I have always loved Dr. Seuss, but most of his books do not translate very well to the big screen. The reason? I mean, his books are short and it is hard to extend it to an hour and a half. It is not a coincidence that one of the best adaptations of all time was the original animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas! from 1966, which was 26 minutes. However, Horton Hears a Who escapes much of these problems, in part with two strong voice performances from Jim Carrey and Steve Carell.

Horton the Elephant (Jim Carrey) is enjoying a carefree existence until one day when a speck of dust floats by and Horton hears voices upon it. He realizes that the voices meant that there was a little person living on the speck of dust. In truth, there was an entire city on the speck… the city of Who-ville, led by the Mayor (Steve Carell).

Because no one else had ears strong enough to hear the Whos, Horton was scorned and believed to be a negative influence on the kids of the jungle. Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) led the charge against Horton, doing everything in her power to get the speck, which had landed on a clover, away from the elephant.

Meanwhile in Who-ville, the Mayor was having the same difficulty getting anyone to believe him that their city was in danger and that Horton was real and in the sky.

This performance from Jim Carrey feels like his Robin Williams/Genie from Aladdin performance. I have a feeling that they let Carrey be free with what he wanted to do as there was a feel of improvisation to much of the dialogue used by Horton. Steve Carell has a great opposing performance and really works well with Carrey. They fit together here well and they are the real reason this works. Carol Burnett provides a strong villainous voice as the antagonist too.

There are a few times when the animation of the movie, which is fine, if not remarkable, switches to look more like the drawing from the actual Dr. Seuss books, which is a clever use of the structure. I would have liked to have seen more of this style than what we got.

There are parts to the story that do not feel fully integrated into the movie. For example, the Mayor’s son, JoJo (Jess McCartney) plays a major role in the finale, but his story was a side note for much of the film. It took a seismic shift to make him more important and I am not sure his third act heroism was necessarily earned.

But overall, the part that did not work quite as well are few and the charm of the rest of the film outstretched the issues. This was one of the most successful feature length Dr. Seuss adaptations and, watching it on Disney + makes it a perfect film for the DailyView today on a busy day.

Found footage was a genre that burned itself out after so long, but that did not mean that there were not some really great films during the time period. The Paranormal Activities films, Chronicle and now, Creep, which becomes today’s entry in the DailyView binge.

Aaron (Patrick Brice) is a young videographer, answered an ad for a one day job chronicling the life of a dying man, Josef (Mark Duplass) in his secluded cabin. Josef tells Aaron that he is making the video for his unborn child but it quickly becomes apparent that there is more of a sinister background to the story than he expected.

Creep was gripping. A psychological drama that consistently made you wonder what was happening. Josef was a talented liar and it was never exactly apparent what were the truths and what was the lies. He was so good that Aaron could not help but get sucked in by the stories. It felt as if something terrible was about to happen and that anxiety was throughout this movie.

The film was expertly shot. There are times in these found footage movies that you wonder why the camera is rolling, but this one does a great job of letting the audience understand why the camera was on.

Mark Duplass was exceptional as the unbalanced stalker. You would range from being empathic towards him to feeling the need to run away screaming. From the very first scene with him in the bathtub, he varied between overpoweringly sad to creepily eerie. Duplass pulled off both within the scene.

The literal jump scares were funny and both broke the tension and elevated it at the same time.

This was a Blumhouse film and it was one of the better offering from the company. I found this fully compelling and it was an excellent entry in the found footage genre.

While I hated Dazed & Confused, I have come across the first truly horrible film in the DailyView. It is a Bruce Willis sci-fi vehicle that is nowhere close to his epic run in The Fifth Element.

Released late in the year of 2020, Breach is a story of the human race attempting to flee the earth because of a terrible plague. They have set up a new location dubbed New Earth (oh so creative) and they are evacuating the final group of humans to New Earth. Noah (Cody Kearsley) and his pregnant girlfriend Hayley (Kassandra Clementi), who happens to be the daughter of the admiral of this shuttle (Thomas Jane), are trying to get on board the ship. They get separated and Hayley gets on the ship. Noah stowaways on the ship, pretending to be part of the custodial crew.

As Hayley goes into cryo-sleep, Noah meets a group of crew members, including Clay (Bruce Willis), supposedly one of the former warriors that was a huge bad ass. Now he is just a grumpy and angry old man, making moonshine to pass the time.

Some kind of alien is introduced in the setting, leading to crew members that dies being turned into zombie-like creatures.

This one is terrible. It is one of those Bruce Willis films that head straight to home video. Bruce just goes through the motions as he plays every character he has ever played since the mid nineties. There is a use of a hologram of Bruce’s head that was laugh out loud funny every time it popped up.

Nothing here makes a lick of sense and it just feels like it took every sci-fi space alien trope or scene form superior movies and just tossed them in to make a movie. Very little is explained.

The special effects were atrocious. The gunfire appeared to be painted on the screen and they may have used the same shots of the crew firing their guns for every time that they needed to show it.

The ending is as bad of an ending as we have seen in a sci-fi story for a long time.

Just a terrible movie and I can see why I had never heard of it before it popped up on Amazon Prime. I miss the days when I looked forward to a Bruce Willis movie.

This film was mentioned on a Top Ten Show a few weeks ago by John Rocha and I found it intriguing. I placed it on the list for the DailyView binge. I was never a huge fan of Mel Gibson, and I found the statements he made to be quite obscene. However, I am trying to separate artists from their art. Never wanting to support Mel Gibson again is a stance that I can completely understand and would never argue against someone for deciding that. I just think there are plenty of other people who have done horrendous things or have made ignorant comments, but their creative outlet may not be affected.

It is a controversy, I know.

The Beaver is a film that is clearly an attempt to redeem the career of Mel Gibson. Directed by Jodie Foster, a close friend of Gibson, the movie deals with depression, mental illness and multiple chances.

Walter Black is a depression man, whose toy company, that he inherited, is on the brink of bankruptcy. He is having troubles at home too. His wife Meredith (Jodie Foster) has kicked him out and of his two sons, Porter (Anton Yelchin) does not want anything to do with him.

His troubles lead to several failed suicide attempts from Walter. After his last one, he found an old hand puppet of a beaver in a dumpster. When he puts the puppet on his hand, he develops a second personality that speaks for and takes over the life of Walter. Named, simply, The Beaver, the personality tries to reorganize Walter’s life while reconnecting with the family he had been separated from.

I remember when this movie first came out. It seemed like a silly film, and, with the Gibson controversy, it was easy to ignore it. However, though there was some dark comedy involved here, this was not a silly, puppet movie. This was a dark, gloomy film with a character that was totally lost and suffering with his mental illness. The Beaver seems to be able to help Walter be successful, but it just meant that The Beaver was becoming dominant.

Porter was having his own issues. Selling himself to other high school students to write papers in their voices, Porter is hired by Norah (Jennifer Lawrence), another student, to write her graduation speech. The problem was that Norah was dealing with her own loss. Porter connected with her but his attempts to help only cause more problems.

There are some deep issues being dealt with here and it is a completely different movie than I remember seeing trailers about back in 2011. Strong performances by all the cast, a deep character study and just the right amount of dark humor sprinkled in makes The Beaver a film that was unexpectedly decent.

It was sad to see Anton Yelchin in the film. He was such an amazing young actor and his death was just a major tragedy. Who knows what he could have accomplished by now? His performance here is excellent.

The beaver is a very solid movie and, if you can look past Mel Gibson, who shows he is an exceptional actor (while maybe not a good person), this is a film worth the time.

Last night I watched The Blob from 1958 as part of the DailyView and tonight I took the next step and watched the 1988 reboot of the film. There were similarities among the two movies, including the basic plot and manner in which the Blob is handled. There were several scenes that looked to be pulled directly from the original and repackaged just a bit for the late 80s, and that is alright.

Like before, a meteorite landed on earth, bringing with it a strange, gelatinous creature that begins to hunt and devour people in the town of Arbeville, Colorado. A group of government agents (undefined from where) arrive, but it turns out that their motives are a little less than helpful.

I had a problem at the beginning of the film because i was not sure what characters I was meant to root for because as soon as I was introduced to a character, they wound up being dissolved inside the Blob. I was shocked a couple of times when characters who were seemingly being set up as the protagonists were dealt quick and gruesome deaths. Although I did like the uncertainty, it did make it awkward when trying to know who to support.

In the end, our main protagonists were cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith) and motorcycle-riding outsider Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon). They were pursued by both the creature and the government agents, led by cookie cutter mad scientist Dr. Meddows (Joe Seneca).

Honestly, when the Blob consumes the friendly waitress Fran (Candy Clark), I was sad, but I missed the fact that it had already gotten the sheriff, Herb Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn). I missed it so much that later on, I kept wondering to myself, “Where is the Sheriff?” I had to go back to rewatch the scene to catch Sheriff Geller’s fate.

This movie has a widely inconsistent tone. At one moment, it feels as if it is trying to be serious and frightening. At other moments, it feels as if it is meant to be humorous and campy. These tones worked against each other several times and did seem to undermine some of the more dramatic moments of the movie.

The special effects are much better than the original, of course. The mostly practical effects are impressive and the kills are much gorier. I have to say that the sequence where Dr. Meddows gets his comeuppance is extremely satisfying, starting with the best use of a rocket launcher ever.

This feels more like an R rated version of the Monster Squad, which is not all bad. There are some moments of fun involved, but the original has more charm and had better protagonists we get to know right away. In the right mood, this could be a fun watch. It could also lead to a lot of eye rolling.

I was watching Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin’s Fatman Beyond podcast tonight and Kevin Smith made a reference to the movie, The Blob. He was referring to the 1988 version, but I had made the decision to add this to the DailyView, I wanted to start with the original, 1958 version.

A meteor containing a strange gelatinous blob landed on earth and connected itself to an old man’s hand. Kids Steve (Steve McQueen) and Jane (Aneta Corsaut) found him and took him to the doctor’s office. The creature continued to grow and dissolved the old man. It started attacking other towns people as it grew and grew.

One of the trope in horror is when the kids tell the parents/adults what they have seen and the parents/adults do not believe them. You see that all the time, including here. However, going against that trope was the character of Lt. Dave (Earl Rowe). He listened to what the kids said and he took steps to show that he believed them. I loved this character as he showed all of the best traits a police officer should have. There was another cop in the film that was just the opposite and he is an annoying character.

The Blob was an entertaining film, though to be fair, it was simplistic. The Blob creature was good for the time and there are many moments of fear in the narrative.

One of the drawbacks for me was that Steve and Jane did not look like teenagers to me. They looked to be in the mid to upper twenties at the least. That was distracting. Aneta Corsaut would end up being Helen Crumb in the Andy Griffith Show just a few years later. She played a teacher in that show.

There are some silly things that happen in the movie, but it moves along quickly and the Blob makes its way around the town without much issue.

The movie was a charming B-level monster flick and I will be following this up by watching The Blob from 1988.

Sam Raimi has had a long career of directing geek type films, from the Evil Dead franchise to the first Spider-Man series. He is currently helming the director’s chair of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. He has several Raimi-isms that appear in many of his films that would tell you that this was a Sam Raimi project. However, the 1998 neo-noir thriller A Simple Plan was directed by Sam Raimi and avoided many, if not most, of the traits of the director and has to be considered one of his best films ever.

Three men, Hank (Bill Paxton), his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe), went chasing after a fox that had caused them to slide their truck off the snow cover road and into a tree. However, the revenge mission was stalled when they discovered a snow-covered small plane crashed in the woods. Even more, inside the small plane was a satchel with $4 million dollars of cash. The pilot was dead and the three of them tried to decide what they were going to do with the money. Hank’s first impression was to turn it into the cops, but Lou wanted to keep it for themselves. The convinced themselves that the money was from a drug dealer and that there would be no victims from them keeping the money. The money would change their lives forever.

The only way Hank agreed to the plan was if he would hold on to the money. Then once some time passed, they would divvy up the cash and all leave town.

A simple plan? Yes, but it is not too soon after this that complications begin to be tossed in the works, and it becomes anything but simple.

Raimi’s film dramatically investigates the theme of what greed or the power of money can do to good people. Hank is a friendly, run-of-the-mill type person who everybody likes, but you can see how he does increasingly, one might say, evil things in the name of the money. The promise of how this money would give these men something their loves were missing affected each of them in distinct manners. Lou became more desperate as the time went on, unable to balance the hope for the future against the pressing needs of the present. Jacob, already a little slow mentally, can be seen having his conscience weighing him down with each of the terrible events.

Billy Bob Thornton is tremendous here as Jacob. You can see the struggle inside his head after each moment in the film. You are never quite sure what he is going to do next. The late Bill Paxton is also great here as the guilt of his actions are pulling at his insides, but his guilt is fighting against the cumulative effects of his unavoidable actions. A Simple Plan is an excellent psychological thriller that you may not expect.

There is also a scary performance from Bridget Fonda, who plays Hank’s wife Sarah. She shows a manipulative side that comes out viciously when she hears about the amount of money. Many of the worst things that happen in the movie come directly from the machinations of Sarah, which plays in direct opposition to the type of character this normally would be.

The film has several twists and turns that help keep that pressure on out characters and allow the audience a chance to continue to be uncertain about where the eventual destiny will take these characters.

A Simple Plan is thrilling and disturbing all at the same time. You find yourselves rooting for Hank even after he had done some evil things because everyone can be questioning themselves about exactly what they would have done if they had been placed in the same situation.

What would you do?

The next movie up for the DailyView is the beloved coming of age, stoner movie Dazed and Confused.

It had an exceptional soundtrack.

Matthew McConaughey’s iconic line “alright, alright, alright” was from this movie.

After that… I HATED this movie.

HATED it.

The movie tells the story of the final day of school for the high school seniors, who all act like total jerks and a-holes, and the junior high students who will be incoming freshmen.

Ben Affleck is here leading a group of seniors who are bullying and physically assaulting freshmen with a paddle. The females are completely cruel and vicious to the female freshmen. This is all okay because…. well, I have no idea. No teacher or cop in sight.

No one seemed to mind these horrible hazings. I don’t know if this was the way it truly was in the 1970s but I find it difficult to believe.

Yes, there is a list of talented actors in this cast and they would grow up to do some wonderful movies. I would even go as far as to say that most of the actors here gave solid performances. I just so hated what they were doing that I overlooked the performances.

Bad behavior. I found myself not wanting to see any more of it. I was glad when it was over.

In honor of the Army of the Dead debuting on Netflix this weekend, I chose another zombie movie for the DailyView. It was a sequel to a movie that was an unexpected favorite of mine, Train to Busan. The sequel was called Peninsula.

I had not watched this film yet because the word of mouth on it was not good. Train to Busan was just a tremendous film, filled with emotions and was grounded in a relationship with a father and his son.

Unfortunately, most of what made Train to Busan special was replaced with giant action pieces and lots of gunfire. The emotional stakes come way too late in the film to really care about. By the time the relationships are squared out, I had already basically checked out.

Four years after the outbreak of the infected, the Korean peninsula is overrun with zombies. Solider Jung Seok (Dong-won Gang) returned to the peninsula with a mission and a team and while there, he finds survivors.

The attempt to circle the story back around to the beginning was clumsy and coincidental. You have to accept a lot to buy into the events of the plot.

The action was typical and did not stand out in a positive way. In fact, there is a car chase that is so obviously CGI that it really detracts from the enjoyment. The zombies were fine, but they’re nothing more or less than any other zombie movie.

Peninsula is too long and feels like it is trying too hard to pack more into the film. Just because there is more in the sequel doesn’t mean that it is an improvement from the original. There was more tension and less manipulation of emotions in the first film. Definitely a step down.

I went over to Shudder tonight to look for more potential horror movies for the DailyView binge and I found a film that I had never heard of before. It was called Wendigo, which is a character from Marvel that I have always been a fan of. Now, this was not going to be the Marvel character, but the mythic legend. I decided that I was interested enough to watch it.

Then I saw Jake Weber, who I just saw in last week’s Those Who Wish Me Dead. Patricia Clarkson was then there and so was the youngest kid from Malcolm in the Middle (Dewey), Erik Per Sullivan and I was surprised that there were so many recognizable actors in a movie I had never knew.

Weber played a high-strung photographer George and Clarkson is his wife Kim. As an attempt to bond more with their son Miles (Erik Per Sullivan), the family heads to a rented house in a woody area of upstate New York. On the way, they hit a deer that was being chased by a group of locals, including one named Otis (John Speredakos), who was angry about it.

Then, a mysterious figure tells Miles about the spirit known as the Wendigo and gives him a wooden statue of the Wendigo. The wilderness spirit brings a darkness to the situation as things get worse for the family.

This was pretty good for a horror film of the early 2000s. However, the special effects on the Wendigo was not great. I wish that the film would have kept the beast hidden as it did in the early part of the movie. It was more effective when they did not show it.

There was some good tension in the film and the story was well done. There were some surprises and twists that I did not see coming, which is always a good thing.

Wendigo was a highly entertaining movie that did have some add moments. It is worth a watch, especially if you have Shudder on Amazon.

I was in the mood for a little horror tonight as the DailyView continued. I went searching through the top rated horror movies on Rotten Tomatoes to see if I could find something interesting. As I was making a list of potential choices I came across one that was more in the vein of thriller than horror, and it intrigued me. It was called The Night of the Hunter and it starred Robert Mitchum.

During the Great Depression, Ben Harper (Peter Graves) had robbed a bank, but, in the process, he had killed a couple of people. Rushing home knowing that he was being pursued by the police, Harper hid the $10,000 he had stolen and made his son John (Billy Chapin) promise to keep the secret forever.

Convicted and awaiting to be hanged, Harper wound up in a cell with a self-proclaimed preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) who hears him talking in his sleep about the stolen money. Harry decides that Harper’s wife Willa (Shelley Winters) would be his next mark in order to get his hands on the money.

Harry Powell integrated himself into her life and wound up marrying her, making the community believe in his con. Powell realizes that the children knew where the money was hidden and he started to target them.

Mitchum was great as the crazed con man killer. When he would get angry or hurt, he would rip out the most inhuman cry I have heard from a human in a movie in a long time. It was penetrating. He would switch on the dime between preaching man of the cloth to psychotic killer without a second thought.

I loved the character played by Lillian Gish, Rachel Cooper who was a tough woman who looked after stray children and who took in John and his little sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) after they escaped from Powell’s clutches in a small boat. I loved how she was no nonsense and willing to do whatever she had to do to protect the wards in her care.

The mood of the film was tremendously frightening when Powell was coming to Ms. Cooper’s home, looking to grab the children. The night time standoff, in particular with the pair of them singing a hymn, was creepy as can be. The ambiance of the picture was extremely effective and built the tension of the scenes extremely well.

The black and white imagery worked very well with the story that was being told here. There was some amazing religious parallels between the story being told and the story of Moses and other biblical tales.

The Night of the Hunter ended a little suddenly for my tastes, but most of the film was great and Robert Mitchum gave us a frightening villain to absolutely root against.

Another Wednesday during the school year which means another Charlie Chaplin short film for the DailyView. This week the Chaplin film I watched was Sunnyside from 1919.

Charlie this time is a farm hand working for am obnoxious boss most of the day and then working at the run-down Evergreen Hotel . Charlie is having a relationship with a local lady (Edna Purviance), but her father is not fond of him.

During his time at the hotel, a city slicker is injured in a car wreck. After he recovers, he meets Charlie’s girl and the bond. Charlie dresses up to try and impress her, This fails so he goes out to kill himself by stepping in front of a car. It was here where he was awoken by his boss at the hotel. The city slicker was there and had never met her before. She shows up and she and Charlie embrace.

This was interesting, but a lot of the narrative seemed to bounce around. I am not sure why he was a farm hand at the beginning when he ended up as a hotel clerk. Perhaps it is to show how tired he is and thus have it make sense why he was always falling asleep. There was a cool dream sequence in the film involving dancing nymphs that stands out. It has been speculated that this sequence is an allusion to the ballet. It also may have inspired the dream sequence in The Kid.

I did not laugh as much with this short as I did with the The Kid or The Immigrant. There is still Chaplin’s iconic style of slapstick comedy involved here too.

There has been debate over the years about whether the end of the movie is a dream sequence or not. My impression is that after Chaplin is awoken by his boss, the remainder of the film is him awake. Unless of course if the whole film is him in a dream sequence from when he was having trouble waking up on the farm.

There was a funny sight gag with a chicken and a cow which worked well. However, this was not as fun as the others that I have seen.

One more week of Wednesday school.

The first documentary being used in the DailyView binge watch is the most recent Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature, My Octopus Teacher, which is available on Netflix.

Beneath the water is one of the most unbelievable places on the planet. It is amazing what is down there and how much we really do not even know about the world of the seas. Animal species and the like are very much similar to earthly aliens and this documentary does a great job of portraying that concept.

Filmmaker Craig Foster started free diving in a kelp forest outside of South Africa. As he was documenting what he was seeing and doing, he discovered a common octopus that showed curiosity that he found fascinating. He began tracking the octopus and following her along. As he does this, he bonds with the octopus, and she seemed to have the same kind of connection to him.

The adventure of this octopus’ life, which is very short, was amazing. There was an extended scene, almost a chase scene, with a pyjama shark that was utterly edge-of-your-seat intense. I was more into this chase than I was in any of the Fast and the Furious movies. It showed the cleverness of the octopus and how nature is a wild and unpredictable place.

Foster narrates the film and talks about the way the relationship with the octopus changed his life moving forward. He was able to share the experience with his son, Tom. There may have been a few too many times when the voice over was overused, but it worked well for the most part.

The imagery of the ocean is beautiful and every shot beneath the water is exquisite. There are so many unbelievable shots that this team gets that it builds an environment that is a visual masterpiece.

The story of this documentary is one of redemption and connection between two living creatures. It is shot beautifully and is as compelling as any scripted film.