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.
STUDIO 666 (2022)
When the rock band Foo Fighters were looking for somewhere to record their tenth album, they ended up in a secluded villa in Encino because they found that the living room had amazing acoustics. Strange occurrences soon led the band to believe that the place was haunted, so they finished that album as quickly as possible. They can't give all the details on what happened there because they signed a non-disclosure agreement... but their experience in that place inspired them to make the horror comedy Studio 666 a fictionalized account of what happened during the recording of their tenth album.
The second film from director BJ McDonnell, who made his feature directorial debut with 2013's Hatchet III, Studio 666 takes place in a reality where Foo Fighters haven't yet made a tenth album, and their manager (played by Jeff Garlin) is putting some serious pressure on them to get it done. Looking to capture a unique sound for the album, they choose a secluded mansion where terrible things happened back in the early '90s. We're shown some of the horrible events right up front: much like the new Scream movie, Studio 666 begins with actress Jenna Ortega being attacked and dragging herself across a floor in an attempt to escape. She has a lot less screen time in this one than she had in Scream, though. But does a place's history matter when the acoustics are so good?
Yes, as it turns out, it is very important to take a location's history into account. In a scene reminiscent of The Evil Dead, lead singer Dave Grohl goes into the cellar and discovers a reel-to-reel tape recorder left by the previous band that tried to make an album in this place, and a book bound in flesh and filled with demonic incantations conjured up by Aleister Crowley. Evil spirits are unleashed. More terrible things happen, this time to the six guys who make up Foo Fighters. A name that feels very weird to say without a "The" in front of, but there is no "The". It's just Foo Fighters.
I went into Studio 666 thinking it was just going to be a goof, a quick and bloody piece of nonsense. And sure, it's nonsensical regardless, but it's much more of a "real movie" than I was expecting. Screenwriters Jeff Buhler and Rebecca Hughes crafted a lot of scenes for the band members to act their way through, and there is large portion of running time dedicated to their struggle to come up with new music and find an ending to the epic song that the demonically-inspired Grohl has them putting together. In fact, there's a bit too much movie here. Studio 666 hits a running time of 101 minutes before the end credits start rolling, and it could have lost some of those minutes along the way. There are even multiple endings; what could have worked as a satisfying conclusion is followed by several more minutes because there are loose ends to wrap up.
This was sold on the idea of Grohl getting possessed and rampaging his way through his bandmates, but the story takes its time getting there. Foo Fighters fans who want to see the full band together will be satisfied for more than half of the movie.
As for how the musicians do as movie stars, I was pleasantly surprised. The comedy element certainly helped them get through it, but they do about as well as I would have expected any actors to do in a movie like this, and some of them - Grohl especially - turn out to be hilarious comedic performers. They are joined by some more experienced comedic actors, in addition to Garlin there's also Whitney Cummings and Will Forte, but the band members have a lot more to do than those supporting cast members and deliver a lot more of the comedy.
There's some good stuff in here to keep horror fans entertained as well. There's the Evil Dead nods, McDonnell delivers exactly the level of gore you'd expect from the director of Hatchet III (and while there are some CGI enhancements, there are also some really cool practical effects), and there's even a cameo appearance by John Carpenter. Who also composed the theme track.
Studio 666 is a bit too long, but it provides a fun viewing experience anyway, and you get the sense that Foo Fighters had a blast making it. Their fans will probably have a blast watching it as well, if they're into horror and gore. If you're not a Foo Fighters fan, I can vouch for the fact that you can still have a good time with their movie. I've heard the band's big hits, but have never listened to full album. When I watched the trailer for this, I didn't even know whether or not half of the band members shown in the trailer were actually in the band. But my lack of familiarity with Foo Fighters didn't hinder my enjoyment of the movie at all.
The review of Studio 666 originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
WARGAMES (1983)
I was born near the end of the Cold War; I have childhood memories of news reports about meetings between US President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union. But I didn't see the Cold War-themed movie WarGames while the Cold War was actually still going on. I was a teenager when it seemed like everyone was getting into this thing called the Internet, and I soon joined in. It wasn't until that point, when I was around 14 or 15, that I first saw WarGames - and even though I was using the Internet daily at the end of the '90s, I was still impressed to see that Matthew Broderick's character had a sort of Internet connection back in 1983. The year I was born.
Directed by John Badham (who replaced Martin Brest after twelve days of filming) from a screenplay by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, WarGames stars Broderick as a teenager named David Lightman, who is able to use the phoneline to connect the computer set up in his bedroom to other computers. And he uses this connection to do things he shouldn't, like get around paying long distance phone bills and access his school's computer to change his grades for the better. When he sees that a gaming company has secretive new games in the works, he's too impatient to wait for the official unveiling of those games. He decides to call every number in the city where the gaming company is located until he reaches their computer system. He does end up connected to a computer that has a list of games on display... and they're all military games, including Global Thermonuclear War. As it turns out, he hasn't connected to a gaming computer, he has connected to a machine called the WOPR, or War Operation Plan Response. And when he plays Global Thermonculear War - choosing to be the Russians, launching an unprovoked attack - the imagery of the game shows up on the screens in NORAD, making the military believe there are actually nukes inbound. When David disconnects, the imagery disappears from the NORAD screens.
It isn't long before the military catches up with David, but that's not the only problem he has to deal with. The computer system liked playing the game and wants to see it through to completion... which will mean actually launching nukes and kicking off a global war. It wouldn't be able to do this if the launches were still in the hands of human controllers, but NORAD's John McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) decided to remove the human element after unexpected drills revealed that a large percentage of human controllers would not be able to launch nukes if they were ordered to. Their conscience wouldn't let them. So McKittrick put the computer in control. David's game of Global Thermonuclear War could really end up causing nuclear war. While the military is trying to lock him up instead of listening to his warnings about the computer system, he has to find a way to stop the WOPR... and save the world.
WarGames is a great movie that won a permanent place in pop culture with the sound of the computer voice, which is also known as Joshua, asking David, "Shall we play a game?" Badham brought Lasker and Parkes' script to the screen as an intriguing, suspenseful film, and the cast - which also includes Ally Sheedy as a friend of David's, Barry Corbin as a General at NORAD, and John Wood as the creator of the WOPR computer - turned in great performances.
As mentioned, I've been a fan of this one since the late '90s, but I just happened to revisit it for a work assignment back in January - not long before it became clear that Russia was going to do things that would have people worrying about global thermonuclear war once again. We already knew decades ago that the only way to win that game is not to play it, so it's a shame to see leaders still make decisions that disrupt peace and put any percentage of a chance of that option on the table.
Like A Fish Called Wanda, WarGames is another movie I watched for the JoBlo Revisited series (see the Wanda video HERE), so keep an eye out for that video.
THE BATMAN (2022)
The fact that director Matt Reeves' The Batman even exists in the form that it does suggests that I'm not cut out for Hollywood. When this project was initially conceived, it was supposed to be directed and co-written by Ben Affleck, who would also star in it, reprising the role of the title character after Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and Justice League (both versions). It was announced near the end of 2014, Affleck spent a couple years working on the script, then in January of 2017 decided he wanted someone else to direct the movie. A month later, Reeves was hired - but decided he wanted to throw out the script and start over from scratch. According to Reeves, Affleck had written a "totally valid" script for a James Bond-ian, action-driven Batman movie... which is not what Reeves wanted to do. This is where my sensibilities clash with Hollywood's. As a writer, I would be crushed if something I had been working on for years was tossed aside. In Hollywood, this happens multiple times every day. On the directing side, I couldn't see signing on to a project, looking at a good script, and just throwing it out. I was interested in watching a solo Batman movie with Affleck, and the concept he had in place - the assassin Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello had even been cast in this role) causes a riot at Arkham Asylum as part of a plot to take down Batman - sounds like a good time. But Reeves did something so different that Affleck, who was disenchanted with the role of Batman by the time he stepped away as director, isn't even Batman in his movie.
Affleck's Batman had been around for a long time. Completely disconnecting from the "Batfleck" universe, Reeves shows us a Batman, now played by Robert Pattinson, who has only been prowling the streets of Gotham City for two years. During that time, he has gained the trust of GCPD lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), who contacts him with the Bat Signal and lets him check out crime scenes, even though other officers object to this. The story begins when a masked serial killer starts knocking off prominent people in Gotham City - the mayor, the district attorney, etc. This killer communicates with Batman and authorities through riddles. He even calls himself The Riddler. And I have to admit, I find it difficult to watch any other Batman solving riddles without wishing I was watching Adam West's Batman solving them.
I recently said that I'd rather watch the campy Batman TV series than the darker, grittier takes on the character, so it's true that hearing Reeves had made the darkest, grittiest Batman movie yet did not have me hyped for this movie. And he did make a dark, low-key movie that I can't imagine children having any interest in, at least not on the level that I enjoyed Batman '66 and the Tim Burton movies when I was a kid. But while I thought the movie should have been much shorter (176 minutes for this story is some major overkill), I liked the approach Reeves took to the material. Batman was introduced in the pages of a comic book called Detective Comics. He has been called "the world's greatest detective". So I thought it was cool that Reeves made a Batman movie that is actually a detective story, one that's focused on solving a mystery. And the mystery Batman has to solve is reminiscent of one of the most infamous unsolved mysteries; this version of The Riddler draws clear inspiration from the real world Zodiac Killer. (While also having a touch of Jigsaw to him as well.)
I wouldn't say Batman lives up to being the world's greatest detective over the course of this movie, not even with some assistance from Gordon, a young woman named Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz), and his butler Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis), but of course he gets the job done. This mystery also becomes very personal, as The Riddler starts to disparage the late Thomas Wayne and targets reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne, not realizing Bruce Wayne is the man inside the bat costume. Following clues leads Batman to characters like crime boss Carmine Falcone, played by John Turturro, and Falcone's right hand man Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. The Penguin - played by Colin Farrell, who's unrecognizable beneath prosthetics and seems to be doing a Robert De Niro impression at times.
The Batman is overlong and somber and I can't see myself watching it many more times, but I enjoyed my first viewing of it. I liked this movie much better than a lot of the other "darker, grittier" Batman movies that are out there. I wanted to see the Affleck version of The Batman, but had a better time watching this non-Affleck version than I did while watching any of the Batfleck movies we did get.
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