FROST Extremities of Survival Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

Hypothermia is a medical emergency when your body loses heat faster than it can produce it. As your body temperature drops, your heart, brain, and internal organs cannot function. Without aggressive resuscitation and rapid rewarming, you will ultimately not survive. Hypothermia can begin in five minutes if exposed to cold temperatures.

Families can be complicated. Abby (Devanny Pinn) is driving to see her father Grant (Vernon Wells). She has not seen or spoken to Grant in five years. Abby is also pregnant. She arrives to his house high in the mountains and surrounded by an immense forest. They have dinner and the conversation is light and then turns into a strained, awkward conversation. 

Quite sometime ago the father and daughter lost the matriarch of the family in a horrendous and unexpected way. Grant self medicates with alcohol and has taken to a near hermit lifestyle, fishing and hunting to make ends meet. 

The next morning Grant is off to fish. He invites Abby along to relive the old days when they would embark on fishing excursions together. A set of innocuous small events leads to disaster. Grant requests that Abby leave her phone at the house. Abby asks her father to drive. Grant loses control of the car and crashes into the heavily forested mountainside.

A thriller operates on the astringent action continually rising. The film succeeds in creating viable moments of tension that is true to the world the film exists in. In the thriller genre there is always the next problem, then the next hardship and the next obstacle. The filmmakers have crafted a film where these elements are well executed. They have also handled the tone of the film very well. A movie like this can very quickly go into "eye-rolling" territory. Frost resonates and is highly effective because the film does not wavier in it's survival story timbre.

Devanny Pinn is outstanding in Frost. This is indeed her film. The audience is with her all the way as she navigates the crash scene and as she tries and survive the elements. A huge amount of praise must also be bestowed upon the special effects team of Frost. For this film to work the special effects must be incredibly and credibly constructed. They succeed and the film succeeds because of their hard work.

Frost is unrelenting as the story unfolds into extremities of survival. How intrinsically ingrained is the survival instinct in human beings? Few films have made me physically ill. I have seen many of the most intense horror films ever crafted. Frost made feel quite queasy. Frost took me to something I have never seen before. 

SMOKE AND MIRRORS: The Story of Tom Savini. First Look Trailer & Stills

Here is a first look at a new documentary about special effects artist Tom Savini. Special Makeup Effects legend, Actor, Director, Stuntman. Tom Savini has redefined the horror genre with his arsenal on talents. But who is the man behind the "King of Splatter?"

From his his childhood in Pittsburgh, PA; to his tour of duty during Vietnam, to his beginnings with George A. Romero and beyond. SMOKE AND MIRRORS is the defining documentary on the life and career of horror icon Tom Savini.

Featuring Tom Savini, Danny McBride, Robert Rodriguez, Danny Trejo, Alice Cooper, Greg Nicotero, Tom Atkins, Corey Feldman, Doug Bradley, Bill Moseley, and more!

From Wild Eye Releasing, director Jason Baker's SMOKE AND MIRRORS on Digital October 19. Here is the official trailer:

TIFF 2022 LEONOR WILL NEVER DIE Ang Pagbabalik ng Kwago: Mabuhay ang Sinehan!

 Leonor Will Never Die closed at the 2022 Midnight Madness program at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was a film I did not know anything about which is one of the great aspects of a film festival. You take a seat, the lights dim and go on an unexpected and unknown ride. And what a ride Leonor Will Never Die is. The film is written and directed by Martika Ramirez Escobar.

The title character is Leonor Reyes.  She was a successful screen writer. Shelia Francisco brings Leonor to life with great pathos and passion befitting an aging writer. The screenwriter's days are spent slipping in and out of reverie. She has a fondness for action movies and watches them as much as she can. She also forgets to pay the electricity bill. 

A freak accident sends Leonor to the hospital. The doctor explains her Leonor's condition to Leonor's son Rudie, "Rudie, you see, sometimes, we are awake, other times, asleep. But sometimes, you can be between both. That is called conscious sleep or hypnagogia. That's is the state your mother is now. Right now we don't know how to wake her up, or if she will wake at all. At least we're sure she's alive." Rudie, "How do we wake her up?" The Doctor responds, "You can't wake up someone who is not asleep." It is so with this story as well. A theme of the film is lines. The line between reality and fantasy, life and afterlife, sleep and awake.

The art form of cinema can really deliver on straddling the fictionalized "real world" of the movie and slide effortlessly into a fantasy world the characters of the film drift into. I have always gravitated to films that are movies within movies, mise en aybme. Anguish, Adaptadtion, Videodrome come to mind. This is something seen a lot in horror movies or drama. To see reality and fantasy blend so well in the context of action film was magnificent. Scenes that are exceptionally strong in Leonor Will Never Die are where the reality of the story run into the fantasy action film that Leonor is engaging with. The movie is also a love letter to Filipino action movies from years gone by.

I especially love the scenes of creating the screenplay for the movie within the movie. Ang Pagbabalik Ng Kwago. The Return of Kwago. Depicting writing in a movie is not an easy feat to pull off. Martika's imagination and innovation soar as the film revels in the act of writing A scene where Leonor is simultaneously typing and acting out what is she writing is a sheer joy.

Step back, this where another fight scene happens.

A film is created by a great many folks, I want to also acknowledge the editor Lawrence S. Ang. Pulling together a film that moves within it's own fantasy and reality takes a keen talent to succeed. The look of the reality and the action sequences created by cinematographer Carlos Mauricio are also wonderful.

There is something to be said or in this case, to be written about what the film watcher brings to watching a movie. I watched the film on what is my mother's first birthday after her passing in March. Watching this movie on this day, there was a lot that hit me a lot more as I engaged with the film. Leonor Will Never Die is a film that addresses grief. The movie celebrates the joy and healing in the act of artistic creation. It is also a testament to strong material. Good screenplays never age.Mabuhay ang Sinehan!

After watching Leonor you have to ask yourself why are we not seeing more grandmothers kicking ass in cinema. Ending a story can sometimes prove difficult. Getting a great ending though is uplifting. Leonor Will Never Die, what a great ending to Midnight Madness 2022.

. The screenwriter's days are spent slipping in and out of reverie. She has a fondness for action movies and watches them as much as she can. She also forgets to pay the electricity bill. 

A freak accident sends Leonor to the hospital. The doctor explains her Leonor's condition to Rudie, "Rudie, you see, sometimes, we are awake, other times, asleep. But sometimes, you can be between both. That is called conscious sleep or hypnagogia. That's is the state your mother is now. Right now we don't know how to wake her up, or if she will wake at all. At least we're sure she's alive." Rudie, "How do we wake her up?" The Doctor responds, "You can't wake up someone who is not asleep." It is so with this story as well. A theme of the film is lines. The line between reality and fantasy. Life and afterlife. Sleep and awake.

The art form of cinema can really deliver on straddling the fictionalized "real world" of the movie and slide effortlessly into a fantasy world the characters of the film drift into. I have always gravitated to films that are movies within movies, mise en aybme. Anguish, Adaptadtion, eXistenZ come to mind. Scenes that are exceptionally strong in Leonor Will Never Die are where the reality of the story run into the fantasy action film that Leonor is engaging with. The movie is also a love letter to Filipino action movies from years gone by.

I especially love the scenes of creating the screenplay for the movie within the movie. Ang Pagbabalik Ng Kwago. The Return of Kwago. Depicting writing in a movie is not an easy feat to pull off. Martika's imagination and innovation soar as the film revels in the act of writing A scene where Leonor is simultaneously typing and acting out what is she writing is a sheer joy.

Step back, this where another fight scene happens.

A film is created by a great many folks, I want to also acknowledge the editor Lawrence S. Ang. Pulling together a film that moves within it's own fantasy and reality takes a keen talent to succeed. The look of the reality and the action sequences created by cinematographer Carlos Mauricio are also wonderful.

There is something to be said or in this case, to be written about what the film watcher brings to watching a movie. I watched the film on what is my mother's first birthday after her passing in March. Watching this movie on this day, there was a lot that hit me a lot more as I engaged with the film. Leonor Will Never Die is a film that addresses grief. The movie celebrates the joy and healing in the act of artistic creation. It is also a testament to strong material. Good screenplays never age. Mabuhay ang Sinehan!

Ending a story can sometimes prove difficult. Getting a great ending though is uplifting. Leonor Will Never Die, what a great ending to Midnight Madness 2022.

TIFF 2022: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

"War is hell." This a statement that has been attributed to General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman a Union General in America's civil war, this counties bloodiest war to date. War is indeed hell. Since the beginning of cinema there has been the war film. An entire genre of movie that has striven to convey General Sherman's sentiments.

Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front is third film bearing the title of Erich Maria Remarque's novel, Im Westen nichts Neuces. There was the original 1930 film directed by Lewis Milestone which sees Lew Ayres play Paul. The 1979 TV movie directed by Delbert Mann that has Richard Thomas play the lead character of Paul. 

Edward Berger has said that in regards to the previous cinematic iterations of All Quiet he just ignored them but was very aware of the historic presence of Lewis Milestone's milestone film. "I ignored it. Ascribe to the idiocy, maybe. We just went for it. While writing it and story-boarding it, I sometimes thought, "What the hell did I do this?" What big shoes to fill." Going into Berger's iteration the 1930s film indeed is on ones mind entering the theater. 

Sitting down to write about this film or any well made war-film, it is helpful to have the thesaurus handy. Harrowing, brutal, barbarous, inhuman, harsh, callous, merciless, atrocious, inhumane, horror, senseless are words to have at the ready.  

The film opens on a beautiful mountain surrounded by forest. The sun is rising. A fox and her kits huddle together for warmth. It is quiet. Looking upwards through the forest to the sky. Looking downward to a snow covered ground that is strewn with dead soldiers. Gunshots are fired intermittently. Blood from the dead are flung upwards. The camera movies into the trenches, through the barbed wire. Running through fields, no man's land through gunshots and explosions. Mud and dirt covered soldiers. War is hell.

Following the efforts and journey of recycling and reusing bloody uniforms taken from dead soldiers. The washing of the clothes in a giant bloody, soapy tub to stitching the fabric back together in a room full of women working on sewing machines. The machine of war continues waiting for new recruits to get ground up and minced by bullets and bombs. There they are. As a German leader says, "Not children but soldiers" but they are baby faced children. They are laughing and excited, the folly of youth, more gristle for the machine.

The great ominous music composed by Volker Bertelman belies where this story is going. The audience knows where this story is going. The German children now recruited soldiers are still excited unbeknownst to them where their stories are going. James Friend and his team do an exquisite job making the brutal, beautiful. That is the thing with the war film. So many times great film making technique is employed to hammer home the war is hell motif. The better the technique the more a film can unwittingly glorify war. Of course with the iconic title the novel and previous iterations are very much a part of this films talking points. However it is Elem Kilmov's Come and See that I for one was thinking about more as I watched Berger's film. There is also the other recent cinematic look at WWI through the direction of Sam Mendes and the non-stop camera of Roger Deakins.

Of course All Quiet on the Western Front is harrowing, brutal, barbarous, inhuman, harsh, callous, merciless, atrocious, inhumane, horror, senseless. It is an extremely well made film. How many times can one watch a well made film about war. Is the message not clear by now. 

Paul the lead character in the film has no real backstory. He is just another mud caked, blood splattered face that ages over the runtime of the film. We see the grisly details other war films do not focus on. The film succeeds in the details. A close up of shell cases rattling around the wooden bed of a military truck. A soldier's boots swinging off the back.  The landscape shots are breathtaking. The reusing of bloody uniforms. Paul rolling over dead soldiers and pulling off their dog tags. Recognizing one of his friends. The distant camera. The sad, melodic music. The endless horror surrounded by natural beauty.It is difficult to have an audience feel the cold of winter. This film achieves that. 

As Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl, Inglorious Basterds) the head of the German delegation is racing towards armistice and proposing a ceasefire during negotiations with the French the men we have followed from the beginning of the film have just arrived in the trenches of the front line. A General knows that the war is ending and refuses to give up any ground to the French. The French hold out a pen to sign the armistice agreement. A body lies in a pool of mud. Another body on barbed wire. The soldiers continue to run towards gunfire. The film is also about class. We see soldiers dying in grisly, brutal ways. Others are barely surviving. The higher up military people are dining in grand dining rooms, eating finely prepared meals, traveling in luxury on trains.

As Edward Berger noted, "Unfortunately this type of movie is always relevant." and as I said during my write up about Causeway, the cost we expect each generation sent to war to pay is far too great and the burden they carry far too heavy. Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front is this generation's All Quiet. The Netflix version. In twenty years there will be another version and in that, there lies the tragedy. 

TIFF 2022 THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER: A Reflection by Robert Aaron Mitchell

"Based on a True Story." With these words so begins The Greatest Beer Run Ever. It is 1967 and the film begins in Inwood, New York City. A neighborhood in northern Manhattan. With beer, lots of beer, pitchers of beer! Chickie Donohue (Zac Efron) sometimes cheapskate, sometimes merchant sailor is buying the rounds tonight. He stills lives at home with hos parents and is not really do a whole lot with his life.

The Vietnam war is raging and so are the tensions in the country and around the Donohue breakfast table. The brutal images of war are on TVs at the local bar. A debate is going on with The Colonel, the bartender (Bill Murray) and Chick and his buddies about the war being shown on television. Regardless young men are being killed and returning home in caskets. Protests are gong on, "LBJ how many kids did you kill today?" An argument ensues about the nature of protest being against the troops and the counter argument that it is honoring the soldiers by demanding they be sent home. The country, Inwood is divided.

Like a lot of insane ideas the crux of this story beings in a bar. The Colonel casually throws out the wish to just going over to Nam and bring the boys from the neighborhood as a gesture to just say thanks. Chick has a revelation, he can do that. Sign up for a ship that is going to Vietnam and jump off and bring the boys some brews. There is definitely a lot guilt and inadequacy of not serving in the war going on in Chick's mind. 

Chick heads to the shipping office and through fate or dumb luck there is a ship heading out in Vietnam in three hours that actually needs an oilier. Now that he is on the ship there is the matter of getting off the ship. A story is concocted and it works. He now has three days to get off the ship, head into a war zone and find his buddies. Beer from New York acts as currency. 

Now that Chickie is in country and has met up with his first buddy now he has to figure out how to navigate a war zone. He figures he'll just hitchhike to meet up with the other Inwood boys. He heads over to the hotel where all the press are. They of course find his story and ambitions, "an idiotic but noble gesture." Left with no other recourse he takes to the streets of Saigon and sticks his thumb out. A military truck picks him up. He heads to a base and tries to hop on a plane. Chick somehow gets on a plane when the Captain exclaims, "It's one of you guys." Things start weirdly falling into place. The military personal believe he is someone who it is indeed not. The funny thing is Chick just straight up tells the truth. 

Everywhere Chick goes there are dead American boys being moved. The further North he heads the further embroiled in the actual war he becomes. Chick sees more brutality as his journey continues and his ideas to get back to Saigon and the ship are increasingly dangerous. He learns first hand how scary, intense and absurd war is.

This fictional film follows the book by Chick Donhue and J.T. Molly and the short documentary by Andrew Muscato. This film is directed by Peter Farrelly (Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber). I appreciate that the soundtrack of this Vietnam movie was not steeped in the soundtracks of the others that have preceded it. It is also great that Efron is going against a movie star type playing Chickie, a regular schmo in the midst of a very stupid idea. The Farrelly name is so ingrained in a collective imaginations as being associated with over the top dumb comedies. The Greatest Beer Run Ever is not playing for easy laughs even though the true life story could have seen an adaptation easily turned into a farce. The film exceeds in showing how everyone was struggling with the war. The boys in Vietnam, the friends and family back home. There are a lot of strong visual montages in the movie.

One of the strongest scenes in the film is when Chick and reporter Arthur Coates (Russell Crowe) are having a conversation - over a few beers - about the effect of the war on everyone. Chick believes it's the truth and the never-ending "bad" stories that affecting everyone. Coates points out that it isn't the truth that is hurting America, it's the lies. The first causality of war is the truth. This scene leads to a great sequence. When the bullets start flying, war is indiscriminate in it's terror. 

Chickie's three day Vietnam sojourn turned into eight weeks. The amount of resources that Chick goes through for his "idiotic yet noble mission" is straight up crazy. It is also indicative of the larger war he somehow is miraculously is moving through shows how truly idiotic the American involvement in Vietnam truly was. War is scary, intense and absurd. He also learns that it is a lot easier to get into a war than it is to get out of a war. Chick brought beer to the boys over there, he brought pack a perspective and truth to the boys in Inwood.

TIFF 2022 V/H/S/99 A Reflection by Robert Aaron Mitchell

V/H/S/99 a reflection by Robert Aaron Mitchell

The year 1999 has been on my mind a lot recently. I watched Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage and began thinking of the year that was. Culturally turbulent. I remember quite distinctly the buildup, panic and fear surrounding Y2K. The paranoia was very real that computers would not recognize the year 2000 and thereby crash the entire system. Banks where running out of cash. Grocery stores were running out food.

1999 was actually pretty chaotic beyond the millennium scare. It was a year that saw riots at the WTO Seattle of what became known as the battle for Seattle. On June 1st Napster was launched completely changing how we consume culture and entertainment. The Columbine school shooting tragedy occurred. As previously mentioned, Woodstock 99 concert took place. A corporate music festival billed as an anti-commercial love fest which turned into a nightmare, as riots, fires and numerous sexual assaults happened. If you were a teenager in 1999 it was also a time of restless energy, pranks, skateboarding and nights wandering around Blockbuster looking for a videotape to rent.

This bring me to V/H/S/99. Alongside the sequel, the found footage concept is another staple of the horror genre, the anthology film. Creepshow (1980) Southbound (2015) XX (2017) Trilogy of Terror (1975), The ABCs of Death. The V/H/S movies combine found footage as well as the anthology structure. V/H/S/99 premiered at the 2022 Midnight Madness program. The fifth film in the series. I have always had a fondness for VHS tapes and camcorders. I spent the 1990s making ninja fight scenes with my friends. Graduating to more complex gangster and art house movies shot around my hometown. There was indeed a thrill to put in a blank tape with nothing written on the label to see what was on the videotape.

A staple to the structure of the anthology film is the wraparound story. In the case of V/H/S/99 it is less a story than something that begins the VHS tape and is then buried under many other recordings and resurfaces in the midst of tracking lines and static. It is highly imaginative and funny as hell. Little green army men in a stop motion movie with great voice overs. These army men segments are the work of Tyler MacIntyre who also directed a longer segment in the film. Which reminds me in the backyard of a townhouse in Mississauga, Ontario near the Meadowvale Mall are several G.I. Joes I buried alive that never made it back to the base. I have been meaning for quite sometime to return to that townhouse on a mission of archeological importance.

The tape goes through infomercials, BMX stunts, more static, "The Video Journal of Neurosurgery"...and settles into something quite akin to my 1999 experience, videotaping skateboarding at the local skate park and a garage band. This segment is Shredding written and directed by Maggie Levin. Way before YouTube and TikTok the original "content creators" were 90s kids running around with LP videotapes as is the case with this group of friends in a band. Local legend has it that a band called Bitch Cat played a show to very catastrophic results. The kids are going to the place where the show happened to see what they can find. Perhaps some new gear for their band and most definitely some more stuff for them to shoot on their camcorder. The fun of this segment is watching and vibing the transition of kids mugging for the camera, juvenile hi-jinks to suspense and horror in a very quick amount of time.

The unique pressures of conformity when heading to university. It leads some to take on great risks so that the next four years of their life are filled with friends, parties and maybe find a boyfriend or girlfriend. The tape settles on what is Suicide Bid written and directed by Johannes Roberts. Lily has found a sorority that she has fallen in love with and wishes to pledge to. She is so taken with the sorority and afraid of spending her university days alone that she decides to pledge only to them which means that if she doesn't get in, that's it, no sorority, social suicide aka the suicide bid. She meets up with girls form the sorority in a graveyard where she will be placed in a coffin and buried alive. There are safe guards in place. The lengths someone will go to become popular are indeed downright scary.

Ah, the Nickelodeon kids game shows of the 1990s. Competition is fierce and broadcast across the nation. You could lose and be humiliated  on national television It could very well be a nightmare scenario. Losing far more than the competition is where Ozzy's Dungeon directed by Flying Lotus and written by Zoe Cooper and Flying Lotus takes us. The lengths that a Mom will go to right the wrongs for their children is at the heart of this segment. It is also a segment that asks the question, "What would you do for a Sega Dreamcast?"

Another great aspect of the 1990s was the prank. It could be done in person, at a sleepover. For my friends and I, our favorite was the prank was the telephone call. Today's kids will never know the simple pleasure of being complete dickheads and phoning complete strangers in the middle of the night. 

It turns out the little green army men were being filmed by Brady the little brother of Dylan the protagonist of The Gawkers written by Chris Lee Hill and Tyler MacIntyre. Directed by Tyler MacIntyre. The big brother promptly snatches the camcorder back from Brady and begins filming himself flexing in the mirror and prank after prank with his buddies. The extremely hormonal teenagers then focus their camcorder lens on Sandra the girl next door. Turns out that Brady while being a genius stop-motion storyteller also has mad computer skills. Once again we see someone sellout morals for the sake of acceptance. 

The tape of V/H/S/99 winds up in a logical place, New Years Eve 1999. All those fears of the Y2K bug and the new millennium take a back seat in Joseph and Vanessa Winters' To Hell and Back. A group of documentary filmmakers are shooting a documentary with a bunch of people anticipating what the last night of 1999 will bring. "You're in for one hell of a trip" one of the people say to the camera. We can all hope to run into Mabel if our journeys do not take us exactly where we thought we might go. Great creature effects and humor close out the anthology on high note.

The fun of V/H/S/99 are the stories within stories that propel the characters forward in their segments. A doomed band, a tale of a sorority pledge gone horribly array, a horrific appearance on a kids game show. Another completely engrossing and entertaining aspect of the film is being propelled by the imaginations of the storytellers as they take their segments to places you had no idea where they were going to wind up. Watching the filmmakers play within the context of VHS camcorder is also one of the great aspects of the V/H/S anthology films. The end credits arrive with Danzig's "Long Way Back from Hell" blasting. Pitch perfect. 1999 what a fucking year. Don't be a dweeb, rewind the tape for the next person who finds this tape.

 

TIFF 2022 THE PEOPLE'S JOKER

 

The People's Joker in a first for the Midnight Madness program screened once at it's world premiere and was hit with a cease and desist order from Warner Brothers. Filmmaker Vera Drew is positive the film will be seen again. As I learn more I will share the details.