Worth Mentioning - Operation Sweet Death

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. 

Coen gangsters, a unique giant monster, and a bunch of zombies.

MILLER'S CROSSING (1990)

I'm a big fan of the sibling filmmaking duo of Joel and Ethan Coen, but for years I was unable to get into one of their most highly acclaimed films, the 1920s-set gangster movie Miller's Crossing. It has played out in its entirety in my presence on multiple occasions, but it has only had my attention for its entirety once. That was during the viewing I had of it earlier this month, when I was finally able to actually absorb what was going on in the movie... I have to admit, the details of the plot flew right over my head the previous times I tried to watch the movie. And I cheated this time. I had the script open on my screen right next to the movie, so I could follow along with its very well written but also difficult to understand - for me, anyway - dialogue.

There are other reasons why Miller's Crossing didn't click with me before. I'm not a fan of gangster movies in general, and I could never connect with the lead character Tom, played by Gabriel Byrne. But the main reason is that I just didn't get it. With the help of the script, I was finally able to understand it. This time around, I liked the movie. I just can't say it's going to be one I'm going to be returning to frequently, because it's not the type of movie that's going to draw me back again and again, and I'm still not that enamored with the overall story.

That story begins with crime boss Caspar (Jon Polito) asking more powerful crime boss Leo (Albert Finney) to knock off a fellow named Bernie (John Turturro), who Caspar feels has been messing up his fixed sporting events. Leo refuses to comply, because he's in love with Bernie's sister Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), unaware that his trusted enforcer Tom is sleeping with Verna behind his back. The interactions between all of these characters fall apart over the course of the film, there are eruptions of violence and assassination attempts, and Tom finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between Caspar and Leo, while also having to deal with that pesky Bernie. There's a subplot involving a homosexual love triangle that is surprisingly well handled by the characters, given the setting of the film, and notable appearances by Steve Buscemi and J.E. Freeman.

Freeman's character Eddie Dane is one of the best things about the movie. Caspar's right hand man, he doesn't trust Tom at all, and has a good read on most of the things that are happening around him. Freeman has a great screen presence as this dangerous, intimidating character.

All of the actors do great work in their roles, and there are several fantastic scenes, including a sequence where armed gunmen infiltrate Leo's home and another where Tom is tasked with taking Bernie out into the woods in an area called Miller's Crossing, where he's supposed to kill the guy - making sure to put a bullet in his brain.

The plot is dense, the dialogue is mind-blowing, and I wouldn't expect most viewers to be able to grasp exactly what's going on the entire way through. I can't be the only one who felt left out in the cold by this movie. As it turns out, it is as great as I've heard many people say it is over the years, it just took me a long time to figure it out.

COLOSSAL (2016)

Writer/director Nacho Vigalondo's Colossal is technically a giant monster movie, but one that takes a very unique approach to the concept - an approach that involves showing very little of the giant monster, so if you want to see a lot of action and destruction, this is not the movie to turn to. Made on a budget of $15 million, the film focuses on character drama in small town America that is intensified by the presence of a giant monster (and a giant robot!) on the other side of the world.

Anne Hathaway stars as Gloria, an alcoholic who moves from New York City back to her New England hometown after being dumped by her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens of The Guest). Once back home, Gloria starts hanging out with the exact wrong longtime friend, Jason Sudeikis as Oscar, who happens to own a bar that he hires her to work in. So Gloria and Oscar spend each night drinking the bar's alcohol to excess. Gloria passes through the local park while walking back to her home... and this leads to a strange discovery. If Gloria is on the playground at 8:05am, a giant monster will appear in Seoul, South Korea and mimic every movement she makes. In New England, Gloria is just moving through empty space, but in Seoul the monster is smashing buildings.

After realizing she's causing the deaths of people in Seoul, Gloria decides to clean up her act. And stay out of the park. Unfortunately, Oscar has his own avatar that appears in Seoul if he steps on the playground at 8:05. A giant robot. Around the time he figures this out, it's also revealed that he is extremely possessive of Gloria. And he decides that threatening Seoul as a giant robot is a good way to control his friend.

We may barely see the monster and the robot, but Colossal is a cool movie nonetheless. Hathaway and Sudeikis turn in great performances, and Vigalondo makes sure the viewer gets wrapped up in the drama when Oscar starts going off the rails and acting like a total douchebag maniac. You could certainly describe this as weird, since I've never seen anything quite like it, but I also found the story to be very clever. After getting us invested in seeing how the situation is going to turn out, Vigalondo also brings the whole thing to a very satisfying conclusion.

Bonus: one of Gloria and Oscar's mutual friends is played by Tim Blake Nelson, and it's always great to see Tim Blake Nelson in anything.

THE WALKING DEAD: SEASON FOUR (2013 - 2014)

After AMC and Frank Darabont ran into such major creative differences that Darabont left The Walking Dead in the midst of season 2, writer Glen Mazzara was promoted into the vacated showrunner position, and I feel Mazzara did a good job as showrunner overall. People often say season 2 is too slow, but I enjoy it, and season 3 - which also had Mazzara as showrunner - is awesome, despite some filler. Unfortunately, Mazzara whiffed in a major way on the season 3 finale. I hadn't read up to that point in the comic book source material, but I was always hearing people who were familiar with the comic talking about how crazy it was when "The Governor" in charge of the town of Woodbury raided the prison that lead character Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln on the show) and his people were calling home. The Governor (David Morrissey) and a group of lackeys raided the prison in the season 3 finale... but nothing happened. Rick and his people were prepared for the raiders and drove them away, and The Governor was so upset by the defeat that he killed a bunch of his own people. It was rather anticlimactic. 

So when Scott M. Gimple took over as showrunner on season 4, he had to make up for that lackluster season finale. And he spent the first half of season 4 trying to loop the show back around to The Governor attacking the prison again. The Governor returns to the prison in the season 4 mid-season finale, and this time around the confrontation at the prison is as disturbing, violent, and destructive as it should have been in the season 3 finale.

But before we get there, I don't find season 4 to be all that interesting. This was the first time in the show's history that The Walking Dead didn't capture my imagination and hold my full attention. Aside from a couple episodes showing The Governor making his way back to the prison, gathering new followers along the way and procuring a tank, the first half of the season focuses on a deadly flu outbreak at the prison, which has a lot more residents now because a bunch of people from Woodbury have moved in. While it makes sense for a post-apocalyptic show to dig into how its characters handle illness when all the hospitals have been abandoned, the subject doesn't sustain the number of episodes dedicated to it. It's just episode after episode of people falling ill, people searching for supplies, and disagreements over how to handle the issue. We do learn that Carol (Melissa McBride) has reached a very hard-edged point in her evolution from mother and abused wife to badass survivalist, and we're introduced to a little girl named Lizzie (Brighton Sharbino) who has an odd attachment to the living dead, which sets up one of the standout moments in the show's entire run... a high point in an underwhelming season.

Season 4 feels like it's meandering before it gets The Governor back into the mix, then after that gut punch of a mid-season finale and the fall of the prison, it sets the characters loose into the countryside so they can start meandering themselves. Now homeless, the characters are split up and forced to wander around, trying to find a way to survive. Eventually, most of them - the ones that live - will decide to follow signs toward a place called Terminus. 

Rick is unconscious through one of my least favorite episodes of the show, best known for the sight of his annoying son Carl (Chandler Riggs) eating a huge can of pudding. Rick and Carl are joined by the sword-wielding Michonne (Dania Gurira). Carol has to partner with Tyreese (Chad Coleman), not longer after she killed his sick girlfriend, to take care of Lizzie, Lizzie's sister Mika (Kyla Kenedy), and Rick's infant daughter Judith. Maggie (Lauren Cohan) escapes the prison with Tyreese's sister Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and a new character, recovering alcoholic and former medic Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) Maggie and her husband Glenn (Steven Yeun) are separated for a large chunk of episodes, just because their relationship was the most important element of the show to a lot of viewers and Gimple always seemed to enjoy torturing the audience. Fan favorite Daryl (Norman Reedus) is saddled with taking care of Maggie's younger sister Beth (Emily Kinney), a pairing that got a lot of viewers "shipping".

As the prison survivors travel for episode after episode, an attempt is made to liven things up with the addition of more characters. There's a gang of villains called The Claimers who cause trouble for Daryl, Rick, Michonne, and Carl - and Rick's interaction with Claimers leader Joe (Jeff Kober) is one for the ages. It was cool to have Kober on the show, because I have found him to have a creepy presence ever since my childhood viewings of The First Power, and Joe is definitely a creep. We also get the introduction of Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), Rosita (Christian Serratos), and Eugene (Josh McDermitt), characters from the comic who certainly do look like comic book drawings come to life when they first step onto the screen. They look kind of ridiculous in flesh and blood, Eugene with his mullet, the muscular Abraham with the way he has his red (a dye job on Cudlitz) hair and mustache, Rosita in her short shorts with her belly exposed. Abraham and Rosita say they're escorting Eugene to Washington D.C. because he's a scientist who has knowledge about the zombie outbreak. Of course, he won't share that knowledge. Top secret.

Introduced in the first half of the season is a character, and an actress, who caught a lot of unwarranted grief from viewers, but she quickly became one of my favorite people on the show: Alanna Masterson as Tara. I always found her to have a very appealing, fun personality. Tara is part of a family that The Governor infiltrates when it looks, for a brief moment, that he might be able to become a decent human being, leave the prison in the past, and settle into a nice life with Tara's sister Lilly (Audrey Marie Anderson) and Lilly's young daughter Meghan (Meyrick Murphy), with Tara also hanging out with them. When The Governor first meets this family, terminally ill patriarch David is with them. David is played by Danny Vinson, who has worked with the blog's own Jay Burleson on a couple different projects. Very cool.

Kyle Gallner makes an appearance in the season premiere, and since I knew him from movies like Red State, Jennifer's Body, and the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, I expected him to stick around for a while. Maybe that's why they cast him, they wanted viewers to think he was a new regular or recurring cast member.

Season 4 has some fantastic moments in it, the sort of moments that will always be mentioned when fans discuss "the best of The Walking Dead" over the years... but those great moments are scattered throughout episodes that I felt were a bit too dull when they first aired and which I don't find to have much rewatchability now. Season 1 was incredible, watching season 2 I get caught up in the character drama, in season 3 it's interesting to watch the taking of the prison, and then the escalating tension between the prison residents and The Governor. Season 4 doesn't give me scenarios to latch onto in the way the previous seasons did. The characters are just making their way from place to place, and that doesn't work as well for me.

But on a personal level, I am grateful for the episode in which Daryl and Beth encounter zombies in a funeral home, because I was in the next room when blog contributor Priscilla's parents were watching that episode. When they saw Daryl get cornered by flesh-eaters, that was the first time I ever heard the Portuguese term, "Tá fudido." That's something I'll never forget.

HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980)

Bruno Mattei directed more than fifty movies during his career, although you won't actually see his name credited on many movies because most of his directing was done under a pseudonym - usually Vincent Dawn. Mattei is best known for making knock-offs of popular films, or "mockbusters" as they're more politely called these days. One example of this is his very first Vincent Dawn movie, Hell of the Living Dead, a.k.a. Virus, a.k.a. Night of the Zombies, a.k.a. Zombie Creeping Flesh, etc. I'm going to call it Hell of the Living Dead. This movie came into existence when the producers asked Mattei to give them something like George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which was a new release at the time. Handed a script co-written by Troll 2's Claudio Fragasso (who apparently did some directing on the movie as well), Mattei set out to do just that.

Of course, Hell of the Living Dead isn't even close to being as good as Dawn of the Dead is. It has zombies, it has a group of Interpol commandos who were the same blue outfits the SWAT team members wore in Dawn of the Dead, it has music by the band Goblin that was lifted directly out of Dawn, and it has a sequence where the commandos raid a building that's reminiscent of the SWAT raid in Romero's film, but those similarities don't get the film onto Dawn's level. 

The story tells us that there are top secret chemical plants called Hope Centers set up in various locations, and at one Hope Center in Papua New Guinea they have been working on a project called "Operation Sweet Death", something they're cooking up to control the populations of Third World countries. Things go wrong, there's a chemical leak, and the Sweet Death chemical causes a zombie outbreak in Papua New Guinea. The Interpol commandos show up to look into this situation, and while traversing the countryside they cross paths with TV news reporter Lia Rousseau (Margit Evelyn Newton), an expert on the native tribes in the area who is close to getting the scoop on Operation Sweet Death.

So most of the film focuses on the commandos and Lia dealing with zombies in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. At one point, Lia has to infiltrate a tribe - and she has previously spent a year living with a tribe, so she knows exactly what to do. Step one: get naked. Hilariously, when Lia says she's going to go to the village ahead of the commando, Mattei quickly cuts to a close-up of her breasts as she takes her top off. She ditches her clothes, paints herself up, and goes to the native village wearing nothing but a leafy G-string. This doesn't accomplish much other than give Mattei the opportunity to pad out the running time with stock footage from a documentary about the tribes of Papua New Guinea, including an actual funeral ceremony.

Zombies attack, the commandos fire a lot of bullets, there's blood and guts. Hell of the Living Dead is sleazy and exploitative, and it isn't very good. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for the producers; they wanted to cash in on Dawn of the Dead, and this is what they ended up with. But it's an interesting curiosity, and does manage to be somewhat entertaining because it's so odd.