The dead wanted to vote, alright. They just didn’t want to vote for us.

Masters of Horror:

Homecoming

(2005)

(SPOILERS) Joe Dante’s debut contribution to anthology horror show Masters of Horror was widely acclaimed as the first season’s standout episode, all eyes fixed on its overt political message. It even snagged the No.19 spot on Vulture’s 25 Best Horror Movies since The Shining (although, since Tarantino’s atrocious Death Proof featured, there’s no accounting for taste). I’ve got to admit, though, as disposed as I am towards venerating Dante, I found the episode so lacking in any form of subtlety or nuance as render it entirely rote. Indeed, the most interesting aspect of Homecoming ends up being the retro-noir narration, like a zombie apocalypse version of Double Indemnity.

Sam Hamm, who penned Tim Burton’s Batman, furnished a script where everything is on the surface. The subtext is the text. These zombies don’t represent consumer society, commies or anything so Romero-ish; they’re straight-up soldiers, back from the dead because they’re pissed off about being sent to wage a meaningless war and determined to vote the Republican president out of office. Dante sounded off that he was incensed by the Iraq situation, and couldn’t figure out why it was left to Homecoming to act as the lone voice of protest. The problem with this is, expressing a noble sentiment so audibly doesn’t necessarily make the vehicle well-expressed. The extent of his uncharacteristic seriousness is seen in the relative absence of in-references (aside from Jacques Tourneur rising from the grave).

Homecoming’s at its best with the sub-Network antics of media manipulation (something Dante has explored before, in the likes of The Howling and The Second Civil War), but even then the writing is too forward to be considered really smart or subversive. Thea Gill is an Anne Coulter-esque right-wing pundit reeling off renta-quotes berating liberals, when a mother comes on air to explain she was detained by the Secret Service for heckling the President (“I stood up and asked him, why did my son die? The WMD weren’t there, the nuclear program wasn’t there, the threat wasn’t there”). At which point, possibly weaving some unintended spell, fellow guest and presidential speechwriter David Murch (Jon Tenney), who lost a brother to Vietnam, pipes up, stating that if he he had one wish “I would ask your son to come back”.

Political advisor Kurt Rand (Robert Picardo, essentially Karl Rove) compliments Murch on his inventiveness, incorporating the dialogue into the President’s next speech, and before we know it soldiers are rising from their coffins. Picardo’s is a suitably relishable Dante turn, and he has some of the pithiest lines (“Private Wheeler died on the operating table, after which he put up a hell of a fight”). When Murch notes the dead man feels pain, Rand rejoinders, “Ah hell, he volunteered”. Pondering why they have come back, he concludes “Couldn’t be the disability benefits”. And, like a typical Dante opportunist, he sees potential in the situation rather than cost (“If we could keep the same dead GIs out on the battlefield forever, that’s like the answer to a prayer”).

The problem is, the bright idea has nowhere left to go after it has been set up, and includes such maudlin scenes as a couple tending a lost zombie GI, telling him “We want you to know that somebody does appreciate you”, complete with treacly music (the flashback, in which Murch as a child shoots his veteran brother, is so overwrought as to be unintentionally funny).

Amid his bid for topicality, Hamm is forced to recognise the logical restraints he’s set himself, the implication that all other wars must be assumed to have been fought for good reason, by way of suggesting those veterans who haven’t returned believed in their fights (before backtracking and including Vietnam). There’s the occasional sharp swipe at the electoral system (scoffing that a couple of hundred votes wont change anything, someone counters by mentioning Florida), but this is a piece that, to be really on-point, ought to have had the GIs conclude it was useless voting for anyone as they’re all as bad as each other.

Homecoming isn’t a dodo by any means; it’s proficiently made, and quite watchable, but the hype it received far outweighs its actual merit. Strange as it may sound to say it, it’s actually rather shallow, and could have delivered its salient points in half the running time.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Prepare the Heathen’s Stand! By order of purification!

Apostle (2018)
(SPOILERS) Another week, another undercooked Netflix flick from an undeniably talented director. What’s up with their quality control? Do they have any? Are they so set on attracting an embarrassment of creatives, they give them carte blanche, to hell with whether the results are any good or not? Apostle's an ungainly folk-horror mashup of The Wicker Man (most obviously, but without the remotest trace of that screenplay's finesse) and any cult-centric Brit horror movie you’d care to think of (including Ben Wheatley's, himself an exponent of similar influences-on-sleeve filmmaking with Kill List), taking in tropes from Hammer, torture porn, and pagan lore but revealing nothing much that's different or original beyond them.

You can’t just outsource your entire life.

Tully (2018)
(SPOILERS) A major twist is revealed in the last fifteen minutes of Tully, one I'll happily admit not to have seen coming, but it says something about the movie that it failed to affect my misgivings over the picture up to that point either way. About the worst thing you can say about a twist is that it leaves you shrugging.

There's something wrong with the sky.

Hold the Dark (2018)
(SPOILERS) Hold the Dark, an adaptation of William Giraldi's 2014 novel, is big on atmosphere, as you'd expect from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) and actor-now-director (I Don’t Want to Live in This World Anymore) pal Macon Blair (furnishing the screenplay and appearing in one scene), but contrastingly low on satisfying resolutions. Being wilfully oblique can be a winner if you’re entirely sure what you're trying to achieve, but the effect here is rather that it’s "for the sake of it" than purposeful.

Well, you did take advantage of a drunken sailor.

Tomb Raider (2018)
(SPOILERS) There's evidently an appetite out there for a decent Tomb Raider movie, given that the lousy 2001 incarnation was successful enough to spawn a (lousy) sequel, and that this lousier reboot, scarcely conceivably, may have attracted enough bums on seats to do likewise. If we're going to distinguish between order of demerits, we could characterise the Angelina Jolie movies as both pretty bad; Tomb Raider, in contrast, is unforgivably tedious.

If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose.

Phantom Thread (2017)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps surprisingly not the lowest grossing of last year's Best Picture Oscar nominees (that was Call Me by Your Name) but certainly the one with the least buzz as a genuine contender, subjected as Phantom Thread was to a range of views from masterpiece (the critics) to drudge (a fair selection of general viewers). The mixed reaction wasn’t so very far from Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier The Master, and one suspects the nomination was more to do with the golden glow of Daniel Day-Lewis in his first role in half a decade (and last ever, if he's to be believed) than mass Academy rapture with the picture. Which is ironic, as the relatively unknown Vicky Krieps steals the film from under him.

No one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams.

Ridley Scott Ridders Ranked
During the '80s, I anticipated few filmmakers' movies more than Ridley Scott's; those of his fellow xenomorph wrangler James Cameron, perhaps. In both cases, that eagerness for something equalling their early efforts receded as they studiously managed to avoid the heights they had once reached. Cameron's output dropped off a cliff after he won an Oscar. Contrastingly, Scott's surged like never before when his film took home gold. Which at least meant he occasionally delivered something interesting, but sadly, it was mostly quantity over quality. Here are the movies Scott has directed in his career thus far - and with his rate of productivity, another 25 by the time he's 100 may well be feasible – ranked from worst to best.

This is it. This is the moment of my death.

Fearless (1993)
Hollywood tends to make a hash of any exploration of existential or spiritual themes. The urge towards the simplistic, the treacly or the mawkishly uplifting, without appropriate filtering or insight, usually overpowers even the best intentions. Rarely, a movie comes along that makes good on its potential and then, more than likely, it gets completely ignored. Such a fate befell Fearless, Peter Weir’s plane crash survivor-angst film, despite roundly positive critical notices. For some reason audiences were willing to see a rubgy team turn cannibal in Alive, but this was a turn-off? Yet invariably anyone who has seen Fearless speaks of it in glowing terms, and rightly so.

Weir’s pictures are often thematically rich, more anchored by narrative than those of, say, Terrence Malick but similarly preoccupied with big ideas and their expression. He has a rare grasp of poetry, symbolism and the mythic. Weir also displays an acute grasp of the subjective mind-set, and possesses …

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Venom (2018)
(SPOILERS) A 29% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes can't be wrong, can it? To go by the number of one-star reviews Sony’s attempt to kick-start their own shred of the Marvel-verse has received, you’d think it was the new Battlefield Earth, or Highlander II: The Quickening. Fortunately, it's far from that level of ignominy. And while it’s also a considerable distance from showing the polish and assuredness of the official Disney movies, it nevertheless manages to establish its own crudely winning sense of identity.

The whole thing should just be your fucking nose!

A Star is Born (2018)
(SPOILERS) A shoe-in for Best Picture Oscar? Perhaps not, since it will have to beat at very least Roma and First Man to claim the prize, but this latest version of A Star is Born still comes laden with more acclaim than the previous three versions put together (and that's with a Best Picture nod for the 1937 original). While the film doesn't quite reach the consistent heights suggested by the majority of critics, who have evacuated their adjectival bowels lavishing it with superlatives, it's undoubtedly a remarkably well-made, stunningly acted piece, and perhaps even more notably, only rarely feels like its succumbing to just how familiar this tale of rise to, and parallel fall from, stardom has become.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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