Doctor Sleep

Minor spoilers throughout

Now of course we didn’t really need a sequel to The Shining but a story that takes place in the same universe with some of the same characters could be something.  As long as we’re not going over the same ground I’m open to it so I checked out Doc Sleep.  Let’s catch up with Danny Torrance forty years later.

Well Danny (Ewan McGregor (The Ghost Writer)) became a homeless alcoholic.  His father trying to kill him and his mother and that bizarre ghost shit fucked him up a real bad.  He gets into fights, carouses around and has lost his moral compass.  But eventually he takes hold of his own destiny, joins AA and sobers up.  He suggests this is the route his father would’ve taken if he hadn’t you know, chased after his family with an ax and attempted to chop them into little bits.  Hey, it was the Overlook Hotel ghosts that made him do it.  Jack was an innocent bystander.  Could’ve happened to anyone.  Anyway, it’s good to see Danny sorting his shit out.

Meanwhile there are these humanoid creature/spirit thingies roaming the country feeding off human fear and anguish.  They inhale the emitted vapor of a victim like taking a hit of a drug.  So they’re more or less vampires.  They can live for thousands of years, must consume this specific part of a human being to stay healthy, can turn anyone into whatever type of species they are, can perform some mind tricks on others and etc.  They can be killed by conventional means however which is a bit of a drawback but fair.

Additionally there’s Abra (Kyleigh Curran (I Can I Will I Did)), a young teenage girl who starts a conversation with Danny across the state of New Hampshire via shining.  I guess she sends these messages out there and waits for someone who also has the shine to respond.  She’s more powerful than Danny though and just about everyone else in the movie including the villains.  She can get inside anyone’s head, rummage around in their memory bank (or library as they say), mutilate them in their mind so that it manifests physically in reality and she can get inside multiple people’s brains and alter what they see in the real world.  So she’s pretty god-like.

And this is part of the problem with the film.  It makes up the rules as it goes with any character’s abilities.  The boundaries aren’t clear for Abra’s super powers which goes beyond simple shining.  If you can Jedi mind trick people and make them have visions and kill them at will then that’s on a completely different level than talking to someone else without opening your mouth.

It’s the same deal with the villains too.  The implication is that each of the eight have a unique power except we only learn of three of them.  And even then we don’t know their extent.  It’s all vague shit.

To back up a sec there are definitely some good, or at least passable, ideas in here which I’d like to emphasize.  Danny’s arc is refreshing, him giving some comfort and company to those about to die is really sweet (which is how he gets the nickname Doctor Sleep), the relationship between Danny and Abra is well constructed and the bad guys are quite menacing especially given that they tend to target very young children.  They don’t shy away from this aspect either by including a graphic child murder scene that’s disturbing as fuck.

But inconsistent screenwriting squashes everything like the final showdown takes place at the Overlook Hotel for absolutely no reason, Danny inexplicably knows or guesses correctly about who the villains are and their weaknesses, the magic powers suddenly available in any situation is convenient as all hell and the dialogue is mostly terrible with a zillion clichés like “it’s too dangerous”, “what have you done?”, “I can’t hold it off for much longer” and all that kinda shit.

The fan service is bad as well.  You got the aforementioned Overlook Hotel, the “come play with us” twins, “great party” guy, little Danny riding on his tricycle, redrum, one character’s office is exactly the same as the manager’s from the Overlook, Wendy still wears the same blue bathrobe from the first film, a hedge maze foot pursuit and lots of others.

They also didn’t setup this Rose the Hat villain (Rebecca Ferguson (The Girl on the Train)) quite right because she’s supposed to be so powerful that Danny and Abra can’t defeat her by themselves but this dynamic is never established.  In fact at one point about midway Abra kicks Rose’s ass by mentally slamming her hand in a file cabinet and infiltrating her vast memory library.  This is a great scene because it’s unexpected and makes the villain look vulnerable, but not totally weak in the way it’s staged, which we almost never see in these types of movies.

My favorite scene though is probably the one between Danny and his father.  Jack is trying to get him back on the booze and the emotions and intensity keep building as Danny refuses but Jack insistently pushes the glass back towards him.  This of course mirrors a scene in The Shining with Jack and Lloyd the bartender.  And I know liking this part is hypocritical based on what I said earlier.

The movie starts off wanting to be its own thing but then devolves into a much worse version of its predecessor with so many recreated shots, scenes and made up junk.  It’s so frustrating because they had enough decent material where they didn’t need to resort to all the callbacks.  Plus with some tweaks to remove all the tired tropes and some tightening up this could’ve been better.

Terminator: Dark Fate

I think we can all agree that the Terminator saga concluded with T2.  Of course it was the sequel we didn’t know we wanted so that was surprising enough.  T3, while completely unnecessary, was a nice bonus though.  No one else seems to have come around on that yet but I’ll sing its praises until my dying day.  It’s the only non-Cameron installment to come remotely close to capturing the spirit of the first two.  Salvation went in the right direction story-wise where if we’re gonna continue to explore this universe then let’s finally take a deeper dive into the infamous war that this entire thing is supposed to be about.  Unfortunately they fucked that up real hard by making John Connor a secondary character and giving off some unpleasant Transformers type vibes.  Then Genisys was a total disaster misguided in just about every way.  I mean they turned John Connor into the villain terminator which was spoiled on the goddamn poster!

Finally we’ve come to Dark Fate and I’ll say from the top that it’s pretty much almost as dumb as Genisys.  I’m not sure if it’s actually a speck better but it’s at least a speck more watchable.  High praise, I know.

Sure it’s easy to dismiss Fate as simply the same ol’ shit yet again with a terminator going back in time to kill a human who will be a threat to the machines in the future but is protected by a good guy also sent back in time.  But that’s not an automatic disqualifier in my book.  It’s the other decisions made within that framework that are bad.

I would classify the dull repetitive narrative as a smaller problem.  There are many others in the same category like that they made the evil terminator Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)), the new half machine/half human hero Grace (Mackenzie Davis (Blade Runner 2049)) and even the standard T-800 way too powerful.  They’re all like Superman level indestructible now which really doesn’t make sense particularly with Grace since she’s still partly human.  These machines used to get some damage after a battle and would need repairs.  That’s out the window in favor of extravagant more cartoonish action.

Speaking of the action I don’t think I care for any of the sequences they came up with.  They’re either worse versions of ones we’ve seen before like a car vs helicopter chase or shit that’s so goofy looking I can’t wrap my head around it like a zero gravity fight in the cargo bay of a humungous military plane falling out of the sky and an encounter with the Rev-9 while our leads are trapped inside a Humvee underwater with ferocious currents because it’s stuck at the bottom of a dam.  And all of it is overly CGI-ed.  Having the machines flip and jump all over the fuckin’ place at lightning speed and use excessively complicated fighting moves makes my eyes glaze over.

With all of that said the film has larger issues and the two I’ll discuss here are related.  Spoilers for the rest of this piece.  The first is replacing Skynet with Legion.  According to the timeline of this particular movie Skynet never becomes a thing so instead it’s this other program called Legion that tries to eradicate human life.  This change is pointless considering Legion does the same exact shit and in the same exact way as Skynet.  The filmmakers are trying to weave an alternate universe because they didn’t want to keep going back to John Connor.  They wanted a fresh face who was as important to the human race but just not John Connor.  And I guess they felt the only way they could do that was to erase almost all events from T1 and T2 (this is somewhat ironic seeing as Fate is a direct sequel to those skipping everything else).

Legion wouldn’t be such a dilemma if we had an all new cast of characters in this other world split off from the original.  It’s still technically part of the Terminators but we’re essentially hitting the reset button.  Again, that would be fine but that’s not what we got.  This leads me to my next big issue.

The conventional wisdom is that you can’t have a Terminator joint without Arnie and once again the T-800 shows up to help save the day.  Not only that but Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton (Dante’s Peak)) is back in action.  Having the two of them co-headlining this feature thirty five years after the first outing is well, if I’m gonna be really honest here, sad.  They’re just too old.  I can’t get on board with either of them running around at their age getting banged the fuck up and doing more physical work than they ever have before.  It’s not even funny.  It comes off as pathetic.

If these characters were used in smaller supporting roles where they aid our protagonists here and there in a much, much, much less guns blazing, fist pounding kind of way that would’ve been more acceptable.  They should’ve catered to the strengths that come with growing older like wisdom, expertise, poise and perspective.

Besides the age thing it’s more that I don’t want to see these characters anymore.  They had their arcs and I’ve been ready since 2003 to move on to others.  And with the new timeline angle it makes even less sense that Sarah Connor and the T-800 are here at all.  Sarah succeeded in preventing her world’s future from happening and the T-800 was theoretically never created.

In order to get the T-800 in this story though they had to shoehorn in a plot point revealing that several T-800s were sent back in time all at once to different time periods and one of them successfully kills John Connor not too long after the events of T2.  I will say the movie has some balls ripping a hole through John Connor’s chest so I’ll give them credit on that one.  It’s a tragic epilogue because the Connors blew up Cyberdyne and everything averting the Skynet future but John ends up dying right after anyway at the hands of a fucking terminator.  Ok, I’ll admit that’s kind of interesting even if it is some major retcon bullshit.

But I don’t understand why this T-800 who accomplished his mission didn’t self-terminate.  I thought that’s what they did when they were done.  Nope, instead he decides to not be a terminator anymore because…he feels like it and settles down and has a family and starts a drape hanging business.  I’m not kidding.  That shit’s actually in the movie.  His name’s Carl by the way.

So the filmmakers wanted it both ways.  They attempted a soft reboot without Skynet or John Connor but at the same time they couldn’t give up Sarah Connor or the T-800.  The end result is this new generation and old generation mix that doesn’t come together.  In fact they clash horribly.  You gotta go all in on one or the other.

One last item, the fate messaging is confusing.  They’re telling you that we can make our own fate but at the same time the drive of the plot is to ensure this one person (Natalia Reyes (Birds of Passage)) survives so she can eventually become the leader of the human resistance.  So it’s all fate but it can be a good fate?  Not such a dark fate but a lighter fate? 

Or perhaps a battle between humans and machines is inevitable which is an idea that T3 initially floated.  You can postpone judgment day and you can split off into a million different alternate realities but the end result will always be the same.  Maybe that’s our dark fate?  I dunno.

The bottom line is the franchise is fated to poop out pure crap until it decides to say “fuck fate” and go in a totally new direction.  I still think it’s possible to do a cool Terminator war movie but that ship may have sailed.  Whatever, this last one’s a mess.

Forrest Gump

This film shouldn’t work.  It’s pure cheese, American of course.  The thing should crush under the weight of schmaltzy romance, nostalgia for landmark events in the second half of twentieth century America and Forrest Gump’s serendipitous coincidence riddled life.  But masterful filmmaking and the utmost sincerity of all involved somehow overcome what is a fucking insufferable exercise on paper.

How did Bob Zemeckis (Romancing the Stone, Flight) and co know they had something good on their hands?  I ask because the story of a low IQ southern man who bumbles his way through life and becomes involved in some of the most significant touchstones in American history and becomes world famous and a millionaire and winds up with the love of his life and transforms the lives he comes in contact with for the better is one of the dumbest sounding plots I’ve ever heard.  Maybe in an animation setting you could get away with this but live action?  Really?

And if that wasn’t enough of a challenge the filmmakers decided to play with the tone.  About half the time it’s fairly whimsical with Forrest (Tom Hanks (That Thing You Do!, Tales from the Crypt)) having silly encounters with various Presidents of the US where he embarrasses himself or he becomes a world class ping pong player.  You know, fun for the whole family type shit.

But there are really serious moments too like an all out war sequence where Forrest’s platoon gets massacred around him in Vietnam and his best friend dies in his arms.  Three or four assassinations are referenced, racism, domestic abuse, incestual pedophilia and drug abuse all show up.  It’s such a bizarre mix.

Keeping one foot firmly in reality has to be one of the main reasons for the film’s success.  This decision cuts the fairy tale angle enough to make the entire story more palatable.  Otherwise it would be much too saccharine.  Striking that balance is a tight rope walk and a half though.

Of course Tom Hanks is another huge reason the picture works.  He sells the character one hundred percent with the ultra thick Alabama accent and constant far off look in his eyes.  The key might be that Hanks pulls off this performance without a hint that you should feel sorry for him.  Forrest may not be too bright but he’s got the biggest heat of gold in the whole goddamn world.  He also excels at every endeavor in his life.  He’s never surprised at this success but it’s not something he expects either.  This attitude combined with the fact that he’s a hard worker intensely focused on whatever the task is at hand makes his accomplishments feel earned which is incredibly important.

Forrest had a rough upbringing with only his mother raising him, he was bullied by other kids, he almost died in Vietnam, his soulmate Jenny (Robin Wright (Toys, Moneyball)) keeps pushing him away and his mother died sorta young.  So these victories of becoming a college football star and suddenly owning a wildly successful shrimping company where he’s set for life money-wise seem valid.

On a technical level the film is a marvel as well.  There are many beautiful shots of the Gump residence and the surrounding property, some of the slick camerawork like the long floaty opening shot are neat and the effects shots where they insert Forrest into old historical footage are seamless.  I mean it’s startling how good that shit looks.  The only issue is the overdubbing of the famous people in the footage is absolutely terrible.  I don’t know how they got one aspect so perfect and completely dropped the ball on another.  Weird.

So I guess it’s no surprise that Forrest Gump is still good.  I think we were all fully aware of the massive corniness when it came out so there’s no revelation there either.  It was embraced back then for its genuineness and I’m doing the same here today.  Despite the odds the moments that should be inane are touching.  It’s kinda like being served a grilled cheese sandwich with a side of peas and carrots at a very fancy restaurant.  That sounds like a strange and less than stellar idea but dammit it’s pretty tasty.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

Happy 9th Anniversary!

Happy 9^th guys!  I know the posts have been very sporadic but life stuff, you know.  My living situation especially is in flux right now and will remain that way for the next few months.  Sorry, I know it’s not your problem.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get back on track more in the spring.

Anyway, thanks to all and to all a cool nine years.  See you soon!