Three Movies with 'Stranger Things'-like Movie Buff Cred

As you may have heard, Stranger Things is Netflix's latest mega-hit series and it is pulsing with 80's nostalgia.  Stranger Things is what would happen if 80's Steven Spielberg invented a teleportation machine and tested it on himself but 80's Stephen King got mixed up in it at the last second and their atoms got scrambled together.  The cast features 80's movie stars Winona Ryder (Heathers, Beatlejuice) and Matthew Modine (Vision Quest, Full Metal Jacket), as well as some kids living the E.T. life and a few teenagers surviving a horror movie.

Mostly.

Stranger Things comes from a long line of homage art.  A good film buff can pinpoint all the ways Star Wars owes a debt to the likes of Flash Gordon and The Searchers.  Stranger Things certainly isn't the first show or movie to build itself around an established genre from an earlier time.  Here are a few films to check out if you like the way Stranger Things likes cool things.

Super 8

The second Super 8 shows up on Netflix again expect to see it in the category "Because you liked Stranger Things."  The 2011 film has all the same influences as Stranger Things but one of them had a hand in creating it.  Steven Spielberg served as producer alongside writer and director J.J. Abrams.  Super 8 is full of nostalgia although it takes place a few years earlier than Stranger Things, in the late 70's rather than the early 80's.  The Goonies/E.T. kids of this movie include excellent performances by Elle Fanning and Joel Courtney along with the prerequisite cool adult Kyle Chandler.  Together they hunt down a mysterious creature, the reveal of which is really quite impressive.  Super 8 takes the film love to a meta degree because the kids' favorite hobby isn't Dungeons and Dragons but amateur movie making, hence the title, a kind of film commonly used for home movies of the time.

Pacific Rim

If there's one thing director Guillermo del Toro is good at it's making monsters.  In 2013 he made his monsters huge.  Pacific Rim tells the story of a battle between giant monsters (Kaiju) who want to invade Earth from an alternate dimension and the humans in giant robots (Jaegers) tasked with defending the world.  Obviously it's an homage to the giant monster movies of old like Godzilla and Gamera, yet still feels like one of the freshest and most original sci-fi blockbusters of the decade.  For the most part, the robots and monsters are the real stars of Pacific Rim but it also features some thoroughly captivating performances from Charlie Day as a frantic, tattooed mad scientist, Ron Perlman as a black marketeer and Idris Elba as an Idris Elba character.  An Idris Elba character named Stacker Pentecost.

Captain America: The First Avenger

I've made no secret about my love for Captain America: Winter Soldier but I'm also a staunch defender of its criminally underappreciated predecessor The First Avenger.  Winter Soldier is strongly influenced by 70's political thrillers but as a World War II period piece First Avenger draws from a very different pool of inspiration.  It has elements of 40's sci-fi but mostly First Avenger is the best Indiana Jones movie since 1989's The Last Crusade; the Indiana Jones series itself being an homage to the action serials of the 1940's.  Director Joe Johnston excels at period pieces and is perfect for an Indy inspired film.  The First Avenger  also introduced the world to Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter, who more than earned an excellent spin-off TV series with a similar tone but more espionage.





Side note: Three guys looking for their friend who mysteriously disappeared?  I liked it better when it was called The Hangover.

"Sausage Party" is great but is Seth Rogen ok?

For a long time my feelings about the new film Sausage Party were a lot like everyone else's.  I thought "it seems pretty dumb, even for Seth Rogen, but I'm intrigued."  That must be a fairly common reaction to the Pixar-style comedy about talking foodstuffs that is absolutely not intended for Pixar's usual audience.  My interest was increased tenfold when an ad for Sausage Party was shown during a commercial break for Preacher, the TV series also created by Seth Rogen and his production partner Evan Goldberg.  Preacher is part intense drama, part black comedy, and part religious satire.  When I first saw Sausage Party being advertised during Preacher I laughed at the idea of one being promoted on the back of the other as if to say "if you like 'Breaking Bad with more sacrilege' you'll love 'Toy Story with 1000% more dick jokes.'"  I quickly realized that Preacher and Sausage Party are more alike than it seems at first glance, and now that I've seen Sausage Party I can confirm that the two are scarily similar in a way that makes me enjoy both even more, but also makes me a little worried about Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

Preacher's recently concluded first season follows a clergyman named Jesse Custer with a dark past who struggles with doubt while trying to lead a Texas church filled with S&M hillbillies, deformed arsefaced teenagers, and star-crossed lovers in mascot costumes.  By the season finale Jesse gets the answers he wants but even more questions and a lot more rage, most of it directed at God.  Sausage Party is about a god-fearing sausage named Frank, with the "gods" being the patrons of a grocery store.  Frank discovers that the shoppers aren't ferrying the food to paradise but to their doom.  They're both comedies with as much existential horror as humor.  They're both about the faithful discovering that the object of their worship is far from perfect.

Rogen and Goldberg (Rogberg) have been working on Sausage Party for nearly a decade but the fact that it was released so close to Preacher is interesting and a little worrying.  I can't help but think that one or both of these gentlemen is experiencing a major mid-life existential crisis and their recent releases are just a part of a pattern.  In the last three years every movie Rogberg has made has either been about growing up, a religious crisis, or the ongoing threat of violent dictator.  In 2013 there was This is The End, in which Rogen and several of his actor friends played themselves as apocalypse survivors who wind up in heaven after a couple of close encounters with demonic forces.  Next was Neighbors, about Rogen and Rose Byrne's married couple who go to war with a fraternity; a literal conflict between domesticity and untethered youth.  That same year saw the digital release of The Interview, easily the most controversial film in recent memory, maybe ever.  The Interview is about entertainment journalists assassinating the very real, very alive, and very dangerous tyrant Kim Jong-un, but the human center is about Rogen's character trying to grow up and take on more serious subject matter against the resistance of James Franco's man-child Ryan Seacrest-type character.  2015 saw The Night Before, a Christmas movie about childhood friends growing up and growing apart.  Finally, that brings us to 2016's Neighbors sequel, Preacher, and Sausage Party.

The stakes just keep getting higher and higher for Rogberg and they're trying harder and harder to grow up while holding on to the goofy blue humor that made them famous.  I'm just not sure they're handling the pressure very well.  They seem to have developed a dim, almost nihilistic worldview.  Maybe they're still a little shaken up after poking the bear by jokingly murdering the bear in The Interview but that doesn't explain the fucked up stuff in This is The End.  Maybe they're just experiencing normal growing pains, or whatever normal is for thirty-somethings who have been among the most influential people in Hollywood since their late twenties.  Maybe they're crying out for help or maybe their films are a perfectly healthy output for a couple of artists struggling with complex thoughts and emotions.  Maybe I end too many blog posts by saying "maybe" a lot but fuck it.  If Seth Rogen can make a movie about a talking weiner why does anything matter?  Maybe life is fucking meaningless.



Side note: Sausage Party is just Preacher with a happy ending, to put it mildly.

Why the Beatles Should let Donald Trump Use One of Their Songs

Every time an election rolls around in the old U.S. of A. the candidates, specifically Republicans, get tied up in a game of reverse whack-a-mole with the music industry.  They play a song at a rally then the musician who recorded it publically denounces the candidates use of the track.  Recently, Donald Trump was denied use of the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and Queen's "We are The Champions," both choices that were hilariously terrible even before the artist's refusal made the titles even more appropriate/ironic.  As much as I love seeing a monstrous excuse for a human being not getting what he wants and failing to be a champion there is one song that is just too applicable for it to not be Trump's official campaign song.

"You say you want a revolution 

Well, you know"

 In the middle of the tsunami of cultural upheaval in the 1960's John Lennon wrote "Revolution," a way of questioning the validity of the common desire to overthrow the establishment.  Lennon went on to develop fairly radical views of his own and over time the counterculture of the 60's has been accepted as a much needed push in the right direction.  Thus, the message of "Revolution" is far more pertinent to the Trump campaign than to anything Lennon had in mind.

Everything that would make Donald Trump a terrible candidate under normal circumstances are exactly why his supporters love him.  He's brash, unpolished, impulsive, crude, and he thinks John McCain is a dumb sissy for being captured during his time as a Navy pilot in the Vietnam War.  Trump supporters think an anti-politician is exactly what Washington needs.  Even Republicans who aren't so excited about him see him as a symbol of their frustration with the status quo.  One way or another they hope that Trump will bring a change.  If he wins the election, there will certainly be change but it can't possibly be the kind that any sane person wants.

"You tell me that it's evolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world"

That's what makes "Revolution" the perfect campaign song for the Donald.  It's about the need to be careful what you wish for.  Donald Trump is a man of bold actions.  He doesn't take half measures.  His supporters want to ban Muslims from entering the country but will that be enough?  Will internment camps like the ones Japanese-Americans were put in during World War II be enough?  They want political incorrectness from America's top diplomat.  What's to stop Donald from calling world leaders "pigs" and "losers" at the smallest slight, irreparably damaging our relationships with allies and potential allies for decades?  What happens when Trump's friendship with Vladimir Putin goes sour and the U.S. has no allies left?  They want impulsiveness from the one person with absolute control over the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

"But when you talk about destruction 

Don't you know that you can count me out"

On a certain level I can understand the emotion behind a Republican vote for Trump, if not the logic.  They've lost.  A biracial man with a foreign sounding name was elected President eight years ago.  Once in office he gave healthcare to the masses.  Then he helped turn the tide on one of the defining social issues of our time and now two people of the same gender can have their love officialized by the law of any state in the union.  Now Republicans just want a win, so they've nominated a rich white man whose sole campaign promise is victory.

"You say you got a real solution 

Well, you know 

We'd all love to see the plan"

I hope that Republicans never learn how little they truly want what they've asked for.  I hope I never get the chance to say "I told you so."  This election is a lot like another piece of 1960's pop culture, The Twilight Zone.  If you know anything about that show you know that there's always a twist at the end.  The main character gets their heart's desire only to realize that it isn't worth the cost and the cost is usually nuclear holocaust.  This isn't The Twilight Zone.  There's no Rod Serling.  This is real.  You may think you want to burn it all to the ground but you'll have to start by pouring gasoline on your neighbor and lighting the match yourself.

"You say you want a revolution 

Well, you know"