Category Archives: Movies

The Unlearned Lesson of Black Panther

2018’s Black Panther, written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, and directed by Coogler, was Marvel’s expansion in Afrofuturism exploring a mythical African kingdom, Wakanda, with incredibly advanced comic-book technology and wholly untouched by historical colonialism. An incredible box office success Black Panther gave a new myth to millions around the world while exploring the theme that isolationism, both for individuals and nations, solves no problems but merely leaves them to fester and grow. Its lesson that through interconnectedness can we heal the harms of the past is a valuable one.

However, there is another lesson in the plot of the film that none of the characters learned or even took note of its existence.

(Some spoilers follow)

After Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan) defeats T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) in ritual combat and claims the throne of Wakanda as his own he launches a campaign to wage war on the rest of the world seeking to ‘liberate’ the African diaspora around the globe. (I place ‘liberate’ in quote because his statement that ‘the sun will never set on the Wakandan Empire’ makes clear not only the historical analogy that he has become the colonizers he so despises but that liberty’ is far from his goal.)

Despite the Wakandan royal court knowledge that this will lead to millions upon millions of deaths around the world King Killmonger’s plan is put into immediate action. The King of Wakanda is an absolute monarch, ruling by decree and without any limitation.

T’Challa and the other heroes of the tale foil Killmonger’s plan for a global war and return the film’s protagonist to the throne.

But there is no hint in this film or the ones that followed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that the Wakandans even took notice that an absolute monarch is a plan for disaster.

Never create a political power you aren’t willing to see in the hands of your enemy.

There are other kingdoms in the marvel Universe, the films have already introduced us to Asgard, and it certainly looks like the sequel to Black Panther will introduce thew kingdom of Atlantis and it is doubtful that either will see limitations of the king’s authority, but Wakanda and Black Panther is different than those other stories and settings. Black Panther is a commentary on the real world, real history, and real evil that was visited upon the African continent. While superheroes with their magical and physics defying powers are modern fairytales and myth if you make such a direct and applicable statement on modern political systems and power then ignoring the dangers of absolute monarchy, of too much power concentrated into one person hands, is a disservice.

The unlearned lesson of Black Panther is power must be distributed and checked or will eventually be abused.

My Mysterious Comedic Weekend

Went out to the cinema twice this weekend, both times to see comedic mysteries.

Saturday, I saw Confess, Fletch the third film to be adapted from the series of novels centered on Investigative Reporter I.M ‘Fletch” Fletcher, (Fletch and Fletch, Lives in the 80s both starring Chevy Chase.) with Jon Hamm as Fletch.

Fletch finds himself. while trying to recover stolen art as part of a bizarre kidnapping, suddenly a suspect in a young woman’s murder. Dodging Boston police and an assortment of eccentric characters Fletch untangles the confusing case while retaining his own mysterious secrets and motivations.

Hamm worked better for me in this role than Chevy Chase, but that may simply be my own bias at work. I have never been a real fan of Chase’s comedy and tend to find most of his project forgettable. Over all I found the film a perfectly acceptable hour and a half diversion that kept me entertained and amused. I hope that Hamm is given more opportunities to play this character in further feature films.

Sunday my sweetie-wife and I went out to catch a screening of See How They Run, a comedic take of Agatha Christie mysterious set in the early fifties around the stage production of The Mousetrap. The film mixes reality. Richard Attenborough starring in the play and the production incredible longevity as a stage production. When the director of a proposed film adaptation is murdered and his corpse left on the stage Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and novice constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) are thrown together to solve the mystery.

Self-aware and playing at the 4th wall See How They Run hangs multiple hats on worn tropes of the mystery genre but sadly for me most of the humor provoked only smiles and rarely laughter. (Though the first flash-back was actually funny.) Adding to my inability to lose myself in the story is the cast of Harris Dickinson as Richard Attenborough. Dickinson is s shade over six feet one in height while Attenborough, perhaps best known to modern audiences as John. Hammond from the Jurassic Park franchise, was just 5’7″. Dickinson towering over the rest of the cast continually pulled me about of the film’s reality. But the movie’s biggest failure was that the comedy simply wasn’t funny enough. Rockwell, a performer that makes scenery chewing a treat for audiences, gave a restrained and quite performance. Ronan continued to be charming and a delight to watch but the plot needed to be centered on her if she were to carry it and it wasn’t.

Enigmatic Estonian Folk Horror: November (2017)

By way of the YouTube channel Dark Corners Streaming Review my Sweetie-Wife and I discovered the Estonian film November.

Adapted by writer/director Rainer Sarnet from the novel Rehepapp ehk November by Andrus Kivirähk November set in an isolated Estonian village in the 19th century and the story

Homeless Bob Productions

principally concerns a love triangle between Liina (Rea Lest-Liik) a peasant girl, Hans (Jörgen Liik) a peasant boy Liina adores, and the baroness (Jette Loona Hermanis) daughter of the local baron and with whom Hans is deeply infatuated. Both Liina and Hans, desperate for the love and attention turn to supernatural aid to win the attention of their loves.

Films often break down into two vast categories when dealing with the supernatural. In one case the supernatural is in intruding, unknown, force that shatters to the existing order and introduces chaos which by the end of the tale must be dispelled to restore or create a new order. A Vampire moves in next door and until it is destroyed there is chaos.

The other great category is a subtle one where the events can be interpreted as possibly taking place in reality, though the evidence is quite thin, or possibly the tale is the product of a deranged mind and there is no supernatural at all. Are there ghosts haunting the children or has the nanny gone mad?

November defies both categories.

From the film’s opening scenes, it is clear that the supernatural exists and is a part of the peasants daily life. The dirty, squalid, and tenuous lives of the peasants is infused with the supernatural. Ghosts, werewolves, devils, witchcraft, and animated golem-like creations composed of farm equipment are all routine and accepted by the peasant as ways of surviving their brutal environment. Visitations by the dead is as routine as stealing from the Baron.

Curiously the supernatural’s integration doesn’t extend to the local lord. At no point in the story does the Baron or his daughter make use of or acknowledge to spirit world with the same level of acceptance as the peasantry.

Cinematographer Mart Taniel captures the world of November is stark, high contrast, black and white. Fog glows with a spectral inner light, moonlight is diffuse, and the shadows are dark, deep, and threatening. I suspect that Taniel and director Sarnet also employed filters in a manner similar to Eggers’ The Lighthouse so that the skin of the peasantry took on a dark and unhealthy appearance while keeping the nobility clean and pristine further dividing the classes.

November is far from a standard horror film. It is atmospheric and moody focusing more on tone that scares. It almost but not quite follows a nightmare or dream logic reminiscent of David Lynch but with a more linear and straightforward narrative. It is not a film that gets your adrenaline pumping and one that sets your heart racing, but one that rather lingers in your mind like a half-forgotten dream.

November is available on VOD, Kanopy in the US, and Amazon Prime in the UK.

Sunday Night Movie: War of the Satellites

Exhausted from the heat and finishing my latest military SF novel I opted for something that wouldn’t tac the brain cells and settled on Roger Corman’s 1958 SF film War of the Satellites.

Inspired by the public interest frenzy and terror following the USSR’s 1957 successful orbiting satellite Sputnik, Corman conceived filmed and edited this feature in 90 days.

War of the Satellites open with Project Sigma’s ninth attempt to place a crewed satellite into space. Once again, a mysterious force destroys the vessel and the project leader, Dr. Van Ponder (Richard Devon) vows to continue the program despite opposition from other nations over the financial costs. (No one mentions or seems to care about the cost in lives of nine destroyed crewed mission.) Assisted by loyal scientist Dave Boyer (Dick Miller) and mathematician Sybil (Susan Cabot) Van Ponder fights the system for funding for a 10th attempt, one he plans to captain himself.

The nature of the mysterious force is revealed when an alien message probe arrives announcing that the Earth, due to humanity’s childish nature, has been placed under a quarantine and that all launches will be destroyed. With the core conflict established, humanity opposing the unseen alien’s blockade of space, the film unfolds with the 10th launch attempt progressing and the aliens further attempts to stop it.

Made on a budget of about 70,000 dollars and with a brief running time of 66 minutes War of the Satellites is a literal B-Picture, released as a second feature with Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Only a year after sputnik and the same year the United States placed its own satellite Explorer into orbit around the Earth this movie has an amazingly optimistic view of humanity’s push into space. Not only is the technology absurdly advanced, three launches within minutes of each other that assembles a fully functional large spacecraft but also one capable of reaching the speed of light, but the politics of the story is even more optimistic with the project operating under the multinational authority of the United Nations.

War of the Satellites also has the earliest onscreen performance I have seen yet of Roger Corman. While later in life he often made appearances in the films from directors whose careers he helped launch, as director of the FBI in The Silence of the Lambs and as a Senator in Apollo 13, this is the first time I can recall seeing him, as a one scene launch controlled, in one of his own pictures.

This film is by far not a great movie, but it is far from the worst Corman ever produced and directed. For those who enjoy cheesy optimistic SF 50s movie it is worth watching at least once.

War of the Satellites is currently streaming on Shout Factory!‘s commercial supported streaming service.

Movie Review: JAWS (1975) in 3-D

Released in 1975 Jaws, along with Star Wars two years later, created the summer blockbuster. Optioned and sent into development and production before the novel was published Jaws made a superstar director of Steven Spielberg and terrorized a generation. 14 When I came out Jaws was a memorable theater going experience and one my all-time favorite films.

Seven years ago, I attended a screening celebrating the film’s 40th anniversary but that screening was nothing like the one I experienced last night.

The digital projection was flawless with the image sharp and perfect as though we were

Universal Studios

watching a print struck directly from the original camera negative. The sounds, which may have been remastered, was rich and enveloping with the bass notes of Williams’ iconic and unforgettable score presented powerfully. Of course, what made this screening so very different from any other of Jaws was that the movie had been retro-scanned into a 3-D format.

In 2016 I made the trip to Hollywood for some Halloween themed fun at Universal Studios followed by a screening of 1979’s Dawn of the Dead retro-scanned into 3-D. Because that conversion had been so successful in presenting the film in 3-D without savaging the experience I wanted to see if Jaws had a similar result.

Yes, yes it did.

The 3-D conversion, which I understand Spielberg helped supervise, was flawless, giving the film that illusion of depth but without taking away from the masterful filmmaking of Spielberg or cinematographer Bill Butler. The added planes of depth changed the experience for me. Now, I have seen this film countless time. It is a movie I know well and can quote at length, but this version felt new and fresh as I noticed the framing of foreground and background elements in a manner I have never noticed before. Because these elements exist in their own plane of depth that are easier to notice and pay particulate attention to. For example, during Quint’s famous ‘Indianapolis’ monologue this was the first time I really noticed that Hooper is in the frame for the entire speech giving Dreyfus time to listen and subtly react as the horrific tale unfolds. With the laser-sharp projection and a screen that is never too dark due to the polarizing glasses, Jaws in 3-D is an experience not to be missed.

Like A Shark

Most, but not all sharks, need to constantly move through the water to breath. This was the point of the barrels in Jaws, tire the beast out until it cannot swim and then suffocates in the water.

Like a shark most writers, but not all, need to move from project to project. Always writing always creating on some level. As I finish up my latest military SF adventure novel, not just cleaning up and the prose and getting my sweetie-wife’s assistance on my typos and fondness for run on sentences my mind turns to the next book.

Returning the dark cynical world of crime and people making bad decisions as I have with Vulcan’s Forge, my next novel is set on Mars about 2130. Thematically its draws inspiration from crime and noir movies such as The Maltese Falcon, desperate people trying to escape such as Casablanca, and social commentary such as The Jungle.

Here is a smattering of some of the notes I have written as I begin to lay out the bones of the world before I flesh it out with characters and dilemmas.

Major Economic Industries of MARS

ROCKET FUEL

From Martian water and CO2 and utilizing nuclear power (Fission) mars produces Methane CH4 and O2 for rocket fuel used throughout the Solar System. The energy coast of lifting the fuel off the Mars is less than half (about 40%) of that compared to Earth. (3.8 KM/s vs 9. Km/s) This fuel is then transported to Earth and the asteroid mining operations for use in scientific and commercial operations.

MANAGING SPACE OEPRATIONS

Given the lower energy costs to lift from the surface, Mars has also become the principal site for directing space operations. The majority of the operations are commercial but substantial scientific and research projects, crewed and uncrewed exploration, process development, and pure research, are also managed from Mars for governments, Universities, and Private concerns.

WEALTHY RETIREMENT LIVING

The lower Martian gravity, about .3G is discovered to prolong life by way of less stress on vital organs. (Lunar gravity about .16 is too low and like no gravity induces muscle and bone loss along with other health troubles.) Mars hosts a community of wealthy person who have permanently relocated to the red Planet in retirement to extend their lives. They do not live communally, they are rich after all, but have in effected formed their own colony within the Martian community. This option is very expensive with the total number of wealthy retirees less than a thousand. However, because of their desire for personal services they employee a fair number of native Martian persons.

WEALTHY TOURISM

Mars is an exotic destination that can only be afforded by the wealthy. Given the scheduling of the cyclers transferring between Earth and Mars no one visits Mars for a week or two, but tourists are usually required to stay about 2 years. This reduces the pool of potential tourists to just the wealthy who can either afford to ignore their lives and commitments for two or more years or those still wealthy but able to manage their duties remotely and with lengthy communications lags.

MARTIAN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

A small community of rotating scientists from Earth live on mars researching the planet itself. Due to bacterial contamination from the settlement of the colony the question of native Martian life has yet to be definitively answered. (all microorganisms discovered to date have similar enough genetic make-up it could either be parallel evolution or contamination.) The scientists live is spartan conditions with nearly all of the technical and lab support coming from native Martian colonists.

MARTIAN FACILITIES SUPPORT

The largest number of people are actual native Martian colonists employed supporting the other forms of economic activity on the Red Planet. Nearly all of these people dream of living on Earth under open skies and weather, but these are dreams as they are shackled to the planet by their debt. None may immigrate from Mars without first clearing their debt to the colony.

I have major questions to research and answer. What would be the schedule of a Mars cycler, a spacecraft that ferries between Earth and Mars about 2130-2140? What the right inflation factor for cost between now and the novel’s period? How does daily assessed interest make loans nearly inescapable? How does the legal regime on Mars develop? And more.

That said I am excited and looking forward to this new project.

Streaming Review: Hatching (2022)

Hatching is a family-drama/horror film from Finland.

Siiri Solalinna plays 13 years old Tinja, a girl trying desperately as a gymnast to please her

Nordisk Film

mother, a former gymnast herself and now creating content for the internet presenting her life and family as a model of perfection.

When a stray bird ruins one of mother’s video shoots it ends up dead and feeling guilty for the animal Tinja finds the bird’s nest and begins incubating its egg.

Kept secret from the rest of the family Tinja egg’s grows to enormous size and reacts directly to her presence and touch. Once hatched the chick, nearly as large as Tinja herself, displays a deep emotional connection to Tinja and begins acting upon her repressed feelings and anger.

Sadly, Hatching is not a very engaging picture. It is a prime example of a plot-driven structure. Aside from taking the egg to begin with and hiding it Tinja, our protagonist, does very little to drive the action of the story or even make meaning choices in her actions. Tinja reacts to the bird’s death, reacts to the strange egg, reacts to discovering her mother’s affair, but rarely is proactive making for a passive character. This is a shame as Siiri Solalinna is a terrific young actress and, in my opinion, gives the most compelling performance of the film. I certainly hope to see more her as she matures and continue her career.

The special effects of the film are quite good. I believe that for most of the ‘monster’ effects the production utilized puppetry and make-up effects rather than digital visual imagery and their choice was correct. Hatching doesn’t feel or look cheap The cinematography is lush and vivid, the sets and design inviting and create a real of real places and locations. It is the script that fails the production giving as an interesting premise that never fully mature into character driven story.

Hatching is currently streaming in the US on HULU.

Movie Review: Three Thousand Years of Longing

George Miller, a filmmaker whose filmography is so eclectic as to encompass both the Mad Maxfranchise and Happy Feet, released last week, Three Thousand Years of Longing a story about Djinn (Idris Elba) and scholar of stories (Tilda Swinton.)

Alithea (Swinton) while in Istanbul for a conference where she delivers a talk about how stories once explained the natural world, but the gods and heroes are reduced to simple metaphors. (With a sly visual reference to the D.C. Property of comics, possibly a nod to the never made George Miller’s Justice League.) While shopping for a memento in the famous Grand Bazar she

Filmnation Entertainment

purchases a delicate glass bottle that she later learns contains a trapped Djinn (Elba.) the Djinn desperately wants Alithea to speak three wishes from her heart as that will free him from his imprisonment but Alithea as well-versed in the dangerous nature of wishes as any experienced D&D players is reluctant to make any wish fully expecting once fulfilled it will twist and transform from benefit to bane.

The deadlocked characters are the heart and soul of Three Thousand years of Longing with each trying to discover the truth of the other’s nature. Is the Djinn really a trickster seeking to twist her wishes for malintent? Is Alithea as fully contented with not heart’s desire as she professes with nothing that she truly wants to wish for? To answer these questions the characters tell each other their stories transporting each other and us to distant lands and peoples rich with tradition and astonishingly lovely, and yet the throughline for both is loss and yearning.

While director and co-writer George Miller and Cinematographer John Seale has composed a visually stunning film rich and vibrant with color and texture the real reason to watch Three Thousand Years of Longing is Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba in a room, acting off each other. Strip away the special effects and the fantastical elements of plot and the story reduced down to two characters talking and eventually exposing their true selves to one another. With actors as massively talented as this pair that becomes compelling far beyond fantasies of djinn and magic.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is a story about stories, the power of stories as well as the fantasies we tell ourselves when reality proves too harsh to face. It is a film about loneliness, betrayal, and how in the end we can never be sure when that magical touch will appear and transform our live and ourselves.

Three thousand Years of Longing is currently playing and theaters and while it has none of the action of Mad Max: Fury Road it deserves every inch of the big screen as Miller’s thrilling post-apocalyptic fables.

Streaming Review: Glorious

Released last week to the streaming services Shudder as an exclusive the cosmic horror film Glorious is a very different take on universe spanning threats.

Wes (Ryan Kwanten) is a man in the midst of an emotional crisis. Driving alone and distraught far from freeways and large cities and after a night of drunkenness at a lonely rest stop he finds himself trapped in the bathroom with an ominous voice (J.K. Simmons) speaking to him from the other side of a stall’s ‘glory hole.’ (If you do not know what a ‘glory hole’ is in reference to public spaces I strongly suggest that you do not Google the term from your work computer.) Wes endures horrors, physical and revelational, as the voice implores and compels him for a favor.

Directed by Academic, Scholar, and filmmaker Rebekah McKendry, and co-written by her spouse David Ian McKendry and Joshua Hull, Glorious is a small film that utilizes all of the potential of its limited location and cast in a spare but efficient 79 minutes. McKendry and cinematographer David Matthews continually find inventive ways to frame and shoot their film with a bare handful of locations, keeping clear of the trap of boredom within such a confined space. Like many ‘cosmic horror’ films following in the wake of Stanley’s The Color out of Space the film leans heavily into the purple and violet to convey the unworldliness of Wes’ plight and the looming threat over existence.

Even with its brief running time the script carefully doles out Wes’ backstory and the source of his emotional trauma, judiciously avoiding rushing in to explains too quickly, leaving revelations for the audience as well as the characters.

While the film is not sexually explicit, see above the term you should never Google from work, it is violent, bloody, and not lacking in gore but does not lean into those elements to achieve its effect, but rather uses them to enhance the story being told. One should not watch Glorious if the sight of on-screen blood is disturbing to you.

I very much appreciated that the film did not linger or lazily get to its point. There is nothing wrong with a massive satisfying 3 hour epic but there is also beauty in a story that flies without need for rest breaks.

The standout star of Glorious is J.K. Simmons. While audio manipulation has been employed to enrich the timber of his voice and enlarge its presence it is Simmons’s delivery that make the unseen character come alive with power and menace. Had a lesser talent been engaged here the product would have suffered terribly.

Glorious will not be to everyone’s taste. It is dark, it is disturbing, and its humor, where employed, though effective can be nausea inducing if that is your inclination. That said the 79 minutes I spent watching the film were thoroughly enjoyable and if this sounds remotely appealing to your tastes then you should surf over to Shudder and give it a go.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

Movie Review: PREY

1987 saw the release of Predator itself inspired by the 1980 wholly lackluster low-budget movie Without Warning, both films used the premise of an alien hunter come to Earth for the sport of hunting humans. Unlike the 1980 movie Predator exploded at the box office quickly becoming a massive success spawning 4 direct follow-on film and melding it with the studio’s other Sf/horror franchise Alien.

Prey, the latest franchise entry, is set in North America during the early 18th century as a band of Comanche deal with a predator-hunter come to Earth. The film’s central character, Naru, (Amber Midthunder) a young woman skilled in healing arts but with a burning desire to a tribal hunter, finds herself struggling to survive the alien’s stalking while navigating the difficult waters of both her tribal politics and the further encroaching of the Europeans into the continent.

There are many who are praising Prey as not only a great sequel but superior to the original 1987 film. This is overly enthusiastic. Granted compared to the lackluster Predator 2, The Predator (2018), or any of the Alien v Predator entries Prey stands out as solid, enjoyable filmmaking. Only it and 20103s Predators took the central premise and did anything more than simply copy the form with cut-and-paste caricatures. That said I think none of the subsequent movies surprise the surprise, tension, and thematic depths of the original film. Predator’s commentary of the emptiness of bravado, and as Lucifer in Sandman might say, the traps of tools, is something that rings true today 35 years later. Prey like all the other films in the Predator franchise has its moments that shatter disbelief. However, it does not layer these issues repeatedly and thus audiences can recover their acceptance of the story as it unfolds. The incongruity that has stayed with me is that any herbal concoction that lowers your body’s temperature to background is simply lethal. No mammal gets to survive that experience.

That is not to say that Prey is a bad film, it is not. Prey boasts interesting characters, who act and react with authenticity. Something that is far too often lacking in popular genre media. (Yes, I am looking at you X.) The tribal characters are engaging, realized human beings with the writers avoid both the cliche of the ‘noble savage’ wise in all things, and the ‘brutal savage’ untamed and untamable. Little can be said for the French fur trappers that who make a brief appearance in the film as all of their dialog is un-subtitled and your humble reviewer speaks no French. Jeff Cutter’s cinematography capture the scale, scope, and beauty of Canada doubling as the American wilderness reminiscent of the fantastic vista often found in John Ford’s best westerns. Director Dan Trachtenberg, previously best known for 10 Cloverfield Lane a tight, confined thriller with a fantastic performance by John Goodman, delivers on the action and tension inherent in a Predatormovie. Naru’s escape and refuge in a beaver lodge is a particularly powerful if short sequence that displays both the character’s quick intelligence and Trachtenberg’s confident directorial skills.

The visual effects are competent and largely invisible. (That pun fully intended.) With CGI creatures and beast flawlessly integrated into the picture. The grizzly is particularly well executed. Prey unfortunately has no theatrical release, and it is possible the VFX would not survive on massive screens but on my 55″ 4K television is worked perfectly.

Prey is well worth watching and is currently streaming on Hulu.

Robert Mitchell Evans

Literary Saboteur