I watched 6 movies last week:
- Nightfall may suffer a little in its pacing from the way it’s told, through piecemeal flashbacks, but it’s an otherwise tidy little noir.
- It says something that Phantasm III is at its best when it’s entirely incomprehensible. On those rarer occasions when you have some idea about what’s going on, it’s never to the movie’s benefit. The first Phantasm movie kind of works as a weird low-budget meditation on grief and nightmares, like some kind a surreal art piece. I think a problem with the sequels is they think the first movie works on any other level and try very badly to build from that.
- I haven’t seen Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire in many years, but even in my memory of it, the remake, City of Angels, can’t help but suffer by comparison. There are some nice moments in this one, mostly thanks to supporting players like Dennis Franz and the lesser-used Andre Braugher, but I didn’t find these characters particularly compelling.
- I guess the best you can say about Nothing Sacred is that it’s largely inoffensive—except in those moments when its very dated racial stereotypes make it briefly very offensive—but it’s also very scattershot in its laughs.
- John Ford made the late-career Cheyenne Autumn in many ways as an apology for the depiction of Native Americans in his earlier Westerns. Which is an admirable goal, even if he casts few if any actual Native Americans, and the first half of the movie handles that respectably. It’s in the film’s middle layover in Dodge City, however, with Jimmy Stewart’s laconic Wyatt Earp, that Ford largely loses the thread, and the whole thing becomes a bit of an episodic mess. (What looks like some terrible third act rear projection doesn’t help matters either.)
- Rockula isn’t so much a movie as an excuse for some goofy musical numbers and silliness all around. It hangs together, more or less, on its weird plot, but a lot will depend on how amiable you find it, or how catchy the tunes.
