Tag: movies

Prince of Darkness

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

(By http://www.impawards.com/1987/prince_of_darkness.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17211922)

Not one of John Carpenter’s best films, but an enjoyable cult classic all the same. To be fair, JC set the bar so high with Halloween and The Thing that anything else feels ordinary, even if it’s still better than most. The guy didn’t make horror flicks. He made horror art.

Prince of Darkness is a bit muddled in its execution, settling more for atmosphere and vibes than a coherent story, much less compelling characters. The narrative centers around a group of scientists, grad students, and one very sweaty and apocalyptically paranoid Donald Pleasence (was this guy ever not freaking out in a Carpenter film?) as a priest, trying to make sense of some creepy green goo swirling around in a cylinder in the basement of some decrepit L.A. church.

Evidently, this green slime contains pure evil, or something. It’s never really clearly stated exactly what it is. The whole thing feels made up as it goes along.

Prince of Darkness toys with some interesting ideas, while throwing around enough scientific jargon to at least sound plausible. Basically, the idea is that “evil” is a force of nature. Something that can be measured with physics and science doodads and whatnot. Except evil can also somehow influence the surrounding world telekenetically whenever it feels like it.

Earlier in the film it’s stated that the Catholic Church misrepresented evil as some figurehead, like Satan, when in fact it’s as common as gravity. But then later, after some of the college students have become influenced by the green ooze, they are are trying to conjure forth the Devil through a mirror, which acts as a portal to a dark dimension. Only the Devil’s hand appears in our world from the mirror, before Old Scratch is repelled back. Fans of Ridley Scott’s Legend will be reminded of Darkness’ appendage. And if Prince of Darkness works as anything, it’s as an unofficial sequel to the 1985 Tom Cruise-starring fantasy film. Whatever did happen to Darkness after Jack sends him hurling into the black void anyway? Now we know where he wound up.

The film is not bad, really. It has some clever ideas mixed in, and its many unexplained developments provoke questions in the viewer. What is the green ooze? Is it a personification of evil? Why does it happen to choose tonight to usher in the end of the world? Why does it need to possess college students and turn them into zombies to do its bidding? What exactly is all the scientific equipment measuring? Why do homeless vagrants surround the church, preventing the characters from escaping? Why are they killing people who try to leave? Is that really Satan trying to come through the mirror? What’s going to happen if he comes through into our reality? Is he going to end the world as we know it?

The film frustratingly doesn’t see fit to really answer anything.

Prince of Darkness boasts an impressively moody score reminiscent of the one from The Thing. There are some genuinely creepy sequences, such as the reoccuring “dream,” which is actually a signal sent from the future to warn the present. There are one or two good jump scares. Carpenter makes good use of his trademark over the shoulder shots. The make-up effects are satisfyingly gory.

While the story is not all there, Prince of Darkness is worth a watch, especially around the Halloween season. I just wish Carpenter had given the screenplay more time. It feels like a script that was two or three drafts away from being something. The ending stinger is pretty good, though. Especially if you like ambiguous Inception-like endings.

‘Jagged Edge’: A Rewatch Almost 40 Years in the Making

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

(Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8198266)

When I was five or six, I told my mom I wanted to watch a “scary movie.” At the time, I lived in a small town in Colorado, and right downtown there was a little video store we used to frequent every week to rent movies. This was the video store we’d rented classics like Alien, Aliens, Superman: The Movie, and many others.

I loved that video store. It’s a coffee shop now.

I saw a lot of films at that tender age that I probably shouldn’t have. But I’m glad I did. Aliens is still my number two favorite all time, just behind Jason and the Argonauts.

Anyway, for some reason, I requested to see a scary film, and for some other reason, my mom picked out Jagged Edge. Why that film and not one of the more popular releases at the time? Why not a Halloween, Friday the 13th, or A Nightmare on Elm Street? I’m not really sure. However, my mom has mentioned liking other films that star Jeff Bridges, and my mom does kinda resemble Glenn Close. So, looking back, I think I can see why she might have been drawn to the 1985 thriller. Plus, I suspect she didn’t want to expose me to a bonafide “horror film” in order to protect me from seeing anything too graphic or scary. But at that point I’d already seen the Alien rip out of John Hurt’s chest and watched Arnold blow away a whole police station after doing surgery on his eyeball. Watching Freddy Krueger eviscerate a couple of teenagers wouldn’t have really done anything traumatic to me at that point.

Like many films that imprint on us when we see them as kids, over the years, I have found myself haunted by bits of it that lodged themselves into my subconscious. Especially the creepy opening scene. So, for a long time I’ve wanted to rewatch it. But since I don’t recall ever liking the film, I kept putting it off until finally last night I gave in.

Jagged Edge is directed by the same guy who did Return of the Jedi and is written by ’80s spec script hotshot Joe Eszterhas. It tells the story of Jack Forrester (Bridges), who is accused of murdering his wealthy newspaper owner wife, and is defended by ace attorney Teddy Barnes (Close). As the trial progresses, the lawyer falls under the seductive spell of her charming client, a brief but torrid love affair begins, culminating in some twisty revelations that reveal the truth of whether Jack committed the murder.

Jagged Edge is sort of the Gone Girl of its era, and it inspired a lot of copy cats afterward. Which is surprising, as it’s quite tame by today’s standards, almost feeling more like a Lifetime TV movie than a feature that starred two A-Listers at the time.

What it’s mainly known for, of course, is the killer opening scene. A fantastic Michael Myers-esque POV of a masked killer brutally invading a posh seaside mansion, slaughtering a Hispanic maid, before turning his attention to Page Forrester, whom he ties to the bed and butchers. This is what I remember most seeing as a kid.

As for the rest of the film? It’s okay. It really sags as the trial gets underway. In Anatomy of a Murder, which was written by an actual attorney, there are excellent and realistic trial scenes. But it’s very obvious the writer of Jagged Edge had little understanding of the courtroom. There are, of course, the requisite “I object” moments, and the surprise witnesses, but on the whole, the trial stuff felt rather cliché and cartoony. Your typical Law and Order trials are done with better and more engaging verisimilitude. But remember, this was the ’80s and you could get away with half-baked legal sequences in a feature so long as they just looked right. No so much now with so much content and competition out there.

However, the writing succeeds better when it comes to the personal relationship side of things. Close’s Teddy makes for a sympathetic divorced high-powered attorney. Though not a particularly respectable one. What kind of middle-aged mother with two young kids living at home invites a man over accused of horrifically slaying his wife and maid and then makes out with him? It was just one of many questionable moments in the script. I can understand a lonely single mom falling under the spell of a handsome rich guy, but I just didn’t buy that maternal instincts wouldn’t kick in and override the lust in Teddy’s case. If anything, Teddy should have been a little younger. Close was 38 at the time. But the character feels more like she should have been around thirty, with no kids, and single. Close is a fine actress, and she sells the role mostly. But it’s an uphill climb.

Bridges is mostly good as the swarmy suspect who stands to gain millions as the husband of the deceased heiress. Though he is somewhat one-note and underutilized.

The main issue with Jagged Edge is structure. See, there was never really a doubt that Bridge’s character, Jack, did the awful deed. Maybe back in’85 it was okay to drag out the trial over most of the movie. But as I sat rewatching this, I found myself bored out of my mind because it was obvious that he was guilty but he was still going to get off. What they should have done was moved the exoneration to the mid-point. You could still plant the seeds of the love affair between attorney and client to come, but you suppress it until he’s declared not guilty. Then you can move into the romance. This would satisfy the unbelievability of a mom of two falling for Mr. Murder, if he’s believed to be innocent. It would also set up the third act a lot better. You could even have Teddy move in with him. Really seal the deal until the big revelation. Plus you would cut down on some of the courtroom stuff, which is the film’s biggest weakness. As a writer, you want to avoid scenes and sequences that expose your weaknesses, not pad them out needlessly. The Seinfeld finale had better courtroom scenes than this film.

By the way, Jagged Edge has the second best revelation scene involving a mechanical typewriter after The Shining.

But that structural fix aside, I have to say, the final twenty or so minutes of Jagged Edge are pretty good. Enough to salvage the movie, in fact. I was riveted, and once Teddy finds the piece of evidence that confirms Jack is the killer, it really took off like a rocket.

The final confrontation is the only other scene from this film I remember watching as a kid. I’m sure after the explosive opening, I tuned out and went outside before coming back in for the conclusion. I almost did the same thing as an adult. There was also a bit of a Mandela Effect. I swear when I first saw the ending, the masked killer ties Teddy’s feet to the bedpost before she shoots him. But after rewatching it, he only makes a noose with the rope, then lunges at her before she blows him away with the revolver. Strange how we misremember things.

Speaking of the gun, that should have been introduced at some point earlier in the film to satisfy the Chekhov’s Gun trope. But I don’t think it was. Which is fine, I guess. I can believe a single mom would be packing heat hidden somewhere in her bedroom just in case.

Jagged Edge is an okay thriller that’s worth a watch. But is it a scary movie, as I requested seeing almost four decades ago? Yes. At least the opening and ending parts are. They are very scary, actually. Most of the middle part sags. There are some clever red herrings and surprises during the trial. But I found I was way ahead of the film for most of it, and not because I saw it before. I didn’t remember any of the trial stuff. So it became a matter of waiting impatiently for the ending to finally come.

The music score is also quite good. Underrated, I’d say. Especially the one used for the murder scene. The movie poster is striking and memorable, also.

Is ‘Thinner’ Any Good?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

(By Moviegoods.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21786900)

I read the Stephen King novella awhile back and remember it being an effective, terse little thriller. King is a classic “over-writer,” often making up for a thin story concept with an encyclopedic catalogue of characters and their backstories, quirks, and then webbing them up in a messy convoluted plot like a cracked out Spider-Man.

Not so with Thinner, thank goodness. That book got right to the point. As if some invisible editor demanded King put his own writing on a diet, and passive-aggressively the Maine horror scribe banged this out in retaliation.

What about the movie, though?

It’s darkly hilarious. Other than that, it’s a mixed bag. King content was all the rage in the ’90s. Every producer in the world wanted to slap out a film adaptation, no matter what the budget or quality. There was the flood of TV movies like The Langoliers, Tommyknockers, The Stand, and IT.

Quick review of The Langoliers, which I also watched recently–actually not as bad as I’d thought it’d be, but that’s not saying much. It’s beyond dated, and not just in terms of it’s CGI effects. It’s also a bit padded out, like it should have been under two hours instead of three or whatever. Not really worth watching anymore, honestly, unless you are some kind of King completionist. I watched it out of curiosity as I’d only ever seen glimpses of the awful special effects (even for the time) for the Langoliers.

Back to Thinner, this tiny little nearly-forgotten almost-gem of a flick from 1996.

Thinner tells the story of fatass scumbag attorney Billy Halleck, who accidentally plows into an old gypsy lady while his wife is giving him road head, and then, after using his courtroom connections to escape consequences, suffers the wrath of the woman’s father, some kind of super gypsy, named Tadzu, who curses him to the ultimate pre-Ozempic weight loss program. Getting thinner by the day until he completely wastes away. Also getting the gypsy curse treatment are the judge, who becomes a lizard creature, or something, and a police officer who helps cover up Billy’s culpability, who becomes a boil-covered mess.

Gypsy curse films are a sub-sub-niche unto themselves. Like, there may only be a handful. Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi’s 2009 horror about a bank manager who gets cursed to eternal damnation when she doesn’t extend some poor old gypsy lady’s mortgage, is one of the others. Actually, that’s the only other one I can think of.

True to King’s style, the story progresses in all sorts of absurd macabre ways as Billy attempts to undo the curse, leading to an escalading series of confrontations with the gypsy chief and his itinerant tribe. At about the midpoint, likely sensing that he was almost running out of story, King reintroduces the mafia don (seen earlier when Billy gets him off on murder charges), who decides to go on a one-man crusade against the gypsies to try to force the old man to take back the curse. The lawyer’s wife also starts cheating on him for some reason, inviting Billy’s wrath. It all comes together in a sick, sad, and twisted final ending that, let’s just say, leaves almost everyone getting their just desserts. Except poor Billy’s teenaged daughter, though.

I like these dark minimalist “morality thrillers” that stick right to the point. Not just watching, either. They are the kind of things I enjoy writing the most. I’ve also tried my hand at a curse story, too. Only it centered on a witch who curses a drunk driver who hits her daughter by making everything he tries to drink turn to blood until he completes a special 12-Step Program she devises. It turned out a bit whackier than it should have, though Thinner was a big inspiration for it.

Thinner is an almost-cult classic. Just not quite there. The film is unfortunately rather shoddy in places. Which is okay in some instances. Sleepaway Camp wasn’t the most photogenic, but its clever conceit overcomes it. With a bit less daftness, Thinner might have emerged like one of John Carpenter’s lesser films. Like Prince of Darkness. Likable enough, warts and all. But it just doesn’t quite come together. Then there’s the contemptible main character. No one is really likable at all in this film. So it’s no surprise it slipped off the radar when it dropped in the mid-90s.

Despite its flaws and flagrant simplicity, I still liked it. It has some “memeable moments.” Moments that stand out due to shock or outrageousness. And I’ll never not think of the gypsy chief’s recurring address of the lawyer as “White man from town.” The book is a fun read. I just wish the movie clicked along in the same way.

Anatomy of a Murder (and a Genre)

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

(By Saul Bass – http://ilovegraphicdesign.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/anatomy-of-a-murder/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25500751)

It’s kind of weird how there are so many legal and courtroom dramas now that it’s hard to appreciate some of the classics that founded the genre and made it what it is today.

There are so many Law and Order spinoffs I can’t even keep track of them anymore. They’re like Covid variants. Just as innocous, too. I got into an SVU kick a long time ago, a show that is somehow still going since 1999, even after one of its main leads, Christopher Meloni, left. That’s a lot of sex crimes for the TV-viewing public to absorb over nearly thirty years.

Then you have the numerous films. Such as Anatomy of a Fall, the 2023 French drama that won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, about a wife accused of murdering her husband. Or 1992’s A Few Good Men.

Which brings me to the Jimmy Stewart-starrer Anatomy of a Murder, the 1959 classic about a young Army lieutenant accused of murdering a bar owner who had allegedly raped his wife. The story is based on a bestselling 1958 book, which is based on a real case that took place in 1952 in northern Michigan. It was also written by the actual defense attorney for the case himself, John D. Voelker, who used the pen name Robert Traver. Bet you no one on money Twitter has considered that side hustle. Go to law school, become a lawyer, wait for a socially compelling case with moral ambiguity and complexity, win the case (important), write a tell-all, and then WHAMMO, wait for the Hollywood riches to flow. It’s so simple I can’t believe more people aren’t doing it.

Anatomy is a deeply intriguing and well-crafted film that still feels very modern and relevant. Especially due to the story’s legal outcome–(spoiler alert)–the officer gets off on a temporary insanity due to a psychological condition of “irresistible impulse” that rendered him not criminally responsible for his actions.

Irresistible impulse. That sounds like the kind of excuse the world’s most sophisticated five-year-old would come up with.

Mom: Why’d you push your little sister down the stairs?

Kid (cute little kid voice): Irresistible impulse.

Hey, didn’t we just see something similar in the Lindsay Clancy trial outcome? At issue there was not whether she commited murder or not, but her mental state during the deed. What was Clancy’s excuse for killing her three children? Well, you see, she had a nasty bout of postpartum depression. It was the fault of wonky hormones.

The characters are engaging and complex, too. Especially the officer’s violated wife, Laura Manion, who is unashamedly flirtateous. Typically, you’d expect the female victim to get the pedestal treatment. But no. The film points out she has a reputation around the Army base for being a “slut.” She’s a fascinating psychological portrait, even more so than her jealous significant other. The woman is blasé even about her own husband’s apparent regular domestic abuse. As if she accepts the idea that rape and assault just go with the territory of being a hot flirt.

Is Anatomy of a Murder still worth watching in a world filled to the brim with formularic courtroom dramas? I would put it this way. If you’ve been numbed to death by the automoton-style scripting of endless legal shows, you’ll find yourself refreshed after watching Anatomy. The performances are all top-notch. James Stewart is his likable everyman self. George C. Scott makes an Oscar-nominated appearance. The judge is even played by a real-life lawyer. And you can’t beat a story written by the actual attorney who defended the real-life defendant.

Overall, I really liked this film. I’ve never been so gripped by a trial proceeding. In fact, I found the first act, which is all mainly set-up, to be quite boring by comparison. But once the trial gets underway, I dare you to try to turn it off. You will be struck with…irresistible impulse to keep watching.

The Great Escape

On By Dean Brooks1 Comment

(By moviegoods.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6629076)

I’ve been thinking on this film for a few days and wondering why it didn’t quite connect with me.

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of WWII films, to be fair. Not because of the time period or the events. But because too often filmmakers use the setting to say something very important about war, life, or whatever, and trip all over themselves doing it. Which I get. We’re talking about a period that shaped the modern world today. It just too often reeks of tryhard. It becomes more of a vanity project for the director than a portrait of a history. Oppenheimer is a good example. So loud and bombastic just to dramatize a handful of guys in a dusty lab drawing on chalkboards. Inglorious Basterds was kind of obnoxious. Saving Private Ryan was decent, overall.

No, I mostly enjoyed The Great Escape. It’s a good film. It could have been great. But for some reason the film felt at odds with itself, and I think the main reason is the inclusion of the Steve McQueen character, Hilts, or “The Cooler King.” Now, I’ve not read the source novel, but apparently Hilts was added for the movie. Likely studios didn’t want to finance the picture unless they could insert an A-List American star like McQueen. But this editorial decision did a disservice to the story, as the Richard Attenborough character, Bartlett, or “Big X,” should have been the primary character. He’s the one driving the plot. He’s the one who concocts the whole tunneling and escape system. He’s wanted by the SS. I wanted to know more about his background and his character. He was like James Bond. Instead, he gets sidelined so we can get glamour shots of McQueen and his antics that get him stuck in the cooler.

Hilts was portrayed rather sterotypically all-American, too. Aloof, cool, daring, and, of course, a huge baseball fan.

This is what I mean when I say too often studios use WWII as a vehicle to show off rather than to tell a good story. A particularly egregious thing to do when it’s based on a true story, such as The Great Escape.

There were some tonal mismatches, too. At times it almost felt like I was watching a sitcom rather than a war drama. I’m a big fan of the TV series M*A*S*H, so I know you can balance hijinks with solemnity. I also love films like Full Metal Jacket, which is rife with dark humor and outrageousness while still sticking to its theme of dehumanization. But then at the end you have a 50-man massacre when the Nazis mow down all of Big X’s guys, including Big himself, after they’ve recaptured them, and then frame them as attempted escapees.

I guess I went into the film expecting a tone more similar to Clint Eastwood’s classic Escape from Alcatraz than something closer to The Andy Griffith Show. Might have just been the audience sensibilities at the time. Escape was released not even 20 years after the war ended. It was still fresh on everyone’s minds, and many viewers were likely veterans themselves.

The tunneling sequences were well done. I’m a huge enjoyer of technical briefing and planning scenes, which are requisite in heist or prison escape films, no matter how “boring” they may be. Such as the one in Rififi when they test out stopping the alarm system.

Overall, The Great Escape was a worthwhile watch. But it’s a good example of how sometimes unnecessarily adding a character can detract from a story, even if it makes good business sense.

Saint Maud

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

(By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62765453)

This film was at threat of becoming a discarded “air conditioning movie,” but I’m glad I stuck with it. I started watching this over a year ago on Prime, gave up on it around the first act, then finally returned to it last night to finish.

I do that a lot. I just did it to Soylent Green, in fact. Some movies, however “good” they are, just fail to grab me, and I put them off. It might be the result of simply getting older. I used to plop down in front of anything and let my eyes get glazed over. Now I’m like a mid-30s professional cat lady on a date–“I just didn’t feel that spark, that tingle. I need to really feel a connection.”

Right, we’ll just ignore the hundred dates you’ve gone on over the past year that make feeling a spark about as likely as igniting a soaking wet match.

Anyway, what is Saint Maud about? This horror/drama centers on a young nurse named Katie who becomes an increasingly obsessive religious fanatic after losing a patient under her care, and is determined to save the terminal woman she’s currently assigned from damnation. It’s really a psychological portrait of mental illness. A deeply unsettling slow burn one, too. It reminded me a little of Don’t Look Now, the 1973 horror starring Donald Sutherland, which really takes its time before delivering one hell of a final stinger. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is another similar film, which is definitely one worth checking out.

Saint Maud has a pretty good last minute stinger, too. Maybe not as amazing as some claim online. But pretty good. I won’t spoil it here. But if you like waiting 90 minutes just to see if a flick’s final image makes it all worth your time, Saint Maud has got your back.

Aside from the last second bitch smack, this flick does a very good job of depicting loneliness and isolation, which are often the twin demons that lead to mental breakdown. Just ask Jack Torrance. There are some good creepy moments throughout. But you have to be patient for them. Frustrating, yes. But you need a Saint Maud once in a while to counter the roller coaster popcorn horror flicks like The Conjuring.

Saint Maud was worth it in the end, even after taking a one-year long sabbatical from my initial watch.

Charley Varrick (1973)

On By Dean Brooks2 Comments

(By http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.21307/Movies, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2772929)

At least now I know where Tarantino borrowed (or stole) that famous line from in Pulp Fiction.

“I’m gonna call a couple of hard, pipe-hitting niggas to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.”

Such a cold ass line from L.A. mob boss Marsellus Wallace. But it originally comes from the the 1973 crime thriller Charley Varrick starring Walter Matthau, based on the book The Looters by John H. Reese.

“They’ll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.”

Like they say, “good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Varrick is a largely forgotten crime flick about a New Mexico crop duster (named Charley Varrick) who stages a daring bank robbery, only to discover he’s stolen mob money. Lots of it. About $750,000, or over $5 million in today’s dollars. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of a mob hitman, who looks like Anton Chigurh’s older white cousin.

The famous line is said by the bank owner, who is fretting about how because his local bank got hit it makes him look like the one who planned an inside job. The mob doesn’t believe in coincidences.

It’s a fun, twisty film with a creative set piece pitting a crop duster plane against a car. It reminded me a lot of No Country for Old Men. You’ve got the stolen mob money. An unstoppable hitman sent to retrieve it. A trailer park. Set in the dusty southwest. And plenty of that dry, cynical wit you expect from the genre. I also see some of the DNA that later settled in Breaking Bad. Come to think of it, Charley Varrick might be the first movie I’ve ever seen set in Albuquerque. Such an overlooked area. Most movies/TV shows pick either Texas or Cali. Almost never in-between.

Charley Varrick also features the prolific John Vernon as the troubled bank manager fretting about mob retaliation. An actor who looks like if the ’70s were a person.

This Latest He-Man Film

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment
Mattel via Gizmodo

I finally caught Masters of the Universe, the newest He-Man film, on Amazon Prime. Which turned out to be mostly fun and engaging, but doesn’t quite land in the Franchise Zone that it was clearly aiming for.

And that may be for several reasons. One, the fantasy genre is tough as hell to break into. There are really only two major fantasy properties doing well in it–Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. I don’t count MCU stuff as fantasy, even when it involves Doctor Strange and Wanda Maximoff. The genre is so tough to crack that MOTU sadly bombed at the B.O., similar to another recent fantasy flick based on an IP that was largely popular in the 80s: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Like Dungeons, MOTU follows the Guardians of the Galaxy formula practically to a T. A group of ragtag heroes led by a charismatic but clueless dude, band together to overcome a purple villain. There is a wisecracking robot, which reminded me of the other wisecracking robot from Rogue One. Even their designs are similar. There is the super badass warrior chick character in Teela to satisfy the feminist box check. You’ve got the mentor character in Man-at-Arms played by a somewhat wasted Idris Elba. I say wasted as I feel he was miscast in this. He’s a better actor than a lot of material he’s been in, like the umpteenth sequel to Fast and Furious and that weird Pacific Rim series. But he plays as a solid veteran overall.

Then, of course there’s He-Man himself, played by Nicholas Galatzine, though he goes by Adam for most of the movie until the very end. Galatzine does a pretty solid job portraying what has largely been a two-dimensional muscley avatar of goodness meant to just sell toys in the ’80s.

Now, I never watched He-Man much as a kid. It was one of the few classic cartoons of the era I missed out on, so the film couldn’t hook me with its nostalgia barbs. So, I could watch it with a more objective eye. Though I am a little familiar with He-Man’s mythology and such.

It’s hard to pinpoint why He-Man didn’t do so well at theaters. It might have been the fantasy thing. The overreliance on the Guardians formula thing. Or just the fact that it’s a nearly 45-year-old IP that really hasn’t been relevant since the Reagan Administration. The CGI and blue screen stuff was all done well for the most part. Nothing really standout.

No, I think He-Man did itself a disservice by not including a certain character–Orko, the hovering juvenile wizard thingy. As I recall from seeing bits of the cartoon, Orko is the pratfall-riddled comic relief. He’s the character meant for young kids to port themselves into the story. In the movie, he only appears at the very end, to deliver the “lesson of today’s episode” segment, as he often did in the cartoon. Seeing him, I was honestly baffled. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t in the story at all, and it struck me as a real missed opportunity. Mid-way through the film, the characters encounter a drunken and depressed Man-At-Arms character, which was obviously done to give him a redemptive arc. Something again I feel didn’t really work.

However, the characters should have encountered an imprisoned Orko instead. Then you could have had a sequence where He-Man has to motivate Orko to use his powers and help them escape. You would have set up Orko in the beginning as a young jesteresque wizard who always makes a fool of himself trying to perform magic, then arc him into a capable enough wizard who comes in clutch when needed. Orko has a fun personality, and the movie could have leaned more into the magical element of the world of Eternia. Orko would have also played very well in trailers for the film. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the film lost tens of millions by not including a kid-friendly character like Orko, and featuring him prominently. I mean, if you’re an eight-year-old kid, would you rather spend your afternoon with Orko, or a drunken bum Man-At-Arms? I know which one eight-year-old me would have picked.

Another missed opportunity was not including more Cringer/Battle Cat. He’s a cute, lovable scaredycat. You never turn down the chance to include a cuddly animal into a film that is meant for children. He-Man was basically made originally for 6-12-year-old boys. The 2026 movie seems meant for…aging Millennials in the 35-45 range? That’s a much smaller moviegoing demographic than the cohort that turned Super Mario Bros. into two billion dollar films. I mean, no kid cares about He-Man much less knows who he is anymore unless their parents showed them the cartoon or their dusty figurine collection. You have to make them care, and you do that by showing them characters that they will like and relate to. You can’t just lean on Member Berries. Think of how Pixar attracts a younger audience, even for films with more sophisticated themes, like Inside Out.

Aside from missing two huge characters that might have represented tens of millions in additional theatrical revenue (if not even more from merch sales), the rest of the film was okay. The humor mostly landed. There were perhaps a few more swear words than there needed to be. What’s with inserting profanity into films that are meant for families? I remember most family films in the ’90s and earlier to be largely free of it, save for one here or there. There are like at least ten in He-Man. There were a bunch in Spider-Man: Brand New Day as well. There’s no reason for it, really. Adult dramas more than make up the difference.

If this latest MOTU is the final word on He-Man, I think that would be just fine. We don’t really need anymore at this point.

Is ‘Heat 2’ going to be Michael Mann’s ‘The Irishman’? Or ‘Gladiator 2’?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment
Heat 2

For those unaware, Michael Mann is planning to direct Heat 2. He also co-authored the novel with Meg Gardiner that is, of course, a sequel to the classic 1995 hit Heat starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and the late great Val Kilmer. The book is centered on the character of Chris Shiherlis, who, you’ll recall, was the lone surviving member of the ace criminal squad.

Heat is a fantastic fucking film, it goes without saying, featuring the classic shootout in downtown L.A. following the McCauley gang’s ingenious bank heist.

But what about Mann’s 2022 novel? Does it live up the legacy of the crime thriller drama that spawned a million imitators and inspired the style of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight?

Well, to quote the wild Detective Vincent Hanna, “This book has a great ass, and I’ve got my head all the way up it! When I think of great books like Heat 2, something comes out of me.”

Okay, okay, I’m not that crazed. But yeah, I liked this book a lot.

And I’ve been on a thriller novel kick lately. I recently finished The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey (Morton Freedgood). I’m currently reading Death Wish by Brian Garfield.

I also liked The Irishman, the 2019 gangster flick, if at times it felt more like Scorsese was just playing his greatest hits. Plus it was ridiculously long, slow, and heavy to watch.

I haven’t seen Gladiator 2, and I doubt I ever will. I find it a little odd, this latest trend of big directors returning to the well of their best works and putting out a sequel decades removed from the original. The Irishman is not a sequel, but it feels like the spiritual successor and final missing piece to the Cinematic Universe of Goodfellas/Casino. Gladiator 2, I felt, was a strange sequel to make. What’s next? Braveheart 2?

It’s usually not best for an aging director to return to the world of their previous hits, especially this far out from the OG. However, Heat 2 definitely landed for me, and if the film is able to capture the book well enough, it should make for a fantastic sequel.

:::spoilers incoming:::

Therein lies a huge challenge. Heat 2 is basically three stories in one. Which works fine for a novel. I’m not sure how successfully that will translate to film. You have a “present” timeline set in 1995, right after the bank robbery and shootout, with Chris’s escape to Paraguay and his attempt to move up in a new crime organization. There’s the past storyline in 1988 with criminal mastermind gigachad Neil McCauley getting the band together for its first gig, and running afoul of psychopath home intruder and rapist Otis Wardell. Then you have the “future” timeline in 2000, with Chris’s return to L.A. to set up some illegal biz with weapons systems shipments or whatever with his new partner and girlfriend Ana, who’s trying to branch off independently from her crime family. All culminating in a final clash with Vincent Hanna, who’s still chomping at the bit to put bad guys six feet under and wants Chris like a junkyard dog wants a trespasser’s throat.

Well, I shouldn’t put that there is a “clash” with Hanna as he never even knows Chris is back in L.A. until the very end, and only after Chris escapes again. If I have a criticism, it’s that I would have liked to have seen more of Hanna hunting Chris.

Look, if you told me Heat 2 was going to be six hours long, I’d freaking love that. This flick is going to be The Phantom Menace for middle-aged dudes. But I’m not general audiences. I don’t see how this is going to get cut down to a coherent 2.5-3.5 hours without removing a TON. You have three movies here, really. The Paraguay stuff was less interesting to me, and frankly, a little hard to follow with all the backstabbing and double agent stuff. You have to have the 1988 sequence to introduce McCauley to set up the daughter of his girlfriend Gabriela, as she returns for the third act showdown with Wardell. So my guess is Paraguay will get cut down to make room for L.A. 2000, which will likely take up the whole second half.

Then there are the set pieces. If you thought the downtown shootout in the OG was awesome, the sequel has SIX shootouts. Yes, six. I think. I might have forgotten one or two. You’ve got Wardell’s home invasion, which turns into a shootout and car chase with Hanna and the cops. The first highway shootout in Paraguay. A cartel base robbery shootout. A shootout near the U.S.-Mexico border between McCauley and Wardell’s gang. The climactic highway shootout between Wardell and Chris. Then there’s a last-minute factory shootout. Yes, this book is packed with so much there’s even a lengthy shootout in the last THREE PAGES. Good lord.

Mann is going to have to go Avatar 2: Way of Water on this deal to fit everything in, and it looks like Amazon is going to carte blanche him. It worked out great for JC, we’ll see if it works for Mann.

Overall, I enjoyed the book a great deal and would highly recommend it. It kind of reminded me of Tom Clancy with all its globetrotting, multiple interweaving plots, and timeline shifts. Or the first half of Inception when Cobb is getting his team together across countries. Leonardo DiCaprio is perfect for this as Chris, a role he’s finally just confirmed taking. Though personally I find Neil McCauley the more interesting character. A shame he’s only in the ’88 stuff but obviously he didn’t make it past ’95. I’d like a prequel just about him.

As much as I know I’ll enjoy this coming film, I can see it getting dinged for its plot excess. Hanna is somewhat underutilized, though I think Christian Bale is a solid Pacino replacement for Hanna. Yes, Hanna is just as insane in this as he was before, and it’ll be interesting seeing Bale channel some of Al’s signature spastic energy. I’m not sure about the guy doing McCauley, Stephen Graham, but he was pretty good in The Irishman. To be fair, nobody can replace DeNiro, but we also don’t want to see a de-aged Bob like in The Irishman. I’ve heard Adam Driver is possibly doing Wardell, but I don’t see him in that role at all. And the latest is Inde Navarrette is in talks to join, so she’s either Ana or Gabriela, and I’m thinking it would be Ana. A great choice there as she was pretty iconic in Obsession.

If anything, I expect Heat 2 to serve as a strong sequel to Mann’s 1995 masterpiece. Will it break the Curse of the Underwhelming Long-Awaited Successor To A Big Director’s OG Classic that seemed to befell Gladiator Dos and made theaters allergic to the lengthy The Irishman (it premiered on Netflix)? Time will tell.

Thoughts On Adapting My Slasher Novella Into A Screenplay

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

So, a while back in October last year, I mentioned how I had written my first slasher novella since high school. It was a fun little project titled Cutthroat. Here’s the updated synopsis:

A group of job applicants arrive at a highrise for an interview, only to find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives against a psychopathic recruiter known as Cutthroat, who wields a briefcase full of nasty weapons and is out to kill all of them.

Cutthroat is a dark comedy/splatter horror in the vein of Happy Death Day, The Monkey, Evil Dead, or Peter Jackson’s all-but-forgotten gross-out ‘80s slasher Dead Alive. It’s bloody, profane, sickly humorous, and was a hell of a lot of fun to write.

I recommend cutting loose once in a while and writing something like a wild and crazy slasher. Especially if you get in one of those creative ruts, which I’m prone to myself periodically. Slashers may not be the most artistically satisfying things to write—God forbid we take time away from working on the next Finnegans Wake or Infinite Jest. But sometimes the writing equivalent of junk food just hits the spot.  

After finishing up the latest draft of my novella sometime in December, I decided to let the project rest for a bit. Then afterward, I thought why not go ahead and adapt it into a screenplay? I’ve been dabbling in screenwriting since around 2012. But admittedly, the format is not really my forte. There’s something I find very constraining and limiting about screenwriting. It doesn’t let you ruminate or really get into the heads of your characters. It’s like trying to pack ten pounds of material into a five-pound bag. Stuff has to get cut. Scenes truncated. Characters condensed or written out altogether. It’s tortuous, really. Which is why I stick mainly with novels and short stories.

Now, it’d been a while since I’d even written a script. My last attempt was in 2019, another horror, centered on an orphaned deaf girl who has to fend off her foster parents when they go psycho on her due to becoming influenced by a weird signal from outer space. Sort like a Twilight Zone episode meets The Shining. It predates Pluribus, the Vince Gilligan-created show on Apple that’s also about an extraterrestrial crank call from space turning everyone into zombies. While it’s a script I’m proud of, it didn’t go anywhere, and so it put me off trying again for a while. Though perhaps I’ll expand that into a short novel at some point. I’ve written twelve screenplays in total. A handful of them are worthy candidates for literary expansion.

Cutthroat the novella stands at a trim 73 pages, and just over 32,000 words. A typical screenplay of 120 pages will be about 20,000 words. Slashers have no right being any longer than 90 minutes (and preferably shorter), so you’re looking at 15,000 words, or even shorter. Most horrors are pretty Ozempic, textually speaking anyway, favoring propulsive cat-and-mouse type narratives. You’re not going to have too many, if any, dense paragraphs.

Well, you can already see an issue with the mechanics. I had to cut my story in half to make it fit.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Just take what you’ve got and divide it. Well, like those two mothers who went to Solomon arguing over custody of their baby, cutting your offspring in twain is harder to do than it looks—and I’m a very protective mom, er, dad, when it comes to my stories.

How do you decide what stays and what goes? How do you cut a nice, juicy conversation that goes on for two single-space pages in the book down to just a bite-sized half a page in the screenplay? Think of all the nuance you’re leaving on the table. Think of the plump details you’re trimming. That one banger line. Gone. Oh, man, the picking and choosing of what lives or dies on the page–that’s the true horror of adapting a horror script.

Well, turns out, it can be done, if you focus on one important thing—moving the story along as reasonably quick as you can. That’s kinda the whole point of a screenplay. It’s even in the word movie—to move. As in to zip along quickly. Even “slow” films move at light speed compared to their novel source material. Especially horror stories. We’re not digging into deep existential questions here. We want to move from one grisly slaying to the next as fast as possible.

You have to cut to the heart of the scene. Hit the broad strokes. Choose your best line or best sequence of lines that convey everything necessary and then move on.

If writing a novel is like preparing a huge rest stop buffet for hungry highway motorists, writing a screenplay is like making one specific dish, and the food critic waiting at the table is Gordon Ramsay. 

In the first draft I actually overdid the cutting, to the point that I wound up with a script at a super lean 82 pages, i.e. 82 minutes of screen time, give or take. While such length is fine and dandy for a Friday the 13th sequel (really, I have no idea how those films filled even 50 minutes, much less 80-something), for the next draft I added some more muscle and tissue to my skeletal framework. I was even able to add a few good lines here and there. As such, the screenplay version of Cutthroat and its novel source constitute two distinct visions of the same story. An unexpected and strange result considering I wrote both. I guess it’s a bit like having twins. They look the same. They share the same biology. But one’ll be an athlete obsessed with lacrosse while the other is content to spend the day watering their geraniums.                     

The latest “final” draft clocks in at a modest 88 pages. Just about perfect as far as slasher length goes. Borrowing from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, there’s a mid-credits scene and a post-credits scene, including sequel-bait. I have plenty of ideas for additional installments in the wacky, wooly world of Cutthroat. Except, like I mentioned, slashers aren’t exactly the most calorically nourishing for the soul. Much less irreverent, darkly comic, cynical ones like this one. Time will tell whether I will revisit my psycho recruiter fiend who likes to butcher desperate job seekers in various macabre ways in the future.

For now, Cutthroat the Screenplay makes for a fine regular entry into screenwriting contests. It’s short, brutal, and to the point. It’s my attempt at making a modern “iconic” horror movie villain like Art the Clown or M3gan, by tapping into the current zeitgeisty Gen-Z terror of jobseeking by introducing the “recruiter from hell.” At some point I’ll put the novella out on KDP. I’m still tinkering with it. I may hire an artist to make some mock-up renderings, or even do an audiobook of some kind. We’ll see about all that.