Uncategorized

Last week, I watched 6 movies:

• Can’t Stop the Music isn’t a particularly good movie, even as a vehicle for the Village People, but it’s goofily endearing all the same. That’s mostly thanks to it being such a schlocky time capsule of 1980—which is why it’s not hard at all to see why it failed so badly in that moment—but I think you also can’t underestimate the charms of Valerie Perrine’s performance.
• Lacombe, Lucien is an interesting take on some of the same ideas I saw recently in This Land Is Mine. That movie takes place mid-World War II, and more about reclaiming the nobility of the human spirit than the ugly violence we often trade it for, but both are about collaboration, and why many would choose it willingly, or without thinking.
• The Twelve Chairs is very amusing. I don’t know that I’d put it in the top half of Mel Brooks’ filmography, but I’d probably at least put it in the top half of the bottom half.

• The Luckiest Man in America feels more fictionalized than it needs to be, which sometimes doesn’t work in its favor, but the cast, particularly Hauser, are the real draw.
• Ballerina doesn’t always work, but when it does, it works really well. It plays heavily on the worldbuilding mythology of the John Wick series, which has always been that series’ weakest part, but it also plays to the series’ strengths with some fun, kickass fight scenes.
• I had a lot of fun watching Troll with the #HorrorWatch crew live on Bluesky, but that isn’t because the movie is particularly good. It’s one of two movies I can remember really frightening me as a child, enough that I never watched more than a few scattered minutes of it. But seeing the movie now, decades later, all I could think was: This? This is what frightened me? The movie has such a weird tone, neither scary in the least but also not exactly kid-friendly, so that might account for it. And it has its goofy charms, I suppose.

In honor the recently departed Terrence Stamp, I also rewatched The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, probably for the first time in thirty years. It’s not a perfect movie, and not everything about it speaks to where we are today, but Stamp’s performance is one of the best things about it.

I watched another 6 movies last week. The week started reasonably well, but took something of a turn.

• Harvest is often surreal, even hallucinatory, unfolding slowly in this uncertain time and place of upheaval and change.
• I’m not as familiar with the tales of Odysseus as I’d maybe like, but The Return doesn’t insist upon that knowledge, is a simple enough tale of violence and regret, with a compelling performance by Ralph Fiennes.
• Love Me can feel a little like a short film stretched to feature length, and still doesn’t necessarily flesh out its ideas as much as it might, but they’re deep philosophical ideas about what it means to be human and real, and the movie plays with those ideas in interesting ways, with strong performances by the two actors.

• Death of a Unicorn could maybe use a sharper satirical bite, or could make its villains a little more unlikable, but it’s often funny and well cast.
• Margot Robbie is an undeniably electric performer, who is just completely wasted in the otherwise tedious Dreamland. As critic Peter Sobczynski writes, “there is a fine line between ‘homage’ and ‘uninspired imitation,’ and this film constantly finds itself tripping over it.” I felt like my time had just been wasted by the end of it.
• Wicked City is an interesting experience, full of a lot of strange, often hypersexualized body horror, but it isn’t a particularly enjoyable experience, often for the same reasons.

I also rewatched Local Hero, which I think is a movie a lot of people are a lot more fond of than I am. I do like it a lot, as it’s quite charmingly endearing, but I still don’t think it’s some great masterpiece.

• Sacco & Vanzetti, said Roger Ebert “is sometimes accurate, sometimes biased and sometimes even fictional in its telling of the story, but no matter.”
• Were it not so grounded in its characters and their emotions, Revanche could easily feel like a string of convoluted coincidences. But what might begin to strain credulity instead begins to feel inevitable and tragic.
• Show Boat is pleasant, with some good performances in this 1951 Technicolor production, but I’m not sure there’s a single song I remember other than “Ol’ Man River.”

• Gothic is mildly tame by Ken Russell standards, but only by those standards. Harlan Ellison reportedly (and I think rightly) called it “loopy and fatally flawed and an aberration”—and that was in praise of the movie!
• Heaven knows there have been worse attempts to shoehorn lore into the Predator series than Predator: Killer of Killers, but that is undoubtedly the weakest part of the whole thing, with the movie’s final twist threatening to undo all the good that’s come before it. However, each of the movie’s trio of stories is a lot of fun, with well-animated action sequences, that deliver on what you want most from a Predator movie.
• True to form for a Roger Corman-financed production, there is a certain charm to how far Deathstalker can stretch its very obviously limited resources. But none of that charm extends to the plot, which is as confusing as it is paper-thin, or to the characters, who are almost without fail reprehensible. And oof, there is so much rape.

I also rewatched Widows. I don’t think it’s director Steve McQueen’s best movie, necessarily, but the strength of the performances alone make it worth watching. It’s weird how quickly the movie became memory-holed.

I watched 6 movies last week:

• Roger Ebert called The Adventures of Ford Fairlane “loud, ugly and mean-spirited.” I mean, when you’re right, you’re right.
• The Jerky Boys is the sort of movie that makes you feel like you need to apologize for finding their prank phone call schtick funny back when you were in junior high. I don’t think there was a better movie to be made from their comedy but I can’t overstate how not funny the one they actually made is.
• The Hunt isn’t terrible. It has some clever moments, and Betty Gilpin’s a lot of fun, but it’s extremely shallow as satire (and weirdly dated for a movie that’s only five years old—but oof, what an awful five years those have been, eh?)

• I think Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is slightly better made than the two films that preceded it in the series, but that’s not saying much. This one is mostly just tedious and confusing.
• Appointment with Death is a little meandering as a mystery, but it’s a fun hangout with these characters.
• Leonard Maltin reportedly called 1945’s Bewitched and “interesting idea, especially for its time, but heavy-handed.” That sounds about right.

I also rewatched the Red Riding trilogy—1974, 1980, and 1983. They didn’t quite hold up for me as well as I remember, maybe partly because I remembered to plot better than I thought and wasn’t surprised, or maybe just because the whole thing is fairly bleak. Some good stuff, just not as strong the second time around.

I watched 8 movies last week:

kinopoisk.ru

• Escape from Alcatraz doesn’t do anything more than it says on the tin—and it can’t help but feel a little familiar, in the wake of subsequent prison movies like The Shawshank Redemption—but it’s tense and very enjoyable.
• This Land Is Mine is a remarkably nuanced look at the dangers of collaboration, why so many might choose to cooperate with Nazis, but it’s also a really great character study of cowardice and courage, with at least one great speech by Charles Laughton.
• There’s a lot to love about Dead End, but the standout might be Humphrey Bogart’s performance as a sad and broken man.
• Eephus isn’t exactly a fun movie, even if it is often very low-key funny. Maybe the most telling moment comes late in the film when a long-expected fireworks display happens entirely off-screen, with only one character’s defeated face reflected in its glow. It’s a brilliantly low-stakes but pitch-perfect hangdog comedy.

• The Phoenician Scheme feels very much like Wes Anderson making stop-motion with live actors. That can sometimes make the movie feel unreal and removed, but it’s all so meticulously crafted, often delightfully and playfully so, that it’s hard to mind too much.
• I’ve never played the video game that Until Dawn is based on, but the lazy way the storytelling falls apart near the end doesn’t exactly argue for very compelling source material. Which is a shame, because there’s actually a somewhat clever take on the time-loop conceit, which raises the stakes in some gory and gnarly ways, before that.
• For such a simple plot, The Crossroads is surprisingly convoluted, but it’s well directed, and William Powell is good in it.
• As Brian Tallerico writes, The Amateur “skims the surface of what has worked in spy thrillers of the past, never finding its own rhythm, identity, or personality.” The movie is better cast than it needs to be, but that proves to be more of a distraction than an asset in the end.

I also rewatched Thief. I don’t know that it’s my favorite Michael Mann movie, but it’s got such style, James Caan is so good in it, and it’s got a perfect downer of an ending.