Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This 1988 science fiction film by John Carpenter combines elements of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'The Matrix'. Unfortunately it suffers badly in comparison with those classics, due to low-budget special effects, mediocre acting, and an under-developed story. The protagonist is a drifter, George Nada, who finds a pair of sunglasses which when worn reveal the true nature of reality: some humans are really aliens who are controlling us all by the transmission of subliminal messages urging people to sleep, consume and breed. Even though the total running time barely exceeds 90 minutes, it takes an inordinately long time before Nada puts on the sunglasses. When he does it's fun for a while to see the aliens (which to be fair to the special effects department are effective enough), and to see the subliminal messages plastered over every possible wall.  Kurt Russell wasn't available to play Nada, so instead Carpenter cast a professional wrestler.  This came i...

This 1988 period thriller was a box-office bomb, but so what?  It stars Jeff Daniels and Kelly McGillis, and is directed by Peter Yates, all capable of good work.  Plus there's Mandy Patinkin and Jessica Tandy, and an intriguing story about smuggling Nazi scientists into the US.  And some critics, such as Roger Ebert, did like it. But oh boy, what a disappointment this farrago is. In the first scene, Emily Crane (McGillis) is before a Senate committee, being interrogated by prosecutor Ray Salwen (Patinkin).  Because she refuses to cooperate, the FBI, in the form of Joe Cochran (Daniels) and his partner, are told to carry out surveillance on her.  She also loses her job so instead she gets one reading for an old lady (Tandy). And then, would you believe it, whilst in the old lady's garden, she conveniently overhears a sinister conversation in the next house, involving none other than Salwen! It's an absurd coincidence, which is the first sign that this story...

This film made a name for itself for being a quantum leap forward technically in how it seamlessly combines real action with animation, and it's a testament to the care and expertise deployed that some 30-odd years later its visuals still hold up. On this second watch I was well entertained throughout - who wouldn't be?   To take one example, the newspaper headline relating to the kidnapping of Donald Duck's nephews had me hooting with laughter. And yet, as with the first time I saw it, I was left with a feeling of dissatisfaction.  Ultimately it's a film I admire and enjoy, rather than love. Part of my dissatisfaction stems from the story about Toon Town being at risk and how Roger Rabbit gets to be framed for a murder.  I wasn't grabbed by it, and long before the end I had lost interest in the fate of someone's last will and testament (don't ask me whose).  We don't get to spend enough time in Toon Town for me to be emotionally invested in its fate. ...

OK, the big problem with this 1988 drama set in 1964 Mississippi, based on real events, is that it is telling a story about racism from an all-white perspective and with none of the black characters having any agency.  If you can get past that (I could) then there's a lot to enjoy.   And to be fair to the makers of the film, although it can be criticised as a white-saviour narrative, the saviours here ( two FBI investigators, Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe) are not romanticised, and there is no triumphalism at the end.   Justice gets done but there's been too much hate and ugliness before then to leave the viewer with a feel-good feeling.   Although US black-white relations are in many ways much better now, we know that there's still a lot more to be done. There's a KKK meeting here, where we see white folks happily absorbing racist bile, that brought to mind  the MAGA movement. To make the story more commercial the informant who helps the FBI, aft...