7/23/17: The Bad Batch

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2017 films, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Ana Lily Amirpour, cannibals, cinema, cults, dystopian future, film reviews, films, Giovanni Ribisi, Jason Momoa, Jayda FInk, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Lyle Vincent, movie reviews, Movies, revenge, romances, spaghetti Westerns, Suki Waterhouse, The Bad Batch, writer-director, Yolonda Ross

Some films have such an impossibly fascinating premise that they demand your attention: writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014), was one of those films. Billed as “the first Iranian vampire film,” this gorgeous, black-and-white homage to everything from John Hughes to Roman Polanski more than lived up to the premise, showcasing a fresh, exciting new voice that promised a truly fascinating career.

For her follow-up, The Bad Batch (2017), Amirpour moves the action from Iran to the badlands of west Texas, hammering down harder on the spaghetti-Western leanings of her debut to craft something that is far more visceral but no less gauzy, in its own way. One thing remains abundantly clear, however: Ana Lily Amirpour is an amazing filmmaker whose craft continues to impress at each new turn.

We find ourselves in a world that’s recognizably ours, yet smeared with a heavy coating of grease and grime: think early Mad Max, pre-Fury Road. “Undesirables” are processed through some vague penal system, dubbed the Bad Batch, tattooed with an identifying number and tossed out into the unforgiving, scorched Texas badlands. Your choices, at that point, are pretty slim: you can try to get to the frontier town of Comfort, led by smarmy New Age guru/Ibiza part host The Dream (Keanu Reeves and one seriously choice mustache) or you can try to avoid being dinner for the roving cannibals known as Bridgers, while surviving on whatever you can eke out of the cracked earth.

Arlen May Johnson (Suki Waterhouse), as it turns out, opts for more of an “all of the above” approach. She gets captured by cannibals, loses an arm and a leg, escapes and makes it to Comfort, only to realize that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. One day, while target shooting in the wastelands outside the town’s walls, Arlen comes upon a pair of cannibals, a mother and daughter, and makes the fateful choice that will put her into direct contact with the formidable Miami Man (Jason Momoa). Arlen will come to learn that when you’re already on the fringes of society, questions of “right” and “wrong” don’t mean much and that people with the least often have the most to lose.

To get the gushing praise out-of-the-way: I really loved The Bad Batch, part and parcel. I’m more than willing to admit that the film isn’t perfect, mind you, but the sheer level of invention on display here should more than gloss over some narrative wheel-spinning or any nitpicking. We need more filmmakers taking risks and this, if nothing else, is one helluva risky film.

Risky, you say? Let’s see…you have a gritty, revenge-oriented, spaghetti-Western, complete with all the stock characters and trappings you would expect. You also, of course, have a Mad Max-style, post-apocalyptic film where people live in junkyards and a messianic guru holds court from atop a giant, neon boom box. Let’s not forget what could arguably be called a traditional, ’50s teen romance where kids from the wrong side of the tracks somehow find true love. Oh, yeah: it’s also got elements straight out of The Hills Have Eyes. Easy sell, right?

As with her debut, however, Amirpour is a natural when it comes to taking all these disparate elements and blending them into a completely organic, believable whole. Although the scale is certainly smaller, The Bad Batch definitely evokes some of the wonder of the Fury Road world: with its cannibalistic body builders, DJ-led cults, baroque prison system and dystopian wastelands, it’s not hard to place this in the same, general universe. I left the film wanting to know more about its world and denizens, always the biggest compliment I can pay any film, especially a stand-alone movie.

From a craft standpoint, The Bad Batch looks and sounds phenomenal. The cinematography, courtesy of Lyle Vincent (who also shot A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night), is simply gorgeous, full of rich wide shots and eye-popping, vibrant colors. The score and sound design make excellent use of songs to highlight scenes, in much the same way as AGWHAAN did, but puts a greater emphasis on sparse arrangements: for much of the film, there’s no score at all and it’s a powerful, well-executed choice.

For her cast, Amirpour collected a pretty diverse group of performers and manages to make the choices look like anything but stunt casting. Suki Waterhouse, equally great in last year’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is simply superb as Arlen, turning in the kind of kickass turn that would make spiritual forebears like Clint Eastwood proud. Equally great is Jason Momoa, giving us the kind of tragic character that would be exceedingly hard to pull off with so little (largely garbled) dialogue, let alone as a violent cannibal. Keanu Reeves, continuing his latter-day trend of quirky roles, brings the proper amount of genuine pathos and complete sleaze to his cult/town leader role and is never less than magnetic when he’s on-screen.

To that core trio, let’s add a roster that includes: the always incredible Yolonda Ross as Miami Man’s wife, Maria; Jayda Fink, doing a fair amount of heavy-lifting in only her second performance, as the little girl; Jim Carrey, doing some of the best acting of his life, in a completely silent role (and I’m not being snarky, in the slightest); and Giovanni Ribisi, as a possibly prophetic madman. It’s a cast that looks odd, on paper, but plays together beautifully. In a film with plenty of sublime joys, the acting is certainly one of the foremost ones.

When all is said and done, The Bad Batch is an incredibly smart, self-assured experience. The film is about many things – one need only look at the marked contrast between the serious, family-oriented cannibals and the party-hardy, hedonistic townies to know that Amirpour has a few things to say about a few different subjects. From a purely cinematic viewpoint, however, she’s created a completely immersive experience and, as an avid cinephile, that’s something I just don’t get enough.

From the first spoken words, as the Bad Batch are processed, to that final, amazing campfire shot, Amirpour’s sophomore film holds your attention like a bear trap. It’s not always an easy film (shit gets hacked off and there will be blood) but there’s a genuine beauty to the ugliness and grime that’s undeniable. As someone who grew up on films like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, I appreciate that glorious combination of the panoramic shot and the gut shot…the decision of the individual to shrug, say “the hell with it,” and wade back into hell just because…the way that death is an ever-present given but life and love still manage to carve their own paths through the wilderness.

The Bad Batch might not be a perfect film but I’ll be damned if I didn’t feel close to perfect on at least a dozen times while watching it. That’s just about all I need to know, friends and neighbors.

The State of The Graveyard Address (June 2017)

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2016 films, 2016 horror films, 2017 films, 2017 horror films, editorial, horror, horror films, personal opinions

By their very nature, graveyards tend to be quiet: possessed of the sort of stillness and lack of activity that comes naturally when the vast majority of your occupants are dead, most graveyards are anything but hives of activity. Supermarkets are for hustle and bustle…graveyards are for quiet contemplation and mournful reflection. You shouldn’t have to convince anyone of this fundamental fact. Unless they’re a horror fan, of course.

You see, horror fans know that graveyards can be just as “alive,” active and bustling as any thriving metropolis. To horror fans, no graveyard could ever really be considered dormant or dead, not while so many numberless creatures of the night still roam this world. This is all by way of saying that neither The VHS Graveyard nor its humble caretaker are dead: we’ve just been moving at our own, decidedly funereal pace, much like the vampires, zombies and ghastly beasties that are our stock-in-trade.

As we near the midpoint of this calendar year, however, I thought it might be useful to check in with all of you loyal boos and ghouls and let you know just what monstrous abominations have been stirring from their deathless slumbers deep within The VHS Graveyard’s unhallowed halls: we may have been silent but we’ve been anything but idle.

First and foremost, The VHS Graveyard continues in its previously stated goal of screening every single horror film released in 2016. This, of course, might have been a little timelier last year but life has a funny way of imposing its will over any given situation. Nonetheless, we’re finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel and it does not, in fact, appear to be an approaching freight train: out of a grand total of 258 horror films released in 2016 (either theatrically or straight-to-VOD), we only have 28 titles left to screen.

What’s been taking so long? Life, as it turns out, but also a rather inherent truth: we’ve been scrapping the bottom of the 2016 barrel for a few weeks, now, and the pickings ain’t getting any choicer. While I screened more than my fair share of flat-out amazing films in 2016, I also saw an almost equal amount of pure and unmitigated crap: as the selections thin out, the crap has risen to the surface in some pretty unpleasant ways. Suffice to say that screening three awesome horror flicks a day is a dream job. Trudging through just one 80-minute shit-fest, however, can feel like the cinematic equivalent of the Bataan death march and tends to put the brakes on forward momentum.

But here’s the thing: I knew it wasn’t going to be all champagne and caviar when I picked this assignment. In essence, that’s one reason why I wanted to watch all 2016 horror films as opposed to just cherry-picking the best. This way, I’m getting a full picture of everything that 2016 horror had to offer, warts and all. It’s easy to say that “Film X” is the best horror film of the year if you’ve only screened a handful of films: giving that same proclamation after screening 258 films, however, is a whole other ballgame.

Additionally (but to a far lesser extent), I ending up screening a handful of films that proved to be fake horror films: whether thrillers, straight-up comedies or classic fake-outs, this group of 10ish films made the initial list but just ended up wasting my time, once the final credits had rolled. In the grand scheme of things, this factors more as a par-for-the-course thing than anything more frustrating but it still ate away a few valuable days of viewing time.

Nonetheless, we’re still committed to our original goal and getting closer by the day. We’re still a little undecided as to what form the final project will end up taking (we’ve even toyed with the idea of releasing this cinematic journey as a book, with the understanding that it would probably see light of day sometime around 2050) but rest assured that The VHS Graveyard will be documenting this (previous) year in horror cinema in some manner in the nearish future.

What else has The VHS Graveyard been brewing up in its Hammer-approved laboratory? It goes without saying (but we’ll say it anyway) that The Graveyard hasn’t been neglecting this current year in horror cinema, even though our eyes have been firmly planted in the rear-view mirror. We’ve managed to screen 10 current horror films, thus far, including a rare trip to the multiplex: except to see more complete analysis on these soon, including a preliminary look at what we consider to be the best films of 2017, so far.

This desire to document some of the newer films we’ve screened leads us directly to what may be one of the biggest changes for The VHS Graveyard. When I first started this blog, back in the early hours of 2014, my goal was to chronicle every single film that I screened, in order, by day. This initial goal held fast through mid-2015, after which the tremendous backlog of screened films (conservatively, I’d estimate that we watch somewhere between 200-300 movies a year) overtook us like a tsunami. After that point, postings became fewer and farther between and we lost, for the most part, that initial feeling of peeking into our daily viewing habits.

In order to unblock the jam and allow forward movement, The VHS Graveyard will be attempting to release reviews in a more timely, if non-linear manner. We currently have at least several hundred unwritten reviews, in the wings, and our ultimate goal is to get these out to you fine folks sometime before we all expire. That being said, The VHS Graveyard prides itself as a source for horror fans to discover all kinds of previously unknown treats and that’s just not possible unless we’re getting the reviews out. Like all promises, this one is contingent on life looking the other way but we feel good about it and that’s a start.

In closing, let me reiterate one thing: The VHS Graveyard is still here and we aren’t going anywhere quite yet…after all, there’s still a few acts left in this particular tale. Keep giving us your undivided attention (or divided…we’re not picky) and we’ll continue to bring you our unfiltered views on the world of cinematic horror, along with anything else that happens to catch our eye.

We may be late but we prefer to think of ourselves like that famed Transylvanian count: timeless.

 

 

5/20/17: In Space, No One Can Hear You Shrug

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2017 films, Alien, Alien: Covenant, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demien Bichir, film franchise, Guy Pearce, James Franco, Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, prequels, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, sci-fi-horror, sequels

It ain’t easy successfully continuing a film franchise after decades have passed: audiences change, filmmakers change, society changes…it’s a real dice toss. After all: who wants to potentially tarnish prior glories and dampen whatever warm feelings fans might have garnered over the years? For every Fury Road (2015), you have a Godfather Part III (1990)…like I said: dice toss.

Tasked with following up his own Alien (1979), Ridley Scott responded with a befuddling prequel, Prometheus (2012): part origin story, part gorgeous creation fable, it used the Alienverse as a springboard for a discussion on the creation of mankind and its inevitable destruction. Light on the franchise’s beloved Xenomorphs, Prometheus was its own beast, warts and all, although scarcely deserving of the derision piled upon it by franchise fans. For the follow-up, Alien: Covenant (2017), Scott doubles-down on the surface trappings of the Alienverse while neglecting to add the elements that made Alien so special in the first place:  genuine heart and soul.

Taking place a decade after Prometheus, Covenant introduces us to the crew of the titular generation ship that’s transporting thousands of cyrogenically-frozen colonists to a new home in a far-flung galaxy. We meet Oram (Billy Crudup), the ship’s second-in-command; Daniels (Katherine Waterston), this film’s Ripley; pilot Tennessee (Danny McBride); security-chief Lope (Demian Bichir); android Walter (Michael Fassbender, pulling double duty as sinister David); Karine (Carmen Ejogo), the resident biologist; and another half-dozen or so crew-members/cannon fodder.

After a freak accident costs the team their captain (James Franco, in a walk-on), Oram makes the questionable decision to investigate a strange audio transmission that comes from a previously undiscovered planet. Despite the protestations of ultra-sensible Daniels, the crew adjusts course and are promptly marooned on a world that seems to serve as both paradise and necropolis. In short order, they meet the planet’s sole inhabitant, Prometheus’ David, and find out the terrible truth behind the dead planet they’ve found themselves on.

Let’s get one thing out of the way, right off the bat: Covenant is not a good film. It’s not a good Alien film, in particular, but it’s also not a good film, in general, arguably representing the nadir of Scott’s impressive career. Lackluster CGI notwithstanding (generously speaking, the look is generic and the creature effects are severely lacking), the film suffers from a bad script (the dialogue is awful and the character building is non-existent), generally dismal performances (only Fassbender really acquits himself, with Waterston and McBride coming off particularly awkwardy) and the overall feeling that this is only a placeholder film for a much grander “finale.”

This is a film that strives to introduce new variants on the traditional Xenomorph (the new, albino version could have come from any of a dozen recent films) while shoehorning in scenes like the one where a hesitant character is practically goaded into sticking his head into one of the iconic egg pods, with the resulting re-introduction of the face-hugger coming not as an organic shock but a tired and foregone punchline to a bad joke. This is the worst case of “having your cake and wanting to eat it, too”: Covenant gorges on leftovers like they’re going out of style.

None of the cast or characters stick in the mind after viewing, unlike the original. Katherine Waterston is a poor patch on Sigourney Weaver, her Daniels more a reactive agent of the story than any iconic hero. Crudup blends into the background, as does Bichir and, to be fair, pretty much any actor that isn’t Fassbender. This isn’t to say that he puts out career-defining work, mind you, just that his Walter/David combo winds up with the lion’s share of the film’s smartest material: talk about a stacked deck!

On the plus side? The gore effects are plentiful and fairly juicy (for what that’s worth) and there are moments that approach the chilly, visual grandeur that elevated Prometheus to something beyond its B-movie trappings. The Pompei-inspired world surface is undeniably cool and the hints we get of a primordial source for the original contagion prove more tempting hints than anything substantial but I’d be lying if I said they weren’t both appreciated and well-done. Scattered moments out of a 2+hour film don’t really signify a smash success, however, no matter how you do the math.

As someone who genuinely enjoyed and respected Prometheus, I really wanted Covenant to knock this out of the park: that Scott managed to whiff it so completely comes as a bit more than a disappointment. In truth, however, the film lost me from the get-go and never got me back: there was no point where this felt like anything more than the disposable middle entry in a longer, better series. From the unnecessary intro to the disposable characters…from the forgettable creature designs to the truly stupid script…from the terrible, Starship Troopers-esque shower scene to the tedious, frenetically-edited action beats…Alien: Covenant has very little to recommend it.

There were plenty of great ideas here (the notion of an all-powerful mad scientist with a God complex trapped on a dead planet, by itself, is solid gold) but precious little in the way of skillful execution. Scott is capable of much better: he’s proven it, time and time again. By trying to please everyone, however, the pro and anti-Prometheus camps alike, Scott ends up disappointing everyone: neither significantly advancing the Prometheus storyline nor adding anything of value to the classic canon, Covenant just exists…nothing more.