Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
The name Guillermo Del Toro on a movie fills me with dread. Unfortunately, not in the way I’d like it to. Everything about the guy I love – his devotion to horror and sci fi, his adoration of HP Lovecraft matches my own, and he has a collection of props I would kill for. His traveling exhibit At Home With Monsters was pretty amazing – I took some pics when I went to see it earlier this year, and posted them here. So yeah, I love Del Toro – unfortunately I think most of his movies stink.
Back in 2010, I saw The Room. By then it had started to gather a head of steam as “the worst movie ever made” (and there’s a compelling argument for that, not just hype), and the beginning of the cult following that fills theaters these days. In those days it wan’t so much the event movie it is today, where everyone attends thinking they’re the next ironic comedy genius, riffing as the movie unreels. I don’t normally watch movies like that (though when Star Wars:TOT was rereleased in the late 90s, a friend and I got ejected for riffing on The Empire Strikes Back. Mea culpa, mea culpa …), I love and respect the medium too much to do that. The Room is, to me, simply a piece of shit movie.
I finally saw Justice League last night – on the backs of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Wonder Woman, I can’t say I had a lot of interest in seeing it on opening weekend, and from its relatively disappointing opening domestic gross ($90 million), I wasn’t alone in putting it off. As it turned out, it was the worst possible night to see it: winter finally roared into the Twin Cities, and driving back to my new home was a tense nightmare, thanks to 25 feet visibility and an icy, sleety mess. Serves you right, the elements seemed to say, serves you right …
I confess, even though I had a busy November (moving, buying furniture, Thanksgiving, tight deadlines on other projects), I mostly am only just getting to review this movie due to laziness, having seen it way back on opening weekend. Movie watching is also down, but I hope to bounce back bigly in December. ANYWAY, here is what I have to say about the latest Marvel movie, and specifically the latest Thor movie! Enjoy!
I have no personal stake in The Dark Tower, I should say. After trying numerous attempts to read The Gunslinger, book 1 of Stephen King’s magnum opus, I finally threw my hands up in defeat and gave up. Not that I didn’t like King’s work at the time – quite the opposite, in fact. In the mid to late 80s, I was a yuge fan of his work, and read his stuff voraciously, sometimes palpably impatient waiting for the books to finally be released in Scotland. I still consider Pet Sematary one of my all time favourite books. But when I tried to read The Dark Tower, it just didn’t feel like a Stephen King book. A little later, me and Uncle Stevie just kind of drifted apart. His work in the early 90s left me feeling unimpressed, so I stopped reading., and never got around to thinking of picking up the series again.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 