Author: S. Brady Calhoun

I avoided 28 Weeks Later when it came out in theaters and only watched it this weekend so that I could catch up in time for 28 Years Later. 

I have a touch and go relationship with horror. I’ve probably never seen anything that might be labeled as torture porn. No Saws or Terrifiers or whatever. There’s a level of cruelty that’s part of the inherent structure of those things that I do not enjoy. 

Or another way to put it is that I am a huge Stephen King fan and I am never going to read or watch Pet Cemetary. 

I’m out. 

28 Weeks Later has a cruel but wickedly fun opening that gave me hope for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie was mostly just a collection of miseries and horrible deaths inflected on characters who were mostly noble. 

On the one hand you could argue that this is what happens in war (this one is a war allegory) the bravest and most noble often die horribly. But mostly it felt ugly and violent for the sake of being ugly and violent. 

I do not go to movies to see what I already suspect – that life is often merciless, capricious and pointless. I go to movies to be uplifted. 

However, there is a scene where a helicopter takes on a hoard of zombies that you really should check out. Likewise that solid opening. 

And, at least so far, this film has nothing to do with 28 Years Later and likely will not need revisiting to enjoy it or the upcoming sequels. 

Watch the first one. Jump to the third one. And unless you feel the need for some pointless, ugly violence, skip this altogether. 

This is a movie that has the goods, and knows it has the goods almost from the start. 

Confidence means an awful lot in a horror flick. 

Not so much in the actual start of the film which is a bit of business to explain the Rage virus which will create fast zombies and set up the entire movie. 

It’s the kind of scene that multiple people probably decided was necessary so that you wouldn’t lose the audience.

It feels like a scene in a lesser movie. 

However, the real opening of the real movie is Cillian Murphy waking up 28 Days Later (natch) in a hospital after being in a coma. 

He is completely alone and walks through an empty London trying to determine what happened and what he should do. 

It’s a stunning and eerie scene and its power is only heightened because we have now seen similar images in real life thanks to COVID-19. 

I feel certain I saw this when it came out though I don’t know if it was in a theater or at home. Watching it again I remembered several story points but forgot others. It feels familiar, not only because it’s been copied in television and film for 30 years but also because it’s built on the bones of great zombie and horror films of the past. 

These aren’t George Romero zombies but the movie is full of Romero’s themes. 

What’s striking about it, I think, is that this is a zombie film that has insight into our basic humanity. 

It’s not a film about goblins and jump scares (though there’s plenty of both) but a film about families struggling to survive and about how hardship can turn us into our best and worst selves. 

It’s also just a banging action picture with inventive cinematography, an amazing score and out of their world acting by four premiere talents in Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleason, Naomie Harris and Christopher Eccleston. I mean … read those names again. 

There are all kinds of great movies and ways to make great movies. This one is a propulsive thriller that makes every moment count. Even in the down times the sense of dread and tension remain. It doesn’t have a false scene (except for the previously discussed plot required opening) or a false note. 

As the hype for 28 Years Later got serious I decided I would revisit the first one, watch the sequel — 28 Weeks Later —- and go see the new one this weekend. 

I’ll save my thoughts on the other two for later this week. 

Pop culture is a funny thing because in revisiting this I’m confident that 28 Days Later is a perfect horror film and probably should be in a top 100 list amongst the greatest films (just films) ever. 

And yet, I had completely forgotten it until this week. But it isn’t it grand to find an old love and discover she is as wonderful as you remembered. 

I’ve struggled to figure out what to say about this movie but after some time with it I think I have my answer. 

It’s funny, shocking, surprisingly complex and Tim Robinson gives me the icks. 

The closest comparison I can think of is Chris Elliott and also possibly Ricky Gervais. I find them so off putting that I struggle to enjoy any time with their various projects. 

There is also, I think, an inherent cruelty to what they do — sometimes directed at others — often directed at themselves that I do not enjoy. 

Some people love to cringe. I am not among them. It’s not my scene man.

Borat is like that for me too. Lots of people found that movie funny. I gave up. I thought it was mean. 

I once struggled through Dumb and Dumber as a large crowd of family members around me laughed at every moment. 

I’m not saying anyone who enjoys any of this is wrong I’m just saying I’m out. The same is true for body horror movies. I get why people like them but they are not for me. 

I just present all this so you know where on the spectrum to place Friendship. If any of those things I mentioned really do it for you then Friendship is almost certainly your jam. 

And I must say that I laughed at a lot of this but the laughs usually gave way to the ick. 

And there is real genius here. Getting Paul Rudd to essentially reprise his Anchorman character is big plus. 

I was invested in the marriage between Robinson and Kate Mara’s characters Craig and Tami 

The little things that keep coming back, like Tami’s frequently mentioned ongoing connection to her ex-boyfriend or Craig’s obsession with a large meal, made me cackle. 

It’s a well made movie, in the way that The Substance is a well made movie. 

Something can be great but still not be your jam. 

Stephen King can do anything. 

This is King in mostly human form, concerned with real people — how we live our lives, how we end our lives and the state of the world. 

Not horror, although the first third of the story/movie has a little edge to it. Especially if you are the type of person who doomscrolls every day. But this flick is mostly amusing and has a lesson to teach. 

If there is a problem with King it’s that not every story can be The Stand. Nor every movie made into The Shining.

I’m tempted to argue with the Kubrick disciples on here because where would your master be if King hadn’t breathed life onto an empty page. 

But I won’t. 

I have read a bunch of King but I hadn’t obtained this one which was in a collection of novellas. When the trailer came out I ran out and grabbed it. 

I was moved by it, though certainly not as much as I was moved by The Shawshank Redemption (on the page and on the screen).

But they can’t all be perfect. 

Nick Offerman is a very good narrator but he’s no Morgan Freeman alas. However, the kid actors are suitably cute, Tom Hiddleston is amusing and Mark Hamill is clearly relishing a meaty role that doesn’t involve a lightsaber. I hope he, in particular, gets to do more of this in his golden years. 

The movie is solid and faithful and I loved the little story again even though I knew all the twists and turns. 

It’s clear that director Mike Flanagan is a fan and he approached the material as a fan which is great for those of us who just want to see the story we read on the screen and probably a strike against him for those of you who believe the auteur theory. 

I do think it’s true that a great director can take coal and squeeze it into diamonds. It’s also true that everything King ever wrote is not gold (Insomnia is not just a bad book it may be one of the worst books ever written). 

But this tale didn’t need extensive rewrites and just presenting it with solid actors, decent direction and cinematography is enough to make us all have a good time. 

There was at least one change Flanagan should have made. The movie, like the novella, stops cold with its final lesson. That works for a story on the page. But here, Flanagan should have let everyone dance, one last time, with a classic movie flashback. 

There should have been joy in the morning.

A woman once told me her highest philosophy. 

“My mama always said it was as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is with a poor man.” 

She did, I think, marry a rich man who was the son of a rich man. They live in a nice house and I’m sure take nice vacations. On the weekends they go out in the boat and she lives less than 50 miles from the place she was born. 

I don’t know if there is any lesson here but Writer/Director Celine Song has one in mind with Materialists. 

Materialists is about a matchmaker catering to the upper crust of New York City. She sees both sides of the equation. The girls want them tall and rich. The boys want them young and “fit.” Both sides say they want to marry but only the right one. Only the perfect one. Certainly you concede that they deserve it. 

Having seen write director Celine Song’s debut Past Lives I suspected that the marketing for her latest was bullshit. 

I like being right almost as much as I like a sad, cutting, adult drama.

Materialists mimics some aspects of rom coms, including a love triangle, beautiful cinematography and expensive looking weddings. Sadly, we never get to go on an Iceland vacation. 

I suspect that was never even in a draft of the script but I also would not be surprised if the trip was scrapped somewhere during production for lack of money. Most modern movies always give away the truth of our current situation, that only bankers run movie studios anymore.

Song even has her own twist on the When Harry Met Sally vignettes. Giving us a glimpse of what upscale NYC men and woman want in a spouse. 

The joke being how incredibly shallow everyone is about these things. 

The movie suggests that there is more to life than wealth and I honestly believe that. Wealth won’t save you from a rotten marriage or a rotten life or a rotten heart. 

But I have been poor and I have been, if not wealthy, then financially healthy. Finachially healthy is better. 

There are certainly some other arrows you could aim at this flick.

If Past Lives felt like it was very much about real people Materialists feels like storybook people moving through a mostly real world. One of these guys is a billionaire, the other is a failed actor and she’s a matchmaker. Most of us might know one of these people in real life maybe, but few of us would ever meet all three.

Dakota Johnson seems a lot more charming and edgy in her interviews than she ever does on screen.

Pedro is very good but a lot of his storyline involves he and Johnson just straightforward explaining things to each other. Including the kind of things that should probably create more tears than they do.

Evans knocks it out of the park though.

At one point he turns to Johnson and says, “I’m a beggar for you.”

Folks, if any decent man or woman ever sincerely says that to you I hope you love them back no matter what their checkbook might say.

This week I decided on the cinema of John Flynn. 

Best Seller is a fairly mediocre entry in Flynn’s tough guy corner of the video store. 

You know that thing where a bad guy turns to a good guy and says, “We are not so different you and I.” 

James Woods (playing a mob hitman) says something like this to Brian Dennehy (a good guy cop) about half a dozen times. 

Woods wants Dennehy (a successful author who is still on the force) to write a book about his life and the murders he committed on behalf of his former boss. 

The boss is opposed to this idea and sends various henchmen at various times to express his displeasure. 

There are a couple of decent turns here. You will figure out the connection between Woods and Dennehy before the movie reveals it. But I like it when a story point pays off. A side mission to meet Woods’ family is amusing even if it doesn’t go anywhere. 

The flick also features Dennehy saying with utmost seriousness, “I’m gonna kill you” to Woods. 

Woods reply? “Fair enough.” 

Fair enough is about as good as it gets. 

Ultimately, I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy this thing. The overall plot is nonsense and most of the scenes along the way are ridiculous too. I mean, Dennehy and Woods kill a bunch of guys who were attacking them in a laundromat and when it’s over … they just leave. 

Action movies need that to happen so the plot doesn’t get bogged down with police investigations. But it’s ridiculous and hard to ignore how nonsensical it is for a cop to leave a crime scene. 

Still, there a few bits of action and decent tough guy lines in this thing. May we all be so cool that we would say this if anybody puts a firearm to our heads. 

“You ever aim a gun at me again it better be loaded.” 

Just don’t forget to have your spare gun handy. 

If you want a real deal Paul Schrader outing, I can recommend Light Sleeper.

The final part of an unplanned trilogy that began with Taxi Driver, continued with American Gigolo and ends with this Willem Dafoe flick.

I made some jokes about it on Letterboxd:

Gotta be the most high-class movie that ever made me say, “Now go kill that son of a bitch too.” 

Also, Schrader invented the male loneliness epidemic.

Schrader has a joke of his own given the names of the first two in this trilogy Light Sleeper doesn’t exactly fit. But Schrader said he figured no one would go see a movie called, “Drug Dealer.”

Again, I wouldn’t recommend this descent into the despair of a drug dealer to just anyone off the street. If you know the kinds of movies Schrader delivers, then this is a very good example of that. Schrader has some writing tics that simultaneously annoy and amuse me. The first is that his male protagonists are always writing in a diary and then doing voice overs about the state of society or their own souls.

One of those things that you just accept when you walk in no matter how you feel about it. Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter. Schrader gonna have someone writing in a diary.

There are some fun cameos here of drug users who give Dafoe a hard time. And Dafoe, Susan Sarandon and Dana Delany are all excellent.

Light Sleeper mostly breezes by with a perfect 80s soundtrack and is content (seemingly) to show us Dafoe’s work and romantic troubles. A shock towards the end sets up a final bit of business and something Schrader almost always handles really well: Righteous Vengeance.

Schrader would probably disagree with my assessment. He would tell you (correctly) that he writes tragedies about the human condition and warnings about what society is doing to young and not so young men.

But also, I am a simple creature. And if you give me a villain and then give me a shootout at the end of your movie I will probably be satisfied.

Yes, all those other things Schrader was concerned about, commentary about societal ills, the personal cost of being trapped in a soulless job, and strong character development. They are all here too.

But also, my reptile brain still shouted to Dafoe at the climax, “Now go kill that son of bitch too.”

I reviewed the first movie in this series, Cast a Deadly Spell, yesterday.

Dennis Hopper (who replaces Fred Ward as the lead) said this was the weirdest movie he ever made. And this was after Blue Velvet. 

Fun to see Sheryl Lee Ralph, now America’s favorite teacher on Abbott Elementary, in a unique early roll. Julian Sands and Penelope Ann Miller are clearly having a blast as well.

Important note as this isn’t a sequel so much as a reboot. We move to the fifties and witchcraft replaces communism as the cultural bugaboo. The villain in the piece is a Joseph McCarthy stand-in who is using fear and paranoia about witchcraft to increase his political power.

Couple of great lines here. Including one I can’t believe they got away with and a speech at a funeral that had me rolling.

Hopper pretty clearly has no idea what’s going on but he makes the best of it. Check out his reaction when a warlock turns a woman into a mannequin.

“Somebody put the whammy on her. She probably thought she was at the Rose Parade!” 

And when an actress testifies before congress. 

“The woman is good,” his partner says. 
“Ah she’s gotta be good,” Hopper’s Harry Phillip Lovecraft replies. “She doesn’t have a (Hollywood) contract anymore.” 

It’s pretty much the same level of cringy badness mixed with occasional moments that made me chuckle as the first one.

Not as horror oriented. I will note that a crowd of people showing up to waive flags and celebrate while someone they don’t like is burned at the stake is as solid a commentary on America as you will ever come across.

But while Paul Schrader may have directed it, this doesn’t have any of things you might expect from a Schrader outing.

Hey, everybody’s got to make a living.

Tomorrow: Light Sleeper

I went down a well the other night and watched two HBO tv movies from the 90.

Cast a Deadly Spell and it’s sorta sequel Witch Hunt. I saw one and possibly both of them when I was a lad in the 90s and I wanted to check them out again.

And then I saw Paul Schrader(!) the writer of Taxi Driver and the director of some of the emotionally wrenching movies of the last 30 years directed Witch Hunt. Seeing that my brain responded, “Well, that’s unavoidable now, you gotta watch these things again.”

As I have said before I pick out people sometimes and try to go through their entire filmography. I only have a few Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood flicks left. I’ve got 40 Nic Cage movies still on the list and will probably never watch them all.

But this week was Schrader and after watching Light Sleeper I moved over to these supernatural detective romps.

Can you believe it took ten years for Cast a Deadly Spell to get made? It’s Chinatown but with magic! It should sell itself. 

Sure, it’s not great but it was never gonna be great, you know. It’s passable and amusing. 

You judge this thing on a curve, I think, accepting that it’s a horror comedy about a detective named Harry Phillip Lovecraft (get it) in 1950s supernatural Los Angeles chasing the Necronomicon (get it). 

His buddy is a police captain named Bradbury (get it). Who at one point interrogates a werewolf under those 1940s police spotlights and complains, “I hate full moons.” (Do you get it!)

There are special effects in this HBO movie that they just can’t do anymore. Not necessarily good special effects but … unique. Visually interesting. 

I’m not sure I would recommend this to anyone. It’s either not as funny as it thinks it is or it’s actually too graphic at times. The regular budget was minuscule but the fake blood budget was astronomical. 

Clancy Brown, very late in the flick when the bad guy (Clancy is just the heavy) is making his villian speech, rolls his eyes and sighs. 

It’s like two seconds of screen time. And I howled with laughter. But that’s maybe the biggest laugh in the thing. 

You either think this is a good line or you don’t: “Nobody’s got a mortgage on my soul! I own it free and clear!”

And this one too, “You’re a funny guy Phil. I bet your dying words are gonna be a scream.” 

But as someone who watched every episode of Buffy and Angel this is mostly up my alley.

Anyway, Fred Ward does alright. Clancy Brown and Raymond O’Connor make stuff work that shouldn’t. Julianne Moore has ton of fun being the femme fatale. But this probably won’t go down on her list of great movie roles.

But freakin’ David Warner is out of this world. 

Everybody else is playing around but Warner took a cheap money job and delivered his ridiculous lines like he’s doing a classic at The Old Vic.

Tomorrow: Witch Hunt

I think it would be an impossible mission to review this thing without spoilers so you have been warned. 

Fans of the Mission Impossible franchise will recognize a lot of proceedings in the final installment. Is there a scene where the team discusses a crazy mission that only Ethan Hunt can perform? Where every member of the team explains how what Ethan is planning is beyond the capability of a human being? That he’s going to get himself killed. 

There’s like four of them and they all made me chortle. 

Is there a scene where Ethan says he’s going to do exactly what the villian wants him to do, the thing that will threaten everyone on earth, but somehow the team will still win? Indeed. 

Are there stunts that might make little sense in relation to the plot and are seemingly designed to put Tom Cruise in as much peril as possible? Oh my yes. 

Is it great? That probably depends on you. I loved it as a reward for mission impossible fans like me. As a movie it’s got some flaws. But if you are going to the final Mission Impossible movie hoping for something that stands alone you have headed to the wrong place. 

Now in the spirit of this movie let’s do a flashback. 

We’ll start with an encounter I had somewhere in the mid 2000s with an older co-worker when I was excitedly yapping about whichever Mission Impossible film was about to come out. 

“Jim Phelps is not the bad guy in Mission Impossible,” he barked. 

He was still angry a decade or two later over what Tom Cruise had done to the franchise. If you don’t know, in the show Phelps was the team leader and the hero of the whole enterprise. 

But when Cruise took over the thing and took it to the movies he and writers decided that not only would Hunt be the star but that Phelps would be a traitor to his country and the big bad of the movie. Imagine if when they got to the films Sulu because captain of the Enterprise after Kirk betrayed the federation to the Klingons. 

Impossible you might say. 

Not only that, but the IMF team that dies in the first movie was supposed to be the original cast members and I think they even went to the original Phelps to ask him to play the villian. There was much yelling in the press about that arrogant twerp Tom Cruise. 

Of course, as a movie star who wanted to be a movie star forever we know that Cruise was absolutely correct. A movie star is not a member of a team he is the big damn hero of the whole thing. He doesn’t have a boss and he doesn’t have partners. He has amusing sidekicks. 

So, in this final mission  we learn that the honest lawman played by Shea Whiggum is actually Jim Phelps’ son. Name? Jim Phelps Jr. 

It’s twist that comes out of nowhere but I was not offended. 

I suspect Cruise or his writers felt they owed it to the fans of the original tv show to leave an honest Jim Phelps alive and kicking in the world of Mission Impossible. 

Now, that storyline doesn’t work and doesn’t add anything to the movie and in this final go round there are lots of little things that don’t work. 

In particular, the constant small flashbacks during nearly every exposition scene drag the procedure down. I didn’t mind the flashbacks to previous movies. This is the final bite at the apple and those made sense. But the movie just constantly shows you things that happened in the last movie and in the movie you are currently watching! 

It may well be the first movie edited with the TikTok generation in mind. 

And at three hours there is at least a half hour, all in the first sixty minutes that could have been cut without hurting anything. 

This is not a great movie if you judge it like a standalone movie. But if you judge it the way you are meant to, as the final send off to a 30 year film franchise it’s a four star banger. 

This movie takes a minor character with a joke ending (quite literally one of the biggest laughs in the first flick) brings him back, allows him to be awesome, redeem his fictional life and forgive Ethan Hunt. 

That sounds crazy when you say it out loud but it is true and it is glorious. 

They take a throwaway macguffin from the third movie and not only make it relevant but also make Ethan’s decision to save his wife at any cost into the driving force that may destroy the world. 

Ludicrous? You bet! Wonderful when you are watching it unfold? I thought so. 

The action set pieces are stunning. Somewhere along the way we moved Tom Cruise from Sean Connery’s 007 to Roger Moore’s 007 but it is still a sight to behold. 

While I’m here I think I want to pinpoint that we moved into Roger Moore territory when Henry Cavill “loaded” his guns during the bathroom fist fight in Fallout. 

Anyway, the action scenes are thrilling and breathtaking and everything you want in a Mission Impossible movie. Cruise and company don’t leave a stone unturned and always find a way to ratchet up the tension and spectacle. 

Cruise assembles not only his heavy hitters from the previous franchises but also a trove of tv star day players and they all make a meal out of the exposition scenes and the side quests. 

And Tramell Tillman has it. Every director in Hollywood should lock him up for the next decade or two. 

If you walked out saying to yourself, “man that thing had problems.”

I get it. 

But if you watch it again or you see it for the first time even after reading this review just remember, this isn’t a movie, it’s a well-earned victory lap.