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Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Uncle Sam (1997) | Graphic Novel

Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam
 is by Steve Darnall, Alex Ross, and Todd Klein

During times when confidence in the U.S government is steadily declining, the people tend to zero-in on the potential causes and jump to a conclusion. At the end of the day, they’re right when they say that modern corporations and politicians are to blame. At the same time, that’s a vague generalization that leads to very little change. Uncle Sam seeks to find the root of the problem, and it may have accomplished its goal thanks to one brief scene.

Uncle Sam #1 & #2 (collected in a 2009 reprint) tells the story of a homeless man named Sam who is “clad in star-spangled rags” (Uncle Sam), and speaking in “presidential sound-bites” (Greil Marcus) as a way to make sense of where he is and the state of the nation. His dementia-caused wandering takes him through a (mostly) chronological journey of America’s rough patches, while his real one has a back-drop of the end of an average political campaign.

Darnall takes readers behind the curtain of the political process, while still keeping an appropriate, spectators distance from it. He doesn’t take readers into a political headquarters because this deception shouldn’t be considered privileged information. It still may be shocking to some. It is for Sam. As he wades through history, the dichotomy of the nation takes shape. Darnall draws a realistic, but optimistic picture, the nation has made progress, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Uncle Sam confronting a warped version of himself
Copyright 2009 DC Comics/Vertigo

Ross, who co-plotted Uncle Sam, paints the picture beautifully. Having said that, I only have Kingdom Come to compare Uncle Sam to, and Kingdom Come just looks better. Maybe it’s by the necessity of the story, or maybe it’s personally easier to find little DC superhero details than little American history details. Objectively though, there’s a certain lack of physical depth to the environments and backgrounds in Uncle Sam, but that shouldn’t deter anyone because every panel still looks like a gorgeous cover, and they’re almost worthy of becoming a full-size poster. Sam is nearly life-like, and if he wasn’t the book would fall apart.

America is a tough country to root for, and it always has been. That’s Uncle Sam’s key revelation. America didn’t go downhill a century, or even decades after being established, but as it was being established. Specifically, cleaning up Shay’s rebellion (remember Shay’s Rebellion?)

Memories of Shay's Rebellion
Copyright 2009 DC Comics/Vertigo

Darnall and Ross create a clear line between where we are, where we’ve been, and where America will always return to. While “America” has a certain “comfort zone,” they’re proud of the progress the country has made and are simply asking for vigilance.

Sam’s journey reminds us that the citizen makes all the difference.

4.75/5



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Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Deliverance (1972) | Spoiler Review

Deliverance
First and foremost, thank you to Archer creator Adam Reed, and his writers and directors on the show, for potentially introducing people to this film. Second, I'm not very knowledgable about the subject matter explored in this film, but I felt like it's not brought up as often as it should be.

Some films are timeless, like Heathers and Natural Born Killers, and the themes they depict will never change. Some are dated, like bad kids movies that rely too heavily on pop-culture and slang from the year they're made. And some films, like Deliverance, have to be re-examined and re-interpreted every five to ten years to see how society has changed.

Deliverance is about a canoeing trip four friends take on the Chattooga River (or at least that's the river they filmed) that turns into short bout for survival when two locals decide to threaten and sexually assault two of the friends. What's unexpected about this film is the assault occurs and is handled as you would expect, especially for 1972. Ed (Jon Voight) is bound to a tree and forced to watch Bobby's (Ned Beatty) attack. The violence of the scene is nothing compared to the psychological trauma shown by the actors and imagined by the audience. However, we're given some insight when the four decide that the best way to handle things after killing the two locals in self-defense is to bury the bodies and never speak of what happened again. There's an instant belief and acceptance that the police would never buy their story, and while we've made significant progress since then, as far as the police being able to gather evidence and piece together an accurate narrative, that belief and stigma still lingers.

So, the question is can men who have suffered similar trauma talk about it more openly today? Well, forty-four years later, things have gotten better, but not everyone is aware of that. We talk a lot about feminism and equal representation for women in media because they're still fighting for what they deserve, but what about equal representation for every kind of man? Basically for all the progress that's been made, all the extremes have gotten more divided, and that's because not everyone is aware of a situation like what's depicted in Deliverance or that a piece of popular fiction even tried to educate people on male rape and the worst way to handle it. According to Tony Porter, who works with men on issues of, basically, what it means to be a man, the best way to tackle this issue is to teach men how to express themselves constructively after a traumatic experience. In the age of social justice, not every group that needs help is getting it, and it's partly because of a lack of popular representation in the media, so can we change that?

Getting back to the film itself, it's incredible. It's well-acted, beautifully shot, and the characters are, unfortunately because of what happens to them, a breath of fresh air from the usual stock characters who would normally be in a movie like this. They're incredibly well-rounded individuals, even though they basically all hold the same beliefs on what masculinity is. If you can put yourself through Deliverance, I highly recommend you watch it.

5/5
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Monday, December 21, 2015

Heavy Metal (1981)

Heavy Metal
Within ten minutes of watching it, I knew I had a lot to say about Heavy Metal. Mostly, questions about the production and the art style that I've seen before in other 70s-80s non-children's animated films. So, I pressed on and tried to learn more about the actual content of this movie.

Heavy Metal story of The Loc-Nar, a green glowing orb that has the power to corrupt, and destroy, the incorruptible across multiple galaxies and dimensions. In eight-ish stories, we see it exercise that power. It would take too much time and space to go over each story, plus it's better to go into the movie pretty blind. Don't worry, I believe I can still find things to talk about.

Heavy Metal's strength lies in it's art-style. It's something I've seen before in Ralph Bakshi movies, and I don't know if it has a definite name. Basically, the inkers are the stars of the show. Textures really pop, and not just in the background art.

Heavy Metal's stories overall cover everything from mixed marriages, to multiple apocalyptic societies, to an original take on cocaine-snorting that still puts The Wolf of Wall Street to shame. One of my favorite stories is the second major one, where a king or god similar to Watchmen's Adrian Veitd, except without the questionable, or any, morals and beliefs, asks someone to steal the Loc-Nar for him, so he can unlock its power through a ritualistic, human sacrifice. There are many references to past and future material that people can imply or infer about sections of this movie, and that's what I really love about it. It's a movie where you get out what you put into it, so, knowing and/or seeing a certain homage to Heavy Metal, that was made in 2008, can cloud that a little.

My two major issues with the film are that homage feels more like a parody now, although I completely understand why it does, and The Loc-Nar's powers. The Loc-Nar's powers are not clear and sometimes feel contradictory. It's kinda whatever the writers need it to be. On the one hand, it gives the writers freedom to tell their stories, but on the other, it leads to some characters doing some stupid things, and wrapping up some of the stories a little too quickly and neatly. A few seconds of explanation maybe could've fixed this, but really this is just nit-picking.

I hope to expand on this review on the future, but for now, if you love animated anthologies, you'll love this. Just one warning, for those who don't know about the homage, this is rated "R" for violence and nudity.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Horns (2013)

Horns
Alexandre Aja's film, based on a novel by Joe Hill, is an acquired taste. From Daniel Radcliffe's very good, but constraining, American accent, to figuring out the rules of Hill and Aja's universe, liking Horns initially seemed like an uphill battle. In the end though, with some manipulative, but circumstantial, moments I was sucked into the universe and was won over.

In Horns, Iggy Perrish (Radcliffe) is suspected of killing his longtime girlfriend, Merrin Williams (Juno Temple). Shortly after her death, he wakes up with horns poking out of his head. These horns, which are seamlessly attached to Radcliffe, may be a gift from the devil himself, but also may be the key to his salvation.

Horns is a mixed bag of good, bad, and great scenes. Absolutely none of them are terrible, but some probably could have been cut for time. Parts, of this two-hour movie, seem to drag during the middle and toward the end. The script has good, the dialogue is well-written, but some characters themselves seem less real than they should. Iggy's parents (James Remar and Kathleen Quinlan), are, at times, the standouts. On the other hand, some are very real, like local reporters who hound Iggy for an exclusive. As a fan of Heathers and Natural Born Killers, his treatment of them is one of my favorite moments in the film.

As the mystery unravels, the movie, as a whole, gets better. It really builds itself up for its final moments, but ultimately Horns is not the sum of its parts, even though many of those parts (great performances, effects, makeup, cinematography) aren't interchangeable. Horns can go from dark, to funny, to sad, successfully, at the drop of a hat. In the end, all I want to do now is see how much better the book is.

3.5/5

Update: The breakup scene is perfect. The fact that I recalled it when..."needed," even though I've only seen the movie like once, boosts Horns up.

3.75/5


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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Cabin in the Woods
The universe created for a movie is never really self-contained. We're just seeing one side, or with sequels a few sides, of a much larger story. What Drew Goddard and co-writer/producer Joss Whedon give us is the side of their story that's a little bit of everything, horror, comedy, a bit of existential drama, and bureaucracy. I wish I could know more about its inner-workings, but I'll have to settle for great acting, scares, laughs, and the best critique of the horror genre since the Scream series.

In Cabin in the Woods, five friends: Dana (Kristen Connolly),  Curt (Chris Hemsworth), Jules (Anna Hutchison), Marty (Fran Kranz), and Holden (Jesse Williams) vacation at, obviously, a Cabin in the Woods. When the discover a basement cellar with all kinds of old knick-knacks, stuff starts getting weird. As they get picked off one by one, a conspiracy as old as time is unraveled.

The strength in this movie comes from cutting between the conspiracy and the, at first, standard hacking-and-slashing. Two of our big masterminds, played by Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, give great, funny performances as they and their crew revel in everything they see happen to their victims. The strings they pull bring out the Scream-ness of the movie, as cliches are questioned, explained, or sometimes avoided. It's refreshing to watch after remembering that the only reasons I watched the last two Krueger movies is because those cliches were still relatively new to me.

Unfortunately, the conspiracy angle is where the problem is too, as I always wanted more from the mastermind side of things than what I saw. Some things like how the masterminds developed this world around a cabin Curt's heard of before is open to interpretation. Nothing too outlandish there, it just raises some questions.

To get my fix, I'll have to turn to fan fiction. Getting over that, what's left is a very enjoyable movie. The cast assembled is one of the best for a movie in this genre. Don't set your standards too low for the performances just because of the movie's title, since everyone here delivers. The writing and directing are fairly tight, as there's never a dull moment and jump scares are kept at an absolute minimum. They're not what this movie is about. And finally, the only thing left to say is that when it hits the fan, and the monsters are unleashed, this film will satisfy anyone who enjoys a drippy, red, horror movie set, and great creature design.

If you've read it here, you've probably read it everywhere else: this is not your typical horror movie. I was skeptical at first, mainly because I don't like the crap scared out of me, but I'm glad my sister badgered me into seeing this one.

4/5


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