Reviews

TvFor the last few months, I've seen ads for the Mad About You revival popping up in my TV Guide feed. This seem like such a weird choice, because it's not really the sort of show that needs to revival - it was about newlyweds at a very specific time in their lives. To suddenly shift to their golden years almost seems to undermine the premise.

Even stranger is Sony's choice to release this only for Spectrum cable customers. I don't know how it works where you live, but every place I've ever dwelled, the cable market isn't really competitive. It's generally one provider in the area, with the possibility of a satellite company sneaking in and siphoning off a single digit percentage of the residences. The point being, it's not the competitive field vying for eyeballs that say, the new streaming market is.

Nevertheless, I was curious. I'm the target demographic for this. I was just about old enough when it came out, and I was a fan when it was still on first run, particularly towards the end when it was not only in first run, but also constantly being syndicated. The idea of a show about a newlywed young couple, just a touch older than I was, really appealed to me. These were married folks that didn't look like my parents, in a genuinely funny presentation. One of the other things I found incredibly appealing was that it explored with the husband and the wife's foibles equally. There were plenty of episodes where Paul comes off looking ridiculous and bad, and there would be just as many episodes where Jamie looked every bit as foolish. It cuts against the grain of the modern sitcom template where the wife is wise and always correct and the husband is invariably a bumbling fool (I hated Home Improvement for this reason and the Cosby Show had lost it's luster for me long before any of the accusations started). I like that it explored both characters and presented what was actually a very edifying portrait of marriage.

So how is this new version fair?

It opens with a cute bit where Paul and Jamie discuss running into an old friend they haven't seen in 20 years and how they changed. It's clever but I don't recall this show getting meta like this and it throws me off a bit. God bless Richard Kine for coming back though. He's great. And Jon Pankow is still as much fun as ever. He's actually nicer looking as an older man, though I don't understand what on earth he's doing as a restaurant owner. What happened to the sporting goods store? I also can't help but notice Anne Ramsey is listed in the title credits of every episode though she actually only appears in two.

There's some stuff that's off though. There are the constant "wink wink" callbacks and 'memberberries that they keep dropping. Remember Ira's old flame Mary Ann? Or Fran! You remember Jamie's best friend Fran! (She and Mark are divorced now and he's remarried to a sassy new African American stereotype). After a while they start to get annoying. It's little stuff too. It's not just that the dog from the original show is dead, it's the fact that they KEEP MENTIONING IT. I probably wouldn't have really noticed Murray's absence if they didn't keep bringing him up. I'm not a dog person, but even to me this is a drag. Paul's dad is dead too (Louis Zorich actually did pass last year), and his mom is in a nursing home - looking surprisingly frail. I'm not sure I want to see her like this (perhaps that just hits too close to home for me, with my father spending his last days in a similar facility). Then of course, the whole thing with Richard Kine's character is strange as well. I realize they couldn't get Leila Kenzle back as Fran, but that doesn't make the thing with Mark make. Let's say your best friend divorces. Do you still hang out with her ex husband and his new wife instead of her (Hang out, she's even apprenticing under the new wife)?

If we want to nitpick, there's things like in ep 5, Richard Kine says Paul is well into his seventh decade. In ep 6 Paul's mom says she's 85. This math is not adding up.(If she had been a teen mom, it would have been addressed earlier). Also, I've been in my house for fourteen years. We've not come even close to remolding this place to the degree they have redone that apartment. And why does everything have to be r rated? I really don't need the S bombs, but I suppose it could be worse

Abby Quinn as the daughter is brilliant. Mable is actually the most interesting part of this series. I'd watch a spin off of just her adventures at college with periodic (and frequent) drop ins by Paul and Jamie. She channels Paul Riser in a lot of her performance and her relationship with Jamie would be perfect if...

Well that's the problem. Jamie.

Paul Riser has gotten gray and soft and fluffy in his old age. It's actually something I noticed in the second season of Stranger Things - he's lost what little edge he had that made him such a great villian in Aliens. But that's fine. He's a teddy bear with his very recognizable brand of humor still at the forefront. Helen Hunt's character on the there hand has gotten harder, with sharp edges. Her character had always been neurotic, even quirky. But it was balanced with a charm, an adorable funny style that just made you love her. I'm a fan of Helen Hunt. I like her outside of this series and followed her into her film career. Heck, I even remember her afterschool specials days. But this incarnation, it's like they took all of the ugliest aspects of Jamie's neurosis and amplified them while jettisoning everything that was charming about the character. Her husband is cucked sexually and every word out of her mouth to him seems critical. She gets mad that he smokes an occasional cigar and yet I remember her sneaking cigarettes during the 90's run. We seem to have tumbled backwards, into that sitcom formula I was so critical of earlier, where the husband is just a bumbling fool and the wife is always right, and her rightness is validated by all around her (Even in episode 4 I believe, where she's been proven demonstrably wrong, yet the episode closes with Ira speaking the words "She's always right!"). I got to be honest, I like Jamie less with each episode. She's turned into a very ugly person.

If we dive deeper into a study of these performances, I almost wonder how much of it is intentional. You could argue that Jamie has settled into the same antagonistic role that her mother filled, except not as passive aggressive as Carol Burnett or Penny Fuller played it. To that end, Paul may well just be settling down into the content and submissive role that Louis Zorich portrayed as his father Burt. We become our parents. It would be accurate. But is it good?

When you end a sitcom, you kind of want to show that the cast is moving on from one time of life to another. You want closure, but you also want to know that they are goign to be okay. That things are good. Mad About You actually did a fairly god job of this with thier series finale. They still showed struggle and growth, but ultimately we got the end we wanted. As I said at the beginning, this kind of undermines that.

So is it worth seeing? At 25 minuets per episode and only six episodes out (The back half of the 12 episode season will drop in December) you can easily plow through this in less time that it takes to watch a Marvel movie. If you have spectrum, It may be worth your time over an evening or two, particularly for the delightful Anna Quinn. It's not worth the trouble of pirating or purchasing though. If they are smart, they will eventually add this to the 90's series syndication package so everyone will have access to it in a few years. I'm curious enough to be willing to binge the last six episodes next month, but can't see how this gets a second season.

The Void is a good movie, I liked it. I feel like it's important to lead with those kind of positive words, because I really did enjoy it but I think a lot of people are going to be put off by my next statement that while a good movie, it's not actually original but completely derivative.

The void starts out with a bang, with cultists, people attacked, bodies on fire. They definitely want you to know exactly what kind of movie you're walking into. We spend The bulk of the film at an urgent care emergency room (that is about to get shutdown) leaving us with only a skeleton crew; a doctor and a couple of nurses, and an intern. There are also a couple of patients – one of which is a pregnant teenager accompanied by her grandfather. Our main character, a bland, nondescript cop, bursts in with a suspect in tow and shortly thereafter the mayhem begins. When mysterious strangers appear, and the hospital is surrounded by cultists in white robes, the movie begins in earnest. After the first atrocity appears, it begs the question "Are the cultists trying to get into the hospital or are they trying to keep the people there from getting out? " The biggest problem with the void is some sloppy writing in places… Too often, I felt like I needed to know more, like I was expected to understand things they hadn't yet explained… "Okay, so they're husband and wife? I thought that might be the case but wasn't sure. Are they estranged or just having problems?" "I see, he's the kids father… That makes sense, but it would help if I knew that half an hour ago" Stuff like that leads to confusion and pushes you out of the story. We also really need better characterization – the characters are all stereotypes. The nurse, the cop, the doctor, the teen mother, and the slacker. There just isn't any depth to these characters. I'd like to know more about the teenager, do we think somebody else is the father? Is there a mystery about it or regret? When we discover the identity of the child's father, it feels almost tacked on as an afterthought… it doesn't feel like it was scripted. I'd like to know more about the father-son relationship, I'd like to know more about the sheriffs secrets, all of those kind of things could've developed these characters. These characters alone can't carry The film without the added attraction of blood and gore… Fortunately for us, there are buckets of blood and piles of gore spread throughout this film. These filmmakers are obviously heavily influenced by David Cronenberg and practical effects showcases like Rob Bottin's work. It's evident in the trailer as well, it's the sort of film to remind you just how effective practical work is. There's a weight there that computer FX just don't quite match in visceral terror. Part of me really wants to watch this over again, in a well lit room with a pad and pencil in one hand and my copy of the Psychotronic Encyclopedia in the other to keep score with. The homages come fast and furious… You may remember a few years back when somebody took Quinton Tarantino's work and paired it up side-by-side with the films that they claimed he had ripped off… This is very much a similar situation, where the filmmakers have taken the best elements and scenes from their favorite horror films and woven them together into a brilliant yet derivative patchwork of classic horror's greatest hits.

There are definite callbacks and homage to Reanimator in our main villain. The discovery of the mysterious staircase that wasn't there before, leading deep into the bowels of the subbasement and beyond – I could swear I'm watching Michele Soavi's The Church. There are moments where blue strobes give me an Aliens feel. The framing of the scene when the monstrosity's leg comes down is pulled straight from Cronenberg's The Fly. The victim racing down the clthe-void-blood-200osing hallway with the monster hot on his heels is absolutely pulled from Hellraiser. The discovery of the failed experiments that come to life and come after you reminded me a great deal of Dr Satan's lair in House of 1000 Corpses (though it's more likely they were referencing what ever Rob Zombie was pulling from himself). There are elements that reminded me a great deal the Blind Dead and some of Fulchi's zombie films… The face of one of the creatures towards the end, I'm not even sure WHAT it reminds me of – but it certainly reminds me of something I've seen before! One of the end scenes is straight out of The Beyond – in fact, I think they may have actually pulled it off better than in The Beyond! In the end, it works… It works because they're doing it correctly – capturing the feel and the moment rather than the clumsy way too many people try to to homage by naming their characters "Mr Craven "or "Mr Romero "and slapping up horror posters all over their sets. There is none of that here, but rather respectful re-creations of elements from tried-and-true horror films that work and bring you back to those moments. But as I said, the over reliance on this kind of homage mentality keeps it from being original, and that does limit it. The extreme gore, directly aims it at a specific audience that is probably going to get a lot of these references, but may keep away others that could've used this as a gateway to horror. Ultimately, I suspect this will keep it from becoming a classic though I'm sure it will still eventually end up in my own collection… The ultimately, it may keep it from becoming a classic though I suspect it will still eventually end up in my own collection

I came in to Ravager with high expectations. It's been a very long time since I anticipated a film with quite as much excitement as the promised final installment of the phantasm series, and the last screen performance of Angus Scrimm.

Ravager is the sequel fans deserve. It is the sequel that we have waited decades for. I am a phantasm apologist, and I will happily explain there is at least half a good film in Phantasm three, and if you get rid of the Pink Cadillac Crew and I like Phantasm 4, despite the fact people complain it feels cheap. I think the phantasms inter cutting of all the new footage with the old unused shots is surprisingly effective and Phantasm 4 does more to world build and push the story then most sequels do, particularly late series ones.

Still, I'll admit that these are weaker films then the first two. Not so with Ravager. It starts off strong and does everything that Phantasm is supposed to do. It fulfills all the promise and potential that I saw in the last two movies.

Ravager is the first Phantasm film not to be filmed by Don Coscerelli, and It makes me wonder if Don shouldn't have handed over the rains awhile back. The fresh perspective of a 21st century director like David Hartman goes a great way towards refreshing this franchise. Watching Ravager, I felt very similar to the emotions I had during Star Trek 6; It was a feeling of "this is finally great again… why does it have to end now that they've finally got it right?".

Reggie is in rare form – even though the third film also focused primarily on him, the performance he turns out in five is far superior. The balance of humor and horror, the more serious tone works perfectly.

In the 21st-century, CGI abounds. Still, I really can't complain about the CG balls. The computer graphics allow them to do things with the balls they weren't quite able to do before – and we see a great deal more of the spheres than we have in any other sequel. Honestly, this is what a sequel is meant to be… to take what's gone before and double it. More importantly, they've managed to make the Tall Man scary again. I've always said that the reason you go to Phantasm films is because it's a reunion – it's time spent with Reggie and Mike and Angus and Bill… Even Don, whose presence is still felt though he's never seen on screen. But in the last couple of films, while the Tall Man has been made mysterious, he hasn't seemed as scary as he once did – his obsessive focus on Mike, and whatever special talent it was that he needed to extract from him… It made him intimidating, but he never did anything to anybody else. He wasn't the terrifying specter of the first two films. With Ravager, that has all changed. The Tall Man is once again a malevolent monster. There is an iconic moment where the tall man is surrounded by the hooded dwarf lurkers, and the masked "gravers". It's terrifying and intimidating and everything that the Tall Man is supposed to be. There is a moment of the tall man lurking outside a victims house. His eyes are all that are lit and silver sphere hovers at his shoulder before taking off to do it's diabolical work. He's not just a threat to Mike in this film. It's an expanded cast, there's more characters here and anyone can die. We don't cede any of the mystery, we don't give up the familiarity, but man… Angus Scrimm is terrifying again! And that is as it should be.

If I have one complaint, it is the over reliance on CGI. I realize I just praised it for their use in the spheres, but this film uses an awful lot of green screen. This is understandable, the original plan was to make a series of shorts, and release them as web episodes. You don't necessarily require the same high levels of resolution for internet content as you do for a film. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the delay in getting this film out was having to re-composite some of those backgrounds with higher quality images. Still, sometimes it gets to be a bit much.

On the other hand, it provides us with a scope that Phantasm has never quite been able to achieve. If anybody out there is familiar with the Phantasm's End concept, you'll recognize some of those elements here. Back shortly after Phantasm 3, Roger Avery, the co-writer of Pulp Fiction presented Don Coscerelli with a script for a final Phantasm movie. It would be an expensive film… Far greater in scope and storytelling then anything that had come before. It was too expensive, but a number of the ideas show up here. Infection from a disease that ravaged mankind and the spheres have invaded…it works better than it has any right to.

Don Coscerelli always aspired to make the Phantasm films a dreamlike fantasy, insisting that there was an off-kilter quality and a surrealist philosophy. If you want that surrealist, dreamlike, feel this is where that really comes into play, jumping between time lines and realities with Reggie lost in the world of Phantasm's end, wandering in what appears to be our world, and then the next moment, frail and delusional in a nursing home.

At the end, I think we see Reggie finally back where he belongs. It's hopeful, in the way a Phantasm film never has been before. It's a good place for comics and books to take over now – and they should. Even as it ends, Phantasm has given us a world ripe for exploration.