Over the last few years, I've noticed a trend in movies to add points clearly motivated by political concerns. Nothing new, of course, but I've become more sensitive to it lately....perhaps as a result of our current political climate. Sometimes these additions have completely ruined movies for me. I'll give an example: "Arrival."
Now, all in all, I thought the movie is well made, acted, etc. The basic story is intriguing. What if aliens came to earth, and we were charged with figuring out some means of communication with them? I find it all interesting, and certainly within the realm of possibility. So, for the first three-quarters of the movie, I was invested, although I found the plot point of the lead character having lost a child an "uh oh." And, surely enough, that whole point reared a huge reveal at the end that ruined the entire movie for me.
It's not that I don't like children (I really like their innocence, for one thing), and I do want families to continue to exist. But I'm worn out by movies having some sort of "having a family/children is everything" messages. And this might be a big reach, but I find them a way Hollywood studios can prove to the religious right that "we care about children! And life! See, it's in the movie!" Like I said, maybe a big reach. But I don't remember movies from even fifteen years ago having the same sort of "but....children!" message to them. Recently, my wife reminded me of Maude Flanders' oft-repeated refrain in The Simpsons: "what about the children?"
Another one, and it ties into a movie I watched yesterday, is "A Quiet Place." I believe I wrote in this blog about the plot point in that one that I found utterly ridiculous. The couple in the story have lost one child during the monster epidemic going on, and so, months later, the woman is pregnant. AFTER the epidemic of monsters killing anything emitting sound has been going on. Whaaat? You want to bring a baby into that world? A baby that's bound to.....uh......CRY???? There's a whole reveal of a box they have built that they can put the kid in, with what looks like a full CPAP mask to put over the kid's face. Sweet Jeebus, really??? At that point, I wanted this whole family to die, if they're going to be that stupid. "I'm sorry, honey, but I know you understand. Hand and blow jobs only, until there ain't no more monsters, okay?" That would be more like it. I don't think the movie would've suffered one whit using that logic. And otherwise, the movie's good. But again, the message is: people have to have children. And at any time ever. Ya know what I think? People do have to have children, the human race needs to go on, but maybe after the vicious monsters that eat anything making noise are dealt with, or are dead, or whatever. Let's wait a bit, shall we?
I watched a movie yesterday called "The Silence." It was recommended to my viewing habit, I suppose due to watching the "Sabrina" show, as both Kiernan Shipka and Miranda Otto are in it. Now, this move, again pretty well done, is similar in many ways to "A Quiet Place." "The Mist, " too, really. Some creatures, apparently living in a sealed cave for who knows how long, are freed by some spelunkers. They kill the cavers and fly to off to wreak havoc on the eastern seaboard. In this film, Shipka's character has recently lost her hearing, so the family has learned to sign a bit, and that is a help. But there is no pregnancy to deal with. Thank you. There are some heart-wrenching scenes in it, for sure, but no stupid ones. And there are the notions of how many people are forming their own sometimes brutal religious cults to try to deal with the situation. That felt completely authentic to me. Also, as the creatures are somewhat localized, at least for the time being, the fact that electricity and wi-fi still existed made more sense to me.
But, when looking at the Wikipedia page for the movie, I saw that it's rating about 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, and people have a lot of issues with it; probably the main one being its similarity to "A Quiet Place." Yeah, that may be, but you know what? I like it much, much more than "A Quiet Place." (purses lips, blows raspberry) So there. Come to think of it, there was an episode of "Black MIrror" sort of similar to this, but I can't remember it that well. I think those monsters were robots of some sort.
Yesterday, Pocket FishRmen played a soup party at Dozen Street in Austin. Yes, a soup party. I had a couple of the offerings, one from our own Cris Burns, and liked them both, although by the time we got there, said offerings were lukewarm at best. Our set was fine, although I learned a huge lesson. I wore a pig mask yesterday, that I can play in okay, but Lance should not play on a backline kit he isn't that familiar with while donning a mask. During the first song, I got tangled up in the drum rims a couple of times and was flubbing some things. After that, though, all was fine. At least, there wasn't too much of a crowd, and I soldiered through okay. I had added several Seinfeld "no soup for you" type samples to the SPD-SX and went overboard with those. It was fun overall. Cris Burns was especially smokin', it seemed.
We were home by 10 and watched a couple of movies last night (yesterday was a big day for watchin'!). The first was "Gwen," which came to us via Shudder. Categorized as folk horror, I thought Michelle might dig it. Not sure I would call it horror, minus one effective jump scare, but it was effective. And a complete downer. After that, I went for the Blu ray of "Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory." Or "Lycanthropus," if you like the original Italian title better. I do. About three-quarters of the way through the movie, Michelle asked me "why did it get that goofy title?" American distribution houses loved to re-title these movies with phrases they thought would bring in the young people. It's a pretty good, fun movie. And starring the first Mrs. Roman Polanski, of whom I knew not. It also has Luciano Pigozzi, or as he's known, the Italian Peter Lorre, in it. It pre-dates the Italian horror and giallo boom, but its script comes from Dardano Sarchetti, who wrote many.
The night before, we watched the Joe Bob Briggs Christmas show on Shudder. We almost made it all the way through the third movie, but I bailed due to a weird stomachache. Finished it off early yesterday. Fun show; the movies were "Black Christmas," "Jack Frost," and "Silent Night Deadly Night 2." Can't say I thought much of "Jack Frost." "Black Christmas" is always welcome, and I was surprisingly entertained by "SNDN2." I agree that the lead performance in that one is "one for the ages."
Onward, folks.
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