Monthly Archives: June 2019

Just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be a novel take on the Zombie genre left, along comes a film like this.

As I’ve noted before, the zombie apocalypse provides the perfect flexible scaffolding upon which to build whatever kind of story you want to tell. George Romero, the master and creator of the genre used this framework to create films that examined the cultural zeitgeist of his times. They were nightmarish reflections of society showing us what we, in a panicked state of fear, are capable of. It wasn’t pretty.

This movie tells an entirely different story – the cast is essentially one woman being pursued by a single male zombie through the Nevada desert. It is a female coming of age story, and the dynamic between the zombie and the woman morphs in surprisingly emotional ways. Kudos to both actors for turning in complex and layered performances.

Brittany Allen is powerfully authentic as a broken young woman discovering her maternal instincts and personal strength as the story progresses, and Juan Reidinger imbues the zombie with a humanity that reminded me of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster or Billy Connelly as “Fido,” in another essential zombie film. It’s no small feat to imbue a zombie with pathos, but this actor pulls off quite a magic trick.

Beautifully directed by Colin Minihan, the film is stunningly gorgeous to watch.

Masterpiece? No, not exactly. Just a beautifully made original film, shot on location with incredible cinematography, capturing fully realized performances of an original script. Most importantly, it draws you in, engaging you fully with an unpredictable story.

Works for me!

This is what I’ve got right now, thank you very much – which is to say, nada, zilch, i.e. nothing.

It’s too late after a busy day in the ER, and I am totally spent.

See you tomorrow…

What if everything that appears objectively real is all just a construct you’ve made up? Like the world you see is not the same world another person experiences?

What if this is true?

What if this is probably true?

Did you ever wake up after a good nights sleep and go outside to a perfectly clear day with the temperature in the 70s and the sun shining and think “This is so beautiful it must be a dream?“

Today is that day – Welcome to planet earth!

Please enjoy your stay

It won’t last forever.

The larger an organization becomes, the more difficult it becomes to implement change. It’s just an inevitable reality – too many departments not communicating with each other, too many outdated but deeply entrenched protocols, all compounded by the persistent resistance to change. If you’re a worker who just wants to improve practice in your workplace it can sometimes be overwhelming.

Good ideas can die a thousand deaths in a giant bureaucracy. It can feel like like trying to play tennis with a dinosaur – you hit the ball into its court and by the time the lumbering beast moves its giant mass in place the ball is covered by the undergrowth that grew over it.

The thing is, massive organizations can change, you just have to be very persistent and supremely patient while it happens.

Understand that it’s a long game and be prepared for pushback and disappointment – but perseverance will win out in the end.

If you want an idea of the range of what this guy is capable of as an actor, watch these films (he co-wrote “One False Move” and wrote and directed “Sling Blade,” but for the purpose of this post I am only thinking about his acting):

• One False Move (1992)
• Sling Blade (1996)
• A Simple Plan (1998)
• Monster’s Ball (2001)

Watching these films back to back you could be forgiven if you didn’t recognize this was the same actor. The only thing that they have in common is that they’re all played by Billy Bob Thornton. He has this way of portraying very nuanced, flawed men, but then somehow imbuing them with vulnerability, often searching for change and redemption. Many great actors might nail the broad strokes of the characters, but Billy Bob somehow makes them real by showing their flaws and pain. I don’t think he’s capable of playing a role without delivering a fully formed complex human.

With great actors everything they do is integral to the role. For example, look at how nuanced his clothes are, but more than that, it’s also about the way he wears them. The emotional weight he gives each of these parts is astonishing – it’s like he’s not acting a character, he is the character. It’s quite a magic trick.

If you’re an actor this is a pretty high bar.

Good luck with that.

Change. It’s the one constant in life – everything is in an unending state of change. Sometimes it’s slow, like aging. When you look in the mirror each day, nothing appears radically different from the day before. You can even have years where you look back at photos of yourself and you appear essentially the same. But make no mistake – you are physically changing whether you notice it or not, and there will always come a day where you look in the mirror and don’t recognize yourself, because you will have grown old and not noticed it while it was happening. Sorry, it’s just reality.

Change can also happen fast – the diagnosis of a disease, for example, or a traumatic accident. There are outwardly expressed physical changes, and then there the ones you can’t see – changes in cognition, memory, and creativity. Spiritual changes, changes in relationships, changes in our understanding of life itself. Psychic traumas.

Changes in what we want, what makes us feel fulfilled, changes in what we desire. Changes in our financial status, where we choose to live (or where we are forced to live). Changes in family (the death of loved ones), changes in friendships. Perhaps changes in our careers – the list just goes on and on and we haven’t even discussed sociological or technical changes.

So how do we cope? We adapt. Some of us do better than others, but we all essentially have no choice. Some will attempt to ignore changes and try to keep living as though things are the same as when they were young and first learning how the world works. The problem here is that the world and our health keep changing whether we acknowledge it or not, so these people eventually get left behind.

Most of us try to adapt as best we can. It’s not easy, but there are great rewards for those who can pull it off. Maintaining engagement with life and the excitement of learning new things immediately come to mind. The satisfaction of self-initiated personal growth is another.

Unfortunately, change also implies letting go – something that can be very hard to do. Evolution implies changing from one thing into something new. It’s the ultimate form of adaptability. It’s one critical area of life that we have some control over. We can’t stop changes from happening, but we can choose how adaptable we will be.

But all of this hinges on our ability to actually recognize when it’s time to adapt, to not be blind to opportunities for growth, to recognize that things are no longer what you thought they were.

Ignore these changes at your own peril.

Okay, let’s be real clear right from the start: this film is a complete masterpiece. I know this is subjective but, for me, I’m talking certainly in the top 200 films of all time, maybe even in the top 100. It’s one of those rare movies you can pretty much watch over and over, always seeing new details, always revealing a little more depth. I just watched it again, after god knows how many times, and once again it hit me hard and deep. Just absolutely fucking stunning.

Of course it was both a commercial and critical flop on release in 1955, so much so that Charles Laughton never directed another film – it was his first and last directorial work. Un-fucking-believable.

One of the things that makes it so powerful is its depiction of the complete and utter helplessness of lost yet innocent children. For anyone who grew up desperately wanting someone to care for them, Lillian Gish’s character is going to resonate with a lot of emotional power. One of the ironies of the film is the apparent fact that Laughton hated children – including the two who were the centerpiece of the film. And yet somehow it all works…

Balancing out the goodness of Gish’s character we have Robert Mitchum in what is quite possibly the defining role of his career. His portrayal of Harry Powell as a murderous, psychopathic serial killer posing as a preacher in depression-era America is once-seen-never-forgotten. There is a creepiness to his character that is extremely disturbing – using religion as his cover on the unsuspecting rubes. His treatment of Shelley Winters is both horrifying and painful to watch, yet there is a ring of truth to the whole thing that makes it even more unsettling. Yes children, beware – this is what adults are capable of.

When these simple-minded “god-fearing” church folk then turn into a lynch mob one is left feeling very queasy indeed. Only the children are innocent – murderous violence seems to lie just beneath the surface of all adults, even the church goers. I guess it’s not that difficult to see why audiences in 1955 didn’t flock to see it – it’s still disturbing in 2019. Maybe some things never change.

Stanley Cortez was the cinematographer and holy fuck – let’s just say this is another example of why he’s a legend! It’s shot in gorgeous black and white with set design that has to be seen to be believed. Interiors where bedrooms are made to look like churches holding scenes of unspeakable cruelty and murder, overhead shots (from a plane?) of the town and its people, the underwater scene of a woman’s corpse tied to the seat of a sunken car, her hair languorously flowing with the current, mirrored by the underwater reeds.

And then there is the river sequence – a long, haunting scene of the children floating down the river (an incredible visual metaphor for life) in a skiff, aimlessly being guided by the currents. Each shot is like a surreal art tableau – the boy and his little sister, hungry and dirty, often sleeping in the moonlight, floating down what may or may not be a set in long shot, with the foreground populated by small woodland creatures.

At one point we see an owl watching a small rabbit from a tree, off camera we hear it swoop down and the cries of the small animal as it dies, the children oblivious and sleeping, floating downriver in the background. Immediately following the death of the innocent at the hands of a predator we hear Lillian Gish’s voice over telling us what all damaged children already know: “It’s a hard world for little things.”

Hard indeed.

Lost in a morass of ennui.

Hasta mañana.