Friday, September 22, 2017

Double Feature Picture Show Freestyle Party, Volume 1

Some weeks do not lend themselves to great thought. Unfortunately for yours truly, this is one of those weeks. So we're about to shake the pillars of heav....well, just of this site, really.

Fun The Mike fact: I started writing about movies online way back in the fall of 2002. My first assignment was a weekly roundup of new DVD releases with a couple of capsule reviews and a lot of zaniness. These columns were probably my favorite thing I've ever written (possibly because they no longer exist and I can't go back and see them now), and I've often wanted to go back to doing a kind of rambling column where I just wing it and let my heart tell you things my brain might not usually let me say.

So, welcome to the Double Feature Picture Show Freestyle Party. I'm gonna talk about some movies and throw out a whole bunch of double feature suggestions, with some help from some fine folks from around the globe. That's right - be ready for THE LIGHTNING ROUND.

You've been warned.

What's up at the Theater?
Over the last two weeks I had the chance to take in two of the most high profile horror films released in a long, long time. For starters, I just need to reiterate that - YES, THESE ARE BOTH HORROR FILMS. Don't be a genre snob. Just don't. It's not nice.

It
2017, Directed by Andy Muschietti

Horror fans have been waiting a long time for the big screen adaptation of Stephen King's It, and it's safe to say that the energy level among them was off the charts a couple of weeks ago when this thing finally hit the big screen. You could almost taste the love in the air; it was like Christmas but with a big scary clown whose lap no one wants to sit on. Hell, that's not even true. Some of you lady horror fans out there have some unique tastes - and I'm OK with that. You do you.

I left work early on a Friday afternoon (don't worry, I did my time) to catch It, and I enjoyed the experience a whole bunch. For starters, this update of King's novel - which moves the story's first half from 1958 to 1989 - feels genuine with its nostalgia act. Comparisons to Netflix's smash hit Stranger Things are obviously out there - based on the setting and shared star Finn Wolfhard - but I'm the kind of guy who will take King's writing over pretty much anything else. And the best thing about It is that it certainly feels like a Stephen King story. 

There are some changes to King's story - that's going to happen any time you adapt one of his books - but I'm pretty confident in saying that It sits alongside the best adaptations of King's work, mostly because director Andy Muschietti and crew were given such a long rope by Warner Bros. and New Line when making the film. Though the film only covers the first half of the It story, it is still allowed to run nearly two and a half hours. The script makes sure every one of those minutes count. The young cast is great, and Bill Skarsgard gives a turn as Pennywise that will be iconic on its own strengths. The scene where he entices young Georgie early in the film erases all memories of Tim Curry's (rightfully loved) performance in the 1990 miniseries, and his first appearance to The Loser's Club in a dark garage made me jump. I am not a big jumper!

The film has some definite flaws - especially in the final battle - that I won't go in to here, but I will say that I felt the film's strengths outweighed them in a big way. The biggest strength is how it handles the young characters, and how it attacks the experiences and feelings that led them to label themselves as The Losers Club. The characterization of the real life predators that live in the town of Derry - ranging from bullies to abusive fathers to imposing elderly librarians - are haunting, and it certainly helps anyone who's ever been bullied to relate to these young idealists. I had my share of traumas from some real life predators growing up in a small town, and I felt a lot of peace watching The Losers Club build the strength to face off with their demons. 

The best thing a horror movie can do, in my eyes, is to make us uncomfortable and make us afraid while at the same time reminding us that we can beat our fears because we are strong enough to defeat them. That's the central theme of It, and this adaptation hammers that message home. I don't care what else the movie's doing after that, because if it achieves that goal it's clearly doing enough to make me look at it as a huge success.

If you're going to the theater this weekend, It is clearly the movie I'm recommending you check out. If you're going to the theater looking for a double feature, you're in luck too. Because there's another horror movie out right now that, if nothing else, is worth talking about.

mother!
2017, Directed by Darren Aronofsky

I'm not gonna review Mother - I know I'm supposed to write mother! like I did above, but that's gonna confuse the heck out of me if I do that every time - as much as I'm just gonna talk about Mother, without any spoilers of course. And I'm darn sure not saying that It and Mother make a good double feature under any other circumstances, they go together like lamb and tuna fish.

(I just snuck a Big Daddy reference into my commentary on Mother. I don't know if I trust me either. But roll with it. It'll probably be fine.)

Darren Aronofsky's Mother - the film, not the lady - is first and foremost a film that makes me happy because of its existence. You can go to a movie theater and see a comedy with someone from a TV show any week or a drama about an animal or a war or an animal in a war (Thanks, Spielberg) any week. You can not go into a theater and see a movie like Mother any week. You simply can't. You guys know I live in Iowa, right? We've got 12 screens in town. We were lucky to get The Beguiled or The Big Sick here. And yet here's Mother, opening on 2300 screens across America, starring a bunch of Oscar nominees, and making viewers as uncomfortable as a dead squirrel that got dropped on the banquet table at Thanksgiving dinner.

Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem star as a married couple living in a beautiful secluded house in the middle of beautiful nowhere where there are no roads coming in or out and no cell service (don't worry though, they've got a land line!). He's a writer, she's responsible for keeping the house nice after it burnt down before. Then some people - starting with a couple played by screen legends Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer - show up. And things get uncomfortable for her. Really quickly.

I'm not going any further with the plot of Mother, but I will tell you that the two hour film becomes a nightmare for Lawrence's character. And it's a damn cool one to watch. Aronofsky knows how to direct insanity, and the camera moves around the house following the lead in such an uncomfortable way for most of the film. The film's sound design! I swear this might have been the best sounding in theater experience of my life. Surround sound does some good work for most movies, and some big movies - like Christopher Nolan's acclaimed summer hit Dunkirk - really excel in that department. But Mother sounded like the house was moving around me. I don't do drugs or drink - really, I'm naturally this weird! - but I felt that house in that theater.

(Random side story: About an hour into Mother a huge thunderstorm broke out in my town. I could hear it through the walls and ceiling of the theater. I was pretty sure it was a storm - but I wasn't ruling out the thought that Aronofsky and company put that storm under the soundtrack of the movie. I spent several minutes trying to figure it out. I'll never forget the moment that storm kicked up and I thought the movie was coming alive around me. It brought my heart to life.)

And it was just an hour into Mother when my heart started to soar because I was lost in its wonderful nightmare. It got crazier from there. A lot crazier. And then it told us what it was talking about in the final minutes - or at least told us as much as it was willing to in those final minutes - and that kinda brought the movie back a notch. After a whole lot of thought the allegory that is at the center of the film makes perfect sense - Aronofsky has even gone on record explaining it - but I kind of wish it didn't. This is such a wonderful nightmare of a film - it made me paranoid and uncomfortable in the best "I'm safe in a move theater so I can feel these things and still walk out of here fine" kind of way - and I wish it was just left as a nightmare after the fact. Who gave Aronofsky the right to make sense out of a nightmare? Who wants that? Just let us think about it for a while and make it our own. 

I guess it is Aronofsky's nightmare, after all. I just wish he'd kept his explanation to himself. I'm gonna watch Mother again and again and enjoy just how intense and insane it is at times - there's a sequence where it even makes us look at comedienne Kristen Wiig as a monster from some other place! - and I just wish I didn't have the writer/director's answer to it hanging around in my mind. What are movies for, if not for the viewer?

What's up on Home Video?

Snapshot - 1979, Directed by Simon Wincer

The coolest thing I've seen on blu-ray lately is Vinegar Syndrome's release of Snapshot (aka One More Minute, aka The Day After Halloween, aka Any Other Damn Title Some Greedy Distributor Of Its Era Can Think Of). Vinegar Syndrome has become one of my favorite niche labels over the last couple of years. Their commitment to restoring random grindhouse titles from the 1970s and 1980s (as well as pornography of the era, but you all know I WOULD NEVER) is something no one really ever asked for but also something people like me who love wild, weird movies from the past should have been asking for their entire lives if they had only known what they were supposed to be asking for.

Snapshot first came to my attention because of one of those alternate titles I listed above, The Day After Halloween. Anything "related" to Halloween is sure to get me to look into it, so when I heard there was a foreign flick out there that sounded like it was trying to capitalize on what John Carpenter created in 1978 I got really curious. Thankfully, like a good genre fan, I read some stuff about the film before jumping on it, and found out that not only does the film not have anything to do with Halloween....it's not even a slasher film! I KNOW!

What sounds like a bad thing about a film that wants to be like Halloween turns out to be a good thing when you realize the film isn't actually a film that wants to be anything like Halloween. What Snapshot actually is is the story of a young Australian woman who decides to try modeling, and who ends up getting her photo used for a full page magazine ad. The two problems that arise from this are a) her face appears in the topless photo against her wishes and b) someone is stalking her and she can't figure out which creepy dude in her life it is.

The film plays out as an uncomfortable mystery, and while it doesn't really hum with intensity all the time it sincerely feels like there's a sleazy entity waiting around any corner in her world. It builds at a slow pace to a couple of strong final reveals, and the journey that the lead, played with an innocent charm by Sigrid Thornton, goes on wraps up quite nicely. It's not the kind of film that will rewrite genre history, but seeing it in a shiny new package from a studio that has taken such good care of it makes me smile a lot.

Let's say we want to pair Snapshot up with a double feature, since that is kind of the gimmick of this site. Here's a quick bullet list of things about it that stick out.
  • That sleazy grindhouse smell. (OK, you can't smell it...but it feels like you should be able to.)
  • Models and creepy stalkers
  • A girl who's really just not having a good time at all even though thanks to them creepy stalkers.
Which brings me to....

The Centerfold Girls - 1974, Directed by John Peyser

We're doing a grindhouse style double feature here, which obviously makes me think of the Tarantino/Rodriguez double feature, Grindhouse. When that film came out it paired Rodriguez' fast paced, ultra violent Planet Terror with Tarantino's slower, more talky, but eventually violent Death Proof. Snapshot is more of a Death Proof paced film, so if we want a double feature partner with more carnage and more violence we need something like The Centerfold Girls. 

The Centerfold Girls is also about the danger of being a model, but it's far more direct in its approach than Snapshot is. Here we have one man - Andrew Prine of The Town That Dreaded Sundown and Grizzly and a whole lot of other cool stuff - who decides to put on a nice suit and some nice shoes and go kill each of the women in an adult calendar, because that's what God would have wanted him to do. He articulates his beliefes quite nicely, actually. But before we talk any more about the film, here are those shoes. 
I thought they was relevant to share.

Unlike the slow paced Snapshot, The Centerfold Girls feels more like an anthology film. The killer sets his sights on multiple girls, but is picking them off one at a time in different settings, so really the film is broken up into three pursuits. Each of these are effective in different ways - the first segment is as brutal as The Last House on the Left, the middle section feels slightly Italian, and the third stars my favorite grindhouse bombshell of the '70s - the gorgeous and talented Tiffany Bolling.

The Centerfold Girls is a tough movie to watch - that first segment treats its centerfold so poorly that we're almost relieved when she runs into the killer - and it certainly has that same icky feeling that's at the heart of Snapshot. It's probably a better second half to this double feature than Snapshot would be, especially when the star power of Prine and Bolling collides in the film's final act.

The Centerfold Girls is actually available on a double feature blu-ray disc from Gorgon Video, paired with my favorite Tiffany Bolling film, Bonnie's Kids. This disc came out on my birthday last year, which makes me believe that someone out there loves me. And that's nice.

Now...let's talk about you guys. That's right. It's time for.....
THE LIGHTNING ROUND
Yesterday I asked the fine folks who follow me on Twitter to name some movies they love, hoping I've seen them. A few people stumped me, but a few didn't. 

How this works:
1) Someone suggests a movie
2) In one paragraph or less, I pick a double feature title to go with that movie.
3) Everybody dances!
(Maybe there won't be dancing.)

Here's 12 flicks people suggested to me, and 12 double features you might (or might not, it's your time) want to watch:
I haven't seen The Last Starfighter in way too long. But I love Catherine Mary Stewart. Let's pair this one with Night of the Comet.

This is an easy one. I adore Fright Night so much for it's Rear Window-with-vampires charm. Another great '80s neighbors and killers movie goes perfect with it. That movie is The 'Burbs.

Man, Kurt Russell in a cannibal horror western is a tasty treat. Love this movie. I'm gonna pair it with another dusty horror, the Civil War zombie flick Exit Humanity. More people need to see that.

Dude. You obviously wanna double John Wick with John Wick Chapter 2, but let's take that out of the equation, just for fun. I'm a BIG fan of Keanu Reeves' directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi. You might want to play it first and then end on Wick though, because Wick can't be followed by anything but Wick. Wick begets Wick, I believe that's how the proverb goes.

This is another one with a natural double feature (Dazed and Confused), but you all know I'm unnatural.  Everybody Wants Some!! (the second film in this post who's title ends with an !) is a little sweeter and more romantic than D&C - and that kinda reminds me of Greg Motolla's Adventureland, which I think a lot of people slept on unfairly. (I had to think about this a while, thanks Ted!)

Re-Animator always makes me smile. Because it's so gross and so funny and so cool. You know what else is those three things? Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn.

Lifeforce is a reallllly hard double feature. There's nothing like it. So I'm gonna go with another movie from the same era that I used to get confused with it because both titles start with L - Leviathan. (I never said all of these double features would be winners! But you should still watch both of these movies.)

Let's go with a super '80s sci-fi double feature here. Dune and Brazil. Make it wild. Pick whichever version of Brazil you like.

Ahhhh, the 1970s. When you could want to make a movie called Satan's Cheerleaders and someone would give you money to make a movie called Satan's Cheerleaders. God bless the 1970s. Let's go with another Vinegar Syndrome title - Malibu High. Not much Satain, but this much cheese in one double feature seems like a great idea.

Man, I gotta tell you guys - I haven't seen Fight Club in over 15 years. Was never a big fan of it at the time. Been meaning to give it another shot, just haven't got around to it. But hey - let's do Office Space and follow it up with Fight Club. Show the progression of how bad being a guy in a white shirt and tie can be when you're fed up with life.

Alright, another Rear Window homage! Y'all love me today, clearly. I adore Body Double. It's about as great as sleazy De Palma can be. I kinda want to pair it with another De Palma, even though that's too simple. But do I go with Sisters or Femme Fatale? You know what - let's make this a TRIPLE FEATURE and throw Body Double in the middle. Bring a towel.

Alright, everybody stop what you're doing. We gotta break format here.

I'm breaking my own rules for The Lighting Round, but we gotta pay tribute where tribute is due. Last week we lost the great Harry Dean Stanton, who passed away at the age of 91 after living a life that saw him become one of the coolest dudes in the history of movies. The dude just had it. I don't mean the "it" that studios talk about it, the thing that makes you look good on magazine covers and make money selling tickets. I mean the "it" that makes someone look at an actor and say something like -
"That guy right there. That guy gets it. That's the guy I want to be like."

Man, I love Harry Dean Stanton. My best suggestion after Repo Man is to watch anything else he did. Look at that man work. The odds are he'll make your day better and make you smile. Because he had that kind of "it."
We've used the word it in a lot of different ways today. Are you sick of me? That's fair. Let's call it a day. There's 14 double features here when I usually only give you one. I don't believe it either.

Come back next week when we'll get back to normal and finish up Alfred Hitchcock Month! And keep an eye out for the next time we decide to do The Lightning Round and have one of these Freestyle weeks, you could be part of it!

As always, thanks for reading. I could do this without you guys - but I'd really rather not. You have "it."
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