My Top 10 Movies of 2017

10. War for the Planet of the Apes



This is the weakest of the new PotA trilogy, but the other two are so strong that War doesn't have to top them to be amazing. I love how the overarching story builds and explores the conflict between compassion and hate, with each entry looking at it from a different angle.

Rise sees compassion and hate mostly from the human point of view as different people have different feelings about the apes (and by metaphor, about anyone who's different from them). Dawn transfers the conflict to the apes as Caesar and Koba struggle with the proper response to humanity's abuse. But in War the conflict is within Caesar himself.

His ongoing battle with the human Colonel (Woody Harrelson) has led Caesar down a dark path and threatens the beliefs that he holds most dear. War handles this in a beautiful, emotional way and it's a great conclusion to what's easily my favorite science fiction trilogy of all time (at least until the current Star Wars trilogy is done... fingers crossed).

It's this low in the Top 10 only because of particular plot points that I don't care for, but that's about me, not the movie.

9. Wonder Woman



It's awesome. The first DCU movie that's about an actual super hero. I love that Wonder Woman goes on a character journey that is never about whether or not she's going act heroically. It's about her world view changing from simple and naive to complicated and mature. It shakes her to her core, and there's a Zac Snyder moment that made me worried about what she'd do, but she recovers quickly and gets back to the work of fighting evil. Just beautiful.

And I love that the movie is able to introduce her to the world as a fish-out-of-water without sacrificing her confidence. She's learning a new culture and there are funny moments that result, but she's never the butt of the joke.

I do want to point out one thing though that bugs me a little. Not about this movie as its own object, but what it reveals about the wider DC movie universe. In Batman v Superman, Wonder Woman has clearly been gone a long time. No one knows about her or remembers her. It's a major plot point that Batman figures out that she's not a brand new hero, but someone who was around a long time ago. And BvS implies that something happened when she was first here that sent her into hiding. She may or may not have fled back to Themyscira, but she certainly disappeared from the public eye. And that made me concerned - especially in the shadow of Man of Steel and BvS - that Wonder Woman was going to be another dark movie about how heroism is punished.

Watching Wonder Woman, I can still see that movie in there. Diana goes through the ringer. And I can imagine a Snyder-influenced ending where she gives up her mission and just goes home for 100 years. I am so glad that the folks in charge decided not to do that and instead had Diana stick around to keep working, but it does create a large discontinuity with BvS. Making a movie about a hero is a great course correction for the series, but it is a course correction and not a flawless one.

The real thing keeping Wonder Woman out of my Top 5 though is the Ares battle. It's not bad, but I have a hard time with the transition from David Thewlis to full-on, battle-mode Ares. That whole fight is too much CG splashed across the screen. It doesn't ruin the movie in any way, but it's a weakness in an otherwise flawless production.

8. It



I've never read the book or seen the original mini-series adaptation, so I have nothing negative to say about restructuring this first film to be just from the kids' point of view. It was an awesome move and created a movie very much in the vein of Stranger Things and all the '80s kids-on-bicycles movies it's an homage to.

The kid actors are all great and the characters are mostly all great. There are one or two who could be superfluous, but I'm not complaining. None of my favorites were cheated of any characterization because of the others.

It's an entertainingly scary movie. Not completely terrifying, but chilling enough. And I like how the human monsters (bullies and certain parents) are just as nerve-wracking and horrifying as any of the supernatural ones. In the end, the strategy for defeating both kinds of monsters is the same and I love that, too. Can't wait for the sequel.

7. Table 19



I wanted to see this because I like Anna Kendrick, Craig Robinson, and Lisa Kudrow and the trailer looked pretty funny. I generally like wedding comedies because weddings are pretty funny anyway, but I wasn't prepared for how funny and touching Table 19 is.

It's the Breakfast Club of wedding movies. The concept is that at every wedding there's a table of misfits whom no one really expected to come or knows what to do with. Kendrick is the ex-girlfriend of the bride's brother. Robinson and Kudrow are a married couple who have a business relationship with the bride's father. There's also a former nanny, the solo teen-aged son of some family friends, and a disgraced cousin.

But where I expected a revenge comedy about these misfits' taking over the wedding, Table 19 is interested in the characters as people. It discusses why they all decided to come in the first place, forces them to confront their status as outcasts, and lets them bond in a really beautiful way.

6. Spider-Man: Homecoming



Amazing. Spectacular. The ultimate. Web of, even.

I'm not going to call it my favorite Spider-Man movie, because there's some apples-and-oranges going on, but it's exactly the Spider-Man movie that I needed right now. No origin story and not even any universe-building. In fact, it's the opposite of universe-building, because the whole point is to explain why Spider-Man needs his own special corner of the MCU. And I love that the explanation is built on the phrase, "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man." It makes sense, it's what the character needs, and it's exactly where I want to see him go.

Also, what a great, funny, diverse cast of supporting characters. And Michael Keaton is brilliant. Best movie interpretation of a Spider-Man villain so far. And I'm not forgetting about Doctor Octopus.

5. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2



I liked it better than the first one. It's just as funny and visually interesting and the music is just as cool, but it has a more complex villain and some really great (and truly touching) development for Rocket, Yondu, and Nebula. Mantis is an awesome new character and my love for Dave Bautista is now fully stoked. Also, some excellent cameos that were genuine surprises.

4. The Last Jedi



The short version is that I love it. It's a Top Three Star Wars movie for me and I appreciate it more with each viewing. Five times as I'm writing this.

I'll give you the long version on an episode of Nerd Lunch next week, but feel free to discuss with me in the comments below if you want. This is a controversial one and I'm interested in talking it out.

3. A Cure for Wellness



Gore Verbinski's latest film is the best Hammer horror movie in 40 years. It's weird and gothic and so directly aimed at a particular audience that I understand why critics were largely down on it. But I'm fully in that intended audience.

It's about a young man (Dane DeHaan) who's sent by his company to retrieve their CEO from a Swiss wellness center that he's disappeared to. After being stonewalled by the spa's director (Jason Isaacs), DeHaan begins to suspect that something sinister is going on. Not just with his boss, but with all the patients and a young, not-quite-a-patient named Hannah (the impossibly awesomely named Mia Goth). I wouldn't dream of spoiling it for you, but it gets strange and lurid while still holding together as a story. The weirdness isn't for its own sake; it's part of a mystery that makes sense, even though it's wild and imaginative.

2. Hidden Figures



Hidden Figures is as powerful as everyone says. It's simultaneously uplifting and frustrating in exactly the ways that it's trying to be.

What's cool though is that it's also frustrating in some surprising ways. In addition to stories of casual, systemic racism (which are always more powerful to me than the overt, aggressive kind), the movie makes a rather depressing statement about what spurs the white characters towards progress. Since NASA is literally about reaching for the stars and making scientific progress, I guess I expected the movie to depict social progress as some kind of natural result of that.

That's very much not the case though and the film spends quite a bit of time reminding us that the '60s space race was a product of the Cold War. Whatever justice the main characters experience by the end isn't a product of compassion, but fear. It takes the common enemy of the Soviets to motivate the establishment and help it see the value of its non-white allies. Progress is made and that's why Hidden Figures is an encouraging story, but I like that the movie complicates, rather than romanticizes what sparks that change.

1. Kong: Skull Island



I love the 2014 Godzilla, but I also understand the complaint that the monster's not in it enough. I completely disagree, but I understand it. That's definitely not a problem with Kong: Skull Island though.

This isn't the familiar Kong story, but that's for the best since that story is well defined by now. It was time for something new and this is it. The island and its inhabitants (human and monsters alike) are all cool and the film spends plenty of time on them. More importantly, it also spends plenty of time on the invading characters so that I absolutely cared what happened to them, too. Even when I disliked what someone was doing, I totally understood why they were doing it.

It's a great companion piece to Godzilla and I cannot wait for the eventual showdown between the two monsters.

Why I Watch Under the Dome [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Damon Knight once reviewed a book thusly: "a plot that is kept in motion solely by the fact that everyone involved is an idiot." That very phrase could be applied to Under the Dome. Let's be honest right up front. Under the Dome is probably the stupidest show on TV. Any reasonable person would say - even science fiction and horror fans who have a much higher resistance to silliness - this show is garbage, let's watch something else. Despite this voice of reason in my head (and my wife's voice in my ears), I watch it anyway.

In Season One we had faith in Stephen King. We thought, okay this is strange but slowly we will get answers. At this point we thought, "King has a plan." We trusted him because he gave us so many great thrills in the past. And there was a book - which I haven't read - but perusing its pages I see familiar names and characters, even if they've been changed a bit. (Though I noticed the show was never sold as Stephen King's Under the Dome. Oddly, Steven Spielberg hasn't been very vocal about his involvement either. Hmm...) Still, 11.2 million viewers in Season One.

During Season Two, things begin to fall off the tracks. Stephen King writes and does a cameo in the opening episode and we hang on tight, hoping things will improve. (This episode was by far the best of the series. Even if the whole show falls into a smouldering pile of rubble, we will still have Season 2, Episode 1.) For example, characters start having things happen to them because, well, something has to happen this episode. My favorite of these MacGuffins is when Julia and Barbie crash in the ambulance and Julia gets a piece of rebar through her leg, then they re-enact a seen from James Cameron's The Abyss. Does it further the story of Chester's Mill? Not at all. Does it give Barbie a chance to be heroic, of course. But you know it's filler. Still 7.2 million viewers...

Worse yet, the woman who was shot twice in the chest and had rebar shoved through her leg will be up and running around Nancy Drew-style for the rest of the season. Each season is a week in the life of Chester's Mill and in Season Three (a week later), Julia's all better and the bandage over her jeans (that's all you need for a rebar puncture, I guess) is there, but it's on the wrong leg at one point and pretty much forgotten.

And that's when you realize what Under the Dome is. Like Lost before it, with its ever-shifting ideas, you see the truth. It's Varney the Vampire time. Under the Dome is a modern penny dreadful. (I'm not referring to the show Penny Dreadful, which is probably my favorite show this year. I have only the highest respect for John Logan.) I mean it is the television form of the old penny dreadfuls or penny bloods as they were known. These cheap serials were sold to the masses at a time when novels were very expensive. The average three part novel (The Mysteries of Udolpho, for example) was published in separate parts and sold largely to libraries. The wealthy or middle class didn't buy the books, but paid for a yearly subscription to mobile libraries. So if you had money, you only had to wait three times for the whole story. But if you were poor, you paid a penny a week and got the story a hundredth at a time. Or in the case of Varney, 220ths at a time. Anyone reading the story in this fashion could not be expected to remember all the details. And they certainly expected something to happen in each chapter.

The penny bloods offered up characters like Varney the Vampire by Thomas Preskett Prest (or James Malcolm Rymer, you decide) with 876 double-sided pages equalling 667,000 words. (To put that in perspective, that's the length of two GRR Martin Song of Fire and Ice books.) There was also Wagner the Wehr-Wolf by George WM Reynolds at over 211,000 words. This seems less impressive but Reynolds also wrote The Mysteries of London at a whopping two and half million words. Writing this kind of story required the author to add more and more incidents, dropping story lines, adding new characters. Sound familiar?

Despite having the ability to remember what happened in Episode 1, Under the Dome fans don't bother to recall certain details. Like the fact that Big Jim Renny has murdered a lot of people to keep his illegal gas business secret. That he converted to believing the Dome was heaven-sent and needed to be worshipped. That he got the egg outside the Dome. None of that matters. All you need to know in Season Three is he is one of the Good Guys, interfering with the alien-possessed Kinship, led by Marg Helgenberger's character, Christine. (Helgenberger should be familiar with King-style alien takeovers, because she was in the miniseries of The Tommyknockers in 1993.) Can't keep up? It doesn't matter, because something else will happen this week. An apocalypse may wipe out the world outside the dome. Or not, depending on which week you watch. By next season (if God help us there is a Season Four!) it will al be co-opted by a new explanation.

And that's why I watch Under the Dome. I may be one of the dwindling numbers, (down twenty percent from last week's episode), but I watch to see how crazy it will be this week. What previous story details will be conveniently ignored? Which of the good guys will become bad guys and vice versa? I sit there, daring the writers to outrage me. To come up with the crazy, stupidest crap imaginable. It's not what TV is supposed to be, but this is the 19th Century - I mean, 21st Century. (And if I get tired of it I can always go watch The Strain. Del Toro wrote three books and the show has a plan!) The penny dreadful has returned and it is called Under the Dome!

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

31 Things I Love About Halloween: Horror Books

As slowly as I read prose, it's not cheating to list this separately from Horror Comics. I can get through several graphic novels a week, but prose books of any length take me about a month, so I have to be very particular with which ones I commit to.

This season, I'm re-reading a couple of shorter novels. I should finish Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto tomorrow and then I'll dig into Stephen King's Carrie. If you're unfamiliar with Otranto, it's generally acknowledged as the first gothic romance and a major inspiration for books like Dracula and Frankenstein. It's got a spooky old castle, an evil nobleman, a couple of innocent young girls for him to terrorize, a mysterious stranger, a dangerous knight, a giant suit of sentient armor, and a ghost that materializes from a portrait. And it's only a little over a hundred pages. Highly recommended if you don't mind the archaic writing style, including extremely long paragraphs and no quotation marks to differentiate speakers in dialogue. It's very very readable, but not what you're used to.

Any of you guys reading anything good and spooky right now?

Art Show: He's Worth a Lot More to Me Played With

Monkey Island



By Otis Frampton.

Under the Sea



By Nino Carbe. [The Comics Reporter]

Oil Spill Aquaman



By Kate Beaton. You should hit that link and read the cartoon about the jester too. That one makes me LOL every time I read it.

After the break: Jack Torrance arrives at the Overlook Hotel and meets Wonder Woman, Isis, Cleo, Bender, Mysta of the Moon, and Buzz Fettyear.

TV News: Hawaii Five-OMG

The new Hawaii Five-O theme and trailer



I don't know whose job it was to tell me that Grace Park was also in this thing back when she was first cast, but man that person dropped the ball. This is now the best show in the history of the world. I don't like that they've shortened the theme, but that's almost made up for by using many of the same landmarks from the original theme sequence and even that same zoom-in shot of McGarrett on the balcony. And when I say "almost made up for," keep in mind that I'd be perfectly happy with the entire show being nothing but a video for an hour-long version of that theme. [Brother Cal]

Oh, and here's look at the show with quotes from some of the stars and some shots from the pilot. It does nothing to contradict my "best show in the history of the world" prediction. It'll be on Monday's at 10:00 (Eastern Time).



(Unless something's changed in Blogger's technology in the last day or so, I'm guessing that some of you can't see one or both of those videos above. Try reading the post without the page break and you should be okay.)

After the break: Katee Sackhoff, Nikita, Chuck sings, The Colorado Kid, Looney Tunes, and Keri Russell.

Duma Key

I'm not a Stephen King fan per se. I used to think I was back in high school when I first read Night Shift. Up until then I only knew King through his movies, but that short story collection convinced me he was a genius. I followed that up with Pet Sematary and though it wasn't as awe-inspiring as the short stories, it was still creepy as hell and my opinion of King went unchanged.

For whatever reason, I didn't immediately go back to check out King's early stuff. The next novel of his I remember reading was The Tommyknockers. It still had it's moments, but it felt overly long. I also remember being disappointed in it for reasons similar to my disappointment about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I went back and checked out Carrie and 'Salem's Lot and was much more satisfied, but the disappointment of Tommyknockers stuck with me and King had become one of those hit-or-miss authors in my head. Weird how one book will do that for you.

I kept watching the movies though and it always seemed like the best ones weren't horror films. I mean Carrie and The Shining are classics, but the truly great movies were Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and Misery. Okay Misery is a horror film, but not in the same way that King's supernatural stuff is. I got the uninformed notion that King had literary aspirations (and good for him if he did), but I wasn't that interested in following him there. I'd gladly stick with the movies.

If you remember my mentioning Disney's Marketing Rules, I said that Duma Key fails to follow one of them. That one is, "You don’t sell products, you sell an experience." Figure out what the experience is that you want readers to have and then figure out how to give them a taste of it before they buy. The marketing for Duma Key doesn't do that. It relies on your familiarity with (and supposed attraction to) King, but otherwise doesn't try to prepare you for how freaking scary and cool the book is.

The front cover flap calls the book "terrifying," but only after spending much more time discussing "a terrible construction site accident," an ending marriage, "two lovely daughters," "rehabilitation," "a rented house on Duma Key," "movement out of solitude," "a kindred spirit," and finally hints at "a sick old woman" and "the ghosts of her childhood." It wraps up by telling us that the book's about "the tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural." It sounds a lot more like The Green Mile or Hearts in Atlantis than 'Salem's Lot, but it's not. Because King definitely hits those other two Disney rules. Hard.

"It’s not what you see, it’s what you don’t see." "Learn to turn work into play." In other words, good writing isn't something where you have to stop and think about the choices the writer made, but it is something where every page has something on it that not only makes it worth reading, but makes you excited about moving on to the next one as well.

The writing on Duma Key is very, very good, but King makes it look easy. His style isn't distracting. I found myself admiring it, but I was never pulled out of the story by it.

More importantly though, Duma Key is really, really long, but every page is a joy to read. Rather than construct an entire community of people you have to get to know - most of whom die as soon as their four-page introduction is done - King sticks to a small cast of really likable characters. Every page is spent either showing you why you hope everything turns out okay for them, or deepens the mystery that makes you think it probably won't.

Edgar Freemantle is the main guy. He's the wealthy contractor from Minnesota's Twin Cities who nearly loses his life in an on-site accident and does lose his marriage thanks to the rage he struggles with afterwards. His therapist suggests a change of scenery, so Edgar finds a rental house off the west coast of Florida. Edgar used to get some enjoyment from drawing a little, so his therapist recommends he spend some time doing that. It was this Minnesota-Florida connection that made me buy the book when I was needing something to read in Florida back in April.

The book's told from Edgar's perspective and King builds instant empathy for him, not only with the tragic accident, but with a sense of humor that - though occasionally, and understandably, perverse - gives Edgar a noble resiliency that you can't help but root for.

In Florida, Edgar hires a good-natured college student named Jack to run errands for him. Jack doesn't know the pre-accident Edgar, so he accepts him exactly as he is now without comparing him to - as Edgar calls it - his "previous life." Jack's easy-going affection for Edgar shows him that there's still a lot to like about him. In spite of the rejection of his wife and one of his daughters, he still has value and realizing this encourages Edgar and brings out his better qualities even more. Jack's a heroic character.

Down the beach from Edgar's rental place is a sprawling mansion owned by the elderly Elizabeth Eastlake. Elizabeth suffers from Alzheimer's and is cared for by a man named Wireman who's recovering from injuries of his own. Elizabeth is a sweet woman who takes an instant liking to Edgar whenever she can remember who he is. Wireman likes Edgar too and the two men form a fast friendship built on the similarity of their experiences.

Wireman is an annoying character with the habits of referring to himself in the third person, spouting Spanish phrases for no reason, and following up quotes of movies and songs with the source of the quotation. But he's a kind-hearted man and he's exactly who Edgar needs in his life. As great and genuine as Jack is, he's still Edgar's employee. Wireman is Edgar's friend just because.

The last character I want to mention is Ilse, Edgar's younger daughter. She's really a supporting character, but because she's the only person in his family who still seems to care about him, she's a joy. I should clarify that King doesn't make villains out of Edgar's wife and older daughter. He paints them as real people who simply can't cope with how Edgar has - not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally - changed. And in the older daughter's defense, Edgar freely admits that he was always partial to Ilse and did a lousy job of hiding it.

As we get to know these people, we also discover that there's something of a mystery to Edgar's new home on Duma Key. He begins to paint and is much, much better than he remembered being. But sometimes his right arm - lost in the construction accident - begins to twitch and he feels the urge to get out the art supplies. When he does, strange things end up on his canvasses. It's like he's channeling images from somewhere else. Eventually he starts to wonder if he can control the process and use it to see the future or keep tabs on his wife back in Minnesota. And if he can do that, maybe he can control it even more and use his painting to shape events too.

It's a frightening power and Edgar is careful with it, but he's also curious and he begins trying to figure out where it comes from. And the more he uncovers, the more horrifying the mystery becomes until you're looking up from the book every once in a while because you thought you heard a noise. Or you're not sure you want to go to bed because you know that when you close your eyes you're going to replay the scene you just read and you don't want to do that in bed with the lights out.

Except of course that you sort of do, because it's really fun being this creeped out.

I haven't followed King's career closely enough to announce that He's Back, but Duma Key certainly deserves to be on the shelf next to Carrie and 'Salem's Lot and that's not at all what I expected out of it.

Five out of five Girl and Ship paintings.

South Florida: Days Two and Three

That title's a misnomer, because I'm really not going to tell you much about the last couple of days. Key West was Awesome yesterday with all it's pirates and seafood and tropical islandiness. I finished up Jane and the Man of the Cloth in Haiti and needed a new book to read, so I picked up Stephen King's Duma Key on the way down US-1. It's about a guy who moves from the Twin Cities down to the Florida Keys, so it seemed like an appropriate book to start on since my next Jane book is at home.

Today we went down to the Art Deco district of Miami Beach and that was Awesome too. We didn't see Mike Westen, but oh well. Must be because he got in the back of that truck at the end of last season. See? I shoulda been looking for him in the Keys.

I think everything else I want to say about the rest of this trip will best be told in pictures and I still need to organize those. If I don't post in the next few days, that's why. I'm letting you wait for the movie.