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.

Disney + was the destination today to continue the DailyView binge as I found a film that fit nicely into my time frame, and one that featured one of my old favorites from General Hospital.

Jonathan Jackson played Lucky Spencer for years on GH. I watched him grow up. Jackson was one of the best young actors on the show. Seeing him here in Tuck Everlasting as the immortal Jesse Tuck was a cool thing.

Teenager Winnie Foster (Alexis Bledel) runs into Jesse Tuck in the woods as he drank from a small spring at the base of an old oak tree. Jesse was clearly up to something and started to chase her. His brother Miles (Scott Bairstow) intercepted Winnie and forced her to return to their home, in order to protect their secret.

Turned out that the water at that tree gave the Tuck family immortality. They could not die. They did not age, and they could not afford Winnie to tell anyone.

However, Tuck (William Hurt) and Mae (Sissy Spacek), Jesse and Miles’ parents, were not sure what to do with Winnie. They treated her kindly and kept her as a part of their family. Jesse and Winnie began to connect with each other, slowly falling in love.

Tuck Everlasting was only 90+ minutes, but it did move very slowly. The slow burn though fit very well with the idea that the world was movie slowly for the Tucks. The film explores ideas of what the meaning of death compared to life was and the loneliness of immortality. The film did not dive into these themes too deeply though, saving most of the screen time for the family friendly action and characteristics of the characters.

The deepest exploration of this came through exposition spoken by Miles about his own tragic circumstances involving his wife and children believing that he had sold his soul to the devil and was practicing witchcraft. Though the back story gave us a greater understanding of Miles, I wish they would have found a better, more impactful manner in which to present the material.

Sir Ben Kingsley was here too as the protagonist, called only The Man in the Yellow Suit in the IMDB page. Kingsley wanted the water for himself but, truthfully, his character was pretty one-dimensional. Not much for depth in him.

I’d say this was a passable film that was certainly worth a free viewing on Disney +. I’m not sure how I would feel had I had to pay (more than just the Disney + subscription fee) to watch this. Overall, it is fine and I liked seeing Jonathan Jackson again.

This is the fourth film that had made the header for the DailyView and the final one that I had to absolutely make sure I saw. I have not yet seen the original movie of this series (whether it becomes part of the DailyView is uncertain), but I have heard that the second one was the better film.

I love the Blaze of Glory song by Bon Jovi over the credits.

Other than that…. well, this was okay, at best.

William H. Bonney (Emilio Estevez), aka Billy the Kid, came out of the West when his former gang members “Doc” Scurlock (Kiefer Sutherland) and Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips) were captured and being prepared to be hanged. Billy staged a rescue operation, reuniting the gang from the first film.

However, not everything went as planned. After the rescue, Billy wanted the group to follow a trail to old Mexico as a way out. Pat Garrett (William Petersen) decided he was out. He wanted to start up his own eatery and so the gang left without him.

Billy went to see John S. Chisum (James Coburn) and claimed Chisum owed him $500. When Chisum refused, Billy and the crew killed two of Chisum’s men. This caused Chisum to hire Garrett as a sheriff and to give him $1000 to kill Billy the Kid.

That’s the basic plot.

Billy’s group went somewhere. Garrett would find them and they would shoot at each other. Some people would die.

Some of the crew were really characters that were pretty unimportant. They had Arkansas Dave (Christian Slater) who seemed to want to be the crazy one. Henry French (Alan Ruck) who wanted a nickname. You have the typical young teen who looked up to the outlaw with Tom (Balthazar Getty). None of these characters meant anything to me, which made them disposable.

Oh, and Viggo Mortensen is here too. He is completely underused as Pat Garrett’s side man.

Some of the gunfights are fun, but these characters seem to be superheroes. They are injured several times and never quite get hurt. Some of them took bullets and apparently kept on going.

Of course, the crazy killer Bill the Kid is the main protagonist. He’s the hero of the film, and they go out of the way to try and give him some positive traits. They also make Garrett the antagonist. Neither feel proper.

There are many better Westerns, including better Westerns featuring some of these very own characters. Young Guns II is as disposable as some of the characters and is most remembered for a great theme song.

I picked a movie from the HBO Max lineup today for the DailyView that is leaving the streaming platform this month. It was not on my original list, but I had considered this movie several times last year. It was around on Vudu and other on demand services, but I did not get around to seeing it. This now becomes the next DailyView film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always.

Produced by Barry Jenkins and directed by Eliza Hittman, Never Rarely Sometimes Always tells a powerful story of a teenage girl Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) who found out that she was unexpectedly pregnant. She and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) went to New York in search of an abortion and, along the way, dealt with the harshness of life and the challenges faced by young people in the world.

Autumn had to go to New York for the procedure because there were troubles at the local clinic. The person at the clinic was specifically trying to influence her into keeping the baby, going as far as lying about how far along Autumn was in her pregnancy (To be fair, they never specifically say this, but it is implied heavily). An unusual home life prevented her in confiding with her parents.

So Autumn and Skylar got some bus tickets and went to NYC.

The two girls were really lucky that anything worse did not happen to them. They had limited money so they were struggling to find places to stay, especially when they had to be sent to a different clinic because she was 18 weeks pregnant instead of 10 weeks as her hometown doctor told her.

Plus, the procedure was going to take two days, so they had to account for a couple of days in New York with few options available.

The powerful performances from both Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder propelled this movie forward. The relationship between these two girls are the center of the film while the honesty of the situation brings the tension and a distinct feeling of uncomfortableness. This was a tough movie to watch because of that level of uncomfortableness, but these two young actresses are stars in the making.

Easily the best scene occurs in the New York clinic where a counselor questions Autumn about the situation using questions that are to be answered “never, rarely, sometimes or always. ” There was so much revealed in that scene without having things laid out in front of the audience.

The movie is slowly paced, but it worked very well with what story they were telling. The realism of the story brought a level of honesty that some audiences may not be ready to handle. Of course, the topic of the film has been desperately controversial since the beginning.

A tough watch. Very powerful.