Safe House (2012)

     It is conceivable that, somewhere, a world exists where Ryan Reynolds may be considered to have a "medium build" (which is how his character Matt Weston is repeatedly described).  In that world, I'd be too short to be a member of the Lollipop Guild.  Okay, that is an extreme exaggeration, but it does serve to highlight one of the problems I had with Safe House (2012) – there was an obvious gap between the character envisioned on the page and the actor hired to play the roll of Weston.
     Reynolds has the ability to play smaller than his size, and his muscle is the lean type, meaning that the right camera angles (and keeping him clothed) can give the appearance of a regular guy.  This tends to work better in the comedies he does where showing off his buff body would throw a serious wrench in the works of his being a goofy, boy-ish Everyman.  In an action film, it is nearly inconceivable.  Maybe it is his ability to play younger – Weston is likely six to eight years younger than Reynolds, not coming to the CIA in his early thirties – the made him the best available fit for the role.  It certainly seems to have had a younger Jeremy Renner in mind.
     The other issues I had follow.  Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) is a bad ass because of attitude more than ability.  I don't want to discount the attitude factor, but I really prefer when Washington is given characters with more definition.  Vera Farmiga (Linklater) just takes up space, half mumbles her lines, and does not seem to be interested enough in her role to even make eye contact with her fellow actors.  It would seem her days of being able to be the pretty face are well over, but not giving consistently strong performances is not a way to ensure more work as she drifts into the age range that Hollywood avoids.  I also get baffled every time I see Sam Shepard (Whitford) show up in a very conventional role. This is the guy who wrote The Tooth of Crime (1972) and La Tourista (1967).  I get that he is much older now, but having him stand in as part of establishment – to represent establishment through his own skill at bringing weight to a role – has never felt like a good fit to me.  That trend continues here.
     Other than those minor things, I found Safe House to be a decent, workman-like film.  Like Echelon Conspiracy (2009), I suspect that production was helped by incentives to make a movie in a non-traditional location.  Strangely, the lighting (and color correction) did more to make South Africa seem different than any effort to establish the setting.  Still, the action is steady without giving way to gore or over-the-top excesses.  The characters inhabit something resembling the real world (save Weston being of medium build), where the real enemy is entrenched corruption.  I'm not sure why it was so successful, but it is better than average.

Heat Rises (2011)

     Why am I reading these books?  Isn't it enough that I watch – usually on tape or via ABC.com – Castle (2009-present)?  Is there really a need for me to support the franchise by reading the supplemental material?  I look upon this as my ongoing struggle with a need to achieve some acceptable level of fandom, even though I am aware that this unobtainable (because there is no real meaning in how one is viewed as a fan of something in the eyes of others).
     Heat Rises (2011) is the third novel credited to Richard Castle, a television character who spends his time getting coffee for a squad of homicide detectives (apparently writing mostly off-screen).  It follows the formula of the earlier books and television show in that it is filled with needless misdirection and revisiting of suspect characters (because the detectives can't seem to do the legwork before dragging them in to be interviewed or confronting them at their homes or places of business).  In book form, this feels quite tedious.  Why not let the characters seem a little more on the ball?
     What the book does offer that is lacking in the TV show is frequent (and not well described) sex between the lead detective, Nikki Heat (Nikki doesn't seem to have a less ridiculous first name, but that's okay because every frequently refers to her, when speaking to her, by her full name...just like all of us do in our regular lives with our family, friends, lovers, coworkers, and enemies) and supposedly gifted journalist Jameson Rook.  That would be fine if it were handled by a more adept author, but "Richard Castle" handles the placement of the sex scenes with all the gentleness of a child stomping an ill-fitting shoe to make it fit.
     That is not the real problem with the book.  No, it suffers from an inability to have most of the disparate elements have any real relationship to what the plot is supposed to be. I don't know how this is the draft that the editors decided was good enough.  It could have absolutely used more direction from the editor, but it isn't a book that is going to make it on its literary chops – see Shatner's TekWar (1989) for a book that only needed to be good enough for die-hard Shatner fans to find satisfactory before it went to press – so all it needs to do is be written in coherent sentences. 
     Maddeningly, the Castle books never do anything to try to develop the characters.  "Richard Castle" is happy to just ape the show, albeit with less charm and little wit.  Again and again it strikes me that Castle must not be a very good writer.  We kind of know this on the show when he considers a contract to write James Bond novels (no offense, Eric Van Lustbader), but to be constantly reminded of it in the books supposedly written by the character feels like an insult.  Why doesn't investigative reporter Rook know how to do research or investigate?  Because "Richard Castle" doesn't want to do the research to show what that entails, because it would grow the character beyond a stand-in for Castle-on-TV, and because it would make the guess work the police do look very stupid in comparison.
     Why can't this series get someone who will do the Castle books some level of justice?  I have enjoyed some books that should be in the same vein of Castle's books.  Surely there are authors on par with Stephen Woodworth or Philip Hawley, Jr. who would be willing to ghost write a Castle novel (there's a paycheck, right?).  I don't know who actually writes these Castle books – I don't care enough to even search to see if that is readily available information – but it feels like it is a junior member of the show's writing staff who would not have a chance to get a book published otherwise.
     Heat Rises felt like work for much of the book.  It gets much better towards the end, where it starts to build some momentum and the characters stop being inconsistent.  Then that falls apart and most of the elements are exposed as being unrelated to the central story and so they are just dropped.  Not a good book, but if you feel the need to prove your fandom, go ahead and read it.  Or read it again, because that means you are an even more serious fan.

A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage (1876*)

     There are those who have a deep and abiding love of Mark Twain as a hateful, mean-spirited critic of humanity.  I am not one of them.  I did not have much familiarity with Twain before embarking on the Reading Projects – I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1976) in the 5th grade and a handful of his essays before reading 11 short stories and two novels (this includes re-reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) – outside of his quips on American politics popping up in various TV shows and documentaries I had seen.  I have more affection for the Twain who didn't hate humanity than the one who has been canonized as the patron saint of curmudgeons.  (When I get more familiar with H.L. Mencken, I can reassess which one really deserves the title.)
     The best part about A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage (written in 1876 but not published until 2001) is not the bare bones story that Twain wrote.  It is passable, easily recognizable as Twain but caught somewhere in between the hope and promise of his earlier works and the nastiness that would come to characterize his more mature works.  But Peter de Sère's artwork does much to soften the darker impulses Twain had a mind to impart to his story, helping keep the experience light and the story fun.  Until the end (more on that later).  No, the best part about the book is the short history of Twain and 1876 provided by Roy Blount, Jr. – how Twain's writing forever changed after the election of Rutherford B. Hayes (and the resulting corrupt administration).
     I am sure that anyone who has bothered to do any research on Twain is well aware that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) was written in two sections, with an eight year break between them.  In my mind, this time accounts for the break from the well-written, worthwhile, deeply affecting first third (maybe a little longer) of the book – the part of the book that warrants consideration amongst the best American novels ever written – and the hateful, bitter, let's forget that Tom Sawyer was a kickass character and make him a spoiled dick who wants to abuse a slave for sport majority of the book that starts when the Duke and the King hop aboard the raft.  Anyway, I was not aware that there was a large break, nor that the style difference is one that is easy to trace as Twain's opinion of his country is transformed in the wake of 1876.  Blount does a great job of condensing the history of Twain while keeping it very interesting.
     As for the actual story, it really is a 'skeleton of a novel' more than a novella or short story.  It also, unfortunately, works towards an unprovoked attack on Jules Verne (Twain and Blount both mistake Verne as the father of Science Fiction and of balloon tales).  There is not enough meat to the story for it to merit its own book except that it wasn't allowed to be published for...well, almost forever.  But I am more enthusiastic about the background material on the story – Twain's effort to get multiple writers to write different versions of the same concept of a story – and the man than what ends up being his polemic against Verne.

The Box (2009)

     At 2009's Flashback Weekend (a Chicago area horror convention), I was afforded the opportunity to see The Box (2009) for free.  I declined the offer.  Much like with Dolph Lungren's I Come in Peace (1990) – which at the time was titled Dark Angel – it seemed like the offer didn't merit the time investment (because it would mean having to go somewhere else to go and see it).  The Box had the additional burden of having a director who had yet to put together a coherent film. 
     That trend continued.  Unlike his nearly unwatchable Southland Tales (2006), there is no sense of fun or enjoyment going on in which the audience can coach the experience.  Indeed, Richard Kelly seems to have aimed at delivering as much of a straight-ahead story as he can manage, and he does that for about thirty minutes.  Not incidentally, this is the best portion of the film.  Then, as he always does, Kelly descends into some sort of dream version of reality where connections don't matter and time is frangible.
     While most of the minor players are so poorly handled that it must have been by design (Kelly appears to be going for a creep factor that arises from how un-creepy his automatons are), the real problem lies with Cameron Diaz.  While I can honestly say that I have only seen her give one performance where she added rather than detracted from the final project, she is such a black hole here that I found myself wondering if her involvement (and the reason she wasn't replaced after shooting started) was because people believe that she will draw people to the theater.  If Frank Langella were not in the film, I never would have given it a chance.  I spent my time wondering how much better Langella's (and Marsden's for that matter) performance could have been if he weren't forced to interact with the human equivalent to a block of wood that is Diaz.
     There is no point to The Box.  Fine.  But I'm positive that Kelly thinks that he made one.  That is a problem.  He is like a writer who is sure he is a genius author, but is instead just scribbling just-above-nonsense into countless notebooks.  This film is an abject waste of time.  Not unpleasant, but very unrewarding.  And as intellectually immature in regards to a take on morality as I can imagine.

Echelon Conspiracy (2009) vs. Eagle Eye (2008)

     Right or wrong, I am solidly of the opinion that everyone but Shane West signed on to Echelon Conspiracy (2009) because they liked the idea of being able to see Prague and Moscow on somebody else's dime.  Shane West clearly just needs the work – unless he saved all of his money from ER (1994-2009).  Between this and Red Sands (2009), he clearly showed that life after major network television wasn't full of open doors and opportunities in shown in theaters movies.  Then again, Ving Rhames may just live in Sophia, Bulgaria waiting for opportunities to make top-end low budget unofficial zombie sequels.  And Ed Burns, well, I may be the only fan of him as an actor.  I keep wondering why he hasn't landed in some kind of franchise film or as the lead in a premium cable channel show. 
     Echelon Conspiracy has a lot in common with a major motion picture that was released at about the same time, that being Eagle Eye (2009).  However, its real roots stretch back to War Games (1983), with West having all the machismo of a nerdy, near shut-in Seattle teenager.  But there is at least some degree of internal consistency and thought put into Echelon Conspiracy.  It may all be ridiculous, but there is a sense that everyone involved – excepting, perhaps, Martin Sheen – knows that the premise of the movie is beyond any rational belief, and that allows for the action to be fun without imposing any threat of real consequence.
     There is the oddity that everyone in Prague, at least those we see, speaks English (and most seem to be American).  One would think that Czech, Slovak, Russian, and German would be more common, but that wouldn't allow for our American technician, FBI agent, former FBI agent, and combat-trained agent girl to just go around like they were in some kind of not America that accepted English as the default language and the Americans as the guardians of order.  Actually, there is some nice, if overstated, commentary on that last bit to close the film. 
     Without a huge budget, Echelon Conspiracy does not rely heavily on special effects to move the action along.  There are a fair amount of practical effects, most of them in that range between oh my god, this is as bad as those Sci-Fi original movies and the Jason Bourne films.  Yes, using a shotgun blast to blow up a gas tank and thus send the car twenty feat in the air is stupid, but it is the fun kind of stupid.  It takes the false toughness of the 1980s and manages to treat it with nostalgia while admitting that there is no way to take it seriously.  Watching someone implore a computer – or rather a complex set of programs that allows for a Skynet-like diffusion over all connected computers – to learn how its stated programming is
    

     Somehow much worse – to the point of not even being that entertaining – is Eagle Eye (2008).  Operating along the same lines of a computer or super complicated set of integrated programs that has found a way to access each and every computer, cell phone, and remote-operated giant scrap metal scooping crane-claw with zero lag time, Eagle Eye manages to be leaden and boring at almost each step of the way.  Maybe that has something to do with casting Shai LaBeouf.  This is the guy who was uncompelling in Holes (2003) and managed to take his general deficit in charisma in new heights in (at least the first two) Transformers (2007; 2009; 2001) movies.  At least he is comfortable in special effects dominated films.
     The same cannot be said for the rest of the cast.  They seem universally confused as to why they are not allowed to do more than spend long sequences reacting to things that will be added in post-production.  If there were more continuity to the story, maybe the scenes where Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson are together wouldn't feel so damn awkward to watch. 
     Where Echelon Conspiracy may have some destructive chase sequences, they are limited to cars operated by actual people, Eagle Eye decides that wholesale destruction from mysterious sources should rule the day.  So mass transit trains can get thrown in reverse like it is nothing (which shocked me, because as a regular rider of the CTA, I know that this cannot be done via remote access), construction booms can be swung around with exact timing (and we should ignore the fact that they cannot generate the force to rip through half a floor of a steel building), and the aforementioned scrap metal claw cranes operate like some demented form of the coin operated grab-a-toy crane games. 
     There is also a complete and total lack of internal consistency.  The overriding program is supposed to be in some sort of a lock down stopping it from going through with its dastardly plan.  Mind you, this isn't a plan that is essentially what it has been programmed to do – which is how Echelon Conspiracy handles it – but rather something it has extrapolated to being a good and necessary step towards being able to perform its stated function.  However, it takes all of its steps during this lockdown.  There is no need to get Jerry (LaBeouf) or Rachel (Michelle Monaghan) at all, and no computer would go through the trouble of picking people from a thousand miles away from the objective.  They are selected so the audience can watch them have adventures while trying to survive the various dangers.
      Eagle Eye doesn't even look that much more polished than its lower budget counterpart.  It looks hurried and ill-considered.  It doesn't seem to be at all aware of just how stupid it is, which makes me think that the people involved thought it was a serious type of thriller.  It isn't.  I'm sure there are people who would enjoy it, but I can't imagine why.  At least Echelon Conspiracy had a better grasp on balancing the plot with the improbability of it all. 

The Caller (2011)

     Playing like an overlong and underfunded episode (specifically "Sorry, Right Number") of Tales from the Darkside (1983-88), Matthew Parkhill's The Caller (2011) manages to be mildly entertaining even as it strains whatever passes for credibility when the central premise is that a phone can connect callers separated more by years than miles.  Unfortunately, it cannot build or maintain any amount of tension, both of which are necessary for a story like this.
     Part of the problem may come from an inability to develop the story in a more nuanced manner.  Mary (Rachelle Leferve) is going through a divorce with a mildly abusive (more menacing and overbearing than anything else) mistake of a husband, Steven (Ed Quinn).  This is handled in a rather obvious, straightforward manner, which deprives any kind of slow build up of the level of threat Mary feels in her just walking around world.  As such, the would-be ex-husband never resonates as anything other than filler material.
     Another part of the problem is that Mary is not consistent in regards to temperament.  She has weird, seemingly random moods swings between being sweet, suspicious, skittish, and oblivious.  She also has no visible means of support or manner to kill time other than the one night class for which she signs up.  More than that, Mary isn't very bright.  In her few fits of being too trusting, she brings all too obvious ruin to her future past-self.
     While The Caller is set on Puerto Rico, in the town of Ceiba.  We mostly know this because Mary's father was stationed at the nearby naval air station Roosevelt Roads.  There is also an off-hand remarks about immigrants getting on the wrong boat and missing New York harbor by quite some distance.  What we don't see are many Puerto Ricans or people speaking Spanish.  While the territory is multilingual, the film makes no effort to make much of the setting.  I felt that not making the most of the setting robbed the movie of an opportunity to escape the generic city setting that many lower budget horror films effect.
     There isn't any gore or gratuitous violence in The Caller.  Indeed, Parkhill does try to make it a supernatural suspense thriller.  The problem is that neither he nor screenwriter Sergio Casci break far enough out of the mold to not have a succession of telegraphed scenes.  On the other hand, it is far more satisfying as a film than many of the larger budget horror/suspense films that have been trotted out over the past few years.

The Dark (2005)

     John Fawcett directed one of my favorite movies.  Actually, it is the only movie that I wish I had directed (and I am not a director, nor am I anywhere near being a director), flaws and all.  That movie is not The Dark (2005).
     Not that I can entirely fault Fawcett for the problems I had with the movie, but his use of some of the camera techniques – and I am going to presume his hand is at work with some of the editing – that have been ruining modern horror films draws much of the moodiness and all of the etherealness from the film.  John Carpenter noted that he fucked up his version of The Fog (1980) by having it feel too grounded and solid.  The Dark may not be either of those, but instead of ghostly or dreamlike, it goes for washed-out color and moldy-looking.  Maybe that is Welsh Hell, but it isn't scary.  Worse, it isn't particularly engaging.
     No, the real problem comes from having a victim who just sort of is – Sarah (Sophie Stuckey) is both underdeveloped and unlikeable – and a mother (Maria Bello) who needs absolutely no nudging to full-on acceptance of the supernatural events.  That could work for me, but it would require setting the story around the beginning of the 20th Century, not the 21st.  There is no development of the mythology driving the supernatural forces.  Oh, and there is a prime assumption that sheep are scary.
     I do remember when this film was in theaters and how much I wanted to see it.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe it was because I hadn't learned that Sean Bean isn't given much to do in movies (at least not in the ones I've seen).  Maybe I thought it would be a slow, moody, psychological examination of a parent descending into madness because of the loss of a child (I think this is what the ads promised).  Instead, it comes across as a film that spent its budget in an odd fashion – those boat searching scenes probably cost more than any special effects sequence – with an obligatory unhappy ending.

Hannah (2011)

     I don't know what to make of director Joe Wright's Hanna (2011).  It is part hard-edge espionage thriller, part standard action fare, and part tweener (or maybe young adult) yarn about friendship and family.  It also calls upon established stars Cate Blanchett (as CIA maven Marissa Wiegler) and Eric Bana (as Hanna's father, Erik Heller) to adopt over-the-top accents for no real reason.  That is not to say that it is poorly made or unenjoyable.  Hanna is fine, but it probably could have been better if it had been more determined as to how it wanted to tell its story.
     I will say that Saoirse Ronan (Hanna) has the creepiest, most expressive blue eyes I have seen in recent cinema.  There is something otherworldly about them.  As such, they help sell the notion that Hanna is some government concocted being, not an ordinary human being.  Add in the odd education her "father" gives her in the remote, snowy woods of Finland, and Hanna may as well be an alien in human form set out amongst the people to complete her secret mission.
     Hanna works best when the government pursuit of their renegade assets gives way to the interactions between a vacationing British family and not-quite-properly adapted Hanna.  These scenes are lighter – almost breezy – but retain the hint of danger and suspense.  More than that, they show off the contrast between people who grow up as part of a society and those who can only mimic as much.  Unfortunately, these scenes are likely not what one is expecting from Hanna. 
     Blanchett and Bana are fine here, but their roles could have been easily handled by a number of mid-grade actors.  The history between Marissa and Erik isn't given enough weight in its presentation – and where it is shown, it strikes a harsh contrast against the lighter, comic scenes – and the resolution of it is most unsatisfactory.  There is a nice call back to end the film, but that, too, stands in contrast to how the story had been developing.
     I wouldn't steer anyone away from seeing Hanna – it is entertaining, if inconsistent.  But I would warn them to not expect it to be gritty or serious.  It is a bit of fantasy, a (perhaps ill-conceived) parable about the power of women who are coming of age and the risks of the adult world they must enter that throws a little government conspiracy into the mix. 

Orphan (2009)

     What if Dale Midkiff had been placed on Valium of barbiturates on the set of Pet Semetary (1989)?  Would he have given the same performance that Peter Sarsgaard did in Orphan (2009)?  I don't think this needs to be mentioned, but it is the question I kept asking myself during the overlong film.  Sure, I also could have been asking how Vera Farmiga went from a virtual unknown (read: I didn't watch the various television shows on which she was a regular) to seemingly being a top choice for a female lead from 2006-2009.  I guess the story didn't involve me enough to distract me from wondering about the actors themselves.
     As for the story, I had more questions than those related to the plot (largely because I already knew how it would play out).  Why, I wondered, make the natural daughter Max (Aryana Engineer) deaf?  It added no worthwhile element to the story – in fact, it was another complication in the seemingly impossible lives of the Colemans – other than to let the actors fumble through some ASL.  It turns out that Engineer is hearing impaired, so the question becomes, was Max effectively deaf because of the actor portraying the role?  Why did nobody throw around the accusation that Kate's (Farmiga) habitual drinking may have led to the condition?
     Why so many problems in the Coleman family?  There is the alcoholism of Kate.  John (Sarsgaard) had an affair.  Max nearly died in the back yard.  Kate birthed a dead baby.  Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is working his way towards a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  John's mother hates and belittles Kate with what few opportunities she is given to do so.  We get almost all of this before the problematic titular orphan enters the story.

Sure, side by side, they look pretty different.  But Sarsgaard sure seemed to be channeling his inner Midkiff for most of Orphan.  John Coleman certainly has a much nicer house in Connecticut than Louis Creed did in Maine.

     There are some other obvious problems.  A couple that is adjusting to the stillbirth of a child are apparently fast tracked for adoption; it pays to be upper middle-class, white, and be willing to take on an older child.  But not only does there seem to be no evaluation as to the fitness of the Colemans as parents (drinking problem, child neglect, oldest working towards a Conduct Disorder diagnosis), there is no interaction between the child to be adopted and the children with whom she will be living.  The child is handed over without any type of medical examination (sure hope your Eastern European adoptee doesn't have any diseases or viruses that could put the other children at risk).  Oh, and everyone except for Max and Ester (Isabelle Fuhrman) – the orphan – is an idiot.
     I picked this up because I felt it had been too long since I opined about any kind of genre film.  Orphan isn't horror; it is more like a poor successor to The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992).  Speaking of that film, does anyone remember when Julianne Moore was thought of as a candidate for minor roles?  It is like seeing Annette Bening in The Great Outdoors (1988).  But back to some kind of point.  My hope was that Orphan would offer some kind of meaningful story structure to explain how Esther would go from nice, if strange, new arrival in the house to terror bent on destroying everyone.  That is not what I got.  Orphan plods along, doesn't worry about keeping characters consistent, or worrying if there is any kind of back-story overload that will kill any investment in the characters.
     If the movie had been shortened by 25-30 minutes and some effort was made to explain the obvious problems with how the child wasn't vetted at all, maybe Orphan would have worked as a fun little thriller.  It wasn't, though.  And I have to add it to Source Code (2011) as examples of how Farmiga should not be asked to carry a scene or emote on cue.

Richard Castle's Deadly Storm: A Derrick Storm Mystery (2011)

     I cannot believe that Marvel retailed this at $19.99.  Or that people paid that amount for it.  Or that it is a hardcover graphic novel – the cover is as thick as the material between them.  On the subject of price, ABC seems to think that overcharging for materials that serve to promote their show (the Nikki Heat novels list at $19.99 to $25.99).  The show is available for free...sort of.  Factor in any cable or satellite charges versus viewing time and it might cost around $3 to watch a season – considerable cheaper than buying them on DVD or Blu-ray.
     See how I'm not diving into any kind of commentary on the material.  Maybe because it was so damnably subpar.  Never mind that it sets up a bad contradiction between the story and the mythology of the Derrick Storm novels as presented in the same book; there are always cheats an author can use to unmake a mistake.  There just isn't anything to the story.  There is little to no character development, just plugging types into the structure and letting expectations be met. 
     Most disappointing, the format wedges in a Castle hero relying on a strong female lead to direct and save him (something that was not supposed to be present in his fiction prior to being inspired by Det. Beckett...as my memory informs me from having seen the show from the get go, and I will admit that I may be mildly wrong).  There is nothing in the story that would make one believe that people would make it a best selling novel or spawn a successful series.  It feels very much like what I imagine my writing a mystery novel would be like – and that means not completely formed and full of guess work as to police (and governmental) procedures without any satisfactory endings to scenes involving them.  What's more, it then becomes hard to take the hero seriously when he needs help with everything but still is competent enough that everyone needs him to do what they can't.
     I did like the artwork, though.  Sure, it suffers from the very common comic book problem of occasional inconsistencies in how the characters look (I can't draw anything consistently, so I can appreciate how hard it must be), but it looks crisp and clean and imparts a good amount of movement without resorting to clichéd panels (it does once, and it feels very out of place).  I liked that it used typed lettering for Storm's inner monologue and regular handwritten lettering for the dialogue; it somehow felt right.  It doesn't hold a candle to my favorite graphic novels – but I fell in love with those in 1986 and the artist has since recolored them to lesser effect – but it comes close to being high quality. (As a total aside, it looks like I could sell my Elfquest graphic novels and pay all my expenses for three months.  That would never happen with Castle properties.)
     There isn't much here other than a quick diversion.  It doesn't really inform the show any better and it doesn't convince anyone that Richard Castle has a great imagination – a quality he is supposed to have.  The price is simply too high to justify this as a purchase.  Find a friend who forked over their hard earned cash or get a copy from the library if you are interested.  I believe in buying books when the value is right, but this would have to drop down to about $7.50 before that level would be found.

Scream 4 (2011)

     Scream 4 (2011) – marketed as Scre4m, but I think that just looks stupid – marks a return to a story that I have to think most people felt was over and done with.  Scream (1996) introduced the concept – or made it more mainstream – of the inhabitants of a horror/slasher film understanding the "rules" of such a film, and trying to use that knowledge to understand their situation.  Moreover, the killers are just as aware and feel compelled to make the right kind of spectacle of their killings to scare and entertain.  This kind of self-aware, winking knowledge has been well received by many and absolutely hated by others.  While there may have been little cause for a Scream 2 (1997) other than to make money – like the first installment, it grossed more than $100 million in the U.S. – it did continue the story in a plausible way.  Scream 3 (2000) couldn't generate the same box office, even with a larger budget, but it also seemed stretched further from the basis of the story than necessary.  Still, it seemed filled out as a trilogy with no need to bring any of the characters back for more terror and threat of death.

     A decade is a long time to wait for a horror sequel.  The longest the Friday the 13th franchise (1980-2009) went without a new installment before the reboot was the nine years between Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) and the inexplicable Jason X (2002).  The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (1984-2010) didn't go three years without a sequel until the gap between Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) and Freddy vs. Jason (2003).  Both franchises felt the need to reboot after Freddy vs. Jason (which becomes a completely different movie after Gibb is killed, going for wacky and morbid comedy instead of any kind of horror).   The Halloween franchise (1978-2009) didn't go more than six years without churning out another film.

     Scream 4 is not some disconnected tale featuring only the "killer", but has the same central cast of characters – Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), now Sheriff Dwight "Dewey" Riley (David Arquette), and former TV Tabloid Reporter turned Crime Journalist turned unsuccessful novelist Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) – who must navigate the killers in each installment.  People die all around them, sure, but these characters are at the heart of the story (especially in Scream 2 and Scream 3).  Unfortunately, much of the time in Scream 4 is given over to other characters who are only peripherally related to these stalwarts.  It isn't that Scream 4 couldn't benefit from an injection of fresh blood, but the additions are not handled especially deftly.

     Part of the problem with Scream 4 may be the idea that the children of Woodsboro celebrate the killings of the original film as part of the local lore.  This is aided by the standard horror film conceit that adults (particularly parents) are largely absent from the lives of the potential teenage victims, but in the case of Scream 4 it begs the question of what kind of message did the parents give their children about the murders.  The Stab movies of the franchise may have brought a crass commercialization and celebration of the murders to the general public, but it is difficult to believe that long time residents would embrace and celebrate the movies (not even die-hard horror fans).  Where Craven crafted high school relationships that felt more organic is his widely ignored My Soul to Take (2010), he and returning scribe Kevin Williamson offer up a rather bland rehashing of the characters from the first film.  Only Rory Culkin (as Charlie Walker) and Hayden Panettiere (as Kirby Reed) seem to have any sense of their characters, though it is just as likely that they filled in the gaps themselves (something most of the cast didn't do).  Both Charlie and Kirby are among those who celebrate the fictionalizing of the real murders (for different reasons, though both come across as very damaged individuals), but no one seems shocked at this trend (not even Sidney).

    The killings in Scream 4 are rather lackluster, and there isn't much in the way of suspense.  Some characters are completely wasted (see Alison Brie as Rebecca Walters) while others are remarkable for their absence from any of the previous installments (see Mary McDonnell as Kate Roberts).  With a known killer running loose, Sheriff Riley calls in no extra help – at some point it should be pointed out that Woodsboro is one of those small towns that is really just a separated suburb, and that Dewey should be the Chief of Police who could call in the County Sheriff for help – even though he has the worst trained officers seen in the 21st Century.  Then there is the issue of motive, which might have seemed clever if the film were released in 2002, but feels preachy and false (a tough combination to achieve) by 2011.

     Only two things really bothered me in regards to Scream 4.   The first was the look of the film.  It was oddly dark, and not in a way that added anything to the mood or tension.  Hell, there wasn't any tension because I couldn't care about most of the characters (and just assumed that the three central characters wouldn't die).  The other was how long the movie was.  It is almost two hours long, easily twenty minutes longer than it needed to be with how it was structured.  The last two acts – this assumes that I can characterize the movie as having four acts – drag along until the credits roll.  I am aware that there are others (mostly people who are about 15+ years younger than me) who found the last two acts to be explosive and riveting.  Good for them, but it just didn't work for me.  Maybe it is because I have a small amount of knowledge about psychopathy (hey, at least I completed a college course on the subject) and have done research on murders, but the payoffs were joyless and incongruent.

     I didn't hate Scream 4.  It is a decent movie that isn't trying to run away from the previous installments, but at the same time it does little to honor them.  My first impression was that it felt like Craven and Williamson were both angry at the franchise and wanted to make an ugly film, one that was a little soulless and devoid of the kind of (sick) humor that powered the first two movies.  I have backed off this a little, but I do think that Scream 4 ended up somewhere between being faithful to the spirit of the franchise and appealing to the next generation of horror fans.  If I rated in grades (sometimes I do), I would give it a C+.  It is not a must see, even for devotees of the franchise, but it doesn't feel like a waste of time.  A waste of some characters, sure, but those same characters end up wasted, some it comes close to balancing out in the end.

Mystery Team (2009)

     I don't want to disparage Mystery Team (2009), because there are some very funny and enjoyable moments in it.  It is, however, clearly a work of collaboration and tends to lack a focus in tone, not to mention meandering away from the story for minutes on end to indulge unrewarding side stories.  The team behind it, Derrick Comedy (whose most prominent member would have to be Donald Glover or NBC's Community) are young and relatively unseasoned.  As such, that this is the result of their first attempt at a feature film is somewhat impressive.
     The set-up isn't new, with celebrated child detectives grown out of that cute phase.  Most satires and comedies that try something like this stick to the former boy detective (in my thinking, all child detectives are inspired by Encyclopedia Brown and not the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew) and a side kick facing the reality of not having the skills to cope with real world crimes.  Mystery Team has three of them who worked in concert: Jason (Glover) – the master of disguise, Duncan (DC Pierson) – the boy genius, and Charlie (Dominic Dierkes) – the strongest boy in town.  Of course, as high school seniors, none of these titles really apply.  Jason has no aptitude for disguise (though much for sketch and/or prop comedy), Duncan only memorizes useless facts, and Charlie has done nothing to develop his strength since he was eight which leaves him as a bit of an awkward stick figure.
     The standard fare for the Mystery Team is figuring out who poked a pie resting on a windowsill to cool or finding missing kittens.  They keep handwritten (in crayon) files of their cases and regular suspects.  The standard devices of the child detective feel rightfully sad and desperate in these near-men, but they refuse to admit it.  Then a different kind of case comes along.  A little girl hires the three to find out who  murdered her parents.
     The group bumbles through their investigation, with mixed results in terms of how the humor works.  It is enjoyable to watch the boys succeed in spite of themselves at times, or to rely on what should be absolutely useless contacts to keep the investigation alive.  However, it is during the various encounters that the style and tone tend to vary wildly even within the scenes.  Even though the story is written with a clear leading man (such as the term applies), the sidekicks have nearly as much screen time until the third act.  Because this film isn't really their story, that ends up feeling like wasted time.
     The one real complaint I have with Mystery Team is that the boy detectives are all played as being kind of dumb.  This really fits one of the characters (Charlie), but Duncan should still be smart and Jason should be more earnest in his desire to solve all the cases the neighborhood children bring to him.  In the end, there is an attempt to mitigate the near constant barrage of gags letting the audience known these characters are fully arrested in childhood, but it feels forced.  It seems written into the script to make sense of the ending they envisioned. 
     Mystery Team may not be a classic, and it certainly isn't a masterpiece, but it does have some very funny moments (such as one involving a stop sign).  For anyone who has fond memories of Encyclopedia Brown and wants to see a twisted take on the boy detective, Mystery Team  should be a worthwhile experience for you.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2011)

     I read – on some internet board discussing the disappointments with a forgotten film – that Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2011) was one of the two worst movies of the year.  Now that's a pretty small list, and one I'd suppose most people wouldn't generate something so specific unless they were strongly convinced that they were in the right.  I remembered seeing the ads for the film and thinking something along the lines of, why would I spend money to see this?, and promptly did not go out and see it.  I probably would not have given the film any thought afterwards save for somebody proclaiming it to be an absolute disaster on a scale that would make Jonah Hex (2010) look good.
     In truth, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night isn't a bad movie.  It isn't all that good, either; it just sort of is.  Mind you, I offer my criticisms of the film and story with full ignorance of the source material for it.  The DVD case claims that Dylan Dog is one the most popular comic books in the world (a quick check on shows that it is the most popular title in Italy), but I had never heard anything about it before the movie.  It is possible, though unlikely, that strict adherence to the style and tone of Tiziano Sclavi's creation led to the weaknesses that were not overcome.
     Director Kevin Munroe fancies his version of Dylan Dog as a film noir thriller, but it lacks in the elements for this to e successful.  First, there isn't much to thrill the audience.  Dylan (Brandon Routh) is about as inconsistent a character as I have seen in recent years.  Routh may give the requisite deadpan readings of the expository voice overs, but he withholds the character's emotions on screen as well, leaving the leading man with no soul.  Instead of the classic sexual tension and clear dileneation between strong, tough men and crafty, cunning, alluring women, Dylan Dog offers up an almost wholly sexless relationship – one certainly devoid of any sexual tension – between the P.I. and the not-quite femme fatale. 
     So much time is given over to explaining the world of the undead that Dylan used to police – and werewolves are somehow casually lumped in with vampires and zombies as the un-living – that there is little time to appreciate the wholly ridiculous manner by which Dylan goes about conducting his investigation.  On this level, it aspires to be an imitation of John Huston's version of The Maltese Falcon (1941).  However, where Huston's film was full of (often vicious) humor, the forced jokes in Dylan Dog seem to fall rather flat.  Because the only character who seems to have any emotional investment in anything happening on-screen is the victim of all of the comedic calamities Munroe offers up, there is no one with whom to effectively banter or sympathize with the plights.
     The movie proceeds at a slow, stable pace.  None of the action scenes carry any sense of malice or dread.  While none of the actors bring a great deal of life to the characters, none seem to be lost or over-matched by the material.  Munroe apparently wanted a more muted tone, a stark contrast to more modern genre films and an attempt to honor the old, classic mysteries of the 1940s and '50s.  The problem is that he captures none of the tension and little of the humor those movies had.
     I definitely would not rate Dylan Dog: Dead of Night as a good movie, but I could see how someone could enjoy it.  There are some elements that are just too underserved for me that may strike the right tone for others.  It certainly is not the worst movie I have seen in the last three years, and probably not the worst one I have seen since starting this blog.  At least it looks decent and is edited competently, which is usually enough to keep a film off a worst of list.

The Thing (2011) (Review)

     I am not going to heap scorn and derision on the latest offering of The Thing (2011), and not just because I am positive that there are more than enough people willing to do as much.  As much as I truly enjoy John Carpenter's 1982 version – so much that I own two copies of it on DVD, the only difference being the cover art – I cannot pretend that it is the height of film making or Science Fiction tinged horror.  What the '82 version does do, and far better than Matthijis van Heijningen, Jr.does with the latest telling, is develop the characters in such a way that the audience is bond to care about (most of) them.  This new version is a little more concerned with showing how it can do the setting and staging in a similar, yet updated format.
     Part of my bias may be due to discovering Carpenter's version on cable.  Anyone familiar with that edit knows that all of the characters are introduced by name in a voice over, and it carries over in the memory to watching the film as the director intended.  Still, even without that, all of the characters are distinct and seem to have a purpose for being stuck at a remote science station during the winter of 1982.  Made in its own time, the characters seem to be refugees from what America became after the Vietnam War and the domestic turmoil that persisted from the '60s into the '70s.  More importantly, they were all men.  The inherent struggle for dominance associated with surging testosterone is only heightened by the dangerous situation that befalls them.
     Van Heijningen, Jr.'s version is largely lacking that.  The new story – set to tell the tale of what happened to allow the thing into the American camp – makes a few mistakes right off the bat.  For some reason, four Americans (really three and a Brit of African heritage) take center stage early on.  My informed guess is that this was done to avoid having the entire film with Norwegian dialogue (never mind that there are several easy cheats around that).  In introducing the central character, Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the film effectively begins in the civilized world.  The sense of isolation and loneliness that was present in Carpenter's version is lost because of this.  The tension that is supposed to exist between Lloyd and Norwegian team leader Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) feels forced; none of it feels rooted in the battle of the sexes that should be playing out with a woman brought into the environment.  Even that is ruined because there is already a woman stranded down at the Antarctic station.
     Because the only characters who seem to get developed seem to be Lloyd, Dr. Halvorson, Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olson), Lars (Jørgen Langhelle), and Braxton Carter (Joel Edgerton), the impending danger and deaths have little emotional resonance.  Likewise, there isn't much reason given as to how or why Lloyd comes to be the leader.  Again, I have to assume this was a cheat to give the film a different dynamic than Carpenter's.  When the action comes, it moves along at a decent pace but doesn't allow for any introspection or examination of what has happened.  It kind of becomes action for the sake of action.

Kate Lloyd (Winstead) has no qualms about torching the thing, but she isn't in a hurry to just lay waste to everything. 

     Even writing all of that, the '11 version of The Thing still works for the most part.  Winstead manages to look pretty, tough, and real all at the same time.  Olson uses his youthful appearance and 'golly, gee' mannerisms to good effect.  Half of the Norwegians are distinguishable even with how little attention is paid to their characters.  Moreover, the film has a look that very much fits in with the 1982 version; it isn't polished and crisp.  The layout of the Norwegian camp evokes both the ruin encountered by MacReady and Copper as well as prefabricated structures at their own camp. 
     Sure, the alien ship looks more like it belongs in Predator 2 (1990) than the 1982 version.  The action inside it feels like what should have been present in The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998).  At the point in the movie where that action comes, the real question posed to the audience is whether or not the thing (or one of them) can be kept from escaping destruction.  If you are going to have a shapeshifting alien as your monster, you may as well embrace the dynamic spaceship that brought it to Earth.
     I didn't like the '11 version of The Thing as much as I hoped I would.  It isn't bad, and I have a feeling that people who have not become so familiar with Carpenter's version that they feel like Windows with Let's Make a Deal when watching it will find this engaging and mildly suspenseful.  Because so much of the format is retained, however, a knowledgeable viewer will see much of what they have already seen before.  I wouldn't discourage people from seeing it, even those who may feel disinclined to give the prequel a chance.  I think it makes good use of the newer special effects technology (with two exceptions, one of which is a creature type and the other a mode of attack) and does not try to replicate the roles of the American camp.  If I were to give it a grade, I would rate it a solid B. 

Source Code (2011)

     I have what I like to think is an appropriate level of affection for The Outer Limits (1963-65; 1995-2002) and The Twilight Zone (1959-64; 1985-89; 2002-03).  There is a lot that can be done with an anthology show that cannot be done with a serialized series, and both shows – in all their incarnations – had no problem embracing science fiction.  Still, both shows occasionally ran into the problem of the "neat idea" for the story not filling the entire episode with meaningful moments and dialogue; some episodes had to be padded.
     This is much how I feel about Source Code (2011).  There is a clever, wholly implausible concept at play that allows for a person to sort of travel in time.  Even better, there is an underlying story of a man learning how to make meaning out of a life that is not his own.  Unfortunately, director Duncan Jones and writer Ben Ripley handle the human element with a distinct lack of finesse.  Everything in the movie is either too obvious or so abrupt as to make one wonder if the script was finished before shooting started.
     There is never really a moment of doubt as to the state of Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) or the motivation of Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright).  Vera Farmiga – as Captain Goodwin – seems to have been given the simple direction of "bite your lip...look vaguely left, then right...now knit your brows while biting your lip", and it really feels like a waste to put someone who is establishing herself as a star in such a role.
     Even with these criticisms, I found myself enjoying the film.  Sure, it felt like there was no real understanding of Chicago (maybe the filmmakers do and I'm the one with an extremely limited take on my home region) and the plot device that is supposedly driving the action is resolved in much too easy a manner, but I found myself more interested in the more human stories being repeatedly visited on the train.  Where Jones crafted Moon (2009) to be dark and miserable in tone, he allows Source Code to rise to a level of romanticism that most science fiction films wouldn't dare.  Gyllenhaal may not have been the best choice to portray a subtle emotional journey, but he is no worse than anyone else in the cast and seems to play the smirking, knowing character better than any other.
     As a movie that I waited quite some time to see – and then a long time to review – Source Code didn't disappoint me.  It is a rather small, simple, clever story forced into a feature length movie, and I have to wonder if developing the back-story more would have lead to a better payoff for the audience (it would have done the trick for me).  I would recommend giving it a chance, at the very least.

Naked Heat (2010)

     I like Nathan Fillion.  I liked him as Johnny Donnelly on Two Guys and a Girl (1998-2001); Fillion came on the show after the name change.  I liked him as Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the enjoyable, but deeply flawed series Firefly (2002).  But I think the role he was born to play was that of Richard Castle on ABC's Castle (2009-present), as it allows him to indulge his evident inner-geek and make the regular murders that provide the plots for individual episodes to seem interesting, or more so beyond the script.
     So, Fillion draws me to Castle – and while I'm watching it I often wonder if I would enjoy a show with with John Huertas and Seamus Deaver as scrappy detectives who never get the glory for all the work they do – and it is in the vein of fandom that I have read the first two novels written by the Richard Castle persona.  I don't know if I can really defend this.  I have a long list of books that I should read.  I have an equally long list of titles I want to read.  And I have made a real effort to make the 2011-12 reading project one that has a lot more non-fiction titles of merit.  Ignore that comic book/graphic novel week of titles that are now part of said project.
     Naked Heat (2010) follows the events of Heat Wave (2009) by a few months.  Jameson Rook (the stand-in for Richard Castle), made somewhat unpopular amongst the police he shadowed for his magazine article finds a new way to become part of the investigating team: he stumbles upon the murder of a high profile gossip columnist.  It takes some time for him to win the warm regard of the detectives, but he does.  And then he has sex with Nikki Heat (the stand-in for Kate Beckett) again. 
     The novel stresses one of the weaknesses of the television show.  In order to keep some kind of mystery going, the detectives (and writer) often have to go back to people who were originally suspects.  I mean often as in regularly and repeatedly.  In the book, it happens over and over and over again.  The story is more involved than a single episode could be, but it is also horribly contrived – such as the garbage strike.  Adding to the problem, most of the elements of Naked Heat have appeared in episodes in Seasons Two and Three.  The ending is a little weak, especially for all of the disparate elements that are brought into the tale.  The pacing also raises some concerns, but it isn't so jarring as to cause any problems.
     Whoever writes the Richard Castle novels isn't particularly concerned with creating a setting, instead simply giving the show's characters different names.  There is next to nothing in regards to physical descriptions, and just as little attention paid to clothing.  Neither Heat nor Rook are developed as characters, and if one were no familiar with the show it is unlikely that either would feel like people worth headlining a story.  However, the Richard Castle novels are a tie-in to the show.  As such, they allow for stories that are similar to the show without having to constrain themselves to the established continuity.  Maybe the selling point is that Heat and Rook get together, something denied to Beckett and Castle.
     As a diversion that is tied-in to something I already invest some time to, Naked Heat is decent.  It is better written and structured than Heat Wave.  Like most of the fluff I have read for the projects, Naked Heat was a two day read.  What I would recommend – strongly recommend – is to not watch an episode of Castle in between reading the book.  It can cause a few moments of what...wait that are the result of an easy confusion between the two.

A Study in Scarlet [Graphic Novel] (2010)

     Say what you will, I have some inner need to either work in themes or to work towards completion when it comes to a body of written work.  In both these manners the graphic novel of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (2010 for the graphic novel; 1886 for the original) fits as there is decidedly a theme this week of supporting the illustrated story and Conan Doyle's Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes were reviewed on 20 September, 2011.  Granted, reading the graphic novel will allow me to not have to pick up the original tale for some time, but it does give me the illusion of having read it.
     I do want to admit – in an ugly sort of way – that I greatly enjoyed being able to finish this in the span of about an hour, much faster than if I were reading the original.  Likewise, much of the needless description of unimportant details are left out as I.N.J. Culbard illustrates the scenes well and perhaps improves upon some of Conan Doyle's approaches to setting the scene.  Unfortunately, neither illustrator Culbard or "text adapter" Ian Edginton can do little to mask some of Conan Doyle's shortcomings when it comes to imagining characters.
     If you are like me – and not in all the bad ways – then you likely grew up with a level of admiration for Sherlock Holmes.  I mean, come on, he's the world's smartest man.  And he can handle himself in a fight.  And he solves crimes.  And stops international incidents from causing wars.  He is about as English a superhero as one could imagine, and he doesn't need to come from a distant planet or be bitten by a spider to get his powers.  But in reading through the stories, there is so much withheld from the reader that it makes it impossible to appreciate what Holmes is actually doing.  And the rest of the cast is usually so confused as to how to go about detective work that the only role they serve is for Holmes to explain what he has done – things hidden from the reader until the end.
     I kind of hate that kind of storytelling.  I think of it as the Henry Lopez school of building a mystery – never mind that Mr. Lopez is working in a different medium and more than a century after Conan Doyle – where surprises can be sprung simply because no information regarding them was ever offered in the first place.  Modern detective stories usually give more of an insight as to the work.  Even comedic approaches like USA's Psych (2006-whenever USA cancels it) show the actual observations, but retain the Holmesian wrap-up speach as to how the mystery was solved.  Shawn Spencer (James Roday), a modern super-observant detective, pretends to be psychic and hides behind humor rather than endlessly berating the police force for not picking up on every single clue.

Shawn Spencer and Guster Burton, Psych's answer to Holmes and Watson.  Less pretentiousness, more snarkiness.  And occasionally the detectives know more than they do.

     Back to A Study in Scarlet.  Conan Doyle gives a brief account of how Watson came to return to England and meet Holmes.  It feels very unsatisfactory, and it is hard to imagine how these two men could come to develop a strong sense of friendship.  Watson comes across as a dullard who is living off of a government settlement due to his injuries in the Battle of Maiwand (in Afghanistan).  Holmes seems like a self-important twat (in the British sense) who is only interested in someone with whom he can split the rent and bully with his intellect.
     As for the story, it actually is pretty imaginative.  Two men are killed and Scotland Yard does not know how to find the killer – and Conan Doyle actually treats the inspectors with a small amount of respect in regards to their thinking and methods.  Holmes stumbles around, insults people, goes missing for periods of time, and then announces he has determined who the murderer is, but needs to get him as to find out why.  That leads to a rather dull and lengthy tale of the motivation behind the killings.  However, we do learn that Watson can diagnose an aneurism simply by checking someone's pulse, so that is quite impressive.

Page 17, where Watson assesses Holmes

     The drawing style feels modern while still evoking a comfortable image of Victorian England.  I prefer how the cutaway scenes are handled to the main story, but both are well done.  The scenes move at a good clip, and the faces come across as emotive enough to get the job done.  The action – there isn't much – is a little lackluster in appearance, but maybe it is meant to be restrained to begin with.
     I think the asking price of $14.95 is kind of high.  I checked a copy of from the local library – at a cost of $0, which is always pretty solid.  Still, it isn't a price gouge.  And if one were really into all things Sherlock Holmes, this would make a fine addition to the collection.  It is also is probably a better means of introducing the characters to the younger set – especially if they can see this before the Guy Ritchie films –than the alternatives.