The Golden Mile

Josh: The Atlantic Ocean can suck it. I say this because I, in Florida, just watched a movie with Gabby, in London. We hit play on Edgar Wright's The World's End at the same time and chatted our way through it via Twitter. To give a little background, Gabby is in her twenties, not too far removed from high school age, whereas I am in my late 30s, not far from the age of present-day Gary King. As you can probably imagine, this makes this particular movie somewhat of a different beast for each of us.

Gabby, I've written and we've talked a bit about my relationship with this movie due to the way I often found myself clinging to the past. As someone who is a bit closer to high school and who wasn't terribly fond of her experiences at that age, what do you think of Gary King? Do you find yourself rooting for him or do you feel like he's pining for things that are better left behind?

Gabby: I think the film does a great job of setting Gary up. When you see him telling the story that kicks the film off to members of a group in a circle, I took that to mean that he was receiving some kind of therapy. That gave me an instant connection to him and I think it is something that really informs Simon Pegg's performance, which is a magnificent one as you can really get that sense of pain and vulnerability hidden beneath that indestructible exterior. I also believe that it is easy enough for people to say things are better left behind you, but that is incredibly hard in practice. Gary King has clung onto this idea of himself that has haunted him throughout his adult life, if he could have let go of that I'm sure he would have done. I know I would love to let go of my past, but I can't. You can't just snap your fingers and move on, and I think that is why he clings to the idea of going back so intensely. He has lived in the shadow of that vision of himself that he never lived up to. Now he wants to complete something that he believes will give him the chance to go back and relieve that sense of glory but also to top that figure of himself. That definitely gives him a depth and humanity, which is what I love in movie characters. It also makes him a character I can relate to.

How do you feel about Gary King and what is it about the nature in which Gary clings to the past makes this film so resonant for you?

Josh: I think you hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head talking about the pain behind his exterior. When I first moved down to Florida I clung to everything from my life in New York, the clothes, the music, anything that would make me feel like I hadn't left. Going back to visit a decade after I left I still wore my old black duster and such, going about like nothing had changed. Gary frightens me because it's almost like seeing myself as I might have been if I hadn't finally let go of the past. Pegg's performance is truly stunning, sad and funny all at the same time. What could have been a caricature feels lived-in and honest, a tremendously difficult feat to pull off.

You mentioned while we were watching it that you identified most strongly with Peter. What was it about Peter that you identify with, and do you feel it affects your feelings about the movie as a whole considering his fate?

Gabby: I think it is easy to see yourself going down a road like Gary's and I can identify with that pain inside him like you can, just in a different way. I think I can identify with Andy as well. Here comes Gary with the exterior of an idolised past, but Andy has to live with the all the pain Gary has tried to cage himself off from. Andy has had some huge knocks. I think Nick Frost puts in a fantastic performance here that shows the damage that did to Andy. I had an incident with someone who had an idolised view of the same place that made me incredibly miserable, it is very hard to be on the other side of that when your experience was so negative. When I saw this at the cinema, I had a few really strong emotional reactions and one of them was to Peter's speech after Shane asks him permission to take the stool. Shane had made Peter's life hell at school, and Shane didn't even recognise his existence. As well as showing that Shane has had no regrets with his previous behaviour, it also gives him the power. Shane has the same power over Peter in that moment that he did over him at school. Emotionally that puts Peter right back in the position he was, feeling victimised but also like he isn't even worthy of existing in this persons eyes. That really was a strong emotional punch for me. I was bullied to such an extent it still affects me today and I can't imagine how bad I would feel if I came face to face with one of the people that bullied me and they looked at me in a certain way or even looked right through me. That would really set me back. Even though I can relate to Peter's pain, my affection for this movie goes far beyond that, I love pretty much every beat in it!

Besides Gary, are there any characters that you can identify with?  We also discussed a moment of Gary's speech that really gets to you emotionally, can you share a bit more about that moment?

Josh: I wouldn't say I identify with him, exactly, but I definitely understand much of what Andy went through, feeling abandoned by the person who meant the most to him, as well as realizing that everything he thought that person was was based almost entirely on what was on the surface.

As for the moment that makes me break down every time, it's when Gary's mask finally slips and he admits that he doesn't want to be sober, that seeing the Golden Mile through to the bitter end (or lager end) is all he's got. To realize he's spent literally 20 years chasing the way he felt that one single night is heartbreaking, and says so much about the power of nostalgia over our lives.

I don't want this to go on too long, but I think it speaks to the power of these characters that throughout this exchange, we haven't talked explicitly about the sci-fi elements of the film. You and I spoke a bit about English pub culture and I'm curious to get your take on the body-snatching element of the movie as it relates to "Starbucking" and the homogenization of pubs where you are.

Gabby: I agree, that is a very powerful moment of the film. Talking of pub culture, it is very hard to strip a pub of its personality. Usually because of the age of the building. Even if a chain come in and buy it it still has been in that town for God knows how long. The wood smells a certain way and there is usually pictures up of the pub in the 1800s or even further back. Some have little plaques and portraits of people that lived there and it is hard to strip a place of that kind of vibe. There is this chain called Wetherspoons and they still keep the atmosphere, like a pub near where I am that used to be an old cinema, it has a magic movie vibe I just love. However, I feel there is a problem in the way coffee shops are going, two Starbucks in one street, that kind of thing. There was one Starbucks that was in a shop with real personalty and charm, of course that was the one of the three in town that had to close. I think we have to celebrate personalty! Otherwise what are we then? A place without culture or individuality, which leads to an easy parallel between that and body snatching. Mind you I live in a place where all you have to do is take a train, get out, wonder a little and you'll stumble upon something with personality. Hopefully more and more people will celebrate that and be able to have access things like that.

Josh: I can't even picture what a Starbucks with personality would look like. Around here the houses, the shops, the movie theaters, everything is very cookie-cutter. If the neighbors on either side of me turned out to be robots full of blue stuff, it would not be as surprising as one might think.

I think it's time to wrap this up, but I appreciate you taking the time to watch and discuss it with me. I say we meet up in 20 years and try to recapture it all over again. Let's Boo-Boo.

F This Movie Fest: The Aftermath

Twitter amazes me sometimes. Last night, just reading my regular feed, I saw a handful of film critics that I follow get into an argument. They began by sniping directly at each other, then arguing about what they each subtweeted about the others. It was ugly and I had no business reading it, yet there it was for all their thousands of followers to see. The complete lack of ugliness like that, public or otherwise, is a big part of why I find the F This Movie! community to be so tremendously appealing. At F This Movie! you never see that kind of thing. Earlier today, future Canadian Prime Minister Sol Ott said in a comment on one of today's postings, "even when we 'fight' it's the most civil thing ever" and he's absolutely right. That's exactly what I love about F This Movie! and the community they've built.

I was having a fairly lousy morning for lots of reasons, and then a few F-Heads got me entangled in a discussion about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull of all things, and it completely turned my day around. The vibe of F This Movie Fest (I'm lucky to be Jewish, because F This Movie Fest is totally my Christmas) was alive and well in that conversation, and I'm grateful for how incredibly friendly and approachable all of my fellow F-Heads are.

For the one person reading this who is unfamiliar with F This Movie Fest (hi mom!), it's a Twitter-based film festival where people from around the globe gather online to watch 5 movies together, and to say it's fun is to undersell it an unbelievable amount. It really feels like we're all together, a genuine shared experience, and the vibe is so intensely positive that the buzz stays with you for hours afterward.

This is all just a long-winded way of saying thank you. Thank you to Patrick Bromley, the man behind F This Movie! and thank you to every single person who tweeted, those who are involved behind the F-scenes and those who aren't. I tried to follow everyone who tweeted, but if I missed you let me know and I'll follow. It's a pleasure to be part of such a fun, passionate, positive group of people, and I'm proud to be part of it. Thank you, everybody.

#FHead4Life

Scary Movie Month, Day 31: The Final Chapter

Halloween

My favorite moment in Halloween isn't a death scene (though "can't I get your ghost, Bob?" is pretty great), it's not a scare, it's not even a line of dialogue, it's the spectacular grin that Loomis gives after he scares the kids off the porch of the Myers house. Donald Pleasence just looks so perfectly pleased and thoroughly full of himself at that moment that it gives me a similar grin every single time.

I can't even tell you how many times I've seen this movie (or how many times I've bought it thanks to a seemingly infinite number of "special edition" releases on various formats) but man, it still works. It's so good I even forgive it the ultimate movie sin of killing a dog on screen (RIP Lester).

From the spare, frightening score to that horrifyingly blank Shatner mask, everything still works. The fact that the focus is on tension rather than gore certainly helps, but it's still a staggering achievement for a movie to still feel tense after countless viewings.

This was my first time watching the new 35th anniversary blu-ray and it's absolutely stunning, easily the best I've ever seen the movie look, maybe the best it's ever looked. It's far from a flawless movie, there's plenty of camera shadows, a puff of Carpenter's cigarette smoke from offscreen, lots of lush greenery for Illinois in the fall, California plates on all the cars, etc....but none of that matters at all. The movie casts a spell and it's exquisitely paced, practically tightening around the audience until we can barely breathe.

Thanks to everyone who's been following my Scary Movie Month ramblings. I've enjoyed writing them and chatting with a bunch of people about all the scary movies I've been watching. 16 of the 31 movies were new-to-me, which is a happy accident and exactly the balance I was hoping for. The only thing I love more than horror movies is discovering new horror movies to love, and I can already tell that a few of those 16 will be entering my rotation. Hell, I already can't wait to watch Dead & Buried again. Of course I don't confine my horror watching to only Scary Movie Month, but 11 months is still gonna be an awfully long wait until next Scary Movie Month.

Maybe I'll watch Halloween II tomorrow so the wait won't seem quite so long. Then Halloween III the next day. Then....

Scary Movie Month, Day 30

The Slumber Party Massacre

Rita Mae Brown is the author of a series of "cozy" mystery novels featuring a sleuthing cat named Mrs. Murphy. Her credited co-author on the series is her own cat, Sneaky Pie Brown. There are, to date, 21 novels in the Mrs. Murphy series which means that somebody must be reading the things. The reason I bring this up is because it thoroughly fascinates me that the writer of the detecting cat novels popular with grandmas nationwide is the same person who wrote this movie, a thoroughly sleazy and gratuitous wallow in depravity.

I mean "wallow in depravity" in the nicest respect, by the way. The movie follows a group of 30-year-old teenage girls who have a beer-and-pot-fueled slumber party and are (of course) stalked by an escaped lunatic with a phallic power drill. Brown originally wrote the movie as a parody of the then-current slasher craze, but producer Roger Corman (who else?) decided to take her screenplay and have it shot as a straightforward slasher flick. It's still mostly funny, you certainly won't find much (if anything) in the way of tension or scares but there's plenty of gore and nudity to keep the audience captivated for the scant 77 minute runtime.

I like the tone of the movie. While it's not the comedy it was originally envisioned as, it's still got a pleasantly subversive streak running through it along with an infectious sense of fun. There are two sequels (natch) and I'm looking forward to checking those out soon, I hope they're as odd and fun as this one. It's notable that all three movies in the series were written and directed by women (different women each time, too) which is an extreme rarity in any genre, much less one so often dismissed as misogynistic as horror. It's a refreshing change in theory, but in practice it only seems to inform us that women can write and direct sleazy exploitation just as well as men.

Scary Movie Month, Day 29

Munster, Go Home!

Boy oh boy, technicolor does not do the Munsters any favors. The sickly blue-green hue of all their faces (other than Marilyn, of course) is ugly and off-putting to the point where I considered turning down the color on my TV but I eventually decided to watch it as it was intended. It's refreshing to enjoy their antics without that horrendously grating laugh track, though, so I guess it's a somewhat worthwhile trade.

For their only theatrical foray, the Munsters head overseas to jolly old England when Herman is notified that he's Lord of Munster Hall. Once there they of course run afoul of scheming relatives (including the great Terry-Thomas, always a treat to watch) and wind up having to clear the family name in a drag race (don't ask).

Fred Gwynne has always been my favorite of the main cast (and the "Car 54, Where Are You?" joke was worth watching the whole movie for) but I've read that he had had enough of playing Herman due to the uncomfortable make-up and costumes. He was forever identified with Herman Munster and it's a shame, he was so great in so many other roles ("Sometimes dead is bettah") but never really seemed to get his due. The rest of the family is fine, though it's a new Marilyn for some reason.

Despite the exotic location it all plays out as an extended episode of the sitcom, especially considering it recycles quite a few jokes from the run of the series. It's funny (and Herman's race car, Dragula, is kind of the best) but it's a trifle, and it's easy to see why the Munsters didn't find new life on the big screen after the series ended.

Scary Movie Month, Day 28

The Dark Half

George A. Romero adapting a Stephen King novel starring Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton, and the movie seems to have been all but forgotten. That seems unfair to me, but then again I'm an unabashed fan of all three principals.

Hutton stars as Thad Beaumont, an upper-class, intellectual writer who has been making a living secretly churning out violent pulp novels under the name George Stark. After a blackmailer threatens to expose him, Beaumont decides to go public and "kill" Stark. As it happens, that high-toned son of a bitch Stark doesn't want to go and the people who helped Beaumont "kill" him start to die for real. Has Beaumont cracked and started killing or has Stark somehow entered the real world?

The movie makes it clear what's going on pretty early on after playing it coy for a short while, and Hutton is great as both the buttoned-down Beaumont and his leather-clad, pompadoured, razor-slinging alter ego. There are plenty of terrific supporting performances too, from the likes of Amy Madigan, Michael Rooker, and Julie Harris, among others.

The Dark Half was the last novel King wrote before going completely sober, and the theme of dual identities certainly fits that but neither the book nor the movie get preachy or hit you over the head with any sort of message. In both cases, they're out to scare you first and make you consider duality later on, preferably with all the lights on.

Scary Movie Month, Day 27

Evil Dead 2

I don't know who it was that came up with the term "splatstick" to describe Sam Raimi's particular brand of mayhem, but it feels like the perfect fit. Even now over 25 years after its release Evil Dead 2 still feels energetic and fresh, and it's so unafraid to go over the top that it leaves the top many miles below itself somewhere in the first reel.

I tend to forget just how much of this movie is "The Bruce Campbell Show"...he spends a surprising amount of screentime completely alone, dealing with the diabolical forces released by the Book of the Dead. The fact that he manages to be as sympathetic as he is while going batshit crazy (and making a huge mess of that cabin) is a testament to how strong a presence Campbell is and how much fun he made Ash as a character despite the fact that we're two movies in and still know nothing about him other than his name, his resilience in the face of almost certain death, and his proclivity for antiquated expressions of satisfaction. Oh, and he has very little luck dating women who don't become possessed by ancient demons and try to swallow his soul. He's 0 for 2 on that count thus far.

There are 3 movies in the Evil Dead series (plus a remake that left me cold) and for my money, this is the best of the bunch. I enjoy all 3, but this one finds just the right balance between horror and comedy, and while its commitment to total insanity never wavers, it doesn't become numbing like so many other movies that try to attempt relentlessness do. It's an incredibly difficult balancing act, and Raimi makes it look as easy and effortless as cutting off your own demon-possessed hand with a chainsaw. I mean that as the highest possible compliment.