Batflash: a 90's Shared Universe?

 Unpopular opinion time.... 

I actually kind of like The Flash movie. Don't get me wrong, it is a bit of a mess, but it's nowhere near the mess that is the original Suicide Squad. As the DC movies go, I do feel it's one of the stronger entries. It took some legitimately creative risks. Whether or not those risks paid off is up to you. For my money, it hit more than it missed, but there is something about it that's been bugging me for some time. 

Why exactly is Batman the one to explain the time travel problem Flash created? 

Backing up, if you haven't seen the film, here's the fastest rundown/summary you will ever need. Flash (real name Barry Allen, portrayed by Ezra Miller) uses his speed to go back in time to undo a personal tragedy to make a better future for himself, his friends, and his family. However, instead of merely changing the future, he changes the past as well. This is known as retrocausality. 

While the movie's explanation of this phenomenon is adequate, I prefer the explanation offered in the animated film Flashpoint Paradox (itself based on a similarly named crossover event in the comics). The briefest rundown of that is as follows: When a speedster uses their power to travel in time, they're essentially outrunning time itself. Going faster than time creates the temporal equivalent of a sonic boom. 

In the film, what Barry creates in his time travel endeavor is a kind of mash-up universe, bits and pieces of alternate timelines playing mix and match into some sort of cohesive whole. In this case, it's comprised primarily of the Batman from the 1989 Tim Burton film and a minor variation of the plot from Man of Steel, namely General Zod's invasion of earth. Other details include Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly in Back to the Future instead of Michael J. Fox. However, it's what ISN'T spelled out that makes this crossover interesting. After all, Back to the Future is never mentioned in Batman, so who's to say Eric Stoltz isn't the lead in that film and Michael J. Fox is known only as that kid from Teen Wolf? There's also no mention of Superman (Batman & Robin's throwaway line doesn't count as that was a different actor and director, we're focusing on Batman & Batman Returns). While there's also no mention of the Flash, Bruce Wayne (as portrayed by Michael Keaton) doesn't seem all that surprised by his arrival. Sure, there's a little scuffle between them, but it settles down relatively quickly and, as we've said, Bruce is the one who explains the situation rather than Barry. It's almost as if he expected this. Speaking of the past... 

We haven't forgotten this version of the Flash, have we?

This was a series that ran for one season in 1990, 22 1-hour episodes featuring John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen. Production began in 1988, but picked up speed (ha) after the success of Tim Burton's Batman the year earlier. My memory of the series is overall positive, if a tad faded with the passage of time. It was a very well-made show, with exceptional production values despite being spread a little thin over 22 episodes. Of particular note is the costume itself, which ran a pretty penny for the time. It was decided that audiences wouldn't accept a spandex bodysuit, even in a modest television outing of a well-regarded superhero. In fact, it was because of Batman that the sculpted rubber suit was accepted as a justifiable expense. After all, it's in every episode. That makes it an investment. 

My point is that, in terms of overall aesthetics, who's to say these two different properties aren't sharing a setting? Who's to say Shipp's Flash and Keaton's Batman haven't met in the time following Batman Returns? Maybe this Flash isn't around anymore because of his own time travel shenanigans. Maybe he's the one who explained retrocausality to Bruce. 

I'm not pretending this is a perfect solution to what may not even be a problem. In fact, it might even create more problems by bringing another Flash into a film with 3 different Batmen. It could simply be a matter of plot convenience. Perhaps Bruce spent his post-Batman days reading up on Quantum physics. After all, in Flashpoint, it's Flash's nemesis who explains the problems with causality, and since he's not in this new movie, someone else had to take on the role of exposition dump. Like I said, despite some problems with the scene, I think it's one of the best, and Michael Keaton is clearly having fun with every last minute of it. He's still got it. 

Frightened, but Brave

Just got back from Snow White and the Huntsman, and I'm not even going to make a comment about Mirror Mirror leaving bad taste in my mouth and this being the cleansing swig because it's an unfair comparison.

In short, loved it. Awesome. Highly recommended.

In the interest of full disclosure, let's address the elephant in the room: I have never seen the Twilight movies. Actually, that's a lie; I've seen five minutes of a scene with two groups of vampires comparing notes on feeding habits and it pretty much told me all I need to know about what I'd be in for if I stayed and watched the rest. I bring this up because my roommate has seen the Twilight films and as such her biggest hangup about seeing the film was Kristen Stewart, fearing a wooden performance.

I think she gets a bit of a bum rap. Granted, the only thing I've seen her in prior to this was Zathura, where she played the older sister of the two boys. Not much meat to the role, but I liked her in it.

Something most people will probably notice right away regarding performances, hers as well as others, is that dialogue is rather sparse, and given that Stewart has a fair amount of screen time in the first act, people might be led to believe that her part was toned back because of fear about her ability to deliver dialogue. This really isn't the case; overall, it's a very visual film with very long passages of silence. I think that's one of the film's greatest assets, not feeling like it has to hold the audience's hand or keep spouting little throwaway lines of expository dialogue. What little dialogue there actually is serves almost as padding. Seriously, this would make a dandy silent film.

At the risk of sounding like I'm gushing, and going back to what I was saying about Kristen's performance, I think she's one of the best female leads I've seen in a fantasy film. She's got a very rare quality that I first heard leveled at the late Elisabeth Sladen by former Doctor Who producer Barry Letts. He said of her:

"She could be frightened and brave at the same time. Most actresses can only do one or the other."

This is also how I felt about Naomi Watts in the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong, someone who has a confidence and inner strength, but is also a human being with a full emotional palette. On that note, I think my favorite scene in the film (stop reading if you don't want any spoilers) is one where she stares down a monstrous troll that's just made a rag doll of the Huntsman and sets its sights on her. Admittedly, it waxes incredibly silly, but it made me smile and, frankly, if I made a fantasy film, you bet I'd have a scene like this. It's Dorothy slapping the Cowardly Lion, but done better. It speaks to her character, saying, "Look, I'm cold, tired, and terrified, but damned if I'm going to run now!"

Sure, not a terribly deep review, more just first impressions, but it's a very good first impression. Again, highly recommend it.

A Question for YouTube (quasi-s.978/copyright related)

I'd never heard of this until a YouTube partner by the name of The Archfiend pointed it out. Apparently, a common (or once common) trend on YouTube was for people to post a comment, either on a video or a user's channel page, to the extent of "Sub4Sub" meaning, "If you subscribe to me, I shall return the favor."

For reasons that probably shouldn't have to be explained or explored in any great detail, this is really annoying, unfair, and, in the case of those asking, downright pathetic. Put simply, their channels are so bad, so borderline invisible, and so obnoxiously underwhelming that they have to ask people to subscribe to their channel in exchange for their pretend patronage.

Luckily, YouTube, in a moment of genuine interest in the goings-on of their site, decided this had to stop, and not only said as much, but literally found a way to prevent it. Now, if someone types "sub for sub" or anything along those lines, the comment does not post. The pathetic excuse for a human being begging for attention will get an error message that the comment cannot be posted due to an "internal error" which is a polite way of saying, "Get a damn life, you scum-sucking bottom-feeder." This technology isn't actually new, as many web-hosting services and a few online games have filters in place that seek out specific words and either erase them, or replace them with something else. It's typically reserved for obscenity and various foul terms, but YouTube has discovered it can also be used to keep people from mooching off of others. Again, genius.

YouTube also has a program that can "listen for" copyrighted music in videos and either mute the video or, as is more often the case, send you an e-mail asking if you'd like to allow a link to a legitimate download service (like iTunes or Amazon) to be posted alongside your video. Of course, it's not really a question, just a kind of gentle warning. They'll only post the link if they can actually get the rights to the song, otherwise they go with the muting option. In essence, they're trying to work with you, reach an agreement of sorts with the record labels so they don't take you to court for all you're worth plus interest. I've always felt the "free publicity" defense often used by people who use copyrighted music illegally in their videos is incredibly weak, tantamount to the spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum and screaming, "You never loved me!" but somehow YouTube has found a way to make it work. I may not approve of a compromise like this, but that's not the same as opposing it.

And yet, despite these capabilities at YouTube's disposal to help both its community and entertainment providers, I still see users posting full movies either in parts of around 10, or even, with the recent set of site changes of late, in single uploads. Granted, with the way the DMCA works, YouTube can't officially make a move against the offending user unless the original copyright holder files a formal complaint, a condition I consider akin to taking someone's car keys and throwing them in the river, insisting that it is not grand theft auto as the car is exactly where it was when the owner originally parked it and no one else has the keys. YouTube has created a kind of relatively safe haven for people to post videos that are not their own yet claims total immunity for what people do with it. Fair in principle, possibly, but jury's out on the practice. The point is, if they're willing to actively work and cooperate with record labels before any legal paperwork is filed, and set up parameters that flag comments for spam, why isn't there a means for automatically flagging videos that are of full-length feature films? Where's the misgiving about what exactly is going on with that user's channel? Sure, clips are tough to peg down as offending because they're only a short portion and often given at least a little context, such as hosting the video on a weblog for review or critique and putting a link to the journal in the description. Exhibiting the film in full, however, hardly counts as fair use, regardless of any attached analysis.

Copyright is far from a black and white issue, but it's not a complete gray area, either.

Two Random Thoughts About Batman

Not much of a Christmas present, I know, but I've got half an hour, and there's a distinct possibility I've had too much to drink, so while this entry is significantly less refined than previous, I won't even request that you take it with a grain of salt due to the circumstances. After all, the first thought is just something I've noticed now re-watching Batman, and the second is an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a few weeks.

1. Stairs seem to be a rather crucial motif in the first Batman film. Consider, for instance, the gunfight at Axis Chemicals at the beginning. Napier keeps climbing higher and higher, only to fall that much farther when he's scarred and disoriented I(symbolic of his rise to power, maybe?). There's also the odd, though clearly intentional, parallel of the "after dinner" segment of Vicki Vale's date with Bruce Wayne and her eventual abduction by the Joker, him leading her up the stairs of the cathedral. In the first case, she's clearly on the offensive, actively pursuing Wayne, just shy of outright seducing him. In the second instance, the roles are reversed and given a distinctly darker twist, and with Bruce replaced by the Joker, previously shown to be clearly obsessed with Vicki. One could probably write a book or two on the gender-role subtext of this motif, but it makes for a far more interesting meditation on the notion and dangers of obsession.

2. I won't go into it full-force here, but my biggest problem with The Dark Knight is that the overall plot feels like it's a string of loosely-connected vignettes whose only common thread is that they're all schemes by the Joker to cause chaos. Granted, that's the idea, and there's obviously still plenty to like in the film in spite of this, but cohesiveness is an essential strength to any movie, regardless of the volumes of established lore behind its source material.
Put simply, if I were in charge of making The Dark Knight, entailing that I'd have to tackle getting The Clown Prince of Crime onto the big screen with all the menace he's thus far conveyed on the small screen and comic book page, I would essentially reduce the Joker to his core concept and spread it as thinly as I could. In essence, I'd take a cue from Batman Beyond and make the Joker a "Gang" of sorts. Actually, it would be more a "successive collection," but in a more abstract sense than something literal like the film Fallen where a consciousness is transferred physically from person to person.
The pitch, in a nutshell, is thus: by the time the film opens, the Joker is already either dead and buried, or incarcerated with absolutely no chance of escape. However, the whole rest of the film would boil down to Batman dealing with copycats, all very different from one another in terms of M.O.s and patterns, but all sporting the same makeup and reckless abandon for life and morality. The resolution of Batman's character arc would therefore be the realization that he will never truly defeat his longtime foe or crime in general for that matter. Of course, he'll decide to fight in spite of the attrition, but the agony could still surely be felt.
To put it in another and even smaller nutshell: I'd have multiple actors playing the Joker.
If the whole notion sounds silly and far-fetched to the point of completely straying from the path, it really isn't. The concept of a "foe of many faces" has been done before; the villain known as The Red Hood historically was comprised of only one Real McCoy, with a series of copycats following thereafter, the Joker and even a former Robin ironically among them.

TRON LEGACY (culled from DevART Journal)

As long as it's on my DevART journal, I might as well post this portion of that entry here:



TRON LEGACY... Awesome. Simply Awesome. Whatever definition you attach to the word "awesome," throw it out and build up a new one, remembering that "awe" is the first syllable and you'll have an inkling of an idea of what seeing this movie was like for me. Sure, I have a few nitpicks and complaints, but it's kind of like when I saw the H2G2 movie; given everything that stood in that movie's way, that it exists at all is about as fulfilling a feeling of vindication as any success it endured thereafter.
If I do have one regret, it's honestly that I saw it in 3D.
The 3D is fine... for 3D scenes. Everywhere else (namely the real world), the glasses just put a yellow-green haze over everything. The worst part is the movie seems to be aware of this, but won't quite own up to it; at the beginning, we're treated to a rather odd title card (this isn't a direct quote, it's just the best I can recall):

The following 3D presentation has scenes that were shot in 2D. This is intentional and how the film was produced.

Please do not remove your 3D glasses for these segments.

In other words, unlike Avatar, which was fully shot in 3D or How to Train Your Dragon, which was fully CG and could therefore be easily switched between 2D and 3D, Tron was only partially shot in 3D, the remainder being 2D and only partly converted later. At one point, I ignored the title card's demand to leave the glasses on and slipped them off for one of the early scenes to find not even so much as a ghosting effect around anything or anyone, a tell-tale sign of the conversion process in any 3D film. I shouldn't be mad, as I guess the alternative would be an immersion-breaking interjection cuing the audience to put on or take off the glasses. Still, I wouldn't have been disappointed if I never saw it in 3D. When it hits the second-run theaters, and if it does so in a 2D format, it's definitely getting at least one more re-visit from me. Hell, I'm wrestling with seeing it again now. The last film to have that kind of effect on me was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which I did see twice in theaters*.

Yes, I'm generally that hard to impress and my taste in films is that hard to place and predict.

*(How to Train Your Dragon was close, but not quite there).

10 of My Favorite Movies With One-Word Titles:

Labyrinth
Hero
Rashomon
Powaqqatsi
Unbreakable
Casshern
Strike
L'atalante
Solaris
Metropolis

No such thing as invisible thread (Legion)

Just a little thought on sophistication.

My roommate and I just finished watching Legion. I didn't have much desire to see it, but she did because she likes Christian imagery and films that pertain to the Biblical apocalypse. I like Dogma, which she's never seen, and she likes Gabriel, which I haven't seen, so those are our viewpoints going into this thing.

She likes it. I hate it.

I hate it to such a degree that it now has a place in the number three slot of worst movies ever made (second is Wanted and third is Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li). It has the exact same problem that Wanted has, it's a moronic, dumb-as-a-brick action roller-coaster that tries desperately to convince you otherwise but has absolutely nothing with which to back its claims.
I don't have any problem with action movies, and I certainly don't hold something like Shanghai Noon or Indiana Jones to the same standards as I do something like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Rashomon. However, the makers of action movies have to learn to either be content with being what they are, or rise to the challenge that comes from trying to be more sophisticated. Imagine a scale of action movies and their level of relative sophistication. On one end of the spectrum is something like Rumble in the Bronx, by no means a bad movie (it's one of my favorites, really), it's just slightly silly and doesn't hold up to much scrutiny in the way of physics, logic, depth, or anything along those lines. It never takes itself seriously, but doesn't try to get you to, either, because it knows it has nothing to offer apart from a spectacle. On the other end of the spectrum is True Lies, also by no means a bad movie (a favorite, as well), but it's a very clever and deep movie with multi-layered characters and a tonally-consistent approach to its own plot. It takes itself seriously when it needs to, and laughs at itself when it wants to, and makes it very clear when the audience is supposed to laugh along and when they're supposed to care.

More movies on the Rumble in the Bronx side:
Shanghai Noon
Enter the Dragon
Street Fighter

More movies on the True Lies side:
Hero
Watchmen
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

These two relative extremes work, they're not outside of the gray area, but they're not dead center, which is where movies like Wanted and Legion are. They'd be outclassed at the sports bar with Watchmen, Kingdom of Heaven, and Curse of the Golden Flower, but they think too highly of themselves to kick back on the couch with 300, Temple of Doom, and Enter the Dragon.
The chief reason why Legion is in the dead zone, its key failing, is its plot and story. At the end of the day, Legion is half a movie, and not just because of its "cliffhanger" ending (this movie makes the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie look self-contained); half of the plot points and concepts it introduces are never followed through with or resolved. Furthermore, many of these concepts and plot points are introduced very late in the film's progression. This is also quite possibly the first film I've ever seen to employ both Chekov's Gun and a Deus Ex Machina (a very literal Deus Ex Machina).

My roommate says my problem is that I was putting more thought into the film than the average viewer. Granted, that's probably true, but like I said, I would never apply the same level of cerebration to this film as I do to American Psycho or 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. Apparently, even my most average of criteria is too much for this film to handle. It's entirely possible for an action film to have a deep narrative and well-rounded characters. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples to go by, so even if you just want to sell a lot of theater seats, you don't have to insult your audience's collective intelligence to do so. Legion bombards you with Christian imagery and lore in the vain hope that people's general ignorance of some of the deeper meanings presented in the Bible will earn the film some kind of revere.

The emperor isn't wearing new clothes, though, he's just naked.

Psst! Sensei, it's the kettle.... (The Sensei)

There are many factors to a film which help determine its genre: action sequences, romantic elements, humor, adult situations, suggestive dialogue, and innumerable others. Genres in general bother me because films (like any other sort of media) can be very difficult to classify and run the risk of being pigeonholed unfairly. Should a martial arts drama be classified (by Netflix, among others) under "Gay and Lesbian" because one of its central characters is homosexual? Granted, I'm not saying "Gay and Lesbian" is any sort of stigma for a film, or anyone the film might appeal to or be targeted at for that matter.

I love women too much to be gay, and I lack the necessary anatomy to be considered lesbian, but I'm not homophobic, either. On the whole, my only real "issue" with those films filed under "Gay & Lesbian" is that they tend to be a bit preachy, but preachiness is as much a common theme of those films as gunfights are for Westerns or spaceflight is for Science Fiction or farce is for Romantic Comedies. So, when I say that I'm not a fan of those films, it's only because I'm neither the choir nor the heretic; I'm more the Good Samaritan. Speaking of which...

The story of 2008's The Sensei (a film my roommate got from Netflix and recommended to me after viewing) centers around McClain, a homosexual teenager who recently lost his lover to a lynch mob in a small, rural town in Colorado. Afraid for his life, he frequently tries to enlist in martial arts classes at a local dojo, only to have his applications mysteriously (read: deliberately) vanish. To further matters, the local minister turns the sermon at an Easter mass from the passion and resurrection of Christ to matters of Sodom and Gomorrah at the very sight of McClain and his mother entering the church to join in the ceremony.
In the dojo's defense, they turn young McClain away not directly because of his sexual orientation, but because they fear losing their students over the matter. In fact, the family that runs the dojo has had some acceptance issues of their own to deal with, not just because of being Asian, but actually because of being multi-ethnic, with Irish, Asian, and even Filipino members and relatives. They're also of mixed faiths, with the grandparents devout Buddhists and one of their sons a Christian actively involved with the local church. The family has a very proud tradition of teaching the martial arts throughout the generations, a tradition that sadly is not open to the women of the family, as we learn when we are introduced to Karen O'Neil (played by the film's director D. Lee Inosanto), a black sheep of the family who returns to town to settle a small matter which is revealed later on in the film.
McClain is cornered in the locker room after gym class and savagely beaten by the school bully, recently suspended from the football team (a move that lost him his scholarship, and the respect of his ex-convict brother). Desperate, McClain's mother approaches Karen and asks him to teach her son some fighting moves, in the hope he might have a fighting chance at defending himself. Karen is reluctant at first, but agrees to private lessons (emphasis on private, as Karen was denied her black belt thanks to the family's proud traditions), wherein she forms a strong and lasting bond with McClain. The lessons are put to the test when a fight breaks out in the school cafeteria, instigated by the bully (out on bail and awaiting a court hearing). McClain is able to subdue the attack, only to earn the scorn of the bully's older brother, who blames McClain for his brother's now-repeated incarceration. Things go south for Karen when her family finds out she's been teaching McClain, with her older brother the most (and, it turns out, only) disapproving, and she considers leaving town. McClain is devastated by her decision, and his attempts to outrun the pain sets him in the sights of the bully's intoxicated brother and his motley crew of hicks and hillbillies. Karen manages to come to the rescue in time, and the two just barely manage to hold their own against the brutes. As a result, everyone is hospitalized, but a small misunderstanding about bleeding wounds drives a wedge between McClain and Karen, leading him to think she's just as homophobic as everyone else. Karen's family arrives (even her disapproving older brother, now mellowed a bit) and Karen reveals the reason she came back has to do with her husband's death. She tells McClain that her husband, a boxer she'd previously said died of cancer, in reality had AIDS and passed it on to her (hence her concern over getting too close to McClain after she's severely wounded in the fight).
What follows in the rest of the film is the reconciling of all these revelations and the effects they have on the community as a whole. It's preachy in places and doesn't leave all loose threads tied up, but still offers strong and powerful dramatics and lots of poignant moments to hit home the reality of the film's message.

On the whole, there's only one real point of contention with this film, but it's a rather large and noticeable one. Following McClain's release from the hospital, he and his mother are visited by Karen's grandmother at an unusual hour of the night. The grandmother explains that she's there to ask a favor of McClain's mom to help Karen. After assurance by the mother that nothing is unreasonable, the grandmother utters a single word:

Pot.

There is, as one might expect, a moment of uncomfortable silence, followed by a hurried explanation that they are, in fact, referring to "the kind of pot that gets you high and not the kind you cook in."

Obvious question: What the Hell?
Obvious follow-up questions: Why would they think McClain's mother would have any or know where to get some? When did we ever have an indication that McClain's mother had access to marijuana? Why do they think this will help Karen's condition where years of medical treatment and a healthy, pro-active lifestyle have failed?
Obvious and appropriate summation of previous questions: What the Hell?

The scene that follows (and undertows the fielding of the aforementioned question, follow-ups, and summation) is two of Karen's brothers arguing how to prepare a joint, with the grandmother (the one who asked for it in the first place and even knew the gesture to indicate it) asking how they know to do this in the first place. The camera then cuts away to McClain sitting next to Karen in bed looking through some old books (with nary a doobie in sight), technically ending the joint-rolling sequence. For that matter, it ends any further mention or discussion of the sudden appearance of cannabis.

It truly is an enigma as to why a film that has so far tackled issues of homosexuality, racial diversity, misguided religious piety, AIDS awareness, and sexism would suddenly throw in a recreational drug reference without stating any kind of viewpoint on it. My roommate offered the explanation that, being an Asian family, they would try to find something equivalent to opium to ease the pain of the illness. Admittedly, she still thought the sequence was weak at best and out of place at worst, not to mention racist. In the end, the only real explanation that works is one of comedy. Put simply, the makers of the film thought it would be funny to have pot jokes because they needed to inject some comedic elements to lighten the mood following the film's dramatic climax. One can just imagine the conversation leading to its inclusion:

1: We need something to lighten the mood of the film a bit after all those deep revelations and intense characterization.
2: But what's funny? What kind of joke could we throw in?
1: I don't know, what's a good comedy out there?
2: Um, well, there's those Harold and Kumar movies, they're pretty funny.
1: Oh, what are they about?
2: They're about two pot smokers who go on a series of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby-inspired misadventures on their way to a fast food restaurant, among them an escaped zoo animal, a nymphomaniacal Christian couple, a pesky raccoon, a racist police officer, and a sexually ravenous Neil Patrick Harris.
1: ... what was that about pot?

Maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this, and I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that scene is the reason why this film hasn't achieved a widespread release or much critical attention, but when questions like that come up, every facet of a film's content and character must be considered. For all the good this film does, and all the positive messages it teaches, it practically shoots itself in the foot because of a moment of sheer ineptitude regarding humor.

So, what do we have? We have a solid, well-made, and inspirational drama with a singular blemish that is tragically the size of the moon and twice as heavy.

Nope, just a demon.... (Paranormal Activity)

First things first, I hate the word "mockumentary." In fact, let that be the only time the word is mentioned forthwith. The problem is that the term implies connotations of humor and parody (This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, et al), which gives other and especially more recent films of this style (Faux Amateurism?) a very debilitating handicap right out the gate. Luckily, The Blair Witch Project came out like a bolt from the blue and breathed fresh life into the style (Diegetic Archive Footage?) by applying its stylistic principles to the horror genre, where it's made itself surprisingly at home with works such as:

The Last Broadcast
REC
Quarantine
The Poughkeepsie Tapes
The Blair Witch Project
Amateur Porn Star Killer
Cloverfield
Paranormal Activity
The Fourth Kind

As a filmmaker, I'm naturally attracted to the concept; I appreciate its grassroots, guerilla sensibility married perfectly to lofty goals and a wide vision. At the same time, it's got this fragility, a kind of precariously teetering insecurity best analogized to The Emperor's New Clothes. Basically, once you acknowledge the "realism" as "frugality," disbelief becomes unsuspended and suddenly you realize that you're watching a talented filmmaker stretch a budget in ways that seem more underhanded than clever. Whichever intention rings true, it's being given more attention than necessary. If you can manage to avoid the pessimistic outlook of "cheap and dirty," the outlook we're left with is that it's just another way to tell a story, like first vs. third-person perspective in a novel.

To that end, the best way to think of these films (whatever name we decide upon for them) is as the visual equivalent of the epistolary novel. It has all the strengths: a more relatable perspective, a more naturalistic approach to characterization, and a heightened sense of realism. Sadly, while it may not exactly have all the weaknesses as well, it's got a whole new set of them to overcome.

The biggest point of contention that's probably going to arise during a viewing of Paranormal Activity is one of scale and subtlety.

This leads to the inevitable comparison to The Blair Witch Project. Yes, it seems unfair to hold every "Found, First-Person Film" to Blair Witch, but that's because there's a lot of things that Blair Witch does right, and a lot to admire as well. Chief among these is its ambiguity. While the film ultimately speaks for itself, so to, er... speak, it really doesn't have a lot to say. Is it a witch? Is it a cult? Is it an elaborate hoax? Is it a conspiracy to commit murder motivated by a sexual power struggle? The point is, it's open to interpretation, and we're really not sure just what it is we've seen.
With Paranormal Activity, there's no question about what's happening. I won't spoil it, but I'll tell you the exact moment in the film when several things happen, among them getting a clear and solid sense of this movie's "reality," and myself nearly bursting out laughing, ready to dismiss the film as cheap and gimmicky.

The scene in two words: Ouija Board.

That'll be the extent of the description, but you'll know the moment when you come to it, and hopefully you'll see what I mean when I'm talking about subtlety and a sense of scope. At first, I honestly found myself fighting back a laugh, along with an overwhelming sense of disappointment. It's my own fault for expecting ambiguity and instead getting something that very clearly and blatantly spells out just what type of horror movie this is. It is not, in fact, a psychological thriller as these "Discovered Video Diaries (Hmm, DVD...?)" might lend themselves to, but something more straightforward. Don't let that deter you; again, we won't spoil it, but just because we know what is causing the hauntings doesn't make it any less effective.

To sum up, the best way to describe just what kind of horror movie Paranormal Activity is in relation to other horror films you might have seen is this: on one end of the spectrum is Poltergeist with The Blair Witch Project on the other, and Paranormal Activity is exactly halfway between them.

NOTE: If you rent this movie on disc, you're presented with two menu options at the start, one being to see the film with its original, theatrical ending, the other to see an alternative ending, which, in the film's complex production and distribution history, is more akin to the director's original cut of the film. While you're probably going to watch both endings anyway, I strongly recommend seeing the theatrical cut first before checking out the alternative ending.

So many movies II (The Island, Hero, Able Edwards, & Seed)

And as for the rest of the films...

The Island was a pleasant surprise. This is probably Bay's best film, and that's saying something. Bay would make a great second unit director, and he has been so in the past. Unfortunately, for him to really have the freedom to shoot the kind of action scenes he wants, he has to be given the reins to the whole project. To make him a second unit director on a film would result in a very schizophrenic and uneven picture as very few directors' sensibilities would gel with Bay's trademark style. This is the ultimate tragedy of Bay's career, but he doesn't seem too disappointed by it. The Island, pigeonholed by certain, more elitist critics, as a modern re-imagining of the movie Clonus (better known as Parts: The Clonus Horror), does its supposed source material justice and beyond. Clonus, sadly, was not a particularly well-made film (as evidenced in part by its inclusion in the Mystery Science Theater film library) and it hasn't aged very well, either. Clonus could barely keep up with the science at the time, let alone the era's science fiction. In fact, I'd read a book about cloning published several years before Clonus' production that handled the subject matter better. Bay's usual lack of attention to anything not involving crashes and explosions is absent here, as the performances (even the most one-dimensional of them) are on par with any drama with less than half as many action sequences. If you're not a fan of Bay, and you haven't seen The Island, it may just be the one that changes your mind from a total write-off of his work.

Hero was brilliant, put simply. It, along with House of Flying Daggers, came with consistent praise and recommendation to me by friends, co-workers, and anyone else in my acquaintance who's seen the film. I had virtually no preconceived notions about the film, having only seen a few trailers leading up to the film's release. I knew nothing of its plot, but was very happy that it employed my favorite narrative device: Multiple Perspectives. Hero is about an assassination plot, told from at least two distinct viewpoints and even then in a variety of different variations. Each variation on the climax's preceding events is marked throughout by a dominant color (Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, White). It sounds like a rather elementary way to tell the flashbacks apart, but it's very effective, and utterly beautiful. The only thing that honestly keeps me from taking a screen capture from nearly any frame of this film to use as my desktop wallpaper is is that it would mean taking down my current wallpaper, a publicity photo of actress Bai Ling (a little more on her later).

Able Edwards was... weird, but novel and certainly interesting. It's a low-budget vanity project combining two well-known figures, one fictional and one real: Citizen Kane and Walt Disney. In short, Able Edwards is about the clone of a deceased cartoonist-turned-business tycoon created to become head of a corporation operating on an orbital space station. The style is patterned after Orson Welles' classic almost to the letter, right down to the very typeface used for the film's title. Released in 2004, Able Edwards is probably the least-widely-known of the films that comprise the “Digital Backlot” cycle, accompanied by Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (featuring the lovely aforementioned Bai Ling) from the USA, Immortal from France (with a Slavic writer and director), and Casshan from Japan, among others. These films were all made using extensive amounts of digital backdrops and composites, to such an extent that few or no practical sets were built, with those that were serving more as references for the actors' benefit than the audiences' viewing pleasure.

I didn't say anything about Seed earlier because I'd only thought to include it at the last minute. This was the first Uwe Boll film I'd seen, and I had a little trouble actually watching it, but not because it's a bad film. Let me put it this way: Horror comes in three flavors which are Terrify, Horrify, and Gross-Out. Gross-Out's markings are pretty obvious, even if you've only heard of Hostel, Saw, or anything by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Horrify elements best described as “jump scares” the ones that play off your reflexes or get your adrenaline pumping (Alien, Jaws, any zombie film). Terrify is the hardest variety of horror to produce, and often the best results come from films outside what most people generally think of as belonging to the horror genre, as you don't have to be a horror movie to be a creepy movie (Jacob's Ladder, Flatliners, American Psycho). Seed is very much in the Gross-Out category, and that's by design, as Uwe Boll described the film in the accompanying commentary as “A horror movie for horror fans”. Like I said, Seed is not a bad horror movie. Far from it, it's at least as competent at what it does as the Saw movies or anything from Rob Zombie. I just happen to prefer suspense to gore.

There are more Uwe Boll films on their way through the combined efforts of Netflix, and I'm actually looking forward to giving them a go. Sure, Boll gets a lot of flack for his work and certainly for some of his more harsh statements about certain filmmakers and most filmgoers, but I try not to listen to gossip. I'll judge for myself his abilities as a director, and so far, from what I've seen, his only real fault is some slightly iffy casting (Tara Reid and Ray Liotta chiefly), and that's hardly something to hold against a director.

Along with Boll's work, the other films on the way are the aforementioned entries in the Digital Backlot cycle, Immortal and Casshan. I plan on doing a sort of video retrospective of the cycle, this being essentially the 5th anniversary of each of those films.

Thanks for reading.