The Deepest Breath
How long can you hold your breath? A minute? Maybe? Kids time these sorts of things when swimming, but it's not something most of us think about in our waking lives. But I know that when I swim and misjudge the time it takes to surface, panic sets in almost instinctively. The body wants to live. It takes a particular personality to ignore the body's demands in apparent life-or-death circumstances. Stephen Keenan and Alessia Zecchini are two such people. Zecchini's first words in The Deepest Breath, Laura McCann's documentary about Keenan and Zecchini's goal to become legendary deep sea free divers, are about how she's never associated diving with death. I'll grant a writer is more likely to associate everything with death. But I cannot understand plunging into the darkest depths of the earth while holding your breath for minutes at a time and passing out before you can return without thinking of your own demise. Some of us, I suppose, see a Way where the rest see a void. Continue Reading →
The Sky Is Everywhere
YA literature often gets a bad rap for being frivolous and superficial, caught up in meaningless fluff like who to go to the big prom with, or what kind of makeover you need in order to get the boy you like to pay attention to you. In reality, much of YA lit has a surprisingly dark streak, and is more obsessed with death and dying than Stephen King. Take a look at what novels are burning up the teen reader charts, and they’re more likely than not to feature a protagonist facing, if not their own death, then the death of a parent, a friend, or a significant other. They may still end up stuck having to choose between two people to go to the prom with, but not until after they’re able to work through their grief and learn to move on. Continue Reading →
Brazen
SimilarCape Fear (1991), Chicago (2002), Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Live Free or Die Hard (2007),
Primal Fear (1996) Rope (1948), Secret Window (2004),
With the meteoric popularity of Yellowjackets, a new installment of the Scream franchise, and the revival of shows like Saved by the Bell and The Babysitters Club, 90’s nostalgia is in full swing. It was only a matter of time before the true entertainment staple of the era made a comeback as well. I’m talking of course about the humble made-for-tv movie. The original TV movies of the 80’s and 90’s came in four basic flavors: teen morality play, hardboiled sleaze, young women being kidnapped/stalked/unalived, and Stephen King. The very best made-for-tv movies had overlap between the categories, with classics like Cyber Seduction, A Friend To Die For: Death of a Cheerleader, and No One Would Tell fueling the Monday morning water cooler roundups. Continue Reading →
Nightbooks
SimilarThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005),
As evil witch Natacha (Krysten Ritter) exclaims in Nightbooks, she doesn’t like stories with “happy endings.” While it’s refreshing to have a children’s horror movie that doesn’t coddle the audience, Netflix's latest is hardly the spectacular, spooky adventure it packages itself to be. Instead, it’s more like the off-brand Halloween candy a kid might get trick or treating. It technically passes as a treat, but not one that will leave kids and parents coming back for more. Continue Reading →