means I owe something to everyone who knows that it exists. How would you like to come to my mansion in Edinburgh and have a chat? Let me know whenevsies. - J.K. Rowling"

I couldn't believe it. I've always loved Harry Potter and the fact that she knew about my amazing improv show that's only $5 and has tickets available at bestcoastimprov.com completely blew my mind. I hastily scrawled out my acceptance of her invitation on a napkin and gave it back to the owl, who was now checking out my movie collection with an overwhelming admiration in its eyes, as if to say "This must be the coolest guy in the world."

He hoo'd goodbye and, after a few anticipation-filled days, finally returned to my front door with a letter addressed to "The Couch That Jacob Sometimes Falls Asleep at for 30 Minutes While Watching a Movie But Still Reviews It Anyway." I ripped open the letter and my eyes filled with tears of pure, unbridled excitement at her response: "K. - J.K."

As soon as I had touched the letter, I felt a sudden rush, blinked, and found myself standing in J.K. Rowling's foyer. She welcomed me to her home and, after giving me a change of pants, showed me to the kitchen, where a lovely dinner was waiting for me. It was catering from a local Scottish restaurant called McDonald's. It tasted familiar, like something I have every single night at home, but the context made it all the more delicious.

Right about now is when I should let you know that I saw the film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald this past weekend, which Rowling herself wrote. It takes place in the Harry Potter universe, and even features some important Harry Potter players, including Albus Dumbledore, Nicolas Flamel, Gellert Grindelwald, Nagini, and Minerva McGonagall, who was amazingly at Hogwarts seven years before she was born.

I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to combine my world with Rowling's, to get a glimpse into her creative process and share it with you all. So here it is, dear reader, here is J.K. Rowling at the Movie Party:

JN: While you're finishing up those McNuggets, I'd love to discuss the newest Fantastic Beasts film.

JKR: (dabbing her mouth delicately) By all means.

JN: The first film is called "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and this next film starts with "Fantastic Beasts", which implies the rest of the title. But after watching both of them I still don't feel like I know where to find very many fantastic beasts. Was this not meant to be an educational documentary series a la Planet Earth but for discovering magical creatures?

JKR: No, it wasn't.

JN: Great, that's actually good to hear.

JKR: Glad I could help.

JN: So, I have some questions about the movie.

JKR: Alright, let's hear them.

JN: Is Nicolas Flamel going to continue to be a part of this series? And if so, are you going to continue hiring Teddy Perkins from Atlanta to play him?

JKR: Well, he didn't die in this film, so it's safe to say he'll probably keep coming back. Although I could change my mind later and decide he's dead already.

JN: On the topic of you changing your mind, you decided to give the character Jacob his memory back in this film despite making a very conscious decision to obliviate him in the first one. Was there a reason for this?

JKR: Oh, yes. Jacob was the source of comic relief in the first film, and after my first draft of Grindelwald I realized I had completely forgotten to add humor to it, so I decided to reinsert Jacob into the film by just sort of squeezing him in there.

JN: Speaking of which, this film features the bold choice of making Jacob's girlfriend Queenie an insane rapist who emotionally manipulates and abuses him.

JKR: I don't hear a question.

JN: Oh, no, it was just a compliment.

JKR: Thank you.

JN: Of course. Moving on to my next question, why did you decide to make Ezra Miller's character, Creedence Clearwater Revival, a new Dumbledore?

JKR: Well, as you know this is a prequel series.

JN: Oh yes, I got quite a few prequel flashbacks.

JKR: Excellent. Well, when you're writing a prequel it's hard to make it interesting because the audience already knows where the story is going to eventually end up.

JN: Absolutely. That's why prequels are pointless and stupid and only exist to scam people out of their hard-earned money.

JKR: Exactly. So, in order to trick people into thinking they're watching something new and interesting, you sometimes have to make surprise additions to the story that you can hopefully tie up before the series is over.

JN: So every new character that shows up will inevitably have to die at some point, because otherwise you'll have to justify why they aren't around by the time the Harry Potter timeline starts.

JKR: They won't necessarily have to die.

JN: I think they do.

JKR: No.

JN: You have some fun moments in Grindelwald that only an eagle-eyed fan will notice. Things like the Sorcerer's Stone, Hogwarts, Dumbledore, magic, and a cameo by Professor McGonagall, despite this taking place in 1927 when you already stated she was born in 1934.

JKR: Yes, isn't that amazing?

JN: Unbelievably so. I just wanted to say that as a fan, I felt very serviced. Thank you.

JKR: You're very welcome.

JN: Walk me through how you made the decision to feature so many different plot threads. Off the top of my head I can think of ten, including: the Newt/Queenie/Tina love triangle, Creedence Clearwater Revival's journey, Grindelwald's crimes, Queenie's dealing with mindreading, Queenie and Jacob's relationship, Lovely Leta's feelings, Newt's brother doing stuff, Dumbledore working at Hogwarts, Newt's mission that Dumbledore gave him, and that suspicious guy with the hat that doesn't really go anywhere.

JKR: That's eleven.

JN: I am so sorry.

JKR: It's quite alright. As you know, I'm an author.

JN: Please don't assume I know that.

JKR: I am so sorry.

JN: It's quite alright.

JKR: I've written one other screenplay, that being the last Fantastic Beasts film, which I believe justified my needing absolutely no help in writing this one.

JN: Makes sense.

JKR: So I used by authorial instincts to have a lot going on the whole time instead of keeping it simple and streamlined like screenplays are preferred to be since they're being written for a visual medium.

JN: Yes, I loved the decision to have so many conversations at boring tables in boring rooms.

JKR: Thank you.

JN: I have some questions about the directorial decisions, but I don't suppose David Yates would be here to answer them.

Right at this moment who else but David Yates walked into the dining room, wearing a night cap and bathrobe.

DY: (yawning) Hello, Jacob. Big fan of your work.

JN: Thank you so much, David. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?

DY: Not at all.

He sat down at the table, between J.K. and I.

JN: First of all, it seems like you're living here. Could you elaborate on that?

DY: Of course. I'm hiding.

JN: Ah, yes. So I've got some questions about the visual aspects of Grindelwald.

DY: Go for it.

JN: What was the reason for replacing wizard robes with boring suits and making the color palette for this film grey and completely miserable?

DY: Well, Harry Potter was a series for children, but Fantastic Beasts is a series for adults.

JN: It's about a whimsical magic man who's studying adorable animals by keeping them as pets in a zoo in his house.

DY: Yes. So in order to match this dark and gritty tone, we decided to light the film poorly and desaturate it in editing.

JN: I noticed some issues with the cinematography, like almost never being able to tell where we are or what's going on, and having close-ups that completely cut off the actors' foreheads.

DY: I'm a bit of a purist, so I wanted to make sure the visuals were exactly as confusing as the screenplay. As for those close-ups, all of the actors in the film are very self-conscious about their foreheads, so we created what we call "frame bangs."

JN: The cast is obviously full of amazing, talented people and Johnny Depp, but I noticed the acting was very subtle, almost as if no one in the movie wanted to be in it.

DY: Yes, that was my decision. As I've said before, this series is very adult, and adults forget how to feel happiness and therefore never smile or laugh or have a brief flash of humanity on their faces.

JN: Can't argue with that. The young Hogwarts students seem to be having fun though. What was the thought behind giving them modern haircuts when this is a 1920's period piece?

DY: That was to make them look cool.

JN: It worked.

DY: Thank you. I'm gonna go back to bed.

JN: See ya.

JKR: Bye.

DY: Bye.

David Yates shuffled back to bed, leaving J.K. and I alone once again.

JN: Can I be completely honest, J.K. Rowling?

JKR: Please, call me J.K. Simmons.

JN: I'd rather not.

JKR: Go on.

JN: I really didn't like this movie. It completely misses what made Harry Potter timeless and successful. It was never about the magic or the creatures, those are just decorations. It was about the magical world, the three-dimensional characters, and the strong relationships those characters had with each other.

JKR: Look again.

JN: What?

JKR: Check your blu-ray copies of the Harry Potter movies you own.

Confused, I pulled out all of my Harry Potter blu-rays that I keep with me just in case. I walked over to J.K. Rowling's impressive home theater and popped in the first movie. I couldn't believe what happened next.

The opening sequence appeared on the screen, but it wasn't how I remembered it. The vivid colors and sense of fun were gone. The film was now grey and the actor's emotions had been digitally removed. The wands were replaced with walkie talkies, and there was a new scene with Jabba the Hut.

JN: I don't understand.

JKR: I changed it. It's better now.

JN: But I loved the original. Everyone loved the original. Why would you do this?

JKR: It's what all of the modern summer blockbuster films are doing. They're either grey and sad or they're colorful but disingenuous. I chose the first option.

JN: But Harry Potter is one of the most successful franchises of all time, why not just stop while you're ahead? You already have everything you could ever want!

JKR: It gives me control, Jacob. It's why I use Pottermore to just straight-up make stuff up about my own series despite it already being finished.

JN: Look, I'm sure Da Vinci would still want to add some extra brush strokes to the Mona Lisa, but once something is published it belongs to the public. Art is never finished, it's taken away from the artist, and it has to be that way because otherwise no one would ever share their art because it would never be quite perfect enough, and then we'd live in a world without art.

From on top of my soapbox I could see something behind J.K. Rowling: a family photo. Only her children and husband looked different now. They had all had their heads replaced with the head of beloved singer/songwriter Morrissey.

JN: Wait. Since when does every member of your family look like Morrissey?

JKR: Since I decided they did. I love Morrissey so I wanted them to look like him.

JN: But you can't do that, they're already the way they are! They can have surgery to look more like Morrissey if they want, but you're certainly not allowed to just change them against their will.

JKR: EVERYTHING IS WHAT I WANT IT TO BE!

J.K. Rowling pulled out a wand from her pocket and shot me across the room, into her TV. Every bone in my body was broken.

JN: Why...why are you doing this to me...?

JKR: I didn't like your A Matter of Life and Death review.

JN: Well, I could always see it again. Maybe I'd change my mind.

JKR: Now you're talking my language.

She helped me up, repaired my broken bones, and sent me back home through her fireplace.

I'm now in my living room, jotting down my thoughts on the other two movies I saw last week. I haven't kept in contact with J.K. Rowling, and I'm sure she's met with so many people since then she won't even remember me, which is why you shouldn't bother asking her if any of this happened.

But I'll never forget my dinner with J.K. Rowling.

Thanks for reading.

A Matter of Life and Death

A Matter of Life and Death

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are a brilliant pair of filmmakers from Britain who made some of the greatest and most underrated films of the 20th century (The Red Shoes being my personal favorite). A Matter of Life and Death (also known as Stairway to Heaven) is probably their most well-known movie, being the all-time favorite of both J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe (according to an interview with them I once heard).

Playing a bit like a fairy tale, the movie revolves around a British fighter pilot (played the charming and gentlemanly David Niven) who sends out a radio call as his plane is going down. He falls in love with the American radio operator (played by the infectious Kim Hunter aka Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire) that happens to pick up his call as he plummets into the ocean. Now the members of the afterlife must decide whether he's ready to join them or not, so he's sent to a sort of realm between life and death where he spends time with his American girl, as well as a few other new friends.

The first 20 minutes or so are absolutely perfect. I was ready to love this movie almost immediately, based on the writing, acting, and gorgeous visuals that look like an animated Disney film come to life. But then there's all of the standing around and talking. It felt a bit heartbreaking every time I would start to get bored by how much talking instead of doing there is in this film. Whenever they actually do things it's wonderful, whether it's stopping time or entering a new, beautiful set, but they spend so little time doing things that it nearly lulled me to sleep at a few points.

Perhaps it would be different if I could see the movie in the theater, where the distractions of home are nowhere to be found and I'm forced to hang onto the many, many words of dialogue there are in the film, but regardless of that there's still the bizarre final half hour. There is a large trial in the afterlife to see whether or not David Niven should be allowed to live or die, and the lawyer who's against him is an American Revolutionary general who hates the British. This leads to a half-hour debate between America and England that's justified in the context of both the story and the political climate of the time, but is still clearly a huge digression from what the movie is supposed to be about. It's also worth noting that Niven isn't the one defending himself in court, it's a completely different character who's doing it for him, so not only is it 30 minutes away from the story, it's 30 minutes without either of the two romantic leading characters. It's well-intended and well-written, but it could've 100% been cut, along with about half the dialogue that's in the movie.

Again, maybe I just need to see it in the theater, but it started to feel like a task having to watch actors stand in a room and talk each other for long periods of time in the visual medium of film. The production design, costumes, and cinematography are all immaculate and I'm glad I own the movie for those elements, and the acting and writing is very good as well, it just leans too heavily onto one aspect of storytelling when it could've been brilliantly using all of them. It's still a very good movie, and maybe I'll watch again soon and like it better, but for now I just can't get over its static nature.

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka

In 1988, before Scary Movie, before In Living Color, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka was the first ever Wayans Brothers' project. A parody of 1970's blacksploitation films, their signature love of Zucker Brother-esque broad humor is apparent from right out of the gate.

It's clear that this is the first Wayans movie, as there's a lot of pacing issues and the majority of the jokes don't land. I don't exactly consider any of the Scary Movie movies to be comedic masterpieces, but at least they all have consistent gags that are hit-and-miss, but they move so quickly from gag to gag that there's no lingering on a bad joke. In this movie there's lots of time to linger on bad jokes, and it feels very awkward to watch. Considering they're going for something like Airplane!, you'd think they'd've taken note of how fast that movie moves, and adjusted their script accordingly. But instead they'll do a visual gag and then cut back to it several times in case you didn't catch it the first time. It never works.

In comedy, the performance is key, as that's where the golden rule of timing comes in. Unfortunately for this movie, none of the performances are particularly funny. Keenen Ivory Wayans is not a strong enough comedic presence to be the lead, which is a bummer considering how hard he must've had to work simultaneously acting, writing, and directing. Perhaps if he had found someone else to be the lead, he would've been able to focus more on the movie as a whole and improve it, but instead he gives an eager but ineffective performance. He's not alone though. Honestly, the only couple of laughs I experienced during the movie were from visual gags, none of the actors in the movie made me laugh at all. Everyone seems sort of tired, not wanting to commit to their characters or elevate the scenes in any way. The Wayans would have to wait until In Living Color to find those incredible comedic performers that they needed.

I'm pretty sure I've only seen one blacksploitation film (The Mack, which is a ton of fun), so it could very well be that there were a lot of gags and references that completely went over my head. And the movie wasn't miserable to watch by any means, I just barely laughed. One gag that made me laugh very hard involves Isaac Hayes gearing up to fight the bad guys, the YouTube clip of which I'll leave right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhe58xORWG0

While it's not a bad movie as a whole, it's a pretty weak comedy. If you're a comedy writer, it's a good example of bad pacing for a comedy movie. If you're not a comedy writer, just watch In Living Color instead. It's much better.

Top Gun

Top Gun

This was so dumb. I loved every second of it.

It baffles me that this was the highest grossing film of 1986 and continues to have a deadly genuine following to this day, because the entire movie reads as hilarious to me. The repressed homosexual overtones have been talked about to death, but they're undeniable and so, so funny in the context of straight men enjoying it in the deeply homophobic time that was the 1980s. It's like a Trojan Horse if the guys were just hanging out outside of the horse and the only reason they were let in is because the castle guards were in deep denial.

This is technically considered an action movie, but there's little to no action. There's dogfighting scenes with real jets, but these scenes are shot in such a confusing way that there's no way to get excited by them. There are shots of guys in the cockpits, and then b-roll footage of jets that looks unrelated to what they're talking about. All of the Star Wars movies were out at this point, so Tony Scott should've known how to make an aerial action scene exciting. It doesn't help that the characters aren't worth caring about at all, but it's really the boring way that the action scenes are shot that keeps me from enjoying them.

There's an unconvincing romance between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis, which is to be expected in a big cheesy 80s movie, but they have a famous love scene that rings as pretty gross to me. They're against a blue backdrop and we only see their silhouettes, which is a perfectly fine artistic choice for the scene, but then they start to kiss. It's almost like they're two aliens replicating what they think making out is, which is just rubbing their tongues together. It's entirely them licking each other's faces and never kissing at all whatsoever. It's pretty disgusting.

Other things that made me laugh include: the awful men singing loudly and terribly at Kelly McGillis, Meg Ryan somehow having the smaller female role, volleyball, a commander that loudly demands butts, and, my personal favorite, Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards clearly only knowing the first line of "Great Balls of Fire" and just singing that part over and over.

If you love Top Gun you're more than welcome to it. I think I might love it too. Albeit very ironically.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

I'm here with another basic movie I've never seen, and as is the case with many of the movies on said list, it's a kid's movie. I grew up almost exclusively watching animated Disney films, so I wasn't very big on live-action fare, which is why, for example, I didn't see Home Alone until I was 22. I remember seeing Honey, I Shrunk the Audience at Disneyland as a kid, but apparently I never required the context of the original movie to enjoy that. It took being up at 1 in the morning bored with friends last week to finally choose to watch this film.

I watched the Roger Rabbit short Tummy Troubles on YouTube the day after I saw Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to get the full experience (since it was the original short that would play before the movie), and that's a super fun cartoon that I recommend watching regardless of whether or not you see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, because it's much better.

I didn't hate Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but I'm definitely far too late to the party. For one thing, none of the characters are very strong or interesting. The kids are all typical stock kid characters, the parents are typical busy-but-still-concerned parents (even Rick Moranis is surprisingly normal and grounded, despite being an inventor in an 80s movie), and the neighbors are a typical parental couple where the mom thinks the dad's too harsh and the dad's too harsh.

Once the kids get small, which thank goodness happens pretty quickly, the sets and special effects are all fun. The big blades of grass, the creepy ant that I somehow ended up getting attached to, and the giant bowl of cereal are all exactly the kinds of things that this movie should be doing and it does them well. The production design is easily the strongest element.

That's really all the thoughts I have, other than according to the movie RICK MORANIS WEIGHS AS MUCH AS A SMALL TV.

Sorry. I'm so sorry. It's just that, in the movie, Rick Moranis needs to hover over his backyard so he can search for his kids without stepping on them, so he makes what's essentially a giant scale, where he's attached by a rope to one side and something that's the same weight as him is attached by rope to the other side. So naturally he'd need to find something that's over 100 pounds (I'd rather not guess Moranis' actual weight), but instead he's balanced by what looks like an average-sized TV from the 80s. A TV that can't be more than maybe 50 pounds. And it balances him out perfectly. So, therefore, according to the science that the movie is putting in front of the viewer, RICK MORANIS WEIGHS AS MUCH AS A SMALL TV.

It's an insane detail that I can't seem to find discussion about anywhere on the internet. How has nobody caught this and talked about it? It's right there on the screen. HIS CHARACTER WEIGHS 50 POUNDS AT MOST.

Pictured: Not my imagination.

It's so baffling, and it's something that will haunt my thoughts until the day I die.

The movie was fine. The short before it is better. And Rick Moranis weighs as much as a small TV.

That's all.

Green Book

Green Book

A fun fact about me is that I'm a very part-time AFI employee, which means I was able to go to the TLC Chinese Theater to see Green Book this past weekend thanks to the AFI Film Festival. This was my first time getting to do anything related to both a film festival and the Chinese Theater, the latter of which I've only seen the outside of and have ridden the Disney World version of.

The tagline "Inspired by a true friendship" is a perfect representation of this wholesome little crowd pleaser, which is why it's very shocking when it's revealed that gross-out comedy mastermind Peter Farrelly wrote and directed it. While it's certainly not as overt as Dumb and Dumber or There's Something About Mary (both of which I love dearly), there's still some surprisingly good laughs supplied by Viggo Mortensen's food-loving, foul-mouthed, Italian-American character, who is a delight to watch. Mahershala Ali represents the more dramatic side of the story (though he still gets a few laughs in there), about a white man driving a black pianist through the deep south.

The story itself is where the movie starts to feel a little antiquated. It's basically just a reverse Driving Miss Daisy, and Driving Miss Daisy, which came out in 1989 (the same year as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing) also felt a little antiquated. Green Book (which came out the same year as Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman) has a tendency to dip into the "Black people and white people are different!" cliches, which can feel a little condescending, if not a little white savior-y. Sure, Ali's character deals with prejudice throughout the movie, but it all sort of feels like a way of getting white people in the audience to go "Oh, I'm good because I'm not like them!" which isn't exactly what I'd call "progress." If it had come out 40 years ago it might've made more of an impact, but in the current social climate BlacKkKlansman is a much more relevant wake-up call.

If you're looking for a simple, light movie that has evenly balanced comedy and drama, you're gonna love this movie. If you're more of a cinephile and want to see something new or inspired, this doesn't do any of that, but it sill features good performances from Mortensen, Ali, and Linda Cardellini, who will always be Lindsay Weir from Freaks and Geeks to me.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man and the Wasp

I still haven't seen Avengers: Infinity War, because honestly I've come to terms with the Marvel movies just not really being my thing. I like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies because they feel like they're made by an actual filmmaker with a unique point of view, but most of the films feel like they're all manufactured from the same machine. Which they are. Ant-Man and the Wasp is no exception.

The main problem I have is that it all feels very lazy. It's a comedy, but the jokes mostly stem from "awkward moments", which don't work in movies because that awkward moment is actually very specifically written, planned, and shot (look up Dan Harmon's "Monopoly Guy" rant on his podcast Harmontown to hear more about this phenomenon). When the humor isn't awkward it's still ironically detached and often delivered in the form of lazy stock jokes that are used in a million lazy movies.

Okay, so the comedy isn't groundbreaking, but hey it's a Marvel movie, it's really just supposed to be fun. Except it's not. It's boring. There's absolutely no stakes or any reason to care at all about anything that happens in the entire movie. I never once felt like anyone was genuinely in danger or were even experiencing real emotions. I was never thrilled by any of the action scenes. I didn't laugh at the comedy. I couldn't enjoy the movie at all because I didn't feel like anyone behind the scenes was enjoying making it. It's all so distant and sanitized that not a speck of it felt real, and therefore it wasn't exciting or even interesting to watch. So much can be done with Ant-Man and his powers, but they practically go out of their way to not be creative with him. It would be frustrating if I had a reason to care.

I know I keep digging into the humor here, but the movie also bothers to do observational humor like Ant-Man saying "How did he get a ticket for the ferry so fast?" when a bad guy is suddenly getting away on a ferry. If this was consistent it would be fine, but instead it makes things like Michelle Pfeiffer having perfect make-up on after being trapped in the Quantum Realm for decades all the more obviously wrong. If you're going to point out little things that are wrong in your own movie, we're going to notice everything else that's wrong. It takes no effort to point out a mistake, it takes a lot of effort not to make one. There's no effort here.

I like Paul Rudd. He's very charming and funny. His performance in the original Wet Hot American Summer is one of the all-time comedic best, and he's delightful in everything else he's in. But he clearly didn't care about being in this movie. He delivers his lines without even remotely caring, he has absolutely no chemistry with Evangeline Lily (who doesn't even have enough of a part for me to tell if she cares or not), and he has a borderline look of actual pain in many of the scenes he's in. He's clearly just doing this for the money and couldn't care less about the final product (which I can't necessarily blame him for).

The only part of the movie I actually enjoyed was when they literally recycled a gag they did in the first movie, which is the Michael Pena flashback monologue. This is obviously one of the holdovers from Edgar Wright's original script from the first movie (as it's very much in his style), and it was so memorable they bothered to do it again in the second movie. It's the only part that genuinely feels fun because the cast and crew seem to actually be into doing it. No other part of the movie feels like this.

The first Ant-Man isn't exactly a great film either, but one of the things that's fun about it is that it's equal parts superhero movie and heist movie. Ant-Man and the Wasp doesn't seem to fit into any genre, which is a huge part of its problem. Genres are great for big-budget films because the filmmaker can then know what the tone is and really lean into it. This movie never leans into anything because it has no idea what it is. Is it a comedy? Not exactly. Superhero movie? Barely. Heist movie? Not this time. The most prominent genres seems to be action and sci-fi, but there's not enough of either of those for that to work either. Writers need to make strong tonal choices for their material, otherwise it's wishy-washy and unfocused, which this movie suffers from. I can't even tell who the villain of the movie is. Is it Walton Goggins? I hope not, cause he's in three scenes total. Is it Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost? No, she unsurprisingly turns out to be a good guy. So there's not really any central threat, which is pretty important for a big-budget popcorn movie.

I know this is brutal, and I'm not saying you're a bad person if you enjoyed this movie, but I think these Marvel filmmakers are starting to get used to their movies making money regardless of quality and it's preventing them from being passionate and creative. The Marvel movies feel less like movies at this point and more like two hour episodes of a TV show, not only because of their episodic nature, but because they all look and feel the exact same, even when they bother to get cool filmmakers like Taika Waititi. They're still making millions of people happy, which is great, but that's really only because of the preexisting characters and stories that they had the money to buy. The filmmaking is still lazy, and I'd rather spend those two hours watching something that someone worked hard to make because they truly loved what they were making.

All That Jazz

All That Jazz

Bob Fosse was the most famous choreographer in the world, so naturally you would think that would be enough for him. Instead, he decided to direct films and made Cabaret, an iconic movie that's in the AFI top 100 films of all time, and won just about every Oscar except for best picture (its only competition being a little movie called The Godfather). Two years later he made Lenny, a film about outlaw comedian Lenny Bruce, which was also nominated for best picture (but lost to a little movie called The Godfather Part II). Five years later, Fosse created his greatest masterpiece: All That Jazz, which Stanley Kubrick called "the best film I think I've ever seen." Coppola released Apocalypse Now the same year. Both movies lost the best picture award to Kramer Vs. Kramer.

This is the most self-indulgent film I've ever seen in my life, and I absolutely loved it. The only negative comment I have is that some of the dance scenes are far too long (especially the last one). If it wasn't for that I think I might even agree with Stanley Kubrick.

While the movie is entirely self-indulgent (Bob Fosse wrote and directed a film entirely about his own life, with names being the only thing that's changed), what's wonderful about it is that Fosse paints a shamelessly honest portrait of himself with the "character" of Joe Gideon. He constantly smokes and pops pills, harasses women, cheats on his wife, and cheats on his mistress, but Roy Scheider adds a charming humanity that keeps Gideon from being unforgivable. It also helps that he's never mean. He'll be honest with performers and tell them what they need to work on, but he's never monstrous or abusive. He's mainly just completely lost in himself, which I love watching, especially when his girlfriend says a particularly funny line and he literally looks in the mirror and says "That's good..." in the middle of the conversation. He's an endlessly fascinating character who's the best representation of my favorite kind of genius: self-destructive and egotistical, but also human and completely genuine.

There are some wonderfully innovative moments of magic realism in the film that continues to inspire storytellers to this day. There's the theater of his subconscious where people from his past and present hang out (along with death personified by Jessica Lange), which is then used again in the film Chicago, which was adapted from the Broadway musical that Fosse directed and choreographed. My favorite example is when Gideon is nearly dead after working on a movie and a musical at the same time, and suddenly the movie zooms out of that to reveal that this is all just a movie, being directed by a much healthier Gideon (both still played by Scheider), who gives the sick and dying Gideon acting notes while his wife, mistress, and daughter do a number about how he needs to change his life. It's very meta, but it's also revealing Fosse's inner thoughts and insecurities, making it a truly revelatory example of using art as personal expression.

The editing is masterful, giving the 1979 film a pace that's faster than even some modern movies while still being entirely coherent and powerful. The cinematography is all over the place in the best way possible, the production design is intensely lavish and detailed, and the performances (both acting and dancing) are magnificent. This is now on the top of my list of movies I need to see on the big screen, because there's simply so much going on visually that it really seems like the only way to take it all in.

I can't recommend this movie highly enough. If you feel like the dance sequences are going on too long, you're not wrong and you're well within your right to fast-forward it, but please finish the movie. It's too good not to see.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 29: [Rec]

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 29: [Rec]

Made in Spain eight years after The Blair Witch Project, [Rec] took the horror mockumentary to the next level of production value (going from the woods to an apartment building), and paved the way for Cloverfield to come out the following year.

An television news reporter and her camera man are doing a story on the local fire station when they decide to go on a ride-along to cover a nondescript emergency. They go an apartment complex where they discover a sickly old woman behaving very strangely, and they suddenly find themselves quarantined by the military and forced to survive what is essentially a zombie virus.

I like the human moments in this film (like how quickly the people start turning on each other), but for the most part the scares aren't that scary (with the exception of a couple moments). There's not enough atmosphere or buildup to earn the kind of scares they're going for, which is mainly due to the film's quick pace. My favorite horror movie is The Shining, and while I don't expect every film to be that high of quality, what I love about that movie is how it really takes its time and earns its scares (there's also a million other reasons I love it, but this one's actually relevant). If a horror film is too fast-paced then it rushes its scares and is therefore not scary. Horror is exactly like comedy, it's all about timing. Fast scares are possible, but that's really hard to do and more often than not it feels cheap. Suspense is so important, and when filmmakers try to bypass it they often end up with a hack movie. This movie's certainly not bad though, I actually liked it. It just wasn't that scary.

I love the low-budget nature of this film. They're able to get so much out of one location, which always impresses me because creativity coming from limitations is far more interesting than just being able to do whatever. Because of its minimalistic nature, the film has to rely heavily on the actors' performances, and every single one of them delivers. They're the scariest part of the movie, because their reactions to this terrifying situation are so realistically desperate.

This is definitely worth checking out because of how much they're able to get out of their low-budget, from effects to performances to a couple of good scares. If you're into Cloverfield or Paranormal Activity, see the one that inspired them to happen (also Quarantine, which is an actual remake).

Unfortunately this is as far as I got in October, so I failed my mission ultimately being two days behind. I'm sure I'll watch two movie horror films before the year ends though, so look out for those!

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 28: The Return of the Living Dead

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 28: The Return of the Living Dead

Dan O'Bannon is probably best known for writing classic sci-fi screenplays such as Total Recall and Alien (one of my all-time favorite movies). Like the dream of any screenwriter, he got enough clout to direct his own screenplay in 1985, which resulted in cult classic The Return of the Living Dead.

This is bizarre. It's undoubtedly a landmark for zombie movies, since it's the first one to have them actually talk and say their most beloved catchphrase: "Braiiiiiiins...", but at the same time it feels less like a love letter to zombie movies and more like hate mail.

In the beginning of the movie a character who works in a medical supply warehouse explains that Night of the Living Dead is based on real events that happened in Pittsburgh involving some sort of massive shock that caused corpses to flail around. He then shows the new employee a secret chemical from the military that they have, and then he accidentally releases the toxic gas from it and things go downhill from there. Meanwhile, a group of the most blatantly stock teen characters I've ever seen are out for a drive. They include: a permanently pissed-off punk, a nerdy guy, a goody two-shoes, a party girl, a lusty goth girl, and a stereotypical black guy. They all dress and play their type to a degree I didn't even think was possible, and are what largely makes me feel like Dan O'Bannon was in a very cynical place when he made this. At one point the goth girl becomes so uncontrollably horny she has to get naked and remains so for the rest of the movie, which feels very exploitive and sad as opposed to remotely sexy. There's also a stock military colonel character who we occasionally see at his house being horrible to his wife, and eventually making a big decision at the end of the movie.

The rest of the movie is a pretty typical zombie survival story, with some really cool effects including a zombie who's cut in half and is strapped to a table. It's the first time the idea of zombies specifically wanting brains is introduced, which is revolutionary for the genre, but other than that it really doesn't do anything that Romeo wasn't doing already, other than just being far more over-the-top and humorous.

The ending is a bummer, and not particularly surprising or interesting. It's pretty anti-climactic, which is especially disappointing considering how ridiculous the rest of the movie is, so I was hoping for a fittingly ridiculous ending.

It's a cult classic, so if you love horror and you haven't seen it you should definitely check it out, but it didn't do much of anything for me personally. I didn't find it particularly funny or even that entertaining, but it's certainly at its best when they get creative with the zombies.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 27: Santa Sangre

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 27: Santa Sangre

This is my first Alejandro Jodorowsky film, but knowing what his movies are like I braced myself for the wildest possible experience. However, this movie is nowhere near as surreal as I thought it was going to be, it was actually a pretty straightforward story.

Jodorowsky's two sons play the younger and older versions of the protagonist (they're both wonderful), who is raised in a circus and has a few traumatizing experiences there. In present day he's now institutionalized and ends up reconnecting (literally and figuratively) with someone from his past. I'm purposefully making it sound vague, but it's such an incredibly original and unique story that I really don't want to spoil any of the details that make the film such a great experience.

With a a big focus on the circus and graphic childhood memories, this very much feels like the Jodorowsky edition of a Federico Fellini film. This is perfect because they both love dream-like storytelling and rely far more on visuals than dialogue when it comes to establishing characters. There are many images from Fellini's films that'll stick with me forever, and I can already tell there's a few from this one that'll do the same.

If you're okay with some artsy surrealism and you're not too squeamish, I highly recommend checking this movie out. It's easily my favorite of the new ones I saw this month.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 26: The Devil's Backbone

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 26: The Devil's Backbone

After Cronos Del Toro had his American debut with Mimic, a movie I haven't seen but doesn't seem to be very well-received. In 2001 he followed up Mimc with another Mexican film, this one called El Espinazo del Diablo, or The Devil's Backbone.

I've got things I like and don't like about this movie, so I'm gonna start with the negative.

Del Toro has a recurring theme of "the humans are worse than the monsters", which I don't think is particularly original or compelling and more often than not it makes his movies seem unfocused. It's really frustrating when there's this wonderful, Zero for Conduct-esque group of orphan boys that discover this ghost but their story keeps getting interrupted by these adult men who are all in love with the same teacher, then one of them goes crazy and causes a whole heap of trouble. The ghost is the interesting part, that should be the focus. Del Toro finally finds his balance in Pan's Labyrinth, which seamlessly goes back and forth between horrific reality and creepy fantasy, but here it's so bogged down in the real world side story that it doesn't let the main fantasy story breathe. He unfortunately regresses with The Shape of Water, but hopefully one of his million next projects (seriously, check out how many TV shows and movies he has planned on IMDb) will get back on the Pan's Labyrinth level of quality.

That's really my only issue with the movie, I just don't find his version of the real world that interesting. Moving on to the positive, I love the production design of this movie. Del Toro's talked about the amount of painstaking detail that went into this film, including spending an incredible amount of time on one pattern of one wall. It's this kind of uncompromising, singular vision that I love to see in film, and it's always my favorite thing about Del Toro's work. The ghost boy has a simple and interesting design, with a steady flow of blood floating from his head at all times. There's CGI used along with the practical elements of the movie, which only very rarely feels at all dated.

The performances are all great. A couple of the actors from Cronos show up and they're very good, but it's the kid actors in particular who do a fantastic job of feeling like real kids. They're often mean to each other, but they're also undyingly loyal to each other like actual young boys, but they also feel like fully-formed characters as opposed to just a bunch of cute kids. Any scenes with the boys are wonderful, which again is why I'm annoyed with how much time is spent with the selfish adult characters.

The kid fantasy story and the production design are marvelous, just know that a lot more time is spent with obnoxious grown-ups having drama amongst themselves.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 25: The Tingler

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 25: The Tingler

Filmmaker William Castle was notorious for selling his movies with fun gimmicks that you had to go to the theater to experience. For House on Haunted Hill there was a skeleton on a zip-line that would fly out at the audience, and for The Tingler there were select seats in the theater that would shock the audience member during certain points in the movie, a plant in the audience who would pretend to faint and a fake nurse who would take her away, and at the end Vincent Price literally demands the audience to scream. It's a lot of fun.

Castle's intro to the film is reminiscent to the opening of James Whale's Frankenstein, warning the audience about how scared they're going to be, which I love. Then there's a bunch of screaming floating heads, which I also love.

Vincent Price plays a doctor who has discovered some sort of thing that allows fear to kill people, a thing he calls "the tingler." He then goes home where we discover he has a shockingly bitter relationship with his wife, which sort of comes in and out of the plot. This happens with a few characters in the movie (including Price's), where they seem to bounce around with either being evil or normal, depending on what the plot needs. But it's The Tingler, so that's not really important.

There's a genuine scare in the movie that's still effective today, and it's part of a wild sequence that makes the whole movie worth watching. There's also a wonderful meta ending in a movie theater that would probably be even better with the gimmicks, but it's still delightful.

Sure it's clearly cheaply made, but it's quick, it gets the job done, it's got real scares, and at one point Vincent Price says: "This gun can put a hole in you the size of a medium grapefruit.", and if that's not worth the price of admission I don't know what is.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 24: Cronos

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 24: Cronos

Guillermo Del Toro is now synonymous with monster movies, a reputation he worked for 25 years to achieve, going all the way back to his very first movie in 1993: Cronos.

Taking place in Mexico, the large majority of the film is in Spanish, with a couple of somewhat fascinating exceptions. For one, the opening Lord of the Rings-esque narration is entirely in English, which through me for a loop as I expected all of it to be in Spanish. Ron Perlman is the primary source of English in the movie, with occasional attempts at Spanish throughout.

This is a vampire movie, but only on a very technical level. The only vampire in the movie is the kindly old protagonist who slowly becomes one. He's not bitten by a person, instead he's bitten by a small device with an immortal bug in it. Pretty different. He never grows fangs or bites anyone, but he does get a taste for blood and has quite a hard time dying.

As with all of Del Toro's movies to come after this one, the set design and cinematography are gorgeous. It feels like a dark, bizarro modern fairy tale, which is kind of Del Toro's whole thing. There's a little girl who looks like every little girl in every Del Toro movie, and there's plenty of violence that juxtaposes the somewhat whimsical tone he sets up.

I would've liked the movie to be more focused and seen more happen to the likable grandfather protagonist, as well getting more wonderful creativity like the beetle device with all of the gears inside. I don't need so much of Ron Perlman and his boss, I just want to see a nice old man deal with becoming a vampire and get some more Del Toro madness.

While I do have issues with the movie, it's a great start to a career that, although riddled with both hits and misses, is undoubtedly unique and entirely his singular vision. If you're a Del Toro fan, you don't want to miss this one.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 23: Tales from the Crypt

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 23: Tales from the Crypt

Part of the Amicus Productions portmanteau film series, Tales from the Crypt is a horror anthology movie that spawned a cult-favorite TV series, and boy is it fun.

Asylum, which was also made by Amicus, came out only a few months later, but this is absolutely the superior film. Focusing far less on the framing story, Tales from the Crypt gives us five stories that are for the most part engaging and genuinely creepy.

The first story centers around a home invader dressed like Santa, which would be so much creepier if we didn't see his face till the end. It still works though, with a fun spousal murder plot to keep the viewer distracted from the truly scary thing lurking just outside the house. It truly feels like a nightmare scenario.

The second story is mostly shot in POV, which is very inventive and makes it feel all the more personal. There's wonderful use of the "it was all a dream" trope that's particularly impressive considering how the trope is typically so obnoxious. This is another authentic nightmare story.

In the third story Peter Cushing plays a wildly different character than what he typically does, going for a kindly Bob Cratchit-type, who ends up being horribly wronged. It's a blast to watch him play so against type, and makes me respect him all the more as an actor.

The fourth story is my least favorite, as it's not very scary due to it's playing a bit more like a comedy of errors, with a couple accidentally misusing a monkey's paw. Also, the main guy sounds like Matt Barry, which is always funny.

The last one sort of feels like a classic scary story kids would tell each other, revolving around losing losing eyesight and having to walk through what is essentially a torture tunnel.

It's perfect for Halloween and you get a lot of bang for you buck with five fun stories, so I highly recommend checking this one out. It's not exactly a fantastic movie, but it's a lot of fun.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 22: The Stepford Wives

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 22: The Stepford Wives

Probably the scariest movie I've seen this month so far, Jordan Peele called this one of his biggest influences for Get Out and it's easy to see why.

In the same vain as other classic 70's horror films like Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now (or modern greats such as Get Out and Hereditary), The Stepford Wives is almost entirely setup, which is what makes so unsettling, and the ending so terrifying.

For the first half of the movie almost nothing seems to really be wrong. The main character's husband is part of a terrible men's social club and the other ladies in the neighborhood are strangely boring, but she makes a friend and still mostly lives an average life. It's not until nearly an hour into the movie that things start to really get suspicious, and the last thirty minutes or so for it to start really getting scary.

I've never seen the Nicole Kidman remake so I can't speak to it, but it seems a bit unnecessary considering this movie was made so well the first time. The only issue I can really think of is that they name a character "Raymond Chandler", which is a very confusing thing to do.

I'm not gonna talk about any spoilers here. You just gotta see it for yourself, and remember to be very patient. It's worth it.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 21: Dressed to Kill

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 21: Dressed to Kill

Much like any Brian De Palma film, Dressed to Kill is an exhilarating rollercoaster of twists and turns. Much like Brian De Palma's filmography, it's also a bit hit-and-miss.

I'm gonna start with the bad, just to get it out of the way. This 1980 movie has very dated views on several things, despite not being made all that long ago. The plot heavily involves transsexuality, and while they bother to show one transsexual person being interviewed, the large majority is showcasing it as a mental illness and something to be feared. There's also a racist group of thugs dressed like the cast of Fat Albert that harass a white female character, which gives off some serious Birth of a Nation vibes. It also paints people with mental illness as automatically dangerous and scary, which isn't exactly fair.

Moving onto the good, I love how the movie is nearly impossible to predict. Something exciting and wild happens in nearly every scene, almost like De Palma purposefully tried to surprise himself every time he sat down to write the movie. It has more than a passing resemblance to Psycho, complete with a beginning mislead, an over-explanation of what happened at the end, and a shower kill. It's clear the De Palma was trying to rattle the audience in the same way Hitchcock so famously did. While it's certainly inspired by Hitchcock, it's also unmistakably De Palma, especially in the visuals. Split screens, sweeping crane shots, fun oners, his trademarks are there from top to bottom.

I picked this movie because it's in the Criterion Collection and Edgar Wright recommended it, so I feel like it's worth mentioning that Michael Caine at one point yells "You don't have to be a detective to figure that out!", which Simon Pegg also yells in Hot Fuzz. Figuring out references in reverse like that is always fun.

As long as you accept that it's dated and has problems, it's worth seeing for its impeccable filmmaking and storytelling techniques.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 20: X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 20: X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes

Another Roger Corman film, but instead of his typical tongue-in-cheek approach, this one is actually quite tragic.

Ray Milland plays an ambitious scientist who invents a chemical that allows him to have x-ray vision. It starts with what a Corman film about x-ray vision would typically have: a party where Milland can see everyone naked (but it's 1963 so it's lots of backs and legs). He also has a very funny dance that I think is worth mentioning. But his mind quickly deteriorates and he goes from a doctor to a carnival worker, eventually landing on being a Vegas gambler. It's a very full, depressing character arc that Corman manages to pack into less than an hour and a half. It's pretty brilliant.

Milland is fantastic, as he is wont to be, but the most surprising performances comes from Don Rickles, who plays a creepy sleazeball unbelievably well. Dick Miller also shows up again, officially solidifying himself as an MVP of the month for me.

This an underseen, underrated gem that I absolutely recommend. It accomplishes so much with so little that it (ironically enough) has to be seen to be believed.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 19: Piranha

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 19: Piranha

Two Joe Dantes in a row! I haven't seen the 2010 remake Piranha 3D, which seemed to play a big part in bringing back b-movies for a while there in the early 2010's (Hobo with a Shotgun, Iron Sky, FDR: American Badass, etc.), but this 1978 "original" (much like the large majority of Roger Corman productions) is far better than it has any right to be.

Piranha is a blatant ripoff of Jaws, but it's so aware of this fact that they feature Jaws as literally a game in comparison to these piranhas. There are also significant differences from Jaws, such as the fact that they (spoilers) lose their Quint in the first half hour of the movie. The movie also tends to go on lots of big tangents (always piranha-themed tangents, but away from the main two characters), causing it to feel a bit more like the hyperactive little brother of Jaws.

Heather Menzies (Louisa Von Trapp from The Sound of Music) plays a determined woman who is trying to find the two teens who died at the beginning of the movie, and what's shocking is that her character is actually smart and has agency. She's funny, she outwits bad guys, she's actually the most defined character in the whole movie (which isn't saying a lot, but still). She's somehow more advanced than a lot of the pandering "strong female characters" that are tossed at us today. Everyone else in the movie is having fun but are clearly one-dimensional. Dick Miller (from Bucket of Blood) was in both The 'Burbs and this, so he's getting quite the representation this October (it turns out he's in all of Joe Dante's films, as well as many Corman films).

It's definitely a Roger Corman production in that it's low-budget, short, simple, and an arguably well-told story, despite being very silly and shallow. Check it out if you just wanna have a fun time.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 18: The 'Burbs

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 18: The 'Burbs

Other than Big, I'm really not familiar with Tom Hanks' early comedic work from before he became America's nice dad. I've also only seen two other Joe Dante films (Gremlins and Small Soldiers), so this combination of ignorances provided me with the perfect excuse to watch The 'Burbs.

This is a fun little Halloween comedy about nosy suburbanites becoming terrified that the new neighbors are a satanic cult. I say it's "fun" because while it is undoubtedly a comedy, there's not really any jokes. There's a comedic tone to the whole thing, with plenty of cartoony hijinks and a comical musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, but there aren't really any punchlines to the silly setups. It has the tone of a live action cartoon (probably because Joe Dante is essentially an animation historian), but it's a fairly cheap cartoon.

Although this is a year after Big, Tom Hanks really doesn't do much performance-wise in this movie until the very end (his breakdown is my favorite part of the whole movie, but then it's sort of undermined by a "twist"). Bruce Dern plays a strange ex-military character as well as he can, and poor Carrie Fisher is given an incredibly boring housewife role despite proving her comedic chops in films like The Blues Brothers 9 years before.

There's plenty of fun set design and bizarre sequences to make the movie worth watching, but as a whole it's not very strong. If you're looking for great horror-comedies, this one can wait for a bit.