- Mad God is monstrous and astounding. Even if I’m not sure what if anything its nightmarish visions add up to in the end, there are moments of such strange inventiveness throughout.
- Twice in a Lifetime is a tender falling-out-of-love story. It offers no easy answers or resolution for its characters, but they’re acted with such grace and nuance that you care about them all by the end.
- The Interview isn’t a particularly satisfying puzzle, but it’s an often interesting one along the way.
- Dollman wasn’t ever going to have amazing special effects given its low budget, but it needed to have some. The movie does almost nothing to actually sell its own premise—there’s no forced perspective or giant sets, just a lot of “no, trust us, he really is small.” It doesn’t do anything interesting with that idea, and the story and characters aren’t very engaging on their own.
- Truly my only complaint about House Party, which really is a lot of fun, is that I don’t buy any of its characters as being young enough to still be in high school.
- Pickup on South Street is a terrific not-quite-noir, with lots of great performances.
- There’s a biting satire splashing around somewhere in Infinity Pool. The movie frames the nihilistic depravity of the ultra-rich, as well as questions of identity and xenophobia, against its unsettling and hallucinatory images—sometimes to great effect, and sometimes not. It’s an interesting, even haunting, mess, but it’s a mess all the same.
I also re-watched Critters, which I enjoyed. It’s more than a little goofy, but it’s also a better-than-decent ’80s creature feature. I think I’d forgotten how bloody it could get, or maybe only ever saw an edited-for-TV version.
