What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I didn't really care for 2018's Halloween, but Halloween Kills somehow manages to be even more disappointing given my already low expectations. Had it leaned more into being a straight-up slasher with more emphasis put on over-the-top kills and the stuff you expect from a B-movie-esque set-up, it could have been fairly entertaining in the same way that Halloween 4 is, despite not being very good as an actual horror movie. As it is, it tries to do a bit of that but also have some kind of message behind it that makes it feel like it's elevating it's material. The result just doesn't work, though. Both aspects of the movie clash tonally, and the writing it doesn't end up feeling smart, or scary, or even any fun except for some unintentionally funny moments.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Why did Halloween Kills decide to repeat that scene from Austin Powers with the same exact actor? It's something you'd expect Scream to do, or one of the Scary Movie movies if you have low expectations, not Halloween.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Also, in both cases he was killed by Michael Myers....

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, which I assume was the joke, but it kinda ruins the tension of a Halloween movie if it intentionally reminds you of Austin Powers. Halloween was never the meta slasher franchise that Scream or the later Nightmare on Elm Street movies were.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I imagine part of that is David Gordon Green touching back to his comedic sensibilities with films like Pineapple Express, as both this and the 2018 movie seem to be crammed with attempts at humor, most of which fall flat. I suppose it would bother me more if I expected more from these movies, but I already wasn't a fan of 2018's iteration, and the humor became the lesser of my issues with them.

Honestly, Halloween as a franchise is a lot like Jaws for me. It's a concept that's great for just one movie, and both first films of each respective franchise did the concept about as well as you possibly could (granted, Halloween is a little more dated with time than Jaws, but still effective for what it does). Everything after that is either a pale imitation at best or ironically entertaining in a way that was clearly not intended.

Interestingly enough, I'd say Halloween III is my favorite of the Halloween "sequels" precisely because it isn't one. It does it's own concept and is a lot more entertaining for it. It's super 80's camp to the max, but is honestly pretty genuinely enjoyable in that camp, and feels more like an episode of The Twilight Zone stretched into a feature-length movie.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Trying to make Michael Myers a recurring threat is always a doomed idea. He's a voiceless character with little personality, no reciprocal relationship with anybody, and no explained motive for why the way he is or why he kills, and that naturally results in a character you can't do much with outside a movie or two, but trying to add new shit to his character like the Thorn cult, making him Laurie's brother, or most of what Rob Zombie did always ends in disaster.  So you're just left with rehashing what the very first movie did but making it gorier since Myers is a dead end of an antagonist. Which can be easily said for most if not all horror franchises that last beyond a couple movies. Even the characters with depth like Pinhead end up becoming schlocky parodies of themselves one way or another, but Myers is a special case since Halloween always retcons itself after 2 or 3 movies. After Halloween Ends, we'll inevitably get another reboot that "goes back to the roots" yet again, and when that fails, we get H60 starring an elderly Jamie Lee Curtis.

Like the inherent problem with slasher franchises is there isn't much catharsis for the viewer when the villain is effectively the mascot of the franchise and can't die. But if you do try to add catharsis and have the villain murder random assholes the audience couldn't care about, then it isn't scary anymore. So they all ride on how interesting the mascot is, and Myers isn't that interesting. He's no Hannibal Lecter, or even a Freddy.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I was originally supposed to see Dune on Friday last week but had to miss my showing because the person taking the evening shift at the Pharmacy called out sick and I was asked to cover last minute (I wasn't forced to, but decided to do it since I got paid over-time).

Anyways, I finally saw the movie in IMAX today and absolutely loved it. It's easily my favorite movie of the year and I desperately want to watch it again, which is harder these days due to my work schedule. I'm actually even more irritated at corporate WB now for essentially sabotaging this movie (along with many others, including The Suicide Squad), with their idiotic HBO MAX simultaneous releases. Seeing this movie on the big screen gave me similar vibes to how it felt watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy on the big screen for the first time. It really felt like that impactful of an experience to me, which is a rarity.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Rewatching Halloween 2018, and this is a lot stupider than I remember. The Dr. Sartain twist in particular. I spent most of the rewatching thinking "Why didn't all those residents lock their backdoor? Why did Laurie bring a comically oversized shotgun with only a couple rounds instead of a pistol? How can an elderly Michael Myers squish that guy's skull with his foot? Why is Sartain so obsessed with Myers when up until the events of this movie, he killed less than half a dozen people 40 years ago? Not exactly Hannibal Lecter here." All the problems with Kills were already in this movie, and I think the main reason this film received a ton of praise was just because it was a reunion with Curtis and Carpenter back. I and a lot of people were too mesmerized by the reunion factor to notice the film itself was dumb.

I kinda fear/hope that Halloween Ends reveals every Halloween movie is canon just to revel in the stupidity. Like say Laurie secretly survived her end in Resurrection, and she has 3 kids who each don't know they have siblings. And she inexplicably abandoned Jamie because fooling 2 kids into thinking they were only children was hard enough. Oh, and it turns out a completely different family had kids named Laurie and Michael, and one of them became a serial killer so we can shove the Rob Zombie films in. Expecting Laurie to show her granddaughter a modern-day picture of Danielle Harris and say "Allyson, this is my other daughter Jamie, who I loved very much but let go. I digitally aged up her photo because I want to pretend she's still alive. Yeah, I know."

[Dr. Insomniac]

And while I know bad installments in movie franchises will always find at least a little positive re-appraisal when another bad installment comes out years later, but I've noticed more Halloween fans are talking about the Rob Zombie movies in a more positive light. It might be just nostalgia since those films came out over a decade ago, but at least compared to the recent films, they've been more experimental and tried to change up what kind of people Michael Myers or Dr. Loomis would seem from a different perspective. Granted, the flaws are still there. They're still messy and come off as exploitation films that happened to find their way to mainstream theaters. But after watching Michael Myers go John Wick on the stupidest civilians ever in Kills, maybe the white horse wasn't that dumb by comparison.

[Avaitor]

I've been behind on, well, everything lately, so I only just got around to Dune earlier today. I really liked it! This is as good of an adaptation of the book as we're likely to get, and it looked and felt rightfully epic on the big screen.

But I wish I had more time to get to other films. I still need to see French Dispatch, Last Night in Soho, and Eternals. I know the last two have a mixed at best reception, but I still want to see them for myself. And I've put Halloween Kills on the backburner.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I quite enjoyed The French Dispatch. Granted, it may be a bit stylistically overloaded for some, even by Wes Anderson standards, and it's not one I immediately wanted to re-watch like with The Grand Budapest Hotel (but I do still want to re-watch it), however it was still a delight to watch the whole way through. I also still want to see Last Night in Soho, and like you I just haven't had much time to go out to the movies. I ended up missing The Last Duel as well, which I still want to get around to.

Glad you enjoyed Dune too. I'm super biased but it's genuinely my favorite movie of the year and I'm super happy that the sequel managed to get the green light. I doubt that we'll ever get to Messiah, but it's at least reassuring to know that we'll still managed to get a proper adaptation of the original novel all of the way through.

[Avaitor]

I had an uncharacteristically early day of work yesterday, and took the time to see French Dispatch. I really liked it! I think it's around the middle of Anderson's filmography- equal to or above Life Aquatic, Darjeeling Limited and Isle of Dogs, and below Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, and Grand Budapest.

The two I struggle with are his first two. Bottle Rocket feels more like a trial run for his work, which results in a fun time, but I'm not sure if its roughness clicks with me or turns me away. And I remember being underwhelmed with Rushmore the first time I saw it, but it's about time for me to give it another shot.

Anyway, I thought that French Dispatch was entertaining throughout, but I can definitely see that this would do nothing to convince you if you're ambivalent to his work- it's maybe the most Wes Anderson movie ever. And it is a little overstuffed, especially in the murder's row of a cast (I didn't even realize Saoirse Ronan was one of the prostitutes!), and there's little breathing room. But it's also one that I think will play well in repeats, like Anderson's other works.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just watched Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and in all honesty I quite enjoyed it. It seems like a lot of people are turned off by the nostalgic-overtones to much of the movie, and while I usually hate that as well, it worked here for me because it didn't feel like cheap nostalgia. The movie still has it's own identity and tone, and managed to get me invested in the core characters. I feel like because we've seen so many movies and shows badly use nostalgia to pander in the last few years, people have a tendency to think that any use of it is now inherently bad. To me, however, by it's nature Nostalgia is meant to comfort, and when done well and with clear passion and care, it can be used to great effect. To me this movie is clearly an example of the latter. It's far from perfect, mind you, as I definitely have issues with it. That said, it really entertained me the whole way through and surprised me with how much genuine heart it had. This is one that I'm glad I saw and would happily watch again. Obviously nothing will ever come close to the original, but the movie clearly knows that and, IMO wisely differentiates itself in it's overall tone and style.

[Avaitor]

The reception to this is looking more positive than I was anticipating, so that's cool! It's still not a high priority, but it's good to hear.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just saw Nightmare Alley. I liked it overall, though the first hour was kind of on the slow side, which isn't inherently a problem, but it did drag in a few places. That said, it does get incredibly intense as the movie goes on, in many ways reminding me of the Safdie Brothers' Uncut Gems (not quite as good as that movie overall, but still pretty engaging).

I really have to give props to the teams involved with set design as well as costumes. It's really top notch stuff.

This is definitely a a good case for how remakes can in fact be done well when made with proper care.