Session 9 (2001)

Tagline: Fear is a place.

Curiosity: My friends reference this four-second clip a lot:



Plot: Gordon (Peter Mullan, Children of Men, Trainspotting) runs an asbestos crew. His company badly needs money and takes on a difficult job refurbishing an old asylum. While Gordon nearly goes insane trying to get work done and reconnect with his estranged wife, the rest of the team keeps things going.

Then shit starts to get real. Hank (Josh Lucas) disappears after trying to steal a large sum of cash he found hidden in the hospital. Gordon’s behavior becomes more and more erratic. Intercut between these scenes are audio tapes fellow worker Mike (Steven Gevedon) finds from therapy sessions with Marry Hobbes (Jurian Hughes), a woman with multiple personality disorder, leading up to the frightening, terrifying, downright unpleasant Session 9 (!!!).

Thoughts: Taken overall, Session 9 is a gripping psychological thriller. I mean that in the strictest sense too. The plot involves some pretty grisly bits, but writer/director Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Transsiberian) handles everything tastefully, leaving a lot of scares to dialogue and imagination. Mullan and David Caruso are game for all sorts of creepy activities, as is the rest of the cast. The problem lies in the script.

Session 9 is pretty good, but it’s not perfect. The dialogue is ho-hum, occasionally spelling out things too much. There are a couple of instances where foreshadowing dialogue is too on-the-nose. Other exchanges are just artless. I think Anderson could have trimmed a couple of seconds here and there, excising maybe as much as 10 minutes of film from the 102-minute running time. Three-quarters of the way through, the movie hits a wall where the viewer will have figured out two possible endings, and it spins around for a bit needlessly before finally delivering the outcome. The Session 9 segments that give the film its title are more compelling in this regard; they’re free of excess but full of mounting dread.

But it’s still worth it just to watch Caruso act.

Reflection: Hey… FUCK YOU.

From Beyond (1986)

Tagline: Humans are such easy prey.

Curiosity: Scott promised me gore, Jeffrey Combs, and Ken Foree from the original Dawn of the Dead.

Plot: Dr. Tillinghast (Combs) and Dr. Pretorius (Ted Sorel) are working on a machine called the Resonator. It’s meant to stimulate the pineal gland and, in doing so, grant the ability to see beyond our dimension (and, uh, give you scary sex cravings). It works a little too well, though, as it opens a portal to another dimension which, given that is based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, is a bad thing. Dr. Pretorious gets his head bitten off, and it’s up to Dr. McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) and Detective Bubba Brownlee (Foree) to figure out how the heck that happened. Sexual hijinks abounds.

Thoughts: Lovecraft’s work is notorious hard to adapt for movies and television, so I was surprised to find out From Beyond came out 24 years ago. While it was a flop at the time of its release, the movie successfully nails Lovecraft’s tone (sort of) while delivering a digestible story and gore galore. The ’80s were a good time for creature features, and while Beyond isn’t exactly The Thing, the film’s effects and puppetry create a horrifying/awesome alternate reality. If this movie was made today, it would be stuffed with CGI and look terrible. Instead, it’s a technical buffet supplemented by great performances. Foree is slightly wasted, but he still gets in some bits. Combs and Crampton take turns being sexual and psychic freaks, driving the plot along. Sorel’s character comes back in the movie as the antagonist (um, spoiler, I guess?), and he’s got-damn creepy. So, mission accomplished.

From Beyond also works well because it doesn’t delve too deeply into Lovecraftian lore. In short, there’s no Cthulu or Elder Gods. It hints at that stuff, but it doesn’t force it too much. Hardcore fans can nod in appreciation; newbies don’t have to do an obscene amount of homework to catchy up. The film is briskly paced at 85 minutes, so it doesn’t really have much time to explain much anyway. Here’s the Resonator. It totally opens portals and shit. Also it turns you into a sex fiend. Next scene, next scene, repeat, repeat. While the film occasionally jumps forward too quickly – Foree needs more dialogue, dammit! – it’s still a great horror flick overall.

Reflection: DO NOT WATCH THIS WITH YOUR PARENTS.

Tron (1982)

Tagline: A world inside the computer where man has never been. Never before now.

Curiosity: It’s the Matrix of the ’80s. Also I wanted to bone up before belated sequel Tron: Legacy drops.

Plot: Flynn (Jeff “The Dude” Bridges) is a computer programmer working on bringing down corporate hack Ed Dillinger (David Warner), who ripped off several video games he designed. Dillinger has since navigated his pirated material to the top of the corporate ladder, but Flynn’s buddy Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) suspects he’s up to something. Turns out Dillinger didn’t stop at stealing video games; his program Master Control has been stealing bits of data from all over, and is preparing to invade the White House. Flynn, Alan, and Alan’s girlfriend/scientist buddy Lora (Cindy Morgan) attempt to find out the truth, but when Flynn gets too close, Master Control sucks him inside a computer.

Then things get trippy.

Thoughts: I think filmmakers took all the wrong lessons from Tron. It’s been heralded as a breakthrough in computer animation – which it is – but the film didn’t rely on any one trick to create its otherworldly look. In fact, there’s only about 15 minutes total of CGI in the film. The rest utilizes a combination of back lighting, set design, film scratching, and good ol’ fashioned acting to create the weirdly neon world inside a computer.

Even then, Tron isn’t a perfect film. The story tosses out a lot of sci-fi concepts that could support entire other films in order to get to its main idea: What if “The Dude” got sucked into a computer? Early on the film tosses out ideas like teleportation and sentient A.I. in order to explain its central plot, and it doesn’t really do that great of a job explaining, and therefore validating, those concepts. In fact, the script skips a few important steps in order to get Bridges inside the damn computer.

But while Tron’s first 30 minutes are rushed, the film eventually gives itself over to the computer world and starts turning out one eye-popping scene after the next. While the CGI is certainly primitive by today’s standards, it still fits the setting perfectly. Yeah, the movie sometimes bullshits its way through science-y stuff, but it’s fucking Tron.

Reflection: I’m a nerd.

The Kids in the Hall (1988-2010)

Tagline: I’m crushing your heads!

Curiosity: Five grown Canadian men tell weird jokes while wearing dresses.

Plot: While they began as a live comedy troupe, to those of us outside the Toronto area, the Kids in the Hall can be broken up into three sections: 1) a sketch show that ran for five seasons, 2) a dark comedy called Brain Candy, and 3) a recent mini-series called Death Comes to Town. All three are noted for a sense of humor that’s off the wall – its closest American counterpart would be Mr. Show – but not as crude. The group rarely goes for obvious gross out laughs, and even when they do, they twist them with a dark edge.

The most revered of the three is the original Kids in the Hall show. It ran for five seasons and built up a considerable audience in Canada and the U.S. I grew up on the show thanks to re-runs after school on Comedy Central, and finally got around to collecting all of the seasons on DVD. Overall, the show holds up. Each season peters out near the end, but I mean, c’mon, you try coming up with 20 episodes of sketch comedy. Despite some dated ’90s token references, the show holds up remarkably. If anything, it’s gotten better with age. Thanks to stuff like Adult Swim, Kids is no longer the weirdest thing on TV, but it walks such a fine line between crass and cute. Consider these two sketches starring cast member Bruce McCulloch:





They’re both funny, but for different, perhaps uncomfortable reasons. The show works because it throws so many different ideas out at once. Its closest companions would be Mr. Show and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but Kids also slips in more mainstream humor a la Saturday Night Live. For me, it’s kind of like a fulcrum for judging all other comedy. Everything else is either safer or more dangerous than the Kids, but few are as funny. Sure, it takes a while for the group to consistently hit big laughs – season three is when they really hit their stride, just like Mr. Show – but they get there. And as dependent as they were on recurring characters, the writers tried to find new situations for those old wells. If an idea stopped being funny, then it stopped getting used (Although I could have done with fewer Chicken Lady sketches, and even Buddy Cole got a little overused… Also, I never understood the appeal behind Terry and Jerry). Imagine if SNL applied that logic this season.

Speaking of SNL, it’s amazing how many cheap laughs Kids didn’t go for. In true Shakespearian fashion, the men dressed up as women, and while they occasionally kissed, it was rarely done for laughs. If these were SNL sketches, that alone would have been the premise. Same for gay characters. Kids posits gays as real people and then moves on to an actual scene. As stereotypical as Buddy got at times, his sketches still had jokes beyond “BUTTSEX HA HA.” Man, those Canadians are so levelheaded.

Five seasons was a good run for the show. While part of me wishes there was more, the show never dipped in quality. The same cannot be said for Brain Candy, the team’s ill-fated attempt at a motion picture. Brain Candy suffers from a lot of problems. Freed from censorship, the guys tried out some of their most offensive ideas yet, like Cancer Boy, whose source of humor comes from having fucking cancer. It didn’t help that the guys had script issues. Their arguments eventually got so bad that Dave Foley quit the Kids. If you go back and check the credits, his name is missing from the writers list, and he even gets knocked down to a “featuring” listing.

But Brain Candy is no longer the terrible coda to the Kids’ legacy. After a few successful tours, the guys got back into the TV game with Death Comes to Town, an eight-part murder/mystery with some of the group’s darkest humor yet. For a taste, my favorite joke revolves around Foley playing the kindly old town abortionist. While the series occasionally gets too bogged down in cartoonish behavior and plot to tell good jokes, Death is still a solid viewing experience. The Kids still got it.



Also, for the record, my favorite member is Kevin McDonald. He provides the best support and came up with some great characters (THE PIT OF ULTIMATE DARKNESS!). While his monologues weren’t as consistent as McCulloch’s or Scott Thompson’s, he still gave us the “I’m Buddy fucking Holly” sketch:



Reflection: The weirdest part about Death is admitting to myself that Dave Foley STILL looks hot in a dress.

Mystery Team (2010)

Tagline: No case too hard. No case too tough.

Curiosity: It’s a movie starring and co-written by Donald Glover, of Community and 30 Rock fame. Dude throws out brilliant one-liners like they’re spare change. AND it’s got some other familiar faces from NBC (Aubrey Plaza, Bobby Moynihan, Kevin Brown).

Plot: While they were once the top case crackers of the school yard, Jason (Glover), Duncan (DC Pierson), and Charlie (Dominic Dierkes) are now the laughingstocks of their high school. The Mystery Team is still reliant on the same bag of tricks from their childhood years when it comes to solving mysteries. And while they certainly know how to rescue a pie and stop fifth grade bullies, solving a double homicide is another matter.

Thoughts: I wanted Mystery Team to be so much better. No offense to the writing team behind Derrick Comedy, who created the movie, but I really wanted confirmation that Glover was the Next Big Thing in Comedy. Mystery Team, which he wrote and certainly carries, implies that he might need a few more years gestating. I get the impression his best lines were improvised, as the jokes pertaining to the plot – teens acting like Encyclopedia Brown in the real world! – fall flat. The movie ends up having a heavy Brady Bunch Movie vibe, where it basically just makes fun of squares. It’s a parody/homage to children’s mysteries – Brown, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew – but it struggles to make that idea fill a movie. Besides, Venture Bros. has been nailing this angle for years.

For a while, though, Mystery Team balances the title characters’ innocence/ridiculousness with the harsher tone of reality, and even gets a few laughs out of it. But eventually it runs out of jokes and settles for gross-out humor on par with an American Pie sequel. Glover still does great work on Community, but his scripts need work.

Reflection: Fuck. I should have rented this movie instead of buying it.

Daria (1997-2002)

Tagline: You’re standing on my neck.

Curiosity: It’s a show about an ostracized high school student that I watched when I was an ostracized high school student. I wonder how it’s held up now that I have to pay for my own health insurance…

Plot: Daria Morgendorffer (Tracy Grandstaff) is an intelligent, alienated high school student, one whose firm and idealistic moral stances often keep her from acting on anything in life. Well, that and the fact that most of the people at her school suck ass, besides her best friend Jane Lane (Wendy Hoopes). Armed with sarcasm and alternative outfits, Daria and Jane take on all the crap high school can offer, from flaky siblings to douchey students to insane parents and teachers.

Thoughts: I’m glad I sat through all five seasons and two movies of Daria, because overall it’s a show that still resonates with me. The show captures a lot of the alienation and terror I felt, and I’m sure plenty of other people would identify with it as well. It wasn’t until college that I started to feel comfortable with myself, and Daria captures a lot of the insecurities, misadventures, and stupid growing pains I experienced.

That being said, the first season is shit. Outside of introducing most of the main characters, it’s a terrible, worthless viewing experience, and pretty much every criticism leveled against the show – it’s nihilistic, it’s cruel towards men, it’s just plain terrible – is valid for the first 13 episodes. Daria comes off as a snarky, vapid bitch, ripping into those around her with little justification. She’s kind of a cunt. Even for a cartoon, the characters are a little too, well, cartoon-ish. That the characters come from such well-off economic backgrounds makes it even harder to care about them.

The second season is where the show starts to find itself, and it’s tied with the fourth season for my favorite. Season Two feels almost like a reaction against the criticisms of season one, as the characters become much more balanced. Each episode has a message, directly addressing a problem teens might face and letting them know they’re not alone. Sometimes it’s a little too much like an after-school special, but generally speaking Season Two is essential viewing for the young and disenfranchised.

Season Three recycles Two’s formula, but by that point the writers had run out of ideas for “teenage issues,” so by the fourth season, they moved on to a new topic: a season-long story arc about dating. Jane starts dating a boy named Tom Sloane (Russell Hankin), and the show delivers a lot of compelling drama as Daria goes from hating Tom for taking Jane away to secretly crushing all up on his goodies. Because let’s face it; being secretly in love with your best friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend makes up at least 40 percent of the high school experience.

The series culminates in its second film, Is It College Yet?. It’s basically a 75-minute ending to the show, and it beautifully wraps up a lot of stories while leaving plenty of room for a spin-off, should the writers have felt so inclined. They didn’t pursue that, though, which I give them credit for. Unlike The Simpsons or South Park, Daria ended at a perfect point, leaving behind a mostly solid set of episodes. I started the complete collection thinking I’d blown $40. By the last movie, I was sad there wasn’t more story to consume.

Reflection: I kind of prefer that the producers replaced most of the incidental music with nondescript alt-rock. I don’t want to know what MTV thought people like Daria and Jane would listen to, but that Korn poster in Trent’s bedroom makes me uneasy.

Daria - MTV Shows