Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 5: Misery

Misery

The last time I saw Misery was around 5 years ago, so I was due for a rewatch of  this classic dramatization of a famous person’s worst nightmare.

Writer/director Rob Reiner is also responsible for films like This is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, Princess Bride, and A Few Good Men, none of which have anything in common other than being stone-cold classics. In a way, it’s this lack of a trademark that is Reiner’s trademark- he always allows the story to be told without any fancy directorial flourishes- and Misery is as straightforward as they come, which in a way is what makes it so special. Act one is barely over by the time the credits have finished rolling- ending with Sheldon being dragged out of his crashed car by Wilkes- and the movie then takes its sweet time in act two, allowing the tension to build and build until it’s practically unbearable.

Another thing I realized is how much I like Buster (the town sheriff played by Richard Farnsworth) as a character. His bickering banter with his wife is delightful, and his curiosity about the case is so grounded and believable it’s impossible not to be on his side. Even though he is the light side of the story, cutting back to him still furthers the film’s tension because he’s always so close to finding out where Sheldon is being held captive. His last couple of steps to finding Sheldon are certainly a stretch, but it’s forgivable due to what ends up happening to the sheriff.

The design of Wilkes’ home also deserves a shoutout, because it’s not the creepy old decrepit home that’s so common in horror films. Much like the interior of the Bates house in Psycho, what’s terrifying about Wilkes’ home is that it’s basically any grandma’s house. There are some ceramics and dolls, as well as a surprisingly incriminating scrapbook, but there’s no spiderwebs or mold or anything like that. It’s the context and the seclusion that make it terrifying.

As with all of Reiner’s films, the star of the film is the story and the characters, brought brilliantly to life by a great screenplay by William Goldman and the wonderful cast, mainly James Caan and the role made iconic by Kathy Bates. If you’ve never seen it, now is the perfect time. 

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 4: Bad Taste

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 4: Bad Taste

Peter Jackson, writer/director of the Lord of the Rings films, started his gargantuan career with this wild, creative, and endlessly silly gore movie, which he made almost entirely on his own.

Only having done a few shorts before, at the age of 26 Jackson released Bad Taste, a sci-fi/horror/comedy film about a group of aliens who don human appearances in order to capture real humans and eat them in the form of an intergalactic snack called Crumb's Country Delight. The plot's not very important though, what's really fun about the movie is how creative Jackson's filmmaking is in the context of his extremely small budget.

There's all sorts of fun camerawork and plenty of both gross-out and just plain goofy gags, but the real star of the show is Jackson's special effects. All sorts of masks, prosthetics, gore, blood, ooze, explosions, and models were used in this film, and they're all passionately and expertly created by Jackson himself. It's this handmade quality that makes Bad Taste worth anything at all, because the actual story and dialogue are dumb to say the least.

The actors are all Jackson's friends, and they're also the crew of the movie, so there's lots of room for forgiving their not-so-great acting - but what I can't forgive is the musical score, which is so bad it sometimes actively works against what's happening on the screen. The script is also bad, but with a name like Bad Taste it's clear to tell what Jackson was going for, and that goal was certainly accomplished. There's plenty of gore humor, a clear precursor to the far more brilliant Dead Alive (or Braindead), which I saw last year and still highly recommend.

If you have interest in becoming a filmmaker or you just love sci-fi, gore, and practical effects, this is a fun little gem to check out. If you only like movies where there's a great story and interesting, three-dimensional characters, this is absolutely not for you.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 3: Gerald's Game

Gerald's Game

Most Seinfeld fans will be familiar with the episode where George is with a woman who cuffs him to the bed but then she has to leave unexpectedly, leaving him alone in her apartment, cuffed to her bed. Four months after that episode aired, Stephen King's novel Gerald's Game was published, which essentially presents the exact same situation except this time the woman is cuffed to the bed and the man dies. 25 years later, Netflix turned it into a movie.

Gerald's Game is one of those great "What would you do?" ideas, like the question "What would you do if you had the powers of God?" made Bruce Almighty and "What would you do if you were buried alive?" made Buried. "What would you do if the guy who cuffed you to the bed suddenly died?" may not be as common of a question, but it's essentially the same as being buried alive; it's a survival film, but on more than one level.

Spoilers.

After Jessie has been dropped into this situation, she does what anyone would do: go crazy. Versions of both her dead husband and herself appear to talk her through the situation and to weigh her options of survival. This takes us to occasional flashbacks to her as a child where her father was sexually inappropriate with her. It's the typical kind of intimate, uncomfortable, bordering on unnecessary detail you'd expect from a Stephen King novel, but in the case of this kind of story, where the situation is so simple that the details are everything, it works.

Carla Gugino is wonderful at playing every aspect of her character; it's inarguably her movie and she nails it. Writer/Director Mike Flanagan does a great job of simply telling the story in a very straightforward way (I highly recommend his earlier film Oculus), and I commend him for also editing the thing all by himself.

While they could've maybe gone farther with how crazy she goes and blurred the lines between fantasy and reality even more, I like the way they keep almost everything grounded in reality (particularly the Moonlight Man, which was a twist I loved). It gives the whole story a sense of realism, like this could've really happened.

Though there are a few logic concerns (Why would they leave the door open? How had they had a multiple-month dry spell without ever addressing his aggressive fantasies?), the movie as a whole is intriguing and entertaining from start to finish. If you're in the mood for something dark and twisted this Halloween season, this is a solid one to check out.

American Animals

American Animals

Following the tradition started by films like American Splendor and 24 Hour Party People is the newest entry into the category of "subversive biopics": American Animals.

Based on a real-life heist by four college students in the early 2000's, the film blends dramatization and interviews together to the point of occasionally having the actors actually interact with the real people they're playing. While this isn't really anything new, it's immensely entertaining to see the similarities and differences between the actors and the people, especially when the real people are every bit as interesting as their dramatized counterparts.

The story itself is the star of the movie, and writer/director Bart Layton (also responsible for The Imposter, which I haven't seen) does an excellent job of retelling it. While for the most part it's shot in a fairly standard way, there are a few moments of truly great filmmaking, such as their ideal fantasy of how the heist will go. The actors all do a fantastic job, and the script is great at always feeling believable as opposed to being forcefully clever. It's all about this real story.

If you like The Social Network, Ocean's Eleven, or American Splendor then this is definitely a movie to check out. If you like all three you should've seen it already.

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 2: The Halloween Tree

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 2: The Halloween Tree

On the second day of October, it's a classic 90's cartoon I've never seen before!

Growing up addicted to Cartoon Network and loving Halloween, I'm not quite sure how I ever missed this animated Ray Bradbury adaptation. Premiering in 1993, there's lots to like about this TV special. The animation and backgrounds are gorgeous, there's creativity from start to finish, and it features the voices of the late great Leonard Nimoy and Ray Bradbury himself.

I wasn't familiar with the story, so this was my first time experiencing it. It's about a group of kids who, while chasing down their sick friend, end up at the house of an old man who transports them to history lessons about each of their costumes. He teaches the kids the origins of classic Halloween archetypes such as mummies, skeletons, witches, and monsters. It's both educational and consistently entertaining, a feat that few other cartoons can achieve.

All of these elements make this a perfect movie for a child to watch during the Halloween season, and adults can certainly enjoy it as well. Check it out if you haven't seen it!

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 1: The Lost Boys

Jacob's 31 Days of Halloween - Day 1: The Lost Boys

October is here! Halloween is my favorite holiday, so I like to get as much out of the month as possibly I can, and I've found that the best way to do that is to watch a Halloween-related movie every day of October. So, to start things off I watched an 80's cult classic for the very first time: The Lost Boys.

This movie has a lot going for a teenage audience: sexy vampires, motorcycles, cool music, comic books, evil grownups, and an oddly specific fascination with Jim Morrison. The cult status certainly tracks, and in some ways it's earned, because a modern take on the vampire mythology was a novel idea at the time, and vampires have always been a subject that young people have a natural fascination with due to the whole "eternal youth" thing.

The problem I have with The Lost Boys is it's kind of a tonal mess. The vampire plot with the older brother has a dangerous, sexy edge to it which seems to be what Joel "Director of Batman and Robin" Schumacher wanted the predominant tone of the movie to be, but then there's the plot with the younger brother and two other kids trying to hunt the vampires, which is like The Goonies but more hardcore (even featuring Cory Feldman), and then there's a wacky grandpa character who seems to have escaped from a silly John Hughes movie. If the focus was entirely on the teen vampires it could've been a lot more interesting, and if the focus was entirely on the boys hunting vampires that still could've been fun, but when equal time is given to both plots it causes the tone to teeter all over the place. Throw in a crazy grandpa and you've got yourself one pretty unbalanced movie.

Although the script isn't great (apart from the tone, the dialogue is far from memorable), the filmmaking is solid. There's some cool camera work and fun makeup and practical effects that definitely make the movie worth watching. Creativity can be found in almost every scene, it's just not always presented in quite the right way.

It's worth seeing once as an adult, and I'd highly recommend it to teenagers.

Oh, and even though I think the grandpa character is bizarre and ridiculous, he gets to deliver one of the best final lines in a movie I've ever heard, although it's a punchline that really only works if it has an hour and a half setup.

BlacKkKlansman

BlacKkKlansman

Anyone who knows the name "Spike Lee" probably has a few associated thoughts that immediately come to mind. Things like how outspoken he is in real life, how prolific he is, how much of a mixed bag his filmography is (leading me to refer to him as the Stephen King of filmmaking), but they probably won't associate him with the word "subtlety." This is often the punchline to any Spike Lee joke, whether it be how he portrays white people (or even how he sometimes displays black people), or how he'll sometimes break the fourth wall to practically scream the point of his movie directly at the audience; the man is known for hitting his viewer over the head with his message. But sometimes he strikes gold with this style, whether it be Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, or now, BlacKkKlansman.

In the words of Troy Barnes from Community: "There is a time and place for subtlety, and that time was before Scary Movie." (This is particularly funny when Donald Glover (also known as Childish Gambino) is the one delivering that line, with his now-iconic, in-your-face music video for This is America gloriously damning subtlety to hell in the first ten seconds.) There is no time for subtlety in this day and age, because the majority of people aren't going to take the time to read between the lines, and things are a little too crazy right now to hope people are going to understand cryptic symbolism. This movie couldn't be Annihilation because the subject is simply too important to risk people not getting. Therefore Spike Lee makes direct allusions to current events throughout the film, and a surprise ending that is absolutely gut-wrenching. While the movie is often incredibly fun and funny, it never takes its finger of the trigger of its message. This movie needed to be made now, and it needed to be made by Spike Lee, because otherwise it would never be in multiplexes and therefore be given a chance to be seen by the masses.

Steering away from the sociopolitical angle of the film, the actual plot and characters are a tense joy to watch. It took me a bit to warm up to John David Washington (Denzel's kid), but by the end of it I absolutely adored him. Him and Adam Driver give perfectly grounded performances, helping create the illusion that these two guys are cops and not actors, despite the fact that both of them have to go undercover and act their way out of some scary situations. And boy, are those situations scary. I call it a "tense joy" because there's never a moment where I felt like these guys were safe (especially since this is somehow all a true story), but there's often surprisingly effective humor that gives very necessary breaks to the tension. Topher Grace is the only person who could play David Duke, Laura Harrier is wonderful as Patrice, Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen is terrifyingly believable as the shrewd klan-member Felix, and a special shoutout goes to Corey Hawkins who expertly delivers one of the most powerful speeches I've seen in a modern movie. The soundtrack and the score are also a joy, and the cinematography has that trademark exaggerated Spike Lee style of canted angles and frequent intermittent style changes. 

I'm not gonna get into spoilers because I think it's important that everyone go see this movie, mainly because this really happened, and because these guys are still out there. But if you watch movies to escape and don't want to be reminded of what's going on in the world, then it's definitely not for you.