Never challenge a man who can burn rubber on a cloud

I'd attach a sketch to the top of the post as usual, but Google/Blogger is doing its usual bang-up job of dismantling existing services to concentrate on new failures.  It's a great strategy, no need for you to look up if Google has ever turned a profit on anything other than strip-mining data for advertisers.  Anyway

October 8th - SPEAK NO EVIL is a clever metaphor about British manners that value civility in one's tone more than the act of actually being civil, and in which a family is drawn into potentially fatal situations just because they don't want to cause a fuss when red flags appear during their stay with the young couple they met on holiday.  It's a metaphor that works well for times in which anti-genocide protestors are shouted down at events where they should be given a microphone, and I got on well with the film as a whole, but mainly I was tickled to see some great footage of a locale I had to draw for several episodes of ACES WEEKLY's Velicity Jones back in the day, and that footage would have been bloody handy at the time, let me tell you, as I had to pore over footage of grainy Youtube holiday videos of Croatian hilltop villages just for background art that the letterer would obscure with balloons.  God, I hate comics.
Also, please buy the comic, as insulin is not getting cheaper.

 
October 9th - SAW, SAW II, SAW III, SAW IV, SAW V, SAW VI - well, I wasn't really doing anything today, anyway.  The plots of the Saw films can be summed up thusly: "arrg, ahh, no, no stop, please", except for the one where it's "ahh stop, no please" but it's happening six months earlier.  The films pull this nonlinear narrative gag quite a few times, and to be honest, I think it only really worked once, and that was in... eurm... well this is embarrassing, I don't actually seem to be able to tell any of the films apart, but it was one of the later films, where the FBI show up and you think the film couldn't possibly be setting up yet another "they have been dead all this time" sting, but it does.  These are less films and more a kind of serialised gory melodrama, as the studio was churning them out once a year, clearly more interested in creating a franchise than making art, and as a consequence the films have little to say about the individual creators involved, and I think only James Wan, who co-wrote and directed the first movie, can claim to have made something that was definitely his own, as he went on to make other memorable trashfests such as one of the Fasts and Furiouses, M3gan, and the gloriously daft Malignant.  The other dudes are probably auteurs in their own fields and I'm doing them a terrible disservice by dismissing them like this, but I'm struggling to think of anything of worth or import to say about this series so far, and there's another four of the things to get through because you don't just stop watching a movie series when you're six movies deep - the sunk cost fallacy, like ADHD, is real.  I guess I have to say something nice, though, and to be honest, I did like that the movies pretend really hard to be deep rather than just deeply stupid, and Saw 6's ending where the protagonist just sort of lumbers into his own undoing and dies in a hilariously graphic depiction of one of the oldest death traps in all of fiction was admittedly really funny.  There are a couple of spins on old death traps from fiction in the latter films, and I guess if one were being charitable, I could say this was a commentary on the lack of imagination displayed by the killer who has taken over from the antagonist of the first few films, hinting at his being uninvested in the work he's doing, but it's equally as likely that by this point, the makers were just getting low on ideas.

One good thing about the franchise, though: in being so laser-focussed on creating a franchise from low-cost theatrical movies, it has probably kept the mid-budget movie alive in an era where the cinematic blockbuster and the arthouse indy have little occupying the ground between them.

October 10th - SAW 3D, JIGSAW, SPIRAL, SAW X - welp, I liked Jigsaw, but to be entirely clear, this was only when I had got momentarily confused by yet another nonlinear narrative switcheroo about what killings had been perpetrated by whom, and when, so that it seemed that a character had appropriated the legacy of a killer to bring a corrupt police officer to justice via an elaborate Xanatos Gambit and thus appropriated his vile legacy to do some genuine good, which was a nice happy ending for a grisly and nihilistic series - but sadly, I had simply got befuddled momentarily and it actually was just another person taking over from the original killer to enforce their own arbitrary sense of justice.  The next film in the series, Spiral, looks to be correcting course and taking aim at systemic corruption, but sadly it doesn't last - or at least, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny very long - and it becomes about graphic deaths once again perpetuated by a vigilate.  To be fair to it, I suppose only a moron or a genius messes with the formula nine movies into the franchise.  Looking at you, Jason Goes To Hell.  And Last Jedi.

Saw 3D and Saw X are continuations of the main series, being the optimistically/fraudulently-titled "Final Chapter" and requel, respectively, and both make little sense from one moment to the next, the Final Chapter ending as other entries in the series have in what I think the makers probably at the time tried to pretend was a callback, but which just looks like yet another sequel bait setup to me.  Saw X is a prequel/sequel/reboot which really just does more of the same, though this time the characters, despite being younger than they were in any of the other movies, clearly look 20 years older.  The story is dumb and it ends on more sequel bait, but I liked the bit where the guy has to perform brain surgery
on himself and then dissolve his own brain in acid, and the bit where a character uses their dead friend's intestines as an impromptu lasso - whomst among us, am I right?

Well, that's all ten movies, anyway.  I heard, as it were, a voice of thunder crying "come and see", and I saw.  I saw a load of old bollocks.

October 11th - A HAUNTING IN VENICE is the latest of the enjoyably daffy adaptations of Agatha Christie's Poirot by Belfast lad Kenneth Branagh, and it doesn't do anyone any good to take these films too seriously as anything other than acting showcases for all involved, for good (Brannagh, Reilly) or otherwise (hard to believe that his performance alone wasn't the only thing that poorly-dated the casting of Russell Brand).  Dang, Michelle Yeoh's in this, I keep forgetting she's a proper actress, as I can recall when she was constantly pegged as a beauty pagent winner who got cast in some Hong Kong chop-sockies as sex appeal and everyone in the action movie press was slagging her off because her Stalking Crane technique wasn't convincing as she initiated with a left inward stride or something and seemed to be concentrating more on "learning lines" and "convincingly delivering them while remaining in character" instead of perfecting the art of kicking Jackie Chan in the neck, and she clearly wasn't going to last in this game.
You might think that last bit where I joked about Michelle Yeoh being lambasted for acting instead of learning to fight better was some sort of off-the-cuff riff, but trust me, if you can get your hands on some copies of IMPACT: THE ACTION MOVIE MAGAZINE from the early 1990s, you will find that I am not paraphrasing anywhere near as much as you think I am.  I seem to recall the divine Maggie Cheung getting it in the neck in a similar fashion around the same period and oh yeah I think I was talking about A Haunting In Venice at some point so getting back to that, I have never seen any of the other Poirot stories adapted - I will assume that Murder By Death is not canonical - except for the Kenneth Brannagh films, and while I'm sure they were all great and it was totally my loss, I liked this just fine, it was fun, it had some of Brannagh's usual directorial flourishes, just to remind you that the camera can also be a performer, and while it's maybe not actually scary, that's okay when a movie is at least entertaining.

October 12th - THE BLACK PHONE is a horror where I got the twist ending spoiled for me ahead of time, though I decided to watch the film to at least see how it was performed, and... there is no twist ending, I was thinking of something else, so the ending of this did actually take me by surprise purely because it didn't have the bleak twist I thought it did, and I really liked it.  The kid actors are great, but then I suppose they'd have to be, as they're pivotal to the narrative rather than just set dressing in another character's story, and there's ambivalence about what the antagonist wants with all those children so it doesn't get too ick like these films usually do.  Occasionally intense, but never anxiety-inducing, this was a pleasant surprise.

October 13th - TALK TO ME is another Australian horror, and for a country that seems to export blonde actresses, I'm surprised there wasn't one fronting this.  Being the tale of a cursed hand that dipshit kids use to play occult party games, things go wrong, yadda yadda - all rote stuff, albeit performed and shot well.  The story has no great surprises, but it's well-told.

Don't you just love all this end of the world crap?

October 1st - Spooktober is not off to a great start, as BRIGHTBURN works from the most hackneed premise in all of geekdom - "What If Superman Bad?" - and does nothing with it.  I tried to meet it on its own terms and fill in the gaps on its broad plot about parents noticing their kid turns into a monster once he hits puberty, and I am willing to buy into that if the film would just give me something, anything to work with, but it gives me nothing.  I can actually make more of a case for the film being a metaphor for why immigration is bad as some people from some places are inherently evil and inhuman, because there's no subversion or wit on display here, the film has literally nothing to add to a sloppy mid-budget remake of one of the "Young Clark Turns Evil For 23 Minutes" episodes of Smallville from 2003, except perhaps the addition of over-the-top gore, which to be perfectly honest just feels like the makers trying hard to differentiate themselves from the aforementioned Smallville episodes, a series that often displayed a lot of gratuitous content in order to string its primary audience of gay men and teenage girls along just a little bit longer so they didn't twig until it was too late that they weren't going to be seeing any Clark/Lex action - which alongside the sight of Tom Welling in a Superman costume is pretty much the only thing that Smallville promised right from the beginning and yet never delivered.  The fucking tease.
So anyway, Brightburn is pretty much just a regular issue of the Superman comic written by Geoff Johns circa 2010.
For a minute, it looks like it might be entertainingly thick-eared, as it starts with a slow camera pan across some books on infertility issues, just to subtly tell the viewer what's going on with the young couple who adopt a radioactive bush baby with apparently no input from social services, and for a fleeting moment, Brightburn seems aware of its own level of bullshit, but sadly, it doesn't last.

TANGENT: Is Mark MIllar's SUPERMAN: RED SON the only good What If Superman Bad story?  You certainly wouldn't think it from the terrible animated adaptation where the lead voice actor thinks he's voicing Dracula and the writers' entire argument against Communism seems to come down to an essentialist argument undermined by their own central premise of Bad Superman Has Redemption Arc and their insistence that America killing innocent civilians in other countries is justifiable "because", but I think the comic version might be up there.

 
October 2nd - LONGLEGS is an atmospheric psychological thriller with horror overtones which juxtaposes scenes of rural domesticity and outbursts of brutal violence, and also it has Nic Cage going OOOOGABOOGABOOGA like he does, while also made up like Michael Jackson for some reason.  There's a lot to unpack in this, but mainly it goes for atmosphere by mining the oft-visited smalltown neo noir genre familiar to Netflix viewers, particularly in its use of a disjointed sense of time to portray how the past becomes an inescapable trap, shaping future decisions in a way that cannot be avoided.  Longlegs chooses to explore the inesacapability of the future by implying a potential supernatural element that never actually materialises beyond aesthetic choices by the director, the feelings of powerlessness and inevitability building a tense atmosphere where few answers are offered and instead we simply have more questions - all of which just makes Cage' involvement in this all the more baffling, as we know from his varied output that he's certainly capable of restraint and nuance when asked or directed, and it's only his latter post-divorce turn as a guy looking for a paycheck that's seen his preference turn to scenery-chewing meglomaniacs on zero-budget turkeys made on a quick turnaround.  Nic Cage doesn't have to play Nic Cage all the time, is what I am saying, and he doesn't, but he very much does in this, and one has to assume the choice was a deliberate one on the part of the director.
I liked this, but gosh, I sure hope I don't have to watch another atmospheric hauntological narrative anytime soon yes this is foreshadowing why do you as

October 3rd - I SAW THE TV GLOW is unambiguously a trans metaphor - except: is it?  We know it is because the nonbinary director and trans writer told us so, but HAHA: death of the author, motherfuckers!  Your art is my bitch now, and I say this movie is a hauntological narrative that anyone immersed in geek culture over the age of 40 can appreciate, because they're slap bang in the Goldilocks Zone where they're old enough to have experienced firsthand the debut of media now celebrated by millenials, probably thought it was okay-to-great at the time, but now experiencing it as either an elderly millenial or - /SPITS - a boomer find it somewhat lacking.  Once again, the toxicity of nostalgia for times that never were rears its ugly head - helped by the sizeable amount of anachronism in the portrayal of "the 1990s" and the media originating thence, and the film explores a storyline familiar to consumers of sci-fi and superhero narratives - protagonists trapped in an alternate version of their lives - to explore themes of identity and societal expectations, so my hot take reading that no-one else has had yet because I am totally a genius media understanderer, is not entirely incompatible with what is supposedly the textual subtext of the film.  That was a pretty long sentence - I really need to work on editing myself .
Anyway, reading what I've written so far about the film, it really is amazing how even when I'm trying to be nice about something it reads like criticism.  I have been on the internet too long, I guess, poisoned by its alternate reality in which people exist as characters, playing roles for an audience yes I'm doing a thematically-appropriate metaphor now, I really am a genius but okay back on track now: my main point before this review started getting away from me as usual was that the metaphor within I Saw The TV Glow is nowhere near as narrow as one might expect of something explicitly spoken about as being - sigh, I guess I'm going to use the word unironically, like a cunt - "woke", and there are plenty of insightful queer readings available, but I think others beyond that target group might find a lot to relate to in this, especially anyone with anxiety issues and a perpetual problem with believing they should be doing something else right now, or people wrestling with cognitive dissonance between their idealised memories of older media and the contemporary interpretation of that media through the lens of younger creators - what I am saying is, I think if the anti-woke brigade watched this, they would probably really enjoy it.  And have only good things to say about it.  Yep.

October 4 - THE RELIC is maybe a bit older than I was willing to go for my horror chills this Spooktober, being of a 1997 vintage, but I do have a softness for Peter Hyams so I decided to give this a go when it dropped in my proverbial lap.  It's a solid meat and potatoes creature thriller with good performances and a cast of oddball characters, reminding me very much of Larry Cohen's cult classic, Q The Winged Serpent, right down to the dated SFX and a monster with connections to ancient American mythology running amok in a modern city.
I can't think of much about it that jumped out at me once it was finished, but it looks great - SFX aside - and passed the time well enough.  I'd say it's worth checking out, but not seeking out - if it's streaming near you, give it a go if you get along just fine with unpretentious thrills, but I wouldn't go paying the £2.50p the average Ebay seller is asking for a copy of the dvd.

October 5th - TRAIN TO BUSAN is a far-fetched story in which a viral outbreak originating in Asia is mishandled by the government, leading to many deaths.  It was made in 2016, so I can say "where do they get their ideas?" and it's a genuine question rather than sarcastic acceptance of the material conditions of the hellworld we inhabit.
Unusually for a zombie movie - yes, I am willingly consuming zombie-centric media despite my previous assertions I would never do so, I am a fickle and inconsistent character - Train To Busan explores the idea that capitalism might be bad actually, and like most people who live in a world where James O'Brien is considered a valid political commentator rather than simply a drunk uncle at a Christmas get-together who is inexplicably on the radio arguing with people who are somehow dumber and less informed, I am here for the criticism of how our race has catastrophically mishandled the opportunities presented to us by the (alleged) end of feudalism.  Having said that, South Korea - silver medallist in the "Best Korea" competition - is probably not the best place to be basing your critique of capitalism, because while there's plenty to critique, the central premise of the film hinges on the fact that South Korea actually has an affordable and functional public rail system that is fit for purpose, and us lefties surely do like to base a lot of our anticapitalist rhetoric on that topic.  I gather there's an American remake of this coming, so I guess we've already identified the biggest logic hurdle for the potential audience for that movie, and it isn't the presence of zombies.
The anticapitalism isn't actually that prominent a thematic element, at least not as prominent as the film's line in class politics, but it surprises me not a jot that even in South Korea, the absolute worst scumbag is a guy who owns a bus company.*  The character's name is Yon-Suk, and I must presume he is so named because he Yon-Sucks - that's a pretty clean joke for this blog, and barely racist, so I'm doing great this Halloween, thank you very much for asking.
Unusually for me, this review is just rambling nonsense, so I will get to the point: I liked this.  It was fun, I should have checked it out when it was streaming on Netflix but I didn't and I had to buy a blu-ray of the trilogy to watch it, and because of the aforementioned US remake, dvd and blu-ray copies of this might get a little scarce when the company that owns Western distribution rights inevitably discontinues print runs/sales of the original to give the remake a better chance of pulling in some box office, so if you're thinking about checking this out, now might be the time.  I would certainly reccomend that you do, as I had a blast with it.
*Real ones know. 

 
October 6th - SEOUL STATION - animated prequel/sidequel to Train To Busan, and arguably as good, but let down by cheap animation, especially what looks like a lot of recycled walking frames.  The class politics are really hammered home in this one, particularly when the police report the zombie outbreak as "the homeless are rioting", but bless its little cotton socks, there's some neat thematic and aesthetic conceits in it, from its use of the homeless and desperate as its main characters to a finale that takes place in one of the plastic pre-made McHomes offered by the plastic America-lite trappings of the contemporary South Korean economy.
The longer I talk about anything, the more negative I sound - I should really look into this someday - so I will wrap this up and say I found this just as enjoyable as the original.

October 7th - PENINSULA - a solid live-action sequel to Train To Busan, and while some really clunky dialogue and setup throws things off in the first act, you'll probably forget all that by the time the extended chase sequence of the third act kicks in.  This time, that pesky capitalism is up to its old tricks again in a plot involving literal bags of cash, and the story feels kind of slight, but I'd argue it makes its point well.  I can see the more bloodthirsty zombo-lovers feeling cheated by what passes for a happy ending by zombie movie standards, and it lacks any big twists and possibly suffers by being less focused than the previous entries in the series, but all told, I liked it well enough, and even if it's the least of the three films, it's still pretty good.

BONUS CONTENT:
The MISTY 2024 SPECIAL revives the branding of the unsuccessful girls' horror comic from the early 1970s that featured such memorable stories as... uh... well anyway, this special follows on from some half-assed attempts to revive the branding by tacking it onto a SCREAM! revival which itself read as little more than a lacklustre collection of backdoor pilots for series that never went forward, so at least this time the premise has room to develop because, bafflingly, Misty has "lore" now, and rather than simply being the gothy host of a comic aimed at telling thrilling but wholesome tales of the supernatural to 8 year old girls, Misty is also a wronged but sexy spirit in thrall to an eldritch horror, which seems... like a choice.  It works fine as a framing device, but I have actually read quite a bit of Misty in recent years, and the "character" - if she was even that - was never a contemporary or relevant figure within the stories, she was always this anachronistic, wispy presence on the inside covers, portrayed in vaguely ethereal fashion and delivering breathy greetings to the readers, and I never got the sense she was supposed to be sinister, so the use of her as a character with agency within the stories seems like it really should be going somewhere, but she's just sort of there.
There's always the question with these Rebellion-published IP revivals that is never adequately answered by the material or the people who produce it: who is this actually for?  It's certainly toothless enough to be sold to kids, but the odd moment here and there makes it apparent the main audience is 2000ad's legacy readership of middle-aged blokes, as is usual for most of Rebellion's IP revivals - though considering that readership is likely only drawn to reprints of the original material out of nostalgia for its dated aesthetic and/or sensibilities, or because it represents previously-unknown work by noted and beloved creators, I'm not sure what this kind of solid but unremarkable project is really going to accomplish.
Mostly written by Gail Simone (yes, that Gail Simone), it's not like this is amateurish, and if anything, Simone embracing the concept of a comic host/narrator is more consistently applied than I've seen in any of Rebellion's other efforts - including their flagship title, 2000ad, which features a fictional host as one of its most recongiseable and enduring selling points - and the art ranges between great and fantastic, it's just that I keep asking: who is this for?
I liked it plenty, though - I guess that's all that matters.