Simpsons And Daughters

Today is a very special day in the lives of Sergio and I. Tonight we are attending the Fireworks Finale at the Hollywood Bowl celebrating the 25th Anniversary of The Simpsons, a show which he has held a lifelong adoration for and that I have been working exclusively with for the past few months.

When watching The Simpsons is your job (I'm super cool, I know), it's easy to view the task as a daunting and tedious affair, especially after a commute about the size of four episodes. But the show is an enduring zeitgeist hit for a reason and it's hard for me and my coworkers not to be giggling at our desks. For that reason, and in honor of the show tonight, I'd like to dedicate today's post to the show that has defined the last quarter of the century.

And now that I'm far more knowledgable about the inner workings of The Simpsons than I ever dreamed or hoped I would be, I'd like to put that knowledge to the test with

Ten Underappreciated Simpsons Characters

Sure, everybody knows Milhouse and Krusty the Clown. You don't even need to watch the show to know those characters - they've become part of the lexicon. But the Simpsonverse is brimming with exciting characters that have appeared many times throughout the show's 25 year run, but don't get quite as much credit for it as characters like Ned Flanders, Nelson Muntz, or Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. Let's take a moment to celebrate these stoic individuals.

#10 Drederick Tatum

Voiced By: Hank Azaria

Appearances: 23

Quote: "Hello, yeah, how you doin', I'd like to order two gazelles, an impala, and throw in a couple wildebeests. Oh, and a two-liter bottle of diet cherry cola. You just have one-liter bottles? Okay, cancel the whole order."

Drederick Tatum is Springfield's answer to Mike Tyson, a professional boxer and hardened criminal to boot. But Drederick has so much intimidating power, he never feels the need to use it, instead preferring to live his elegant lifestyle and/or eat Jello in peace while others bend over backwards to stay out of his way. His delicate whisper of a voice and his erudite manner of speech, combined with his brutal skill in the ring make Drederick a fascinating character. So much so that he appears on this list despite appearing in far fewer episodes than anybody else.

#9 Sherri and Terri Mackleberry

Voiced By: Russi Taylor

Appearances: 42

Quote: "Remember. The one you pick may not be the one you get."

Sherri and Terri are generally just used as background characters to populate the school scenes, but they have much more personality than their peers, like Richard or Database or Lewis. Are you saying "Who?" Exactly. A lot of my favorite humor comes from the duality of these two characters as they either interact as one being or exhibit creepy twin characteristics. I suppose its easy to see why considering my pedigree as a horror fan, but I'm always drawn to the sinister, dark, and creepy side of Simpsons humor. Of which, luckily, there's an abundance.

#8 Troy McClure

Voiced By: Phil Hartman

Appearances: 32

Quote: "Hello, Selma Bouvier? It's Troy McClure. You may remember me from such dates as last night's dinner..."

Troy McClure is a parody of the industry, an eternally washed-up actor who appears in instructional videos largely to remind people that he, as a matter of fact, did have a thriving career once and hey, wouldn't they like to buy a DVD or two? Of all of Phil Hartman's desperate, money-grubbing roles (including derelict lawyer Lionel Hutz), Troy McClure is the funniest, hiding his flop sweat beneath a deep voice and a handsome face.

#7 Squeaky-Voiced Teen

Voiced By: Dan Castellaneta

Appearances: 58

Quote: "I gotta go sort tortillas. Corn, flour, corn, corn, no gluten, corn, two stuck together?! Oh, now I gotta fill out a form."

The Squeaky-Voiced Teen has never been given a name, but he is a fixture in the Springfield community, having worked just about every crappy customer service job imaginable. You may wish that you, like the Simpsons, never aged beyond your current state, but one of the hazards of eternal youth is that you have 25 years of summer jobs to get through. Squeaky-Voiced Teen is a weak spirit, constantly pushed around in jobs that he has no passion for, and only The Simpsons can render that kind of dynamic completely hilarious. But believe me it is.

#6 Selma Bouvier

Voiced By: Julie Kavner

Appearances: 111

Quote: "Always a bridesmaid, only occasionally a bride."

Although Patty is her identical twin, Selma is by far my favorite of Marge's sisters. Fearless and grumpy, Selma charges her way through any given situation with chutzpah and bitter sarcasm. Although she could do to treat Homer a little nicer, her one-liners can't be beat. And her tough as nails attitude is what won over her sixth and final husband, the illustrious mafioso Fat Tony. Although it didn't work out (does it ever?), Selma Bouvier-Terwilliger-Hutz-McClure-Discothèque-Simpson-D'Amico continues to face the world as she always does - with gruff disgust.

#5 Snake Jailbird

Voiced By: Hank Azaria

Appearances: 63

Quote: "I am so going to enjoy pooping on their carpet."

Snake is just about the only criminal in town, so why is he so likable? With his valley girl accent, his unique, almost coworker-like relationship with captor Chief Wiggum and victim Apu, and his general agreeableness make him unique in the felon community. Also his hair is superb.

#4 Jasper Beardly

Voiced By: Harry Shearer

Appearances: 41

Quote: "All I brought is a dime. I didn't know there'd be pornography."

Jasper is Grampa's gruff best friend, and a constant acerbic presence in the community. His humor derives from his deadpan deliveries and unimpressed personality. But when he tries, Jasper can be really sweet, like when he brings Grampa along on a trip to Capital City so he won't be lonely. The Springfield Retirement Castle wouldn't be the same without him.

#3 Sideshow Mel

Voiced By: Dan Castellaneta

Appearances: 116

Quote: "Applause is an addiction. Like heroin. Or checking your email."

Everybody's favorite non sequitur character would probably be Ralph, the weird little son of Chief Wiggum, but I myself am rather partial to Krusty's sidekick Sideshow Mel. A wacky quasi-caveman who speaks like a Shakespearean actor, Mel is typically the first member of any crowd to react to the antics of the Simpsons, always in an erudite manner, but with a layer of absurdity as large as his hair.

#2 Martin Prince

Voiced By: Russi Taylor

Appearances: 141

Quote: "I'm not gay! I'm nothing yet!"

Martin's a huge nerd, an endlessly amiable classmate, and a coded homosexual in the vein of Arrestd Development's Tobias Fünke. His boundless enthusiasm for life and knowledge is infectious and he is prone to outbursts of intellectual fervor that get him on the bad side of the local bullies more often then not. But this little charmer is never going to stop and that's why I love him. He's impenetrably warmhearted and though he may only have one line in any given episode, it's always sure to be a corker.

#1 Hans Moleman

Voiced By: Dan Castellaneta

Appearances: 77

Quote: "My name is Hans. Drinking has ruined my life. I'm 31 years old."

Hans Moleman is the one character that consistently keeps me rolling in the aisles. A withered old man with a weak temperament, Moleman always finds himself in sticky situations, whether it be a car crash, a bad date, or not being extroverted enough to mention that he is still alive at his own funeral. He accepts the weight of the world with a sigh as life constantly provides him with new challenges. His begrudging acceptance of the state of things as terrible as they are is a constant crackup. Characters that have terrible things happen to them are a staple of the genre (Oh no, Mr. Bill!), but hands down Moleman is one of the classics of the form, and an alarmingly underappreciated one at that.


So what do y'all think? Are you happy I mentioned a favorite? Sad I skipped someone? Please let me know in the comments!  And have a nice day! I know I will.
Word Count: 1379

Census Bloodbath: At Death's Door

Year: 1981

Director: Alan Beattie

Cast: Patricia Pearcy, David Hayward, John Dukakis

Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Now this brings me back. Now that summer has wound down and school has wound up, many of my special features have taken hiatus or drawn themselves to completion and I can return to my school routine - namely, jamming in slasher movies during any long break in my day. 

And the first to receive such treatment is a decent throwback to some of the better movies of my 1980 run - more focused on mystery and intrigue than gore and sleaze (love those things though I do) - The House Where Death Lives, also known by the vastly inferior title Delusion.

A movie apparently so rare that this is the coolest screenshot I can find of it.

Meredith Stone (Patricia Pearcy) is a Final Girl wrought from the days of yore - she doesn't drink, she's quiet and amiable, and she has the relaxed good looks of a time-warped Amy Adams. When she takes a nursing job for the wheelchair-bound Ivar Langrock (Joseph Cotten, whose pedigree includes a little-known gem of a film called Citizen Kane) at Fairlawn, his grand estate, she has no idea what she's getting herself into.

You see, Langrock's son has just passed away and his grandson Gabriel (John Dukakis) is coming to live with him. But, having grown up on a commune in Tucson eating snakes, his uncouth and strange behavior is like a cross between between Eliza Doolittle and an avalanche. When people in the house begin dying soon after his arrival, it's no cramp on the imagination to assume that he is the culprit.

But is he really? Meredith isn't sure. Partly because Gabriel's strange magnetism has awakened a dark sexual desire in her. Partly because Langrock's mentally challenged and violent son Wilfred (Patrick Pankhurst) is currently locked up on the second floor. Or is it someone else entirely?

It is up to her to discover the truth as everyone in the house is put at risk, including Duffy (Alice Nunn, also of the same year's Dark Night of the Scarecrow), the Irish cook who despises protein and makes killer granola; Alex (Abraham Alvarez), the groundskeeper; Jeffrey Frasier (David Hayward), womanizer and Langrock's personal attorney/mustachioed friend; and Phillip (Leon Charles), the Langrock's devoted butler who is also devoted to draining every single wine bottle kept down in the cellar.

Here are... some of them. Screenshots are hard, guys.

The House Where Death Lives is a fascinating curio, somewhere between a slasher Jane Eyre and a classic Agatha Christie mystery. It's not exploitative by any means - the deaths don't start until long after the halway point and are quite demure when they eventually arrive. And there's somehow no exposed flesh, despite featuring a sex scene and a two minute bathtub scene. It's like they were trying to prove how chaste they were.

But The House Where Death Lives is not quite so far from the slasher genre as you might think, including but not limited to that terrifically flamboyant title. It also features several classic slasher tropes like dream sequences and cheap jump scares, but when it's surrounded by such a, dare I say, classy atmosphere, it surprisingly works. It's astonishing how engaging these moments end up being, and I'm embarrassed to admit I was caught up in them hook, line, and sinker.

But I have an excuse, for the film as it stands is far from typical. Name me one other slasher film smart enough to name their main suspect after the Angel of Death. It's not Shakespearean genius, but the brain pulsing under the surface of The House Where Death Lives makes it a wild card, drawing you into its heady vapors.

Much like... Oh, I give up. She IS pretty, though.

It's not quite a romp, but it's a remarkably decent effort. There's not enough gore, behind-the-camera talent, fun, and/or thrills to render it a true lost classic, but it absolutely doesn't deserve to be as overlooked as it is. The House Where Death Lives is a murder mystery populated with a sheaf of well-rounded characters played by capable performers (the late Leon Charles is a standout, fabulously underplaying a character that could have been an obnoxious drunk), which immediately ranks it higher than most of the dreck I've had to sit through, at least on the storytelling level.

It is undone a bit by a sluggish third act and a predictable ending, but the movie holds out at least one solid gut punch for its finale, proving once again that despite its generic tendencies, someone involved in the film was actually trying. And despite the massive withering effect the final moments have on the tension of the piece, that's something worthy of respect.

SPOILERS [The ending is interesting. It's predictable that Meredith is the killer thanks to her dark past - her mother was committed to a mental institution after being raped by her father, but the ultimate reveal throws in an unexpected third element. The mother is actually her, utilizing a Psycho-ized split personality to shift her shame. It's not groundbreaking and the way it comes about is remarkably clumsy, but it does justice to the solid mystery that came before it.]

The House Where Death Lives won't be remembered in twenty years as a great film, even by me. But for those 80 minutes I spent hunched over a computer in my empty Broadcasting classroom, I was transported to another world that I couldn't bring myself to want to leave.

Killer: [Meredith Stone (Patricia Pearcy)]

Final Girl: Meredith Stone (Patricia Pearcy)

Best Kill: Phillip is crushed by a wine rack - an interesting metaphor for his alcoholism (or, you know, it's cool).

Sign of the Times: Just look at this tool.

Scariest Moment: Wilfred charges at Meredith when she investigates his room.

Weirdest Moment: For two minutes, the film briefly becomes a film noir interrogation scene.

Champion Dialogue: "Take a look at this supermarket art. A cripple is driven to it."

Body Count: 6; Not including Nicholas the Dog and a poor poor snail.

1. Wilfred is bludgeoned and tossed out the window.
2. Phillip is crushed by a wine rack and bludgeoned. 
3. Detective Harmon is stabbed.
4. Alex is stabbed with a pitchfork.
5. [Gabriel is stabbed with a table leg.]
6. Jeffrey is bludgeoned with a table leg.

TL;DR: The House Where Death Lives is not a particular standout in the genre, but is a remarkably engaging watch.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1089

The Oxford Files

Year: 2014

Director: John Pogue

Cast: Jared Harris, Sam Claflin, Olivia Cooke

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

As my friend Hunter Allen commented on my Xanadu review, I've been having a pretty dreary September. Disappointment after disappointment have abounded, whether it be the squandered potential of As Above, So Below, the meandering non-plot of Love Is Strange, or the repugnantly dull chintziness of the aforementioned experiment in psychological warfare starring Olivia Newton-John.

Now, I wasn't expecting Hammer's revival film after The Woman in Black to be a stellar piece of genre-defining genius, but the fact that it fails to be even halfway decent, barely even stretching itself to a quarter-way decent, boggles the mind. Some would ask why I expected any good output from the man who directed Quarantine 2: Terminal, but I maintain that I like that movie considerably more than its predecessor, a queasy shot-for-shot (except where it counts) remake of my favorite film of all time.

Toss in the fact that The Quiet Ones was kept on the shelf for two full years before its release and I suppose it's easy to see why the film couldn't technically be considered a disappointment - it was destined to be putrid from the very start.

"But movies with gratuitous bathtub scenes always end up so good!" says nobody.

Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris) has several problems, the most damaging of which is that he is a character in The Quiet Ones. But he's also hitting several bumps on the road to disproving ESP and paranormal activity once and for all. His experiment on Jane Harper (Olivia Cooke) - a young woman who is being haunted by a ghostly entity from within - has had its funding pulled by the board at Oxford University. However, he is adamant that he can prove that her haunting is merely a telekinetic expression of mental illness that can be expunged. He insists he will succeed despite his disastrously erroneous assertion that "if you cure one patient, you cure them all."

In addition to spitting on the grave of Sir Francis Bacon, his hobbies include having students do all his work for him and appearing in doorways whenever anybody says something even remotely dramatic. Although he has been forced out of his Oxford location, he brings Jane and a team of student researchers: Harry (Rory Fleck-Byrne) - a handsome Irish lad, Krissi (Erin Richards) - a horny blonde who's aiding the experiment on a lark, and Brian (Sam Claflin) - a shy camera operator, to a remote mansion for further assessment.

What ensues is a blisteringly odd mishmash of too-shaky found footage, too-slick 1974 period piece, and the most jaw-droppingly tedious and generic "possession" story ever inflicted upon the public. 

One clichéd example before we move on. In an early sequence - in which footage from a previous case file is played for the students - a young boy (who deserves an Oscar) somehow manages to not burst into hysterical laughter when uttering the most hyperbolically inane moniker for a ghost in recorded history - "The Man That Makes Things Happen."

Ah yes, my old nemesis, The Man Who Teaches Knowledge to Others.

I suppose being generic isn't the worst thing for a movie to be. When two roads diverge in a yellow wood, it's not a sin to take the road more traveled. But when the yellow is as washed out and drab as The Quiet Ones and punctuated by nauseatingly oversaturated swaths of green (we're talking about color palette now, by the way. Don't get lost in the confusing and twisty forest of my metaphor.), it really doesn't seem like a journey worth taking.

The grubby yet tactile colors jar with the slickness of the cinematography itself (every cut and angle and composition is a little too stagey and high definition), occupying a strange, interminably ugly middle ground that pushes you out of the movie with the force of a kangaroo kick.

Some visual examples:

Gross.

Gross.

Gross.

Conflicted.

Characters wander in and out of this repellent world repeating the same conversation over and over until some of them die. It's staunchly unscary, yet overwrought - especially in a too-early shock scene that overextends itself in an attempt to frighten, trips over a snag of internal logic, and tumbles into the rest of the plot, jumbling it into an incoherent mess.

My easiest comparison is the controversial "spider walk" scene in The Exorcist. Those who don't know about it can read about it here if they wish, but let's leave it at this. It's a tremendously creepy scene but it comes too soon in a slow burn narrative and displays powers the demon never uses again, even in the climactic moments. So it was cut out of the theatrical release to ensure the sanctity of the story.

The Quiet Ones leaves all that mess in with relish. To be fair, it's the only even mildly unsettling part of the entire affair, but the damage it does to the third act (which is already busy picking at its own logic with sado-masochistic glee) is irreparable. The whole thing is irritating nonsense, beginning with Sam Claflin living in a barn outside a mansion with presumably dozens of empty rooms, continuing with a doctor carting around incriminating video tapes and a film student suddenly gaining detailed medical knowledge, finally culminating in an explosion of twists that coil onto one another like an out-of-control frozen yogurt machine.

No matter how hard they pretend, there is no meaning to be found in all of this. Just pure agony, boredom, and disappointment. It's a shame to see the legendary Hammer Studios fall on such hard times, but if this is the output we can continue to expect from them, maybe they should return to dormancy.

TL;DR: The Quiet Ones is a pitiable wisp of a horror film - woefully tedious and not scary in the slightest.
Rating: 3/10
Word Count: 985

Beware! Beware! Her Flashing Eyes, Her Floating Hair!

Year: 1980

Director: Robert Greenwald

Cast: Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, Michael Beck

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

I love the 80's. I love Olivia Newton-John. I love Gene Kelly. I love ELO. I love glitter. I love camp. I love watching other people roller skate. I love bright colors. I love terrible outfits. I love terrible movies. But I also love reversals. I hate Xanadu.

It's just not fair. The 1980 Newton-John vehicle (for Kelly's career it was less a vehicle than a hearse) is the perfect synchronization of just about every element that makes me love a film. So I feel personally affronted when those ingredients synthesize into such a messily boring film as the roller disco flop Xanadu.

An accurate representation of the number of people who manage to stay awake by the end of Xanadu.

Let's get the story over with quick, so nobody falls under the impression that this is a bad-good movie worth seeing. Kira (Olivia Newton-John) is a muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus whose duty is to provide inspiration for struggling artists. Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) is a man, a washed-up painter who has recently returned to his creativity-assassin of a job - recreating album covers in large scale prints. Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly) is another man, an ex-clarinetist who longs for the glory days of big band music and who pretends that he gels with the storyline in any meaningful way.

After meeting her several times over the course of a week and discovering her on his newest album cover, Sonny learns that Kira has been sent to inspire him and Danny to work together and create a new club in the heart of the city. I'll give you a nickel if you can guess the name of the club. But Kira falls in love with Sonny along the way, despite the fact that she is set to return to her neon-tinged home dimension upon the completion of the project and that he is a bland, irritating, moppet-headed cipher with no autonomy, no money, and no personality.

You know what? Screw Sonny. She should have ended up with Gene Kelly.

This simple story kicks in only at the beginning and the end of the film, much like bookends. But whereas bookends are used to house important compendiums of the world's knowledge and foremost literary minds, these plot nuggets are used to sandwich a whole bunch of roller skating to fitfully lip-synced ELO and/or Newton-John songs. It is up to you to determine the relative importance of these two tasks, but take it from me that your money would be better spent on the bookends.

Or honing your irony skills to satisfactorily explain why this print is hanging on your wall.

Xanadu is an exercise in frustration, frequently setting up dominoes that would indicate a fun, glitzy romp, then encasing them in cement so they can never be properly knocked down. Allow me to take you on a macabre tour of some should-be camp classic scenes that are ruined for one godforsaken reason or another.

• Kira and her sisters are born out of a DayGlo mural: A mural comes to fabulous life, spitting out women drenched in neon auras like a log ride. Who then dance uneasily to an ELO song, not even bothering to pretend that they're singing it. The choreography by Kenny Ortega wouldn't be out of place in a yogurt commercial, demanding no effort from the dancers and receiving it in abundance.
• Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John share a tap number: Gene Kelly was still a master of the craft of dance, but by 1980 his body and soul were beginning to wear, and the steps were mostly borrowed from his older, better films. Throw in two uniformly terrible performances (Gene Kelly bumbles his way through the role like he bumbled onto the set by accident - which may or may not be true, considering that he only took the job because the set was close to his house; Olivia Newton-John does nothing to inflate a flatly written role, instead plastering a daffy, dizzy smile over everything like a Band-Aid) and you have a sublimely disappointing sequence.
• Sonny and Danny conjure up an imaginary battle between a big band jazz club and an 80's rock mosh pit: The two bands combine to perform in a delirious mash-up explosion of styles, but this is only at the tail end of an exhausting, incalculably long and pointless scene where the two different bands play drab, generic, awful pop. The resulting effect is something like putting the movie (and the audience) in a Spanish Inquisition torture device, punishingly stretching Xanadu to feature length.

We are also saddled with an interminable and extraneous animated sequence and about 92 scenes of Sonny roller skating while unrelated ELO songs play in the background just to remind us that they worked on this movie. The fact that they seem to actively flaunt their involvement in Xanadu is a testament to the purity and overwhelming power of... the drug market in the late 70's.

There are only two good scenes in the entire film, and neither of them live up to the lofty expectations, given the film's status as a cult classic. One, in which Kira roller blades around an empty warehouse while flirting with Sonny and shifting in and out of corporeal reality is reliably strange and arresting, though it suffers from the film's budget. The other is the (almost) showstopping (almost) final number "Xanadu," which is the only good song to come out of the entire affair, though the performance of said number is just about as lackluster as everything else in the preceding 80-something minutes.

Is it too much to ask for a little pizzaz in my roller skating fantasy numbers?

It's too low budget to achieve anything more than a vaguely glitzy series of sets composed almost entirely of cheap lighting effects in dark rooms. The framing is frequently alienating, usually forcefully shifting focus from the central figure by accidentally obscuring them with something far more interesting, like a dancer being spun on a ring by her neck.

Even when the framing isn't ruining a shot, the composition and coverage work double time to pick up the slack, like a bleating ballad that is shot absolutely static for five minutes, only deigning to subtly zoom in on Newton-John's face on occasion as if to prove to themselves that the camera was still actually on. By the end of the film, even the dancers look bored - as if instead of using a metronome, director Robert Greenwald (whose career has taken a far less dismal and bleak turn - he now directs documentaries about the drone wars) sat there reading War and Peace aloud.

One of the only good things about the film is that they let Newton-John use her native Australian accent. Hearing a non-American accent in a Hollywood film is nothing to spit upon and that at least maintains auditory interest during the long, long, long wait for the closing number. But everywhere it can, Xanadu sucks the air out of itself like an auto-cannibalizing glittery vampire, reducing itself to a mewling, quivering wreck of a movie.

TL;DR: Xanadu is underbaked, boring drivel when it should be a high-fashion camp classic.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1225

Bad Habits

Year: 2008

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Cast: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams

Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned.

I have promised Sergio that I would watch Doubt with him since possibly the first microsecond of our relationship, but have managed to delay it a year and a half down the line. Now, any frequent reader of this blog knows that dramas, especially religious period dramas are absolutely not my forte, although I'm a big Meryl Streep fan (if you're not, thank you for visiting this blog from your home dimension, because you don't exist in mine).

But some higher power decided that I should labor on Labor Day, so Sergio and I decided to make the most of the preceding day (which was, appropriately, Sunday) by sitting down and achieving this hard-won dream. And you know what? I didn't hate it.

I mean, it's hard to hate someone so fashion-forward.

Doubt tells the story of Catholic school principal Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep). Her stern, old-fashioned ways have no place in the modern cultural climate of 1964 (what's more modern than Meet the Beatles! and My Fair Lady?), or so thinks Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a more progressive priest who performs such sacrilegious acts as (gasp!) listening to "Frosty the Snowman" and (my stars!) forgive errant altar boys.

One such altar boy, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster) becomes the source of a whirling controversy by nature of 1) being the first black student accepted into the school and 2) Sister James' (Amy Adams) early suspicion that his relationship with Father Flynn might have dipped into impropriety. Sister James is caught in the crossfire as Sister Aloysius attempts to bring down Father Flynn with all her might for what she perceives to be a case of molestation.

And that's about it. Doubt is based on the play of the same name by John Patrick Shanley (also the film's director) and retains much of the same presentational limitations of the form, especially the musty, fussy, staging typically exhibited by off-Broadway plays full of ambiguity and religious metaphor.

Nope, nothing Jesusy here, move it along.

Doubt is a film about the power of words, and is thus filled to the brim with conversations: Conversations between Aloysius and her nemesis, Father Flynn, conversations between Aloysius and her unwitting mentee Sister James, and conversations between Aloysius and Donald's mother (Viola Davis), sometimes lasting ten minutes or more. To mix it up a bit, there are brief interludes for Father Flynn's lengthy sermons and Sister James' classroom lectures.

For a film this strapped for alternative content, it is absolutely crucial to feature a host of terrific performances, which it thankfully receives through the deity-channeling vessels known as Steep, Davis, and Hoffman, in that order. Adams is terrific, but too green to make an impression when pitched against these three giants. In the hands of people like, say, Keanu Reeves or Jessica Alba, the film would undoubtedly be a dismal failure.

Obviously thanks to its overwrought intellectual content, it teeters on that knife's edge for general audiences, especially those with no particular interest in religion. But for those who appreciate the art and craft of cinema, Doubt is a near textbook example of filmmaking done right, even if the story is a bit slack at times. 

The use of cinematography (especially judicious use of canted shots), color design (color is eked out only in very strict measures), and delicious lighting schemes allow the sufficiently invested viewer to interpret subtextual meaning and symbolism (even beyond the obviously religious) in a more immediate and rewarding way than many films of its ilk.

 You know what they say... Those who can't do, cant.

Doubt is full of resonant themes to be parsed out by any viewer with a keen eye and a willingness to meet the material halfway. Those who don't wish to can't be blamed, especially because the plot is so achingly measured and sedate. But for those willing to go the distance, Doubt provides some terrific performers at the top of their game and an interesting cinematic text to study.

TL;DR: Doubt faces the constant threat of receding into dullness, but survives on the strength of terrific performers and a strong cinematic style.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 720

Time To Slam

Year: 1996

Director: Joe Pytka

Cast: Michael Jordan, Wayne Knight, Theresa Randle

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

My friend Brenna is back in town now that summer break is over. And considering that we're trapped in the same apartment together for the next year of our lives, we've deemed it advisable to remain friends. She has since tested my resolve by making me sit through Bee Movie and Space Jam on two consecutive weekends. And how I curse the day I vowed to review every movie I watch.

You see, Space Jam is a peculiar case study. My generation places it on a pedestal of high honor due to its position in the pantheon of children's pop culture at the time we were growing up. But myself, ever the contrarian - even as a toddler - never watched it and thus formed no opinion of it when I was young and impressionable.

So I've watched it for the first time as an adult, immediately putting myself in a position of contrast with literally everyone I've ever met. And, as we know, when we dare to use hindsight in terms of entertainment we loved as children, we take a walk on the wild side. And if you love Space Jam, you have my permission to quit reading now because man, is it just no good at all.

An artist's rendering of the backlash I'll receive for saying that.

Maybe I exaggerated slightly, because there are some valuable pieces of Space Jam, just not as many as seem to be lauded by the pro-Jam camp. I'm a big proponent of any movie that manages to get funding for a ludicrously illogical premise, and the "famous basketballer fights to save the Looney Tunes and also Danny DeVito plays a space goblin" premise is a classic of the form.

So what, exactly, is a Space Jam, you ask? It's a crass, commercial vehicle gone awry thanks to the creativity and lunacy of its creators - the Lego Movie of its day, if you will. Well, if the Lego Movie featured Michael Jordan, a truly psychotic number of classic Warner Brothers cartoon characters, and about one kernel of plot to go around.

Space Jam is a fictionalized retelling of Michael Jordan (Michael Jordan)'s retirement from basketball and subsequent return. Except, instead of the reason being sucking at baseball (or whatever - I'm not a sports guy), his return is fueled by an intergalactic cartoon slave cartel. I'm not even kidding. I'm so far from kidding that I'm growing a mustache and filling out a 401k.

Swackhammer (Danny DeVito) is the plump goblin executive of Moron Mountain, a theme park in outer space. He demands that his tiny monster minions (they have names according to online resources, but the movie doesn't grace them with such and neither shall we) travel to Earth and capture the Looney Tunes so he can enslave them and use them in a sideshow.

Because it's a cartoon and it's the 90's, the Looney Tunes' freedom depends on the outcome of a climactic basketball game. When the monsters steal the talent from NBA players and become grotesque gargantuan menaces called the Monstars, Bugs Bunny (Billy West) and Co. recruit ex-star Michael Jordan to save their skins.

The face(s) of pure evil.

This harebrained plot bolts by like a sugar rush, eschewing things like coherent editing or character development in favor of frenzied cartoon violence (and please remember that I come at you after years of slasher movie marathons when I tell you that Space Jam is shockingly violent) and Looney antics. Assuming the core audience is already familiar with the Warner Bros. properties and personalities (a risky judgement call in 1996), the film races toward the finish line with scarcely a backward glance at its estimable canon. So - in spit of its innumerable flaws - at least it's over quickly enough.

There will always be the argument that children's entertainment is allowed to be more low brow than what you can expect from a more mature picture. And that's true - to a point. The zaniness and broad comedy is perfectly acceptable in the context, but just because your hyperactive little goblins don't quite understand metaphors, symbolism, and critical analysis yet doesn't take away the fact that good comedy comes from solid characters, something which Space Jam should have in spades - indeed, assumes it does have - but is sorely lacking.

Sure Daffy, Bugs, Porky, and friends have a storied history. And any self-respecting parent has hopefully sat their drooling little tykes in front of some old Tunes. But the egregious Cliff's Notes characterizations of these classic figures is a downright insult. The perfect example I can come up with is the character of Lola Bunny (Kath Soucie) - an original Tune created as a romantic interest for Bugs. She enters the scene, nails down her singular trait (at least it's a quasi-feminist one), and resides in the background for the rest of the film - the exact same fate that befalls just about every other beloved Tune, save Daffy (Dee Bradley Baker) and Bugs (Billy West).

But Lola doesn't have decades of back catalogue to inform her motivations and comedy stylings. She's an utter non-entity, a sterling example of what the entire cast of the film would seem to be to anyone who isn't a member of the Loony faithful.

She's about as important to the plot as that basketball. Nay, less important.

Just as painful as the whirlwind characterization is the voice talent, though not through any fault of their own (the only cast members to return are June Foray as Granny and Stan Freberg as Chester the Terrier, neither of whom appear in more than about 15 frames each). It's a tough job when your contract reads "be Mel Blanc," but the vocal impressions are just two steps to the left of the classic characters, creating an endlessly jarring environment for an already decidedly un-Loony film.

And the cherry on top of that unfortunate cherry on top (we are now entering the third level of Cherryception) is the funky animation style used to integrate the Tunes with live action footage, never quite managing to give the characters the weight and heft of real creatures who interact with their environment, but 3D-ifying them just enough that tourist trap road signs start appearing for the Uncanny Valley.

Also, I can be fairly certain through copious experience that this film was edited on Windows Movie Maker.

But hey. Let's be nice to a poor old friend. Bill Murray has one of the best extended cameos of the entire decade, the booming thrum of the 90's keeps any hardcore nostalgic on the hook, and the cartoonish human element provided by Wayne Knight, Bill Murray, and a Greek chorus of NBA stars keeps the energy up. 

There's not a ton of Space, but just enough Jam to keep the kids going. I find absolutely nothing to recommend it to the discerning, or even non-discerning adult. That is, unless you are one of the lucky ones who have the nostalgia factor working for you, in which case disregard this review, it's Citizen Kane.

TL;DR: Space Jam is a classic children's film that does not hold up under scrutiny.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1166

Aging Out

Year: 2014

Director: Ira Sachs

Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Queer cinema tends to be a rather bleak affair. Because of the dearth of LGBTQ-related stories, filmmakers tend to think that since they're already pushing the envelope, they may as well make a dreary message picture about AIDS or hate crimes or coming out. Films about gay individuals rarely explore their humanity, instead turning them into martyrs for some cause or another.

Love is Strange is not one of those films, and for that we must thank it. In and of itself, it's not a particularly terrific film, but for there to be a vibrant and varied tapestry of films regarding these topics, there have got to be some duds, just for spice.

Speaking of duds, check out these slick getups.

Love Is Strange tells the story of two longtime lovers, Ben (John Lithgow) - a painter - and George (Alfred Molina) - a musician, detailing how their eventual marriage ruptures their lives from the outside. When George is fired from his position as the conductor for a Catholic school choir due to his wedding being perceived as a political statement, they can no longer afford their rent.

Against their wishes, the newlyweds are separated until they can find a new place. Ben is sent to live with his nephew Elliot (Darren E. Burrows), his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei), and their son Joey (Charlie Tahan). Their family dysfunction is not caused, but is certainly exacerbated by Joey being forced to share a bunk bed with his ancient relative as he blathers on endlessly while dripping memories from his head like a sieve. George shacks up with a relation of his own - young cop Roberto (Manny Perez) and his similarly be-copped boyfriend Ted (Cheyenne Jackson).

The film does everything it can with angles and composition to emphasize space - the tightness of living in a New York apartment with other people, especially uninvited houseguests, being key to the entire narrative. It accomplishes this clearly and with grace, but despite a functional visual style supporting the theme, mere cinematography can't be the Atlas carrying the world of a story on its shoulders.

Much like Joey, cinematography could barely carry a grocery bag without breaking into a sweat.

Thankfully, Love Is Strange has four solid anchors. The two leads are uniformly terrific, displaying the craft they've honed for decades, and Marisa Tomei shines as the resolutely imperfect, arrogant housewife who struggles to fit her internal issues with her external perception of herself. Cheyenne Jackson likewise magnetizes the viewer, albeit in a much smaller, thankless role. But his easy performance brings a sense of naturalism to what could easily have become a stilted, overdone premise, especially considering that the dysfunctional family isn't exactly a shunned topic in the annals of indie cinema.

But in spite of all of this solid work, Love Is Strange is an unutterably messy narrative. Weeks slip by unnoticed between scenes and the central conflict of the second act of the film is so ludicrously inane that I was halfway convinced I was watching a heavily-veiled satire - SPOILERS [There are countless family meetings, arguments, and accusations about all the time Joey spends with his new, slightly older friend Vlad (Eric Tabach) alone in his room. Like any reasonable parents, Kate and Elliot are concerned that Joey and Vlad are... stealing library books. I'm really shocked the MPAA let this kind of scandalous material run by them unchecked.]

What begins as a sprawling dysfunctional family narrative quickly pares itself down to just the essential people and moments, yet most of the thematic, core material about love and perhaps strangeness occurs offscreen. Lithgow and Molina are by far the most seasoned and committed performers onscreen, but they are kept apart for far too long. Deprived of a dramatic foil, each character slowly dilutes until there's nothing left but a thin smear of color. An alarmingly ill-advised scene in the climax relies on an emotional intimacy with these characters that hasn't been present for a good thirty minutes, feeling for all the world like a high school production of Les Misérables - it's emotional and resonant in theory simply by displaying the thing that it displays, but any emotion evoked is absolutely not earned by qualities present in the work itself.

Unless those emotions are related to pretty men in cop uniforms.

And don't even get me started on the ending, by far the worst scene in the entire film, placing the entire crux of the narrative on the uneven shoulders of the clunkiest performer and quickly disintegrating any remaining goodwill with vapid, generic independent film imagery.

But Love Is Strange isn't exactly the scourge of the Earth despite its flaws. The performances are largely on point, there is some sparkle of wit in the humor, and it is perhaps the most effortlessly diverse film of 2014. It's always nice for a film to depict interracial relationships, especially in a New York setting considering that the city is a larger melting pot than the one at the Hershey factory.

But we've finally reached the point where multiple, varied, layered ethnic characters can be integrated into a storyline by the American media without the flop sweat of tokenism present in earlier decades, especially on TV shows like Friends and movies like all of them. In combination with the intelligent queer narrative that comes into play, it's like a diversity variety hour, and a pretty terrific example for what films should strive to look like in the future.

I'll be happy if I never see Love Is Strange again, but it's nice to see a movie prove that the world can be depicted as it really is - messy, diverse, angry, loving, loud, exciting, and even strange.

TL;DR: Love Is Strange is a massively sloppy narrative but remains reasonably enjoyable throughout.
Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? I wouldn't. It'll end up on HBO Go sometimes probably. Click through it if you're binging, but don't set a date and bust out the popcorn.

Word Count: 1017

Paris Je Lame

Year: 2014

Director: John Erick Dowdle

Cast: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for the first half hour of As Above, So Below. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Found Footage. 

Found Footage is what brings us together today. It awoke in America with The Blair Witch Project, slumbered peacefully until the advent of the Paranormal Activity franchise, and reached its brightest dream with the Spanish cinematic sledgehammer that is [REC]. But instead of hibernating once more, awaiting its resurgence like the behemoth that is the 3D fad, found footage stayed quite active, festering at the fringes of mainstream society, setting in like a permanent rot on the eaves of Hollywood.

You see, unlike 3D, found footage costs almost nothing to make. There's no extra processing fees, no unwieldy cameras. It's no fiscal strain to crack open a prosumer camcorder from Target. Loving the fact that this cinéma vérité trend kept their wallets nice and limber, studios have been keeping the subgenre on life support, refusing to pull the plug.

In fact, this year already saw two found footage releases (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones and Devil's Due) within two weeks of each other. Now, I'm a big fan of this filmmaking style - it's a delightful way to thrust oneself into a new world and the genre produced my favorite film of all time - and find something to love in even the most tawdry of shaky cam nasties (Save one - Zombie Diaries 2: World of the Dead, which you may never get a review of considering the fact that the only way I'll be able to sit through it again is if it's playing in my funeral home. And that's just because I won't have had enough time to teach my incorporeal ectoplasmic form how to change the channel.).

So I find no problem in the current FF boom, nor do I side with the common recent complaint that casting recognizable actors ruins the illusion (news flash - nobody actually believes these movies to be real anymore - that idea died with Heather Donahue in Blair Witch). But I do take issue with the outrageously mistaken concept that using the found footage gimmick can cloak egregious story flaws thanks to its artificial realism (and, more importantly, still make a metric buttload of return on investment).

You bet your sweet bippy I'm going somewhere with this.

As Above, So Below starts off well enough. In fact, it starts off fascinating. [LAST CALL FOR FIRST ACT SPOILERS] Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), an intrepid young scholar, wants to continue the lifelong quest of her recently deceased father - namely, finding the sorcerer's philosopher's stone, the fabled alchemic token that can grant eternal life. She ropes in her Aramaic-speaking friend George (Ben Feldman) to help her with translation and young filmmaker Benji (Edwin Hodge, the Stranger from The Purge) to create a documentary about her pursuit of the stone through the catacombs of Paris.

On their way, they gather three experienced Parisian cave-explorers, only one of whom, Papillon (François Civil), is particularly important because he is very handsome. So, things happen and they end up exploring a possibly cursed uncharted tunnel of the catacombs in their pursuit of the stone (and the treasure rumored to be buried with it). Some nasty things begin to happen, but the trailer has spoiled enough, so this is where we get off the plot train.

And onto the... analysis... bus? Captions are hard.

Aside from the dazzlingly out-of-left-field plot device provided by the presence of the philosopher's stone in the narrative, As Above, So Below also boasts a tremendously intriguing mixture of ancient cultures and religious iconography, as well as calling influence from such classic films as The Descent, Indiana Jones, Aladdin, National Treasure, and even Enchanted (more than once, if you can believe it).

This dense array of narrative elements sets out a keen and complex bed for the themes and plot to lay on. Unfortunately, after a night of hard drinking, they prefer to sleep on the floor. By the time the film crosses the 90 minute finish line, it has absolutely bungled almost each and every one of the elements that seemed so promising in the beginning, bogging down the insightful thematic material with needlessly generic jump scares and piercingly inane, resolutely muddled plot beats.

The fact that amid the piffling nonsense, the film gives the viewer anything to parse out and discuss afterwards is a triumph, but As Above, So Below could so easily have been a ten out of ten film that it's hard to come out of it tasting anything other than the bitter tang of defeat.

And the faint, but ineradicable aftertaste of Nicolas Cage.

I can't dig into the film too much because, again, spoilers, but there are enough wan plot devices in the first third to accurately exemplify the kind of execrable nonsense one is likely to encounter later on. First off, we're meant to believe that our sexy young leads have had the time and inclination to study an entire encyclopedia's worth of culture, science, and language, spreading across centuries. These kids do have masters degrees, but every time they go from zero to Copernicus in the blink of an eye, it reeks of movie magic, bringing one out of the movie far swifter than any vaguely recognizable genre actor could have.

And my doctor says I have to cut down on snark in my diet, so I'll limit myself to one more nitpick, but it's a big'un. A hastily translated Aramaic passage rhymes. In English. Something tells me that the ancient civilization that penned the inscription hadn't quite planned far enough ahead to anticipate the development of anglophone linguistics. Not unless Marty McFly had something to do with it. But then again, the lack of Chuck Berry lyrics would seem to rule that hypothesis out.

But this is a movie, not a doctoral thesis. Who cares about rhyme scheme? As Above, So Below is efficiently scary, disorienting, claustrophobic, and effective, justifying its documentary aspects with relative ease. So that alone makes it one of the better found footage efforts of the decade. It utilizes its budgetary limitations to tremendous effect especially in terms of set design, it creates tension within the audience even when it doesn't deserve it, and it tells a story that falls flat, but at least it takes the leap in the first place.

So what if the premise doesn't pan out one hundred percent? So what if the third act feels more like a Da Vinci Code-themed Universal Horror Nights maze? It provokes a feeling in the audience and conceptually, there's nothing else quite like it. It'll never be an enduring classic, but as a stepping stone toward a sleeker, better genre, As Above, So Below is essential viewing.

TL;DR: As Above, So Below is a waste of a brilliant premise, but in terms of scares remains a rather strong genre picture.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Skip it in theaters. This is definitely a RedBox movie. Save it for a rainy day. Lower your expectations, drop a blanket on your bod, and have a good time.

Word Count: 1210