Supernatural: Season 4

Dean is in hell – until he wakes up in a pine box six feet under. He manages to climb his way out to find a leveled war zone, a hand shaped burn on his shoulder, and Sam & Bobby who both don’t know how Dean broke out of hell and got back into his meat suit. However, soon it’s revealed that Dean and Sam have been pulled into the biggest battle of their lives; Dean has been pulled out of hell by Castiel an angel because Lilith is breaking the sixty-six seals and once the sixty-six seals break Lucifer will rise.

Supernatural has always been a show that does the unexpected, but season four of Supernatural is the season that threw away all of the rules and did things that we never expected any show to go to; the Winchester brothers fight, Sam allies with a demon, angels and demons pursue the boys, and there are more twists an turns than any season before. The crazy thing about all of this is that Kripke and crew not only manage to put all of these twists into season four, but they are all completely logical and so well written that you can trace how they started slowly and subtly in the seasons prior.

The best addition to season four is most definitely Misha Collins as Castiel. Castiel is the angel that raised Dean from hell and he watches over the Winchester brothers as he attempts to guide Dean into the plan his superiors have for Dean and slowly uncovers more about humanity then he has in his thousand of other years on the planet. Castiel is deadpan, innocent, tough and cocky all at the same time; he is a hard-boiled, noir detective ripped right out of a pulp novel, only he’s commissioned by God instead of a dame. Misha Collins was the perfect addition to the show and earned his place as a cast member in season five.

More than anything season four is the season where Winchester brother turns against Winchester brother. Sam secretly works with Ruby to develop his supernatural powers to take down Lilith and Dean tries everything in his power to keep protecting Sam and avoiding any plans the heavenly powers have for him, that he doesn’t see the wedge forming between he and Sam. It’s a great arch and one that no one ever expected. We’ve watched the Winchester brothers argue and fight for four years, but not until the end of season four do we actually see what can happen when the brothers try to work separately. Suffice it to say, it’s not good.

Season four ends with the biggest cliffhanger I’ve ever seen on television, one that is currently playing out this season, one that I never thought any writers would be brave enough to do. While I don’t want Supernatural to end any time soon, I can’t wait to see where the show goes.

Creator: Eric Kripke
Dean Winchester: Jensen Ackles
Sam Winchester: Jared Padalecki
Bobby: Jim Beaver
Ruby: Genevieve Cortese
Castiel: Misha Collins

Dean: I mean, I've saved some people, okay? I figured that made up for the stealing and ditching chicks But why do I deserve to get saved? I'm just a regular guy.
Sam: Apparently, you're a regular guy that's important to the man upstairs.
Dean: Well, that creeps me out. I mean, I don't like getting singled out at birthday parties... much less by... God.
Sam: Okay, well, too bad, Dean. Because I think he wants you to strap on your party hat.

After Hours

Paul Hackett is a data processor who goes out for an innocent coffee one night, meets a interesting girl…and his night goes downhill from there. After meeting Marcy Paul agrees to go on a date later that evening and soon discovers that everything that can happen to him late night in New York will happen, from his money flying out his cabs window to being chased down by an angry mob who thinks he’s a thief. After leaving Marcy all Paul wants to do is go home but he can do anything but.

After Hours is by far the least Scorsese-like film I’ve ever seen by Martin Scorsese. It’s not about thugs, men with too much testosterone, or family. In fact the only defining characteristic about this film that makes it a Scorsese film is that it takes place in New York…and that’s Scorsese directed the film.

This film is a bit scattered, but in a delightful way. It’s almost like Scorsese tried making a David Lynch film. There is a twisted sense of humor about the piece, and watching how far Paul Hackett can stumble into the underbelly of New York before coming up again is pretty fascinating. Everyone you meet in the film is a unique eccentric character that you’ve never seen on film before; in the exact opposite kind of crazy that Travis Bickle is the characters in After Hours are aboard the crazy train, but have eccentric traits that make them artists, club hoppers, bartenders, and individuals obsessed with eras – characters you would expect to see in a vast metropolis but not all at once.

I think my favorite part of the film has to be when Paul meets Gail. Gail owns a Mr. Softee ice cream truck and decides to give Paul a ride home in if after she whacks him with her cab door and her cabby steals his newfound money. However, Gail comes to believe that Paul is a serial burgler that is robbing her neighborhood and becomes part of a mob that wants to hunt him down. It’s a delightful mixtures of warped sadism and humor.

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Joseph Minion
Paul Hackett: Griffin Dunne
Marcy: Rosanna Arquette
Kiki: Linda Fiorentino
Gail: Catherine O’Hara

Street Pickup: Why don't you just go home?
Paul Hackett: Pal, I've been asking myself that all night.

Only You

RDJ in "Only You" 1994
Originally uploaded by bluesteel1981

I showed Only You to a fried who shares my love of Robert Downey Jr. This movie makes us both want to move to Italy. The romantic, artistic brush that Only You is painted in is wonderfully fun and spirited, and this movie really could have been done forty years ago with Doris Day and Rock Hudson.

Faith: Why couldn't we just have arranged marriages in America?
Kate: Yeah, at least you could spend the rest of your life blaming your parents instead of yourself.

Devour

[This review contains spoilers, but tryst me it doesn’t “spoil” the film.]

Jake Gray is a college student dying to get out of his small town. However, he’s been plagued with disturbing visions that only get worse when his friend Conrad signs him up for a game called The Pathway which makes he and his friends start to do bizarre tasks in order to keep playing. Jake backs out of the game but Dakota and Conrad do not; when his friends are killed Jake begins to wonder if The Pathway has anything to do with it.

Devour is one of the strangest horror films I’ve seen in a long time – I watched the film start to finish and I’m not sure I can tell you what it was about. The description I wrote above is basically what’s on the DVD label from Netflix…and it’s not super accurate to the film, but I literally can’t figure out what else to write about the movie.

Somehow Devour is about Jake Gray, his two messed up friends and how he manages to stay sane while they have led screwed up lives for years; Jake meets a girl, Jakes parents are overbearing for a not apparent reason, people around Jake keep dying and somewhere in all this is a few scenes with The Pathyway, college party massacres, Jakes horrific visions, and Jake begins to track down and old occult group and thinks he saw the devil… It’s strange. When it came time for the third act twist I literally cannot figure out how we got there – suddenly Jake is finding out he was kidnapped at birth by his parents because they were crazy-religious and his mother was a Satan worshiper, a group of occultists are trying to track Jake down and somehow the devil is looking for him…it really makes NO sense.

Perhaps the thing that disturbed me the most about Devour is the character of Marisol. Marisol is a nurse that is taking care of Jake’s invalid mother, and they begin flirting when he fixes her computer. They then begin dating which excites his mother and makes Dakota jealous…and then in the final few minutes of the film you find out that Marisol is the devil and she’s Jakes mother. After the “HUH?” faded it was replaced with a “EWWW!” sensation. Jake has been dating the devil/his mother…this is downright Oedipal and done badly on top of that.

Then of course there is the final cliché reveal – is this all in Jake’s head or was it all real? By the time that question rolled around I didn’t care…

Once you see that Jensen Ackles is in this film you won’t be surprised as to why I decided to Netflix it. That man has been in far too few movies and I thought I’d give it a whirl. He’s not bad in it, it’s just the movie that’s bad. Actors and crew do a film like Devour for one of two typical reasons: 1) The original script has a lot more promise than what made it on film and they have no control over where the film goes after they sign on, or 2) they are very early in their career and just need the work. I think for Ackles and the other young actors in this film one of these reasons probably rings true.

Director: David Winkler
Writers: Adam & Seth Gross
Jake Gray: Jensen Ackles
Marisol: Shannyn SSossamon
Dakota: Dominique Swain
Ivan Reisz: William Sadler
Conrad: Teach Grant

Ivan Reisz: Imagine if Hitler had the internet.

Supernatural: Season 3

Supernatural saison 3
Originally uploaded by waytoblueFR

Sam & Dean finally killed the Yellow Eyed demon, but not before the Hell Gate was opened, his demons were released, and Dean had to sell his soul to bring Sam back from the dead. Now Dean and Sam have a year to figure out how to keep Dean from going to hell, a new demon leader named Lilith is hunting Sam and a demon named Ruby is trying to help Sam & Dean fight back but the brothers don’t know if they can trust her. However, as time moves on Dean’s year is running out and the Winchester brothers can’t find a way to stop Dean’s contract from coming due…

Season three of Supernatural is the season that was affected by the WGA strike making it sixteen episodes instead of the standard twenty-two. The problem with this is that six episodes in a season of Supernatural is an entire subplot or arch and I really want to know where Eric Kripke and crew would have gone if they had been able to accomplish their entire season; watching Lilith’s mystique grow, Ruby twist and Dean struggle with an impending death sentence was intriguing as hell and while Kripke managed to get all of the major points and events across six more episodes would have allowed a lot more freedom in exploring all of this drama.

The single most interesting thing about season three is of course the fact that Dean is a man with a death sentence. When he watched Sam die something in him snapped and he went to the crossroads demon and made a deal, thinking he would be granted ten years before his contract was up and giving him and Sam ample time to figure out a way out of it. However, the crossroads demon was much smarter than that and only granted Dean a year before the hell hounds would come to drag him to hell. The next year of Dean’s life is spent with Dean deciding to live it up with girls and good times until reality hits him and he finally goes to Sam & Bobby to try to find a way out of his deal. Jensen Ackles showed a lot of range to bring these extreme emotions about as Dean goes from extreme highs to lows during season three and it’s fascinating to watch. If I wasn’t already sold on the character of Dean Winchester this season would have done it for me.

This is also the season where we spend sixteen episodes thinking that Sam’s powers are gone, and his destiny with Yellow Eyes (Azazel) is no more…but brilliantly this season just lulls us into a sense of complacency. Ruby won’t stop brining up Sam’s destiny and special skills and the new demon population is more than happy to continually hunt Sam down because they are afraid of him.

Even though Sam & Dean have no idea what lies ahead of them the viewer does and watching season three is fascinating as the brother’s don’t realize how everything they do this season lays the groundwork to the coming apocalypse…

Creator: Eric Kripke
Dean: Jensen Ackles
Sam: Jared Padalecki
Bobby: Jim Beaver
Ruby: Katie Cassidy

Sam: I'm not gonna let you go to hell, Dean!
Dean: Yes, you are! Yes, you are! I'm sorry! I mean this is all my fault. I know that. But what you're doing is not gonna save me. It's only gonna kill you.
Sam: Then what am I supposed to do?
Dean: Keep fighting.