Friday The 13th (1980)

I recently re-watched the original Friday The 13th movie, in bits and pieces over the course of a couple of nights. While watching the last 20 to 30 minutes separated from the rest of the film, I realized something that I really like about this movie – the killer is a normal looking, older woman. Not supernatural or super-powerful or something that is obviously scary.

This gives the film a level of horror beyond just the slasher scares of the murders. She's a regular person who, through losing her son while attending Camp Crystal Lake, is pushed over the edge and lost her grasp on sanity. This could be anyone – through the right circumstances just about anyone could be driven to that sort of insanity. And there's no way to tell who could or who already has, they don't put on masks, aren't deformed, or horribly scarred – their scars are invisible. This underlying fear that anyone could decide to kill you is completely terrifying and grounds the terror in something very real and innate in us.

It's too bad they basically undo all of this at the very end just to get a cheap, quick, jump-scare. The movie has no supernatural elements to it but then, what we are to believe, the undead corpse of Jason Voorhees jumps out of the lake and grabs the lone survivor. Sure, it's a good scare you don't see coming, but it's out of place with everything else that happened so far, it's clear the filmmakers just felt the need to add one more thing at the end. If they didn't have this last bit, the film could have a very solid sense of existential fear to go with its slasher kills.

Ghostbusting Your Childhood

Nowadays it's pretty common to see the complaint, or worry, that something (TV show, movie sequel/reboot/remake/adaptation) will ruin or destroy a part of someone's childhood. This refrain is coming up again with men upset about the idea of a remake/reboot/sequel(?) of the movie Ghostbusters featuring female leads. I find this somewhat ironic.

In Ghostbusters, Ray Stantz is a man-child. I don't mean that in a negative sense, as a man stuck in a state of arrested development afraid of growing up and commitment and all that that's a fairly common characterization in movies in recent years. He's a grown man who has an almost childlike enthusiasm and excitement about what he does – when looking for a building for their business, he's sold on the place because it was a fire house and has a pole to slide from the top-floor to the bottom-floor.

In the end of the movie, Ray accidentally summons a Godzilla-sized Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, a beloved and nostalgic icon from his childhood, to destroy the city. To save the day, he has to kill Mr. Stay-Puft. The man-child kills his childhood, or a part of it, at least. The ultimate ghost (though it's not a ghost, I know this) is his own past.

In a small way, then, Ghostbusters is about being willing to let your childhood go. And now, men are crying over their childhoods. Take a lesson from Ray Stantz and let it go.

Or just admit you're a misogynist because that's the other option if it's not about your precious childhood.

King Kong (1976)

I watched the 1976 version of King Kong. I'd never seen it before. I'm generally very forgiving of special effects of the time a film was made and don't let them detract from the movie. However, there was just something about the special effects that just didn't sit well with me.

The problem is that I don't think there's a way to make a man in a monster suit smashing a model not look silly. No matter how good the model may be, no matter how good the suit may be, it still looks like an actor in a suit breaking bits of plastic and cardboard. It draws attention to itself and breaks the suspension of disbelief, not because it doesn't look realistic but because it looks ridiculous. If Kong destroying a train, with people in it, makes me want to laugh because I can't take the image seriously, what's the point? Not to mention a man in an ape-suit fighting a big, fake snake. It looks cheap and dumb.

I also couldn't help but think about how rather rudimentary the special effects are. I watched the original King Kong a couple of weeks ago. While the stop-motion puppets certainly don't look realistic, I can at least look at them and appreciate that, for the time, how the live-action actors and puppets were mixed and blended together was sophisticated and would have been spectacular. Then you go forward 40 years and the best they can do is put an actor into an ape suit to stamp around and toss models? It was a fine suit, capable of some decent expression (though it mostly seems to pull a creepy, rape-vibe expression) through mechanics – the effects team did a good job on it and the cinematographer did a good job complimenting it. Still, it's a man in a suit and hardly highlights the advances in special-effects filmmaking.

How else could they have done it? That's the question I then have to ask myself. I'm not sure. I'm not sure, exactly, of the limitations of the time. But I'd look at something such as the Rancor scene in Return of the Jedi, released 7 years later. They initially considered using a man in a suit for the Rancor, but decided, instead, to use a stop motion puppet. With the use of blue screen, projection, mechanical arm, and the puppet, they made something that looks good and holds up well. This should have all been available to the filmmakers in 1976. It's the same principles used in the original movie, but with the benefit of improved technology and techniques it looks so much better. If used in the 1976 King Kong, the film would be less silly and it'd better show how effects had improved since 1933. Don't try to make a man in an ape-suit carry a movie – it should be a small part and never made to standalone, so that it wouldn't have to bear the burden of close scrutiny.

Psycho

One of the things that I like most about the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is the last shot – the camera slowly spinning and pulling away from Marion Crane's open, lifeless eye. It's extremely unsettling. It's a great way to cap that sequence off.

When characters die in movies, they often close their eyes or we don't see their eyes. Or, someone will do the decent and respectable thing by closing their eyes rather quickly. Here, Hitchcock lingers on her eye, as it stares off into nothing, seeing nothing. Her eye doesn't move or twitch. He makes us actually, kind of, confront death. It's so uncomfortable sitting there, being forced to look at this blank eye. It doesn't feel as though it's a movie death, as it would if she had closed her eyes or if her eyes remained hidden from, and unacknowledged by, the camera. It adds a sense and feeling of realism to the scene.

It also adds to the shock of it. She doesn't get the time to breathe her last few breaths and, sort of, peacefully go. No, she's attacked, has her last few moments and just collapses – splat – onto the floor. It's violent and sudden and brutal.

I don't think the scene would work as well without this shot. It's creepy and unsettling and uncomfortable.

Poltergeist

There are, obviously, a lot of things to like about the film Poltergeist because it is a great, classic movie. But there is one thing that I especially like about it – there are no experts in it. There's no one who has all the answers. It's a bit of a trope that there's always some character around who has read up, and knows all about, all sorts of paranormal and supernatural phenomenon and can say 'this is what's going on, this is what we need to do.' Here, all of the characters are clearly in over their heads.

The most Dr. Lesh and her crew have seen before is a toy move a few feet over several hours – what they're greeted with is a room with several objects flying around it. The Freeling family has more experience than the paranormal investigators at that point, having seen furniture move in seconds. The investigators haven't seen anything like this - after seeing the room with things spinning and flying around they still look for tricks when they see a coffee pot move across the table, this is their job but they can't believe what they're seeing. All the investigators can really do from there is collect data and evidence of the paranormal activities going on. They won't know what to do about any of it though.

Tangina, the medium, takes it in stride and acts as though she knows what she's doing, but she doesn't – she's faking it. When Diane wants to go into the portal in the closet, Tangina tells her “You've never done this before,” to which Diane responds “Neither have you.” Tangina gets a look on her face as though she's thinking 'oh crap, that's right' then tells Diane to do it. She's prepared to tell the family what they want to hear and say a few words to the house, but when it comes to actually confronting a poltergeist? She's real quick to pass that off to someone else. Then when Diane reappears with Carol Anne, Tangina straightens her hair a bit, looks into the video camera Dr. Lesh's crew has, and declares, very self-satisfied, “this house is clean.” But we soon see that the house is not clean. So she doesn't know! She doesn't know what she's talking about – she just sees a chance at some glory, this will make her look good.

So what's my point? Well, it's much more frightening and unsettling when no one has the ready answers. This is added to the film being set in an average 1980s suburb development – there's probably houses and developments that resemble it in most areas. It's not some spooky looking house or area – it's brand-new, nice houses; nothing should go wrong or be out of the ordinary there. But things go very wrong and no one knows how to deal with it. In the end they don't defeat the poltergeist, they don't triumph over it – they escape, they run away from it. If it can happen there, to this average looking family, it can happen anywhere, to anyone – and there may be no one who knows what to do or has answers and the only thing you may be able to do is run. How frightening is that?

12 Years A Slave

12 Years A Slave is the true story of Solomon Northup, a free African-American man from New York. One day he comes across a friend who stops him and tells him he was just telling two gentlemen about him, as they are searching for a musician and he can play the violin well. After a discussion with them, he agrees to go to Washington, D.C. with them and play for their circus for a short time. At the end of his engagement with them, they all go out for a dinner and he has too much to drink. In the morning he wakes up chained in a room. From there he is transported to New Orleans where he is sold into slavery. He spends the next 12 years between three plantations before he is finally able to gain his freedom again.

The film can be tough to watch. It's good that it doesn't shy away from the violence visited upon the slaves, it's something that needs to be seen and dealt with. It doesn't get overly graphic though, which is also a good thing otherwise it could become unbearable to watch and/or diminish the film as possibly being sensationalized or over-the-top. It keeps a rather even-hand.

The grounding in Solomon makes the film easier to watch as his story is compelling. He learns quickly that speaking out will do no good, it will only bring worse treatment on himself. He struggles to keep himself from lashing out or speaking out, but he knows he has to in order to survive. There's a longing in him to say something that he must suppress. There are moments of hesitation as he has to consider what he's about to say and how much to say. He knows that revealing that he's educated and can read and write would be dangerous for him - for instance, he has to resist the instinct to read a grocery list he's given.

There's great joy when he is finally rescued and reunited with his family. Though it is tempered by the post-script that tells us that, though they were tried, the men who kidnapped him were not convicted as he was not able to testify against white men in Washington, D.C. The film remains grounded in this way. The film doesn't tread into sentimentality - it'd be easy to imagine this film with rousing speeches on the rights of man and denouncing slavery, slow-motion hugs as he sees his family, and a good 'they lived happily ever after' feeling and 'The End'. It doesn't do this because it acknowledges that it's just not that simple.

The film also doesn't turn the characters to stereotypes or cliches. Even Epps, the master Solomon spends the most time with, though he is a horrible person, is conflicted by feelings for his slave Patsey. His mistreatment of his slaves, in part at least, likely comes from him taking out that internal conflict on them. He's jealous. He's a bit trapped in his life. It certainly doesn't make him sympathetic, he's not, but it at least makes him a character with some depth where he could just be a mustache-twirling bad guy. Patsey attempts to keep her humanity by continuously crying and mourning the children that were taken away from her; Solomon tries to keep his humanity by trying to maintain a sort of professional attitude and doing the best he can at his work. Solomon's first master, Ford, who is much nicer to his slaves than Epps, is relatively kind to Solomon but refuses to listen to Solomon when he tries to explain that he is a free man who was abducted, because Ford is in debt to the slave trader he bought Solomon from and so cannot afford to set him free. It all creates realistic characters.

The film knows that it doesn't need to convince anyone that a wrong is being done, not only to Solomon but all of the slaves, so it doesn't grandstand or moralize. It keeps its feet firmly on the ground. And, really, any sentiment or grandstanding or moralizing would most likely undercut the impact of the film - it's more powerful because it feels more real. It's just concerned with telling the story.

The film is well-made, story is told well. The acting is, for the most part, very good. Hans Zimmer's score is, at times, perhaps a bit much or just doesn't quite fit the film as well as it could. It's clearly one of those 'important' films, but it's not pretentious or cloying. It doesn't try too hard to be something or make you feel something. It lets the story speak for itself. It's honest. It's an excellent film.

4 1/2 out of 5

Oz The Great And Powerful

Oz The Great and Powerful has a really good idea – how did the Wizard, of The Wizard of Oz, get to Oz? Who is the Wizard? And it starts well. But...well...

It starts, as the classic The Wizard of Oz, does – in sepia-toned Kansas. A nice visual touch, along with the sepia-tone, is using the Academy aspect ratio in this section (this is the more square picture films were shot in up until the early 1950s, like The Wizard of Oz). So, clearly, they're trying to connect it to the 1939 film. In this part we're introduced to a sideshow magician who dreams of being something greater. Cool. They establish the character. They set the table. It starts well.

They perhaps hit the notes here a little too hard, as though they don't trust that you can put the pieces together yourself on where this is going without hitting you with a “I want to be a great man” sledgehammer. In the 1939 film they show you Dorothy's motivation – she feels out of place and picked on, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” suggests her desire to leave, she runs away but quickly comes back. Here, they tell you, then tell you again, and tell you again just in case you missed it.

Then the twister comes. Oz takes to his hot-air balloon in order to escape a jealous husband (Oz is a bit of a rake) only to get up caught up in the cyclone. And they started losing me here. The cyclone becomes an action scene with things flying at the camera (in the laziest, least inventive use of 3D – and if you see it in 2D, as I did, then it's just horribly out of place and annoying). No visions of his friends or people he's wronged by being a fraud. No, that'd be character – we need action! He's almost stabbed by flying posts! A hole is ripped in the carriage and he falls! But he's saved by the updraft of the cyclone! More flying stuff! Heaven forbid we're actually made to feel and sense something deeply.

When he gets to Oz, the film switches to color and the picture widens out to widescreen. It looks bright and beautiful. But it feels sort of hollow, as again they toss stuff at the camera for 3D, we don't get to so much take it in and be awed as we are cheaply distracted by 'woah, look at this! And this! Look out here comes this!' And, really, the whole rest of the film goes like this – action scenes and superficial spectacle with little focus on character and story. The story, for what it's worth, is essentially the same as the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland from a few years ago, which was produced by the same people as this movie – the people of this land need to be saved from a cruel ruler, and they can only be saved by this one person which leads to a big climatic battle.

As he makes his way through the Land of Oz, he is accompanied by a talking monkey and a china doll girl. The monkey is his assistant from his magic act and the china doll girl is a girl who was unable to walk and went to his act, believing him to be a real magician, to ask to heal her (in the way the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion were the men from the farm in The Wizard of Oz, except here done digitally, not with makeup). Yet, all they really provide is attitude and wisecracks. There's nothing deeper to their presence – I mean, his assistant wants to help and feels bound to, like the monkey is because Oz saved him, and when Oz finds the china doll girl her legs are broken off, so he fixes them so she can walk again, like he wanted to do with the girl at his show, but there doesn't seem to be any recognition of this by Oz.

They don't help him grow. The monkey knows he's not a real wizard, but aside from the first few scenes after Oz tells him, he doesn't really seem to have a problem with it – imagine if he felt conflicted about helping a man he knows is a fraud, imagine if he struggled with not telling people, it'd create conflict and drama and tension. The china doll girl doesn't know and so she joins him and helps and everything is fine – imagine, again, if Oz saw in her the little girl who he couldn't help, it'd create a deeper character as he tries to be a better man; imagine if she believed in him and found out he wasn't a real wizard, again it'd create drama and tension. But, alas, they keep everything superficial and light.

It's an entertaining and fun movie, no doubt. And, obviously, there's nothing wrong with being an entertaining and fun movie. But it stands in a pretty tall shadow. And they clearly took some measures to try and embrace it. Unfortunately, not much. I feel as though, knowing this, they'd take greater steps to live up to it by creating a great story and developing great characters. Those are the things that make the 1939 The Wizard of Oz one of the greatest and most-loved movies of all time – it's well-made with characters we care about and have genuine interest in plus it looks beautiful with great costumes and make-up (for the time) and sets and effects (for the time). Here they seem satisfied hitting the effects and beautiful-looking notes. And it really is beautiful looking; it's a gorgeous film. On my own personal note I would've liked greater use of actual sets (as opposed to what you know was likely just a bit of yellow road with a couple trees on a giant green set – it seems to be a lot harder, at least for me, to be wowed and blown-away by a CG-landscape as opposed to a real set) and practical make-up and effects.

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. It looked like it would be good. But, the best I can say is it's a beautiful-looking, superficial fun movie.

2 out of 5