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• It’s easy to see what Love Hurts is going for. The movie is a lot of things—way too many, as it happens—but none of those things is especially original. It’s easy to see what it’s going for, but it’s almost remarkable how immediately and completely almost none of the movie works. It’s overly complicated, yet only half-committed to any of its bits. None of it’s very fun—most of it is decidedly not so—and even if a scattered few of those bits show some fleeting promise—just enough to make it easy to see what they were going for—it’s hard to find any reason to care.
• The Monkey is a lot, but it’s exactly that go-for-broke, over-the-top gruesomeness, coupled with the very real, very personal trauma that writer-director Oz Perkins seems to be working out in the film, that makes it work so spectacularly. For a movie this gory and silly, it’s surprisingly heartfelt and just a lot of fun.
• Mickey 17 is goofy and inventive and also a lot of fun, thanks largely to Robert Pattinson’s central performance(s).

• I went into Better Man with only the most casual familiarity with who Robbie Williams even was, and I adored the movie. I can’t imagine how much I would have loved it if I had started out as a fan. The movie hits all the standard beats of the music biopic, but it does so in such clever and unexpectedly engaging ways.
• The (mostly) first-person POV in Nickel Boys is arguably both the film’s greatest strength and weakness. It’s visually compelling and immersive, leading to some interesting thematic connections, but it’s also a little distancing from the characters.
• When the first Paddington sequel knocked Citizen Kane (only semi-ironically) off some best-of-all-time lists, maybe that was a cue for the filmmakers to quit while they were ahead. Paddington in Peru never hits Paddington 2‘s heights, or even those of the first film, but it’s silly and charming and sweet enough that it never feels wholly unnecessary.

I also rewatched Wild Things, which I think Roger Ebert described accurately (and admiringly) as “lurid trash.”

Last week, I watched 7 movies:

• There’s a lot to like in Sword of Trust, with a strong performance from Maron and an improvised feel that often lends the movie a likable, laidback quality. That doesn’t always work in its favor, however, as the movie can sometimes lean into naturalism at the expense of jokes and any plot development. But it’s a fun idea with some playfully observed characters.
• The Long Dumb Road is an amiable enough road trip, with interesting if not always likable (or even fully drawn out) characters, though its lack of direction doesn’t always feel like an asset.
• It’s an interesting tactic, making your central character an unlikable dimwitted manchild, but that might be the most interesting thing about Most Likely to Murder has some fun with observing that character, and to its credit allows him some growth, but that still means hanging out with a dumb likable character for the whole movie.

• I’m not sure if The Voices is too quirky or not quirky enough, but despite some fun moments and a good performance from Reynolds, this dark comedy never entirely worked for me.
• Stephen King himself has called Graveyard Shift his least favorite adaptation of his work. While I think there have been worse—some of which King has even taken a more active hand in—this one is definitely not very good. The movie belabors its setup, then it squanders any scares it might have left with confused action and lack of character development.
• Same Time, Next Year would probably feel hokey and contrived even it didn’t also feel so dated. The two leads, Burstyn especially, do their best to elevate the material, but there’s only so much character the conceit of the movie will allow.
• Orson Welles’ The Trial is visually stunning and inventive and absolutely feels to its core Kafkaesque, but that can also lead to it feel confusing and claustrophobic.

I also enjoyed a re-watch of Hanna.

• I’m glad that Hollywood Shuffle exists. It has some important things to say, and it’s not infrequently very funny. But I’m also inclined to agree with Roger Ebert, who wrote in his review: “The story behind ‘Hollywood Shuffle’ is more thrilling than anything on the screen.
• By nearly all objective metrics, Nomads is a bad movie. The problem is, it’s not very badly made. John McTiernan, for all his many faults, would, right after this, go on to direct in a row three of the greatest action blockbuster action movies ever made. Nomads is deeply flawed, confusing on every level, and yet it’s also—maybe because of that confusion as much as in spite of it—strangely compelling.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger has called Red Sonja “the worst film I have ever made.” I don’t think it’s that bad—has he not seen The Expendables or Batman & Robin?—and there’s maybe just a hint of misogyny to the suggestion that it is, considering how Brigitte Nielsen is much more the center of the film than Schwarzenegger’s extended cameo. But yeah, Red Sonja is a pretty terrible movie, from its wooden acting to its extremely cheap-looking sets. It might have some hokey charm if it wasn’t also so boring. I mean, Schwarzenegger was wrong, but he wasn’t that wrong.

• The Age of Adaline gets a lot better midway through, with the introduction of Harrison Ford’s character (and Ford himself as a screen presence), but overall the movie is still clumsily structured, often emotionally distant, and filled to the brim with sometimes tedious voiceover. It plays like a film based on a novel, with a lot of character development and story details unfortunately left on the adaptation-room floor, and yet it’s somehow an original screenplay.
• Freaky Tales isn’t exactly deep, and it has a mean, gory streak that’s occasionally less than pleasant, but overall, it’s a very fun movie.
• Black Bag is perhaps a little too cold and precise, a little too straightforward for all the spycraft cat-and-mouse. But it is also a very fun and expertly made exercise.

I also re-watched two very different movies: Sicario and Brotherhood of the Wolf. I enjoyed them both, even if Sicario plays a little differently in the Trump era and Brotherhood of the Wolf is all a bit too much.

I watched 8 movies last week:

• There seems to have been a small effort, in recent years, to reclaim The Long Kiss Goodnight as an unfairly forgotten perfect action movie. And I’m here to say, no, I think the reaction at the time—this is a well made, largely fun, but also mostly forgettable movie—was more or less the right one.
• I Am Cuba employs some of the same camera techniques that amazed me so much recently in The Cranes Are Flying, and yet I found this all a little too dizzying, too disconnected, and too much.
• For better or worse, Maniac Cop gives you everything you expect from a 1980s Troma-produced Larry Cohen=written movie about a killer cop in New York City.
• The simplicity of One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, in its story of female friendship and empowerment, is to be admired, and I like the characters. Would it have helped if I liked what the one of them sings more?

• Eminem is good in 8 Mile, a genuinely compelling screen presence, but it’s also not hard to see why he hasn’t gone on to act in anything else, any movies where he plays a character further from himself.
• Havoc is surprisingly bad. “Even if you discount how utterly formulaic Evans’s screenplay is…” writes Peter Sobczynski, “in regards to its clunky story in which nothing ever seems to be at stake and unsympathetic cardboard characters or how it wastes such charismatic performers as Hardy, Whitaker and Olyphant or how the whole thing has an ugly and unconvincing faux-gritty sheen that looks like a ‘Grand Theft Auto’ knockoff designed on a computer in need of debugging and focus entirely on the action beats, ‘Havoc’ still comes up short.
• First Time Caller is surprisingly great. It isn’t a perfect movie—it maybe could have done more to tie what’s happening to this character, why it’s happening specifically to him—but it’s incredibly effective and creative for such a simple premise and bare-bones indie film.
• I saw Blithe Spirit on Broadway once, with Angela Lansbury in the Madame Arcati role. I think I liked that version slightly more—even Noel Coward reportedly felt David Lean’s direction of the film version was a little too static—but there are things to enjoy about it, from its droll wit to Margaret Rutherford’s own turn in the Arcati role.

I also re-watched Twins of Evil, which proved to be even more fun than I remembered it.

I watched another 6 movies last week:

• Not to over-sell it or anything, but David Lean’s Great Expectations may be the best literary adaptation ever.
• I just don’t think Goddard films are for me. Weekend is certainly interesting, and I can respect what I think it’s trying to do and say, but Goddard’s films have almost always left me cold. “There are some other strange things,” wrote Roger Ebert in his own review, and that’s about all I can say for it.
• I loved The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice. It’s so simple, so natural—even if the camerawork is almost flashy by Ozu standards—and while Tokyo Story is probably still my favorite Ozu, this was just lovely.

• Machine Gun McCain isn’t very good, largely dull and poorly dubbed, but there are some moments, particularly the brief performances by Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands, that almost shine.
• The Cranes Are Flying is a remarkable movie, genuinely beautiful and heartbreaking, full of incredible shots and compelling performances.
• Companion would probably be better if it didn’t give away its central twist in every single bit of its marketing (including, spoiler warning, that poster), but that twist isn’t exactly groundbreaking, so maybe it’s fine. The movie isn’t wildly original, but it does some fun things and offers some good performances all around.

I also re-watched Carrie and The Raven, two very different movies, but both of which are still pretty great. (For the record, Carrie is a lot better, but The Raven is very charmingly silly.)
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