David Dubrow's Blog, page 31

Uncaged Book Reviews – September 2016 Edition

Writer Amy Shannon was kind enough to read and review The Blessed Man and the Witch on her website:

This book was intensely and magnificently filled with horror and ultimate gore for the grand story. Prepare for the end of the world, and get ready to face Armageddon.

You can read the rest of the review on her site.

Pleasantly, that and a number of other reviews were included in the September 2016 issue of Uncaged Book Reviews! I encourage you to click on over and see what else might strike your reading fancy.

After you’ve picked up The Blessed Man and the Witch, of course.

Some Thoughts on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

As superhero movies go, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was no better or worse than any other superhero movie ever produced, and deserves better than the 27% Rotten rating it got from the reviewers. I mean, it’s a superhero movie, not Bridge on the River Kwai. I like superhero movies, though I’m done with Marvel for reasons this post should make clear, and I’ve always been a big fan of Superman. So overall I came away from the movie with a feeling of having been entertained, which is the entire point. The things I want to talk about here are spoiler-heavy, so if you haven’t seen it yet, do so before reading the rest.

Things I liked:

The damage to Metropolis from the events of the film Man of Steel becoming a plot point was a nice touch. After all, Supes and his white trash cousins destroyed the city, so the aftermath of that made sense from a story perspective. This sort of thing wouldn’t have become such a big deal in a pre-9/11 world, when we Americans hadn’t had to deal with mass destruction of our metropolitan areas by inhuman terrorists.
Ben Affleck did a perfectly fine job as Batman; I don’t see what the fuss was about. He’s a big, muscular fellow in middle age. The voice modulator helped. One thing I hated about the Christian Bale Batman was the silly, grating voice the actor put on when in costume.
Jesse Eisenberg/Mark Zuckerberg as Lex Luthor also did a fine job, despite that he had to say a bunch of very dumb things. He didn’t come off as mentally ill: just evil and quirky.
Superman always looked clean and bright and heroic, even when everything was dirty and dingy and awful. It gave him an otherworldly air. Kind of like an angel. Or Legolas in The Lord of the Rings.
All the explosions and stuff. Batman’s armor was cool.
Having Batman torture Superman a little was also cool, though it made Bats look more like a psychopath than might have been intended.
The disturbing dream/vision Batman had while decrypting the data was dark and distressing and unusual. But I didn’t like it, too. You’ll find out why in a minute.

Things I didn’t like:

Batman’s fight scenes were really slow. I don’t know why. It made them rote and unexciting.
Superman didn’t get any opportunities to act heroic in the early parts of the movie, which helped boost Batman’s case that The Man of Steel is more a menace than a savior. Part of being a savior means saving people, and Supes didn’t do that.
Batman’s dream/vision was, apparently, something that will become relevant in an upcoming film. If they’d titled the movie Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Part 1, implying that this was the first part of one long story, that would be acceptable. But they didn’t. Don’t make me go to IMDB to find stuff out about the movie I just watched.
Wonder Woman was nice and all, but she did absolutely nothing to advance the plot. There was no reason for her to be there except to tease the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. How she managed to outsmart Batman, the World’s Greatest Detective, was an artificial boost to make her look competent, but at Batman’s expense.
Good on the writers for giving Batman mommy issues (I mean, who among us doesn’t have at least one), but it was insufficiently teased in the flashbacks for it to come off as anything but contrived at the end with “Save Martha.” That could’ve been really powerful, but it wasn’t.
How did Lois Lane know to get the spear? Any explanation of that requires mental gymnastics rather than an honest analysis of the events of the film.
We all knew that Superman wasn’t really dead at the end, so the last ten minutes were a waste of time. And now that it’s been reported that Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent is dead, what’re they going to do, just not have Superman’s secret identity anymore? Is that it for Superman as a character with a life outside of superheroing?

Anyway, I look forward to watching the Justice League film when it comes out on streaming video in a year or so.

The Slaughtered Bird Movie Review: Der Bunker

This is definitely the season of bizarre cinema for me. I reviewed the German film Der Bunker at The Slaughtered Bird:

While Der Bunker doesn’t qualify as a horror movie under any definition of the genre, it’s still an extraordinary piece of filmmaking. More a black comedy than anything else, the mild handicap of having to read the English subtitles doesn’t lessen the humor one whit.

Yes, but is it funny? Click to find out!

Three Brief Reviews of Horror Films

I watched a few horror movies recently. Rather than write long, drawn-out reviews of them, I’m giving you more bang for your buck and presenting a short review of each film.

Open Grave: The movie starts out well, with Sharlto Copley awakening in a gigantic pit of corpses, crawling out, and finding a group of people who, like him, suffer from amnesia. The early interactions are fraught, interesting, and multilayered. And then, somewhat predictably, it all comes apart in the second half when they start to discover the truth of their situation. The plot becomes contrived and the film drags in the last half-hour, destroying the first ten minutes’ promise. Everything else was decent, so it gets 3 out of 5 stars.

The Invitation: A man and his girlfriend go to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife, who divorced him two years ago in the wake of the accidental death of their young son. Killing a child can be a very cheap way to create pathos, particularly in film, but The Invitation pulls it off through excellent performances and good writing. I would have liked a little more set-up with the invitation itself and some establishment of the relationships between the characters, but overall I really quite liked it. The always-awesome as the perfectly-named Pruitt rounds out a great cast. 4 out of 5 stars.

Hush: It’s survival horror, featuring a deaf woman contending with a sadistic home intruder. If you like that sort of thing you’ll love this movie. I don’t. Hush had no plot, no depth, no reason to keep you interested if you don’t identify with the protagonist. At no point do you learn why the antagonist does what he does, which doesn’t improve the film. Truly random violence in the real world is extremely rare; predators attack people for specific reasons, even if it’s just opportunity. But this is a movie, and movies should have things like plots and character motivations. Instead, you get a lot of blood, a lot of pain and savagery. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

The Slaughtered Bird Book Review: Marvelry’s Curiosity Shop

I reviewed the short story anthology Marvelry’s Curiosity Shop at The Slaughtered Bird:

In theme, the collection is reminiscent of the Friday the 13th: The Series television show from the late 1980’s, with each story focused on an object bought from the titular establishment. If you’re looking for blood and gore, cosmic horror, or screams of terrible agony, you won’t find them here: the entire collection would get a PG-13 rating for content, at best, making this a somewhat milquetoast foray into the horror genre.

Read the entire review at The Slaughtered Bird to see if this is your cup of tea.

Book Review: The Tatman

Ray Zacek’s The Tatman is an intense tale of relationships of all kinds: sexual, friendly, and predatory. In it, protagonist Stephanie gets a weekend visit from her old friend Jen and Jen’s new boyfriend, the enigmatic, heavily tattooed Jason. Sparks fly.

The dialogue is very snappy and realistic, showing Zacek’s facility with the rhythm of how people truly talk: they don’t always communicate, let alone agree. Combined with the frank discussions about sex, the relationships between the characters take on a free-wheeling late-1970’s John Updike vibe. Looming over everything is Jason, the titular Tatman, and how he throws an already volatile situation into chaos with his virile, masculine presence.

Disquieting rather than disturbing, The Tatman is a short read that straddles the line between horror and thriller, and is well worth your time.

A Letter to Target

Dear Target:

I’ve been a fan of your department store chain since the late 1990’s, when I moved to Colorado and the friends I stayed with took me to Target to help me set up my new apartment. Dishes, furniture, linens, groceries: all available at the Super Target in Louisville. Years later I became a dad, and the first outing I took with my newborn son, just me and him, was to the Longmont Target. Not as a rite of passage or anything like that, but because we needed a few things.

As time went on and we moved to Florida, the local Target became my little boy’s favorite place to go, mostly because he would typically get a cheap toy or small Lego set or something. I try not to spoil him, but he’s my only child and I love him. He refers to Target as “the red store.” It’s a great place to get what you need as well as what you want. Great job on that.

But then, in the wake of North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill,” you had to open your big, fat, stupid mouth and insert yourself into the Culture Wars by claiming that men should be allowed to invade spaces set aside for women’s private functions if those men feel like they’re women that day. That hour. That minute. Rather than simply having a Target free-for-all bathroom policy, you had to make sure everyone knew how moral you were.

So that day we stopped going to Target for good. And we’re not the only ones who are no longer patronizing Target stores across the nation.

I know this happened way back in April 2016, but it’s back-to-school time now, and it would’ve been nice to go to Target to pick up some of the things my son needs for school: new clothes, supplies, etc. But just like you’ve decided to make your moral stance such a big deal, we, as consumers, get to respond in kind. So, unfortunately, we’ve had to go to Wal-Mart, which is nowhere near the same in experience or quality of product.

As your bottom line gets smaller and smaller, you maintain that it has nothing at all to do with your proudly-proclaimed bathroom policy, as though deliberately setting yourself against your customer base is a good business practice. Fair enough.

Just know that moral preening only gives you traction with a small subset of very loud people, and they won’t spend enough at your stores to make up the shortfall. Good luck with your bathroom policy and diminishing profits. You deserve them.

Sincerely,

David Dubrow

A Former Target Customer

Doings

Between the end of my son’s preschool summer program and the beginning of the school year, I’ve been busy with family the last couple of weeks. He started kindergarten today, and we threw him into the deep end: a public school. I attended public school (several states north from here) myself, and it did no lasting damage to me, despite that I subsequently worked for the most dangerous publisher in America and now write about the bloody, horrible end of the world when I’m not reading horror books or watching bizarre films.

Hence the lighter posting of late. I’ll have something for you tomorrow, also somewhat back to school-themed.

 

Movie Review: The Cokeville Miracle

In 1986, a lunatic named David Young took the faculty and student body of Cokeville Elementary School hostage. He had a bomb and several guns, and demanded 200 million dollars for the hostages’ release. The film The Cokeville Miracle dramatizes the events from beginning to end, when a troubled police officer attempts to make sense of the aftermath and how it relates to his diminishing faith in God.

While the film works hard to tone down any overt expressions of the Christian faith, this is definitely a religious-themed movie, tackling themes of loss of faith, the power of prayer, and celestial/supernatural phenomena. Anti-theists will not find much to like about this film, but the rest of us will find it enjoyable and thought-provoking.

Jasen Wade as the protagonist Ron Hartley turns a decent performance as a man troubled by what he’s seen on the job. Police officers often have to deal with the worst in humanity, and this exposure conflicts with his life as a church-going family man. He’s losing his faith, and as the hostage crisis takes place over the course of the film, this diminishing faith is further tested: his children are in the school, being terrorized by the bomber. His personal agony is clear in the performance, if a bit one-note at times.

Later, after the crisis is over, his investigation uncovers some very unusual circumstances. What really happened in that classroom?

Overall, The Cokeville Miracle is an earnest movie, and raises important questions about the nature of an interventionist God. Why does He seem to intervene in one event and not another? What’s the difference between coincidence and divine intervention?

Like so many films in which children are put in peril, this movie will be particularly poignant for parents (alliteratively speaking). We send our kids to school, figuring they’ll get through the day just fine.

Until they don’t.

I award this film 4 out of 5 stars. Give The Cokeville Miracle a try and let me know what you think.

The Slaughtered Bird Movie Review: The Arbalest

I reviewed Adam Pinney’s The Arbalest, which premiered July 29 at Fantasia Fest, for The Slaughtered Bird:

The tricky thing with magical realism in film is that if you use too much you end up with unwatchable fables like Winter’s Tale, and if you don’t use enough the movie comes off as jarring, as though the filmmakers can’t tell the difference between the miraculous and the credible. Adam Pinney’s The Arbalest works very hard at making a go of such a difficult theme, with mixed results.

How mixed are these results? Click to find out!