I'm Geeking Out...About Christmas

We interrupt this regularly scheduled space of movie talk to cordially invite you to see ME, in person!

If you're anywhere near the Brooklyn area on December 5th, consider getting yourself a ticket to, as the poster says, a VERY special evening where I'll join comedian Kevin Maher in bringing you some seasonal entertainment. What does that mean exactly?

THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT! 

London Calling

 

One day, I'll remember which James is the good one and which is the piece of crap.

Considering I get TWO of the good ones in today's movie, maybe that day has finally come. 

Quick Plot: On the 100th anniversary of each of Jack the Ripper's murders, victims are turning up in the same pattern way over in the lower class parts of LA.  

Dr. John Wesford (baby-faced James Spader) toils away at a free clinic, much to the chagrin of his grumpy boss. Having grown up in LA's less affluent area, John cares deeply about the neighborhood and has been paying close attention to the ongoing crimes. 

Right on schedule for the final murder, John catches the clinic's janitor Jack slipping out of a pregnant sex worker's apartment, her body bloodied and pulse gone. Jack claims it's a misunderstanding, but that seems less likely when he follows John back to the clinic and strings him up, staging it as suicide.

To the police, it's a relief. Dr. John Wesford, found hanging and covered in the final victim's blood, was clearly Jack the Ripper 2.0. Case closed!

Not so fast (we're only about 25 minutes into the movie, after all). John's twin brother Ricky, a less successful assistant manager at Foot Locker, shows up in town knowing his better half would never do such things. Most of the detectives are dubious, though the story is just incomplete enough to give Ricky some merit. 

Several MORE investigations proceed. Ricky grows close to Christine, Jack's colleague at the clinic who might be on the next hit list. Lurking in the background is the always welcome, and usually squirmy Robert Picardo as a psychiatrist who specializes in hypnosis. Through it all, James Spader and his stunt double display an excellent knack and possible addiction to leaping out windows and landing safely.

Jack's Back was written and directed by the gloriously named Rowdy Herrington, who followed this up with a little movie you might have heard about called Road House. Jack's Back doesn't reach the campy fun heights of that classic, but considering its low profile in film history, it's a surprisingly interesting little mystery. 

James Spader is incredibly watchable as both John and Ricky, which holds everything together even when the story gets a bit messy. Herrington makes some great moves in the film's first act. We're caught completely off guard by John's early murder. The series of suspects that comes after keeps the story moving, but also never really seems to come together. I was a bit unsatisfied when the very '80s credits music closed in. 

Still, considering those very '80s credits music included sexy saxophone solos, my complaints are minimal.  

High Points

Both John and Ricky don't quite have enough character history on the page, but by GOLLY is James Spader good at captivating the audience. This is one of those "that guy's a star" performances not in scope, but in pure charisma

Low Points

I'm still not exactly sure how some of the characters line up, which is a bit of shame when this is the kind of film that should have a clear, resolute finish

Lessons Learned

The bigger the scar, the higher the fee (at least in Texas)

Rickys are always the naughty ones

The best way to distract an old lady is to ask about her grandkids

Rent/Bury/Buy

Jack's Back isn't a masterpiece, but it's a nice little hidden gem in an era that wasn't really making these kinds of movies. You can find it streaming on Peacock. 

Family Ties

 

Family trees have deep roots in film. Yes, there's an element of nepotism that is incredibly frustrating when you think of how many talented, hard-working creatives you know who simply don't have the same opportunity as someone with a known last name. That being said, it's impossible not to be curious at what kind of filmmakers the children of David Cronenberg have turned out to be. 

Quick Plot: The world is not good. Nature is revolting, and the government's new priorities are to encourage voluntary (for now) conscription. Serving your country is nice in theory, but in this case, you're not signing up for combat: it's voluntary execution. 

Charles York is mildly above it all. A  retired, once celebrated newsman living in awkward comfort with his iron chef wife Dawn, Charles summons his four adult children to a formal home dinner with some news: he and Dawn are going to enlist.

The kids are not all right. Rachel (Schitt's Creek Canada-certified Emily Hampshire) is rocking her way through scandal as a disgraced pharmaceutical CEO. Jared is a government mouthpiece publicly urging "those people" to sign up. Noah is a hardworking recovering alcoholic pianist. And failed actress Ashley's current ambition is to get cast in a video game commercial. 

The servicemen arrive to take care of business right as Dawn (understandably) gets cold feet and scrambles. Supervisor Bob is displeased, and delivers some pretty rough news: backing out of an enlistment contract has consequences. Someone with the last name of York has to make good on the terms. 

The siblings are given two hours to decide. It goes about as well as many Thanksgivings or crowded Christmas dinners do, which is to say there's a lot of screaming, airing of childhood grievances, and a few beatings. 

Directed by Caitlin Cronenberg (daughter of David, sister of Brandon) from Michael Sparaga's script, Humane suffers a bit in timing in being released so closely after Mike Flanagan's Fall of the House of Usher. There are some very specific family dynamics and character beats that feel so familiar, only Usher had the luxury of spreading its twisted humor and eat the rich dinner over eight courses of episodes. 

One of Humane's major drawbacks is that it just doesn't seem to have enough time to really dive into the Yorks' relationships. Noah and Ashley have a fairly clear bond as the two youngest, and for reasons I won't spoil, that serves as a very important factor in how the second half plays out. But Jared is simply all the worst parts of humanity in the frame of Jay Baruchel (who I have to keep reminding myself is not Justin Long) and Rachel simply doesn't have enough time with us for the audience to understand her whiplash journey.

Despite how negative some of these comments might sound, I actually enjoyed Humane. It has a stark and understated approach to a version of a society crumble that we haven't quite seen before, and the sort of clumsy violence is a fresh approach that in reality, makes a lot of sense. People give victims in horror movies a hard time for not always dispatching their attackers, but you know what? Actually killing someone (and in this case, your own sibling) is probably VERY DIFFICULT for most of us, even in the most heightened of genre circumstances. 

Cronenberg is aiming more for dark comedy than spine-tingling horror, and when it works (Enrico Colantoni's Bob has a lot to do with that), it has some pointed things to say about bureaucracy, capitalism, and sibling politics. I found the ending unsatisfying thematically, but the fact that I'm still turning things over in my head is certainly a good sign. 

High Points

Peter Gallagher is, and will always be, a genuine treasure, and while his part is fairly small, it's absolutely key that we understand exactly what kind of man Charles York is (and isn't), both to his family and the public. You get that easily with Gallagher's presence, and he manages to convey both his "great man" and "vain jerk" status in equal measure

Low Points

It's genuinely weird that Baruchel's Jared is never actually confronted about his own hypocrisy in pushing enlistment but doing everything possible to save himself from it. Maybe Cronernberg thought it was simply too obvious to point out, but the idea that his siblings would never call him on it is just, well odd

Lessons Learned

It's not a booty call if you live together

Reading the fine print is never more important than when committing something to the government

One burnt kernel will ruin the whole bag of popcorn (which, sorry to say Bob, is why you should always make yours in an actual popcorn maker and avoid microwaved slime)

Marketing Bonus

Guys, the Instagram account Bob mentions is real, and it's entirely popcorn kernel-based, and it makes me very, very happy

Rent/Bury/Buy

I realize that I had more negative things to say than positive in the above paragraphs, but I still find myself thinking about Humane and wanting to discuss it more. Now streaming on Shudder, it's certainly worth your time.

Quick Change

I know I say it every time I cover a film from this time period, but my GOSH: those mid 2000s were an ugly, ugly time in horror. 

With that said, Pathology!

Quick Plot: A quick pre-credits sequence shows us a bunch of young people making corpses talk like ventriloquists. So basically, we already know we're going to be spending the next 90 minutes with some awful people. AWESOME.

They're quickly proven to be worse than you think. Dr. Ted Gray, after graduating at the top of his medical school class, is the fresh face at an incredibly prestigious, incredibly white pathology residency filled with alphas. They spend their days cutting up corpses and evenings doing what they can to add to the pile.

As Flatliners and other medical school-centered horror movies have told us, young doctors are sociopaths. In the case of Pathology, they're insufferable sociopaths who have made a game out of committing undetectable murders on the city's undesirables. 

Dr. Ted Gray (like the characters in the movie, I too will refer to everyone by their full names) quickly falls in line, stabbing and liquid nitrogen poisoning like the best of them. Despite being engaged to Alyssa Milano, Dr. Ted Gray starts sleeping with Dr. Juliette Bath, one of his classmates who's already in a relationship with Dr. Catherine Ivy and/or Dr. Jake Gallo (it's never exactly clear how this trio works).

Not shockingly, things escalate. Dr. Jake Gallo grows progressively unhinged right as Alyssa Milano (not a doctor, so I'll just use her regular name in full) comes to stay with Dr. Ted Gray, riling his nightly activities. 

Pathology is directed by Marc Schölermann from a script courtesy of Crank and Gamer's Neveldine and Taylor. Considering that duo's bonanza energy in other products, I get the feeling that the gloomy end result onscreen comes more from the final execution. On the page, I can almost see where Pathology had something going for it. The actual concept feels fresh, and the final act tosses in multiple twists that actually surprised me. 

Unfortunately, it's a slog to get there. Dr. Ted Gray makes no sense as a character. He's introduced as the kind of hopeful youth who dutifully spends three months in Africa on a volunteer mission, then falls in line with actual murder in less than one week drinking with the atrocious Dr. Jake Gallo. He has Alyssa Milano in his arms yet shows not a morsel of remorse in shagging Dr. Juliette Bath on the same sectional where the latter's abusive father has just been murdered. Had Dr. Ted Gray (sorry, but I can't not keep doing it) been given a hint of a backstory or one more scene to explain how someone could so quickly toss his morals away, maybe, just maybe we could at least understand, if not sympathize. 

That's not Pathology's only problem. On paper, this should be shocking. Made in the second act of the Saw franchise's success, there's little spared in bloody body part closeups or boobs. An early montage tries so hard to be shocking that it shoves two women doing meth in between making out over the bloodied corpse of a murder victim in slow motion. CAN YOU HANDLE THIS EDGINESS? Pathology seems to scream. 

Yes, but that doesn't mean we want to. 

High Points

This involves a spoiler and a lot of cooperation with my 25 year obsession with Olivia Benson and Law & Order: SVU. 

You have been warned.

There's a running rule for the show that states without exception that anytime the squad's family members are involved in an episode, I as a viewer will be miserable. Rollins' wayward sister just makes life hard, Tutuola's nightmare nephew ruins careers, Elliot's bushel of children always get in the way, and so on. I can write volumes on how just unreasonably deep my hatred for Benson's son Noah runs, but if you can possibly believe it, there's a relation that's even worse: Simon Marsden.

Simon shows up in season 8 and appears five times over the next several years. He's the long-lost half brother of Olivia Benson who, aside from having a rapist father, finds himself on the wrong side of the law in a variety of cases. 

All of these episodes are terrible and annoying, and make our stalwart heroine look like an idiot in the name of saving her terrible horrible no good very bad half-brother who can't make a single good decision to save his short life. To be clear: THIS MAN IS WORSE THAN NOAH BENSON.

I hate this character. What, you ask, does that have anything to do with 2008's Pathology? It's a dull answer: the actor. Michael Weston plays both Simon and Dr. Jake Gallo, so if nothing else, I thank Pathology for SPOILER ALERT, giving me another death scene for one of my least favorite people ever to appear on my television screen. 

Low Points

There's so much to be annoyed at with Pathology, but I really do think its major error comes in how little it thinks the audience needs to go on a journey with its lead. Milo Ventimiglia is perfectly fine as Dr. Ted Gray (NOT STOPPING), but he gets absolutely nothing to work with in terms of why an intelligent young man would suddenly throw everything away to part with Olivia Benson's kin. As a result, it is truly impossible to invest any kind of feeling in what happens to anyone in this movie. What a weird choice

Lessons Learned

Never cut into the poop pipe

Pathology season really picks up during the holidays

The feeling of guilt is actually the fear of getting caught

Rent/Bury/Buy

I sort of hated Pathology, but I can also concede that it's going for something fairly different, particularly during this rough patch of late aughts horror. I don't know anyone that I'd directly recommend it to, but hey, if you're in the market for a grisly medical school Fight Club with less nuance and more female nudity, here you go. Find it now on Max, or HBO, or whatever we're calling it by the time this post goes live. 

Growing Pains

Is Judith Light the most underrated actor of her generation? 

Well, no, because there's Alfre Woodard, but is Judith Light the SECOND most underrated actor of her generation? 

A TV movie from 1996 suggests so.

Quick Plot: Irene and Ed McNair have been through some things: the death of their eldest son Joey, Ed's winding road to recovery from alcoholism, and now, the horror of Joey's living teenage twin Teddy's sudden outbursts. 

Teddy is...needy. He demands his mother come with him for a sleepover at his dead grandmother's house then whines like Veruca Salt when he finds out she's planning on selling the empty home. Irene soon learns that Teddy was expelled from college for some scandalous artwork, fired from his job for decorating a department store window with BDSM-style mannequins, and has a closet wall covered in newspaper clippings detailing their small Connecticut's town shocking crimes.

See, a few young blonds are turning up dead. Ed's AA sponsor happens to be the head detective who has a full profile ready to share with his bestie: a young man, artistically frustrated, sexually confused, deep mother issues, previous tenure on Roseanne. You get the picture. 

Murder At My Door is a very, very made-for-TV movie. The screenplay is credited to veteran Christopher Canaan and Patti Sullivan, whose scanter IMDB resume only lists this and Reading Rainbow. Perhaps most excitingly, the director is  Eric Till, a perfect unicorn of a filmmaker responsible for both A Muppet Family Christmas and the Costas Mandylor/Jennie Garth joint Falling For You. 

This one isn't quite as memorable as those incredibly diverse classics, but I had a good time. Between fog-framed flashbacks and a very dense score, Murder At My Door screams its 1996 CBS roots with such fury that even the most hardened live-in-the-now viewer can't help but feel nostalgic. I wish the screenplay offered more surprises or that Johnny Galecki found more layers into Teddy, but also, well, this is a 1996 made-for-TV drama. If I can give Zombie Night a good review, I have to pause and say my standards are inconsistent and unfair. 

High Points

I really do mean it when I say that Judith Light is a national treasure. As Irene, she's mostly stuck playing an ill-defined (on the page) fraught mother, but by golly does Light seem fully present in every mournful stare. This is a woman who does not throw away a performance

Low Points

It's a strange day when you realize how made-for-shock-TV movies have, in some ways, made huge strides over the past 30 years. Sure, Lifetime rarely snags a lead as good as Judith Light, but Murder At My Door's biggest flaw is that it plays out exactly as you would have expected from the first beat. Had this been made today, we'd get a bonkers twist revealing (SPOILER ALERT TO WHAT WE DON'T ACTUALLY GET) that Teddy was troubled but innocent, and it's, say, his little Mikey-in-the-making brother who has actually been stabbing blonds

Lessons Learned

Mansplaining was just as bad in the '90s, particularly if you enjoyed CD shopping at the mall

If you're planning on murdering a woman, always take note of her earring count before and after (but also, don't murder women)

There's nothing you can do to go against the district supervisor

Special Exception

If you've ever spent more than 11 minutes drinking with me, you probably recall that I can't go 12 without ranting about one of my biggest movie credits pet peeves:  "Special Appearance By". Movies are temporary, and a cameo (though rarely is it a singular appearance) should simply be an "And" or "With" credit, or a complete surprise without introduction. That being said, when you get the glorious Grace Zabriskie, it is indeed special

Rent/Bury/Buy

TV movie enthusiasts, particularly those with soft spots for the '90s, will certainly find Murder At My Door entertaining. I wish it had a little more bite in the end, but can I REALLY complain when I get to see Judith Light cry and Grace Zabriskie scream? 

On the Move (Or Not)

 

It's odd that there are so few mannequin-related horror films. They're innately creepy objects that are, essentially, oversized dolls, one of the genre's favorite villains. So why aren't there more mall-set slashers that take advantage of this?

Have you seen Don't Look Away? It explains a lot.

Quick plot: Frankie, a sad student a few days away from her LSATs, is driving home to her awful older TA boyfriend Steve when she smashes her car into a hijacked truck driver. She's not really at fault: the trucker was standing in the middle of the road after watching his assailants get brutally murdered because they made eye contact with a naked mannequin.

You know how it goes form here. Frankie goes out with friends the next night only to spot the same pile of plastic at the club where very quickly, a whole bunch of partiers are slaughtered. The police still think nothing is amiss from this young woman, even though one a day later, another pal ends up dead after, you guessed it, seeing the naked mannequin. 

This all sounds so much more fun than it is. Frankie's friends take a very long time to come around, and then they do, and we're not very happy because they're, well, pretty new to this acting thing. As they play out a half-hearted It Follows, Steve gets lost in his version of The Shining, ghost bartender and gibberish writing file included. 

Don't Look Away is clearly made on a budget, though that's really not the film's problem. Cowriter/director Michael Bafaro shows some good staging instincts when it comes to a few sequences, making the most out of his Annabelle-style immobile villain showing up without notice. For a good chunk of its first half, I found myself hopeful that Don't Look Away was on the right track. 

It's not. The characters never earn enough of our interest or sympathy to carry us through a storyline that only gets explained by the director showing up in a bit part to give some last act exposition. 

Seriously. 

This movie has not one, but two Roomba jump scares. It is indeed that kind of thing. 

High Points

Considering this film is partially dedicated to John Carpenter, it's not shocking that Don't Look Away employs a synth-y score. The surprise, considering most of this movie, is that it's actually pretty good

Low Points

There's a LOT wrong with Don't Look Away, but when the ending doesn't actually tell you who's alive, you really can't cut something like this any more slack

Lessons Learned

Most people don't crave a big breakfast after watching their friend and a batch of strangers murdered the night before

A decapitated body can wander your porch for at least two full minutes

PhD students are better than the rest of us because they understand ethical principles

Rent/Bury/Buy

Mannequin completists will certainly be able to say, "Hey, this is a movie about a murderous mannequin." So for me, there was certainly merit to watching Don't Look Away. For the rest, ignore the title. Unless you crave this kind of content: