Tag Archives: Eric Robert Nolan

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My slightly disappointed review of “The X Files” Season 1.

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I am blogging my past TV reviews from Facebook; this was my surprisingly unenthusiastic reaction to “The X Files” Season 1.  Yes, this review is dated, as it makes no mention of the show’s impending return.  (Hooray.)

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I love ‘The X Files.” And I mean I REALLY love “The X Files.” It’s possibly my favorite television show of all time, running neck and neck with shows like “24,” Battlestar Galactica” and “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” So I was very surprised at my own disappointment when, via Netflix, I was able to watch Season 1 in its entirety for the first time. Taken together, I think its 24 episodes deserve a 5 out 0f 10. And bear in mind – that’s coming from a diehard fan.

I first fell in love with this show as its fourth or fifth season was currently airing. This was long before Netflix streaming, and I’m pretty sure it was before DVD’s were even a thing. (I’m old.) What few episodes I’d seen of Season 1 were from syndication and purchased VHS tapes. So I’ve been proclaiming my love for the show (which had a nine-year run) for years without ever having seen much of the early seasons.

Some great TV shows can get off to a rough start. “The Simpsons,” “MST3K” and even “Family Guy” were less than stellar when they first began. Shows like “24” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” were good, but got much better. “The X Files” was surprisingly average.

The first nine episodes were, frankly, poor. There was little of the suspense, mystery and characterization that would eventually make the show great, with Mulder and Scully being flat, and even annoying characters that were thinly scripted and awkwardly played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Duchovny, early on, was just bad. His wooden line delivery made him seem like a Fox Network intern who was standing in for a sick professional actor. Anderson was better, but could only do so much with the clunky and simplistic dialogue.

Episodes like “Ghost in the Machine” and “Ice” seem clearly like ripoffs of sci-fi classics (“2001: A Space Odyssey” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” respectively), though “Ice” still manages to be fun. One episode, “Space,” was so boring that it was painful to watch. “Squeeze,” which is a favorite for many longtime fans, was good, but even it hasn’t aged all that well. I’m surprised the show lasted.

As mysteries or police thrillers, these early episodes also failed. Eager witnesses cheerfully and conveniently present themselves early on to volunteer clues and exposition. The underlying reveals seemed like elements thrown together with little exposition. And Duchovny looks like he’d never held a gun in his life. (I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to wave it around like that.) I can’t remember the episode but, at one point, Mulder (a supposedly brilliant Oxford-trained criminal psychologist) actually confuses schizophrenia with MPD (multiple personality disorder). Sigh.

Then there was a shift in tone and quality. “Eve” is one of the all-time greats. (And it was here where the dark themes and complex overarching plotlines were truly established that would later define the show.) “Beyond The Sea” saw Anderson shine, along with the writers and directors. It was simply fantastic … even unforgettable (thanks in no small part to amazing guest actor Brad Dourif).

“Darkness Falls” and “Born Again” established their creators’ abilities to make great standalone, scary mysteries. Duchovny just seemed to … get better. He settled into the role, became more natural, and the writers seemed to begin giving Mulder the endearing quirks and idiosyncrasies that eventually grew him into an attractive, three-dimensional character that so many people would grow to love.

And the final episode, “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” clinched it. Here the show seemed to reach the greatness that I remember, with a great story with humor, pathos, creepiness, tension and seemingly plausible twists and mysteries. It was wonderful, and a great precursor of the greatness we would see in later seasons.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the show. And Season 1 was really more average than flat out bad. I’m just saying that the first season compares poorly with what longtime fans remember from the next eight years.

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“BURN, BABY, BURN.”

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“Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.”

— Francis Bacon

Certain forward-thinking friends of mine are chopping and stacking wood this summer so that they can burn it in autumn.  They’re even posting pictures of their woodpiles on Facebook.  (You see what rural Virginia does to transplanted New Yorkers?)

Keep at it, I say.  I don’t have a fireplace myself, but one of my favorite things about fall in Virginia is walking down the street and detecting the scent of burning oak.

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My review of “The Following” Season 3.

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Yeah, okay, I get it.  My love for “The Following” should be considered a guilty pleasure, and not anything that would distinguish me as a connoisseur of great television.  Smarter friends than I am have repeatedly pointed out the newly cancelled program’s flaws; I myself have been able to notice weaknesses such as redundant story arcs, predictable plot points and occasionally spotty acting.

I’ve still got to give this show a 9 out of 10, simply because I enjoyed it so much — and I know one or two others who enjoyed it as well.  I’d be lying if I gave a negative review to a TV show if I kept counting the days until the next episode.

I still think this show really shined sometimes, and served up a fast-paced battle between FBI agents and serial killers that was great, episodic, horror-thriller fun.  As far as I am aware, there really wasn’t anything else on television that was quite like this.

I thought Season 3 began in a lackluster fashion.  Kyle and Daisy were flat and uninteresting characters; Mark was growing stale with his overdone split-personality shtick.  (I really missed Lily Gray and Emma from past seasons.)  Too much dialogue focused on these characters squabbling.  It did little to advance the story, and the show lacked momentum.  Yet again, the show resorted to melodramatic dialogue that beat us over the head with the news about a new big-bad being THE MOST HORRIFYING SERIAL KILLER YET.  (That well is one to which they returned a little too often.)

Then … things quickly got better.  Kyle and Daisy started taking shape; their tension with Mark became interesting.  The new villain actually became … the most horrifying serial killer yet, in some ways, as the show seemed to promise.  “Box-Man” still freaks me out, and I am surprised at the pathos that the writers must have called upon to invent his modus operandi.  The pacing improved immediately, and the screenwriters returned to doing what they had a pretty good track record for — portraying interesting and sometimes frightening bad guys.

The last major big-bad that we get to know was expertly played by Michael Ealy.  The character of Joe Carroll, by this point, had grown into a foppish caricature, which is a shame, because he was a great antagonist at first.  I blame the screenwriters for overdoing his dialogue, but I still think some blame should go to the otherwise wonderful James Purefoy’s overacting.  Where Carroll became an effete oaf, Ealy’s new villain was a controlled, calculating bad guy that seemed like a KGB agent right out of a Tom Clancy novel.  It was a game changer that really made the show great in Season 3’s later episodes.

It was also great seeing an ostensibly nerdy African American computer programmer portrayed as a master serial killer.  Here the writers were playing against type.  I was taught as an undergraduate that most identified serial killers are white males with less education (a major exception being the Atlanta Child Murderer), although this might be due to less diligent investigation and reporting by law enforcement agencies.

The ultimate arrival of the character of Iliza revealed a possible story arc reminiscent of the terrific “Hostel” horror movies.  Maybe that’s derivative, but it could still be great fun — especially considering key choices made by one main character in the last episode.  It’s a bummer that “The Following” was cancelled before we could see how that played out.

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Wolverine does not practice safe sex.

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Think about it.  He suffers from chronic nightmares, awakens in a panic attack, and then gets all stabbity-stabbity towards whichever woman happens to be closest to his bed.  We saw this in “The X-Men” (2000), but thankfully Rogue’s plot convenient powers saved her.  No mention is made of this to Mariko in “The Wolverine”  (2013).  Should he be … kinda sorta responsible for informing any women he spends the night with about his sleep disorder?

Anyway, I am blogging my past movie reviews from Facebook.  This was my take on “The Wolverine.”  I didn’t despise this movie the way so many others did, but my response was somewhat tepid for a lifelong fan of the character.

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I understand what the filmmakers were trying to do with “The Wolverine” (2013) – I really do. They were trying to make an X-Men movie with less flash and more substance. And it was a good plan – taking a “gritty” and clichéd dark character and humanizing him with a lot of introspective character study. Which should have been the ingredients for a great movie.

This was an average film, though – I’d give it a 7 out of 10. For one, it was a bit slow and chatty at times for an “X Men” movie. For another, some of the action sequences and villains were just too cheesy. Silver Samurai reminded me constantly of the 1980’s “Voltron” cartoon, and Viper was really just a poor man’s Poison Ivy with unimpressive powers.

This movie does do a really nice job in upgrading an old action movie trope – fighting on the roof of a moving train. That was fun.

Can anyone explain to me how Wolverine got his claws back? How the hell did that happen?!

Also … is he mortal now? That would explain the “older” Wolverine we see in the posters for “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”

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TAP THAT ASK.

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Everybody.  PLEASE.  This is my formal request to the world to stop using the word “ask” as a noun.  (“I have a new ask.”)  PLEASE only use “ask” as a VERB.  Merriam Webster Dictionary agrees:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ask

The word you are reaching for is “REQUEST.”  (Please see the first paragraph.)  I have no idea why this bothers me so much, but … it DRIVES ME NUTS.  Seriously.  I even think that hearing the mispronounced “axe” is less unsettling.

The “ask-noun” happened all the time in New York, it seems mercifully absent among Virginia’s population.  The ask-noun is still around, however.  (Hint: notice how it rhymes with “ass-clown?”)

It has gained currency in TV-Land.  The latest offender is “The Following” (This season’s episode 13, I think.)

Anyway, if you DO use “ask” as a noun, then just LOOK at the shame and disappointment it has caused poor Kevin Bacon after it was used on his program.

I SAID *LOOK* AT HIM, DAMN YOU.

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“V/H/S: Viral” got a lot of negative reviews. This isn’t one of them.

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I’m a little flabbergasted here with the negative critical response to “V/H/S: Viral” (2014).  I thought this was a fantastic little horror anthology flick that redeemed the “V/H/S” franchise from a pretty poor second installment.  (And apparently fans liked that one?)

I’d give this a 9 out of 10.  It certainly isn’t for everybody, with its violence, gore and disturbing content.  (I’m going to repeat that: as with past “V/H/S” films, this has some disturbing content, so beware.)  But it should be a damned scary treat for hardcore horror fans.

This time out, we’ve got three short films linked together by the running “wraparound” film.  (A fourth segment was edited out.)

The first is like a damn good episode of “The X Files.”  The fight with the cops was fantastic, and the special effects were surprisingly good for a “V/H/S” movie.

The second film is a wonderfully creative horror/science fiction tale that plays out like a terrific classic short story.  (Yes, it begins a bit slow, but I think that’s an intentional part of the narrative.)  This segment gets extra points for its unabashed use of some not-so-subtle Freudian body horror.

The third film isn’t perfect, with a thin story and some schlock horror cheesiness.  But it’s still really entertaining, thanks to the teen skateboarder anti-heroes (and their “photographer guy” tagalong) that were scripted perfectly and then performed perfectly by their young actors.  I am still laughing at how one character threatens to “pistol whip” another for interrupting him.  These kids were great.  They’re perfect malcontents at first — then, thanks to a nice flourish in the script involving a homeless person — they’re shown to have more depth than that.  Gimme a full-length feature film starring these brats.  I’m serious.

Finally, the wraparound tale’s finale was brutal and perfect.  And what a great use of classical music!

A few things left me scratching my head:

1)  We learn little about the story’s antagonist in the wraparound tale — exactly who or what is responsible for the speeding ice-cream truck?  I wanted to know more, despite the story’s deliberate ambiguity.

2)  Why does the main character’s girlfriend in the wraparound story enter the truck?

3)  How do people on bicycles manage to keep pace with the speeding truck?  One of them is a bicycle made for a young girl.  They … even outpace the pursuing police cars?

Forget the haters, check this out.

Oh!!  One more thing — if you view this via Netflix, as I did, you’ll find that the entire second segment is in Spanish.  You can fix this just by wiggling Netflix’ captions function at the bottom right.

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When is “Shaun of the Dead” not “Shaun of the Dead?”

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When it’s “April Apocalypse” (2013).  Don’t let that dissuade you from watching it, though, because despite being a derivative zombie movie, it’s still quite good.  [THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.]

To be honest, it actually borrows more heavily from “Zombieland” (2009), with its tone and narrative style.   But … I actually think I like this more than “Zombieland,” because the humor of that popular movie often fell flat with me, and I walked away feeling that it was a little overrated.

“April Apocalypse” actually has a smart, funny script, with a likable kid as a protagonist (capably played by Reece Thompson, who reminds me a little of Ryan Reynolds).  There are a lot of genuine laughs, depending on off-beat, quirky characters and dry line delivery.  The family scenes are extremely funny — who would have thought that the prison rapist from “The Shawshank Redemption” (Mark Rolston) could be a hilarious dysfunctional Dad?  I’d give this movie an 8 out of 10, and I cheerfully recommend it to fans of the genre.

I … don’t always respond so well to horror-comedies, so some of the truly black humor was a turn-off for me.  We see a church full of desperate people perish in a manner that is supposed to be funny; one character dryly shrugs them off as expendable “Jesus Freaks.”  If you ask me, that’s disturbing, not funny.  Ask yourself this, secular friends — what if the script was different, and those sacrificed (in grisly fashion) were attendants at an American Atheist Convention?  Most of my close friends who enjoy “The Walking Dead” as much as I do are also Christian.  Which makes this joke, at the very least … icky, in my opinion.

We also see a running gag that I’ve seen pop up from time to time in zombie films and fiction.  Otherwise good-natured characters gleefully enjoy killing the zombie versions of people who they disliked when they were alive.  That’s some pretty dark humor, and maybe it’s transparently pathological.  I like survival stories of people coming together to fight an insurmountable threat — not murder-by-proxy jokes.

Finally, I would have gone with a different ending.  I won’t say more because I don’t want to make this post too spoiler-heavy.

Anyway, sorry to over-analyze and be a grumpy old man.  Do give this film a chance and watch it.  It was surprisingly good and made me laugh a lot.

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Okay — maybe the Julianne Moore joke has gone far enough …

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I see that the photo of “me” and Julianne Moore that I blogged a couple of days ago has gotten a record number of hits, and 56 Facebook shares.  I need to come clean that it was intended as just a silly hoax.

I have never met Julianne Moore; the man shown is renowned actor James Woods.  It’s been a running joke among a lot of people that I look like Woods — I have been hearing it since I was 16 years old.  My buddy Pete Harrison sent the picture to me as a gag.

Nor did Moore visit Washington, DC this past weekend as part of her charity efforts, as far as I am aware.  The Facebook comments I made about her kissing me on the cheek and telling me I was “a special guy?”  Pure fiction.  Her press office contacting me the next day because she wanted to stay in touch?  Also fiction.  Finally, I extemporized about her hair carrying the scent of strawberries and lavender, but … somehow … I just KNOW that part is actually true.

I love it when people are kind enough to share my blog posts — I’m really sorry if anyone passed this along unaware that it was a joke!  🙂

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My review of “When the Wind Blows” (1986)

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“When the Wind Blows” is a decent 1986 British animated film that follows an elderly couple trying in vain to survive a nuclear war.  It was adapted from a graphic novel by Raymond Briggs, and the two characters are modeled after Briggs’ parents – which must have made this a challenging project to write, given the dark, tragic nature of the material. I’ve had a few friends recommend this – and I suspect it might have a bit of a cult following because it also features music by none other than Roger Waters, David Bowie and Genesis.

This movie employs irony on two levels. One, the animation style is deceptively child-like, and eerily contrasts a brutal story about two people who are woefully unprepared for the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. It’s a mixture of traditional animation and stop-motion photography, with departures every now and again for really thematic montages, which make great use of fantastic imagery.

Two, the story focuses on the husband’s naive reliance upon government-issue pamphlets, which are entirely inadequate to help them. The feckless couple also romanticizes the British experience during World War II’s “The Blitz,” and wrongfully expects their experience with the new world war will parallel that.

I thought it was well done. I’m not sure the material warranted an hour-and-a-half running time, however, I think this could have been covered in 40 minutes to an hour. The caricaturized voices and vocal optimism also made the characters slightly annoying after about an hour.

Still, I’d give it a 7 out of 10.

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I will not be reviewing “The Human Centipede 3” here …

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… because I will not watch the movie.  I watched the entire original, and even reviewed it.  (If you guys are ever interested, look up Roger Ebert’s review of the first movie.  It’s a treatise on tactful, oblique language.)  Then I watched maybe the first 20 minutes of “The Human Centipede 2.”  Frankly, that is just about enough human-centipedey-ness for one lifetime.

I keep mistakenly calling them “The Human Caterpillar” movies … I think that might be some form of Freudian repression.

This film is just so … gross that it’s beneath even me and the reprobates that will occasionally populate my peer group.  I can’t link here to the film’s trailer, or even post a movie poster, because they are just too explicit and repulsive.

Why not focus instead on the Camden family, of The WB’s heartwarming Christian dramedy, “7th Heaven?”  They are far more pleasant, and I’m pretty sure that they inhabit a universe where films like “The Human Centipede 3” do not exist.

Oh you quirky Camdens, with your disarming foibles and well-intentioned hi-jinks!!  YOU’VE CHARMED EVEN THIS SECULAR CURMUDGEON, HAVEN’T YOU???

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