Time for a Good Wax

 

Is there a horror fan alive who doesn't love a wax museum?

I'd guess not, even though there's a good argument to be made that we've never actually had a great wax museum movie. Yes, the Waxwork flicks are fun and every variation of House of Wax is melty in all the best ways, but you know, neither franchise really produced an actual GREAT film. 

IS THIS THE DAY THAT ALL CHANGES? 

Quick Plot: At the start of the 20th century, Parisian police discover a grisly crime scene that turns their stomachs. A couple has been brutally slain, body parts scattered around the room or missing. The only witness is their young daughter Sonia. Inspector Lavin vows to solve the crime, but twelve years pass without a lead.

Grown and gorgeous Sonia is now on the job hunt in Rome, where she lands a wardrobe position at the city's newest attraction: a wax museum specializing in violent tableaus. The spot has already been in the news after a young man of leisure died inside after taking on a dare to spend the night.  

Surely there's nothing to worry about! It's just a wax museum! That ... focuses on violent tableaus, including the murder of Sonia's parents.

It doesn't take long for Sonia to suspect curator Boris and his creepy assistant Alex. She quickly teams up with reporter Andrea to investigate (along with some other things). Meanwhile, good old Inspector Lavin comes to town determined to help. Along the way, a few Romans of all ages disappear, with oddly similar faces debuting later in waxy glory.

Made in 1997, Wax Mask (not "Wax Max", as I keep writing, which feels very Rural Juror of me for those who understand) is gooey and gross and feels wonderfully out of time. There's a true Hammer Horror style in its bones, but those bones are also covered in wildly grand practical monster makeup and random callbacks to The Terminator.

I loved it.

Wax Mask apparently began as a Lucio Fulci project, but his death saw producer Dario Argento pass the reins on to special effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti. There was certainly some heft lost in the transfer. The acting is a bit stiff, even if you push most of that blame onto weird dubbing. Perhaps more importantly, Fulci (admittedly my personal favorite of the genre's Italians) might have come at the material with something to say. 

Instead, we get something that looks really, really cool.  

High Points

Seriously: Stivaletti holds nothing back in giving us hot acid baths, robot hands, essence-sucking waxing, and so much more

Low Points

I still don't understand the exact connection between Sonia and Boris, or Alex's actual opinion on things, or, you know, anything about the characters. Thankfully, I don't really care

Lessons Learned

Being an investigative photojournalist was a lot harder when cameras were the size of Warwick Davis

Every movie set in a wax museum must end with a very drawn out fire (I don't make the rules, but I do love them)

I never thought this had to be said, but here we go: when conducting an autopsy, it's important to check for a heartbeat before, you know, slicing into a possibly living chest

Rent/Bury/Buy

I flipped on Tubi one morning when I was frustrated with having to think too hard, and what a perfect decision I made. Wax Mask is silly and gross and in a word, grand. Have fun.

I'M GEEKING OUT IN BROOKLYN!

It's happening!

Time for me to guest at another Kevin Geeks Out show here in New York. Yes, every now and then, the city of Brooklyn decides that I'm just cool enough to enter for 20 minutes, talk about killer dolls, and drive back to the nerdy suburbs where I belong.

This is your big chance to watch a whole COLLECTION of witty, funny people talk about dolls. American Dolls, stretchy dolls, Barbie dolls, action figures that are indeed dolls, and so much more. I'll be documenting my own personal history with a short redhead who changed the course of my life in 1988 and made me, well, the weirdo doll-obsessed blogger you know today. 

If you're anywhere near New York this April 23rd, be sure to grab your ticket! 

The More Things Change...

 

One of our last few beautiful natural resources remaining on this rapidly declining planet is Turner Classic Movies, aka TCM, the cable channel that airs such a glorious grab bag of film. Whenever a genre title I haven't seen comes up on the guide, you can bet my DVR I'm going to record it. 

Quick Plot: Four very white men embark on a mission to circle Mars. The trip is uneventful until their attempted return, when they hit whatever you call the space version of turbulence and land on an earth-like planet that doesn't feel too friendly.

First comes the dog-sized paper mache spiders (ADORABLE). Then the one-eyed neanderthal-ish gang. Finally, the real horror: a cemetery with gravestones proving this is earth, but an earth a few hundred years in the future following a nuclear holocaust. 

The men are saved by the more "civilized" survivors, a prissy collection of helmet-wearing nerds and Judy Jetson-styled sexy ladies who have formed a society underground. While they're safe in the bunker, there's a clear problem: the men are so weak that reproduction rates are at an all-time low. We need testosterone, STAT!

Did someone say shirtless Rod Taylor? Because we can all certainly use some shirtless Rod Taylor.

Watching World Without End, it's hard not to imagine it framed with silhouettes of a few robots and their human friend. This is a film that SCREAMS Mystery Science Theater 3000 because it hits all of those trademarks that make for a great riff: hand-made special effects, goofy but earnest dialogue, and careful violence that feels cute. This has such a '50s sci-fi vibe that I started watching it in jeans and when it ended, I somehow was wearing a poodle skirt.

Just kidding. Who the hell wears pants in their home?

I enjoyed World Without End. The film was written and directed by Edward Bernds, a man who spent a whole lot of time on Three Stooges projects (which might explain his confusion on how violence works). It's kind of a delight. 

There's some drama and heaviness. One astronaut leaves behind a wife and kids and has to accept that they're long gone, while the very threat of nuclear war underlines the entire story. I don't love how those left on the surface are treated as wild animals, but the film makes a tiny effort towards the end to suggest a brighter future for all. So long as you don't think too hard, World Without End is a pretty fun time.

High Points

Yes, the actual monster makeup and crafting could have used some darker lighting, but this is a movie that just feels so visually fun, especially when we go underground and are treated to, well, this

Low Points

Not surprisingly, the gender balance of a 1950s sci-fi film don't really feel great some decades later

Lessons Learned

The ancients kept most of their secrets in caves

The most effective way of shooting is to put your whole body into it, pushing that gun in the same direction you're firing

Astronauts are very good at understanding the differences between optimists and pessimists

Rent/Bury/Buy

World Without End doesn't have a lot on its mind (although one can always appreciate the unfortunately never-not-relevant nuclear war warning) and that's okay. This is a charming little bite of '50s science fiction that will scratch a very particular itch. 

Carnival of Soul[Survivor]s

 

We've talked a lot here about that strange time in genre history when hot fully clothed CW Network refugees would star in forgettable PG-13 to the occasional light R-rated slasher. Scream's success had a long but weakening tail effect that put quite a few mid-budget thrillers on the big screen. You usually discovered these from newspaper ads that had a V-formation of attractive young people staring straight at the camera with a look of mild fear.

One such film: Soul Survivors (not o be confused with the near plural homonymic  Sole Survivor). 

Quick Plot: Cassie is ready to start college with her bad girl* best friend Annabel, ex-boyfriend now entwined with Annabel Matt, and soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Sean who's heading in the other direction to Harvard. The group enjoys their last night together by partying at a closed church, but things take a dark turn, literally, when Cassie crashes the car while taking a dark turn.

*we know Annie is a bad girl because she smokes, wears black, and is played by Eliza Dushku in full Faith Lehane drag 

Sean is killed, Cassie, devastated. Annabel tries to cheer her pal up but also starts hanging out with some goths, much to Cassie's horror. Matt becomes more convinced that he and Cassie are meant to be together. Halo-lit priest Luke Wilson shows up to dispense wisdom. 

It's something.

Written and directed by The Power's Stephen Carpenter, Soul Survivors feels like an earnest teen drama forced wearing slasher drag. I hate spoiling a film (albeit a poorly received one from 22 years ago), but as you probably can gather from this post title or, you know, from watching 5 minutes of Soul Survivors, Cassie is not quite in the same realm as her peers with a regular heartbeat.

Maybe this was more of a surprise in 2002. Even so, I can't imagine an early 21st century audience getting that much more out of Soul Survivors. It's sleek-looking in that way most mid-budget theatrical slashers of the era were, but it never comes close to being scary or even that suspenseful when the truth is so obvious. The performances are fine (well, the female ones) but the script doesn't find any interesting angles into the actual characters. 

Or maybe I'm just giving this movie a severe disadvantage because it's no Sole Survivor.

High Points

There's really not much on paper to the character of Cassie (she ... swims) so it speaks to Melissa Sagemiller's performance that we're still invested in her safety and sanity

Low Points

Trying to separate my dislike of Casey Affleck with his actual presence in the film, but you know what? I don't have to because he has so little of it! Wes Bentley fares better, save for the fact that his character is actually a creep

Lessons Learned

When looking for study help, never start with the mean blonde

Nothing is worse than the I Care For You But Speech

Always choose the college that puts freshman in dorms that have their own bar

Rent/Bury/Buy

As with most movies of this era, there is certainly some charm to be found in the style of the aughts. But the movie doesn't offer too much else. If you go in expecting a thriller over a horror movie, you might leave slightly more satisfied. You can find this one on Amazon Prime (and probably Tubi, because, you know, Tubi). 

Groundhog Morning

 

Is there anything better than randomly flicking on an under the radar horror film only to discover that it features Peter Stomare? 

And spontaneous combustion?

And bear traps?!

Quick Plot: A young woman crawls out of a hole in triumph only to be murdered by a Leslie Vernon-esque reaper. 

Cut to a set of five attractive dark-haired college students on the road to find Melanie, the same girl we saw clawing her way out of the ground in the prologue. Little sister Clover hasn't been the same since she disappeared. Ex-boyfriend Max, pals Meghan and Nina, and Nina's new, likely short-term boyfriend Abe stop at a gas station where attendant Hill (Stormare!) points them towards an abandoned mining town. Great things always happen in abandoned mining towns!

The group locates an empty hotel and quickly realizes that something is wrong. Melanie's signature graces the guestbook...multiple times, growing more erratic on each line. 

Things get more troubling when the same masked madman shows up to slaughter them all. 

Fear not! The kids wake up to find themselves alive!

Later that night, they die again.

If you're picking up on some Happy Death Day vibes, your senses are working. Based on a video game (I know nothing of such things), Until Dawn is a sort of slasher mashup fueled by some semblance of everybody's favorite thematic word of the moment, trauma. 

The description above might sound fairly terrible, but l found myself pleasantly surprised by Until Dawn. Director David F. Sandberg is no stranger to horror, having made the decent Annabelle: Creation and the (in my opinion) unsatisfying Lights Out. He goes for a much lighter, even bouncy tone here, with a snappy cast of young actors who manage to create real characters amid the chaos. 

Still, there's something that keeps Until Dawn from fully coming together. It's fun. It moves well. I was invested enough in the young cast's fate to root for their survival. But even with the added bonus of last act Peter Stormare, I just never felt like I had my thumb on exactly what Sandberg was going for. The psychological angle of Clover's grief is never taken with enough weight for an emotional catharsis, but the film doesn't fully embrace its zaniness to make it overly memorable. 

Still, I had a good time here, a better one than I expected based on the premise and poster. It's fun!  

 

High Points

There's great joy in watching a familiar setup and realizing you're in for a dozen surprises. The aforementioned spontaneous combustion gave me a full guffaw, but even that didn't quite prepare me for a sudden turn into...wendigos?

Low Points

At a certain point, I realized you could throw all the wendigos in the world at me and I still wouldn't really have a deep emotional connection to Until Dawn

Lessons learned

There's much power to be found in VHS

Don't expect good plumbing from a hotel that hasn't been opened since 1998

The more you look like your partner, the better your odds of survival might be

Rent/Bury/Buy

Until Dawn isn't a movie I'll remember much in a few months, but for its 100 minutes, it gave me a few surprises and even more full body bursts. It's a good time for a lazy afternoon. Find it on Netflix.

My Best Picture Ballot

Ever since fourth grade me watched Jack Palance do a one-armed pushup next to his trophy, the Oscars have been a valued event in my life. Yes, it's a political popularity contest that gets things wrong more than right, but as a film fan, it's just FUN. The nominations inspire people to SEE MOVIES, and how is that a bad thing? The nominations stir up heated debates that force enthusiastic cinemaniacs to fervently defend and attack other people's opinions, and come on: THAT'S ALSO NOT A BAD THING. 

I love the Oscars. I love occasionally hating the Oscars. It's Hollywood prom with more expensive dresses, but somewhere between awkward presenter banter and the battle between the play-off orchestra conductor and a winner on a mission to thank everyone in his group chat by name, we get to celebrate cinema. 

On that note, I made it my mission this year to watch all of the Best Picture nominees. And much like the preferential ballot that has Academy voters rank their picks, I decided to do the same, starting from the bottom.

But with more talking. The orchestra would DEFINITELY crescendo by the time I got to #7.

10. F1: The Movie

I'm not going to say F1 is a badly made film. It used its immense budget to look good and sound even better (said by someone who watched this movie on a plane). I can even accept that it's on the Best Picture ballot because I get it: the way I'll watch anything about killer dolls or sociopathic children is the same way many MORE people will squeal at expensive and fast cars going vroom vroom. To each their own. Fine.

I'd love to just stop there, but there's that nagging voice in the back of my brain that just can't accept how easy this movie is. F1 offers no surprises. Every single thing you think will happen, happens. Every conflict plays out exactly how you'd expect it to. Brad Pitt's character can't make a wrong move if his baby blue eyes depended on it. It's exhausting. 

Maybe I'm being too hard here. Kerry Condon? A pleasure. Javier Bardem? Always welcome. Newcomer Damson Idris? Charisma ooze. As someone with next to no knowledge about Formula 1 racing, I at least learned something new here. But as soon as the last scene ended, as SPOILER ALERT, savior Brad Pitt comes to Mexico to save their style of racing, I wanted to dump out the 160 minutes that had just occupied my brain to make room for something of value. That could have been TWO Bloody Birthdays!

9. Frankenstein

I love Guillermo del Toro as a force for genre cinema and filmmaker freedom. I love his stance against AI, his devotion to craft, his unyielding pure geekiness for horror. But I sadly did not like Frankenstein.

It looks GREAT. The costumes, the sets, the framing, the makeup...all awards-worthy, and yes, they sure make the nearly 3-hour runtime a bit more bearable. But what is this Frankenstein really doing that dozens before haven't? The shame is that there are two great ideas in the story here: the toxicity of bad fatherhood and the outsider feelings that both the creature and Elizabeth find suffocating. The problem? Those should be two separate movies. When you toss in the completely unnecessary subplot of Christof Waltz's character and the repetitiveness of Victor's faults, you get an overlong mess. But boy is it pretty!

8. Marty Supreme

I went to see Marty Supreme in a theater so I could give it my full attention (and, you know, because it wasn't streaming). By the halfway mark, I found myself accepting two truths: this is an incredibly well-crafted film, and it was simply not for me. I was ready to not be mad when it won a few awards over movies I preferred, because it would feel like a matter of taste. 

Then I got to the ending. And oh boy: I was angry.

About a week before this, I had the pleasure of seeing If I Had Legs I'd Kick You followed by a Q&A with writer/director Mary Bronstein (who coincidentally, is married to Marty Supreme's co-writer and producer). It's a disturbing, hilarious, unusual masterpiece about the messiness of motherhood, starring an all-in Rose Byrne as a woman who doesn't necessarily deserve or care to have our sympathy. Sound familiar?

Marty Mauser is, much like Byrne's Linda, functioning at a level that is deliberately exhausting to the audience and people in his life. He's unapologetic about his goal, and hustles his way to get it no matter the expense (mass manslaughter, for example?). Watching the movie, I felt a distance to the character but respected the swing. Then we get to the final scene (SPOILER ALERT) where this selfish prick of a man suddenly has a revelation that he's a dad. 

I first assumed I was misreading the ending, that maybe director Josh Safdie intended the ending to be more open. But no. I've since read an interview where he really does say, "Marty is a dad now and understands what really matters."

Kill me. 

Marty Supreme has nine Oscar nominations. A movie about another crappy dad has four more. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, just one. 

I really did intend to write these all up as one paragraph summaries on my general feelings. And here we are. Because time and time again, the Oscars celebrate certain viewpoints and mostly ignore others. So a flashy film about an asshole suddenly redeemed by doing no work is rewarded 9x more than a far more unique and challenging story by and about a woman. 

I hated the ending of Marty Supreme so much that I just wrote a mini essay. And yet, I can still FULLY concede that it's kind of a remarkable film. So. That's that.  

7. One Battle After Another

One of the cinematic discoveries I made over this past summer was coming to appreciate Robert Altman. I was hoping that enthusiasm would flow over to one of his biggest fans, Paul Thomas Anderson. 

It's been mixed.

One Battle After Another has been the awards season favorite. I sat down to watch it a few months ago when the hype had already soared. That did not help things.

This is a very good movie. Much like my feelings on Marty Supreme, I would never argue that there aren't great performances and incredibly skilled filmmaking at play here. But I just don't know what I'm missing in a world where critics had hailed this the movie of the decade. The politics felt fuzzy, and while the action was thrilling, I can't shake the sentiment that a lot of dudes like this movie because it's about a crappy dad becoming a slightly less crappy dad. That obviously doesn't apply to everyone's review, but so much of the discourse has been about Leonardo DiCaprio's arc that it's hard to not, again, scream, "BUT HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT MARY BRONSTEIN DID WITH IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU?"

I know, I'm insufferable. The orchestra has stopped trying to play me off and has instead activated USC's marching band to stomp me offstage. 

6. Bugonia

I've never not had a grand time with a Yorgos Lanthimos film. Bugonia is probably near the bottom of my rankings for that weirdo's output, but, well, it's still a Yorgos Lanthimos film, filled with black humor that simultaneously loves the possibilities of humanity while having no patience for its failures. Classic Lanthimos, just not at the same level as his best.

5. Train Dreams

How wonderfully ironic is it to realize that Train Dreams, which covers the longest stretch of time of any of the Best Picture nominees, is also the shortest. Clocking in at just 103 minutes, this is a simple story about an unexceptional man's life. That's really it! Beautifully shot in the Pacific Northwest, it feels more like a meditation than movie. I found it touching and deeply human.

4. Sentimental Value

There's always a movie like this in a Best Picture lineup that you know is going to be good, but you also don't exactly leap to watch it with a bowl of popcorn and unbridled enthusiasm. You assume it's an actors' movie, and you'll exit it with approval but maybe not adoration.

That was not the case for me with Sentimental Value. The story of two grown sisters who have processed their complicated relationship with their famed filmmaker father in different, unresolved ways shouldn't necessarily be something that we can all understand, but it's Joachim Trier's specificity that makes the film all the more effective. There's a deep truth to this family that I found myself leaning so far into that by the end, I was shocked at how much I felt. 

3. The Secret Agent

Having virtually no knowledge base of modern Brazilian history, The Secret Agent felt a bit daunting at first, particularly with a 2:40 runtime (look, I know I'm complaining about the length of these films BUT THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH TIME IN A DAY AND THESE MOVIES ARE VERY LONG). Thankfully, The Secret Agent is riveting. I had been impressed by writer/director's Kleber Mendonca Filho's Bacurau, and while The Secret Agent is a bit more restrained in its violence, it still shows an incredible level of skill and more importantly, something truly unique. Star Wagner Moura might be the most charismatic actor working today. The film doesn't make anything easy for its audience. It tells us a linear story only to veer to the side halfway through in a way that comes together in a rather haunting ending that leaves you putting pieces together. Of all the films here, this is probably the one that I'll most often find my brain returning to, and that in itself is a huge triumph. 

2. Hamnet

Recency bias: I watched this movie yesterday. I am still emotionally navigating.

I knew Hamnet was the movie that made people cry. I knew it was about the death of a child and parental grief, and while I trusted the general critical consensus that it was a Great Movie, it seemed like something prestige that probably wasn't made for me. In some ways, this is a similar approach/surprise I had back in 2006 with Atonement. I went in expecting Oscar bait only to leave with something deeply rich and challenging. 

For the first 70 minutes or so, I thought Hamnet was perfectly fine. Beautifully crafted, heartstring-tugging, and you know, fine. But then I hit that final act and suddenly, there are heavy drops of salty water cascading down my rosy cheeks. 

This is not a story about a cute little boy dying too young. It's a much richer, kind of transformative experience exploring how art can save us from each other and ourselves. It hit me, and it hit me hard. 

1. Sinners

Here's my take: Sinners is a great film, but only an okay horror film. BUT IT'S STILL A GREAT FILM.

Around these parts, we're obviously going to hold the genre to a bit of a higher standard. lf there's a flaw to Ryan Coogler's jazz opus, it's that the actual vampire siege doesn't quite hit as hard as you would want it to in a movie with this premise. But take that nitpick away, and what are we left with? A true independent vision with clear roots. There's so much here, and I can't wait to come back to it.

We'll see how closely my tastes line up with the Academy tonight. I will be ready.