It Chapter Two finally ended

I tried very hard to have an open mind on IT: Chapter Two. The first chapter in Andrés Muschietti's adaptation had a ton of promise, but I won't lie. I got hung up on the differences from the book. Hell, I went over the 1100 page monstrosity in detail. While the story of the kids is the best part, the adaptation in Chapter One I feel did a disservice to the minority characters Mike, Bev, and Stan. Mike should have known the history of the town, not Ben, who is not given his aptitude for building. Bev should have been the best shot of the group and not a damsel in distress, kidnapped to allow the boys a reason to be heroes. Stan, well, I guess they decided not to include to Standpipe which makes sense. Money and all. 

Chapter Two does little to prove these changes were needed, leaning back on Mike being connected to the library and Ben an architect, undoing those changes. I will get to Stan later, but the end result ends up being an overly thought, overly complex adaptation of one of the only true examples of epic horror that removed most examples of why the novel was epic in the first place.

The following are my notes (in bold) while watching, along with what I was thinking. 

Not British

We start with my first thoughts, not including "uh oh." Bill is on the movie set with his wife Audrey, who gets maybe a line or two. She's big in the novel, an example of how he is trying to move on and escape his past. She's not British like in the novel or the mini-series, but who cares? What is important is how he treats her, how he acts. James McAvoy's acting is fine, but Bill's a dick. Our hero treats his wife like an asshole.

Ending dig on King

Another call on Bill as a Stephen King counterpart, everyone digging in on the running joke of Bill's horror novels not having good endings. Not gonna lie, this landed pretty good and felt nice. The first dozen times.

Ben remembers

Sure there's a nice scene where we get a bait and switch of the now handsome Ben (with the original Ben from the playing the fat guy on the conference call), but I can't help but feel sad we miss the novel's Ben remembering. Something about a guy squeezing lemon into his eye and drinking a full glass of bourbon (a damn beer stein). I kinda wanted to see that. 

207-159-????

I tried to get Mike's number on the Loser's phones. Bonus points for getting a Maine area code, I guess. I'm not gonna rewatch to find out, but I bet there's screenshots online.

Lingers on Stan

I did like Stan getting the call. We'll get later why it is kinda bullshit, but the scene where he get the call and goes upstairs to take his last bath is pretty effective. Still, the miniseries wins out by adapting the novel better, giving the scene to his wife finding his body and the blood-scrawled "It."

Bev not as empowering

She's tough. I'll give Jessica Chastain that. When her bastard husband (who never comes back after this scene) tries to come after her and tell her she's not going back to Derry, Bev gets away in fine form and does her walk away in fine form. Yet… The scene in the novel almost parallels when the Losers fought back against Bowers and his gang during the rock fight. Bev getting superpowered by her memories of having friends, of being strong, kicking the shit out of her shitty husband and leaving is neutered by a scene of her getting some shots in and leaving. As she walked down the street near broken, I didn't get a feeling she had a return to that power but some kind of pre-empowerment from a Lifetime movie. That this never comes back makes it feel even less actualized.

Fortune cookie too much

Let's not talk too much of the Loser's just showing up at the Chinese restaurant without any build up. They just know where to go and in a three hour movie I guess we can be blessed with some brevity. Yet by the end of their reuniting, they get attacked by IT in the most absurd way. Either IT or the filmmakers have no subtlety, substituting small practical gag monsters with ranting abominations such as the baby-headed cockroach thing and the creeping eye. It jumps from creepy to over-the-top nonsense much like the 2011 Thing prequel relying too much on CGI effects than simple practical effects.

Poor Vicki

By far the best scene in the movie relies on the simple terror or a little child. Pennywise lures a little girl under some bleachers and kills her, offering friendship and kindness. It's heartbreaking and pure evil. It also stands out because it offers the one thing this movie is desperate to recreate: genuine fear for our protagonists.

Bowers - no dog or Christine

The reason Henry Bowers comes back is because they did not kill him off in the movie. Well, not the only. He's also the only real life threat to the Losers. I regret Muschietti not going pure crazy with this one with the clown dog head killing the guard as Bowers escapes. Hell, Bowers could have been killed as a kid, left out entirely, and replaced by those jerks that kill Adrian at the beginning. They vanish just as easy. Plus, what's up with Christine not picking him up from the hospital? A rotting corpse is one thing, but a driverless car is another.

Mike lives in library?

Here's another of those things that bug me. Growing up I wanted to live in the library. The miniseries took pains to show Mike as part of the community, the head librarian running the place and well liked. Mike here seems to be a weird hermit piecing together nonsense while living in a clock tower like he's Batman's Barbara Gordon, visiting crime scenes like a ghost. Nobody talks to him, sees him, or cares for him even though he lives in a municipal building. It's just dumb and empty storytelling meant for shortcuts and winks than actual character building.

Native sweat lodge mixup

The fuck? Mike drugs Bill to get him to see the scene of IT's arrival on Earth millennia before. He explains the Ritual of Chud, the lights, natives of the area gathering to bring down the evil monster yet… it feels useless. Add to this that later they find the sweat lodge clubhouse where in the book the ritual took place, where a few of the kids see the same thing, it just feels wrong. Another scene to take away from the kids and give to the adults information just so they will stay in town and fight IT when they know, THEY KNOW IT is evil and no one will stop it. Which leads to...

Seen all die - Bev

Here's the reason they had Bev kidnapped in the first place, my rationalization believes. By being kidnapped by IT and seeing the deadlights as a child, Bev sees how they will all die. She has always known all this, shown to her by the evil thing… Why does she believe it at all? I'll tell you: so she can tell them they should stick together or they all die. From information she gets form the evil fucking thing. This feels like lazy icing on a lazy sweat lodge cake. 

Lots of Street walking

This happens a lot. At this point, the Losers are going into the town to find their totems, to find things each of them can hold to remember what they used to deal with IT back in the day. These totems will go into the ritual to defeat IT. Whatever, sure. Doesn't stop some dude and his ghost in a Trans Am from running them down while superhero walking down the middle of the street. Bev did the same thing walking away from her husband, too. At least at one point with Bill he almost does get run over and laughs it off, so they might be aware of this nonsense.

Bev Dad - too much perfume

Skipping ahead a bit, we get that trailer scene with Jessica Chastain and the old lady in Bev's old house. It's creepy and effective, maybe one of the best sequences of the movie spoiled on Youtube. Still, though, there's more to it with a flashback to young Bev and her father. Her dad blames her for her mom's death from some illness. He sprays the young woman with perfume, one or two thousand spritzes more than necessary emphasizing just one more time the filmmaker's lack of understanding of subtly. One spray and a sniff close to the young girl would be unsettling and creepy. A dozen or two and some yelling just comes across as silly as all hell. Calls back to the fortune cookies with too much, just way too much into the realm of absurdity. The small looks of the old woman, the creepy dances in the background, those are unsettling. The in-your-face thumps and shouts are just crude.

Ritchie Paul Bunyon = gay

Here we begin the retroactive secret telling, the calling back and adding more to the kid's stories and yet there's nothing here. Sure, we just learned about Bev's dad's creepiness, but we saw that before with the blood bathroom. Here the secret is not an extension of what we know, but whole cloth invention. Old Ritchie's Bill Hader (doing a badass job in the role) wanders downtown to the Paul Bunyan statue and gets a vision of being attacked by the big fucker as a kid after being rejected playing Street Fighter with a relative of Bowers and being called out as gay. I have no problem reading Ritchie as gay and in love with Eddie or whoever, but what does this add? In some ways this feels more exploitative, creating a narrative not foreshadowed in the first film and exposing a secret not with a shout or an exclamation but with… nothing. Adult Ritchie never admits he's gay, just pines quietly. It feels reductive and sad and not with the pathos needed. If the filmmakers had had the balls to include this in the first chapter, I might have been more receptive. 

Bill finds Silver, Buys from King, Threatens skateboard kid

Bill's token finding is also just as convoluted and useless. His old bike, Silver, is in a pawn shop window run by none other than Stephen King himself. This scene serves to give King a highlight reel, a fun cameo that we can all look back on years from now. Other than that, Silver's use in the story is… there's none. He doesn't use it to reclaim his childhood, to cure Audry in the end (she's not a thing here), or to even stop his stuttering. The bicycle is just a token of a time gone by, a glorified running joke. Then Bill goes to the drain where his brother Georgie died and yells at it for a while. We get a slight secret that there was more to that day, then Bill gets the little boat from god-knows-where. Looking on, a kid that Ritchie yelled at earlier gets yelled at and runs away. In the book this was a nice scene with Bill reconnecting with a piece of Derry, a part of his childhood, while trying the skateboard and realizing his mode of transport is Silver. Here it's another chance for the kid to be yelled at so he can be remembered later.

Bev smokes in school, NKOTB

Enter Ben. Everybody gets a token in this episodic mess, so Ben gets to just walk into an American school in 2016 and roam around. Sure, Pennywise might be affecting the town from converting the school into a prison like most other public schools. Whatever. Still, when he remembers listening to New Kids on the Block and Bev smoking in school, it's pretty nice up until she starts mocking him and then bursts into flame. This scene is pretty horrific and effective but seems to go nowhere but back to the other Losers at the hotel. Which lead me to think...

Nobody works at hotel

Bev has to go behind the desk at one point to get her key. Sure, it's late, but could we not make one person's day as an extra in this movie? Or why couldn't this be King's cameo and ditch Silver all together. I may be nitpicking, but they made a point of showing that no one was there to help them… OH. Well, I have to admit that's a little clever if annoying.

Keene Tumor talk - basement - Angel of the morning

Eddie's turn! Of course, he goes to the pharmacy because that's where a creepy old man named Keene is going to poke the spot in his face where he's going to be stabbed soon. This works as a creepy and gross scene. Then Eddie goes into the basement. He's attacked by the rotting hobo monster and decides, you know what fuck this monster shit! He chokes out the rotting hobo monster and for a moment the audience fist pumps. Then Juice Newton pipes up with Angel Of the Morning and the rotting hobo monster vomits all over Eddie. End scene.

Kid Skateboard gone

The scene at the fair where Bill tries to save the skateboard kid in the funhouse is excellent, tense, scary, and pointless in this nearly three hour movie. Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, chase them into the funhouse, and make Bill watch as you kill your darlings. This is what special unrated director's cut editions are for.

Bowers not stopped

Eddie gets stabbed in the face by Bowers who has snuck into the hotel. Eddie them stabs Bowers. Another unnecessary addition, much like everything else with Bowers. Like Audrey and Tom, Bowers should have been dumped altogether to trim this story down. Was he great in the first movie? Yep. Does he impact anything in any way here? Nope. Still the effects of the knife in Eddie's face was super effective, especially the detail of him opening his mouth, blood falling out, and the knife visible. Shudder.

Mike makes it

I could have just written "Bowers stopped" to counter point the previous scene. Rather than send Mike to the hospital, Ritchie puts an ax in Bowers head. Mike then jumps up and they go to the creepy haunted house to do battle. Bonus points for a really good Hader reaction to just killing a guy.

Stan the thing head

Over at the house ready to kick some ass, the Loser's find young Stan's body pretzeled up in the refrigerator much like Pennywise was in the first movie. Without giving us much reference (Carpenter's The Thing could have been young Eddie and/or Ritchie's unifying scary movie, imagine the squees if they had held hands while watching this), Stan's head turns into a spider monster like in The Thing and runs around. Exactly like that. Except not scary or gross but comical and time consuming.

Eddie scared

While Ritchie does battle with… something, I think the Stan the thing head, doesn't matter as one monster in this movie is as disposable as another… While Ritchie does battle, Eddie freezes. The only Loser so far to to fight back IT by choking a motherfucker freezes. What is even happening? At least give us some Juice Newton vocals to show that impacted him enough to attack the thing killing his friend when he could conquer his own fear not so long ago.

Bev taken again

Uh. It's almost like the writer's didn't know what to do with her after they took away how badass she was.

Mike is evangelistic

Down in the sewers about to do the ritual, Mike takes on a fever that is reserved for Southern pulpits and Walmart customer service lines. He's not wrong, nothing he's done in the past is wrong, and by all that is in the power of the universe Mike is getting a return on this child killing monster clown if he has the receipt or not! The fact that the ritual fails spits in the face of not only the character, but of the audience. I came here to see some bonkers cosmic turtle action, not a bunch of average adults run around an alien set pretending to know what the hell is going on.

Ritual place is Geiger

They stole the set of IT's landing from the Alien franchise. Somebody call Ridley Scott and demand this sequel now. Can't be worse than Prometheus. Alien Vs Predator Vs Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

Balloon boom

What better way to fail than fail with a big ass balloon filled with a clown spider?

Pomeranian

I'll be honest, this was funny. But also right up there with the skateboard kid in terms of unnecessary. How long did this go on, this throw away sequence based on a throw away line backing up another scene from Chapter One. The damn dog doesn't even come back. Pennywise failed to kill any darlings here.

Bill not sick - Bullshit

This pissed me off. Just what the hell were they thinking? Why did the Losers need secondary problems on top of their already shitty childhoods? Ritchie's gay, Bev's dad blamed her for her mom's death, all of that is layered and alters the story, but saying that Bill faked sick the day Georgie died feels offensive. Not only was the poor kid not there when his brother died, but he lied to stay home. The original way, he puts the owness on himself and comes to terms with the fact that nothing he could have done would have saved Georgie. He was sick, a thing that happened to him, not like now where the blame almost shifts to him. If he had been there, Georgie might have lived, the screenwriter is saying. It's needlessly complex in a movie with already too much going on. Plus, there's no reason for him faking sick. He's not watching the A-Team or playing Hard Ball on his Atari. He just sits there at the window and watches his brother play. 

No cosmic space turtle

I really wanted to see this sumbitch.

Poltergeist implosion

Another movie that the young Losers should have watched as its reference directly here as the house implodes in on itself after IT's defeat.

Town okay?

Remember all that shit about IT infecting the town, influencing the behavior of the adults to allow kids and gay men to be eaten by a monster clown?  Well, killing IT has no effect. Kids are just in regular danger now. The town doesn't get swallowed up or devastated as punishment for being supported by an extraterrestrial hell demon for centuries. Since the movie never leaned on this aspect, this is not surprising. Still, we wasted a lot of money so far and didn't get a space turtle.

Not forgetting

Right up there with the town not getting thrown out, the Losers get to remember all the trauma and horror that has haunted them all their lives. Ben and Bev get a nice life, Bill gets to write, Mike travels, and Ritchie gets his carving skills on, but man think of the nightmares. That is not how PTSD works.

Stan suicide meaning

So they saved the most useless bit for last. Here's the thing: Stan might have been my favorite Loser from the book, or at least my favorite conceptualization of a character dealing with horror. He's a logical being, an accountant, a thinking machine that needs things orderly. When IT starts getting fucking bonkers, he is the closest of the Losers to spin towards insanity because IT was WRONG. IT made no sense in the world Stan lived in and was offensive in the way IT's manifestations went against the natural world. Stan was closest to the brink of madness, the true sign of horror. You can die, be eaten, get torn apart, and have everything end, but madness is the true horror. Losing your mind, yourself, knowing that you can't trust the world and believing no one else suffers like you; that's horror. Having Stan say "Well, I was scared and that would stop me from helping (like Eddie did) so I took my top hat off the Monopoly board" just… It's sad, but it almost lessons the horror of his suicide. He's "being brave" by killing himself rather than facing his fear, even if he knows he's going to fail. Fuck that shit.

Ready or Not leaves no rich bastard un-punished

Get ready to watch a hunt where I'm not sure everyone knew what was going on.

The genre of people-hunting-people stories has been done to death with every action type you can imagine. From the straightforward "rich people killing hobos" like Hard Target to the more politically acceptable "innocent man on the run" stories like The Fugitive, every action man on the planet has been chased and chased in return. Hell, even Arnold did it with Predator. In Ready or Not, we see Grace (Samara Weaving) marrying into the super rich and elite Le Domas family. The family has a little tradition, however, in that every new member has to play a game. Around once every generation or so, that game is "hide and seek," and the family hunts the new member and sacrifices them. Grace wonders who she can trust in this bag of crazy, even down to her own groom, as she fights for her life. Ready or Not gives a clever twist by making Grace seem like a real person without resorting to making her into a "final girl" aka the last girl alive in a slasher movie. Unlike Veronica as the assassin in Final Girl or Erin the survivalist in You're Next, Grace has no training to fall back on. She thinks things are a joke until maids start dropping and struggles to live for the rest of the movie, coming out of it battered and beaten. The family chasing her as equally as inept. They have not killed someone in thirty years and are rusty at it, up to and including using weapons. As the family is whittled down and Grace's wedding dress gets more tattered, the subversive ending creates a cheer-worthy pop to the senses in this laughter filled comedy-thriller. 

Come for the light dose of horror and leave wanting to know so much more about what other rich assholes have done for their money.

Ready or Not

You're Next'

Starring Sharni Vinson, AJ Bowen, Wendy Glenn, Joe Swanberg, Ti West

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 works despite being bonkers insano pants

Prom Night 2: Hello Mary Lou

Starring Michael Ironside, Wendy Lyon, Lisa Schrage

Mary Lou (Lisa Schrage) wields her youth with the insane bravado of a biker on speed. She's prom queen and she'll sleep with whomever she wants, drink whatever she wants, and play her music loud and proud. Then her boyfriend burns her to death. A few decades later, sweet virginal Vicki (Wendy Lyon) finds Mary Lou's prom crown in an old trunk and shenanigans ensue. What kind of shenanigans? Well, the ghost of Mary Lou can't seem to decide how to kill a pregnant girl, so it chokes, hangs, and then throws her out a window. Mary Lou gets tired doing poltergeist shit so she possesses Vicki, shocking everyone with a very liberal attitude about her body. As the climax freight trains its way towards prom, you bet your ass everything goes Carrie and the body count rises. Depending on your point of view, Hello Mary Lou is either the greatest horror movie or a rip off of all the better horror movies. The effects hold up pretty well with special mention to the scene where Vicki gets sucked into the chalkboard. The acting by a crew of unknowns is amazing. The one deviant in the cast is Michael Ironside playing the older firestarting boyfriend of Mary Lou and father to one of the boys. A recognizable face only adds to the substance of the movie. The combination of silly slasher and psychological ghost horror gives the movie more legs that it needs, zooming along from set piece to set price. By the time Vicki makes her turn, the movie has more than given its entertainment value.

Breaking the mold of the normal slasher, Mary Lou creates a sense of unease through a lens of crazy "let's just do this next" that will leave you guessing and/or cheering through your first viewing.

Carrie (1976)

Starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, John Trovolta, William Katt, Betty Buckley

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark tells the best campfire tales without pulling punches

Four kids decide to combat evil after evil decides to kill them in this adaptation of the beloved and befeared children's book series.

When you get right down to it, the only way any of us will be remembered is by stories. Stories our families tell, stories that get written in the newspaper, stories that are whispered over campfires. In one way or another, you become the example for others to follow. When Stella, Chuck, and Auggie take their new friend Ramon to the Bellows mansion on Halloween, all they know about Sara Bellows is that she could tell a hell of a story and killed multiple children. By the time the film is over, only Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) is truly capable of telling their story along with the truth behind Sara Bellows. Director André Øvredal crushes the hell out of this adaptation of the children's classic series, using the flair he showed in Troll Hunter with the grounded simplicity of The Autopsy of Jane Doe. The stories told throughout feel as though they come from the books as told around campfires. Stephen Gammel's classic images compound the telling just as they did in the story, making a corpse looking for a toe as horrifying as any challenged unleashed in the Saw movies. Made for teens, this adaptation does not hold back showing psychological and physical consequences of tangling with a demonic entity. The most horrific section did not have a monster or creature on the prowl but a poor girl in a bathroom not wanting the boil on her face to ruin her big night on the stage. Her screams and those of her brother (played wonderfully by Austin Zajur, the awkward teen equivalent to Finn Wolfhard's tween joker in It: Chapter One) still echo off the tile of my mind. On top of all the horror, there are good messages in here of social acceptance, duty, and racial equality that are threaded with calm deliberation. That's more than I ask for my silly horror, especially when done this well.

For those of you questioning if studios are capable of making good horror for the younger set, get out there and see this movie now.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

Starring Emile Hirsch, Brian Cox, Olwen Kelly, Michael McElhatton, Ophelia Lovibond

Crawl (2019) is a hell of a good time

Crawl

Starring Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper

A daughter goes looking for her dad in a hurricane and finds a whole mess of alligators. Who knew this might be the best horror of the year?

Director Alexandre Aja became prominent with psychological horror thrillers like High Tension and self aware monster flicks like Piranha 3D. In Crawl, he flexes both those muscles to create a great little monster movie that's better than it needs to be. Haley (Kaya Scodelario) leaves her swimming practice in a hurricane to go look for her father (Barry Pepper). She finds him trapped under the house, hunted by several alligators. As the basement begins to flood, Haley and her dad battle the gator menace while watching looters and rescue workers get taken out by the way over the top pissed off reptiles. The story bounces back and forth between a tight thriller with a countdown clock (it's a big ass hurricane coming bringing all the water) and a grisly visceral violent ballet. Bites matter when they need to, showing off blood and breaking bones. Then when Haley needs to swim or her dad needs to fight back, all injuries are put aside. Make no mistake, getting bitten by a ten foot gator in this movie means a lot until it doesn't, and that's okay. Horror movies are made on less. For the most part, I believed that these characters would fight back with everything they had. That belief carried me much farther than my actual knowledge of how alligators and hurricanes behave. As Haley fights the alligators, she elicited several "fuck yeahs" and fist pumps from the audience I saw it with. She's strong, badass, and yet vulnerable enough to think that maybe she won't make it out okay. There's enough character failures here for any semblance of triumph to be great.

A no-duh double feature with last year's Hurricane Heist, Crawl creates enough atmosphere and self awareness to make its runtime fly by.

The Hurricane Heist

Starring Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson, Melissa Bolona

Piranha 3D

Starring Elisabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Richard Dreyfuss, Jerry O'Connell

Mary Poppins Returns with flash and cheek reaching for the original magic

The magical nanny Mary Poppins comes back to the Banks family after a few decades to sing songs, teach lessons about being a kid, and kick some nostalgic tires.

Thinking back on the original Mary Poppins, beyond the ear-worm songs, brings to mind a fresh faced 29 year old Julie Andrews as a kind yet stern nanny to some neglected kids. They needed a nanny, and she delivered. In the 2018 version, it seems Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) has returned to those kids who are all grown up to help them remember to be kids. Jane (Emily Mortimer) and Michael (Ben Whishaw) have followed in their parents footsteps as an activist and a banker. Tragedy has followed them, however, as their parents seem to have gone off to a farm in the sky, and Michael's wife and mother of his children has died. Alone and about to lose the family home, the Banks family needs some help. Mary Poppins literally rides in on nostalgia, an old kite from the first film bringing her to earth. From there, the nanny and lamplighter Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) jump and dance and sing to bring some joy and peace to the Banks family. For the most part the journey is delightful, as is Colin Firth as the greedy bank manager trying to steal the family home. The musical numbers are a throwback to music videos of the 1980s with lots of bright colors and smooth dancing. While watching, I hoped that they would lean in a bit more with the plot as a true musical, but for the most part they are spectacle. One in particular, a bawdy cabaret number "A Cover is Not the Book" had me thinking a creepy thought, "well, this one is for the moms and dads out there." Overall, the tone of the film scratches the nostalgic itch while, like most other sequeled properties, misses what made the original special. Mary Poppins (who I realized while writing this can only be referenced by her full name) is more cheeky and clever, not talking down to the modern audience with spoonfuls of sugar. Emily Blunt is the standout star of the film, the focus of every scene she's in with magnetizing effortlessness. For the most part, the film updates the original, yet at times does not feel like its own thing. It could be compared to rebuilding a classic car with newer materials, something about the plastic and flashy curves cannot reproduce what heavy steel and solid lines create.

A fun family film with flashy musical numbers, this film curses itself with the original's shadow.

Mary Poppins Returns

Starring Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters

That Night by Chevy Stevens lacks a compelling mystery but succeeds with great drama

Typical cool ass nineties girl Toni rocked flannel and loved her boyfriend Ryan. Then her sister was killed, and they were arrested.

Told in three timelines, Toni's story follows the events leading up to "that night," Toni adjusting to prison life, and after Toni is released fifteen years later. As a teenager, Toni had to deal with her overbearing mother and a former friend turned enemy. Navigating through the minefield of high school proved tough but doable as Toni plans to move away with Ryan. Then the murder of her sister throws her into prison. Plagued by the truth, that she did not kill her sister, Toni's prison stint goes well after a few years. She makes friends and forms a kind of family inside, the kind of family she did not have outside. While not as fleshed out as her mother's disapproving nature, the book shows what a kind and loving parental figure can bring to a shiftless life. Then Toni gets out of prison and moves back to her hometown amid the stares and whispers. The structure of telling three parts of Toni's life at once, interweaving the mystery and Toni's characterization is very well done even if some parts (like the earlier parental example) are underdeveloped. The whole is a journey of a woman from unsure and listless young girl to confident woman. The mystery of who killed Toni's sister is an afterthought for the most part, informing Toni's journey rather than being a central throughline. Toni's teenage self navigating a mother who does not understand her, her time in prison, and her ability to reclaim her place in society despite the beliefs thrust upon a convicted felon give this story a bulkier narrative than an average whodunit. 

For those wanting a more straightforward mystery, look elsewhere. Otherwise dive in to this well told crime drama.

That Night: A Novel

By Chevy Stevens

One of Us is Lying Review: Most of them should have been interesting

A kid dies in detention with four other kids. They become suspects in his murder because he was a giant dick.

Karen M. McManus's book about death and bullying starts off the Breakfast Club but ends near Lifetime movie territory.  Bronwyn (Brain), Simon (Dead Guy), Nate (Criminal), Cooper (Jock), and Addy (Princess) are all sent to detention. They claim to have been framed, the phones in their bags not theirs. Maybe not Nate because he deals drugs and stuff and has multiple phones. Also Simon who takes a drink of dosed water and dies from a nut allergy. Seems somebody hated him enough to know his fatal weakness. After the police begin to suspect the crew, each student and their friends and families have their secrets freed. Addy and Cooper each belong to the popular crowd that Simon despised when they rejected him. Bronwyn and her friend once messed up Simon's chance at joining a premier school event. Nate just sells drugs. Each of them has other secrets on top of the ones listed, making them all pretty good suspects if beholden to the character traits those secrets give them. Well rounded but at times rather boring. As the tension grows, the brain and the criminal grow closer. She lets go of her more tight-assed ways, as does the princess, while the guys grow more sensitive and reliable. Cooper's life gets the most readjustment as the story goes on, leaning on heavy tropes of sexual awareness better told in But I'm a Cheerleader. The princess Addy becomes more of a self-assured badass after realizing her asshole boyfriend doesn't have to be her asshole boyfriend. Things come to a head as each kid confronts their fears. One of Us is Lying answers the question "What if Agatha Christie had written the Breakfast Club" that no one was asking. 

Too bad a lot of the pat storytelling of teen drama overshadows a lot of interesting character development.

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One of Us Is Lying

By Karen M. McManus

Buy on Amazon

Hobbs and Shaw: Run Fast and Furious from this big dumb bag of boredom

The CIA needs the best to catch a killer virus and in the Fast and the Furious universe I guess that means Hobbs and Shaw.

A fancy virus is stolen by the good guys from the bad guys with surviving member Hattie (Kirby) on the run and infected. The CIA gets together two crazy guys who know how to get jobs done, giant muscle man all about family Hobbs (Johnson) and wiry tough man all about family Shaw (Statham). The two of them track down Hattie in London and proceed to tear that town apart with impressive stunt work and a never-ending, monotonous, skull-emptying amount of insults right out of Wrestlemania. We find out Hattie and Shaw are brother and sister, fulfilling one family requirement. Then the actual wrestling starts with the three bad asses on the run to Samoa where they fulfill Hobbs family requirement, telling a moving story about a family of former criminals running a global custom car enterprise. More action! More stunts! More insults until they decide to stop insulting each other. From the beginning where he introduces himself as "the bad guy," augmented "Black Superman" Brixton (Elba) chases Hattie to get back the virus so his company can use it to go Thanos and kill the weak people in the world. Things go boom, cars go vroom, a helicopter goes zoom. Throughout the movie, impressive stunts are running the show to the detriment of all else. The story is dull and unmotivated, Idris Elba is wasted, and even the family elements come off as pat and unnecessary. Halfway through I found myself paying more attention to all the useless timers the movie presents. The virus will break down and kill the world in 48 hours? Plane trips from London to Russia to Samoa go supersonic so the virus goes unleashed. How long does it take for the sun to rise in Samoa? About five minutes from full dark to hard shadows, something that normally takes over an hour everywhere else. The point being, I should not have even noticed if the movie was doing its job. Director David Leitch had some impressive showings with John Wick and Atomic Blonde but Hobbs and Shaw does not work.

Hobbs and Shaw isn't a bad film, but it makes the biggest mistake of being boring while thinking it is more clever than it is.

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Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

Starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Eiza Gonzalez

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Tarantino starts out Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on the set of Bounty Law. Rick Fucking Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) are being interviewed in black and white, the audience seeing Dalton's insincerity and Booth's rye sense of humor. Booth carries Dalton's load, we are told, and it sets the tone for the color film coming.

The rest of the run time tells a story that goes three ways. We see Dalton after Bounty Law has been cancelled. His career isn't the best: he's playing the bad guys in various television shows. In comes a hot studio producer telling him to go east where the Italians are making westerns. Booth sticks by his side while having his own adventures.

Booth is a bit of a character. A capable man. Pragmatic. He loves his dog. He does not take any more shit than necessary. He can hold his own in a fight with Bruce Lee and fix a tv antennae. We see Booth care for Dalton and get mixed up with some girls who might be a little dangerous.

Speaking of girls, Sharon Tate (Margot Robie) is our last point of view. She's newish in town with a couple of movies under her belt. Her new husband is a hot shit director and her house is gated. One of her most significant scenes shows her going to the theater where her movie is playing and be delighted by the audience laughing.

Watching Dalton, Booth, and Tate wander themselves around this story, Hollywood comes to the forefront. Sounds cliche, another story where a place is a character, but Tarantino fills in the story in four dimensions. Hollywood looks the part, all the right music comes out of the stereos. It feels like it should, and that might be the best lie of them all. The way things should be ain't always the way they are. That's how movies go, though, huh? Whole point of them is to present a lie, a facsimile of the truth, and tell everyone how things are. Think of all the things movies have made you believe: Moscow is always cold, cars explode when shot, the pyramids don't have a KFC beside them. Tarantino uses the fake and the real to carve out a story made of pure wish fulfilment.

Spoilers beyond: go watch it. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

How many wishes get granted in this little fabel? That's the why of starting out "Once upon a time…" right? Otherwise name the movie "Hollywood Shit-fits" and get on with your life. But this story has a few wishes granted, the big one coming at the end, one of Tarantino's big wishes. Tarantino uses the myth-making, wish-granting of Hollywood to make sure that Sharon Tate lives just as he did when he killed Hitler in Inglourious Basterds. By undoing the Tate murders, Tarantino's world exists with the sixties continuing past their expiration date. Tarantino's inner creative world is dependent on evil being stupid and punished in the most creative way possible.

Let's go back to Rick Fucking Dalton. As the story tracks, Dalton had a pretty good life until his show was cancelled. He keeps on, paying Cliff, and doing parts on television shows. Then comes along a fairy godmother in the form of Shwarz (Pacino) with a deal: Travel to Italy and be in a few movies and a star will be born. It's a chance, one that may not pay off, but a chance at a better and more creative life. Throughout most of the movie, we see Dalton in this limbo. Everyone around him tells him how good he is, from the eccentric director to his young co-star. We see him flip out when he can't remember lines; we understand that he cares about his craft and not become jaded and cynical. In the end, the gets a new career, wife, and relationship with Cliff, being invited up to the house of the young star and director he pined for early in the movie. Dalton's story is one of privileges much like many fairy tale subjects, the story of how a talented person got everything they ever dreamed.

To juxtapose Dalton we have Cliff Booth. If Dalton is Cinderella or Snow White, someone in the stardom who allows good things to happen and success blossom from who they are, then Cliff is Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood, a confident pragmatic creature on a path they will not be deviated from. Cliff works hard as a stuntman. You can see that with the many, many scars all over his body. He also has a bit of a moral code, one that does not allow him to listen to Bruce Lee shoot his mouth off or have a hippie cut his tire. Both of those examples prove Booth is not a man to be messed with as well as showing our own wish fulfillment as humans. Few people can say that beating up on Bruce Lee would be low on their list of capabilities as well as standing up to the Manson family if they were to attack your car.

Speaking of the Manson family, of course they are foiled at the end. The suspense leading up to the horror ending is masterful, but the fairy tale setting will not allow them to succeed. As monsters in stories are defeated, so must these stupid cultists. In the real world, the idiots of the Manson clan made their way around the gates and killed Sharon Tate. Tarantino has them connect their insane notions of race wars with television, jumping dozens of years ahead of Tipper Gore, and instead go after Rick Fucking Dalton. Unfortunately for them, Cliff Booth and his dog are making some food and proceed to destroy the stupid cultists. Sure, Dalton ends the violence with a flamethrower, but Booth had it all in hand.

The mix of truth and fiction creates a world Tarantino wants to live in. It creates a world where all the best songs are always on the radio, a world where good performers get the roles they deserve, and a world where strong men defeat bad people. This world is covered in orange and lime green and it thumps along on the muffler sound of a classic car. It creates Hollywood, the lie we all want to believe in. Otherwise why even write about it?

Spider-Man: Far From Home Makes the Villain Matter

Halfway through Spider-Man: Far From Home I turned to the person next to me and said, "I think this movie just shifted into high gear." In response, her boyfriend leaned over and said, "Stop talking to my girlfriend during the movie." After that I kept my comments about how better the effects and villain get once the whole story is laid out.

     After the effects of Thanos's Snap and Unsnappening in the Avengers films, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) just wants to have a nice European vacation. He's gonna see some sights. Take some pictures. Tell MJ (Zendaya) how he feels about her. Too bad for them, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) need his help to beat some elemental apocalypse creatures with some leftover Tony Stark tech.

     With Spider-Man: Homecoming, Jon Watts proved he could weave a good story around kids and superheroics. Having already proved he can deal with menacing figures going against children in the not-too-talked about Cop Car, he almost cookie cut the menace from Kevin Bacon in that film onto Michael Keaton's Vulture. Here he ziggs a bit, implying the gravitas in Mysterio while undercutting it with a twist that comics readers will see coming but is thrilling anyway. When Mysterio proves himself to not be the gracious mentor but a scheming actor, Gyllenhaal gets to stretch villainous side, not pure evil like he showed in Nightcrawler but the laughing menace Tom Cruise showed in Magnolia. He's a showman with a dark side and that resonates far more than dark and cackling.

     When Mysterio shows his true colors, the movie really comes alive. Until that second act reveal, most of the action and effects seemed lackluster. Possible big budget fatigue, but the giant water monster and the backpack wearing Peter Parker in a carnival mask looked cartoonish. Then Mysterio's effects to disorient and play with Parker's senses turn the effects budget up to eleven, providing sequences that rival Doctor Strange's multiverse and Ant-Man's microverse effects for "man I wish I was in college and on drugs right now" effect. The amazing hallucination effects fall apart once you think about how we are shown dozens of people work to make the other effects possible but handwaving plots is Marvel's true superpower.

     Unfortunately, all Marvel's bad traits are on display here as well. As cool as the hallucination sequence is, it and all the other fight scenes are chopped to hell. No matter how much money the John Wick franchise makes proving good action have to be seen, Marvel still cuts too quick and too often to get a good feel about how particular fights are going. Nowhere is this more clear than the ending battle on the London Bridge with Spider-Man going against a bunch of drones. It's mostly dull with misdirection and confusing more than it is thrilling.

     Walking out of the theater dodging that guy and his girlfriend, I have to say I enjoyed the movie overall. A fun movie containing enough pathos to move us through the end of Phase 4 of this big weird money-making experiment. Mysterio himself also hints at bigger and better things, being an effective villain not in his over schemes in this film, but the secrets he lets out after his defeat. Whereas the Vulture kept Parker's secret identity, Mysterio let that secret fly and the implications are fascinating to think about.

Check it out before it leaves theaters

The Dead Don't Die (2019)

A case can be made for the zombie art house film. Slow paced, shot with a deft hand, full of esoteric dialog delivered by deadpan performers, Jim Jarmish's The Dead Don't Die checks many boxes for the art house crowd while giving into the violent mass appeal. Prone to the odd tangent, the film is a mixed bag of unexpected and traditional.

     Officers Cliff (Bill Murray) and Ronnie (Adam Driver) start off their day by meeting up with Tom Waits in the woods. So banal is there existence that when the singer turned hobo fires off a shot at them, they just shrug and let the man off with a warning. Driving back to town, they begin listening to the radio talking about polar fracking and comment on how the days are lasting longer than usual.

     A song comes on the radio that Ronnie likes, The Dead Don't Die by Sturgill Simpson. Cliff asks what it is. Ronnie says, well, it's the theme song.

     So begins the slow death of a small town and the story of a few officers trying to keep their shit together long enough to maybe live. The self awareness of the story is off-putting yet charming. The aw shucks humor mixes with the violence to create an hour and forty-five minute tale that might have something to say if it ever got around to saying it.

     Our officers tour the town. There's another officer, Mindy (Chloë Sevigny) guarding the body of the soon to be risen zombie cameoed by Carol Kane. Steve Buscemi and Danny Glover play an asshole racist farmer and a nice old black man about town who are given little to do but say some lines before the zombie horde pulls them into the ranks. One could go along with calling them caricatures if they were playing any type of characters.

     Strangers make their way to the motel driven in a classic car by Selena Gomez. They are warned about the zombies. Close your doors and lock your windows and all that. In what could be an avant garde act, they are killed off screen, much like Josh Brolin in No Country For Old Men but without the impact. The strangers are given a scene in a convenience store and another at the motel and then death. Their only contribution other than the random futility of life seems to be a stab at the commercialism and to re-introduce the theme song after Gomez purchases a Sturgill Simpson CD.

     I guess that leads us to the zombies. Most zombie movies are commentaries on the world that created them. George Romero's slow zombies are ravenous killers based on our own prejudices and consumerist ideals. The fast runners of 28 Days Later exemplify the ability of modern life to overwhelm and consume the individual. Jarmish's zombies eat and destroy sure enough but when they are not they chant the desires of their simple lives. Dead kids stumble around candy ailes chanting brand names. It's enough to make me wonder if the metaphor of the walking dead has been played out.

     Well aware I have not mentioned Tilda Swinton's Scottish Samuri Funeral Director, I simply do not know how. What well of ideas this creature came from I will never know. She's a delight and steals the movie from her first scene painting corpses to her last… well, even I won't spoil that. It really has to be seen. It's fucking nuts.

     In the final scenes, Cliff snaps at Ronnie after the younger man utters his catchphrase: this is all going to end badly. Where does he get this phrase? It's somewhat of a callback to Ronnie listening to the Sturgill Simpson song, but overall it is a comment on the state of the world. It's all ending badly and the movie The Dead Don't Die is no different.

Shaft (1971/2019)

Doing forty-five in a 2012 Toyota down the street ain't as impressive as ninety in a '71 Chevelle, but my date and I made it to the library. On an average night, we would be bowling. Once you get me out the library door I tend to stay gone. Tonight the library had a movie and free food, so we decided on a show.

    We watched the original Shaft and then went to the theater for the newest film in the series. I'll get to the movies and what I thought of them. First we had to find a seat.

    The library offered popcorn and a drink for the movie. As my date and I are wont to do, we brought our own drinks. For the theater, we break out the tall boys. In the library we went respectful, my date bringing her flask. I got the popcorn and she got the drinks and freshened them up for us.

    Our library pulls out all the stops for movie nights. The finest non-reclining plastic chairs. Bags of popcorn that not only crunch in your mouth but in your hand. A screen so big it would take a family size cereal box to block the projection.

    Speaking of the projection, you never saw such lush grays. Because we are a municipal building, a light must stay on to spotlight the exit. If you sit in the right place, you get to feel like Moses talking to the Lord.

    Talking about the Lord, you will feel the booming quality of those stereo computer speakers. Sit close enough and you might hear the earth move.

    So we settle and relax near the back. The lights are flicked off. The room has filled up some. A small child held up his hands, but his shadow puppets suck.

    Right off people started talking. Not telling Richard Roundtree's Shaft what he should do or who he should throw out a window, but just talking. The guy in front of us was going over his taxes on his cell phone.

    "Excuse me, please be quiet," my date said.

    The guy doing his taxes turned around and gave me a sweaty eyeball. I gave him one back. He turned back around and kept talking.

    "'Scuse me, shut the fuck up," my date said.

    The guy turned back to us again. I shrugged and nodded. He said, "Why don't you shut-"

    That's about as far as he got. I like my drinks strong, my clothes comfortable, and my women fiery. She hit the dude with her open palm, a nice slap that was felt back up his family tree. He dropped his phone. People clapped.

    The rest of the movie went by in silence. Richard Roundtree took no shit and Issaac Hayes bopped along with a nice little funk. After we drove off to the multiplex to see the newest Shaft. We had a less eventful time although on the way we finished a joint to color the experience. Turns out we needed it.

     The best way to think about the new Shaft is to compare it to the old Shaft. If anyone out there mentions the middle Shaft from twenty years ago, well, maybe go talk to your mom. She might care.

    So how is the 2019 Shaft different or the same from the 1971 version? Well, I guess depending on who you are, the new one is more offensive. There's all kinds of issues in here to mess around with: sexism, homophobia, attitudes of blackness, manliness, cultural issues, and just bad plotting to name a few.

    In the 1971 Shaft, Richard Roundtree is the sex machine private detective and all around bad mother shut-your-mouth. He is approached by a local mobster whose daughter has been kidnapped by a rival mob guy. Shaft kills many dudes with bullets and windows and sleeps with two women, proving the sex machine and bad mother shut-your-mouth parts.

    In the 2019 version, Jessie T. Usher is a guy who is the son of the guy who is the son of Shaft. The second guy is Samuel L. Jackson and Shaft is still Richard Roundtree. All three men seem to be having a blast but are neither sex machines nor bad mother shut-your-mouths. Wait, no, that's not all correct. They should shut their mouths.

    Where the original stuck to a fairly flat noire plot that ranged around New York City and Harlem creating a world, the new version seems to jump from place to place because things have to happen. Usher's JJ (who should be John Shaft III, right?) creates most of the plot. The younger Shaft's friend dies and to solve the case, he goes to his dad (Jackson) who eventually goes to his granddad (Roundtree). The whole thing ties together with an old case of Jackson's.

    Most of the dialog is Jackson telling Usher to be more of a straight black man and Usher saying "nuh-uh." To back up that Jackson's approach is correct, the movie over and over shows Usher shooting and fighting to impress his love interest (Alexandra Shipp). The love interest swoons at these "manly" actions while berating Jackson for his outdated attitudes.

    Unlike the original, the 2019 movie has no idea what its message wants to be. A comedy? An update to the crime drama? A reason for people to hang out and talk shit to each other? A reason for people to say "the original is better, watch that" because, well, it is and more social conscious.

    If you must see a Shaft, check out the original from the library.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

She had big hair, big makeup, and read Goodnight Moon like a pro. I sat back and watched Miss Sweet Tater enthrall two dozen kids for an hour while a bunch of idiots outside yelled about Jesus. As if Jesus didn't wear a robe.

    All month we pushed the Drag Queen Story Time. We got a thousand or so calls from the public. The split between patrons wishing us good luck and those calling for our eternal damnation cut right down the middle. It's best not to speculate on such things, but let's just say the retirement home flashed up on the caller ID more than once.

    The day of the event, William Ratcliff came into the library's back door. He looked like a plumber because he was a plumber. Still had on his overalls and carried a big heavy bag. Rather than carry around pipes and toilet rings, that big heavy bag contained Miss Sweet Tater.

    Miss Sweet Tater came from Ratcliff's aunt, a woman with an appetite for life and pecan pie. Little Billy would sit in his Aunt Bea's kitchen and eat that pie and listen while she told him stories of her dancing in New Orleans. A dozen years later, Ratcliff created Miss Sweet Tater and danced on those same New Orleans stages and floats, one time going up on the main stage at the Saenger with the Dixie Chicks to sing God Bless America. Aunt Bea had passed, but Miss Sweet Tater said she had been with him nonetheless.

    After that long afternoon worrying about a violent response to a man wearing a dress, Miss Sweet Tater and I decided to take in a movie. We had time to kill while the crowd dispersed. I pulled up the Shudder app and scrolled through. We chose Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

    Humor and horror are linked by the visceral reactions they produce. Humor creates a laugh, horror a cringe. Shifting from a laugh to a cringe takes a deft hand that few have. Behind the Mask rides the line pretty close and succeeds way more than it fails.

    In the spirit of the Blair Witch, three grad students get in over their handheld heads. They have been contacted by Leslie Vernon, a spree killer, who wants to document his first assault on a group of horny and drunken teens. The majority of the flick follows Leslie as he lays out how he's setting up his Final Girl, how he's picked the legend to fuel his mythology, and how he's gonna hack and slash when the time comes.

    For the most part, the movie is a funny deconstruction of slasher movies, almost in the spirit of Scream. Other movie franchises get called out and named. At times it plods along, fueled by the likeable Leslie Vernon and the gullible grad students. When the time comes, however, Leslie puts his scythe where his mouth is and delivers.

    More fun than fright, Behind the Mask is clever and deserves to be checked out.

Booksmart (2019)

The other night, my friend Cornbread was on an internet call, looking at each other from two thousand miles away. Very spooky if you think about it, just ghosts in each other's machines. Then Cornbread goes all glitchy saying, "You believe in ghosts?"

    You can talk to about such topics with a certain type of friend. This type of friend does not have the name of a demon tattooed on them. This type of friend does not own two or more crystals they believe have any kind of powers. This type of friend does not have a sword nearby.

    If you are talking ghosts and goblins with a friend holding a sword in one hand, a glowing crystal in the other, and has the name JERRY tattooed on his or her bicep, find a new friend.

    So I told Cornbread no, I did not believe in ghosts. What did he think? He told me to hold on a minute and got himself another beer, cracking open the cold can and saying, "I saw a man exhale a mighty big cloud of vapor and walk into the dark."

    I asked a few questions. What kind of vapor? What kind of dark? Do ghosts exhale? I have not been a resident of the South in several years and while not sure, I doubted they had changed the rules on breathing ghosts.

    Turns out, they have not changed southern ghost rules. They just got hipsters that vape. I encouraged Cornbread to try it out before his two pack a day habit of Camel Wides catches up to him.

    So the film Booksmart had me tricked. I went in looking for an edgy comedy like the ones I was raised on. The ones where one or more Corey had adventures in high school.

    The plot follows Amy and Molly, two smart as shit kids going to better places after high school who find out so are all the assholes they look down upon. The slutty girl, the theater kid, the stoner guys, all the archetypes of school are going off to Ivy League or equivalent. Amy and Molly face the fact that while everyone else was partying and studying, they were just studying. Stunned by this revelation, Amy and Molly plot to go to the crazy high school party and have one last fun night. Along the way they meet a serial killer, confront their crushes, and learn that all they really needed was to be less up their own asses.

    The plot is clever in its simplicity. As Amy and Molly get to know the kids they dismissed, they learn the kids are three dimensional people. The direction of Olivia Wilde and the script pivots with nimble dexterity around Amy and Molly's point of view. From the beginning to the end the audience goes through the same emotional growth as the girls seeing their peers as more than they first appeared. Add in amazing shots such as the pool scene (which could have been a Radiohead music video from the 90s) and the following oner shot that ends in silent screaming, and the film amazed me even more.

    Like the best John Hughes movie, Booksmart leaves the audience thinking the characters are going to be okay. Maybe it leaves them one too many times, the ending drawn out far too long, but I wish all these kids well. That's not too bad.

    Special awards go to Billie Lourd who has the best "having sex in a graveyard" story in recent memory.

    The library says check it out.