Everything Old Is New Again
Vol. 33 - November, 20211
By Hunter Bush, Podcast Czar
It’s always a smidge bittersweet to put Halloween in the rear view each year. A sting that’s traditionally only soothed by the promise of the good food and large, familial gatherings usually highlighted within the back pages of the calendar. These are, as we’ve all become accustomed to saying, unprecedented times however and that might not be any more advisable this year than it was last year. I may be earning a reputation as a doomsayer and a scold, but I’m also proudly one of the ever-dwindling number of people who have not contracted any form or variant of covid *knocks wood*.
I know, I know; you’re not here to get beaten about the head and neck with my opinions on anything OTHER THAN movies, and I respect that. I just wanted to take one more moment to politely request that everyone please continue to behave as though we are still not out of the woods yet because, unfortunately, that IS the case. Be safe, wear a mask, get the vaccine if you haven’t - or a booster if you’re able - and use caution when considering large holiday gatherings.
Okay. There, I’m done. Let’s talk about movies! Here at Everything Old Is New Again, the focus is pre-existing IP (Intellectual Properties) and the movies or TV series based upon them. If it started out as a book, a song, a play, or even an older film or TV project, it’s EOINA material. I watch the available trailers and give my rundown of what I know of the project and the IP it’s based on, before finally describing my personal level of enthusiasm for it.
My hope is that my li’l column might expose you to some upcoming entertainment you weren’t aware of, or allow you to approach it with a slightly more enlightened view of its origins. Then down at the bottom, I’ll have a SPOTLIGHT for some older EOINA appropriate flicks that, though they’re not exactly new, still fully get my recommendation. Let’s get started!
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PREMIERS
Flicks and series coming to screens great and small this month
4th
Eternals (dir. Chloé Zhao)
Where: In theaters
Based on a series of Marvel comics that have been around forever but never quite hit the kind of popularity that some of their peers did, my recollection of the Eternals' whole deal is a little spotty. They’re a race not unlike humans except with fantastical super powers. Unlike the Marvel concept of “mutants” who get their powers from genetic mutation, the Eternals exist as the result of tampering from godlike beings from space called Celestials. I think. And iirc, they are known as “Eternals” because at some point they just stop aging and are immortal. These trailers look very pretty actually and the tone struck in them is nice; very grand. Like a Greek epic but with laser eyes and ropey CGI dragon monsters. Oh, the monsters are called Deviants and according to the copious narration here, they’re the reason the Eternals are here: because the Deviants pose a threat to us regular degular humans and those Celestials I mentioned before have charged the Eternals with protecting us. They’re not supposed to interfere with human events unless a Deviant is involved which handily explains why these super powerful, long-lived characters didn’t show up when the big grape-flavored Bruce Willis-looking Thanos showed up and annihilated half the population. Coincidentally however, the energy of all those souls being returned to existence is what has set …some vague threat in motion. A threat the Eternals have seven days to stop. Wow, now that I’m typing this out, these trailers have laid A LOT of road for audiences before we’ve even set foot (hypothetically) in theaters. My guess is that the overall message of the movie - as much as a Marvel movie is capable of having a message beyond “see the next one!” - will be about how we’re all connected. They’ll of course be talking about humans and Eternals, but I have a feeling that message may be applicable to normal humans just as well. It is honestly refreshing to see a Marvel movie with some kind of feeling of life in it - there are shots of Sprite (Lia McHugh) performing some kind of maybe play or magic show (?) and I’ve heard that Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) will be involved in a dance number (?!). I’d still like more color from these films, but director Chloé Zhao seems to, visually, be making the semi-monotonous palette work in her favor, giving the flick a sun-baked sword-and-sandals epic feel despite not really containing much by way of traditional sword-and-sandals tropes (at least, as far as I can tell). The heroes will still be fighting a lot of janky-looking CG villains and yadda-yadda-yadda; the usual MCU nonsense, but I’m hoping maybe this will feel …different? Still not going to a theater for it though.
7th
Dexter: New Blood (weekly series) (dir. Marcos Siega, others?)
Where: Showtime
Back in 2006 Showtime began a series based on Jeff Lindsay’s 2004 novel ‘ Darkly Dreaming Dexter ‘, about blood spatter analyst by day/vigilante serial killer by night Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) which ended after eight seasons with Dexter riding off on a small boat (maybe a raft?) into a raging storm at sea. This ten-episode miniseries picks up ten years after the events of that night, with Dexter living in Alaska. The trailer gets points for using Iggy Pop’s song ‘ The Passenger ‘ in it because that’s not only a great song but thematically references Dexter’s “dark passenger” (as he calls his urge to kill). Sadly it immediately loses these points by slowing the song down and generally giving it the “chopped and screwed” treatment to make it fit better with the weird musical fetishes of our times. Blerg. So, Dex is dating the town sheriff, a relationship that is great for dramatic irony and also allows him to be up to date on missing persons, giving him potential serial killers to continue to hunt - to satiate his “dark passenger” - and is generally a really good setup for a mini series! Smart stuff! It seems kids have started to go missing and Dex may be hallucinating his sister (Jennifer Carpenter) as a manifestation of his conscience. (SIDEBAR: Did she die in the original series? I don’t recall.) Anyway, the New Blood of the title refers to both Dex breaking his kill-fast but also to his son (Jack Alcott) showing up… in Alaska. My guess is: the kid is having his own “dark passenger” problems and needs daddy’s guidance (which is a nice thematic bookend for Dexter’s own life story, yadda yadda yadda). Also Clancy Brown is in this! So I will DEF be watching …if someone could let me borrow their Showtime login. Pretty please?
11th
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (dir. Jason Reitman)
Where: In theaters
The hotly anticipated sequel to 2016’s Ghostbusters, I find it very interesting that I’m not seeing hide nor hair of any of the original cast (played by Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Kristen Wiig - alphabetical by last name). This is actually a pretty smart tactic in my opinion, as I feel too many trailers reveal too much of the film! This could even just be footage taken from a cold open largely unrelated to the main plot! That’s exciting, isn’t it, to not know exactly what you’re going to get? I guess no one in Hollywoo thinks so because this is just one long nostalgia jerkoff session that ends with you wiping goopy Stay Puft residue off of your face. Seriously, “we” (and I use the term loosely) had a problem with women Ghostbusters but not kid Ghostbusters? Where are all the outraged fanboys asking how those kids can drive the Ecto-1 so well? The plot here seems to be that, I guess Egon (Harold Ramis, R.I.P.) moved to the midwest and had kids who had grandkids and now the grandkids have found all of his still-functional Ghostbuster stuff? And the town they live in is essentially a Hellmouth from Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a temple of I’m guessing Gozer the Gozerian (because not only do we get those big gargoyley dog-monsters here in less-impressive CGI than the original practical versionms, but also because why take a chance on inventing a new thing that people might not immediately recognize when you can recycle the old stuff back at them?) in a mineshaft under it. And of course the kids figure it out (with some help from Paul Rudd?) and have to save the day. I get that “everybody” (and I use the term loosely) loved Stranger Things but can we just, please try some new fucking ideas in Hollywoo? This A Pup Named Scooby-Doo version of Ghostbusters is an immediate turn off for me. I’m skipping it and watching the original 3 films instead.
12th
Home Sweet Home Alone (dir. Dan Mazer)
Where: Disney+
In 1990, director Chris Columbus and screenwriter John Hughes conspired on a concept so genius that it sounds silly: what if this home invasion film was a family comedy? It launched the career of Macaulay Culkin (he of Pizza Underground fame) and generally speaking, has more sequels than you remember. Well, throw one more on the pile as we generally rehash the plot of the original. It’s the holidays and everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off and in all the confusion and meshugas of packing they forgot to pack one of the kids (Archie Yates as Max)! On top of that, Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney have decided to break in for some reason (?) so Max has no other option (read: several other options) besides violent bodily harm. And you know what? I’m (largely) fine with it. They make a point of having mom (Aisling Bea) mention that the family had been split onto two flights which is a much better excuse for misplacing a kid than in the original which was …none? My biggest question is that Kemper & Delaney don’t seem to be capital-C “Criminals” so much as “regular people committing a criminal act for some unspecified reason”, which makes it a smidge harder for me to enjoy watching them get injured. Speaking of, the trailer shows almost no harm coming to Kemper, as I guess regardless of circumstances audiences are adverse to watching women get bodily harmed for the sake of comedy, which begs the question: why have a lady burglar at all? But I digress. It’s a little hard to tell from the trailer but the defenses better 1) be violent and 2) look brutal or else, really, what are we even doing here? I’m not champing at the bit for this one, but I won’t be mad if a roommate wants to watch it.
17th
Hit Monkey (series)
Where: Hulu
Another Marvel property, this time one I’m even less familiar with (though to be fair, it’s a lot more recent than Eternals), Hit Monkey is a hitman and a monkey and is apparently being guided by the ghost of a human hitman (Jason Sudekis) in a quest for vengeance! The tone of this falls somewhere between Archer and Venture Bros. for me, which is a good thing, and having a woman (Olivia Munn, I believe) saying things like “He’s one of the good guys” and “He’s going to save us all!” …about a monkey dressed like John Wick is pretty fun. My only issue was that the camera work in the trailer footage was really shaky, I guess going for that gritty handheld feel, but whoo boy was I getting carsick watching it. Maybe it’ll be better coming out of a TV a greater distance across the room from me, or maybe I’ll just end up skipping the whole thing but I’ll definitely be checking it out.
19th
Wheel of Time (series)
Where: Prime
Okay, so my knowledge of this property is pretty nebulous but as far as I know: The Wheel of Time is a high fantasy 14-book magnum opus begun by Robert Jordan and finished, after Jordan’s death, by Brandon Sanderson guided by Jordan’s copious notes. Despite my owning maybe eight of the books, I have read none (I bought them because other authors I like spoke highly of both Jordan and the series specifically). So, “high fantasy” means things like swords, sorcery, elves, and the like. I know the series has at least two of those, so… The footage here looks appropriately grand in scale and there are some very intriguing, unique visuals (the woman rising from the water with paint on it which stains her skin and armor?) that make me personally interested in seeing what it’s all about. I love worldbuilding and I can only presume that a series based on tens of thousands of pages of story will have lots of it, I just hope it’s interesting and handled well. The broad strokes plot seems to be about someone discovering they have a special power (known apparently by many names in different parts of the world) and being one of the many women who wield it to protect that world. Of course some vague “great battle” is coming - there are monstrous looking creatures on horseback, a creeping blackness, and some pale thing in a cloak with a mouth like a lamprey - and these women will have to stop it. The concept of the titular wheel of time is, I guess, that ages and civilizations come and go and, to quote Leonard Nimoy from that Simpson episode “the cosmic ballet goes on”, but there’s a moment in the trailer showing visual repetitions of wheels/circles/rings that I find very interesting. I’ll be checking this out for sure.
Cowboy Bebop (series)
Where: Netflix
24th
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (dir. Johannes Roberts)
Where: In theaters
The Resident Evil franchise began life as the genre-defining “survival horror” game of 1996 (known as Biohazard in its home country, Japan) which spawned at least seven video game sequels, comics, novels, animated series’, and notably a six-film live action film franchise lead by Mila Jovovich. Holy schnikes, y’all! This takes the goddamn cake for absolutely boneheaded music drops! Similar to the way they massacred my boy ‘ The Passenger ‘ in that Dexter trailer, there is a slower and slightly remixed version of, I kid you not, 4 Non Blondes’ ‘ What’s Going On? ‘ in this trailer! Hahaha…what?! I honestly absorbed very little of the trailer after that point. It’s all I can focus on! Like, imagine that meeting:
Executive: “That trailer needs a song in it. Something recognizable (but edited so as to be different), that’s what the youth demographic is into these days…”
Creative: “Oh okay, I’ll find something spooky. Something with the right vibe…”
Executive: “How about that “What’s Going On?” song from the ‘90s?”
Creative: “...”
Executive: “The one in that He-Man video everybody loved (about 2 decades ago)?”
Creative: “I …don’t think that …will work.”
Executive: “Well we don’t pay you to think.”
Creative: “In fact, that is EXACTLY what you pay me for.”
Executive: “Okay, so we’re in agreement.”
Creative: “What?”
And then maybe they kiss? That’s what happens in slash fiction, right? Kissing? ANYway: before all my senses fled my consciousness due to the cognitive dissonance of that song pared with that footage, it seemed like the play here was to make a prequel (it’s set in 1998) that, if this doesn’t spawn a franchise, could just as easily take place before the Mila Jovovich set of films, BUT if it DOES make bank and “demand” sequels, could just as easily go it’s own way. The plot seems to largely follow that of the 2nd Resident Evil game (which I believe is the most well-known, but don’t quote me on that) involving Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) arriving in the titular Raccoon City to investigate a contamination event involving the Umbrella megacorporation that has turned much of the populace into (essentially) zombies, as well as unleashing some other creatures, here rendered in absolutely horsecrap-level CGI. I will forget this movie is coming out by the time I finish this article, and will eventually stumble across it on some streaming platform down the road, watch it and think “That was …fine.”
Hawkeye (series)
Where: Disney+
SPOTLIGHT
Recommended flicks that, though not quite new releases, still meet EOINA criteria
1st
Moneyball (2011) (dir. Bennett Miller)
Where: Hulu
I, and I cannot stress this enough, have no interest in baseball. I live in a city that has won the occasional championship, and when that happens I’m happy for them and for all Philadelphians, but I’m not one to hop on a bandwagon. I also could not care less about statistics; not a stocks guy, not a gambler, nothing like that. Having said all of that, I legit l-o-v-e Moneyball. The performances are across the board fantastic, the direction is top notch, the cinematography (by Wally Pfister!) is (unsurprisingly) gorgeous, etc. Most of all, something about the rhythm of the film (editing by Christopher Tellefsen) is just hypnotic and relaxing, making it a movie I’d gladly sink into for an afternoon. No one is more surprised than myself that I love a movie about baseball statistics this much.
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And there you have it. All the news that’s fit to print, as they used to say. Lot of vigilantes. Lot of bad music. Lot of Marvel. I’m so tired.
If you’re not sick of my thoughts and opinions, you can find me on every episode of Hate Watch/Great Watch, which I regularly co host with Allison Yakulis (though she is on leave for the time being and our pal Tina Dillon has been filling in). In November we’ve got episodes coming up on Disney’s Jamaican bobsled Olympics dramedy Cool Runnings (1993) and the answering machine-centric made for TV thriller Lisa (1989). Both great episodes.
Support the MovieJawn Patreon for all sorts of cool stuff, with more coming all the time. Thank you as always for reading! Please drop a comment below or get in touch on social media - you can follow me on twitter, instagram, or letterboxd - about the column (or just to chat about movies). Please enjoy your holidays safely, for your benefit as well as everyone else’s. Talk soon.
Long Live the Movies!
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