2017 Flashback: Music & Miscellaneous

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MUSIC

Top Ten Songs of 2017

#10 "Hold My Heart" Lindsey Stirling ft. ZZ Ward

How do you rescue a pretty generic soft-EDM track from itself? Add a heaping helping of Lindsey Stirling's violin, effortlessly blending with the electronic bed around it to synthesize classical musicianship with a breezy modern sound.

#9 "The Cure" Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga's most recent album Joanne left me very cold, but this random single she spewed out in the aftermath of that country/rock-inflected sprawl is infectiously danceable. There's really not much more I can say about it than that, but sometimes that's all a song needs to be. If you're feeling down, just click play and feel your worries melt away for three minutes at a time.

#8 "Cut to the Feeling" Carly Rae Jepsen

In the background, Carly Rae Jepsen has been pumping out solid pop singles in the years since "Call Me Maybe," but this year's standout is by far "Cut to the Feeling," written for the instantly forgotten animated film Leap. The opening verse isn't as strong as it could be, nor is the repetitive bridge, but once the chorus smacks you in the face with its soaring candy vocals, it proves to be one of the strongest pop confections of the year.

#7 "Slow Hands" Niall Horan

Am I surprised that my favorite solo One-Directioner has turned out to be the shy Irishman Niall Horan? You bet your sweet bippy I am. But Horan has been exploring a side of himself that feels actually genuine, landing on the top 40 without clearly straining to be included in the pop music zeitgeist. His stripped-down hit "This Town" was also pretty solid, but "Slow Hands" is a syrupy, sexy track that defies everything I've ever felt about this boy band ex-pat, bumping and grinding along with an acoustic guitar riff and a relaxed, totally compelling lyrical seduction.

#6 "Green Light" Lorde

Lorde is certainly good at blending different musical influences, and "Green Light" is a track that takes you on a real journey. From the staccato stabs of lyrics that thrash you around the verse like a choppy, iceberg-laden sea to the chorus's Billy Joel piano riff that sweeps you straight into the sky with its soaring melody, everything in Lorde's best single is as fresh and unusual as her debut, which frankly pretty much everybody thought would amount to just a one-hit wonder.

#5 "Thunder" Imagine Dragons

I've never had an interest in Imagine Dragons. They just blended in with all the other recent bands that sounded like they exclusively played on instruments made before the 1800's. But "Thunder" utilizes an electronic vocal that never fails to prick my ear and some beautiful drum stings that unsubtly but satisfyingly evoke booming claps of thunder. Sure the lyrics are a little inane, and the lead singer's attempt at pseudo-rapping proves his whiteness by rhyming with the word "foyer," but I have a lot of fun with this one. Also that video is straight bananas.

#4 "Praying" Kesha

I've been waiting so long for new Kesha music. Her 2012 album Warrior was a triumph of pop artistry and the fact that her career was put on hold by a sexual assault allegation toward her producer Dr. Luke and subsequent court case is just unconscionable, both for her as a human being and for us as a world in need of perfect pop singles. But suddenly, out of the blue, "Praying" came to us on a golden lightning bolt. It's a perfect comeback single, showcasing her range as a singer while crystallizing everything that went unsaid for five long years in a beautiful, heartbreaking paean to rage, hurt, healing, and forgiveness. And if that high note shatters my eardrums, then so be it, because if that's the last thing I ever hear, I have led a blessed life.

#3 "Redbone" Childish Gambino

And the award for Most Funkiest Song in the History of Ever goes to... Childish Gambino really goes out of his way to transform his voice into the human embodiment of pure, breathy sex, accompanied by the best funk riff I've heard in decades.

#2 "Let 'Em Talk" Kesha ft. Eagles of Death Metal

When Kesha's Rainbow finally dropped, it provided an intriguing, vital mix of inspirational/haters-back-off pop and wickedly sharp girl power country, but "Let 'Em Talk" combines all the themes of the album with a rip-roaring rock 'n roll beat provided by one of her weirder musical collaborators, the Eagles of Death Metal. Their personalities collide in this kinetic, infectiously catchy middle finger to the world.

#1 "The Valley" Betty Who

There's only one pop musician out there who could possibly have summoned the strength to knock a Kesha song out of the number one slot, and that's the Aussie pop princess Betty Who. "The Valley" is the intro track to her album of the same name, and while that album was satisfying if a little thin, this track is a stunning piece that crystallizes a melancholy mood in a perfect minute and a half of gorgeous, lush a cappella harmony.

Bottom Five Songs of 2017

#5 "Body Like a Back Road" Sam Hunt

I think part of the reason I hate this song is how easily it gets stuck in my head. It's deviously simple, basically a jump rope rhyme that is designed to drill straight into your hippocampus. And what woman wants to be compared to a dirt road full of skid marks? At this point, I'd much rather be a wonderland.

#4 "Look What You Made Me Do" Taylor Swift

Now, I'm not as down on this song as the general populace immediately turned out to be, but it's a poor representation of her new album (which is basically generic "dark" pop that she already attempted to pull off years ago with "I Knew You Were Trouble") and a supremely irritating song. It's trying to galvanize her public identity in a way that flies in the face of all the work she's been doing to avoid taking responsibility for not speaking out against Trump or sexual predators in any way, shape, or form despite ostensibly being an outspoken feminist singer. I'm willing to grant her her silence and privacy, but not if she's going to be so loud about it. It's pure hypocrisy wrapped up in a shiny, staccato package.

#3 "Strip That Down" Liam Payne

I'm not going to pretend I expected art from the solo works of One Direction members (although, frankly, half of them seem to think they're producing it), but this R&B-aping solo track from The Shy One is a nauseatingly misguided decision.

#2 "Save as Draft" Katy Perry

I've heard my share of bad inspirational girlpop songs, but you know Perry is scraping the bottom of her creative barrel when the best metaphor she can come up with involves a Microsoft Word document.

#1 "Gucci Gang" Lil Pump

I know I've criticized certain songs in the past for being repetitive, but I take that all back because I've discovered the nadir of unnecessary rap repetition and nothing else seems quite as bad anymore. The only reason this one isn't number 1 is because it's blissfully short, just a baby's breath over two minutes.

Rap Success: Cardi B

I still don't know what "Bodak Yellow" means, but Cardi B's surprise megahit shattered records left and right, and the success of a solo female black artist is something we really need in this day and age. Bring on single #2!

Rap Fail: Eminem

Wait, suddenly we're accepting Eminem as a nice person again just because he stumbled through a lame rap about the President? No, thank you.

Biggest Surprise: Niall is the Best 1D Solo Member

When One Direction broke up, I can't say I was particularly excited to hear any of their solo work, but I especially can't say I was anticipating hearing from Niall, by far the most bland member of the group, who got into their fair share of hijinks as the years went on. But Zayn jumped on the crummy R&B bandwagon, Liam attempted to grab the bumper of that wagon and fell in the mud, Harry became a proto-Mick Jagger yawnrock purveyor, Louis dropped off the face of the Earth, and Niall... delivered a super solid selection of folk rock acoustic songs. Who knew he had it in him?

Biggest Disappointment: Taylor Swift is pure evil

I mean, we all knew that Taylor Swift was a corporation more than she was a human being, but two things this year really lit my fire: First, other than the singles, her new album Reputation had every track set at "album only," which means you have to buy the entire album in order to download any particular song. I know moneymaking isn't what it used to be in the music business, but that is scary evil. Then on Black Friday she had the grace to discount her album. By three dollars. To $16. Why discount it at all? It's just cruel how tight-pursed she has become, but I guess that's how you stay at number one.

Best Bonus Track: "Godzilla" Kesha

Now, this is exactly what a bonus track should be. An acoustic little noodle that wouldn't quite fit on an actual album, "Godzilla" is still a delightful, sweetly hilarious gem of a song (in fact, she recorded it because her mother wrote it and she fell in love with its romantic sense of humor).

Best Music Video: "Boys" Charli XCX

Sometimes, simple is all you need. Throw a bunch of blink-and-miss-it cameos from handsome celebrities onto a pastel background and you have yourself an endlessly engrossing three minutes with a fun little chirpy pop tune.

Worst Music Video: "Sign of the Times" Harry Styles

There's nothing worse than a music video that's just boring. Like, I could have been listening to this song while washing the dishes or doing something productive, but instead I'm just sitting here watching you mope about on a hill. He does disrupt the boredom when he randomly starts flying, and the effects are pretty stellar, but then it becomes one of the silliest things ever broadcast. There's something about his posture that's just so inane, and I'll never stop giggling whenever certain shots hit.

Best Song for a Movie: "Dusk Till Dawn" Sia & Zayn (The Mountain Between Us)

The Mountain Between Us was an entirely forgettable, very nearly good-bad movie, but as soon as the credits rolled, it became clear that this duet was the single best thing about the film. Maybe it was just good in comparison to just shy of two hours of icy staring, but it was a fun way to wrap up an only OK night.

Worst Song for a Movie: "Never Forget" Michelle Pfeiffer

Something tells me she only signed on to star in Murder on the Orient Express if they agreed to let her sing a song over the credits.

Best Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Song: "I Go to the Zoo"

Season three of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has been a spectacular ride, but one of the biggest surprises was this music video, parodying Drake in a loving, hilariously childish way. The way the language switches between the verse and the chorus is just sublime.

Worst Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Song: "What a Rush to Be a Bride"

Look, I get the joke. Juxtaposing this cutesy sentiment with black metal is funny. But it doesn't mean I want to listen to it for two minutes.

Best Guilty Pleasure: "Just Hold On" Louis Tomlinson & Steve Aoki

This list is really dominated by One Direction ex-pats, but they've really been the talking points this year. Well, except poor Louis, whose single got buried under a mound of poor publicity. But this track with Steve Aoki is an undeniable ear worm, even if the vocals are a bit rough and the lyrics are, frankly, insipid. Hey, a pleasure is a pleasure, but I do feel the slightest bit of shame looking at that play count in the corner of iTunes whenever this comes on. I've listened to this waaaay too many times.

Worst Guilty Pleasure: "Feel it Still" Portugal. The Man

At first, when this song was in one commercial, it was an enjoyable little riff. But then it was in more commercials. And trailers. And stores. And the charts. And you realize the manufactured happiness of the song is nothing but an emotional cheese grater rubbing against your brain, propagated by irritating hipsters who think their band name's alt-grammar is ever so cool.

Best Album Cover: Melodrama, Lorde

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a bold color scheme.

Worst Album Cover: Witness, Katy Perry

Look, I know I've been dumping on poor Katy this year, but seriously? First of all, you're ripping off the poster for The Theatre Bizarre. Second of all, why are you riffing on horror imagery for an album full of two-bit double entendres? The strategy on this whole album is just incomprehensible.

Best Cover Song: "Old Flames (Can't Hold a Candle to You)" Kesha feat. Dolly Parton

I know this list has a lot of Kesha, but cut me some slack. It's been five years, and I need an outlet. Kesha has covered "Old Flames" before on her acoustic album, because she has a very personal relationship with the song. Her mom actually wrote it for Dolly way back in the day. But nothing could beat getting Ms. Parton herself on the track, and their voices collide in a beautiful hurricane of nostalgia and emotion.

Top Five Pretty Guys

#5 Adam Levine

He has been on this list before, and he will be again. What can I say?

#4 Calvin Harris

Is it just me, or is he trying to look like a blonde Tom Hardy this year? Either way, it works for me.

#3 Childish Gambino

I think this entire list is made up of repeat offenders, but what can a guy do? The music industry hasn't really changed that much, and neither have the beautiful men.

#2 Zayn

I care for his music not one bit, but his face is a different story entirely.

#1 Joe Jonas

Dude was literally an underwear model this year. Come on.

Bonus: Shameful Bro Country Crushes

"Bro country" is maybe the worst subgenre in American music history, but Sam Hunt, Thomas Rhett, and Jacob Davis at least cover their shame in beautiful wrapping paper.

Here's Some Stuff That I Did in 2017

Pod People

Hopefully you're aware that I do a horror movie review podcast called Scream 101 (links in the sidebar), but things at my podcast network are doing surprisingly well! We added a new pop culture show called Cast Party that I'm co-hosting with my high school drama teacher Dave, as well as a slasher review show called Keep Screaming, hosted by my friends Ryan Larson and Bee Bass! Frankly, I wish I was a host on that show, but nothing can keep me from coming on as a guest at some point.

Geek K. O.

I always love it when I'm invited to run a round of geek trivia on Geek K. O., the podcast co-hosted by my friend Justin Madriaga. And this year I got to visit them four times, to talk Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alien, and Christmas horror flicks!

Kill by Kill

This was the year of me guesting on podcasts, and I got invited to be on another one of my favorites, the Friday the 13th podcast Kill by Kill, which runs through the characters in the film death by death. On my episode, episode 21, we talked about the requisite Sex Couple Eddie and Tina and had a lot of fun doing it!

Blumhouse.com

Although the site unfortunately shut down this summer, I contributed many articles to the horror blog run by Blumhouse Productions, by far the coolest job I've ever gotten, and the reason I have any Instagram followers.

Shock Waves

Speaking of Blumhouse... I was invited on their horror podcast Shock Waves to talk recently seen flicks and LGBT horror movies with Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon. It was a blast, and appropriately I guess, it was episode number 69. Check it out!

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy DVD

See that quote on the back that says "A truly twisted high school movie" and is attributed to Eric Walkuski? Well, I wrote that. My editor at JoBlo got the credit thanks to a mix-up from the publicist, but hey. Maybe it's for the best that my first name blurb isn't on Bad Kids of Crestview Academy.

Ghastly Grinning

Also this year, I began writing a weekly column for the positivity-in-horror site Ghastly Grinning called the Horror Sommelier, where I pair the weekend's upcoming theatrical releases with older horror films for the perfect double feature.

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Word Count: 2817

Popcorn Kernels: A Christmas Double Feature

Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate it! In honor of the holiday, and the endless terrible movie options it provides, today I'm doling out some mini-reviews for two of Netflix's attempts to snatch the Hallmark Channel's weave.


A Christmas Prince

Year: 2017

Director: Alex Zamm

Cast: Rose McIver, Ben Lamb, Alice Krige

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A plucky journalist masquerades as a tutor to gain access to the royal palace of Aldovia in the days leading to the coronation of its playboy prince. She wants a scoop, but she might just find a heaping helping of love.

There are certain films that inspire me to hop to it and start writing. My mixed-but-positive review of The Greatest Showman just poured out of me, because I had a lot to say as I parsed out what exactly my feelings were. It's even easier to write a negative review trashing a film like, say, any Saw movie. Then there's A Christmas Prince, which makes writing a review feel like squeezing molasses out of a pinhole.  It's so effortfully bland that it's no fun to talk about, and it's even less fun to watch.

Sure, there are some solid bad-good moments, like the poorly thought-out set design (a cover photo in the background of the magazine publishing office has a headline that just reads "Pop Singer") or the fact that this is set in the fictional land of Aldovia, which is presumably in Eastern Europe given its small size and disproportionate orphan population, but every character just has a British accent because we're not really pretending that this isn't Prince Harry fan fiction.

But otherwise, this is listlessly predictable drivel that even Jane Austen would judge as being too chaste for her liking. Does the girl get the Prince? I mean, yeah. Duh. Is the lead character clumsy in a way that's supposed to make her flawed enough to be believable, but also not enough that we will notice when it's totally dropped midway through act 2? Hell yes! Are there stakes present within a hundred mile radius? Unfortunately not. A Christmas Prince has been getting a lot of buzz due to this notorious Tweet from Netflix, but really those viral marketing geniuses should have turned their sights toward that other scrap of streaming holiday fare...

Rating: 3/10

Christmas Inheritance

Year: 2017

Director: Ernie Barbarash

Cast: Eliza Taylor, Jake Lacy, Andie MacDowell 

Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The heiress of a Christmas gift company (?) must fulfill her father's annual tradition with his business partner, delivering him a Christmas letter incognito in the small town of Snow Falls, in order to prove her worthiness at taking over the company. While she's trapped by a snowstorm, she learns the true meaning of Christmas giving from the small town hicks she is forced to spend time with.

Do you feel that spray? That's the water A Christmas Prince is being blown out of. Christmas Inheritance is everything I was looking for from a terrible Hallmark Christmas spectacular. For one thing, the cast is infinitely better, featuring a couple people I've actually heard of. Jake Lacy for one, who was engineered in a lab to be the perfect bland white love interest and has actually been in real movies (Obvious Child, How to Be Single, Miss Sloane, Carol). The other being Andie MacDowell, who was last seen being a deliciously campy cougar in Magic Mike XXL, and who delivers what would be called an extended cameo if she wasn't in so damn much of the movie.

Toss them into a Canadian tax shelter helmed by the writer of Cube 2: Hypercube, and you've got yourself a recipe for something pretty special. This is exactly what I was imagining when we sat down to watch A Christmas Prince: a workplace that's weirdly specific and Christmas related, a non-threatening small town love interest with an ice sculpting habit and an ex-wife (proving he's marriage material and giving him a wounded, sensitive heart in one fell swoop), and an infinitely contrived plot (there's no reason for the main character to be incognito except to add a wrinkle right when it seems impossibly obvious that they should end up together, and the importance the entire town places on this Christmas Letter tradition is frankly mystifying).

There is such a plethora of bad-good fun to be had here, the best example being the magically elastic size of this small town (Snow Falls is so small they have no cell service and only one taxi, but it's big enough to need a taxi, but also that taxi is run by the guy who manages the hotel, and there's only one diner that's the central spot in town, except there's also a huge bar and grill where an important leg of the love triangle takes place, and there's only one cop and one homeless person, but there's also a huge Apple store, and I'm just so confused). But I also had a great time with the Mickey Mouse saxophone score that follows every emotion like a curious little brother, the constant bizarre dialogue about the true meaning of Christmas, and just every contrived scrap of this plot, which doesn't feel overlong somehow even though it lasts a good ten minutes longer than any TV movie has any right to be.

There's just one thing that sinks the movie like a stone. The main character has a rude, businessman fiancé who we're not supposed to be too terribly cut up about her leaving. This is all par for the course, but that fiancé is one of only two black men in the movie, and the theme of a city woman finding joy in the fundamentals of life does involve her leaving an interracial relationship to return to a Pillsbury Doughboy of a man in a small town filled with almost exclusively white people. I'm going to optimistically assume that this was a hideously misguided attempt at showcasing diversity in casting instead of a conscious political move, but that's pretty disgusting in today's political climate. So... that happened. For me, it was just another element of its campy, clueless fundamentalism, but I'm not really the right person to dig into exactly how damaging this is. It just needed to be mentioned before we close out.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with Christmas Inheritance. It provided me exactly what I wanted: a glimpse into the fantasies of the type of people who watch and make these movies, and as a psychological portrait of a world I have no part of, it was extremely delightful.

Rating: 6/10

Now, just for fun, a list of things that both films have exactly in common:

• Opening credits featuring a jaunty Christmas tune over stock footage of New York City
• A meet-cute involving a taxi
• A Plucky Woman finding True Love while traveling for work
• The Plucky Woman masquerading as somebody else
• That same Plucky Woman proving how relatable she is by clumsily tripping into half a dozen priceless objects
• The Plucky Woman's mother has passed away, which she reveals to the Man at a key emotional moment
• A walk in the snow leads to the discovery of a secret about the Man's beautiful soul
• A hometown diner run by a family member
• The tabloids' reports on debauchery are just grotesquely exaggerated accounts of things like doing cartwheels or having snowball fights with orphans
• Fatherly advice from a dude who's acting really hard
• Stakes so low they're actually subterranean
• Exactly one kiss

Word Count: 1233

Reviews In This Series

A Christmas Prince (Zamm, 2017)

A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (Schultz, 2018)

The Boy From Oz

Year: 2017

Director: Michael Gracey

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

You guys, the Mamma Mia 2 trailer premiered before The Greatest Showman, and if that movie isn't the most exciting slice of glitter pie that cinema has to offer in the coming year, then I'll eat my bedazzled hat. I can't wait to hear what obscure ABBA songs they're forced to pick and see how many clunky lines they can shove into Cher's mouth. The fact that a two and a half minute trailer for a movie that will almost certainly be a beautiful disaster excited me more than The Greatest Showman should probably say something, but this review still isn't a negative one. Let's jump into it!

Hey Hugh Jackman, it's nice to see you without mutton chops.

The Greatest Showman is a highly fictionalized (read: lies, all lies) telling of the life of P. T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman), which has opted to take his life full of exploiting "freaks" and enslaving animals and turn it into a wholesome movie about one man's dream to bring happiness to all people in spite of the haters. And here I thought The Disaster Artist was going to be the most thoroughly sanitized whitewashing of a real person's horrifying tendencies I saw in theaters this year.

Anyway, whatever. It's a movie musical. We don't get enough of them for me to go around boycotting any of them, and since when have movies actually been good with biographical material? So Barnum is struggling to make ends meet for his born-into-privilige-but-unwaveringly-supportive wife Charity (Michelle Williams) and their two ruthlessly adorable daughters. Through a bizarre combination of white savior-itis and feeling on the fringes of society, he decides to create the circus, a spectacular show of derring-do that highlights the outcasts of society including a little person dubbed Tom Thumb (Sam Humphrey), a bearded lady (Keala Settle), a brother-sister duo of African-American acrobats (Zendaya and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), what seems to be Kate McKinnon in ghost makeup, and basically the entire cast of Newsies with either wigs or goop on their faces.

Seriously, these freaks are hot as f**k.

I don't want to be a bummer, so I'm gonna start with the worst thing about The Greatest Showman and work my way up into what I secretly kinda love about it. Here goes: The plot is totally boring. Anytime we're forced to spend any prolonged time with Barnum and his drama (or Michelle Williams, who is totally wasted in one of the most reductive, passive female roles in years), it begins to slide back into being a sludgy, nuance-free biopic, and nobody wants that.

Honestly, these parts can get really dreary. They feint toward depicting Barnum as a lying, thieving scumbag but aren't willing to commit to that interpretation, and the constant pulling back leaves a lurching feeling in your stomach. And the scenes at the circus aren't much better, almost entirely forgetting to explore the inner lives of the circus performers who form the central theme of accepting yourself for who you are. There is a halfhearted stab at the idea that being black makes you just as Other as being a dogboy in America in the 1800's, but this is not a political movie. It's not really an anything movie, jamming a square peg of reality into the round hole of upbeat musical mayhem. 

There hasn't been a tone so ill-suited to biographical material since the sitcom Heil Honey, I'm Home!

But one good thing about The Greatest Showman is that it speeds though its plotty bits in strokes as broad as Fifth Avenue. Sure, that prevents engagement with any of the characters but who needs that, this is a musical extravaganza! Now, the music itself is... fine. Songwriters Pasek and Paul have proven themselves to be very capable at crafting catchy pop Broadway numbers (they wrote lyrics for La La Land, provided the best song to Trolls, and had a recent stage hit with Dear Evan Hansen - the former and the latter presumably being the reason this movie finally got the green light after seven years), and they provide the same service here.

None of the songs are incredibly memorable, matching the hollowly inspirational themes of the plot with rousing riffs on Rihanna, Mumford & Sons, and other pop subgenres that are invariably upbeat. The litany of interchangeable, on-the-nose "believe in yourself" lyrics can be a little numbing until they throw in a bit of variety late in Act 2. Plus there's a supposed opera number is hilariously off base, but god I've missed musicals. There's no genre more suited for frothy, nutrient-free material, and here's the thing: the choreography is not to be missed.

Yeah, there's a reason I still seem excited about this movie after all that complaining.

The framing, movement, and design of the production numbers is sublime. The choreography, which in no way represent what the actual circus looks like but who cares, is a tremendously athletic, physical approach to dance that I haven't seen in quite some time. It's electrifying, blending perfectly with the percussive, in-your-face foley work that pulls elements from all around the scene into the musical sphere. Every frame comes alive with color and light in a way that's just busy enough to not drip into Moulin Rouge excess while still featuring the painterly backdrops and fantastically unreal settings that turn 1800's New York into a lurid fairy tale.

The dancers rush full bore into dazzling feats, to the point that I was worried that Michelle Williams' double was gonna have her head whipped right off, but there's also a gloriously unsubtle approach that revels in just how Big the emotions of the songs are. Possibly my favorite moment takes place on a rooftop where rows and rows bedsheets are invariably hung out to dry (the beds in the Barnum household must be numerous and bare), where Barnum and Charity pull off a gravity-defying reverse dip into the air, the movement of her dress perfectly matched by the flapping of the sheets in the wind.

Almost every sequence is knock-your-socks-off spectacle, but the number "Rewrite the Stars," although the song feels the most like a reject from Smash season 2, features incredible trapeze work and the Efron/Jackman duet "The Other Side" has a minute and a half of beautiful, minuscule choreography that takes place while Barnum is just sitting at a barstool. Big or small, The Greatest Showman paints a tapestry of music and feeling that's well worth your time.

Jackman obviously is a massively talented theater performer, and it's nice to see him actually have fun in a big screen musical, but the standout here is probably Broadway diva Keala Settle, a big personality with an even bigger voice. Plus Zac Efron can move, and he even sings OK! (I think he took lessons between High School Musical 1 and 2). Everyone and/or their doubles is actually massively talented, and it's a pure pleasure to see them make their magic, sugary spectacle. Even if you have to suffer through the rest of the movie to get to it.

TL;DR: The Greatest Showman is a terribly bland approach to the material, but the production numbers are unspeakably gorgeous, and it's not like there was any other reason to go see it anyway.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1235

This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think

Year: 2017

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill

Run Time: 1 hours 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Here it is, the reason I've come out of retirement. I decided to stop reviewing current movies shortly after Rogue One, but I've always had a worry gnawing at the back of my mind that that meant I wouldn't be able to weigh in on the next chapter in the Star Wars canon. Well now the veil has been lifted, and he reviewer has been loosed upon the world once more. Let's dive into it, shall we?

Cue applause.

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi picks up more or less immediately after the events of The Force Awakens. Rey (Daisy Ridley) is on the galaxy's most absurdly gorgeous island (and the characters keep using the term"galaxy" as if that term encompasses the whole of creation, and it bothered me slightly less than in Guardians of the Galaxy, but still a lot more than it should) to solicit the help of legendary Jedi hermit Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) int he fight against the First Order and maybe learn a thing or two about this Force business in the process. Meanwhile, in a very Empire Strikes Back fashion, while Rey has a space-Buddhist adventure into the inner workings of life itself, her friends are fighting for their lives out in space.

A battle between the dwindling Resistance forces - led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher, in her final appearance as the character not played by a horrifying CGI specter) and purple-haired Vice-Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) - and a First Order fleet - led by the rogue's gallery of Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), his apprentice Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) - has reached a brief standstill, but things aren't looking hot for the good guys.

While Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) chafes against authority due to his insatiable and potentially dangerous drive to be a hero, Stormtrooper ex-pat Finn (John Boyega) teams up with maintenance worker Rose (Kelly Marie Tran, the newest star to be scooped from obscurity to light up screens worldwide) to find a master codebreaker to help them yadda yadda science fiction words. Look, there's a ticking clock and they're trying to save the Resistance and preserve hope for the galaxy.

A whole galaxy! It's, like, really important!

What's most striking about The Last Jedi is how small-scale everything really is. We do visit some spectacular new environments (and one that's mostly just Hoth 2.0), but the bulk of the story takes place within a couple square miles, or whatever the space term is for that. That's not in and of itself a bad thing (the original Star Wars only has a couple settings it switches between), but I think the reason I felt claustrophobic is that the main battle is stuck in a holding pattern that sucks out every bit of narrative tension like an industrial vacuum. It kind of prevents any sort of real action, and all the participants are content to just kind of sit and wait for the important characters to figure things out, while sitting around discussing their differing philosophies over tea.

OK, I may have exaggerated a bit, but really not by that much, and that's probably the biggest flaw in a movie riddled with flaws. To be fair, it's also riddled with triumphs, but The Last Jedi is audacious, conceptually and visually, and that bold ambition comes with a willingness to take risks and stumble that The Force Awakens was not willing to indulge. And that's probably why the latter was a whole lot better as a popcorn spectacle when all is said and done.

The Last Jedi is full of these contradictions, which is why it has been so hard for any reviewer to wrap their head around it. It very clearly has a better director, and Rian Johnson (of Brick and Looper) delivers images of such pure, magnetic beauty that it's impossible to dislike the movie as a whole. From the set design (a Resistance bomber ship in an early scene is an impeccably crafted space with lived-in functionality) to the costume design (a new set of storm troopers that are basically blood red samurai) to the space warfare (one key moment is literally breathtaking; every process in your body will briefly stop to appreciate the sheer beauty), The Last Jedi is a sublimely accomplished visual work. But as a story, it falls apart like a ham shank left in the crock pot for too long.

Maybe I shouldn't be writing this review right before lunch.

For a movie with such a generous run time, the story fails to find room to develop most of its dramatic beats, shoehorning in scenes of grand import that weren't properly established and thus have the impact of a handful of cotton balls being thrown at your face. It doesn't help that the dialogue in these scenes is brutally clunky, and relies on aspects of the Force and Jedi lore that have never made an appearance in the film canon and frankly made no sense to begin with. Fans of the extended Star Wars mythos may find a lot to dig into here, but as someone who has never found the struggles of the Jedi and their philosophies anything but hokey, it's hard to find any emotional stakes in the proceedings.

I suppose this is just a symptom of a problem Star Wars has always had. The divide between the Dark Side and the Light is written as the malleable, porous line that can be crossed all too easily if you're not careful. But basically every one of the franchise's villains is a scarred, sneering mustache-twirler in all black, obliterating whatever shades of grey the plot wants you to imagine there might be. So whenever a character struggles with being pulled toward the dark, it's hard to see what could possibly be so tempting about it.

Seriously, who's looking at this guy and thinking, "He looks like he'd be a good boss."

Honestly, there are moments here that are just lame. In addition to what it pretty objectively objectively the most idiotic scene to ever grace a Star Wars picture (you'll know it when you f**king see it), there are a handful of sequences that exist exclusively as fanservice, and they're exhausting to suffer through.

Looking at all these flaws, I should honestly be infuriated by this movie, but I'm not. There's the trouble with The Last Jedi. What's good is so damn good, and even if more than a good half of the movie was dull and overwrought (the actual number is probably closer to 35%), it would be enough to shift the scales toward a positive score.

For one thing, the wacky humor that has secretly always been present in the Star Wars franchise is back in full force, and although anything Poe does is ripped straight from the mouth of Star-Lord and frankly doesn't work all that well, there's a sense of kiddie matinee fun that runs through the whole thing. The biggest and maybe not best example of this is the Porgs, this episode's answer to the Ewoks. They're these cute little rodents that only exist for comic relief, and I'm deeply upset by how much I loved them.

I KNOW this only exists to sell plushies, but damn it it's working.

OK, the Porgs are bound to be divisive, but they really are a sterling example of the register The Last Jedi shoots for, and  more often than not hits on the mark. For instance, BB-8 continues to be the best new character in the franchise, and his every exploit continues to bring me unending joy (He's also allowed to get a little bloodthirsty when push comes to shove, and it's rad as hell).

Another good thing (there are more than I've been letting on, because the bad things can be so loud) is Rose, an entirely charming new character who might feel more at home in a spin-off like Rogue One but really holds her own against the more established ensemble. I don't know where they plucked her from, but they need to keep returning to that well.

Plus, when The Last Jedi goes big it goes big. The action sequences are pretty stellar, and occasionally even surprisingly gory (at a "family-friendly" Indiana Jones level, not a The Prowler level, just in case you were worried), and the universe-building is as weird and charming as the franchise fans should have come to expect. 

In short, it's a water cooler popcorn movie that's definitely worth your time, even though it has some massive holes to patch up come Episode IX. This is a step down, but it's not quite a stumble. Even though with a worse director it certainly would have been. 

TL;DR: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is a beautiful, stunning popcorn adventure with some really wonky storytelling over a terribly indulgent run time.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1504

Reviews In This Series
Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Edwards, 2016)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Howard, 2018)

Popcorn Kernels: Q4 Review Purge

In which, while I'm still gearing up to begin reviewing current films in earnest, I release mini-reviews of some 2017 releases that aren't quite recent enough to meet my cutoff for getting the full review treatment, but still deserve a nod.

Lady Bird

Year: 2017
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Timothée Chalamet
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

In her senior year of high school, Lady Bird navigates her prickly relationship with her mother and a series of friendships and relationships as she comes of age and gets ready for college.

Given the Oscar buzz surrounding Lady Bird and the fact that it was being described as the female iteration of Boyhood, I was worried that the film would leave me a bit cold. Well, I'm here to report that I needn't have worried. Lady Bird is a frickin' delightful warm breeze of a film. It's especially relatable to me, because there's a large portion of the film dedicated to putting on a musical theater performance, something I dedicated a good 85% of my high school life too, but this film is genetically engineered to be relatable to as many people as humanly possible.

The central relationship of the film is between Lady Bird and her mother (played by Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf respectively), an effortlessly sharp evocation of the sharp edges and mercurial bonds between mothers and daughters, but every aspect of a teenager's developing friendships and loves is explored with a fine-toothed comb. Obviously nothing can beat Metcalf and Ronan (Metcalf especially delivers up a healthy platter of emotionally-laced barbs that cut to the bone), but every relationship in the film is a well-observed, matter-of-fact marvel, preserving in amber the vast spectrum of feelings that make up one's youth.

Like Boyhood, Lady Bird presents its story as more of a series of vignettes than an actual structured plot, but unlike Boyhood, it's damn funny while it's at it. I bark-laughed more than once in the theater, and the warm joviality of the film's tone makes it so that the dark moments are even more powerful, cast in sharp relief against the genial humor.

I'd say Greta Gerwig the writer is much more on the ball here than Greta Gerwig the director, who is content to bathe her terrific ensemble in desaturated, flatly presented frames, but that writing is whip-smart, capturing the lived-in reality of its setting and characters as if they've always existed, just waiting to be brought to life by her hand. Presumably on a vintage typewriter, because this is still Greta Gerwig we're talking about.

Rating: 8/10

Ingrid Goes West

Year: 2017
Director: Matt Spicer
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr.
Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Ingrid is an ex-mental patient who becomes obsessed with an Instagram lifestyle blogger, moving to Venice Beach to Single White Female her and ingratiate herself into her circle of friends.

If I didn't already have the CW show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in my life, I'd think Ingrid Goes West was the work of a mad genius. And perhaps that's not fair to Ingrid, but that show handles how mental illness and obsession collide with the cold modern world in a way that wrings tears from me like a sopping wet rag. This movie doesn't quite reach that point, but what it does succeeds in its own, entirely unique way.

Taking the common inclination for Instagram stalking and ramping that up to its logical conclusion, Ingrid Goes West turns the psychologically dubious underbelly of social media into a twisted tale of terror. But as much as Ingrid's scheming is frightening and depressing, the fact that everything she does is instantly and completely relatable adds a startling layer of familiarity that is grotesquely juxtaposed with what could only be called a psychological thriller. It's a satirical indictment of the closed-off emotional world that social media creates, and it cuts deep.

Oh, and did I mention it's a comedy? It's not frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious, but Elizabeth Olsen is perfectly cast as the ne plus ultra of the perfectly primped Instagram hottie who lives her life out in a series of hashtags, misquoted authors, and superlatives. Then there's O'Shea Jackson Jr. (in only his second onscreen role), who breathes life into every scene he's in with an easygoing charm that allows you to forget that his character has literally one dimension and that dimension is that he loves Batman, which is maybe the most thoroughly boring character trait I could possibly imagine.

And Aubrey Plaza reaches emotional depths here that I never imagined her capable of, converting her usual deadpan personality from a sardonic sidekick role to a hollow shell for a totally empty personality. It's a shocking, sublime performance that interacts with the film's themes of identity formation and loneliness in a satisfying and visceral way. Sure, it's far from perfect, with a series of decisions in the third act that don't make a ton of sense or push the plot forward much - if at all - but as a showcase for these performers and the deeply felt central character arc, it's a tremendously satisfying bit of business.

Rating: 8/10

Coco

Year: 2017
Director: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina
Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt
Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

On Día de Los Muertos, a young guitarist named Miguel rebels against his family, which has banned music for generations. He becomes trapped in the world of the dead, on a quest for a long-lost musician relative who can release him and approve of his love of music.

A lot of people have been saying Coco is a step down for Pixar, and they might not be totally wrong. The plot is entirely predictable from twenty minutes in, and it pulls much more from the Disney animated musical tradition than films like Up or Wall-E. But if you approach it as a Disney musical, then... Well, it's pretty superb.

Never forget for one minute that The Book of Life did more or less the same thing several years ago, a fact that I'm upset few people seem to have pointed out, but it's impossible to complain about getting multiple films based around the design and folklore of Día de los Muertos. And a mainstream American movie being so steeped in Mexican culture is almost unheard of. From the inclusion of a beautiful rendition of the folk song "La Llorona," to the appearances from many famous Mexican historical figures (including an extended cameo from Frida Kahlo, playing a hilariously exaggerated version of her personality that lovingly pokes fun at her favorite tropes and designs), Coco thoroughly pays homage to a non-American sphere, to the tune of becoming the highest grossing film in Mexican history.

But social issues aside, it's just a fun film to be around. It might not linger in the memory as long as Finding Nemo or even the short film Piper, but it's an emotional roller coaster with original songs that are much better than I would have expected from Pixar's decidedly un-musical crew (the most boring one, an inevitably Oscar-nominated musical theater standard called "Remember Me" that hits on the film's theme with the subtlety of  a jackhammer, was of course written by the Disney duo behind Frozen, and all the great ones that actually channel a distinct musical tradition were by co-director Adrian Molina and Germaine Franco - who also worked on The Book of Life, so she knows what she's doing).

Its depictions of the land of the dead are also pretty dang beautiful, an unnatural barrage of colors and lights and skeletal character designs that are enough to earn back the goodwill that the 22-minute short film Olaf's Frozen Adventure worked hard to obliterate. It's a tremendously satisfying film in its own right, even if its not totally unique or perfect. I'll be listening to the soundtrack for months to come, even if I don't feel the need to see the film again for a while.

Rating: 8/10

The Mountain Between Us

Year: 2017
Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Cast: Kate Winslet, Idris Elba, Beau Bridges
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

When their charter plane crashes in the mountains, two strangers must fight for survival and just maaaaybe fall in love while they're doing it.

There's maybe nothing better than a soapy romance movie if you just want to have a good time in the theater, and The Mountain Between Us has all the ingredients of being a perfect good-bad romantic thriller. Who wouldn't want to watch a movie you could describe as "Alive meets An Affair to Remember"?

Unfortunately, once again the vengeful gods of boilerplate cinema have struck. Mountain is hovering somewhere exactly between good-bad and mediocre, which is the most boring place to be. It just doesn't commit to being much of anything. Whenever the movie threatens to briefly become The Revenant, every problem from a slip down a mountainside to nearly drowning in a frozen lake is solved in less screen time than it takes for Kate Winslet to take a pee.

So what we're stuck with is a low-stakes survival thriller welded to a hideously contrived erotic romance. The script makes such an effort to paint Idris and Kate's clashing as a Brain vs. Heart conflict, it forgets to give them any character traits whatsoever, other than Winslet's fake American accent, the strained vowel sounds of which are the scariest thing in the movie.

But then the movie has the gall to very clearly end, then prattle on for a good fifteen more minutes, scraping up a thin gruel of drama from a pot that has long since been drained. There's nothing worse than a boring movie that overstays its welcome, and therefore I refuse to celebrate The Mountain Between Us as the second coming of B-movies, no matter how many mind-boggling unmotivated close-ups I get of Kate Winslet's watery eyes.

Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1189

A Room Of Our Own

Note: I wrote this review of The Disaster Artist over a year and a half ago, after I saw a preview screening of the film. I watched it on opening night to learn that not only was it not substantially changed, not a frame other than the opening and closing credits was touched. On a second viewing, I'm a lot colder on the film, but I stand by the feelings I express in this review. It just doesn't have a lot to offer other than a one-time gimmick. Once that's used up, there's no reason to return to that well whatsoever.

Year: 2016

Director: James Franco

Cast: James Franco, Dave Franco, Sharon Stone

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I’m a huge fan of oddball auteur Tommy Wiseau’s bad movie masterpiece The Room. So much so that it’s not even listed on my index in the section that’s sorted by rating, because that would have broken the system entirely, not to mention my credibility. I’m also a huge fan of Greg Sestero’s behind-the-scenes book The Disaster Artist, which is hands-down the most fascinating nonfiction book I’ve ever read. It’s not only an insight into the twisted mind that birthed The Room, but the story of a man rattling against the bars of the cage of normalcy who would eventually become that twisted mind's best friend.

So when I heard they were adapting that very book into a movie, I was mighty intrigued. When it was announced that stoner comedy icon by day/berserk artistic soldier by night James Franco would be directing, I was concerned, but realized there’s hardly anybody better to bring that madcap, deranged nightmare to life.

I was wrong.

You’re tearing me apart, James Franco!

In The Disaster Artist, Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) is a young aspiring actor in San Francisco who meets the mysterious, ineffably accented, appallingly dressed Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) in an acting class. The shy young man comes to respect Tommy’s bravado and total lack of elf-awareness. They become fast friends and move to L. A. to pursue their dreams. However, Greg’s success at finding an agent (Sharon Stone) and a girlfriend (Alison Brie) makes Tommy dangerously jealous.

When they decide that the industry isn’t ready for them, they agree that they should make their own movie. They assemble a crew (Seth Rogen, Paul Scheer, Charlyne Yi…) and a cast (Ari Graynor, Josh Hutcherson, Zac Efron, Jacki Weaver…) with Tommy’s bottomless pit of money and it’s off to the races!

Oh hi, cult classic.

At its heart, The Disaster Artist is about the relationship between Greg and Tommy more than it’s about The Room itself. This is as it should be. And as a movie adaptation of said story, some details are changed to smooth the narrative along. This is also as it should be. As much a fan as I am of the book, I understand and respect that certain choices had to be made when adapting the material. However, the end product is both completely unrecognizable as the original true story and kilotons less interesting. The quasi-horror story of a dark, twisted friendship between a bipolar lunatic and an insecure ingénue has been transformed into a wacky, whitewashed buddy picture about never giving up on your dreams.

It lurches so hard to fit a three-act structure that it’s gut-churning. And again, to make myself clear, I’m not upset that they streamlined the casting process or combined multiple characters into one or cut out the subplot about Retro Puppet Master (OK, maybe I’m a teensy bit upset about that one). I’m upset they capsized years of bizarre behavior, manipulation, homoeotic tension, and drama in favor of a bog standard “girlfriend jealousy,” man-child, Apatow-approved plot structure, which they go ahead and totally ignore in the third act, arriving at zero resolution for either character. And this is not a “true stories don’t have endings” situation. By this point, everything true about this story is rotting under a stack of old TV Guides at the landfill.

I guess they were too chicken to commit to their story. Cheeeep, cheepcheepcheep.

That’s not to say that The Disaster Artist isn’t funny. It completely misses the point of its own story but it still has the juice to be pleasantly amusing. It’s not an uproarious affair, but there is plenty of that awkward comedy that’s rampant in The Room itself, especially in any scene where Tommy has to interact with people out in the real world. It certainly helps that James Franco completely disappears into the role, delivering a pitch-perfect imitation of Wiseau’s haunting strangeness. His comic timing is on point, and frankly he saves the movie from itself, the cuckoo center of the maelstrom of muddled plot elements.

Franco has also assemble a veritable A-Team of essential comic actors for lightning quick cameos, though – mysteriously – some of them (including Dirty Grandpa-redeemer Jason Mantzoukas) aren’t even given any real gags to work with. My favorite would be John Early, who plays a major agent's assistant and needs to get noticed by more people immediately. But frankly, the non-Tommy/Greg cast of The Room are given short shrift in a series of rapidfire scenes that blast through the actual making of the film. Only Ari Graynor (as Juliette Danielle, who played the blonde temptress Lisa) and Zac Efron (as Dan Janjigian, who played the psychotic drug dealer Chris-R.) make any sort of impression as the film completely ignores them. Seth Rogen also livens up several scenes from the peanut gallery, eking comedy around the edges.

To be completely honest, the film’s only acting liability is Dave Franco, who puts almost no effort into crafting a distinct personality out of Greg Sestero. Where James is playing Tommy Wiseau, Dave is just playing Dave Franco, coasting on his looks, his stock mannerisms, and a truly pitiful fake beard that looks like he got tarred and feathered by Fozzie Bear.

You are NOT my favorite customer, Dave.

The film has its ups and its downs, but it’s only half bad. It feels more like a home movie of celebrities hanging out than an actual work of cinema, but there’s certainly a place for that. I do wish it spent more time on the process of creating The Room (in fact, the longest segment of the film is the totally pointless premiere scene, where we get to sit with the actors and watch their weird facsimiles of actual scenes from The Room for what feels like hours. I’ve already seen The Room. I don’t need to watch fans watching a fan recreation of it, celebrities or not), because that’s where the more interesting story lies (in this watered-down version, anyway). And as it stands, if you haven’t actually seen the film, you’ll be flummoxed by the whole process. But I don’t mind spending 90 minutes with these people in this setting. If you’re a Room acolyte, seek this movie out. If not, leave your stupid wallets in your pocket.

TL;DR: The Disaster Artist is an oddball biopic that misses the story mark but lands the humor.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1189

Census Bloodbath: Weight Reduction Through Terror

Year: 1989

Director: Michael Fischa

Cast: William Bumiller, Brenda Bakke, Merritt Butrick

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I have so many thoughts swirling around in my brain about Death Spa that I’m gonna cut to the chase in this introduction so I can get to unpacking what the hell it is I just watched. In short, I resuscitated Census Bloodbath with the adrenaline shot to the heart that was Killer Workout, and I thought it was only fitting that I follow it up with that other late 80’s slasher about murders at a health spa. Other than that link, Death Spa couldn’t possibly have been a more different experience, and I daresay it’s about time to dive into that twitchy mass I’m – for lack of a better word – going to have to call a plot.

There’s less aerobics stock footage at least, though I’m not really sure that’s a positive.

So, the Death Spa in question is Starbody Health Spa, owned by one Michael Evans (William Bumiller), a widower who has struck up an affair with his customer Laura Danvers (Brenda Bakke of Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight). After Laura sustains a chemical burn from a malfunctioning sauna, mysterious accidents and deaths plague the spa, and as the crew prepares for its annual Mardi Gras party (unintentionally minting this a proper holiday slasher), bodies – and suspects – begin piling up. Investigators Sgt. Stone (Rosalind Cash of Tales from the Hood) and Lt. Fletcher (Francis X. McCarthy of Interstellar and a bunch of Steve Martin comedies) might suspect Michael at first, but almost everyone in this overpacked cast starts to smell a little fishy.

High on the list is David Avery (Merritt Butrick of Fright Night Part 2 and Star Trek II and III), the twin brother of Michael’s ex-wife Catherine (Shari Shattuck) and the computer programmer in charge of the spa’s preposterously high-tech control room. Not since Chopping Mall has an 80’s movie so vastly overestimated the amount of flashing buttons and dials that are required by the average local business. David also hates Michael’s guts, blaming him for his sister’s miscarriage and suicide.

Anyway, we’ve also got Michael’s lawyer Tom (Robert Lipton) who wants to keep the club open at all costs; the manager Priscilla Wayne (Alexa Hamilton), who was the first to find Laura despite supposedly having left the spa earlier that night; Marvin (Ken Foree of Dawn of the Dead, From Beyond, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, and just so many cult movies), the… I don’t know, janitor? Security guard?; and Dr. Lido Moray (Joseph Whipp, who played a sergeant in A Nightmare on Elm Street, a detective in Chiller, and the Sheriff in Scream, so apparently Wes Craven was pleased with his work), a parapsychologist investigating the scene.

And why exactly is a parapsychologist here? Well you see, Michael keeps having dreams of his dead wife demanding that he kill himself, and he’ been receiving creepy computer messages from her before that was a thing people could just do. Is there something paranormal going on, or is this just a plain and simple hack and slash routine with some gaslighting thrown in for flavor?

Spoiler alert: it’s very confusing, but it’s not neither and maybe both.

Death Spa is one of those bad movies where everyone introduces themselves with their full name, and I’m so glad the filmmakers assumed we were all idiots, because if this script wasn’t dumbed down a smidge, it would be absolutely impenetrable to anyone but the people who wrote it. The characters aren’t quite distinct enough in looks or personality to be able to tell who is doing what (except for the one recognizable face, Ken Foree, but his character is useless and onscreen for maybe five minutes), the unclear reveals are a series of bizarrely elliptical paranormal happenings, and the deaths are shot so poorly it’s almost impossible to tell who is being killed by what implement except for the fact that it’s happening and it’s gross.

But there’s the thing. As difficult as it was for me to put together a coherent body count list for this review, the murder sequences have an untamed power that is absent from most toothless 1989 slashers. The viscera is present and unrelenting, whether it’s an eyeball exploding out of a burning corpse, a man’s brains splashing onto a sauna bench, or a blender converting an arm into a bloody smoothie. The effects aren’t exactly stellar, but for a film of this vintage they’re both surprising and relatively innovative. One death in particular, in which a girl is sprayed with either boiling water or acid (if I haven’t made this point already, Death Spa has a clarity problem) is so nauseatingly rendered that it sent a chill up my spine and had me asking some hard questions about why I continue watching these movies. That might not sound like a compliment, but it is. 

A slasher being physically affecting in any way is rarer than finding a four leaf clover made of leprechaun gold.

The confusion isn’t really helped by the sheer amount of noise this movie produces. Not enough people die to justify the alarming abundance of characters in this movie, including  comic relief schlub with an inexplicable British accent who gets two laugh lines, then promptly exits the movie. But all of this contributes to a sense of never really knowing what’s going to happen next, and this movie is packed to the gills with delightfully bizarre little moments and details around every corner that are satisfying for the lover of strange cinema. There’s even a scene of inappropriate football tossing (across a desk in an office, in the middle of a conversation), a hallmark of bad filmmaking as written in stone by The Room.

And boy does this movie make a habit of chucking in the most insipid good-bad false scares ever conceived (in a  scene where we’re emend to believe Laura is dead, it’s revealed that she’s merely taking a nap face down on the couch. You know, as humans do.) All of this is a little disappointing considering that when Death Spa is on it’s on, providing some truly macabre imagery that’s more than a little shocking from a horror flick of this vintage. Fortunately, the bad scenes are pretty amusing, but the good scenes almost get in the way of them and vice versa.

I’m almost at a loss for words to describe how I feel about this film. It’s utterly perplexing and frustrating, but that might just be the most delightful thing about it. I commend the filmmakers for going to the extra mile and not just turning this into some aerobics slashing boilerplate, but I just have no idea what it actually is. Death Spa is beyond description, and thus inherently worth giving it a look.

Killer: [Caroline Avery (Shari Shattuck), as channeled by her brother David (Merritt Butrick)]

Final Girl: Michael Evans (William Bumiller) feat. Laura Danvers (Brenda Bakke)

Best Kill: Priscilla is frightened by a violently wobbling mirror in the bathroom, which then explodes outward, sending shards of glass – along with her face – smashing to the floor.

Sign of the Times: When the douchey beefcake Robert rebuffs a girl who’s flirting with him, he smirks and says, “I’m Beta. You’re VHS.”

Scariest Moment: Possessed fish begin screaming at Lt. Fletcher in the gym’s walk-in freezer.

Weirdest Moment: suspicious of Tom, Michael barges into his apartment to confront him – but first he compliments his short shorts.

Champion Dialogue: “You’d resort to the only weapon in your system file: jock violence.”

Body Count: 9; not counting many trampled/burned alive partygoers, or whatever the hell happens to whoever the hell the villain was

1. Robert is bent in half backwards by a weight machine.
2. Marcie is impaled through the back of the neck.
3. Linda is sprayed with acid from a fire sprinkler.
4. Dr. Moray’s hand explodes and he’s thrown down a stairwell.
5. Jeffrey has his face crushed by a phantom hand.
6. Sauna Dude is impaled through the back of the skull.
7. Bartender’s arm is devoured by a rogue blender.
8. Lt. Fletcher is impaled in the neck with a swordfish.
9. Priscilla is diced by an exploding mirror.

TL;DR: Death Spa is confusing, gruesome nonsense, which means it's a pretty great late 80's slasher.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1399