October Movie Ritual: Tradition, Timeline, Themes

Unfortunately, the final movie of this year's October tradition was a bit of a letdown--at least in my opinion. The movie was  The Nightingale.  Honestly, between trick-or-treaters, dressing up, and planning supper, I didn't have much time to choose a final horror movie for October. I defaulted to trusting movie reviews. They let me down.  I want to use this final post to make an argument: An overly violent movie is not a horror movie. It's just violent.  The Nightingale  is an overly violent movie. That's all. It lacks all of the spiritual wonder that I believe underlies the best horror movies. This one is just bloody, long-winded, and cold. Really, there are no characters to love; we just endure their experiences. We feel sorry for them, certainly, but about as sorry as we feel for choosing to watch a bad movie in the first place.  I don't want to be reminded how awful the world can be from a movie--even a horror movie. I want to be in awe of the mysterie...

I don't see  Sleepy Hollow  by Tim Burton as much as a movie as I do a work of art--a painting you could spend a fortune on and hang up in any prestigious gallery or estate. I don't often have this feeling about a movie. Burton's masterpiece is a rare exception. It's likely matched in its cinematic artistry only by another Burton work:  A Nightmare Before Christmas.  The great ones know their style;   Burton is proof. Yeah, sometimes his movies falter ,  especiall y  when we fast-forward to more current times. But  Sleep Hollow  is Burton at his best, a Jordan figure in his time.  As has been my practice for this blog, I try to find a greater message with every movie we watch in our tradition. About Burton's classic book adaptation I can only offer this: Cherish the movies that move you to think of paintings. They are the movies that will live with you.    

I know. I know. I know. We're supposed to read into the ghost plot that's right there.  Carnival of Souls  is a brilliant invitation to reflect on the afterlife. What happens when we die? In my forties now, I certainly spend more time than usual contemplating this question. I think it's healthy to do so, of course. I shouldn't have waited until my forties to obsess over it. We should all. At the very least, thoughts of the afterlife can compel is to make better decisions now. Perhaps that's what the movie wants us to see? Well, I just see a lot of people manipulating a poor girl. Sorry. Cannot escape this. My wife and I rarely align on our movie takeaways, but we did on this one. That next-door neighbor in particular infuriated me--and my wife. He was somewhere between child and harasser. Either way, I couldn't help but feel sorry for our main character. She had to put up with him. He represented temporary safety and companionship.  Even as a ghost, we deserve m...

One thing I've noticed about the added tradition of completing a blog with "October Movies" is that I can have conversations about characters, rules of conduct, everyday life, and underlying motives as I would have otherwise never had. I have been excited to have these conversations because of the movies my wife and I have watched together this month and in previous renditions of this October tradition.  Last night, we discussed the classic Night of the Living Dead.  The discussion was all about what makes a character likeable or not. I was originally mistaken about motive when I claimed I did not like our main character in this movie. I thought he made an execution without giving it much thought. I was wrong! I had left the room (full confession) when it was clear that our "Cellar Lover" was bitten by his daughter. Therefore, our main character had no choice but to shoot him. I walked back in when the shooting took place, but I had missed the critical scene tha...

Sometimes I forget why I love horror movies so much, and then a movie comes along that reminds me. That's what  The Substance  did--and did unapologetically. When I finished surviving (not just watching) this movie, I was grateful that my life's decisions had not yet doomed me to the same fate our two protagonists met. The movie also raised an interesting question :  What unnecessary choices do we make in life that needlessly grasp at youth?  With a question like this, I'm not suggesting we should never make choices to grasp at youth. We can all revisit those childhood memories and locations that provide us a sense of peace. We can also maintain friendships with people who have long since moved away. There's also nothing wrong with continuing to maintain our health and fitness to become the best versions of ourselves. These are all fine practices that we should feel encouraged to maintain.  The key is "needless." What are the needless attempts we make to grasp...

I love this movie! From plot, to actors, to setting, to conflict, this movie has it all. I think what I love most about this movie is that the idea behind it grips me at the outset. It is a simple idea, but is a widely entertaining one. Throughout, we watch our actors bring to life a story that makes us laugh, gasp, and cheer. If you have not read any of the posts on this blog to this point, that's okay! What you will find if you do is that there is a recognizable pattern to them. I enjoy finding a larger truth in each movie that I watch and post about.  Shadow oft he Vampire  deserves no less.  My humble point of wisdom to offer here is to love your craft. Love your craft completely. Love it like you love nothing else in life--well, perhaps with the exception of family, of course! We have a director in this movie who loves his craft completely. The actors are the same. Our legacies in life are established through the crafts we commit ourselves to. In part, I find this mo...

Stories that immerse us immediately in settings we recognize and value are stories I can get behind. The same goes for supernatural occurrences. That’s the idea with the  Haunting of the Queen Mary . I can say I enjoyed this movie for more than its wise borrowings. I loved the main character; the premise of writing a story is always one I can endorse. I also found myself reminiscing on my own failed relationships due to the main characters’ struggle. That struggle, more than anything, is why I found myself watching this movie with anticipation. The human struggle always sells.  I realize that one of my reasons for loving movies so much is because they often provide me a chance encounter with a buried emotion. Sometimes I need to be reminded of those emotions, and movies refuse to let me ignore those feelings. Horror movies in particular have a way of fronting me with buried emotions. 

I'm a music teacher, but I didn't always consider music my calling. Some of the professions I wanted to pursue (in no particular order) were: Writer Actor Singer English Teacher Psychologist The movie Split, starring James McAvoy, appealed to the version of me that would have chosen to be a psychologist. I've always been fascinated by the brain's ability to protect itself. From something as simple as justification for questionable behavior, to denial of reality, to projection, the brain really works overtime to ensure the survival (if not the thriving) of the human person. This can be a double-edged sword. In the movie, James McAvoy's character, Kevin, has Dissociative Identity Disorder, more commonly known as split personality. In most instances of multiple personality disorders, a person has two to four distinct and separate personalities . Our antagonist, Kevin, has 23.  Dissociative Identity Disorder, according to the National Institute of Health , is primarily...

  A long time ago, before streaming services, people were at the mercy of what TV stations and cable television providers happened to be showing at a specific time. My parents didn’t see the point in paying for TV, so we didn’t have cable. Our Halloween watching options were limited, but one that we watched with some regularity was Disney’s version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. I’m not sure if it ran every year or if my mom just recorded it on VHS so we could watch it, but it was a staple Halloween movie for us as kids. It was so much so that I know many of the songs by heart, even now that I only watch it around once a year. It wouldn’t be until a few years ago that I found out that it was narrated by none other than the Christmas crooner himself, Bing Crosby. I also had no clue until several years ago that it was made as a double feature, the second feature (Mr. Toad) of which I still haven’t watched. Even more surprising to me, I discovered just this year ...

I fell in love with my field and profession because of reading stories at an early age. I would immerse myself in Westerns during the long winters in North Dakota, favoring in particular stories by Louis L'Amour. An element of storytelling that has long held my fascination is setting. I've been known to choose a story and a movie just because of the setting. This purpose is exactly why I selected  A Haunting in Venice.  This movie is equally charming because of its lead actor, Kenneth Branagh. He stars in one of my top five favorite movies in  Hamlet,  so I was willing to trust this movie.  I'm not   exactly in love with  A Haunting in Venice. Interestingly, it's because we don't get enough glimpses of that setting. I wanted to experience more fully the darker side of Venice. Every place has a darker side ; it's a missed opportunity in a horror movie not to experience fully this darker side. When   drafting my own stories ,  I try my   v...

My family and I went to  Black Phone 2  last night at Meghan's request. It was Tuesday night, and in our town of Bismarck / Mandan that means "cheap movie night" at the local theater .  Meghan is the second oldest in our family and really wanted to see   this movie with us. Her   reason was because we had just watched the   first one as a family a week ago. She felt it fitting to watch the sequel as a family, although I now suspect her real motive was because she has a crush on one of the actors from the first installment of this horror classic. I really enjoyed the first one, so it didn't take much to convince me to go to this one. Only our youngest, Henry, couldn't go because he's a bit too young for horror movies that are rated R. My expectations were understandably low going into this movie, given the less-than-extraordinary success rate of movie sequels in our day and age. But I was surprised. In fact, this movie inspired a realization about sequels. S...

I tell people often (and mean it when I say) that I had the best childhood a kid could hope for. I mean, come on! I grew up on a farm with lots of trees, open spaces, and ample resources to adventure through my formative years. I built so many tree houses, forts, play weapons, and other-such products of my imagination that I still find myself missing those items. I had two parents who were together for us kids; I had plenty of siblings to challenge my view of myself as the center of the universe. I wouldn't trade anything from my childhood. Well, maybe I could have done with a few less chores. But even those chores likely had meaning--we know they do for everyone.  I am reminded of childhood because of the movie  It.  This movie takes me there, as it does all of its followers. There's a reason they've made so many different  It  movies. Our childhoods will always provide a needed adventure.      

As I was watching  Crimson Peak,  I was reminded that movies aren't just about their stories; they are about their awe-inspiring sets, too. I'm quite ashamed to make this observation, as it's quite obvious when you think about it. Yet, somehow, I tend to forget this. I think the obsession with visual effects over the past few decades has shifted my appreciation for effects to story. And while I still believe story matters more, I also want to be fair when I evaluate movies for their attempts at trying something different with their visuals.  Crimson Peak  checks all of the right boxes for visuals. It's an escape we want to make ourselves, even when there is danger everywhere in the movie.  I loved the visuals of the movie, yes. But what about the story? On its surface, the story should have also been a monument in film-making. We have an attempt to be original with a plot: a duo villain with clear, understandable motives. A female lead who's incredibly likeable....

It's not often anymore that where I watch a movie matters more than what the movie is about. When I was a kid, where I watched a movie probably did matter more. Watching a movie at a friend's house, for instance, was probably far more important than what the movie was about. This has not been true for many years in my life, however--until this weekend.    This weekend my wife and I adventured to Sica Hollow State Park in South Dakota for a late October camping trip with my sister. It was 29 degrees when my wife and I settled into our tent for that night. We watched our latest horror movie,  The Burbs,  on our laptop as the temperature continued to drop. The wind was quite strong, and somehow this felt like the perfect setting for a horror movie. Our choice of horror movie was not anything too exciting, of course. But that didn't matter.  What a great place to watch a movie!  Just prior to watching our movie, we had enjoyed a campfire together with some grea...

  A recurring theme in many horror movies circles around whether something is real or imagined. The movie 1408 with John Cusack, for example, causes the audience to wonder how much of the events that take place in the room are actually taking place or if he is slowly descending into madness. This theme is echoed in other movies like The Shining, Event Horizon, and the film du jour, The Babadook. When we started this movie, I deeply empathized with the main character, single mother Amelia. Amelia clearly struggles from PTSD, grief, depression, and possibly even paranoia/schizophrenia. When a mysterious book titled The Babadook appears on her 7 year old son's bookshelf, terrifying events begin to unfold. The longer Amelia tries to ignore the creature, the stronger he gets, rendering poor Amelia nearly unrecognizable. She becomes vicious, angry, aggressive, and abusive towards her son. When the Babadook chases her upstairs and Amelia shouts loudly that he's not really there, the B...

For this post, I have elected to apply a strengths / weaknesses approach to reflecting on our latest installment for this blog. The movie we watched, Weapons, invites this approach for several reasons: STRENGTH: I love how this movie reinvented the zombie-like creature. Having zombies run with their arms straight and eyes wide open is an element of horror in and of itself. No makeup is needed. WEAKNESS: There is an unimaginative reason for the trance that our zombie characters are in. I'll let you watch the movie to figure out what that is. No spoilers here. It's not a bad reason, just an unexciting one. Can we say  deus ex machina? STRENGTH: I enjoyed following each of the characters in this story. They were interesting and endearing enough to keep my interest. I also found them relatable: teacher, father, principal, child. WEAKNESS: I dislike having stories that are fragmented; I don’t like going back and forth in time throughout a story. Pulp Fiction is the exception...

I do appreciate the supernatural element of some horror movies. The underlying element of the supernatural in The Shining, for instance, is one of the reasons this movie rests in my top five horror movies of all time. Last night, I was excited to see a newer horror movie classic, The Black Phone, experiment with a backdrop of the supernatural. It appears our main character has the ability to communicate with the dead. Who can really say whether or not this is not possible or is? As a lifelong Catholic, I was heartened by the element of prayer as the foundation of being able to communicate with the dead--at least by the sister.  Another strength of this movie was the main character. He draws on voices from the aftermath to find his strength. That strength is enough to defeat a larger-than-life villain. The creepy elements of the movie, such as the villain’s mask, are also to be appreciated. The subtleties of wardrobe in horror movies is not to be undervalued. It has been a gre...

I have long recognized the theatrical nature of conversation. This recognition has saved me countless times in small talk; this recognition has saved me countless times in socializing with people. It is because of this recognition, furthermore, that I detest the labels “introvert” and “extrovert.” Come on. I sometimes need to recharge by being by myself. So what? Sometimes I prefer to recharge by being with people. I’m literally fifty / fifty on this one. I bring up the theater of conversation because one recent horror movie from our October list is Speak No Evil. Our bad guys in the movie seem to feed off the theater of conversation; it’s their motive. Our other characters, the female heroine excluded, just don’t seem to get it. When we socialize with others, there is a sense of theater that the very best speakers recognize. It’s this recognition that makes them so great at conversing. Our female hero in the story knows this well, and it keeps her alive. She sees through the hollowne...

  The movie Us, from Jordan Peele, takes uncanny to a new level. One of the biggest themes that it asks us to ponder is, what are we tethered to? Not only that, but what do we lose ourselves to? What do we sacrifice of ourselves (and others) in the pursuit of comfort, happiness, or social expectations? What idols are we creating that take time away from what it truly means to be human so that we can have what we are TOLD we need to consume to be human ? And do we even know where the line between truth and our perception of what's important lies? -Becki

  Haven't we all wondered what would happen if we had the ability to turn back time? What could one moment in time change about our lives or the lives of those around us? SPOILERS AHEAD..... DO NOT READ PAST THIS IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN THE MOVIE DONNIE DARKO ...__________________________________ ...__________________________________ ...__________________________________ ...__________________________________ ...__________________________________ ...__________________________________ ...__________________________________ ...__________________________________ ...__________________________________ Donnie Darko gets to find out when he accidentally misses his own death. A series of events unfold that destroy so many lives around him; when he realizes that the airplane engine that crashed into his empty bed came from a wormhole - and if he stayed in bed that night, he could save others by dying himself - he goes back and remedies (?) the situation by being in that fatal position.  T...