Writer of things that go bump in the night

Tag: spring

Monster Hunting: Some Recent Movies Worth Watching This Halloween

The spooky season is once again upon us—my favorite time of year—so I thought I’d share a few horror-movie recommendations.  Despite my curmudgeonly assertion this past spring that I don’t enjoy movies anymore, each suggestion below gives lie to that.

In compiling this selection, I tried to choose A) relatively recent movies, from the last few years, that B) you’ve likely never heard of, hence the reason worthy entries like Get Out, Split, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Conjuring, and The Witch didn’t make the cut.

What all of the following lacked in budget they more than compensate for in creativity; they remind me of what I found so exciting about filmmaking in my youth, before corporations controlled all of our popular entertainments, and Hollywood was ushered into our ignominious Era of the Endless Reboot.

As always, I’ve included each movie’s Save the Cat! genre classification.

 

It Follows (2014)

Genre:  Monster in the House (“Supra-natural Monster”)

This one you may have already heard of (it isn’t quite as obscure as some of the titles to come), but I had to include it for the simple reason that it’s the most terrifying horror film I’ve seen since I was a kid.

After a one-night stand, a college student finds herself afflicted with the mother of all STDs:  an invincible supernatural entity (which can shapeshift to appear as anyone:  an old woman, a middle-aged man, etc.) that follows her ploddingly but relentlessly—night and day, wherever she goes, however far she runs—and will kill her upon catching her.  The only way to rid herself of the demonic fiend?  Pass on the “curse” by sleeping with another person!  Of course, if the wraith kills that unlucky fool, it reverses course to work its way back up the vectorial chain—meaning there’s no way to permanently outrun the malignant spirit pursuing you!

Just like an STD, It Follows leaves a stinging sensation you just can’t seem to shake once exposed.  (I’m actually looking over my shoulder as I type this at 12:45 in the afternoon.)

Continue reading

Spring Fever: On Baseball Season and the Joy of Not Being an Expert on Some Things

Forget the alert on your iCal.  To hell with the buds of green sprouting on the branches outside your window.  It isn’t really springtime until legendary announcer Vin Scully utters, on opening day of the new season, “It’s time for Dodger baseball!

Alas, Vin retired last fall after a 67-year run, ending one of the great rites of spring.  I can’t blame him, though; he’s more than earned his retirement.  There isn’t a person in the world that doesn’t wish him a long and happy ride into the sunset.  Life, meanwhile, goes on.  Spring came just the same.  So did baseball season.

Fellow Bronx native Vin Scully at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles

I have a special fondness for spring.  It is the season of my birthday, which evokes all those happy associations from childhood—not just the parties and presents, but emerging from the long winter frost to be tempted back to the streets by the perfume of blooming flowers, the petrichor of rain-slick pavement, the gentle, pre-summer warmth coming back around for a long overdue visit.  Nothing, however, heralds the season for me so resoundingly as the resumption of Major League Baseball.

This has not always been the case.  Truth be told, baseball is a fairly recent personal pastime of mine.  My wife is the real sports nut in the family, having grown up only blocks from Shea Stadium as a card-carrying—and long-suffering—Mets fan.  I was raised in the Bronx, right up the Deegan from Yankee Stadium, though it’s probably for the best I was never much of a baseball enthusiast, and certainly not a Yankees fan, otherwise our two-decade romance might have proven too star-crossed to survive one of the great New York rivalries.  Given how resolute (to put it diplomatically) team loyalties can be, it was fortunate I was decidedly nonpartisan.

I guess you could say I discovered the pleasures of baseball the really old-fashioned way—by sitting in the stands and watching the games.  And that only happened here in L.A.  Through her work, my wife regularly receives Dugout Club tickets to Dodger Stadium—those fully catered VIP seats right behind home plate.  (Yes—they’re as fantastic as you might think.)  I’ll admit I initially went along for the all-you-can-eat Dodger Dogs, but, somewhere along the way, I learned the game—and got invested in it.  That’s the thing about baseball, after all:  For three-plus hours, you have nothing to do but sit and watch (once you’ve reached your gastrointestinal limitations from the buffet, that is), so eventually you’re left with little choice but to start paying attention.  Baseball doesn’t wow you into engagement so much as lull you into complacency.  But more on that point shortly.

Continue reading

© 2024 Sean P Carlin

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑