Klaus (2019) Directed by Sergio Pablos

This Christmas story produced for Netflix and featuring a leap forward in 2D animation might just be the thing that gets studios back into 2D animated movies. Disney's last attempt was "The Princess and the Frog" and while that film was AMAZING, it just couldn't push the ball to the top of the hill and beat the slew of 3D animated films that were taking over animation everywhere. Well, not quite everywhere. TV and independent filmmakers still were and are harnessing the magic that hand drawn animation can bring to a movie and I think while not wildly promoted like Pixar and Disney films, they lurked in the background reminding us that animation is more than one thing.

In comes Klaus, a sort of re-imagining of the Santa Claus legend with stupendous visuals and a story that really walks the line between light and dark in a way I haven't seen in a "children's" film before. It even give the late Jim Henson a run for his money in that regard. the story of never-do-well rich kid who is shipped the worst place on earth to teach him a lesson is fairly standard the stuff. It's the details that make this story stand out.

This project first released a teaser trailer in April 2015, 4 year's before it's release and all those years of work show in the final product. the backgrounds are beautiful and the characters have a depth to them not seen in even the most famous of Disney productions. Things changed from the teaser and previews, including the lead character's voice and the cutting of a series of gags where the postman keeps getting snow dumped on him while trying to make his rounds to the less than friendly population. Those cuts were a shame because they were fully animated and quite funny but I won't second guess the writer/director's choices in the final edit because the finished movie works so damn well.

This is one of the best and innovative animated films to be released in a long time. For an animator like myself, it's inspiring.

Max Mike Movies - new podcast!

Mike Luce has a new podcast with his friend Max. The conversations are loose and fun and they need support! So look fro them on tunes which is the process of getting done but in the meantime.... listen to them here
http://maxmikemovies.com

I have heard a sneak preview of a couple and they are well worth checking out! DO IT!

The Shape of Water (2017) directed by Guillermo del Toro

This film has had a lot of lead up to its release. Limited releases had critics swooning and the internet, being the internet had all sorts of opinions about it ahead of its release. Is it a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon? Is the monster a retread of Abe Sapien from Hellboy, a previous del Toro film?

Firstly, the film is excellent. It is filled with tropes we are all familiar with but they are presented in new ways and the performances have been lauded for good reason. Sally Hawkins is, as usual, amazing but she is given addition support by everyone else in the cast. Not one bad performance in the entire picture. Doug Jones, who is making a career by playing creatures it seems, is the man in the monster suit but - again as usual - he elevates it to something so much more.

The story is simple enough. An amphibious creature is kept in a secret U.S. government facility in the 60s and is experimented on for possible use winning the space race. The Russian have spies in place who want to take it or kill it, doesn't matter as long as the Americans don't learn anything from it. A young mute cleaning woman befriends (and more) it and learns to communicate with it and eventually helps it escape while the government forces lead by Michael Shannon try to recover the creature.

Its not the story but how it and the characters in it are handled that sets this apart from a B movie horror film. Michael Shannon is less evil and more just a total douche bag, having bought into every single character trait that was wrong but encouraged by much of society at the time. He is sexist, racist to be sure but it's how those traits are portrayed that make it work. Del Toro does a great job showing less over the top bigotry and goes instead for that kind of bigotry that masquerades almost as politeness. He repeatedly asks the black cleaning woman (Octavia Spencer - again so good in this) if she understands a word he just used when it's plain who the ignorant one the conversation really is. Richard Jenkins plays Hawkins older neighbour who is surely gay, but who, like many gay men at that time, doesn't seem to really understand his sexuality and pushes it to the back and instead prefers to live in the world of old movie musicals ( in a way that somehow comes of as not stereotypical). A minor character, the soda jerk is revealed to be a real jerk over time. At first he seems like a sympathetic ear to Jenkins' character but he personifies the underlying bigotry of that era pretty well when he refuses to serve black customers and rejects Jenkins the instant he innocently touches him on the shoulder and then bans him from the soda shop because it's a "family place".

The look of the film is everything you'd expect from a del Toro film, lush, detailed and a little surreal. The effects are seamless. In fact, as I read the end credits it was amazing to see how many post production people there were. Its proves you CAN have CGI in a film that actually works invisibly to enhance a film instead of taking you out of it. The music is not intrusive either but like the effects enhances the experience. Production wise there is nothing to complain about in tis movie.

Things I did not like as much in this movie are things I don't like as much in many other movies though you can find good reasons for them to be included in this film. If you don't like nudity in movies, this has a bit of it and like many de Toro films there is some graphic violence (especially involving cheeks - what's up with that in his films?).  As I said earlier there are many tropes in the scripts, it really does not go too far from convention plot devises and ends exactly how you would expect it would. I wish he had dropped in a few surprises in that regard.

Worth seeing? Absolutely! As good as his earlier film Pan's Labyrinth? Don't be crazy, that is a bar far too high to jump over more than once in a career. He may yet do it again, but the Shape of Water is not that movie.

The Devil's Playground (1976) directed by Fred Schepisi

This film follows the story of Tom a young man living in a Catholic seminary and also the lives of the Brothers who run it. Tom and the Brothers both have their challenges and stresses living within the framework of a religious institution and each deals with them in his own way. Some of the men in the order will "temp" their faith and resolve by going into town, drinking and then not picking girls in bars... but taking it just to to the limit of actually having sex. Tom's struggles are different as he tries to form relationships and live within the strict disciplines of the seminary. One of the most pious of the Brothers is tortured by fantasies of beautiful women as he keeps himself in shape by exercising and swimming and imagines them naked.  This slowly drives him crazy by the film's climax, leaving all involved to question the sanity of the vows and strict rules they agreed to live by. 

Nicely filmed and wonderfully acted, I found this small little Australian film a nice look into the struggles of some religious people and those left in their charge. The Brothers are shown as real men, struggling with faith and modernity and coming to terms with rules that, frankly, are harmful to any human's sanity. Nick Tate, who was Allan Carter in TV's Space 1999 plays one of the priests and i was surprised by his performance having only seen him in the space opera. (To be 100% honest, I first watched this film because I thought he was kinda hot in that show). 

As I noted in a previous post, this film also used the "allure"of pedophilia in it's posters and ads and I find it disturbing and misleading. A film this good might need something extra to gets seats in the theatre filled but promising sexual assault on film should never be how you do that. This was long before the exposure of the Catholic church's rape cover-ups but it seems worse to do even in light of that. 

The Shout 1978 directed by Jerzy Skolimowski

It seems odd to me that this film never reached cult status considering it’s « cult » bonafides. For example it stars Alan Bates, Susannah York, John Hurt and Tim Curry! The film is certainly weird enough and interesting enough to have gained multiple viewing by motivated audiences.  maybe the recent death of John Hurt will bring it more into the public eye. 

The story is that of a drifter who arrives in a  small seaside town who is taken in by a young couple. Hurt plays a musician experimenting with all sorts of new ways to produce sounds, a profession that the lifter uses to his advantage by telling the musician that he was trained by an Aboriginal shaman to produce a sound, a shout, that will kill any living thing that hears it. 

The mysterious guest, played by Bates, slowly takes over the household including the wife (who has a really bizarre walking on all fours scene) played by York. When the time come to prove his ability… he does, accidentally killing a homeless person sleeping on the beach within range of the terrible shout. 

The film is book ended with shots from inside an asylum where the story is being told as the inmates, all of whom are are featured in the story as Bates narrates while keeping score. This story telling device keeps the viewer off guard as while most of the events are shown as a flashback, there seems to be jumps forward and other directions mixed with the dreamlike imagery of some of the shots.  

The film is not perfect and from a 2017 point of view, there are some problems with the white guy who can learn and master the powers of the aboriginals. Why would they teach him? Why not just hire an aboriginal actor? I wouldn’t accuse anyone involved with racism by any means, but I also had issues with the « Last Wave » (1977)  for similar reasons even though Richard Chamberlain’s roles was better explained than Bates’ was in « The Shout ». I suspect the casting was more a case of who was close and available for this very low budget production.

This film is somewhat hard to see now, no DVD version in North America I can find. Another site stated it was viable in full on YouTube but that seems to have been taken down. 

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

The film studio alike is by far the most innovative animation studio around these days. Previous films, Coraline, Paranormal and Box Trolls are all great films and in many ways expand on who animated films are aimed at and have stories no other studio is telling. They are all done primarily with puppet animation with a smattering of CGI for practicality and enhancement.

The story of this film is maybe the weakest point of this film. My husband got detached from it about 15 minutes in but I can't say that's normal. I thought ti was a little weak but it kept my attention the entire way through. Some of the plot elements arrive WAY too easily... there is a quest to find magical armour elements, a sword, a helmet, armoured suit... but this aspect is over taken by all the other elements and gets puts the background and pretty much forgotten by the end of the film. None of the searched for elements make a notable diffference in the story.

Basically a young mother has saved her son from// something and hides him from the night near a small village. She and her son have magic powers which at fort consist of him making origami come to life to tell a story, his story it turns out. His evil grandfather sends his scary aunts to get him when he accidentally stays out too late and the adventure begins. This is not a children's tale,I'd recommend it to young teenagers and about... there is killing and death and main character die and do not come back despite having magical story elements. I can't speak to the voice talent quality as I saw it in French. The only voice in the English version I wish I had heard was George Takei, who is amazing in anything he does.

One thing anyone watching the film can not ignore is the visuals. They are more than AMAZING. I am a little biased towards this sort of technique as I used to de-rig (take out the supports and wires) of the puppets in these sort of projects, so I am well aware of the effort it takes to pull them off. As with their other films, the end credits have some behind the scenes clips off people working on the puppets. This really adds to the experience as you get not only an idea of how time consuming it is but also the skill it take sot making the puppets and set.. which are enormous in some cases. The giant skeleton is about 10 feet tall and animated frame by frame.



*note
the Slammer seems empty these days and abandoned by all the writers, including me. I just haven't had time or money to see anything but I hoped hat will change in the fall. I have a LONG list of thing to catch up on.

The Man From Earth (2007)

directed by: Richard Schenkman

written by: Jerome Bixby

David Lee Smith as John Oldman

Tony Todd as Dan

John Billingsley as Harry

Ellen Crawford as Edith

Annika Peterson as Sandy

William Katt as Art Jenkins

Alexis Thorpe as Linda Murphy

Richard Riehle as Dr. Will Gruber

It’s rare to find a new film worthy of being a cult film but I think this film with it’s simple premise, intimate feel and interesting cast and history is one of them.

The writer, Jerome Bixby had been working on this idea for decades and completed it on his death bed. His son worked tirelessly to make the production happen. The story about a man who reveals to a group of close friends that he is possibly 14 000 years old is not the first time the author visited this material. In the 60s he wrote the Star Trek episode «Requiem for Methusleh» which covers some of the same themes. Some of the actors are from various later Star Trek incarnations, in fact, and the show evens gets a mention during the film. 

The filmmaking is really well done, the low budget helps rather than hurts the production. The entire drama takes place either in or in front of a cabin in the woods. It never falls into a «filmed play» mode, but really squeezes out solid cinematography in a limited space. The lead actor, David Lee Smith gives a great underplayed performance. He has an emotional distance and quietness that sells the idea he might really be as old as he claims and there is a real honesty to the character. As he unfolds his story, at first framed as a science fiction he may be writing, it becomes more and more clear he believes it and more to the point, those hearing start to believe it as well. 

The problems with the story are more things that bother me personally than maybe actually faults in the movie's structure. 

«spoilers coming»

While the telling of story is fascinating, some of it’s details bothered me. The concept that he was «one man telling a story from one point of view, from the perspective of a single person only in one place at a time», is brilliant but somewhat sullied by a revelation that he may have been the inspiration for the Jesus Christ mythology. This is told in a compelling way and the objections of the obligatory biblical literalist friend don't feel forced. In the same sort of vein, the guests leave for the most part either believing or disbelieving what they have heard and even at this point, there is cause for us the audience to feel ambiguous as well. A compelling story is not proof of such an amazing claim. I liked that. Sadly, not everyone has left the party and while John is telling his soon to be ex girlfriend before he moves on (he leaves every decade or so for a new life as people start to notice he isn’t aging) and mentions one name too many. The psychologist who has been called in to assess John’s sanity recognizes the name as that of his father, a Harvard professor who left he and his mother almost 60 years ago. This is not thrown in willy nilly… in fact it explains why in his questions, he seems to be stuck on John’s impressions of fatherhood. Also, Dr. Gruber has lost his wife the day before and has brought a gun to the cabin. At first it seems like a test for John, then maybe a means to commit suicide and finally a possible reason might be he suspected John was his father all along and wanted to kill him. In a very well done shot, we are shown the gun actually has no bullets in it. This mystery is thankfully never solved as, upon having it confirmed that his father is an immortal from caveman times, he has a heart attack and dies (He was complaining of pains and tiredness throughout the film). Smith's characters is very affected by his death, but in a quiet, in character, understated way. He had to have known for years this man was his son and for some reason, chosen to be near him and risk exposure. 

This revelation, though well done, is not an asset to the story, in my opinion. I would have preferred everyone (including us) leaving with their own ideas as to what has just happened and him deciding to give a little more time to the woman who loves him but he can never love the same way after losing so many people over possibly 14 000 years of life on earth.