High-Rise, director Ben Wheatley’s and screenwriter Amy Jump’s adaption of the novel by J.G. Ballard, sure looks good. The photography is a slick imitation of cinema from the 1960s and ’70s. Cinematographer Laurie Rose muted the palette somewhat. It’s not the type of desaturation made popular for a short time by Saving Private Ryan, but more resembles natural color decay. The blues have been turned down, making the overall color temperature quite warm. Whether this was a stylistic choice only, I cannot say, but a great deal of the mood of this film is established by the way it was shot. It flirts with clinical precision, but falls short, mostly because it’s easy on the eyes. So, like I wrote, High-Rise looks good, but I had a hard time figuring out what was happening on screen. Eventually, I had to set any frustrations aside and just go along for the ride. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: High-Rise”
The Empty Balcony: Terminator Genisys
It’s incredible how little redundancy is built into Skynet. Not long after Terminator Genisys opens, we see the mythical John Connor leading an assault on Skynet’s time travel facilities. Connor, played by Jason Clarke, has ordered the bulk of his forces to attack Skynet itself, farther north, much to the consternation of Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), who hasn’t been let in on the Terminator series canon at this point. As the battle rages at the time machine, all of Skynet’s killer robots go inactive, signaling that Skynet has been destroyed, and only the war in the past remains undecided.
A viewer is required to engage in a large amount of suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy Terminator films. There’s the whole time travel/killer robots thing to get past, and a plot hole-to-consistency ratio that is weighted too far towards the wrong side. But the idea John Connor’s troops could attack a single location, presumably blow it to smithereens, and a worldwide computer network would collapse, is ludicrous.
This is it. We’re in the future. Thirty years ago, when the first Terminator was released, something like Skynet was as far beyond our comprehension as time travel, making it fine to just make stuff up. But today we live in a world of server farms and off-site backups. Sure, there are still times when an ISP goes offline and millions of people can’t get their email, but those times are rare, and never last all that long (unless it’s a Sony network). Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Terminator Genisys”
Tidying Up
Hey, what the hell happened to Missile Test? It’s still here. I’m just doing a transition from Movable Type to WordPress. All the junk you Loyal Seven love so much will be back soon.
The Fourth Annual Empty Balcony Awards for Movies I Saw From Last Year
The Oscars were a couple of weeks ago, which means it is past time to indulge myself, to conflate this lovely little website with the likes of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and release my own film awards. Why not? It’s no more absurd for websites with readership as small as mine to issue awards than it is for Hollywood to hand out little statues to itself. But the Empty Balcony Awards arose out of no desire to pat myself on the back. Rather, it was because, three years ago, I noticed that I had not seen one of the films that had been nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards. I could not offer an opinion one way or the other on the winners and losers. But I could get an article on Missile Test out of my ignorance, and so the Empty Balcony Awards for Movies I Saw From Last Year was born. The only criteria for a film to be eligible for one of my awards is that it was released in the previous calendar year, and that I have actually seen it. Continue reading “The Fourth Annual Empty Balcony Awards for Movies I Saw From Last Year”
Oval Office Thunderdome: What a Bunch of Cowards
There was yet another Republican presidential debate last night. These debates are finally human-sized, the number of candidates having been whittled down to just four. Joining the frontrunner, Donald Trump, on stage were Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and Governor Ted Kasich. Continue reading “Oval Office Thunderdome: What a Bunch of Cowards”
Oval Office Thunderdome: SOOOOPAAAHHHHHHH TOOOOOSSSDAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!
It’s here! The biggest day of the primary season (only to be superseded, possibly, by a chaotic GOP convention in July — I may have to visit the old family in Ohio for that one).
Each party has 11 states up for grabs tonight, with a big chunk of delegates to boot. There won’t be much in the way of surprises tonight, but I’m going to live blog it anyway, because it gives me an excuse to watch Republican pundits go through the five stages of grief on live television. Continue reading “Oval Office Thunderdome: SOOOOPAAAHHHHHHH TOOOOOSSSDAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!”
Cocksuckers Ball: Elections Have Consequences
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Antonin Scalia is dead. When the San Antonio Express-News broke the story of Scalia’s death this past Saturday, it was met with a certain amount of macabre glee only by those on the left who could afford to be seen celebrating. That is, those whose greatest contributions to the debate are tweets or comments on reddit. Most policymakers and pundits praised Scalia’s intellect and keen legal mind, while expressing sympathy for his family. It was an appropriate and typical set of reactions from the politicians who represent liberal America. Continue reading “Cocksuckers Ball: Elections Have Consequences”
October Horrorshow: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
What a clumsy title. H20. Does it relate to water? Not at all. That’s a zero on the end, not the letter ‘O’. H20, then, is the shortened version of what this movie should have been called — Halloween: 20 Years Later — only shoved right in the middle of the title. Beware films that can’t even get their titles right. As it turns out, though, this flick is redemption for a franchise that had been foundering for the entire 1980s and ’90s.
Halloween III is the stepchild no one talks about, while Halloweens 4 through 6 are little better than straight to video cash grabs, relying on brand strength over competence. The plot threads in 4-6 were so tangled and messy that for this film, all that nonsense was retconned. No more Jamie Lloyd, no more Undertaker impersonator, no more missing baby. The series went back to the core elements that made it such a success in the first two films — Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Once upon a time, horror flicks couldn’t get enough Jamie Lee Curtis. She starred in five horror flicks from 1978 through 1981. Her piercing scream became instantly recognizable to horror fans. In fact, her first line in this film is a vintage scream, as her character, Laurie Strode, awakes from a nightmare. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later”
October Horrorshow: We Are Still Here
I love a good anonymous horror flick. How anonymous is We Are Still Here, the movie from writer/director Ted Geoghegan? The plot summary on Wikipedia currently sits at 152 words as I write this. That’s it. In this day and age, a film really has to fly under the radar to get such a sparse entry on a site whose editors can be quite verbose.
We Are Still Here takes place in snow-covered New England in the year 1979. Husband and wife Paul and Anne Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig and Barbara Crampton) have relocated from the city following the death of their college-aged son in a car accident. They have chosen to move into a century-old house on the outskirts of Aylesbury, one of those insular New England towns that populate fiction. It’s full of people who have known each other since birth, and is very mistrusting of outsiders.
Like all small towns in a horror film, this one has a dark secret. Long ago, the house the Sacchettis purchased was home to the Dagmar family, who were accused by the townsfolk of selling human bodies to medical schools and Chinese restaurants in Boston. After facing some small town retribution, a curse was placed on the house and any poor souls who occupy it. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: We Are Still Here”
October Horrorshow: The Relic
I love a good monster flick. Hell, I love a mediocre monster flick. Which is good for The Relic, because, while it’s a passable diversion, it’s not the second coming of Alien.
From way back in 1997, The Relic, from director Peter Hyams, features one of the more complicated beasties I’ve encountered in my decades of watching horror flicks. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Relic”