EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN 12

Everything Old is New Again, Vol. 12 - November and December 2019

by Hunter Bush

Hello again good people and welcome to another installment of Everything Old is New Again, my bi-monthly column on Adaptations, Remakes and Legacy Sequels. If any of those terms are new to you, allow me to elucidate: an adaptation is a work based on any pre-existing work; a remake is when a film is made again as though it were the first time; a legacy sequel or long-gap sequel is the continuation of a franchise that has been lying dormant for some time; and while I'm at it, when I say bi-monthly, I mean "occurring every two months" not "occurring twice a month". So this EOINA will cover all the movies and such that fall into any of those categories coming to screens big & small in November & December.

"TERMINATOR: DARK FATE" (2019)

Terminator: Dark Fate
Directed by Tim Miller
Story by James Cameron & Charles H. Eglee & Josh Friedman and David S. Goyer & Justin Rhodes; Screenplay by Goyer & Rhodes and Billy Ray
Starring Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mackenzie Davis
Running time: 2 hours and 08 minutes
MPAA rating: R for violence throughout, language and brief nudity

by Hunter Bush

I'm a big fan of the trope I think of as "The Titular Line", when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they are in. Sometimes it's so synonymous with what the movie is that taking note of it is pointless, like someone saying "Ghostbusters" in Ghostbusters. What I enjoy is seeing if the writers and actors can make some of the clunkier subtitles sound natural. So, around an hour twenty into Terminator: Dark Fate when characters start really throwing the word "fate" around, I perked up. But it wasn't to be. The best you get is Natalia Reyes' Dani at one point saying "Fuck fate!", which is... pretty close.

""Riches to the Conjuror"

"Riches to the Conjuror" :

How a Viewpoint Sleight-of-Hand Yields a Wealth of New Perspective on the Destruction of a Model Family

An alternative POV on 2018's Hereditary.

Ari Aster's recent sophomore feature Midsommar has been a big deal in film talk circles recently, but his previous film, last year's Hereditary, is what put him on most people's radar. A film dealing with family and grief (Aster's topics of choice) through the supernatural chicanery of a witchy cult, Hereditary is most definitely when all's said and done, a Bad Moms Movie. What I posit today is that there is a way to view the events depicted in the film that makes it, somehow, an Even Worse Moms Movie.

Also, heads up, I will have to outright RUIN Hereditary for you if you haven't seen it.

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival - PUFF Part 2: Postscript

The films that screen at the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival, by and large, are difficult to pin down. Organizers prefer to think of it as an "Alternative" film festival, though a lot of the movies do tend to fall under the umbrella of "horror". But you may as well just classify them all as "movies" and call it a day for how unspecific that is. Hence the "Unnamed" part of the PUFF moniker; it's not just that they were too lazy to come up with a name.

Allison & Hunter were lucky enough to, between them, see all the films great and small shown at PUFF proper. As mentioned in PUFF Part 1 - Prologue, the short films on hand were largely broken up into blocks, though there were a few that played before the features like a film appetizer. Below we've got a round-up of what we saw and, in brief, what we dug about it:

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival - PUFF Part 1: Prologue

PUFF 2019 Preview
“Allison & Hunter Write a PUFF Piece! Part 1 - Prologue”

For this, the fourth annual Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival (or PUFF), Moviejawn contributors Allison Yakulis and Hunter Bush are going to check out all the delicious independent genre films and shorts that are being screened in our own backyard. PUFF will be rocking and rolling from September 26th to September 29th at the 2223 Theater in Fishtown. There’s also a pre-PUFF event on September 25th that will include a screening of The Blair Witch Project with director Eduardo Sánchez in attendance (it’s the 20th anniversary of the film!) and a screening of Legacy Award to Exhumed Films winner Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural with its director Richard Blackburn there to introduce the film. Lemora is also going to be screened in 16mm, which is rad for all you format freaks out there.

PUFF is still growing, and this year will be screening 10 feature length films. There are also over 20 short films, broken up into blocks (you can catch Bizarre Shorts on Friday, International Shorts on Saturday, and Local Shorts on Sunday). Allison & Hunter couldn’t find a listing of the shorts that will be featured, but we did get to check out some synopses and trailers for the feature length films. Between the two of us we’re hoping to bring you full coverage of the festival proper after PUFF packs up.

So consider this a PUFF Prologue and if you’re in the area and want to check it out, tickets are available HERE. We’ll be back after the fest with some thoughts on the movies and the event itself. For now, read on to see what we’re looking forward to: