March: A sea of disappointments.
Mickey 17
MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! I might have set my expectations a little too high for this one. For those living under a rock and only choosing to come out for remakes of ten-year-old movies, Mickey 17 is a movie about the titular character Mickey. He signs up to join a space colony as an expandable, someone tasked to take on dangerous missions, and when he dies, the colony prints a new version of Mickey. Naturally, the film picks up with Mickey 17, the seventeenth copy of Mickey, and I am sure many of you are starting to see my gripe with this film.
Mickey 17 is very on the nose with its metaphor in a way Parasite wasn’t. If you can’t see the bright neon sign that director, Bong Joon Ho has erected saying “The Working Class is Expandable,” then I’ll start questioning if you are paying attention. It certainly doesn’t help the film’s subtlety when you have Mark Ruffalo doing his best Donald Trump impression. There is also a scene that feels eerily mirrors Trump’s attempted assassination.
Am I trying to claim Mickey 17 is a subpar film? On the contrary, my dear followers, I enjoyed my time with this film. Pattinson is working overtime, literally and figuratively, playing both Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, and over-the-top Ruffalo is humorous in his own way. The film just has the unfortunate role of being the follow-up to Parasite: a film that allows its ideas to sit and simmer with the audience. Whereas, Mickey 17 feels like it is trying to beat the metaphor into the audience with a comically oversize hammer.
Jennifer’s Body (2009)
It happened again, my loyal followers.
Despite being a hormonal teenager at the height of Megan Fox fever, I didn’t catch the infamous horror movie trying to capitalize on said frenzy, Jennifer’s Body. To be honest, I am relieved I didn’t see it. I am sure a younger Doomsayer would have loved the sex and violence littering the screen, and even as an adult, I can appreciate how much everyone, including Fox, commits to the bit. A movie looking to tone down some of these elements would have come off as hollow and undermine the ultimate message of the film. A message that, I have no doubt, a younger Doomsayer would have mocked or made some sarcastic remark at. Look, we all have some growing up to do as a teenager. However, the moment Jennifer enters the band’s van, adult Doomsayer knew exactly what Jennifer’s Body was about: sexual assault and the horrors that come from it. It was a brilliant move by writer Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama to marry the horror of a demonic possession to sexual assault that many women experience.
Now, I can see you all waiting for me to drop the metaphorical axe. WHERE WERE DOOMSAYER’S EXPECTATIONS MISALIGNED!!! My loyal followers, I lay my complaints squarely at the feet of IMDB. The site has Jennifer’s Body labeled as a body horror. I saw that label as I was seeing how long the movie was, and my mind ran wild. I knew the film was mainly a possession film, where the titular Jennifer lured horny teens to their doom. Yet, my imagination pictured Jennifer’s skin stretching and bones cracking as she transformed into the monster that would devour these teens. Alas, those moments never came. Did it lessen my movie going experience? No, but it does leave me annoyed at the tool I so often used to find information on a film. Shame to whoever tagged Jennifer’s Body as a body horror; they should go watch The Thing, The Substance or The Fly and learn what body horror truly means.
The Rule of Jenny Pen
The trap laid in perfect wait. A movie, starring Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow, about the horrors of growing old. The premise and cast are too tantalizing for the old Doomsayer to resist. I took the bait, only to learn the story was as put together as I thought.
The Rule of Jenny Pen is a movie about an elderly judge who suffers a stroke and is forced into an assisted living facility, only to be tormented by Dave Crealy and his child’s puppet named Jenny Pen. The concept on the surface seemed like it had potential. As someone who values their mental fortitude, I could see a story of someone slowly losing these abilities to be haunting. However, I failed to find The Rule of Jenny Pen scary, which makes me feel like a teacher writing “see me after class” on a student’s test. I was waiting for the moment for the movie to reveal some detail about the doll that would make my skin crawl, but it never came. I essentially spent close to two hours watching one old man bully another. As your humble movie-loving Doomsayer, I am positive there is a movie out there about the horrors of growing old, but this is not one worth watching.
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
I will confess to you, my loyalist of followers, that I can certainly be petty when I choose to. When it comes to the giant corporations looking to drain the consumers dry, I will do anything I can to spite them. For those unaware, Warner Brothers, the rights holders of the Looney Tunes, has locked away the recent ACME film as a tax right off. The only reason The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie was able to see the light of day, is because Warner Brothers sold the distribution rights to a small company for scraps. Naturally, when I caught wind of this Looney Tunes movie coming to theaters, I had to be first in line to spite them.
Putting aside my hatred for the Looney Tunes’s parent company, how was the film? Pretty solid. It doesn’t try to be anything more than an hour and a half long episode of the Looney Tunes, but it doesn’t need to be. The movie starts with Porky Pig and Daffy Duck trying to make enough money to fix the roof of their house and slowly spirals into an adventure to save the world from an alien takeover. I had a good time with this film and hope enough people checked it out to make Warner Brothers reconsider their plans regarding the Looney Tunes.
Novocaine
At initial glance, you might assume Novocaine might appear to be an action movie revolving around a typical Jack Quaid-like character who is unable to feel pain, and you would be correct. The film utilizes this concept to give some ridiculous action scenes in many hazardous environments. Simply watching Jack Quaid walk into a kitchen or tattoo parlor made a smile creep onto my face as I knew an almost comical fight scene was about to break out.
Now, yes my LOYAL FOLLOWERS, the action and special effects are impressive, but what surprised me about Novocaine, was the solid character work. A film like this could have gotten away with a bare-bones script consisting of boy meets girl then boy save girl, but the film took its time developing both Jack Quaid’s character and many of the smaller ones. Being unable to feel pain, Jack Quaid’s character lived a very safe life out of fear of being unable to tell if he sustained an injury that could kill him. When his work crush asks him out, he begins wondering if playing it safe has really served him. The work crush and main villain also have compelling arcs that I won’t spoil.
My only concern is between this movie, Companion and The Boys, the fear Jack Quaid is being severely typecasted. You may have noticed, I never mention the name of his character in Novocaine. I am sure the movie mentioned it many times, but in my mind, the character is just Jack Quaid. The character dances the line between kinda pathetic and kinda lovable THAT DESCRIBES ALL JACK QUAID CHARACTERS. I don’t blame Quaid, he is good at playing these characters, but I certainly think he’s capable of doing more. If he is happy staying in his lane, then I will allow him to continue, but I think he is capable of doing more.
Ash
Another bait and switch, my loyal followers. I was baited into see a horror movie in the hope some Lovecraft elements might show themselves. Alas, I left disappointed and frustrated with the sci-fi horror movie, Ash. The film revolves around Riya, an astronaut who wakes in a space station alone. She must repair the station and find out who is responsible for her crew’s disappearance. The trailer hints at a Lovecraftian monster lurking in the planet’s atmosphere, but alas, no creature came. Instead, Ash wants to be The Thing, except where all the interesting bits are crammed into the final twenty minutes.
This unfortunately is a problem many creatives make with slow burn stories; they assume it means nothing should happen, which is far from the truth. Take The Thing, for example, even during the more tame opening, the story is progressing. They find the abandoned base, the animals start acting weird, they discover the Thing among the dogs, it escapes and panic among the crew break out. Nothing like this takes place within Ash; it’s just bland flashbacks and Riya staring at empty space station corridors. MY FOLLOWERS, I PLEAD WITH YOU, is a good sci-fi horror too much to ask?
Death of a Unicorn
Loyal followers, would you grace me with your patience as I go on a typical Doomsayer rambling. I promise it is relevant to the latest A24 film, Death of a Unicorn. I want you to think about Richard Attenborough’s character in Jurassic Park, Hammond. While initially appearing to be an old man excited about his new discovery, Jurassic Park goes out of it’s way to drop small clues that Hammond is not an archeologist in the way Grant or Ellie are. From using his helicopter to ruin Grant’s dig site to all the lapse in safety, the film subtly hints that Hammond is merely cosplaying as an archeologist, while truly being a capitalist. It’s done to make the character sympathetic; if Hammond resembled a Monopoly man, we all would have been hoping dinosaurs would eat him alive.
I was reminded of Hammond as I watch Death of a Unicorn, a film about a father daughter duo who accidentally run over a unicorn on the way to meet the father’s new bosses. They bring the corpse of the unicorn to the bosses, who immediately start cooking up schemes on how to profit off the new discovery. Similar to Jurassic Park, the film wants to show how capitalist and oligarchs will slowly corrupt something magical. The oligarchs are cartoonishly over the top. They brand the smug, advantageous “wanting to leave the world in a better place” attitude while clearly lining their pockets. Will Poutler does his best over the top tech billionaire brat, but there’s nothing to juxtapose it against, as his parents are also comically evil. There’s a moment where the head oligarch, dressed in safari hunting gear, laments on African hunting lions with spears; only to immediately cock his machine gun as he charges off to hunt the Unicorn. Similar to Mickey 17, the painfully on-the-nose metaphor makes the film a struggle to get through. I long for subtlety to return to storytelling.
House (1977)
Any horror fanatic knows that horror from Japan just hits different. So when a local indie theater was playing the 1977 horror classic House, I was the first in line. For those of you thinking that I am talking about a drug-addled doctor, House is a film about a schoolgirl and her six friends venturing to her aunt’s house in the countryside. Slowly, each girl is picked off one by one in ways that are oddly comedic and terrifying. One girl is devoured by a piano, and another girl’s boyfriend is turned into a pile of bananas. The film feels like it is aiming to be a horror comedy similar to Splatter House. The effects are also pretty wild for a film from 1977.
However, I can’t really recommend this film, because there’s some underage nudity. I claim not to hold the same standards as some of the prudish filmgoers; I will happily watch Eyes Wide Shut or Cruel Intentions. Yet, I will always draw the line at nudity or sexuality involving minors. You can cry out that Japan has different customs regarding that topic, but I will not yield to your demands. I find all of that repulsive, and I rather not have it in my splatter house-style of films. You could remove the nudity from the film and lose nothing. Feel free to pursue this one if you would like, but I have no desire in returning to it ever again.