The invisible man (2020) – a review.

A young woman –Cecilia- finally manages to escape the clutches of her abusive husband Adrian. Soon after this he commits suicide. Yet, something tells Cecilia that her husband isn’t dead. That he is using his skill in the field of optical-technology to torment her once again. Is Cecilia seeing things or is her husband truly the invisible man.

The invisible man is what a good remake should be. It takes an old movie (the 1933 version with the same title) and updates it to current times.

Visually, by updating the original English countryside inn and barn in favour of a massive neo-modernist beach house (with lots of glass). Plotwise; technology instead of magical potions.
And, thematically; this version’s main theme is abuse, because that is a prominent feature in our current collective (western) landscape.

The movie ended the way it was always supposed to end. The script was pretty straightforward in that regard. The title of the movie is The invisible MAN. It’s all about masculine power play over a woman and her changing from victim to survivor. So of course, to highlight the end of her transition the movie needed The invisible WOMAN to end it all.

Where so many remakes fail, The invisible man succeeds. The reason for this is quite simple really: the remake only truly needed to tick two boxes of the original: there has to be a man and he has to be invisible. The rest the moviemakers could ‘fill in’ as they saw fit.

It is interesting to note here that every invisible man movie sofar (it haven’t been that many to be honest) rather uses the current technological advance of the day to make said man invisible. Memoirs of the invisible man (1992) used gamma rays; Hollow man (2000) used some sort of chemo therapy. And so this one uses sleek and stylish technology straight from the Apple factory.

It’s quite another story if you are remaking (for instance) Papillion (1971, 2017). Then the movies have to address a whole array of elements. There’s not a lot of freedom.

The invisible movie genre

When it comes to invisible men in movies there are various personal traits you can hand the bloke. Rodney Skinner in The league of extraordinary gentlemen (2003) was a thief and a spy. A handy character to have around in a movie that deals with a world encompassing conspiracy.

But if the invisible man is the main character of a movie those personal traits become part of the thematic of the movie and/or character. For instance:

I think dear Violet Incredible is the only (well known) female in cinema who gets to turn invisible.

Her original thematic for her powers were shyness.

Memoirs of an invisible man; a regular bloke who took life for granted and now wants his normality back. Il ragazzo invisibile (2014); becoming an adult. Hollow man; a peeping tom and a control freak. And, now, The invisible man; An narcissist.

So, as you can see, invisibility grants the movie a variety of thematics to play with. Just like the good ol’ vampire movies love to play with thematics surrounding youth, religion, and, of course, lust and sex.

But in any archetype-story one thematic is always the most prominent. For the vampire-stories it death. And, I argue, invisible movies always use the thematic: sneaky. Doing, or being somewhere that isn’t allowed. Like Harry Potter (2001) exploring the library at night.

With this comes the conclusion that an invisible man movie works best if the man in question is a villain. Because a villain is far more comfortable doing something sneaky than a hero. A villain might keep it up the entire movie whilst the hero constantly needs new reasons to turn invisible again (like Dexter Riley’s actions in Now you see him now you don’t (1972)).

The invisible villain

Interesting about The invisible man –I found- is that the main villain doesn’t appear on the screen for more than three minutes or so and that is predominantly near the end. This hauls back to the original The invisible man (1933) in which Claude Rains was already invisible to begin with. You never meet him face to face as it were so the man stays a mystery, there’s no connection.

Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow man took a different approach. This movie took quite a bit of time to get to know the main character Sebastian Caine. And, even though, Kevin Bacon pretty much played him like an unlikable smuck from the get go you do bond with this character; as an audience will always bond with the person who is on screen most of the time no matter whether they are villains or heroes. No matter what they do (e.g. That gut wrenching scene in Once upon a time in America (1984)).

This does, however, create a possible problem for The invisible man by the way that it is shot.

The villain invisible

You never truly see the danger that Adrien is. All you get from the movie to accept this statement is his brute smashing of the car window at the start of the movie

A very clever story technique that shows how uninhibited and violent a character is.

and Cecelia’s fear of him. This concept works a charm the minute you make Cecelia an unreliable character.

However, in The invisible man she stays rather reliable throughout. The viewer gets to see exactly how she is constantly being framed by the invisible man, there is no ambiguity on whether or not she is telling the truth. So, ergo, her stories about the danger that is Adrien has to be the truth as well.

I, for one, would be rather intrigued the see what would happen if Whannell took the Rear Window-route (1954). Constantly questioning if the protagonist is right; or even right in the head like in Twelve Monkeys (1995).

Which would mean: leaving all the shenanigans of the invisible man out. And only in the end spring the revelation that we are talking about a literal invisible man here instead of a figurative invisible man working behind the scenes or from the protagonist’s damaged psyche.

The director

Leigh Whannell is quickly growing as a director. I’m rather impressed with what he managed in The invisible man. Both the acting performances he managed to capture as the way he uses the camera (the opening shot alone is wonderful).

Who would’ve thought ten years ago that the golden child James Wan would end up making enjoyable but not very memorable blockbuster movies like Aquaman (2018) and The fast and the furious 7 (2015). And that Whannell would take over his friend's reigns and craft smart little thrillers.

But then again; Whannell has a remake of Escape from New York lined up and Wan is going back to his roots with a thriller called Malignant.

The invisible script

As always in Whannell’s screenplays the important plotdevices get introduced early and in quick succession. Without spoiling too much: the knife, the fire extinguisher and the hidden compartment amongst other things are thrown in early and openly without any pretence of hiding it for the audience.
So this little fire in the kitchen-scene servers three purposes: the introduction of the knife, the introduction of the fire-extinguisher and establishing a solid relationship between the two females.

That’s what I always liked about Whannell’s screenplays, they are clear. Every scene has a function and he hardly every mucks it up with scenes leading nowhere.

I do, however, blame him sometimes for ignoring the obvious. In the case of The invisible man the script tends to make the criminal too smart, too much in control. Which, at certain times, makes you wonder how this woman ever managed to outsmart him like that.

The acting invisible

One of the famous things to say about an actor or actress is to say something like: ‘She doesn’t appear to be acting at all.’ I never truly agreed with this statement, but I understand the compliment behind it.

In The invisible man it is Elizabeth Moss who is front and centre throughout. Because of the lack of a visual threat the entire movie is on her shoulders. She has to act and react to things ‘not there’ and the audience has to take her ‘word’ on this.

In short Moss has a deliciously juicy part that allows her to showcase her talent as an actress. And she does quite brilliantly. She never truly goes over the top (which would be easy to do in such a fantastical tale) and manages to find a balance between a whole array of character-emotions shifting between empowered, victim, paranoid and just plain old fightin’ mad.

True some of the abovementioned choices of 'seeing what the invisible man does' made during this movie rather weaken her performance in the whole. But that certainly doesn’t diminish the fact that she gives quite the performance.

More invisible men

Originally it was the intention to make a Dark universe much like the Marvel and DC universes only this time featuring the monsters from yesteryears. This dream however imploded the minute Dracula: Untold (2014) and The Mummy (2017) failed at the box office.

But maybe that was a blessing in disguise. Because movies like The invisible man work on a small scale. Let vampires and lycanthropes have their all out war in various massive blockbuster movies and let the invisible man and Dr. Jekylle and Mr. Hyde operate on a smaller scale.

Free from the Dark universe, Whannell managed to craft a small thriller with a fantastical concept at its core. And, again, free from the Dark universe this movie has found its audience.

It is interesting to see once again that a good movie doesn’t come on order. It comes from people given the freedom to create something that they think is right.

The invisible man is a well crafted thriller that fits perfectly in our current era in which female rights and technological advances are hot topics.

Who said a ninety year old story is dead? It just takes a new perspective to see what is possible. To see what was once invisible.

Fairness, and unfairness in computer games.

State of Decay; I just cleared a hundred metres of zombies. I ran them all over with my car. I’m hovering over this strange ‘Cleo’-device. What’s suddenly growling behind me? A zombie. Did I miss it? Maybe.

Same game; I’m helping out some fellow survivors. Due to a glitch my car gets stuck under the house. I run to the next car. Suddenly there’s a horde of zombies (including some feral) waiting for me who weren’t there a minute ago.

Is the game messing with me? I’m starting to think it is!

Fairness: Outgame.

Here I wish to talk about fairness in computer (video) games.

What is fair? Nazis spawning behind you after you cleared the field in Return to castle Wolfenstein? Some silly toadstool telling you that the princess is in another castle? Or a massive ordeal to get through without any savepoints like Battletoads.

Fairness in games begins and ends with the people making those games. This means that their logic and reasoning is in play here. So; Alex Kidd in high tech-world for the SEGA Master System.

I mentioned this game before on this blog. I think.

To get past a guard-post, during this game, you have the opportunity to craft your own fake passport. There’s a book dealer who sells books on ‘how to craft your own passport’. There’s a shop selling printing presses. I believe there’s even a shop selling paper and ink.

Does this all work? No, of course not. The guard recognizes that your passport is a fake and kills you on the spot.

In fact you have to pray at a temple 100 times to make a ghost shaman appear who gives you a true passport.

Where is this shaman mentioned? Nowhere!

Never throughout the game is the shaman mentioned; let alone the praying 100 times.

So any player would come by the temple; pray a few times –for his/her own sanctitude and move on.

This was the first time in my life when I realized that, sometimes, games were stacked against me!

Just think about it, go to the past with me –hold my hand: me, a young boy, incapable of getting past this guard. So I called the SEGA-GAME-helpline (there was no real internet back then – I’m that old), 50c per call.

The (nice) guy on the other end of the phone told me the answer instantly. He didn’t even have to take time to look it up (which told me how many frustrated ten-year-old-boys called before me – and (nowadays) how little videogames there were out there, back then).

So by paying an extra fifty cents over the cost of the game I was ‘allowed’ to continue my game.

Is this fair? I think not!

Fairness: A distinction.

So, reading the previous, there’s a distinction to be made here. 1. Honesty ‘Ingame’. And, 2. Honesty ‘Outgame’.

I think it’s clear from my above example that number 2. Does occur. There’s no way I would’ve figured out ‘praying a hundred times without the ‘lifeline’ (0,50 cents a beat).

But continue this train of thought to the present.

I mean; is it fair for EAGAMES to charge players extra amounts of money to play a game? I mean they used to call it upgrades, extra content, now they call it microtransactions. I all boils down to the same thing: coercing players to give money to get better at a game.

Is this fair? I think not.

Just like my little Alex Kidd in High-Tech world-example. Gamers should be allowed to play the games they bought without interference from ‘either’ call-in-help (obviously), bad ports,

A welcome hello to Silent Hill: Homecoming, which is unplayable without outside help.

A ‘bad port’ is nothing short that a ‘console game’-producer releasing a game to PC without

checking whether the game that works on a PS3 might actually work on a PC. Negligence.

or, ‘Buy-up’ upgrades. A game should remain a game. But that’s not how economy works.

Nowadays we, the world, are playing against each other. And we all want to beat our opponent.

In Asia this, apparently, works rather fairly. Occasionally a guy gets killed because he sold a (virtual) magnificent sword a (virtual) friend lend to him (look it up).

But, apparently, in western games this fairness isn’t allowed. Here the game is stacked so that those with the most money to spend get better at the game. (Notice here how I used the word ‘get’ instead of ‘are’). No more skill involved. Is this fair? I think not.

Fairness: Ingame.

Having argued that some games suffer from a ‘lack of fairness’ due to outgame influences I also wish to highlight some ingame issues I stumbled upon during my playtime.

Sometimes, there are just games that are too hard to beat either because the programmers were some sadistic b*stards (hello again: Battletoads), because the programming itself isn’t flawless (hello: Lucius III). Or, and this is the point I wish to focus upon, because the programming allows ‘unfairness’.

In any game of Tetris the pieces you get to work with are generated by chance. Tetris is basically a
gambling game with some slight amount of skill involved. Like poker you can have all the skills of reading signs, calculating chance and counting cards; yet, in the end, a big portion of you actually winning a hand relies on the chance of getting dealt good cards.

Tetris is the same; do you stack up high waiting for that one long piece (appropriately named: hero) or do you play it safe and keep your stack low?

If a game is based on chance, I argue that any apparent unfairness should be regarded as unintentional. If you gamble you should be able to take a hit every once in a while.

Take They are billions per example. Now this is a game that is hard to beat.

The reason for this is rather clear from the start. The game deals with zombies. And each zombie is (programmed) set to attack any nearby human (settlement). This works like an infection. So if one zombie spots you, so does the nearest to them, and the nearest and so on. In short: on false move and you suddenly got a horde against you. This is fair.

For those who wonder: Yes, I have a thing for zombie games.

But, fairness, becomes questionable when you look at ‘survivor mode’ within the game. In this mode the computer generates a map, drops your town hall somewhere in the middle and places a finite amount of zombies around it.

The object of the game: if the town hall falls the game is over.

So strange situations occur in which you find your town hall strangely placed (e.g. close to a zombie den. Or placed in the wide open even though there is a beautiful sheltered –more defendable- spot close by). Now, I argue, a schism becomes apparent between this ‘computer generated chance’ and narrative.

In the blocks of Tetris or the cards of poker there is no underlying narrative to influence the chance. They are billions, a game set in a world where humans have to fight zombies, nobody, in their right mind, would place their town hall in the middle of an open field. It’s not lot logical from a preservation/human perspective.
The cards are dealt the way they are. But in

The computer generating the map obviously doesn’t understand human preservation logic, it’ll just drop the town hall anywhere. But any human would look at the landscape (chance) and place the town hall accordingly (narrative).

So, I argue that if a game has a narrative at its base an overreliance on chance based dynamics cause the game to become: less fair.

Similarly; that’s why I hate respawned enemies in any First Person Shooter. If I just cleared a section I don’t want to find sudden respawned enemies there if I can’t justify how they could’ve come there from a narrative perspective.

Usually just a door the enemies could’ve come through would be enough to create the (narrative) illusion.

Fairness: skill.

Games are about skill! Not everybody should be allowed to finish them. That’s why there are levels ranging from easy to hard.

Battletoads is an extremely difficult game to finish. There are only so many lives you can gather on the way and then there are a million obstacles blocking you towards the finale.

One could, rightfully, say that Battletoads was deliberately made too hard by the programmers.

On the other hand one might realize that game makers at the time were exploring the capabilities of the players . What were they capable of? It’s an honest question.

Except for those speed runners. Those people are unfathomable.

Fairness, I argue, implies a game based on skill without trying to influence the skill by means of either outside ([micro] transactions) or inside (narrative destroying chance) elements.

And I haven’t even mentioned the auto-saves which makes a lot of games way too easy to beat.

There has to be a balance.

Luckily a lot of games strike this balance just right. But ever so often –after you got your behind beaten in a playthrough- you should ask yourself: 'Did I lose fair and square?'. ‘Was this fair?’

The Good Liar – a review

An elderly conman Roy (Ian McKellen) finds that his latest mark Betty (Helen Mirren) is quite rich. This makes the evil entrepreneur in him more than willing to give it his best to unburden her of all that wealth.

Let me start by saying that the poster is actually rather well chosen, on two fronts. First it evokes the feeling of a classical detective the like of Deceived (1992), The Hand that rocks the Cradle (1992) and Single White Female (1992).

Those famous (often 90s) thrillers in which the single white female has to smarten up fast to resist the evil male intruder in her life.

Then there are the colours of black and white. At first glance this is the clear distinction between right and wrong, the villain and the victim.

But, after seeing the movie I have to admit that it also highlights the big problem of the story and thus, as a result, the movie as a whole. Strangely enough I’m accusing The Good Liar of being dishonest to its audience.

The fighting chance in a detective story

S.S. van Dine famously wrote his ‘twenty rules for writing detective stories’ in 1928. The phrase ‘The butler did it’ –I believe- derives from this list as (as rule 11) the writer clearly exclaims his disdain for the notion of someone ‘common’ committing bloody murder.

But, nevertheless, taken with a grain of salt these ‘twenty rules’ still work as a blueprint to this day and age. And one thing is almost hammered home in Dine’s list (as rules 1, 5, 8, 9 and 15 stipulate): the reader should have a sporting chance to solve the crime.

To take Midsomer Murders (or any other crime-of-the-week TV-show for that matter) for example. This show scores high on this list. Every clue is a plain sight and it up to the audience to pay close attention.

But it is human nature to experiment. It is human nature to do something different from time to time. Sometimes even to try to reinvent the wheel as it were.

So throughout crime-fiction history there have been stories in which the ‘who’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ The Alienist (2018) left out the Who until the very last episode. Sherlock’s (2012) death defying leap in The Reichenbach fall (the How) was famously left without a proper explanation. And The Good Liar, I argue, is guilty of leaving out the Why.
weren’t there for the audience to pick up upon. In televised fiction last year’s

Anybody can, at least, sense that there is something amiss between the characters; that neither of them are very truthful. You can feel it in the picture, in every frame. You’ll probably even know how it will all go down and you’ll be right. But still, in the end, you are left empty handed because you didn’t have any access to the smallest morsel of information pertaining to the question: Why.

This wilful choice (derived from the original book by Nicholas Searle I assume) makes The Good Liar and uneven viewing. The movie seduces you, the viewer, to take part in the mystery of solving what is going. Like a peacock spreading its feathers it uses tried and tested cinematic techniques of informing the audience of danger lurking, just letting the camera linger on a character’s face in a room. But at the same time denies the audience to see all of said ‘peacock’. So, in short, what you want, you don’t get.

Genre fatigue

One could easily blame the detective genre for this. After years and years of detective novels, TV-shows and movies (most recently the brilliant Knifes Out (2019)) which were all following Dine’s twenty rules to the tee audiences get alienated when a story tries something different.

Expectations restricting imagination as it were.

But, one could also make the argument, why change a winning formula? Would The Good Liar really have suffered that greatly if the 'why' was brought to the forefront a little earlier than the big finale?

I don’t think so. I actually believe it would make the story work a whole lot better.

At least it would have prepared/guided me a bit for the emotional somersault the Roy character goes through in the finale.

Audiences will always identify with a main character. Even if he or she is a villain. No matter how vile and despicable (often) he is.

But the trick here is to do vilify the villain slowly (like Ian McKellen’s character in Apt Pupil (1998)). Not to, suddenly, spring a whole new level of villainy on our evil protagonist out of the blue.

Basically the finale to The Good Liar was the textbook example of the ‘introduction of the big bad’. In any (action)movie the main bad guy’s introduction is accompanied with him doing something dastardly. Done early the movie can build from that.

But if you’ve already got the audience invested in a character and then, after a full hour and a half, spring a disturbingly dastardly deed on the character without leading into it it alienates the character and the audience is left in limbo.

The only movie this worked in, I think, is Heat (1995) with Tom Sizemore’s character. But he was a side-character, not one of the protagonists. The audience hardly knew the guy so his ‘big dastardly deed’ in the end was a possibility that could come from this character.

Maybe a bit more predictable since any weathered moviegoer/ crime fiction enthusiast now has the 'Why' handed to complete the mental jigsaw.

But, then again, this would also shift focus from the core mystery to the many other wonders that The Good Liar has to offer its audience.

Visually a detective story

The visual flair of The Good Liar is one of the main reasons to see this movie (apart from the obvious two reasons I’ll mention below). Shot in London and Berlin the camera makes good use of showing the beauty of the scenery. It truly is a bit of a tourist folder (complete with British upper-class fashion). But there’s much more. Little shots here and there that elevate the tale and truly making it a colourful feast for the eye.

There’s a brilliant little strip-club scene that is a deliciously lit set. The setting makes all the character on screen grubby and morally grey. The camera, then underlines this with quick successions of shots, just lingering long enough to capture a thoughtful silence or two.

Every set is like this; well chosen and fitting the moment in the movie with the camera subtly underlining what you see instead of distracting from it.

But, of course, the main attraction here are Ian McKellen and Helen Mirror facing off. Both have played baddies. Both have played absolute sweethearts. Both have played strong and powerful. Both have played frail.

It’s clear from the opening credits that these two acting forces are going to dominate every scene that they are in, and they do.

Who can forget Mirren’s deadpan:

“Try the c*ck, Albert. It's a delicacy, and you know where it's been.”

In The cook the thief the wife the lover (1989).

Playing both weak and empowered at times, relying on each other as they are building their characters. Just a moment here and there with a changing look. It deepens the mystery (which is only in the way anyhow) and enriches the characters.

The Good Liar shouldn’t be seen for the mystery it promises. You just have to enjoy this thriller for the two acting giants having a go at each other. Shot beautifully this movie gives all the room for its two stars to shine and to show us which one of the two is the better liar. (That’s a lie, they both are).

Tick, tick, BOOM: Bomber movies.

A dark, cramped space. Before the hero is a strange box filed with numerous tangled wires connecting explosives to a clock counting down. He's holding a cheap cutter in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He is sweating. He is nervous. He needs to cut a wire, red or blue before the timer runs out. Which one will he choose?

A conundrum hilariously spoofed in Cats & Dogs (2001).

In the late eighties, early nineties, bomber-movies became a thing. With which I mean a movie about a mad bomber leaving time-detonated explosives around and it’s up to the heroes of the movie to dismantle them before the time is up!

Movies like these were done before, like the famous Rollercoaster (1977), but in the nineties something caused a quick succession of movies to be made about this subject. It probably had something to do with the Troubles in Ireland coming to an end. But that’s just me having a guess.

There are numerous examples from the nineties like Live Wire (1992), The Final Cut (1995),

Which, by including the (sexual) fantasy of the ‘human bomb’,
created quite the effective metaphor of the inevitability of death.

Bombmeister (1992) and, of course, Blown Away (1994) and Speed (1994). These last two are interesting because these two movies ‘broke the mould’ as it were.

It’s all about the bomb, not the bomber.

You see, bomber-movies aren’t –almost by definition- that interested in the persona of the bomber. These kinds of movies prefer to focus on the ones defusing the bombs and the (psychological) peril they find themselves in at that time, not necessarily the demented reasoning of the culprit placing those devices. This guy usually gets shot down (almost as an afterthought) the minute the last bomb has been defused (The Kingdom (2007), The Hurt locker (2008)).

This notion, however, shifted a bit when Blown Away and Speed came to show. Now suddenly these mad-bombers had a reasoning for their actions. And because of their presence the whole situation of defusing bombs became far more perilous. Suddenly the vengeful act of the ‘mad-bomber’ was personal. Meaning: the bomber knows/knew how the ‘defuser’ thinks.

But, to be honest, these criminals always remain rather two-dimensional in character. Their motives never anything more than ‘classical’ revenge.

The bomber-movie, therefore, I consider a full 100% different than, let’s say, the serial-killer movie in which the villain and his motives are important. In short: The bomber-movie is all about preventing the end result. When other movies are all about understanding the villain.

One could say that in bomber-movies spectacle takes the forefront over narrative.

It’s all about the bomber, not the bomb.

To take a little side-track I should point out the main MacGuffin of Face/Off (1997). In this movie the
evil Castor Troy has placed a bomb somewhere and it is up to the detective to pull off some shenanigans to find out where the bomb is and diffuse it.

An interesting part about this movie is that here the bomb is the afterthought. The whole defusing-scene leaves the audience utterly unimpressed. This because the movie (rightfully so) prefers to focus all its attention on the dynamic between the criminal and the detective.

As such the ‘bomb-element’ could be replaced with any other cataclysmic event. Be it poisonous gas, a terrorist attack, evil grandmothers, it doesn’t matter. The movie wouldn’t change.

Usually, in movies that have somewhat of a ‘bomber-movie’-plot point in them timing is, rather more, ‘lucky’.

Like the pitch, perfect, phone call in Law Abiding Citizen (2009).

Or, the perfectly timed (no time for a simple warning phone call) car bomb

in The Dark Knight (2008).

So, in short the formula appears to be this: more focus on the bomb(s) equals less focus on the bomber. More focus on the bomber equals less focus on the bomb.

The bomber is dead…tick, tick, the bomb.

The interesting thing about bomber-movies is that the bomber can be dead and still his ‘legacy’ remains a danger. So the bomber-movies have a ‘trump-card’ to play around with. Now there isn’t a mad man with his finger on a button. Rather the mad-man has pushed the button already and it is up to our heroes to save the day before time runs out.

This creates a second schism in bomber movies (apart from the ‘focus’ mentioned above). Do you tell the audience WHEN the bomb is going to go off or do you suffice by merely telling the audience that there IS a bomb?

Countdown to zero.

Do you remember James Bond defusing the bomb in Goldfinger (1964), of course it was going to land on 007-seconds left.

The big trope in bomber-movies is the ‘countdown’ before something terrible happens. To make this happen you need two things: a clock or an action (per example: picking up a phone in Payback (1999)). And an audience who knows the requirements for the bomb to go off.

To take the classical example of a bomb set to go off at noon. Invented by Hitchcock -and often referred to by him when he explained ‘Suspense’-, for his film Sabotage (1936).

I’m not quite sure if I’m correct here. But I think I am.

In this movie the criminal gives a bomb to a boy, whilst telling the boy that the package has to be
delivered at the town hall in the office of the burgomaster at twelve noon.

The boy goes on his way and, since he is a young boy, gets distracted all the TIME.

Every single scene after the boy receives this ‘package’, Hitchcock included a clock. He informed the audience of the bomb in the package and the fact that it’ll blow up at twelve-o-clock. So each clock the audience sees is horror. As the boy visits the market, watches a display at a window. In the end the boy boards a bus and is almost out of time. Yet, there is hope. He might still make it.

And if he does: wilfully condemning the people at the town hall to death! (Because the audience never ‘met’ them).

A moviemaker can stretch this out for ages. In fact, various movies tried to prolong this ‘feeling of tension’ throughout the running time (like Wedlock (1991)).

But, to be clear, this ‘trick’ only works for so long. However, if you don’t know the timer you can prolong the feeling of dread a whole lot longer.

Countdown to when?

The short period of bomber-movies in the nineties are interesting because halfway through the hype Hollywood reasoned that it was, in fact, rather silly to have a countdown clock on each and every bomb. Because, let’s be reasonable here, why WOULD a bomber let the defuser know the time left?

So a second genre of the bomber movie came to the foreground. Stories that merely told the audience that there was a bomb set to go off, but not when.

This paved the way to a new form of creating tension. Informing the audience that something is going to blow up during the duration of the movie creates an uneasiness that lingers. Not necessarily edge of your seat tension but rather a constant feeling of dread. This tension was masterfully used in the (underrated) Arlington Road (1999).

And like Hitchcock years before moviemakers weren’t afraid to let the thing go off in The sum of all fears (2002).

No more bombs?

Nowadays the bomber-movie plot- elements have gone away a bit. I blame fatigue of the subgenre and, of course, real life terrorism for this. But still the techniques remain.

Thanos getting hold of all the stones in Avengers: Infinity War (2008) is a clear usage of the ‘bomber movie without a countdown technique’ and when he finally gets hold of the stones the movie shifts over in ‘countdown territory’ with Captain America trying to prevent Thanos from snapping his fingers.

And to be honest, that’s fair. A bomber movie is only successful if the bomb doesn’t go off (a happy ending). But the audience flocks to the cinema to see stuff getting blown up. Basically a bomber-movie is a movie that promises what it isn’t allowed to deliver. Tangled wires indeed.

Bomb defused!

Bomber movies, or movies that use –at one time or another- the elements from bomber movies want the audience to experience the dread of a possible cataclysm devised by a person who isn’t present when it happens.

Bomber movies are the ultimate anti-James Bond movie because the main villain doesn’t matter. He’s not there at the scene of the crime. He’s either dead or behind the scenes contemplating.

The reason bomber movies, or elements of the bomber movies, work is because it brings to the forefront a sense of imminent danger that we, the audience, love to see defused.

Bomber movies give the audience a thrill ride because ‘we all know’ that danger is lurking around every corner and this, particular, danger has a timetable.

Frozen II - a review

Anna and Elsa are on an adventure again. Elsa hears the voice of a secret siren calling her to the frozen north. What she and her sister find there will shake the foundations of their kingdom.

Frozen (2013) was an accident! Originally the plan was to go all out on Hans Christian Anderson’s original story and have Elsa be the villain of the piece (a snow queen with a loveless frozen heart). But then, of course, the songwriters came up with the most miraculous power ballad since Bonnie Tyler.

It is a very good/well crafted song. No matter whether you like it or not.

This brought the whole original story of Frozen tumbling down. How can a woman who sings such a wonderful song be all bad? So, things were changed around. Elsa became a ‘goodie’ and the story became about love between sisters.

As a result this meant that the movie had to put strong independent women on the forefront.

Suddenly Frozen had the potential to become more than just a fairytale. All the chess pieces were in place to make this a movie that heralded women. Even though I doubt even Disney foresaw the impact this movie would have on little girls.

The success of Frozen proved this ‘gamble’. There’s a market for female-lead movies that don’t involve courtship or a male dominance. Soon other moviestudios followed (Wonder Woman (2017)  for example).

I said ‘gamble’ because, as always in movies, trends come and go. In the blaxploitation-era there were numerous examples of strong independent women carrying a movie. The same goes for The long kiss goodnight (1996), Salt (2010), I would even argue How to marry a millionaire (1953). Every once in a while a movie comes out that treats the female leads as normal human beings instead of ‘hysterical-'panties-in-a-bunch'-“men-please-protect-me!”-breeding-machines’. What changed, however, is that nowadays with the internet people ‘take’ these movies and highlight the female themes within them. The hope being, of course, that THIS will be the movie that will change the world! What I’m trying to say here is that movies like Frozen -throughout movie history- came out all the time. However, we now have the platform to use this cultural object as an example to (maybe) change the world.

So, basically, due to the fact that the song ‘Let it go’ was so great Frozen became a movie about gender equality.

Frozen II: bound to happen

Disney is a lot of things but it isn’t stupid. So of course they were going to follow up on the massive success of Frozen with Frozen II. And, of course, this time around the message of gender equality and strong role-models is hammered home.

Plus some extra power ballads. A bit too many for my taste.

It’s this ‘sticking to the formula’ that makes Frozen II a bit lesser than the first outing. Everything is done absolutely right. But, because of that there is no surprise. There are the power ballads (plus a fun 80s parody song), the love between sisters, Elsa being awesome, Olaf being cute. We’ve seen it all before in the first movie; there’s no shocking new addition to the tale of two sisters.

In all seriousness I doubt the online petition of ‘Get Elsa a girlfriend’ would’ve changed my mind
because even a lesbian queen would fit perfectly in the formula Disney is using here.

Also, why should a strong, independent woman automatically be a lesbian?

It is because of this that the movie falls down flat in the second act. Once we’ve had the happy reintroductions and the adventure has begun the movie focuses on relationships.

True, there’s a nice action scene of Elsa ‘playing with fire’. But overall the whole second act is rather boring. Because each and every interaction confirms what the audience already knows. Yes, Anna loves Christoph and vice versa. Yes, Elsa loves Anna, and vice versa. Yes, Olaf loves everybody, and vice versa.

Combine this with the fact that the ‘two feuding fronts’ that are introduced in the second act don’t actually fight, or even hate, each other and the ‘problem’, to me, is evident. Frozen II is relying too much on rehashing that which the audience already knows. But is, at the same time, to afraid to really put in something new.

Unless, of course, it involves (the original thematic of) making Elsa and Anna even more amazing.

This, to me, feels like a miss. I would’ve wanted more ambiguity. In Star Wars II (or V) (1980) the good guys got their *sses handed to them. In any horror-sequel the action is upped, the character-stories lessened. In The Godfather Part: II (1974) extensive flashbacks were introduced and Michael kills his own (bleeding) brother. In a sequel it is hardly ever wise to do the same thing over again. If you want your movie to be remembered you need to shake things up. Frozen II doesn’t do that. It plays it safe.

Frozen II: still endearing

But still Frozen II manages to melt even this cold old heart of mine. Why? Because the movie is so darn endearing.

After Frozen I fell in love with the characters (except for those trolls, I don’t trust trolls). So I would watch anything with them in it. The songs are very good (the new power ballad has been stuck in my head for over a week now). And this movie has even more Olaf – which is always a good thing.

If I had to pinpoint a highlight it is Anna’s song near the end. Anna never really got to get to the forefront of Frozen and for this little moment she does. In fact I want the next Frozen-movie to be all about her.

Still, Frozen II is, in basis, a rehash of the first movie. The people behind it were to afraid to change things around. I can’t blame Disney. I understand. And yet, even as a lesser movie, Frozen II is still a wonderful movie to watch time and again.

Fun fact to end with: Uptil, now I haven't found a single cover of ‘Into the unknown’ that is better than the one in the movie or the credits. Shame on you internet. I know you can do better! The Jacob Sutherland version is almost perfect. If not for that (overtaking) distracting piano. And why (oh why) has nobody used the current voice technology to have Freddie Mercury sing the song?

Fairytales a reality?

This isn´t going to be an Anti-Trump article.

I always try to stay as politics free on this blog as possible.

Even though I sometimes can’t help myself. I just can’t lie, I don’t like the man.

However, this article does concern the current American President Donald J. Trump in relation with current developments in new-media.

The point I’m making is this: Deep fakes have evolved. Nowadays we have 3D technology, Deep fake technology and voice technology. Basically I could (from my home computer) create a video of a person saying and doing whatever I want.

What I’m saying here is that I expect that this year (2020) a doctored video will come out of President Trump doing some dastardly thing.

Intermezzo As always Deep fakes started in porn. Every technological or cultural ‘step forwards’ throughout history has had one thing in common: People began experimenting with it with the 'Oom Pah Pah'-angle in mind. Be it paintings, sculptures, songs, books from the printing press, photographs, cinema or even videotapes. Heck, even the discovery of electricity soon had people trying out this new ‘power’ as a means of sexual exploration. The point I’m making, however, is that the ‘porn angle’ of Deep fakes should be understood as a ‘sign’. If people use it for porn and sex it’s probably something that’ll make an impact somewhere else down the line. Just remember, as popular belief likes us to think: The printing press caused the Reformation!

Now the point with Deep fakes is that you have to use your common sense.

If you see actor Nicolas Cage’s face on a baby common sense dictates that that isn’t possible.

President Trump, however, is famous for three things. (1) He is utterly unpredictable. You never know what he is going to do. Everything is possible. (2) He lies all the time even though there are irrefutable facts telling differently. And (3) every news-item he doesn’t like is ‘fake news’.

Basically, I think, this year the story of the boy who cried wolf is going to become a reality. And the American President will find himself in his very own dark (Disney) fairytale.

President Donald J. Trump is going to be confronted with a fake (Deep fake) video of him doing some dastardly thing. He will state that it is ‘fake news’ (nobody will believe him). He will lie to make things even more convoluted (nobody will believe him). He will do something unpredictable to take the spotlight away (which will make people believe the video even more).

Is this going to hurt the President’s re-election? No, not at all. His voters are committed. They’d vote for him no matter what.

But just think about the possible scenarios required for a video that would cause his voters NOT to vote for him. Trust me when I tell you that those scenarios quickly become hilarious (and highly insane).

Just imagine the worst video you can possible imagine (it’s a party game) that might make a little old lady in Pasadena say: “Maybe, I won’t vote for him this time around.”

That’s going to be the fun part about the 2020 elections. I think ´fake news´ is actually going to bite the POTUS in the behind.

Dr. Sleep – a review

Years after his ordeal at the Overlook hotel Danny Torrance has grown up to become his father Jack. He is just as troubled and self-destructive.

But unlike his father he gets a second chance to become a better person by protecting a young girl, Abra, who has the supernatural power called ‘the Shining’, just like him.

Dr. Sleep is one of those movies that made me think about ‘movie theory’ in general a lot more than the actual movie review itself. There’s just so much to talk about on a lot of different levels.

Just like The Overlook hotel has many different doors that Danny Torrance rides by on his tricycle this review will, from time to time, quick fire ‘door after door’ of movie theoretical questions at you.

Good book, bad movie. Bad book, good movie.

Comparing a book to a movie is a tricky business.  You’re more likely to hear: “The book was better” than the other way around. The reason for this is simple: if a book is good not only is it already quite a daunting task to put it on screen just (as good) as it was written. But, also, more people have read the book. So there are a lot more potential criticasters.

In this sense you could also make the distinction between ‘popular’ and ‘obscure’.

A fun thing happens, however, if a director successfully manages to adapt a book to a movie: people tend to forget the original book. Hardly anybody knows that Psycho was once a book. And I doubt the people who do, have actually read it. The same goes for Jaws, Rosemary’s Baby and (I’m certain this will happen in my lifetime) Jurassic Park.

If you can name the writers connected to these books you get a virtual cookie with my compliments.

If a movie adaptation was a success it’ll henceforth be the movie first with the book, almost, an afterthought.

Which brings me to Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick.

In 1981 Kubrick produced a masterpiece of a movie called The Shining (1981) based on King’s bestseller of the same name. But since the original book and the movie are so vastly different (and because the author is still a successful writer I might add) two ‘cultural objects’ started to exist side-by-side. Each with its own author: Kubrick’s The Shining (the movie) and King’s The Shining (the original novel).

The mini-series (1997), lovely as it is, doesn’t really exist in this ‘auteur’ sense.

And if there’s one big critique I have to give the 2019 adaptation of Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining is that the movie, in the end, tries too hard to incorporate both authors.

Stephen King’s Dr. Sleep.

Suddenly there was the news item: “Stephen King-master of horror- is soon to publish a sequel to The Shining called: Dr. Sleep.” (paraphrasing).

I bought the book the day it came out and started to read. And, I have to admit, at first I was disappointed. The book didn’t take place in a haunted hotel but was rather more a road-trip. The Danny Torrance character was an abysmal human being (in the first fifty pages or so). And the villains didn’t seem half as threatening as I wanted them to be (going up against super-power humans and all).

But the book grew on me the minute I realized that Dr. Sleep is all about addiction. Where the first book destroyed the addicted Jack Torrance in a self-destructive manner. Dr. Sleep actually offered Danny Torrance-who is on the same destructive path as his father, Jack-a way out.

The villains here are those ‘new’ addicts willing to destruct others for their own gain. And they are represented as a vampiric-cult known as the ‘True knot’ lead by the maleficent woman named Rose the hat.

More precise, the Knot’s addiction isn’t akin to alcoholism in the sense of ‘drinking one’s emotional pain away’ but rather drug-addiction of ‘getting the next shot because it is needed to ‘stay’ at any cost’.

Realizing this I could read Dr. Sleep as it really was. The book is not a retracing of the old steps but a re-exploration of the original themes by an older author whilst telling an entirely new story in a new setting. Yes it uses the same characters and the same hocus-pocus as before, but at a minimal since those things aren’t really important.

Dr. Sleep is basically an older Stephen King telling the reader (through Danny) about the dangers of addiction, the possibility of salvation and also, by including a Shining-little girl named Abra, the importance of parenting, educating and preparing the next generation.

By the way, the Overlook hotel got destroyed in the first novel. So in Dr. Sleep the finale takes place at the ruins of the Overlook.

Flanagan’s Dr. Sleep.

Stephen King has always been a very ‘filmable writer’. Meaning to say: even his most bonkers scenes are right there on the page described in full. So yes, near the end of IT the main character is flying in space talking to some intergalactic space turtle. The basic image is clear. The technical side of actually filming it is quite another story.

Dr. Sleep, therefore, is a very filmable book. There is a main character who looks like sh*t for the first fifty pages or so. Then he gets clean-shaven and is ‘ready to go’. The main villain, then, wears a very distinctive hat. It is all very visual.

So getting the shooting script together for this movie is rather easy. The dialogue is often already pretty solid. Only some subplots that would take the movie slightly off course (e.g. there are a lot of driving scenes in the novel) had to be removed to streamline it a bit.

And because the source material is already so visual, so is the dressing and the tone of the movie. The locations, landscapes, the ways characters look are all there on the page.

The big hurdle is, as always, the casting. Luckily King movies can nowadays pretty much call any actor in the world and he/she will accept. For Dr. Sleep the casting directors called Ewan McGregor as Dan Torrance, Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat and Kyliegh Curran as Abra Stone.

McGregor is quite fitting as the tormented Torrance. Playing his character far more internally than he normally would he fits the profile of a man wanting to survive himself just another day.

I loved the (slightly sick) mention of a Shallow grave (1994).

Curran as Abra, then, is actually rather impressive as the youthful enthusiastic ‘Shiner’ who doesn’t know what dangers lie on the horizon.

She has a wonderful power scene in a car (was she wearing contacts that time?).

If I would give the character any faults it is that she is (as in the book) overpowered and hardly ever gets hurt like Danny does. But that’s character, not actress.

But the real steal of the show is Ferguson as Rose the Hat. What is it with Stephen King adaptations and conjuring up wonderful female villains? Rose The Hat as played by Ferguson is far more sinister and vile than her book counterpart. Every moment she’s on screen you fear that she might do something dastardly; even when she’s speaking to her lover (even though I doubt this character can love) Crow Daddy (Zahn McClarnon).

But this is the strength of movie adaptations. Good movies allow actors to become their characters, to live them. Mike Flanagan understands this perfectly well in Dr. Sleep (not so much in The haunting of Hill House (2018)).

By focussing just a handful of scenes on the newest  ‘True knot’-troupe member Snakebite Andi (Emily Alyn Lind) and her interacting with the others the actors gain the momentum to become real humans even though their core characters are supernatural and single-minded –thus, prone to two dimensionality.

As always it is fun to see the wonderful Carel Struycken in a genre piece again.

He really is Hollywood’s go-to strange man (this is a compliment).

BTW it is hinted at quite strongly in the movie that his Grandpa Flick character is a Strigoi.

Left on Flanagan’s table are the shots/scenes he wants to pull for this movie. Sometimes he pulls the camera back and lets the wide-open shots overtake the screen for a fantasy-element (like Rose the Hat looking for Ebra, or the tilting room scene). Whereas, when true bloody horror is needed, he closes in on the victim and his/her torment.

And yes the horror in this movie is as brutal as the opening scene of IT: Chapter one (2017).

It’s a polite (textbook) playing with the camera that is never distracting or overtly artistic. It is only when the big finale comes to show that Flanagan can no longer control himself.

By the way, the Overlook hotel didn’t get destroyed in Kubrick’s The Shining. So in Dr. Sleep the finale takes place at the  boarded up –but intact- Overlook.

The Shining greatest hits.

If you love The Shining as dearly as I do (and many, many, people with me) you can consider yourself very lucky. In the span of two years we got to see The Overlook hotel recreated not once, but twice for our pleasure. First in Ready Player One (2018) and second in this movie Dr. Sleep.

Comparing ´The Shining´-scene in Spielberg’s Sci-fi spectacle to Dr. Sleep’s finale one thing becomes obvious. There is a lot less CGI tomfoolery in Flanagan’s hotel. This is absolutely a plus. I applaud Spielberg for the wonderful visual eye he has but the last ten years or so he relied far too much on CGI when it wasn’t really needed.

Intermezzo This reliance on CGI is a tricky one for me because I sometimes applaud it (e.g. recreating the ‘70s skyline in David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007)) and sometimes I just don’t see the point. For instance: I never quite understood David Fincher digitally cloning an actor’s face over another actor to create twins in The social network (2010). Why not hire...I don’t know...real twins? Like Linda Hamilton’s sister for that wonderful deleted scene from Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). Fun fact: Ewan McGregor once got himself ‘cloned’ over another actor (a lot less technical than the ‘Fincher technique’) in Last days in the desert (2015). But, then again, in that movie he was playing both Jesus Christ of Nazareth and Satan. Same father and all. So on some kind of artistic level it isn’t much of a stretch to cast the same actor for both parts (like George Burns famously did in Oh, God! You Devil (1984) as both God and the Devil). CGI can do anything...but should it? Naturally this CGI discussion is currently also being held on related subjects as ‘de-aging’ actors as Scorsese did for The Irishman (2019). The question here being, of course, how much de-aging can a person put in a movie. Should it be a little bit for a flashback or two (e.g. Ant-man (2015)) or is it allowed for the entire movie? The second subject is the current morality debate going on about resurrecting actors (e.g. Star Wars: rogue one (2016)). Would Peter Cushing have reprised his role if he was still alive (immortal)? If he refused would the studio honour his wish? In this sense I consider it refreshing that Flanagan decided against ‘recreating’ Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers or even Danny Lloyd. The movie doesn’t need that. And the audience is more than happy to accept these new actors in the parts. But this does bring forth a nice dilemma. Because the recreated 2019 Overlook hotel in Dr Sleep  is –visually- one hundred percent the same as the 1981 original. So now we’ve got ‘new faces’ running around in a familiar set. The reason for this I’ll explain after this intermezzo. Sufficient to say here is that because the finale of Dr. Sleep uses so many visual elements from the original The Shining movie the actors actually feel ‘wrong’ or ‘out of place’ almost in the same way those deepfake face-swaps of famous, well known, movie scenes feel wrong.

But, then I do give Spielberg credit for ‘playing around’-for want of a better word- with Kubrick’s classic. The ‘The Shining-scene’ works marvellously in Ready Player One because the movie is filled to the brim with pop-culture references. And it’s not like Spielberg is blatantly making an exact copy of the original movie. He inserts a completely bonkers storyline with out-of-tune characters. Only the backdrop of the haunted hotel is the same the rest is refreshingly new.

This is where Flanagan fails in his big finale for Dr. Sleep: he recreates too much! I was in awe the moment Danny Torrance re-entered the hotel of his childhood fears. The place looked exactly the same. But then what does Flanagan do? He painstakingly recreates various shots and moments from the original.

I did enjoy the ‘doctor’s office’-scene earlier in the movie (with the great Bruce Greenwood,

another King-movie alumni) since it is the same (incorrectly placed) office as it is in The Shining.

If only Flanagan stayed with these little pokes of fun here and there.

He doesn’t show us a new part of the hotel; a spot Kubrick’s movie has never been (like the attic).

No, he lets Dan(ny) take a tour to see all the highlights (The gold room, room 237, the Redrum-door, the elevators, the staircase, the maze. Only the kitchen and the red bathroom are missing). And at each of these locations he uses the exact same shots as Kubrick’s version.

He relies on this so much so that when the movie misses a beat (e.g. Danny riding his tricycle through the hall –‘new’ Danny has a different riding technique than ‘old’ Danny, apparently) it actually registers –to me- as a faux pas. It takes me out of the scene because I’m unwittingly (and unwillingly) comparing the shots.

I’m left to wonder why I was put in this position in the first place? I can understand the fun of recreating a shot or two (like the drive-up to The Overlook) as both an in-joke and a homage. But after that the movie really should have started to create its own shots. There are more than one way to shoot a stair-scene.

And that’s just the camera-angle and the montage I’m talking about here. The finale also recreates choreography, dialogue and, apparently, only the original movie’s amount of ghosts.

If there’s one movie in which Flanagan could’ve used his, now famous, ‘ghosts lurking in the shadows’-trick

that he pulled before in The haunting of Hill House it would’ve been this movie.

According to the first book there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of souls at The Overlook.

This is a shame since Dr. Sleep started so well with focussing on the Stephen King/book-lore instead of the Kubrick-lore.

Back at the Overlook hotel.

What to make of Dr. Sleep? The first three quarters of the movie are a faithful Stephen King adaptation that understands the source material. There’s some great acting to be found in this movie. Especially Ferguson is a scene stealer. But, then again, every actor fits his/her respective part perfectly with great chemistry between actors on screen.

The streamlined plot then, works a charm with very little unnecessary moments. Which, for what is basically a road-movie, is quite a feat as those movies have a tendency to meander all over the place.

Then there are the various visual tricks the movie pulls that are always greatly imaginative. Even in the scenes where the movie runs the risk over overdoing itself it reels itself back in just in time and lets suggestion take centre stage. Dr. Sleep (for the first three quarters of the movie) knows what kind of story it is telling. It’s telling a Stephen King story.

But then, for the great finale, the movie shifts gear and goes into blatant Kubrick territory. Suddenly the movie needs to tie itself to the cinematic masterpiece (that won two razzies in) of 1981 instead of the book. It is this heavy-handed connecting with the original in the final act that doesn’t sit well with me. A more loose approach would’ve been appreciated.

Still, for any The Shining fan Dr. Sleep is a must see movie. But, in my mind, it is best to see it as one of the better book adaptation of the original author than something that comes even close to the vision of that ‘other’ author.