Honey, I'm Home

Film: The Return
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

There’s almost always some value in looking at the true classics when it comes to making a story. There are a number of ways you can do this, of course. You can adapt a classic story into a new setting (like The Lion King is animated Hamlet) or you can play it straight (like Olivier’s Hamlet is Hamlet). With big, sweeping stories, a miniseries is more in keeping unless you go for a complete reimagining, like the Coens did with O Brother, Where Art Thou? You can also just do a piece of the story. That’s the case with The Return, a film that concerns itself with the end section of The Odyssey, the moment when Odysseus comes home after 20 years.

It's always been one of the weirder parts of the story. In the original Homeric epic, Odysseus and the Greeks have spent 10 years fighting the Battle of Troy. Odysseus comes up with the Trojan Horse ploy and ends the war and he and his men sail home to Ithaca, but because he angered Poseidon, his return took another 10 years. Naturally, Odysseus is presumed dead, and so a number of suitors arrive to Ithaca in the hopes of winning the hand of Penelope, Odysseus’ presumed widow. She delays them through various methods waiting for her husband’s return and seemingly oblivious to the abuse that the suitors are piling on her son, Telemachus.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Acts

Film: Sing Sing
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

Who is the best actor working today? There are a lot of good answers for this, some who have been working for years and some up and comers who are making names for themselves. Colman Domingo might be the easiest to overlook in some ways despite two Oscar nominations in as many years. With Rustin, he was the best thing in the film by far. With Sing Sing, he is an outstanding part of an outstanding whole.

Sing Sing is a prison movie in the sense that it takes place in prison, but it’s not the sort of prison movie that you are thinking of. This is no made-on-the-cheap “sexy women behind bars” film, nor is it the story of gang vengeance or learning to live on the inside. It’s not a film about an escape attempt. Sing Sing takes place in prison, but it is about the transformative power of art. It’s cliché to say that a movie about prison is actually about freedom, but it is—and about why art matters and should matter.

Captive Audience

Film: Heretic
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

Hugh Grant is in his villain era, and I am here for it. While he’s played a villain or two in the past (Bridget Jones comes to mind), lately he’s been doing more and more bad guy roles in films both comical and serious. He’s great in Paddington 2 and equally fun in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. It has to be fun to reinvent yourself in this way, to go from the rom-com boyfriend to various incarnations of evil. That’s exactly where we’re headed with Heretic.

Grant, in Heretic, is having a really good time. He’s enjoying the hell out of being someone truly, diabolically evil. We are going to have to deal with the religious implications of this, because Heretic does what many movies that have a religious bent do, and even some without much of a religious angle: it’s going to make sure that the evil being done is being done by someone who will eventually discover is a non-believer, because of course he is.

This is Why Some People Don't Want Kids

Film: Case 39
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

The idea of a story about an evil child is hardly new in the movie business. Orphan, The Other, The Good Son, The Bad Seed, The Omen and plenty more have been enough to establish something of a subgenre and given us a good number of expectations. There are basically two ways this movie can go. One is that we’re led to believe that there is an evil child who turns out to be the victim of evil adults. The second is that we’re led to believe that there is an evil child who is actually evil. The big turn in this movie is always when we find out which of the two movies we’re in. In Case 39, this happens pretty early.

We’re introduced to Emily (Renée Zellweger), a social worker who deals with children in troubled situations. Up to her eyeballs with 38 cases, her boss Wayne (Adrian Lester) assigns her a 39th case, that of Lillith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland), a 10-year-old girl whose grades have suddenly slipped and who shows some signs of abuse from her parents. Emily believes that bad things are going on in the house and when she receives a panicked call from Lillith, she heads to the house with her cop friend Mike (Ian McShane). What she discovers is Lillith’s parents trying to kill her in the oven.

Half a Story (Is Better than None)

Film: Wicked
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

I knew a little bit about Wicked before I watched it in the sense that I knew the very basics of the story. I haven’t seen the musical (I don’t do a lot of theater), and I haven’t read the book on which it is based but just through osmosis and being alive in a society, you learn a few things. So I was prepared for a lot of what was to come even if I didn’t know the details.

What I knew going in was that this is the story of the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. I also knew that the witch, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) was given that name specifically by the author of the original book because it would recall the name of the author of the Oz books, L. Frank Baum. I expected this to be a big, blustery, traditional Hollywood musical, which, of course, it is. I am honestly shocked that the controversies surrounding this were about Cynthia Erivo’s reaction to a fan poster and the fact that this ruined the marriages of Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater. I genuinely can’t believe that the reactionary bastards of the American right wing didn’t have an absolute conniption over how utterly “woke” this film is. I mean this in only the most positive way.

(Pitch)Fork You!

Film: Dark Night of the Scarecrow
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

A lot of American horror movies take place out in the middle of nowhere. There are naturally millions of Americans who live in the country, of course, but Americans are by and large urban and suburban people. I live in a farm community in large part—we’re also home to a large university, but this town made its bones in the agricultural world, and it’s still more or less suburbia. In the summer, you can find corn or soybeans within 15 minutes of my house in literally every direction, and yet I’d be hard-pressed to tell you I actually live in the sticks. The sticks can be scary, and that’s what we’re going to be exploiting in Dark Night of the Scarecrow.

This is very much a Southern Gothic tale of murder and revenge from beyond the grave. I have to say that, good or bad, that’s the kind of thing that I’m going to find interesting. There’s a long history of this kind of horror film. There’s something dangerous out there in the corn fields (or whatever they’re growing in this small Southern town), and it comes from murder most foul and prejudice.

Change the First Letter to "C"

Film: Trap
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I wonder sometimes how many chances someone should get. I’ve given M. Night Shyamalan a bunch of chances based on the strength of a couple of his movies. The Sixth Sense was great for the time, although I have since discovered that I like Stir of Echoes much more. He’s had a few good movies, though, but has also had some legendary stinkers. I went into Trap knowing that reviews were mixed (at best), but having at least respected both Split and Knock at the Cabin. And, truthfully, any good will he earned from those movies he has lost with this one.

The set-up for Trap is an interesting one until you actually discover what the set-up is. The tag line is “30,000 fans. 300 cops. 1 serial killer. No escape.” What that sounds like to me is that there’s going to be some sort of massive concert (check) where a serial killer is operating, suddenly presented with a huge number of possible victims (not so much). That’s a movie I would find interesting to watch. Trap is not that. Instead, what this movie includes is a massive concert where a serial killer is in attendance with his daughter and somehow the cops know he’s there and are working to catch him while he tries to get out undiscovered.