LAST FEW MOVIES LVIII: I’m Back

I’ve taken a break, but I guess I’m back. Anyway…MOVIES!!!

Ouija (2014) is unscary, unengaging, brainless, CW-energy garbage. I totally get that this was probably made with 12-year-olds in mind, ergo not for me. BUT, if you want more context, the prequel, which appears later on this list, is actually pretty good.

I kept trying to justify the baffling choices. Do the astronauts have ridiculously high collars to evoke a Dracula costume and the twist is that the astronauts are the real Draculas, or that the collars protect them from space Dracula bites? Nothing. There aren’t even any vampires in Mario Bava’s Planet of Vampires (1965). I did like the giant skellingtons.

Even with a scene where a Dracula turns into a bat and is then grabbed by a guy who shoots its head off with a gun, this movie is still a bit of a letdown. Zach Galligan stars in Waxwork (1988), an episodic horror-comedy with some fun, but feels like it wastes its premise. There’s something cool in getting trapped in an evil waxworks.

Dragonslayer (1981) is very bad and very boring and has no fun performances, but it does mark that unique time in the 80s when Disney started making dark films and it does have like 3 minutes of a cool dragon tucked away in there.

Nicole Kidman is so young and this movie is so bad. BMX Bandits (1983).

Slugs (1988) takes a stupid premise (what if the slowest creature on the planet ate people?) and does its darndest to do something with it.

David Fincher deserves credit for bringing even more hellish doom and hopeless nihilism to the Alien franchise. And that is it. Alien 3 (1992) isn’t bad. And then Charles Dance’s character gets killed off and you’re on your own. Ripley deserves better. What your left with is a few interesting ideas, a bleak location, and finale so dark it’s kind of a marvel. But unlike the previous two installments, which are amazing technical achievements and a whole lot of goopy, xenomorphy fun, this one is just dark. Be dark, sure, but be fun about it, will ya?

Is this what Paul Scrader thinks sex is? The Comfort of Strangers (1990) belongs to a forgotten genre: the erotic thriller. If the whole movie was just lurid shots of nighttime Venice with Christopher Walken talking about his dad’s mustache, maybe I could do it. As it is, this one was just slow and weird. And why is Rupert Everett always acting too cool for school?

I am a fan of Satyajit Ray, but The Holy Man (1965) comes off as too simplistic for me. I like a movie where the skeptic topples the religious charlatan. But I think Ray executed a lot of these ideas better in Devi.

Stage Fright (1987), aka Aquarius, aka Bloody Bird. It’s a slasher movie about a guy who escapes a mental hospital, dons an owl mask, and murders random actors on rehearsal night. It’s fine for what it is, I guess. I like the owl mask.

For the love of god, stop putting Gregory Peck in romantic comedy thrillers. I love Peck. Peck’s my boy. But he cannot deliver these lines that were clearly written for Cary Grant. And absolutely zero chemistry with Sophia Loren. Skip Arabesque (1966) and watch Stanley Donen’s other European caper, Charade, instead. Or anything Hitchcock.

Jean-Claude Van Damme in the Bayou punches a snake. Hard Target (1993), for the right mindset, is everything you want in a brainless 90s action flick.

There’s a very simple and efficient movie hidden in here.

Lance Henriksen has a business where the rich can hunt the poor. They pick Jean-Claude Van Damme, a down-on-his-luck drifter who needs money. What they don’t count on are his survival skills honed from growing up in the bayou. Hard Target.

That’s not the movie though. Here’s the real movie:

A woman comes to New Orleans to find her father, a homeless war vet she hasn’t seen in 20 years. Turns out he’s been killed by rich people who pay to specifically hunt homeless war vets for sport. Naturally, the cops don’t care about a missing homeless guy. Plus there’s a police strike. She meets Jean-Claude Van Damme, a down-on-his-luck seaman who is behind on his union dues (but none of that really matters), who saves her from some thugs outside a bar. The bad guys can’t have her running around asking questions (even though the cops are not interested), so they keep trying to kill her… and the cops… and JCVD… and the guy who hired the father to be their quarry at the beginning because he didn’t know about the estranged daughter. The whole movie becomes the group of guys who run the rich-hunt-vets business trying to kill JCVD. And JCVD, who has almost no stakes in this (his only real stake is he needs $217 by the end of the week for his union dues), conservatively murders like maybe 50 guys? Instead of just moving to another country like they planned anyways, the bad guys just keep chasing JCVD and taking more and more damage. Also, you get Wilford Brimley as a moonshiner with a questionable Cajun accent as JCVD’s uncle. And lots of John Woo slo-mo and birds. It’s so much more needlessly complex than it needs to be and it somehow removes most of the logical stakes.

I’m not a fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’s always a bit too humorless and blank to be a leading man. But the man can kick and he can rock the sweatiest, greasiest mullet you ever did see.

The modeling industry is predatory? Say it ain’t so! OK, so I think Nicolas Winding Refn needs be like 70% less high on the smell of his own farts, but Neon Demon (2016) was stunning to look at. Part of me is curious to see a Peter Strickland version of this idea.

City of the Dead (1960) (aka Horror Hotel), but more like three houses on a soundstage of the dead, am I right? It’s a low budget, fog infused flick about a town trapped in time by a witch’s curse. It doesn’t have enough moving parts or build much out of its premise to be classic, but it does have the appropriate Halloween mood and a distractingly American-accented Christopher Lee.

It may be that I watched Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) right after its abysmal predecessor, but this was a pretty solid prequel. Director Mike Flanagan immediately sets a tone and a style and lets you know you are finally in the hands of a filmmaker. It’s small, but effective and has some good scares. It may not be my thing, but I respect craft when I see it.

Luc Besson’s Subway (1985) is a jazzy, sleazy hangout sort of movie whose amazing soundtrack almost makes up for the fact that I have to look at Christopher Lambert’s face.

The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (1985) is the Japanese take on the Phantom of the Paradise-style subversive rock opera. It’s not as good as the films that inspired it, but it is a fascinating experiment, and I genuinely dig a lot of the songs.

This is one for the books. Fans of Neil Breen, Tommy Wiseau, James Nguyen, Deaundra T. Brown, and similar auteurs should rejoice. Love on a Leash (2011), a romantic comedy about a woman who falls in love with a dog. There is just so much going on and every scene will give you a million inane production questions to ponder (if the horrific editing doesn’t give you a seizure). All I’ve been doing is reading how this movie was made and tracking down interviews with anyone that was a part of it. It’s something.

We watched Sisters (1972) mainly for a pre-Superman Margot Kidder in a Brain De Palma movie. I don’t remember a lot of the details, but it was a weird one and I miss William Finley’s face.

When is George Miller going to make another Mad Max? I actually don’t mind waiting, as long as he keeps his imagination alive with oddball flicks like Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022). Most of the movie is just Idris Elba telling stories to Tilda Swinton in a hotel room, and I ain’t even mad. Visually and narratively sumptuous. This movie is horny for stories and I, for one, was swept up in it.

Folks looking for a black comedy Polish musical horror about mermaids and the entertainment industry can rest easy. The Lure (2015) is here and it’s a colorful oddity that surprised me.

Yaphet Kotto, Richard Pryor, and Harvey Keitel star in a working class Paul Schrader movie about unionization? Listen, these ingredients have got to be catnip for more people than just me. Anyway, Blue Collar (1978) is good.

This is what I like to see. Everyone on screen having fun. Remember when Robert Zemeckis made cool movies? Watch Death Becomes Her (1992). Two rivals (Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep) make a strange deal to stay young forever. What could go wrong? It starts off a little cartoony, but once the magic gets introduced I was fully locked in. Bruce Willis doesn’t get enough credit for being a comedy actor. Also, Isabella Rossellini, what are you wearing??

John Carpenter’s action comedy steeped in Chinese black magic, Big Trouble in Little China (1986), holds up well. Stroke of genius making Kurt Russell just a big, dumb idiot who winds up the sidekick for most of the ass-kicking. The only other person I could see in this role would be Bruce Campbell, and Kurt out-Bruces him here. I liked this well enough as a kid, but watching it again as an adult was pure joy.

Carnival of Souls (1962) was made for $33,000 and it is a marvel of what can be accomplished with a humble budget. A efficient, effective, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge-style horror flick that meanders through empty churches and theme parks while terrorizing a survivor of a car accident with visions of ghouls.

A hitman movie that pontificates on the weight of human life and existence is such a films school cliché, that we may forget that some gems still work. The Hit (1984), directed by Stephen Frears, restored my hope in the tired trope. I chalk much of the success up to Terence Stamp, Tim Roth, and John Hurt being so great on screen, but the execution and Spanish countryside add quite a bit.

It may be trite for film snobs by this point, but S. S. Rajamouli’s historical action adventure from India, RRR (2021), rules. It’s the stuffed crust pizza version of a bombastic big budget action flick. It’s a blast and one of those rare occasions where I actually wish there had been more song and dance numbers.

Finally watched the rock opera about a German drag queen that had a botched sex change. John Cameron Mitchell writes (based on Stephen Trask’s play), directs, and stars in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). It’s exuberant, fun, funny, sad, and a whole lot of other stuff.

Two struggling actors take a trip to the English countryside where their situation does not improve. Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I (1987) is a classic English dark comedy steeped in alcoholism that celebrates friendship in a sobering way. Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann are wonderfully cast and the dismal drizzle and dampness never lets up.

Tony Curtis plays a slimy publicist trying to get to the top in the slimiest version of Manhattan gossip rag culture. Burt Lancaster plays the slimy media mogul that can offer success or crush a man. Smears and blackmail and cutthroat manipulation are the name of the game in Alexander MacKendrick’s (The Ladykillers) noir classic, Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Oozing with tough-talking masculine energy, it depicts a seedy underworld that no longer exists (at least, in that form). Co-written by Ernest Lehman, the movie boasts plenty of quick verbal jabs and gloriously, flowingly shot by James Wong Howe, this is a slick Hollywood flick that comes pretty highly recommended.

Mars and Beyond (1957) is a forgotten bit of retro Disney made-for-TV cosmic curiosity and speculative evolution. Refreshing optimism and also some ruthless roasting of contemporary sci-fi clichés. This is like the perfective combo of wanting to inform the general public about current scientific notions and the history of those notions, but then getting side-tracked with your rampant creativity, whimsy, and total bullshit (yet all with a sobering wink).