Doomsday's Paternity Leave Movie X-travaganza

Split
Watched 3/12



I know this type of experience is pretty common but it's still funny to me. Years ago I was in a theater watching a movie, I believe it was the first Expendables if I remember correctly, and a trailer for Devil came on. Towards the end of the scary, spooky trailer the text 'From M. Night Shyamalan' popped up. The entire theater roared with laughter. That story right there is such a good metaphor for the man's career, someone who was given the keys to the kingdom, hailed as the next great filmmaker, and everything just went to hell. To quote the elder Jeffrey Lebowski, 'the goddamn plane crashed into the mountain.'

To say I was gun shy before watching Split is the understatement of the century. Why the hell would I want to watch this movie?  Now, this is the part where I would start into M. Night but what's the point? What slander could I sling at the guy that hasn't already been said by much more prestigious figures than me? Considering how he got himself to the very top and spent the next fifteen years of his directing career making each subsequent film worse than the one previous, of course I wouldn't be anxious to watch this thing. The last movie of his I watched was The Happening, a movie so offensively, comically, embarrassingly, laughably, extraordinarily terrible that most people would pack up and spend the rest of their lives herding sheep in Mongolia rather than risk being seen in public in the United States again let alone Hollywood. It really is one of the worst movies ever made and I can't see how The Last Airbender or After Earth could be worse although I've heard that's the case which is beyond my comprehension. So I'll admit two things got me to give Split a chance. 1) Several people said it was good, and 2) One of those people was Neverending . Now don't get on your high horse, NE, but if you vouch for a movie then I'll take it seriously. That's why I've been coming to these boards for the better part of twenty years, because I trust all you guys. So back to Split. Split isn't a bad movie by M. Night standards or anyone else's standards either. The real driving force behind the entire thing is James McAvoy's performance. As you could tell from the trailer he has to exhibit several different personalities, from the proper Ms. Patricia with an British accent or 9-year old mischievous Hedwig. McAvoy's performance makes up for a lot of the sillier plot points and stuffy, almost nonsensical dialogue that other Shyamalan movies are choked with. It's a 100% performance driven movie and fortunately that performance eclipses those things that could detract from the overall quality. I will give Shymalan credit though because he certainly does have an eye for a good shot. There are a couple overhead shots down a spiral staircase that set an eerie mood, he uses slow close ups to nice effect and like many other filmmakers he knows when to focus in on the eyes, he's good at that. I also think it's interesting that Shyamalan is choosing to combine this movie with Unbreakable. I only watched Unbreakable when it was in theaters 17 years ago and I don't recall being very fond of it but I know enough to think that this little crossover comes off as a little...desperate? Hey, if I were M. Night Shyamalan I'd feel a little desperate too, but do you know what comes out of desperation? Not giving a shit. And do you know what comes out of not giving a shit? The willingness to take chances and sometimes that's just what an artist needs. Either that or he'll just churn out another movie that's fucking terrible. Place your bets.

Split was a major disappointment. Like you said, if it wasn't for McAvoy's performance it would be a total crap movie. I reluctantly gave it a chance (more I was "rewarded" it by Neverending in the film club) after I swore off M. Night films after The Happening.

He's a terrible writer. All the scenes with the psychiatrist were a joke. He delivers his exposition with no subtlety at all. And where are the twists and turns in the story? The way people championed the film I thought for sure M. Night had reached deep into the well and found at least a decent twist to cap the film off, but nope, we're giving an awful crossover "twist" to a movie no one has cared about in nearly twenty years.

Never again, never again...

The #1 movie in Italy right now.

Might be because they dub over his shitty dialogue...  

Mudbound: Mudraiser II
Watched 3/20



I'm not sure where I come down on this movie exactly. It has everything that should evoke passions and tempers from an audience but it goes about with little subtlety. It's the story of two families, one white and one black, working a cotton farm while they deal with physical hardships, war, and racism that's bubbling from below the surface. When each family's son returns from World War II, the veterans form a bond that transcends the expectations of their cultures until one day things come to a head thanks to the ne'er do wells of the Ku Klux Klan. I know it's a phrase I often use but this is another example of a movie that I think is trying really hard to have a message but it's lost amidst a pretty meandering screenplay. We scratch the surface of most characters but don't know that much about any of them. Jason Clarke and Carey Mulligan play the primary couple, Henry and Laura, who own the farm where everyone works. Laura is unhappy in her marriage because Henry is just...there. He doesn't do much other than run the farm and we really don't know what his convictions or motivations are. Their brother Jamie, overplaying his phony accent to the point of being annoying by Patroclus from Troy, is an alcoholic thanks to his war experiences but is the only one who can really relate to Laura. In the meantime Jamie befriends Ronsel, the African American veteran who is having his own personal issues. We know Jamie is one of the good white people because he doesn't say the n-word. That's how the movie tells us who the good guys and bad guys are. The bad guys are also part of the Ku Klux Klan, lead by Mike Erhmantraut who also says the n-word a lot, so we know how bad they are. The thing is there isn't much of a message or moral behind it other than things are pretty bad for everybody. There isn't much closure at the end with many of the principle characters because it didn't feel like the movie could decide what it wanted to say. It's alright I suppose but I think the lesson here is that you have to have more than evil Klansmen and a 'racism is bad' message to rise above being just an average movie.

Return keys are for pussies.

I hate the term "woke".

Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Watched 3/25



Believe it or not this was my first time watching this movie. The original Gremlins, dozens of times, one of my childhood favs, I just never got around to Gremlins 2 despite hearing that it was actually really good. It's a movie that once again features Gizmo, Billy and a fully dressed Phoebe Cates battling a horde of green monsters, this time in a New York skyscraper. The main purpose of Gremlins 2 is to go completely off the rails mocking everything from consumerism a la Paul Verhoeven to even having Leonard Maltin giving a scathing review of the first Gremlins before being attacked by them. During their rampage they attack a genetics laboratory and start drinking vials conveniently marked with whatever animal or human crossover they're about to turn into. We're quickly introduced to bat-gremlins, spider-gremlins, cross-dressing gremlins and even gremlins made out of electricity.

This movie looks like it was made for two reasons. One, to show off as many types of Gremlins they could come up with and two, to mock the first one as much as possible by breaking the fourth wall and frequently referencing the first film. There's a scene where the movie stops because the gremlins have 'broken the projector' and Hulk Hogan makes a cameo threatening that they had better put Gremlins 2 back on. It even makes fun of the extremely creepy and awkward story Phoebe Cates tells in the first one of her family discovering her dad's rotting corpse in her chimney only this time she's had a shocking experience on Lincoln's birthday. Basically where the first movie was based on a blend of horror and comedy, this was just pure insanity. There's no story behind Gremlins 2 whatsoever because like I said the main point was to exhibit different types of gremlins but because of that it never feels like you're watching an actual movie. In a way it gives me a good idea as to why a Gremlins 3 never got off the ground. A sequel has been thrown around for years and why not? In a time when nostalgia is at its peak you would think they would churn out another Gremlins movie but the question would be where the hell you would take it. Do you attempt to get sillier than Gremlins 2 or do you pull back and try to make something more similar to the first one? It's pretty incredible that Gremlins 2 makes the first Gremlins seem like an anchored, serious movie which is why I think it's a fair assumption that the hangups on Gremlins 3 relate to what you could even do with it. So yeah, Gremlins 2 is a pretty stupid movie that has some funny parts (I liked the Phantom of the Opera gremlin the most) but its complete lack of story, total absurdity and overall pointlessness make it feel like a missed opportunity when it could have really blown out the Gremlins mythos or done something more with any of the characters.

But seriously though, if they can make a Blade Runner sequel 35 years after the original then they can dust off the puppets and make another Gremlins movie.

Okay, I just watched this.  I had never even heard of this sketch before but there are so many reasons why it's great.  It's funny, it isn't ripped from today's headlines, it actually has some kind of point and isn't pandering to the lowest common denominator.  Basically it's everything that Saturday Night Live isn't.  I'm impressed that they even wrote this sketch, there's no reason it should have been made in the 2010s other than they thought it was clever.  I can get behind that.

Gremlins 2 is proof that ideas concocted on cocaine aren't always bad.