Trolls: What a delightful little world we live in

Living with kids isn’t easy. When it comes down to having a quiet night in and you want to watch a movie, there’s only so much that parents will tolerate. Power Rangers on Netflix doesn’t really make anyone but my son happy, and I can’t stand watching anything on YouTube for children (some of that shit is outright toxic). Every now and then, we try to find a movie that we think both our kids and us will enjoy, so we were lucky when our 4-year-old got attached to the movie Trolls. When it came out, I didn’t think much of it. I never really liked Justin Timberlake’s music or his SNL sketches, so I thought the movie would be more of the same, with a cash-grabbing toy company out to incite girls to buy new versions of their dolls. I was pretty surprised then to find out that Trolls was an overall fun film from start to end, the perfect antidote to a lazy night at the end of my weekend.

The movie centers around a group of trolls who, after escaping the clutches of the bergens, a race of grumpy creatures who think the only way to be happy is to eat trolls once a year, find themselves being hunted down again by the one bergen, Chef (Christine Baranski, who’s as wonderful here as she is on the Big Bang Theory), who was kicked out of Bergentown for accidentally allowing the trolls to escape in the first place. She cozies up to Prince Gristle, the ruler of the bergens, first snatching several of trolls she lost many years ago, then vowing to bring the rest of them for a new Trollstice celebration, where they’ll all get eaten to make the bergens happy. Meanwhile, Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick) tries to save her friends from Chef with the help of a reluctant Branch (Justin Timberlake).

It all sounds really stupid, I’ll admit. But the story is written so earnestly, with characters that are usually excessively cheerful yet also capable of feeling deep sadness, worry, and regret that you can’t help but get on board with the simple happiness-through-introspection theme that the movie conveys. It’s filled with one-liners, weird, retro creatures, and full-on musical numbers that are catchy and, most importantly, appropriate. I usually despise musicals that make the music a spectacle unto itself. I find them self-indulgent, as if I need 17 people doing the lambada and singing about how excited or sad or whatever they are, droning on and ruining the entire rest of the movie. It’s the complete opposite here though, as each number has its place in the story, either giving a bit of exposition or further the plot, linking seamlessly—and meaningfully—with the rest of the action. They celebrate the characters and their motivations in ways that are more than just singing and dancing, with a few gags here and there to keep with the vibe of the rest of the film.

I think a good chunk of the enjoyment you get out of Trolls will depend on how catchy you find the music and how well you get the jokes. It’s a movie made for both kids and adults, but the humor might still come off between with tweens than your average 40-year-old. It’s still dark enough, what with eating trolls and a maniacal Chef who’s more abusive than just pure dark evil, but the whole point of Trolls revolves around finding positive ways to make yourself happy. And therein lies the ultimate success of Trolls: it’ll make you smile (maybe sing and dance a little too), even if you’re a grumpy ol’ bergen.

Mandy: Go full Nic Cage or go home

I’m not sure what to make of Mandy, the new plug for Nic Cage to do Nic Cage stuff. Critics seemed to really like it—its Tomatometer rating is sitting at a cool 92%, with an audience score of only 67%. I never really trust those scores anyway, because sometimes you’re just the fish swimming in the opposite direction of everyone else, right? Still, it’s worth pondering over what the difference between the two scores mean and what might audiences have missed that critics seemed to enjoy so much about this film. I’m in the 67% crowd since I thought that there were a fair number of things that were fun about the film, while wanting perhaps something a bit more clever out of the script.

The premise for Mandy is basically a set up to let Nicholas Cage do his thing. Red (Cage) and the titular Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) are shacked up together somewhere in the wilderness, living a peaceful, hippie-ish lifestyle when a cult leader and his gang abduct the couple and try to force Mandy into sexual servitude. When she balks at the cult leader, he decides to gruesomely kill her in front of Red and leaves Red crucified to die alone. Of course, Red is no stranger to armed combat and goes seeking vengeance on the cult.

To say that the second part of the movie is a trip belies the tone the director sets out from the beginning. The world is full of odd creatures and is filmed as if you’re watching the story on LSD, with strange camera angles, lingering shots, and a subdued color palette full of mauve and red mixed with darker tones. It’s got a grainy feeling to it, as if it’s supposed to be an 80s horror movie yet comes off as something else closer to 80s home video. Altogether, it’s a weird experience that gets weirder as the violence ramps up and Cage goes full Cage.

And boy, does Cage go full Cage. It’s as if the movie switches tone to a dark comedy as he goes fully insane once he escapes his demise and decides to wreak havoc on the cult members. There are some great moments where he gives his most Cage-like faces as he knocks off each member, one by one. I was most looking forward to these Cageriffic moments, though I ended up leaving the theater oddly disappointed. It’s not that he wasn’t great…I mean, he’s Nic Cage! Doing insane things! It was fun. It’s just there wasn’t enough of it in there for me to really enjoy. It takes so long for him to become insane Cage that I sat around getting a little bored at the impressionistic filmmaking style of Panos Cosmatos. I mean, it’s not like he’s filming an award-winning movie over here; just get to the good stuff and make it clever while you’re at it! By the time Cage goes full Cage, it’s fun, but he’s made to be too invincible for his own good, leaving little suspense or any crafty scenarios for Cage to one-up himself. He’s just crazy Cage the rest of the way, killing everyone in his path (SPOILER), without any real sense of danger or whimsy. I was utterly disappointed by a chainsaw battle scene, and no one should EVER be disappointed by a chainsaw fight scene featuring Nic Cage. It should just never happen.

So, I ask the director after watching a movie that felt so mellow yet featured insane Nic Cage: what? What were you going for here? Was the aesthetic of washed-out colors contrasted with Nic Cage-driven insanity meant to amplify his psychoses? Or was it all just meant as a trip to make Cage a dream-like model of crazy? Whatever it was, it was just okay. I’m sure the critics thought it was a hoot, because how many actively watch bad Nic Cage movies to know the difference? Real audiences were less supportive, and I think that’s because most people watch Nic Cage, not for the high-mindedness of the movie, but for how silly and dumb he can be. If you’re going to use him, you might as well use him the whole way, no matter how unpredictable or stupid things might get. 

Fallout 76: Well, it’s a Fallout game…

Fallout 3 is one of my favorite games and I’ve played through both New Vegas and Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is really where things went off the rails for Bethesda, as they neglected to include the things that made Fallout 3 special, like interesting dialogue and story choices. Nevertheless, I played through the game because the world was so fun to explore and the game mechanics—namely the combat and crafting—were upgraded enough to keep you hooked. I had fun with the different locales and film noir vibe that I wanted to play through the game at least once.

Fallout 76 is Fallout 4 without non-player characters (NPCs) and the odd real player wandering around. There are a few things I expect in each Fallout title, and they’re all here in the newest one: a truly open world, a wonky combat system, a big map to explore, a variety of strange enemies that you can run into anywhere, and a great atmosphere. I’ve heard a lot of complaining online about this game, but I refuse to complain when I’m playing something so similar to the old ones that I really like. Overall, the locations are beautiful, and I haven’t even wandered past the first few sets of buildings. Photomode is neat (I've populated the blog with a few of the screenshots I've taken from roaming around Appalachia) and I love just walking around and observing, taking in a fully-crafted world that’s very surreal and vibrant. The buildings, inside and out, are designed so well that I’m never disappointed when exploring, even if I don’t find any useful junk. It’s also nice to play in a world where you can roam anywhere, regardless of whatever level you’re at, fully aware that you will probably get killed and wanting to visit the farthest reaches of the map even more because of it (I realize that other open world games are like this, but I still find many of them hard to navigate properly, limiting their true open worldiness).

The game mechanics are still wonky, with a little bit of extra urgency since you can no longer pause the game whenever you look at your Pip-boy. It makes choosing the right weapon more crucial to survival and necessitates more hiding and running away when things aren’t going great, so you can heal or pick the right gun. I liked that aspect a lot because the Pip-boy was almost like a cheat code in all other Fallout games, stopping time and letting you fix yourself before going back into battle. The combat would be fun if this weren’t an online game, because the big problem with the system is aiming. VATS doesn’t work like it did in other Fallout games. To be fair, I’m still not sure how it works in this one. I use it mostly to sense any enemies around me, but every time I track them with it, I fail to figure out how to aim while I’m in VATS mode. Instead, I just aim naturally by holding L2. This has its own problems, as I miss so much more often that I should. Enemies that attack close up, like mole rats, are impossible to hit with a gun since the aim has to be exactly on target. Even then, I’ve still missed a bunch of times, probably because of lag. For bigger targets, like Super Mutants, this doesn’t pose much of a problem, but I’m not looking forward to how this plays out when I get to bigger and more dangerous foes.  

The most glaring thing that’s distressing about Fallout 76 is the complete lack of NPCs for storytelling purposes. There was considerable backlash against Bethesda because of how their approach to storytelling in Fallout 4, where the only real choice you could make was in which faction you wanted to be part of. Besides that, there was very little in the way of decision-making, and you couldn’t even complete quests without killing everyone in the room. The writing was lazy and boring, and that’s been replaced by quests that come from terminals, as if Bethesda just wasn’t even pretending anymore that it cared about story and dialogue. It’s okay to keep running around and doing what the computer tells me to for only so long, until you just figure that you’re better off exploring the map once over and calling it a day. I just recently started playing Life is Strange, and I'm beginning to debate whether I'd rather play a game like that, with limited actual gameplay yet an interesting and affecting story, versus wandering somewhat aimlessly around an infinitely larger and more complex world. With a game as big as Fallout 76, the decision should be an easy one, and I can't blame anyone but Bethesda for making me debate how much time I want to spend on their game. 

I’m hoping that my friends buy this game too—COME ON YOU LAZY SONS OF BITCHES, PONY UP—so I can at least run around, build bases, and shoot things with them while having conversations about how work was and how the kids are. With no other humans around because the map is so big that it’s hard to find other players to interact with, it’s a lonely world in Appalachia. When my character sleeps in a bed, it does seem like there’s no one else there, and I’m just looking at the ceiling waiting to regenerate health for a good 30 seconds. Maybe that was what Bethesda was working towards, an atmospheric touch of loneliness that makes you feel something different compared with their older games. The trouble is that, like all Fallout games, everything else—from the menus to the crafting system—need so much brainpower that it’s not even like a pared down, isolated gaming experience. You’re always busy, just by yourself, wondering how you’ll finish the next quest or what perks you’ll get once you level up. Therein lies the problem with having such a huge game and very little story to tell. I’ve got such an intricate world around me, I just wish it all meant a little more.  

As a side note, for anyone interested in the blog, don't be shy to post comments! The blog is in its infancy, so any movie or video game recommendations you'd like to see or any input towards making the blog better would be amazing. 

Zombeavers: An expertly-crafted, thoughtful B horror movie about...zombie beavers

Lately, mainstream horror movies have focused on the scary and supernatural, as films like Paranormal Activity and Halloween gathered huge national and international audiences. Filming a blockbuster horror movie must be feel repetitive at this point; how many ways can we scare you and how realistic does the acting have to be to make you feel horrible about it? Zombeavers belongs to another genre of horror entirely: B horror movies.

There aren’t many truly popular B horror movies. Probably the most well-known B horror movie director ever, Sam Raimi, isn’t even really known for his horror movies as much as his Spider-Man films. But there are a lot of them and they have specific qualities that make them classifiable as B horror. Calling them B horror is a misnomer anyway, because they’re not really horrific in any meaningful way. These movies are meant to be funny by appealing to people’s love of the excess and offensive. They’re not really horror comedies, like Shaun of the Dead, which was funny, yes, but based its jokes off of something more lighthearted. B horror encompasses sensibilities that are more off kilter and low brow, like laughing at someone try a backflip but land on their neck, except in a B movie, their neck would snap in half and the head would fall off, rolling away to an unsuspecting toddler who doesn’t understand what just happened and kicks it like a soccer ball into the net. It’s not JUST that the head fell off, as many gory, torture porn films would have you believe is entertaining, but the punchline at the end sets the tone of self-awareness, that whatever you’re watching is appalling, and everyone knows it, so what are you going to do about it? I suppose you could classify horror movies that are just utterly terrible in here too, because they’re unintentionally hilarious without being scary, and you’d be right. Zombeavers, however, manages to be both B horror and well-crafted, as well as thoughtful towards its audience.

The movie centers around a group of teenagers as they head to a cabin in the middle of the woods to partake in some debauchery and resolve personal issues amongst themselves, standard fare for a horror movie. From there, things go awry as the teens are attacked by zombie beavers, some get bit and turn into zombies, leaving fewer and fewer survivors. Replace “zombie beavers” with “zombies” and it’s a regular zombie movie without anything interesting attached to it. But add in zombies that are also beavers and you open yourself up to all sorts of gags that tell the audience, “we know this is dumb but come see how TRULY dumb it can be.” The movie has a sense of openness around the premise, with a death scene that involves *SPOILER WARNING* one of the teens being trapped by the beavers in a beaver dam (!). It’s not slapstick either, as the actors do a commendable job of playing the straight man in the face of what looks like stuffed animals come to eat them alive. The premise is also injected with some witty, clever writing that upends expectations in several places, including a sunbathing scene that takes an unexpected turn and a pretty surprising ending.   

It’s typical that a film like this has a 4.8 rating on IMDB. It reminds me of how people regard Freddy vs Jason, one of the funnier mainstream B horror movies, or how Hollywood realized that Evil Dead 2 was such a cult hit that they decided to remake the first movie in the vainest, most self-serious way possible. What made Evil Dead 2 such a classic was that it was the opposite of serious, so low-budget and over the top that turning it into a run-of-the-mill scary movie felt so much cheaper than even the original’s production values. Here, Zombeavers opts to take a more entertaining approach to horror, unafraid to revel in its stupidity while being intelligent, shameless, and self-deprecating. And honestly, it’s the reason you go to the movies in the first place: to have fun.

Basket Case: AHHHHH AHHHHH AAAHHHHHHH

This one is a real oldie. Basket Case was released way back in 1982, and it still holds up, even today. What can be said about this glorious movie, whose every line was so perfectly acted, so well-conceived that calling it an Oscar snub doesn’t even do it justice. It should have won for best picture, best actor, and every other award. Wait, what? Gandhi won best picture that year, you say? Who has even SEEN that movie? Honestly, no one in the last 20 years has watched Gandhi and it never even spawned a sequel. Basket Case has 2! Each one was terrible, but still!

I’ll leave it to IMDB to describe the plot of this one: “A young man carrying a big basket that contains his extremely deformed Siamese-twin brother seeks vengeance on the doctors who separated them against their will.” That encapsulates it perfectly. He hides his deformed brother in a basket at a hotel as he goes about exacting revenge. It’s so brilliantly thought out, you don’t even need to ask questions. Of course he would want revenge! The assholes tried to kill his brother by separating him and tossing him in the dumpster! Sigh, what monsters….

I barely need to mention the director’s name, but if I did, it would hook you instantly. Frank Henenlotter—he of the Brain Damage, Bad Biology, and Frankenhooker fame—expertly mixes in poignant dialogue with top notch visual effects to make something both harrowing and comical. I swear it couldn’t look any more real when Belial, the deformed brother, mutilates his persecutors, as he flies across the air effortlessly but with such grace, making you truly BELIEVE in his cause. You feel his pain as he tries to decide whether these people are actually worth killing, then kills them anyway. I can’t possibly ruin the finale, but it’s as unsettling and affecting as anything you’ll see in modern cinema (except maybe that last scene in the Avengers: Infinity War, boy that was a shocker).

Everyone should see this movie at least once in their lifetime. It’s an epic, monumental achievement in filmmaking, something so grand that 2 sequels couldn’t contain the sheer genius of the first. It’s a heartbreaking ode to Siamese twins, but also as capable of sending chills down your spine as movies like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist did in the 70s. So, if you’re sitting around the house and you’re spending 30 minutes perusing Netflix for something to watch because you’ve already binged Breaking Bad and The Good Place, go find a comfortable couch, pop some corn, and watch Basket Case (but not Basket Case 2 or 3, ew).  

Deadpool 2: Mel Brooks, but more violent

Deadpool 2 reminded me of old Mel Brooks movies, like Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Airplane! Those movies were family-friendly, but they were also non-stop farces that made fun of everything and everyone, including Mel Brooks himself. In his movies, nothing is sacred and everyone can be mocked, from the characters to the actors themselves, along with the movie’s own plot and setting as well as any other headline that was popular at the time. You couldn’t be part of a Mel Brooks production unless you were self-deprecating enough.

Of course, Mel Brooks movies weren’t nearly as offensive or as violent as Deadpool or Deadpool 2. It’s almost like they decided to make an over-the-top meta horror movie and ridiculed itself for making one in the first place, all while placing it under the banner of Marvel comics. Of course, this was Deadpool’s schtick from the comics as well, talking to the reader and laughing at everyone. To see it as a movie is something entirely different, though, because how many times in a superhero flick are people shredded to death and that’s the joke? It’s like a compendium of horrible impulses that tells you how bad they are but oh they’re so bad, it’s delightful. There’s a certain glee to it that only Ryan Reynolds can bring, a true happiness in making fun of everyone for being so damn intolerant of his inability to stop himself from doing something terrible.

The plot is pretty thin and stupid. A Russian gangster kills Deadpool’s girlfriend, which makes him depressed and suicidal, only he can’t kill himself no matter how hard he tries. He ends up back with Colossus at the X-Mansion, who tries to snap him out of it by making him a trainee member of the X-Men. Things end poorly when Deadpool tries to settle down a teen mutant at a boarding school who’s threatening to light everyone up in flames because he’s been abused by the headmaster and the staff. Thereafter, he tries to make it up to the kid before Cable, traveling through time to save his family, kills the kid first. It sounds like there’s some real emotion to be mined, but the entire thing is really a ruse to laugh at how stupid and fun (stupidly fun?) it all is. That Deadpool can’t be killed ever makes for some fun gross-out gags throughout the whole thing, all of which I can’t possibly spoil without ruining the film, and they don’t shy away from unabashedly killing off anyone that’s not a central character in the goriest, most obscene ways. The whole movie is laughing at you for enjoying such perversion and depravity.

Deadpool 2 does add a small layer of comicbook meta humor as well, with jokes that only make sense if you’ve followed the X-Men films and some quirky one-liners like “no more speaking lines for you.” Setting up these gags with such an excessively, comedically violent tone makes for something more than a mere splatterfest. It’s a wink to those who know, deep in their hearts, that the Marvel movies are big, dumb things where superheroes get to bash each other into oblivion to save somebody from something for one reason or another. They even integrate that idea seamlessly into the movie itself, with Cable playing the straight man seemingly teleported right out of any other Marvel movie and into Deadpool’s world, full of dicks and cocaine and mayhem. It’s what makes this so much better than horror comedies that use gore without any real purpose for it other than LOOK, DISMEMBERED LIMBS, FUNNY RIGHT?  That self-awareness goes a long way, even if it’s annoying and belligerent.

If you’re an obnoxious person (who isn’t, AMIRITE?!), this movie will cater to your tastes. Yes, it tries way too hard, but that’s the fun of it. It knows that it’s trying too hard and keeps chugging along with more one-liners, spewing them out like bile without really caring about anything, continuity be damned. I read somewhere that Ryan Reynolds isn’t interested in doing another sequel. It’s a shame because of all the Marvel and DC movies coming out—at least 3 major ones in any given year, and probably more now that Disney owns Fox—the franchise that truly understands the meaning of this film genre isn’t the Avengers, Black Panther, or Spider-Man; it’s Deadpool.   

Stir of Echoes: Struggling to keep it together

This is another older entry that I’ve seen multiple times. Like the Assassination of Jesse James, I see another layer each time I watch this movie, things I’ve missed or see a different way after a year or two. Like Jesse James, the movie is dreamlike, with a fog of disorientation followed by a revelation that seems final yet incomplete. It’s unfortunate that this movie came out at the same time as the Sixth Sense, a far inferior movie in terms of pacing and emotional impact. Where the Sixth Sense became popular based on low-key performances from Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment and an ending that was as ridiculous as it was shocking (what a twist!), Stir of Echoes was much more affecting, positioning regular people trying to find some meaning in their lives. As a ghost movie, it’s also a pretty haunting one, with a song that reverberates throughout the final scene, providing a quiet, melancholy twist.

The story centers around Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon), a blue-collar father whose begins to have visions after being hypnotized at a party by his sister-in-law. At the same time, his son, Jake (Zachary David Cope), is communicating with a ghost in the house, who may or may not be a girl that went missing months earlier. After briefly encountering the ghost, he become obsessed with the visions, berating his wife, Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), and Jake as he tries to parse what they mean and becoming more and more frustrated when he realizes that he can’t control what he’s seeing or when he sees it. Maggie tries to figure things out for herself, with the hopes that she can restore her husband’s sanity and figure out what’s going on with Jake

Stir of Echoes’ plot sounds like something that would be perfect for Nicholas Cage: guy who sees a ghost and becomes deranged, becoming abusive to everyone around him until he somehow saves the day. But the movie is so much subtler than that, with motivations behind each member of the family that hit close to home. Tom, a little weary of a normal life, wants to do something important with his life and to find a greater purpose, which contrasts with Maggie, who loves their down-to-earth routine and doesn’t mind that their lives are simple and uncomplicated. The thing that holds it all together is their love for each other and their son, even as Tom desperately tries to find something meaningful in his and Jake’s visions, and Maggie becomes frustrated. Because she doesn’t see the visions either, she becomes increasingly alienated from both of them and sets out on a quest to figure out what’s going on and why. It’s the bond that she and Tom share that ultimately brings them together, putting themselves in danger for one another as they finally realize the horrible truth behind Tom and Jake’s ghost.

The movie represents a realization of what life means for most of us and the rage against it to find something important to hold on to. It’s also a genuine, heartfelt ode to family and its importance in helping each other when things start to go off the rails, no matter how much frustration and anger spills over. I haven’t watched this movie since I’ve had kids, which is a total shame, because nothing for a parent is easier to connect with than a family trying to keep it all together every now and then. One of the scenes that I overlooked initially but eventually resonated most with was where the sister of the missing girl kidnaps Jake because he was talking to her ghost. She’s visibly upset and desperately wants to find out what happened to her sister. But it what it really does is foreshadow the thing that’s truly important to everyone who lives in their small town: family.