“People think we’re just one of those dead towns they heard about: a run of bad luck, worse judgement, broken promises. We know different, don’t we? It’s not luck. It’s a plan…and not God’s, either. Remember the dog? The Strangler? Sure, you do. How ’bout all the others that didn’t make headlines?”
So goes Shawshank Prison Warden Dale Lacy’s (Terry O’Quinn) voice over introduction to the second episode of Castle Rock (titled “Habeas Corpus”). But just what the hell is he even babbling on about in this string of vague references?
Like so many Stephen King-related tales, this may lead us to the Dark Tower. However, the road to get there is a bit long and winding, requiring us to explore the show’s various references and Easter Eggs.
Major spoilers lie ahead.
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(Welcome to Employee Picks, a series where Jacob Knight uses his day job expertise as a video store manager to recommend unique and often overlooked alternative options to the big movies hitting theaters and home video.)
Hello and welcome back to Employee Picks! We’re on our last round of video releases for the summer (before switching back over to theatrical alternatives in September). In order to avoid some overlap with our previously published “Summer Guide”, a few of the bigger titles (Infinity War, Deadpool 2) have been omitted this month, because I already told you what to watch instead of those (so get on it, y’all!). We’re trying to stay fresh in this little corner of the Internet, so don’t look at me funny for operating in the name of #goodcontent.
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(Welcome to Team Leaders, a series where we explore how the directors of the Mission: Impossible movies used this franchise as a canvas to explore their pet themes and show off their unique sensibilities. In this edition: Christopher McQuarrie leads the series into the future with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.)
With Ghost Protocol (’11), writer/director Christopher McQuarrie previously put his stamp (albeit anonymously) on the franchise’s future, having been brought in midway through shooting to help re-tool the narrative of animation great Brad Bird’s live-action blockbuster debut. This “doctoring” assignment arrived because of the scribe’s growing history with Tom Cruise, which began on the old-fashioned Hitler assassination adventure, Valkyrie (’08), where McQuarrie tailored the part of rebellious Nazi officer Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg for Cruise after introducing the All-American marque idol to director Bryan Singer at United Artists.
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(Welcome to Team Leaders, a series where we explore how the directors of the Mission: Impossible movies used this franchise as a canvas to explore their pet themes and show off their unique sensibilities. In this edition: Brad Bird brings his animated sensibilities to Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.)
For Brad Bird, there’s no difference between helming animation and live-action. A film is a film, and a director is a director, regardless of the visual mode an artist is operating within.
Handpicked by Tom Cruise (who loved Bird’s work on The Incredibles [‘04]) and longtime compadre J.J. Abrams* – thus solidifying Bad Robot’s ongoing influence on the tentpole franchise – the Simpsons and Iron Giant (’99) architect viewed Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol as an opportunity to branch out and diversify his already impressive filmography; not as some half-assed, insulting means of gaining the acceptance of his peers, the press, or viewers (as animation has long been relegated to being “for kids”).
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(Welcome to Team Leaders, a series where we explore how the directors of the Mission: Impossible movies used this franchise as a canvas to explore their pet themes and show off their unique sensibilities. In this edition: J.J. Abrams brings his “mystery box” methods to the series and reboots it all.)
After Mission: Impossible II made over half a billion dollars worldwide, it wouldn’t seem prudent to re-tool the franchise’s format. However, due to the overblown shooting schedule on John Woo’s first sequel, and the fact that the somewhat compromised final cut received mixed to negative reviews from both critics and fans (on top of Tom Cruise butting heads with the Hong Kong auteur on numerous occasions behind the scenes), taking the Mission: Impossible movies in a new direction makes sense in hindsight (at least from its star/chief creative force’s perspective).
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(Welcome to Team Leaders, a series where we explore how the directors of the Mission: Impossible movies used this franchise as a canvas to explore their pet themes and show off their unique sensibilities. In this edition: John Woo’s graceful Hong Kong transplant, Mission: Impossible II.)
18 years after the May 2000 bow of Mission: Impossible II, it’s somewhat hard to swallow that the movie made $546 million worldwide, mostly because it’s garnered such an awful reputation (with many cinephiles considering it the unqualified nadir of the franchise). Some folks flat out hate John Woo’s Tom Cruise team-up (and fourth American theatrical feature), utilizing it as the prime example in arguments regarding how the United States studio system somehow “broke” the legendary Hong Kong action auteur.
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(Welcome to Team Leaders, a series where we explore how the directors of the Mission: Impossible movies used this franchise as a canvas to explore their pet themes and show off their unique sensibilities. In this edition: Brian De Palma makes the most fascinating Hollywood blockbuster since Jaws.)
Mission: Impossible was the first movie Tom Cruise ever produced. This fact often gets lost in the conversation when looking back on the 1996 blockbuster (not to mention its subsequent sequels). Nevertheless, the transnational superstar not only built the perfect James Bond clone for himself in IMF Agent Ethan Hunt – all-American, athletic, sexy but never exaggeratedly sexual, and containing a steadfast moral compass to guide his gung-ho screen presence – but also a genre cinema sandbox, in which he could invite some of the most talented artists from around the world to come play.
For each of the first five films in the M:I franchise, a new author was called in to stamp their thumbprint onto its ever-expanding mythology, allowing this initially improbable series to grow into a rather wondrous pulp canvas. Perhaps this is because Hunt’s adventures began during an era where movies weren’t just viewed as brands or “shared universe” starters (ironic, given its origins as a big screen adaptation of an iconic CBS serial). No, Mission: Impossible kicked off in a Hollywood we’d barely recognize these days: where blockbusters were mostly built to be single stand-out films, manned by visionaries unbeholden to the notion of hypothetical sequels or prequels. Instead, their job was to capture our imaginations for a specific moment in time, without any interminable business plan put in place.
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(Welcome to Employee Picks, a series where Jacob Knight uses his day job expertise as a video store manager to recommend unique and often overlooked alternative options to the big movies hitting theaters and home video.)
Hello and welcome back to Employee Picks! In case you missed the rules in the first and second editions of the column: for every big-name motion picture on the horizon, I suggest something from the archives to watch in its place that’s either thematically, spiritually, or tangentially related.Yes, I have fully accepted my role in this world: the goofball hipster who wants you to get the hell out of the multiplex and into the realm of pure weirdness (and I won’t apologize one bit).
With those general parameters in mind, here are my alternative picks for every big movie dropping on Blu-Ray, DVD or VOD this July.
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The Purge movies are the unruly branch on the otherwise upright “social horror” filmic family tree. Exploitation movies to their very core, with each installment the futuristic franchise (that’s built on the idea that, for one night in America, all crime is legal) has widened in scope, beginning with a home invasion on the titular devil’s evening (The Purge), then taking us to the city streets amidst government sanctioned chaos (Anarchy), and finally letting us see the corrupt political mechanisms (Election Year) that believe it will be psychologically beneficial for the citizens who participate, but even more lucrative for the companies who try and exploit it for financial gain (insurance, medical, etc.).
It’s an angry, ever-expanding pulp treatise on the crass customs of class and capitalism – “Wokesploitation” that beats you over the head with its sociological messaging without a hint of subtlety, and one of this writer’s absolute favorite running series in modern schlock.
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In the annals of genre cinema, Arachnophobia is a slightly strange case. The feature directorial debut of Frank Marshall – co-founder of Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy – it arrived in theaters on July 18th, 1990, as the first title released beneath Disney’s Hollywood Pictures banner, which was founded so the studio could unveil more adult-oriented fare. Arachnophobia received solid reviews, was a modest box office hit – placing #3 behind Ghost and Die Harder before raking in $55 million total on a budget of $22 mil – and became a VHS staple for an entire generation of ‘90s kids. Ask most folks in their mid-30s these days, and they can cite whole scenes involving the picture’s practically rendered poisonous arachnids that scared the bejeezus out of them, doing for popcorn bowls what Psycho did for showers.
Still – thanks to format changeovers and market demand – Arachnophobia has also become something of home video relic. There’s an OOP bargain bin Blu-ray you can snag for a few bucks on Amazon, and a decent HD stream available at the same mega retailer. Nevertheless, its omnipresence somehow seemed to skip a generation, remaining in those Gen Xers’ nightmares, while the other scary classics Marshall produced with Spielberg (namely: Poltergeist and Gremlins) endured and solidified themselves in the Millennial pop culture vernacular. Perhaps it was simply due to iconography, as ghostly girls and green demons were burned into memory much easier than simple spiders. Or maybe the title of the film itself became an odd bit of self-fulfilling prophecy, as legions of potential movie-watchers steered clear since spiders creep people out on the regular during their everyday existences.
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