Ventriloquist dummies can be creepy. And that is even before they start talking and moving on their own.
“You’re watching a ventriloquist named Jerry Etherson, a voice-thrower par excellence. His alter ego, sitting atop his lap, is a brash stick of kindling with the sobriquet ‘Willy.’ In a moment, Mr. Etherson and his knotty-pine partner will be booked in one of the out-of-the-way bistros, that small, dark, intimate place known as the Twilight Zone.”
I really enjoyed this episode. I liked how there is still some question about whether Willy was real or whether Jerry was simply hearing voices and was out of his mind. Even with the bizarre ending of switching places, I can see how this could be dealing with mental illness on the part of Jerry.
“What’s known in the parlance of the times as the old switcheroo, from boss to blockhead in a few uneasy lessons. And if you’re given to nightclubbing on occasion, check this act. It’s called Willy and Jerry, and they generally are booked into some of the clubs along the ‘Gray Night Way’ known as the Twilight Zone”
Cliff Robertson, Uncle Ben from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, was our lead actor here and he does a wonderful job of showcasing the anxiety, the fear and uncertainty of this situation.
Paranoia is a major feel in The Dummy as Jerry is never 100% sure what was happening. The way Willy would move ever so slightly as it sat in the dressing room emphasized this to the audience.
Am awesome episode. One of the best of season three so far.
So when two men land their spaceship on this planet, they discover a bizarre surprise.
“The time is the space age, the place is a barren landscape of a rock-walled canyon that lies millions of miles from the planet Earth. The cast of characters? You’ve met them: William Fletcher, commander of the spaceship; his copilot, Peter Craig. The other characters who inhabit this place you may never see, but they’re there, as these two gentlemen will soon find out. Because they’re about to partake in a little exploration into that gray, shaded area in space and time that’s known as the Twilight Zone.”
The land where they landed contained natives who were tiny, Lilliputian-type people. And Peter Craig found his gigantic size a major advantage. So much so that he started to consider himself a god to these people, going as far as to crushing these people’s homes with his foot.
When the ship was repaired, Fletcher tried to get Peter to come with him, but he would refuse, pulling a gun and demanding that Fletcher leave him alone. Peter had convinced the little people to build a statue in his honor.
However, the power would be fleeting as another ship landed on the rock and this was a race of people who were much large than Peter. In fact, they grabbed Peter and crushed him in their hands. When they left, the little people pulled down the statue upon the dead body of Peter.
“The case of navigator Peter Craig, a victim of a delusion. In this case, the dream dies a little harder than the man. A small exercise in space psychology that you can try on for size in the Twilight Zone.”
“Four O’Clock”
One of the straight up villains of The Twilight Zone, Oliver Crangle was played by Theodore Bikel with a glorious zeal unlike we have seen to this point.
“That’s Oliver Crangle, a dealer in petulance and poison. He’s rather arbitrarily chosen four o’clock as his personal Götterdämmerung, and we are about to watch the metamorphosis of a twisted fanatic, poisoned by the gangrene of prejudice, to the status of an avenging angel, upright and omniscient, dedicated and fearsome. Whatever your clocks say, it’s four o’clock, and wherever you are it happens to be the Twilight Zone.”
Oliver Crangle is like the Q of our time. Going out of his way to do his battle with those he perceived as ‘evil’ in the world. He did not see himself as evil though, as most great villains do. They see themselves as the hero of their story.
Crangle was certainly a bit crazy. His overall plan to make all people he deemed evil two-feet tall is super-villain plots at the best. I also enjoyed the twist ending with Cringle becoming two-feet tall himself, revealing that he was, in truth, evil.
How did this happen? That is never mentioned. Could there have been more depth to this character? Sure. Still, I found the performance of Theodore Bikel to be over-the-top goodness.
“Hocus-Pocus and Frisby”
Hey, there was Floyd, from Mayberry!
Mr. Frisby is the ultimate liar. That might be too unfair. He is certainly a ‘tall tale’ teller.
“The reluctant gentleman with the sizable mouth is Mr. Frisby. He has all the drive of a broken camshaft and the aggressive vinegar of a corpse. As you’ve no doubt gathered, his big stock in trade is the tall tale. Now, what he doesn’t know is that the visitors out front are a very special breed, destined to change his life beyond anything even his fertile imagination could manufacture. The place is Pitchville Flats, the time is the present. But Mr. Frisby’s on the first leg of a rather fanciful journey into the place we call the Twilight Zone.”
With the theme of ‘boy who cried wolf’, Mr. Frisby, who has a tale to tell about his exploits that are, at best, inaccurate, was abducted by aliens because the aliens were looking for specimens that were the most impressive and knowledgeable of their kinds and they did not understand the idea of lying. So, obviously, with Mr. Frisby’s continued hyperbole and outright fibs, they thought they found the best human going.
Mr. Frisby is able to escape by playing his harmonica, which was a sound that was dangerous to the aliens, and, ironically, when Mr. Frisby was telling the story that was actually true to his friends at his store, they did not beleive him.
This was fine, but a little bit of Mr. Frisby went a long way. It did become somewhat annoying after awhile.
“The Trade-Ins”
“Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, aging people who slowly and with trembling fingers turn the last pages of a book of life and hope against logic and the preordained that some magic printing press will add to this book another limited edition. But these two senior citizens happen to live in a time of the future where nothing is impossible, even the trading of old bodies for new. Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, in their twilight years, who are about to find that there happens to be a zone with the same name.”
This story was a love story featuring the couple of Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, who had been married for fifty years, but whose bodies were feeling the stress of age. Fortunately, there was a technology that allowed them to switch from their old bodies and trade them in for younger versions.
Unfortunately for the Holts, the process cost $10,000 dollars, and they only had half of that. This created the conflict in the episode as Mr. Holt tried to go about finding the extra money, but failing to make it in a high stakes poker game.
In the end, Mr. Holt had the process done, but decided to take up the return policy because he could not see himself living the life of a young man without the love of his life.
Sweet and romantic. It was a decent episode with a message that showed the positive side of humans, which we do not see as often in The Twilight Zone.
The strange numbering comes from Amazon Prime/Paramount +. For some reason, they had the episode “The Gift”, which is listed as episode 32 everywhere else I looked, was in at number 28. I am not sure the reason it is in a different order on Prime even though it had never been in an incorrect order as of yet. So I am listing it as the order is supposed to be, not the one on Prime.
“Person or Persons Unknown”
He is David Gurney… or is he?
“Cameo of a man who has just lost his most valuable possession. He doesn’t know about the loss yet. In fact, he doesn’t even know about the possession. Because, like most people, David Gurney has never really thought about the matter of his identity. But he’s going to be thinking a great deal about it from now on, because that is what he’s lost. And his search for it is going to take him into the darkest corners of the Twilight Zone.”
David woke up after a night of drinking and, without warning, his wife did not recognize him. He thought of this as a joke, but when the people at work did not know him either, things get harder for him.
He desperately tries to find proof of his existence, failing at every turn. The performance by Richard Long was solid, though he did take a while to really grasp what was going on. You would think that he would have come around earlier than what he did.
Then, The Twilight Zone pulled a switch much like they did in “The Midnight Sun”. David wakes up again, understanding that everything he had gone through was a dream. However, his wife Wilma was not the wife he knew, looking completely different.
I feel as if this was another Twilight Zone episode that started strong, with a really good premise, but that did not deliver an equally potent conclusion.
“The Gift”
As I mentioned earlier, this was out of order on Prime, but I did not realize it until it was underway so I decided to leave it as is. I am still referring to it as episode 32, though.
This was not a very good episode. Performances were weak or uninspiring and the story, which was meant to be a parable tied to the story of Jesus Christ, it misses its mark badly.
“The place is Mexico, just across the Texas border, a mountain village held back in time by its remoteness and suddenly intruded upon by the twentieth century. And this is Pedro, nine years old, a lonely, rootless little boy, who will soon make the acquaintance of a traveler from a distant place. We are at present forty miles from the Rio Grande, but any place and all places can be the Twilight Zone.”
Pedro was one of the weakest child actors we have seen in The Twilight Zone. His performance was very wooden and lacking any sort of depth. I do not like calling out child actor’s performances, but when one is such a vital piece of the story, I can’t ignore it.
The gift given by the alien was, of course, something that we all wish we would have had and it shows the way fear and hatred can cause problems in the world today. The message is good, but the delivery of the message felt heavy-handed and lacking the sufficient subtlety to make this sci-fi story worthwhile.
A psychological horror film from Shudder called What Josiah Saw is one of the more unsettling and disturbing films I’ve seen in awhile. There was plenty of icky concepts and things happening.
It is the story of one family who come back together to face the horrors of their past. Three children, Eli (Nick Stahl), his twin sister Mary (Kelli Garner) and their slower brother Tommy (Scott Haze), and their slimy father Josiah (Robert Patrick), face with their sins from their life.
The film was broken into three sections. The first section included Tommy and Josiah, which included one of the most disturbing scenes of the flick. The next section was with Eli trying to get his life straightened out, but really not have much success. There was a whole section with Eli and a bunch of gypsies. Then we met Mary and her struggles in trying to become a mother via adoption. She was also shown as suicidal over something from her past. Eli came to see her about the oil company letter wishing to buy their childhood home property.
This is where the story came together as the three kids reunited and the past comes up. I won’t go into what that was because there were some major revelations here.
It was an uncomfortable film. There were very few characters that felt worth rooting for, though I did kind of connected with Eli, even though the very end of the film took that away from me.
I had a little trouble getting into the movie at first because Robert Patrick was such a horrendous person. Robert Patrick delivers an amazing performance because I really hated this character.
I’m not sure I would recommend this movie to many people. It was a slow burn and definitely filled with scumbag characters. Still, I thought the story was well developed and the performances were outstanding. This is another one that I will never watch again, but not because it was bad. I just felt like a shower afterwards.
Welcome back to the Comic Cavalcade! Thirty-six posts comprised of dozens of comic books. I am happy that I have gotten back into actually reading these books instead of just buying them.
Once again, most of these books are the ones that were left over from last week’s pull list. I really do have a lot of book I read in a week since I have gotten into the independents.
Start off with…
Killadelphia Vol. 3: Home is Where the Hatred Is. Written by Rodney Barnes and drawn by Jason Shawn Alexander. The third volume of Killadelphia, which collected issues 13-18 of the Image series. This is the third consecutive week that I picked up a new collection of Killadelphia and they have only gotten better. The last two weeks have ended with moments that caused me to shout out in suspense… wishing I could read the next one immediately. Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are running around as vampires and we get what we’ve been waiting for… werewolves! This has been an excellent series.
Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #5. “Thou Art More Near They Death.” Written by Tini Howard and featuring art by Vasco Georgiev. Erica D’Urso and Matthew Wilson did the cover art. This short series comes to an end as Betsy gets the better of Morgan Le Fey. I have to say that I am glad this one has come to an end because I have not been enjoying this much over the last several issues.
Damn Them All #5. Written by Simon Spurrier and drawn by Charlie Adlard. This is, of course, one of the books that I did not buy last week. I have been working on the first six issues of this series and I think this one has been my favorite so far. It is a tough read, dense with writing and filled with difficult character names. I have to work to know what is going on, but I do think it is worth it. Ellie has been showing to be a kick ass character.
The Vigil #2. “Weather Warning” Written by Ram V and art by Lalit Kumar Sharma. I was not sure how I felt about issue one last month and I decided I would give this a second issue to try it out. I gave it a chance and it has come up wanting. I will not be continuing this one after this issue.
Guardians of the Galaxy #3. “Hunt of the Spartax.” Written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing with art by Kev Walker. This cover art was done by Marco Checchetto. The Spartax Empire sent Captain Sagittar of the First Arcana to go on a hunt… for Grootfall. I am intrigued by the events that have led to Groot being this new persona.
All Eight Eyes #3. Written by Steve Fox and drawn by Piotr Kowalski. This issue, we get some new information on Reynolds and some frighteningly good spider action. I was unhappy at the end though when it said that next issue would be the conclusion. Conclusion? Only four issues? That was a disappointment. It’s been a great series so far.
New Mutants: Lethal Legion #4. “When I Was a Lad” Written by Charlie Jane Anders and penciled by Enid Balám. The team of New Mutants really came together in this issue and stepped up against the Lethal Legion. I am still learning who some of these mutants are, but I like them a lot. One more issue for this series too.
Bloodline: Daughter of Blade#5. Written by Danny Lore and drawn by Karen S. Darboe. Yet another series coming to an end with this issue. Brielle is the daughter of Blade and she does a really great job kicking vampire ass. I would like to see more from Brielle down the road.
This was a weird episode that was intended to be a sweet one, but lent itself into something less than sweet.
“It’s been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things: science fiction, the improbable made possible; fantasy, the impossible made probable. What would you have if you put these two different things together? Well, you’d have an old man named Ben who knows a lot of tricks most people don’t know and a little girl named Jenny who loves him — and a journey into the heart of the Twilight Zone.”
Ben and Jenny are friends. Ben can do amazing things, such as shapeshift and other magical tricks. Trouble is that Ben is being pursued by two men who appear to be from the police.
Jenny is staying with her aunt Agnes, played by Nancy Kulp, most well known as Ms. Hathaway of the Beverly Hillbillies. Aunt Agnes was pretty mean, always yelling at Jenny and wanting Ben to go away forever.
The relationship between Jenny and Ben was meant to be sweet, but it really felt odd to me and was a drawback to the episode. That made this a weird installment of The Twilight Zone. Ben was revealed as an alien who was a king of his planet and the two police were actually subjects trying to bring him back. There were a lot of this episode that just did not work well for me.
“Little Lost Girl”
“Little Lost Girl” is a fascinating episode with some cool special effects creating a bizarre dimension, showing how different the they can be.
“Missing: one frightened little girl. Name: Bettina Miller. Description: six years of age, average height and build, light brown hair, quite pretty. Last seen being tucked in bed by her mother a few hours ago. Last heard: ‘ay, there’s the rub,’ as Hamlet put it. For Bettina Miller can be heard quite clearly, despite the rather curious fact that she can’t be seen at all. Present location? Let’s say for the moment… in the Twilight Zone.”
An opening between dimensions appears in the bedroom of Bettina Miller and she falls into it. Crying out for her parents, Chris and Ruth, they come to her room. They can hear her, but they cannot find her no matter where they look. When Mack the dog runs under the bed and disappears as well, they know that something weird was going on.
Fortunately, Chris has a friend named Bill who is, coincidentally, a physicist. He comes up with the alternate dimension theory and tells Chris that the dog was the key. The dog is trying to lead Bettina out from the dimension. Chris, however, winds up falling inside the portal too.
The special effects in the dimension was really cool, making everything feel unsettling and oft balance.
Chris is instructed that he must not move and that Mack had to lead Bettina to him. Chris kept calling his daughter and the dog and finally they came to him. Bill is able to pull them free of the dimension and back into their house.
Bill lets Chris know that the portal was closing and that Chris was actually just partially inside the dimension. Bill was worried that the portal would shut before Chris was out, leaving half of him in each dimension.
Bill and Mack the dog were clearly the MVPs of this episode. It just goes to show you that it is always a good idea to make friends with a physicist and have him on speed dial for those middle of the night dimensional emergencies.
The twenty-sixth movie of the June Swoon 2 was found on Hulu and it was a thriller called No Exit. Dennis Haysbert, formerly President Palmer on 24, was the only actor I recognized from the cast, although I discovered that Danny Ramirez was Joaquin from the Falcon and the Winter Soldier Marvel + series.
Our main protagonist though was Darby (Havana Rose Liu). Darby was in rehab when she received a phone message that her mother was in the hospital with a brain aneurysm. Darby was not allowed to make a phone call without the doctor’s permission, and the doctor was out of touch for the weekend. Darby broke out of the hospital and started for Salt Lake City, where her mother was.
However, there was a huge snow storm and the roads were impassable. Darby was redirected to a mountain rest stop where several people were also waiting out the storm. As she was out trying to get reception on her cell, Darby stumbled across a little girl who was tied up in the back of a van. This was when Darby realized one of the people at the rest stop was a kidnapper.
No Exit had some good excitement and some moments of thrills. Overall, it was a decent flick. However, there were plenty of plot holes or events that were either incredibly coincidental or very hard to believe. I do believe that if you choose to do so, you could pick apart this movie fairly easily.
Despite those problems, Havana Rose Liu was extremely likable and easy to root for, even with the errors that she had clearly made in her life. The other people in the rest stop were also a nice mix of characters, especially Ed (Dennis Haysbert), a former Marine.
Is any of this likely? It certainly stretches credibility in several moments, but director Damien Power knows the strength of this film is in his small cast and the claustrophobic setting and both of those work very well.
My friend Todd told me that this was his favorite episode of The Twilight Zone and that I would love it. I know that the expectations were high for the episode as it is considered one of the iconic episodes of the entire run.
“Respectfully submitted for your perusal — a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment, we’re going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone.”
I enjoyed the way the episode started, with Michael Chambers locked inside a room by himself as instructions came over the speakers. It immediately places the audience on their guard. With his own narration used, it set a new feel for the episode since typically all we get for narration is Rod Serling at the beginning and the end of episodes.
The Kanamit aliens looked great, using their telepathy to talk is a really cool idea too. I see that Richard Kiel was the actor who played the giant aliens. Kiel also became famous for his role as Jaws in several James Bond movies.
Now, I did figure out the twist early in the episode. When I first thought about it- the fact that the Kanamits were actually doing everything for the humans because they were preparing them as food to eat- it seemed like a joke, a Soylent Green-esque moment. However, as the episode continued and when the cover title was deciphered, I had a pretty good idea that my guess was indeed the correct one.
I did love the twist and I am sure that it was sensational to the people of 1962 when this first aired. This was based on a short story of the same name by Damon Knight from 1950.
“The recollections of one Michael Chambers, with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy. Or, more simply stated, the evolution of man. The cycle of going from dust to dessert. The metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone’s soup. It’s tonight’s bill of fare from the Twilight Zone.”
Todd was right again. I did love this episode. I kind of wish that I did not figure out the twist so early because I can see that line “It’s a Cookbook!” being a great horrific reveal.
This was actually the worst stretch of five episodes that I have seen from the series, with a couple of okay ones and a couple really low ones.
Spoilers
“The Hunt”
This was the best of the five episodes during this stretch. A good old country mountain man and his dog. He rather go coon huntin’ than much of anything else.
“An old man and a hound-dog named Rip, off for an evening’s pleasure in quest of raccoon. Usually, these evenings end with one tired old man, one battle-scarred hound dog, and one or more extremely dead raccoons, but as you may suspect, that will not be the case tonight. These hunters won’t be coming home from the hill. They’re headed for the backwoods — of The Twilight Zone.”
Hyder Simpson and his dog Rip went out hunting raccoon despite his wife Rachel’s objections. Rachel’s premonition came true as Rip chased the raccoon into the water and was drowning. Simpson dove in after his beloved dog, but neither came up.
Hyder awoke in the woods and returned to his home only to realize that no one could hear him and that he and Rip was dead. He found a fence that shouldn’t have been there and followed it, finding a gate where a man sat. The man said this was the gate to heaven but Hyder could not take Rip in with him. Hyder refused and decided to keep walking down the road for eternity.
Soon he came across another man who knew who he was and told him that the other guy was on the gate to Hell. This was actually the path to heaven. Hyder asked about the coon hunting in heaven.
An episode for dog lovers everywhere. I found it funny that the dog’s name was Rip (rest in peace).
“Showdown with Rance McGrew”
One of the dumbest episodes I have seen so far.
It appeared to be another Western episode. However, it was a Western TV series being filmed and the star of the show was Rance McGrew, arrogant, pompous, demanding.
“Some one-hundred-odd years ago, a motley collection of tough mustaches galloped across the West and left behind a raft of legends and legerdemains, and it seems a reasonable conjecture that if there are any television sets up in cowboy heaven and any one of these rough-and-wooly nail-eaters could see with what careless abandon their names and exploits are being bandied about, they’re very likely turning over in their graves—or worse, getting out of them. Which gives you a clue as to the proceedings that will begin in just a moment, when one Mr. Rance McGrew, a 3,000-buck-a-week phoney-baloney discovers that this week’s current edition of make-believe is being shot on location—and that location is the Twilight Zone.”
Like several other episodes, Rance found himself transported to the past in the actual saloon like the show was taping at, but the crew was gone. The real Jesse James (who was the villain in the episode) was looking to make Rance pay. Apparently, Jesse was able to watch Rance on TV and knew all about the career path of the actor.
This got even stupider as well as Jesse wound up back in the present with Rance as his new “agent” and insisted on changes to the script to make the real life Western characters look better.
More comedy attempted. There have been very few comedic episodes of The Twilight Zone that worked.
“Kick the Can”
A nice little episode of the wish for youth and the cliché that you are only as old as you act/feel.
“Sunnyvale Rest, a home for the aged – a dying place, and a common children’s game called kick-the-can, that will shortly become a refuge for a man who knows he will die in this world, if he doesn’t escape into – The Twilight Zone.”
While the episode was harmless and did carry a decent message, there was not much to it as it carried on. The end was fairly expected and the way the staff treated these old people, especially Charles was shameful. The idea that Charles was considered senile because he wanted to stay young by finding the magic in a kid’s game was mean-spirited. The fact that his best friend Ben did not support his friend was quite off too. Admittedly, I did like the end with Ben losing out on the magic.
“A Piano in the House”
Speaking of mean-spirited, the episode ‘A Piano in the House’ is one of the most mean-spirited episodes of The Twilight Zone I have seen. I’m not sure the ending was sufficient of comeuppance for the cruelty shown by lead character, Mr. Fitzgerald Fortune.
“Mr. Fitzgerald Fortune, theater critic and cynic at large, on his way to a birthday party. If he knew what is in store for him he probably wouldn’t go, because before this evening is over that cranky old piano is going to play ‘Those Piano Roll Blues’ with some effects that could happen only in the Twilight Zone.”
Fortune had purchased a player-piano for his young bride’s birthday. Fortune discovered that the music played by the piano had strange effects on the listeners and he planned on using it during the party on some of his guests.
I especially felt bad for Marge Moore, played wonderfully by Muriel Landers, as the piano made her do things intended to humiliate her (and the whole crowd laughed). I am not sure why Fortune targeted Marge outside of simply sadism.
“The Last Rites of Jeff Mytlebank”
Roscoe P. Coltrane is back once again!
That is James Best is back as our titular character, a man who died and, during his funeral, sits up and is apparently alive… two days later!
“Time, the mid-twenties. Place, the Midwest, the southernmost section of the Midwest. We were just witnessing a funeral, a funeral that didn’t come off exactly as planned, due to a slight fallout from the Twilight Zone.”
This episode seemed to be hinting at the fact that people can get themselves riled up and lose common sense when confronted with rumors and speculation, especially when they are not necessarily the brightest of people (that is a relevant comment for today’s political world too).
There was a lot of exposition here, particularly at the very end when Jeff was being confronted by the town people about him being a demon that had taken over the dead body of Jeff. The ending was somewhat lackluster and lacking. This concept felt like it could have been much ore than what it turned out to be.
It has been a long time since I have seen a movie as disturbing, unsettling and upsetting as Soft & Quiet, which I found on Netflix for the June Swoon 2.
I had no idea what this movie was about. The synopsis for the movie did not prepare me for what I was going to get. Shown in real time, a group of women, led by kindergarten teacher Emily (Stefanie Estes), held a meeting at a local church for their club. From there, things spiral out of control.
These seemingly sweet and kindly women were a part of a club of “like-minded” women. This was a nice way to put racist. They were an white support group that complained about every minority in the area. That was dark enough, but I had no idea what was coming next.
As they were heading to pick up some wine and go home to continue their meeting (after getting kicked out of the church), they came across a couple of Asian women at the store and engaged in some vicious comments.
This escalated to the point where the women went to the Asian women’s home to teach them a lesson.
It amazes me how much hatred there is for people in the world based on nothing but physical differences or perceived slights. Watching this really drove home the point how much hate can be a cancer and how it can become more easily.
This was a horror movie in the way that real life can be a horror. Blumhouse produced this movie and it absolutely created horror in me.
This movie was not an enjoyable experience, but it was not enjoyable because of the way it made me feel. The movie was extremely effective in its story and the acting felt real. There are several movies that I think are powerful and brilliant movies that I will never watch again. This is one of those.
I chose to go with Downton Abbey: A New Era as the June Swoon 2 film for the day despite the fact that I never watched any episodes of the original PBS series or the first feature movie. I wondered as I was watching A New Era how much of this movie would have been affected by me not watching anything prior to it. I didn’t feel lost as I watched it, but I wondered if it would have felt richer if I had.
There were several storylines going on during the film. First, some of the crew went to the South of France to see a villa that had been left to Violet Grantham (Maggie Smith). Second, a Hollywood movie crew came to Downton Abbey to film on location. There were other storylines involving the staff too.
There did feel like there were some storylines were ignored or pieces of the plot were never fully addressed. Again, that may be because I do not know these characters as much as a longtime fan of this property would be, but there were some moments that felt lacking.
I did like the idea of the Hollywood movie angle. It was actually the story of Singin’ in the Rain as the film they were making was a silent picture, but silent pictures were on their way out. So they changed it to a ‘talkie’ picture. Problem was (just like Singin’ in the Rain) the lead actress of the film, Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock) had a voice that was terrible and they had Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) dub the film. So this story worked because, one of the greatest musicals of all time already used it.
I do love Maggie Smith. Every minute she was on screen, the movie truly popped. It was a shame that she did not get more time, but it did make sense for the narrative. I also enjoyed the ultimate British butler Mr. Carson (played by Jim Carter) bringing the British to France.
I found this Downton Abbey film to be passable. I was not totally lost and it was enjoyable enough. They did cram a lot into the two hours and it felt as if it could have been shortened up some to make it more concise. Still, not bad.
“An old woman living in a nightmare, an old woman who has fought a thousand battles with death and always won. Now she’s faced with a grim decision—whether or not to open a door. And in some strange and frightening way she knows that this seemingly ordinary door leads to the Twilight Zone.”
Wanda Dunn has been hiding away from Mr. Death for years. She has seen him when others have died and it has led her to shut herself inside a condemned building and not leave the premises. When a police officer is shot outside her door, she opens it up to help him.
However, everything was not as it seemed, as is common in The Twilight Zone. When another man comes to try and convince Wanda to leave because the building has to be torn down, she realized that that man could not see the injured police officer in the room.
Turns out that the police officer was Mr. Death, offering Wanda a chance to come with him. He shows Wanda her own dead body, which lies on the bed in the room.
Well acted episode and the dialogue between Robert Redford and Gladys Cooper, who played Wanda, was a highlight.
“One More Pallbearer”
Not sure how the purpose of this episode. Was it meant to be a revenge tale or simply a practical joke meant to teach the subjects an abject lesson?
Either way, I did not like this.
“What you have just looked at takes place three hundred feet underground, beneath the basement of a New York City skyscraper. It’s owned and lived in by one Paul Radin. Mr. Radin is rich, eccentric and single-minded. How rich we can already perceive; how eccentric and single-minded we shall see in a moment, because all of you have just entered the Twilight Zone.”
Paul Radin held grudges from his life and he is looking for a way to save face. He pretends that he has called back three people form his past who have treated him poorly and he pretends that the world is going to be destroyed in a nuclear bombing. He provides them safety in his bomb shelter but he asks for apologies. None of the ‘victims’ want to stay. They all prefer to go to their homes and loved ones and die together if they must. This drives Paul crazy.
None of this makes any sense and it is just filled with exposition and nonsense.
“Dead Man’s Shoes”
The shoe is on the other foot, literally.
Another weaker episode of the show, as it follows poor hobo Nathan Bledsoe as he finds a dead body and steals that body’s new shoes.
“Nathan Edward Bledsoe, of the Bowery Bledsoes, a man once, a specter now. One of those myriad modern-day ghosts that haunt the reeking nights of the city in search of a flop, a handout, a glass of forgetfulness. Nate doesn’t know it but his search is about to end, because those shiny new shoes are going to carry him right into the capital of the Twilight Zone.”
The shoes belonged to a gangster named Dane, whose spirit then possessed Nathan in an attempt to gain revenge on the gangster that killed him.
However, Dane shows himself not very smart as he winds up dead again and dumped in another alley (this time, it being poor Nathan). Another hobo takes the shoes and apparently starts the circle all over again.
I, along with a bunch of other reviewers, claimed that The French Dispatch was the most ‘Wes-Anderson-movie’ that we had ever seen.
Well, Asteroid City is that but on all kinds of steroids.
I am not sure that I have seen anything are weird and as wild as Wes Anderson’s latest movie, Asteroid City. My mouth was agape multiple times and I grasped my head with my hands over and over again.
And yet, I was weirdly entertained.
The narrative was bizarre. It was a play being hosted by Bryan Cranston, and directed by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) starring an actor playing Augie Steenback (Jason Schwartzman) but was shown as if it were happening with Augie and a group of people attending a junior stargazing event in Asteroid City where an alien showed up and stole the meteorite that had landed in the town years before.
There were storyline everywhere with some of the most eccentric characters that I have seen on screen together in a long time. Anderson brought an A-list cast, full of many of his typical band of actors that appear regularly in his films. The cast, along with those already mentioned, included Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Jake Ryan, Maya Hawke, Liev Schreiber, Sophia Lillis, Grace Edwards, Hope Davis, Rupert Friend, Steve Park, Ethan Josh Lee, Aristou Meehan, Tilda Swinton, Matt Dillon, Steve Carell, Henry Rhoades, Tony Revolori, Bob Balaban, Fisher Stevens, Jeff Goldblum, Adrien Brody, Hong Chau, Rita Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, and Preston Mota.
This movie was extremely chaotic. Things were weird and did not always tie together in any sort of true narrative structure, but every strange thing that happened was funny or shocking or entertaining. There were scenes that were included that felt like its own little thing and I could not believe what I was watching.
I was shaking my head throughout the film. As I was watching the movie, there were times that I considered walking out for good and other times I considered giving it 5 stars. There were several people in my theater that did walk out during this movie and I couldn’t blame them for it. Still, I laughed. I was engaged. I was entertained. I had no idea what was coming next and isn’t that a great theater experience.
There is no doubt that Asteroid City is not a film for everyone. If you are a fan of Wes Anderson, you may like this movie (although it may go too far for those fans as well). There will be those who absolutely hate this movie. I understand that feeling. I might even agree with it. But I enjoyed myself. Just sayin’.
4 stars
(…but this could be anywhere from 2 stars to 4.5 stars too.)
Raunchy comedies can be great or they can be horrendous. Comedy is so subjective and many times I do not like the movies that fall into that raunchy category. However, No Hard Feelings starring Jennifer Lawrence looked funny from the trailers and I was hoping that this one would be a lot of fun.
According to IMDB, “On the brink of losing her home, Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) finds an intriguing job listing: helicopter parents looking for someone to bring their introverted 19-year-old son out of his shell before college. She has one summer to make him a man or die trying.”
Andrew Barth Feldman played that 19-year-old son, Percy, and he did a fantastic job of if. He and Jennifer Lawrence made a wonderful pairing, which is one of the reasons why No Hard Feelings worked as well as it did. If you did not like the two lead characters, this film would have been doomed.
Now, this movie was surely predictable. As soon as Percy’s parents told Maddie that Percy could not know that they were hiring her to “date” their son, it was clear what was going to happen. The thing is that predictable does not necessarily mean bad. A movie can be predictable and still be effective if executed properly. And No Hard Feelings id a good job with its humor and its situations that they placed Maddie and Percy into.
I guess this film is not as ‘raunchy’ as I thought it was going to be, which is probably another reason why I liked it more than I thought I might. It had its moments, but it could have been way worse than what we got.
My favorite scene was the skinny dipping scene, but not necessarily for the reason you may think. I do not know how to go into this without spoiling it, so I will just say that this moment was awesome for several reasons.
I also wanted to shout out the supporting roles of Percy’s parents, Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti, and Maddie’s best friends, Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur.
No Hard Feelings had two lead stars that were funny and charming together. They were easy to like and that made a predictable storyline less likely to be a problem. Jennifer Lawrence was committed to the comedic aspects of the film and was not afraid to take it that extra step.
I hardly recognized Dean Stockwell when he first came on the screen with the American army during “A Quality of Mercy” episode from season three. I had seen this episode low on lists of Twilight Zone lists, but I did not think it was that bad. However, I could tell what it was docked for. It’s the same thing that I am going to dock it for.
Dean Stockwell played Lieutenant Katell, a young officer during World War II (the last day actually) who arrived with a platoon that had lost its last two leaders. They had a group of Japanese trapped in a cave, but they were not sure what they were going to do. Katell showed up, ready to rush the cave and kill all the enemy soldiers.
The the Twilight Zone took over.
Katell found himself in the body of one of the Japanese soldiers, but earlier in the war, and the man in charge was acting the same way he did when arriving with the Americans. He was able to see how mercy could go a long way.
The problem? Stockwell had face paint, eyes done up and a horrendous Japanese accent. I do not know why it was decided that Stockwell perform this in such a stereotypically racial manner, but this choice ruined the scenes for me and really weakened an otherwise strong episode.
EYG Hall of Famer Leonard Nemoy was in the episode too as one of the American soldiers.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 