In Retrospect: Scream

I saw Scream in the theaters, and it's almost shocking to consider that that was 21 years ago. Twenty-one years!?! Holy cow! This is one of my favorite movies. I enjoy it, but more than that, I also admire and respect it. Personal tastes vary, of course, but whenever someone describes this movie as "stupid" (related side-note: The IMDb's decision to permanently remove the comments sections for movies was a true gift to humanity. I mean that whole-heartedly.), I look at this person with a mix of distaste and pity and think, "you're allowed to not like it, but if you think it's stupid, you don't understand this movie even at its most basic level."

Scream is many things -- I'll get to how many levels it operates on in a moment -- but let's clear up a common misunderstanding, Scream is definitely, demonstrably, not a movie about "characters who know that they're in a horror movie," despite many people (even Roger Ebert!) incorrectly describing it as such. No, Wes Craven's previous film -- Wes Craven's New Nightmare -- explicitly touched on that idea, but the concept of characters outright knowing that they're in a horror film wouldn't really be explored in mainstream cinema until 2015's The Final Girls.

No, the characters of Scream don't know or even suspect that they're in a horror movie. Director Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson try to steep their story in realistic settings, and one character even lectures another that "this is the real world!" rather than some "Wes Carpenter movie." But, and here's what people are really trying to say when they claim that the characters know that they're in a horror movie, many of the characters of Scream are familiar with the standard elements of slasher films, so when they find themselves stalked by a serial killer, this knowledge adds a layer of irony to the story.

I mentioned that Scream works on multiple levels, and I think it's true. I'd argue that it's precisely the intricate comingling of those varying elements that makes Scream such an effective film. But okay, okay, people are always saying, "it works on so many levels!" but, frankly, would usually be confounded if asked to mention more than one. So you'd be right to think, "okay, Movie Man, what are the alleged multiple levels you keep talking about?"

Scream is, most obviously, a horror movie, of course, but it's also a mystery and a suspense film, and while those three genres may often overlap, it's rare to find a movie that devotes its time to all three elements simultaneously, and with such equal effectiveness. The distinction between horror and suspense is not a small one. Hitchcock, for example, was known as the Master of Suspense, but he rarely delved into outright horror. Suspense is all about building anticipation. Horror can just as easily build on gore or shock. It's not the same thing at all -- but when they're both done at the same time, and both done right, the elements of horror and suspense enhance each other.

Example: There is a moment when the main character, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is approached by two friends, Randy and Stu (Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard). Both are seriously injured, both are begging for help, and both are accusing the other of being the killer. Sidney has no way of knowing which of them is telling the truth. Does she choose one at random, with a terrifying 50% chance of locking herself in with the killer? Or does she protect herself by locking them both out, and thus dooming the innocent friend to die?

Scream's status as a mystery film is almost always overlooked, but I've never understood why. After all, the characters spend a great deal of time trying to figure out who the killer is. Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers are the three movie serial killers that every fan knows, and I won't get into how much Scream does or doesn't owe to their influence, but it should be observed that a key difference is that Freddy, Jason, and Michael don't carry much mystery; everyone knows who's under the burned scar tissue and the hockey and Halloween masks. No one says, "who is that guy under the Freddy mask?" It's Freddy. But who is "Ghostface," the masked killer in Scream? The answer is eventually revealed, and yes, it's a bit of a cheat, to be honest. But along the way, trying to solve the mystery is half the fun.

In addition to horror, mystery, and suspense, Scream also works as satire -- but here I must make a distinction between satire and outright parody. Scream has a sense of humor, yes, but the laughs never come at the expense of the other filmic elements of the story or its presentation. The mystery always remains front and center, and the horror and suspense are never diminished for the sake of a cheap laugh. But as mentioned, the characters -- especially film buff Randy -- are familiar with the conventions of horror films. They discuss these conventions, sometimes dismissively -- and then find themselves in those exact same situations. Their survival often depends on remembering the very "Rules" of horror films that they've earlier discussed, but it's understandably hard to think in terms of cinematic analysis when you've got a knife-wielding maniac running after you.

The brilliance of this concept can't be overstated, but it can be succinctly summarized: Director Craven and writer Williamson get to have their cake and eat it too, pointing out how similar so many movies are, but then still able to present those very same elements that were earlier mocked, and still do so with effectiveness and style. It's self-referential, but not to the point of either intellectual exercise or self-mockery: It still works, even after explicitly explaining exactly why it shouldn't.

Example: A few of the characters discuss how often the characters in slasher films seem to be clueless to what should be obvious danger. Later on, Randy watches a prime example of this on television, specifically the scene in Halloween where Jamie Lee Curtis is sneaking around the house as the killer lurks behind her for an extended period of time and she just - doesn't - notice him!!

"Behind you, Jamie!" Jamie Kennedy shouts out to the TV Jamie Lee Curtis. "Jamie, behind you! Look behind you!"

And the Scream audience could very well be shouting the same thing at their screens, for just as Randy is vainly hoping that Curtis's character will notice the killer lurking behind her -- we see that the "real world" killer is also sneaking up on Randy as he's watching the TV.

This review is filled with such admiration, I hate to inject a note of negativity, but I have to address the Wayans brothers' spoof of Scream, the dreadful Scary Movie. Look, you may or may not like Scary Movie, but regardless of your personal taste, Scary Movie is an objectively bad movie in a number of ways. First, its mission of mirroring the look and general idea of Scream but with wall-to-wall broad comedy makes it difficult -- not impossible, but more difficult than it should be -- to watch the original movie effectively. Too many people dismiss or miss the artistry of Scream because they are distracted by memories of the dumb jokes in Scary Movie. As odd and unfair as it may seem, watching Scary Movie can actually ruin the experience of the earlier, superior film. I think that, cinematically, this is a tragedy. Spaceballs can make fun of Star Wars all it wants, because you can re-watch them both forever and still enjoy their respective strengths. But horror and suspense depend on anticipation. Anticipation is suspense's life blood. You simply can't appreciate Scream for what it is if you're distracting yourself with the idea of the killer engaging in slapstick or toilet humor.

Second, it's always seemed to me that the Wayans, in even making a parody of Scream, missed the entire point of the first film. Scream is already a satire engaging in self-referentialism. Why make a satire of a satire that already has, and is in fact defined by, its own self-awareness -- but this time with dumb jokes? This is how I see the relationship between Scream, Scary Movie, and their audiences: Scream is the straight-A student who gets up in front of class and proves surprisingly adept at making the other students laugh during his presentation. And just as importantly, he actually made his classmates think critically about the subject matter! Then Scary Movie gets up, and because he was too lazy to come up with anything original, he devotes his entire presentation to making fun of the previous kid. The second kid's presentation is filled with fake farting noises and unskilled "duh-duh-doyyy!" mockery of the first kid.

Now, depending on what strikes your funny bone, you may laugh along with Scary Movie, or you may (rightfully) dismiss him as just cruel, stupid, and unoriginal. But here's the sad thing, either way, it's going to be hard to remember what made the first kid's presentation so great. He's been overshadowed by Scary Movie's buffoonery. That, in a nut-shell, is Scream and Scary Movie for ya.

So yeah, avoid Scary Movie like the plague if you haven't already seen it. It may or may not make you laugh, but I'd argue that the artistic cost is too severe. But watch Scream. Either seek it out for the first time, or re-visit it if you've seen it already. It's not just a pretty good movie. It's a great one.

New to DVD: Kong: Skull Island

I expected to enjoy Kong: Skull Island -- after all, why else would I rent it? -- but I didn't expect the writing to be almost as good as the spectacle. Face it, when you rent a movie about a giant gorilla, you're not exactly looking for Pulitzer material, so I don't want to make it sound like that's what you'll get. But what I am saying is that despite Hollywood's eternal reputation for dumbing down its material more and more each year, this latest interpretation of King Kong is the most intelligent.

And, of course, there are giant monsters randomly attacking people. That too.

But to say that this is the smartest of the King Kong movies is a bolder statement than you might at first think. People tend to remember these films as "the ones with the giant gorilla," and they're not wrong, but that description, while accurate, is also dismayingly reductive. The filmmakers of each generation have always stayed true to one poignant premise, that unlike other monsters, Kong is only a monster because humans force him to be. This is why (spoiler alert for a 1930s movie!) his death at the end is remembered as a moment of sorrow rather than of triumph.

Still, previous interpretations of Kong have emphasized his pathos by contrasting him with the human characters, who, to put it mildly, tend to be nothing more than generic stock characters. I mean, has there ever been a more definitive "damsel in distress" than Fay Wray in the original movie?

Kong: Skull Island certainly contains its share of stock characters -- there's the Mercenary Action Hero (Tom Hiddleston as Captain James Conrad) the Disgraced Scientist With Something to Prove (John Goodman as Bill Randa), and a whole truckload's worth of interchangable soldiers and nameless scientific assistants who can all be conveniently killed off to illustrate danger without wasting time on emotional investment.

But unlike previous Kong films, Skull Island does provide two characters with a surprising degree of character development. Even if you could somehow subtract Kong and the other monsters from the movie, these characters would be worthy of stories in their own right.

The first of these two characters is Colonel Preston Packard, a career military man played by Samuel L. Jackson. The ads, using a combination of selective editing and, I suspect (I may be wrong) footage that never made it into the final film, make Preston Packard look identical to the type of character that Jackson plays again and again these days. You know the kind, the "I'm a bad-ass, and I enjoy every minute of it!" type.

But the ads, in the presentation of Jackson's character, are misleading. It's interesting how Jackson has acted in dozens of dramas, many of them quite good, but one of his most nuanced characters is in an ensemble special effects extravaganza about a giant ape.

After a prologue set in World War II, the main storyline starts out on the very last day of the Vietnam War. Nixon has announced the withdrawal of troops, the soldiers are packing to go home, and they're all elated to do so, with the exception of Packard, who's depressed that the war is over. It's certainly not that he's blood-thirsty or macho, but he's got his emotional reasons: He's sad to say goodbye to his men, for whom he's developed a great deal of affection. The war gave him a sense of purpose. And he sees the manner in which the war ended as a disappointing note to end his career on. When he explains to photojournalist Mason Weaver that "we didn't lose the war, we abandoned it," you can tell that he truly believes that to be the case, but also that the distinction brings no comfort to him.

So when Packard is assigned "one more mission" before his retirement, everyone who's ever seen a movie ever knows that it's not going to end well for him, but we can also understand why he happily accepts even when most other soldiers would be crestfallen.

That mission is to lead the military escort for the scientists who are setting out to explore the newly discovered Skull Island. As the story demands it, the humans quickly find themselves shipwrecked on the island, and at the mercy of not just Kong, but a laundry list of other monsters as well: giant insects, fantastically enormous bison, pterodactyls, and "skullwalkers," terrifying creatures that almost defy description.

They also encounter the movie's other standout character, Hank Marlow, an Air Force pilot who's been stranded on the island ever since that prologue set way back in World War II. Marlow is played by John C. Reilly, who is best known for starring in a series of silly comedies with Will Ferrell, so you'd expect him to bring some comic relief to the action, which, to some extent, he does: Marlow not only has a habit of wisecracks, but he's also possibly got a screw or two loose, as anyone else would if they've been living on an island infested with monsters for the past few decades.

But the more time the movie spends with Marlow, the more interesting the character becomes. Just as Jackson's character is surprisingly less Jacksony than we were led to expect, Marlow is more than just your typical John C. Reilly wacky supporting character. Marlow is full of surprises, but surprises that make sense. Each time we learn something new about him, we first think "whoa, I didn't see that coming!" but then you think, "but yeah, okay, I totally get it." Marlow doesn't have as much screen time as Hiddleston's Conrad or Jackson's Packard, but the movie both begins and ends with Reilly's character, and I was happy that it did. He is easily the best and most interesting character in the movie.

Still, Jackson's Preston Packard is a close second. After some of Packard's beloved men are killed in their initial encounter with Kong, Packard becomes determined to kill him. Even as the movie piles on reason after reason (you'd be surprised by how many!) why killing Kong would be a terrible thing to do on every level -- morally, practically, tactically -- Packard ignores all pleas, signs, and warnings for him to stop, until his obsession with killing Kong eclipses all his other goals and consumes everything about the character that initially made him a good and even virtuous man. The dynamic between Kong and Packard becomes very reminiscent of the dynamic between Moby-Dick and Captain Ahab -- I was very aware of this similarity while watching the movie, and wasn't surprised to later learn that Jackson also made this comparison during interviews -- but at the risk of offending literature fans, I'd argue that Packard's obsession is more compelling than Ahab's. Ahab may be the defining character when it comes to obsession and revenge, but his obsession lacks development and nuance; he's depicted as mad with a lust for vengeance from the beginning. Packard, by contrast, starts out as a good man and ends up being the villain.

Oh, and did I mention that there's a giant ape and a lot of action, chases, fights, gunfire, and monsters? Yeah, there's plenty of that too.

Tobe Hooper: Rest in Pieces

The title of this piece is not a typo, nor is the joke in poor taste -- or, at least, Tobe Hooper wouldn't think it is.

Only one month after the death of horror film icon George Romero, an equally but very different giant of the genre has passed away. Tobe Hooper was 74. He was still making movies right up until 2013 (Djinn), but for better or for worse, he will always be associated with one film in particular: the ground-breaking The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and like Romero's Night of the Living Dead, it simply can't be over-stated how massively it changed the history of horror movies. Slasher films -- not many, but a few -- pre-dated Massacre, but this was a far cry from the artistry and style of Psycho. Viewers will forever disagree over whether Massacre is art, but watching the film, you can't help but feel that Hooper wasn't aiming for art. He was aiming for shock, nothing more, nothing less, and this, the movie delivers in spades. The movie (no plot description necessary, the title says it all) is so gruesome, so unrelenting, so visceral, that love it or hate it, you can't help but always remember its images. I would argue -- and I probably wouldn't be the first -- that the very unfortunate horror subgenre of "torture porn" (horror movies with no artistic intent other than to depict gruesome physical or harrowing psychological torture) started with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

In the ongoing argument of whether Massacre counts as art, many critics, both amateur and professional, have zeroed in on one particular moment: the very end of the film, when one of the characters manages to escape and Leatherface the killer does his little dance. Many people have posited different reasons for the character's dance -- is it a dance of frustration, triumph, or something else entirely? -- and argued that it is that very ambiguity that elevates the film to the level of art. I don't know about that. It's either art or it isn't, and I don't know if one moment can change that. I'd say that the movie is indeed art, and our own subjective levels of admiration or disgust have nothing to do with it. Art is art, and whether it's "good" art is strictly a matter of opinion.

But look where all of this took us: a movie so often derided as trash leading to a discussion on the very nature of art. That in itself is a significant contribution. Hooper's other major contribution to cinema would -- inadvertently -- lead to equally passionate arguments over who is the primary artist in a cinematic work.

In this world of cinema, where even countless critics who should know better routinely associate a film's failure or success almost solely with directors and rarely even mention the writers, it's odd that  Poltergeist (the 1982 haunted house movie that famously, creepily used the warning , in the little girl's voice, "they're heeeeere!") is so often thought of as a Steven Spielberg film. Spielberg helped produce and write the movie, but almost nobody ever, ever considers Poltergeist a Tobe Hooper film, even though he is the credited director. Indeed, Poltergeist feels so much like a Spielberg movie, that the Directors' Guild launched an investigation to make sure that the right man was being credited as director of the film. Conflicting accounts, confusing photographic evidence, and a very ambiguous "let's clear this thing up" open letter from Spielberg -- a letter that could very easily be interpreted either way -- only muddied the waters further. Did Hooper direct Poltergeist? Did Spielberg? Did they do it together and reach some odd deal that gave only Hooper credit? And if Spielberg directed or helped direct it, why did Hooper end up the only one credited?

The truth is, you could know about none of this behind-the-scenes mystery and still enjoy the movie. Although they're both horror movies, Poltergeist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are light years apart in terms of style and tone, and Poltergeist still holds up very well today, mostly by taking such care in presenting the main characters as such a believable family, and thus giving the audience emotional investment in the characters when scary things start to occur.

Hooper made many other films, but before I go, there is one I want to discuss in particular: 1986's Invaders From Mars, in which young boy David Gardner has to fight aliens who are slowly taking over the bodies of both the citizens of his small town, and the nearby military base.

It's sci-fi horror, yes, and B-grade sci-fi horror at that, but it's also something more, an examination of childhood itself: By making a child the hero, Invaders effectively swings back and forth between nightmarish scenarios (a child is, by his very nature, both physically and socially much more vulnerable than an adult, and Invaders explores the social vulnerability very well) and wish-fulfillment for younger audiences (the adults were all clueless, but the boy saved the world!).

Hooper and his actors and writers all do an excellent job of inserting a surprising amount of pure eeriness to the proceedings. Even now, decades later, I remember the moment young David realizes that something is suddenly very wrong, when his possessed parents, trying to pass as humans, tell David, "we made breakfast!" and present him with an enormous heap of burnt-to-a-blackened-crisp bacon and eat it as if it's normal. It may sound mundane or even funny-stupid (if made today, the scene would almost certainly be played for laughs), but I remember it as creepy as hell. Making moments into memories -- What more can you ask from a filmmaker?

Just One Day

I'm a Democrat, but not as passionately so as some people I know. That's why I didn't vote for Donald Trump, but when he won, I, much like Dave Chappelle, tried to put my distaste and doubts aside and wished him well. "Maybe he'll surprise us all and turn out to be a decent president," I told myself. See, I'm fairly easy to please. I didn't demand greatness. "Decent" was fine enough for me, it really was.

Pretty much from day one, Mr. Trump has consistently forced me to lower my standards. Even Bush, Jr., of whom I am no fan by any means, occasionally did or said something I could agree with. But Trump is just borderline insane. And sometimes I wonder if I should qualify that phrase with the term "borderline." Now, I don't use the descriptor "insane" lightly. I've always had a major issue with people from both the left and the right who see the other side as "insane" or "evil" or just plain "stupid." Once you start using those words to describe your political opposites, you're usually not interested in dialogue, but more in venting your one-sided frustration. No middle ground or progress can ever be made when each side considers the other evil, insane, or stupid. And whenever I'd have discussions with Republicans who were tempted to point those accusations at the Clintons or Barack Obama, I'd always point out that political differences don't equal evil, insanity, or stupidity. That even when Bush infuriated me, a part of me always remembered that he earnestly loved America, and was doing the best he could to improve and protect the nation. I agreed with almost none of his methods of doing so, but I at least knew that his heart was in the right place. I just can't say the same for Donald Trump.

I'm not going to list all of the many things Trump has done and said that I passionately disagree with. The list would be too long and wearying. But I do want to say just a few words about the two most recent issues I have with him.

Mr. Trump, can we at least get on board the same train to the glorious destination where we can all agree that Nazis are not the good guys? Does someone have to tie you down and force you to read a book or two on the subject of Nazis and their goals, or, since you lack the attention span to read books, at least watch Schindler's List? I mean . . . I'm trying to wrap my head around your argument that both sides are equally to blame for the chaos and violence in Charlottesville. Your argument that Nazis and the people who oppose them are equally bad. But I'm having a hard time coming up with any explanation for your comments other than that you lack any sense or decency or morality.

Then, Mr. President, you announce that you're seriously considering giving a presidential pardon to a sheriff who was imprisoned for illegal harassment of immigrants and minorities. Then to read that, after you've backtracked from your "both sides are to blame" comments, you've . . . I don't know, "forwardtracked"? -- back to your original stance on the issue. Nope. You're back to insisting that Nazis may be bad, but those damn lefties are equally bad. For not liking Nazis and their goals and their views. It's mind-boggling. And yet not surprising. Mr. President, you've actually forced us to qualify the word "shocking." In a relatively short period of time, we've all gotten to the point where when you do something we all describe as "shocking," we have to clarify that we are shocked only in the sense that we are outraged, but not "shocked" in the sense of "surprised." You've managed to routinely shock us and no longer surprise us.

Now, Mr. President, as I've said, I've already lowered my standards from "great" to "decent," and by now, you've already proven that expecting even a minimum of decency is expecting far too much. How about this as a new standard: One day. Because, and I never thought this would be possible, but in six months, not a single day of your administration has gone by without you doing or saying something that has made me and millions of other Americans cringe in embarrassment, fear, and outrage. Can we please have just one day when you don't do this? When you don't attack someone for simply not agreeing with you, one day when you don't do or say something that embarrasses the United States of America? So we, as a nation, can look each other and even other nations in the eye, and, just for a moment, say, "maybe it's not so bad"? That way, when it comes time for your re-election campaign, and I say, "he did something every day that embarrassed and horrified all decent Americans!" a Trump supporter can say, for example, "oh yeah, what about September 29, 2017?" and I'd at least have to nod and say, "okay, you have a point, I guess it wasn't every day."

One day. That's all I ask for now. It's not enough, not nearly enough, that much is obvious. But it would be a nice start.

new to DVD: The Comedian

Dirty jokes can be funny -- but they are almost never funny simply by their virtue of being dirty.

I whole-heartedly believe the above statement to be true, but I'll admit that humor is subjective, and many people would disagree with that statement. The makers of comedy-drama The Comedian would certainly be some of those people. Between the fictional comedian who is the main character of the film, and the many actual comics who appear in cameos, there is a lot of stand-up comedy in this movie. Every single joke is either aggressive, vulgar, or both. But while some of the jokes are borderline clever, almost none of them are actually funny to any degree.

The Comedian tells the story of the personal and professional struggles of Jackie Burke, a vulgar insult comic who, both onstage and off, never knows (or perhaps simply doesn't care) when his insults and vulgarity have gone too far. This guy doesn't just push the envelope, he tears the envelope to shreds and sets a match to the confetti. You can tell that, beneath the lewd and seemingly insensitive exterior, there's a good heart underneath, but he's not an easy character to like. I'm sure that's intentional on the part of the filmmakers. But the fact that he's an allegedly talented comic whose routines in this film are squirmingly unfunny certainly doesn't help his likability -- and that part I'm not so sure is intentional. Some of Jackie's performances are clearly supposed to be unsuccessful, but others . . . well, you can tell when the filmmakers want you to understand that Jackie is being "funny" this time because the onstage audience is laughing. The problem with these scenes is obvious: The stand-up here is no better, neither in content nor in delivery, than the routines in the "Jackie's not being funny" scenes.

Many critics have compared the character of Jackie Burke to Rupert Pupkin, the main character of The King of Comedy. Both are sorta-funny-sorta-not stand-up comedians played by Robert DeNiro, albeit decades apart, but I've noticed that such comparisons tend to overlook major differences between the characters. Rupert cared so much about mainstream success, that his material wasn't exactly unfunny, but it was overly safe, to the point of mediocrity. It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good. It lacked personality, and his punch-lines had humor but lacked punch. Jackie wants mainstream success too, but he cares much more about expressing himself, and his punch-lines often have more punch than humor. He's the kind of guy who uses alleged humor as both a weapon and an excuse for verbal abuse, the "hey, I was just kidding" defense of insults, when everyone knows damn well he wasn't really kidding. This repeatedly gets him in trouble. Jackie insults everybody -- people who deserve it, people who don't, and people who he really needs on his side, like family members, studio executives, and the chairman of the membership committee of the club he desperately wants to join. Nobody likes him, and nobody should, because yes, he does have a good heart under it all -- but he doesn't give most people any reason to look for it.

Take, for example, Mac Schlitz, a supporting character played by Harvey Keitel. Mac is a big fan of the sitcom that was Jackie's claim to fame, and when the two characters meet, it goes very well at first, and you get the feeling that they could easily become good friends. But Jackie is unnecessarily antagonistic to Mac, and they part as enemies. The whole time during their first encounter, you keep hoping that one or both of these two guys will stop being such a dick. But they'd rather trade insults than thoughts. It's all so pointless, both for the characters and, arguably, for the viewer.

I'd like to address one particular scene late in the film. It's one of the very few comedy scenes that worked for me, but it worked in a way that really emphasized why so few of the other scenes worked. Jackie enters a comedy club at one point, and his intention is to just watch the show as an anonymous member of the crowd. But the comic on stage spots him and calls him out. The two trade insults, some of them vulgar. Now at this point in the film, many insults have been traded between Jackie and other characters, and much of it has been even more vulgar than this. But this time, for the first time, the scene is actually enjoyable to watch. Why? Because this time, you can sense that Jackie and the woman on stage have some degree of affection for one another. They're enjoying their banter, and also taking joy in the comedy itself.

That's a joy that's sorely missing from the rest of the film. Look, I'm not saying you can't make a drama about comedy. It's been done. But while The Comedian is allegedly about comedy, it's got a nasty cynicism about comedy itself. Even Billy Crystal's cameo devolves into a brief war of insults traded between Crystal and Jackie, and once again, the jokes ain't funny, because the insult/ jokes are more insult than joke. It's the kind of comedy that makes Shakespeare's tragedies seem light-hearted by comparison. The characters and their relationships are well written, I suppose, as are certain scenes, but what's the ultimate point? What's the point about making an entire movie about allegedly funny, kind-hearted people consistently failing to be funny or kind in any way whatsoever? What's the point of stripping the humor from comedy itself? If the filmmakers' next movie is about the ugly, bitter side of rainbows, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

When Normal Sitcoms Get Weird

There are, to make a very broad generalization, two kinds of sitcoms -- those that engage in a silliness bordering on (and sometimes all together crossing the border of) outright fantasy, and those that try to ground themselves in reality and find their humor through familiarity, making audiences think, "it's funny because it's true!" Not much of a fan of sitcoms in general, the few that I do like tend to fall into that latter category. Yet and still, every once in a while, the "realistic" sitcoms try to experiment with the other style -- and when they do, the results are sometimes brilliant, sometimes insane (and not in a good way), and always, always confusing as all get-out, leaving viewers wondering, "what the heck did I just watch?"

Here is a list of the most memorable "huh-whaaa?" episodes from otherwise normal and sane sitcoms of the eighties:

1. The Cosby Show -- Dr. Huxtable is abducted by the Muppets. If you want a sitcom grounded in reality, you don't have to go much further than The Cosby Show, whose very first episode became famous for the scene in which Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby) uses Monopoly money to teach his son about the realities of living on your own without a proper education. And for the vast, vast majority of its run, The Cosby Show stayed true to this agenda, finding humor in truth about family dynamics. But season six treated us to not one, but two episodes that were entirely dream sequences, allowing the writers to explore bizarre concepts that their realistic format otherwise would never allow. In the first of these "it was only a dream" episodes, alien spores caused men to become pregnant. A wacky concept to be sure, but thematically, it actually made more than a little sense; the main character of the show is, after all, an OB/GYN physician, and so The Cosby Show frequently found ways to poke fun at the concept of pregnancy; and since another theme running throughout the series is the differences between men and women, a humorous exploration of how men might react to the challenges of pregnancy, and how women would respond to becoming the helplessly expectant "other" parent, is actually a logical combination of these two themes.

But, believe it or not, the "men get pregnant" episode actually comes in second place for the most wild, out-there Cosby Show episode. At least that episode took one crazy premise and ran with it. Just a few episodes later, we were treated to yet another episode taking place entirely inside Cliff's nightmare, and this one is even more of a doozy. The aptly titled episode "Cliff's Nightmare" follows Cliff's adventures wandering his house trying to find someone to help save his wife, who is dangling out the window and hanging on for dear life, but doesn't trust Cliff to try to save her by himself. Neither Claire nor Cliff comment on the bizarre post-apocalyptic background that we see behind Claire out the window.

Cliff searches the house for help, and he keeps running into relatives who have been re-cast as either bureaucrats or military officers, none of whom seem interested in helping him. In the climax, Cliff is forced at cannon-point to deliver an alien baby on the stage of the Muppet Theater, with Gonzo the Great as both assisting physician and master of ceremonies, and two old men -- Statler and Cosby himself -- heckling his progress from the balcony, as an audience of Muppet monsters cheered him on.

Bizarrely, Cliff later encounters another group of Muppets hiding in the fridge -- in the epilogue set after he has supposedly woken up from his dream!

2. Day by Day -- The son wakes up to find himself in the wrong sitcom. Day by Day was a thoroughly forgettable sitcom, notable in history for two reasons, and two reasons only: It featured later sitcom star and Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a supporting role, and it had an episode that crossed over with the infinitely more popular Brady Bunch. In the crossover episode, slacker son Ross Harper turns out to be a fan of the Brady Bunch TV show, because, he reasons, the Bradys always were able to solve their problems within thirty minutes (the running time of an episode). The next morning, he wakes up to find himself living the life of Chuck Brady, the "long lost" Brady son. After sending most of the episode as Chuck, and thinking that he likes being a Brady more than a Harper, Ross is dismayed to find that, yes, all of the Bradys' problems are solved within thirty minutes -- but they're also doomed to repeat those same problems again and again, due to the curse of re-runs.

More than a decade after The Brady Bunch went off the air, the original cast reunited to reprise their characters here, giving Day by Day its one and only non-Seinfeldian reason to be remembered.

3. Family Ties -- For one episode, a feel-good TV comedy turns into a dramatic theater production. If you look up the title "My Name is Alex" on the Internet, you'll find that memories of this episode of Family Ties are sharply divided, some fondly remembering it as a powerful, lingering dramatic work, others dismissing it as pretentious schmaltz. Regardless of which way you feel about it, "A, My Name is Alex" is certainly a curve-ball for regular viewers of the show. After Alex P. Keaton's friend dies in a car crash, Alex wanders around a bare stage, talking to a mostly off-screen therapist (and therefore also talking to his audience) about how the tragedy makes Alex reflect on his own life. Occasionally, a spotlight will show up on the stage, highlighting a familiar character or setting from the show, but it's mostly a one-man show starring Michael J. Fox, as he paces back and forth on the stage, telling his stage audience/ TV audience/ therapist (and ooo, wait a minute, doesn't that make us his collective therapist?) about his thoughts in a series of extended monologues.

4. Growing Pains -- One of the kids learns the truth that his entire life is a TV show. The Growing Pains episode "Meet the Seavers" has a set-up remarkably similar to Day by Day's "A Very Brady Episode": One of the familiar family kids laments that life for TV characters are so much simpler than real life, and then he wakes up to find his reality radically altered. But whereas Day by Day chose to use that premise to revive a beloved TV show from yesteryear, the Growing Pains writers decided to go in a completely different direction, and completely deconstruct their own show.

Ben Seaver (played by child actor Jeremy Miller) wakes up one morning to discover that his house is just a TV set and his "family" are just actors playing the roles of his relatives. They all think that Ben is a child actor named Jeremy Miller, and can't understand why, from their perspective, he's confusing the fictional show with reality. Most memorable scene: Ben goes to "Dad" for advice, and finds Alan Thicke, as himself, on the phone with his agent, arrogantly demanding more screen time than other B-list celebrities for some minor TV event. (Say what you will about Thicke as an actor, but he could do comedically clueless arrogance better than anyone.)

Years later, the action show Supernatural would do an episode called "The French Mistake," in which brothers Dean and Sam Winchester -- played by actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki -- find themselves in an alternate universe, where their lives are just a TV show, and everyone mistakes them for actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. (Humorously, Sam has trouble pronouncing the actor's real last name.) Critics and fans alike called "The French Mistake" brilliant, and it sort of was -- but Growing Pains did it first.

5. Roseanne -- The cast temporarily switches roles with the cast from Gilligan's Island. I'm told that the last season of Roseanne really went off the rails, but that's the one season I've never watched. All I know is that Roseanne was indeed a show very grounded in reality. From the family's constant struggle to stay out of poverty and unemployment, to over-weight, unattractive parents (now common in sitcoms, but back then unheard of), to unsentimental treatment of "Important" issues previous sitcoms had always treated as nearly sacred, to wisecracks that sounded less like TV writers' lines and more like throw-away insults you might actually hear around the house, Roseanne knew how to capture the lives of struggling middle-class families. It's no coincidence that the early seasons of Roseanne were co-produced and co-written by some of the same people who brought us the Huxtables in The Cosby Show, for even though the Connors and the Huxtables were worlds apart in persona and personality, they were remarkably similar in their complete and thorough believability.

The season seven finale probably caused an equal amount of belly laughs and head scratching, as the familiar Roseanne characters get stranded on a desert island and find themselves falling into the personas of the characters from Gilligan's Island. Many aspects of the casting were truly inspired: The crass, nasal, overweight Roseanne Barr was so wildly miscast as the classy, husky-voiced, voluptuous Ginger Grant, that you knew it was Roseanne and her fellow writers winking an eye at the audience. Conversely, John Goodman was an obviously perfect choice to play the Skipper, while Laurie Metcalf, best known as Roseanne's sister Jackie, turned out to be surprisingly adept in the role of Gilligan. The writers also had fun with admitting that not every character had an equivalent: Roseanne and Dan became Ginger and the Skipper, but supporting character David was still just David, and thus the only character aware that everything was wrong in this alternate reality.

Arguably the best joke, though, was during the closing credits sequence, in which the original cast of Gilligan's Island showed up to reverse the tribute: Bob Denver playing it perfectly straight even in drag as Jackie, Tina Louise playing Roseanne, the elderly Russell "the Professor" Johnson playing Roseanne's teenage son-in-law -- hilarious!

6. 227 -- The characters get locked in a room with Pee-wee Herman. 227, based on a Christine Houston play about a trio of women whose friendship thrives in the inner city, regularly dealt with such themes as class struggle and poverty, and friendship and neighborhood dynamics. It was still a comedy, though, finding humor through the usual sitcom methods of misunderstandings and wisecracks.

Mary and Lester, the African-American couple forming the heart of the neighborhood, were very good people who made the best of every circumstance. For example, in the episode "Toyland," it comes to their attention that children in the hospital often don't have toys to play with, so they decide to go to the toy store and purchase toys for the poor hospital children. There, they are taken hostage by a thief, who locks them up in the store room. Crime on the streets -- hardly an out-of-place theme for 227 (even if it does give us pause to consider the possible racial stereotyping going on, equalling"African-American community" with "crime on the street").

The weirdo aspect is, the thief's other hostage is Pee-wee Herman. I don't mean actor Paul Reubens playing a different character, I mean wacky, borderline insane children's show character Pee-wee Herman. Being locked up in a creepy warehouse by an armed criminal is bad. Being locked up in the same room all day with Pee-Wee? That's gotta be so much worse.

In an odd clash of tones, the 227 characters are fully aware of their dire circumstances, and try to figure their way out of the situation using rationality, while Pee-wee, blissfully indifferent toward any danger, capers about like a child high on sugar. At one point, the regular characters try to escape by setting off the fire alarm, but when they hold their one match up to the smoke detector, Pee-wee blows it out, gleefully explaining, "safety first, only you can prevent forest fires!" Okay, he's a children's show host who's been gorged on TV catch-phrases, so it makes perfect sense for him to do that, in a way. But what's he doing in a show like this in the first place?

Granted, even Pee-wee Herman showing up in a sitcom about life in the inner city probably can't compare with a doctor being forced to perform an operation on stage while alien monster Muppets look on and an elderly doppelganger heckles you from the balcony. But it's still pretty weird.

new to DVD: Logan

Audiences and critics alike have been hailing Logan as the greatest superhero film of all time. Personally, I think that's more than a bit of hyperbole. When it comes to audiences, it seems that, for a while, every superhero movie that comes out is inevitably exclaimed to be either "the best ever" or "the worst ever," until the next one comes out. But the critics? Yeah, I can see why they'd put the label on. Critics have only begrudgingly accepted the fact that superhero films have been dominating the box office for the last several years, and Hollywood's only way to appease them is to occasionally release a "realistic" superhero film, in which the characters have to deal with real-world issues like politics, poverty, racism, etc. Then the demand for sequels directly leads to rapidly escalating levels of spectacle, and soon you've got aliens fighting guys in tights as monsters roar and spaceships zoom across the screen. Critics stop taking the genre seriously, until a filmmaker somewhere says, "but what if our main guy is in the real world?" and the whole cycle repeats itself again and again.

Logan is decidedly in the "realistic" part of the cycle. For the vast majority of the film, most characters with the more fantastic superpowers are absent, and the three main superhero characters -- James "Logan" Howlett (formerly known as superhero Wolverine), Professor Charles Xavier (formerly known as Professor X), and Caliban (formerly known as . . . well, as Caliban) are all aging has-beens, long since retired from superheroics. They also seem to be the only mutants (for the uninitiated in this cinematic universe, "mutant" is short-hand for "person simply born with their superpowers," as opposed to someone who obtains them through some fantastical means) left on Earth, as this story takes place in a world where mutants seem to have been gradually dying out as a race.

There's a reason why these guys don't do superheroing anymore. A combination of aging and circumstance has rendered their most dominant superpowers useless. Caliban's sole power is detecting other mutants -- useless in a world where almost no other mutants exist. One of Wolverine's most prominent abilities has always been his astounding "healing factor," which used to allow him to heal from wounds at astonishing rates, but in this story is unreliable and has slowed down significantly. And Xavier's superpower is telepathy, a power that is significantly muted by the medication he has to take. (When he forgets or is unable to take his medication, he either falls into senility or, worse, has seizures that, due to his telepathic nature, cause everyone else in the vicinity to have seizures as well.)

Caliban, Logan, and Xavier live in poverty in a small complex of otherwise abandoned, ramshackle buildings in the desert just south of the Mexican border. Logan is the only one of the three that has any source of income (as a limo driver -- a job he, surprisingly, doesn't seem to mind), and as a result, they have a hard time making even their meager ends meet. Being able to afford Xavier's desperately needed medication is especially an issue. Xavier's telepathic seizures temporarily paralyze humans, and fill mutants with neurological pain; they feel the telepathic energy as waves of hurricane-like winds emanating from Xavier's head.

The story is set into motion when, after years of wondering if they're the only mutants left in the world, the trio encounters Laura, a mysterious little girl who is not only a mutant, but whose superpowers closely and mysteriously mimic those of Wolverine himself. (Well . . . maybe not so mysterious, as the answer is fairly obvious.)

The girl is determined to get to Eden, a possibly only-mythical place on the Canadian/ North Dakotan border, where she believes that other young mutants are waiting for her in a safe haven for those of their kind. Unfortunately, a whole army of bad guys are after her, for reasons that are only gradually explained, and so she needs Logan's help to get there.

Road trip!

Laura, Logan, and Xavier head out on their cross-country journey to see if Eden really exists.  (Caliban has been captured by the bad guys.) Laura has reason to believe in the existence of Eden, Logan has equally compelling reasons to doubt it, and Xavier insists that it ultimately doesn't matter, as long as Laura gets the chance to find out for herself.

Maybe at this point, it all sounds absurd, or maybe it all sounds compelling. I will point out that the writers' resumes are all to be admired, and I feel that their talents are certainly on display here. The dialogue is intelligent and meaningful (nary a catch-phrase in sight), allowing the characters, and the film, to explore such themes as aging, family dynamics, and the need to have a purpose in life. The action scenes are far less random than those in most action movies, here occurring only when they make sense in the narrative. And the main characters are three-dimensional. We sense that these people care about each other, and that helps us care about them too.

I'd also point out that this is a shockingly violent movie. That may seem like an odd thing to say about a superhero film, a genre in which half or more of the screentime is often devoted to fight scenes. But even the so-called "realistic" superhero films tend to feature bloodless or even cartoonish deaths, akin to the old black-and-white Westerns, in which you know a character has been shot only because the actors clutch their belly and fall down. These bloodless fight scenes are even more remarkable for a character like Wolverine, whose primary weapons are razor-sharp claws. But throughout his depiction in the X-Men series, Wolverine has mostly used his claws for other purposes -- climbing walls, blocking bullets, cutting through objects rather than flesh. He rarely stabs people, and when he does, we know it because . . . well, because they almost bloodlessly clutch their bellies and fall down.

Not so in Logan, in which, for better or worse, we finally see what it would really be like if a guy took sharp weapons into battle. Many, many people (the villain really does seem to have an entire army of thugs at his disposal) are either sliced or stabbed throughout the course of Logan, and when they are, director James Mangold doesn't shy away from the blood or the gore. Compared to how Wolverine's fight scenes have been handled in previous films, yes, it is shocking to see. There's only a few seconds of nudity in Logan (blink and you'll miss it), but between Logan's course language and the violence of the action scenes, the R rating -- another rarity for superhero films -- is certainly earned.

In the end, Logan may not be "the best ever" -- I tend to think such exclamations are ultimately ridiculous the more you think about it -- but it is highly entertaining, and if critics love it, it's because it's more intelligent and insightful than films of this type usually allow themselves time to be.

The X-Men movies are lucrative, and Wolverine is the franchise's most popular character, so I doubt this is the last we've seen of him, one way or another. But Hugh Jackman has announced that this is the last time he'll play the character, and this seems like a fitting good-bye to his take on Logan, as the movie itself is such a reflection on the personality of Logan/ Wolverine: brutal, cynical, even harsh at times, but ultimately with a good heart, surprisingly smart, and never short of entertaining.