Roar: A historic piece of wtf filmmaking

Roar is a truly stupefying movie. It was released in 1981 to what I assume was little fanfare—I was born a year later, so I wouldn’t really know, but it’s not like it won awards or anything—starring Tippi Hedren, Noel Marshall, Melanie Griffith, and Melanie’s two brothers. That this was basically a home movie produced by the Marshall family is strange, and that they had to sell assets, like their Beverly Hills mansion, to make this film is outright bizarre. Go to Roar’s IMDB page and you’ll find an unending supply of interesting tidbits. It gives a pretty complete breakdown of the injuries suffered by the cast and crew, though it somehow doesn’t say that anyone died during filming. This is odd because so many of the people who worked on this movie, including almost every member of the Marshall family, were severely attacked by giant felines.

You would think this would stop people from making such a dangerous movie. You would also be wrong! The Marshall family had the idea to make a film about a father, living in Africa, who is not home when his family visits him unexpectedly. Unbeknownst to them, their father resides with around 50 full-grown lions and tigers, without fencing or any sort of barriers between himself and the animals. It would make a great CGI-animated movie except that there was no CGI or any effects whatsoever. They all went to Africa and played with 50+ carnivorous felines for a few years. I saw this at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal, and the reaction of the crowd within the first 10 minutes was just laughter. It continued until the rest of the movie, but those first 10 minutes were shocking, as the Noel Marshall doesn’t really act as much as he shows himself living with lions. Entering the house, they pin him up against the wall playfully—I guess? Still not sure they really wanted to eat him—and he continues about his business as if there’s nothing abnormal about getting pushed around by a lion. He ups his game after by interfering with a lion fight between the good lion and some bad lion that wants to claim the territory as his own. That they tried to make a plot within this movie about some lion that’s trying to take over is absurd on its own. I mean…it’s like watching a comedy—a fail video that you can’t possibly believe someone actually tried because it’s so stupid and why are they honestly trying to kill themselves oh god I can’t watch.

It’s an unbelievable movie just because of the animals. There’s nothing worth saying about the plot, other than the family spends time running away from lions, tigers, and an elephant, which also tries to kill them in real time. I don’t know that they bothered even trying to act for this movie since there must have been so much distraction, what with lions potentially mauling you to death in every scene. The more you keep trying to wind your brain around it, the more it sees this movie as a surrealistic portrait of insanity, something so rare and weird that the fact that it was made almost 40 years ago seems trivial. There are older movies who pushed limits, like cannibal holocaust did when they decided to kill real animals on-screen or films like I Spit on Your Grave, which bath in depravity. Most had the intention of horrifying you, as you witnessed something disturbing and shocking. But Roar goes into another realm directly, telling you that the thing you’re seeing that is outright shocking is totally normal and something to be celebrated. You just find yourself so awe struck that you can’t help but laugh while the cast are filmed being attacked.   

The greatest achievement this movie makes is ultimately getting an entire family to sleep with lions comfortably, as if they’re cuddly pets. I don’t think anyone could pull it off today, let alone on film (the fact that a film like this has zero chance of being made nowadays not withstanding). If my child decided that he wanted to make a movie like this, I would barricade him in his room forever. What the hell people?! Anyway, I highly recommend watching this piece of remarkable history. It’s an experience unlike any other, something that will never occur ever again. It’s also batshit insane and I’m nearly positive that someone HAD to have died while filming, but the Marshall family covered it up so they could release this ridiculous piece of film history.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: It’s more than the kingdom that’s fallen

I loved Jurassic Park (who didn’t?) and Jurassic World. Some people act like they’re better than the first JW, and they’re not. None of them! JW was the right way to make a proper sequel to JP, providing a great entry into the What If genre of film by just ignoring the inherent problems with making a dinosaur zoo and making a new, larger one that’s even more susceptible to capitalistic greed. Why come up with a dinosaur that’s more dangerous than anything else in the park? More customers and money! Why on earth would you let anyone walk around with dinosaurs, herbivores or not, in a big plastic ball? The whole thing sounds like a terrible idea, and of course it predictably turned into a horror show, because that’s the entire point of the series.

The problem with the JP series was always the sequels. There had to be some excuse to go back to the dinosaurs, some issue with the remaining ones from the park that are just roaming around Costa Rica unguarded. JP2 and JP3 didn’t really solve it in any meaningful way, and neither does JW: Fallen Kingdom. The writers try to get our main characters back to the park with the intent of saving them from a conveniently exploding volcano. It’s not that the premise is unrealistic (the whole series is completely unrealistic, the instantaneous genetic engineering of new dinosaurs as a prime example). It’s that it feels like the characters’ motivations aren’t justified enough. Why would anyone set foot back on that island where the dinosaurs no longer have cages AND a volcano is about to explode? By pushing the emotional impact of saving the dinosaurs, the film is playing the wrong notes with its audience, who don’t care about the dinosaurs as much as they care about the chaos they bring at this stage of the franchise. Eventually, it all leads the dinosaurs into a mansion with an extremely large basement (?) where they’re to be sold off as weapons. That’s a thing that happens. Whoever wrote that into the movie should probably not work on JW3.

The saving grace of JW: Fallen Kingdom is the cast and production values. Both are up to the task of making this thing work as far as it’ll go, with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard doing their best to work in some gags and keep everyone entertained. The dinosaurs are still pretty neat, but the most personality you get from them is a cute stygimoloch that likes to butt things with its head. It’s a shame because the dinosaurs are really the ones along for the ride and they get nothing much to do except eat a few people and attack other dinosaurs. Blue’s backstory is a welcome addition, but it’s still not enough for a movie that prides itself on showcasing how amazing these creatures are.

It’s not a real surprise this movie wasn’t half as good as the original JW. It’s probably better than JP2 and JP3, though not by much. It’s also quite a bit more violent and dark than the first JW, making it a hard sell to those with kids. I can see where they want to eventually take the series, and maybe the producers thought this would be the best way to get there. It’s an unfortunate place for a franchise that already ran into sequel trouble and had people expecting the worst even when the first JW was released. If JW: Fallen Kingdom was truly memorable (or even entertainingly watchable), I think moviegoers would give more of a pass to a third movie that bombed. With a film this average, I can see the franchise going extinct altogether along with those poor genetically-modified dinosaurs.   

Fallout 3: Your first walk into the wasteland is always your best

Yes, I realize that this game is old (old as shit, honestly), but with Fallout 76 coming out and Fallout 3 being one of my all-time favorite games, I thought it would be a great first video game review to add to the list. It was actually one of the first games I ever played on my PlayStation 3 (sold to make way for the PS4, of course). I initially bought the console to play NHL 2010, and after borrowing someone else’s Xbox 360 and playing through Skyrim a bit, I was shocked at how different storytelling could be, even within the first set piece where you’re about to get your head chopped off, only for a dragon to attack at the last minute and save you. After that, I wanted to get my hands on all games made by Bethesda that had a similar style of gameplay.

Fallout 3 immerses you immediately from the start with an extremely clever tutorial, as you begin your journey as a baby, then morph into an adolescent within the tight community of a vault (where mostly everyone lived throughout whatever nuclear wars were happening outside). Your perks are decided during class, and there’s even a birthday party, which gives you time to interact with NPCs. It all leads to the disappearance of your father and your escape from the vault to go find him in the Capital Wasteland of Washington, DC.  

Bethesda sets up your first venture into the wasteland perfectly by spotting you near the top of a hill overlooking the rest of your surroundings. You can see the scope of the land, with quests designed to explore your immediate area, but also so much freedom that you don’t have to do anything the game tells you to. It asks you to venture out and play for yourself, with structures designed to lure you in and flesh out the world around you. That you can interact with almost anything; the game lets you collect items that sometimes don’t mean anything at all except to sell as junk. The interfacing with characters is a bit odd, as the camera focuses up on each one during dialogue, but that’s really the only thing that takes away from the reality of the world around you (well, that and V.A.T.S.). That the gunplay is wonky makes it feel endearing, like if you were dropped into that setting and was given a gun, you too wouldn’t be great at shooting it either. The V.A.T.S. system helps, sometimes giving the game a turn-based RPG mechanic but shooting from a distance without it often gives you a better chance of hitting if you can figure out the spray of each weapon.  

The story mechanics are probably the best thing about the game. Not the story itself per se, as your quest to find your father ultimately leads you to an unfulfilling ending, but the mechanics of how that story and other side stories are told is what’s most interesting. Without specifying it explicitly, the game usually gives you at least 2 options at any given point, leaving it to the player to figure out what those options could be and inviting them to investigate what exactly is going on.  Many games promote themselves on the idea that your choices dictate the outcome of the story (Life is Strange and Until Dawn come to mind), but not many invite you to use your imagination and paint a picture with what’s given to you. Of course, this being a video game, it doesn’t give you unlimited options, but whatever option you choose, it has a lasting impact on the game and your character. Sometimes you’re just not sure how to figure it out but you’re sure that whoever you’re dealing with is kind of maybe evil, so you decide to just use all your artillery and kill the entire lot (the slaver colony is a good example here, and I’m really eager to find a more stealthy way of freeing the slaves). It also gives you incentive to go back to an old save point and attempt to figure things out in a different way, like in Tenpenny Tower, where using the right investigative process will lead you to discover that whoever has control of the building is entirely up to you.

Tennpenny Tower, in all its glory. 

The details make the game’s atmosphere worth spending time in too. Little things like raider camps filled with empty cans and bottles, pilot lights inside ovens, and grocery stores with food items being feasted upon by radioactive bugs. The 1950s theme gives a surrealistic vibe to everything, developing a uniqueness to the world that seems like it could mirror the nuclear fallout of today, but is situated in an entirely different universe. The level design, from the open countryside to the tight alleyways of downtown Washington, makes it feel like there’s always something new to discover. Playing it a second time around, I’m still coming across vaults and hidden areas I didn’t know existed on my first playthrough.

Altogether, Fallout 3 is a well-designed ecosystem meant for exploration and storytelling. I’ve played through both Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4, and neither is as enthralling as Fallout 3. Las Vegas seemed like a good concept for an end-of-the-world apocalyptic game, but the level design was so minimal that your actions don’t feel meaningful, even though the main story was more credible. Fallout 4 reverted back to a denser setting, making an expanded, vibrant city surrounded by all sorts of weird characters, creatures, and buildings. Unfortunately, they completely ruined the story mechanics, making it impossible to really tinker with the plot structure except to give you one of four possible groups to join about halfway through the main quest. It was almost impossible to solve a problem nonviolently; in fact, the game was better suited as a straight up shooter since most quests involved clearing bases full of supposed bad guys. Fallout 3 supersedes the other 2 games for its sheer imagination and true open endedness, letting you dictate the terms of engagement and the result of the narrative.

With Fallout 76 coming out soon (the B.E.T.A. version is already out, though server time is extremely limited), it’s worth revisiting Fallout 3, the game that pushed Fallout into the realm of third-person RPG. With no human NPCs, I’m a little worried though. It seems like Bethesda is banking on a new strategy, using players themselves to help tell the story and build their own world. I was sorely disappointment in the Elder Scrolls Online experience, but that had mostly to do with the fight mechanics than anything else. I’ve already pre-ordered the damn game though—how could I not, it’s another Fallout game!—so here’s hoping Fallout 76 lives up to the same standard of gameplay of its previous incarnations.

Hereditary: It’s reality that scares you

Hereditary is an odd movie. It feels like a slow burn, but it’s more like a ramp that keeps upping itself until it falls right off, like a demented roller coaster where no one really knows they’re on one until it’s too late. It’s definitely scarier than most of what’s been made recently, but the parts that will leave you disturbed long after the movie is over happen early on, before anything supernatural even occurs, as the family, full of vulnerable, fragile people begin to unravel.

The story centers on a family of four as they initially deal with the passing of the children’s grandmother. Several ideas are foreshadowed from the start, with her passing meant to signify that she might now play a bigger role in their lives. The director clearly intended to make the mood as uneasy as possible, with the mother, Annie (played by Toni Collette), noticeably distressed by souvenirs left in her mother’s belongings, and a daughter, possibly affected by a genetic disorder, doing strange things like mutilating birds. Overall, everything seems like it’s held together loosely, with strings ready to be pulled and torn apart. 

Now, the main premise of this review can’t really be discussed without revealing certain plot points, so if you intend to watch the movie spoiler-free, I suggest you skip to the end.

—SPOILER WARNING—

The scene where the daughter, Charlie, suffers from an allergic reaction to peanuts only to be decapitated truly made me terrified, especially for a parent with kids. It takes such a benign, ordinary situation (we’re going to a party, be back later), frames it as a horror twist, and leads to such a tragic conclusion that it overshadowed the entire supernatural devices that came about as a result. The family dynamics that played out, with regret, sorrow, and hurt felt by everyone that ultimately leads to all the strings being torn apart was one of the harsher and more unique turns a horror movie could take. I could easily see where Annie could have developed into the true villain, not based on her possession, but because she couldn’t forgive her son and thought that the only way to satisfy her emotions would be to end it all. It would have been a character-driven thriller/horror movie that would have truly impacted the audience. Unfortunately, the director chose to turn Annie into something manipulated by her mother’s cult because of Charlie’s death, which leads to Charlie's restoration inside her son’s body. Yes, it was that confusing, and not half as interesting as the initial dilemma regarding how Annie’s family could possibly cope with the loss of her daughter. Seeing Annie cut her own head off in mid-air just wasn't half as disturbing as the initial shock of what happened to Charlie, and that was made problematic for the rest of the film as it kept getting sillier and sillier.   

OKAY, YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.

With all that said, Hereditary is a solid horror movie worth watching on Halloween. Everything is spot on, feeding into a real unsettling atmosphere, with well-framed images that stick with you afterwards, as well as some jump scares for those who love movies like Paranormal Activity as much as Rosemary’s Baby. It’s not a perfect movie like some are making it out to be, but it’s highly effective (in parts, at least) and an experience that few horror movies nowadays can conjure up.

Avengers: Infinity War: This is what my favorite audio comic book would look like

Marvel has been making movies for many years now. They succeeded at first with big production films full of well-known superheroes, making them relatable and giving them a bit of personality, and upped things with the Avengers, where those personalities could finally play alongside each other with bits of wit, humor, and drama. The same thing happens all the time in the comics, where the crossovers and team-ups were always some of those most interesting storylines. I always loved reading about how Wolverine would reluctantly team up with Spider-Man and the Hulk to fight who knows what bad guy or watching everyone team up to take on Onslaught. What the producers of the Avengers got right is that it wasn’t just comparing the powers and abilities of these superheroes in real time that was fascinating, but the often-conflicting motivations and personal drama surrounding these people. Many subplots are intertwined along with set pieces that somewhat rationally (with some imagination thrown in) adopt the powers of the characters into something both humorous and moving.  

The latest Avengers movie is the culmination of almost every MCU plotline into a grander, cohesive whole that focuses on the new ultimate villain, Thanos, who wants to wipe out half of the universe because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. It’s bathed in an overarching ideology, with motivations that are full of holes (especially for characters as supposedly omniscient as Thanos, who should know something about colony collapse) but with just enough logic to keep the whole thing flowing. And that’s what the movie does best: it flows. The pacing is tight, the camera never stays too long in one place, hovering around as the characters do. Our heroes deal with their own thoughts and feelings about their predicament within the context of trying to stop Thanos from obtaining the infinity stones and having the power to follow through on his disastrous plan. The writers do a good job of incorporating some semblance of emotion and sharpness into Thanos as well, with a fleshed-out backstory and moments throughout the movie that refuse to let him become any sort of run-of-the-mill movie villain, to say nothing of Josh Brolin’s subtle performance.

For such a long movie with so many different characters and plot twists, there’s not much more left to say. It’s like a comic book that wants you to keep turning the pages—to keep watching to find out what will happen next. I won’t speak about the ending of the movie. If you haven’t seen it, which you probably should, then all you need to know is that it keeps the series going, just like any good comic book would, and I expect the sequel to do so as well. 

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Like a dream of redemption that never happened

I’ve watched this movie at least 10 times, and each time, I see something slightly different. The first time, I saw Robert Ford, a mixed-up young man trying to mistakenly follow in his idol’s footsteps. The next few times, things started to meld together in ways that few movies ever allow. It’s an ambiguous film but direct, with a narrator that sees things as it was, without much to say but what had apparently happened back when Jesse James was still alive. I’ll be forthright and say that I don’t know much about the history of Jesse James or the period. It’s something that, as a Canadian, you’re never really exposed to. But I wanted to learn more after watching this movie.

The story centers around the last few weeks of Jesse James’ life, as he rounds up members of his gang to pull off one last heist. That description isn’t really accurate though, because he spends most of his time interacting with Robert Ford and his brother, Charley, as Robert tries to curry Jesse’s favor and creepily act as if he were Jesse James in misplaced bouts of wish fulfillment. Jesse never really takes Robert seriously, so he vows revenge and gets hired by the American government to kill Jesse, in the hopes that he would become famous as THE man to kill him. That he kills him is in the title, and it’s the lead up to it—the why—that really stands out. It’s a parable about American fame and how you’ve got to earn it the right way if you want to truly be liked by the people.

That still doesn’t really sum up what the movie’s really about either. The score of the movie and the little scenes in between, where the narrator quietly describes how Jesse and his family had to keep moving from city to city in the middle of the night or how secretive he had to be to keep his identity unknown, really make this story about Jesse, his way of life, and how he tried to redeem himself by keeping Ford’s company. A man who no one could sneak up on suddenly killed in his home by a boy who he could size up and understand so well was like a parting gift to that generation. The music gives a gloomy air to what everyone knows will happen, but it’s also pensive, as if signifying that the previous generation is passing on and wondering if he did the best he could for the future—if his actions, robbing banks and fighting against the government, mean anything at all—as society moves on without him. He lets Ford kill him, not even knowing if it’s the right thing to do, but letting Ford try to fill his shoes anyway, hoping that everything he taught him will make him a better man in the end.

The saddest moment of the film, the one that leads to Jesse’s redemption (if you can call it that), is not at the end of the movie, but at the beginning, when he turns to his brother after his final train robbery. Not a word is said, and his brother shoots him a tired, defeated glance, as if there was never any real point to what they were doing. Life had moved on, and it was time to find another purpose. It just took Jesse a while to find it.