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.
GINGER SNAPS BACK: THE BEGINNING (2004)
From Dusk Till Dawn is my favorite vampire movie, and when it received a pair of back-to-back follow-ups, a sequel (From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money) and a prequel (From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter), I had a lot of fun watching those movies. Ginger Snaps is my favorite werewolf movie, so I was glad to hear that it would also be receiving back-to-back follow-ups, a sequel and a prequel, just like From Dusk Till Dawn. In both cases, I ended up enjoying the prequels more than the sequels.
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed was dark and nihilistic. I didn’t really like how that one expanded the story of the first film, and really hated the ending. Directed by Grant Harvey from a screenplay by Stephen Massicotte and Christina Ray, the prequel Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning takes an unexpected approach. If most filmmakers were to make a prequel to a werewolf movie that’s set almost two hundred years before the events of the first film, they might include references to or take place around locations from the first movie, and maybe they would have characters who are related to characters from the other story. The filmmakers of Ginger Snaps Back did do that, but they took their story into mind-bending territory by casting Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins, the stars of Ginger Snaps and Ginger Snaps 2, in the lead roles – which happen to be the same characters they played in the films that take place two hundred years later, sisters Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald.
The script makes reference to the werewolf curse being something that is passed down through generations, and legend says that it will be up to two sisters to decide whether or not the curse will be broken. The Ginger and Brigitte we see making their way through 1815 in this film are presumably blood relation to the Ginger and Brigitte we met in Ginger Snaps in 2000 – and since we saw the other Ginger and Brigitte dealing with a werewolf situation in 2000, we can be sure that things are not going to end well when the Ginger and Brigitte of 1815 find themselves in a werewolf-infested wilderness.
The teen girls are traversing the Canadian frontier on their own. Something terrible must have happened to remove their parents from their lives, and their explanation that their parents died in a boating accident probably isn’t the true answer. Whatever happened in their past, the sisters have vowed to stick by each other and be together forever. Then they reach a remote fort that was set up by a fur trading company and discover that the men who live there live in fear. A group that was supposed to bring them supplies to survive the harsh winter is two months overdue. Winter has arrived. Supplies are running low. And, worst of all, there are werewolves lurking outside the gate.
Not only are there monsters outside, but this fort is also largely populated by very unpleasant people, so Ginger and Brigitte have found themselves in a tough spot. And it gets even worse when Ginger discovers a little boy, the son of one of the men, hidden away in one of the rooms. This boy has been bitten by a werewolf, but his dad has been keeping him around as he gradually transforms... and when the boy bites Ginger, she also becomes infected and starts to transform.
It’s only a matter of time before the situation in the fort completely falls apart, and we’re left to wait and wonder just how bad things are going to get. The men at the fort are so unpleasant, most viewers will probably be rooting for the werewolves, waiting for the chance to see these guys get ripped apart.
I could have done without all the talk of cursed bloodlines and the implication that the Ginger and Brigitte of 2000, who may not just be relatives of the 1815 sisters but also reincarnations, were always destined to have a run-in with a werewolf. I didn’t need that stuff to complicate the story. But the upside of this weirdness is that it allowed Isabelle and Perkins to remain in the lead roles for the prequel, and they are always great in these roles. For the most part, I disregard the mythology stuff and just take Ginger Snaps Back as a standalone werewolf movie that takes place in 1815 – and that works for me. As a prequel, it’s pretty weird. But as a werewolf movie, it’s really good. The fort setting is a creepy, hopeless place, and Harvey and the cinematographer, Michael Marshall, were able to give the movie a great, unnerving look and atmosphere. The supporting cast around Isabelle and Perkins was awesome (my favorite of the bunch being the Cree character played by Nathaniel Arcand, a badass werewolf killer known as the Hunter), and when the werewolves are on the screen, they look pretty cool.
I don’t like Ginger Snaps Back nearly as much as Ginger Snaps, but I would choose to watch this one over Ginger Snaps 2. I'm still waiting for a Ginger Snaps 4 to come along and fix the ending of the second movie.
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE (2024)
For two movies (A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place II) director John Krasinski told us the story of the Abbott family, who were struggling to survive in a world that was overrun by monstrous alien invaders that hunt their prey by sound. It remains to be seen if we’ll ever catch up with the Abbott family again, but in the meantime Krasinki teamed with director Michael Sarnoski to craft the story for the spin-off A Quiet Place: Day One, which shifts away from the Abbotts, who were dealing with the aliens out in the countryside, and shows us what it was like in New York City on the day the aliens arrived.
We see the arrival of these invaders from the perspective of Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a terminally ill women who lives in a hospice house and has only joined fellow patients on a trip into the city (with her emotional support cat Frodo in her arms) because she’s hoping to get pizza from a place she has fond childhood memories of. The aliens mess up those plans and cause a whole lot of death and destruction – leaving Sam and Frodo to make their way through the city on their own, with Sam remaining determined to get some pizza. As they go, they cross paths with law student Eric (Joseph Quinn), who decides to accompany them on their quest for pizza.
Given the title, I thought A Quiet Place: Day One might play out over a 24 hour period, with the journey across NYC being sort of like a sci-fi horror twist on The Warriors. But while the movie does start on day one of the invasion, the title isn’t entirely fitting, because Sam’s journey takes more than one day. I guess you could still compare it to The Warriors, though. Just without the cool characters... Anyway, for most of the movie I found it to be underwhelming. There were plenty of thrilling action moments going on, I just wasn’t getting caught up in them. I wasn’t being thrilled. And I found it difficult to connect with these new characters, even though I share their love for pizza. I finally warmed up to them toward the end of the movie, which I found to be more interesting in its second half than in its first.
In the end, I would say A Quiet Place: Day One was just fine. I didn’t get a whole lot out of watching it, but it wasn’t bad.
BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN) (2020)
2016’s Suicide Squad may not be the most popular entry in the DC Extended Universe film franchise, even its own director has some serious issues with it, but it did introduce one of the Universe’s most popular characters: Joker’s girlfriend Harley Quinn, played by Margot Robbie. So it was no surprise that the DCEU signed a deal for Robbie to return for several more movies, and quickly started developing two projects that would see her not only taking on a lead role, but also sharing the screen with other female characters from the DC Comics source material. One project was Gotham City Sirens, which would have had Harley Quinn teaming up with Catwoman and Poison Ivy. That movie didn’t make it into production before the DCEU collapsed under the weight of poorly received movies and disappointing box office, but another Harley Quinn project did: Birds of Prey, subtitled And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.
In the comics, the Birds of Prey are a crime-fighting team that consists of the crossbow-wielding Huntress, a character called Black Canary who can let out a canary cry, and a former Batgirl who now goes by Oracle. Directed by Cathy Yan from a script by Christina Hodson, the Birds of Prey movie drops Oracle and replaces her with Harley Quinn, Gotham City Police Department Detective Renee Montoya, and a character named Cassandra Cain, who has been another iteration of Batgirl in the comics, but here is just a young pickpocket. The movie then spends most of its 109 minute running time making us wait for the Birds of Prey to become a team.
Harley Quinn’s fantabulous emancipation is the real story here. She and Joker have broken up, and she’s finding her own way. She has gotten her own place and a pet hyena, and she blows up a place that was special to her and Joker, the Ace Chemicals plant, to signify that she’s done with that part of her life. Unfortunately for her, she has wronged a lot of people during her time with Joker, and now that they’re not together, she doesn’t have immunity from those people anymore. So she has to deal with a bunch of people coming after her, including crime lord Roman Sionis, also known as Black Mask and played by Ewan McGregor. Roman is after a diamond that belonged to the wealthy Bertinelli crime family, who were massacred years ago, because it has account numbers embedded in it. This diamond happens to be in the hands of Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), who stole it from Roman’s serial killer lackey Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina). Cassandra has been arrested and can be found at the police department where Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) works... so Roman makes a deal with Harley Quinn: either she busts Cassandra out of jail, or he’ll kill her. Harley Quinn decides to bust the kid out of jail.
But once Cassandra is in Harley Quinn’s custody, she’s also under HQ’s protection. Harley isn’t going to let the mercenaries that are after the kid (Roman has offered a bounty of $500,000) get her, and she’s not going to let Zsasz cut the diamond out of Cassandra’s stomach. Played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Black Canary, who is a singer named Dinah Lance who works at a club owned by Roman, gets mixed up in this situation because Roman has just hired her as his new driver. And Huntress, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is Helena Bertinelli, the last survivor of the Bertinelli family, who is on a rampage of revenge, using a crossbow to take down people who were involved with the murders of her loved ones. The story also involves the perfect egg sandwich.
Even though it waits until the climactic sequence to have Harley Quinn, Cassandra, Huntress, Black Canary, and Montoya all working together and kicking bad guy ass side-by-side, Birds of Prey is a fun movie that feels like a continuation of the most entertaining aspects of Suicide Squad while leaving out its more dull and off-putting aspects. Harley herself is the one telling us this story, so it moves along at a wild, energetic pace and sports colorful visuals. It also has a solid soundtrack – and while the Joan Jett, Heart, Ohio Players, and Patsy Cline songs, along with the Pat Benatar cover, are more might speed, they also have the likes of Doja Cat, Halsey, and Kesha in there.
It's rare for me to think a DCEU movie was a fun viewing experience, but Birds of Prey was one I had fun with.
No comments:
Post a Comment