reviews

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)

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three star

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If there’s any doubt of my contention that the 50s drive-in creature feature I Was a Teenage Werewolf was a zeitgeist shift in its first-ever depiction of a teenager-turned-monster as its central threat, just look to the fact that the film’s wild cultural success lead to an immediate onslaught of imitators. There are countless movies that have followed in the cult classic’s wake that all turned the horrors of puberty into literal monstrous transformations, far too many to list here. There are even enough teen werewolf movies that followed that the plot device can be considered its own genre: Teen Wolf, Ginger Snaps, Cursed, Twilight, and, from the very same year as the original, Teenage Monster all fit snugly under its umbrella.

More often than not, though, Hollywood producers will learn the exact wrong lessons from a film’s success. So, when Sam Arkoff & AIP decided to strike while the iron was hot with a follow-up to their surprise hit I Was a Teenage Werewolf, they ended making a film that was nothing like the wild idiosyncrasy of the original. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein completely missed the point of why I Was a Teenage Werewolf struck it big with drive-in audiences. In the werewolf picture teens watched their peers talk hip slang (or at least what adult screenwriters assumed was hip slang), rough house, make-out, and transform into hideous beasts at the cruel hands of puberty. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, by contrast, shows almost no teens at all during its entire runtime. Even the titular teenage Frankenstein monster appears to be a man well into his 20s (not that you ever get a good enough look at the actor to really make a judgement call on that).

The one thing I Was a Teenage Frankenstein did keep from I Was a Teenage Werewolf‘s formula was the idea of a mad scientist experimenting on teen subjects. In the original a rogue scientist plots to “save” the world by bringing man back to a primitive state through hypnosis-aided de-evolution. In the Frankenstein version of this story, an equally ambitious man of science (and direct descendant of the more infamous Dr. Frankenstein, of course) wants to save the world by creating some kind of superbeing out of disposed body parts. His exact goals are a lot fuzzier than his werewolf-creating predecessor’s, but they have something to do with experimental eugenics & bodily reconstruction due to a belief that the world is in danger because morons keep breeding morons. He believes he can do a better job of constructing the human body than God & Nature. Gathering the pieces-parts of his teenage specimens from a head-on car crash, the doctor creates a modern Frankenstein monster in total secrecy, even keeping his lab assistant & nosy fiancee in the dark. Inevitably the experiment gets out of his control & the monster ends up killing a few unsuspecting victims, both by accident & through coercion, despite having a genuinely kind teenage heart resting in his undead body.

You pretty much can guess how this film winds up, which is largely what holds I Was a Teenage Frankenstein back from achieving the glorious heights of its predecessor. Rushed to theaters less than five months after the release of I Was a Teenage Werewolf, the film feels like it was made without any real knowledge of what even happened in its source material, let alone what made it popular. The only teens I can recall seeing in the picture arrive in the final third during a brief trip to a Lovers’ Lane parking lot in the monster’s search for a new face, which separates the film so far from its lycanthrope counterpart that it’s a wonder they even share a title the way they do. Still, as a standard drive-in era monster movie the film is a surprisingly decent watch. The teen Frankenstein’s monster make-up is downright grotesque in its hamburger meat visage, the doctor’s fiancee has a sincerely great gravitas to her performance, and the doctor’s disposal method for unused body parts is to feed them to a stock footage alligator, which is something of my schlock-loving dreams. I also really appreciated the doctor’s relentless cruelty, which was surprising in its viciousness even for a villain in a monster movie. For instance, when he first brings his creation to life, the teen freak immediately weeps at the crushing weight of its own existence & the doctor exclaims, “It appears even its tear ducts function!” That’s pretty cold. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein may have missed the point of its more teen-oriented predecessor’s success, but it stands well enough on its own as a straight-forward genre exercise with a heartless villain & a truly horrific monster design.

-Brandon Ledet

I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)

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When I recently reviewed the sci-fi horror comedy Invasion of the Saucer Men, I was quick to praise the picture for escaping criticism by mocking itself so openly that any sarcastic derision aimed at it would feel redundant. The film was in danger of becoming an empty exercise in teen-marketed drive-in horror genre tropes, but turned itself around & ending up functioning almost like a full-blown genre spoof. Although I enjoyed its detached, laissez-faire approach to 50s monster movie mayhem, the film it was attached to on a double bill, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, stands as a testament to the idea that big risk earnestness often pays off more than sarcastic self-parody every could. I Was a Teenage Werewolf is the exact kind of teenage-marketed monster movie that Invasion of the Saucer Men openly mocked, but it’s one that took such big risks in its basic formula that it ended up standing the test of time as the much more significant work. You could even claim that it forever changed the motion picture landscape at large, which is quite a bold claim for a schlocky monster movie cheaply slapped together for the drive-in crowd.

The main innovation I Was a Teenage Werewolf brings to the table is the very basic idea of a teenage monster. It’s difficult to imagine modern horror cinema without teenage monsters. Transforming into a heinous, bloodthirsty monstrosity is a perfect metaphor for the hormonal powder keg of puberty and has been put to effective use in countless horror pictures. Even the werewolf teenager picture has evolved into its own genre, including titles like Ginger Snaps, Cursed, and, duh, Teen Wolf among its ranks. In 1957, however, this idea was entirely foreign & even somewhat controversial. Keep in mind that the very idea of a teenager was a relatively new concept at the time, with almost no thought given to the awkward bridge between childhood & adulthood previously. More to the point, though, horror villains were almost unanimously either murderous adults or supernatural creatures so I Was a Teenage Werewolf was something of a game changer. Teens had gotten used to watching their peers terrorized by monsters onscreen, but this was the first instance where they saw themselves becoming a monster, which surely struck home in some way, considering the way puberty had already transformed their minds & bodies.

The titular teenage werewolf of I Was a Teenage Werewolf is a hothead with anger management issues named Tony (played by a pre-fame Michael Landon). The film starts with Tony engaging in a fistfight over most innocuous of offenses. A friend playfully tapped Tony’s shoulder, an act that threw him into a rage, exclaiming “I don’t like that kind of friendship!” His teen angst extends far beyond schoolyard fights, too, and Tony spends most of his day bucking the influence of parents, teachers, and police officers with an “I don’t like to be pushed around!” attitude. His quest not to be “hassled” by the adults in his life & a quick-to-anger personality is given an official diagnosis. Tony is told that there isn’t anything wrong with him, necessarily; he’s just having a difficult time “adjusting”. Sent to the mysterious Dr. Brandon, known for curing patients through hypnosis, Tony is told that he should be able to “adjust” after psychological treatment. “Adjusting” is far from Dr. Brandon’s mind, however. The maniacal scientist is hellbent on using Tony as a guinea pig in experiments to save the world by bringing Man back to a primitive state. Using the same meditative, de-evolution technique as Ken Russell’s masterful Altered States. Dr. Brandon’s mission to unlock “the primitive past that lurks within” & conviction that “the only road to progress is to hurl the human race back to its savage beginnings”, of course, only leads to monster movie mayhem as he turns the poorly adjusted Tony into a murderous lycanthrope.

I should be clear that I Was a Teenage Werewolf is finely-crafted in a campy kind of way. If you couldn’t tell by its title alone, this is cerainly an exploitation picture & a genre flick so the outdated hokeyness of its dialogue & monster make-up is certain to illicit a giggle or two. I was personally amused by the way the film panders to teens by attempting to co-opt their hip youngster slang. Phrases like “yakety yak”, “How square can you get?”, and “This party’s really percolating!” all play like the way parents think teens speak instead of how they would actually talk. Much like Roger Corman’s beatnik horror classic Bucket of Blood, I Was a Teenage Werewolf is certainly made by outsiders looking in & there’s a good bit of humor in that false authenticity. Campy or not, though, this movie is one of those unique genre pictures that achieves far more than its limited means would indicate. There are some truly beautiful shots/scenes to the picture that surprise in their craft.A fist punching the camera lens, a pan shot of Tony’s shocked friends, a masterful scene featuring a beautiful gymnast/Playboy bunny, and the then-idiosyncratic imagery of a werewolf wearing a varsity jacket on a high school campus are all far more striking than they have any right to be. I Was a Teenage Werewolf not only forever changed the course of horror cinema by turning its teenage target audience into monsters themselves; it also looked fantastic while doing it. It’s the kind of old school monster movie that burrows into your subconscious the way a less earnest picture like Invasion of the Saucer Men never could. It’s a genuinely fantastic slice of camp horror history that deserves to be remembered fondly & with great, schlocky reverence.

-Brandon Ledet

Good Burger (1997)

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fourhalfstar

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When I was a goofball, media-hungry youth I used to look forward to Saturday nights where I could manage to land myself at a house with a cable connection so I could watch new episodes of the sketch comedy hallmarks All That & Saturday Night Live in a single evening. Watching Kenan Thompson make the move from Nickelodeon to NBC, then, felt like just as much of a natural transition as graduating from high school to college. He’s grown as a comedic performer steadily over the years even if his range is somewhat limited & it’s been fun to take the journey with him as a sketch comedy fan. The one career milestone Thompson is likely never to top came before this transition to network television mainstay, though. In the mid-90s, Kenan found himself starring as the protagonist of a legitimate feature film, a cult classic screwball comedy about fast food workers called Good Burger. If I had more steady access to a cable connection as a kid I very well might’ve caught Good Burger in a Nickelodeon broadcast & grown up with it as an oddball favorite. Watching the film for the first time as an adult had its advantages, however, and I was surprised to fall completely in love with the film as a work of mild surrealist humor & laidback stoner charm.

The biggest surprise about Good Burger is just how far Kenan Thompson is outshined by his then-comedy partner Kel Mitchell. As the classic straight man in the duo, Kenan assumes the unfortunate task of trying to elicit preteen cool while Kel goes full Looney Tunes & runs chaotic circles around him. Even if you can’t commit 100 minutes of your life to a screwball comedy starring former Nickelodeon talents as a pair of mismatched fast food workers, I urge you to at least watch Good Burger‘s opening five minutes, which are a masterfully bizarre introduction to Kel’s boundless obliviousness as the living enigma Ed. Ed dreams a Pee-wee’s Playhouse style animation sequence about burger assembly, which then morphs into Better Off Dead-inspired burger puppetry before he wakes to shower while wearing his full uniform & sing the wonderfully egalitarian personal anthem “I’m a dude, he’s a dude, she’s a dude, we’re all dudes” to himself. Ed then starts his day with a reckless rollerblading adventure that sets in motion mayhem as varied as a baby being slam-dunked on a basketball court & a life-threatening car accident. Most of Ed’s humor is similar to the children’s book series Amelia Bedelia or the character Drax the Destroyer  from Guardians of the Galaxy. He’s a painfully literal personality, so a request for “a burger with nothing on it” lead to customers receiving an empty bun & the threat “Watch your butt!” leads to him walking in circles. This line of humor isn’t, you know, height of comedic wit or anything, but Kel’s performance makes it charming & his other, almost supernaturally bizarre attributes makes the performance approach high art.

At heart, Good Burger fits firmly in the genre of the weedless stoner comedy, joining the respectable ranks of cult classics like Wayne’s World, Dude Where’s My Car?, and the Bill & Ted series. Ed’s chaotic rollerblading antics set in motion a contrivance that traps Kenan’s straight man audience surrogate Dexter in a menial summer job meant to teach him humility/responsibility. Once he gets over his own selfishness & emotionally-distancing sarcasm, Dexter finds a higher calling in destroying Good Burger’s flashy corporate competition, Mondo Burger, who are threatening to deliberately put them out of business almost entirely out of spite. There’s some kind of emotional core in this plot about a heartfelt quality product outshining & dismantling the more shrewd, calculated machinations of big business, but the true nexus of Good Burger is much more closely tied to Kenan & Kel’s junior high stoner humor. The same high fructose visual design (the kind of look you’d find in a cereal commercial or the Vanilla Ice vehicle Cool as Ice) & gay panic bro humor that adorns almost all other weedless stoner comedies are aplenty here. That latter aspect is something I might find annoying or abhorrent in a Seth Rogen or Adam Sandler picture, but it’s so relentless & out of place in this context that it almost plays as downright subversive. I particularly liked the exchange “He doesn’t like  you [as a friend]. He wants to use you.” “That’s not natural!” and the uncomfortable reveal that Kel looks disturbingly beautiful in drag.

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Good Burger proves time & time again that it’s well aware of the genre confines it’s working in and it’s a lot more well-versed in how to make them work than what you might expect giving its preteen media pedigree. For instance, when the Good Burger‘s manager exclaims “Ed, what are you doing inside the milkshake machine?” you’re not at all tempted to roll your eyes at the humor’s simplicity. Instead, you laugh to yourself & think “Classic Ed.” Well, I did at least.

Just about the last thing I expected when I watched Good Burger was for it to stand as my all-time favorite comedic use of Abe Vigoda and, yet, here we are. Besides Kenan & Kel’s great comedic chemistry, there are tons of bit roles & one-off cameos that shine in the film. George Clinton, Linda Cardellini, Carmen Electra, Sinbad, and Shaq all have their moments of unexpected charm, but it’s Abe Vigoda that manages to steal the show (as much as Kel will allow). Vigoda’s morbid line of self-deprecating humor is top notch here, with nearly every line referencing the idea that he probably should not still be alive. At one point another character asks of their geriatric Good Burger coworker, “How long could he possibly live?” Since Vigoda just passed away a few months ago, the answer ultimately was about two decades. Vigoda seemed to have a blast turning himself into something of a living novelty in his final years in projects like Joe Versus the Volcano & The Conan O’Brien Show, but I contend that Good Burger was his finest comedic performance of them all.

The film’s cast & general vibe is about as perfect of a mid-90s time capsule as you could ask for, right down to the Less Than Jake rendition of “We’re All Dudes” featuring guest vocalist Kel Mitchell. For what the film set out to accomplish it’s difficult to imagine any area where it could’ve been improved. I’d even go as far as to say that its fictional Good Burger delivery vehicle the Burgermobile is more of an enviable possession as any version of the Batmobile I’ve ever seen onscreen. Kenan Thompson’s performance could’ve used a little work, but it’s an act he’s gradually fine-tuned over the years & the film stands as a great document of his humble beginnings. Oddly enough, it’s Kel’s tour de force creation of Ed that I would’ve altered slightly in a re-write of the film’s screenplay if I could change just one thing about the film. At Good Burger‘s climax Ed hugs his newfound pal Dexter goodbye, completely misreading the finality of their friendship. If I had my way Ed would’ve been returned to his home planet in this moment though alien abduction & fulfilled his lifelong dream of “shaving a Martian”. The fact that he wasn’t feels like an opportunity missed. This (& only this) plot detail stands as the one area where Good Burger could’ve been improved. Considering the means & scope of its origins it’s an otherwise flawless edition to the weedless stoner comedy genre, this time with a 90s Nickelodeon preteen sheen.

-Brandon Ledet

Stardust (2007)

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fourhalfstar

I should stop kidding myself with the idea that I have to read a book before watching its movie adaptation. I was on a bit of a Neil Gaiman kick around the time that Stardust was released in 2007 so I had convinced myself that I was going to rush to read the novel as quickly as possible so I could experience the film fully informed. Almost a decade later I finally watched it thanks to a Netflix recommendation algorithm & hadn’t even yet even touched a copy of Gaiman’s book. There was a little fatigue on my end that came with reading a ton of Gaiman works in a row due to a perceived sameness in his narrative structures. More specifically, every Neil Gaiman novel read to me like a down-the-rabbit-hole adventure where a citizen of our realm gets swept up in the complications of a magical one. Although I tired of watching this formula play itself out repeatedly in his novels, it’s one that lends itself very well to cinematic adaptation & when I finally got around to giving Stardust a chance I ended up holding it just as high regard as previous Gaiman projects Coraline & MirrorMask, two movies I love very much.

The first thing most people will likely mention about Stardust is that it is the movie where Robert De Niro plays a crossdressing pirate on a flying ship. This detail is totally significant, as it might be the one role De Niro’s landed in the past 15 years that isn’t a total waste of time & talent (outside maybe his David O. Russell collaborations), but his fey pirate captain is just one of many players in a wide cast of winning eccentrics. Stardust is the kind of movie where every character is likable whether they’re literal star-crossed lovers or murderous goons with coal-black hearts. Boardwalk Empire/Daredevil‘s Charlie Cox stars as our bumbling, babyfaced hero who falls down the requisite rabbit hole to get the story kicked off. In order to retrieve a falling start to prove his love & devotion to a spoiled brat who couldn’t care less about him, our protagonist crosses the wall that serves as a thin barrier between our realm & its magical counterpart. He’s shocked to discover that his fallen star is, in fact, a beautiful woman (played by Claire DaaaaAAaaaanes) & on the journey to bring her back home to his coldblooded beloved, he runs into a long line of magical obstacles that include a coven of bloodthirsty witches (with Michelle Pfeiffer among them), a group of brothers determined to murder each other to claim royalty & their resulting ghosts, a unicorn, a humanoid goat and, yes, a crossdressing pirate & his loyal crew of cutthroats. Stardust shamelessly panders to the Ren Fair crowd & knows exactly how campy it gets in the process. The film’s mix of ribald humor, playful gender-bending, and lighthearted glee for witchcraft & murder all amount to a wonderfully silly adventure epic & mythical romance. Honestly, the only thing holding it back from being a (remarkably goofy) masterpiece is its horrifically shitty CGI, which looks exceptionally poor even for the mid-2000s.

I don’t know if it was the film’s unicorn connection with Legend (sans the wonderful Tangerine Dream soundtrack, unfortunately) or a magical Michelle Pfeiffer recalling her past roles in titles like Ladyhawk & The Witches of Eastwick, but my favorite aspect of Stardust was the way it felt like a throwback to decades-old fantasy classics. It feels like the era of titles like The Princess Bride, The NeverEnding Story, and The Labyrinth is long gone & it’s difficult recall the last time a fantasy epic was this winning. (Sorry, Harry Potter fans; I just can’t get into it.) The best example I can think of from recent memory was Upside Down & most people hated that one (possibly because they thought of it as shitty sci-fi instead of great fantasy cheese.). Are Gaiman & Gilliam the last two significant personalities still bringing this sensibility to the big screen on a somewhat regular basis? (Obviously, Game of Thrones is doing well enough on the televised end of things.) I’m at the point now where any cinematic adaptation of a Gaiman work is more than welcome in my life whether or not I’m committed to actually reading the source material first . . . or ever. The world is thirsty for this kind of romantic fantasy content.

-Brandon Ledet

Super (2010)

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When recently revisiting James Gunn’s MCU directorial debut for our Agents of S.W.A.M.P.F.L.I.X. feature, I was surprised to find that the film had greatly improved with time & distance. A lot of problems I had with Guardians of the Galaxy felt entirely inconsequential the second time around. Unfortunately, I couldn’t repeat this trick with Gunn’s other superhero movie, 2010’s dark comedy Super. I enjoyed Super well enough the first time I saw it a few years ago, but found it deeply flawed in select moments that often poisoned the film’s brighter spots with a certain kind of tonal cruelty. More specifically, I thought Super‘s lighthearted approach to sexually assault in not one, but three separate gags was a huge Achilles heel in an otherwise enjoyable film. If anything, recently giving Super a second, closer look made this fault even more glaring than it was the first go-round.

In the film a short-order grill cook & lifelong target of bullying (Rainn Wilson) is emotionally wrecked when his exotic dancer wife (Liv Tyler) relapses on her sobriety & leaves him for a ruthless drug-dealing schmuck (Kevin Bacon). In this moment of crisis our pathetic hero finds solace & inspiration in a Christian television show about a pious superhero named The Holy Avenger. Things get out of hand when his religious delusions become full-blown divine visions where the finger of God touches his brain (literally) and convinces him to take justice into his own hands by becoming a real-life superhero. As his newly-minted superego The Crimson Bolt, our hero is no longer on the receiving end of bullying. He’s no longer the kind of pushover who’d make his wife’s new lover fried eggs for breakfast out of timid kindness. He’s now empowered by a homemade costume, an overeager sidekick (Ellen Page), and some nifty catchphrases (“Shut up, crime!”) to fight evil deeds by mercilessly beating people within an inch of their lives with household tools for minor offenses. In his mind The Crimson Bolt is all that’s standing between justice & chaos. From the outside looking in, he’s a man suffering from crippling depression & self hate and is more of a dangerous liability than he is a divine vigilante.

My favorite aspect of Super is the ambiguity of its tone. Is it a pitch black comedy or simply pitch black? When The Crimson Bolt weeps in a mirror & thinks to himself “People look stupid when they cry,” does the humor of that observation outweigh the severity of its emotional turmoil or should you join in on the tears? It’s difficult to tell either way, but part of what makes James Gunn pictures so engaging is in the fearless way they’re willing to explore this compromised tone by going hard on darker impulses that complicate their humor. Sometimes I’m more than willing to laugh at these clashes in tone, like when The Crimson Bolt has a moral dilemma about murdering people for non-violent offenses (like cutting in line or keying cars) that he summarizes as “How am I supposed to tell evil to shut up if I have to shut up?” Other times I’m left much more uncomfortable, especially in the multiple instances of rape “humor” that make light of prison rape, female-on-male rape, and drug-assisted sexual assault. In these moments Gunn’s tonal ambiguity plays much more like a detriment than an asset & any humor meant to be mined from the violence falls flat & unnerving.

It’s possible that the exact discomfort I’m describing is what Gunn was aiming to achieve in Super. The director makes a cameo in the film (in the context of the Holy Avenger television show) as the Devil & it’s possible that’s exactly how he sees himself. He promises to deliver certain genre goods in his films (Kick Ass-style dark comedy in this case), but merely uses them as a vehicle to deliver something much more misanthropic & grotesque. It’s a classic Devil’s bargain. I enjoy so much of what Super grimly delivers & maybe Gunn’s turning that sinful delight against me with this distasteful line of rape humor. Who’s to say? All I can really do is note the discomfort & wish for better.

-Brandon Ledet

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

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I’ll start out saying this: I didn’t hate Batman v Superman … as much as I thought I was going to. I certainly didn’t hate it as much as I hated Man of Steel, for starters. Further, despite the fact that I found co-writer David S. Goyer’s script for the final Christopher Nolan Batman flick to be patronizing and transparent in its privileged take on income inequality, this film wasn’t quite so morally bankrupt in its presuppositions about audience attitudes. I even had a few positive takeaways from the flick, although some of those things were probably in spite of the filmmaker’s goals and not because of them.

I’m not a Zack “The Hack” Snyder hater, either. I know that hating on him is popular and easy, and he certainly deserves some of the criticism that is leveled at him. I’ve heard mixed things about Sucker Punch (although never anything that enticed me into watching the whole thing), and I find that the director’s cut of Watchmen is a decent adaptation of the source material. The problem with Snyder is that he knows and understands that film has a language, but he doesn’t know how to make that language work for him. Snyder just doesn’t grasp how to handle pacing and tension, so, instead of having rising action that grows at a steady rate up to a film’s denouement, everything is metaphorically cranked up to eleven at all times. Snyder knows how to make things look “epic,” but he uses that same technique in every shot; as a result, every action has the same dramatic weight, be it people fleeing in terror from collapsing buildings, potential warnings from the future, nuclear deployment, or uneventful board meetings.

Not all of this is Snyder’s fault, really; it’s the audience’s. The general public took 300, a film that revels in its consistently over-the-top nature and (arguably) succeeds as a narrative within that paradigm, and made it Snyder’s first real mainstream success. We taught Snyder the unfortunate lesson that this style was laudable and commercially viable when it’s actually exhausting. He’s like that classmate of yours who misunderstood the definition of a word from context clues and then proceeded to use it incorrectly all the time because it sounds good to their ear. It’s not that Snyder doesn’t have experience; he’s got several films under his belt now, each one more popular (or at least profitable) than the last. Snyder is simply living proof that sometimes a person can create a worthwhile piece of media without grasping the reason that it works. He understands that using a particular visual rhetorical strategy is something that filmmakers do to elicit a response, but he doesn’t seem to know why they do it. As a result, you can’t really say that there are any “quiet moments” here in Batman v Superman, just scenes and sequences that would be treated with some deftness and gravitas in another, more sensitive movie, a film in the hands of a more mature filmmaker.

Ironically, the audience is expected to assume that the immature Superman of the previous film has grown into a true-blue hero after a short montage of him rescuing people in scenes that appropriate the images of real-life disasters. Just as Man of Steel relied heavily on 9/11 imagery, so too does this film co-opt the images we have seen of the victims of Hurricane Katrina waiting for rescue on their rooftops. What’s more, it seems that the criticism of the previous film’s inappropriate use of this visual rhetoric resulted in an increase in it this time around, which is horrible. The audience is supposed to believe that Superman has learned his lesson about accountability and the value of life despite the fact that, metatextually, Snyder certainly didn’t. Further, he couldn’t figure out how to communicate that idea visually; you know, like making Metropolis a warmer looking place, or subtly lightening the blue of the Superman outfit in order to make him stand out as a beacon of hope in contrast to Batman’s more fear-mongering approach.

Of course, just because their names are in the title doesn’t necessarily mean that either Batman or Superman is really the main character in this film; Lex Luthor is. I wasn’t keeping track of the exact number of lines that each says in the film, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesse Eisenberg’s character had as many as Henry Cavill’s and Ben Affleck’s combined. Luthor’s actions kick off the plot, Luthor is behind the false flag operation in Nairomi (which provides the final catalyst for Bruce Wayne to come out of retirement), Luthor kidnaps Ma Kent in order to force Superman’s hand, Luthor creates Doomsday, etc. Luthor even collates the data about potential powered individuals for Bruce to later stumble upon. Every other character is reacting to Luthor’s manipulations, but Eisenberg’s performance doesn’t have the requisite gravitas to make the character work. Eisenberg has been in a few things that I’ve enjoyed and a fair few others that I have not. He’s not necessarily a bad actor, but he is one with a fairly limited range, and, in fairness to him, I don’t know that any performer could have played this role and pulled it off. Luthor is framed as some kind of wunderkind, but any menace that he could possibly embody is undercut by the character’s shrill, foppish affectations. I don’t know if that was a character choice made by Eisenberg or on his behalf, but it’s distracting and obnoxious. Overall, Luthor ends up as a non-threatening villain despite the heinousness of his actions.

Clocking in at just under three hours, Dawn of Justice seems interminable at times, and the above-cited problem with a lack of variation in intensity is only one factor. There are abundant issues with pacing as well. Something like 10% of the film’s 166 minutes, including the very first scene, is taken up with dream sequences (and dream sequences within dream sequences, and imagined conversations with dead relatives). I don’t want to go into too many details in case any of you reading this want to maintain some surprise when/if you get around to seeing it, but there’s a prolonged scene that occurs near the film’s climax which interrupts the preparation for battle to focus on a character watching a series of video files. This sequence exists solely for the purpose of planting the seeds for DC’s attempt to create a Marvel-style interconnected film franchise, and its placement  in the film is utterly baffling. There’s a basic misunderstanding of narrative at play here with DC’s embarrassing attempt to play catch up with the House of Ideas. I can’t tell if it’s a blatant attempt to differentiate their business model from Marvel’s or a stubborn unwillingness to take the time and effort to give individual characters the needed breathing room for an audience to get to know them before forcing an Avengers style team-up with the upcoming Justice League (Part I… ugh). Either way, Batman v Superman doesn’t work as a cornerstone for the building of this larger universe or as a notable film in its own right.

There are occasional hints of a better narrative throughout (for instance, having Lex act as both a corrupt businessman and a bit of a mad scientist, as he has been portrayed as both in the past/comics, was a good idea that was poorly executed). I would even go so far as to say that the first half of the film works surprisingly well, especially with Holly Hunter acting circles around every other person onscreen in her performance as Senator June Finch. It’s really all downhill once she’s no longer present, with the second half feeling like a completely different movie. Amy Adams’s Lois Lane spends most of the climax struggling to retrieve a kryptonite spear from an underwater location that she herself threw it into in an earlier scene; that’s a first draft plot problem if I ever saw one. In one particularly noteworthy scripting problem, Lois’s Senator informant tells the President that the monster Bats and Superman are fighting only gets stronger each time that they attack it. This occurs after they attack Doomsday only once; sure, the knowledge that Doomsday gets stronger with every defeat is something that certain parts of the audience will know because of a familiarity with the source material, but why does this character have this knowledge?

I am sure that defenders of this film will find ways to justify the problems with the narrative, just as there were many who bent over backwards to make excuses for Man of Steel and its poor choices. We live in a world where there are people who will look you in the eye and defend the Star Wars prequels, so there’s no possibility that I could ever again be caught off guard by individual tastes and perceptions, no matter how alien they seem to be to me. This is an objectively bad movie, but I’m certainly not here to judge (I’m writing this next to a DVD shelf that contains both Dead Heat and Astro Zombies, after all). I will say, however, that I cannot fathom getting sufficient enjoyment from this movie to merit dealing with the long swathes in which there is nothing that could offer the smallest amount of filmic pleasure.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should cite the film’s good elements. I mentioned Holly Hunter’s strong performance above, but Gal Gadot does good work here with the limited screen time they give her, and there really is nothing quite like finally seeing Wonder Woman on the big screen for the first time (not counting The Lego Movie), and I gave the movie an extra half star for her appearance alone. The guitar-heavy track that serves as WW’s leitmotif is strange, but it does effectively differentiate her musical arrangement from Clark’s and Bruce’s even if it is an unusual choice. I also appreciated that the film trusts the audience to infer that Bruce was once the Batman and has since retired, even though Snyder apparently felt the need to show the Waynes getting gunned down in an alley for approximately the millionth time, complete with falling pearls, as if this wasn’t the most well-known origin story on the planet other than the birth of Christ. There’s a fun cameo from a Major Ferris (i.e. Carol Ferris from the Green Lantern comics) as well as some other Easter Eggs, and I’m always happy to see Lauren Cohan (Mrs. Wayne) getting work.

If you were already planning to see this movie (or not), one more negative review on top of all the others that are floating around isn’t going to make much of a difference to you. Still, even if you (like me) are enticed solely by the prospect of Wonder Woman, don’t waste your money trying to catch this flick in theaters. Like the Luthor character, Dawn of Justice is less interested in being clever than it is in investing time in making itself seem more clever than it really is, and ultimately ends up being incoherent for all its effort.

Random Remaining Questions (spoilers for both this film and Man of Steel):

● In the trailer for the film, we see Bruce getting a piece of hate mail that says “You let your family die,” and we see this same scene in the film. In context, this makes no sense, as no members of the Wayne family were killed during the showdown that ended Man of Steel, just Wayne Enterprises employees. So what was the point of that, other than to mislead people with the trailer?

● At the end of the film, Lois is hanging out in a bedroom in the Kent farmhouse. From the look of it, it seems like it’s supposed to be Clark’s room from before he left for college. So did Ma Kent really have the house recreated so exactly after its destruction in the first film that they duplicated this room, right down to its rural teen aesthetic?

● When will TV and films realize that an atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon is exponentially worse than one that occurs on the ground? Heroes got called out for doing this same thing ten years ago at the end of their first season; was no one listening?

● This one was pointed out to me after the fact by my friend who saw the film with me: was Luthor intercepting Wally’s mail for eighteen months before he used him to infiltrate the senate subcommittee? My reading of the situation was that Wally was returning his checks to Wayne Enterprises for all that time and then came to Luthor’s attention following his public arrest for vandalism of that hideous Superman statue, at which point Luthor approached Wally to help him. But later Luthor seems to admit that he sent the final piece of mail to Bruce personally, implying that he was behind the returning of checks this whole time. So which is it?

● I know that the locations of Metropolis and Gotham City are not fixed and as such they sometimes are close to each other and sometimes further apart, but putting them across the bay from each other really bothers me for reasons that I can’t quite put my finger on. I guess I feel that you shouldn’t be able to see one city from the other? Like, if any random person in Metropolis could look toward the waterfront and see the Bat-Signal in Gotham City, it really strains credibility that these two characters would have never interacted previously.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)

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three star

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Many black & white alien invasion movies from the 1950s have found a second life in the last few decades as targets for sarcastic derision at the hands of MST3k & similarly-minded snark peddlers. I think the reason Invasion of the Saucer Men largely escaped this treatment was that it was more than willing to make fun of itself in a way that sucked the joy out of any potential bullying. An irreverent horror comedy of sorts, Invasion of the Saucer Men treats its teenage-marketed 50s sci-fi horror genre tropes with such a continuous wink & shrug attitude that making fun of the film in any way feels redundant at best. Filmed almost entirely on a sound studio lot with no budget to speak of, the movie originally was pitched as a drama & developed into a comedy sometime during production. In that decision the film avoided slipping into a mockably goofy triviality & instead became an intentionally goofy triviality. It’s a minor distinction, but an important one.

A “true story of a flying saucer” told over the course of a single night, Invasion of the Saucer Men is just one gentle push away from becoming a full-blown genre spoof. Its small town setting of Hicksville & population of drunk drifters, dimwitted farmers, and eternally horny teens all feel like a direct mockery of the many by-the-numbers sci-fi horror flicks that proceeded it. And that’s not even to mention the film’s standard issue alien invaders, which look like prototypes for Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks. The plot doesn’t truly kick off until a hot & heavy teen couple accidentally strike & kill one of said evil invaders with their car on the way home from canoodling. Because of the “little green men’s” stature they at first assume that they killed a small child, but when that “child’s” hand detaches from its lifeless body, grows an eyeball, and crawls away, they quickly realize what they’re dealing with is not of this planet. The question is if they can convince their fellow citizens of Earth they’re under attack from extraterrestrial forces before it’s too late.

It’s funny to think that Invasion of the Saucer Men was released on a double bill with I Was a Teenage Werewolf under the tagline “We DARE you to see the most amazing pictures of our time!”, since that’s the exact kind of old school, teen-oriented sci-fi horror the film mildly lampoons. Invasion of the Saucer Men is far from a full-blown spoof, but it does directly reference the violence & fantasy in other teen films, so its tongue-in-cheek genre mockery plays as entirely intentional. My very favorite moment in the film is when our eternally horny teen heroes trek out to Make Out Point to recruit their fellow oversexed peers to help save the day because the adults of Hicksville won’t believe them. It’s a gag I’ve seen repeated with the moviegoers of America in Night of the Lepus & the Greatest Generation of navy men in Battleship and it’s one that never fails to amuse me.  Invasion of the Saucer Men could’ve been (a goofy) one for the ages with a few more gags that inspired, but as is it’s an enjoyable, self-deprecating genre spoof that proves remarkably difficult to mock.

-Brandon Ledet

Reptilicus (1962)

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three star

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It’s sometimes difficult to distinguish old school giant monster/kaiju movies from one another through any means besides the individual visual designs of their respective monsters. The original King Kong & Godzilla films have a distinct look & history to them, but a lot of the giant monster films that followed in their wake are a little more run of the mill. The 1962 picture Reptilicus, on the other hand, is significant as the first & only giant monster movie native to Denmark. Filmed in & around Copenhagen, Reptilicus has effortlessly earned a cult reputation among Danish-speaking audiences because of the novelty of its setting, which gives Tokyo a much-needed break from kaiju-driven destruction.

A crew of Danish miners are shocked to strike blood & functioning organs beneath the frozen tundra of their job site. Once in possession of the anomalous specimen, a group of scientists identify the mysterious genetic material as belonging to a prehistoric reptile they christen “Reptilicus”. They soon discover that as the organic material thaws it begins to regenerate, heal, and grow, eventually returning Reptilicus to its massive prehistoric form so it can terrorize downtown Copenhagen. The mayhem that ensues may not seem all that special in light of the 10,001 Godzilla movies & Power Rangers episodes flouting around out there, but it does have a really cool monster puppet at its center and the film is allowed to repeatedly destroy it with flamethrowers, tanks, and missiles thanks to its reptilian “regeneration” powers. Reptilicus was one fire-breathing, airborne attack away from being a great old school movie about a dragon, but as is it’s a pretty decent kaiju picture with a really cool context in its setting.

There aren’t too many other distinguishing characteristics to Reptilicus besides its Danish setting. Its love story is flat & uninteresting, as is its bumbling doofus comic relief. There’s exactly one sequence where the film is campy in a way that has nothing to do with its “prehistoric reptile” menace. While out on the town on a date, two sightseeing lovers intone inane chatter over Ed Wood/Europe in the Raw-style stock footage of Copenhagen. This sequence is gloriously capped off by a dinner-and-a-show rendition of the swanky tune “Tivoli Nights” in a Danish nightclub. As highly amusing as this moment is, it points to the very simple formula that makes Reptilicus special: giant monster + Denmark. The film’s gigantic reptile terror is great fun to look at, from its dragon-like head to its dumb little T-Rex arms hanging out comically low on its elongated body, but it’s doubtful that would be memorable enough to carry the movie on its own without Denmark as a backdrop.

Reptilicus is a moderately fun novelty solely due to its monster & its setting. Years ago, it would’ve been the exact kind of B-picture I’d rather watch through the snarky lens of MST3k, but I’m starting to prefer this kind of dinky, antiquated  entertainment without the emotionally-distancing sarcasm. It’s the perfect daytime, background noise monster flick, especially if you have any particular fondness for or personal connection to Copenhagen or Denmark at large.

-Brandon Ledet

Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (2016)

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fourstar

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Is it possible for someone to have an unbiased opinion on Pee-wee Herman in 2016? It seems like everyone in the world even remotely in tune with the pop culture landscape probably knows by now whether or not they’re on board with Paul Reubens’ man-child alter-ego & his home planet of eternal 50s kitsch. I guess for the purposes of this review I should go ahead & confess my own bias: I’m a wholly committed fan of everything P.W. Herman. The long-defunct television show Pee-wee’s Playhouse is one of my favorite examples of modern surrealism. His 1985 cinematic debut Pee-wee’s Big Adventure remains my all-time favorite Tim Burton feature (though Ed Wood is a close second). I’ll even stand up for the much-hated sophomore feature Big Top Pee-wee, which I think is underappreciated for its off-putting sense of tongue-in-cheek camp. I love Pee-wee so much I should probably marry him.

So, yeah, to say that Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is a for-fans-only venture is a bit of a redundancy, since all Pee-wee content is something of an acquired taste. The direct-to-Netflix production is only different from earlier Herman outings in that it feels like it was made by fans (who now happen to be moderately famous). Heavy-hitter comedy producer Judd Apatow, Comedy Bang Bang regular & creator of the excellent Netflix series Love (also produced by Apatow) Paul Rust, and director/multi-media artist John Lee (who had an absurdly subversive/satirical run with the projects PFFR, Wonder Showzen, and Xavier: Renegade Angel) all come together to form a really geeky Pee-wee Herman fan club, making Pee-wee’s Big Holiday out to be something of a labor of love (or a dream come true, depending on your perspective). And the president of this fan club just happens to be none other than Magic Mike XXL star/popular kid Joe Manganiello, who appears here as the film’s hunky MacGuffin.

In the same way J.J. Abrams recently took the reins of the mighty Star Wars empire by mirroring past story lines in The Force Awakens, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday tries to revive Herman’s prominence in the world by returning to the roots of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The similarities between Big Adventure & Big Holiday are unavoidable, even right there in the titles. Both films are road trip comedies. Both open with needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg contraptions. Both feature surrealist dream sequences (this time with a Mac & Me-style alien instead of the much more terrifying clown surgeons of yesteryear). Both feature former new wave punk legends on their scores (this time Mark Mothersbaugh instead of Danny Elfman). Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is essentially Pee-wee’s Big Adventure on a Big Top Pee-wee scale & budget, which is all that fans could really ask for in a direct-to-streaming release after a 30 year gap. It also helps that the film finds Pee-wee just about as charming & hilarious as he’s ever been, even if its financial freedom & resulting ambition are somewhat diminished.

While working as a short-order cook at a 50s-style diner in the Pleasantville-esque town of Fairville, Pee-Wee is shocked to discover that his doo-wop band is calling it quits, a blow that pretty much puts an end to his social life. Stuck in a hopeless rut, it takes a chance encounter with Joe Manganiello (starring as his wonderful self) to convince Pee-wee to break free from his milquetoast lifestyle & explore the world outside Fairville on a quest to attend Manganiello’s birthday party in NYC. Along the way he meets a long line of eccentrics played by mainstays from past Pee-wee projects & minor comedic personalities. His run-ins with traveling novelty product salesmen, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!-style gangsters (who include among them Arrested Development/The Final Girls‘s Alia Shawkat wearing the exact angora sweater director Ed Wood spent a lifetime fetishizing), strange mountain men, Amish folk, and sassy beauty salon weirdos are all entertaining in a lighthearted, episodic sort of way, but they all exist merely to support Herman’s madness-in-repetition comedic stylings, which are just as top notch as ever.

It’s easy to see why Lee, Rust, Apatow, and company would return to the road trip format for Pee-wee’s Big Holiday. All the movie has to do to succeed is provide Herman (who’s also billed as playing himself) with a variety of backdrops & supporting players to bounce his bizarrely childish humor off of. In one highly pertinent scene, Herman proves that he can entertain an entire village of on-lookers with a single, ordinary balloon. Just about the only aspect of Pee-wee Herman’s Big Holiday that isn’t bare bones in this way is Joe Manganiello’s involvement. Manganiello enters the scene as a living embodiment of a Tom of Finland drawing on a motorcycle. The gay subtext certainly doesn’t end there. By the conclusion of the film, Herman & Manganiello’s instant attraction to each other fully blossoms into a really sweet, very romantic story about “friendship”. If there’s any chance for a non-Pee-wee fan to enjoy Big Holiday it’d be in watching just how naturally & enthusiastically that “friendship” develops. All else should be pleased to know that Big Holiday is more like Big Adventure than Big Top (which I still contend is under-loved) and should pretty much already know whether or not they’ll have fun with what’s delivered.

-Brandon Ledet

The Bronze (2016)

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fourstar

I went into The Bronze not knowing who Melissa Rauch is & came out an instant fan. The problem is that anyone following Rauch from her run on the wildly successful (and wildly mediocre) CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory is likely to have the exact opposite experience. The Bronze is a mercilessly dark comedy much more in line with Jody Hill-helmed cult comedies like Foot Fist Way, Eastbound & Down, and Observe & Report. Its pitch black humor is hilariously misanthropic for audiences with the right temperament, but also isn’t the kind of entertainment that has mass appeal. Anyone going into The Bronze looking for Rauch to deliver the broad, calculated comedy she’s associated with on The Big Bang Theory is going to be shocked by the loose, raunchy cruelty she brings to the screen here. Rauch helms The Bronze as a writer/lead actor & the film reveals that her personal sense of humor has a wicked mean streak to it that is sure to alienate a lot of fans, but also draw in some new devoted ones, myself included.

Much like the archetypal Danny McBride antihero in the Jody Hill content mentioned above, Rauch plays a has-been athlete with an oversized ego terrorizing the small town folks who are nice to her because they’re easily awed by her modest fame. The Bronze opens with Hope Ann Gregory (Rauch) masturbating to footage of her glory days when she became a local hero by bringing home an Olympic bronze medal in gymnastics. Her life has been a continuous rut since that youthful victory and Hope has slowly, bitterly grown into the world’s oldest teenager. She wears her hair in a ponytail, sleeps in until the afternoon, wastes her days getting high & hanging out at the mall, steals spending money from her dad (whom she lives with) when her allowance (!!!) isn’t sufficient enough to support her “lifestyle”, etc. When her dad threatens to cut her off & force her to get a job, she threatens to “suck dirty dicks” for cash to make him feel guilty. It takes an old friend’s suicide & posthumous blackmail to shake Hope out of her arrested state of adolescence. As she finds a second life as a coach & a mentor for gymnastics’ next generation, she learns what it means to be truly selfless & how much value there is in true companionship. Just kidding. All that changes is that she allows her petty jealousies & shameless narcissism to spread out & poison everyone she interacts with instead of keeping it confined to her father’s basement.

Besides the dark humor of its protagonist’s merciless selfishness, The Bronze also sets out to alienate audiences with an especially raunchy assault of sex humor. Hope is eternally horny in a purely animalistic, Jerri Blank sort of way. She’s constantly barraging her mild-mannered, Midwestern counterparts with phrases like”cock hole” & “clit jizz” and lights up the screen with the film’s centerpiece: an epic sexual encounter that could only be pulled off by a pair of oversexed Olympic gymnasts. Some of my favorite comedies of the past decade have been this gender-swapped version of raunch cinema (The To Do List, Appropriate Behavior, Wetlands, etc.) and The Bronze fits snugly among them. Combine that genre subversion with the film’s heartless cruelty, the novelty of its gymnastics-world setting, and expert use of my all-time favorite movie trope, the plot-summarizing rap song, and you have a strong contender for a future cult classic. Melissa Rauch’s twisted creation has the potential to alienate some of her network television-oriented fan base, but it also promises to earn a more rewarding longevity for fans of this kind of oversexed, misanthropic comedy. Personally, I’m already prepared to give it a second watch & introduce it to some like-minded buddies with the right kind of barbaric sense of humor.

-Brandon Ledet