Hello friends and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. As I continue to review the highlights of the summer season (I’m currently halfway through the new Ghost in the Shell), the story of the week has undoubtedly been Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave. The scale of the game is frankly a little intimidating; My housemate and I are following different starting routes, and the profound differences between them are already giving us clues as to what game we’re really dealing with here. Nonetheless, I quite enjoy the game’s mix of high fantasy, strategy, and world exploration, and even if the game doesn’t quite match Three Houses’ level of character writing, I’ve still become pretty attached to my team of sewer-scavenging weirdos. I’ll let you know how I feel after devoting another ungodly amount of hours to the experience, but for now, let’s review the week in review!
The first thing this week was The twilight zone: the moviean ’83 adaptation of Rod Serling’s original series. This film tones down the contemplative, tongue-in-cheek tone of the original series and elevates the spectacle, matching the Twilight Zone’s general conceit with the talents of its formidable guest directors. The film runs through four consecutive episode concepts adapted from previous Twilight Zone episodes, directed by John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante and George Miller.
As you might guess from that director’s summary, this film is less interested in capturing the precise style of Serling’s original series than in seeing major horror directors repaint that series in their own colors. The results are, as expected, somewhat uneven. Landis’ segment is largely a failure, about a racist American who gets what he deserves by being transported to Nazi Germany as a Jew, a Klan lynching as a black man, and also the Vietnam War (the supposed irony of this third party is a bit shaky). It’s a fair enough revenge fantasy, but it’s certainly not one of the original show’s strongest concepts, and Landis doesn’t do much to elevate it.
The second segment is pure cloying nostalgia, a tone Spielberg knows well. The story is about a group of nursing home tenants who are given a second chance at childhood and discover that their old bodies may not be so bad after all. This segment is a long walk to a very simple point, noteworthy only for the excellent melancholic sting of its conclusion, the only moment in which Spielberg rises above the maudlin to evoke genuine poignancy.
The second half of the film is much better than the first, largely because the stories it adapts are inherently stronger and also better suited to the goals of this film. Dante manages to adapt “It is a Good Life,” which is one of my all-time favorite short stories, about a boy whose desires immediately manifest into reality. It obviously can’t match the creeping terror of the original prose, but the story lends itself well to Dante’s sideshow-style specialties, and the adaptation feels like a mix of the original short story and Beetlejuice.
Miller directs the final segment, an adaptation of the iconic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” The narrative paucity of the original story worries Miller little; To provide his story, he turns the entire cabin against our cautious protagonist, building up the pressure before we even see the thing on the wing. It’s classic Miller and a great conclusion to an uneven but ultimately satisfying collection of not-quite Twilight Zone tales.
Our next viewings were a pair of Roger Corman films, which we pulled from the dark depths of Tubi to form an unintentionally synchronous double feature. The two films were ’82. forbidden world and its remake from 91 dead spacewhich are essentially low-budget pastiches of Star Wars and Alien. From Alien, they take the general plot: a rapidly mutating life form begins to eat its way through a scientists’ laboratory. From Star Wars, they take their protagonist: a space cowboy with a robot companion who is not Han Solo at all, but who nevertheless embodies each and every one of Han Solo’s gestures.
Neither film is anywhere near essential or really “good,” but both are interesting in their own way. The former actually has better set design and practical effects, largely due to the presence of up-and-coming set designer James Cameron, who would direct Aliens just four years later. It also embodies all of Corman’s lowly ’80s-era graces, which means there’s plenty of inexplicable nudity, as well as a cast that mixes past leads with anyone willing to engage in the aforementioned nudity. On the other hand, dead space features a more convincing Han Solo, as well as Bryan Cranston, who, as expected, gives a better-than-necessary performance as the lead scientist. In the balance,
I have to give the award to Forbidden World: it steals less blatantly and embraces its own B-movie appeal more blatantly, serving as an excellent showcase for Corman’s ’80s work.
Then we checked out. Virala 2016 horror film centered on a pair of sisters whose family recently moved to a California suburb. Worries about making new friends or parenting drama are quickly forgotten in the face of a more pressing problem: a strange infection running rampant in their community, turning anyone who contracts it into a violent, zombie-like carrier. Isolated in their home by military confinement, the sisters will have to fight to survive this new and terrifying threat.
Viral is not a particularly compelling film in most respects; its threat is fleshed out, its stars aren’t particularly compelling (it’s a movie that cares so little about performances that it’s willing to hire Machine Gun Kelly), and there are basically no distinctive, memorable horror scenes. what is the movie did The offering was a strangely nostalgic portrait of pre-pandemic social assumptions, before the germ theory of science was politicized by our current crop of rising reactionary cretins. I guess it’s not a great sign that a movie about an apocalyptic virus makes me long for a version of humanity that would show similar caution in the face of such an existential threat; Unfortunately, it turns out that a good part of humanity is as stupid as it is evil.
The last thing of the week was The Thief of Baghdada 1940 adventure film starring Sabu Dastagir as the titular thief Abu, John Justin as the young King Ahmad, and Conrad Veidt as the sinister vizier Jafar. After being tricked and imprisoned by Jafar, Ahmad joins forces with Abu and flees to the kingdom of Basra. Although Ahmad quickly falls in love with the princess of Basra, his toy-obsessed father ends up shaking hands with Jafar, leading to a whirlwind of adventures involving transformations, genies, magic carpets, and more.
The Thief of Bagdad is basically a perfect adventure film, an ideal fusion of Arabian Nights-based fantasy and fundamentally excellent filmmaking. The script is efficient and lively, the direction is stylish and energetic (The Archers’ incomparable Michael Powell co-directs), and all the stars immerse themselves in their roles, delivering a glorious hundred minutes of fantasy adventure marked by constant invention and Sinbad-style glee. It’s no surprise that the Disney version stole everything humanly possible from this film; This movie is already perfect, there’s not much you can do to make it better.
