Search Results for: movie review

Movie Review – Bones and All

The best horror movies tend to focus on teenage protagonists. The very age when we all didn’t have a clue what we didn’t know (we thought we knew everything). We spend so much time with these young people, actively rooting for some of them to survive (and maybe actively rooting for others to not be as lucky). The stories act as coming of age stories. A warning that you might be transitioning from your childhood into adulthood.

The world is a scary place already, so to have a slasher/ghost/demon/etc. trying to kill you…

Bones and All takes this conceit and asks the question from a completely different angle. It is from the Monster’s point of view. Whether it is our lead, Maren, who is trying to figure out who or what she actually is. Or whether it is Lee, who knows who he is, but throuh Maren’s eyes he now sees himself in a different light. Or whether it is some of the other Eaters they encounter. Those who might embrace their darker natures. Is being true to yourself mean that you are evil?

Probably when we’re talking about eating people.

But really, we all have some form of darkness within us. Obviously, for most it isn’t horror movie level. I think of it as that Devil on our shoulder who tries to influence our basest natures. You know where you should cuss someone out, but end up listening to the Angel instead. Still, that darkness is there. For some it may be a constant struggle against some form of addiction in all of its various forms.

The disease is there. The question is what are we. Who are we?

It feels like Bones and All is trying to present and answer these questions as best it can. The journey Maren goes on to figure out where she comes from, shows her a world she never even thought existed. And where many horror movies would jump to the evil immediately, this movie takes its time. A very slow burn as she goes through the full spectrum of emotions. It never rushes her (or the audience for that matter). It doesn’t shy away from the horrific actions she is forced to take, but for many of the other characters – this is simply their lives. They have some control, but in the end, they can’t fight their nature.

But she says something within the movie that sums up her world view – “I would have done the same… in my own way.”

She believes that she doesn’t always have to be the monster. That much like the vampire movies where they drink rats or whatever, she can maybe find a way to live a “normal” life. The good side of her could possibly win.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – The Mandela Effect

The Mandela Effect feels like a movie where we are on a journey with the writer of the film as he works his way through the very idea of the “Mandela Effect”. And I think that is a very good thing.

For those who may not know, The Mandela Effect is a term coined for people who have memories of something happening that is counter to reality. The most popular (and where the name comes from) is the idea that many people thought Nelson Mandela had died in the 1980s. Had you put them to a lie detector test, they would have passed it because they remembered it. The only problem is that Mandela didn’t pass away until 2013.

False memories? Parallel universes bleeding into each other? The simulation which we all currently live in (and is possibly the darkest timeline) glitching?

Whatever your flavor of rabbit hole you wish to take, this movie is more than willing to spiral down with you.

The core plot is a simple enough one: A husband and wife have a daughter who passes away. While trying to make some kind of sense of the world he now lives in, Brendan notices that some small things are different than what he remembers. Book titles, the Looney Toons name, the look of the Monopoly guy… all of this pointing him, in his grief, into trying to find an explanation for it all. And he then begins to take a personal journey to figure out whether his reality is true or not.

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Definitely less Horror and more Science Fiction (obviously), I thought that some of the questions being raised by Brendan were ones we all have asked. He is simply trying to find Order in a world full of Chaos. The same thing we all would like in our lives. It is somehow more comforting to think that our lives are perhaps not our own, but a simulation being run around us. Order is comforting. Chaos is terrifying. If there is no specific reason for an event in our lives (especially a tragic one), that is so much worse than anything else might be.

Brendan wallows in these theories, emotionally seperating from his wife who is also trying to work her way through the grief process. And through all of that it introduces a couple of interesting thoughts about the lengths someone might go to “get their life back”. Would they abandon the ones who survived in order to cling to a life which doesn’t exist anymore?

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How much does a person’s memories affect the world around them? If you remember an event one way and everyone else remembers it differently… how do you rectify those differences? How much do other people’s stories shape our memories as well? I know there have been many times where I remembered a portion of an event, but then a family member mentioned something which I’d completely forgotten (or buried too deep to even conjure back up). But is that memory mine or simply a construct of someone else?

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A couple of years ago, I hit upon a similar thought process. I’d come home and my toiletries were on a different side of the bathroom. I’d been going to the right sink for years and suddenly I’m using the left sink. It’s a very minor change, but one which got my mind turning over and over again. If I knew about the Mandela Effect, it wasn’t at the forethought of my brain. And I started crafting a story about a man who was starting to see some inconsistencies with his memory and everyone else’s memory.

Many, many words later, and I had writen The Echo Effect.

While my trip down the rabbit hole was far different than this particular movie, I enjoyed viewing another (a parallel) version of these ideas could be presented… and what their ultimate outcomes might be.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – It’s What’s Inside

It’s What’s Inside feels like it could be a Black Mirror episode with a couple of additional tweaks here or there (which is fairly high praise coming from me).

The basic set up is a group of college friends getting together for a prewedding night to celebrate the impending nuptuals. In the process of reconnecting, the audience is shown how some of them have lived in the meantime. A couple of them are in a relationship (that appears to be struggling), you have the social media influencer, the rich kid, a couple of new age women, and the nerdy guy who none of them have kept up with since college. However, since they made the pact (about getting together before the wedding), he still shows up and has the MacGuffin which the whole movie is based on. See, Forbes (the nerd) has a device which will allow a person to switch bodies with another person.

What the movie does really well is explore the age old idea of what it would be like to walk in someone else’s shoes. What sort of freedom might you have if no one knew who was driving the body you were in? Would you lose some of the inhibitions? Would you lose a part of yourself?

While I would agree that who we are is based on our memories, our thoughts, our history, whatever you want to call it… I don’t believe that it exists outside of the idea that our bodies directly affect who we are as well. I’d argue that these meat shells we all wear reflect our thoughts and vice versa. If you have a more attractive body/face/etc, then you may have a bit more confidence when going through your life. And less if you are less attractive (or perhaps preceive yourself as less attractive).

Image by Kohji Asakawa from Pixabay

But being able to wear a second skin, even for a short time… we see the characters (or some of them) really get into their roles.

I didn’t mention it, but they are playing a game where you aren’t supposed to tell anyone and whoever is the last one to get found out “wins”.

This mostly means there is no reason to not do some level of roleplaying. And I think the actors all do a pretty good job of “playing” their new roles, but the movie does a clever bit of storytelling where they will show the scene in reds/blues/& greens to show us who is inside the person. So even if you got a little confused about who is who, this snaps things right into place.

I don’t want to go into spoilers, but you can likely guess that things don’t go smoothly as the night progresses, and it is those moments there are some interesting choices and some things that didn’t allways make a ton of sense. It’s not bad decisions, but sometimes it had me wondering if a person would really react to the situation in that way or not.

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Regardless, it has enough twists and turns that make it worth giving it a watch this Halloween season.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – The Platform 2

It’s October, so it’s time for my annual attempt to watch a bunch of horror movies. Of course, this quickly turns to lamenting the fact that somehow even though the month has 31 days in it… the calendar moves far too quickly for me to watch as many as I would like (and yes, I realize I can watch horror movies during other parts of the year – but this is the horror month!).

A few years back I sat down and watched a very strange movie called The Platform. The concept is a vertical prison where food is lowered to the inmates down into the bowels of the earth. You only get to eat what you have requested and nothing more. However, humans being humans, most of the time the higher levels gorge themselves on whatever they like, leaving those below to starve.

It was this weird movie that really sits with you over the days after a viewing. Less jump scare horror and more “wow, this is fucked up” horror. I would have never guessed it would have garnered a sequel.

With The Platform 2, it is still the same situation as the last movie, save there appear to be a set of rules which allows the food to reach many of the lower levels (I believe they mention food making it all the way down to the 170s at one point). The big sticking point is that there is a not so secret police who ensure the rules are followed. And if you do anything against their edicts, they will come to ensure you do not make that mistake again.

With both movies, there is a social contract which is supposed to be followed. And if it is, then everyone can potentially get what they deserve. But in both movies we see that those in charge… whether they are the upper levels of society or the “police” enforcers abuse their powers almost immediately. The other side, whether it is those who are just doing what they can to survive or the true “barbarians” who believe that their own self freedom is the most important thing.

It is never really about the best thing for society. It is only what is best for them. Might makes right without any concern that they may be on a lower level during the next month(s) struggling to survive with limited or no food at all.

Instant gratification is all that matters.

What we truly end up taking away from this social experiment is that the only lesson which can be learned is that you cannot become indebted to either side. Neither have the answers to your questions and doubts. Both will take you down a path where you are no longer your true self or anything close to it.

Instead, you must find a way to work through your own traumas for only you can determine your freedom. Only you can determine when you’ve served your time.

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Again, these two movies are more about making you think than they are about giving you some simple scares. Their attempt to be a funhouse mirror version of our world makes it where you can see the parallels, even in the horrific mess the main characters find themselves.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – The Honeymoon Phase

My wife makes fun of me, but one of my favorite things is to scroll through VUDU (now Fandango At Home) looking through the weekly deals. I’m not trying to spend tons of money and most of the time I don’t bother with much of anything. However, sometimes they’ll do a Horror movie spotlight and suddenly there are a bunch of new to me movies to investigate. So one night after finding a couple of interesting trailers, I went on the deeper dive on the computer and realized that a few of them were made by the same company (Dark Sky Films). Hmm… well maybe I should give one of them a shot.

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What makes married couples fall out of the so-called Honeymoon Phase? That’s the set-up for the experiment are going in for. They do it for one month and are paid $50,000. So even though there is a little trepidation, they agree, and wake up together in a house in the middle of nowhere. There anything they want appears to be provided (food, alcohol, etc.). And things proceed fairly normal for the first week or so.

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What makes us trust someone? What makes us know that the person we love has only our best interests at heart? What would it take for that trust to become broken?

The movie is at its best when those are the questions we are asking as we watch the film. We follow Eve as she begins to have doubts about her husband. One of those things where things are just a little off through how he acts. It’s nothing big enough to be more than a nagging feeling, but… he doesn’t kiss her the way he normally does.

The movie really leans into this idea of whether or not Eve is having some kind of mental break (brought on due to taking LSD brownies 10 days into the experiment) or if she’s right and something is really wrong.

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Here’s the thing, that works really well when the movie focuses on that. And there are a bunch of things where as the viewer you kind of wonder which way they are eventually going to lean into, because either option (she’s crazy or he’s wrong) can work within the story… until (and spoilers to follow)…

She gets pregnant and suddenly is like 6 months pregnant. And only 20 days have passed.

She freaks out (understandibily so) and yet, her husband (Tom) embraces this all as a good thing.

I’m sorry, what? Something super strange is going on and Tom wants to treat this like it is just a normal thing (and the observers of the experiment don’t make any mention of it).

It’s a strange choice, because at that point you know Tom is wrong 100%. She knows it 100%. And I think the movie suffers for this. And the sad thing is they didn’t need to do the weird pregancy angle the way they did. It could have been a “normal” pregnancy where suddenly she’s wondering if this baby inside her is Wrong Tom or her husband’s from before the experiment. Suddenly she has even more doubts about her own sanity. What if the baby is Her Tom’s kid? What if she really is going crazy?

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As the movie moves to its conclusion, we get some answers as to why this experiment exists, who Wrong Tom actually is, and Eve gets to do a decent Final Girl impression.

Overall, I liked the performances. I liked the premise, and I dug the questioning of Eve throughout the early portions of the experiment, but some of the stranger decisions are a little confusing (as to why that choice was made) which made it feel more like a “let’s do this weird thing” as opposed to maybe telling a slightly smaller story about two people in love.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – Furiosa

A lot of time when a sequel or prequel comes out, I try to go back and watch the previous movies. Sometimes I don’t get that opportunity. However, with Furiosa I wanted my wife to go see it as well (she’s a fan of girls kicking ass), which meant she needed to watch Mad Max Fury Road first. So we both went into the movie this evening with Fury Road only a couple of days old.

First… I really dug the movie (Courtney liked it a lot as well).

Chris Hemsworth is a worthy addition to the villains of this world. You could tell that he was having a ton of fun just playing nearly every moment as big as possible. Anya Taylor-Joy has very large shoes to fill in the titular character’s role, and she does a great job in making the character hers.

As to the story… while it is one overarching story of Furiosa’s life, Miller does an interesting thing where he breaks up these tales into segments, with each having their own title. I thought that was a cool way to tell these little tales that still allow for the time jumps we need for Furiosa to grow up, but I also realized that these Mad Max stories could happen in almost any order (prior to this movie), and as such they are little stories you might tell about the heroes and villains in mythology. Each of the chapters in this movie are exactly that, chapters of a larger tapestry within this world.

With the box office results so far, it would be fair to say that it hasn’t performed as the studios would have liked it to perform. And while I don’t have the answers to all the questions pertaining to why people aren’t going to the movies like they used to (although I do have plenty of theories that range from the cost of movies to make down to the cost of seeing a movie and a bunch of other things in between), I do have a couple of thoughts about why this particular movie might have stumbled out of the gate.

Both Fury Road and Furiosa ask something of its audience that I’m unsure how it works across the broader spectrum. They ask you to buy into a post apocolyptic world that is gonzo. The characters are over the top, larger than life, in a world where the lives of the extra characters are beyond meaningless. And by that, I mean those people are sacrificial lambs in the entire sense of the word. I’ve heard that the best science fiction asks you to believe one thing, but then grounds the rest within the rules you would expect. Mad Max says this is a dead world run by insane men… and oh, yeah, there’s going to be over the top, in your face action to the point you are going to question how anyone would live for an hour in this world.

But that’s the charm of these movies as well. I think it is why Fury Road did as well as it did. It got the good word of mouth to help slowly build to a success. Whether Furiosa does the same, it’s hard to say, but given Hollywood’s penchant for taking these “duds” and immediately trying to go to streaming, we may never know the real answer.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – The Marvels

There is a ton of talk about this movie online. Honestly, it is to the point that I’m wondering about that old saying “whether it is bad or good… as long as they are talking about you” still applies. After one weekend, this has underperformed at the box office, and while many people have listed their own theories about why this has occurred (smarter and dumber people alike), it seems to me we’ve gotten away from the key part of watching a movie.

Did you like it?

Yes.

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Thanks for coming to the blog!

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OK. The first Captain Marvel really occupies an odd place in the MCU as it came out after Infinity War but before End Game but took place in the 90s, which put in a position where it didn’t really fit into the current storyline and acts as a prequel to much of the MCU (other than say the first Captain America movie). It introduces more of the Kree (since Ronan in Guardians was really the only Kree we’d met otherwise) and sets up something that within the comics is a HUGE deal: the Kree/Skrull conflicts.

I enjoyed the first one, but I must admit, I haven’t gone back to do a rewatch so it might have been seen through rose-colored glasses as we all waited for End Game.

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With Marvels, my concern was how well would people who haven’t watched the tv shows understand who these characters are. We’d watched WandaVision, so Monica’s story was familiar to us, but we haven’t had a chance to watch Ms. Marvel. And while I am familiar with the comic version, I haven’t really read much with her in it. Luckily, I think they did a pretty good job of introducing both, even if Monica has a leg up due to Captain Marvel being Aunt Carol.

The sequence which gets the movie started is them switching places whenever one of them uses their powers at the same time as another of the trio. Which creates a breakneck series of fights which does a nice job of illustrating each of their power sets. When the three are finally all together, the embarassingly cute interaction Ms. Marvel has with the other two women is infectious. It also does a nice bit of contrast to one of the things people complained about with the first one – that Captain Marvel was too stoic. In fact, that is kind of her character arc here. Someone who has seperated herself from the rest of the universe, someone doing a job only they can do, and just being utterly alone. Faced with a “team”, she balks at it because it is so against her nature. Yet as things continue, she has no choice but to literally and figuratively embrace these two souls. It was this underlying thread that still made it HER movie in so many ways.

Dar-Benn

On top of everything else, though, this movie feels like something where everyone is having fun. The actors look like they are into it. The writer clearly understood this was supposed to be more about the three heroes and their developing relationships between one another rather than the larger plot. Which may be the one bit of “bad” about the movie for me.

I don’t know if they completely knew what kind of villain they were portraying here? Is Dar-Benn your classic cosmic world destroyer in the vein of Ronan? Is she someone who is only trying to do her best to restore her homeworld back to from the brink of annihilation? Or is she someone who is bent of revenge against a sworn enemy?

Now, that sounds like the beginning of real depth for Dar-Benn, but it is here that things seem to get confused. She is all these things, but we only find out about the revenge against Captain Marvel near the end of the movie which makes it seems like it was her ultimate motivation. However, this came across as more of a “oh, ok” moment rather than a “WOW” moment. I wish they would have put something more into that, even an exchange between her first officer saying something about getting revenge is how she’s picking her targets.

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The cosmic side of Marvel has so much to explore and these characters could allow them to do just that. And could even seed some additional ideas for a Fantastic Four movie (Annihilus is out there).

The comic book nerd would hate for the lower box office to hurt these explorations in the future. There is a ton to enjoy about this movie, and if the first one didn’t quite hit right, this one has a feel very different to that one – it may be more in your wheelhouse.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

After spending the last two blog posts talking about Marvel’s Phase 4 movies, I finally managed to get out and see the first movie to kick off Phase 5: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. While the Phase 4 movies and shows gave us glimpses of where (when?) we might be heading… it is here that the big storyline for the MCU really kicks into gear.

It’s an interesting choice to use an Ant-Man movie for this purpose as the first and second movies were really elaborate “caper” movies. They played things more for the laughs. And yes, while Marvel movies love their comedy bits, I feel like the Ant-Man movies lean into the full comedy with a touch of science fiction. So if you were to tell me which Marvel character would be best suited to provide us with Kang the Conqueror, I would have probably leaned more toward a Thor movie or Guardians of the Galaxy or even The Eternals (if you had to). In the comics, Kang is traditionally a full Avengers team opponent, so no matter who had first contact with him, it should potentially leave us with the idea of “We’re going to need the whole Avengers team to deal with this.”

Ant-Man 3 then has to really pivot from those first two movies. The sidekick friends are missing from the film to instead focus on the surrogate Pym/Lang family which has developed in the time since End Game. Really, there is no opportunity to spend much time with anyone else, as we quickly find our heroes all trapped in the Quantum Realm doing their best to navigate this alien world and find their way back to each other.

All the while, the threat of Kang the Conqueror hangs over them (and the world).

This is very much a superhero movie with BIG STAKES.

Michelle Pfiefer’s Janet Pym is effectively a co-lead within the movie. She is the only one of the five who has any real idea of what might be in store within this world, and therefore literally takes the lead trying to reunite the family and find a way home. Which works well for the most part… however, her character does the trope of not telling her family about Kang and the danger he represents for nearly half the movie. This isn’t a case of a story where maybe the character with “knowledge” doesn’t know whether she can trust the people she is with… no, she’s with her husband and daughter. But instead of taking ten minutes to let them in on the big problem they have, she instead dodges the question.

Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man also gets to play the big hero in this movie. It’s another place where you can really see where this character has started back in Ant-Man 1, and where he’s ended up. He’s someone who is content to not play hero. He’s someone who lost 5 years with his daughter. Someone who also was directly responsible for saving everyone who were Blipped. He’s an Avenger. And while they play that bit for laughs, with that designation, he’s someone who has to help others (or, at least he should).

I really liked the various alien creatures ont he world. Many of them had very cool and unique looks to them that I almost wondered what a Quantum Realm tv show should look like. There was an oddity to some (much) of it and while many of those characters offered some humor, for the most part I thought it worked.

However, what didn’t work for me was MODOK. Without getting to in the weeds (and spoilery), MODOK is a character that comes off as a complete joke. Everything is played for laughs, which makes little to no sense considering he is a Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing. Leading up to his appearance he is called the Hunter. Someone who is not only dangerous, but is basically death for those who encounter him.

Yet, that is never shown. Instead it is one character making fun of him after the next. There is a never a moment I really feel like he should be taken seriously. And while I’m not a big fan of the character in the comics, there might have been a way to do him justice… this wasn’t it.

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So does this work as the launch of Phase 5? Does this movie start the ball rolling for the Kang saga?

Yes. I think that Kang is shown as a very credible threat. Someone who is not only powerful, but he’s powerful on a scale completely different from Thanos. Where Thanos sought to change the fundamental nature of the universe, Kang is someone who snuffs out timelines. He arrives and he conquers. Because that is who he is. It isn’t for some misguided attempt at a noble reason. It is because he can.

And that is someone who the Avengers (and Fantastic Four and maybe the X-Men) will need to be brought back together to stop.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – Scream 5

 

The Scream franchise holds a dear place in my heart as one of those movie series I felt I could call my own. You know, the ones where you were there from the very beginning and understood that you were seeing something both familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It did things in a way that made it more than just something going for cheap scares, but instead took us down a different path by fusing the slasher film with a true mystery on trying to figure out the killer. And the clues build upon themselves as the story progresses, even down to certain music cues potentially giving something away a little earlier than you’d think.

It rewrote how we were supposed to view those films of our youth, pointing out the tropes as being silly, and then earnestly sticking to them so the viewer could understand why they were important tropes to the genre. There’s that old saying of until you know the rules, you can’t break them.

As the series progressed, we saw different variations on the theme, sometimes redefining who our heroes and villains might be.

Which leads me to the most recent installment, over a decade since Scream 4 came out…

Scream 5 is really an attempt to go back to what made the first film so great. Where the first 4 are really Sidney Prescott’s story, this one begins with a new protagonist, setting up a new group of friends, and even a twist on the opening sequence. In fact, it may be the best decision for a movie 26 years after the very first one to not lean on Sidney to be the main person, and allow for new blood (pardon the pun).

Even so, the fifth installment really takes the idea that it’s been 26 years since the original film to heart. Our main group of friends all have connections to earlier characters in the series, via being directly related or just where they might be living (a familiar house from the original makes an appearance in the new movie). It is truly a new generation while still allowing for the connections to the previous legacy characters that we have grown up with.

Going further, it recognizes what it is and in very Scream fashion, deconstructs the very idea of “requels” something of an amalgam of sequels and reboots that Hollywood has been embracing over the last decade or so. The question of how do you serve the fanbase by giving them something familiar while also pushing things into a potentially new place, with new characters, and new reasons for why the killings are happening in the first place.

This legacy vs. new is at the heart of the struggle for the fifth movie. The title itself is a nod to this very conceit: How much do you allow the legacy characters to exert their will on the film? Too much and you might as well have called it Scream 5. Too little and it doesn’t feel much like a part of the series. It’s a fine line they walk throughout the film, and while I really enjoyed both aspects, I’m not entirely convinced they found the correct sweet spot for some of those legacy characters. You almost feel that the movie could have more or less done what it needed to do without them (save for one character that really does serve as both the bridge between the two worlds, but also lays out the very tropes we’ve learned all the way back in 1996).

Where the 4th installment leaned too heavily on our legacy heroes (and as such I think missed a prime opportunity with the end of the movie to do something very unexpected), this one definitely wants us to associate with the new teens in a way that their deaths might mean a little more or at the very least, become extremely invested in the plight of the main female, Sam. And for the most part, I think they are able to make it work. Even those characters who may not have an overwhelming amount of screen time (you know, because they die a little too quickly), still have a little bit of time to rise above their own character archetypes.

All in all, this latest installment feels like a nice segway from the first 4 movies into something for the next couple of decades.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – Midsommar

 

With a movie like Midsommar, I come at it from two different directions based on what little I knew about it. It’s a movie about a group of travelers (friends) who are given front row seats to experience a 9-day festival in a backwoods part of Sweden. Now, with stories like this, we all know that things are never going to be what they appear to be (otherwise it wouldn’t be a horror movie). So the questions we must ask ourselves are twofold:

Is the lead-up to the big reveal of what might really be going on enjoyable?

Is the reveal worth it?

It’s all about execution in these situations, because if you don’t spend enough time in the build-up where we start to get acquainted with our characters, then when bad things happen to them, we just won’t care. However, if the movie takes too long to start showing the weird, then it is very likely to lose our interest before we actually get there.

Spoilers to potentially follow:

We begin the movie seeing Dani and Christian going through the motions of being in a relationship. Well, it’s Christian who is going through the motions as he has become clearly disengaged with Dani using him as an emotional support person more than a boyfriend. All this comes to a head when Dani finds out her sister has killed herself and taken their parents with her. This tragedy has forced Christian to remain with her whether he really wants to or not.

Weeks? Months? later, Dani discovers Christian and his three friends are going to Sweden for the midsommar festival Pelle’s home commune throws every year. After being invited to go on the trip with the guys, they arrive and we can begin to see that Dani is not only still struggling with PTSD from her family’s deaths, she can’t even rely on Christian as much (as he’s mentally checked out). The festival begins and while there are some odd eccentricities, overall things aren’t too out of the ordinary.

And then things begin to go sideways when they see two of the elders commit suicide.

I’m not going to go any further with spoiling the movie, but I wanted to mention this key moment because none of our characters, save for Dani, have any kind of realistic reaction to what’s happening in front of them. And maybe it falls into the old troupe of not leaving the haunted house immediately, but both Christian and Josh nearly act like what they’ve seen is as normal as anything else (and what they saw was NOT normal). In fact, it is only Dani, who already has visions of horror in her head, who nearly breaks completely upon seeing the display. And for some reason, it’s only a pair of other travelers who decide they’ve had enough, not our group.

From there, things only get weirder and weirder.

The Good

Florence Pugh delivers a great performance and definitely has the most realistic reactions to nearly everything.

The set-up, while potentially dragging things out a little bit too much, does a great job in making sure you understand that while the festival might be odd, it’s still not crazy (until suddenly it is).

The Bad

The reactions of the other characters to strange things occurring. The elder’s deaths aside, at a certain point people, start disappearing and no one seems to care… at all. Like not even a raised eyebrow.

I get that you need the characters to stay, but I wish they’d found a more plausible thing other than “I’m writing my thesis on this.” Bleh.

The Ugly

It’s not really scary. I had a little bit of dread here and there, but only because I was hoping for something big and bad to happen. We have one kill completely off-screen, which felt like a missed opportunity because as the audience, we knew that character was dead the moment he went “missing”. It’s like the film wants to play coy when everyone knows the punchline anyway, so why hide things?

***

Another one that could have been trimmed a little bit (probably 15 minutes easily) (I’ve heard there is a 3-hour version and can’t imagine what that would do that the 2+ hour version didn’t already convey). The ending was just… I get what happened, but I’m not sure I “get” it

I’ll take another shot this weekend. Maybe I can find the one then?

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Something is off.

I’m watching this movie (based off the novel of the same name) and something is off.

I was led to believe that this was a horror movie of some sort which obviously can cover a ton of ground within the genre. You have slasher flicks, monster flicks, mind f- flicks, slow burn, fast burn, and everything in between. So I understand that you don’t always know exactly what you are going to get but…

I was led to believe I’m Thinking Of Ending Things was a horror movie.

And it really isn’t. Sure, there are plenty of moments within the two hour plus movie where you are a bit unnerved by what’s going on between the characters. The conversations have the appearance of being about something without saying very much at all. They are all surface level things being said aloud with undertones that hint at bigger issues.

The basic plot is that Lucy and Jake, a couple who has been together are taking a day trip to pay a visit to Jake’s parents. And while things have been decent between them, Lucy had been coming to grips with the idea that perhaps the two of them are not supposed to be together. The mantra of the title is repeated within her head throughout the movie. For the first third of the movie they are in the car on the drive there. This means there are lots of moments for the awkward silences hanging in between the two of them. And while it appears that Lucy is the only one who may be clued in their relationship may be headed toward a break-up, I think Jake has begun to realize it as well. Perhaps this trip is one of those hail marys where he sees this trip to introduce her to his parents as a big enough gesture that he might hang onto the relationship for a little while longer.

Here’s the thing, it isn’t until they reach the parent’s house where I began to suspect there could actually be something bigger at work here. And while there is definitely a ton of VERY weird things going on at the parent’s house. And while his parents don’t act entirely normal at times (laughter which feels almost forced and meals randomly being prepared).

But again, it’s never scary. Even a trip down into the sealed basement only reveals more questions about… well, the reality of the situation.

The Good

The two main actors are absolutely crushing it the whole time. I liked the character of Lucy, and was definitely wary of Jake through most of the movie. But…

The Bad

Did I mention it was over two hours?

This movie could have done the same things with a much tighter edit (honestly I think a good 30 minutes could have been lost and it wouldn’t have made a ton of difference).

The Ugly

The dance scene.

Yep. I said dance scene.

***

Maybe if I hadn’t seen the trailer for the movie or read the review of the novel on a list of best horror. Maybe had I come into it cold, I might not have left the movie feeling… cold.

Oh well, my search for this year’s horror movie gem is ongoing. Maybe the next one will be the winner!?!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Movie Review – Malignant

I always tell myself that this is the year I watch a TON of horror movies during the month of October. Yet, sadly, the month begins to dissolve away and before I know it the scary decorations are being put away and Christmas Season comes out in full force. However, this year, HBOMax released the movie Malignant allowing me to get a couple of weeks jump on the Halloween festivities.

Spoilers to follow…

Malignant is the story of a woman (Madison Mitchell) who after an altercation with her boyfriend who nearly kills her, finds herself followed by this demon/creature/person/thing. At first the creature seems to want to terrorize her specifically, but as the movie progresses, we see that it appears to have a different sort of agenda. Soon enough others are killed by the entity, with their only connection being our heroine. Even as the police arrest her, the entity continues to taunt them, until we get our final confrontation between the lead and the killer.

The Good

Some of the special effects are really amazing. There is a connection between Madison and the Killer so that she sees his kills. As the hunt begins, her world melts away revealing the house or room where the next victim is. The first time it happens I definitely let out a “wow”.

There is a pair of sequences where the Killer interacts with the police, the first time evading a lone cop by doing a crazy amount of parkour-style moves. The second is the battle at the police station, which I almost would say would be worth checking out even if you didn’t watch the rest of the movie. Aside from a couple of weird shots (which actually could be explained by the reveal of who/what the killer is), it gives a very creepy feel to how the thing moves in almost counter in style to what we would expect. The action is all over the place (in a good way), and it manages to get into the more gore side of the horror.

The Bad

My very first thought after finishing the movie was to wonder whether there was a classification of movies between an “A” and a “B” movie. There are times during the film where everyone is taking the script very seriously, and it mostly works. And then there are the times where the dialogue (and the delivery) makes me wonder if Ed Wood had a hand in crafting it. This makes it feel a bit disjointed like they didn’t know which way to go, trying to do a little of both and not mastering either.

The Ugly

The Killer… he was definitely ugly but not as scary as I was hoping for. Sadly, I figured out what the twist was going to be fairly early in the process which makes me wonder if it was too telegraphed for the audience or not. When the “twist reveal” occurs, instead of being a WTF moment, it was more of a “OK, that’s what I’d thought”. This doesn’t make it specifically a bad or good thing, but I think speaks to the idea of trying to play something a little too coy throughout the movie.

Overall, this is very much a popcorn and candy movie. It doesn’t ask much from the audience and tries its best to be a bit of a throwback to the horror/thriller films of the 80s. It does a good job with the spectacle but the rest fell a little flat for me.

Movie Review: Parallel

The idea of other versions of ourselves… those who might have made very similar choices to the ones we have made so that their reality and ours aren’t that much different. If that were the case, and you found a way to reach across the veil of our reality into theirs, what could you do with that ability?

That’s the fundamental question at the heart of Parallel.

A group of four post-college adults who are struggling to make their business (app development) a success, find that there is a secret attic space in the house they are renting. More curious than the secret room is that it houses a mirror which when passed through, can lead the traveler to a world nearly their own, with subtle differences to be sure. However, the more important aspect of this parallel world is that time moves much much slower there. Hours can go by in the alternate world while mere minutes pass on our own. Armed with this knowledge, the group of friends begins to use this “extra time” to their benefit allowing them to finish projects in days when it should have been weeks. When they later discover that even though the world at large is pretty similar to their own (down to their own doppelgangers), they find that artistic choices aren’t always the same.

And with those minor differences, they recognize an opportunity to effectively plagiarise these alternate worlds for their developments in technology to increase their own stature in our world.

Opportunity becomes a chance at excess, and the movie begins to change. As these types of stories often do, the darker side of having this power begins to fracture the group to the point that they are no longer sure they can trust the others.

To say more would be to give away some of the middle and last acts twists and turns, but the thing about most movies about the parallel worlds (or tv shows for that matter) is that they normally go for the bigger changes to the timeline. It’s not enough to have a world that is virtually the same, minus some historical footnotes, those films would have us in a world were Rome never feel, or Germany won WWII, etc. This movie focuses more on the characters’ reactions to this newfound power. Really leaning into the whole “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” theme.

What makes this interesting is the idea of these nearly identical doppelgangers from the other realities. While our group uses their mirror to ensure their own successes, very little is given to those versions of themselves they are potentially screwing over by: committing crimes, spending their money, and even living out their own fantasies with others. It’s a movie where the mirror is merely a way to tell a story about how easy it is to lose your own identity. As the movie progresses towards its ending, the characters no longer resemble themselves from the start of the movie, making us ask the question of whether or not they’ve effectively become their own doppelganger.

It’s those character moments which will drive the movie once you strip some of the sci-fi aspects of things from the story. What happens when a group of friends discover something to make them rich? How long does it take for that money and power to drive a wedge between them? And at the end of the day, are they even the same people they were at the start. Parallel takes all of that and then adds that bit of science fiction to tell that story while showing us that the grass isn’t always greener.

***

One other thing, the poster at the top of this blog makes me think more along the lines of a spy vs. spy movie than something to do with parallel worlds. Just an odd thought.

***

I enjoyed the movie, but then again alternate worlds and living different lives is right in my wheelhouse. In fact, I wrote a book that is definitely in that same vein where a man has to figure out what his own personal reality actually is as he experiences worlds very close to our own, but not his original one.

It’s called The Echo Effect and you can get it here.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

An ordinary guy’s movie review of Blade Runner 2049

Disclaimer: This review contains no spoilers. It does contain minor plot elements and thematic discussions.

*

I’m fresh off a viewing of Blade Runner 2049.

And I’m buzzing.

Director Denis Villenueve’s latest film tackles the not-so-easy task of reviving one of the more classic cult films of the early 80’s – the original Blade Runner. And boy, does he do it in style. For those not familiar with the bleak, mega-dystopian feel of the first film, Blade Runner 2049 recaptures it…and it does so in grand fashion.

Ever present rain drips from a never-sunny sky.

No birds. No leaves. No softness.

Just hard angles, harder hearts, and possibly the most brooding atmosphere since…well…pretty much ever.

Blade Runner 2049 isn’t a remake, in case you wondered. It’s a sequel, occurring decades (in movie time and real time) after the events of the original. In it, ‘K’ (Ryan Gosling) gets down to the dirty business of hunting the last of the old model ‘replicants.’ Replicants are programmed humans – faster, smarter, and stronger than regular people – but also mostly enslaved to humanity’s will.

As you can imagine, things don’t go particularly well for K. Every time his boss (Robin Wright) rings him up on his next-gen cell phone, you know s**t is about to go down.

And it does.

‘Luv’ – played to perfection by Sylvia Hoeks. When you see her, run.

Now then, if you were to waltz into the theater expecting a bang-bang action flick, you might as well tuck tail and head right back out the door. B.R. 2049 isn’t really an action film. That’s not to say action doesn’t happen or that the fights aren’t razor sharp. It’s just that Blade Runner 2049 is a thinking film-lover’s movie. At its core, it’s about atmosphere, emotion, and tension. It’s about feeling like you’re actually walking through the stark, cold wasteland of Los Angeles 2049. It’s a look at what our world might someday become.

It’s exhilarating. And terrifying.

I felt it. I think you will, too.

Ok. So let’s go ahead eliminate one concern you might have. No, you don’t have to worry about Harrison Ford. Unlike in The Force Awakens, he doesn’t just show up as wallpaper guy rehashing a thirty-year old shtick. He’s as vivid as everything else in the movie. And yeah, he can still fight.

And speaking of vivid performances, I’m allowing myself a moment to gush about one of the movie’s most intriguing characters. Joi (K’s pseudo-lover, played by the absurdly beautiful Ana de Armas) just about won my heart over in every scene she appears in. Poor Joi’s just a hologram-girl meets Stepford wife, and she nails her performance. Hers might’ve been an easy role for movie-goers to brush off as window dressing, but in my mind, she gives us a glimpse at what the future of human relationships might look like.

Bleak. Yet fascinating.

And it doesn’t hurt that Ana de Armas is simply stunning to behold.

Blade Runner 2049 is a long movie. Let’s be honest. Some of the scenes take a good while to develop, and others take their sweet time in coming to a close. This will assuredly provoke boredom in some movie-goers. At times, I admit I found myself begging for the next scene to start. And yet…the longer the film went on, the longer I wanted it to be. The quiet moments aren’t boring; they’re allowing us – the audience – to think. To ponder. To wonder what’s next.

In this respect, Denis Villenueve does very well. Just like he did in Arrival, he doesn’t leap casually from scene to scene. There’s a thoughtfulness in his pacing uncommon to most modern film directors. Some won’t appreciate it. Others might suffer bouts of impatience. But as for me…I learned to love it.

I wanted time to think.

During a movie like this, I needed it.

Plenty of spaces like this appear in the movie. Big. Sparse. Sterile. Beautiful.

Let’s talk antagonists. The bad guy is played capably (if weirdly) by Jared Leto. He’s cool, for a blind dude. The bad girl, however, is one of the best parts of the film. Her name is Luv. And no, she doesn’t luv anything except kicking ass. Evil ass-kicking women with no remorse…well…that just floats my film-lovin’ boat. I think everyone will ‘luv’ Sylvia Hoeks’ performance.

Musically, the film score (by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch) sounds a ton like the score from Arrival. It pairs well with the atmosphere, though sometimes feels a little loud. I’m a Hans Zimmer nut, and I’ll admit this isn’t his best ever effort. It’s too derivative. Even so, it’s better than most.

In the end, Blade Runner 2049 creates one of the finest dystopian atmospheres you’ll ever see. It’s populated  with fascinating characters, most of whom continually surprise movie-goers. Even I, the king of know-it-alls, got hit with a few plot twists I didn’t see coming. In a world full of predictable movies, that’s a good thing.

Once again, B.R. 2049 is long. Maybe too long for some. Early on, things take a while to develop. And not everyone will buy into the ending. There’s questions left unanswered, to be certain.

But…

For the patient fan, for the fan who likes to wander into worlds far different than our own, and for those who wonder what humanity’s fate might someday be, this movie is for you.

Go see it twice. I know I will.

And someone please get me Ana de Armas’ phone number.

*

Read my other movie reviews here.

J Edward Neill

IT movie review

(Disclaimer: no major spoilers appear in this article. Minor thematic and a few vague plot details are discussed.)

*

I knew what I was getting myself into when I settled into my seat on a chilly Friday evening.

Twenty-seven years ago, on an eve not so different, I watched the original IT. Starring Tim Curry, it promised vast horror, and yet it only partly delivered. Tim Curry’s performance was of course flawless, but the disjointed flashbacks and clunky pacing didn’t deliver in the ways they could’ve.

After all, we’re talking about IT here.

Evil shape-changing Cthulu-esque clown invades small American city to devour children and consume oceans of human fear?

This kind of plot needs a better movie.

And perhaps IT 2017 is it.

As any good movie-goer knows, the key to setting a horror movie’s tone is to make us care about the characters. Anything less, and the most one can hope for is B-grade cheap scares and campy, gory death scenes. Fortunately, character-wise, IT 2017 delivers in a way most horror films just don’t. From the opening scene onward, we care about young (and stuttering) Bill (played by Jaeden Lieberher.) He’s vulnerable, yet strong in ways we can’t yet see. And so it goes for nearly all of the young, mostly unknown cast of ‘kids.’ Bev (Sophia Lillis) and Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) stand out in the gang of seven Losers. We meet the young gang in their early teens, and they behave exactly like teenagers. They’re funny, sarcastic, and not yet sure of themselves.

Just like we all were.

And not only are the kids believable, they’re nuanced. No cookie-cutter fears here, folks. Each young’un deals with terror in a different way…and each one has a separate reason for fearing death at the hands of Pennywise, the Dancing Clown. Best of luck to the adults who have to follow this young cast up in IT – Chapter Two (rumored to hit theaters in 2019.) These kids will be a tough act to follow.

Speaking of Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard) he’s as creepy as we can hope for. I won’t compare him to Tim Curry (not really a fair fight) but Skarsgard delivers a solid performance. Modern special effects help Pennywise go over-the-top in ways 1990’s IT couldn’t. He’s not the most subtle villain, but likely one of the most powerful…and diabolical ever to hit the big screen.

Side-note: being a movie-geek and a lover of HP Lovecraft, I recommend this wiki explaining the Cthulu-esque origins of Pennywise. (Hint – IT isn’t just a clown.) Beware of spoilers.

Who wants to float?

Now…let’s be honest. The adults in IT are afterthoughts. Bev’s father (Stephen Bogaert) is appropriately creepy, while young hypochondriac Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer) has a mom (Mollie Atkinson) who’s pretty much the most overbearing helicopter parent ever. And then there’s bully Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) whose dad (Stuart Hughes) shows up just long enough to make us hate him. But that’s it in terms of adult, non-Pennywise roles.

And that’s just fine.

This movie isn’t about the adults, but instead the impacts they’ve had on their children.

Now then…

It’s safe to say that an hour in, I cared plenty about all seven kids, but wanted more monster. IT runs pretty long (more than two hours) and I’ll admit at times I craved a slightly faster pace. But that’s just the thing. To really build anticipation, and to avoid some pretty common horror tropes, IT needed space to breathe. Meaning, if you’re looking for an in-and-out gorefest or a quick slasher horror flick, this isn’t your film. The expectation here is that movie-goers will be patient. After all, this film is just part one of two. It’s basically the Lord of the Rings of horror flicks.

IT is what Dark Tower was supposed to be, but failed to live up to.

Other notes:

The special effects? They’re good, but not obnoxious.

The music? Subtle, but not intrusive.

Jump scares? Only a handful, thanks to director Andy Muschietti. If you’re looking to be completely terrified, this isn’t necessarily the movie for you.

Adherence to Stephen King’s novel? Well….not exactly. I didn’t mind the deviations. Although, to really appreciate the bottomless depth of IT’s evil, one really needs to read the book (or at least hope the second movie dives headlong into the monster’s true nature.)

Ultimately, IT is a solid film. It’s not just a horror flick, but a character piece and reflective of several of humanity’s real-life fears. It’s sometimes slow, sometimes perfectly-paced, but mostly very good.

For me (and for most of you, I’m betting) the measures of a good film are:

A. Would I see IT again? The answer is yes…pun intended.

B. Am I itching to see the sequel? Yes. IT can’t come out fast enough. Pun intended again.

In other words, go see IT.

*

For my other movie reviews, go here.

To get into something just as scary (but not nearly as long) go here.

J Edward Neill

Rogue One – A non-fanboy Movie Review

* Disclaimer: This review is spoiler-lite. No plot specifics, deaths, easter eggs, or other direct moments from the movie will appear. However, themes and atmosphere will be discussed.

* * *

Before we begin, I have a confession. I want to let you know I’m going to deliver a particularly unbiased, un-fanboyish review…because I can. You see, I’ve never been a big Star Wars guy. While the first movie intrigued me and The Empire Strikes Back fascinated me, the rest of the movies (except mayyyyybe the final Darth Maul fight in Phantom Menace) bored me to tears. It’s for this reason I feel I’m able to give an extra-fair review. Because while some went into the theater with high or low expectations, I was in the unique situation of going in with neutral expectations. Rogue One is just one more movie to me, not another in a canonical series.

And so it began. On a frigid December night, I wandered alone into a packed theater. Modest cheers erupted when the opening credits rolled, and then everyone fell into reverent silence.

…as is to be expected at a new Star Wars film.

Mads Mikkelsen, the excellent actor of Casino Royale fame, opens up the action as Galen Erso, a character I’d never heard of. There’s a certain stillness to his opening scenes, and right from the start it became apparent this wasn’t like the other Star Wars films. The music cues were slightly familiar, but also somewhat new (and almost jarring.) The conversations were less stiff, and the atmosphere more mature. After all these years of watching (and reading…and discussing) Star Wars, one of my complaints has always been that the Empire felt rather unimposing. The stormtroopers couldn’t hit anything, the bad guys overacted, and my dread was never really inspired.

But in Rogue One, I finally found the fear I’ve been looking for.

The Empire doesn’t pull any punches. The stormtroopers’ aim is 1,000% improved. The rebels find a few foes (other than Vader) worth being terrified of.

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These guys especially…

Early on, we’re introduced to Jyn Erso (played very capably by Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (played just as well by Diego Luna.) These aren’t the Lukes, Hans, and C3PO’s of the early, almost goofball Star Wars realm. These characters are deeper. They give us a taste of the true suffering endured under the Emperor’s Imperial reign. Their dialogue is a cut above the other Star Wars’ films, and while each scene pays loving homage to George Lucas’s vision, there’s no plagiarism here. There’s no ‘we’ve got to fit this cornball one-liner’ in. Sure, we see several familiar faces, but only one scene (I won’t even mention it) felt forced on the audience.

After the early scenes, the action starts moving fast. Things jump from planet to planet. You’ve got to be sharp to keep up with it.

We’re treated to an excellent performance of the reviled Grand Moff Tarkin (played superbly by Guy Henry.) His is a standout role, and deliciously evil. While the main antagonist is somewhat obnoxious, Tarkin is better.

We get a taste of some truly vicious space battles. No cornball Hayden Chistensen & Ewan McGregor banter while slaughtering TIE fighters. Just dudes and chicks fighting to the death with some awesome space hardware.

And we finally get a sidekick (he’s a droid) who’s actually funny. He helps us forget Jar-Jar Binks ever existed. Thanks especially for that, Gareth Edwards (the director.)

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Our nemesis. He whines a bit, but works a solid amount of evil.

Now let’s talk atmosphere. Whereas previous Star Wars (and action films in general) force action scenes that tend to be juuuuust a bit too long, Rogue One gets it right. In the quiet spaces between the action, we get a little more than just a dusty desert scene or bars filled with aliens. There’s rain, beaches, canyons, and beauty. The music gets even better as the movie progresses, and in the latter half, the familiar John Williams score fires up in earnest. More importantly, we get to see the Death Star like never before. No more garbage chutes and incompetent stormtroopers here, ladies and gents. When the D Star rolls over the horizon, the effect is more powerful than all its previous viewings.

So let’s summarize. Does Rogue One have a good plot? Yes, it’s solid. Are the villains the most terrifying (and talented) we’ve seen in a Star Wars’ film? Yes, without a doubt. Do we get to glimpse our favorite historical characters without them being an obnoxious throw-in? Definitely. And is the ending good? Yes….the best I’ve ever seen out of Star Wars. I’ll be a little cryptic so as not to spoil it, but let’s just say fairy-tale endings are dull, and I wish more films had the guts to end like Rogue One.

So…did I love it? Maybe. I’m not sure yet. I will admit it had a few ‘oh come on…that’s unrealistic’ moments. And of course it has the typical Star Wars non-science science.

But…

I really, really liked it. And I will go see it again.

And I haven’t been able to say that about a Star Wars movie since a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

If this it what Star Wars will bring the table in the future, count me in.

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Read more of my movie reviews here.

And get into some seriously deep sci-fi action right here.

J Edward Neill

Arrival movie review

* Disclaimer – this review is largely spoiler free. A few small plot points and themes are revealed.

*

On a cold night in early December, I saw Arrival in a nearly empty theater. Now, the theater being almost vacant isn’t a commentary on Arrival’s quality. The hour was late, the weather was frigid, and everyone (besides me) was probably huddled inside their homes, still stuffed with Thanksgiving leftovers.

I’ll confess; the only reasons I went to see this movie is that I’m writing a sci-fi novel and I’m hungry for inspiration…and I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that the movie was right up my alley.

I’ll start by saying this: it didn’t disappoint.

From the first moment Amy Adams (as Louise, an expert linguist) appears, it’ s obvious Arrival is a character piece. The title suggests maybe an Independence Day-ish alien invasion or a Bodysnatchers-esque creep-fest. Nope. While the opening scenes share a sense of “what are these huge ships doing in our sky?” dread, every moment thereafter is unique to Arrival.

Mostly.

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What’s the heck is that?? …I’m not telling.

Turns out, Arrival is a thinking-person’s movie. Maybe a splash of Jodie Foster’s Contact mixed with a tiny dash of Interstellar, but with even less action. Let me repeat that: Arrival has almost no action scenes. That’s not to say nothing’s happening, but if you walk in expecting cities full of people to die and xenomorphs strutting around with murder on the mind, this movie probably isn’t for you. Like I said, I went in purely to do a little sci-fi research, and I got exactly what I expected. A mind game. A voyage of intellect and emotion, not of violence.

Amy Adams’ Louise is the key to the movie. And when I say she’s the key, I mean she’s the only character of substance. Sure, you’ve got competent performances by Forest Whitaker and Jeremy Renner, but Arrival is one of those films in which you get to know one person and one person only. Louise is a linguist, and her job is to find a way to communicate with some pretty cool looking extraterrestrials. Her conversations with humans are short and to the point. It’s really all about what’s going on between her and the aliens, and what’s happening in her head.

Which, as it happens, is a lot.

In pretty much every aliens-on-Earth movie ever made, the real question is: Why are they here? And in pretty much every aliens-on-Earth movie not named Arrival, movie-goers know within 45 minutes whether they’re going to be killed (Independence Day) hunted (Predator) or hugged (E.T.) But Arrival makes a point of stretching the question of why until the very end. In fact, having only seen it once (so far) I’m not entirely sure director Denis Villeneuve ever actually reveals the aliens’ true intent. Which is fine if you can appreciate subtlety, but perhaps less than ideal if you prefer nice, tidy endings.

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But…does it have guns?

I will say this: if Arrival’s intent was to show the meaning of hope and the power of human perseverance, both messages ultimately faded for me. And that’s not meant as a criticism, but more a commentary on the strange turn of events near the film’s end. If you’ve seen the excellent sci-fi flick, Ex Machina, maybe you’ll understand my meaning. Things get a little dark and morally murky at Arrival’s terminus. It’s something I personally enjoyed, but not something all movie-goers will appreciate. Or even notice.

So what you’ve got is a movie that moves at a measured pace, a movie that’s sprinkled with small reveals, and a movie whose ending might leave some scratching their heads…and others a little perplexed. The themes go way beyond meeting aliens. Some moviegoers might think it’s too slow, and that’s not a point I can really contest. It is slow at times. And that’s just fine with me.

Final verdict: I didn’t love Arrival, but I really liked it. And for my part, the science behind the aliens’ reason for coming to Earth and the weird/dark situation Amy Adams grapples with at the end made it a worthwhile film. If you like thinking movies, go see it. If not, download Edge of Tomorrow to squeeze in your action fix.

It’s worth mentioning the Jóhann Jóhannsson music score (mostly strings and piano) is haunting and excellent. I’ll be adding it to my soundtrack collection.

Oh, and it’s also worth mentioning (again) the aliens in Arrival are pretty awesome. I’d take them in a fight against pretty much any other movie xenomorph…ever.

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* * *

My other movie reviews are here.

And for a book I want to make a movie out of, go here.

J Edward Neill

The Revenant Movie Review

(Disclaimer: No major spoilers. Includes small plot revelations.)

 

Revenant: One who returns after death or a long absence

An apt name indeed.

The Revenant was a movie I knew I had to see from the first time I glimpsed its preview. A frozen wasteland. A grizzly Leo DiCaprio. An even grizzlier Tom F’n Hardy. And not to mention an actual grizzly bear. Terrible things were about to happen. Even watching the trailer, I could just feel it.

First, let me hit you with some truth. The Revenant is NOT for everyone. It’s not for kids. It’s not for teenagers. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s not for fans of Michael Bay, Kevin Hart, superhero movies, or happy endings. It’s dark. And when I say dark, I don’t mean in a visual sense. Or a gothic, ‘look how angst-ridden the hero is’ sense. What I mean is that the subject matter gets down to the very bottom of what it is to be desperate. And human. And hungry.

The Revenant may very well be the darkest movie I’ve ever seen.

And the longer I lie here and dwell on it, the more I like it.

What we’ve got here is Leo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass, an enigmatic tracker/hunter in the service of Captain Andrew Henry (Played sharply by Domhnall Gleeson.) Also in their group are the brutal John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and the young Hawk, who happens to be half-Native American (and Hugh Glass’s son.) These men find themselves on an expedition to collect and prepare hundreds of animal skins for sale, presumably to the American army.

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John Fitzgerald – Not a dude you want to F with

Without giving anything away, the whole sell-animal-skins plan goes downhill…and fast. The Native American Arikara, hostile with every right to be, get involved. A grizzly bear shows up. Tom Hardy is pissed. And death starts happening.

Let me summarize the next two and a half hours: Beautiful Violence

Because The Revenant is violent. So very violent. It’s not stylized. It’s not pretty. It’s not epic. It’s harsh. And it’s realistic. By realistic I mean it’s so visceral and unwashed that it feels like this is how real life was. It’s the opposite of The Matrix’s pretty skirmishes, Lord of the Rings’ bloodless warfare, and even Saving Private Ryan’s booming, catastrophic clashes. If I had to pick a movie to step through a door and experience in real-life, The Revenant would be last on the list. I’d be dead in seconds. And so would you.

But it’s also beautiful. So very beautiful. I fully expect this movie to take home the easiest Oscar for best cinematography ever. Not that awards matter. They don’t. What I mean is; every frame of The Revenant is poetry in motion. From the cold, sharp, deadly mountains to the frosted rivers to the snow-blanketed plains, the landscapes are stunning. I sat in my seat and felt the wind blowing over me. I saw the characters wandering beneath moonlit skies, and I was held rapt. The shots were all real. Very little CGI. The Revenant’s terrifying world is the truth. These places exist.

So what’s the point? What are these hard, hard men doing out in the middle in winter? It’s clear from frame one that some brave and foolish white men are moving through the wilderness during the last stages of the war against the Native American tribes of the American Northwest. They’re risking their asses, and they know it. But in the midst of this, Hugh Glass appears different. His son is half-Native American. He endures constant flashbacks (some of them a bit disconcerting) of his Native American wife and of the terrible things that happened to her tribe. His son, Hawk, is as noble as he is, and therein lies a problem. Fifteen minutes in, you know things are gonna go very wrong for Glass. And you know why. And how. It’s not just about racism. It’s about how some people know what honor is, and everyone else does not.

Kinda sounds like modern-day reality, right?

I suppose some people might say that the majority of the movie is a revenge/redemption trip similar to Braveheart. Or maybe a survival tale a la The Grey. I get it. And there are definitely moments in the movie that will confuse some folks. There’s not a ton of dialog. There are no one-liners. All the movie’s glory is given over to nature, not to man. Once it comes down to one dude slogging his way through the brutal wilderness, there is a slowness that will drive some movie-goers away. That’s all well and good.

But if you love movies, and you have a soul, and you’re willing to stop worrying about just simply being entertained, you’ll find something in The Revenant. It’s not just about white people fighting natives. The bad guys don’t wear capes to make themselves easy to hate. Every deed that happens here feels like it really could go down. It’s all so bloody human. When you finish watching it, sit down and ask yourself if you’d never do the things the bad guys do in this movie. If you’re honest with yourself, really honest, you’ll be conflicted.

And that’s beautiful. Because the best movies should make you think.

Look…I’m not sure whether or not The Revenant is my favorite flick over the last year. It had a few strange moments, to be sure. And sometimes it walked a tightrope of not knowing whether to be hard and cold or a little abstract in meaning. But ultimately, if you like movies about realistic human conflict, this is up there with the best of them. I recommend you go see it early in the day. Preferably on a cold, rainy day. And then, after it’s over, maybe even several hours later, I think you’ll start to like it more and more.

Just like I did.

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Like this review? Hit up my reviews of Mad Max – Fury Road, Whiplash, and my personal favorite, Ex Machina.

Or, since we’re talking about seriously dark fiction, drown in my short story, Let the Bodies.

J Edward Neill

Whiplash Movie Review

JK2Disclaimer: This review is largely spoiler-free

A few weeks ago I reviewed George Miller’s screamingly loud and bone-crushingly good Mad Max – Fury Road.

This week’s movie, Whiplash, breaks only a few bones, but is almost as loud, and is definitely as good.

I’ll start with an admission: I’m late to the party. Very late. 2014’s Whiplash, directed by Damien Chazelle, has already earned three Oscar wins and numerous other accolades. That said, it’s my opinion that not enough people have been exposed to it. So if this review convinces even one person to check Whiplash out, I’ll claim success.

So…

Like Jazz music much? Maybe? Maybe not so much? It’s ok. While planted on my couch during a 1AM Redbox DVD screening of Whiplash, my first worries were: ‘This is a jazz movie. What was I thinking?? I should’ve picked something else. Or maybe just watched some porn.” And yet, two minutes in, any fears of drowning in discordant jazz and wonky music vanished. Into. Thin. Air.

Early on, we see a different J.K. Simmons than we’re used to. Gone is the friendly guy from the Farmers Insurance commercials. Gone is the affable, calm dude from J.K.’s previous films. Instead we get a badass. And I’m serious. As Fletcher, the leanest, meanest jazz instructor ever, J.K. is shredded. He’s an all-black-wearing, door-slamming, fist-shaking maniac. He’s a force of f’ing nature.

And it’s apparent he’s made it his mission in life to mold Andrew (played to perfection by young and talented Miles Teller) into the planet’s best drummer…or kill him in the process.

JK3

“Faster!”

As an interesting aside, it should be noted that Miles Teller played ALL his drum pieces. He had a head start, being born of a musical family, but even so. His dedication to learning some of Whiplash’s more extreme rhythms is admirable, and adds tons to the movie’s realism.

So what’s it really about?

Whiplash is primarily a struggle between two men. Fletcher’s win-at-all-costs mentality are at permanent odds with AndrewFletcher wants perfection, nothing less, from his musicians. And perhaps no instrument requires perfection more than drums. Andrew’s willing to bleed to become the best, but still manages to be overwhelmed by Fletcher’s never-ending stream of F bombs and insults. As the movie drums on, literally, the questions become: “Is greatness only achievable under enormous pressure?” and “Is there a such thing as going too far to win?” I know what MY answer is. If you watch or have already watched Whiplash, I want to know YOURS. Because therein lies Whiplash’s soul. It’s Pain versus Reward. Sacrifice versus Greatness. Living a full life versus Having a Singular Dedication. The movie puts us in the proxy position of asking how far we’d go to be the best at something.

Would you bleed? Would you suffer? Would you give up every comfort? Most of us wouldn’t. But perhaps Andrew might.

The supporting cast is small, but more than capable. Veteran Paul Reiser plays Andrew’s concerned but ultimately powerless father. Beautiful Melissa Benoist charms as Andrew’s unfortunate love interest, Nicole. Austin Stowell and Nate Lang are formidable rivals in the studio for Andrew to wage war against. They’re all very good, but reduced to mere pawns in the Fletcher v Andrew struggle. And that’s ok. This isn’t their film. It’s J.K.’s and Miles’.

As another aside, if you like drums of any kind, you’ll love Whiplash’s talent, if nothing else. The speed and excellence demanded in the film transcend genres. It’s obvious this isn’t a movie about jazz at all. It’s about power, skill, and using means to justify the ends. But even if you don’t care about all of that, the drums…are…epic.

Let’s be clear. I Redboxed Whiplash on a hunch. I’d never heard of it prior to plugging it into my DVD player, and I’d no idea what to expect.

…which made it all the better when it turned out to be fucking awesome.

Rent it. Watch it. In the dark. Preferably alone.

And when you’re done, check out my latest philosophy title here.

Love,

J Edward Neill

Mad Max – Fury Road Movie Review

ImmortanJoeDisclaimer: This review is mostly spoiler-free.

Last week I reviewed understated sci-fi marvel Ex Machina. This week I saw another sci-fi movie, Mad Max, Fury Road.

It’s a sci-fi movie. Sort of.

And George Miller’s battle-tastic epic is the opposite of Ex Machina in almost every way.

It’s likely the original Mel Gibson Mad Max was among the pioneers for how we treat post-apocalyptic stories in the modern age. Earth population: drastically reduced. Nuclear fallout: yes. Crazy people fighting for survival in a crazy world: check.

Fury Road honors that tradition…and jacks up the awesome by 400%.

So you say you like action films? And that you don’t have much patience for movies slowing down in the middle? And that you crave movies which pull zero punches? Yeah? Yeah. Fury Road is for you.

Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky, blood-bag to a cult of fallout-diseased but utterly badass oil and water hoarders, really gets the shaft. I mean really. Every situation he’s in is bad. I mean, not that there’s much good in living in a irradiated desert wasteland dominated by spiky-car driving warlords, but Max might have it worst than most. He’s a universal blood donor, meaning he’s viewed as nothing more than a fuel-sack for the baddies, who suck his veins nearly dry just to extend their short, violent lives. Good luck, Max. Good luck.

Even when Max meets a truckload of the most beautiful women left on Earth, he still gets no play. Sucks for him.

Enter Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, badass among all badasses. While her motivations aren’t really known until the end, her willingness to crunch bones is evident from the beginning. I suppose if I were driving a truck brimming with such hotties as CapableThe Dag, and Toast the Knowing, I’d have a completely different goal in mind. Luckily Furiosa is all business, all woman, all tough, all the time. And I confess, while the stunts she pulls are over-the-top, it’s all entirely believable. Fury Road wears no kid gloves. When people die, good or bad, it’s visceral. Just the way it should be. I’ve heard complaints that this is more Furiosa’s film than Max’s. Bullshit. It’s everyone’s movie. There is no one superstar. Everyone does awesome shit. No one’s left behind.

Now let’s talk about the bad guys. Hugh Keays-Byrne plays the skull mask-wearing, willing-to-do-anything-to-get-his-beautiful-concubines-back Immortan Joe. In a way I can’t blame Joe. He’s got water. He’s got a loyal-to-the-death cult. He’s got several stunning concubines. And he’s got a monster truck with a freakin’ cannon on the top. If someone stole your hotties, you’d probably go bat-shit crazy, too. And if you had a skull mask, you’d probably wear it.

Don’t forget Nicolas Hoult’s Nux. This guy is proof that matter how much white body paint you wear, how many times you spray your mouth with silver paint in preparation for the afterlife, you can still find redemption. And honestly, it’s in Nux we find the movie’s true soul. It’s there. I promise. You might have to squint to see between all the carnage, but you’ll see it, and when you do, you’ll love it.

Max

Max ridin’ shotgun on the hood of Nux’s battle wagon.

Where Mad Max, Fury Road really scores its win is in its pace, its ruthlessness, and its sense of purpose. It’s relentless. It’s the loudest movie I’ve ever seen, so loud that even if you’ve got jerks in your theater talking or whatever, you will not hear them. You’ll tune them out…easily. Junkie XL’s superb soundtrack backs the sometimes absurd, always entertaining feast of destruction. I’m listening to it right now, and it’s boomtastic. And when Fury Road does manage to ease up on the gas pedal, the moments between the world’s most epic chase manage to be meaningful, tense, and believable. You may find that hard to swallow. You may think, “Action movie = no plot worth caring about.”

You’d be wrong.

There’s both glory and substance here.

But even if you don’t care about that stuff, you’ll get all you asked for and more in what’s sure to be the best action movie of the year.

Go now. Drive fast. Put explosives on your hood and spikes on your fenders.

J Edward Neill

If you like violent, epic stuff, check out my Tyrants of the Dead series here.

Ex Machina Movie Review

Ex-machina-uk-posterDisclaimer: This is a mostly spoiler-free review

In the modern realm of wide-release films, it’s rare to see science-fiction movies that are:

A. Unabashedly intellectual

and

B. Not reliant on hyper-violent technological advances

Ex Machina is both of these.

I saw this movie in a cozy, nearly empty theater.  I felt torn about the empty part, because I worried it might mean not enough people were interested in the kind of movie I’d like to see a whole lot more of. Apparently that’s not the case, since to date it’s netted a cool $18.7M. That’s good news. Great news, actually. Meanwhile, the experience was almost ruined by a few stereotypical loud-ass movie talkers. But the offending parties managed to shut up long enough for the rest of us to focus.

Thank goodness for that.

At first, Ex Machina comes off as boy-meets-girl completely flipped on its head. Caleb (played to nerd-fection by Domhnall Gleeson) is an apparent coding whiz for a huge computer search engine company. When he’s selected to travel to a mysterious, almost CIA-like black box facility, he does so with glee. And who wouldn’t? For an opportunity to meet Ava, the world’s most advanced android, most of us would leap in headfirst. And the setting in Ex Machina is so realistic, one begins to believe something like this can…and will…happen someday soon. Go Caleb. Get some.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger was the perfect person to play the original Terminator, Alicia Vikander (who plays the aforementioned android) is perfect-er. She’s eerie. She’s beautiful. And she nails every little tic you’d expect from a woman-robot. It’s clear from the beginning who owns the dialogue between Ava and Caleb. And it ain’t Caleb. I have to believe Lady Vikander will score big based on her performance here. She echoes the strength of Game of Thrones’ super-heroine (Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen) and frosts it with the sort of intelligence you’d like to see Hollywood give more of its female roles.

Very quickly, the boy-meets-girl vibe melts away.

For those who aren’t aware of what the Turing Test is, I recommend you study the concept. It’s the frontline premise of Ex Machina, and quite possibly (in part due to this year’s epic The Imitation Game) a new piece of vernacular everyone will soon become familiar with. Essentially, the Turing Test is the methodology for determining whether or not an A.I. can behave human enough to trick us into no longer knowing it’s a computer. If the computer fools the human, it passes.

Turns out the one inviting Caleb to perform the world’s most important Turing Test (on Ava) is the buff yet emotionally FUBAR Nathan (played to frat-brother genius levels by Oscar Isaac.) Nathan is like a chessmaster working both sides of the board. He’s got tech game like no one’s business, and a penchant for working off his hangovers by pumping iron and intimidating the slim, non-alpha Caleb. Nathan’s motivation is the question of the hour. It’s clear he wants more than just a Turing Test. And it’s obvious he gets his rocks off by head-fucking people. But the lines between antagonist and protagonist are blurred, just as they should be.

Where Ex Machina really succeeds is in its pace, its dialogue, and its atmosphere. Caleb’s encounters with Ava are blocked off into seven sessions, each of them growing in intensity. Conversations between Caleb and Ava have a permanent shadow lying overhead, a subtle reminder that she’s smarter, quicker in her learning curve, and possibly deadlier. And the hyper-realistic, we-could-picture-these-moments-actually-happening, verbal sparring between Caleb and Nathan leave one needing to know what comes next. Even once our suspicions of dread become tense enough to snap.

Not to be underestimated is the melodic yet somewhat dark soundtrack. Composers Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow blend their music so well into the film I knew halfway through I needed to buy it and play it…over and over again. Which I did end up doing.

untitledAnd then there’s the end sequence. It’ll be hard to watch without wanting to see it again and then immediately becoming a part of the growing online discussion. I’ve read many takes on the path of evolution Ava takes. Some speak of sweetness, others of liberation, but I saw something darker. Watch it twice, I say. And tell me you don’t sense one possibility for how the world might end.

 

So if you crave MORE than robots with laser guns, spaceships doing things that are impossible in space, and over-the-top future battles, go see Ex Machina.  It’s a solid A, and the best sci-fi movie to hit theaters in a long, long time. And if I have a special love for it, it’s also because the director, Alex Garland, is also an author and screenwriter. Would that I were so talented.

From time to time, I’ll review more movies.

Sorry ’bout that.

Get into my coffee table philosophy series here.

J Edward Neill

 

Secret Level Part 1 Review

I was intrigued by the premise of Secret Level from the very first trailer they ran. Telling stories where they use the video games as inspiration feels like a great concept overall. While I certainly have played my fair share of video games over the years, I was also hoping this would give me some insight into games that others loved but had slipped by me. Each episode runs between 8 and 20 minutes and runs the gambit of games that have been around forever to ones that are only a couple of years old.

***

Episode 1 – Dungeons and Dragons: The Queen’s Cradle

An attack against the Cult of the Dragon ends up becoming a rescue mission instead. The lead character, Solon, was scheduled to be sacrificed by the cult, but even after he’s been freed there are still voices in his head which torment him. It’s up to our adventuring group to get him somewhere safe and to someone who might be able to help him end his curse. While seemingly a somewhat straightforward adventure at the start, things grow more and more complex for our adventurers as the truth about Solon’s curse becomes apparent in the climax.

As an avid D&D player for over 35 years at this point, this was a perfect game to start the season. I dug how we could tell exactly what everyone’s class was (even if I’m not always a fan of being so overt about things). I wasn’t sure where the story was going, but I was pleasantly surprised by the ending.

Episode 2 – Sifu: It Take’s a Life

Being completely unfamilar with this game (a common theme with these episodes), it immediately grabbed me when the main character died, resurrected, and continued the fight. It reminded me of Edge of Tomorrow (which is a Groundhog Day style movie using video games as inspiration) with a unique take on things. Every time the protagonist dies they are resurrected but are older. From a video game point of view, it sounds like it creates a nice push/pull where you get more abilities with each death, but you also get less health.

(I could actually see a story about “gaming” the system as best you can. Some kind of pact where two characters keep killing each other to ensure they are complete badasses without taking the lesser health aspect into true consideration).

The actual story is fairly thin, with most of it following a video game logic of beating up on the mooks, running against larger gangs, before finally encountering the level-ending (game-ending?) boss. Still, I enjoyed the concept overall (I’m definitely a sucker for these types of stories).

Episode 3 – New World: The Once and Future King

Another game I didn’t know. After a conquering King crashes on the island of Aeternum, he finds that everyone there is immortal. This does very little to curb his conquering sensibilities such that the majority of the episode is mostly played as comedy with his constant deaths never seem to dissuade him from his true path.

While I figured out where we were going fairly quickly, the story was well done and the ending felt earned.

Episode 4 – Unreal Tournament: Xan

While I’ve never played Unreal, I am certainly familiar enough with the idea of death match first person shooters. What worked well about this episode was we got a lot of information, both directly and indirectly, about the overall story and world. Which is a great idea since, at their core, most first person shooters feel very similar, just with the setting being changed. Focusing on a mining robot who manages to gain sentience also manages to give effectively “faceless” cannon fodder a transformation into someone/something we can root for. This is reflected within the story itself where the crowd echoes the viewer at home.

A successful story that showed there was more to the story.

Episode Five – Warhammer 40,000: And They Shall Know Fear

Of the first batch of episodes, Warhammer 40,000 has the worst story. It literally is little more than a group of Space Marines fighting and killing everything in their path until the reach the big bad and fight it too. However, it is also the one I would say to never skip, because it features some of the best animation of any of the episodes. There is a sequence where the Marines are in the dark and are fighting against creatures whose very blood is bioluminescent which creates some amazing visuals for the animators to play with.

100% check this one out.

***

I’ll end it there. They released the last 7 episodes yesterday, so I need to block out some more time to watch them (and I still have 3 from the first batch to talk about as well).

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Black Mirror: Season 6 Review

My previous reviews can be found here: Seasons 1&2 and 3, 4, and 5.

As I wrote last time, “For those not in the know, Black Mirror is an anthology show. Each episode stands alone to tell a story about how our technology or something perhaps not too far from our grasp affects people.”

After a long wait, we managed to get a 5 episode season this year. And while it has its ups and downs in terms of the actual episode stories, what was more surprising was that these mostly looked backwards as opposed to where technology might lead us, this instead tried to show us where older technology might fit into our lives (and potentially make it a better or worse experience).

***

Ep 1 – Joan is Awful

This episode is probably my second favorite of the season if only for how unique the initial premise is. A woman named Joan suddenly finds her life broadcast on the Streamberry App. It is cleverly done by cutting back and forth between our Joan and the TV version of Joan (played by Salma Hayek).

Initially Joan tries to find a way out of it, but that goes nowhere since apparently those “Check the box to say you’ve read the Terms and Conditions” are really well written to the point that they can just use your likeness for anything. She then decides to try and be as over the top as possible to maybe get the show off the air (it is disgusting what Joan does). But at every turn she finds more and more obstacles.

Seeing as how AI artwork and imagery is currently a big deal in Hollywood as well as for any artist trying to ensure their works isn’t stolen… this episode feels exceptionally timely. The best Black Mirror episodes are the ones where the leap in how technology is being used/portrayed doesn’t feel all that strange. This one has that in spades.

Ep 2 – Loch Henry

Sadly, this is my least favorite of the season, and not because it does anything particularly wrong. The basic set-up is that Davis and Pia are a pair of film students who come back to Davis’s home town and decide to investigate a serial killer who not only did his crimes there, but was indirectly/directly responsible for Davis’s father’s death. During the investigation which follows, they begin to learn more and more about what really happened all those years earlier.

It is very straightforward to the point that the reveal near the end didn’t feel like a reveal at all. Instead, it was more of a thing that really was the only way the story could have gone (considering the various hints the episode drops throughout). And maybe that’s why it’s my least favorite. It weirdly didn’t feel like it was taking any chances with the plot.

 

Ep 3 – Beyond the Sea

1969. A pair of astronauts, David (Josh Hartnett) and Cliff (Aaron Paul) are in Deep Space on a mission for six years. Luckily, they have technology which allows them to still be in robotic replicas back on Earth. However, when David’s replica is destroyed and his family is killed, he begins to spiral into a severe depression. So Cliff offers him the ability to use his replicant. What follows is some of the best acting you’ll see as Aaron Paul is effectively playing 2 different characters. And considering that there is only 4 main characters in the episode (with Kate Mara playing Cliff’s wife and their son being the last), this one feels like it belongs on a stage more than it does on the screen.

While I’m not sure I like the overall ending, it was definitely one which forced me to really think and feel what each of the characters were thinking and doing in each moment.

 

Ep 4 – Mazey Day

Set in 2006, this follows a paparazzi named Bo who is on the hunt for a picture of one of the larger acting stars who during the filming of her lastest movie did too many drugs, got behind the wheel of a car, and killed someone. And ever since, her life has spiraled completely out of control.

I appreciated the idea of the camera being the real focus point for the technology. With the mobile phones we carry around in our pockets, you can forget that it wasn’t all that long ago you had to carry an entirely seperate device to take pictures of any real use.

This episode is fine. I don’t mean to damn it with faint praise, but had it not been for the final act twist, I’m not sure what I would have thought about it (or would I have really given it any further thought). Instead the twist puts evertything into a different light and changes the story being told from one genre to another (and yes, I’m trying to be as vague as possible here).

EP 5 – Demon 79

The last entry this season was Demon 79 and I have to say this was my favorite episode of the year. Though, I’m not entirely sure how or why the technology aspect really plays during this episode, I didn’t care.

Set in 1979, the story focuses on Nida, who deals with some manner of both racism and sexism in her day to day life. We see flashes of moments where she shows us what she’d like to do to her coworkers (driving their head through the glass display), we understand this is the fantasy she allows herself. But when she stumbles upon a relic which summons a demon to her side, her world twists into something completely foreign.

You see, the demon informs her that she must kill one person a night for the next 3 nights or the world will end.

It was in this moment, I suddenly had 3 versions of what might play out:

1 – Everything with the Demon is simply another hallucination from her fantasy mind. Something she’s built in order to regain some level of control. There is no Demon and now she is truly wrestling with her own concious.

2 – Everything is real except for the Demon’s story about needing to kill people. Instead, he is trying to prey upon Nida in order to corrupt her and gain his (bat?) wings.

3 – Everything is real, including the End of the World clause, and that means Nida is going to have to kill.

The episode does a great job of straddling those three ideas for a lot longer than you might think before finally revealing the true nature of everything. I was extremely engaged while watching this one, and it may be in my top 5 episodes of the show

***

The only bummer now is that it might be 3 years or so before we get more episodes.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Best Marvel Movie Moments – Phase 1

After watching Guardians 3 a couple of weeks ago (I’m only a little behind the times), it got me to thinking more about the Marvel Cinematic Universe again… and more specifically those moments within the movies where I will rewatch the scenes over and over because they are so good.

Phase 1

I Am Iron Man – Iron Man 1

We can start with the biggest moment within all the movies, which is Tony Stark admitting that he’s the one in the suit. Supposedily this line was ad-libbed as the writers had planned to go with the Body Guard story. What’s interesting about this is that for so much of Iron Man’s career, that was the cover story within the comics. Iron Man was simply a hired body guard… who also happened to be in the Avengers…

Which never made a ton of sense other than the “it’s a comic book, what do you want?”

So many heroes over the years have this secret ID to protect their loved ones, but with Stark it felt a little more odd since he could legitimately protect those people with the weaponry and technology he invented.

With that one moment though, the movies told us that this was going to be a little bit of a different take on the character… and what is even more amusing, I feel like the comic version has pretty much adopted a form of the Robert Downey Jr. version.

Art imitating Art?

Cap jumps on the grenade – Captain America – The First Avenger

What’s the best way to show the deep down parts of someone? What happens when you put someone in a life or death situation. With one moment, we can see who Steve Rogers is. We can see why he is deserving of the power he eventually possesses. And we can see that he is someone to inspire others around him because he’s willing to make the sacrifice if that’s what is needed.

Avengers Assemble

Black Widow Interrogation – Avengers

Black Widow has a ton of great moments in the film, but the key one is the very first one. We find Natasha being interrogated by Russian Mob. And the old thoughts from a thousand movies begin to work their way into our brain: how is she ever going to get out of this mess?

Instead, we see very quickly she was always in control. Much like with Captain America in the grenade scene, this one tells us so much about the character, why she is so trusted by Nick Fury and SHIELD, and that her connection with Hawkeye is extremely important (and personal).

Punny God – Avengers

The Hulk slamming Loki against the floor over and over again.

What more do you need?

The funny thing about the actual line “Puny god” was that I didn’t hear it on my viewing in the theater. Nothing could be heard over the laughter and cheering. It was only after I sat down to rewatch the movie at home and got to experience the full scene. Which made it go from good to great.

The Team is Assembled – Avengers

This is not only the culmination of Phase 1 with all the characters striking their hero poses and truly becoming Earth’s Mightest Heroes. However, for me it was something I wouldn’t have ever dreamed would have worked. It shouldn’t have. Putting those characters on the screen and having it make sense. To have the other lead in movies manage to do well enough that it could propel us to this movie. That should have been impossible.

My inner 12 year old was/is glad that wasn’t the case.

***

Of course, there are a ton more, but these were the first ones to come to mind.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Repost – What if… Last Action Hero was a Good movie?

I wanted to look at a movie that could have been something more, but was tied to an aging actor and an annoying kid and only wanted to be tongue in cheek about the whole “Cop” movie thing.

lastactionhero

So What If…. Last Action Hero was a GOOD movie?

I know what you’re thinking: “John, there is no way to salvage anything within that movie!”

And you know what, random person talking to their computer screen, you’re probably more right than you are wrong… but let’s give this thing a try anyway.

Note, the one thing I am not touching is the soundtrack. Say what you will about the movie, Alice in Chains (2 songs!), Anthrax, AC/DC, Megadeth, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Cypress Hill, Tesla, Fishbone… it is one of those albums that I still listen to from time to time.

lastactionhero2

For those of you who don’t remember, the movie was supposed to be a parody of the 80s action movies (anything with Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Russell, Gibson, etc). A kid manages to get a magical movie ticket that puts him directly into the movie he’s watching. Eventually he brings Arnold back into the real world where suddenly Arnold realizes that the rules here are not the same as they were. And worse yet, his arch-enemy has somehow made his way into the real world as well!

That’s actually not a horrible idea on the surface. That core concept of what is real and what is fantasy. And that’s what my version would focus on as much as anything else. Those little moments that appeared in the movie, but were glossed over due to the need for another catchphrase or yelling boss or even cartoon cat.

My version would still begin with Danny watching the movie, getting the magical ticket, and then getting sucked in. But our hero, Jack Slater, wouldn’t be a goofy parody spouting one-liners left and right; no, this would be someone who had seen the worst in people and still managed to keep going (think Se7en for an idea of the feel I’d be going for). He’s a person who is barely holding on to his sanity and is constantly wondering why all these terrible things always seem to happen to him.

seven-movie-poster-500w

So when Danny reveals that he’s a character in a movie series our hero lashes out. The idea that someone has been dictating the horrors of his world, tearing his marriage apart, killing his son, keeping him estranged from his daughter… that would be too much for him. And even though Danny would try to plead with him to follow through on his latest mission, Slater ignores the kid and then goes on a spree of his own. If the world is always going to be terrible, then why bother with it, why bother with saving anyone… let it all burn… and he uses half of the ticket to go into the real world (Danny rushing in after him)…

While the second piece of the ticket manages to fall into his enemy’s hands, Benedict. This is a man that has stood by and watched Slater destroy his boss’s empire, and only by luck was Benedict able to escape. Once he finds out about the ticket he sees it for what it is – a way to go to other worlds than these – to recruit like-minded people to his cause, giving them the freedom in the real world that has been severely lacking for any of them.

In the original Benedict has a monologue where he talks about the real world being a place where the bad guys can actually win. He talks about going to get the villains and bring them out. But we never get to see that moment in the original. And I believe that is a huge missed opportunity. So in my version we not only see some of it, but these villains coming out are not treated as just randoms… no, Benedict would have begun to research who might be able to help him.  And freed them. And the Ripper would be one of them.

Now the real world is suddenly going to Hell and somehow Danny still believes in the HERO that Slater was. He convinces him by telling him that while it is terrible that all those horrific things have happened, he always knew that Slater would still try and do the right thing. That he could still be the man Danny always knew him to be.

Last-Action-Hero-Magic-Ticket-1

And that would set up an ending where Slater not only has to deal with Benedict, but with the random assortment of baddies that are out in this world. It gives Danny a chance to assist in figuring out those characters who Benedict might have contacted in the first place (what the people are like, what their weaknesses might be, etc.).

We end with Slater and Benedict squaring off, Slater run through the ringer, but somehow finding enough strength to finish his enemy off. A beaten and bruised Slater limps back to the theater with Danny helping him, ready to go back to his movie life again… Danny fires up the movie, but instead of Slater IV, it is something nicer – perhaps a romantic comedy. A just reward for the life that Slater has led.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

My Comfort Movies

If any time has expressed a need to sit back with some comfort watching, this last year (and a half) have certainly answered the bell. I used Firefly as a part of that process by watching a couple of episodes every Friday night (and lamented that we only got the partial season). But when it comes to movies, I certainly have cycled through ones throughout my life where the amount I saw them was in direct correlation to what kind of mood I might be in.

A little Depressed as a teenager – Pump Up the Volume was the go-to for that version of me. I’m not sure exactly why as the movie isn’t really a “feel-good” movie. I’m sure it had more to do with Christian Slater and pretty much loving any movie he was in for the longest time.

Enjoying a night in during college attempting to destroy people in Duke Nuk’em? – Clerks and Mallrats to the rescue. My college roommate and I watched those two so much that I doubt we really needed to have them on, we could have pretty much done the movie dialogue in our sleep.

So when I go to my comfort movies it doesn’t necessarily mean happy-go-lucky or something that has a happy ending. Instead, I think for me, it has to be something that I simply find joy in. Something that puts me in a better mood through the skills of the writers/editors/directors/actors/etc working their crafts to perfection for those couple of hours.

Rounders

I probably watch this about 2-3 times a year. Aside from the fact that I love playing and watching poker, so a poker movie was a no-brainer. With Rounders there is an ease to the characters, to the story, and to the idea of overcoming one’s own shortcomings. At the end of the day, it really is about placing your faith in someone and having them not live up to your expectations. But really, all that does is cast a light on our own issues. How can we ask someone else to be someone they are not when we aren’t exactly sure who we are?

That struggle feels all the more real at 2 in the morning as I try and write or edit. While I’m not one of these people who can crank out a book in a few weeks, and while I should challenge myself with lofty goals, I shouldn’t lose sight of what I have accomplished and what I’m accomplishing.

Office Space

When you need to reflect on the idea that people weren’t meant to sit at desks for 40 plus hours a week doing various jobs until our brains begin to melt and all our motivations slip away. There is the fantasy at play here that we’ve all wanted to do in some form or fashion. Maybe you want to tell your boss off? Maybe you just want to quit? Or maybe you just want to get a game of Tetris in before your meeting with the Bobs…

This one features in pretty heavy rotation on Comedy Central. It has the sort of gravitational pull on me where I end up stopping on it and before I know it, I’ve watched the whole movie again. It genuinely makes me realize that all those times when you just want to call out sick to work: You don’t need to tell them what you are sick of.

Waiting…

This is one that I came upon because of the actors involved. Somehow, it slipped under my radar for a long time, and though I’ve never worked at a restaurant, watching this movie lets me know that was the correct decision to have made for my life. Even if the situations behind the scenes are over the top, we’ve all been in a restaurant when someone begins making a huge deal out of something with their food. Those moments ring true in more ways than I can even count.

The thing about this one, aside from the absurdity or its crass nature, is that it shows us a day in the life (much like a Clerks or Mallrats). Our lives can get this way very easily. The mundane becomes routine and before we know it a month has passed. For me, this is about enjoying the moment as best you can, even if they take place somewhere you might not want to be.

Tombstone

Wait. This is basically a tragedy. A tale of woe where Wyatt Earp loses almost everything dear to him and goes on a hunt for the people who perpetrated the crimes on his family. So how can this be a comfort movie? And my answer is that it probably comes from that simple idea of one man who just wants to get away from his past and start a career in this new town. Be in on the ground floor, as it were.

But our past is always there. It helps to shape the person we are today. The challenges from those earlier times allow us to have a better idea on how to prepare for the next obstacle. I don’t know why it helps ease my thoughts and any burdens I might be carrying. Maybe it is the power of friendship? Family? Revenge?

Or perhaps I’m just a sucker for a good western?

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things – A Review

This past weekend I conned my wife into watching a Time Loop movie. Now, I normally have to qualify this in a way because she isn’t a fan of Groundhog Day. This in and of itself is beyond blasphemous, but I think it is because she hasn’t actually sat down to watch the movie. Oh, she thinks she’s watched it, but even then she claimed that she fell asleep during it, woke up in the middle, and then felt like nothing had changed. Like there were portions of the movie she missed, but because of the Time Loop, she really didn’t need to watch it at all.

So, when it comes to Time Loop movies I have a little bit of an uphill battle.

It’s a good thing that the last novel I wrote didn’t have anything resembling a time loop or repeating lives or anything (check out Echo Effect here!).

However, I have recently figured out the secret sauce to getting her buy-in on such things. You take a simple (or maybe not-so-simple) Time Loop movie, and then add young adults to it. She’s a sucker for that. Which is how we ended up watching The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (based on a short story by Lev Grossman playing on Amazon Prime).

So the thing with Time Loops is whether we get to see our main character’s first Loop or do we enter it in after they’d already done dozens (or perhaps thousands). Groundhog Day shows us his very first day and then he is stuck in that Loop. In this movie, they very quickly show you that this isn’t Mark’s first time through the day. In fact, I kind of wonder if he’s closer to thousands. We watch as he makes his way through his day only to see he is trying to have a good interaction with a girl. Trying to replay the day to set up these moments in the hopes that she might like him.

It goes about as well as you think.

But those attempts are what cause him to run into Margaret… who turns out to be stuck in the same Time Loop as Mark. And that’s where the beauty of this little movie begins, because Mark, in an attempt to try and impress “the girl” begins showing her some of these Little (Perfect) Moments he’s discovered in his time going through the day. And he’s not alone in noting them as Margaret has a few of her own.

Thus begins their attempt to document all those great moments that happen in a day. The little things we might not notice as we go about our lives. It’s the shape of a cloud. It’s a moment between two people when they think no one is watching. It’s the interactions that occur every day for each and every one of us.

That’s the key to this movie. Where other Loop movies are about improving yourself or discovering/atoning for something you had done. This movie is about showing the viewer they don’t have to ignore the small, seemingly insignificant moments. Instead, those should be the very things that make up a joyous life. And that doing those things alone might not ever be as good as when you have someone beside you, experiencing those same instances… bonding the two of you in those moments.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Watch

There was a post going around Twitter this past weekend where you are asked to name 5 movies you’d seen at least 10 times. Considering the people I follow, I saw many of the usual suspects mentioned (Star Wars being the big one). Of course, this got my mind going on those movies I could claim that I’d absolutely seen at least 10 times. Now I think for it to count, you would have had to sat and watched at least 90% of the movie. So if Shawshank Redemption is on TNT this weekend and you catch it shortly after Andy arrives in prison, I think that counts, but if they are well into him doing the taxes for the guards… then that doesn’t count.

The weird thing about this little exercise is not so much identifying the greatest hits of my own life, but trying to determine those movies that I have really and truly seen 10 times. Fundamentally, viewing a movie ten times is a lot. When you think about it, it’s a bit harder to do, especially as you move from your childhood into adulthood. Back then you had summers and random weekends and probably random afternoons where I decided to watch Young Guns for the twentieth time. As the list builds, anything that came out in the last decade or so is almost immediately eliminated. There are movies I feel like I’ve seen 10 times, but do I really know that I’ve seen The Replacements 10 times (I mean, I pretty much watch it every time it pops up on TV)? I love A Knight’s Tale, but I gotta be honest, it’s probably more like a 7 or 8 time movie for me at this point. Even something like Avengers is around 6 or 7 times, but there is almost no way it is 10.

But really, what does the list tell us about ourselves and our friends? There is a comfort in rewatching something over and over. I see it in my own household constantly as my wife has certain TV shows on a continuous loop (Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, Lucifer being only a few). You’d think she’d rather watch something new (and we do), but she uses the shows as a way to unwind and de-stress. She also uses them to fall asleep, training her mind to shut down as the episode plays on in the background.

There is also something to the idea of needing those familiar movies (or TV Shows) to help us through certain times in our lives. They can be a bonding mechanism or just a way to appease the next generation.

During last year, I definitely found it helpful to get a level of comfort in the familiar by watching something like Firefly on a weekly basis during the summer (about 2 episodes every Friday to really have a sort of throwback to “better times”). Revisiting those characters that I’ve loved through their handful of adventures is always a nice way to spend some time. I don’t have to worry about following every word since I nearly know all of them by heart. Even more than that, on first watch of nearly anything you are going to get caught up in the big moments (whether it is a small comedy or a big blockbuster). A single rewatch allows you to see what you missed in the first place.

Back in college, Clerks and Mallrats played over and over from the same VHS tape. It was a beat-up version copied from a rental so on my old-ass tv we had to turn the volume to its limits in order to hear it (even in our small dorm room).

Also during college, whenever I returned home for Quarter breaks, my sister and I would make a point to watch The Breakfast Club and Weird Science. Those movies became our way to bond in a real way that we didn’t or hadn’t been able to do when we were living together 24/7 and annoying each other day in and day out.

Casting my mind even further back, rewatching the pair of Ghostbusters 2 and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was the only thing that would calm my younger brother down enough to let my mom sleep (she worked nights, so during the summer we babysat). Again, it was a VHS copied from HBO with both movies on it. Over the course of two summers that tape was played nearly every day. It got so bad that my sister hid the stupid tape… but my brother found it time and time again.

Much like music has an ability to recapture a moment in time for the listener, I think movies can remind us of who we were when we first watched them, and then later, on the rewatches, we are able to glean different and new things from those same stories, finding a way to apply them to our current lives.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

WOLF REVIEW: Blackwind Project 

Many moons ago, I covered the Kickstarter for the Blackwind Project (now Blackwind), an RPG they describe thusly:  

“Whether you are planning an action-packed adventure, a journey to exotic lands or a sordid tale of murder and intrigue, the Blackwind System will support you through every step of the process.” 

When the core rulebook came out, Elisa Mignemi, one of the authors, gave me a copy. I was talking with my RPG buddy, Wolf, about doing a one-shot session with our group and I sent him the Blackwind Core Rulebook to see if it would work. In response, Wolf wrote a review that I’m sharing here with his permission.  

 

WOLF’S REVIEW: 

Insofar as using this as a one-shot is concerned, its very foundation rules that out. The first session would be the group sitting around and creating the campaign by committee. Following the book’s rules, going into the first session we do not know who the Director will be, what campaign we’ll be playing, or even what genre we’ll be playing. Step one, once everyone has seated themselves at the gaming table, is to select a Secretary. The Secretary is not the Director (although the Secretary might end up being the Director). The Secretary is the person who will be organizing the creation of the campaign’s foundations. The Director is not selected until the end of the campaign foundations creation session. After selecting a Secretary (if no one volunteers to do this job, dice are tossed and the winner gets the honors) the group must then decide upon a Genre (and possibly Sub-Genre, though the group must also decide if that is something they want to have or not have), a Context, a Group, a Theme, Enemies, the Type of Plot, an Antagonist, and a Structure Type. Note that each and every one of these campaign aspects must be unanimously accepted by the group before proceeding to the next aspect; any hold-outs must be bribed or beaten into acquiescence (or else excommunicated from the group, which is given as a viable option in the book). 

Only after all of this has been set in stone (the first rule of Blackwind is that choices, once made and finalized, are irrevocable–unless the group unanimously agrees that changing something would improve the dramatic narrative) does the subject of who the Director will be get broached. Again, if no one volunteers, a die roll will forcibly volunteer someone. With that settled, the Director can get on with the business of having the group tell him what they want him to Direct them toward, and at what speed, and in what fashion. 

The Director gets to decide, at this point, what the overall Mission should be (and also possibly whether there is a Fake Mission) as well as the Thesis for the campaign (because what it a good role playing campaign without a solid morality lesson or social message baked into it, right?). Then he gets to “choose” between High- and Low-Concept Adventure plots (but not really choose, because the group actually chose that before by whether they selected a Genre or a Context first back while the Secretary was still organizing things) before going on to structure said Concept into a series of Sections, Episodes and Steps using a series of simple mathematical formulae: where N is the number of players, the SETUP (including a possible sub-climax, with or without a BOARD) should contain N Steps of which the ASCENT should contain N +/- [N / 3] Steps, the MIDDLE (including the main climax or a sub-climax, with or without a BOARD) should contain 0 to [N / 2] Steps, the FALL should contain N +/- [N / 3] Steps, and the RESOLUTION (including the main climax, if not used during the MIDDLE, or a secondary-climax, with or without a BOARD) should contain [N / 2] Steps plus any Steps saved from preceding sections. Then there can also be an AFTERMATH of 1 to N Steps. 

Once all of that in place, the Director submits his campaign Concept to the group for voting (the Director can receive up to 30 points from the players if they feel he’s created an “exceptionally well-developed” Concept!). 

And that would be the first session. I think you get the picture as to why this will never be suitable for use as a pick-up-and-play one-shot generator. 

Oh, and maybe you’ve noticed something missing from the above activities? Right. Character creation. Or, in the Blackwind lexicon “Casting.” 

As you can tell from the terminology within, Blackwind is someone’s attempt to gamify an improv acting class. There’s even a whole section about the use of props and costumes (and the bonus points players receive for the use of them) “similar to film prop or theatrical property.” 

But what about using it for an ongoing campaign? Well, it might work for certain types of groups. 

First, because the game is essentially run by committee and the Director lacks authority in most matters (and the fact that the Director doesn’t effectively even exist for the first session), it becomes incumbent upon each and every member of the group to be thoroughly familiar with the book and systems laid out therein.  

Second, and related, Blackwind relies upon proactive group participation in every step of the game as well as between-session preparation. While a small amount of points are awarded for what characters achieve in-game, as many or more points are awarded for what the players do out-of-game in order to enrich the experience. And while it is possible to gain a handful of points for creating maps or introducing physical props for the group’s use, Blackwind wants to encourage players to really go that extra mile. It assumes, for example, a group member composing, scoring, performing, recording, editing and arranging a complete OST for the adventure, for which said player would receive 3 points per track plus 4 points for having created an album from scratch (or possibly just a straight 7 points per track; the rules are a bit fuzzy for that).  

Incidentally, have you noticed we haven’t yet touch upon game mechanics? Depending upon the Role to which you are Cast, your character is assigned a die. Checks of any sort are made by rolling and attempting to get a low number (ideally below 6 for most things). If you are the Main Protagonist (Spades career) than you roll a d6 for anything related to your Role, thus nearly guaranteeing success. Less important party members get to roll a d8, d10, or d12, giving them less and less certainty of success. Anybody rolling for checks unrelated to their Role rolls a d20. 

If you succeed thrice in a row on any particular check, even across sessions, your character suddenly reveals they have that skill, and the character’s player must then retcon that skill into the character’s backstory in some fashion. You can have a maximum of eight skills at any time, though, so if you gain a new one you must also (if you have achieved that cap number) lose an old one.  

During play, each character gets three “actions” per round, but only one of those actions may require a die roll or have any mechanical weight. So, for example, a character may walk, show a facial expression, and hum; or sit, beckon a waiter, and make an order; or wake up, run a hand on their face, and mutter something. 

And the book points out that “[o]bject and environment descriptions are not counted within the three-action rule, as long as they do not lengthen the dialogue excessively.” Thus “He raises the sword to the sky, screaming, ‘Victory!'” is counted the same as “He raises his sword: it is an old, blood-drenched blade, with two golden dragons damasked over the hilt and a handle wrapped in worn red leather. He raises it to the sky, screaming, ‘Victory!’ while the wind ruffles his blonde hair and sends his red cloak fluttering in the wind.” are counted the same (though the latter might gain the player a bonus point for role playing). A direct example from the book. 

So, if we pull out the pages dealing with character creation and in-session game mechanics we end up with about 20 pages (including several full-page artworks and a number of other pages that are largely or mostly art with some text). The remaining 140 pages (excluding covers and TOC) are dedicated to the rules surrounding the creation of the campaign.  

Who is this book written for?  

They assume their audience has an interest in stage or film production and desire to know all the intricacies that go into the pre-production of shows and/or movies. Further, they assume their audience wants fairness and equality in all things, with an absolute flat power structure, and a guarantee of equitable outcome. Their audience wants rules that prevent anyone from telling them what they can do, but also rules to let them have a say in what everyone else can do. So… This book was written for actors both professional and amateur as well as gamers more interested in proactively shaping organic narratives than in responding to mechanically-imposed challenges. 

 

Blackwind – Core Rulebook 

Blackwind – Game Module – Space Blood: Arena 

Blackwind – Game Module – Space Blood: Rescue!

Blackwind – Game Module – The Treasure of Maracaibo

 

WOLF REVIEW: Blackwind Project 

Written by Wolf 

Edited by Egg Embry 

All opinions expressed here are strictly those of the individual authors. 

Black Mirror, Season 5 Review

 

My previous reviews can be found here: Seasons 1&2 and 3 and 4.

As I wrote last time, “For those not in the know, Black Mirror is an anthology show. Each episode stands alone to tell a story about how our technology or something perhaps not too far from our grasp affects people.”

Last time my big complaint to start things is how long it takes for these crazy shows to come out. However, since this was only 3 episodes, I feel like I’m left needing a couple more just to last until the next season (yes, I know Bandersnatch came out earlier this year – what can I say, I’m greedy!).

EP 1 – Striking Vipers

It is said that Science Fiction stories allow us to confront ideas and themes in a “safe” way. Presented in a container of something that isn’t real, we can allow those statements and questions to be made without instantly rejecting them because they may not line 100% up with our own personal feelings or beliefs. So many of the Black Mirror episodes do this very thing, asking a question about the tech we use, but maybe more important is how that tech affects us in our day to day lives.

And while this episode allows the show to ask some fundamental questions about friendship and love and sexuality, it also doesn’t try and present only one answer. Is it ok to be in love with two different people? Is it ok to be in love with the mind of someone? Is it cheating if it is all virtual? Is it enough to know what you are doing is wrong and still continue to do it?

Or could the episode be about addictions more than sexuality? The idea of every day getting closer to losing ourselves within a virtual shell. That what is on the other side of the monitor or within some game, no matter how life-like, isn’t life.

Or maybe it is just about lying to yourself…

EP 2 – Smithereens

This is probably the most “normal” of the trio this season. The fundamental technology aspect has to do more with a Facebook-style site called Smithereens and how addicted we are to it. That idea alone is probably 5 or 10 years out of date. We all know this and don’t seem to care.

No, what is important about this episode is the lead character who is doing everything he can to “say his piece” about how far this addiction has gone with people and the world. But it is the performance of Chris that really shook me. Something about the pain he was in was conveyed by him in such a way that I was not only fully invested in his story (even if I had pretty much figured out the “twist” on why he was kidnapping this guy). That pain was something we’ve all had to go through… loss of a loved one will make you reexamine everything you are doing.

And it might lead you to do things you might have never suspected.

EP 3 – Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too

The juxtaposition of the pop-singer Ashley O and the teenaged girl Rachel is at the core of the episode. Really it caused me to echo back to my own teenage years, and while I was never a 16-year-old girl, I had moments where I didn’t know how I fit in. That any of us might jump to an artificial toy who can respond and interact to us… had that been available when I was in school I suspect it would have been as big a hit with my peers as it was in this story.

The flip side is a story we’ve seen or heard before about the pop singer (movie actress, famous person) who is just as dissatisfied with their own lives as we are. The proof that even being rich and famous may mean that we have less control of our own lives than those who are struggling to get through another day.

At what point do we take control of our lives and make it what we want it to be? Can we manage to do that when other people are depending on us to be the bread-winner? How do you manage to follow your dreams when reality won’t let you?

***

A short season only means I was able to knock the whole season out in a few hours… so I can finally be ahead of everyone else for just a few seconds!

***

John McGuire is the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. The Trade paperback collecting the first 4 issues is finally back from the printers! If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

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His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow EmpireBeyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com