IT'S ALIVE III: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE - Alive Island

This review is the fourth in a Larry Cohen retrospective commissioned by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. All other film reviews in this retrospective can be found here.

Director: Larry Cohen

Writer: Larry Cohen

Cast: Michael Moriarty, Karen Black, Laurene Landon, James Dixon, Gerrit Graham, Macdonald Carey, Neal Israel, Art Lund, Ann Dane

Runtime: 95 mins.

1987

I had held a lit candle of hope that the "It's Alive" movies could be one of the great unheralded horror trilogies. The first impressed me with its psychosocial insights, and the second expanded that scope ambitiously. It's Alive III: Island of the Alive postures at a grander narrative still, yet the end result feels so small in comparison.

The film begins as its best self. A street-level birthing and maiming incident spools out into an intense courtroom scene legislating the fate of the violently defective monster babies. The wonderfully melodramatic scene culminates in a courtroom panic that incites a captive monster baby to escape its confines and menace the Honorable Judge Watson (Macdonald Carey). Bloodshed is only avoided by the intervention of the baby's father, our designated protagonist Stephen Jarvis (Michael Moriarty). This rupturous demonstration of love coupled with the threat of violence convinces the Judge to banish the little creatures to a remote island where they may become... whatever... away from society.

HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS - Somehow, Michael Returned

Other Reviews in this Holiday Tradition.

Director: Dwight H. Little

Writers: Alan B. McElroy, Dhani Lipsius, Larry Rattner, Benjamin Ruffner

Cast: Donald Pleasence, Ellie Cornell, Danielle Harris, George P. Wilbur

Runtime: 88 mins.

1988

Halloween, misshapen and immediately iconic, births the slasher subgenre. Halloween 2 attempts to provide more of the same, with limited success now that Carpenter has vacated the director's chair and indulged in some less disciplined screenwriting. Halloween 3 boldly compensates for Carpenter's total departure by striking off into the direction of anthology; the result is bizarre, and not popular enough to justify the follow-through of that vision.

Thus Halloween 4 emerges bereft of innovation. The top and only priority is a return to the watering hole. The subtitle "The Return of Michael Myers" oozes desperation, as if begging for grace from a jilted lover. Back to formula! Unfortunately, while Halloween 3 was dithering about with originality and Halloween masks melting children's heads into bugs, the formula has grown entirely stale. In all its cowardice, Halloween 4 drinks it down nonetheless.

THE SECRET OF KELLS: Manuscripture

This review was requested by Alexis Howland. Many thanks to Alexis for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Directors: Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey

Writers: Tomm Moore, Fabrice Ziolkowski

Cast: Evan McGuire, Christen Mooney, Brendan Gleeson, Mick Lally

Runtime: 75 mins.

2009

There is nothing that looks quite like The Secret of Kells, the first film in director Tomm Moore's 'Irish Folklore Trilogy.' The prologue dashes primordial shapes and storybook colors across the screen. Character models scuttle about in impossible synchronicity. Geometries natural and artificial compete for supremacy while emulating each other's designs.

What is most stunning (and indescribable) is the way the animation feels so uniquely flat. All 2D animation is flat of course, but Kells cultivates the illusion of ink dancing upon page. The young hero of the story Brendan (Evan McGuire), introduced in the midst of a literal goose chase, radiates a playfulness that extends to the screen's dimensionality. Lacking the proper words, I must show you examples.

This style is fresh, but it is not new. Brendan's quest of artistic enlightenment is based on a real Irish holy book called the Book of Kells. This illuminated manuscript enhances the Gospels with vibrant spiraling illustrations which director Moore describes as "flat, with false perspective and lots of colour." The form of the film about the formation of the book is informed by the form of the book the film is about.

MORBIUS: Mor' bius Mor' Problems

Director: Daniel Espinoza

Writers: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless

Cast: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Tyrese Gibson, Al Madrigal

Runtime: 104 mins.

2022

It took Morbius 0.5 seconds to get on my bad side. The film begins with radiating lines in teal, purple, and black. "It's 'M' for 'Morbius,'" I said to my companions. After a further five or so seconds of 'graphics,' we pull back to see that it was indeed 'M' for 'Morbius,' with the embellishment of two vampiric fangs jutting downward. Thus begins the film's visual motif of the letter M. You know. For Morbius.

Morbius introduces the world to the great scientist Michael Morbius, inventor of artificial blood, casual denier of the Nobel prize, haver of a degenerative disease. This disease is never named in the film, which gives the oh so serious Jared Leto and his good friend Milo (Matt Smith) an opportunity to pantomime cerebral palsy with plausible deniability.

ELVIS: Heartbreak Toilet

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Writers: Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, Jeremy Doner

Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr., David Wenham

Runtime: 159 mins.

2022

Surprise surprise, the racial politics of Elvis are reprehensible. One can hardly expect a Hollywood film to damn him* for stealing the music of Black musicians who trailblazed Rock N' Roll without recognition, but the gall of proclaiming Elvis's innocence is made all the worse by the Black characters, actors, and extras all being treated as props. We flash back to a kinetic church revival tent so that the Black congregation can lift a besotted Elvis-child atop their shoulders. We see young adult Elvis drawn to Beale Street, eyes glimmering with wonder. B.B. King shows up just long enough to tell the rising star that he's the only one who'll be allowed to make any money off these songs, so he may as well take them. It's cynicism masquerading as community.

*The film also slickly glides over his grooming of Priscilla Presley, who was 14 when they met.

That cynicism comes to the fore in the character of Col. Tom Parker, Elvis's ultra-predatory financial manager. He is brought to life in one of Tom Hanks' worst performances (although a bad Hanks performance is still pretty good on balance). The film is quite shrewd to anchor the narrative in this old roach's perspective. An impossible needle is threaded thusly: Parker's moustache-twirling villainy becomes the root source of all exploitation, making Elvis himself an entirely passive figure. Austin Butler's portrayal is competent but anonymous; The movie must keep the King at arms' length to protect his mythos. The end result is an Elvis absolved of agency, upon which the audience may project anything they please, be it bitter resentment or starry admiration. So much for this botched opportunity to revise the Elvis legend for the 2020s.

MOONFALL: Positively Lunatic

Director: Roland Emmerich

Writers: Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser, Spenser Cohen

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry, John Bradley, Charlie Plummer, Wenwen Yu, Michael Peña, Carolina Bartczak, Eme Ikwuakor

Runtime: 130 mins.

2022

I've done the public service of jotting down Actual Quotations from the feature film Moonfall:

"If the moon really is what you think it is, we're gonna need a megastructurist."

"I hope the moon holds together, at least for a little while anyway."

"I got a lot of my own problems down here." "And the moon falling to Earth isn't one of them?!"

"Sonny, the moon is going to help us!"

"We scanned your consciousness. You're part of the moon now."

These are the quotations of a movie besotted with saying the stupidest shit imaginable about the moon. This is also a movie very much in love with Elon Musk, from which I'll invite you to draw your own conclusions.

NOPE: Nope Man's Sky

Director: Jordan Peele

Writer: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Steven Yeun, Wrenn Schmidt, Keith David

Runtime: 130 mins.

2022

Jordan Peele: Idea Man. This reputation crystallized after his premier feature Get Out, an allegory for racial trauma, microaggressions, and fetishistic performativity, complete with sci-fi thriller trappings. Peele distills the miasma of racecraft into something sharp and familiar. Peele's preternatural skill as a director is what elevates the film to iconic status. We may trot out the well-observed "I would have voted Obama for a third term" line regularly, but it's the off-kilter delivery of "no no no no no no no" and the clinking, sinking sensory nightmare of the hypnotism that we remember most deeply. Indeed, it is 'Idea Man' Peele who undermines his second film Us, a queasy, slanting audiovisual achievement that falls apart when the script butts in to explain everything with dotted Ts and crossed Is.

So, Nope. OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) inherits his father's (Keith David) horse training business after a freak accident in which loose change shrapnel falls from the sky. The family ranch has been a mainstay in Hollywood since the original motion picture: the infamous jockey, OJ's great great great grandfather, riding on a horse. OJ's sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) drops by from time to time to leverage her charisma for the good of the ranch, but they both have the sense that their legacy is slipping away from them. A series of terrifying encounters with an alien object in the clouds inspires them to grasp for legacy once more, in the form of documented extraterrestrial evidence.

RRR: !!!

Director: S.S. Rajamouli

Writers: Vijayendra Prasad, S.S. Rajamouli

Cast: N.T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan, Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Olivia Morris, Shriya Saran, Ray Stevenson, Alison Doody

Runtime: 187 mins.

2022

"American movies could never."

The refrain of our viewing party. Every time a scene of physical extremity was shot with clarity and true impact. Every time an intimate moment was played with blistering sincerity. Every time our heroes worked towards uncompromising anticolonial revolt. Every time the fun was maximized, and then maximaximized.

American movies could never. Is this true? You would have to peer back a few decades in blockbuster history to a specimen like Con Air, or Speed. Mile-a-minute insanity used to be acceptable for a big budget four quadrant movie. Desirable, even. Something poisonous has happened to the blockbuster since then. The movies are risk averse. The studios are afraid. Fun must be ironic, characters must be flawless, consequence must be forestalled, the audience's indulgent power fantasy must escape intact. Although it is not true that American blockbusters never could, perhaps it is now true that they could never.

RRR isn't a blockbuster... it's a ballbuster.

A NEW LEAF: May Flowers

This review was requested by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

 

Director: Elaine May
Writer: Elaine May

Cast: Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston, George Rose, James Coco, Doris Roberts

Runtime: 102 mins.

1971

Between 1949 and 1979, fourteen feature films were directed by women. That's 0.19% of all films released. Before A New Leaf, Ida Lupino was the last woman to be given a directing contract in Hollywood, and the lion's share of her work was in the early '50s. Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, Elaine May: the only three women to be inducted into the Director's Guild of America for decades.

The irony is that May stumbled into this gig somewhat accidentally. Having found fame in an improvisational comedy duo with (soon-to-be-great filmmaker) Mike Nichols, Elaine May merely intended to adapt A New Leaf from a Jack Ritchie story and sell the script off. Her agent pulled for her to direct, for which she was paid a paltry $50,000. She resisted the studio's preference of Carol Channing for the female lead because she felt the story belonged to Walter Matthau's character and wanted the actress to 'disappear.' Instead of allowing her to select her own lead, Paramount made an ultimatum. May could star in the film if she acted for free.

A fitting backdrop for a story of slimy exploitation. Matthau plays Henry Graham, a trust fund parasite who has been blithely squandering his wealth for no reason beyond shortsightedness. It turns out being broke comes along with a neverending onslaught of unpleasantness. Graham concocts a plan to marry a wealthy woman on a brisk timetable, pay off his debts, then matter-of-factly murder her so that his lifestyle may continue. A New Leaf is a tale of the colossal effort a man will go through to maintain his behavior.

Top Ten 2021

In 2021, film limped back. Pandemic-blighted productions relearned how to bring a movie into the world. Movie theaters opened their doors one by one, except those that had been permanently shuttered. High profile releases oscillated between streaming service and big screen. The theatrical experience struggled for relevancy; the very definition of cinema shifted beneath our feet. Folks who hadn't been to the theater in a year deliberated about when it was safe enough to experience the medium in its finest form.

Yet the art perseveres, as it always does, as it ever will.