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.
Possessed animatronics and Jack the Ripper.
WILLY'S WONDERLAND (2021)
Before you even start watching director Kevin Lewis's film Willy's Wonderland, it's already a given that it's going to be an incredibly strange movie. It's about Nicolas Cage battling living animatronic characters at an abandoned family restaurant along the lines of a Chuck E. Cheese, so of course it's going to be weird. But even going into it with that knowledge, I was still surprised at just how weird Willy's Wonderland is.
Cage plays a character who is never given a name, we only know him as The Janitor. He never even delivers a line. Cage gives an entirely silent performance here, and yet still manages to turn in a performance that could only have come from him. When his car runs over a spike strip in a small town and he doesn't have enough money on him to pay for his replacement tires, The Janitor is offered a way to work off his debt: clean out the abandoned Willy's Wonderland family restaurant. The Janitor doesn't know that he's being offered as a human sacrifice to the animatronic characters that live in the restaurant; animatronics that are possessed by the souls of killers and cannibals who used to murder families in the restaurant. The Janitor doesn't particularly care, either. He doesn't bat an eye when the animatronics come to life and start attacking him, he remains dedicated to his job of cleaning up the place.
The Janitor also remains dedicated to taking breaks so he can chug down some Punch Pop and play pinball. He's so into this beverage that he sets an alarm on his watch so he can drink it at regular intervals, and he will take his Punch Pop break even if he's in the middle of facing off with one of the animatronics when his alarm goes off.
Cage fighting animatronics alone in a restaurant wouldn't sustain an 89 minute running time, especially since the animatronics are no match for The Janitor at all - he dispatches these things quite easily - so more characters get dropped into the restaurant along the way. They're a bunch of young locals who have decided to destroy the restaurant and end the animatronics' reign of terror, but they aren't very successful at achieving this goal. Most of them end up dead.
I don't know what's going on with The Janitor and his Punch Pop, the answers I expected to receive at the end were not given, but it was fun to watch this guy beat his way through a group of homicidal animatronics. If you're into weird entertainment, Willy's Wonderland is one to check out.
FROM HELL (2001)
Directed by the Hughes Brothers from a screenplay by Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias, the Jack the Ripper thriller From Hell is based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore, who would probably advise you to skip the movie entirely and just read the graphic novel. That's how he is in general, and it doesn't help that the movie apparently changes quite a bit from the source material.
Moore built the story around an actual theory about the identity of Jack the Ripper, the serial killer that targeted prostitutes in 1888 London. The theory has been discredited, but that's okay. Moore never said he was out to solve the case, he just felt that this particular theory could make for an interesting story. I haven't read the graphic novel, but the theory certainly made for an interesting movie.
From Hell stars Johnny Depp as Inspector Frederick Abberline, a flawed character with a serious drug and alcohol problem. He drowns the grief he feels over the deaths of his wife and child in absinthe, and spends a lot of time "chasing the dragon" in opium dens. Abberline is an amalgamation of two different people who really worked the Ripper case, one of them a cop and the other a psychic. The psychic element comes when Abberline is high on opium; the drug gives him visions of the future. You might expect that psychic visions would make his job a lot easier, but they really don't amount to much and could have easily been removed from the movie. Despite his problems and regardless of his visions, Abberline is a good and determined inspector. He sees patterns that others overlook, knows a clue when he hears one, and can perfectly read a crime scene. He'll even break into the Special Branch offices to search through files if he has to.
Abberline is aided in his investigation by an Irish prostitute named Mary Kelly (Heather Graham). Mary also becomes his love interest along the way, so of course she'll be in great danger from the Ripper soon enough. We know how the Ripper case went in real life; more than 130 years later, it's still not clear who this killer was. From Hell gives direct answers on his identity, showing us who he is, digging into his motivation, revealing why he chose his victims, and why his killing spree ended even though he wasn't apprehended.
While this movie may not tell the truth about Jack the Ripper, it's still highly intriguing to see its inaccurate but convincingly presented revelations. Depp's Abberline is a great lead character, and there are some terrific moments of thrills, including an action scene set in a high speed horse-drawn carriage.
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