Hellboy (2019): Savaged by critics and mostly ignored by audiences last summer, this soft reboot of the Hellboy movie 'franchise' is really pretty enjoyable and at least as faithful to creator Mike Mignola's epic comic series as Guillermo del Toro's first two Hellboy movies.
David Harbour makes a perfectly good Hellboy under all that make-up and prosthetics. Ian McShane plays it crusty as Hellboy's adoptive father and head of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, one of a handful of organizations that protects Earth from supernatural disaster. But what price vigilance?
Hellboy doesn't play much like a movie, though, but rather a serial -- the creators cherry-pick characters and situations from what feels like 50 different issues of the comic. Hellboy in Mexico! Baba Yaga! Nimue (semi-hilariously pronounced as in 'Leonard Nimoy' by pretty much everyone)! King Arthur! The Wild Hunt! The boar-headed monster! To accentuate the serialesque nature of this movie, call it THE ADVENTURES OF HELLBOY and watch it in ten-minute segments. Recommended.
Hellboy: House of the Living Dead, written by Mike Mignola; illustrated by Richard Corben (2011): Fun original graphic novel set during Hellboy's "lost months" while on a bender in Mexico during the 1950's, during which time he professionally wrestled and fought various supernatural menaces, generally while either drunk or severely hung over. Forced to kill a young wrestling, monster-fighting ally after vampires turned the young man into a bat-headed monstrosity, Hellboy went on a blackout-inducing bender, the end of which we see here.
Richard Corben's art combines the grotesque and the voluptuous in a variety of fun, pleasing ways, while Mignola's script strikes the right balance between humour and heartbreak. Hellboy has to face his guilt before he can get out of Mexico, but the whole voyage of self-discovery avoids the usual rote, Afterschool Special platitudes and lessons we often see in such a story. Recommended.
The Lighthouse (2019): Written by Max and Robert Eggers; directed by Robert Eggers: Is The Lighthouse Lovecraftian tentacle horror or a psychological study of men and madness? It's both! You know, like H.P. Lovecraft's sea-themed tale "Dagon"!!!
From the writer-director of The Witch, which also occupied both the supernatural and psychological portions of the supernatural spectrum comes this superior horror film starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson and really no one else as lighthouse keepers with a few too many secrets for a one-month tour on an island off the New England coast.
Pattinson is very, very good as an the 'kid' learning the ropes of lighthouse-keeping from suspiciously salty sea-dog, peg-legged Willem Dafoe. Reality seems to fall apart for both men in different ways as the stay lengthens and the weather worsens.
Why won't Dafoe let Pattinson into the light-room, much less teach him how to run the light? What is up with the fresh-water supply? Why is that seagull so angry at Pattinson? What's up with the mermaid figurine in the bunk room? And will these guys EVER STOP MASTURBATING? Or is Dafoe, ulp, masturbating?
Eggers juxtaposes the wide open skies and seas of the island with the claustrophobia of the living quarters -- and of the outside closing in on Pattinson when the rain comes down. There are points at which Eggers seems to have learned some valuable lessons from David Lynch, perhaps never moreso than when he lightens the tone with the increasingly loopy arguments of Pattinson and Dafoe, during one of which Dafoe is almost reduced to tears by the possibility that Pattinson doesn't enjoy his cooking.
Eggers is already a major directorial talent and a welcome addition to the ranks of serious, seriously creepy horror writer-directors. Highly recommended.
The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1964): edited by Robert Aickman: Solid 'Best of' collection apart from the annual, numbered Fontana Ghost Stories paperbacks.
Edited by the great and idiosyncratic 'strange story' writer (and English Inland Waterway enthusiast) Robert Aickman, this collection contains many great stories, including Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo" and Walter de la Mare's "Seaton's Aunt" along with Aickman's own "The Trains." It includes one stinker, the twee and mostly unfunny funny ghost story "The Ghost Ship." Highly recommended.
In the Shadow of the Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (2009): edited by Michael Connelly: A tribute to Poe from the Mystery Writers of America, whose annual award(s) is named the Edgar, after Poe.
The early-20th-century illustrations by Harry Clarke are really nice. The stories are pretty much a 'Best of' Poe's greatest stories, along with poems "The Raven" and "The Bells" and an excerpt from Poe's great, truncated novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Also included are essays from members of the MWA on what Poe means (or doesn't mean) to them. As a Poe collection, you can certainly do worse. Highly recommended.
The Reddening (2019) by Adam L.G. Nevill: Gripping, grueling, visionary work of cosmic folk horror from the author of The Ritual and Last Days. Archaeological discoveries in modern-day Devon draw a grieving sister and a depressed Lifestyle reporter into an ancient mystery and an ancient horror.
Mysterious underground sounds, a long line of disappearances and unexpected suicides, and the run-down farm of a minor rock-folk star of the 1960's figure in the narrative. So, too, people high and low lacking all empathy.
The mysteries of the ancient cult and its supernatural progenitors are vividly imagined and described, as are the psychologies of protagonists and antagonists alike. While not for the squeamish, the violence is modulated and necessary to the depiction of the cult and to the larger questions about humanity's love for ultra-violence.
Nevill weaves social commentary into the horrible imaginings, with the worst instincts of humanity being linked to Brexit and austerity measures and the overall rise of xenophobia and fascism throughout the world. It's the sort of novel that justifies my recent blurby observation that Nevill's two clearest forerunners in British horror are James Herbert and Ramsey Campbell. Highly recommended.
The Haunted Palace (1963): adapted by Charles Beaumont from the poem by Edgar Allan Poe and the H.P. Lovecraft novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward; directed by Roger Corman; starring Vincent Price (Charles Dexter Ward/ Joseph Curwen) Elisha Cook, Jr. (Cheaplaughs), and Lon Chaney, Jr. (Simon): Delightful romp from Roger Corman loosely adapts H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and quotes the eponymous Edgar Allan Poe poem.
Vincent Price plays both an evil 18th-century sorcerer and his late 19th-century descendant whose body the sorcerer needs to possess in order to finish his nefarious plan involving some extremely rapey elder gods. It's set in New England, which doesn't explain one character's bargain-basement Irish accent. Alas, the adaptation doesn't include the "essential salts" of Lovecraft's superior, weird original. Recommended.
The Fast and the Furious Presents Hobbs & Shaw (2019): written and directed by a Vic-20 computer; starring Dwayne Johnson (Hobbs), Jason Statham (Shaw), Vanessa Kirby (Shaw's Sister), and Idris Elba (Slumming It for Money): Basically a Roger Moore-era James Bond movie that has suffered grievious brain damage.
At this point in his career, Jason Statham's charisma has no gas left in the tank. Dwayne Johnson, so jacked he's cartoonishly bulbous, goes full-camp. Idris Elba actually seems to be doing something called 'acting.' Vanessa Kirby is intermittently charming as Statham's sister. Ryan Reynolds wanders through as a CIA agent who seems to be channeling Deadpool. Occasional ridiculous fun can't outweigh the tediousness of most of the writing. Not recommended.
Good Boys (2019): Produced though not written or directed by Seth Rogen and the other folks who brought you Superbad, this is basically a middle-school Superbad, sort of. There are some genuine laughs, but it's all a bit thin and ends with an interminable slog of sentimentality. Still, an adequate time-filler -- the most shocking thing about it is how innocuous it all is. Lightly recommended.
Midsommar (2019): [Credits Here] Writer-director Ari Aster follows up the superior Hereditary with another smart horror film, this one in the vein of The Wicker Man or Children of the Corn.
A grieving Florence Pugh tags along with her boyfriend -- an annoying sociology grad student -- and other annoying American grad students to visit the communal village of a Swedish grad student just in time for the special, every-90-years Midsummer festival, aka Lammas, aka, per a surprisingly recent Farmer's Almanac, "sabbats possible." Whee!
Makes a weird trilogy from unconnected film-makers (the other films would be Let the Right One In and The Ritual) about how no location in Sweden is safe from horror. Florence Pugh stands out as the only really sympathetic major character. Highly recommended.
If you're wondering why you keep touching your face in public despite knowing that you shouldn't touch your face in public -- well, part of that is habit. But part of it is called The Rebound Effect, in which focusing on an action or a thought one is supposed to avoid actually causes that action or thought.
Tied into all this is the Ideomotor Effect, first discovered in the middle of the 19th century in the process of debunking spiritualism. Thinking about things can actually cause the body to do these things unconsciously. It explained both spirit writing (and the later Ouija board). It also explained spiritualist Table-turning.
And it's backed by later brain science -- simply thinking about moving your hand causes your hand to essentially fire up and get ready to move at the very least. But it can also cause involuntary movement.
Or in other words, over-loading people with a longer and longer list of Do's and Don't will cause some of them to do the opposite involuntarily. And the longer the list of Do's and Don't's, the greater the number of failures.
Which is my way of saying that if you're going to wear a face-mask, wear gloves as well. You're not going to remember every time you're supposed to wash your hands, and you're not going to always remember not to touch your face.
Also, 'Don't think of the purple elephant.'
