Worth Mentioning - Your Life Will Surely Change

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

A monster apocalypse, '60s music, dark history, and Thanksgiving thrills.

LOVE AND MONSTERS (2020)

Love and Monsters (which was originally announced under the title Monster Problems) was supposed to get a wide theatrical release, but since that release was scheduled to happen in 2020, of course it ended up going to VOD instead. After watching Love and Monsters at home, I agree with blog contributor Priscilla - this is a movie I would have been glad to watch in a theatre, if only this were a normal year.

Directed by Michael Matthews from a screenplay by Matthew Robinson and Brian Duffield (who also crafted the story and wrote the very cool Netflix movie The Babysitter), the film is set seven years after an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth was blasted out of the sky by rockets. Unfortunately, the chemicals from those rockets then rained down on the planet and caused all of the cold-blooded animals to mutate and grow extremely large... and those creatures then started wiping out the human race. 95% of the human population was lost in the first year. Now the survivors stay hidden in underground bunkers, bomb shelters, etc. Among the survivors is Joel (Dylan O'Brien), an awkward young man who was on a date with his girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick) when the world began to fall apart.

Joel and Aimee were separated, Joel's family was killed, and for the last seven years he has been living in an underground bunker with a bunch of random people. While others go to the surface and fight off monsters so they can make supply runs, Joel is ordered to stay inside and work as the bunker chef, because he gets too scared to be of any use outside the bunker. After years of loneliness, Joel uses the bunker radio to contact other shelters - and eventually he discovers that Aimee is still alive and safe in Colony 3022. Which happens to be 85 miles from the bunker Joel lives in.

Desperate to see Aimee again, Joel goes to the surface and sets out on a solo journey to Colony 3022 for what he imagines will be a joyous reunion with his lost love. Quite a brave move for someone considered to be too scared for supply runs. Crossing 85 miles of post-apocalyptic wasteland on foot proves to be a treacherous journey, and over the course of the film Joel encounters giant, deadly versions of frogs, insects, crabs, snails, and worms... including a Queen worm that's reminiscent of the Graboids from the Tremors franchise. But it's not all bad, because Joel also makes friends along the way, like a smart dog called Boy and pair of fellow survivors who are heading toward a different colony. Those survivors, Clyde (Michael Rooker) and 8-year-old Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt) really liven up the film with their presence; Love and Monsters is really good when Clyde and Minnow aren't in it, but they bring a whole different energy to it when they are there. They're only in about 20 minutes of the 109 minute running time, but they make a great impression on both the viewer and Joel. They teach him how to handle the apocalypse, and how to shoot a crossbow.

Love and Monsters has a light, amusing, family friendly tone, and could definitely work as a kid's first creature feature. The monsters are threatening, but not too scary, and Joel even finds out (thanks to Clyde and Minnow) that some of them are even nice. You can see it in their eyes.

I love a mixture of creatures and comedy, and what I loved about this movie most of all is the amount of heart it has. It may be the end of the world, but it's all about hope, love, and family - not necessarily blood family, but the people you choose to have around you in good times and bad. It really feels like the filmmakers drew inspiration from Stand by Me, another movie about a walk across the countryside that mixed darker elements with a lot of heart. It doesn't seem like they wanted to hide the Stand by Me influence, either. They even went so far as to have the song "Stand by Me" on the soundtrack (for a pleasant moment involving a robot and floating things called sky jellies), and a scene where Joel gets covered in leeches.

Joel is a good guy we quickly come to care for, the film has a nice sense of humor, the creatures are cool, and some moments are genuinely touching. I had a great time watching Love and Monsters.

THAT THING YOU DO! (1996)

Bored while making the press rounds, Tom Hanks decided to spend his downtime writing a screenplay that was about a fictional 1960s rock band, but drew inspiration from notable events the history of The Beatles and the madness of Beatlemania. That screenplay ended up becoming Hanks' feature writing and directorial debut, That Thing You Do!, and I remember there was a lot of hype for this movie when it was coming out. Entertainment journalists were saying Hanks had discovered "the new Tom Hanks" by casting Tom Everett Scott in the lead role, and even though Charlize Theron has a small role as the girlfriend of Scott's character (who dumps him for her dentist early on), this was her breakthrough year. That Thing You Do! wasn't a hit, it only made a little more than its budget at the box office, but this did get a lot of positive attention, and it's the sort of movie that could be described as "nice". It's a "nice little movie".

Set in 1964, the film stars Scott as Guy Patterson, a jazz fan who works in his family's appliance store during the day and practices his drumming after the store closes. Jimmy (Johnathon Schaech), Lenny (Steve Zahn), the unnamed bass player (Ethan Embry), and Chad (Giovanni Ribisi) are the members of a local band that's struggling to figure out what their name should be, and eventually they'll land on "The Oneders" - which is supposed to be pronounced like "The Wonders", but rarely is. After drummer Chad breaks his arm, the band has to ask their acquaintance Guy to replace him for a show... but when Guy speeds up their song "That Thing You Do" during the show, it suddenly becomes a local hit. They make a record, they get radio play, their song gets attention from managers. Soon a professional named Mr. White (Hanks himself) is helping The Oneders (quickly renamed The Wonders) a national sensation.

The Wonders go on tour, with Jimmy's girlfriend Faye (Liv Tyler) coming along, and the film follows their meteoric rise every step of the way, showing how Mr. White shapes their images and gets them gigs, and showing that the personal situations of the band members make it unlikely that The Wonders are going to have long-term success. Jimmy is a jerk, T.B. Player has joined the Marines, Guy is in love with Faye... It looks like they're doomed, but it's fun to watch the story play out.

Scott didn't become the next Tom Hanks, An American Werewolf in Paris seemed to crush those expectations the very next year, but he did a great job in the role of Guy, and has worked steadily through the decades since. All of the cast members did top-notch work in the roles, Zahn doing his best to steal the show with his character's irreverent behavior. I haven't watched the extended version of That Thing You Do!, which is a whopping 40 minutes longer, but I can say that the 108 minute theatrical cut holds up as a good movie that's worth revisiting, if you've seen it already, or worth checking out for the first time if you haven't gotten to it yet.

Turns out Tom Hanks isn't just a great actor, he's really good at writing and directing as well.

PLAYHOUSE (2020)

The feature writing and directorial debut of Fionn and Toby Watts (a.k.a. The Watts Brothers), the supernatural horror film Playhouse is mildly intriguing throughout, but never manages to reach the level of being fully engaging, and its slow burn approach may begin to test the viewer's patience when half of the 87 minute running time has gone by and not very much has happened. If you stick around until the ending, well... there's also not a whole lot in the way of payoff, but at least you get some interesting drama along the way.

The story the Watts crafted is set entirely in and around a very cool location, a castle in the Scottish countryside that has a dark history involving a young boy being bricked up inside a wall and left to starve to death, a woman taking a tumble down a flight of stairs, a man jumping to his death from the highest window, and a deal with the devil. A playwright known for working in the horror genre moves into the castle with the intention of writing a play about the castle's history, which will then be performed for patrons as they're given a tour of the place - they'll be able to see this tragic story brought to life in the very rooms where the terrible things took place. Of course, the presence of the playwright stirs up the spirits of the people he's writing about, and he undergoes a personality change. It seems like he's becoming the man who killed that boy many decades ago. Elements of this story were pretty obviously inspired by THE SHINING, and it doesn't seem like the Watts were trying to hide that at all. They gave the playwright a name that's quite close to Jack Torrance - this character, played by William Holstead, is named Jack Travis.

Jack has moved into the castle with his teenage daughter Bee (Grace Courtney), and this pair looks so close in age that I was assuming they were brother and sister right up until the moment when Bee first calls Jack "dad". Don't worry, the fact that Holstead and Courtney look more like siblings than father and daughter isn't a case of odd casting, Jack and Bee's age difference is addressed, it's an issue for the characters. Much of the first half of the film centers on Bee; her troubles with her father, her inability to fit in with her classmates, her disapproval of what Jack is doing in the castle. It seems like Bee is the main character, but then the Watts find someone else to shift focus to. You could say they lifted a bit from the Psycho playbook in addition to taking inspiration from The Shining.

The protagonist here is actually Jenny Andrews (Helen Mackay), a young woman who lives in a nearby house with her shiftless husband Callum (James Rottger). Jenny's family history is tied in with the history of the castle, and when things get weird around Jack and Bee it's Jenny who steps up to get to the bottom of what's going on. She seems like she's just going to be a supporting character when she first arrives, one that something bad is probably going to happen to, but she turns out to be a decent heroine.

Playhouse works best if you can buy into the drama between the characters and not worry too much about the supernatural happenings. Even on the occasions when there is some kind of flashy paranormal activity, it's not very impressive. Horror fans have seen all of this before, and we've seen it in better, more exciting movies. But the actors do well with the material they were given and manage to carry the film to its underwhelming conclusion.

The best scenes here don't have anything to do with the supernatural, they're just moments where characters talk to each other. My favorite was when an acquaintance of Bee's tells the story of the castle in a way that's about as Scottish as the first name of the actress who plays the character, Eilidh McLaughlin.

The Playhouse review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

INTENSITY (1997)

When I was growing up, there were two authors whose novels could be found around my household more than any others', courtesy of my parents. One was Stephen King, and I ended up diving deep into the works of King myself, I have read the majority of his novels and short stories. The other author who was exceptionally popular was Dean Koontz, and so far I've only read a couple Koontz books - one of them being Intensity, which ended up being turned into a rather harrowing two-part mini-series in 1997.

The thrills start early on in this two-parter and rarely let up over the course of the three hour total running time. Intensity stars Molly Parker as Chyna Shepherd, a young woman with a very dark past that included watching her mom's alcoholic beau murder people right in front of her when she was a child. It's Thanksgiving and Chyna's college friend Laura Templeton (Deanna Milligan) has invited her to spend the holiday with the Templeton family. Accepting that invitation only results in Chyna seeing more people get murdered in front of her, because the Templeton family gets wiped out by a serial killer who rolls up in an RV and breaks into their home in the middle of the night.

Thinking the killer is abducting Laura, Chyna is able to sneak into his RV, and by the time she realizes Laura is dead and the killer is taking her corpse with him for some reason, the RV is on the road and Chyna is stuck with the guy. Played by John C. McGinley, the killer is named Edgler Foreman Vess, and Chyna's nightmarish experience with him lasts through a road trip (Piper Laurie and Blu Mankuma show up thanks to what happens on the road), a gas station pit stop (My Bloody Valentine's Alf Humphreys works there), and - for the entire second half of this two-parter - a visit to Vess's own home, where Chyna discovers that he does have a live captive (Tori Paul as Ariel Delane) after all. While Chyna deals with this hostage-taking murderer, she's also plagued with flashbacks to her twisted childhood. That's an aspect I don't feel was completely necessary, writer Stephen Tolkin could have dropped it when scripting the adaptation and I don't think it would miss much aside from extra bad feelings, but it does give Chyna more to overcome, and more reason to care about Vess's captive.

Directed by Yves Simoneau, Intensity is really well made and worth checking out if you can get your hands on it. It provides some good, thrilling Thanksgiving viewing and features some surprisingly disturbing, violent moments for a network TV movie. Molly Parker and John C. McGinley both turn in great performances as the heroine and villain, respectively, with Parker effectively conveying the emotions of her situation and McGinley making for a convincing madman.

Intensity deserves to get more attention than it has, especially since a popular horror movie released less than ten years after the mini-series aired copied a large portion of the first half without giving Koontz any acknowledgment.