Film review: The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

This was a film on a list of "Hidden Gem" movies on Netflix and I remember hearing it was effectively creepy when it came out.  Plus it's by the director of the excellent Trollhunter, which I thoroughly recommend.  But this one I do not recommend.  It starts well enough: cops investigating a house full of people who seem to have gone crazy and killed each other, and in the basement, half buried in the dirt floor, a Jane Doe.  She gets taken to the local coroner, a father-son team, the father played by the always-reliable Brian Cox.  The son is just on the way out with his girlfriend, but feels guilty leaving his dad to work alone so late at night, and so goes back into the cavernous old coroner's building, and The Night From Hell begins.  And indeed the first half (at least) manages to be genuinely creepy and to ratchet up the tension, as weird things keep happening as they find out more and more disturbing things about their corpse (tongue cut out, swallowed her own tooth wrapped in some sackcloth covered with strange writing, lungs like those of someone who died in a fire, scars on her internal organs but no blemish on her skin).  Then things really go crazy: suddenly the three corpses that were stored in the morgue disappear, and in the corridor they hear a bell, knowing that one of the corpses had a bell tied to its toe.  But sadly, the movie seriously loses its way, to the extent that we felt bad at having wasted over an hour of our lives watching it.  Go back to Troll movies, Mr. Director!  "Hidden Gem" my arse.

New shoe picture for the blog heading?

Now we all wear Chelsea Boots.  Thomas is the only one to buck the Doc Marten trend:

Where maple syrup comes from

At For-Mar, yesterday:

How we live now

...is actually not that different from usual.  I still go into the office.  We can shop whenever we want, go for walks whenever we want.  And the streets are empty - it's great.  That said, our usual walking places are more full than usual, of families getting outside BEFORE THEY KILL EACH OTHER.

 Plenty of parking at the office.

 Half a melon.  Why?

 More parking.

 Thomas deigns to drink the coffee I bought him.

 Surgical gloves scattered in the parking lot of Meijer.  Classy.

 Thomas is training the chickens to nag for food constantly so that they will love him.

 Frederick and I go for a trot round a lake today.

 The wind picked up, but it was still in the low 50s.

A concession to the coronavirus: yellow warning tape round the swings.

Film review: The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

Want to watch a slightly-chubby Orson Welles fall for Rita Hayworth while talking in a blarney-drenched cod-Irish accent?  Have I got the film for you!  A bit of an oddity, it starts like a sort of romance film, switches into Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on a yacht and then turns into a regular film noir, with a slightly-comedic courtroom scene thrown in.  And it wraps it up with a wonderfully inventive ending shootout in a funhouse, complete with multiple mirrors.

Where to start? Well, in what appears to be Central Park, where Welles's Michael "Black Irish" O'Hara first spies Hayworth's Elsa Bannister taking a ride in a horse-drawn buggy. He is smitten enough to give her his last cigarette.  She reveals that she doesn't smoke, but wraps it in her hankie and puts it in her handbag anyway.  Seems like he successfully corrupts her, though:

Or does he?  She's a slippery customer.  She's been as many places (hence the title) as he has, and he's a professional sailor.  Turns out she's married, too, which she only reveals after he's saved her from a gang of thugs another day.  (Was it staged, you will wonder later on.)  He is heartbroken and ready to return to sea, when her husband, Arthur (a famous trial lawyer, who got himself off a murder rap for killing his last wife) seeks him out to persuade him to come on a sailing trip with them.  This is where the marital sniping (the flames of which are fanned by his law partner, the outrageous and weird George Grisby (I am intrigued to see anything else Glenn Anders is in).  As the nightmare trip draws to a close, Grisby approaches O'Hara, whom he knows has killed in the Spanish Civil War, with a proposition: kill someone for $5000.  Who, wonders O'Hara. 

"Me" reveals Grisby.  Of course, this is a ploy: he reveals that he is (already?  in 1947?) scared of bombs falling on San Francisco (where the law firm is based) and wants to fake his death to get an insurance payout so he can live out his days on a remote Pacific Island.  All (?) Michael has to do is be seen with a gun at the wharf where George disappears, and sign a confession that he accidentally shot Grisby.  But with no corpse, he cannot be tried.  Of course it's a trick, and Grisby intends to frame Michael, but there will be crosses and double crosses to come.  Michael does indeed end up on trial, with Arthur "defending" him (not exactly enthusiastically, since he knows that Michael and his wife are sweet on each other).  Rather preposterously, Michael escapes from the courthouse to hide out in Chinatown, where the Chinese-speaking Elsa tracks him down, still groggy with the pills he had to swallow as part of his escape.  From there, it's a short step to the final shootout.

Strange, but memorable, with some great lines and wonderful images.  Check it out!

Film review: A Quiet Place (2018)

This is one of those films that keeps you entirely in its grip while you're watching it, but falls apart rather as soon as you give it some thought.  The idea is that Earth has been invaded by carnivorous aliens (that look like giant skinned bats with heads like the Demogorgon thingie from Stranger Things) whose only sense seems to be hearing.  The film is about a single family living in a time just over a year after the invasion, where they have carved out a life for themselves just doing things really quietly, living in an idyllic little compound out in what looks like the woods of New England (with a small town within walking distance, that they can raid for supplies (like medicine, at the beginning of the film) when they need them).  This family is almost nauseatingly self-sufficient.  He's a handyman who can make anything, although he's struggling a bit perfecting a cochlear implant replacement for their daughter (eldest of three, or, for most of the film, two, and then three again).  She seems to provide the entire family with the most wonderful knitwear outside of a catalogue.  It's the hippy dream, albeit with killer monsters lurking in the undergrowth.  As I said, the film opens with them raiding the nearby town for medicine for their middle child, a boy, who is sick.  Their youngest boy, who is about 4, becomes enamored of a toy space shuttle, which the father says (well, signs - the advantage of having a deaf child is that they all know sign language) he can't have because it makes noises.  The daughter, though, gives him it sans batteries.  But he then pockets the batteries, and as they're walking back to their compound (on bare feet, despite it being obviously autumn, on a sand path they've constructed) in single file, with him at the rear, he re-inserts them and it goes off.

 Bye bye 4-year-old.  This is a bit of a gut punch for the opening of a movie (usually kids are off the menu, even in horror films, which is why Jaws is so upsetting), and of course it sets of a dynamic where the daughter blames herself and thinks that the father hates her for it.  We then cut to a lot later where the mother is heavily pregnant (which in itself is super annoying.  WHO THE FUCK WOULD GET PREGNANT WHEN THERE ARE KILLER MONSTERS AROUND, WHO WILL KILL ANYTHING THAT MAKES A SOUND?  And you're not telling me Plan B wasn't available from the same drug store they raid at the beginning?  There's a hint the family might be super religious, because they say grace at the beginning of their (sumptuous) dinner (they maintain better dinner decorum in an apocalypse than we have ever managed with our kids), but still.)  The father decides that it's time to take the surviving son (who is understandably super-spooked) off to the fish traps in the river, leaving the girl behind to "take care" of her mother.  She doesn't want to, and sneaks off shortly to leave the (presumably retrieved) space shuttle toy (which has been de-noisified) at the little memorial to the eaten son.  Meanwhile (betcha didn't see that coming!) the mother's water breaks early, she steps on a nail, and a monster gets in the house.  From that point on it's pretty much constant tension.  So what's the problem?  Well, like the superior, but also hole-filled It Follows, all sorts of questions present themselves.  Why don't they move near a giant waterfall (like, you know, Niagara) as it's made clear you can make noise when you're by the river because it drowns you out.  Surely, though, the aliens can do more than just hear.  How do they get around?  They make clicking noises as if they echo-locate, so shouldn't they be able to detect movement?  Why can't they smell?  It takes the girl forever to work out an obvious weakness with these creatures, which the audience realizes instantly (and the army should've a long time ago) so how were they able to conquer the world?  Also, couldn't everyone just hide in soundproofed recording studios?  And, although the word "armored" is written on the father's brainstorming whiteboard, turns out a shotgun to the face is pretty effective, so, again, you'd think the army might've had some success.

Overall: it's sort of a cross between Pitch Black and I Am Legend, only more PG-13 (the most upsetting gore is the mother stepping on a nail).  The contrast between this and the last film we watched is instructive: both are artificial, of course, but I find I think about and cared about the archetypes of A Girl Walks Home than the family I'm practically bludgeoned into caring about in this film.  And while this one was universally praised as tautly constructed ("not an ounce of fat on it") and indeed, does keep you gripped very successfully, while Girl is just a series of vignettes strung together, I found myself absorbed by that world more completely.  Perhaps it's that the family in this is so damn saintly.  Yes, there's minor teenage rebellion on the part of the daughter, but the father is practically Jesus (in many respects), and I like my characters under pressure to crack a little.  But I'll still check out the sequel - out soon!

Coronavirus time

So, we're officially housebound except for... well, lots of things, really.  We're still allowed to go for walks, and go to the supermarket, and that's about all we did anyway.  But here are some sights of this strange time:

 March 19th

March 22nd

Today.  Lost in the coronavirus madness is the oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia that has driven gas prices down to levels I haven't seen in the 21st century.  That's dollars per gallon, remember, British readers.
Meanwhile, this was a week ago:

And this was today:

But at least the weather's turning nice...

Film review: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Watched this one because it's leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of March.  What to say about it?  It's certainly unique.  It's shot like a cross between Night of the Hunter and Cat People (which is very high praise, as both are masterpieces), which is to say that the blacks are all velvety and the shadows endless, but has the episodic feel of an early Jim Jarmusch (e.g. Stranger Than Paradise).  It's in Persian, and most of the characters (all but very minor bit players) are Iranian, but it looks like somewhere in the Valley, and apart from the sort of Chador-cowl that the titular main character wears when she's out and about (although, she wears it like a superhero would wear her cape), nobody's dress looks especially Iranian.  (But then, what do I know?)  Certainly the main male character, Arash, who is unfeasibly beautiful,

dresses like an extra from The Wild One.

Plus, of course, the main character is a vampire, and there is some extremely Morricone-ish music, along with a lot of pop music (and Twin Peaks-esque drawn-out scenes of characters putting on music and swaying gently to it for what seems like hours).  So definitely style coming out of its ears.  But is it nothing but style?  No: it's oddly moving.  Like Let the Right One In, the central relationship is doomed but still romantic.  And, given how silly this could come off as, everybody in it is very good.  The main actor (simply billed as "the girl") has an astonishing face with the most soulful eyes you've ever seen

(which is good, because they do most of the talking).  She also manages to be very scary when she needs to - and there are a couple of scenes that remind one of the Bus Stop scene in Cat People in a good way.  And there's a beautiful scene of her skateboarding down an empty street at night with her cape flowing out behind her that has no right to work as well as it does.  All in all: I recommend it highly.  There are some who will find its pace glacial.  But if you have any romance in your soul you will nor be one of them.  I just wish it had been around when I was a teenager, it would probably have been my favorite movie.  It certainly should be the date movie for every young Goth.

This probably won't mean much to most people, but in scenes like the one above, where she just appears as a sinister shape in the near distance, she reminded me of The Groke, who has a similar sad but sinister affect.

Film review: Knives Out (2019)

We've been re-watching (for Jami) and just watching (for me) the final season of Breaking Bad, so, as you'll understand if you've seen it, we wanted some light relief.  And a funny update on the 70's Agatha Christie adaptations (like the Murder on the Orient Express we watched a while back) starring James Bond doing a ridiculous Southern (Louisiana?) accent seemed just the ticket.

And indeed it was!  This is a very entertaining romp, with some wild implausibilities (a character who literally vomits if she doesn't tell the truth) and a thoroughly rotten rich family with people like Jamie Leigh Curtis having a wild time playing them, and Christopher Plummer as the family patriarch whose apparent suicide triggers the whole thing.  Plummer plays Harlan Thrombey, a self-made millionaire Christie-esque thriller-writer, who has decided that his family's dependence on his millions (his son Walt runs the publishing company set up just to publish Harlan's books, he set his daughter (Jamie Leigh Curtis) up in business, he supports at least two grandchildren's education, one of whom (Chris Evans in a thoroughly un-Captain America performance)

is a no-good playboy who's never had a job in his life) has harmed them terribly and, on the night they all gather for his 85th birthday (Plummer is actually 90!) he cuts each of them off in separate meetings, but does not announce this to the whole group (thus giving each of them a motive to bump him off before he does).  But his real cause of death is revealed to us to be a cover-up (by Harlan himself) for a fatal mistake by his loyal immigrant nurse (the excellent Anna de Armas, who is actually Cuban, one of the few nationalities that (in a running joke) the Thrombeys don't say she has) (another running joke is that several of them approach her individually and tell her that they were in favor of inviting her to the funeral but were outvoted) who mixes up his morphine with his other medicine and gives him a massive dose of the former (that would be the regular dose of the latter).  Harlan gives her advice of how to make it look like she wasn't there at the time of his death and then slits his own throat (with one of his large collection of knives).  Me telling you this is not really a spoiler, either, as this happens fairly early in the film.  She is the aforementioned regurgitative falsehood-avoider, and is understandably freaked out when Daniel Craig's drawling detective (Benoit Blanc) recruits her to be Watson to his Holmes. 

Things are of course complicated enormously when it emerges that Harlan left everything to her.  There are lots of satisfying occasions when hints at later developments are given in apparently throwaway lines, so you can feel clever if you remember them.  And unlike most murder films today (he said, making him sound like an old fogey) it's not unpleasantly gory.  In fact, apart from Harlan, there's only one other death.  Check it out - it's lots of fun - and actually better than the 70s films it's an homage to (right down the font, which looks like the kind used in the 70s on Christie paperback reprints).

New Mailbox!

After about 18 years it was time for a new one, as the door fell off the old one a while ago and our letters got all snowy this year.

Film review: 3:10 to Yuma (1957)

This is an interesting little movie.  It's based on a story by Elmore Leonard (who wrote a lot of Westerns before switching to the thrillers he's better known for now) and Glenn Ford is the bad guy.  The good guy is Van Heflin, who is, to be blunt, funny-looking.  The basic idea is that Van Heflin, a poor farmer suffering through a drought, takes up the offer to escort Glenn Ford's outlaw leader (who was caught because he dallied in town to have a quickie with the sexy barmaid)

to a small town to catch the titular train to a town with a jail.  It's rather a talkie Western, with Glenn Ford (whom I've never really liked as a hero, but who works pretty well as the devious villain (with a soft center)) getting a lot of good lines as he wheedles and manipulates Van Heflin's stoic and decent farmer, who is only doing this to get $200 to pay for water rights so his cattle do not die of thirst.  Meanwhile Ford's gang is looking for him to spring him before he gets on the train.  Initially they are put off the trail by a switcheroo that the (pathetically small and old) posse does, where Ford is removed from a stagecoach and replaced by a decoy, but it doesn't take long for them to locate Van Heflin, his assistant (the doomed comic-relief town drunk, played by another one of those "where have I seen him before" actors, and the owner of the stagecoach that Glenn Ford's gang robs at the beginning of the film (who is putting up the $200). 

(Ford also shoots both his own man and the stagecoach driver dead, so he's not exactly Alias Smith and Jones.)  A solid portion of the movie is spent with our heroes and the villain cooped up in a hotel waiting for the train.  (As Leonard said in an interview that came with the movie on Criterion Channel, a friend said that the movie was basically "3 hours and ten minutes past High Noon".)  The tension is effectively ramped up (as the town drunk meets a grisly fate and every recently-recruited townsperson suddenly decides he has important things to do elsewhere, and to complicate matter, Van Heflin's wife comes into town looking for him).  So the climax (as seen in the poster) is Van Heflin trying to get to the train through all of Ford's gang members. 

This leads to a rather unexpected denouement, that I'm not sure I like but that I won't give away.  (Apparently the 2007 remake is even more extreme.)  Oh, and one important extra point: it has a cracking theme song!

Coronavirus hits home

So: yesterday the first two cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus were reported in Michigan, and today the shit hit the fan.  First Michigan State canceled face-to-face classes for the rest of the semester, and very quickly every other university followed suit, including, finally, U-M.  Right now Thomas is still allowed to stay in his Law School Dorms (probably because the University of Dayton kicked everyone out of their college residences with no warning and the students rioted) but Jami's law school classes are all online, and I have to switch three classes to online.  I was about to give an exam tomorrow, and I'm going to try to sneak round the restrictions (partly because my class is a high school class, and they haven't closed yet, so I'm not going to be forcing them into proximity that they wouldn't be anyway) by taking it in the currently-still-open university library.  Craziness abounds!
[Update: they "talked to their parents" who "weren't comfortable" with me "going against Ann Arbor's directions" so I need a new plan.  Meanwhile Tom Hanks has reported that he's tested positive for the virus, Trump has announced that flights from Europe (except the UK - which is obviously because he wants that sweet post-Brexit trade deal) and the NBA has canceled their season!  Things are escalating fast...]

Last snowy walks for a while?

As Emily is still off on maternity leave, this leaves plenty of days to fill by taking scenic walks, so I've been researching new ones. For example, this one is "Indian Springs Metropark":

Whereas this one is Holly Recreation Area:

I would love to rent out one of these cabins - they're pretty remote.

Today the temperatures are touching 60, so we may not see much snow and ice on our next scenic stroll.