The Lord of the Rings Trilogy / *****

Note: I’m not exactly dodging spoilers for this series here, so if you haven’t seen it and somehow don’t know how it plays out, consider yourself warned.

When you return to a truly landmark piece of film, it can be hard to see it with fresh eyes. When you revisit Night of the Living Dead, it can be difficult to see it without also seeing the countless hordes of imitators and follow ups it spawned. It’s hard to go and watch Citizen Kane and realize just how groundbreaking it was in terms of technique when that same craft is so commonplace today. And, in the case of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, while not necessarily a seminal work like those, it’s nonetheless hard to revisit it without wondering how it will hold up in the wake of everything it inspired – everything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Game of Thrones to dreck like the Dungeons and Dragons films (to say nothing of Jackson’s own deeply disappointing return to the well with The Hobbit).

But, miraculously, Jackson’s epic holds up, reminding you of nothing but itself, and still feeling every bit as immersive, exciting, imaginative, and detailed as it did when I first saw it at midnight on opening night. (It’s the only series I’ve ever done midnight screenings for, and I’d do them again, because I am a dork.) Jackson and company make the films work through sheer dedication and effort to making them come to life, with every corner of every frame packed with details that may never be noticed, but still immerse you in a fantasy world that comes to life because of the commitment by everyone involved.

A casual perusing of the special features on the discs give you a sense of the effort that went into it all, from a reliance on practical effects, makeup, and models wherever possible to cast members who refused lightweight props in favor of carrying real swords to convey their weight. But none of that really matters if it doesn’t come through on the screen…which it does, undeniably. When you’re all but feeling the dust in the mines of Moria, or watching the rain come down on the anxious soldiers on the walls of Helm’s Deep, or seeing the grime covering the armor of the orcs and goblins, you can’t help but be immersed into Middle-Earth in a way that feels effortless, and that’s due in no small part to the amount of detail-oriented craft that permeates every corner of the film.

So, yes, the cast and crew brought the world to life. But let’s not undersell Jackson’s own role in the project. Before The Lord of the Rings, Jackson was primarily known for his splatter films like Dead Alive (a personal favorite), but his work on the haunting, disturbing Heavenly Creatures foreshadowed his ability to ground his silliness and B-movie charms in character-driven narratives. And yes, there’s still ample evidence of that low-budget horror director in here, from a gleeful willingness to savor the gross-out effects of the orcs to some showy Raimi-like camerawork, all of which I’m sure irritates the Tolkien purists.

But what Jackson really brings to the table is a grounding of this epic in its characters, and that’s the most critical element of all. From the development of Gimli and Legolas’s relationship as it evolves from distrust to friendship to Samwise’s quiet decency and devotion to “Mr. Frodo,” from the evolution of Aragorn from quiet loner to true king, every one of the Fellowship comes to life, and that’s what makes the film go from good to great. Much has been said about how Jackson drags out the ending of Return of the King, but it’s earned in so many ways by the care he’s taken with the characters, giving them complete arcs and making the quiet moments as important as the major ones. (The best occurrence of this, for my money, is the return of the Hobbits to the Shire, as they sit in silence and realize just how much this journey has changed them from the people they were.) For all of the epic tale being spun, what makes The Lord of the Rings masterful is the way it’s so much about individuals in dark times, making a stand for what’s right.

And on this viewing, I found myself thinking about that more and more in the character of Samwise Gamgee, whose fundamental decency and kindness more than once left me feeling some dust in the room. Maybe it’s just the feeling of seeing a good person trying their best against all odds, or maybe it’s his devotion to his friends, but there’s something moving and genuine about that character, conveying a lesson that manages to apply as much in America in 2019 as it does in the shadow of the Nazgul:

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.

Maybe it makes me a softie in my middle age…but that line hit me pretty hard this time, and it’s the sort of thing that makes this series so special – not just that it told an epic, but it made it feel like something true and human underneath.

A final note: I watched the extended versions of all three films this time (I had seen the first two extended cuts before, but not that of The Return of the King), and to that point: there are legitimate pacing issues with the extended cuts (most notably the fact that any extension to the Aragorn/Arwen plot just kills the movie dead, even more than in the originals), and I’ll concede that, as films, the original cuts pare down the fat of the film in good ways. But as someone who loves these films, I can’t say that I don’t love the extended cuts, given that most of the scenes and moments that they add only underline all those character beats and world-building that made me fall in love with the movies in the first place. They’re undeniably cuts for fans of the movies already, but for those who love them, it’s hard to imagine losing some of the moments that they add in.

IMDb: The Fellowship of the Ring | The Two Towers | The Return of the King

Crime Thrillers by Robert Swartwood and Joe Lansdale

As happens with a lot of self-published authors, Robert Swartwood has made a career out of pulpy, propulsive thrillers with undeniable hooks, such as the intense, unnerving thriller Man of Wax or the surprisingly thoughtful, complex supernatural tale The Calling. So it’s really no surprise that his novel Abducted packs in the twists and turns, giving you a tale that keeps you hooked as it unfolds. Unfortunately, it also commits so hard to its twists and turns that it loses any sensibility along the way, becoming something enjoyable for its cleverness, but not really as a story on other merits.

Abducted starts off simply enough, with two prison escapees kidnapping a woman outside of a service station in an effort to keep them safe as they make their way to a hidden cache designed to give them a fresh start, all while the police try to track them down. But this is one of those books where no one is as they seem, with almost everyone hiding their true motives until the most dramatic moment to reveal them, making it a hard book to summarize. Suffice to say, this is a story full of double- and triple-crosses, until the final story is so far removed from that first premise that it’s hard to remember how you got there.

None of that really makes Abducted less fun to read (apart from one brief detour into some serious unpleasantness whose later reversal due to a twist doesn’t make it less tonally jarring with the otherwise B-movie thrills of the book), but it does end up making it hard to really empathize or even really understand the majority of the characters as you go. That’s a problem with a thriller where we’re supposed to care about the outcome, meaning that the main appeal of the novel comes from watching Swartwood’s labyrinthine plot unfold. That’s entertaining enough as it goes, but twists within twists within twists can get tiring after a while, and the whole thing ends up feeling hollow and silly by the end. It’s fun enough as a b-movie style thriller, but there are better books out there for those wanting that sort of thing. Rating: ***

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There may be no series I love more but struggle to review as much as Joe Lansdale’ Hap and Leonard series. Every single entry in the series is a joy to read for so many reasons, but when the structure is so often broadly the same – and each book’s strengths and assets so similar – I end up feeling like I’m repeating myself with each review. And yet, there’s no way I won’t take the chance to speak up and endorse one of my favorite series going today, one whose every volume leaves me happier for having read it.

So let’s talk about Rusty Puppy, the tenth entry in this series about two old friends whose careers as private investigators usually leads them into trouble, but also confronting ugly injustice rooted in some deep-seated issues in the world that so many thrillers shy away from. As ever with Hap and Leonard, things start simply enough, with Hap being approached the investigate the death of a young African-American man which seems to be being ignored by a local Texas police force. And, as ever, this seemingly simple case takes the boys deeper and deeper into some wild territory, with corrupt cops, police brutality, systematic racism, and a community turning a blind eye to what’s happening at its core – or even worse, secretly embracing it. Lansdale has never shied away from the ugly realities of racism in the Hap and Leonard books, and Rusty Puppy is no exception, from the dynamics between police and impoverished communities to debates about the origins of gang life in tenement housing. Lansdale lets his characters breathe freely and live within that world, not shying away from the ugliness they express, nor refusing to let Hap and Leonard have their debates about who’s to blame for it all.

But for all of their engagement with complex, ugly themes, somehow, the Hap and Leonard books stay as frequently hilarious and insane as ever, thanks in no small part to Lansdale’ ability to capture the Texas-infused banter of all of its characters, reveling in their colorful (and yes, profane) language throughout, whether it’s Leonard getting into a shouting match with a ten-year-old girl or the boys refusing to be intimidated by some less than brilliant henchmen. Lansdale’s books are equal parts neo-noir and dialogue-driven comedy, operating with one foot deeply in the tradition of writers like Hammett and Chandler, for whom the patter was half the draw, if not more. It’s just that Lansdale gets to operate without restrictions on his language, and the result often leaves me laughing out loud as I read or sharing passages with friends.

The short and simple of it is that Lansdale has yet to write a bad Hap and Leonard book, and Rusty Puppy keeps that streak alive on every level, from the rich plotting to the great characters, from the drawling prose to the engagement with the modern world. There’s a reason that I space out Hap and Leonard books as treats to myself, given how they can be counted on to bright my mood and leave me ripping through their pages. And every time you crack open those pages, you’ll find yourself just glad to hang out with these two friends again as they make an effort to fight the good fight even in small ways. What else could you ask for? Rating: *****

Amazon: Abducted | Rusty Puppy

Three Books on Writing

As an English teacher, sometimes my reading habits are a bit dictated for me by the necessities of class prep. Such is the case this summer, where, thanks to taking over the AP Language and Composition course, some of my summer reading includes three non-fiction books about the craft of writing: Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird, and Stephen King’s On Writing. Three very different books, written by three very different writers, and each with its own approach to the idea of talking about the actual practice of writing.

Bradbury’s is perhaps the least helpful for those interested in the nuts and bolts of “how to write,” and yet that doesn’t mean that it’s without insight or value for the would-be writer. A series of essays that Bradbury has written over time – some as introductions to new editions of books, some for collections, some for magazines – Zen and the Art of Writing is more about Bradbury’s own practices and beliefs than it is about what others should do. Nonetheless, there’s always benefit in hearing a master like Bradbury opine about his own craft, and while the lessons may be ones that apply to his own stories, the wise writer could still draw lessons here through inference.

Still, the primary draw of Zen in the Art of Writing is the window into Bradbury’s own mind and process, from the way he incorporates experiences in his own life into stories into the various ingredients that fed into his brand of storytelling. What’s more, hearing him talk about the inspiration and writing of classic tales like The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, or short stories like “Skeleton” gives you a sense of the mind of a practicing writer, and how it sees the world. But if you’re looking for advice as to how to develop those tools in your own writing life, it’s less helpful and practical.

Meanwhile, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird evidences from the first page its author’s experience as both a professional writer and a creative writing teacher. Conversational, frequently hilarious, and calm, Lamott treats her book less as a window into her own practices and more like a classroom discussion by an affable teacher with her own experience brought to bear. Yes, Lamott still draws off of her own experiences – what author doesn’t? – but she does so while always keeping the focus on advice for students, focusing on the art of finding your own voice and pushing yourself as a writer in comfortable but challenging ways.

Lamott’s teaching experience makes Bird by Bird more directly helpful than Bradbury’s more personal essays, but it’s still focused more on the art of storytelling more than some of the nuts and bolts. Yes, there’s a lot of great advice here – the importance of short exercises, how to make the most of your observations of the world, dealing with perfection (and jealousy), and so forth – but Lamott is as much focused on the “emotional” side of writing as anything. Which is far from a bad thing – indeed, the book’s encouragement, warmth, and advice on how to tap into your own muse is often wonderful, and definitely aligns with both comments from Bradbury’s own essays and King’s own thoughts on writing later. No, any writer struggling to figure out their own perspective and voice will find a lot to think on in Lamott’s book, and her voice is a joy to read. But for those looking for some more of the fundamentals – agents, grammar, etc. – you’ll need to look elsewhere. or else supplement the book.

Not really surprisingly, you’ll find more of that practicality in King’s book, which makes sense – here’s an author who turns out books like clockwork and supports himself entirely through his craft, meaning that he undeniably approaches writing as a job as much as a pastime. That’s not to say that there’s not both here – King’s passion for writing comes through in every page – but King is the only one of the three who spends time who gives time not only to the sources of inspiration that make stories and plotting, but also talks about grammar, the importance of cutting down on adverbs and why you do so, gives actual examples of revisions to a work (complete with commentary on how they affect the final story), and even takes some time to walk through the process of finding an agent and a place to submit a short story. It’s a work on writing that’s as focused on the nuts and bolts as it is the big picture, a choice that fits with King’s general attitude and approach to both stories and the world.

Of course, there’s a lot more to On Writing, a fact that either gives the book more appeal or less, depending on what you’re wanting out of it. Specifically, most of the book’s first half, and a closing epilogue, are more about King’s own life (his childhood and first experiences writing and then the car accident that nearly killed him, respectively) than the craft of writing. These parts of the book are more compelling for King fans than would-be writers, undeniably; though they give a fantastic portrait of both how King came to be a writer and how writing helped him to heal psychically after the accident, they’re far more of a memoir than authorial advice. Of course, they’re also testament to King’s writing ability in general, making the argument why his advice in the middle of the book is so potent – but I’ll admit to my own fanboy status here, so take it with a grain of salt. For my money, though, it’s the most helpful and practical of the three writing books I read; while each have their own strengths and areas of interest, King’s comes across as the most helpful for those who don’t just want to write stories, but want to work on becoming a true writer, in every sense of the word.

Amazon: Zen in the Art of Writing | Bird by Bird | On Writing

Dogtooth / *****

When you know you’re writing a review of a movie – which I do for about 95% of the movies I watch – you tend to find yourself thinking about what you’re going to use as a thesis as you watch. Is this a movie whose pleasures come from craft? Is it the story being told? The performances? The big ideas? Maybe all of that, in some wonderful rare cases?

Other times, there are movies like Dogtooth, that leave you thinking to yourself I genuinely have no idea what I will possibly be able to say about this movie. And even now, days after I’ve seen it, I’m struggling a bit. Is Dogtooth well-made? Undeniably – the cold, simple camera work makes it feel like we’re watching this surreal, nightmarish family story as a sort of reality show, seeing it all unfold almost entirely within the walls of this house, and anchored by the simple, vulnerable performances across the board. Does it tell its story well? Oh, more than well, with any number of scenes that will stick with you long after you’ve seen it, and leave you squirming just thinking about them. And does it have ideas? That, too, is unmistakably true; in its utterly bizarre tale of homeschooling gone mad, as two parents raise their children in a sealed off environment and convince them of everything from false meanings of words to unknown siblings living outside the fence to murderous stray cats, it’s clear that Dogtooth has ideas about how we accept the truths we’re told, or about how far parents can go to protect their children, or how much we are shaped by our environments.

All well and good. But none of that truly conveys the deep discomfort, unease, and  disturbing feelings that come along with watching Dogtooth, and that’s really what you’re going to come away from the film thinking about.

How do you convey the feeling of watching a father convince his children that the stray cat that wandered into their yard killed their nonexistent brother, and then train them to bark like dogs to keep cats at bay? (That, to be fair, is better than their other plan with the cat.) What about the way that sexuality creeps into the house, as the older sister begins demanding sexualized favors to give away her toys, such as the plastic airplane that they’re all convinced fell out of the sky? Or what about the bizarre way in which the parents constantly use language to lie to their children by giving them false definitions for words, hiding both unpleasant truths from them but also commonplace ideas, all as a sort of insidious control done as much out of amusement as for any discernible purpose? And even trying to explain some of these events doesn’t convey the way director/co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos tells the story, which is coldly and dispassionately, allowing the viewer to simply watch and providing no judgment, commentary, or even perspective on these events, and just letting us understand how bizarre it all is, but denying the characters that knowledge?

Dogtooth is an effective parable, to be sure, and one whose mastery and brilliance I’ve come around to more and more as I write this review and think about the film. But none of that makes it anything less than a squirm-inducing, discomfiting experience that gets under your skin not through gore, not through profanity, not through aberrant sexuality (though all of that exists here), but through the sheer wrongness of the situation we’re watching, and never looking away from any of it, nor letting us escape without seeing it all. It’s a truly strange film, by almost any estimation, and one that’s decidedly not for all audiences. But that same strangeness and willingness to push the envelope are the very things that make it a such compelling, strange experience that works as well as it does.

IMDb

Stuck / **** ½

In 2001, a nurse in Texas was driving home from an evening at the club when she struck a homeless man with her car. The man was hurled up onto the hood and became lodged in the nurse’s windshield; somehow, he lived through the impact, but could not free himself from the windshield. Rather than helping the man, the nurse drove home and left her car – and the man – in her garage, leaving him to die over the course of the next few days before disposing of the body in a nearby park. Ultimately, the nurse was arrested for the crime after bragging about it and sentenced to fifty years in prison.

That’s a horrifying true story by any standard, but a compelling one that raises questions about human decency and kindness in the world. So it’s not a stretch to see Stuart Gordon use that story as a jumping off point for his viciously black comedy/horror film Stuck, which takes the basic outlines of the story but has its own tale to tell entirely, one that allows Gordon to truly explore the empathy – or lack thereof – at the core of this morality play.

It doesn’t hurt that Gordon casts his roles so well, starting with Mena Suvari as the nurse who spends her days caring for residents at a nursing home. There’s such a sharp disconnect between the patience and kindness we see during her day job and her dealings with the homeless man left in horrendous pain at her house that we can’t help but question what’s going on in there, and Gordon makes the most of that, letting us see how often each of us is willing to turn our back on another human being whenever it might actually cost us anything. That’s a recurring thread of the film, whether it’s the illegal immigrant family who doesn’t want to get involved out of fear of deportation or Suvari’s drug dealing boyfriend (Russell Hornsby) who finds himself being asked to do more and more for a woman he may only have casually feelings for.

Of course, equally important is Gordon’s casting of Stephen Rea as the homeless man. Rea’s naturally empathetic, sad-eyed face works wonders for the character, and the glimpses we see of his day before the accident ensure that we’re all too aware of his humanity, and that he’s not just an abstract embodiment of homelessness and poverty. Instead, Rea makes the character someone doing his best to handle the bad hand he’s been dealt in life, only to have an even worse hand dealt to him in the form of that accident.

All of this makes Stuck sound heady and ponderous – a morality play for modern days – which is why I need to remind you that this comes from the director of Re-Animator, not from Merchant Ivory. Stuck revels in Gordon’s ability to work in horror and gross-out gore, and there’s no shortage of moments in Stuck that will emphasize the sheer violence and pain of this accident. But there’s also Gordon’s natural black comedy tendencies, reveling in the absolute absurdity of this situation and the inexplicable actions of Suvari’s character. By the time she’s asking the bloody man impaled on her windshield wipers “Why are you doing this to me?”, you both know why she’s saying that and laughing at the insanity of what she’s asking.

Stuck has about as much connection to the true story as a Law & Order episode, using it as a background for something much different – a look at human cruelty and indifference, yes, but also a gleefully violent, nasty black comedy about those same issues. It’s gory, bleak, and cynical to the core, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have something to say or a thought in its head. It just means that you’re going to have a wild, nasty ride getting there is all.

IMDb

 

In Our Own Worlds, by Margaret Killjoy, Ellen Klages, Kai Ashante Wilson, and JY Yang / ****

In recent years, Tor.com has made an effort to publish more novellas, a choice that both allows them to take advantage of ebooks and low prices as well as allowing a wider range of authors who might want to try out a world or idea before taking on a full novel. This month, in honor of Pride month, Tor released In Our Own Worlds, a collection of four novellas all written by LGBTQ+ authors and featuring LGBTQ+ characters. It’s a great anthology, with four solid entries and four wildly diverse stories, each of which shows you a different side of how fantasy has truly begun to move away from the Arthurian tropes that defined it for so long. 

Margaret Killjoy’s The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion opens the collection with a bang, giving us a squatter Iowa commune that summoned a guardian to protect them – a blood-red, three-antlered stag that murders anyone who brings injustice into the community. All well and good, but when that guardian spirit begins turning on the town itself and those who summoned it, the town finds itself divided as to whether their own ideals or the purity of the guardian should win out, and what exactly “injustice” is comprised of.

Killjoy gives us a great community of characters – outcasts both by choice and by fate, all of whom have come together to build something more. But rather than just letting her politics dictate the story, Killjoy slowly makes them part of the tale’s thematic complexity, as the characters have to wrestle with their own beliefs as part of dealing with the guardian and questioning who diverged from their utopia – the people or the guardian. She does all of this while giving us a fast-paced tale with plenty of horrific and surreal imagery to go around, all while investing us in the conflict by making it as much about big ideas as it is a murderous red deer. It’s a blast across the board, and serves as a welcome burst of energy to kick off the anthology.

Next comes Ellen Klages’ Passing Strange, a tale that largely unfolds in San Francisco during the 1940s, and one whose magical elements only gradually come into focus. For much of the novella’s length, it’s the story of a small cadre of women who find a common bond in their own lesbian desires and loves, trying to allow each other a safe place to co-exist. But while Passing Strange is a romance at its core, Klages makes it as much a story about this group of friends, ranging from the club scene that gave these women a haven to an unblinking look at the realities outside their safe places. It’s a book that’s so grounded in its historical detail that, for a while, you’ll wonder what its connections to the fantasy genre really are – but you won’t mind hanging out with its characters or living in its vividly re-created world while you figure it out.

Suffice to say, there is a fantastic element to this story, but it’s a wonderfully quiet one that underlines the lives of the characters without taking away from their story. Indeed, it feels almost like an element of the book that we only barely begin to glimpse before it all ends, leaving us with as many questions as answers. That can be a little frustrating, and certain elements (I’m thinking particularly of the “shortcuts”) end up feeling a little tossed in and less fleshed out than others. But that’s largely forgotten by the end of the tale, which ties the 1940s setting into the present in a satisfying, sweet way and ends the novella on a moving, warm note. Passing Strange is more historical fiction than fantasy,  but it’s done with such affection for its characters and its world that it’s hard not to get swept up into it as you go.

Kai Ashante Wilson’s A Taste of Honey is similarly a romance tale at its core, despite all of its fantastical and science-fiction trappings. The story of Aqib bgm Sadiqi, the scion of a royal family, who finds his lifelong confusion coming into focus as he meets a male soldier from another nation named Lucrio. The two strike up a fast and passionate affair, but it’s not long before Lucrio has to leave, and Aqib is forced to choose whether or not to stay behind and honor his family (and repress his identity) or leave with his love (and turn his back on his obligations and birthright). Wilson makes clear early on that Aqib chooses to stay, but his novel unfolds across two time periods, alternating between a recounting of the men’s time together and the next decades of Aqib’s life as he grows up, finds himself in an arranged marriage, has a daughter, and settles into his role. It’s here that A Taste of Honey most comes into its own, juxtaposing the passion and love of his youth with a life defined by an absence of both of those things, and helping us see the cost of this repression.

That being said, A Taste of Honey also ends up feeling weirdly busy and cluttered, from his wife’s dive into advanced physics and mathematics into his life with animals that feels like setup for something we never quite get. More than most of the novellas, A Taste of Honey suffers a little from its length; its world keeps overflowing its slim pages, leaving you feeling like you’re not seeing so much of what’s going on, even as Wilson’s depiction of Aqib and his life are so pitch-perfect throughout. All of that is only complicated more by a fairly wild twist ending that both throws the book’s true story and ideas into sharp focus while also ending up feeling like a sharp turn that’s thrown in without warning or setup. It’s still a rich story of love and repression, but there’s a sense that you wish A Taste of Honey was either longer or shorter than it is.

That goes as well for JY Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven, which I’ve already reviewed at length here. In many ways the most ambitious entry of the anthology, Yang’s novella doesn’t just give us a solid story of a pair of siblings who find themselves struggling to find a place for themselves over the course of 30 years and an ever-shifting political situation; it also throws us into an astonishing world of gender-fluidity, steampunk technology, elemental magic, and a deeply Asian-influenced mythology that we only get a taste of.

The Black Tides of Heaven is ambitious, have no doubt about it, but of all the entries, it’s the one that suffers most from its length. Yang has ideas to spare here, and their world is compelling and rich – one that you can easily lose yourself in, and one in which you’re ready for a whole series and saga to unfold. But more than the other entries, The Black Tides of Heaven feels like a story that’s too compressed for this length, all but demanding at least twice the length to explore side characters, magical leanings, political feints, aging, relationships, and so much more. There are undeniably worse things that having a book end by leaving you wanting more, to be sure, but Yang’s choice to make this one so brief ends up making you wish they’d just gone for broke and written the saga they clearly have in mind.

But even with some flaws, there’s not a bad entry in this anthology, and all of them bring so much to the table – rich imagination, complex worlds, interesting ideas, and a humanity and affection for their characters that is undeniable – that it’s hard to imagine anyone coming away from this collection dissatisfied. More than that, it’s a great reminder of how fantasy has changed so much over the course of my lifetime, and how that change and opening of the gates has given us all so many wonderful stories that we denied ourselves and the world for far too long.

Amazon

 

Classic Suspense: Invasion of the Body Snatchers / The Old Dark House

Invasion of the Body Snatchers has become so analyzed to death – is it an allegory for Communism? for McCarthyism? a take on the studio system? – that it’s easy to forget that, at its core, it’s still a piece of pulp sci-fi. Body Snatchers is a B-movie at its heart, with simple effects and a great hook – what if people around us were being replaced and we couldn’t tell? – but those ideas are so good, and the execution so solid, that it’s hard not to enjoy the movie for what it is, even without all of the critical analysis.

Journeyman director Don Siegel brings a lot of noir touches to the story, with emphasis on shadows and fast pacing, but also some great shots and sequences (there’s a moment where we watch a crowd silently amassing in a town square that’s chilling in its simplicity). More than that, though, Siegel’s efficient, clear direction moves the story smoothly, laying the groundwork for the subtle invasion in small ways until it feels like the situation is so far out of hand that there’s no going back. Siegel and the film’s screenwriters make the most of their characters, too, giving us a simple love story between two recent divorcees that underlines the gaps between humans and the emotionless replicas taking over. Add to that the general sense of malaise that already infects the lives of the characters even before the arrival of the pod people, and there’s some nice thematic complexity to the film to work with the propulsive plotting.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers works so well because of – not in spite of – its B-movie trappings, but those same trappings can’t help but make the film feel slighter than all those allegorical readings would lead you to expect. And when comparing it to the remakes that would come later – most notably the iconic 70’s version – it ends up feeling slimmer than you’d hope. But taken for what it is – a 50’s pulp sci-fi movie – it’s a blast to watch, with some great moments and solid performances throughout. Just don’t let its reputation mislead you. Rating: ****

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James Whale is one of the iconic classic horror directors. Along with Tod Browning, who helmed the original Dracula, Whale ushered in the era of iconic monster films. But while Browning focused on the psychological undercurrents of his work and committed to the horror elements, Whale often approached his movies with a knowing wink and a self-awareness of the genre, giving his films both a lush gothic feel and a wry camp sensibility that can make them feel ahead of their time for modern audiences.

That self-awareness comes through in spades in The Old Dark House, a long lost film from Whale whose strong reputation has held up since its rediscovery. Whale takes on the Gothic mystery story in all its archetypal glory, giving us a collection of strangers who end up in a shadowy manor on a stormy night, only to find themselves dealing with a hideous manservant, imprisoned family members, ominous threats from old women, and so much more.

All of which is such classic fare that you know how a lot of it will go, except that Whale executes it all with a knowing wink and a sense of fun that permeates every scene of the film, from drunken banter between characters to cartoonish use of shadows that don’t quite line up with what’s going on. Even so, Whale is more than capable of emphasizing the Gothic and horror elements of the film – creaky walls, shadowy hallways, distorted mirrors, and distant voices all have a big part to play here – which allows him to have his cake and eat it too, giving you something that’s both stylish, moody horror and knowing riff on those tropes. Sometimes you get both at once, such as the use of Boris Karloff here as another scarred, mute monster, but one whose monstrous nature here comes not from psychopathy, but mainly from just doing too much drinking.

Whale is doing more than just giving a knowing riff on the genre, though; that doesn’t even get into the fascinating sexual politics of the film, with gender role reversals throughout and some obvious stand-ins for Whale’s own feelings as a gay man in the 1930s. But more than that, The Old Dark House is just a fun classic horror film, filled with great characters (Charles Laughton, in his American film debut, is a standout, although Brember Willis is fantastic as a deeply broken pyromaniac), rich atmosphere, and a sense of fun that makes it a treat to watch. Rating: ****

IMDb: Invasion of the Body Snatchers | The Old Dark House

The Shrinking Man, by Richard Matheson / ****

There’s something so wonderfully grounded about so many of the works of Richard Matheson. From the oddly “practical” vampire lore of I Am Legend (to quote Stephen King) to the scientific ghost explorations of Hell House, Matheson has a way of taking supernatural fare and grounding it in the details of the real world, both enhancing the realism of the story and making the horrors all the more comprehensible. And that comes in spades in The Shrinking Man, where so much of the novel’s tensions come in the form of things like a lawn chair, a spider, or a household pet.

Wasting absolutely no time on the novel’s setup, Matheson gives us an inciting incident in less than a page and then jumps into the story of Scott Carey, an archetypal 50’s suburban white male who finds himself shrinking a seventh of an inch every day. By the time we catch up with Carey, he’s less than an inch tall, and he’s trapped in the basement of his house, threatened by a black widow spider, struggling to climb mountainous refrigerators, and doing his best to stay alive even as he closes in on the day where his shrinkage takes him to non-existent. Matheson tosses us directly into the action, immersing us in Carey’s daily efforts to simply stay alive, and emphasizing the surreal nature of his predicament by only gradually helping us put all of the landscape into perspective as familiar, everyday objects.

If all The Shrinking Man had to offer was Carey’s adventure, it would still be a blast of a novel. As he always does, Matheson has a way of making even day-to-day survival compelling, and by immersing us into the practicalities of life when you’re less than an inch tall (using a sewing pin as a weapon; finding a way to scale a lawn chair; collecting water in a thimble), Matheson scratches a great itch of storytelling. There’s always something engaging about survival tales – think Robinson Crusoe or Castaway here – and the alien environs (of a sort) make this one all the more compelling.

But there’s more to The Shrinking Man than just the adventure aspects. After all, it doesn’t take Freud to start to find the subtext in a shrinking man, and Matheson dives into the effects on Scott’s psyche as he finds himself increasingly powerless and losing his own sense of “manhood”. That can make Scott a toxic protagonist at times, as he becomes obsessed with his inability to make his wife happy or be held without feeling infantilized, to say nothing of the way society increasingly treats him like a child or his own daughter starts respecting him less and less. (The less said about the plot thread where Scott starts spying on the teenage babysitter in an effort to satisfy his needs, the better; that being said, Matheson doesn’t make much effort to make him look good there, which is something.) Matheson makes the loss of manhood all but text, not subtext, and by cutting back and forth between Carey’s basement adventures and his personal crises as the shrinking began, he links it all into a tale of self-definition, to where we start to realize that the spider is as much a representation of Scott’s fears and insecurities as it is a physical threat.

But in pure pulp style, Matheson always draws himself back to the adventure, letting the background be background and never quite making those links explicitly clear. It all adds up to a great piece of pulp sci-fi/horror that’s fun to read, and has just enough complexity to give it some weight. (And that’s without getting into the way it’s so much of a portrait of suburban white men in the 1950s, dealing with the changing of the world around them.) It’s still workman-like in its prose (a typical issue with pulp in general, and Matheson usually), but it’s such a fun read that you won’t mind too much.

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Men with Issues: Enemy / The Collector / Angst

Denis Villeneuve has made a name for himself in recent years with moody, complex cinematic fare that revels in complexity and depth. With movies like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve has made rich adult fare part of the mainstream, bringing both craft and richness to the cinema. Enemy is one of his earlier films, filmed right before Villeneuve burst onto the scene with Prisoners and Sicario. But while it’s got mood to spare and plenty of ideas, it doesn’t really ever come to more than a lot of (admittedly arresting) strange images and ambiguity that frustrates more than provokes.

Jake Gyllenhaal pulls double duty as both a middle-aged college lecturer disillusioned with his life and an actor mostly playing background roles in films. When the former becomes aware of the latter, realizing their identical appearance, he asks to meet, only to find the two of them may be even more alike than he expected, and that their lives form an odd juxtaposition that finds each wanting more from the other.

Oh, and there are a lot of spiders involved, too. And some of them aren’t quite normal.

Enemy feels like it has a lot to say, or at least ideas it wants to explore – wish fulfillment, fear of women, toxic masculinity, midlife crises, and more. And there’s little denying that Gyllenhaal is great in the role, nor that Villeneuve isn’t capable of some truly unsettling moments and images – the final moments of the film are truly surreal and disturbing. But I’m not sure the movie ever amounts to much, feeling like a great exercise in craft that doesn’t really have much new to say. It’s well made, but by the end, you’ll feel like you’ve seen this all before. Just, you know, with less spiders. Rating: *** ½

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It’s somewhat unexpected to find William Wyler – the respected director who made The Best Years of Our Lives, Ben-Hur, Roman Holiday, and other classic film staples – directing The Collector, a deeply strange film that feels more in line with Peeping Tom than it does your stereotypical classic film fare. (Of course, Wyler also helmed The Desperate Hours, so it’s not like thrillers are unknown territory for him.) The Collector sometimes feels like it doesn’t have the courage to be as unsettling and squirm-inducing as the material should be, but in many ways, his more formal approach only underlines the twisted dynamic of the movie, making that tagline of “almost a love story” all the more appropriate.

Our titular “collector” here is played by Terence Stamp, an obsessive butterfly collector who has decided now to collect something new: a local young woman (Samantha Eggar), whom he imprisons in his lushly furnished basement as if she were a bird in a cage. What unfolds from there is an uncomfortably two-hander, as Stamp wrestles with his deeply-rooted psychological issues (more than a bit of a Madonna-whore complex here) and Eggar tries to play to his interest in order to win her freedom. It’s a film that you can feel straining against its 1960’s timeframe, touching on repressed sexual longing and psychosexual control issues, all without quite being willing to come out and directly talk about much of it. But, of course, that repression plays into the film as well, both underlining Stamp’s own repressed desires and creating a weird sort of normalcy to the film that makes it all the more disturbing.

The Collector gets under the skin nicely, and you can’t help but see it as part of a continuum of 1960s films that deal with these sorts of men. But at the same time, it also definitely doesn’t quite hold its own against the obvious comparison points of Psycho or especially Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, which covers so much of this same territory but does it even better and with more willingness to be honest and upfront about it. There are two great performances here, and some well-crafted dynamics, but there are better versions of this story out there. Rating: ****

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The easiest comparison to make that conveys the feeling of Gerald Kargl’s Angst is to the seminal Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. Preceding Henry by a few years, Angst is a raw, unflinching depiction of the mind of a psychopath, following him from his release from prison all the way through his invasion of an isolated country home and his crimes committed therein. And yet, while Henry gave us a killer who could present himself as calm and rational, the madman at the core of Angst is something wholly else – a damaged, disturbed individual so driven by his psychosexual hangups and desires that every moment is taken up with his own insanity and violence. This isn’t Hannibal Lecter, or even Francis Dolarhyde – this is someone simultaneously pathetic (in the most literal sense) and nightmarish.

Much of what makes Angst so effective comes from Kargl’s choices throughout, from a documentary-like opening that plunges us into the main character’s mind to the sheer number of long, flowing overhead and crane shots that let us see all of it unfold without ever being able to stop anything, from the constant narration by the killer that keeps us stuck in his mind to the use of SnorriCam shots that either force us to watch the killer’s face as he interacts with the world or else find us tracking over his shoulders, riding on him like a passenger. It all plunges the viewer into the midst of the chaos and violence without a choice, immersing us without the distance that a more polished thriller gives us. In Kargl’s hands, we’re forced to confront all of this as a piece both of horror and as psychological disturbance, with neither played down. He is a killer whose actions are both terrifying and inept, driven so much by his own compulsions that he’s both a monster and a victim himself.

Angst does so much with purpose – dizzying camera movement, grounded performances, a haunting score, disturbing narration – that it’s both disappointing and relieving that Kargl never made another feature again. A disappointment because his craft and skill are so evident here, but a relief because it’s hard to imagine watching something like this again. It’s hard to forget as it is. Rating: *****

IMDb: Enemy | The Collector | Angst

Ms .45 / *****

I go back and forth on the films of Abel Ferrara, to put it mildly. At his best, there are films like Bad Lieutenant – raw, jagged experiences that plunge you into broken minds and unfold in a way that defies easy structuring or categorization. On the other hand, there are films like The Driller Killer, which I recently watched and just found bewildering – a punk slasher film full of ideas but without the execution to match. And knowing that Ms .45 was Ferrara’s next film after Driller didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

But Ms .45 is something else entirely, something far more accomplished, capable, unsettling, and disturbing than its predecessor – a quantum leap forward in terms of craft and storytelling. And while Driller Killer tried to engage with exploitation film tropes but turn them on their head, Ms .45 pulls it off, giving us what first appears to be a standard rape-revenge film and instead turns into something stranger, more haunting, and more disturbing in a way that enhances the film rather than hurting it.

Those subverted tropes start early, as Ferrara downplays the rape scenes of the film, making them far less sexual than some of the genre’s worst offenders and instead focusing on the experience of Thana, a mute seamstress played to perfection by Zoë Lund (a performance conveyed so entirely through her eyes and physical presence). Indeed, Ferrara’s explicit content doesn’t come through sex or nudity, but instead through violence – a violence that begins in self-defense but soon spirals outward into journey through New York City, shooting anyone Thana sees as a predator.

Ferrara keeps the film grounded in Thana’s perspective, occasionally breaking from objective reality to focus on her own trauma after the assaults, and leading to one of the most uncomfortable cinematic experiences this side of Repulsion, as Thana constantly hears sexual comments, pick-up lines, degrading commentary, and more, all without being able to respond to due to her disability. Instead, her response comes more and more in the form of violence, as she increasingly shoots without asking questions, culminating in a dreamlike massacre at a Halloween party with haunting images aplenty.

Ms .45 works because of the way it neither justifies Thana’s actions nor questions them, leaving the viewer to deal with it on their own terms. We understand why she’s taking these actions, even as we see that this may or may not be revenge, but it’s certainly her way of settling the score. It’s done without glory or easy satisfaction, instead depicting the killings bluntly and without cheap thrills (although the film has a great sense of black comedy at times, especially in some editing choices involving the dog of Thana’s neighbor). Indeed, at times, Ms .45 veers into the realm of horror, especially in that closing sequence – a choice that underlines not only the cold reality of Thana’s killings, but of the dehumanizing actions of the men around her.

What Ferrara ended up making is something wholly fascinating and strange – a revenge film that eschews catharsis and thrills, and instead gets under your skin, immersing you in a world of misogyny and toxic masculinity, but also giving us a protagonist whose actions feel both broken and somehow justified in her own mind. It’s a film full of haunting, strange images, from the slow realization of a party full of guests to a late night conversation on a bench with a recently dumped man. It’s something more arthouse than you’d expect from the genre, and yet wholly belongs to it at the same time, and works all the better for the way it blurs those lines. It’s an uncomfortable watch, but as an experience, its power is pretty undeniable.

IMDb