Review – Happy-Go-Lucky

This sort of movie isn’t my usual cup of tea, but every once in awhile I like to take a break and watch something silly and romantic. And this movie fit the need nicely. Sally Hawkins plays Poppy, a perpetually cheerful woman who weathers the ups and downs of her life – including a stolen bike and a psycho driving instructor – with quirky good humor. The plot flow (to the extent the movie even has a plot) is a bit uneven, but that actually works in its favor. If it had been entirely, relentlessly upbeat, it probably would have turned to treacle after awhile. As it was, this was a pleasant little picture that probably won’t win a lot of Oscars but nonetheless did a better job of pure entertainment than most movies with bigger stars and more lavish budgets. Worth seeing

Review – The Signal

The first couple of minutes made this look so much like another low-budget pile of torture porn that I almost shut it off. However, I’m glad I stuck with it. After they got the opening vignette out of their systems, the film-makers get down to a much better piece of indie horror. The thesis seems familiar at first: a mysterious signal transmitted by televisions and phones causes everyone to go insane. However, unlike King, Romero and other predecessors, this time around the victims don’t become mindless, blood-crazed zombies. These lunatics retain at least some capacity for thought and can even pass for normal when they have to. Of course that makes them far more dangerous than shambling corpses. The picture is a bit uneven, at least in part because the running time is divided between three different writer/directors who take slightly different approaches to the same set of characters. But overall this is a lot more innovative and interesting than the DVD box made it look like it would be. Worth seeing

At least say “trick or treat”

I suppose none of us ever really grows up to be what we thought we’d be when we were kids. Sometimes the best we can hope for is avoiding becoming the kinds of adults we hated when we were younger. Thus I was considerably upset when – after some recent self-examination – I discovered that I’d turned into one of the most loathsome creatures ever to haunt childhood’s otherwise happy hours.

I’ve turned into a Halloween Grinch.

When I was a kid I absolutely loved Oct. 31. Next to Christmas – of course nothing could compete with Christmas – Halloween was the best holiday ever. To this day I remember my costume from just about every year. The werewolf get-up complete with my first full-head latex mask and furry wolf paws my mom sewed for me. The invisible man costume with sunglasses – not the smartest idea for crossing streets after dark – and bandages that swiftly unraveled, leaving me more “burn victim” than “invisible.” Even the store-bought jobs had their own measure of magic.

When I got too old to trick-or-treat, I switched to distribution duty. Throughout high school, college, grad school, law school, and even the real world, I’ve tried where possible to station myself next to the door from dusk to 9:00 or so with a plastic jack-o-lantern full of candy. And that’s good candy, by the way. Not those vaguely-peanut-butter-flavored things that come in the orange and black wax paper wrappers and are universally considered nasty by everyone everywhere except maybe the folks who hand them out.

Indeed, one of the things I was really looking forward to as a new homeowner three years ago was really getting into the Halloween thing. One of my teachers in junior high used to convert his front yard into a mini-graveyard. He’d dress like Frankenstein and shamble after us down the walk once his wife had dished out the treats. I’m too short to pull of the Frankenstein thing, but the rest of it would have been really cool.

Early in October of our first year in our current neighborhood, we got our first hints that things might not work out exactly as planned. The neighborhood association’s newsletter said that kids in our area would trick-or-treat a day early in order to avoid some vague, undefined problem with the traditional day. It made me wonder what exactly I’d moved into.

Then I found out. I was out of the house until late that first All Hallow’s Eve, but I arrived home to a scene of utter pandemonium. Honestly, I hadn’t seen that large a crowd of cars parked on the streets and people milling around since I lived less than a block from the KU football stadium. Actually, except for the Nebraska games, even the football fans weren’t this numerous.

To be honest, the crowds and the chaos didn’t especially bother me. I admit that the tradition I recall from childhood was no more than three blocks – give or take – in any direction from home. That’s a far cry from kids coming in from so far away that they have to be driven into the neighborhood. But I’m willing to adapt to new customs. And it’s not like I can’t afford a few extra bags of treats for kids that pile out of cars with out-of-state tags.

However, I’m less flexible about a few other Halloween traditions. So this year I’m asking parents to help their children help me un-Grinch myself. If you have kids who are planning to trick-or-treat this year, please pass three things on to them for me.

First, 13 is the limit. The moment you can officially be called a teenager, trick-or-treating is officially over for you. Even if your birthday is Oct. 31, you’re still out. Sorry, but that’s the rule. Maybe it isn’t fair, but if you’re 13 then you’re old enough to understand that life isn’t always fair. You’re also old enough to leave the candy for the kids.

Second, you must wear a costume. Michael Vick is scary. You in a Michael Vick jersey ain’t. I’m not asking for much. Don a ratty old coat and beat-up hat and go as a hobo. Throw on overalls, blow a buck on a straw hat, and go as a hillbilly. Put your clothes on backwards and go as Mr. Crazy Backwards Man. All I’m looking for here is some effort.

Even if you can’t manage either of the first two simple requests, please at least try to master this third one. Spend 20 minutes or so practicing it in the bathroom mirror if you have to. Two simple phrases. The first is “trick or treat.” The second is “thank you.” No magic words, no magic.

And if Halloween isn’t about magic, what is it about?

Most of this entry was originally printed as a column in the Kansas City Kansan.

Review – The End of St. Petersburg

This film – Pudovkin’s take on the October Revolution – would make an interesting companion piece to Eisenstein’s October, assuming one could endure two over-edited Soviet silent movies in one sitting. My favorite part about this picture was that it was less grandiose than most other cinema treatments of the Russian Revolution (October, Doctor Zhivago and Reds in particular). The plot focuses on a peasant who comes to the city seeking work only to find himself caught up in the turmoil of the times. Before the end, he’s suffered just about every ill experienced by the lower classes: starvation, homelessness, labor riots, military service in World War One, and so on. Though the production is plagued with Soviet propaganda clichés such as the Honest Workers versus the Greedy Capitalists, it still manages at least a little genuine human interest. Mildly amusing

Review – Earth

This may be a classic of Soviet propaganda film-making from the late silent era, but beyond that it’s mostly just weird. The bare bones of a plot is about a collective farming champion murdered by a selfish landowner. Throw in an atheist funeral, a grieving wife thrashing around naked, some powerful tractor obsession, and a motivational speech about the glories of Communist aircraft, and you’ve got some idea of just how odd this picture is. So while it’s a brilliant piece of cinema as graphic art, it leaves something to be desired in the talking-the-peasants-into-giving-up-their-land department. Mildly amusing

Review – The Curse of the Living Corpse

This crappy old horror movie is a lesson in how awkward foreshadowing can ruin a production. Assemble a gaggle of greedy relatives at the reading of a millionaire’s will. The will states that the relatives have to take special precautions to make sure the ol’ guy isn’t buried alive. If they fail to perform their duties, he’s going to kill them using whatever they fear most (fire, drowning, etc.). So right away the audience knows 1. the guy was buried alive, and 2. he’s going to kill them using whatever they fear most. The only remedy for the ensuing tedium is to pull a twist out of left field at the end of the picture, a cure that’s almost worse than the disease itself. This experience is noteworthy as an early appearance by a very young Roy Scheider and not much else. See if desperate

Review – The Mysterious Doctor

For a movie that barely makes a 60 minute running time, this sure does pack a lot of weirdness into a small amount of space. In the first half of the 1940s, even horror movies often ended up working for the war effort in some way. So here tin miners in England have been frightened away from their jobs by a headless phantom, costing the motherland access to a badly-needed resource. The whodunit that ensues is bound to involve a Nazi saboteur, but I admit I was disappointed when the culprit turned out to be a life-long limey with distant German ancestors. The once-a-kraut-always-a-kraut racism was an unwelcome element from this distant time and place in film history. Mildly amusing