Mladen and Del review ‘The Midnight Sky’
Image courtesy of Netflix.
“The Midnight Sky” starring George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Caoilinn Springall, Kyle Chandler, Demian Bichir, Tiffany Boone, and others. Directed by George Clooney. Runtime 118 minutes. Rated PG-13. Netflix
Mladen’s take
Rank the essential components – acting, directing, score, cinematography, and script – of “The Midnight Sky” individually and the results vary from good to very good. Combine the essential components of this Netflix production and the result is mediocrity.
It’s not that “Midnight,” despite its Adam-and-Eve ending and a twist that turned out to be, what, a terminal-cancer-driven hallucination, is entirely disappointing. It’s that its subplots weren’t particularly absorbing. Nor were its way-too-many characters consistently worth caring about.
In “Midnight,” the year is 2049 (maybe that’s a nod to 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049”) and the jig is up for humanity. Actually, it’s the end for anything that breathes air as we know air today – mostly nitrogen, some oxygen, and a little bit of carbon dioxide, i.e. not enough to poison us. Before our planet’s atmosphere turned into a swirl of unbreathable toxic gases, mankind mounted an expedition to a newly discovered Jovian moon that could support complex life. The crew of the vessel was on its way home from a recon of moon K-23 when Mother Earth, reacting to our abuse of her, transformed into Serial Killer Earth. Augustine, portrayed by George Clooney, and accompanied by a young girl, has to make way for a weather station that likely has the capability to communicate with the spaceship returning to Earth. He wants to warn the crew that our planet is no longer habitable and offer a suggestion – return to Jupiter’s moon to re-plant our species on a pristine solar system body.
Why cosmologist Augustine feels he has to alert the crew of a spaceship built to probe a moon for signs it can support life that Earth is unsafe for them is beyond me. As the spaceship approached Earth, it was clearly visible to its crew that the planet’s atmosphere, now a green-yellow, had changed since they departed two years earlier. I’m no astronaut, but a discolored home world would have me saying something like, “Ensign, give me scans of the planet in UV and IR. What’s the spectroscopy saying about chemical composition of the atmosphere?”
The spaceship has a crew of five, one of them Felicity Jones’s Sully, a pregnant communications specialist. As the spaceship’s sub-story unfolds through a course deviation, collisions with space rocks, and an assortment of personal anguish, one crew member dies, two decide to return to Earth the Stomper of Life via a lander, and two slingshot back toward K-23.
I predict Del will like this movie, giving it a B+. He’s like one of the dudes in “Midnight” who decides to go home, though home will kill you for sure. Del will strain to find the positive in “Midnight” like the movie’s Earth returners hoped to find family still alive. Don’t be fooled. “Midnight” ain’t that good.
The best you can expect from “Midnight” is a few bits of good storytelling backed by consistently good acting. The film’s score is sturdy, if not exceptional. It helps the tale by setting up moods. The visual effects in “Midnight” are very good. I enjoyed the cinematography the most when it conveyed the austere and stark blue whiteness of snow cover and ice pack in the North Pole. But, even that simple joy was harassed by an achy nagging at the back of my brain. As mentioned above, “Midnight” takes place in 2049. Ain’t no way there’ll be any ice pack or glaciers anywhere on Earth in 28 years. Want ice then? Place your glass beneath the ice dispenser on your refrigerator.
“The Midnight Sky” gets a C+ from me. Del, on the other hand, will likely nominate it for a best picture Oscar.
Del’s take
Merry Christmas, you old coot. Sounds like you’re sipping more of the “nog” than the “egg.”
You think I liked “The Midnight Sky”?
Piffle. Do I like any movie?
Folks may think I’m a serial hater but trust me, there are movies I adore – “Being There,” “Doctor Strangelove,” and “Die Hard” to name a few. “Midnight Sky” ain’t one of them.
Not to nerd out on all three of our readers but “Midnight” lost me at the opening narrative where we are informed mankind has discovered a “new moon” around the planet Jupiter, one that has the ability to support terrestrial life.
Oh, sweet Jesus, somebody hand me one of George Clooney’s barf bags.
To put it politely, that’s a preposterous crock of ca-ca. There is no more an undiscovered moon of Jupiter capable of supporting “The Property Brothers” than the Earth is flat, climate change ain’t happening and Donald Trump was an effective and cordial president.
(Yes, I did have to get my Trump bash in.)
With all the space probes we’ve sent to Jupiter – hell, we’ve got one there right now photographing everything from moons and lightning bolts to Jupiter getting out of the shower – the chances of a large moon escaping our carefully studied inspections are nil. Not almost nil. Totally, completely and incontrovertibly nil. Nil nil nil, as in where have you been the past 30 years and you’re an idiot for even suggesting such a stupid departure from reality.
Seriously, it isn’t written in stone that a movie’s science must be accurate. Obviously the science of “Star Wars” is so far off the mark it qualifies as fantasy, and let’s not talk about movies like “Godzilla” and “Transformers.” But if you, the moviemaker, present the science as a pillar of the film’s premise, then you must make sure it’s consistent – or at least plausible – with what we already know. Had the makers of “Midnight” consulted a single astronomy buff they could have adjusted their ca-ca premise.
OK, enough nerd stuff. I can see two of our readers are asleep. Suffice it to say the scientific implausibilities that I mentioned, along with those Mladen noticed even in his nogged-out state, pretty much ruined the movie for me.
The rest of “Midnight” is a depressing pastiche of tropes and science fiction clichés interspersed with scenes of George Clooney throwing up. Was anybody else grossed out by the vomit in his Unabomber beard? Funny, the ca-ca Hollywood thinks people want to see. As for Mladen’s “consistently good acting,” I’m sorry but what the hell was he smoking? Clooney’s narcoleptic performance failed to impress despite the bombastic promotionals. The only actor who showed the tiniest sign of life was Kyle Chandler, who uttered one laugh-out-loud line. The plot consisted of a series of contrived and impossible cliffhangers. The script seemed inspired by “A Recipe for Seduction” in terms of silliness and the movie as a whole struck me as Frankensteined from bits and pieces of “Gravity,” “Interstellar” and other mediocre SF films.
By the way, “We messed up” is not sufficient explanation for the end of the world.
What’s good about “The Midnight Sky”?
The special effects are pretty. Sound of crickets chirping. I can’t think of anything else.
What irritates me is “Midnight” could have been an excellent movie. The problems could have been fixed easily enough so that grouchy old bastards like Mladen and me could go back to grumping about our prostates. It’s just sloppiness and laziness, and as a storyteller myself it pisses me off.
I’ve recommended a lot of Netflix movies lately but if you miss this one you haven’t missed much. I give it a C-.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
GPA PHoto Archive, Flickr, via Creative Commons license
The 2020 election is not a done deal, but from the close results one can draw several broad conclusions about many of the voters in this country:
1. They don’t care about climate change. Either they don’t think it’s happening, or it’s somebody else’s problem (their children’s and grandchildren’s problem, to be more precise).
2. They don’t seem interested in finding cleaner energy sources that will power our civilization when the oil runs out, nevermind the pollution and climate change consequences of burning fossil fuels.
3. Speaking of pollution, they don’t seem to care about clean water, clean air and caring for our natural resources and wildlife. They don’t understand the connection between these things and their survival. (Just wait until they find out pizza doesn’t grow on trees.)
4. They don’t seem to care about the rest of the world. They seem to think America can function in a vacuum, mindless to the needs of the other nations – unless one of them threatens access to the resources they want to maintain their comfortable lifestyle.
5. They don’t care about the rights of minorities. Judging by the way they voted, it would seem as long as they can do what they want unimpeded by restrictions and discrimination, everyone else can be damned.
6. They don’t appear to care about the truth. Their candidate lies and they laugh it off, or respond with an endless series of “Whatabouts.”
7. They have no understanding of the Constitution and how it applies to their daily lives, and they don’t seem to care. Again, as long as they get what they want, everyone and everything else can be damned.
8. Decorum, dignity, compassion and respect are concepts apparently lost to them.
9. They don’t seem to respect or even understand the power and truth of science. They’ll avail themselves of science when it serves their purpose, but otherwise they treat it as a kind of superstition. The distrust of science and scientists in this country is headed in the same direction of the USSR in the 1940s.
And finally, 10. They don’t seem to care about the future. They have no vision of the amazing thing this country could become with hard work and determination. In fact, they appear to relish living in the past and wallowing in a notion of greatness that does not exist within their generation, something they have not earned.
The sad fact is that even if the more honorable of the two candidates pulls it out at the 11th hour, about half the eligible voters have, in my opinion, demonstrated themselves to be greedy, selfish, ignorant people whom I will never trust or respect again. I am not just disappointed with but ashamed of them, and that isn’t a difference of political opinion. It’s an issue of values.
They have shown me that their values and mine are in no way compatible.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Gaumont.
“Rogue City,” aka “Bronx” Starring Lannick Gautry, Stanislas Merhar, Kaaris, David Bell, Barbara Opsomer and Jean Reno. Directed by Olivier Marchal. 116 minutes. Rated TV-MA. Netflix.
Del’s take
What the hell is the name of this movie? “Bronx” or “Rogue City”?
It’s both. Released in some countries as “Bronx,” it appears on Netflix as “Bronx” and “Rogue City,” a bit much to ask of somebody in a vomit-soaked wifebeater waking up from a 12-beer bender.
Should you choose to go this route, prepare yourself for a gritty, nasty, violent crime drama where the line between cops and robbers, good guys and bad, is described perfectly by one of the kingpins negotiating a deal with anti-gang unit boss Richard Vronski (Lannick Gautry):
“You know the only difference between you and me? A police badge.”
That message is conveyed throughout the movie in a multiplicity of ways, straight to the bitter – and I do mean bitter – end credits.
“Bronx” is about a local police anti-gang unit operating to thwart the activities of drug gangs in Marseilles (yes, the movie is French, and it is subtitled, so there goes about 85 percent of the American audience). The unit has become as thuggish and brutal in its methods as the criminals it seeks to suppress, drawing the ire of Internal Affairs and other elements of the French law enforcement community.
As the story progresses we come to know that everyone in the Marseilles police department is in cahoots with the crime community EXCEPT some of the guys on the anti-gang unit. I’ll let you decide who’s on the take and who’s just an asshole.
The story is a typically bleak modern viewpoint, made special by its cinematography and explicit violence. I expect Mladen was disappointed by the level of mayhem, but to my sensitive palate “Bronx” was soaked through and through with shocking footage both overt and suggested. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to cinematic violence. But it must serve a storytelling purpose. In the case of “Bronx,” violence was the story.
Acting was solid, with the incomparable Jean Reno playing a role contrary to his character type. One of the pleasures I get from watching foreign movies is seeing how other people live, and “Bronx” provides an extensive look at that aspect of French citizenship. Apparently shiny floor tiles is a thing in Marseilles.
What I did not like about “Bronx” was its heavy-headed subtext and dystopian worldview. The chief of the anti-gang unit, Vronski, is named after a “motherfucker” from a Tolstoy novel, according to a crime boss, one of the few human-like creatures in the film. I would like to believe people are not as selfish and hateful as the Marseilles anti-gang unit and their persons of interest, but maybe I’m wrong. After enduring four years of the Trump administration I should no longer harbor such idealistic fantasies.
Still, “Bronx” is entertaining, though it requires a strong stomach for those sensitive to blood. I’m not sure what the title is meant to convey – maybe a European conception of what a crime-riddled American city must be like. If so, I would say America’s Bronx has nothing on Marseilles, which comes across a shootout away from total anarchy.
I would give “Bronx” a B.
Mladen’s take
It’s tough to tell. Am I tepid about the French movie “Bronx” because Del promised it was uber-violent but wasn’t? Or, am I disappointed because the cop/gang/drug war movie was disorienting?
Disorienting, how? Well, there were shifting alliances and billions of character names thrown around. There was not one single good guy or wonderful gal in the whole damn Netflix film. Not one. Yes, there were a couple of less than bad guys – the Internal Affairs investigator, for example – but a prominent good person would’ve helped me track the bad guys, which would’ve helped me follow the story. All the cops were corrupt or otherwise compromised, e.g., one cop screwing another cop’s wife. The drug gangs were, ah, Mexican cartel-like drug gangs. Fighting brutally for territory and respect, though their marketplace was Marseilles, a city of some 900,000 people. Wouldn’t it have been more productive for everyone involved to divvy the city into parcels using socioeconomic data to ensure each gang gets a fair and balanced share of jack from drug peddling?
By the time “Bronx” ends, you feel like you’ve been seeing from the inside the way the outgoing and bonkers Trump administration operates. Everyone inside the police department is part of clique that protects its own from the other cliques in the police department. Unflinching loyalty, rather than decency, honor, public service, or competence, is the play. Non-legal side hustles and betrayal are the norm. The drug gangs, think of one as Vladimir Putin and the other, oh, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dick with each other until everyone but a cop unit from a different police department ends up dead. Absurd.
“Bronx” isn’t introspective. It isn’t didactic. It isn’t good versus bad. It’s bad versus an ever badder bad interwoven with the kind of incomprehensibility you find in films such as “Inception” or “Tenet.” The moral turpitude and nearly unfathomable complexity became tiring after a while. And, one of the movie’s principal firefights occurred at night, which, again, was disorienting. I had no idea who was shooting at whom. So, instead of a gun battle at the OK Corral, or whatever, the viewer gets muzzle flashes and plinking bullets from every direction amid vast deposits of black screen. Besides, if everyone in “Bronx” is a bad dude or dudette, who cares which one of them dies?
Wait. It just occurred to me. The reason I mostly disliked the movie. Its intrigue and violence reflected the malaise of normal life on Earth these days. “Bronx” relied on narcissism and nihilism to see it through. Its violence lacked the wholesomeness of the man vs. computer action in “The Matrix.” It wasn’t the survival violence of man vs. nature as portrayed in “Jaws.” It wasn’t the tired violence of a war fought too long as on display in “Fury.” It wasn’t the outrageous and playful violence of “John Wick” Chapter 1 and “John Wick” Chapter 2. “Bronx” violence was about the Euro with a dose of racism pitched in. Eh.
“Bronx” had some money behind it because its production value was good. The acting was decent. I saw no trouble with film editing. The score, though indistinctive, fit the movie well enough. I found myself imitating in pretend French the catchy song at the end of the film.
Bronx gets a C+ and Del needs to hone his definition of “violent.” This movie was no “Scarface.”
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Open Road Films and Briarliff Entertainment.
“Honest Thief” Starring hot Kate Walsh, old Liam Neeson, decent bad guy Jai Courtney, remorseful Anthony Ramos, skeptical but open-minded Jeffrey Donovan and others. Directed by Mark Williams. 99 minutes. PG-13. Amazon Prime.
Mladen’s take
“Honest Thief” is an honest-to-goodness mediocre movie. It pulls a C+. The film’s woes in a moment. I’m obliged to provide a summary first to sedate Del’s urge to nag me about it.
Liam Neeson as Tom Carter falls in love with perfect woman Annie Wilkins played by Kate Walsh. Carter decides that the relationship will suffer unless he comes clean with his dark past, which ain’t all that dark if you ask me. Stealing from the rich to keep some for yourself and give some to the poor is OK with me.
Anyway, Tom tries to confess to the FBI that he’s a long-wanted bank robber and cut a deal to serve less time in the hoosegow so that he can spend more time with Annie. As The Fixx will tell you, one thing leads to another and, pretty soon, Tom and Annie are on the run from a couple of corrupt FBI special agents trying to steal the money that he robbed from assorted financial institutions.
Toss in guilt trips, a murder or two and attempted murders, violations of the oath to serve and protect, EOD expertise, lots of PG-13 gun play, and a healthy house-destroying detonation and you’ve got a pretty standard tale of a somewhat bad man, a thief, attempting to do the right thing, be honest.
Casting old Neeson as an adroit, strong brawler and an ace car driver provokes one of my biggest movie-going peeves. Action films cannot be propelled by aged dudes. And, Neeson is gaunt to boot, so it’s impossible for him to use sheer bulk as the source of a powerful punch. I’m somewhat old and would, no doubt, break many a bone falling from a two-story window whether I’m locked in fisticuffs with a Bureau baddie or not. Hell, I’m not even convinced Tom would be able to lift the uber-drill he uses to break into bank vaults made of thick steel.
Even more of an impossibility is that someone as fine as Annie would fall for a semi-mummy-looking fellow such as Tom. That said, Walsh does a good job making the movie flow. She’s convincing as a girlfriend who goes from disbelieving and troubled that her beau is a bank robber to a willing accomplice intrigued by Tom’s techno-skills.
In fact, it’s getting to the point where I’ll consider watching a movie starring Walsh even if the genre is crap. For example, she was very good in “Grey’s Anatomy.” My daughter made me watch the show.
“Honest Thief” knows what it is. A passable film that’ll draw a sufficient number of viewers to make some bank. I imagine it also took no more than a week to make, freeing Neeson to shoot another film where he can pretend to be as strong as the 30-year-olds he’s fighting.
Del’s take
I would make a lousy Robin Hood because I am not as sanguine as Mladen about stealing from the rich to give to the poor. I thought the whole point of capitalism was to let people come up with a great idea, work their ass off, sell it for billions of dollars and enjoy the financial fruits of their labor.
Being rich doesn’t mean a person is evil. Breaking the rules and stealing – those things are evil. So with that thought I segue into my critique of “Honest Thief”: It was a decent enough action movie based on a ridiculous premise.
Throughout my viewing of I heard a voice inside telling me, “This is ridiculous. Nobody but NOBODY would behave like this.”
And by “this” I mean what Mladen wrote: “Liam Neeson as Tom Carter falls in love with perfect woman Annie Wilkins played by Kate Walsh. Dolan decides that the relationship will suffer unless he comes clean with his dark past … Tom tries to confess to the FBI that he’s a long-wanted bank robber and cut a deal to serve less time in the hoosegow so that he can spend more time with Annie. As The Fixx will tell you, one thing leads to another and, pretty soon, Tom and Annie are on the run from a couple of corrupt FBI special agents trying to steal the money that he robbed from assorted financial institutions.”
What Mladen omitted in his otherwise acceptable summary was the reason for Tom Carter’s bank-robbing spree. It was to avenge a miscarriage of justice inflicted on his father by a bank. I’m rolling my eyes as I write this.
THAT is a ridiculous premise.
What follows is a corny, formulaic beat-’em-up that explodes every house, falls off every ledge and lands every roundhouse you would expect from a man with a particular set of skills. Liam Neeson gimps his way through the plot with respectable dexterity – I mean, the guy is 68 years old, which is only two years older than yours truly, and I would not want to have my teeth kicked by anybody, much less a corrupt FBI agent. But I would agree with Mladen that maybe he’s a tad long in the tooth for those kinds of roles. To go on would be a mis-taken.
I enjoyed the action and I thought Kate Walsh and Jai Courtney were the standout actors. Neeson was his usual post-AARP good guy with a pacemaker. The characters were props for the action, however, and that’s what I remember best from “Honest Thief.”
Mladen gave the movie a C+. I’ll be a little more generous and say it’s a B-. The unbelievable premise knocks it down from a solid B.
Mladen Rudman is a former newspaper reporter and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former newspaper editor and author.
Del Stone Jr.
When I lived in my noisy townhouse, the one with paper-thin walls, I sometimes climbed aboard my bicycle and pedaled off into the relative quiet of surrounding neighborhoods, a journey that often carried me to a winding lane in Cinco Bayou called Opp Boulevard.
Opp is populated with very few big houses, lots of duplexes and townhouses, and a slew of cottage-style homes. It’s a narrow road fringed with big, big trees and because of the park, the people who live there are insulated from the clamor of Eglin Parkway, Hughes Street and Uptown Station.
I liked the neighborhood on Opp Boulevard because it was cozy, out-of-the-way and quiet, the kind of place where people washed their cars, mowed their yards, and waved when they passed you by. Time seemed to move slower there, and that’s what I wanted – the serenity of slow.
It never occurred to me that I too could live there.
That opportunity arrived in 2015 when I was abruptly informed by my landlords they were selling the noisy townhouse I had lived in 24 years. Would two months be sufficient to get out?
Thus began a depressing search for new digs, and I say “depressing” because the rent I had been paying, about $600 a month, had become as out of date as my tastes in neighborhoods. I looked at absolute dumps for between $900 and $1,200. A smaller, more cramped apartment lay in my future.
Then a coworker gave me the number of a friend who needed a tenant for his rental. I called and we made an appointment to meet. Imagine my delight when the address was “Opp Boulevard.”
The house was crazy big, with much more space than I needed. The rent was more than I could afford, about half my monthly income. But the landlord came down on the price and I vowed to stretch my budget, and within a few days we had agreed on a lease.
So.
After 24 years I was living in a house. An actual house. With three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I garage. A walk-in closet, for crying out loud. And get this – TWO refrigerators – one in the kitchen and the other in the garage, which I could load with beer.
Could it be? Could I be so lucky?
My first few weeks there were consumed with guilt. I felt I was living in a palace that I didn’t deserve. The living room echoed. I had my choice of two showers. One room was devoted exclusively to holding cardboard boxes of books. The garage held everything but the car.
It was true. I had died and gone to heaven.
My euphoria lasted until that first post-move in paycheck, which is when the panic commenced. How the heck would I pay for all this? I received a monthly pension from a former company, and every penny of that went into savings, along with whatever I had left over from salary. Now, the pension money would go to rent and practically nothing would remain for the bank.
But somehow I made it work, and I did save money, and both my new landlord and the bank were content.
I lived in the house five years, and they were five happy, happy years – not that it was all free sailing.
Being next to a park … well, let’s be honest … it was a swamp … meant bugs. Roaches and palmetto bugs constantly found ways inside, dodging the sticky traps and roach hotels I laid out for them. I kept a can of spray in one bathroom because the cockroaches seemed to favor that one for their intrusions.
The house had skylights and something was always falling on the plexiglass, producing a loud bang or crack in the middle of the night that at first scared the daylights out of me. I learned to ignore sharp noises, but I could not ignore the sound of something trying to claw its way through the skylight one night as I shivered through a viewing of “Insidious.”
The heater was strange – hot water from the water heater was pumped through a network of baffles. A fan blew over the baffles and the-now warmed air circulated into the house. Except it wasn’t very warm because I kept the thermostat on the water heater pretty low.
But it was nice to come home from work the night of a parade and not find my parking space taken by a parade fan. It was nice to not have to hear somebody’s American Ninja Warriors or Call of Duty rattling the walls. I could walk to Uptown Station when I needed something. Or just sit on the front porch, hemmed in by azaleas, and quietly read a book without being distracted by the thunder of traffic.
I loved that house, and I loved the neighbors and the neighborhood. I felt at home going there, pulling into the driveway and seeing the warm light from the kitchen shining from the windows.
So of course, it couldn’t last.
I don’t live there any more. I have moved in with Mom. She is at that age where she needs somebody with her.
It’s tight, and I have little space of my own. Half a closet, a spot for my computer desk, and a twin-sized bed. My clothes dryer is a clothesline in the back yard. The beer fridge is still with me, in a utility room outside near the car port.
Some day I will have another house, maybe one that I will have built, and it will be in a nice, shaded neighborhood where people wash their cars, mow their yards, and wave as they pass you by.
The serenity of slow.
I will have a home.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Del Stone Jr.
I don’t know what I was expecting – fire, pestilence, world-ending earthquakes. It is 2020, after all.
In truth, Halloween was like all the recent Halloweens. Here are the highlights:
1. I was afraid the weather would be chilly and windy, but it was perfect – temperatures in the mid-60s and practically no wind. No bugs, either.
2. For the first time in memory, a full moon rode the sky. Patches of clouds drifted across its silvery face, lending a spooky effect. I tried to take a photo with my phone but I couldn’t turn down the brightness and got only a white patch in the sky.
3. I went old school on the jack-o-lantern. I wanted to replicate the look of the jack-o-lanterns in “Halloween.” According to my niece Liz, I achieved that goal.
4. We got our first batch of trick-or-treaters around 6. They seemed to come in waves. The last wave moved through just after 8:30 p.m.
5. The kids, as always, were very polite, as were their parents.
6. I did not take photos of the trick-or-treaters this year due to the meltdown by the millennial mom last year. Pity. I used to love taking their photos.
7. The neighbors on the corner were having a driveway party and they were the belle of the ball. Every batch of trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood came by their place, as did some of their parents and even the bicycle cops patrolling the neighborhood.
8. The real must-stop destination was the Port-A-Potty at the house under construction next door. No. 2 was the dumpster near the Port-A-Potty.
9. We gave out the good stuff this year – Snickers, Three Muskateers, M&Ms, Reese’s Cups, Smarties and Twix. I only ate about five.
10. Mom and I had our traditional Halloween night treat – Little Caeser’s pepperoni pizza. Mom hated it. She ended up eating diced melon.
11. Pickups and golf carts loaded with kids cruised by. They weren’t decorated as often as in the past.
12. One kid wore a full-body costume depicting the human musculature. When I complimented him on his costume he said, “Yeah. Sixty bucks!”
13. My favorite costume of the night – a girl wore an inflatable dragon. It even had a fan running underneath – either to keep the dragon at full inflate or keep her cool.
14. A man wearing no costume approached and explained, “I’ve been designated as the bag carrier.” I filled his bags with candy.
15. What would have made it a better Halloween? A giant cooler filled with iced beer, a grill loaded with brats and a spooky soundtrack playing.
16. Once again this year I failed to get our Halloween decorations put up. I was too sick and there were too many things going on, what with my sudden retirement and moving in with Mom.
17. There were two fireworks shows in the area. I managed to catch some spectacularly bad photos through the trees.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Silverback Films.
“David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet” Starring David Attenborough. Directed by Alastair Fothergill, Jonathan Hughes, Keith Scholey. Rated PG. 83 minutes. Netflix.
Del’s take
The most heartbreaking moment in David Attenborough’s profound “A Life on Our Planet” takes place at about the halfway mark when we see an orangutan clinging to the shredded branch of a tree – one tree – remaining in a field of clear-cut Borneo rain forest. Surrounding this pitiful creature lies destruction – jagged stumps, mangled limbs, the earth scarred by monster bulldozers.
Gut-wrenching.
That brief snippet of video perfectly encapsulates the message of Attenborough’s documentary film about the downfall of the natural world and serves as a metaphor for the future of mankind as we greedily attack the systems that make life on Earth possible.
Attenborough has a unique perspective on this tragedy. His role as broadcast journalist and naturalist for the BBC has allowed him to see firsthand the rapid decline in animal species, the fouling of the earth and the collapse of ecosystems. As a result, “A Life on Our Planet” is “my witness statement and my vision for the future,” he says.
The first two thirds of the documentary are devoted to Attenborough’s career as a journalist-naturalist and the chilling litany of ruin and destruction he has witnessed since he began covering the “nature beat” in the 1950s. Then, the plains of Africa were covered with migrating herds of wildebeest and zebras, Antarctica was a deep-freeze of glaciers and penguins, and the oceans of the world were home to thriving coral reefs.
Compare that with today: The great herds of Africa are diminished to a trickle, with some species, like the white rhino, becoming extinct. Glacier coverage around the world has shrunk, contributing to sea level rise and the possible extinction of animals like the emperor penguin. Coral reefs are dying as the oceans heat and become more acidic.
Attenborough tries to describe the relationship that exists between mankind and nature, and how the former must be preserved if latter is to survive, then devotes the remaining third of “A Life on Our Planet” to the steps we must take to save ourselves.
In the end, “We need to learn how to work with nature, not against it,” he says.
The film is a showcase of lush visuals, both beautiful and horrific, the yin and the yang of how beautiful our world once was and could be again, and what it is increasingly becoming.
I expect his “witness statement” will fall on deaf ears.
Forgive my cynicism, but I don’t hold much hope for the years ahead. People are disconnected from nature and cannot understand the gravity of Attenborough’s message. They conflate science with some kind of political philosophy. Any attempt to educate them only hardens their disbelief. Throw in market incentives to maintain the status quo, an unswerving refusal to limit population growth, and a rampant, voracious consumerism stoked by soulless corporate entities and you reach a future that resembles a science fiction novel where masses of uneducated savages are baking in the slums of a dead world, awaiting a final war to finish off the species.
I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope “A Life on Our Planet” creates a groundswell of support for those who are trying to solve the riddles of climate change, population growth and destruction of the natural systems that give us clean water, air to breath and food to eat. I hope to see the weather return to normal, to hear a bobwhite quail calling in the morning, to see moths orbiting the porch light.
In the time it takes you to read this review, 60 average homes’ worth of rain forest will have been cut down. That’s an area roughly the size of your neighborhood, gone forever.
Better hurry.
“A Life on Our Planet” gets an A+.
Mladen’s take
Shit, Del’s correct. By that I mean he correctly assessed the quality and importance of “David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet” and the documentary’s likely impact on mankind’s environment-ruining behavior, as well as that I hate to admit Del is right about anything.
Attenborough is 93 years old. He walks with a slight hunch and his steps seem tentative, but the sparkle in his eyes, the pleasantness of his voice, and the lucidness of what he observes and says are unchanged. The Old Timer, who narrated such break-through documentaries as “Life on Earth,” “The Living Planet,” and “The Blue Planet,” should be heeded because he knows his stuff. His advice should be taken – reduce poverty to reduce deforestation, destruction of fisheries, obliteration of species; render one-third of the ocean’s littoral off limits to mankind; stopping buying so much crap.
It ain’t gonna happen, of course, as Del notes.
“A Life” makes the argument that mankind will go the way of the wild places it destroys, extinct, unless it starts preserving the atmosphere, the biosphere, and the geosphere. Attenborough’s storytelling is punctuated periodically with a counter that ticks off numbers such as the world population of humans and the percentage of wild places still left from the 1950s to today. Sobering. As the population of people grew, guess what happened to the extent of wild places? I’ll give you a clue. It’s what mathematicians call an inverse relationship.
One striking feature of the documentary might go unnoticed unless you’re paying attention. Attenborough never casts blame for the demise of nature at specific countries or leaders. Bollsanaro in Brazil, the feckless muther-f-er encouraging destruction of the Amazon, is not named. China and brutal, soulless Xi aren’t named for obliterating the country’s rivers. America and beyond-stupid Trump are not named for loosening environment preservation regulations and opening national parks and monuments to “mineral extraction.” Attenborough does use examples of sustainable activity such as agriculture in the Netherlands, if I recall accurately, to make the point mankind can have less impact on the air, land, and water while still enjoying a lofty lifestyle. To Attenborough, the environmental catastrophe facing Earth is caused by “us.” It is “our” problem. The problem can be stemmed only through global action requiring that “we” cooperate with each other.
“A Life” ends where it started, in Pripyat, Ukraine. This “atomgrad” of the former Soviet Union was the place where the people who operated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant lived. When Reactor Number 4 exploded in April 1986, all 50,000 of those people had to be evacuated. The city remains uninhabitable decades later. The radionuclides ejected into the air poisoned some of the world’s most productive land and water, crossing national borders all the way up to parts of North Europe. I assume that Attenborough chose to disregard the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi three-reactor meltdown in Japan because that disaster is still in the early stages of unfolding.
Attenborough warns us that Earth will become Chernobyl writ planetary scale —uninhabitable for mankind — unless Homo sapiens initiates remediation now. The naturalist considers pollution and climate change significant contributing factors to the destruction of the outdoors, but not its root causes. Industrial agriculture, mining, and fishing; wanton consumerism; and human disconnection from land and sea are the culprits. He asserts we have stepped from nature and into a delusion: that the supply of Earth’s resources is infinite and that are always technologic solutions to problems caused by technology.
To illustrate there’s hope, Attenborough moves from talking about the Chernobyl catastrophe by walking through room after room filled with abandoned furniture, books, and toys to the outdoors. Large fauna (e.g., wolves, deer, and rare wild horses), the kinds of animals that end up dead or displaced when mankind moves in, are reclaiming Pripyat and so are flora. Trees are present in what were once courtyards. They compete for height with the desolate and deteriorating multi-story buildings that once housed tens of thousands of humans. It might be that vines growing up the walls of those buildings are helping them stay intact a little be longer. In Pripyat, it’s as though Nature had forgiven mankind and has started the hard task of re-nourishing the air, land, and water.
So, there it is in a visual nutshell. Attenborough shows that given enough time and space, the outdoors, and, as a consequence, mankind can recover.
“David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet” gets an A+. Watch this documentary and then go plant a tree in your yard, somewhere, anywhere. Seriously.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Vertical Entertainment.
“Ava” Starring Jessica Chastain, John Malkovich, Common and others. Directed by Tate Taylor. 96 minutes. Rated R. Netflix.
Mladen’s take
“Ava,” starring Jessica Chastain as a hitwoman, gets good about halfway through the 96-minute movie. What’s the halfway grade on the scale from A to F? Correct. C. That’s the grade the movie gets from me.
Chastain is a very good actress, but what’s with very good actresses heading toward middle-middle to late-middle age and the urge to do action thrillers? We have Angelina Jolie as “Salt.” We have Charlize Theron as the matriarch of “The Old Guard.” Jennifer Garner is “Peppermint.” I imagine you can name others. Are Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis or Liam Neeson convincing as kick-your-ass man killers when they look their skins have turned to leather and their muscles are rippled rather than ripped? I loved the “The Expendables” trilogy, but only Antonio Banderas in TE3 looked somewhat like he was nimble enough to dodge bullets.
Ava is a former drunkard and Army super-soldier recruited by one of her then-commanders – played convincingly by John Malkovich as Duke until he fights and nearly kicks the shit out of much younger Simon (Colin Farrell) – to be the assassinator of guys who’ve done serious wrongs but avoided prison time. Simon is the head of the organization that arranges the hits. Duke and Ava, who are friends, too, are employees of said company.
We are led to believe that in most instances Ava moves in, takes out her target, and moves out with barely a ripple in the Force. But, of late, she’s started asking her marks what they had done that warranted the application of her skills before she applied them. For some reason, Simon is disturbed by Ava’s curiosity.
Between offing prominent baddies, Ava struggles with staying sober, tries to bed her sister’s fiancé (who was once Ava’s lover), and works hard and long to mend relations with her ailing mother, played nicely by Geena Davis. OK, so far so somewhat good, but, like pretty much every action thriller, it seems that very few, if any, other soldiers or mercenaries can shoot as good as our likeable but troubled protagonist. Or fight as good as Ava. Or take body blows like Ava, etc.
But, the real problem with the first half of the film is that it’s somewhat uninteresting because A. I could give a shit about her family woes and B. what’s wrong with knocking off a corrupt IMF economist? It’s when the movie gets personal, Ava moving to avenge Duke’s murder, that I started to enjoy the pretty redhead’s acumen and ability to focus.
“Ava” is a C, but that could be a rating that’s the result of my defective preference for straight-up violence. John Wick started puncturing Russian mobsters with knives and bullets because one of them killed his dog (which his wife gifted after her death) and stole his Mustang. I sympathize with both, though much more with the missing muscle car than a puppy. After that, the dead dog and the stolen hot rod were used by the mobsters to express disbelief about Wick’s motivation to kill them moments before he did so. Wick wanted to be left alone, but people kept interfering with his new life as a non-assassin. Ava, well, she’s portrayed as human. She wants to booze. She wants to copulate. She’s troubled by her mother’s, what, callousness and wants to repair their relationship or obtain her affirmation or whatever. Who cares? Not me, until Ava goes vengeful.
If you want to watch a movie about an assassin and the assassin’s detailed backstory, “Ava” is for you. I prefer my killers to be meticulous, stone-cold sociopaths with contempt for humanity, rather than inclination to become part of it.
Del’s take
Much as it pains me I agree with the drift of Mladen’s review. I wasn’t a fan of “Ava.” Ironically, one of the movie’s co-stars appeared as the lead in a superior action flick many years ago. Oh, if “Ava” had only been half as good.
My problem with “Ava” is that it wants to be two movies – the story of Ava the recovering drunk and the story of Ava the badass lady assassin. For an action movie viewpoint character to have flaws is perfectly fine by me, but when half the movie is spent exploring family dynamics and attending 12-step meetings, the distraction of naval-gazing amounts to more than the focus and pacing can bear.
The movie seemed populated with clichéd characters – John Malkovich as the eccentric yet deadly handler, Colin Farrell as the ruthless higher up and Chastain herself as the out-of-control rogue operative who must be exterminated for the sake of the company’s reputation. All this strikes me as VERY familiar. Maybe if they had changed Ava’s name to “Jason.”
Acting was only so-so. Malkovich is good in everything he does but he typically plays one type of character – the kind of guy who, when you walked into your junior year situational ethics class, could be standing at the podium or slouched in the desk next to you. I’ve never understood the draw of Colin Farrell, who strikes me as a tabula rosa kinda guy, and Common was simply awful. I honestly think Shaquille O’Neal could have done a better job reciting those lines.
And then Chastain … what can I say? She was totally wrong for the part. Most of the time she seemed lost and confused, her face an expressionless slate, her eyes wide with … I don’t know, introspection? Valium? Beats me, but the effect was the same. Plus, and this is a biggie, she totally lacked the physicality to play the role. During many of her fight scenes she struck me as slow, uncoordinated and dare I say weak? I wasn’t convinced.
The one redeeming performance came from Geena Davis as Ava’s bitchy, judgmental mom who’s nevertheless happy to have her kid back home, toxic secrets and all. Davis is an actor’s actor and she seemed born into that role, just as she seemed born into all her roles. She was also the star of a much better action flick that some of you old farts may remember, 1996’s “The Long Kiss Goodnight.” Samantha Caine was the romp ’em, stomp ’em action hero that Ava should have been. If only they had handed Geena a gun.
“Ava” is mostly competent in the details but not so much in the view from 20,000 feet. With a better lead actor and a tightly focused plot it could have been a better movie. From me it gets a C-.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Netflix.
“The Block Island Sound” Starring Chris Sheffield, Michaela McManus, Matilda Lawler, Neville Archambault, and others. Directed by Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus. 99 minutes. Unrated. Netflix.
Mladen’s take
Del warned me to avoid spoilers when I recapitulate the plot of “The Block Island Sound” because the film relies on keeping the source of the troubles endured by our protagonists secret.
So, here are a couple of sayings to help you meander through this review while I try to explain what the sci-fi-like, horror-ish “The Block Island Sound” is about without giving away the neat ending. To appreciate the ending, by the way, be sure to pay attention to the beginning of the movie. It’s the scene between mother and daughter talking about studying animals.
I’m borrowing the first indirect explanation of “The Block Island Sound” storyline from a couple of Star Trek movies: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” I believe that’s a Spockism.
Then there’s “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” I have no idea where that saying originated.
The movie also portrays and warns about doing onto others, in this case marine fish, what you wouldn’t want done unto you. That truism is derived from the Bible or some other piece of historical fiction.
“The Block Island Sound” is a slo-mo film that constantly has the viewer wondering what the hell is going on. By slo-mo I mean action is limited and the story unfolds through the tension of a family that doesn’t get along. There are a couple of drunkards, the father and the son; a smart and altruistic sister and her cute daughter; an unempathetic and punitive sister; and a dead mother.
Other characters in the film are the gossip and law enforcement attitudes of a small, somewhat isolated community. A kook expounding all sorts of conspiracies about the Government, parasites, and I can’t recall what else is in the movie, too.
Semi-mass dyings of fish and birds and an apparition are also parts of the story.
“The Block Island Sound” takes place in the American Northeast, somewhere in the vicinity of Nantucket. The sea is blue-gray, as is the sky. The movie’s moodiness is similar to “The Vast of Night” or “Cosmos.”
The acting is good, even if the smart sister seems to be dumb occasionally though she’s a scientist. Chris Sheffield, playing emotionally tortured Harry, executes again and again some one of the finest examples of walking catatonia, the vacant stare and slackened face, the blank expression, a hypnotic state, describe it as you wish, I’ve seen in a movie.
Be patient watching “The Block Island Sound.” Everything is tied together at the end in pretty cool fashion. Disregard, to some degree, the family dysfunction that’s regurgitated throughout the film. It annoyed me, but I hung on until the credits rolled to see what caused the strangeness on the island and its local waters.
“The Block Island Sound” earns a B, just scraping past a B-, from me.
Del’s take
I won’t be as charitable as Mladen in grading “The Block Island Sound.” The movie was a tad schizophrenic for my tastes.
To amplify Mladen’s plot summary, the story is about a man caring for his Alzheimer’s-stricken father at the ancestral home on an island somewhere in the Northeast. His sister, who works for the Environmental Protection Agency, returns to the island with her daughter to study a series of bird and fish kills. When the father turns up missing and then deceased, another daughter, the bitchier of the two sisters, joins her siblings for the funeral. The brother resents his sisters for abandoning him to the care of their father. And now he’s seeing things. He’s drinking heavily. He’s falling apart.
For the most part the movie is competently made, and casting and script are fine (faint praise). My gripe is with the metastory. There are two stories at work here, and the McManus brothers do a much better job of telling one. The second story is not original in content or presentation.
Most interesting is the interaction between the siblings, all finely drawn by the actors. Sheffield does a good job as Harry, the suffering son who has remained behind to take care of his dementia-addled father while his two sisters pursue their lives unencumbered by familial obligations. McManus and Heidi Niedermeyer are equally effective as the two sisters who have left their ailing father in the hands of their brother, then snottily fault him for crumbling under the pressure of caregiving. The interplay between these three is sufficiently interesting to compel a watch, despite the fact that none of them is very likeable.
And the second story? It emerges slowly over the course of the action, until sometime in the second act when the climax is telegraphed, resulting in an anti-climax to wrap that branch of the narrative and the movie itself.
As many character studies go, the pacing of “The Block Island Sound” is slow, abetted by a depressing color palette of grays and steely blues, always cloudy skies, and a choppy Atlantic Ocean that does not give up its secrets. Likewise the tone is dark and funereal. You are watching the dissolution of a family as much as a mystery about dying fish and crows flying into windshields.
My sense is the overarching thematic imperative is one of loss – loss of soul due to the escalating infirmity of cognitive decline, loss of life on the part of those in the caregiver role, loss of empathy for those who have shirked their responsibilities and in the end, loss of humanity.
That’s a lot to digest in a movie that’s pitched in its trailer as being about something more congruent with a horror movie. Who wants to be entertained by grim reality when there’s a fun universe of exploding heads to be explored?
If the McManus brothers had left out the fish kills, bird kills and all the nonsense that followed, “The Block Island Sound” would have earned a B+ from me. As it is, the movie gets a C.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Next Entertainment World.
“Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula.” Starring Lee Jung-hyun, Dong-won Gang, Re Lee, Ye-won Lee, Hae-hyo Kwon, Kyo-hwan Koo, and others. Directed by Sang-ho Yeon. 115 minutes. Rated PG-13. Amazon pay-to-stream
Mladen’s take
There I sat, wavering. It was about three-fifths of the way through the South Korean movie “Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula.” My qualms included a meditation on the film’s weird title, which was clearly an example of success exploitation marketing. Was this semi-sequel to the excellent film “Train to Busan” worthy of a good grade or does it deserve a bad grade? And, then, came the straight-faced line: “Let’s get Mom.” Poof, I dropped into the “Better than Average” column, but only just.
Before I sum the plot, you’re owed a warning. Del the zombie-phile will praise this movie, maybe even slip it an A-. He’ll be wrong. The movie is one full grade lower, but worth watching. It cost me 55 cents to lease a 48-hour viewing window on Amazon.
Recall that “Train to Busan” introduced us to some very good action horror with an unremarkable plot very well executed. A bioengineering laboratory accidentally releases a contagion that transforms people into something akin to the rampaging quasi-dead hungry we first met in 2010’s “28 Hours Later.” In “T to B,” the story was driven by a father trying to keep his daughter alive, if I recall accurately, as the infected multiply and the state rapidly loses control of law and order. “T to B” possessed stunning special effects. The locomotive slowly motoring along while zombies clinging to the back of the machine pile on each other to make a squirming, yet flowing tail of organic debris was something else.
That “something else” was missing in “Peninsula.” The computer-generated special effects lacked believable physics of motion. The vehicles bulldozing through zombies, jumping roads, or smashing into each other seemed like Matchbox cars running the gauntlet of a plastic race course. Also, at times, “Peninsula” seemed very “Casshern”-like or “Alita: Battle Angel”-ish. The difference is that “Casshern,” a 2004 Japanese movie, and “Alita” of 2019 intentionally deployed the tinge of anime as part of the storytelling. “Peninsula,” which imagined quarantined South Korea four years after the “T to B” virus was unleashed, often portrayed dilapidated urban terrain or action scenes with the patina of a video game that had mated with anime to create an almost-cartoon. In short, the visual effects in “Peninsula” were surprisingly crappy.
Oh, the plot. A South Korean soldier loses his sister and nephew to zombie-itis, but manages to save his brother-in-law. A few years later, the pair gets sucked into returning to South Korea to retrieve a truck load of American dollars for an American gangster based in Hong Kong. If they and a couple of others succeed, they get half of $20 mil. That’s money that would get them out of the political limbo of being microbe-induced refugees. Naturally, the return to the Peninsula, get it, goes astray. Dong-won Gang, playing South Korea Army Capt. Jung Seok, gets pulled off a zombie dinner plate by feisty, hard-driving teenager Jooni, played by Re Lee, and her younger sister Ye-won Lee as Yu Jin. They flee to their hideout, where Jung meets resourceful, determined, and very pretty Min Jung. Min is played by Lee Jung-hyun. She’s the mom in “Let’s get Mom.” While Jung, Min, and the girls are good and likeable characters in the film, most of the bad guys are all pretty much clichés and fail to be unlikeable. The exception was Captain Seo, nicely portrayed by Kyo-hwan Koo as desperate and scheming to the end. He has no trouble shooting the old man and Mom to get the hell off the Peninsula.
The soundtrack in the film is good enough. There was a moment when I thought I heard a few stanzas, verses, whatever you call pieces of music, that sounded like an adventure tune in the video game “Halo.”
OK, Del, take it away with your take. Please don’t let the blubbery family scenes in “Peninsula” color your judgment as they did when you watched the last film we reviewed. We owe it to our growing readership to assess correctly the merits of a film.
Del’s take
It was I who recommended to Mladen that we review “Peninsula.” It was not I who recommended that he tap the cooking sherry before writing his review.
He’s correct when he describes the putative prequel to “Peninsula,” “Train to Busan” as excellent. I remember foraging through Netflix one night, searching for something to watch, when I stumbled across “T to B.” Another hokey foreign zombie flick, I warned myself, before clicking the “play” button. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a modern classic in science fiction-horror, one I’ve added to my DVD collection. “T to B” is that good. I would rate it up there with the Zack Snyder remake of “Dawn of the Dead.”
So it was with great expectations that I forked over my 99 cents to watch “Peninsula.” (I’d like to know how Mladen managed to do that for 55 cents. Did he get the cooking sherry discount?)
To put it succinctly, I was not impressed. For these reasons:
1. It’s derivative. Take the premise of “28 Weeks Later,” throw in some “Escape from New York” and using crude, Frankensteined stitches graft on any road chase sequence from the “Mad Max” movies and you’ve got “Peninsula.”
2. Mladen was right about another aspect of the film – the special effects. They weren’t just bad. They were cartoonish, on par with “Speed Racer.” They completely ruined the movie for me because I’ve seen car chases and motorized mayhem done right – all that metal-crunching comprises a story of its own. You want a car chase? Consult George Miller. You don’t hand it to the CGI folks, and that’s what the creators did with “Peninsula.” Those scenes screamed “Fake!” and threw me out of the zombie-infested universe Sang-ho Yeon sought to create.
3. Many of the major characters were unlikable. As Mladen explained, the point of this group’s return to zombie-infested South Korea is to recover a truckload of American dollars. The deal is a small group will find the truck and drive it back to an Inchon dock, where it will be loaded aboard a ferry. The group gets half the $20 million and the crooks get the other half. Ahem. Of course. The crooks will most definitely abide by their end of the deal. Have you never heard of honor among thieves?
The movie is really about Gang Dong-won’s character attempting to redeem himself after refusing to help a family in need during the initial, hyper-frantic days of the zombie outbreak. As subtexts go it’s about as subtle as a Mar-a-Lago powder room and Jung-seok is such a weak and altruistic tormented-soul type that by mid-movie you’re hoping one of his putrid antagonists makes a snack of him.
4. Nitpicks. Why does a director spend a considerable chunk of screen time building tension and setting a deadline, and when that deadline arrives the director allows his characters to engage in long, deadline-busting soliloquies and dénouements?
How is it that a car will start after sitting idle four years?
Why are children always precocious and infallible?
Why are the elderly characters always expendable?
Why does a highway choked with wrecked and abandoned vehicles always have a lane open?
Why was South Korea simply abandoned? Is its net worth beneath the scope of recovery?
5. The version I saw was not subtitled. It was dubbed. Have I ever told you how much I hate dubbing? When you can see the character’s mouth moving while the dialogue track stopped three seconds ago?
Enough fussing. Bottom line: I was hoping for a movie that matched the off-the-rail entertainment punch of “Train to Busan” and what I got for my 99 cents (Really, Mladen? Fifty-five cents?) was something altogether different and, dare I say, less everything. I could wax all movie-review poetic and talk about the film’s emotional core or its resonance to the genre template but this is not a thirst trap for pretty words. Suffice it to say “Peninsula” was a disappointment.
For much better fare about the undead try “Cargo” or the unbelievably good series “Black Summer,” both on Netflix at no extra charge. For an even weirder take on the zombie genre try Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Maggie,” which you can find in some DVD bargain bins.
“Peninsula” gets a grade of C from me.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.