Dave’s Blog – Page 48

Reminiscence and Analysis: Omen III

March 4, 2015 by David Dubrow 4 Comments

I must’ve been twelve or thirteen when I first saw Omen III: The Final Conflict. I watched it with my older brother (the same brother with whom I’d watched Kolchak: The Night Stalker when I was too young staying up too late on Friday nights) on a Sunday evening. We’d recently gotten cable TV, and my dad had sprung for subscriptions to both HBO and a local cable channel called Prism. I think it must have been a package deal to get both, because Dad wasn’t into movies very much. He liked baseball, and Prism broadcast all the Philadelphia Phillies games that the local TV stations didn’t or couldn’t due to blackouts.

We loved Prism, not least because, unlike HBO, it showed rated R movies during the day.

I can’t remember if I’d seen The Omen before watching Omen III. Probably not, but it didn’t matter at the time. The synopsis in the cable guide told us everything we needed to know: Adult Situations, Adult Language, Violence. (Horror, 108 mins.) I also can’t recall if my younger brother watched it with us or not. I hope not, because it had some pretty disturbing stuff for an adult, let alone a kid. Now that I’m the parent of a little boy, media management has become a concern.

The beginning of the film was brilliant: they wrote and filmed a commercial for Thorn Enterprises that Damien didn’t even like. He poked holes in it. It was a great way to show Damien’s intelligence, power, and amorality. The previous ambassador’s bizarre suicide was another great piece of moviemaking: how many people shoot themselves under the nose? I assume the effects guys measured the angle of the bullet to determine where it would go from the gun under the desk and said, “Well, it should go here.” Truly disgusting brain splatter. Very shocking.

Harvey Dean’s character had some depth. Rather than have him just ignorant of his boss’s true nature, he knows that Damien Thorn is the Antichrist. Consider the kind of person who knowingly works for the personification of evil. He’s conflicted about ordering the deaths of the potential Christ-child babies, but does it anyway. And when it comes time for him to pay the piper and have his own son killed, he refuses. It’s all too much for him. He wasn’t a sniggering caricature of an evil henchman, but a man who’d chosen the wrong side and paid for it with his life. And soul. There’s an unexpectedly poignant moment late in the film when his wife learns what he’s been doing and who his boss truly is. She confronts him, holding his own baby son, with a monstrous series of crimes. She’s broken and horrified and scared for her baby, and we feel for her.

There is still a part of the film that I can’t watch: the burned face of Dean’s baby when Damien uses the hell hound to implant horrible suggestions into Dean’s wife’s mind. It showed the true, unadulterated evil of Damien Thorn in a way the other scenes did not. His foiling of the monks’ plan to kill him was self-defense, but the baby-killing went way too far. The method of the baby’s death was no accident; Damien had quoted Genesis 22:2 when telling the shocked Harvey to kill his own son, saying, “Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love–Isaac–and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you'[emphasis mine].”

The screaming monk swinging from the cable, swathed in burning plastic, was also disturbing. As a youngster, the sex scene seemed more brutal than in later viewings of the film. What was worse was that they killed the kid. They wrote that the monk, a good guy, should accidentally stab a child to death. Very brutal. The kid was doomed, an apostate of Hell, but still, how often do boys get murdered in movies?

Damien praying to his own father Lucifer and cursing Jesus Christ was an extraordinary soliloquy. It combined fury and loathing and even self-pity as he, the son of the Devil himself, describes the glory of suffering. This insight into true evil was riveting and imaginative, making you understand Damien, if not sympathize. Later, the juxtaposition of the monks’ exaltation at the star alignment heralding the rebirth of Christ with scenes of Damien in agony over the same event show us that in the end, Damien isn’t a man. He is a figure, a supernatural creature. A thing born of a jackal.

Note also that Damien only once or twice refers to Jesus Christ by His title: Christ. He speaks to and of Him often, but uses the term “Nazarene,” denying Him His kingship as the Messiah. In Damien’s mouth, Nazarene is a pejorative. It works.

As Jews, we knew that demonic and vampiric bad guys in the movies could be turned by crosses (Richard Benjamin showed how useless the Magen David was against vampires in Love at First Bite), but we didn’t feel left out. Judaism doesn’t have demons like Christianity, so things like the Antichrist and hell hounds were part of their mythology. We could be frightened by it in fictional representations, but at no point did any of us say, “Hey! That’s exclusionary! You’re not being inclusive!” It was a strength of the film that we were as caught up as much as any Gentile: after all, we’re talking about Armageddon here, and Jews will die at the end of the world, too. The weird crucifix in Damien’s secret chamber was disquieting because we knew it was meant to be profane, especially when we saw what he was doing with it. Thorn’s Herod-style killings of the babies born during the star alignment lacked any deeper meaning for us when we first saw it (I didn’t learn about Herod until later in life when I read the New Testament), but the end was cathartic. The good guys won, despite the terrible price. We could rejoice in the death of the Antichrist and the horrible Armageddon he represented with clear hearts.

Looking back, it’s easy to see how different the film is from today’s efforts. Even though the monks were bumbling and even foolish at times, they were the good guys. And they represented the return of Jesus Christ. No bones about it. No pedophile priests, no new chapters of the Bible revealed to show how evil the Catholic church is. Damien was the son of the Devil, and the priests, as incompetent as they were, fought to save the Christ child. The religious iconography was relevant and poignant, including the vision of Christ at the end. Even Jews could be moved.

The end was rushed, especially the last confrontation. It didn’t make sense. I’m not sure if some elements had been edited out for time constraints or if it was written that way in the beginning, but getting Damien to the place where he’d be killed should have been a lot more difficult than it was.

Despite its flaws, the 80’s hairstyles and terrible grating American accent Neill was obliged to adopt, The Final Conflict still holds up today. If you haven’t seen it in a while, give it a look.

Movie Review: Devil’s Pass

March 2, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Devil’s Pass is a movie that fictionalizes the infamous Dyatlov Pass incident, where nine Russian skiers died under mysterious circumstances in the Ural Mountains. The premise is that five college students retrace the skiers’ steps decades later, armed with GPS devices and cameras, to determine exactly what happened in Dyatlov Pass.

In general, the movie was very silly, with a twist ending that was insufficiently teased and an utterly charmless cast that did nothing to elevate a tedious, pedestrian story.

Characters: All of the typical horror tropes were represented: the Good Girl, the Bad Girl, the Geek, the Player, the Hippie. All were adequate. At no point did any of them break character to be anything other than archetypes or get the viewer to care about what happened to them.
Scares: None. It wasn’t even the least bit disturbing. The teleporting zombie creatures were too shaky-cammed to see what they were doing, so it was hard to be afraid of them. The bigfoot footprints in the snow were silly, not frightening. An abortive trip to a mental hospital failed to provide the ominous foreboding that was intended.
Found Footage-Style: I suppose we’ll just have to ride out the found footage-style of horror/sci-fi movies until it’s over and we can return to movie production that doesn’t involve gimmicks to get us to feel as though the action’s really happening. There was no good reason to do this movie in found footage-style, as it added nothing to the immediacy of the story; in fact, it made the film less believable. I couldn’t believe they filmed some of the things they did the way they did, especially during dangerous moments.
The Twist: In an effort to solve the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass incident in the most bizarre way possible, they included a time-traveling wormhole that turns idiots into zombies. Do you really need to know any more?

Across the board, this film is a must-miss. One star out of five.

Movie Review: Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead

February 23, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

A brief review of Dead Snow is available here.

There were very few surprises in Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead, and that’s one of the film’s greatest strengths. At least as gory as its predecessor and a lot funnier, it’s a sequel that didn’t have to be made, but I’m glad it was. Horror comedy often goes terribly wrong, veering into bland, unfunny spectacle, but it did not happen here. Between a hysterical script and some very inspired physical comedy, it’s a fun movie all on its own.

The Cast: Vegar Hoel returned as Martin, who survived Dead Snow and ended up getting his arch-enemy Herzog’s arm grafted to his stump. The transplanted limb has a life (or unlife) all its own, and creates not only some hysterical moments, but important plot advancement. The film’s writer, Stig Frode Henriksen has a great role as Martin’s reluctant friend/assistant, and Hallvard Holmen was very funny as an entirely incompetent cop.
Zombie Squad: Three members of the Zombie Squad arrive in the nick of time to help Martin deal with Herzog’s new invasion of Norway. The writers handled them deftly, making them funny but not (too) pathetic.
Language: It’s going to mark me as unsophisticated and provincial, but I appreciated that the movie was filmed in English. Reading subtitles tends to take me out of the experience and divides my attention, so that didn’t happen for me here.
Gore: It’s all here. More intestine jokes, more blood, more disgusting scenes across the board. It doesn’t let up. Ever. Some parts, even the funny ones, were a little hard to watch.
The End: There’s a scene at the end that had me saying, “No, stop it, this shouldn’t be happening, just stop, stop, stop.” Few movies can do that to me.

If you like funny, gross-out zombie movies, you’ll love Dead Snow 2. Four out of five stars.

Movie Review: I, Frankenstein

February 18, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Simply put, I, Frankenstein is an absolutely terrible movie.

But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see it. If you modify your expectations, knowing at the outset that you’re going to see a terrible movie, you can have fun with it. You just have to stop cringing first. The plot is a confusing, terrible muddle involving Frankenstein’s monster (named Adam), demons from Hell, and gargoyles who exist to protect mankind from the demons (but they’re not angels). Thematically, it’s an appalling mishmash further confused by awful dialogue and a silly backstory. Despite all that, I was entertained. I’d see a sequel if they made one (which they won’t).

Aaron Eckhart: A fine actor, he was completely wasted in this film. We’ll ignore the strange scars his character Adam was forced to bear other than to suggest that Doctor Frankenstein was an unbelievably incompetent stitcher and couldn’t find a single clean face to put on his creation. Eckhart tried, he really did, but he was given such terrible lines that not even he could save them. To his dubious credit, Eckhart never once descended into the smart-alecky humor that made him so watchable in Thank You for Smoking. The film was far too earnest and grim for that.
Everyone Else: Miranda Otto (Eowyn) was the Gargoyle Queen. She was also schizophrenic to the point of making no sense at all. Bill Nighy did his usual sinister upper-class Brit schtick. Yvonne Strahovski added no charm at all to an entirely useless role. The only stand-out was Jai Courtney as Gideon, the mean gargoyle. He did a great job and added actual depth to his role; a Heavenly miracle, of sorts. It helped that he was such a cool character from Spartacus: that just sort of bled over.
The Script: Ignore it. Everything everyone says is extremely silly, but they say it with such gravity. If at any point you think somebody’s going to say something interesting, you’re wrong. Recalibrate your expectations. When it isn’t cliche, it’s stupid. The thing is, they believe it’s meaningful, even if you don’t. So don’t worry about it. This goes double for the plot. It’s hopeless. Imagine if Mary Shelley wrote a sequel to Frankenstein while high on opium. Then someone photocopied a mirror image of it and threw it in a wood chipper with a copy of the Bible. Finally, a chimpanzee scotch-taped the bits together larger than a thumbnail, and that’s your plot.
Fight, Fight, Fight: This is the real reason to see this film. If you liked the fight scenes from Blade, you’ll dig this movie. I practiced serrada escrima several years ago, just enough to get some sinawali patterns and flow drills down, and the Kali-style fighting Adam did in the movie was a real treat to watch. They even did some punyo-work in the fight scenes. You know where the special effects budget went, and they squeezed every nickel out of it to great effect.

It’s terrible. See it anyway.

Why Brian Williams Did What He Did

February 11, 2015 by David Dubrow 2 Comments

Everybody lies. Yes, you lie, too. We lie about what we’re doing, feeling, not doing, and not feeling. We lie to others and we lie to ourselves. That’s perfectly okay. As thinking, reasoning adults, we can gauge the relative social importance of one lie to another. When you don’t want to tell a co-worker that you’ve got a massive headache, you answer, “Fine,” to his, “How you doin’?” in the hall. However, when your wife asks you how your day went and you give her the same “Fine,” even though you were just fired for writing company checks to pay for your mistress’s Invisalign treatments, that’s extremely bad. We all know this, but I had to set the table so we could eat.

NBC journalist Brian Williams lied. A lot. About a number of things. It’s clear that the deeper one digs, the more lies will be uncovered, but it’s equally clear that the full extent of his untruths will never be revealed. Even though we all lie, his lies are especially egregious because as a journalist, he has the duty to tell the truth about what’s happening where. So it’s only right and proper that we question how often he has lied and about what. Whether these questions are rooted in schadenfreude over a partisan journalist’s deserved comeuppance or a true desire to get to the truth is immaterial: journalists are offered specific protections under the U.S. Constitution, and have a duty to earn those protections. Just as your free speech rights don’t include falsely yelling “Fire!” in a crowded Kanye concert, freedom of the press should not be extended to individuals who intend to report falsehoods under the guise of real news.

Being around military personnel, especially ones who have seen combat, can be an emasculating thing for certain men who haven’t served and haven’t seen the elephant, like Williams. How can your petty day-to-day experiences reading copy off a teleprompter compare to putting your eyes to the sight of a gun and pulling the trigger on another human being?

They can’t.

It’s even worse if you’re a famous journalist and you have to be around virtual teenagers who are part of that brotherhood. A brotherhood you will never join. You haven’t paid your dues. You haven’t been so tested. How small, how weak you must seem to them.

During my time in video production, I met a great number of people who claimed more combat experience than they had actually acquired. Some of them I worked with very closely. They inflated their resumes to give themselves credibility they hadn’t earned. They omitted important facts about themselves. They presented themselves as people they patently were not. Not all of them, of course. Many were and are the real deal, with skills honed through experience, not classroom study or practice with cooperative assistants.

When wading through that kind of BS, it’s very easy to let some get stuck to you. People tell war stories all the time, and there’s typically an element of competition about it. Think Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw comparing scars in Jaws. Or, if you’re so inclined, call it dick-measuring.

I don’t have those experiences. My previous work had some element of danger to it, insofar as it included firearms and work with some real sociopaths, but it didn’t compare to what the average American soldier serving in the conflict-ridden Middle East experiences every day. And I’m perfectly fine with that. I do what I do and I respect and support what they do. My resume is what it is, and my body of work speaks for itself. So I can’t measure my combat dick against some kid’s half my age who served in Afghanistan. I won’t bother trying.

Part of being comfortable in your own skin is establishing comfort with your own experiences, no matter how prosaic. Save the resume enhancement for a job interview.

Movie Review: Snowpiercer

February 9, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

The premise behind Snowpiercer is absurd: the world has ended in snow and ice, and the only survivors of humanity live aboard a massive train that somehow never stops moving. The poor people, the dregs live at the back of the train, while the beautiful rich people live at the front. It’s ludicrous. It’s obvious social commentary class warfare BS tarted up in global warming-based science fiction silliness.

And yet…

And yet it works. It works incredibly well.

The script rises above the subject matter, making it a smarter story that its underlying assumptions deserve. Hints about terrible past events begin to make sense later on in the film, from strange hand gestures to the disturbing number of amputees among the tail section passengers. The dialogue is tight, funny when it has to be and just philosophical enough to project ideas without bludgeoning the viewer. Familiar tropes are used, but not overused, from the wisecracking sidekick to the sassy black woman to the assassin who just won’t die.

Chris Evans does a good job with what he’s been given. As a bearded, reluctant leader of a violent revolution, he made a far better Curtis than he does Captain America. Tilda Swinton was a scream, and Kang-ho Song as the security expert added depth and humor to a supporting role. The only low spot was Ed Harris, who slept through his performance.

At times, the film made clever use of its absurdity, with a surreal scene in a sushi bar and an even more bizarre scene in a classroom full of young worshipers of Wilford, the inventor/engineer of the train. Just as you’re lulled into accepting the movie’s strangeness, it manages to hit you with something out of left field that keeps you watching.

The visual style is arresting. Fans of Chan-wook Park (The Vengeance Trilogy) and Kim Jee-woon (I Saw the Devil) will really appreciate Joon-ho Bong’s work here. It just grabs you and you can’t help but watch the whole thing.

4 out of 5 stars.