I'm as happy as a clam.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

(2008)

Although I appreciate it now for what it is, I was distinctly underwhelmed by the 1998 movie, which just seemed to be biding time rather than breaking new ground. In contrast, I was expecting some kind of limp expiration of the franchise with this return, given the sour reviews, but I found myself really enjoying it for the most part.

There are plenty of bum notes in the mix; Scully's maudlin medical subplot is standard fare, but Gillian Anderson returns to playing Dana as the scientific to the point of ludicrousness doctor in a way that makes you suspect seasons 8 and 9 of the series never happened. Meanwhile David Duchovny's right back in there with his deadpan quips and constipated underplaying. Billy Connolly's very good value in an unsympathetic part and Cylon Callum Keith Rennie gets to flex his villainy muscles (Duchovny clearly has a man-crush on him; he's in most of Season 2 of Californication too). Xzibit and Amanda Peet don't make much impression.

The plot is patchy. Or rather, while the main X-file is involving enough, if not really movie-worthy, heavy weather is made of the Mulder-Scully relationship with Chris Carter never really facing their romance head-on. The result is that they communicate in the manner they did pre-ugly bumping. In fact, it's difficult to discern just what their living arrangements are since she complains about Mulder's beard like she's never felt it before and walks around his house like she's a stranger in it.

The real star of this is Bill Roe's gorgeous wintry cinematography which, combined with an evocative Mat Snow score, creates an atmospheric and moody film. Carter's direction is actually quite competent; he's in Duane Barry "serve the story" mode, rather than Triangle "let's see how much I can work the camera" and all the better for it. I'm sort of impressed that they didn't take a bells-and-whistles approach to this movie; it's by no stretch equivalent to one of the best TV episodes, but it makes no apologies for being its own beast and as a result feels very unpackaged and non-committee-dictated.

***1/2

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I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
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Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

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In that sense, Mr. Robot’s thematic conceit is very much of a piece with its narrative form; it’s a conjuring act, a series of sleights of hand designed to dazzle the viewer into going with the flow, rath…

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

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Ghostbusters (2016)
(SPOILERS) Paul Feig is a better director than Ivan Reitman, or at very least he’s savvy enough to gather technicians around him who make his films look good, but that hasn’t helped make his Ghostbusters remake (or reboot) a better movie than the original, and that’s even with the original not even being that great a movie in the first place.

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It’s the Mount Everest of haunted houses.

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(SPOILERS) In retrospect, 1973 looks like a banner year for the changing face of the horror movie. The writing was on the wall for Hammer, which had ruled the roost in Britain for so long, and in the US the release of The Exorcist completed a transformation of the genre that had begun with Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby; the realistic horror film, where the terror was to be found in the everyday (the home, the family). Then there was Don’t Look Now, which refracted horror tropes through a typically Nic Roeg eye, fracturing time and vision in a meditative exploration of death and grief. The Wicker Man, meanwhile, would gather its reputation over the passing years. It stands as a kind of anti-horror movie, eschewing standard scares and shock tactics for a dawning realisation of the starkness of opposing belief systems and the fragility of faith.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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