The Mist Review

        Since I’ve been talking about Stephen King movies all this month, it only made sense that I talk about Frank Darabont’s only horror adaptation. With the success of both Shawshank and Green Mile, it’s only him and Rob Reiner that have adapted King’s stories the most. I feel as though this one is misunderstood and contemporary in the context of what happened a few years ago. To wrap up my look into Frank Darabont, here’s what I think about The Mist. 

1. Mist over Bridgton

        One thing that I haven’t gone over is Darabont’s past as a writer. Prior to his work as a director, he got started as a screenwriter and horror was up his alley. Both Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and the remake of The Blob were the gems of the 80s. More telling was that he actually wanted to adapt The Mist story before directing The Shawshank Redemption. After the success of the latter, it was the one story where it was put in the backburner as he adapted The Green Mile. 

        Having watched three of his films throughout the month, this one is obviously different. Horror angle aside, it’s clear that the film was shot with a relatively low budget and how it’s shot reminds me of those police/detective procedural shows. With the camera being active and having those quick zoom ins to whenever someone is talking. Not to say that’s a detriment, but it’s a drastic shift than what’s been established in his prior works. 

        So, we start off in all places in Maine. It wouldn’t be a Stephen King story without the northern most part of the country taking a beating for the sake of storytelling. We see that David is an artist who mostly paints movie posters. I really like the nod to him painting one of King’s other story The Dark Tower. While it got adapted, it wasn’t very good. Anyways, the area encounters a severe storm that knocks out the power. Him and his son enter a supermarket, until an enigmatic mist descends onto the area causing everyone to hunker down. 

This is a different horror movie compared to its contemporaries in the early 2000s. During that time, there was an emphasis on remakes and continual Saw sequels. This is the one movie where it doesn’t follow the usual tropes at the time. It’s the opposite where most of the action is focused on one specific area. More so that there’s a human element at play instead of people being slowly picked off by the monstrous creatures coming from the mist. 

        I’ll talk about the main highlight in a second, but with what the movie is going for, Thomas Jane does a good job as the lead. He’s the only person who acts rational at a moment where everyday life is upended. He builds a small group of the people he can trust to figure out what’s happening. There isn’t so much a bad guy, but we get the obligatory Stephen King religious nut with Mrs. Carmody.

        If there’s one secondary actor that I was surprised to see, it was Sam Witmer. My first exposure to him was through the video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. His face is so familiar to me, to the point where he made an appearance in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia among other things beyond the Star Wars franchise. While he has a short appearance in this movie, I can at least highlight that he was the outcome of the main threat in the film.

2. The Monsters

        I can imagine that the people who went to see the movie, only wanted to see the monsters. The designs of them are impressive, but sometimes the CGI effects look a tad shoddy. Originally, the film was supposed to be in Black and White, to harken back at the old school horror and the aesthetic was supposed to match what the film was going for. Obviously, the studio heads denied Darabont the request, so he came out with an alternative version that is his preferred vision of the film. Anyways, beyond the bug monsters that we see, the real monsters in the film are the people. 

        I really love the dynamic within the movie where the people act out when things go south. It’s the sort of dread where it’s rare to see people act irrational and do things that ultimately cost them their lives. That’s the main thing that I must commend the movie, we see the people stay in the store and venture out. To highlight just how the event has thrown any or all sense of rational thinking.

        In some way, I think this film is relevant in today’s time. Since we got out of a pandemic, the whole film has that lens where people don’t believe there is a threat and see it as another fatal sign from God. Just seeing Mrs. Carmody build a following and sacrificing Witmer’s character shows just how everything could go wrong when something uproots any sense of normalcy. It reminds me of Lord of the Flies with how people can be tribal and how it can be fatal. 

        I think it’s appropriate to talk about the ending. Aside from other controversial endings like Man of Steel, I think this one had people in sort of a funk where David did a selfless or selfish act, depending on the individual interpretation. To me, it sort of encapsulates what the movie is going for, humans act out and become monsters on their own. Within the context of the film it works, seeing how the bugs wiped out the citizens and a massive one roaming around established that the world they know is gone. 

        Seeing how there’s no hope amongst David, his family, and the survivors, he kills them as an act of mercy to avoid being bug chow. Then in an ironic twist of fate, the mist dissipates, and the military arrives just after David did what he did. I get the feeling where people where roiled when the immediate sequence happened, had he just waited a few moments later. But I think the overall point is that David loses his humanity and becoming part of the thing that he tried to escape. 

 

3. Overall

        Probably the most underrated horror film of the 2000s, The Mist is a hidden gem of the decade and an underappreciated Stephen King adaptation. 

The Green Mile Review

        With the success of The Shawshank Redemption, it seemed that Frank Darabont couldn’t do any wrong. I can imagine the suits at Warner Bros. practically gave him a carte blanche to adapt another Stephen King story and have total control. It’s often a level of debate as to decide which of his first two King films are better. So let’s get cracking with what I think about The Green Mile. 

1. The Guards at Cold Mountain

        The way the film starts is kind of interesting. We see the immediate action take place as we witness John Coffey holding two dead girls and crying. Transition to a retirement home where we follow Paul. He feels isolated amongst his peers and tells his only friend what he did. We basically follow Paul when he was a guard at a penitentiary.

        Him and his officers are completely different than those in Shawshank. They each have a sense of morality but the only one, named Percy is a conniving sack of feces. I hated that character so much, and I’m surprised the actor wasn’t nominated since he did some pretty messed up acts in the film. Within the context of the story, we see what the guards do and that is to mostly walk the inmates down towards execution. 

        Before I talk about that, I want to elaborate more on Paul’s character. Tom Hanks plays him well where he’s the defacto leader that doesn’t abuse his power at a moment. The moment when Percy loudly proclaims John Coffey’s arrival, perfectly shows what kind of man Paul is. He’s the guy and he’s lenient to an extent with the prisoners. A far cry to what was shown in the last movie. And I think in one way is that this film tries to at least portray that realistic angle to the officers at a death row penitentiary.

        All the other guards do their job competently, with one of them being a sort of Saving Private Ryan reunion with Barry Pepper reuniting with Hanks once more. Percy on the other hand is the character that you love to hate. It’s established that his family is higher up on the political side, more so that when he messes up, he doesn’t face any accountability. He’s just a piece of work and the scene that solidifies it is when he intentionally kills the inmate’s pet. 

        Since we have a movie that involves death row, we do see the executions. Specifically, we see the electric chair that was used in that time. Nothing is half assed in the least bit since we do see a rehearsal and then execution of the guilty. With a movie that is grounded, it’s not exploitive when witnessing the action, but just gruesome since there’s a detail where the electricity alters in the room and seeing the corpse being fried. 

        The film is significantly longer than the last entry and I feel that it’s sort of worth it. We do get a sense of time progression as we see the next inmate being executed and another one being brought in. It uses time effectively than just a standard time jump by showing a change of a season. People complain about the time especially within the ending, since this is Paul’s story that he’s retelling. I think it’s more about getting closure and coming to terms that his predicament is a perceived punishment for what he had to do.

        I’ll get into John Coffey next. That man should have won an Award.  What I want to establish thematically speaking is this sense of morality that the movie has going for it. Shawshank, of course has redemption and has its subtextual reference to Jesus. With this film, there’s this idea of the guards being the ones to decide when the prisoners are executed. It affects the guards when they must rehearse it and of course the prisoners make light of it. There isn’t a sense where the ordeal sticks with them, but that it’s a job. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s not something that they deal with until later. All that changes when they meet John Coffey. 

2. John Coffey

        Michael Clarke Duncan was everywhere back in the 90s and 2000s. He was always the tough guy in the films and he has that very distinct baritone voice. And I can’t believe that it’s been a good while where he’s no longer with us. I remember his roles in Michael Bay’s Armageddon and in Daredevil with Ben Affleck. Among all his roles that he’s known for, I strongly believe this is his best performance in this film.

        When we start the film, he’s the new inmate that is faced with execution. The thing that separates him among the other prisoners is that he has a child-like thing to him where he has a simple attitude. Of course, a retread where the prisoner is nothing like those around him but has an interesting aspect about him. This is where the supernatural part comes in, where John’s ability is to remove the ailments of other people. 

        It's never explained how Coffey got his gift, but he uses them to perform a miracle, sort of like Andy Dufresne as the Christ-like figure. With healing Paul and bringing back to life the inmates pet mouse practically gives him and Paul a rapport. The detail that I like is that we cut to John when an execution is happening, since he reacts to it and feels the pain that is being done.

        To me, I’m perfectly okay with the direction that the story went with. People would be expecting this movie to be a sort of like Shawshank but at another angle. Having it be where the inmate is presumed innocent and having an unnatural gift makes it sort of tragic. There isn’t redemption, more so that it’s about the actions that the guards must live with as a sort of judgement. Which makes the execution of John so tragic. 

3. Overall

        While in some ways it’s inferior to The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile is still a worthy entry to the best films of 1999. 

The Shawshank Redemption Review

        April is here at last and that means that I’m looking at another director to spotlight. The prior years I’ve looked at Robert Rodriguez and Denis Villeneuve’s best films. Now, I’m shining that light on Frank Darabont. He’s not among the most talked about directors, but what he’s known for is his adaptations of three Stephen King stories. It’s odd that he’s the only director to adapt three of King’s work, but they are held in such a high regard that they even outshine King’s other works of horror. So with that, we’ll kick off the month with The Shawshank Redemption. 

1. Andy Dufresne 

        Consider this as a first impression since I just saw this movie this instant. This wasn’t the first time that I was exposed to the story. Of course like many things, it was a combination of Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken show and a rerun of Family Guy. Both had segments where it parodied the film by using Batman characters and Peter Griffin as Andy Dufresne. As years gone, I’ve only seen snippets of the film and it’s until now that I viewed it. 

        The story is simple as a prison drama. We follow Dufresne as he’s wrongly accused of murdering his wife and new lover. As punishment, he’s sentenced to consecutive life sentences and imprisoned at Shawshank. Morgan Freeman’s Red narrates the whole story of his encounter with Andy and his adjustment to incarceration. Both Red and Andy are the main highlights since they develop a close bond among each other. 

        Just the fact that Andy didn’t squeal when the fellow inmates were daring the new arrivals, showed that he can’t let his guard down. What makes Andy interesting as a character is just how he maintains his innocence and never really stoops down to the other convicts level. He never bends or cracks when he gets jumped by the other inmates. To me, he takes the brutal punishment since there’s no other way to get any sense of justice with where he is. 

        With the run time of the movie, it really shows just how Andy and Red start to influence themselves. So much so that we see Andy start to make deals where he isn’t abused within the prison walls. It’s almost like he makes compromises since he sees every prisoner as a human and to at least have any sense of empathy. Right down to have a library established within Shawshank. 

        I think the interpretation that the film has going for itself is that we can interpret Andy as being a Jesus-esque character. A man that doesn’t belong in an area where he’s abused and questioned just by his own thinking. And then shows empathy among his peers and tutors one of them. While he doesn’t die in the end like being a martyr, but his perseverance to endure the hardship makes him endearing. 

2. Shawshank Prison

        The scene where the inmates are introduced to the prison immediately sets the tone to how Hell-ish the place is. Both Warden Norton and Captain Hadley each display the level of cruelty and malice that infects the prison. The moment that perfectly illustrates Hadley as a person is when the obese inmate cries out that he doesn’t belong in the prison. Hadley drags him out and beats him to a pulp, which killed him. It’s the level of brutal threats that has the prisoners know where they are. 

        The warden is a special kind of evil since he’s a believer of Christianity.  He gives the prisoners the book, but he’s one to not follow the guidance that wants to help the prisoners. To put it simply, he’s corrupted to an extent that he uses Andy to falsify financial documents. It’s a recurring motif with Stephen King and religion where he shows the hypocrites, and this movie is no different. 

        One could interpret the prison as Hell and Andy being a sort of savior to help improve the prisoner’s morale. More so that within the breaks of the movie, we see Red have a meeting with the parole board on three separate occasions. On the first two moments, he gets denied since he states that he’s no threat to anyone. With the final meeting, he gives the answer that the new board wants to hear. The last scene is one of the many highlights of the film. 

        For one, he’s not acting humble and putting on an act that he’s finally cured with innocence. Red tells the board that there’s nothing that can be done to fix his problem and that days go by where he wished he could change what happened. I believe with that scene, without having the Warden or Hadley, is supposed to show why prisons exist. To be an actual punishment by finally recognizing what you did and own up to it when the time comes to be let out. 

        We see just how much influence the prison has when we see both Red and the old prisoner Brooks are let out. Just the shot selection between the two show just how much the incarcerated life has affected them. When Brooks is let out, we see the prison behind him. Right down to when he rides the bus, he clings on to the seat rail. The opposite is set on Red’s character since he is facing the window side of the bus. It shows just how much the whole experience changed them that they can’t adapt and be a regular civilian. With Brook’s death being tragic to really cement the whole idea. 

3. Legacy

        This is the rare moment for a film where the appreciation came just after the release. While it got glowing praise when it came out, the movie didn’t do well box office wise. Making matters worse, the film was competing with Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. While Pulp Fiction made an impact among the audience, people gravitated towards that film. Reading more, it was move by a Warner Bros. exec to print more copies of the film’s VHS release. 

        The move paid off since the film gained more of an audience following with its rentals and ownership. I think to show a movie’s longevity is a combination of time and it’s obligatory reruns that’s available on TV. I believe that with the newfound success of this one, it made the studio give Darabont another shot with making another adaption. Don’t you worry though, we’ll look at that one next week. 

4. Overall

        The Shawshank Redemption is one of the best films of the 90s. More so that it’s the best non-horror Stephen King adaptations that I’ve seen. 

Arrival Review

        Denis Villeneuve can do no wrong as of now. So far, he’s a rare director that has a consecutive number of hits. With an impressive streak like that, it’s sort of becoming impossible to even try and rank his films by any means of which one is superior. Some say its his Dune duology or Blade Runner film for instance. As difficult as it may seem, Arrival is one of the best sci-fi films of the 2010s.

1. Modern Day "Close Encounters" 

        If Close Encounters walked, Arrival ran before the firing gun was even gripped to shoot. This is the second time that I’ve watched the film. The first being for a class back at A&M involving philosophy and science fiction films. While I won’t divulge into any philosophical ideas since that’s not what the whole initiative is about. Instead, we’ll talk about how this film is sort of like an heir apparent to Close Encounters. 

        Based on the short story by Ted Chiang, we follow Amy Adams’ Louise, who is a specialist on linguistics. Following the, well, arrival of 12 alien ships hovering above various points on Earth, the military task her and Jeremy Renner’s Ian to uncover and figure out why the aliens are here. The way the film goes about it is utterly fascinating to me. The whole movie is sort of told in a non-linear way. 

        While we see Louise experiencing visions of her and a young girl, then transition to what’s happening as we’re seeing it is ingenious. I can imagine that it was sort of thrown as a red herring since we’re led to believe that it’s in the past. And that having her communicating with the aliens is sort of like the therapy she needs to get over her grief. That isn’t how it goes down. In fact, it’s sort of the opposite with how both Louise and Ian contact with the visitors. 

        I’ll talk about them in a bit, but the film’s most famous part is when they’re communicating with them and trying to transcribe what they’re writing. This is Louise’s movie in a way where it’s never half-baked in the least bit. I just love the rationale and no-nonsense approach she has with the general. Basically, stating that they must teach the aliens what their words mean to get an understanding of why they’re on Earth. 

        I think my favorite scene is when we have Ian narrating in a sort of audio journal of their progress. The soundtrack really conveys just the whole main idea of talking to the aliens and the multiple questions that are brought up aside from the “why are they here?” problem. The music feels like it’s sort of repeating to piggyback on Ian’s own thoughts and the audience’s mind on the whole matter. 

        Aside from that, this is very different from Close Encounters. It doesn’t have the optimistic look of sort of embracing the aliens. Or a moment where we see a malevolence of the invaders like an abduction or seemingly become threatening. The presentation is really grounded with its approach by presenting a “What if?” scenario. We have moments where the other nations are combative and using what Louise thinks is an incorrect way of communicating with the aliens. 

        What I think the main idea that the film is going for is just how humans can’t communicate among themselves. The details of the duo arguing with the military brass further punctuate the theme. Just the inability to communicate among each other cements it since no one is being open with how they’re handling the visitors. Right down to everyone misinterpreting what the aliens say is a “weapon” which sets off a domino effect. I kind of feel that it’s sort of common that when a character has made progress, there’s always an outside force that throws a monkey wrench at it. I get what they’re trying to go for, by I feel that it was forced. 

2. Heptapods

        One would think that what the aliens looked like when both Louise and Ian see them inside their ships would be their bodies. Well, partially in a way. They obviously remind me of an octopus with their legs and how they dispense a black ink that forms a various symbol that means a word to them. As I mentioned earlier, the film literally goes out of its way to show how Louise and Ian manage to transcribe what they’re saying. 

        And it’s not just something where the film is trying to be artistic for the sake of art, we later find out why Louise is being plagued by seeing future events. She’s no Lisan Al-Gaib that’s for sure, or perhaps Villeneuve was sort of dipping his toes into Dune lore before inhaling The Spice. Anyways, I love how when Louise learns the alien language, she sort of loses her sense of reality since the way the alien’s see time is something that’s constant. No past or present, just happening. 

        Again, I hate to sort of prod Close Encounters again but the film had a unique way of introducing the aliens. Just them simply appearing without any establishing shots of them descending is great. More so how it’s like an inverse where the aliens are presented within the first hour instead of leaving it at the end. There’s no pomp or circumstance but more like, they’re here and that’s it.

        I’ve been thinking further as to why these types of films exist or keep popping up as time goes by. It’s not an entirely new concept since it’s been interpreted at how an advanced civilization has made contact and laid waste to a lesser race. I believe that it’s a horrifying idea by both terror and just general fear since we don’t know how to react. And we have films that sort of prepare us on how to react or expect. The pacifist approach is a sort of comforting thing since there has to be some diplomacy before anyone gets ahead of themselves. 

        Now, the ones people flock to is when the invaders bust out the weapons and we fight. Some are just brain-dead action films that are bottom of the barrel garbage. Though the interesting ones I believe is when there’s an underlying message and just seeing how we survive an invasion. With how it’s presented, the direction can go either way based on interpretation, by either have the aliens be a metaphor or a reflection of how we can be better.

3. Overall

        Arrival is one of Villeneuve’s best films of the 2010s. And overall best film of that decade.