‘Ad Astra’ and Horror Fest 2019 on Monday Morning Diary (September 23)

by Sam Juliano

We are approaching the Halloween season and with it here at Wonders in the Dark, our annual Horror Fest capsule reviews on some classic and contemporary works in the genre, courtesy of poll position horror expert Jamie Uhler, which I am thrilled to post here on the MMD.  This past week we featured two extraordinary reviews by our distinguished writing staff, one by James Clark on Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf (as the latest entry in his continuing series on the director) and the other by J.D. Lafrance on the classic Jules Verne adaptation from 1954, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  I myself am preparing to post the first review in my annual Caldecott Medal Contender series, perhaps as early as later this evening.  In any event Jamie reviewed three films, two of which he liked/loved to varying degrees and one a “howler” (1980’s Alligator) which he describes as “an enjoyable piece of trash”:

Hereditary (A. Aster… 2018)
Midsommar (A. Aster… 2019)

Aster’s first two films reveal a burgeoning master of modern horror, a sensibility finally tuned to the modern psychosis of crippling terror married with a visual sense straight from titans of European Horror cinema. His first and best film, Hereditary, is an intricately layered piece of family dynamics told via miniature diorama symbolism, that once stripped away, revealed a meditation on the immense power of grief. Similarly, Midsommar cloaks itself in the minutia exploration of the day to day workings of a Swedish cult, where we know that terror will befall all those that aren’t members if we correctly identify the tropes. It only misses being Hereditary’s masterpiece equal by echoing a few films it clearly loves a little too closely; the Wicker Man especially, with a dash of the Devil Rides Out for good measure. At the heart of both films is a terrific lead female performance; Hereditary sees the grieving Annie (Toni Collette), invite terror into her world and onto her family, just as we’re left partially wondering how much is it inside her troubled mind that she replicates in her masterful miniature sculptures. Midsommer has the ailing Dani (Florence Pugh in a breakout performance), who slowly realizes in her grief that boyfriend Jack has never been the soulmate she sought. 

Midsommar was initially rumored to be something of a sequel to Hereditary, and outside both films attention to cults, we’d need a third film to better connect the two films divergent stories. Aster hasn’t revealed where he’s going next, but given he’s a confessed Horror obsessive, we assume it’ll be another buzz Horror film, I can’t wait. 

Alligator (L. Teague… 1980)

What’s more glorious in cinema than a bunch of talented upstarts getting (some of) their first paychecks to perform their craft with a producer attentive to their talents? I suppose, for my tastes, the only thing is occasionally when, without caché, they’re asked for something slightly more specific. These days seem long ago, but once, heavily within genre, people tried to make a quick buck by asking for copies of successful trash. Jaws begot The Car, Piranha, Piranha II: The Spawning, Blood Beach, Tentacles, Grizzly, the whole lot. Consider some of the names behind those seedy things: Joe Dante, James Cameron, then jump a bit, Coppola doing Dementia 13, Demme helming Caged Heat and Scorsese taking a stab at Boxcar Bertha, a crime movie about would be gangsters on the lam. Almost nothing above is masterpiece level, or even close, but nearly all titillate and provoke and make tantalizing promises to be paid out very quickly with bigger, better, bolder pictures by all the audacious young talent. It’s a corner of cinema that is a wonderful reminder about how creativity should be nurtured by those flush with the greenbacks. 

I bring it up, obviously, as Alligator is both. Envisioned as a Jaws ripoff, it sent a few unknowns Lewis Teague (director) and writer John Sayles to produce something similar, only centered around a large, bloodthirsty croc. The whole enterprise is sneakily humorous, Sayles (future creator of several of the best modern American independent films) imbuing the proceedings with coy references to urban legends, sexual innuendo, corporate politics and outright absurdity. In short, he gets that it’s B-level schlock, a point Spielberg failed on—he could never get over himself on the set of Jaws, or the number of trashy, gloss entertainment he’s doled out since. Spielberg is pissy and tries to hide his fake shark from the truthful gaze of the camera, while Sayles splashes it into action all over the place, knowing, as his audiences does, that if someone plucks out a few bucks to see a flick called Alligator they don’t care what the damn scales look like, they just want to see it rip limbs from torsos and maul everything in sight. Does it ever; we hear at the start that the little baby alligator is flushed down the toilet on the day after the 1968 Democratic National Convention turmoil in Chicago has grown to an unruly behemoth 12 years later (this is after it’s purchased at a carnival at the start where another alligator chomps a hillbilly nearly in half). The goings on in Chicago of 1968 were also the topic of Medium Cool, a masterpiece a decade earlier and one of my personal favorite films, also staring Robert Forester, so I spent the screening thinking it was something of a trash sequel. The Breathless to Medium Cool’s Bonjour Tristesse, if you will. It’s a hilarious idea of course, quite ludicrous really, as here that flushed alligator grows to the size of an ‘el Dorado’ from eating lab animals discarded into the sewer once testing was over with, the trial drugs mutating the gator to hellish lengths. 

By the end you’re howling often, with an action sequence running about two-and-a-half minutes during the films (first) climax getting the lions share of the hoots. The titular alligator crashes a swanky outdoor black tie gala being thrown by the lab corporation, here he eats several people, tails whips two high into the air into a tent, another into a wedding sized cake (like the ‘November Rain’ video!), destroys a limo, and crushes the two men inside it (earlier they even have the alligator kill a kid!). That a similar story also literally just happened in Chicago, captivating the city for days, only makes for even more delirious laughs. Definite high trash recommend here. 

Lucille, Sammy, Jeremy and I saw one film in theaters this past week (numerous others on DVD and blu ray as per the norm) but what a film is was!

Ad Astra  *****  (Friday night)    Teaneck multiplex

My social media report on the film is as follows:

A masterpiece set in space contends for Best Picture of the Year honors

A fellow good friend and film blogger wasn’t so impressed with the new space opera “Ad Astra” by James Gray. Here was my response: “I greatly respect you and your opinions and scholarship for the longest time, but like the overwhelming majority of the critical establishment ( a staggering 47 favorable, 5 mixed and 0 negative on Metacritic) I strongly disagree. The “better examples of the genre” as you call them lag far behind this brooding, existential masterwork, a film both ruminative and emotional, imbued with a soulfulness and focused vision, orchestrated not only by the finest performance of Brad Pitt’s career, but by Hoyte von Hoytema’s cinematography and the haunting minimalist score by Max Richter. Of course the exceedingly talented James Gray is the genius behind this enterprise and the ruminative style echos Malick here. Sure it is a space opera version of Apocalypse Now but it is set apart from that by a personal vision orchestrated in psychological terms. Both intimate and epic (almost like a hybrid of Claire Denis’ “High Life” and Alfonso Curaon’s “Gravity (though I am no fan of the latter film) AS ASTA’s prime concern is the recesses of the mind, and it seems destined for a long fun of study and discussion. I don’t often agree with Richard Brody but I do think he nailed it with his own review where he also calls the film a unique masterpiece. 5/5