31 Days of Halloween

I defend Red Dragon, so I'm not gonna criticize you for loving Hannibal. LOL. We're both in the minority.

That's probably the better movie actually.  It's not "good" exactly, but I definately remember liking it more than the first one.  And no, there isn't some vast continuity that you'll be missing out on.

In 1964 a former track runner and aspiring entrepreneur from Oregon named Phillip Knight was in Kobe Japan while on a post college trip around the world and while there he discovered a line of running shoes made by the Onitsuka Tiger company that so impressed him that he went out on a limb and bought distribution rights for these sneakers for the Western United States. He then went home and showed the shoes to his old University of Oregon track coach, Bill Bowerman, who offered to join together with Knight to sell them and they eventually formed a company called Blue Ribbon Sports. Long story short, the company worked out pretty well for them. By 1971 they started designing and manufacturing their own sneakers and changed their name to Nike, Inc. The rest, as they say, is history.

Why am I talking about a sneaker company? Well, decades later Phillip Knight met another Oregonian businessman, an animator named Will Vinton who had a small but growing animation studio. This studio was probably most famous for having done work on the movie Return to Oz and for making the Fox TV series “The PJs.” Vinton needed a new investor and that’s where Phillip Knight came in. Knight’s son Travis was an aspiring animator and it seems like getting him a job was a large motivating factor in him making an investment in the company. Will Vinton Studios continued to struggle though and eventually Knight purchased the studio outright, placed Travis Knight on the board, had Vinton himself leave the company (with a severance package), and rebranded it as Laika animation.

So, we’ve got a rich entrepreneur buying a company for his son and placing him at its head out of sheer nepotism and pushing out the artist who started it. That’s not exactly the most inspiring origin story for an animation studio and poetic justice would probably demand that the company’s output would be soulless product devoid of artistic merit, but that isn’t what ended up happening at all. Instead, Laika has become something of a specialist in making “alternative family films.” They use stop motion to make films that are still more or less for families but which are a little edgier and more offbeat than what gets made even in quality animation studios like Pixar. That’s not to say that they’re making movies that are wildly transgressive or uncommercial, they do get wide releases after all, but it is telling that they’re distributed by Universal’s Focus Features imprint rather than the parent company. Their films have so far had a creepier, more horror tinged tone, and that tone was established by their breakout first feature: Coraline.

Coraline (2009)

For their debut feature, Laika turned to two people with an established track record in dark fantasy: Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman. Selick is an animation pro most famous for being the director of the Tim Burton produced The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. However he was also responsible for the film Monkeybone which was a pretty big flop and could have ended his career as the director of feature length films. He spent most of the 2000s in the wilderness; he did the practical effects work on Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou in 2004 and in 2005 he met up with Laika and directed their Annie nominated CGI short film “Moongirl.” The collaboration seemed to work out and for their first feature film Laika and Selick decided to adapt Neil Gaiman’s 2002 young adult novel “Coraline.” Gaiman is of course a pretty ubiquitous name in the world of dark fantasy and even today is perhaps best known as the creator of the “mature readers” comic book series “The Sandman.” Some of his work is meant for children, some is made squarely for adults, but everything he does maintains a certain sense of dark whimsy and if the film is any indication that’s certainly true about “Coraline.”

Coraline came out in 2009, a year that I’ve talked about a lot over the course of this series. It was easily the biggest year for “mature” family films like this and Fantastic Mr. Fox and Up and so on and so forth. The film from that year that it reminds me of the most is probably actually Where the Wild Things Are in that both films are about attention-starved little kids who need to escape to a fantasy world because their parents don’t want to entertain them. Both films are perhaps playing off of Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film Pan's Labyrinth, which did something similar within more R-rated trappings and each film does so with different levels of ambiguity. I interpret the fantastical elements of Where the Wild Things to be entirely within the child’s imagination for example while I think Pan’s Labyrinth is supposed to be pretty ambiguous. I think Coraline, by contrast, is supposed to be taken literally for the most part but like the other two movies you can kind of see how a similar adventure could fill a void that the protagonist needs at this point in her life.

Come to think about it, the movie is also kind of similar to Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Both films have their child protagonists trying to save their parents, who’ve been captured by a malevolent force, and both are forced to explore a strange parallel world filled with wonders and terrors. However, all this talk of other movies perhaps makes the film sound more derivative than it really is. In fact, this is a pretty damn creative movie by family film standards. The film doesn’t use stereotypical Halloween ghouls (vampires, witches, ghosts, etc.) and instead gives us an abstract demon with a unique looks and modus operandi which never quite loses its mystery. The film uses dollhouses as a motif and manages to use the image of people who’ve had their eyes replaced with buttons to good effect.

In general, the film doesn’t feel much like The Nightmare Before Cristmas at all. That film tried to feel like a funhouse rollercoaster with its songs and scattershot horror ideas, while Coraline is significantly more focused and subdued. The character models look relatively realistic by stop-motion standards and, at least while the film is in the real world, and it’s a lot more relatable than the fantastical realms of Tim Burton’s stop-motion films. Selick seems to have grown a lot as a filmmaker in the nearly twenty years since he made TNBC; he’s developed an eye for interesting tilted camera angles and uses them judiciously and to good effect. At times the film does seem to break the immersion with an off choice here or there. For instance, there’s a character named Mr. Bobinsky who seems completely out of place, firstly because he’s a large personality and secondly because he’s inexplicably blue. For the most part though, the film has a very good grasp of tone and rarely makes stupid mistakes to dumb things down for the audience.

One thing that did sort of disappoint me about the film was actually the character of Coraline. From the film’s advertising I’d kind of gotten the impression that Coraline was something like twelve or thirteen years old, but she was actually more like eight or nine, and that makes a pretty big difference. Frankly, she sort of seemed like a brat. I did not particularly like Dakota Fanning’s voice performance in the film and I couldn’t really relate to the character’s general immaturity and gullibility. When the alternate world presents itself, we as an audience are already well aware that it’s evil and it’s a little frustrating that the character doesn’t see through the façade. Still, this is less of a problem during the second half of the film after the villain has presented herself and is in full-on witch mode. It’s at that point where the film moves from being merely unsettling to being what is about as creepy as it gets in a PG rated animated film.

I don’t know that I’d call Coraline “great” by any means, but it did impress me a lot more than most family movies and I totally see why it stood out as much as it did when it came out. Like a lot of movies, it attempts to be a modern fairy tale and does it in a very smart and highly literate way. There’s a creativity to it that’s all too often lacking in family films and its execution feels fascinatingly uncompromising. This is not the kind of movie you make when you’re trying to set your studio up as the next Dreamworks or Pixar, it’s the kind of movie you make when you’re trying to become the next Studio Ghibli. Laika clearly wants to carve out and dominate a niche and Coraline was the perfect calling card to build that niche. If I had seen this when I was a kid I probably would have loved it, and I suspect there’s a whole cadre of fourteen year olds around today who saw this when they were nine and will one day be very nostalgic for it.
***1/2 out of Four

These are great:

To this day I still love House II. It's such a fun movie.

16. Night of the Creeps



Night of the Creeps is a decently fun camp horror film, but I can't say I'll be joining the cult any time soon. The basic premise is alien slugs turn people into zombies, so some college students try and stop them. For fans of these types of films, this is a fun watch. The characters are distinct, the humour is prevalent, and there's lots of zombie action in the third act. However for as much seemingly cool stuff as there is here, none of it really pops. The characters are good but not great, there's some solid humour but it's never hilarious, and there is lots of action but none of it is great. Basically it's a movie that does a lot without excelling at anything. Anyway, I enjoyed the film while it was on but forgot it more or less as soon as it ended. It's kind of like cotton candy. It tastes good when you're eating it, but as soon as it dissolves it's gone forever.

I will give the film credit though for a scene midway through between the main character and his best friend. It was actually kind of a touching moment and I didn't expect the film to "go there".

C

The “X” in the title Jason X could be interpreted as either the letter X or as the roman numeral for ten. The “ten” would fit given that this is the tenth film of the series, though the letter X would perhaps make more sense given that the previous films weren’t called “Jason” and the title maybe rolls off the tongue a little easier that way. Personally, I find it a little more amusing to just call it “Jason in Space,” because that title would be both hilarious and accurate. Anyway, this is the kind of movie that makes you appreciate just how little you can buy with eleven million dollars. That’s reportedly how much this movie cost to make. It sounds like a lot, and yet this movie looks cheap as hell. Seriously, this set, this cast, and this writing are about of the caliber I would have expected from a somewhat ambitious science fiction themed softcore porn movie. Or, maybe a better comparison point is a direct-to-Syfy movie… either way it’s not a flattering comparison. Anyway, this movie puts me in a bit of a weird spot because it’s actually a pretty fun movie if you’re just comparing it to other Jason movies. It’s got a decent wit and the whole outer space angle does shake things up a bit. However, when looking at the movie outside of that context and simply analyzing it as a movie made in 2002, it’s pretty terrible. Terrible writing, terrible acting, terrible story, general lack of suspense or genuine terror… it’s borderline incompetent. There is something of a “so bad it’s good” angle to the whole thing, it knows it’s a bad movie so it just takes an irreverent tone, runs with it, and then kind of flaunts its limitations. Probably a fun movie to watch with friends and sort of riff on, but by all objective measures it’s terrible.
*1/2 out of Four

DAY SIXTEEN: HANNIBAL WEEK - PART FOUR: RED DRAGON (2002)



When comparing two films -- each a version of the same story, with one being directed by Michael Mann and the other by Brett Ratner -- I never thought I'd say this, but ... I find Brett Ratner's movie to be better.  Call me crazy all you want, but I like Red Dragon more than Manhunter.  There.  I said it.  Now, does that mean I think Red Dragon is as strong as Silence of the Lambs?  No, I don't.  In fact, of all the three Hopkins-Lecter films, I'd say Red Dragon is overall the weakest (yep, I like Hannibal more), but I'd also say it's still a good film.  But starting with director Brett Ratner (how was he chosen for this?), the direction is the film's weakest element, especially in comparison with that of Jonathan Demme and Ridley Scott before him.  Ratner doesn't bring any truly interesting sense of style to the proceedings, and he seemed a bit too reliant on the score of Danny Elfman -- which gets pretty ridiculously "creepy" on more than one occasion -- to help him establish atmosphere.  I think it's pretty obvious Ratner is out of depth here in comparison to his usual area of comedy.  Edward Norton plays Will Graham, the FBI agent consulting with Hannibal Lecter this time around, and Norton's performance, while not BAD, still feels fairly average and uninspired, particularly when compared with the other two on-screen interpretations of the character.  On the flip side, Anthony Hopkins yet again steals the scene as Hannibal Lecter, and he's used an appropriate amount, and Ralph Fiennes is truly creepy as Francis Dolarhyde, a.k.a. The Tooth Fairy.  And just like Silence of the Lambs, the most interesting part of Red Dragon is the relationship that develops between a killer and a woman -- this time, Dolarhyde and a blind woman named Reba, played by Emily Watson, who shows Dolarhyde genuine compassion.  The tense writing of Ted Tally also helps keep things interesting.  Overall, Red Dragon may not measure up to the best of the Hannibal Lecter franchise, but it's still a good thriller worth watching.

***/****

THE THREE FACES OF FEAR (1963)
A/K/A BLACK SABBATH (1964)




The Three Faces of Fear, or Black Sabbath, is an Italian anthology film about a French call-girl who receives threatening phone calls from her ex-pimp, a Russian family destoyed by a vampire, and a London nurse who steals a ring from a corpse and lives long enough to regret it. All three segments are directed by Mario Bava (Black Sunday) and he does an okay job. You can tell this movie worked a lot better in the 1960's than it does now in the 2010's. All the scenarios were fresh back then, but now, we've seen other people do better - and less censored - versions of these stories. So watch it for the historical value, but don't expect anything Earth shattering.

C-

I'll definitely see this eventually, but almost solely because Black Sabbath is one of my favourite bands and I want to see the film that inspired their name.

17. Blacula



Blacula has always been appealing to me because the title is just awesome. Seriously, Blacula. The name just makes me smile. Anyway, the film itself is less awesome. The plot sees an African prince cursed by Dracula to live as a vampire. The prince is then reawaken in 1970s LA, where he finds a woman believed to be the reincarnation of his wife. By any objective standard, Blacula is pretty poor. The cinematography, editing, writing, production, and a lot of the acting are very weak. There are also some boring spots and I was disappointed in the gay decorators, who are frequently described as "fags". The film has some redeeming elements though. Blacula himself is pretty charming with William Marshall giving a fun performance. I also liked the soul music and when things start to go down in the third act it can be pretty entertaining. Vampires being lit on fire and Blacula attacking cops is pretty fun after all. The ending is also interesting, if a bit out of place for a film like this. Part of me wants to give Blacula a pass, if nothing else for its surreal charm, but this really isn't a good movie, no matter how I try to slice it.

Note: Since seeing Blacula, I've seen subsequent horror films which were objectively more competent films, and yet have not been as entertaining or memorable as this one. So I've re-considered the film and decided to bump up my score a little bit.

C