Reaction Shots

Ahead of the second Dr. Strange movie coming out next year, it seems appropriate to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve with Sam Raimi’s seminal Evil Dead Trilogy.   A lot’s been written already about Raimi’s contribution to genre filmmaking, particularly this series. it’s not too much of a stretch to say that he and his team came out with one of the most assured feature debuts in a decade full of them. But there’s something special about “Evil Dead”. As Bill Hader said recently, it’s punk rock. Raimi paid tribute to his predecessors like John Carpenter, and Wes Craven (with a little Roger Corman leavening?) and he brought a sensibility that can only be described as Stoogerific. There is a slapstick element - more pronounced in the sequels - that is as destabilizing as the scares; but there’s also Raimi’s command of context.  In the lists of Lovecraft-derived horror movies, the Evil Dead mythos ties itself to Old Ones by using the Necronomicon as a driving plot point. We get Ash a...

It would be naive to think I wouldn’t be excited by both of these. Despite my cautiously optimistic temperament, I also know that a strong desire often results in a greater degree of disappointment. When it comes to movies, though I can still be enthusiastic, I really don’t have high expectations of any given film.   Consequently, for these two, I might be personally satisfied but I doubt I’d be surprised if either or both were disappointments. Are they? Let’s start with Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank  Herbert’s epic novel. To be sure, I’ve tried to read “Dune” repeatedly and usually found myself sidetracked by other things. This is not a knock on Herbert’s writing or the story; I’ve gotten far enough into the book to appreciate its world-building and artistry, but I bring this up to ensure that this isn’t one of those “in the book they did this” type of reviews.  Villeneuve said he wanted to create a “Star Wars for adults” and I believe he has largely succee...

Photo credit:  Ben Gabbe/Getty Images and Them.us Recently, I’ve begun reprising “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” series with an eye to examining how much of the show’s DNA has been passed on down through succeeding generations in both film and TV. Also, I wanted to see if my sense of the characters has changed much and last, but certainly not least, what effect the past year or so of allegations against Joss Whedon recast how I view the series/read the text. It’s this last that’s going to occupy us here, but the other two approaches are part of the mix, as well. I first watched “Buffy” beginning with the third season and caught up through reruns. I stuck with it fairly devotedly/regularly through season five and didn’t really see all of six and seven until I got a boxed set of DVDs. I did catch the odd season six/seven episode when they aired and wild horses weren’t going to stop me from watching the series finale. I came to actually prefer “Angel” at a certain point but felt things we...

Both of these flicks are similar: charismatic heroes and supporting characters, more or less conflicted bad guys, fantastical settings, beautiful CGI, and a self-aware (to varying degrees) silliness quotient. So why did one capture my attention and hold it and I had to get up, take a break from the other and decide if I’d finish the movie? “Aquaman” is out in limited re-release and I was kind of sorry I missed it on the first go-round three years ago. It looked like really engaging, dumb fun. It is that until it’s not. Then it becomes a slog. A gorgeous slog, but a slog nonetheless. The story is comic book dopey; Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is the scion of the Queen of Atlantis who fled to the surface to avoid an arranged marriage (a CGI-enhanced Nicole Kidman? Honestly, I can’t tell anymore…) and a lighthouse keeper ( Temuera Morrison ). Eventually, Atlantis catches up to her and she realizes she has to return. Little Arthur is trained over the years by his Atlantean family’s vizier...