Tag Archives: Eric Robert Nolan

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A review of “Parallels” (2015)

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First, a clarification — “Parallels” (2015) is absolutely not a feature film; it’s an undisguised attempt at a pilot for an ongoing web-based series.  I think it’s pretty cruddy of Netflix to market it as a standalone film, as viewers expecting a conclusive story will doubtless be disappointed.  Its parallel universe-hopping premise also seems so similar to “Sliders” (1995-1999) that it just might approach the boundary between inspiration and ripoff.

With that said, however … dear LORD!!!  “Parallels” was frikkin’ FANTASTIC.  What we’ve got here is a far edgier, grownup version of “Sliders,” with a first episode introducing the same type of show-spanning mysteries as “Lost.”  But where “Sliders” was milquetoast primetime family fare, this looks like an excellent serialized thriller with plenty of pathos.

What a shame this thoughtful series never reached fruition.  I was hooked.  It’s smartly written by Christopher Leone; he’s visibly well acquainted with string theory, and has a hell of a lot of clever fun with it.  “Parallels” is a face-paced 80 minutes that follows a tragic, dysfunctional modern family embroiled in the mystery of the plot-driving “Building.”  The Building appears to be the nexus of countless parallel universes, a bit like the “The Dark Tower” links them in Stephen King’s multiverse.  The cast is uniformly good; the standouts were Eric Jungmann as the comic relief and Michael Monks as an understated but terrific bad guy.

I had only a few tiny quibbles.  Some of the family melodrama and the mysteries were a little forced and heavy-handed.  The ending (?) here, while really intriguing, also borrows a page or two from “Cube” (1997) and one particularly good episode of Ron Moore’s “Battlestar Galactica” (2004-2009).

I’m not sure how to rate this.  It fails as a standalone film, I think, because it simply doesn’t have an ending.  I suppose I’d give it … a 4 out of 10?  If you can forgive that fatal flaw, however, and want to enjoy some top-shelf science fiction, then I’d easily give it a 9 out of 10.

Dammit.  Why wasn’t this show made?

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“Graceless Ravens Envy You,” by Eric Robert Nolan

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“Graceless Ravens Envy You,” by Eric Robert Nolan

Revel in apostasy.
You are the black dove, hovering
High in an inklike arc.

Blacker, even, than
coal-colored wolves in onyx lines seeking
quarry at starless midnight.

More ebon, even, than
narrow sable blacksnakes staying
cravenly in shade at noon.

Darker, even, than
murders of crows, newly legion at Autumn, amassing
among saw-wing martins at dusk.

You’re blacker, even, then the rooks.
Graceless ravens envy you.

Remember your rebirth?
The sun rose,
Your birdsong changed and then
the questions flew from your beak
faster even than the wrens?
Faster than you could fly?
For a moment, they rendered
all the world obsidian.

Remember your feathers burning?
Sunlight striking your wings and then
all the slow alabaster there
singing, quickening into
aerodynamic black?
Remember the flock’s suspicion?

Remember your siblings, the nest?
Remember when
all their pearl heads turned
their backlit crowns in morning sun
ringed so thinly in shining ivory?

Their song was interrupted,
Yours was made a query —
empiricism’s aria.
Flustered, they fluttered
at all the low notes.
They were all immaculate;
you were the color of night.

Now you arc alone —
soar and sin and sing,
the unrepentant one.

Somewhere an ordinary dog,
awakening from shadow,
howls at the sun.

(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2015

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Photo credit: “Indian Crow vs” by Venkatx5 – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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A short review of “American Ultra” (2015)

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The Manchurian candidate is a common trope.  A Manchurian candidate hidden within a neurotic, drug addled, underachieving comic book creator is actually pretty creative.

That’s just one of the reasons that “American Ultra” (2015) had the makings of a great movie.  This film has more going for it too.  The soft spoken Jesse Eisenberg is extremely talented, being both quite funny and bizarrely likeable in the role.   Kristen Stewart is also just great.  (I haven’t seen her in the “Twilight” films that made her famous/infamous, but she really impressed me as a child actress in 2002’s terrific “Panic Room.”) And, like Eisenberg, Connie Britton has perfect comic timing and delivery.  (I’m still smiling at her offhand “Hey!” to the guy in the barn.)

Regrettably, maybe just past the halfway mark, this film loses its way just a bit.  The humor stops being character- and dialogue-driven, and the fish-out-of-water comedy sort of segues into a generic (and not terribly well executed) action –thriller.  There are some half-hearted action set pieces that aren’t especially well staged, or even well conceptualized.  And precisely nobody acts as though they have any sort of government or military training — either conventional or subliminally hidden.  Does EVERYONE in hollywood movies ALWAYS cluster together in a clear field of fire without seeking cover?

There is another miscalculation, too, that makes “American Ultra” less than great.  Our bad guys are cartoonish.  Eisenberg’s pursuers turn out to be (sigh) former mental patients who have received the same mental conditioning.  One is code-named “Laugher” because he cackles hysterically.  (That’s something out of a mediocre comic book.) And, like everyone’s least favorite Spiderman movie from the 2000’s, Topher Grace is cast against type as a raging psychotic.  (Am I the only one who thinks he was far funnier as the mild-mannered, relatable everyteen in “That 70’s Show?”)

How much funnier would this movie have been overall if Eisenberg’s quirky antihero (and maybe his weird friends) were the only comedic characters?  What if all their antagonists were “straight men” characters who ironically struggled in vain to defeat them?  This film could have been a classic.

Oh, well.  I still liked this well enough.  I’d give it a 7 out of 10.

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A very short review of “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” (2014)

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I think that “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” (2014) is the best of Peter Jackson’s prequel trilogy, and not only because of its predictably terrific climactic battle.  I’d give this movie a 9 out of 10.

First, it’s less cartoonish and far more adult than its predecessors, in everything from its themes to its fight choreography.  (Compare the beautifully staged final melees here, for example, with that Warner Brothers-esque sequence in the second film, in which the dwarves dance across barrels and river rapids to repel their orc pursuers.)

It also seems like a better peek at a larger fantasy universe, with different races, armies and cultures working at cross purposes before needing to align, and with more than one protagonist’s real failings factoring in to that.

And … HOT DAMN!  That’s GOTTA be the greatest depiction of a dragon I’ve ever seen.  One small quibble I’ve had throughout all of Jackson’ Tolkien films was that the stories’ antagonists sometimes seemed too silly and clownish to be truly menacing.  (The orcs, trolls and goblins seemed cartoonish and are too easily defeated by beings sometimes half their height; only the Nazguls and the Uruk-Hai hybrids managed to impress.)  Jackson’s depiction of Smaug ravaging Laketown makes dragons look like Middle Earth’s equivalent of a goddam nuclear device.

[Edit: I just realized that in both this film and NBC’s “Hannibal,” the amazing Richard Armitage costars with a “Red Dragon.]

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“Annabel Lee,” by Edgar Allan Poe

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Halloween season is almost upon us.  (I’m the kind of purist who thinks it begins on October 1.  My neighbors have shown surprising restraint; I’ve only seen one decorated house.)  And Halloween is the season for Edgar Allan Poe.

I’m running “Annabel Lee” today, however, because I was chatting with a Mary Washington College Alumna the other day who named her daughter “Annabelle.”  The conversation came up after my review of last year’s surprisingly good horror movie of the same name.  (My New Hall friend arrived at “Annabelle” after researching the name, but not after this poem.  That would be weird.)

“Annabel Lee,” by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

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Photo credit: By Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee”, 1849 fair copy. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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It’s a bird! It’s a plane!! It’s SUPERMOON!! (And an eclipsed moon! And a “blood moon!”)

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No wonder medieval people freaked out at lunar eclipses.  I suppose if you had no scientific knowledge to interpret such an event, and it occurred unexpectedly, it would be a little unsettling.

Frankly, I’m glad I could even see the supermoon eclipse, as I am notoriously poor at spotting all things heavenly.  Also, some of my Virginia friends were unable to see it, while others could.  There was a lot of cloud cover to pass over my little stretch of the Commonwealth’s rolling dark Autumn hills, but high winds let that darkening lunar eye peek cravenly and intermittently past it, down at me.  The “blood moon” effect was achieved, unless I’m seeing things — that red “haze” was visible at the eclipse’s height.

The photo you see below is not my own; I abruptly accosted a stranger on the Facebook wall of horror writer and editor Wednesday Lee Friday.  (Thank you for the shot, Kleopatra Daravingas!)  🙂

[UPDATE:  Dammit …. you know what would have been a more clever headline, even if only Stephen King fans would have gotten it?  “M-O-O-N — that spells ‘moon.'”]

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Don’t buy Target gift cards online …

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… lest your experience parallel my own.

Here’s what might happen.

  1.  You buy an online “gift card” via Target.com to be sent via e-mail to its recipient.  (The recipient is then supposed to apply the balance to their Target.com account so that they can make purchases.)
  2. Your credit card will be charged promptly, but your intended recipient receives no e-mail from Target at all.
  3. You call to rectify the situation.  Target then sends the promised e-mail to the recipient with the virtual gift card.  But it is useless because it has been cancelled.
  4. You call to rectify the situation again, but the customer service rep informs you that Target’s computers are down.
  5. You call back the following day, hoping to get it all straightened out.  But Target’s solution is a slightly confusing process by which they send the gift card to you, then you resend it to the intended recipient.  It’s confusing because this e-mail from Target makes it look like they have sent a SECOND gift card to you to apologize for your trouble.  (No, that’s the gift card you mean to give to your friend.)
  6. Honestly?  Just buy a f&*$ing Amazon gift card, people.
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A quick review of “The Visit” (2015)

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I quite liked M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit” (2015); I’d give it an 8 out of 10.  It is by no means a perfect movie.  But it has all of the elements of Shyamalan’s work that I love: it’s beautifully shot; it has a fresh, creative story; it’s suspenseful; it’s atmospheric, and it has well drawn, likeable protagonists.

I am an unashamed Shyamalan fan.  I love all his horror-thriller movies, even the one or two in which I can guess Shyamalan’s trademark “twist” in advance.  Yes, I even liked “The Village” (2004).  And I liked “The Happening” (2006) a hell of lot too.

This movie indeed has said twist.  I thought I guessed what it was in the opening minutes.  I was wrong, and when the real twist was revealed, it was pretty damn effective.  For a moment, I was as dumbfounded as the characters on screen.  This was despite the fact that all the clues had been right there in front of me, and seem obvious in retrospect.

And it is scary in places.  A scene beneath the house comes first to mind.  So does the “oven” bit that we see in the trailer.  The cast is uniformly good.  The standout was a fantastic performance by Deanna Dunagan as “Nana.”

A couple of things nudged this movie just slightly left of the “great” category, into the “good but not great” category.  For one, I think this could have been a short film, and didn’t need more than 40 minutes or an hour to tell its story.  The pacing seems to suffer a little because of that.  For the first hour, we keep revisiting the same arc in tension: a grandparent behaves strangely, a grandchild queries them, and then the behavior subsides.

Character choices are also implausible.  These are bright, savvy kids, who are either oblivious to or cavalier about obvious signs of danger.  I think any person in real life would be too frightened to remain in the house where “The Visit” takes place.  Later, certain things change a little too conveniently after the twist is revealed.

The rapid change in tone after the story’s conclusion was a little heavy-handed.  I thought the story’s final minutes were nice, but maybe a little too much.  (I am being intentionally vague here to avoid spoilers.)

Still, I’d recommend this.  If you can overlook the movie’s faults here and there, you’ll enjoy a damn creepy modern fairytale.

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Throwback Thursday: “Sugarcane Island,” by Edward Packard

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Does anybody else remember Edward Packard’s “Sugarcane Island?”  I actually had a copy of its original publication, as the first of the “The Adventures of You” series.  The “series” was actually just three groundbreaking books by Packard that served as the prototype for the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that I’m sure many of us remember.

The Internet tells me that major publishers actually rejected “Sugarcane Island” before Vermont Crossroads Press picked it up in 1976.  Lippincott put out the other two, then Packard struck a deal with Bantam Books in 1979 to create the entire CYOA series (which incorporated this book).  That’s a nice little success story.

Man, did I love this book.  And damn if that cover couldn’t captivate a gradeschooler!!  I loved the CYOA books that followed, as well, but my fondest memory is of this one.  I even sat down when I was in the second or third grade and penned my own.  (Predictably, it involved a mysterious island.)  I filled a red spiral notebook with numbered pages and fates of my ow making.  I like to think it was pretty good for a kid.  I’ve still got it somewhere.

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“Annabelle” (2014) scared the $#@& out of me!!

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“Annabelle” seems like precisely the sort of horror film that shouldn’t work.  Thinly drawn characters wind their way through a series of overly familiar tropes, including, of course, the titular possessed doll.  These characters make the same baffling decisions that only people in horror movies are stupid enough to make, and cavalierly remain in dangerous situations long after you and I would have gotten the hell out of there.  The film is so reminiscent of “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) that for a while I actually wondered if it was a remake.  And the script is pretty clunky — especially the coda at the church.

Yet … “Annabelle” still works.  This is a frikkin’ scary movie.  I’d give it a 9 out of 10.

There are a couple of reasons for the movie’s success, I think.  First, it’s beautifully shot and directed throughout an especially creepy apartment building. Our supernatural antagonists are (at first) wisely seen down long corridors and stairwells.  There are some static shots of the doll but none of the silly cut-and-cut-back tricks to explain that it is moving on its own.

Second, there is no ham-handed CGI to make the action cartoonish; there are only sparsely placed practical effects, and they work quite well.  This felt like an effective old-fashioned 1970’s horror movie about the devil.

Third, Annabelle Wallis does well in her role as the wife in the young married couple targeted by Satan. She underplays it quite a bit, but she’s still a good actress.  (The beautiful Wallis is none other than the college student that young Charles Xavier tried to pick up in 2011’s “X-Men: First Class.”  And, yes, she does have the same first name as the demonic doll.  Weird world.)

I was confused at first about the awkward and confusing bookends to the film; they’re distracting and unnecessary.  Wikipedia informs me that these are intended to remind viewers that this movie is a spinoff of “The Conjuring” (2013), which is regarded by horror fans as superior to this film.  I guess I’ll need to watch that soon.

 

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