Ivy On Celluloid: Senseless

September 17, 2018 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Senseless

In today’s Ivy on Celluloid, I’m going to take a look at yet another higher education comedy: 1998’s Senseless.

The plot of Senseless is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A student gets his senses enhanced by an experimental drug. But abuse is not an option.

The screenplay for Senseless was credited to two writers, Greg Erb (The Princess and The Frog, RocketMan) and Craig Mazin (Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, The Hangover 2, The Hangover 3). The film’s director, Penelope Spheeris, is best known for her string of high-profile comedy films in the early 1990s like Wayne’s World, Black Sheep, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Little Rascals.

The cast of Senseless includes the likes of Marlon Wayans (White Chicks, Littleman, Scary Movie, The Ladykillers, Dungeons & Dragons), Matthew Lillard (Scream, Hackers, SLC Punk, Scooby-Doo), David Spade (Black Sheep, Joe Dirt), Brad Dourif (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Child’s Play, Body Parts, Spontaneous Combustion), Tamara Taylor (Bones, Altered Carbon), Jeff Garlin (The Goldbergs, Curb Your Enthusiasm), and Rip Torn (Men In Black, Dodgeball).

Senseless was pretty far from a major hit – it failed to make back its production budget in its theatrical release, and the critics’ reviews were brutal (6% on Rotten Tomatoes), and audiences were, at best, mixed (6/10 on IMDb, 45% on Rotten Tomatoes). That reception was well justified, though – this is a crass cartoon of a comedy movie, with very little depth or relatability. Outside of farts, pee, physical comedy, homophobia, and sexist objectification, there isn’t a whole lot else to be found in Senseless. However, the film does provide an interesting lens through which to view issues surrounding higher education.

To begin with, three real campuses served as filming locations for the movie – the University of Southern California, UCLA, and the Stevens Institute of Technology, located in Hoboken, NJ. The setting for the film, however, is the fictitious institution of Stratford University, which is said to be located in New York City.

From what I can tell, Stratford University is supposed to be an elite academic institution, given some of the context throughout the movie (like the prestige of the junior analyst position). The two best real-life institutional fits for these details, based on the New York City location, are New York University and Columbia University, though it is hard to nail down which of the two institutions is the better analog. Interestingly, though, Stratford’s branding and colors are more akin to another institution with a similar name – Stanford University – due to the script “S” and red/white/black athletic uniform color palette. In fact, looking at Stanford’s Identity Toolkit side-by-side with the Stratford logo, it is pretty evident that they are almost exactly the same logo, with Stanford’s iconic tree removed.

At the center of the plot of Senseless is an elitist (and possibly racist) fraternity called Kappa Zeta, or “Kappa House.” In reality, there is a prominent sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, that uses the nickname “Kappas,” and a small sorority in California called Kappa Zeta Phi. However, there are no fraternities that I could find that go by the name Kappa Zeta. However, much of the fraternity’s activities in the film, like hazing via paddling, racist pledge decisions, and donors/alumni dictating chapter activity, all have basis in reality.

The two [black] students…apparently participated in the formal rush week festivities at the school and boasted impeccable academic and social credentials. Nevertheless, they didn’t receive any bids from the 16 white sororities on campus.

The problem, to hear sorority girls tell it, is that alumnae are either using their voting powers to veto racial integration or threatening to withhold donations and other assistance.

–The Daily Caller

Part of the plot of Senseless involves the black main character, Darryl, becoming an accomplished hockey player for the university. Ice hockey is a notoriously non-diverse sport (in part due to the high costs involved), and at no level is that more evident than in collegiate competition. Jordan Greenway, a black hockey player for Boston University, recently made headlines for being named to the United States Olympic Men’s Hockey Team – the first black player to have ever received the honor. According to ThinkProgress, “less than one percent of male college hockey players are African-American, and only two percent of NHL players are black.” For comparison, a 1997 article in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education titled “The Only Blacks in College Hockey are the Pucks,” stated that:

More than 62 percent of all male players on basketball scholarships are black. More than 52 percent of all college football players are black. African Americans also make up nearly 30 percent of all college track athletes…But college ice hockey is another story. During the 1996-1997 college hockey season, there were only seven blacks among the 3,554 athletes playing college hockey in the United States. Specifically, blacks
made up less than two tenths of 1 percent of all college
hockey players.

The primary motivation throughout the film is for Darryl to win a tight competition for a prized employment position after graduation with a New York brokerage firm called Smythe-Bates. The stated requirements to qualify for the position include, specifically, a record of athletic achievement, high GPA, and ties of tradition through a fraternal organization. This set of requirements is what sends him on his quest for simultaneous hockey glory and admission to the Kappa Zeta fraternity, all while keeping his grades in order. This is reflective of a process that has gotten increasingly common over the years – bolstering a resume through taking on multiple extracurriculars, specifically for the purpose of making one more desirable/employable. You don’t have to search for online to find countless articles on the best kinds of activities to pursue to make your college application or resume look more impressive.

Part of what makes Darryl’s challenge to win the position even harder is that, compared to his competition, he is under significantly greater economic strain. Early in the film, it is revealed that Darryl is behind on rent payments despite working 4 jobs, excessively donating both blood and semen for money, and signing up for experimental medical trials to pay for his schooling. It is also shown that he comes from a low-income single-parent household, and is likely a first-generation college student.

All of these challenges are very real. College today is immensely expensive, especially for students who can’t rely on financial support from family, which covers 22% of tuition for the average college student. A 2017 article from Texas State University’s The University Star noted predatory practices by plasma banks that took advantage of poor college students, at the expense of their health. The challenges faced by first-generation college students, when compared with their continuing-generation peers, are well documented – a study found that 20 percent of first-generation college students obtained a four-year degree 10 years after their sophomore year of high school, compared to 42 percent of continuing-generation students. In regards to medical trials, college students are no strangers to sacrificing themselves for cash:

The best-paying studies…they also undergo invasive procedures, like a bronchoscopy or a biopsy, or something else unpleasant, such as being deprived of sleep, wearing a rectal probe, or having allergens sprayed in their faces. Because such studies require a fair amount of time in a research unit, the subjects are usually people who need money and have a lot of time to spare: the unemployed, college students, contract workers, ex-cons…

– The New Yorker, “Guinea-Pigging”

Speaking of “unpleasant” medical trials, this is where the plot of Senseless really kicks in. After Darryl volunteers for a paid medical trial of a drug aimed at providing “heightened human perception” and “super senses,” he uses the effects of the drug to get ahead of his peers both academically and athletically. I brought this topic up in my post on How High some time ago, and cited a 2011 article by the University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Ross Aikins called “Academic Performance Enhancement,” about the use of stimulants by college students to improve their academic performance.

Now that the topic has come up again, I decided to give Dr. Aikins a call, to get a better idea of the realities behind the use of drugs as academic performance enhancers. I had a wonderful conversation with him, and thank him greatly for his insights here.

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To begin with, how real is the issue of using drugs to enhance academic performance? What are the drugs people are using to this end?

In college settings, there is functional, academic use of drugs. There is a history of surgeons and concert musicians who use beta blockers and anti-anxiety drugs to perform better. In war and combat, military forces use prescription stimulants and amphetamines. For college students right now, they tend to use Ritalin and Aderall…Generally, other drugs are used as purely recreational.

According to what I’ve read, stimulant use for academic purposes is far more common among white males from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. What can you tell me about that?

I have an upcoming article called ‘The White Version of Cheating,’ that looks at the academic use of drugs as an equity issue. They are a thing of privilege and access…you see men more than women in college using these drugs, and more often upper-class white families with access to these drugs. Ultimately, there is a risk factor with fraternities, as they have a culture of resourcefulness in circulating resources to perpetuate advantages, and also get easy access to drugs.

Are Ritalin and Adderall actually “smart drugs” – are people smarter when using them?

There is no evidence that these drugs actually help students academically. It can plausibly provide cognitive benefits on some kinds of tests…they mostly promote wakefulness and provide a feeling of improved performance, without proven gains to GPA.

Is using drugs for academic enhancement actually “cheating”? Is it specifically against the rules pf academic conduct at universities (outside of often being illegal activity)?

Very few colleges classify use of drugs to enhance academic performance as ‘cheating’…we sampled almost 200 university policies and handbooks, and only one included this as a matter for the academic code of conduct. Most schools don’t see it as an academic policy issue. On that one campus that did, it was a response to student demand to include it.

How widespread is this problem, exactly?

According to a number of sources, 8-9% of college students are illicitly using these kinds of stimulant drugs, but that doesn’t take into account technically licit use – when students have a prescription, but don’t use the drug as intended, or didn’t get the legitimate prescription in good faith.

In Senseless, the drug at the center of the plot is specifically engineered to “enhance senses.” Do you know of any drugs specifically made for academic enhancement?

There are not any drugs that I know that have been designed specifically to enhance academic performance…nothing like Limitless is actually out there…at least, I don’t think students are doing this in makeshift labs. There is some evidence that some people are using direct-current brain stimulation as cognitive enhancement, though. You can find information about this online, but it sounds to me to be very risky…people are essentially shocking and hacking their bodies. There are trials for Alzheimer’s medications that aim to improve focus and concentration without some of the negative side affects of current drugs, but those haven’t hit the market. Nothing like what you see in movies or books, though…mostly Ritalin and Adderall is what you see out there on campuses.

Is there anything else people should know about this practice?

This use of these drugs could be creating addicts…students often attribute their successes to the drugs, which is scary. If their career is challenging, will they use drugs as an adult as they did in school? There are concerns about long-term effects of these users later in life as well, due to a lack of longitudinal studies. What will happen to these people (both licit and illicit users), after flooding the brain with chemicals (dopamine, norepinephrine) as a result of using these drugs for so long? Some neuroscientists theorize that they ‘dim the bulb,’ and that early-onset dementia could be possible. We just don’t know yet.

——————————————————————–

Based on what Dr. Aikins told me, I’m surprised that Senseless ended the way that it did. Ultimately, Darryl confesses that his successes were due to his use of an experimental drug, and he is disqualified from the competition for his prized position. According to Dr. Aikins, however, the odds are good that Darryl didn’t violate any of the school’s academic integrity policies, and because he obtained the drugs legally, I don’t think he violated any policies at all.

Lastly, I wanted to mention something that is played for a joke in the film – heroin addiction among college students. For most of the film, Darryl’s roommate things that he is addicted to heroin, because he catches him injecting drugs. In reality, as opioid use is rising across the United States, campuses are following suit. In 2014, there was a high-profile death of a University of Rochester student by heroin overdose, much like a death at the University of Delaware in 2018, and a 2013 death at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst.

On the whole, Senseless is another crass, sexist, mostly unfunny mess of a movie. However, this is also one of the more interesting films I’ve analyzed for its portrayal of higher education and higher education issues, for what little that might be worth. It is still not a movie I would generally recommend, other than to dedicated higher education nerds.

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The Book of Henry

September 10, 2018 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

The Book of Henry

Today I’m going to flip through the pages of 2017’s The Book of Henry, directed by Colin Trevorrow.

The plot of The Book of Henry is summarized on IMDb as follows:

With instructions from her genius son’s carefully crafted notebook, a single mother sets out to rescue a young girl from the hands of her abusive stepfather.

The Book of Henry was directed by Colin Trevorrow, whose other directorial credits include Jurassic World, Safety Not Guaranteed, and the upcoming Jurassic World 3. The film’s screenplay was written by Gregg Hurwitz, whose only other prominent credit is writing for the television series V.

The cast of the film includes Naomi Watts (King Kong, Mulholland Drive, Birdman, Tank Girl), Jaeden Lieberher (St. Vincent, IT, Midnight Special), Jacob Tremblay (Room, The Predator), Sarah Silverman (School of Rock, The Sarah Silverman Program), Dean Norris (Breaking Bad, Total Recall, Under the Dome), and Lee Pace (Guardians of the Galaxy, Halt and Catch Fire, The Fall).

The cinematographer for the film was John Schwartzman, who has shot such movies as Pearl Harbor, Seabiscuit, Armageddon, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Rock.

The editing for The Book of Henry was done by Kevin Stitt, who has cut quite a few major features over the years, including Paycheck, Cloverfield, X-Men, Elektra, Lethal Weapon 4, and Jurassic World.

The music for The Book of Henry was composed by Michael Giacchino, who also provided scores for Inside Out, Coco, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Jupiter Ascending, among others.

Apparently, the screenplay for The Book of Henry was originally written as a black comedy in the late 1990s, but Colin Trevorrow had it altered significantly to make it less comedic and more dramatic to fit with his vision for the story.

The initial poor word of mouth surrounding the release of The Book of Henry has been considered as one of the primary reasons Colin Trevorrow was released as director of Star Wars IX, as many had already questioned his competency to handle the task prior to the flop of Henry.

Currently, The Book of Henry holds a 6.6/10 IMDb user rating, alongside, Rotten Tomatoes scores of 20% from critics and 63% from audiences, making for a fairly mixed reception. Financially, however, the film was an unambiguous failure, taking in a lifetime theatrical gross of $4.5 million on a production budget of $10 million.

In his review of the film for The San Diego Reader, Matthew Lickona refers to The Book of Henry as:

a…sort of Rube Goldberg machine: one that seeks to draw out simple human emotions through precisely engineered (but still ridiculous) mechanics…However hard the talented cast may try, those aren’t people up on the screen; they’re candles, balloons, and marbles.

This is one of the most adept criticisms of the film I have come across – the characters really don’t feel tangible, as if they are just cogs and mechanisms engineered to fill a specific role. Outside of a few brief moments where Naomi Watts gets room to genuinely play the role of a grieving mother, the performances all seem rigidly trapped in defined molds, as to perform their function and nothing more. I don’t think it is at all fair to level this criticism at the actors – they clearly are doing what they can – but the writing and directing that they are beholden to makes their work effectively impossible.

Another film critic, C. L. Reed, noted in his review of the film that “there is nothing wrong with The Book of Henry that a good script could not fix.” I would go a step further than that – the problem here wasn’t just the script, but Trevorrow’s adherence to it as the director. His vision took precedence over the original screenplay – which he twisted and contorted it to fit within the boundaries he desired. Once it suited him, it clearly became fixed in his mind – since he tinkered with the script to his personal specifications, the odds that he would take input from others on it is very slim, ever if their criticisms were valid. I would wager that issues with his version of the screenplay were brought to his attention from multiple sources, but that he couldn’t and wouldn’t address them.

In his review for Paste, Andy Crump referred to The Book of Henry as having an “exact imbalance of bonkers incongruity” and called it an “inexplicable hodgepodge.” I think this gets at one of the core issues of the film – its tone. This is the other consequence of Trevorrow’s manipulation of the screenplay, and subsequent direction of the film. He took a film of one genre, and forced it to become another. What results is a screenplay that is still rife with vestigial fragments of the dark comedy it once was, but with a hard dramatic veneer. It is coarse where it should be smooth, and jagged where it should be round – it is just obviously the wrong damn shape from what it was and should be. Unlike a hybrid, genre-bending movie like Hot Fuzz or The Cabin In The Woods, the multiple genres aren’t synthesized or merged in an effective manner – they are ad-hoc pieced together by twine, Elmer’s glue, and wishful thinking. It is a bad look stylistically, like having your sleek, modern dining room decorated with a rusty, dilapidated Volkswagen.

All of that said, there is definitely some weird potential in The Book of Henry, and I would have been interested to see the off-kilter dark comedy it was written to be. The cast really do their best, and Watts gets some good emotional moments here and there. It is a shame that the movie doesn’t stylistically lean in to the bizarre hyper-reality created by the characters as they are written. Instead, this is a flat, unremarkable vision and execution layered on top of something that is, at its core, fundamentally twisted and perverse.

I’m not sure if The Book of Henry is a recommendable movie or not – it sounds more interesting and intriguing on paper and in summary than it actually is. If you only watched Dan Olsen’s reviews of the film, you would both get the gist of the film, and not have to deal with the arduously dull and faux-cutesy process of having to actually watch the damn thing. However, this is one of the more bizarre flops of recent years, and is probably worth checking out for bad movie aficionados for that fact alone.

Ivy On Celluloid

Ivy On Celluloid: Final Exam

September 3, 2018 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Final Exam

Today, in my continuing series on films about higher education, I’m going to look at the 1981 horror movie Final Exam.

The plot of Final Exam is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A psycho killer shows up on college campus to slash up pretty co-eds and dumb jocks.

Final Exam was written and directed by Jimmy Huston, whose other credits include My Best Friend Is a Vampire and Running Scared. Huston’s career started with some minor work in the 70s, and concluded with a handful of television directing gigs in the mid-90s.

The musical score for the film was the first credited composition for Gary S. Scott, who would later make a name for himself providing music for television shows like Beverly Hills 90210, Behind The Music, 7th Heaven, Fame, Freddy’s Nightmares, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.

To fill out the extras and background characters, the production apparently recruited theater students from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte and Appalachian State University.

Final Exam is the first horror movie I have analyzed for its portrayal of higher education – however, I found that it still brought up a handful of interesting issues relating to colleges and universities.

First off, three campuses served as filming locations for Final Exam – Limestone College in Gaffney, SC; Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, NC; and Isothermal Community College in Spindale, NC.

Lanier College, the setting as portrayed in the film by the aforementioned campuses, is entirely fictitious. However, there is a Lanier Technical College located in Oakwood, GA, though it is a trade and technical school that doesn’t match the traditional description of Lanier College in Final Exam.

Speaking of the description of the setting school, what kind of school is Lanier College, exactly? There are a few details scattered throughout the film – first off, the school is clearly residential and rural, as it is clearly not located in a city, and has a number of student dormitories. It is also revealed early in the film that a rival institution to Lanier College – March College (also fictitious) – is a small population, rural school that recently dealt with a significant football recruiting scandal. I think that it logically follows that Lanier is similar in size and athletic competitiveness – otherwise, it is hard to imagine how a rivalry would exist. There is also a throwaway detail that Lanier requires science courses – namely chemistry – as a core requirement for all students.

Based on these general descriptions of March College and Lanier College, I think it is safe to say that neither institution is meant to stand-in for a specific, real college – they are both designed to be as generic and relatable as possible to any given audience. They are both merely vague amalgamations of American higher education institutions.

At the beginning of the film, a killer is shown murdering March College’s star quarterback and his girlfriend. This got me wondering – has a star college quarterback ever been the victim of a murder?

In early 2018, Washington State University quarterback Tyler Hilinski was found dead as a result of suicide. Later in 2018, a Maryville College wide receiver was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend. Also in 2018, a former Penn State quarterback was killed in a stabbing in Philadelphia. In 2007, former University of Miami safety and NFL player Sean Taylor was killed in a break-in at his home. In 2009, former Alcorn State quarterback and retired NFL star Steve McNair was murdered. In each of these cases, however, the formula is different than what is described in the film – either the student had long since graduated, was a perpetrator rather than a victim, or wasn’t murdered.

In the trailer for Final Exam, the narrator states that Lanier College has “the finest security, the best teacher-student relations, no fraternity hazing, [and] strictly enforced curfews,” juxtaposed with images that counter each statement.

In regards to campus security, there is only one campus officer shown in the movie, who is quickly revealed to be a dire alcoholic and an incompetent. It is also shown that there is a jurisdictional debate between local police and and campus police, which has led to a negative view of the college by local police officers.

In a 2015 piece in The Atlantic, it was written that the role and size of campus police departments has expanded significantly in recent years – apparently, “over 4,000 police departments total operate at public and private postsecondary schools.” This is a far cry from the early 80s, single-guard security depicted in Final Exam, to say the least. In the words of the President of International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, campus police often “do a better job of interacting with the public” than local police departments, and allegedly have a more “harm-reduction” mentality than their non-campus colleagues. However, incidents like the UC-Davis pepper spray fiasco have also come about with the increase in campus police, as well as allegations that campus cops are insufficiently trained to deal with their ever-widening jurisdictions beyond their campuses:

the shifts within college and university police departments raise some odd jurisdictional issues: Even though they’re narrowly tasked with enforcing the law and student safety…According to DOJ statistics, eight of ten college police can patrol off-campus areas (81 percent) and make arrests (86 percent).

In the trailer narration, “teacher-student relations” is used as a euphemism for sexual activity between students and members of the faculty. In the story of the film, such a relationship plays a pretty minor role in the background of the story. This is an ethical issue in higher education I brought up back in my coverage of Necessary Roughness. As an example of a typical university policy on these kinds of relationships, here is an excerpt from a Cornell University document, which specifically outlines that romantic relationships are prohibited between faculty and students at that institution, and why:

The relationships between students and their faculty…should be conducted in a manner that avoids potential conflicts of interest…a conflict of interest arises when an individual evaluates the work or performance of a person with whom he or she is pursuing or engaged in a romantic or sexual relationship. Romantic or sexual relationships between students and persons in positions of academic authority may compromise the relationship between students and the university.

Fraternity hazing also plays a minor role in the film, though it does ultimately leave a character prone to an attack from the mysterious killer. The hazing ritual that takes place is one in which the pledge is tied to a tree overnight. I was able to dig up a couple of approximately similar hazing rituals, including an incident at the University of Central Florida in 2004 where a pledge was found tied and Saran wrapped to a tree, and another case where a Troy University fraternity pledge was tied to a tree and pelted with eggs in 2015.

In regards to “enforced curfews,” as mentioned in the trailer, this is a policy that is not entirely uncommon. Kentucky Christian University, for example, has a campus-wide curfew of 1:00am. In 2017, a long-standing curfew policy at Liberty University was relaxed, allowing students 20 and over to stay out past the traditional midnight curfew, which met with a mixed reception:

“Our argument was to have college be a transition period from kind of being a kid into being an adult. This way when you graduate from here and go out on your own, it’s not going to be this huge culture shock where you can do whatever you want,”

– Jared Cave, Liberty University SGA Vice President

During one of the first scenes of the film, one of the characters complains about his required chemistry class, despite his non-science major:

“Why do I have to take chemistry anyway? I’m going into advertising.”

Some colleges certainly require science classes as part of their core curriculum, which all degree-seeking students must take. Columbia University, for example, uses the following logic for its three required science classes:

The objective of the science component of Columbia College’s Core Curriculum is identical to that of its humanities and social science counterparts, namely to help students “to understand the civilization of their own day and to participate effectively in it.” The science component is intended specifically to provide students with the opportunity to learn what kinds of questions are asked about nature, how hypotheses are tested against experimental or observational evidence, how results of tests are evaluated, and what knowledge has been accumulated about the workings of the natural world.

Columbia’s policy does allow for a degree of choice, however: students have to choose from Astronomy, Biology, Computer Science, Environmental Sciences, Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Psychology, and Statistics to fill their three required science classes.

The very idea of a core curriculum ties in to a very old debate as to the purpose of higher education. Is college supposed to, as Columbia states, “help students to understand the civilization of their own day and to participate effectively in it,” or is it to provide specialized job training for a designated career? Passionate arguments for both sides have been made for centuries, and the battle continues through higher education policy and programming today.

In an early sequence in the film, a Professor glibly announces that he is introducing a modified honor system for an upcoming quiz – saying that any cheating is to be met with “sniper fire” from Nazis located in a nearby tower, who he claims trained with UT-Austin sniper Charles Whitman. While all of the students take this as an obvious joke, this kind of quip from a professor would almost certainly be received with hostility from students and fellow faculty alike.

An inappropriate joke by a King’s College London professor in 2018 led to disciplinary action from his professional association; in 2011, a Roosevelt University sociology professor’s immigration joke led to an investigation, and ultimately his dismissal from the university; in 2015, a Louisiana State University professor was fired for telling sexually-themed jokes to undergraduate students. While all of the aforementioned cases involved at least questionable professionalism, they all pale in comparison to the dark comments from the Lanier College professor in this movie, which could easily be interpreted as a direct, physical threat to his students.

The UT-Austin sniper killings, which were referenced in the aforementioned scene, took place 15 years prior to the release of this film. However, numerous other notable spree killings occurred on college campuses in the intervening years. For example, in 1966, a copycat of the UT-Austin sniper killed 5 people and injured 2 others at the Rose-Mar College of Beauty in Mesa, AZ. In 1970, 2 University of Pennsylvania professors were gunned down by a disgruntled graduate student. In 1969, two students at UCLA were killed by a third, who was never apprehended. In 1971, a spree shooter shot four people at Gonzaga University. In 1976, a university custodian killed 7 people and wounded 2 others at California State University – Fullerton. Even in 1981, the year of the film’s release, a flunking University of Michigan student killed two of his peers on campus. Even this is only an abridged list – there were numerous other incidences between 1966 and 1981, let alone in the ensuing years afterward the film’s release.

However, there is a key difference between the typical campus killer and the villain portrayed in Final Exam. Most campus shooters fit the definition of either spree killers or mass murderers, whereas the killer in this film is unquestionably a serial killer who targets college students.

Speaking of which, I was able to find one serial killer who specifically targeted college students – Danny Rolling, the “Gainesville Ripper,” who brutally killed five college students in the Gainesville, FL area over the course of four days in August of 1990.

When discussing the potential of campus violence, the characters in the film always assume it will be a random “psycho” who will show up on campus to bring the chaos (which ultimately proves to be the case). However, judging from the records I could dig up, the odds are far more likely that a member of the university community would commit such a public, on-campus act – whether a student, faculty member, or staff member.

In an early scene, a Lanier College fraternity launches a shocking, mock mass shooting on the Lanier College quad, terrifying the student body as an apparent prank. Ultimately, the intention behind the prank is to push back exam week, giving fraternity members more time to make a plan to cheat their way through the tests.

Outside of a bunch of conspiracy theories about crisis actors, I couldn’t find any documentation of a mock mass shooting on a college campus. Cheating, however, is an undeniably common practice. On top of the mock mass shooting, there are a number of other times where students at Lanier College are shown plotting to steal tests or actively tampering with grades. In 2015, there was a case at Texas Tech where a number of students tampered with their grades to graduate, but were caught by a professor and investigated. A Kessler International survey of 300 college students found that 86% admitted to cheating in some way in college coursework. A 2013 Boston Globe article claimed that the percentage of college students who are admitted cheaters is at 75%, and has been for some time.

At one point, one of the fraternity members in the film complains to a professor that “this isn’t the test I studied,” which seems to be a reference to the somewhat ethically dubious practice of test banking. Test banking is the practice of keeping copies and records of previous tests, which are frequently used by fraternities and other student organizations. While some schools and professors encourage this practice, many still find it to be ethically questionable.

At one point in the film, one of the characters tells the story of a student who rushed to join a sorority at Lanier College, but was ultimately rejected, and subsequently committed suicide. This kind of story is the sort that gets told over and over again, until people eventually just assume it is true. Personally, I haven’t been able to produce a single instance of a suicide that attributed a sorority rejection as the cause. Kind of like with the Dead Man On Campus roommate suicide straight-A scenario, this is something that is an unfounded hypothetical that has ballooned into the public consciousness over the years, despite there never apparently being a root truth behind it.

Final Exam, at the end of the day, is a weird, mostly-forgotten little film. It was a bit of an oddball choice to cover here on the blog, but I am glad I did. While it isn’t a movie I can particularly recommend, it brought up a fair number of interesting higher education issues and topics for me to dig into. Horror fans who enjoy an off-the-beaten-path slasher movie might get a kick out of this one, but otherwise I think it is worth a pass. If the Rotten Tomatoes scores of 14% / 18% say anything, it is that there are long odds that any given person is going to enjoy this flick.

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Threads

August 27, 2018 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Threads

If you haven’t heard of the 1984 film Threads, you are certainly not alone. There aren’t many BBC made-for-television movies that are talked about at all 35 years after their airing, let alone have wide name recognition after all of that time. I wasn’t made aware of this movie until I was in college, and it was part of a class I took on The Cold War. I remember it being covered along with The Day After, as examples of Cold War nuclear fears manifested on film. As you can imagine, it is a pretty bleak affair, as summed up in its IMDb synopsis:

The effects of a nuclear holocaust on the working class city of Sheffield, England and the eventual long-term effects of nuclear war on civilization.

Recently, Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre held a one-night theatrical screening of this nightmarish speculative vision of the aftermath and carnage of nuclear war – something that is a rarity for television movies. This is was my first time watching the film in its entirety – my class only included clips as I recall.

To begin with, this is an emotionally potent piece, even today – I can only imagine what it was like to watch contemporaneously. Screenwriter Barry Hines put some real effort into creating a wide cast of tangible and grounded characters – some likable, some not – before literally obliterating them in fire, ash, and languishing torment. While the early segments felt unnecessarily lengthy and banal when I was watching them, I didn’t realize how much I was connecting with the dull and realistic humanity of the characters until they began vaporizing.

The film’s director, Mick Jackson, did a handful of theatrical movies following Threads, including Volcano and The Bodyguard, but this is almost certainly his most lasting work. While it isn’t necessarily remarkably shot or edited, it is immensely affecting as a complete package. The combination of Hines’s writing, shocking makeup effects work, and a handful of key performances is a gut-punch of a cautionary tale.

That said, I’m not sure if I can recommend it. It has some pretty serious pacing issues due to its unconventional structure, inconsistent and often unnecessary narration, and is nowhere near the realm of entertainment. For people interested in Cold War history, I think it is a great watch, and it can be a great call to action towards denuclearization, but it is also definitely a product of its era. This isn’t going to have the impact on someone today as it had in 1984 – there’s too much distance between the viewer and the threat now. This was designed very particularly for a contemporaneous audience, and I think that is something that definitely comes through today. Personally, I am glad I watched Threads, despite its flaws. However, I don’t think I’ll ever watch it again, either.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: 4 Years Later

August 20, 2018 Gordon Maples 1 Comment

It has been a long while since I went back to my initial project here at the blog: watching and reviewing the entire IMDb Bottom 100 list of movies.

For those that weren’t following the blog back then, I gave myself a year to get through the entire list of movies. However, there wound up being some intriguing difficulties with doing so.

First off, the list is based on live rankings, so it is in constant flux. Movies come and go off of the list with significant frequency. After all, the list measures the public perception of the worst movies of all time, and that is undoubtedly going to change over time. For instance, Saving Christmas and Gunday popped on the list while I was going through it, and a few movies I covered dropped off.

Another long-standing issue with the list is a matter of accessibility – because of how the ranking system works, only a small quota of votes is needed to qualify a film for the list. This opened the door for some films with only limited, regional distributions to crack onto the list, which were basically unattainable for people in other areas to view (like A Fox’s Tale, The Tony Blair Witch Project, and Danes Without A Clue). To make up for this, I found some archived versions of the IMDb Bottom 100 rankings, and covered a handful of “alumni” to fill in the gaps. If you are curious, I even made my own subjective ranking of the films I covered from the list.

I’ve only officially gone back to the IMDb Bottom 100 once since I completed my challenge at the end of 2014, to cover new list addition Theodore Rex. One of my readers recently asked me if I was keeping up with the latest rankings – admittedly, that answer is essentially “no.” However, I did take a look at the current rankings, and something major stuck out to me – not only are there a ton of new films, but almost all of those inaccessible films are now off of the list. I’m not sure if this is due to a change in the list’s qualifications, of if IMDb community members manually voted them off the list with unwarranted high ratings, but someone taking on this challenge now would have a much easier time of it.

Here are the films that have cracked the IMDb Bottom 100 (and held their position) since I wrapped my challenge in 2014. Movies that I have covered have their reviews linked.

Code Name: K.O.Z.
Dragonball: Evolution
Meet the Spartans
Who’s Your Caddy?
Date Movie
Jaws: The Revenge
BloodRayne
Kazaam
Rollerball
Left Behind (2014)
The Human Centpede 3
Catwoman
The Emoji Movie
Daddy Day Camp
Barb Wire
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Spice World
Vampires Suck
Police Academy: Mission to Moscow
Crossroads
The Starving Games
The Master of Disguise
Far Cry
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
Scary Movie 5
Feardotcom
The Room
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D
Batman & Robin
Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star
The Wicker Man
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace
Spy Kids 4
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
The Fog (2005)
The Open House
Race 3
Dragon Wars: D-War
Fifty Shades of Black
Dungeons & Dragons
I Know Who Killed Me
You Got Served
Speed 2: Cruise Control
The Avengers (1998)
The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas
2001; A Space Travesty
Piranha 3DD
The Love Guru
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Street Fighter
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
The Cat in the Hat
Dance Flick
The Adventures of Pluto Nash
Swept Away
Stan Helsing
Exorcist II: The Heretic
The Human Centipede II
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Caddyshack II
S. Darko
Norbit
Prom Night (2008)
Fifty Shades of Grey
Enes Batur Hayal mi Gercek mi?
Furry Vengeance
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
Plan 9 From Outer Space
One Missed Call
Extreme Movie
Material Girls
The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure

I’m not going to say that I’m going to go back to cover all of these new additions to the list – you couldn’t pay me enough to sit through that many parody movies, and I simply don’t have the free time that I used to – but I will say that a good number of these were already in my mental queue. Rollerball is a movie that I have intended to cover since I started the blog; Blair Witch 2 has been on my short list since I saw the GoodBadFlicks defense of the film; Kazaam is on my imminent list of movies to cover due to the whole Mandela Effect controversy, and plenty of others here have my attention.

I can say this though – I’m going to be paying attention to this list again. I have a feeling that it’ll give me some ideas.

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Spontaneous Combustion

August 13, 2018 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Spontaneous Combustion

Today, I’m going to take a look at Tobe Hooper’s bizarre 1990 film, Spontaneous Combustion.

The plot of Spontaneous Combustion is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A young man finds out that his parents had been used in an atomic-weapons experiment shortly before he was born, and that the results have had some unexpected effects on him.

Spontaneous Combustion was co-written and directed by Tobe Hooper, who was responsible for classics of the horror genre like Poultergeist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. However, he is also known for some of his later, cheesier works, like The Mangler, Lifeforce, Invaders From Mars, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, a couple of which I have previously covered here on the blog.

The cast of Spontaneous Combustion includes Brad Dourif (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Mississippi Burning, Deadwood, Child’s Play, Senseless, Dune, Body Parts), Cynthia Bain (Pumpkinhead), Jon Cypher (Masters of the Universe), William Prince (Spies Like Us, The Stepford Wives, Network), Melinda Dillon (Harry and The Hendersons, Magnolia, Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and Dick Warlock (Pumpkinhead, The Abyss, Halloween II).

The cinematographer for the film was Levie Isaacks, whose other credits include The Guyver, Tooth Fairy 2, The Dentist, Leprechaun, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, Children of the Corn II, and numerous episodes of shows like Tales From The Crypt, Dawson’s Creek, CSI:NY, and Malcolm In The Middle.

The editor for Spontaneous Combustion was David Kern, also who cut Maniac Cop, Maniac Cop 2, Maniac Cop 3, It’s Alive III, and Class of 1999 II, served as an additional editor on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Monster Trucks, Kong: Skull Island, and Captain America: Civil War, and was a sound editor on Purple Rain, Hook, and Rush Hour.

The musical score for the film was composed by Graeme Revell, a prolific film scorer whose credits include The Crow, Daredevil, Sin City, Pitch Black, Freddy vs. Jason, From Dusk Till Dawn, Suicide Kings, Street Fighter, Tank Girl, Hard Target, and The Craft, among many others.

The team of effects workers on Spontaneous Combustion included William Tony Hooper (Demon Knight, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Stephen David Brooks (The Mangler, Spaceballs, Lifeforce), Michael R. Jones (Ghostbusters, The Return of Swamp Thing, I Come In Peace), and John Dykstra (Star Wars, Spider-Man, Lifeforce, Batman & Robin).

The inspiration for Spontaneous Combustion is the phenomena of spontaneous human combustion (SHC). This is a term to describe cases where a human body combusts without an apparent external source of ignition. In contrast to the claims of the film, reported cases of SHC are very uncommon, to the point that there is significant doubt that the phenomena exists at all.

Brad Dourif’s character in the film is shown to have the power of pyrokinesis, which is defined as the ability to create and control fire with the mind. In reality, this alleged psychic ability has never been proven to exist, but it comes up relatively frequently in fictitious works, such as comics like The Fantastic Four and The X-Men, cartoons like Avatar: The Last Airbender, video games like Street Fighter, and books/movies like Firestarter.

Critically, Spontaneous Combustion mostly went under the radar. What reviews do exist, however, aren’t particularly positive. The film has an IMDb user rating of 4.6/10, and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 18%. A Spin magazine review of the movie referred to it as “incoherent,” claimed that it “moves too fast for logic,” pointed out the “too many subplots” and “icky, ridiculous effects,” but nevertheless concluded that the end product is still “a lot of fun” despite the movie’s low quality, likening it to Troma films.

I certainly can’t argue that there aren’t problems with Spontaneous Combustion. However, there are quite a few things I liked about this weird little movie. Chief among these positives is the performance of Brad Dourif – he is a pretty fantastic character actor to start with, but this is just perfect casting. The guy always seems at least low-key pissed off, with a dash of biting wit on top, and that mixture works perfectly for this fiery character. Dourif pretty much carries the movie on his own, and to his credit, he is able to do it.

Another huge positive to this film is its concept – this is just a damn cool idea, and something that doesn’t hit the screen very often. Pyrokinesis is pretty cinematic, and allows for some cool effects work. More importantly, though, the intersection of theme and character here is fascinating. As opposed to scientists who are undone by their own inventions, like a Dr. Jekyll or a Dr. Brundle, Dourif’s character here is a victim of someone else’s madness. He’s not burdened by a karmic system for his misdeeds or hubris – he’s unjustly cursed from birth. While he does give in to a clear anger problem, he is forced into this emotional (and physical) combustion by external sources – like the constant deceit from those around him – which is a lovely irony given the technical definition of SHC.

It may be a minor point, but I also love that the film is effectively book-ended by the song “I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire” by The Ink Spots. This is a song that has been used quite a bit in movies, television, and video games, but I think it particularly fits well here. It can be interpreted thematically as indicative of the fact that Sam never desired to have his abilities, nor did he desire to go on his eventual fiery rampage – again, these were externally thrust upon him. It is also a neat aesthetic foil for the tone of the film – it is a calm, romantic song, set against a frenetic and furiously violent movie. My only complaint is that I wish it was actually at the end of the film – instead, it comes back just prior to the falling action.

Still, this is far from a great movie. It is founded on some ridiculous fears of nuclear energy and unfounded beliefs in SHC, which put it on pretty shaky footing for me. The writing also doesn’t always logically hold together, and some performers (Dourif) make the dialogue work much better than others. That said, I think this is a totally serviceable deep cut for fans of bizarre science-fiction horror movies. Dourif’s performance and the effects work are worth seeking it out on their own, in my opinion.

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Leprechaun: Origins

August 6, 2018 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Leprechaun: Origins

Today, I’m going to look at a particularly loathed horror reboot: 2014’s Leprechaun: Origins.

The plot of Leprechaun: Origins is summarized on IMDb as follows:

Two young couples backpacking through Ireland discover that one of Ireland’s most famous legends is a terrifying reality.

The director for Leprechaun: Origins was Zach Lipovsky, who had previously done directing work only on television movies and short films. However, he has gone on to since direct more consistently on television, and is currently attached to a Kim Possible movie.

Taking over the role as the eponymous Leprechaun in the film is professional wrestler Dylan Postl, also known as “Hornswaggle.” Postl has been wrestling for WWE since 2006, and has no other notable acting credits. His association with WWE is likely what got him the role, as the film was produced by WWE studios, which has frequently cast notable wrestlers as actors. Past examples of this practice include John Cena in 12 Rounds, Kane in See No Evil, The Rock in The Scorpion King, and Steve Austin in The Condemned.

The cinematographer for Leprechaun: Origins was Mahlon Todd Williams, whose other credits include 12 Rounds 3, See No Evil 2, and numerous episodes of the television series Legends of Tomorrow.

The editor for the film was Mark Stevens, who also cut The Final Destination, The Number 23, 8MM, Batman Forever, Phone Booth, Freddy vs. Jason, and Batman & Robin, among other films.

Allegedly, star Dylan Postl has never seen a Leprechaun movie, and intentionally didn’t view them after getting the part – he didn’t want his performance to be influenced by the one given by Warwick Davis.

Speaking of Warwick Davis, he apparently wasn’t asked to be involved with Leprechaun: Origins, and has public stated that he would have loved to have reprised his role.

In 2018, Syfy announced that it would be making its own Leprechaun reboot, to be released in 2019. One again, Warwick Davis was passed over, with the role instead going to Linden Porco. However, the tone of the film is reportedly going to be more in line with the original run of Leprechaun movies.

Leprechaun: Origins was widely loathed by critics and audiences alike: it currently holds highly unenviable review statistics, like a 3.3/10 IMDb user rating, and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 0% from critics and 9% from audiences.

In his review of the film for IGN, Cliff Wheatley wrote:

the main characters are so bland that you won’t know their names before they start being offed by the so-called leprechaun. I know B-movie characters are meant to be cannon fodder, but watching cardboard cutouts getting eaten isn’t all that much fun.

This review points out one of the biggest problems with this movie – there is nothing here for an audience to latch on to. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having “cardboard cutouts” making up most of the cast, but something in the film has to give the audience a reason to pay attention. For a lot of slashers, that comes in the form of creatively gore-y demises for the aforementioned cutouts. For the Leprechaun films, though, that engagement has also come from the goofy charisma and rhyming schemes offered by Warwick Davis. Hornswaggle, in this ill-fated reimagining, doesn’t have a chance to win over the audience in the same way. This is because his character is now merely a growling, humorless, feral monster – solely a mechanism for murder.

The fact that this film totally lacks cheesy tone of the original Leprechaun movies says to me that the production had no understanding of what made those movies unique and beloved by fans. My suspicion is that WWE came up with the idea for this movie specifically because they had Hornswaggle – a little person with an Irish stage theme – under contract. This wasn’t a movie made with an intention or vision beyond a capitalistic desire for revenue, and that comes through in the dispassionate final product. It is kind of ironic that this movie was fueled by greed alone – it sounds to me like the kind of thing that would put someone on a murderous leprechaun’s shit list.

On the whole, this is a boring, gruelingly unimaginative horror film, that sits in stark contrast to its predecessors in the franchise. There honestly isn’t a single thing to recommend about it – this is a total and complete failure of a movie. However, it might whet your appetite for a goofy Leprechaun classic – Leprechaun 3, perhaps?

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Jennifer’s Body

July 30, 2018 Gordon Maples 1 Comment

Jennifer’s Body

Today, I’m going to take a look at the 2009 horror-comedy Jennifer’s Body.

The plot of Jennifer’s Body is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A newly possessed high school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

The screenplay for Jennifer’s Body was written by Diablo Cody, who previously won an Academy Award for Juno. Her other works have included the television shows United States of Tara and One Mississippi, as well as the movies Young Adult and Paradise.

Jennifer’s Body was directed by Karyn Kusama, who also directed the films Aeon Flux, The Invitation, and contributed a segment to the anthology film XX.

The cast of Jennifer’s Body includes Megan Fox (Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Amanda Seyfried (Les Miserables, Mamma Mia, Mean Girls), Johnny Simmons (Scott Pilgrim vs The World, The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Adam Brody (The O.C., Yoga Hosers, CHIPS), Juan Riedinger (Narcos), J.K. Simmons (Whiplash, Spider-Man, The Accountant, The Ladykillers), and Chris Pratt (Jurassic World, Parks & Recreation, Guardians of the Galaxy).

The cinematographer for the film was M. David Mullen, who also shot The Love Witch, Akeelah and the Bee, The Astronaut Farmer, and numerous episodes of television series like Big Love, United States of Tara, Get Shorty, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Mad Men.

Plummy Tucker served as the editor for Jennifer’s Body, and also cut the films Aeon Flux and The Invitation for director Karyn Kusama. Notably, Tucker also served as editor for the miniseries 11.22.63.

The music for the film is credited to both Theodore Shapiro (Tropic Thunder, Trumbo, Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory, Idiocracy, Old School) and Stephen Barton (Call of Duty 4, Titanfall).

The town in the movie – Devil’s Kettle – is named after a waterfall in Minnesota’s Judge Magney State Park, which flows into a massive pothole, seemingly into nothingness.

As a tie-in to Jennifer’s Body, a graphic novel was made that expanded on a number of the background characters in the film, and revealed additional details about the monster.

The monster/demon that possesses Fox’s character in the film is, based on its stated details and description, a succubus – a monster from folklore that takes the form of a women, and practices predatory seduction.

The screenplay for Jennifer’s Body was named to the 2007 Black List, which is an annual honor given to a handful of unproduced screenplays deemed to be of high quality. Other screenplays on the list also made it to the screen, such as Selma, The Road, Source Code, Slumdog Millionaire, Zombieland, The Wolf of Wall Street, Doubt, The Revenant, and The Town.

One element of Jennifer’s Body that was covered widely in the media was a kissing sequence between stars Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. Both actresses spoke publicly about the scene, as well as writer Diablo Cody. While many assumed that this sequence was included due to pressure from producers for marketing purposes, Cody has claimed that it was always part of the screenplay, but was sensationalized by audiences and the media:

“if the two protagonists of the film were a guy and a girl and in a particularly tense moment, they shared a kiss, no one would say it was gratuitous. But the fact that they’re women means it’s some kind of stunt. It was intended to be something profound and meaningful…Obviously we knew people were going to totally sensationalize it.”

While the kissing sequence was apparently in line with Cody and Kusama’s vision, the marketing for the film was almost certainly not, and is what most people attribute the film’s critical and financial failure to. At least one critic blamed the film’s poor reception on “misguided, boy-targeted marketing,” and the film’s co-star, Adam Brody, publicly indicated his displeasure with the campaign, remarking:

“I do think it should win a Razzie for Worst Ad Campaign Ever. Seriously. They couldn’t have done a worse poster or trailer if that’s what they fucking set out to do.”

Financially, Jennifer’s Body proved to be far from a blockbuster: in its lifetime theatrical release, it brought in a box office total of $31.5 million on a production budget of $15 million. Critically, it didn’t fare well on its release: it currently holds a 5.2/10 user rating on IMDb, along with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 43% critics and 34% from audiences.

That being said, Jennifer’s Body is in the midst of a critical re-assessment, and is being revisited by many. Recent articles in publications like Bloody Disgusting and Cosmopolitan have encouraged viewers to give the film another shot, now that the film’s marketing campaign is a distant memory.

It goes without saying that there is a weird mismatch between the film’s marketing and its actual content, and that almost certainly had a huge influence on its critical and financial success. However, when the film is separated from its context, there are still some notable issues that hinder it.

To begin with, I think that there is definitely some potential to the concept behind Jennifer’s Body, but many of its core elements have definitely been done much better in other films. It Follows uses anxieties and sexual terror adeptly, The Faculty utilizes a high school setting for a horror film ideally, and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night take a similar, predatory adolescent girl and does much more interesting work with the concept. While I do like some of the trope subversions in Jennifer’s Body, such as establishing teenage boys as the targeted victims, it is only addressed once in the film. This is the sort of detail that could have been played up more, and delved into effective satire of the way society treats young women. Those little details can be the difference between a mediocre movie and a good one, if you ask me.

Another issue with this film is its tone. While horror-comedy can be an effective combination, the director has to play a balancing act to pull it off. Here, Cody’s dialogue style creates a distinct tonal mismatch in what is visually a very dark and somber film, which might have been righted in the hands of a different director. There are a few good lines (“lasagna with teeth”), but her writing doesn’t work as well here as it did with the more light-hearted Juno, at least not with the way this film is shot. Frankly, Jennifer’s Body doesn’t fully commit to comedy or horror, and vacillation between them takes nuance to pull off well, which is lacking here.

As far as the performances go, I found Fox to be perfectly decent in her role, though it is definitely more limited than you would imagine – she’s nearly a tertiary character. The real weight of the film is on Seyfried, who does her best to make Cody’s dialogue sound organic. However, she doesn’t handle it nearly as well as Ellen Page, and it comes off as stilted at times.

Personally, I found the most distracting element of the film to be the soundtrack. The selections of contemporaneous alternative music dates the movie, and the selections frequently don’t fit the atmosphere of their scenes. It is pretty obvious that the film was shoehorning in a tie-in soundtrack, in an attempt to bring in an additional market to the theater. Unfortunately, on a rewatch many years later, it definitely hurts the film. At the time, I’m not sure how distracting the music would have been, but it definitely stands out now.

Overall, I think Jennifer’s Body is a pretty mediocre movie that squandered some great potential, even without a poorly-conceived marketing campaign. That said, I think people should give it another shot – particularly women. I suspect there is more here to resonate with for women viewers, which is part of why the male-centered marketing didn’t make sense in the first place. If you think the concept sounds interesting, give it a watch.

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine

July 23, 2018 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Today, I’m going to dig into the less-than-beloved comic book film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

The plot of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is summarized on IMDb as follows

A look at Wolverine’s early life, in particular his time with the government squad Team X and the impact it will have on his later years.

The screenplay for X-Men Origins: Wolverine was written by David Benioff (Game of Thrones, Troy) and Skip Woods (Sabotage, Hitman: Agent 47). However, uncredited rewrites were also done by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, White House Down, The Amazing Spider-Man) and Scott Silver (The Fighter, 8 Mile).

The character of Wolverine first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #180 in October 1974, and was created by the trio of Len Wein, John Romita, and Roy Thomas. Prior to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the character had appeared in the previous X-Men films, and would go on to star in two quasi-sequels to this movie: The Wolverine and Logan. On the small screen, the character has appeared in a litany cartoons, and is one of the most recognizable and popular Marvel superheroes.

The director for the film was Gavin Hood, who also directed the films Ender’s Game, Tsotsi, and Eye In The Sky.

The cast of X-Men Origins: Wolverine includes Hugh Jackman (X-Men, The Prestige, Prisoners), Liev Schreiber (Scream, The Manchurian Candidate, Spotlight), Danny Huston (21 Grams, The Aviator), Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool, Deadpool 2, Green Lantern), Dominic Monaghan (Lost, The Lord of The Rings) and Taylor Kitsch (Waco, Battleship, John Carter).

The cinematographer for the film was Donald McAlpine, whose credits include Romeo + Juliet, Ender’s Game, Predator, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nine Months, Peter Pan, and The Time Machine.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine had two credited editors: Nicolas De Toth (Stoker, Live Free Or Die Hard, Sum Of All Fears, Bicentennial Man) and Megan Gill (Eye In The Sky, Ghost In The Darkness, Tsotsi).

The music for the film was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams, who also provided music for the movies Blackhat, The Town, Cowboys & Aliens, Gone Baby Gone, and the video games Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3.

Prior to the film’s official release, a workprint copy was leaked online before the addition of much of the effects work. This leaked version was greatly criticized by fans online, and the studio blamed it for the film not taking in a higher total gross once it did release.

The negative fan reaction to the film, particularly to the portrayal of the fan-favorite character Deadpool, led to a groundswell movement lobbying for Ryan Reynolds to get his own movie to portray the character. It took years to muster studio support, but thanks to a demo leak that further riled up fans in support, Deadpool ultimately released in 2016, with a sequel two years later. Both films freely and specifically criticize X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with the second film going to far as to rewrite and re-enact a scene from the film.

Hugh Jackman specifically recommended and advocated for both his co-star, Liev Schreiber, and the film’s director, Gavin Hood, for their parts in the production. Despite this, Hugh Jackman was ultimately disappointed with the final product of the film.

The character Gambit had repeatedly been cut from previous X-Men movies, despite his wild popularity among fans. However, as with Deadpool, fans were less than pleased with his appearance and behavior on screen. Also, as was the case with Deadpool, fans have been lobbying for a solo Gambit movie for years since the disappointment of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, though progress on the film seems to have indefinitely stalled.

Brian Cox, who played the character of Stryker in X-Men 2, and Tyler Mane, who portrayed Sabretooth in X-Men, were both turned down for reprising their roles in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, despite both actors indicating interest.

Reportedly, conflicts between the studio and Gavin Hood were extreme throughout the production, to the point that a mediator had to get involved to ease tensions.

Will.i.am of the band The Black Eyed Peas is a huge fan of the X-Men, and particularly of the mutant Nightcrawler. Despite not being an actor, he was given a role in the film, as well as a Nightcrawler-esque character to portray.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a box office success, taking in $373 million on a $150 million production budget. However, the studio regarded this as an under-performance, citing that the leaked workprint siphoned interest away from the theatrical release.

Despite the ticket sales, the reception to the film was mixed-to-negative. Currently, it holds an IMDb user rating of 6.6/10, along with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 37% from critics and 58% from audiences. In the years since the film’s release, however, with the popularity of the Deadpool movies, X-Men Origins: Wolverine has retroactively earned a reputation as a complete failure, and an embarrassment to the franchise.

To begin with, there are some positives to X-Men Origins: Wolverine that are absolutely worth mentioning. First off, Liev and Hugh have fantastic chemistry, and light up the screen whenever they have the chance to work off of each other. I don’t even think there is a debate that Liev is the definitive portrayal of Sabretooth on film. Likewise, Ryan Reynolds got his chance here to show off his Deadpool skills. Without his brief scenes as Wade Wilson in this film, there is absolutely no way that the Deadpool films get made. So, even if you can just appreciate this as an audition tape, that is a positive worth mentioning.

Now, on to some major points of criticism. First off, I think one of the biggest issues with the film is the performance of Huston as Stryker. This is a film that could really use a good, compelling villain. Making things even harder, the same character had just been portrayed brilliantly by Brian Cox, who pulled out all of the stops to give one of the better villain performances in a comic book movie. Huston, on the other hand, just feels like a slimy bureaucrat – he isn’t menacing or imposing, and he doesn’t telegraph hatred or loathing as effectively or hauntingly as Cox did in the previous portrayal. The result is a huge gap in the film, where there should be a compelling central antagonist.

Another huge issue with the film is the contrast between early sequences and the rest of the film. I personally found that the introductory sequences were significantly more interesting than the rest of the movie. As an audience member who had already seen the previous X-Men films, I can confidently say that I would rather spend time with Wolverine while working with a black ops squadron, or Wolverine while fighting in wars through the ages, than watching a Wolverine story unfold that we already know the details of and ending to. The Weapon X story, after the events of X-Men 2, is just paint by numbers – there’s not really any stakes to a story the audience already knows, which is part of why prequels can be quite tricky. The movie should have introduced some more compelling new characters and relationships, but the ones that it attempted just had no effective gravity. The most colorful and intriguing characters are unceremoniously dispatched or neutered within just a few screen minutes of their introductions.

Another significant issue with Origins, and one that was pointed out with criticisms of the leaked workprint, is that it was laden with unwise and poorly executed effects. The Blob, for example, looks terrible, to the point that the fat suit comes off as comical. More importantly, the crucial adamantium claws on Wolverine look jarringly unconvincing, due to an over-reliance on computer generation to render them, when props would work far more effectively. However, for the most part, I found the effects to be less distracting than I expected: looking back now, years later, it isn’t so different than any bad CGI from the mid-2000s.

Perhaps the true coffin nail for this film was baked into its (capitalistic) intention to please fans. Including characters like Deadpool and Gambit had to have been done due to the popularity of those characters. Unfortunately, the key crew didn’t have any knowledge beyond that – there was a lack of understanding of characters, and what made them popular in the first place. The consequence of this ignorance was the massive backfire that ensued, which hurts the reputation of the film to this day. Haphazard fan service attempts simply don’t cut it these days – die-hard fans now demand fidelity and vision, rather than just cameos and facades that merely allude to their beloved source materials.

All in all, Origins is basically a mediocre popcorn action movie. I think it is hated more today than it really should be, due to the production so badly mishandling fan service. While the movie is definitely not good, it also isn’t a complete disaster by any means – Jackman is still fun as Wolverine, Sabretooth is an improvement, and the brief Wade Wilson moments are great. We Hate Movies refers to this sort of film as a “hangover movie”: a film you can have this on in the background while nursing a hangover on a Sunday morning: it requires neither attention nor energy to consume, but is just enough of a pointless spectacle with highlight moments to be tolerable. It is still not a recommendation from me, though: this is a movie that is probably best to leave it where it is.

Ivy On Celluloid, Uncategorized

Ivy On Celluloid: Accepted

July 16, 2018 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Accepted

For today’s Ivy On Celluloid, I’m going to look at the portrayal of higher education in the 2006 comedy, Accepted.

The plot of Accepted is summarized on IMDb as follows:

A high school slacker who’s rejected by every school he applies to opts to create his own institution of higher learning, the South Harmon Institute of Technology, on a rundown piece of property near his hometown.

The screenplay for Accepted has three credited writers: Adam Cooper (Exodus: Gods and Kings), Bill Collage (Assassin’s Creed, Allegiant), and Mark Perez (Game Night, The Country Bears).

Accepted was directed by Steve Pink, a writer and director who also worked on the films High Fidelity, Hot Tub Time Machine, Hot Tub Time Machine 2, and Grosse Pointe Blank, and the shows Santa Clarita Diet and Cobra Kai.

The cast of the film includes Justin Long (Tusk, Drag Me To Hell, Waiting…), Jonah Hill (The Wolf Of Wall Street, War Dogs, 21 Jump Street, Moneyball), Maria Thayer (State of Play), Blake Lively (The Town, The Shallows), Anthony Heald (Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs), Lewis Black (The Daily Show, Inside Out), and Kellan Lutz (The Legend of Hercules, Twilight).

The cinematographer for Accepted was Matthew F. Leonetti, whose shooting credits include Star Trek: First Contact, Santa’s Slay, The Butterfly Effect, Hard To Kill, Action Jackson, Red Heat, Weird Science, The Bat People, and Dragnet.

Accepted was edited by Scott Hill, whose other cutting credits include Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty, Here Comes The Boom, and Zookeeper.

In 2011, a loose Bollywood remake of Accepted was made, titled F.A.L.T.U.. It used many of the same elements as its predecessor, but changed the setting of the film. The world “faltu” in Hindi translates to “useless” in English.

Accepted was made on a budget of $23 million, on which it took in $38.5 million in its lifetime theatrical release. Taking into account advertising and post-production costs, the film probably wasn’t terribly profitable. Critically, the reception to Accepted was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds scores of 37% from critics and 72% from audiences, alongside an IMDb user rating of 6.5/10.

As far as college comedies go, this is one of the more bearable ones that I’ve come across. There is still a lot of crassness and sexism to be found, to be sure, but it didn’t make me as livid as a lot of other college comedy films.

When it comes to the portrayal of higher education in Accepted, this is a movie that deals with some issues that most college stories don’t necessarily touch on, like what the minimum requirements for a university are, what the purpose of higher education is, and what fraud looks like in this realm.

The story of Accepted takes place in the state of Ohio, though the specific location is fictitious. Harmon College, as it is portrayed, it not a real institution in Ohio, though it could be a stand-in for any number of the many universities and colleges in Ohio. Interestingly, there is a Harmon College that exists within the University of Central Missouri, but it isn’t an autonomous institution.

A number of other higher education institutions are mentioned but not seen in the film. Oddly, some of these are real universities, whereas others are not. For instance, B is rejected from “Ohio State College,” which is clearly meant as a fictional stand in for the Ohio State University. Rory, however, is rejected from the very real Yale University, and an unnamed character is shown celebrating an acceptance into Princeton University.

At one point, the topic of B’s admissions essay comes up. Apparently, his essay was themed around how he “doesn’t have a clue” what to do with his life, which his sister claims is part of why he failed to get accepted anywhere. Later in the film, it is shown that B is pretty good improvisational speaker, and is able to weave complicated deceptions and inspirational speeches from thin air. At his core, he is a gifted storyteller / huckster, which is a skill which might have helped him out with his essay. In an article in the US News & World Report, it is stated that individualism, likability, and vivid storytelling are all key components to a successful and effective admissions essay. Personally, I think that if B had channeled his existing skills, he might have been able to concoct a brilliant essay that would have possibly compensated for his insufficient grades. However, it sounds like he couldn’t muster any genuine passion for his applications, which probably came through in his writing. That – rather than just his topic of choice – likely contributed to his inability to stand out in the admissions review process.

In an early scene, B tries to break his rejection news to his parents by arguing that it is “financially irresponsible to go to college.” This is not an uncommon line of thinking, particularly as the cost of schooling has continued to rise, and success stories of tech industry drop-outs have circulated and enchanted countless budding entrepreneurs. However, his parents immediately shoot him down, with his father stating that:

Society has rules. The first rule is, you go to college. If you want a happy and successful life, you go to college. If you want to be somebody, you go to college.

This is an interesting example of a generational divide when it comes to perceptions of higher education. People who went to college decades ago probably still hold on to the belief that a college is a sort of guarantee of a high quality of life, and the absence of one is a guarantee of the opposite. There was definitely a time where achieving a college degree alone was enough to raise someone’s social status, when it was a far less common achievement. Now, however, it isn’t that simple. College is an opportunity for learning and connections that can eventually lead to more than that. It isn’t, by any means, a guarantee of success.

Something that has always bugged me about this film is the apparent absence of community colleges. In theory, any number of the South Harmon students could have gone to a community college, as they are generally open enrollment. Many students who don’t get into the school they want, or can’t afford the price tag, will take community college classes and later transfer to another institution. While this pathway is definitely not flawless, it has proven viable for more than a few students over the years, and is likely preferable to not taking classes at all. If acceptance (as opposed to rejection) is what South Harmon students were looking for, community colleges is where they could have found it.

B’s sister, who is apparently a pre-teen, is shown to be already preparing for college admissions despite her young age, in the hopes that she will “have a shot.” Their parents are supportive of this, which is becoming increasingly common. In the hopes of standardized test successes and any potential advantage in applications, children are beginning college preparation younger and younger.

One of the central characters of the film, Daryl, is said to be an all-state quality wide receiver. However, at some point, he winds up with a prohibitive injury, which leads to his promised football scholarship being reneged. Prior to the formation of South Harmon, he is left completely adrift, without any clear options.

This is a very real issue that faces college athletes: any injury could not only spell the end of their scholarship, but in some cases the end of a potentially lucrative career as well. A single injury can stand between multiple millions of dollars worth of contracts, and being left with nothing but immense debt and a vacancy where a college degree should be. Consider the story of University of Oklahoma basketball player Kyle Hardrick, who suffered an injury shortly into playing at the university:

As Hardrick tries to resume his career, he has been unable to obtain a medical hardship waiver, something he needs to regain a year of college eligibility. His family has been stuck with tuition bills since his scholarship was not renewed. And with those bills unpaid, he also can’t get his academic transcripts from Oklahoma to transfer to another school.

“You believe that your child will be taken care of on and off that court throughout their college career,” said Valerie Hardrick, Kyle’s mother, at a congressional roundtable discussion last week. “My insurance does not cover all of Kyle’s medical bills.”

With scholarships renewed on a year-to-year basis, stories like Hardrick’s emerge every year across the country.

In an article titled “The Most Evil Thing About College Sports” on Slate.com, Josh Levin writes:

An athletic scholarship is not a four-year educational guarantee. What few college sports fans—and not enough college recruits—realize is that a university can yank that scholarship after one, two, or three years without cause. Coach doesn’t like you? He’s free to cut you loose. Sitting the bench? You could lose your free ride to a new recruit.

…

[One] roster management strategy, seen often at Alabama, LSU, and other SEC schools, is to rescind a promised scholarship just before the student-athlete’s freshman year.

Daryl’s is not unlike the other stories described here. If anything, he is somewhat fortunate to have been injured prior to getting to college, when a lot of debt could have been on the line.

The character Rory in the film faced another rejection scenario – she applied to only one highly-selective college, and didn’t get in. In this case, her target was Yale University. In her words, her rejection was due to “too many rich kids with mediocre grades and well-connected parents this year” applying for admission this year, meaning there was no room for her. In 2017, Yale was among the most selective of colleges, accepting between 6% and 7% of applicants. Even with an immaculate application, there was no guarantee for Rory’s admission to the school. That said, there is a long history of elitism and admissions bias in the Ivy League and other top-tier institutions, so she is probably not entirely off-base with her assumption. Almost certainly, a child of a trustee of donor would have gotten preferential consideration over here, in one way or another.

When initially designing their fake college, this first steps the gang makes are to design fake acceptance letters, as well as a facade website. Some people might thing that this is beyond belief – surely people would just Google the school and look at the website, and immediately get fishy?

Recently, I read a fantastic book on fraud in higher education called Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over A Million Fake Diplomas. Shockingly, both fake degrees and entirely fake institutions are really common, and people fall for them absolutely all the time. A couple of examples of entirely fake institutions that conferred fake credentials for years were LaSalle University in Louisiana and Columbia State University, both of which took in millions upon millions of dollars in profits before being shut down. Records of fake universities even go back all the way to the 14th century:

So many new universities opened, the University of Paris begged the pope to stop them…because some of the newer ones, more interested in making money than offering education, got into the business of…selling admission…and eventually the selling of degrees themselves.

Bear, J. & Ezell, A. (2012). Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over A Million Fake Diplomas. p. 34

Even more disturbing than how profitable and prolific fake universities are, is just how easy it is to get a hold of one of their degrees. In 1984, just to see how easy it really was, U.S. House of Representatives staff took $1800, and used it to buy a doctorate from the fake Union University in Los Angeles. The fake degree was written out to Rep. Claude Pepper, thus making him, nominally, “Dr. Pepper.” Taking it a step further, the staff members then made up their own fake university, and displayed to the House of Representatives how easy the process was (Bear & Ezell, p. 38).

The biggest difference between South Harmon Institute of Technology and most fake universities in real life is that “real” fake universities rarely, if ever, have a physical campus. Today, almost all fake universities utilize the internet as their primary platform, whereas they previously did a lot of their business over the phone through cold-calling. The audacity and impracticality of trying to pull off a false campus is clear from watching Accepted: the whole process is unbelievably complicated and tenuous. After all, imagine how much easier it would have been for B to concoct an online college: he wouldn’t have had to invest in a location, wouldn’t have had to improvise in his interactions with students, wouldn’t have had to deal with the liability of housing students, etc. However, this gets into another interesting aspect of the film – the guidelines for accreditation, as outlined in the climactic hearing with a state accrediting board.

As stated in the film, there are two sets of qualifications needed for SHIT to earn accreditation. First:

The state defines a college as a body of people with a shared common purpose of a higher education…that’s us, with the word ‘higher’ kind of loosely defined – B

As B notes, SHIT loosely qualifies as a college based on this definition. Thus, the team has to meet three additional stated requirements for accreditation – they have to prove that their college has a facility, a curriculum, and a faculty. While they ultimately provisionally pass accreditation by the skin of their teeth, there are a whole lot of problems with this whole process.

First off, the state does not accredit colleges. That work is done by independent accrediting agencies, such as the Higher Learning Commission or the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges. So, the entire basis of the hearing is bizarre and inaccurate.

Here is an example of the guidelines that an accreditation agency, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, uses. It has 9 general standards for accreditation, each of which has between 5 and 49 specific points beneath them. NEASC states that each of these standards “articulates a dimension of institutional quality”, and that “serious weaknesses in a particular area may threaten the institution’s accreditation.” There is, to be blunt, no chance that B and company could have weaseled their way through an actual accreditation process by one of these rigorous agencies. Their ad hoc institution simply could not meet these sorts of qualifications, given the amount of red tape and planning that would be necessary for the process.

In the film, the villainous President of Harmon College is shown to be planning an expansion of the campus into the impoverished surrounding area, in order to build a ceremonial gateway. This is something that actually happens as well – the University of Southern California, for example, recently expanded further into the low-income neighborhood of Inglewood, though it was in order to create more student housing.

Lewis Black’s character in Accepted was said to have once been a college Dean, but apparently “resigned” by sending bag of dog feces to his university’s president many years before the events of the movie. Regrettably, I wasn’t able to dig up any similar instances of over-the-top resignations of Deanships. However, in some ways, Black’s character’s opinions on and frustrations with the state of higher ed echo that of former MIT Dean Christine Ortiz, who left her Deanship in order to start an innovative, experimental university called Station1 that would forego traditional classes, classrooms, or departments.

The curriculum design that is shown at South Hampton is, to put it lightly, as bizarre as it is non-rigorous and disgusting. Some classes, as far as I can tell, consist of only leering at women, or learning skeevy pick-up artist tricks (“Hitting on Strippers” stands out). In fact, a huge number of the shown classes are centered on the study of “girls,” (not to be confused with women’s studies) as the primarily-male student body was able to design all of the course offerings. Other classes included real arts-based teachings, like wood carving, music, sculpting, fashion design, and the culinary arts, but most of the classes are shown to be effectively either nonsense, immensely creepy, or both.

One of the key selling points for South Hampton Institute of Technology in the film is that there are no traditional grades. In reality, there are some colleges that have tried to circumvent the stresses and anxieties that come along with traditional grading. Reed College, for example, records letter grades, but doesn’t release them to students. The rationale is that students can then focus on intellectual and academic pursuits instead of aiming for just a letter grade.

At one point, it is revealed that the student population of the South Harmon Institute of Technology is roughly 300. This is a very, very small student population, to the point that it would comfortably land among the smallest higher education institutions in the United States, most of which are seminaries or highly specialized art, music, or architecture schools.

As a film, I’m not a huge fan of Accepted. That said, I appreciate that it is different than most college movies, and deals with different issues related to higher education. It also actually feels like a movie that the cast and crew enjoyed making, which doesn’t always seem to be the case with these. Still, I feel like there was far more satiric potential with this movie than was ultimately tapped into by the production. As far as a recommendation goes, I think I can lightly recommend it, with a distinct caveat for the shallow, crass, sexist content of the school’s curriculum.

Misan[trope]y

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Reviews/Trivia of B-Movies, Bad Movies, and Cult Movies.