Faults (2014)

Posted on by
Reply

faults01Faults has many tricks up its sleeve.  The first being that the first scene in the diner leads us to expect a Coen Brothers style of comedy.  In fact, cult deprogrammer Ansel Roth seems at times to be perfectly channeling William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo.  He needs money, he is twitchy-nervous, he will constantly tell small shortsighted lies which will only benefit him until the next question.  He even loses control and begins flailing his arms around in frustration.  He a loser.

Though it is impossible to watch this first scene and not start thinking of Macy, it takes only seconds for Leland Orser to replace him in your mind.  Whether he had Macy in mind when forming this character, or not, Orser owns it — both in the first scene and as the tone of the movie changes.

faults02From his brown suit to the gross way he scoops up ketchup with his fries, to his trying to scam the diner out of a free meal and struggling with the manager, it is a great dark comic scene establishing his loserhood.  It is a delight, but not a surprise that he steals batteries out of the hotel’s TV remote.

He exudes a little more confidence when he is standing in front of the small group that is attending his seminar / book-signing seminar at the hotel.  But really, how many people is that topic going to draw?  The ones that are there certainly have little interest in buying his books.  It is strange that they did not set this in a larger room to emphasize the size of the crowd.

faults03Book-signings are kind of anxiety-inducing events anyway.  If it is a popular author, you will have no time at all with them, and walk away with an illegible scribble.  I can’t even conceive what a proper thing to say is.  What could you possibly say to them that they haven’t heard a million times; and what could you ask them that you couldn’t Google in 30 seconds.  You’re left with a full price hard-cover that has gained nothing  in value[1].

faults04If it is a less popular, or local, author, it is just kind of sad seeing them sit at the little table by themselves with stacks of unsold books as you can’t help but glance furtively from your various vantage points in the store.  It’s like a guy at CostCo whose at the end of the aisle whose job is giving out samples of kale.

I am trying (and projecting ahead, probably failing) to make 500 words without saying almost anything about the story.  Claire’s (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) parents hire Roth to kidnap their daughter for deprogramming from the Faults cult.  Even though he is a loser who has recently fallen-from-grace, he once had a TV show and a popular book.  And frankly there aren’t that many deprogrammers in the yellow pages[2].

There are so many things to be enjoyed along the way, that I just can’t being myself to pick and choose.

This is a good one.

faults05Post-Post:

  • [1] The same booksigning issues also all apply to the actors who appear at conventions. At least there you can gawk at the actors — hey, that Traci Lords is holding up well!
  • And paying for an autograph at a convention would just make me feel like a whore even though I’m the one paying (in theory — I don’t really get the point of that either (in the convention context)).
  • [2] Fat yellow books of phone numbers in the old days that listed businesses by category, then alphabetically — so every region had an AAA Bail Bondsman and AAA Locksmith).
  • Title Analysis:  Conveniently, Faults is the name of the cult.  Claire explains that it means a change is on the way.  Roth later describes how pressure can build in a fault causing it to explode.  So, well done.
  • And that’s 600.

Thriller – The Prisoner in the Mirror (05/23/61)

Posted on by
3

tprisonerinthemirror02Paris 1910 — I ‘m bored already.

A man is entertaining a woman by doing a few magic tricks for her at dinner. Despite not being six, she is charmed by his shenanigans.  He produces a bird from under a napkin — God knows where he had the poor thing jammed during the amuse-bouche and escargot.  Then he releases the filthy creature in the restaurant to shit in everyone’s consomme — to her delight.

Ultimately, she is hypnotized by his reveal of a huge diamond necklace.  But the scene tprisonerinthemirror03turns to horror as she screams, imagining him turn into a skeleton and his bony fingers putting the necklace on her.  He apparently strangles her as the gendarmes come after him as he is painting over an evil mirror. Rather than face trial and be judged mad, he throws himself out the window, uncannily splatting in the spotlight of a curiously focused streetlamp.

“Half a century later,” Boris tells us.

Professor Robert Langdon, er Harry Langham is interested in an old mirror he has read about and has his assistant, Fred Forrest, scouring the antique shoppes and museums looking for it.  Langham himself finally finds the mirror in a Paris antique shoppe, still tprisonerinthemirror04painted over.  As he scrapes away a bit of the paint, he sees the image of a woman killed by the original owner of the mirror.

He has it shipped home to America, or specifically to the home shared by Langham and Forrest.  Forrest wants his sister Kay to marry Langham and settle him down.  They move the mirror up to the bedroom where Langham gets out the paint scraper and cleans the entire mirror.  He sits staring at the mirror for hours, but sees only himself.  Finally in the dark, he sees the woman lighting candles.  She is able to hear him, but can’t speak herself.

When he tries to show his girlfriend Kay, she sees only her own reflection.  And as she is played by a very hot 33 year old Marion Ross (Mrs. C on Happy Days), that should be tprisonerinthemirror07enough.

But Langham throws her out, and is then met by a man in the mirror who explains that the original owner, evil Count Cagliostro has trapped them in that other dimension, but that they are alive.

The man recites an incantation that is supposed to free them from the mirror, but instead hypnotizes Langham into joining them in the mirror dimension. This enables the man to take inhabit Langham’s body outside the mirror.  The woman can now speak and tells him the man was actually the evil Cagliostro.

Cagliostro goes out for a night on the town for the first time in 50 years, foolishly passing up the very hot Mrs. C who was just complaining of Langham not paying enough attention to her.  Luckily for the future Mr. C, Cagliostro picks up a floozy down by the docks and kills her, drawing the police to his house.

tprisonerinthemirror08The next morning, he sets his eyes on Kay.  She is Langham’s girlfriend, and is there first thing in morning, but he wakes up alone in a twin bed?

That night, Kay deduces that he killed the floozy.  Fred busts him for killing Kay.  The mirror is busted in a struggle.

A nice little story, but with major strings left dangling — like the fate of 3 major characters.  Is Langham dead, or trapped forever in the other dimension?  How about the girl in there with him? Most importantly, is Kay actually dead or hypnotized perhaps banished to a mirror downstairs?

Post-Post:

  • The representation of the people in the mirror is sometimes fairly amusing as it is obvious they are just standing in a box.  In some scenes not even a sheet of glass has been installed to look like a mirror.
  • Supposedly Marion Ross is given the ironic toast “Happy Days” but I missed it and ain’t going back.
  • One year later, Lloyd Bochner would be hauled aboard a Kanamit spaceship just because no one could decipher that To Serve Man was a cookbook despite the pages and pages of full-color tasty dishes.

Creep (2014)

Posted on by
Reply

creep01Hipster Doofus videographer Aaron is heading for the mountains.  He answered an ad for $1,000 per day “filming services, discretion is appreciated.”

Aaron walks up a virtiginous set of steps and knocks; and rings; and calls.  No answer to any of them.  Not even a ruffled curtain.  Whoa — prom night flashback.  He ponders his next move as he looks down these amazing stairs, and the nice new axe buried in a tree stump right beside them.  He decides to wait in the car.

Luckily it is a short wait as Joseph shows up and and tells him he likes his face and gives him a big hug.  They go inside and Joseph describes his health, how he had cancer of the liver which spread to the lungs, how he took chemo, and beat his cancer into remission immediately.  Is this the project?  Not exactly Shoah.

creep03And now he has an inoperable brain tumor the size of a baseball.  Oh . . . sorry about the Shoah crack.

He says he experiences dizziness and cognitive misfirings which I’m thinking is going to come into play anytime now.  Joseph has a wife name Angela and has a child on the way.  He wants to make a video diary for his unborn son just as he saw one time in a movie.

creep05The job is to keep the camera rolling and Joseph says to just following him around, a normal day in the life of his dead dad.  Oddly, he wants the first scene to be in the tub.  If he was that intent on a full day, why not start with taking his morning dump on camera?  He indeed gets naked and in the tub, pantomimes playing with his baby boy (not a euphemism).

Then he dances around for his unborn son in a wolf mask named Peach-Fuzz.  They put on some wacky hats go on the road.  They are heading for a lake that supposedly has healing powers.  And maybe more opportunity for nakedness.  They park the car and head into the woods.  Not being loaded up with camera equipment, Joseph is able to dart into the woods.  Aaron goes looking for him, and Joseph pops out from behind a rock, throwing a scare into him.  Joseph says after the shock faded, there was a couple of seconds where Aaron looked like he wanted to kill him.

creep07Aaron is a little worried that they won’t be able to find their way home. Then Joseph spots the healing waters — a small rapid / waterfall and a pit of water shaped like a heart. Absolutely nothing comes of this or the idea of being lost as they are wolfing down pancakes in a diner seconds later.

At nightfall, Aaron feels he’s earned his $1,000 but Joseph insists they have a whiskey to celebrate their “merry day.”  Joseph also wants to relate a story, off-camera, of bestiality and the wacky time he broke into his own house and raped his wife disguised in the Peach-Fuzz mask.  Aaron’s key’s go missing and he tries to search Joseph while he is sleeping.  Unfortunately, Joseph’s phone rings and Aaron answers it.  Angela — who says she is really his sister — advises him to leave the house immediately.  OK, so now that raping-his-wife story is creepy.

The film takes an unexpected turn structurally.  Up to this point, the scares were jump scares — literally — Josef jumping into view and scaring Aaron.  But there was more curiosity than suspense in trying to figure out just what was happening.  But Aaron makes it home and receives several strange objects, in the mail, on his doorstep, on his windowsill.

Now, what could happen on a beautiful day like this?

There are a few minutes of genuine creepiness and suspense, then it goes back to more of a curiosity.  In the end, though — especially at the end — it came together for me, but can see how others would hate it.

Post-Post:

  • The movie refered to is My Life with Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman.
  • So Joseph’s Internet was slow because the “History was full”?
  • Aaron calls the police but has no evidence he can offer — no last name, no address, guess he ditched the phone.  Too bad he didn’t have anything.  Except the picture Josef sent him, and hours of video, which he didn’t think to mention to the police.

Ray Bradbury Theater – Sun and Shadow (10/03/92)

Posted on by
3

a/k/a Sun and Shaddow, as the DVD menu spells it.

We open on a Mexican coastal town.  In a casa over-looking the village square, a woman says, “Breakfast, husband.  And son of the father who is my husband.” Is that the way Mexican women talk?  I had to play it three times to make sense of it.

Ricardo, the father of the son whose mother is his wife is looking from the balcony at the beautiful day.  Suddenly several vans and a Porsche roll into the square and a Hollywood film crew leaps from the vehicles, scattering to their positions.  There is the bumbling rbtsunandshadow03crew, the hot model, and the arrogant director.  So I guess, some stereotypes are alright.

Ricardo is happy with none of this as they have chosen his stairway for the location, and lured his son Tomas to the street to watch the excitement.  The director realizes what is happening and offers Ricardo a few Pesos to use his home.  Ricardo still insists that he move on.  The director, not used to a principled man says, “What?  Move my crew?  All this equipment?  Now?”  Mind you, this entire set-up occurred in the time it took Ricardo to walk down a flight of stairs.

So they move one street over as Ricardo continues to tell off the director for thinking of his people as cardboard cutouts, and his house as a prop.  Once they start filming, Tomas is in the way, so they give him a serape, a sombrero and tell him not to smile as the camera pans across him.  Ricardo shows up again, angry that his son his being used as a prop and orders him home.  Tomas takes off, but with the American dollars still in his pocket, and still wearing the serape and hat, I notice.

The crew starts filming again, this time at the home of Ricardo’s neighbor Jorge who seems to have no problem with it.  Like a classic American do-gooder, Ricardo feels he must explain to Jorge that he is too stupid to understand what is going on.

rbtsunandshadow06The producer of the commercial arrives.  Ricardo puts on a little show for everyone asking what he can do to look more Mexican for their clown show (which he isn’t in, anyway) — sweat a little more?  Grow his hair a little longer?  Tear a hole in his shirt?  He is indignant that his people are being exploited and is adamant in being a role-model for the dignity of his people in the face of these interlopers.

So he walks into the shot and drops his pants.

The production moves to the beach to get away from this nut, but he has already proclaimed the sky as his, so this seems unlikely to work.  The producer decides to “try harder” to buy him off.  Reflecting the low budget of the series, his open wallet briefly exposes a fan of singles.

A policeman finally arrives, and the director illustrates the problem.  As he starts shooting, Ricardo walks into the shot followed by a crowd of his neighbors, stands between the girls (a second has mysteriously become part of the commercial), and drops his pants again.

Again with the speeches, he says that as long as there is one man like him in ten thousand in every city, things will be good.  Without him, chaos.  Even Tomas gives back the money he was paid.  Once again, a single is prominent on top of the fold. They couldn’t have spared a Benjamin?   Just for the outer note?

rbtsunandshadow09There could have been something here, but it was all so simplistic.  The director did not ask permission to use the location — that was wrong.  Ricardo would not take money to allow the location to be use — entirely his decision.  But then he sabotages the production at his neighbor’s house, and on the beach.  What was his point?  They were just looking for a location, no one was being mocked.  Even dressing up Tomas was just throwing the kid a bone.

Ricardo is clearly an intelligent man, but he is reacting like an ancient tribesman who thinks a photograph is going to steal his soul.  Fine, he drove the production out of town instead of them working locally, spreading around a few dollars, bringing a little excitement to the village, probably throwing a kick-ass party that night, and everyone sharing a little weed.  Nice work.  Hey, Mexico, you have those fascistic, know-it-all, do-gooders, too?

rbtsunandshadow08Other than the misguided actions of Ricardo, there were some good points to the episode.  The director was suitably arrogant, British and pony-tailed.  The locations, ironically, were interesting.  And Gregory Sierra, despite his character’s baffling philosophy, was excellent.  He has nothing on IMDb this century — I hope it’s because he just retired on a pile of money, because he was always a great actor.

Post-Post:

Meh.

Midnight’s Child (1992)

Posted on by
1

midnightschild0020 Horror Movies for $7.50 — Part XV of XX.

A title card tells us we are starting off in Stockholm Sweden so hopes are high with visions of nurses, stewardesses and — that being a free country, bikini teams — dancing in my head. Nope, nuns.  Well that was a buzz-kill.

While schoolgirl Anna is lured to the science lab on the last day of school, another girl goes through her luggage, passport, plane tickets, and au pair contract.  OK, OK, au pair . . . this thing is salvageable.  Anna gets to the dark lab and is clobbered by a pestle[1] the size of a bowling pin — WTF were they mashing up in there?  Cut to a well manicure hand turning on the gas in the lab (which has more jets than United), a body strolling past a lit candle, leaving the school, and KABOOM.

midnightschild02Back in the USA, hot business woman Kate (a Linda Hamilton doppelganger) comes home to a house that is messier than my condo, like they just moved in.  That day.

Stay-at-home dad Bob makes dinner for her and their 8 year old daughter Christina played by 10 year old Elizabeth Moss and looking exactly like she does in Mad Men.  Somehow Bob has managed to burn dinner in  a microwave with a freakin’ timer, so they order enough Chinese food for Peking. On the bright side, maybe they don’t have a gas stove.

midnightschild03That night, just as Bob and Kate are about to have the sex, faux-Anna (hereafter known as Anna) knocks on the door.  Despite her first day being a disaster, she stays on at the house.

Meanwhile, back in Stockholm, Kirsten’s (the faux Anna’s) father is suspicious why her personal things are gone from her room.  Personally, I am suspicious why the enormous conflagration did not seem to do any damage to the school.

Other than the inevitable 1) au pair very mildly flirting with the father scene, and 2) mother feeling replaced and threatened scene, not much happens in the middle section, yet I was never bored. The cast was good in their roles, even though I didn’t recall seeing most of them (as adults, anyway).

midnightschild08So Anna took Christina to a theme park 2 days before Kate had promised to take her.  So Nick and Anna went shopping for Christina’s birthday presents without Kate because she was working.  Nothing radical ever really happened, but that’s all it took to get to the two lines that ignited the 3rd act:  Kate:  “I want that woman out of my house. Now.  Today.”  Nick: “What do we tell Christina?  That Anna had to go away because mommy couldn’t stand the competition?”  Oh no you d’int!

Act III:  Kate storms into the house and into her bedroom, slamming the door.  She midnightschild09immediately gets a call from Dr. Loomis — er, I mean “Anna’s” father. Since his character gets no name on IMDb, let’s just go with Loomis.  He tells Kate that “Anna” is really his daughter Kirsten and , “She is EVIL!”  Wow, he IS Dr. Loomis.  “And that she will do anything to get what she wants . . . your child.”  Christina has been chosen by Anna to make a bond with the devil.

They agree on a meeting place and hang up, but Anna has been eavesdropping on the kitchen phone.  Oddly, Kate has been talking on a black phone, and EVIL Anna has been listening in on a white phone.  Seems like . . . well, I ain’t no director.  Kate tears through the house looking for Christina, but she and “Anna” have fled and are hiding in the woods.

midnightschild13Rather than call the police, Kate goes through “Anna’s” room and finds 2 passports and a t-shirt from the Rhode Island School of Design.  She breaks into Nick’s studio and finds a Gieger-esque painting of the family and “Anna”.  She runs to Christina’s bedroom to find her coloring — so what was the point of hiding in the woods.  As Kate drags Christina screaming out of the house, she is stopped by Anna who has enlisted Nick and, for some reason, the landscaper to stop her.

Kate, again forgoing the police, goes to see Loomis at an abandoned building scarier than “Anna”.  There is the usual EVIL rigamarole, a pact with the devil, wedding a child bride, a pendant, a book.  On the other hand, Satan waits until the child’s 21st birthday to bear him a child.  So either devil-babies have remarkably long gestation periods, or Satan does have some boundaries.

midnightschild14The landscaper finally has a purpose as he kills Loomis in the classic “always run in a straight line when a car or spaceship is bearing down on you” strategy.  Finally Kate calls the police — no, wait, she drives home,  The wedding ceremony has already begun with Nick creepily giving away the bride and putting the pendant on her.  In a struggle, fire spreads throughout the orchard as “Anna” escapes with Christina into the burning house — another brilliant strategy.

Caught between “Anna” and her mother, Christina does the right thing and tosses the book into the fire.  “Anna” tries to retrieve it, but is killed as the roof collapses — a trick Satan usually saves for snowy church roofs.

midnightschild15Despite a firey load-bearing member[2] collapsing on top of her, “Anna” escapes without so much as a singe as she is seen hitchhiking.  Looking like she does, she easily gets a ride — and what luck, a nice couple with a daughter.

There is absolutely nothing remarkable or fresh about this movie, but somehow I found myself kind of liking it.  Maybe it was little Elizabeth Moss looking crazily like grown Elizabeth Moss, maybe it was grown Marcy Walker (Kate) looking like grown Linda Hamilton, maybe it was Olivia D’Abo just looking awesome, maybe after a rough week, I just needed a big fat comfortable chair of a movie.

Would I ever recommend it to anyone?  Never.  Will I ever watch it again?  Never.  Yet, somehow I didn’t feel like it was a waste of time.

midnightschild06However, the poster is God-awful.

Post-Post:

  •  [1] Finally, I know which part is the mortar and which part is the pestle.  It’s been keeping me up nights.
  • [2] Coincidentally, the same thing Satan had for Christina in a few years..
  • Executive Producer:  Victoria Principal, who in 1992 should have been in front of the camera.
  • The director went on to do several episodes of Breaking Bad, winning an Emmy for one.
  • Does anyone eat Chinese food at home with chopsticks?  Even the Chinese?  Use a fork, ya hipster doofus!
  • Was the Rhode Island School of Design t-shirt a joke?  That was the alma mater of David Byrne, maybe best known for Psycho Killer.
  • The plural of au pair is aux pairs.