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.
Cody marvels at a Disney+ series, then takes in some sci-fi and horror.
LOKI (2021)
I previously admitted that I wasn't hyped when Marvel announced that they were making a Disney+ show that would focus on the characters of Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch and The Vision, but then I ended up having a lot of fun with their show WandaVision. I was similarly unenthusiastic when I heard that one of their first Disney+ shows would center on the Loki character. I guess Tom Hiddleston did too good of a job making me dislike Loki when he was the primary villain in both Thor and The Avengers, because I never warmed up to the character the way a lot of other Marvel fans did - even though I did enjoy watching his redemption story in Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok, and felt he earned an honorable death in Avengers: Infinity War. But then the time travel shenanigans of Avengers: Endgame allowed the still-all-bad Loki to escape into another timeline just moments after he was captured at the end of The Avengers, and that was a Loki I really had no interest in watching a show about. Especially if it was simply going to be, as early reports suggested, about Loki hopping through time, causing mischief.
Much like WandaVision, Loki turned out to be much better than I expected - and it won me over by being weird. Instead of following an unleashed Loki causing trouble, the series begins with Loki being taken into captivity almost immediately after he vanished from Avengers: Endgame. He is taken away by the Time Variance Authority to a place that exists outside of time, where magic doesn't work. An office building in a technologically advanced city that looks oddly old school. It's said that the TVA and the agents that work for it were creating by beings known as the Time Keepers, tasked with protecting and preserving the "Sacred Timeline". If someone branches off of the timeline like Loki did when he jumped off the timeline in Endgame, it's called a "nexus event" and agents are dispatched to take care of this. People outside of the Sacred Timeline are called variants; they get "pruned" out of existence and the new timeline they created is ended with reset charges. Getting pruned is the fate Loki faces when he's taken to the TVA - until an agent called Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) decides he could be useful.
The Loki we know isn't the only Loki causing trouble for the TVA. There's another Loki variant out there, and Mobius thinks our Loki could be helpful in tracking them down. And he is. Loki catches up with this other Loki by the end of episode 2 in the show's six episode run... but things get even wilder from there, when we find out that this other Loki is a female who goes by the name Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino). Sylvie has a personal vendetta against the TVA. She's out to bring it down. And as we spend more time with her and more information is revealed, the viewer might start agreeing with her that the TVA should be taken down. But is there any merit to the TVA's warning that messing with the Sacred Timeline and letting nexus events get out of hand could lead to a "multiversal war"?
I've always felt that Hiddleston did a terrific job in the role, and he continues to do so here. Six episodes of watching Loki be nothing but bad doesn't sound like a good time to me, so I was glad to see that Loki's dead-ended redemption arc in the films wasn't a waste; through the time-bending abilities of the TVA, he is able to witness the events we saw but this version of himself hasn't lived through. He sees the path he would have gone down: inadvertently causing the death of his beloved adoptive mother in The Dark World, the destruction of Asgard in Ragnarok, his death in Infinity War. He sees that his quest for power wasn't going anywhere, he didn't have the "glorious purpose" he thought he did. Seeing his destiny, along with the verbal smackdown Mobius gives him, actually softens Loki up some. You're never quite sure to what degree he can be trusted, but even here he's no longer the creep he was in Thor and The Avengers. His interactions with Sylvie also allow us to see the depth of his character, and to see once again that he is capable of change.
Wilson and Di Martino both did great work bouncing dialogue back and forth with Hiddleston... and it's a good thing they did, because head writer Michael Waldron made sure they had a whole lot to say to each other. There are dialogue scenes in this show that go on and on, taking up large portions of episodes. I've seen an interview where Waldron said he was inspired by the long dialogue scenes in Quentin Tarantino movies, but the fact that Loki was the first Disney+ series to be almost completely shot during the pandemic (WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier also shot during the pandemic, but not the majority of their episodes) kind of made me wonder if there were so many scenes of people sitting and talking just because it was the easiest thing to get done under the circumstances.
There are the occasional action scenes, though, and some interesting characters beyond the ones I've mentioned. They include Gugu Mbatha-Raw as TVA Judge Ravonna Renslayer; Wunmi Mosaku and Sasha Lane as TVA hunters; Richard E. Grant, Jack Veal, and DeObia Oparei as other Loki variants (there's even an alligator variant!); and an appearance by Jonathan Majors, who we'll next see in an upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp sequel. There's also a welcome cameo by Jaimie Alexander as Sif, a character from the first two Thor films who really should have been in Ragnarok, Infinity War, and Endgame.
I wasn't always thrilled by Loki, at times I felt there was a bit of chit-chat overload, but I liked the show a lot better than I thought I would. Hiddleston made me care about the title character I wasn't excited to see again, and I really enjoyed watching Wilson and Di Martino at work. The show also comes to a jaw-dropping ending, so it makes sense that this - unlike WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - is going to get a second season. Things got crazy over the course of these six episodes (which were all directed by Kate Herron, like WandaVision was directed entirely by Matt Shakman and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier by Kari Skogland), and there's crazier stuff to come.
THE DAY TIME ENDED (1979)
The Day Time Ended is a uniquely odd little movie, which is to be expected when you take into account that it was produced by Full Moon founder Charles Band and directed by legendary stuntman-turned-B-movie-maker John "Bud" Cardos. The story about a triple supernova opening a rift in time and space, the effects of which are felt on Earth two hundred years after the event initially happened. That's the idea Steve Neill, J. Larry Carroll, and Wayne Schmidt pitched to Band, who said he could only produce the movie if it had a small number of characters and few locations. So the script Carroll and Schmidt wrote with future Puppet Master director David Schmoeller shows us the ordeal this rift in time and space puts a family - grandparents Grant and Ana (Jim Davis and Dorothy Malone), their daughter Beth (Marcy Lafferty), teenage son Steve (Scott C. Kolden), and Beth's daughter Jenny (Natasha Ryan) - through at their isolated home in the California desert.
This movie kept me captivated because I didn't know what to expect from it, I never knew what was going to happen next. First there's a growing green structure on the family's property that can make things disappear and re-appear. Then a couple UFOs fly overhead, but I didn't expect that would be followed by a miniature spaceship flying around inside the house. Or characters seeing a little stop-motion alien. Or any of the other bits of insanity that the characters endure.
Apparently The Day Time Ended was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and that makes sense because it is quite goofy... but it's also one of those MST3K movies that is still fun to watch even without that crew making a mockery of it throughout. I had a good time watching this movie.
Lafferty was married to William Shatner at the time, and she and Shatner had both worked with Cardos on Kingdom of the Spiders a couple years earlier.
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: NEXT OF KIN (2021)
I should state up front that I have never been a fan of the “found footage” style; I have enjoyed some found footage movies over the years, but they have been few and far between. The original Paranormal Activity is one that I would give a positive rating, but the franchise lost me in the midst of part 2 and I still haven’t watched every installment in the series. I understand that things got rather convoluted as the franchise went on, so if the newly released Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin were just another sequel I probably shouldn’t have jumped right into it without catching up on its predecessors. But it’s not a sequel, it’s a reboot that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with any other Paranormal Activity movie, they have just put the title on a new supernatural horror movie that was shot in the found footage style. That’s because franchise producer Jason Blum felt the franchise was tired and tried to end it for good six years ago – but then Paramount called on him to make another one, so we get one that does its own thing.
Directed by franchise newcomer Will Eubank, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin definitely feels like it was shot with the found footage resistant members of the audience in mind. The characters are, for the most part, trying to making a serious, prestigious documentary, and therefore there are plenty of shots in the film that look like they were captured by a professional, including some drone footage since this crew happens to have a drone with them. Sometimes you get the shaky cameras flailing around and off-the-record moments are shot from odd angles because someone has just set the camera aside, but this is one of the slickest and most tolerable found footage movies I have ever watched.
Franchise veteran Christopher Landon wrote the script for this one, crafting the story of a young woman named Margot (Emily Bader) who was adopted as an infant and is now seeking more information on her biological family. She’s making a documentary about the search, so when she learns that her long-lost mother was from an Amish community in the Buffalo, New York area, she ventures into the community with cameraman Chris (Roland Buck III) and comic relief sound guy Dale (Dan Lippert). Our documentary crew will soon come to realize that there’s something very strange going on in this community, and there are some dark secrets hidden beneath their isolated church.
Landon wrote some likeable characters and they were brought to life very well by the cast. I enjoyed spending time with the documentary trio, I was entertained by Dale’s antics and wanted to see Margot both solve the mystery of her past and get out of this situation unscathed. That said, I did end up spending more time with these people than I really wanted to. At 98 minutes, the movie drags on a bit and asks you to be more invested in Margot’s search for answers than a lot of viewers are likely to be. There came a point where the movie felt like it was just going on and on and throwing too many scenes into the mix. I started checking the time frequently, every time willing the movie to be closer to the end credits than it actually was.
There aren’t a lot of scares in this movie to liven things up. Occasionally there will be a goofy little jump scare, but the majority of the running time is dedicated to building a feeling of dread. Anyone watching this is going to know from the beginning that things are going to go terribly wrong in the community, but Eubank and Landon keep us waiting to find out exactly how things are going to go wrong and how bad it’s going to get. As is often the case with found footage movies, nothing too bad can happen to the characters until we’re almost the end, so it’s all about following the slow build-up. You have to hope that the payoff is going to be worth the wait, and thankfully – even though I got restless on the way there – I did find the last twenty or so minutes of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin to be creepy and exciting. It’s certainly more eventful than the first Paranormal Activity was, and the movie is a lot better than the sequels I’ve seen.
Devoted fans of the Paranormal Activity franchise may be disappointed that this doesn’t continue the story of the previous films, but those who had their fill of that story may find this to be an improvement. It’s a bit long-winded, but if you don’t mind sitting through a found footage movie it’s worth a look.
The review of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
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