july 18, 2014

UNDER THE SKIN
this is a very slow week in home video releases, so i will recommend one i haven't seen, but about which i've heard good things. under the skin is a british-american science fiction art film directed by jonathan glazer. it stars scarlett johansson as an alien who is seducing men in scotland. this sounds like a great thing to watch on a friday night. get some pizza and beer, turn all the lights off, open all the windows, and have a weird, spooky time. then if you don't like the movie, at least there was pizza and beer.

LIFE WITH ARCHIE #36
life with archie is a comic book that chronicles two parallel universes in the future: one in which archie marries veronica; one where he marries betty. this issue signals that the series is wrapping up because it skips even farther into the future to show archie's inevitable death. and as you can see from the cover, he doesn't die from no old age. archie andrews is murdered. archie will of course live on in perpetual teenage bliss in the pages of all the regular archie funnybooks, but kids everywhere will now know that no happiness awaits him in his multiverse of futures. his inescapable fate is to be taken from his loved ones prematurely. a shadow of tragedy that will forever haunt riverdale, making you want to bury your head in the classic archie books and never again think about the future.

it's a good read though, and it comes in five different variant covers so gorgeous that you'll spend twenty minutes standing at your local comic shop trying to pick one. or, you'll buy all five, if you are a lunatic. the book keeps it ambiguous as to whether we are in the veronica universe or betty universe. i guess everyone has their favorite, so they want you to be able to pretend it's whoever you want. but if you ask me, betty has always been the clear choice. both betty and veronica are pretty, but betty is a really good person and veronica is a cunt. to the point where i think that was even part of the appeal for archie.

THE PURGE: ANARCHY
the purge: anarchy is a horror thriller sequel written & directed by james demonaco, who wrote and directed the original purge from last year. the movies depict a society 9 years in the future that enforces an annual observance called the purge, where, for 12 hours, all crime is legal and all emergency services are suspended. the thinking behind this is that if everyone is allowed to "purge" all the darkness within them once a year, then the rest of the time, we can have a nice friendly society. this sequel takes place a year after the original, but follows all new characters. which i think is great. strong is the franchise bigger than any one character. now instead of being anchored to one specific storyline, the purge universe could be the basis for a neverending anthology of installments. if the hunger games people were any smart, they would've done that too.