Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Evil, F for Fake, The Watchers

Welcome back, midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up. I am Father Malone, and with me, as always is the irrepressible, the lovable, the adorable little Miss Ripley. Jean Ripley, say hello, Ripley, Wake up. Here we go. It has been more than thirty years since Molder and Scully began shining light into the dark corners of the world, bringing mutants and monsters and aliens and shadow governments into the living rooms of every American home.

That's three decades not only of the importance of the show itself, but it's incalculable impact on popular culture and mainstream entertainment. Let me tell you something, and I'm speaking from experience. If in nineteen ninety somebody were to ask you what your favorite thing was in the world and you said zombie movies, you may as well have said I'm from Neptune and my toes smell like asphalt. Pre x Files. Horror was for lunatics and the deranged, and oh everyone in the world on Halloween night.

Then it was okay. Then we all loved it. We had to pull them off all the shelves in the video stars. Anyway, what you're a year old. This was thirty five years ago.

You don't know what you're talking about. Those are my fangorias. You know you're getting that. You're not getting any more information anyway, Listen. Having said that, the shift culturally toward horror and the supernatural and aliens has pretty much picked those bones dry.

As far as serialized television, there's been Buffies and Angels and Roswell's a plenty, plus all of those ghost hunting shows. Man throw a rock and you'll hit one, and do me a favor of mi ink, throw it hard. Every facet of paranormal investigation and conjecture are on never ending display thanks to these shows. Hell I was a tour guide in a purported haunted museum for a while, so you can imagine the idea of taking on a new television series to watch, which, on its face seems like nothing more than a bold theft of the X File central premise. Died in the World, Believer man with pragmatic to a fault woman and let the paranormal activity fly.

But then I went ahead and watched Evil. God damn it, how many times have you declared a defendant? Saying Francis psychologist doesn't declinedy times? Have you determined the defendant had the mental capacity to be prosecuted? Thirty four times?

Is my client possessed by a demon? Are you referring to demon's metaphorically or clinically? This for sure. I work for the Catholic Church, so you're a priest. No, anossessor.

My colleague Ben and I investigate unexplained phenomenon. I didn't know that was a job. It is. I don't believe in all that devils in possession. The problem with my job is that possession looks a lot like insanity, and I need someone to help me distinguish between the two.

Or so maybe what's wrong? This is what a haunting? Well, the theory is that the demon takes over the house and then it takes over the person. I know you believe in this stuff. I don't.

Let's just stupid again. There's no demonic possession. Yeah, my wife believes in that stuff. Why do you want me doing this? There are people out there who do bad things and encourage others for the pleasure of it.

Psychopaths. Yes, this is where our beliefs Overlapp scenario. It's just dream. Can a dream to this take this. Trust me, you may need it.

I'm here to tell the truth. You're in way over your head, Miss Roch. What happened to nonviolence? It's provisional? Is that what Jesus said?

You're a bitch? Oh boy? Do you have that right? The trailer sent up the plot better than I could, but it doesn't hint at the talent on screen. Katya Herber's who was on Westworld, and Mike Colter the MCU's Luke Cage are the duo here, and they are fantastic, wholly different flavors of the believer in the skeptic.

They're good together and separately, and I'm really digging it. Even with them, even with Michelle King and Robert King at the Helm, they created the Good Wife. Even with the promise of Michael Emerson as some understated character study of anarchy, When Michael Emerson turns on the chills, there is no one scarier. He was Ben the leader of the others on Lost and Midnight. Viewers who have heard our anthologies attack we talked about Frank Miller.

We mentioned mister Emerson because he was the voice of the Joker and the animated Dark Knight returns. He is perfection, and this show is so far also kind of perfection. I'm hooked. The pilot is flawless, and the show manages this really nifty trick in giving us this nightmare demon on screen who's genuinely frightening, then showing him again in daylight in a it's only make believe setting, which spoils the entire trick, and then returning us to the nightmare version and he loses no menace. It's remarkable.

And Rockney O'Bannon Rockney s Obannon, creator of Alien Nation and far Escape. He's a contributing writer here. I have an interview with mister O'Bannon a few episodes back about his time on Twilight Zone. Yes, I am self plucking. You benefit from it too.

I feed you for one thing anyway, evil, simple enough title. It's on Paramount. Plus they're finishing up their fourth and final season, so it's the perfect time to start watching. No lag time, no future, but at least you won't have to wait all right, what else is streaming? What else is new or just new to you?

You realize there were several lifetimes worth the movies made before the year you were born. It's true shocking but true. Weirder still is that we spend so much of our time complaining that there is either nothing to watch or too much of that ever loading content machine we have to stare down every time we open a device. But I have a solution to your problem. Fine, Ripley has a solution to your problem.

And that very subtle growling is meant to get me to the next segment. Okay, the best segment. This is Ripley's pick. I didn't know you were into documentaries, A classic one at that. That's true.

It does count as a narrative. We're talking about the nineteen seventy three Orsonwells classic f for fake Ladies and Gentlemen. By way of introduction, this is a film about trickery and Robert how about lies? You don't talk about Siza. You talk me about Elvia, Elma, Elmir?

Who is Elma? That question has yet to be answered with any real precision. Can I kiss your truth? Anybody? About three in the world, the jet setters, among us, beautiful people everybody knows?

Help me? Help me of what he has about sixty times the same name he's called his uri Ory Cory Barr dorr All of Papa with you ali sixty names. His real name was Elmer Freman, then sixty personalities, as much lies and as much real. Well sounds very jesuita. Yes, it's his world is a world of make believe.

I'm not an actor, not an actor. Help me, I'm not an actor. I am not a professional actor. He's a leading actor in this movie. He's a profession It's true.

It's painting painting fakes. Among all fakers, Elmer is number two. Once I saw a man from Ibiza writing a book on fake who came to see me to Paris. He said, I heard you are the first man who both a and tell me of That man's name was Irving. The important distinction to make when you're talking about the genuine quality of a painting is not so much whether it's a real painting or a fake.

It's whether it's a good fake or a bad fake. Ripley, we're both of a mind about mister Wells. Yeah, thought so. I know that most, if not all, of you remember Orson as a bloated Shakespearean pitchman at the end of his life, and he was no doubt you can hear it. Get me a jury and show me how you can say in July and go down on you.

That's just idiotic. If you'll forgive me by saying so, that's just stupid in July. I'd love to know how you emphasize in and in July. Others of you might recall him from Peter Bogdanovitch's dead eyed, endless parroting of his his encounters with Wells. Good God, that is a fate wor than Paul Masong, But Orson Wells was a vital for seemingly the entire modern age.

He was at the forefront of cultural expression, even though more often than not he was relegated to the sidelines. His career was rife with frustration with everything from bungetary concern to artistic meddling to being targeted for a rest with an idea toward discrediting him. Here's something Citizen Kane, widely regarded as the greatest film of all time, isn't even his best work Lady from Shanghai. Really, Oh yeah, that's true. Ripley has a thing for mirrors anyway, in movies like Citizen Kane and Lady from Shanghai.

Those are the ones you've probably heard of or potentially seen. Ripley's pick is lesser known, lesser luded, and it's fucking brilliant. By nineteen seventy three, the writing was on the wall for this once wonder kind. He was getting no play here in America as far as production went. His list of unrealized film projects at this point is staggering.

A French filmmaker, Francois Reichenbach approached him about a documentary about a famed art forger. So Wells did what he does best. He turned a simple subject into a labyrinthine puzzle box of a movie. During the course of the film, Wells draws parallels with other famous forgeries, including his own. Because what was the war of the World's radio broadcast if nothing other than an attempt to convince the whole of the American public of a great falsehood?

Why to hear disingenuous this is Wells the day after. I know that almost everybody in radio would do almost anything to avert the kind of thing that has happened, myself included. But I radio is new, and we are learning about the effect it has on people. Learned the terrible lesson anyway, f for fake, I don't want to say too much more and spoil even one frame of it, other than to employ you to pay close attention to everything Wells is saying in the opening scene. Trust me, it pays off.

How's that? Oh? Yeah? For fake is streaming for free on Max right now. And if you find yourself as captivated as Ripley and myself, check out the documentary The Eyes of orson Wells that's also on Max, also free, also extraordinary.

The main thing I watched this past week was The Watchers, which is currently available for streaming on Apple and Prime and a whole bunch of other places, but you do have to pay for it. We'll get back to that at the end. I'm going out tonight trying not to die and I thought you couldn't talk. Well, I need some help. Where's the car?

You have five seconds before the door received? Five? Four three? What is happening? What is this place?

I don't mean to scare you, but we haven't much time. It's not wise to keep them waiting. They'll be very interested in someone new. It's a window on the other side. They come every night and they watch us.

What is that? What are they doing here? Applause or you mean how long have you been here? I don't know, and you've never seen one. No one sees.

They have come to our world for a reason. I'm not supposed to be here, and I'm not staying here. They allow us to live because we follow their rules. You have broken too many. What did he say?

I try to get it. I saw myself. Someone's out. Please open the door, John, my husband's outside. This is a trick.

This film takes place in modern day rural Ireland and it star as Dakota Fanning remember her. She plays a rudderless American expatriot who's working in a pet shop and she's tasked with transporting a bird to a zoo, but she has to drive through a dense forest to get there. The movie is part fairy tale, part psychological experiment, part meditation on grief. It's the kind of film you'd expect from Shyamalan, and it is although the next generation Dakota Fannings, Mina finds herself lost in the woods with several others who take shelter in a concrete box that was built to observe the super natural creatures that populate the woods, but now serves the exact opposite. Function.

Now. I love Irish folklore. It is wildly underused, and I think it's wildly underrepresented in cinema. So when a film does embrace it, like Halloween three, Season of the Witch, it tends to blow convention out the window. In fact, I think it creates new conventions.

So I was pretty stoked when this film began, because it was really sure footed and it was gentle, and then the characters began making decisions oo boy, and then other choices were made, and some of us chose to keep watching the watchers all the way to the end. No spoilers here, but I will say that the film tries way too hard to obfuscate a twist by packing our heads with ultimately irrelevant and more pressingly unbelievable moments and ideas. And how do you have a film about Irish fairies and never refer to them as the she I don't want to give you a negative impression over all about the film. It is worth a look, particularly as a first feature. There's some genuine dread in this movie.

And anytime you can make a forest this sinister, that shows me nothing but promise. I hope she keeps making horror flex we're in desperate need. See here's the thing. Ever since the letter aim at the number twenty three, a lot of legitimate filmmakers have seized on the notion that it's now okay to make horror films as long as they're lofty, as long as they're elevated, and the simplest and somehow not pretentious way to get there is grief. Grief is powerful, and it's just as prevalent as love or humor in everyone's life.

We just don't talk about it in popular media. I'd like to think that's out of some sort of reverence, but more likely it's that it's nearly impossible to make entertaining Horror has always been the place where it's been able to live, but it's becoming cliche. Worse, it's becoming cheap, And ultimately, grief is a kind of close to the bone shorthand does not absolve you from decent characters or dialogue. I think Robert Ager's movies are beautiful, and I'm looking forward to No Saratu, I really am, But his movies are a slog I have thrice attempted to watch The Lighthouse, and I have thrice slumbered and I'm an insomniac. The Lighthouse is better than Nikael and all those gorgeous tableaux he trafficks in those are just moving recreations of classical paintings.

And how do you make a movie about a family banish from a Puritan village into the wild and not have absolute terror for ninety minutes? What? I don't disagree with you? Yes, the climax is freaky and beautiful, but I'm not debating the merits of the Vivich with you, Ripley, Okay, disagree? Like I said, The Watchers, which is what we're talking about, is currently available for streaming for a fee on Prime and Apple Plus and the usual gang of streamers.

I am recommending this movie overall, but I'm also recommending you wait till you can see it for free. That's gonna do it for this week's weekly round up. Unless you've got anything more, Ripley, you you got any quick recommendations for people out there? The Beekeeper, Godzilla, Times Kong, the Fallen Empire, Dreams or whatever the hell that is? How about that Ghostbusters?

Mafe know nothing? All right? Well, then on her behalf and mine as well. Thank you for joining us here. At midnight viewing until next time.

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