Month: January 2023

I watched 7 movies last week:

• Somehow, I’d managed to never see the entirety of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country until now. I don’t know that it’s a perfect movie, or even the best of the original Trek films, but it is one of the better ones, and moreover a really fitting farewell to the cast.
• I’m not sure that To Leslie has anything truly original to say about addiction or hitting rock bottom, but it’s helped enormously by some really good performances, including a remarkable turn by star Andrea Riseborough.
• If you’ve always wanted to see Angela Lansbury portray Agatha Christie’s famous sleuth Miss Marple…well, I’m sorry to report that The Mirror Crack’d is going to be your only option. That’s not the fault of Lansbury, who’s clearly having fun with the small handful of scenes she’s actually in, or of the rest of the cast, which includes heavy hitters like Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, and Tony Curtis. The movie is not without some charms, but it’s slow and not especially engaging—which is all the more surprising, given director Guy Hamilton’s track record.

• The most interesting thing about Fast Company is that it’s the movie David Cronenberg made between Rabid and The Brood. It feels like such a weird B-movie blip in his early career, but also not a work-for-hire; Cronenberg co-wrote the script and was reportedly just a huge fan of drag racing. His enthusiasm for it isn’t exactly infectious, but the movie is passably entertaining for what it is.
• Scarecrows isn’t perfect—the limitations of its effects (and some of its acting) are occasionally on full display, and it maybe could have done with a little more explanation of the story—but it’s better than average, which is a lot better than I expected. It takes a pretty simple premise and tosses it up against another one, and it generates some pretty solid scares from that.
• Roger Ebert called The Presidio “a film assembled out of spare parts from other movies, out at the cinematic junkyard.” And for a short while, it’s tempting to think he was being too harsh. Peter Hyams is a talented, if workmanlike director, and there are reliable actors in the cast. But the movie and its plot are incredibly generic and don’t ever rise above that, relying instead on unconvincing plot twists and even less convincing character development.

• Medicine for Melancholy lacks a little of the polish and focus that director Barry Jenkins would later bring to Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk—but only a little of it.

I also re-watched Poltergeist, which I don’t think I’ve seen in some thirty years. It holds up really well, despite being a very 1980s horror movie.

Here’s last week’s #nowplaying music playlist:

I watched a half dozen movies last week.

• In some ways, Fort Apache is the quintessential Western, but it also isn’t afraid to interrogate the genre’s narrative, and it features great performances by Fonda and Wayne.
• Gene Siskel called McQ “excruciatingly slow,” but added that “the film holds together around [John] Wayne.” I would agree with only the first part of that. The movie is plodding and dull, and I don’t think Wayne’s performance does anything to help that.
• Vengeance starts out like it’s going to be a one-trick pony, a toothless satire of both small-town America and hipster big-city podcasters. But it turns out to have something more to say, and some really nice performances, especially, maybe surprisingly, by Ashton Kutcher.

• I’ve seen worse movies, and worse vampire movies, than Dracula 2000. But ooh boy is it not good.
• Say what you will about the strange, semi-satirical, universes-next-door that director Peter Strickland populates his movies with: they’re not uninteresting. Flux Gourmet didn’t get on my wavelength–or me on its–but it isn’t uninteresting.
• Lured is somewhat scattershot, but it’s helped enormously by a good cast, especially, maybe surprisingly, Lucille Ball. It fumbles somewhat near the end–and Ball disappears for too much of that–but it’s a fun noir.

I also re-watched Re-Animator, which I haven’t seen in many years, and enjoyed it.

Here’s this past week’s #nowplaying music playlist:

I watched 5 movies last week:

• Operation Mincemeat is surprisingly tedious. It’s a fascinating story and well-stocked with talented actors, but it’s also desperately padded, even without the wholly invented characters and love triangle, even without the wink-wink of knowing what will happen to some of the real-life characters—like Ian Fleming, who for no good reason narrates a chunk of the film—after the fact. Maybe because we’ll never know the full extent of the operation’s success, but the resolution here seems awfully muddled.
• Real-life characters also play a significant role in The Pale Blue Eye, but I found myself enjoying that a whole lot more—maybe because Harry Melling is genuinely very good as the young Edgar Allan Poe. There are a number of good performances here, and while the plot twists might strain credulity by the end, this is a nice, winter-bound murder mystery.
• Beyond the Black Rainbow isn’t (always) uninteresting, but writer/director Panos Cosmatos would do a much better job of marrying plot and characters to his cosmological horror and aesthetic fixations in his second film, Mandy, almost a decade later. If this first film wasn’t almost two hours long, it might be easier to be forgiving of its faults, but it’s hard not think this wouldn’t have worked much better as a short film.

• It’s striking that Lady Macbeth was only Florence Pugh’s second feature film role, because it really is a star-making turn, a chilling and mesmerizing performance. Because of that performance, you deeply empathize with the character even when (spoiler) she does terrible things—which is good, because otherwise this could become nothing but a portrait of a woman punished for her desires and sexuality.
• John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara are often delightful together in The Quiet Man—which is good, because I’m not convinced their relationship is as endearing today as it might have seemed to a 1950s audience. There’s a lot to enjoy about the movie, down to the beautiful Technicolor of the Irish countryside, but times sure have changed.

I also re-watched The Lost Boys, which can’t help but feel like a very 1987 movie, but which mostly holds up as pretty good stylish fun.