ACROSS
1 Fancy parties
6 [This is gonna be
really bad!]
10 OutKast rapper
Big __
13 Hi in Hawaii
14 Senior golfer Aoki
15 Lends support to
16 Likely to speak
out
17 *Vodka cocktail
often served with
a sugared rim
19 Text update from
an Uber driver:
Abbr.
20 Trippy ’60s drug
22 Milked for all it’s
worth
23 Mai __: rum
drinks
25 Post-CrossFit
woes
26 With 49-Across, it
keeps repeating
itself ... and,
based on the first
and last letters,
an apt
description of
each answer to a
starred clue
28 “__-ching!”
29 Down with the flu
32 NFLer again in
2016
33 Early American
furniture style
36 Casino cash
source
37 Oft-injured knee
part, for short
40 Bit of texting tact
41 Sine __ non
42 Interest-arousing
promo
45 More accurate
47 Mud bath offerer
48 Night before
49 See 26-Across
50 Burton of “Star
Trek: TNG”
52 Wild swine
53 Win out
56 Tiny drink
57 Go wrong
60 *Largely bygone
penal colony
62 “Paper Moon” girl
64 Notable times
65 Mideast dignitary
66 Brownish gray
67 Susan of “L.A.
Law”
68 Fix, as a feline
69 Promoted heavily

DOWN
1 Conceded, with
“up”
2 Tons
3 *Store website
feature
4 “I thought so!”
5 Education
financing
company,
familiarly
6 Coat, as 
jewelry
7 Put in the game
8 *Shari Lewis
puppet
9 Place for a
break?
10 Dove or robin
11 Campfire
attraction
12 Kids’ game for
car trips
15 Includes
18 Maiden name
intro
21 Nine-digit ID
24 Wanted poster
letters
25 Duke’s conf.
26 Cry from a 
sheep
27 Motel postings
30 *Totally drunk
31 “Today” co-host
Matt

34 Manipulative
health care
practitioner
35 Pie crust fat
38 Mountain
climber’s piton
spots
39 *Light source
with hypnotic
bubbles
43 Artillery bursts
44 Essen article
46 Electronics giant

49 Hitter’s stat
51 Sound-detecting
organ
53 Claimed in court
54 Hard to find
55 “Buy It Now” site
56 Agile
58 Like orange or
red persimmons
59 Marsh plant
61 Athletes for Hope
co-founder Hamm
63 Calendar square

By C.C. Burnikel
©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/04/17

10/04/17

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

8 — Wednesday, October 4, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Like 
“The 
Witch,” 

“Chainsaw” treats it’s monster 
— Leatherface — with an 
unexpected tenderness.

Every minute is amazing, 

but it’s worth sitting through 
even if you’re horror averse for 
the final shot. It’s poetry spun 
from what could have been 
just 
a 
dirty 

bloodbath. 
Hooper’s eye is 
unmatched and 
the 
emotional 

core of film is 
unrivaled 
in 

modern horror. 
This is master 
class 
horror. 

This is why I 
love movies.

“Texas 

Chainsaw 
Massacre” 
is 

available 
to 

stream on Amazon Prime.

It Follows
“It Follows” is just further 

proof of what I hope has 
already been made clear at this 
point: Horror can be beautiful. 
This movie does to home 
invasion narratives what “The 
Witch” and “Chainsaw” do to 
their respective subgenres. It 
reimagines what it means to be 
followed while playing within 

the rules.

A not-so-subtle metaphor 

for STIs, “It Follows” tracks a 
demonic spirit that manifests 
itself as different people, visible 
only to the person possessed, 
who follow you until they can 
reach and kill you. The only way 
to pass the demon off to someone 
else is by having sex with them.

It’s eerie and terrifying and 

a surprisingly poignant portrait 
of teen culture. Filmed in and 

around 
Detroit, 

it’s 
beautifully 

dark. This is the 
kind 
of 
horror 

that sits with you, 
crawls under your 
skin and unsettles 
you for days after 
it ends.

“It 
Follows” 

is 
available 
to 

stream on Netflix.

***

Okay, if you’re 

still looking for an 
ease-in to horror, 

the teen fare of the 90s and early 
00s is a good place to start. The 
“Scream” franchise (especially 
1 or 4) blend humor and horror, 
and “The Craft” does horror-
lite unlike any other movie out 
there.

Go forth, get scared and 

please (please, please, please) 
watch 
“Texas 
Chainsaw 

Massacre.”

Please.

FILM
From Page 5
FILM REVIEW

SONY PICTURES

It’s unsurprisingly disappointing
‘Flatliners’ fails completely

The remake disappoints, just like everyone thought it would

Let’s get the lie at the center of 

“Flatliners” out of the way first. 
This 2017 film, billed as a sequel, 
is just a remake of the 1990 film of 
the same name. Despite comments 
director Niels Arden Oplev (“Speed 
Walking”) has made and the casting 
of Kiefer Sutherland (“Designated 
Survivor”), who starred in the 
original, “Flatliners” does little 
more than copy the original’s story 
nearly scene for scene, occasionally 
even line for line. What little novelty 
there might have been in expanding 
the original’s ideas is almost 
completely drowned out by a story 
that seems to go out of its way to be 

a boilerplate imitation of an already 
mediocre film.

For those unfamiliar with the 

original, “Flatliners” tells the story 
of a group of medical students who 
— in a series of attempts to probe 
the afterlife — kill themselves 
temporarily 
and 

have their colleagues 
resuscitate 
them 

after 
an 
allotted 

time 
has 
passed. 

Once they’re back 
in the world of the 
living, they begin 
to 
experience 

hallucinations that 
seem to imply some part of the 
afterlife isn’t done with them yet.

Ultimately, this remake’s biggest 

problem is the same one that 

plagued the original: The central 
conceit is too good for the movie 
that follows. There is limitless 
storytelling opportunity to the idea 
of scientists proving the existence of 
an afterlife, but neither the original 
nor the remake go anywhere 

particularly special 
with it. There are 
a 
few 
nebulous 

definitions thrown 
out (“It was like 
pure 
energy,” 
“It 

was kind of sexual”) 
and an attempt to tie 
into a greater story 
about 
redemption, 

but everything about the afterlife 
and its nature and capabilities is so 
poorly defined that it’s impossible 
for any stakes to develop.

That means that when it 

comes to the horror, it’s hard to 
be all that scared because it hasn’t 
been established what audience 
members are supposed to be 
scared of. In “The Conjuring,” 
we’re scared of the Bathsheba’s 
hold over the Perron family. In 
“It,” we’re scared of Pennywise 
and the other forms It takes and 
the way it feeds off peoples’ fear. 
In “Flatliners,” we’re just scared 
of the next inevitable blast of 
loud noise. Oplev, who directed 
the excellent “Mr. Robot” pilot, 
wrangles some atmosphere into 
a few scenes, but for most of the 
runtime, the script seems to be 
actively working against him.

To the movie’s credit, it tries 

to set up characters with unique 
problems 
and 
personalities. 

There is an effort made to base 
the story around the characters’ 
struggles. 
One 
character 
in 

particular is given an interesting 
arc with a shocking ending, 
and it’s no coincidence that this 
storyline represents the biggest 
departure from the original. 
The cast does their best, and 
while results vary — Diego 
Luna (“Rogue One: A Star Wars 
Story”) suffers through some of 
the worst dialogue of the year 
— it’s hard to say that anyone is 
outright bad.

It’s not as if the original 

“Flatliners” was a great movie, 
or even a good one. It’s tediously 
slow, features effects and scares 
that have aged incredibly poorly 
and is mostly notable for its 
cast and being directed by a 
pre-“Batman and Robin” Joel 
Schumacher. Still, it’s hard not 
to be disappointed at having 
to watch this remake take the 
same ingenious idea and waste 
it in many of the same ways. A 
good cast and a few moments of 
atmosphere can’t overcome the 
slavish devotion to the source 
material without even an attempt 
at reconciling that movie’s flaws.

DIRTY HIT

Wolf Alice’s new album wows
And for once, an Alt-Indie 
rock band that isn’t sad

The latest from the band continues on what the last album started: 
unexpected yet melodious arrangements of sound and feeling 

In 2015, Wolf Alice burst 

onto the British alt-rock stage 
with their first album, My Love 
Is Cool. With tracks like “Bros” 
and “You’re a Germ,” the four-
member 
band 
effortlessly 

blended 
acoustic 
riffs 
and 

melodious 
vocals 
with 

pounding bass and grating 
yells. A delirious explosion 
of sound, My Love Is Cool is 
flighty; it jumps from speakers 
with vitality, spinning into a 
kaleidoscope of emotion and 
never lingering too long in one 
place.

Wolf Alice’s latest release, 

Visions of a Life, introduces 
nothing 
new 
but 
rather 

expands 
on 
their 
debut’s 

unpredictability. The album’s 
songs 
are 
like 
full-color 

illustrations 
of 
different 

moments in a person’s life. A 

scattered collection of photos 
faintly bound together by the 
barest glimmer of thread, what 
they lack in cohesivity, they 
make up for in expressiveness.

The 
initial 
track, 

“Heavenward,” begins in a 
hazy nebula of ambient synth; 
grey matter that transforms 

into a rhythmic instrumental 
background that rises and falls 
under the line of lead singer 
Ellie 
Rowsell’s 
voice. 
The 

echo of her vocals are almost 
lost in translation: a nearly 
indiscernible chorus of “Go 
heavenward / As all Earth’s 
angels should” unravels the 
edges of the song. Frayed and 
obscure, “Heavenward” sits at 

the edge of consciousness — a 
half-forgotten memory.

In contrast, the succeeding 

track, 
“Yuk 
Foo,” 
seems 

to come from an entirely 
different band altogether, one 
that doesn’t give a “shit, shit, 
shit.” 
Rowsell’s 
aggressive 

screams backed by a raucous 
medley of punk rock anger 
gives the middle finger to the 
modest 
“Heavenward.” 
As 

“You bore me to death, well 
deplore me / No, I don’t give a 
shit” scratches nails down the 
chalkboard of prepubescent 
angst, Visions of a Life jolts 
from one sentiment to another. 
With little to no warning, 
a 
metamorphosis 
occurs: 

whimsical 
experimentation 

into belligerent rage. 

Open up the fucking pit, 

Wolf Alice.

The last lingering clamor 

of “Yuk Foo” mellows into 
“Beautifully Unconventional,” 
and Visions of a Life takes 

another turn, this time into 
a more relaxed, slightly pop-
infused 
composition. 
The 

muted simplicity of background 
harmonies calls attention to the 
bounce in Rowsell’s delivery 
of “Hannah! She lives! She 
breathes! / She’s beautifully 
unconventional.” 
Breezy 

and unaffected, this song is 
less 
substantial 
than 
“Yuk 

Foo” but more approachable: 
superficially catchy.

The 
rest 
of 
the 
album 

continues to leapfrog in the 
same erratic manner. Breathy, 
half-finished 
speculations 

stand next to relentless tempos 
that oddly cut into the acoustic 
pluck of “After the Zero Hour:” 
Wolf Alice manages to fit a lot 
into twelve tracks.

Although the songs rarely 

falter in delivering originality, 
each arrangement distinctive 
and 
multifaceted, 
the 

discombobulated 
complexity 

can 
oftentimes 
become 

overpowering. 

The 
various 
components 

of Visions of a Life seem to 
stand 
independent 
of 
each 

other; a spilled jigsaw puzzle 
with mismatched pieces, it’s 
hard to see the overall picture 
with songs that just don’t fit 
together.

It is almost impossible to form 

the flurry of contrasting sound, 
clashing harmonies and jarring 
juxtapositions 
into 
sequences 

that are easier to follow. 

After 
all, 
in 
choosing 
to 

focus 
mostly 
on 
individual 

track 
development 
rather 

than 
establishing 
an 
overall 

coherent 
flow, 
Wolf 
Alice 

creates a labyrinth: A cacophony 
of 
disconnected 
personal 

exclamations that can be easy to 
get lost in.

But even so, this isn’t an album 

that is meant to lock neatly 
together.

Within the disarray, each song 

becomes an abstract mosaic of 
Wolf Alice’s distant memories; a 
chromatic jumble that transforms 
Visions of a Life into a poignant 
exploration of human emotion. 

SHIMA SADAGHIYANI

Daily Arts Writer

JEREMIAH VANDERHELM

Daily Arts Writer

“Flatliners”

Sony Pictures

Ann Arbor 20 + 
IMAX, Goodrich 

Quality 16

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Visions of a Life 

Wolf Alice 

Dirty Hit 

ALBUM REVIEW

Open 
up the 
fucking 
pit, Wolf 

Alice

It’s eerie and 
terrifying and 
a surprisingly 

poignant portrait 

of teen culture

