Last Few Movies LXX: The Boys Are Back in Town

Cinema is dead probably. Look, I don’t know.

I think YouTube or somewhere just played this one after we had watched another movie, and we let it. Deathmoon (1978) is a made-for-TV werewolf movie set in Hawaii. There’s not a whole lot to it, but the one novel aspect here is that it’s an anti-colonial curse.

I really like Martin Short. Most of the time. Clifford (1994) is not one of those times. Short plays an old priest who tells the story of how he was an annoying little kid, and while it is amusing to see an obviously grown man pretending to be a child in a sea of adult actors who are going along with it, it’s way more unsettling and creepy than anything else. Clifford (the character) also veers between behaving like a small boy to behaving like a psychotically manipulative adult man. But maybe Clifford had to walk so MADtv’s Stuart could run.

The big pluses here are Charles Grodin (pulling a real Richard Dreyfuss in What About Bob? and managing to steal the show from a comedy icon by playing the straight man so well). The other big plus here is Dinosaur World. The whole movie Clifford wants to go to Dinosaur World, and, when they finally do, we get amazing matte paintings, elaborate whimsical sets, and impressive prehistoric animatronic monsters.

Up and down, stem to stern, Anaconda (1997) is dumb. It’s a dumb movie. It’s one of those creature-features where the titular animal just wants to get you so bad. It will do anything to get you. It boasts some truly awful performances (Jennifer Lopez) and some truly bewildering performances (Jon Voight). It was hard for movies like this living in the shadow of Tremors and Jurassic Park.

We knew it would be bad (and probably much worse than we remembered it being from when we were kids), but it does have a few things going for it:

1. An actual animatronic giant snake (most of the time). This and Tobe Hooper’s Crocodile are terrible, but some of the last bastions of B-movie creature-features that have fun puppets on set. It adds weight and danger to what you’re looking at. If you’re a B-movie that only has weak CGI effects, don’t even waste my time.
2. Some actual jungle locations and a cool boat. That’s nice. I like the boat.
3. Ice Cube. Say what you want, but he brings something grounding to this nonsense that really helps the whole thing go down smoother.

And that’s what I’ll say. It’s dumb, but goes down smooth. One of the last classic watchable prestige B-pictures maybe. Well, that or Deep Blue Sea. But it is bad. I can’t in good conscience tell anyone to watch this.

I really wanted to like Bruce Robinson’s How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989). Robinson’s directorial debut (that also stars Richard E. Grant), Whitnail & I, is a boozy classic of British comedy. His next film was arguably more ambitious and zany, but it’s also rather grating.

Spoilers ahead.

A cynical ad executive grows a conscience…sort of. For a bit. Or at least he has a break with reality where feels he cannot, in good conscience, continue to peddle products that are probably bad. He goes from being mean and irritating to being mean and irritating. Then he grows, quite literally, a boil on his neck that sprouts a face and begins talking to him. This makes him mean and irritating. Eventually the boil – which is his more unscrupulous side – grows larger and more powerful, ultimately overtaking him and the ad exec ends up just a mean and irritating man. And that’s how you get a “head” in advertising.

The central theme is good, the Cronenbergian body horror is gross and inspired, and Richard E. Grant is throwing himself into this, but it’s all a bit just one note for me. And while I generally like a downer ending, this just felt unsatisfying. Like all that screaming and running around just for this? It’s worth checking out, and I’m sure a lot of folks out there will like it more than I did.

I recalled liking Super Troopers. And I realized it’s the only Broken Lizard movie I’d ever seen. Sick on the couch and needing something brainless, I put on Club Dread (2004). It’s an early 2000s comedy that parodies the slasher genre. It’s got hot ladies and guys being dumb, as well as Bill Paxton as a washed-up Jimmy Buffet knockoff.

It’s not particularly cinematic. It’s not a good slasher flick. And it’s not that funny. However, it did grow on me. By the third act it actually starts to become pretty funny and gory. Why it didn’t lean into the humor and the horror before then is a bit of a mystery, perhaps the scariest mystery of all. It definitely needed more funny accents. Jay Chandrasekhar and Steve Lemme get to have some fun with their wacky characters. Share the love, ya know?

A Private Function (1984) is a respectable British comedy about meat rationing in a small town during the postwar period. There’s an uptight inspector who is a stickler for the rules and an unlicensed pig being kept on a farm illegally for the political class. It’s all very dry and English, but it’s a veritable who’s who of legendary British actors. We got Dame Maggie Smith, Michael Palin, Denholm Elliott, Richard Griffiths, Bill Paterson, Jim Carter, Liz Smith, and Pete Postlethwaite all up in here.

Ken Russell tells the classic yarn of a cold and distant man who gets so obsessed with unraveling cosmic mysteries and touching God by doing shamanic drugs in a sensory deprivation tank to de-evolve himself into an early hominid, when the real meaning for living was the woman who loves you and has been there all along. We just gotta ignore the people he killed.

Altered States (1980) is a bit of a mess, and the mechanics of what is literally happening in the universe of the movie are…silly. They’re very silly. It fastforwards through time like it’s nothing, so we never really get to sit with the characters for very long, and when we do they’re not very compelling. The movie is nuts. It has great visuals and wild psychedelic trip sequences. It’s got William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban. The real star? Charles Haid as a foul-mouthed Southern scientist who absolutely has no time for any of your shit.

As you are well aware, Christopher Nolan’s sweeping biopic about the man who made the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer (2023) won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Score, Best Editing and Best Cinematography. It was pretty decent.

You ever watch a movie and think to yourself, “Gosh. I just don’t know if I’m Czech enough for this”?Vojtěch Jasný’s Cassandra Cat (1963) (aka When the Cat Comes, The Cat Who Wore Sunglasses, One Day a Cat, The Cat) is weird, even by Czech New Wave standards.

A small town (with a few characters that have different views on society and what is best for human flourishing) gets visited by a traveling circus. The circus features a cat. The cat wears sunglasses. If the sunglasses are removed, anyone it looks at will change colors to reveal their true inner self.

I’ll come clean and say a lot of the metaphors were lost on me, which I atribute to having not grown up in Soviet-controlled postwar Czechoslovakia. However, narrative enigmas aside, I enjoyed the fairytale feel and the look of it. I loved the magic show sequence, fourth-wall breaking, the textured imagery, unpredictable chaos, the colors, and the performance Oliva/the Magician (Jan Werich). I really just don’t know what to make of it.

Brian Trenchard-Smith is my favorite Trailers from Hell guy. He’s always so eloquent and proper, regal even. He’s always wearing Hawaiian shirts. And I don’t even really like any of his movies. That is, until we saw Dead End Drive-In (1986), an Australian post-apocalyptic grunge fest (is there another kind?). It’s general chaos and lawlessness out there, but if you can make it to a movie, you might just get away from it all…until you realize you can never leave. It’s essentially a prison that the government feeds drugs and junk food to in order to reign in and contain some of that violent youthful rebelliousness. It’s grimy and punk and it actually has some things to say. It’s also got a really nice car stunt at the end.

Adam Rifkin’s The Dark Backward (1991) is one weird, gross, messed up kind of movie that will forever be remembered, for me at least, as the most accurate depiction of entry level standup comedy and the movie that has Bill Paxton fondle and lick the corpse of a woman he finds in the garbage at the dump.

More Ken Russell! Twiggy stars in The Boy Friend (1971), a comedy about all the drama onstage and behind the scenes of a lavish stage production, and Russell’s tribute to Busby Berkeley musicals. It’s a sweeter, more tame film than Tommy or Liszomania, but apparently he did this right after The Devils (my personal favorite) to prove he wasn’t just some insane deviant. It’s very breezy and stylish. Each musical setpiece does something new and exciting. Welcome style over substance.

Writer/director/producer/astrologer/star Craig Denney set out to make a name for himself in The Astrologer (1976), an incomprehensible pile of dogshit that is absolutely worth your time. We laughed a lot, just don’t ask us to recount the plot. Don’t even ask Craig Denney. You can’t. He died right after the movie came out. Or, perhaps more plausibly, as many claim, he faked his own death for reasons that will forever remain a mystery.

If you love it when a movie looks like it smells bad, you’ll love The Astrologer, not to be confused with The Astrologer (1975) which we accidentally watched a few lists back thinking it was this one. See? I told you I’d get to it.

John Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970) can be a bit too meandering, improvised, and long at times, but at the end of the day, it’s a fairly unflinching portrait of a particular type of man, one that has perhaps evolved over time but exists nevertheless.

John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, and Peter Falk are MEN. They don’t cry! They get drunk and throw up! They’re rude to people! They beat their wives! They have repressed emotions! They are deeply insecure and afraid! They have intimacy issues! They can barely admit to themselves that they love each other! MEN!

E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is a criminally underseen gothic horror about the making of the infamous 1922 Nosferatu. It posits an alternative cinema history wherein legendary German director, F.W. Murnau (played here by John Malkovich), so intent on realism for his vampire movie, secretly hires a real vampire (played by Willem Dafoe absolutely chewing up every scene and clearly having a blast being weird and creepy). If you’re a Nosferatu fan (either the original 1922 Murnau version or the 1979 Werner Herzog version, or are just excited for the upcoming Robert Eggers one – that will also feature Dafoe, but as a vampire hunter), then you gotta check out this underrated oddity. I love it when a film recognizes the only way to sell its zany premise is let the weirdness have a layer of grim humor.

The movie itself is good, if a little cartoony (and Udo Kier and Eddie Izzard are fun additions to the cast), but the real reason to watch it is for Willem Dafoe’s unabashedly kooky performance as the bloodsucking immortal posing as obscure actor Max Schreck. I daresay Dafoe is even more captivating and fun to watch than the real Schreck and even Klaus Kinski. He really is one of the best actors working today, and I respect the hell out of him for taking weird roles like this.

Harrison Ford’s innate charisma extends to a cop drama that morphs into a steamy Amish romance in Peter Weir’s Witness (1985). I had forgotten that it’s not really an action movie. Kid me remembered the intense ending, but adult me was digging all the sexual tension between Ford’s wounded cop and Kell McGillis’s thirsty Amish widower. Like a lot of folks, this was my introduction to Amish culture, and, while it’s pretty surface level (I mean we really only have this, Kingpin, and For Richer or Poorer), it highlights their pacifism and plain living. It’s a pretty solid drama with an absolutely terrible soundtrack.

Rewatched this banger, and The Fifth Element (1997) is still so breezily fun and good that it only rubs it in further that Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets isn’t. Luc Besson’s filmography is filled with arresting visual flair that is also unmistakably French. Like how you don’t get that feeling watching a Terry Gilliam film. Like how when you’re watching Alien Resurrection and someone says, “hey, you know the director is the Amélie guy”, and you’re like, “oh, well, now THAT explains a lot of what I’m seeing.”

Anyway, the thing I’ve always loved about The Fifth Element was that, horny sci-fi hijinks aside, it’s just so odd. And silly. It’s having fun being silly at you. And it dishes out it’s silliness and its cavalcade of silly characters in carefully planned installments. The costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier really help define the movie’s unique tone. And you gotta love a montage of an interstellar cruiseship readying for takeoff intercut with Chris Tucker banging a stewardess set to space reggae. The French, man.

Not that it’s saying much, but this is Milla Jovovich’s best movie, and Bruce Willis was always at his best when allowed to showcase his sense of humor. The whole cast is great. Don’t make me name them all. It’s a who’s who of supporting greats.

William Peter Blatty is most famous for writing the novel and screenplay of The Exorcist. He only directed two movies. The Exorcist III, which I loved, and The Ninth Configuration (1980), a truly beguilingly dark yet comic film about trauma and faith.

A laconic marine psychaitrist (Stacy Keach) goes to a mysterious castle asylum in the foggy northwestern woods. It is a dysfunctional place populated by brilliant men who have all gone mad from the war. One patient (Scott Wilson), however, isn’t a soldier at all. He’s an astronaut that had a psychotic break moments before takeoff and had to be dragged from the rocket ship. From there we embark on a spiritual journey in and out of madness and reality, and confront the duplicitous duality of man: the good and evil that lurks within us all.

The setting is great. The cast is great (love me some Ed Flanders). It has a great bar fight. It’s a weird sort of movie that really doesn’t get made anymore. At least, not like this. It’s a hypnotic mystery that unravels very slowly, and it is steeped in some serious post Vietnam anti-war sentiment. This all adds to the flavor. Now, Blatty’s worldview might be a bit too inaccessibly Catholic for me at times, but he uses his religious framework to intelligently get at deeper truths about the human condition…or at least truths we all hope are true. I do think The Exorcist III is a lot more polished and relateable, but this is a worthwhile curio.

And you know something? I even like Stacy Keach without a mustache.

I liked Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 2 (2024) a good deal better than the first one, although there were things in the first one I did really like. Villeneuve’s team can create some striking images and manufacture the feeling of immense scale, but there’s just something about Timothée Chalamet that really takes me out of things. Even more than Christopher Walken did for a lot of people in this. But hey, I’m mostly watching these things for Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, and Charlotte Rampling. Zendaya doing some good stuff in here too. If you can get into the slow pace and get sucked into the scope of the world building, there’s a lot to appreciate.

The Full Monty (1997) is a just a prime example of an efficient comedy executed well. Aided by a smart, funny script and a terrific cast (Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber), it hits every mark it sets out to hit. Six desperate and unemployed Sheffield steel workers come together to put on a striptease show in order to make enough money to solve their problems. Simple set up and pay off with just the right stakes, jabs at masculine insecurities, and hiccups along the way to make for a very enjoyable 90 minutes.

R.I.P. Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom, Michael Clayton, Batman Begins, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Full Monty)

Powell and Pressburger are glorious movie gods and A Matter of Life and Death (1946) proves it. So does The Red Shoes. And Black Narcissus. And The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. And if I cheat and sneak in The Thief of Bagdad, that too.

A British airman (David Niven) gets shot down during WWII and his afterlife escort (Marius Goring) can’t find his soul in the thick English fog to ferry him to the next world. This causes problems upstairs. To make matters even more complicated, the airman has fallen in love! Now he’ll have to fight for his right to live in the high courts of the otherworld. Or maybe it’s all in his head.

As much as I may not buy the oh-so-crucial romance between David Niven and Kim Hunter (I dislike it, in fact), and as much as I find it weird that the survival of their relationship depends on a successful lobotomy (don’t enjoy that), I absolutely love the audacious look of this thing, the weird bureaucratic mechanics of the afterlife, Roger Livesey and Raymond Massey are great, and I LOVE the trial in the final act.

There’s something magical and refreshing about the progressive optimism embodied by certain films of this era that we’ve really lost as we’ve all become more cynical and jaded. I miss stories that believed in something real and hopeful and had the temerity to back it up. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington comes to mind, among others. It’s the difference in flavor between patriotism and jingoistic nationalism, I think. These films are patriotic. And they actually taste good for it.

To me, what makes A Matter of Life and Death work is not that the court case is about proving the love between a death-dodging Englishman and a woman from Boston; it’s that the trial puts modern (for the 40s) American culture on trial. It dares to challenge America’s angrier revolutionary past, and demands that it face how the very things it claimed to believe in all came true, and in ways that are better than it could have imagined (and in ways it cannot recognize or even really approve of). Sure, it sidesteps a slew of historical evils, but it does at least rub England’s face in its own stodgy history of imperialism and murder. Watching it now, I lament, because it seems that, for a time, we were maybe getting on the right path, albeit in fits and starts and with plenty of maturing still to do. But there was hope, and reason to hope, dammit.

Watch this one. It’s a unique film that’s been copied enough by now. Fits nicely alongside films like The Devil and Daniel Webster, Heaven Can Wait, Defending Your Life, Wings of Desire, and maybe even Beetlejuice.

What an absolute treat The Holdovers (2023) is. Directed by Alexander Payne (About Schmidt, Nebraska) and starring Paul Giamatti (in one of his best roles since Payne’s Sideways), Dominic Sessa, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Dolemite is My Name), the story concerns three lonely creatures stuck at a private high school over the Christmas break. This is a great example of an excellent script, stellar cast (and their chemistry), and rich locations and setting really elevating a simple premise and making it something special. The 70s aesthetic also gives it a lot of extra juice. It just looks so good. It pulls you into its cozy, misanthropic world and just lets a sweet dusting of snow settle on you while it makes you some hot tea with lemon. Highly recommend if you haven’t seen it yet.

OK, Craig Denney was a curiosity for making The Astrologer. Shuny Bee is a legend for making Fight of Fury (2020). Once again, Bee is the writer/director/producer/editor/stunt coordinator/star. That’s exactly what you want for this kind of thing. I shan’t say too much, other than I absolutely loved it and cannot wait for the sequel.

Ishirō Honda’s original Godzilla (1954) remains a classic, and one of the best movies about the atomic bomb (sorry, Oppenheimer). The hand puppet closeups are little goofy, but the destruction is still visceral and shocking. And there’s just something extra haunting about Godzilla in black-and-white.

This movie frightened me as a kid (although the version I saw then had a disconnected Perry Mason spliced into it) because unlike Frankenstein or King Kong, which I loved, there was no identifying or humanizing with the monster. Godzilla was just a bastard. It was just a mindless force of destruction oblivious to the wanton carnage it wrought. Some of the scenes are still effectively frightening 70 years later.

It’s easy to take for granted Godzilla’s status in monster movie history. For the remainder of the Shōwa era of Godzilla, the movies get increasingly campy, silly, and geared toward children. There are a few bright spots (Mothra, I love you), but none of them try to be horror like the initial outing. The Heisei, Millennium, and Reiwa eras all kind of have their own vibe. But that first movie remains something unique and startling. Perhaps because it was less than a decade after the bombs were dropped. Perhaps because it was the first time cinema had seen a monster that large and unstoppable. 33 Japanese films later, the lizard stomps on.

Last Few Movies LXIX: Death to 2023

I’ll be the first to admit it: movies are subjective. It’s one of the few times you can legally say nobody’s opinion matters but yours. So if you hate what I have to say about the following movies, you are 100% right.

The first C.H.U.D., however low-brow a B-movie it may be, actually had C.H.U.D.s (cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers) in it and had real stakes, wet puppets, Daniel Stern, and a surprisingly compassionate look at homelessness.

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D. (1989) strips the schlocky horror away to morph into a corny comedy about zombies that don’t even eat people. And the comedy, hoo boy, seems to have been calibrated to be the antithesis of everything I personally find funny. Opportunity after opportunity to be funny or scary or interesting just gets completely biffed in unyielding succession. It’s like a baby movie, but full of dead people and one F-bomb. I guess this one is for die-hard Gerrit Graham stans.

If the movie had drifted from its obnoxiously goofy tone for a second to let the characters actually grapple with the concept of death as it lay before them in all its absurdity and let the faintest flicker of horror enter, it might have salvaged a small portion of whatever this is. I have never encountered a film more incurious about what it means to be human.

There is a part in the theme song where they say “Bud the C.H.U.D.” I kinda liked that.

Wes Craven has made a lot of super iconic horror movies and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) is not one of them. Is the dubious presentation of Haitian voodoo? Is it the Bill Pullman of it all? Is it the general amorphousness of the plot and yucky sex scene with Cathy Tyson who frankly deserved better? There’s potential here. We got classic voodoo zombies. Sort of. It doesn’t really commit to that. Apart from a few cool dream sequences and some creepy imagery in the last five minutes, it’s mostly a dud. Unless Bill Pullman has some sort of hold over you.

The onyl real question most folks have surrounding the 5th Indiana Jones movie is: is it at least better than the 4th? That’s the starting point. And it’s not. Not really. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) has our hero dealing with age, which is appropriate and worth exploring. I’ll always love Harrison Ford and those first three movies, but everything about Dial of Destiny just looks like a videogame. This series can be silly, but it needs grit. Modern Hollywood blockbusters (especially from Disney) kind of all look the same, don’t they? Everything is weightless, cartoony, airbrushed, and ugly. There’s that glossy, overly color-corrected, hyper-CG, fakey-fake sheen to everything. Good movies with strong visuals and unique perspectives are still being made these days, but not at Disney. And you just know you won’t see anything good that cost $300 million. That pricetag usually means too many risk-averse, non-creative studio boys got their box-ticking fingerprints all over it.

Spoiler alert: the ending does feature a fun concept (perhaps inspired by the classic Twilight Zone episode: The Odyssey of Flight 33), but it’s all too short and too late. I found myself asking, why not make the whole movie more like this? Ah well. Nostalgia is brain poison.

Sam Raimi (Army of Darkness, Darkman, Spider-Man) brings an extremely cartoony sensibility to a dreadfully miscast Sharon Stone-led western, The Quick and the Dead (1995). I can appreciate some of Raimi’s zany directorial flourishes here in this tonally goofy cowboy pastiche. Weird how serious most of the cast takes it when it’s filmed like an SNL spoof on Sergio Leone. The main problems for me are the shapeless script, boring cardboard characters, and complete lack of any tension (an impressive feat considering the whole movie is a series of shootouts between different guys). Gene Hackman is the only one bringing anything (young Leo too, I’ll add). It just don’t live up to its simple setup. 

It was hard making a solid western during this time, and I like that people were still trying to make them. But Back to the Future III is a better western than The Quick and the Dead. I dunno man. Pop in Silverado if you want a lightweight throwback to classic cowboy movies.

Brainstorm (1983), directed by Douglas Trumbull (Silent Running), is an…interesting sci-fi thriller. Some bold filming techniques and a solid look, but it takes more than half the runtime to get to the only real plot beat (which is launched by Louise Fletcher using some sci-fi contraption to record her death in VR as she is having a heart attack). Christopher Walken is losing control of his project, which is being commandeered and mass produced to hurt people for some reason, but he desperately wants to see that video. And, hey. I get that.

Wanting to find out what is recorded on VR when you die is such a cool sci-fi premise. And Brainstorm must know there’s no way that reveal (if revealed) could ever live up to the hype. Oh, you’re just gonna casually drop on your audience the pscyhedelic visions your brain produces as your soul leaves your body? You really gonna nail that in a satsifactory way? It’s all rather muddled, clunky, and the themes feel undercooked. The special effects are neat, but what they ultimately reveal is kind of cheesy. The movie has an awesome question, but doesn’t really provide a satisfying answer or show its math. Show me your work, cowards!

The legendary Godzilla director, Ishirō Honda, moves the plot into the distant future and throws as many kaiju as he can at the screen in Destroy All Monsters (1968). Shootin’ straight here: I love Godzilla (or perhaps I merely love the idea of Godzilla?), but I was never a big fan of the plots with aliens and outer space. Giant monsters on Earth are awesome. Don’t trivialize them with the addition of undercooked cosmic cultures. I also never liked the kidsier, goofy movies where Godzilla is essentially a good guy. I like Godzilla to be a bit of a bastard. One more beef: don’t tease Mothra and not let her metamorphosize. It’s maybe a forgettable entry in the series (even with all those monsters), but they do all gang up on King Ghidorah for one scene. That’s cool.

Mike Hodges’ Black Rainbow (1989) has a great name. Say it. “Black Rainbow“. Chills. Rosanna Arquette stars as a woman who travels from church to church peddling her skeptic father’s (Jason Robards) grift. They present her as a prophet who can see the future. It’s actually all just cold readings and chicanery, BUT… plot twist: maybe she’s actually psychic?! There are faster and more compelling ways to get to most of the important beats in this film, but I wasn’t upset. I just know I won’t remember much about it in 10 seconds.

Anna May Wong (The Thief of Bagdad, Toll of the Sea, Shanghai Express) was the first Chinese-American actress, and Hollywood pretty much never gave her the respect she deserved. Daughter of the Dragon (1931) is one of the Fu Manchu sequels. Warner Oland, a Swedish-American actor who was inexplicably almost exclusively cast as Chinese, is the fiendish yellow menace: the evil Fu Manchu! It’s all incredibly racist. And he’s kind of a boring Fu. I liked Boris Karloff in the role better. But this Fu Manchu is dying maybe. So he is passing the torch to his daughter (Anna May Wong). She reportedly hated this type of dragon lady role, but she took what she could. The only other draw here is maybe Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa as a detective (to prove the movie isn’t racist because they got one positive Asian character), but sadly he’s not in it much and the movie is clearly uncomfortable with his heavy accent.

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) exists in the same universe as Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. It’s not as well-oiled a machine. The jokes are mostly not funny, but they’re that familiar flavor of cheesy one-liner that corny horror movie hosts do. Which makes sense considering that’s Elvira’s origin story. Cassandra Peterson is charismatic and fun and, blasphemous as it may be, I believe funnier and more interesting than her Elvira character. It’s a vibe. And it’s got loads of cleavage for weird horndogs trapped in the 80s. Listen, you can enjoy this, but don’t do it so much we get a Svengoolie movie.

Rat (1998) is a simple documentary that is less actual information about rats and more cheeky pastiche of surly New Yorkers re-enacting their dramatic encounters.

I liked the Harmontown podcast, so, naturally, I had to see Harmontown (2014). All’s I’ma say is: I love Spencer. I love Jeff. I enjoy Dan. I want to be their friends. How come Rob Schrab wasn’t in this?!?

I hate clowns, an the Chiodo Brothers made them the scariest they’ve ever been. Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988). Clearly made by special effects and prop guys (who absolutely BRING IT with the creative designs). It’s a bare bones B-movie plot with some uninteresting characters, but the rubbery, grotesque masks and puppetry are definitely worth it. The clowns themselves, and everything about their culture, is profoundly upsetting to me. And that’s what the movie wanted to do. Fun theme song too!

The appeal of the Shōwa era is its breezy silliness (1954 film excluded). Godzilla morphs from a near indestructible force of mindless destruction into being a benevolent savior to mankind. Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971) is more overtly environmental than other Godzillas. It’s still geared toward children, but Hedorah is a more unique monster than most (a walking – sometimes flying – mountain of sludge, born of human pollution). I’m a sucker for Mothra and Biollante, and Hedorah fits nicely alongside them as some of my favorite Godzilla foils.

Plus, this movie is uncharacteristically funky. Love the animated interludes, that groovy intro, and swinging 70s musical number.

Terror Train (1980). A teen slasher flick on a novelty train? Also magician David Copperfield (now on the Epstein list!) bein’ his creepy self in a weirdly large role? Jamie Lee Curtis?? Finally. A decent New Year’s Eve horror movie. It’s schlocky and silly, but we dug it.

I saw Pixar’s Elemental (2023). Wow they mis-marketed this one. Legitimately pretty solid. Creative, clever, heartfelt, and gorgeously animated. Are we running out of metaphors for prejudice? Who knows, but it’s still an important message to be putting out into the world. Seriously, though. The animation is mesmerizing. I want to live in the Elemental city.

Admittedly, I have a hard time with a lot of westerns of a certain era. Specifically this one. There are a few gems in there, but it’s not my genre. And I am at peace with that.

That said, Joan Crawford is fantastic in Johnny Guitar (1954). Intimidating even in the brightest colored cowboy blouses you ever did see. Good tension and climax.

This one hard to score. It’s Adult Swim Yule Log aka The Fireplace (2022), directed by Casper Kelly (Too Many Cooks)! It’s if Adult Swim did a yule log thing. That’s all you gotta know. No spoilers. Just love. It was a delight and a surprise.

Godzilla has been many things over the years: a metaphor for atomic bombs, a metaphor for natural disasters, but he’s never been a metaphor for survivor’s guilt. Godzilla Minus One (2023) is just a straight, honest monster movie with the right amounts of melodramatic cheese o keep it going when the monster is not decimating cities. This might be the scariest Godzilla has ever been. I may be partial to the weirdness of Shin Godzilla, but this was a refreshing return to normalcy. The postwar setting really helps sell it and make it feel new again.

Not something you’d expect maybe, but my favorite thing in Godzilla this time was the tugboats. And the scientist guy: a real grade-A cutie.

Apparently, I’m not Dutch enough to, say, “get it”. Just like the Dutch. Always guarding their weird little Dutchisms. Anyway, I dug the hell out of Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman (2013). It’s sort of like a slowburn home invasion movie. Weird little guy insinuates himself into a normal family’s lives and turns things upside-down (we talked about this before when I couldn’t shut up about The Shout). Although decidedly darker than your average What About Bob?, sucks you in with its macabre sense of humor and casual dream-logic. Big fan of Jan Bijvoet (Embrace of the Serpent) as the mysterious vagrant.

I’ll tell you one thing: would not let that little freak into my home.

Following an accidental murder, a woman flees to a tropical island in Safe in Hell (1931). Whirlwind opening, kinda slow and sweaty middle, and surprisingly tragic ending. Really well filmed and Dorothy Mackaill is great. I love me some pre-Code sleaze.

In an age of airbrushed supermodel actors, it’s kind of refreshing to see a movie where everyone is old, bloated, in visible pain, and just looks like shit. Martin Scorsese hasn’t really made a bad movie, in my opinion. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) is about a lot of things, but perhaps the most glaring is the insidiousness and banality of evil and how fools often play a bigger part than they are capable of recognizing.

I could compare this thematically to There Will Be Blood (which, as an exploration of the vile tycoons that stole the west, is a bit more my jam). I could quietly wish we had gotten a version of this story through more of an Osage lens. It will always be a little hard for white people to tell Native stories. And that’s kind of the indictment the movie levels at itself with its finale. But Scorsese has always been great at telling stories from the point of view of the villains. So we get the story of the murder of the Osage people through the eyes of the men responsible for it, both directly and complicitly.

It’s a grim portrait of “how the west was won”, but an important one to remember. And to remember that this shit is still going on today in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Isael, Saudi Arabia, and a million other places. So what do we do? We could probably stop killing indigenous people and taking their land. Ah, but then the worst people in the world wouldn’t keep getting richer. Surely, we could never allow that. The greedy wheels of global capitalism must continue to turn.

Need a down and dirty slasher flick for the holidays? Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974) has you covered. Creepy and Canadian. You will feel a shiver down your spine every time the phone rings. Absolutely obsessed with all the insane 70s sweater patterns, wallpaper, curtains, etc. Now is it technically better than Scorsese’s most recent and arguably more important film? I mean, probably not. No accounting for taste, I guess. I just know I’m more likely to watch this again someday.

Every time I catch a Federico Fellini film, I think, “Damn. I gotta see more of this guy.” Staunchly European, And the Ship Sails On (1983) collects a group of wealthy, eccentric characters and chucks them onto a huge ocean liner in 1914. What follows is a meandering series of vignettes loaded with playful wit, social commentary, and opera. Watching this, I couldn’t help but feel like Stanley Tucci was somewhat inspired by it for his own underseen cruiseship screwball comedy, The Impostors.

Well, this one holds up pretty well. Almost directed by Re-Animator guy Stuart Gordon, Joe Johnston’s first directorial outing is a hot blast of tiny danger. It’s Disney’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989). I must have seen this a dozen times as a kid. Honestly, it’s kind of a brilliant idea. Renegade attic scientist (Rick Moranis at possibly his most loveable) invents a device that accidentally shrinks 4 kids who then have to trek across the backyard and try to get their parents’ attention. And, in the end, it’s all about making peace and becoming friends with the neighbors you never really gave the time to before. What this movie doesn’t get enough credit for is how gross it makes everything when you’re tiny. Floors? Cracky, dusty, strewn with rusted screws and miscellaneous detritus. Water? Dirty, dangerous, viscous, slimy, and will 1000% kill you. Bugs? Giant, throbbing units of alien muscle encased in hairy, damp exoskeletons. Grass? Jagged, wet, and covered in gross, prickly hairs. Insane that this movie launched a full-blown franchise – complete with two sequels (Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves), a live-action TV series, and a theme park 4D ride (Honey, I Shrunk the Audience). It’s also just nice to see Matt Frewer (Max Headroom himself) in anything.

Great opening animation sequence reminiscent of Ren & Stimpy. They don’t do that anymore. And amazing practical effects (giant sets, puppets, stop-motion, forced perspectives, etc.). And all set to a manic score by James Horner aping Danny Elfman and jazzifying Raymond Scott’s Powerhouse (a Looney Tunes industrial staple cue thanks to Carl Stalling). I can’t imagine how awesome this must have been to see in theaters in 1989 with the first standalone Roger Rabbit short produced by Steven Spielberg, Tummy Trouble. Disney used to be way edgier. One more fun fact: this movie was filmed entirely in Mexico City, and you’d never know it.

*Bonus points for girlfriend and I sharing possibly the nerdiest, nichiest jinx of all time when we both read Brian Yuzna’s name in the opening credits out loud and with equal measures of delight and incredulity.

If I were a demon, I would be so scared of George C. Scott yelling at me. William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III (1990) is a chillingly cold and clinical police procedural featuring a depressed and cranky George C. Scott as an investigator who believes in nothing, and what may just be a demonic entity wreaking bloody havoc in a hospital. Blatty, author of The Exorcist, only directed two movies, and what a shame that is. I love the blunt yet artistic look of this film. It’s scary mostly in its emptiness. It shows very little, but it alludes to much. George gives a great performance, but Brad Dourif is having a blast chewing scenery as a damned soul sent to torment.

Hayao Miyazaki’s final film (for like the 4th time) is The Boy and the Heron (2023), a gloriously weird and magestically animated fantasy about a young boy coming to terms with grief and loss. This thing is overflowing with wonderfully imaginative imagery, and seemingly all guided by a mature and inquisitive hand. I love Miyazaki’s worlds. They operate on a logic just to the left of Wonderland. It’s a weirder world than we’re familiar with, and it’s always magical in a refreshingly original way. The Boy and the Heron has my favorite kind of Miyazaki magic. That kind of magic you find in My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke. The kind of undefined nature magic that lends more to feelings than to reason. It’s a gentle, righteous, and mystical magic that is governed by a kind of moral order. I liked being in that world, even if I didn’t fully understand it.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ most recent film is Poor Things (2023), and it is very much my candy. I’m biased toward whimsy. Call it a weakness. You can’t hurt me. As strikingly beautiful and it is odd, it tells the story of Bella Baxter (played wonderfully by Emma Stone), a woman with the literal brain of a child coming of age in a world governed by the greedy whims of selfish and/or misguided men. It’s got mad science, sexual liberation, steampunk nonsense, and a hilarious performance by Mark Ruffalo. It’s also got amazing sound/music and Willem Dafoe. All the quirks of The Lobster and The Favourite are dialed up to 11. If that’s your jam, then perhaps we are indeed kindred spirits. The book, by Alasdair Gray, is also quite good. I loved it, but obviously, this won’t be for everyone, but then that is the name of this place.

It’s always exciting revisiting a classic. I had some memory of seeing this very long historical drama as a kid and being sucked into it. And it is a classic for a reason.

Arguably Miloš Forman’s grandest spectacle, easily Tom Hulce’s best performance, and F. Murray Abraham as one of the all time great movie villains, it’s Amadeus (1984)! The fictionalized biopic about Mozart from the point of view of a jealous rival composer has a great script by Peter Shaffer, but the oppulent production design (Karel Černý) and flamboyant costumes (Theodor Pištěk and Christian Thuri) are simply fantastic and wonderfully immersive. John Strauss coordinates the music as well, and it’s appropriately pretty much wall to wall Mozart bangers. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for stories that touch upon the messy complexities of faith and human frailty. Salieri (Abraham) believes he wants to be great to glorify his Creator, but he is inwardly cowed to discover his deepest desires and grandest ambitions were always only ever about himself. Stuffing those shameful revelations down, Salieri syphons all his jealousy into ruining Mozart, the basis for his ire. Salieri’s mania is always presented as relatable and understandable, even if his tactics are far from justifiable. It may not be historically accurate, but it is accurate to the human experience, which can sometimes make for a more enjoyable and piercing work.

Last Few Movies LXVIII: Halloween Times

Movies movies movies. I’m not addicted. YOU’RE addicted.

Chuck Vincent’s Warrior Queen (1987) stars Sybil Danning as a noblewoman in ancient Pompeii wandering from one curtains and balsa wood set to another until Vesuvius erupts. What could have been (and should have been) a Titanic-esque ticking time bomb of Roman intrigue and feminism-tinged political drama building until historical inevitability, ultimately sidesteps all this potential for more lascivious ambitions. What’s a handier Deus ex machina than a volcano erupting? Give us tension. Give us prophecy. Instead, the film just sort drifts shapelessly between gratuitous rape scenes and pilfered footage from other movies. Also stars an especially yucky Donald Pleasence.

 🎃 A crazed cartoonist unleashes true evil when it turns out his inked artwork brings ghouls to life! It’s a premise that’s been done, but, as a cartoonist myself, it’s one I can get behind. Cellar Dweller (1987) squanders its concept, in part, by killing off reliable horror mainstay Jeffrey Combs in the first two minutes and leaving us with the much less engaging or likeable Debrah Farentino as the new plucky cartoonist. The monster is rather lazy and doesn’t do much beyond nonchalantly chewing. The art school setting could have been nice (Munsters star Yvonne De Carlo plays the cartoon-hating Mrs. Briggs, who runs the retreat). Alas, a mostly boring and witless nothing of a flick, but the fiery finale was so silly and incomprehensible that it became pretty funny.

Leslie Nielsen’s entire career trajectory changed after 1980’s Airplane. The serious actor had amazing comedy chops. The Naked Gun series, would be his highlights. After that, you get weaker flicks like Wrongfully Accused, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and Spy Hard (1996). I watched all these on TV as a kid because Leslie Nielsen’s deadpan idiot character was funny, even if the movies weren’t great. Spy Hard has a lot of gags, and maybe 10% of them work (and most of that is owed to Weird Al Yankovic’s Bond-style song at the start of the movie). I can handle bad jokes you can see coming a mile away and hot bimbos being hot, but to me it’s just depressing to see old guys like Andy Griffith, Charles Durning, and Barry Bostwick giving career-worst performances, and simply unable to rise to Nielsen’s comic level. Spy Hard is a weird hybrid of feeling lazy while also being exhausting for how much it throws at you (but ultimately unsatisfying with how little sticks). You’ll get your fix for Ray Charles, Hulk Hogan, and Fabio cameos, I guess.

The plot to Xanadu (1980) is something. An artist (Michael Beck), whose job is to repaint existing posters exactly but bigger, gets fed up because he wants to be a real artist. He quits his job, but also hates making stuff by himself. But his lack of inspiration causes several muses to pop out of some graffiti (the main muse played by Olivia Newton-John). Instead of inspiring the artist, she just kind of rollerskates around, and he becomes obsessed with her and wants to bang her. Enter 68-year old Gene Kelly as some sort of retired clarinet millionaire. The artist tells him he should open the club he’s always wanted to, and they decide to make it an upsetting combination of a 1940s big band dance theater and 1980s rock and roll club. Still not sure where the muse fits into any of this. The club Gene Kelly opens at the end makes no sense and is scary actually.

Oh, and it’s also a musical. Written by Electric Light Orchestra. Don’t get too excited. There’s way more rollerskating than singing.

 🎃 Stephen King’s directorical outing owes a lot to his muse: cocaine. Maximum Overdrive (1986) asks us to imagine a world where cars come to life and want to kill us sometimes. OK. Done. What now? Well, now you have to contend with being stuck in a gas station with a completely devoid-of-charisma Emilio Estevez. But fret not! What Estevez lacks here in charisma, he more than makes up for in being sweaty. Maximum Overdrive has some fun car stuff at times, but is such an aggressively brainless movie that it’s actually impressive that it is watchable at all.

What a weird movie. Fun and Fancy Free (1947) is an anthology with only two stories, and multiple narrators with multiple bookend schticks. It starts out as a tale told by Jiminy Cricket (who has apparently been alive since the 1880s when Pinocchio takes place). He tells the story of a circus bear named Bongo who returns to the forest. Not really into the story of Bongo or the apocryphal bear lore of romantic slapping, but it’s nicely animated and fine.

Then it shifts narrator perspectives when Jiminy reads a little girl’s mail (illegal, by the way) and decides to secrety crash her party across the street (not cool, Jiminy). The party is creepy as hell. It’s a live action segment where radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his puppets, the snarky Charlie McCarthy and mentally challenged Mortimer Snerd, are entertaining the child actor Luana Patten. Jiminy Cricket doesn’t really do much beyond touch their food and listen to the story. Call the police, Jiminy. Luana was invited to a puppet man’s house at night without a legal guardian. This is not normal.

Mickey and the Beanstalk is far from my favorite Mickey cartoons, but it has a psychotically unhinged Donald Duck and that’s always funny. I also appreciate the grander scope of this tight adventure. Really not digging Walt Disney’s voicing of Mickey here. Missing that youthful spunk. I like the harp’s song and the vine growing sequence and Donald’s manic freakout where he tries to murder a cow with an axe. Good stuff.

For me the real irksome thing is the Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy stuff interrupting Mickey and the Beanstalk. I’ve never really liked Bergen and McCarthy (they ruin W.C. Fields’ You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man for me)

Here’s where I had to do a bit of research. I remember watching the Mickey and the Beanstalk segment on a VHS taped off of TV as a kid. It was narrated not by Bergen, but by Sterling Holloway (Kaa, Winnie the Pooh, the Cheshire Cat, etc.). This version makes a few edits. I also recall another version narrated by Ludwig von Drake (maybe my favorite minor Disney character), which makes a few different edits. I like Holloway’s cozy read, and there’s something anachronistically charming about the von Drake stuff (animated and recorded a few decades after the original short). Then I discover there is yet ANOTHER version of the Mickey and the Beanstalk narration. With Shari Lewis and Lambchop! I guess they wanted to stick with the original ventriloquism vibe. I have not seen it, but would like to find it.

Miracles (1989) is apparently Jackie Chan’s favorite film he’s done. And I can understand why. It’s got some great period costumes, gangster shootouts, excellently choreographed action fight scenes, and Anita Mui. But not enough. It’s more of a cheeky comedy melodrama than a straight action movie. I love a good Jackie Chan flick, and the fights that are present are great, but I guess we just weren’t in the mood for a farce. Give us more action. Or at least a few more songs.

 🎃 In The Addiction (1995) Abel Ferrara uses vampires as a metaphor for heroine addiction and also as a metaphor for losing faith in this slowburn drama that serves mainly as a place for Ferrara to plug in all of his favorite quotes and concepts from an Intro to Philosophy course. There’s some good stuff in here, but it’s weighed down by how overwrought and philosophically eloquent everyone is about everything at all times. Also, the constant images of real world death are a bit much. I get it. Mankind is the real vampire. Or something. Lily Taylor, as a grad student who is becoming a vampire (aka a heroine addict, aka an annoying 13 year old atheist), will be waxing philosophical and then BAM. We hard cut to piles of real corpses in Vietnam and Holocaust. And stay on them for a long time.

Perhaps a bit too soaked in Catholic guilt for some, but I do sort of admire Ferrara working out his demons so nakedly. Also, nobody hams up a scene like Christopher Walken when he wants to.

I love Bob Hoskins as well as peeks into Roma culture (although Emir Kusturica is the real filmmaker to check out for that). I watched The Raggedy Rawney (1988) because it’s one of the few movies Bob Hoskins directed. It’s a wartime drama about a young boy (Dexter Fletcher) who runs away from the army, poses as an insane witch woman (a “raggedy rawney”), and fenagles his way into a gypsy camp. I wish we got a little more more into the head of the titular character. He’s the character the movie keeps at the furthest distance. The drama is good, Bob Hoskins’ mustache is luscious, it’s got some solid actors doing good work (Zoë Wanamaker, Zoë Natheson, and Ian McNiece), and a moving finale.

It is sensitive mode Hoskins, and I wonder why he wanted to tell this particular story. It’s good, but don’t expect a Long Good Friday or Mona Lisa type of mad dog performance from the guy.

So much of 70s Australian cinema is just warning people not to go. “We’re weirdos here, mate. Real sickos,” they told us. Everthing’s dusty and hot and distant and the folks in the smaller towns, well, they’re all mad. The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) is an early Peter Weir movie about a small community with an economy that requires car accidents to function. It’s not as fast-paced or exciting as Mad Max or as intense as Wake In Fright, but it does operate on a similarly weird wavelength. Most of the runtime is about a car crash survivor being informally adopted by the mayor (John Meillon), which is not particularly interesting. It’s a slow wind up to the wild car finale.

 🎃 Slasher films full of too many hot, buxom, young, horny teens for ya? Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) has got you covered. This story’s murder victims are all fat, middle-aged, male farmers who hate people with mental struggles. For a TV movie in a genre loaded with stereotypical lackluster entries, this one is pretty solid. A basic setup, some great performances (Charles Durning, I’m lookin’ at you), and some creatively horrific deaths involving farm equipment. Admittedly, Darkman‘s Larry Drake appearing as a “Simple Jack” type threw me off, but I soon recovered.

Ryan’s Babe (2000) is what we wait for. It’s a classically bad movie that is just as puzzling as it is incompetant. I assume this is just how all Saskatoonians see the world. Anyway, it’s a must-watch and any description I could give won’t do it justice.

Neil Breen is back, and we were lucky enough to finally see one in theaters! Cade: The Tortured Crossing (2023), shot completely on greenscreen, was a special treat, but perhaps a note of diminishing returns… And our first moments of doubt. But perhaps that doubt is more in ourselves than in Breen.

If, in years to come, it is revealed that Neil Breen, as a man, is a hoax – that the entity that is Breen is all merely an elaborate performance art piece and the films are just one of the many extensions of this performance dreamed up by a team of Breen engineers (Breengineers, if you will), but have taken a life of their own, perhaps even beyond their initial intentions – I would not be mad.

Whether Breen is exactly who he appears to be, whether he is an avant-garde experiment, whether he is a flawed but ever evolving entrepreneur grasping vaguely at what people love about him and tapping into waves of self-awareness, I truly do not care. If it is a trick, it is a great one. If it is all real, as I continue to humbly suspect, perhaps an even greater one.

 🎃 Cults and murder and Halloween. It’s Jag Mundhra’s Hack-O-Lantern (1988)! A somewhat infamously bad movie with a title that says precious nothing. It’s dumb fun that, if you’re in the mood, will surely scratch a trashy Halloween-y itch or two.

Now I am become old, the gets tired watching a superhero movie. I absolutely loved 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It was fresh and fast and so imaginative and gorgeous. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) is no less technically impressive and smart, but I feel like I aged 10 years watching it. It’s a great movie with loads of astounding visuals, dizzying action scenes, sharp wit, and a nice arc for Gwen Stacy’s character. But after a time, it was just too fast and furious for me and I needed a nap. Maybe it’s a masterpiece every bit as good as the previous film. All I know is I felt exhausted.

 🎃 The Black Cat (1934) marked the first (but not the last) time Universal monster icons Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff would star in a movie together. It was only natural for the studios to pit Dracula against Frankentstein (the two most popular horror movies of 1931). Lugosi is a Hungarian (how appropos) psychiatrist who survives a taxi wagon accident along with a newlywed couple and winds up at the futuristic mansion of the Satanist (Karloff) who killed his wife.

Extremely, loosely “suggested by” Edgar Allen Poe, this classic horror melodrama is decent enough for the time, but suffers from a clinical location (gimme a spooky castle over this pristine, sterile house), a plodding plot, and the fact that Lugosi and Karloff, while amazing in their own rights, are kind of weird together. Their acting styles and powerful personas clash, and not in a way that services the story. Something just feels off about their chemistry. Still, I love both these men and it’s always fun seeing them.

 🎃 Teruo Ishii’s Horrors of Malformed Men (1969) is a bit of blur to me now. I was tripping balls on cold medicine at the time. But that actually seems like the perfect headspace to enter this strange Japanese horror movie. I knew nothing about it going in, except that the cover art intrigued me. Sometimes you gotta trust your instincts. Malformed Men has some trashy twists and turns and some weird, culty body-horror type surgeries, but it’s a gradual windup. You gotta be patient.

 🎃 We had a time trying to guess which character was played by actor/writer/director/producer James Bond III. Depending on who we thought at any given moment, it drastically altered the overall tone and flavor of where this weird story was coming from. About 35 minutes in we confirmed who James Bond III was. Def by Temptation (1990) is a moralistic urban horror about a succubus that tempts people astray. It’s hard to score this one exactly as it’s a bit scattershot, but we definitely liked a lot of individual scenes. And what is a good movie if not a collection of pretty good scenes?

 🎃 Romero meets the Ramones! Zombies are attacking and only Japanese rock group Guitar Wolf (…and overcoming transphobia) can the world be saved in Tetsuro Takeuchi’s Wild Zero (1999). It’s wild and wacky, and would make an excellent double-feature with 1998’s Bio-Zombie.

🎃 Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture (1991) is a super weird movie that’s gonna be hard to dissect in a blurb. It takes a specific brand of American Christian eschatology and treats it completely soberly, crafting a psychological slow-burn horror flick through the lens of that theology. It’s about doubt and faith and fanaticism and probably a whole lot more. It’s low-key, but also harrowing. Tolkin said while inroducing the film for Trailers from Hell that people came away from the movie in 1991 either happy it portrayed religion as true or happy it portrayed it as false, or angry about either of those two reads. Essentially, interpretations are numerous.

Mimi Rogers plays Sharon, an atheist call center employee and swinger who finds God and embarks on an apocalyptic journey that challenges her new faith at every turn. It is a provocative film for a lot of reasons, and I definitely had a lot of feelings about it while it was unfolding. Having grown up with evangelicalism (and having been shown the pre-Left Behind series, Thief in the Night and its sequels), the movie truly felt like a sermon I had heard many times before – but it was different this time. It was not the fantastical Christian Twilight Zone-esque cautionary tale. At least, not exactly. Tolkin doesn’t believe any of this stuff. His rather matter-of-fact presentation of the events doesn’t pass judgement on any of the characters. It lets things happen and leaves the moral determinations and the reality of it all up to the audience.

Weird this was even made. Also stars David Duchovny. Would pair well with Bill Paxton’s Frailty. True as it ever was, no one does Christian movies quite like a non-Christian.

What a cozy, silly man Steve Martin is. LA Story (1991) is a very personal and gentle romantic comedy with touches of surreal humor and magical realism. A weatherman (Martin) starts to receive messages from a freeway billboard that helps him win the affections of an English journalist (Victoria Tennant). It’s sweet and is about fate and love and Los Angeles and, it would seem, one of the closer peeks into Steve Martin’s head.

 🎃 Finally saw David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979). I don’t want to give much away, but I will say that, like a lot of early Cronenberg movies, it starts as a strange, slow quasi-mystery; depicts Canada as a perpetually slushy and overcast dystopic snowmare* [*nightmare but with snow]; and gets wildly, weirdly gross once you start figuring out what’s going on.

For me, what elevates this above Shivers and Rabid, is the star power of Oliver Reed. Cronenberg starts putting actors with more gravitas in his movies (Michael Ironside, James Woods, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Walken, Jeremy Irons, etc.), and, for me, it really adds to the film. I love Cronenberg’s bizarro body-horror concepts and themes on identity, but inserting a more captivating actor into the story really sucks you in more. What can I say? I’m an actor boy. The Brood does start slow and cryptic, but once you get to the third act, it’s pretty hard to say the ride wasn’t worth it.

 🎃 Thirteen Women (1932), directed by George Archainbaud, is an estrogen-fueled, pre-Code, proto-slasher flick and it rules. The sinister magic at work isn’t a masked killer with a knife, but merely the power of suggestion…which appears to work murderously well on the poor, horoscope-obsessed victims. Someone is killing women! And in surprisingly creative and grisly ways for a movie made in 1932.

It is a bit “has aged poorly” in a few key aspects. Myrna Loy plays an evil Indonesian swami who was the victim of cruel racism in her school days. Naturally, she’s a supervillain now. For some reason, Hollywood kept casting Myrna Loy as an Asian woman in this part of her career. Thank God she eventually moved from Fu Manchu to The Thin Man. She’s actually a much better comic actor than a dragon lady trope.

The movie does highlight a deep flaw within astrology (that I imagine even subscribers of would undoubtedly admit), and that is the pliable susceptibility of the mind. If you are looking for something, you will almost certainly find it, whether it is there or not. I’ve never seen astrology used as a murder weapon before, and it’s pretty intriguing how Thirteen Women employs it. Although, this is less of a Derren Brown exposé of superstition, and more a cheap, pulpy thriller. It even has a train in it.

Quentin Tarantino, love him or hate him, hasn’t made a bad movie. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) is a sharp homage to many of the movies that made him. Uma Thurman is the bride out for revenge, hacking her way through Vivica A. Fox, Chiaki Kuriyama, Lucy Liu, and every last member of the Crazy 88 to get to the man who done her wrong: Bill. It’s a fast, pulpy, hyper-violent revenge thriller streamlined to its essentials so that the movie can focus on delivering stylish visuals inspired by wild retro flicks. Cue the 5, 6, 7, 8’s!

Roy Andersson’s Songs from the Second Floor (2000) is a Swedish tragicomedy played out in numerous vignettes that occasionally overlap. The humor is pitch black and quite haunting. It examines the cruelty and banality of modern life in Sweden, and how it is tainted by the crimes of the past and the uncertainty of the future, but all at an arm’s length, almost as if it all were being presented as an especially grim (and rather Scandinavian) Far Side cartoon. It marks the beginning of Andersson’s trilogy of similarly styled features which include You, the Living (2007) (which is quite good) and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) (I need to see it).

 🎃 I think I’m obsessed with David Robert Mitchell now. I absolutely loved the criminally underseen neo-noir Under the Silver Lake, and I was quite taken by his earlier horror film It Follows (2014) which I have now seen.

For a supernatural horror like this to work it needs: 1. an intriguing monster, 2. clear rules, 3. let the discovery of those rules unfold a bit like a mystery. Check, check, and check. I’m just a sucker for monsters and their rules. To make it great it needs: 1. clever concept couched in a topical metaphor, 2. great cinematography, 3. Disasterpeace does the soundtrack. Triple check again.

Apparently Mitchell is currently working on some sort of “dinosaur movie set in the 80s” starring Oscar Isaac and Anne Hathaway. Please, let this movie be made. I need this.

While I really like Kill Bill Vol. 1, I love Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004). Uma’s back and going after Michael Madsen, Darryl Hannah, and ultimately David Carradine. This sequel tones things down and slows things down and morphs into a very different kind of movie. While the first movie had a comically high body count, this time the Bride ultimately takes only one life. It’s a more pensive movie, with more consequences, more tragic backstory, and more lugubrious soliloquoys. I don’t know if anyone has ever had more fun telling a story than Tarantino. The inevitable violence is teased out, but has more power and weight to it. If Vol. 1 was an 70s exploitation movie steeped in old school Japanese revenge flicks (Lady Snowblood, for one) that would work just as well as a silent film, Vol. 2 is a talky, slowburn western peppered with nods to classic Chinese kung-fu. Together, they are a fantastic showcase of the power of various cinematic styles and how those styles inform the telling of a story, even one so simple as a basic revenge plot.

 🎃 Jerzy Skolimowski The Shout (1978) tickled me in ways that I find quite easy to pinpoint. Listen, my review of this is probably beyond rational. This a genre I love: weird guy insinuates himself into normal man’s life and cucks the bejeezus out of him – think Cul-de-sac, Bone, Borgman, What About Bob?, etc. And it’s from a time when cinematic protagonists had hyper specific, unusual jobs. In this case, John Hurt plays an experimental electronic composer. I love those details.

A mysterious man (Alan Bates) claims to have learned dark Aboriginal magick. There is a scream that can be uttered that can kill a man. Is it true or merely the rich braggadocio of a lunatic? Or perhaps he is not insane, but merely exceptionally manipulative. Or again, is it real? What does he want?

Skolimowski’s direction is bonkers from the start. Lots of bold and bizarre choices that suck you in and thrash you around. The sound design as well is very intentional and great. John Hurt and Susannah York are well cast, but the real reason this movie is so beguiling and strange is because of Alan Bates’ dangerous, unhinged performance. He keeps you on the edge of your seat and surprises you at every turn.

Happy Halloween 🎃

Last Few Movies LXVII: to Hell and Back

I watched movies again. Whatever it means to rank disparate films in order of how much one enjoyed it, I did it.

The Cannon Group is always a weirder production company than my dumb brain realizes. Anyways, Menahem Golan’s The Apple (1980) is one of the more out there musicals. Bold choice to retell the timeless story of wide-eyed innocents being corrupted by the allure of the entertainment industry and map it onto Christian Evangelical tribulation eschatology complete with a literal Deus Ex Machina and also have it totally suck ass. I will say, however, it was nice to finally see character actor Vladek Sheybal get a big role (he plays Mr. Boogalow aka the Devil). He’s pretty bad, but he’s having fun. I liked that. They even gave him some song numbers. He can’t sing either, but he’s having fun.

Who doesn’t want to get lost in Richard E. Grant’s beautiful baby blues? Warlock (1989) is about wizards that travel to modern day to stop each other. It’s a mostly forgettable affair, and I have to put the blame on how small the adventure feels and the villain (a blonde ponytailed, barefoot man in a black romper who can fly). I need to watch Whitnail & I again to cleanse the palate.

Watched schlockmeister Ted V. Mikels’ The Astro-Zombies (1968) out of a sick duty. We stumbled upon his 2004 sequel, Mark of the Astro-Zombies, by happenstance a couple years ago. It is also an extremely bad movie. Cheap, ugly, stupid, nonsensical, BUT we were overcome with fascination at the volume of old people in it. Turns out a lot of them had ties to Mikels from way back in the day. It is also the movie that introduced us to Tura Satana. She is marvelous trash and loving it. Best takeaway, by far. So we found the original Astro-Zombies and…not nearly enough Tura in it. She’s cool and mean, but most of the film is boring talking heads and an ancient John Carradine using a screwdriver and talking to a greasy Igor knockoff. Is it worth it? Not really, unless you’re a Tura or Mikels completist. Watch Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! instead.

I remembered disliking Legend (1985) when it was shown to me years ago. Fastforward to a couple weeks ago and I’m thinking how did I not like a weird Ridley Scott fantasy movie with a Tangerine Dream score, Rob Bottin makeup effects, and a horny Tim Curry in the best Devil suit ever constructed trying to seduce Mia Sara? And Tom Cruise is in it?

Gave it another shot. I think the problem is it is boring and rather unengaging. When you compare it to something like NeverEnding Story, it’s almost depressingly subdued and shapeless. It’s also clinically claustrophobic. Show me a sky. And not enough Tim Curry, who is absolutely the reason to watch it at all. He’s chewing scenery, loving being evil.

Nico Mastorakis’ Nightmare at Noon (1988) starts off pretty solid and engaging, but it makes a few cowardly choices along the way and loses steam once George Kennedy is out of the picture and the characters leave the town. If you wanted a bad version of Bucarau that will test your tolerance for Bo Hopkins and Wings Hauser, then give it a whirl.

Is Demon Seed (1977), a hoakie sci-fi thriller about a robotic house that wants to shag Julie Christie, truly a better film than Legend or Nightmare at Noon? Who’s to say, but Demon Seed doesn’t have Wings Hauser or the perpetually wincing face of Bo Hopkins in it. Demon Seed is an impressively stupid movie about an evil AI that’s trying to Rosemary’s Baby up a human to live forever. When the evil computer is challenging people (albeit with embarrassingly simplistic reasoning skills) and using uniquely computer-y ways to disturb and kill people, it’s kind of cool. It doesn’t do that very much. Best things here were the folding metal shape monster (RIP Beef from Phantom of the Paradise) and the robot baby.

Listen, I love the body horror, wet puppets, and jittery stop-motion ghoulies. I even dig the flashback structure. Where this movie really rubs me the wrong way is the goofy comedy acting, which just didn’t work for me. Check out Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor (1990), but know it’s more comedy than horror.

Kate Bush is great and way better than this short film: The Line, the Cross and the Curve (1993). It features several of her songs, and a few of the numbers are filmed very entertainingly, but it’s not as good as a surreal Kate Bush musical should be. We watched this after seeing The Red Shoes (appearing later on this list), as it was a huge inspiration and one of her favorite movies.

What’s this? An Italian Southern Gothic supernatural horror flick about a Louisiana house built on a portal to Hell directed by Lucio Fulci?? It’s The Beyond (1981), everybody. I couldn’t tell you much about the plot or the characters. Like a lot of films in this style, it’s more of an atmospheric pastiche of weird, brutal violence and some striking imagery. It held our interest and I liked the final shot quite a bit.

Brad Bird is responsible for some of my favorite animated films. Iron Giant, Ratatouille, and The Incredibles. I had a few worries about Pixar’s superhero sequel, The Incredibles 2 (2018) going in. Hence why it’s taken so long to see it. Ultimately, it’s not bad. It sags a bit in the middle, but the story is good enough, there are some fresh ideas, and the animation is amazing to look at. Watching Mrs. Incredible hit the same exact story beats as Mr. Incredible did before this time around isn’t the most exciting. And Mr. Incredible being a tired, grouchy dad maybe isn’t as funny as it could be, but on the whole it’s nice to the see the family back together. That first movie is really hard to top, and this isn’t Toy Story 2.

Sometimes I respect a novel, ambitious mess more than a streamlined success. Underground animator Ralph Bakshi has a lot of those types of movies in his canon, and Wizards (1977) is weird even for him. It’s a fantasy set in the future, and it’s about the rise of fascism. An evil wizard utilizes old footage of Adolf Hitler (and there is a LOT of Nazi and WWII footage in what was allegedly Bakshi’s attempt at a family movie) to inspire his army of cybernetic goons to oppress the fairyfolk and dwarves of Montagar.

In addition to the Nazi stuff, it’s also a pretty violent and horny movie. The Frazetta-inspired, scantily clad queen of the fairies is perpetually nipping out. The good wizard’s mushroom tower house is unmistakably phallic. And it’s got war and guns and cartoon blood.

The movie is all over the place. The tone veers wildly from screwball sex comedy to serious warning about fascism and how easily it can take hold and be used to destroy peace. The quality of the animation shifts throughout the movie. Bakshi’s reliance on rotoscoping is not to everyone’s tastes. The still images and backgrounds are wonderful! And it does have that Bakshi grim satire. The ending, depending on your mood might strike you as stupid or anticlimactic. I actually weirdly think it’s hilarious and maybe even important or something. Like I said, it’s a mess, but I have to respect it.

Wes Anderson is a fascinating specimen. Each of his films becomes a litmus test for fans’ personal Rubicons of what they are willing to accept, as well as a confirmation for his detractors for why his style is so devoid of appeal. Maybe more than any other director. All this to say, I did not like Asteroid City (2023). But I know a lot of people who loved it. Classic Anderson play, right there.

Set in a Cold War desert town, Asteroid City is pretty to look at (maybe even visually genius), but somehow even more scattered, plotless, and emotionally inert than usual. Confoundingly of all to me is how little a movie about a television show about a play so very little resembles either. It’s squarely the language of cinema, making the constant reminders that it’s a behind the scenes look at a theater production all the more bewildering. Is it about the military industrial complex in 1950s America? Not really. Is it about how science is deemed the playground of weird children? Maybe? Is it about dealing with death and loss? Not exactly. Is it about the stories we tell to convince ourselves of a greater narrative purpose and meaning in an otherwise incomprehensible universe? Could be. There’s a lot in there, and, taken separately, not all uninteresting. As a whole, I just felt like I wanted a more engaging onslaught of wacky characters. Maybe it’s even more meta than I’m giving it credit for. Who knows.

I liked the alien, and there are a couple of good chuckles, but I kinda miss having a plot and some characters I care about.

Ching Siu-tung and Tsui Hark started a wild fantasy/action/romance/comedy/horror franchise with A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). While I may not have been prepared for how slapstick-y the shenanigans and general hijinks were to be, I was enchanted by the fast-paced fantasy action and dazzling special effects. When a clumsy tax collector (Leslie Cheung) falls in love with ghost (Wang Tsu Hsien), it threatens an arranged spirit wedding and, armed with the aid of a knowledgeable Taoist warrior (Wu Ma) they all must go into the afterlife to do battle with old evil. It’s a fun flick, whose influences on the fantasy kung-fu genre are apparent.

Don’t judge me. David Winters had a dream. He was a choreographer (Viva Las Vegas), director (Thrashin’), producer (Raw Justice), and actor (Westside Story) and, very late in life, choreographed, directed, produced, and acted in his swansong Dancin’: It’s On (2015). I can’t tell you if we enjoyed the movie the way Winters meant it to be enjoyed, but it brought us a lot of laughs and delight. It’s the kinda bad we simply love to see. Wouldn’t change a goddamn thing. Nothing but love for this man.

I thought the first Guardians of the Galaxy was a breath of fresh air when it came out in 2014. It stood out as being a quirkier Marvel movie at the time. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 had some more cool ideas and themes (namely about fatherhood), but the freshness and quirk may have been less novel by then. I never expected to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), but I found myself watching it one night and it might be the most soulful and satisfying. James Gunn knows how to make a fun big budget movie that’s appropriately weird (for a mainstream audience) and doesn’t look like garbage. It’s that raccoon’s movie, but the connective tissue around that works well. It’s fun and funny, but it’s got enough emotional heft when it needs it. Fans of Marvel and The Plague Dogs should enjoy this equally.

Indonesia’s take on James Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi action horror is a fascinating example of meming. It grafts (albeit awkwardly) the beats of the Termintor story onto an old Indonesian myth. Instead of a murder-robot from the future sent to kill Sarah Connor, Lady Terminator (1989) has the mythical Queen of the South Sea (a capricious and horny ocean goddess who has a vagina eel that kills men by eating their penises mid-coitus) possessing the body of an American anthropologist to complete her mission of cursing a rising rockstar and great great granddaughter of a guy who turned her eel into a dagger by grabbing it that one time. Barbara Anne Constable may not exactly be Arnold Schwarzenegger, but she looks great kicking in doors and spraying bullets. There’s a bit too much shooting (it gets tiresome), but the frantic car chases, jungle/gutter aesthetic, and weird Indonesian folk magic make this a unique cross-cultural adventure.

Shirley Jackson’s gothic horror is no stranger to adaptation. The Haunting (1963), directed by Robert Wise, tells the story of a group of people investigating the paranormal in an old mansion. The heart of the movie – for me anyway – isn’t so much the promise of poltergeists but the character of Eleanor Lance, one of the people invited to experience the house. Eleanor (played by Julie Harris) may be a bit of an unreliable narrator as her internal monologues constantly call her emotional state into question. She is wracked with guilt at finally feeling free following the death of her invalid mother whom she had spent her entire adult life taking care of. The trip to Hill House is a much needed reframing of purpose for her (so much so that she steals a car to get there).

If that’s not enough to lure you in to this classic haunted house atmosphere, the house itself and the wonderful cinematography (by Davis Boulton) should be enough to captivate. It’s kind of tragic what the 1999 version with Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor did to it.

I mean it when I say that cinema is time travel.

Special effects guy and stop-motion wizard, David W. Allen (The Howling, Willow, Caveman, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Batteries Not Included, Dolls, Freaked, The Stuff, Robot Jox, Bride of Re-Animator, Puppet Master, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) spent years trying to make The Primevals (2023). Conceived in the 1960s as a throwback to classic adventure movies of the 1930s (like The Lost World, King Kong, and maybe even She), Allen’s film about the search for the Himalayan yeti kept getting stalled and snagged and money was hard. They finally filmed most of the live-action stuff in 1994 in Romania and the Italian Dolomites. Allen died in 1999 at the age of 54, never having completed his most ambitious project.

Full Moon producer Charles Band, along with an Indiegogo campaign that raised $40,000, and several animators who had known Allen (Chris Endicott, Kent Burton, and a team) managed to finish the film and release it now. In 2023. And we got to see it at its debut at Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.

So how was it? As a movie, that is?

I went into this knowing it was a pulpy low-budget adventure flick that was going to have bad writing and cheesy acting, but that it would be an effects-driven labor of love. It was all of that, and we had a blast watching. The live-action stuff is poorly directed, badly acted, stupidly written, and the story is a needlessly convoluted mess that makes little sense, but there is so much life and personality and the dynamic fun in the stop-motion monsters and action scenes. It really does capture the magic of the work of Willis O’Brien or Ray Harryhausen. And that’s why you sit through the boring people stuff. It made me feel like a kid again watching old adventure flicks waiting for the dumb people to shut up so the movie could get to the monsters, dinosaurs, aliens, and spaceships.

The Primevals feels like it’s from another time (because it is), but it was fun and inspiring and made me wish to see more stop-motion adventure films like this on the BIG SCREEN. I’ve never seen the original King Kong in a theater. Or any of the Sinbads or other Harryhausen movies in a theater. And now I know it would be a thrill that a TV screen simply cannot deliver. The Primevals reminds me of the importance of specialty cinemas that show classic films that were always intended to be seen big. It reminds me how much love and passion are sometimes behind even flawed, messy projects. I’ve always been enchanted by the tactile feel and energy stop-motion animation has, and I’m not alone. It’s a different sort of magic than CGI for me, because it’s closer to childhood. It’s more readily understood. It’s literally bringing toys to life. It’s a magic trick where knowing exactly how it was all achieved only lends to its wow factor.

So should you watch it? Well, it won’t be for everyone, and I’m honest when I say I don’t recommend something like The Black Scorpion for the dialogue, but for folks with some nostalgia for Hammer Films or Harryhausen creatures, it’s definitely worth it. Seeing the colossal yeti and the reptilian Martian men on the big screen was a real delight.

Honey Lee plays Yeo-Rae, a Korean pop culture sensation trapped in a controlling relationship with her psychotic husband (played hilariously by Lee Sun-kyun), but who happens to live across the street from her biggest fan, university hopeful Bumwoo (Gong Myung). Naturally, he agrees to help her murder her husband. This is Killing Romance (2023). This is a wild, breezy, live-action cartoon musical filled with flashy advertising energy and extremely zany performances. I had a smile on my face for most of the runtime, and the audience we saw it with was laughing and cheering throughout.

George A. Romero was always a progressive, underground renegade. Most famous for inventing the modern zombie flick (and I’d argue Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead have yet to be topped), Romero’s best work has deeper thematic and political yearnings animating it. Knightriders™ (1981), on its face, is about a troupe of Ren Faire motorcycle jousters and their internal dramas and schisms, but it’s really got a lot to say about staying true to your ideals and the romanticization of living on the fringes of society.

It is overly long, and occasionally a little unintentionally silly (Ed Harris bringing perhaps a comical level of gravitas to the Faire King, but his seriousness does add to the film), but there’s a true rebellious heartbeat pounding within it. And it’s great to see makeup artist Tom Savini get such a meaty role. I appreciate how much they sexualize him. Savini’s just a cool guy. True to Romero’s worldview, the bad guys are authority figures, and the good guys are a diverse crew of flawed but interesting personas. Knightriders may not be perfect, but I found myself thinking about it long after it was over.

Sometimes somebody just really loves pulpy, splattery 80s horror flicks. Sometimes that somebody doesn’t have a budget to make a good movie. So they have to settle for shoestring DIY greatness.

Shinichi Fukazawa (writer/director/producer/editor/star) pays tribute to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies. Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell ain’t even trying to hide its influences. Super low budget stuff, with its earnest love for the craft and awareness of its limitations (stuff like Carnival of Souls, Basket Case, and anything out of Wakaliwood), can sometimes tap into unhinged magic of the highest order.

Sometimes called The Japanese Evil Dead, Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell has a basic setup: three people wind up in a haunted house. Cartoonish gore and general silliness ensues. Shot in 1995 on 8mm film and not completed until 2009, viewers can expect to see a plethora of weird DIY special effects, goopy dollops of corn syrup, and lines ripped from the mouth of Bruce Campbell. My only real complaint is that we could have had a bit more bodybuilding.

Much like how The Lego Movie kinda snuck in and surprised us with its cleverness, stellar art direction, and ambitions to say more than “Look! Look! Remember this toy?!”, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) has a much firmer clasp on the pulse of the American cultural malaise than a movie about a doll probably has any right to.

Barbie is weird smart fun. Not just socially and politically aware, but more introspective and willing to examine how ideas evolve over time. Because, as the movie clearly states, Barbie is an idea. And there are a lot of ideas about what Barbie is and what she means and where she belongs in 2023. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s incisive script goes way harder than most big budget Hollywood blockbusters. That’s super refreshing to see.

It also looks amazing. The ultra pink plastic universe and wacky, playtime rules that govern them are hilarious, creative, and tantalizing to behold. The whole cast truly understands the assignment and nails this hyper specific comedy tone extremely well (perhaps Ryan Gosling most of all). Its politics may be a bit cudgel-like, but this is a mainstream movie for a general audience, and no one gets mad when South Park is this on the nose with spelling out its satirical points.

It’s more than a fish-out-of-water story, or a story about the origins of Barbie, or a feminist attack on the patriarchy (although it is all of those things too); it’s an existential journey that uses the iconic doll (and all her baggage) to say something bigger about the human experience and the modern world we find ourselves in. I put Barbie in the same camp as Sorry to Bother You, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Bo Burnham’s Inside; modern humanist cinema that can be inelegantly blunt, but is urgent, honest, and ultimately hopeful about it all. We could debate about who said what better, but I’m just happy folks are using studio money to be this weird.

If it’s the greatest example of the lush richness of Technicolor, then it’s got to be Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. I enjoyed The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and I really dug Black Narcissus. They’re gorgeously shot, narratively complex dramas that, above all, are just kinda low-key weird. The Red Shoes (1948) ups the ante in terms of both color and idiosyncrasy. Welcome to the competitive world of lavishly produced ballet shows. A girl (Moira Shearer) longs to be a star. A man (Marius Goring) longs to compose. And a strange and obsessive impresario (played with enigmatic oddness by Anton Walbrook) controls the fates of all who yearn for the stage. It’s a messy, melodramatic love triangle that is never not gorgeous to look at. There is an elaborate dance sequence that rivals Singin’ in the Rain for its scope and visual innovation.

Cool Hand Luke (1967) asks a very important question: what if a real cool guy went to prison? Or rather, what if Paul Newman went to prison? Or perhaps more broadly: what if the systems around us are so clanking, cruel, and unworthy of our respect that the only course of action was a sort of laconic, detached, Bugs Bunny-flavored nihilism?

I saw this legendary Paul Newman movie when I was a kid, and I never forgot that ending. It haunted me. It was maybe the first time I encountered a film that ended that way. Cool Hand Luke is a hot, sweaty drama about a good ol’ boy on a chain gang in post WWII Florida, and it’s tone reflects the burgeoning anti-establishment sentiment of many Vietnam War era films. Unlike the rage of R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Luke’s resistance to authority is more passive, cool, and sarcastic. He’s masking his emotions and distracting himself because there is so little within his control. Every act of defiance is completely understandable and justified, even if we (and arguably him too) know that it’ll all go to pot.

Rugged treatise on American individualism aside, the film is well shot, tragic, funny, and features frequent B-movie actor George Kennedy in his Academy Award winning role as the gruff prisoner who becomes Luke’s greatest admirer.

Got to see the director’s cut of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) in a real theater. I had remembered liking it long ago, but it really is a masterpiece of bitter British 70s horror. Edward Woodward plays Sergeant Howie, a Scottish police investigator and devout Christian, questioning the secretive residents of Summerisle about the disappearance of a girl. He is misdirected and confronted with backwards beliefs that boil his blood at every turn. And Lord Summerisle (the ever regal Christopher Lee) thwarts his investigation at every turn…or does he? If you’re familiar with the movie, it’s not hard to see where Ari Aster’s Midsommar got some inspiration. It’s a legendary horror movie that is remembered for its finale, but I’ll always remember it for its weird musical numbers.

National Film Board of Canada Animated Shortstravanza!

Binged a bunch of NFB shorts on YouTube, and what a joy it was.

How Dinosaurs Learned to Fly (1995) is cute and fun and I like dinosaurs so there you go.

Mr. Frog Went A-Courting (1974) took a turn in the end, but loved the song and creepy animation.

Hot Stuff (1971) was some more cute and crusty animation.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. If you can get past the few casual racial slurs in this one, Propaganda Message (1974) is a great reminder that we are divided more by ideology than time.

Claude Cloutier’s Bad Seeds (2020) is expressively animated. And his work will appear again here.

Richard Condie also makes this list twice. The Cat Came Back (1988) is wacky and whimsical so much fun to look at.

Log Driver’s Waltz (1979) is as Canadian as you can get. It’s a jolly, jaunty jingle that celebrates the history of the logging industry and the workers who had to nimbly walk across logs floating in the river. And the women who loved them.

Montreal animators, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, spent more than 5 years making this unique, melancholy, and surreal journey into existential realms unknown. Madame Tutli-Putli (2007) is marvelous stop-motion craft, made all the more fascinating by compositing human eye performances onto the puppets. Masterful.

I love Log Driver’s Waltz, but Blackfly (1991) is just the better song to me. And it’s funnier, grosser, and weirder. Growing up in upstate New York, I would catch these every so often on CBC and these two musical numbers were the most nostalgic to revisit.

Richard Condie’s The Big Snit (1985) is exactly the high we were looking for when we started watching these one rainy summer night. It’s funny and weird and oh so Canadian.

Claude Cloutier’s Sleeping Betty (2007) has my personal favorite. From the Aislin-styled linework to the Plympton-styled surreal humor, it’s everything I love to see in animation. Loved the visual gags.

LAST FEW MOVIES LVXI: I did it again.

I did it again. Ah well.

Canadian cinema must be stopped. Nicolas Cage will literally do anything and The Humanity Bureau (2017) is one of the least compelling uses of him. It’s a dystopian sci-fi thriller about a distant, climate-afflicted future wherein the government removes people who are unable or unwilling to contribute to society. Cool premise. Worth exploring. This movie is not the vehicle to do it.

Five years after Stephen Sommers re-imagined the classic Universal horror flick The Mummy, switching it up to an Indiana Jones style adventure comedy, he returned to his love of 1930s/40s movie monsters. This was Van Helsing (2004). Hugh Jackman is the legendary vampire hunter who is commissioned by the 007-styled Vatican to kill Dracula so that a family of deceased Romanian nobles’s ghosts can get out of Purgatory and go to Heaven. Suspicious villages and haunted castles abound, but moreover, there are werewolves, Igor, vampire brides, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein’s monster and swarms of grotesque bat goblins. The ingredients sound fun. Sommers’ love of the classic iconic monsters, as well as bombastic action setpieces, is present. Sadly, the result is a yucky looking, exhausting mess with a cloyingly cartoony tone and performances either so bland (sorry, Hugh) or so hammy they hurt (sorry, Richard Roxburgh and Kate Beckinsale). It’s a film bloating with onslaughts of early-CG mayhem and zero chemistry or charisma.

It starts off with a lot of the worst instincts from The Mummy and Sleepy Hollow, and it just keeps leaning into all of those terrible instincts and doubling down on them and just adding more and more exhausting, weightless, repetitive stuff. It’s visually oppressive and ugly. The music doesn’t fit. Everyone is miscast and giving a career worst performance. It’s way too long. There are no physics, tension, or jokes that work. I think this was my favorite movie when it came out in 2004.

One of my kinder critiques of this Charles Band-produced Full Moon riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers is that all of the male leads look like the same guy. Anyways, Seedpeople (1992) isn’t great.

We watched this for the cast, but Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) (aka The Crimson Cult) was so joylessly filmed, stagey, and boring it soon became an endurance test. Boris Karloff delivers his lines well, but he’s pretty tired. Christopher Lee is doing what he can, but he’s basically rehashing stuff from the better City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel). Not nearly enough Barbara Steele. Like what gives. You can’t dress her up like that, paint her green, and make her the queen of an insane-o antlers basement S&M cult and give her 3 minutes of screen time and top billing. All in all, chalk this one up to stuffy, old British men having all the wrong impulses (save the antlers guys) and absolutely zero pizzazz in their adorably lurid depictions of demonic cults.

In the spirit of Village of the Damned (it wishes!), it’s another evil kids movie! Moral of this story: don’t get born during an eclipse, because if Saturn is blocked you will be born without a conscience and just kill people for no reason. Even as a low-budget slasher flick, Bloody Birthday (1981) commits a major sin for me.

SPOILER ALERT: Had this movie focused on a survivor or victim of the killer kids, it might have developed a quantum of suspense, and, who knows, might have even been scary and had a bit of emotional heft. Instead the movie chooses three murdering kids as the main focus (two really: glasses boy and doll girl, who, I guess, could act better than blond boy). And that’s really the heart of the problem. We’re following characters that have no specific goals and no motivation beyond being born during an eclipse. They just want to kill people. And they aren’t even particularly interesting about it. They are very bland, annoying, and unlikable as characters. Had this movie been told from the perspective of the doll girl’s mom, it could have been terrifying and gut wrenching. For me the movie completely biffs it even further, because ultimately it doesn’t have the guts to even try to give these kids there comeuppance. I kept thinking, ok this sucks and I hate all these kids and what they’re doing is dumb, evil, and arbitrary, but maybe it’ll pay off Class of 1984-style when they each get cacked, or at least easily overpowered. Alas, no. Missed opportunity to murk some bad kids.

Gargoyles (1972) is an American TV movie that doesn’t seem to understand what a gargoyle is. And I, for one, applaud that audacity. According to this movie, gargoyles are ancient Native creatures that live in caves of the Southwest deserts. It’s broad daylight stylishlessness and tacky rubber suit monsters with robotic voices are a thing to behold.

I feel bad for Wesley Snipes. He looks cool as hell, but Blade II (2002) is easily director Guillermo del Toro’s worst move. I confess my bias here. I absolutely despise the early aughts cyberpunk vampire aesthetic. It all looked goofy and dated at the time, and time has not made it any better. Snipes deserved better.

A consummate horror fan, Paul Naschy is the writer-actor-director behind a lot of Spanish incarnations of classic Universal and Hammer monsters. The craziest thing about Night of the Werewolf (aka El Retorno del Hombre Lobo, aka The Return of the Wolfman) (1981) is that early 80s Spain could mostly still stand-in for almost any previous time period. Count Waldemar Daninsky, a Luciano Pavarotti-lookin’ werewolf man (Naschy), is executed along with history’s infamous Elizabeth Bathory in 15th century Hungary. Fastforward to present day, and the wolf’s tomb is disturbed…and so is Bathory’s by stroke of coincidence. Both awake. Bathory creates a new coven of hot witches, while the wolfman tries to stop her. It’s silly and the werewolf makeup and transformations are not great (a step up from Hammer’s 1961 The Curse of the Werewolf and several steps down from Universal’s 1941 The Wolf Man). I dig the concept of ancient enemies waking up in modern times and immediately going back to their old habits, but the film is kinda flabby. The vampire stuff is handled with a bit more flair. There’s also zombies too. This movie is part of Paul Naschy’s expanded Waldemar Daninsky cinemtic universe. Apparently there are 12 feature films starring Naschy as the tragic werewolf count.

We love our badass ladies, but Cherry 3000 (1987), a low-budget misogynistic dystopian sci-fi flick about a guy (David Andrews) who desperately needs a sex doll, ain’t something I could or would recommend to anybody. The MVP of this movie is the set dressing. Everything else is pretty meh to bad. Melanie Griffith stars as tracker hired to escort the guy into evil Tim Thomerson’s Mad Max Land to recover the love of his life!*

*The love of his life is an old model of a sex robot because his model malfunctioned in a tragic dishwashing accident.

Also features Ben Johnson, Brion James, Robert Z’Dar, Harry Carey Jr., and Laurence Fishburne.

Bruce Davison is a wormy little twerp who trains rats to do his vengeful bidding in Willard (1971). It’s fairly forgettable, and I was mad Willard seems completely ungrateful to his rat army. This lackluster movie garnered a sequel and a remake starring Crispin Glover.

I saw this movie when it first came out. Recently, I revisited After Last Season (2009) with a steadfast troop of bad movie watchin’ boys. This one stumped the room. It’s maddeningly confusing and just awful to look at. The sound, the locations, and the editing are all jarring; seemingly engineered to manifest an unyielding sense of dread and nausea. I say “seemingly”, because that effect is almost assuredly accidental. After Last Season is perhaps even more inscrutable than a Neil Breen film.

My best guess reharding the point of this movie is I think it was reverse engineered by a super logical guy who wanted to figure out what it would take to get him to rationally believe a claim that, on its face, appeared irrational. In the story, a woman is having dreams that seem to match real events. There’s a killer on the loose, you see. But one of her colleagues has acquired a piece of equipment that allows you to peer inside someone’s unconscious. He observes her visions and starts to believe maybe she can predict what the killer will do. But then he wakes up because that was all a dream, and apparently he was the main character all along. But then the woman shows up again and they go through the whole rigamarole again and it seems the same. So because he first dreamed he was seeing her dreams using technology, he now has some intellectual (however, coincidence-based) leeway to believe her. Maybe?? I don’t know. Then there’s a ghost that shows up to save them or something. The group hated the experience of watching it, but the hours of theories and laughs had afterward tell me this one’s special and should be watched and dissected. For the right people, anyway. Obviously, this won’t be for everyone.

This is also my second viewing of Shakma (1990), and I think I got on its wavelength way more this time. It’s a bad and dumb creature feature that does drag on way too long, but it has a novel setup (med school students LARPing in a facility at night) and perhaps the only movie ever made about a rage-filled baboon murdering people. The baboon attacks are generally pretty effective. Good baboon performance. Decent puppet work.

Man, Ken Russell is a real sicko. Kathleen Turner is woman with a double life in the neon-drenched erotic thriller, Crimes of Passion (1984). And it kind of feels like two movies clanging into each other. Is it good? I know it wasn’t for me. I think the themes of deeply internalized misogyny (encapsulated best in Anthoney Perkins’ deranged and horny homeless preacher character) and the tantalizing lure of flirting with the taboo when feeling sexually unsatisfied at home are all definitely worth examining. That said, this is not the movie to do it. It’s all just too weird, overwrought, and nonsensical to be much more than glamorized Hollywood smut. Kathleen Turner’s character feels like a cartoon character. I strangely wanted to understand Annie Potts’ shrewish, sexless housewife more. Like a lot of Ken Russell movies, even the ones I don’t particularly care for, I can’t fully write it off.

Suzume (2022) is a lavishly animated magical adventure about a girl chasing an interdimensional cat that is opening portals to release monsters. Luckily, the girl is aided by a guy who got turned into a chair. When it’s leaning a bit too heavily into Miyazaki territory, that’s when it falters. Because that’s when we can see how it’s not a Miyazaki film. There are enough emotional turns and dazzling setpieces to keep it interesting, but it’s not one I could remember much of the following day.

Whether you found the infamous “Manos” the Hands of Fate (1966) through Quentin Tarantino or Mystery Science Theatre 3000, it’s one for the books. It’s a bad nightmare of a Z-grade movie, and yet it is so perfectly amateurish and odd that there’s something almost captivating about it. Oddest thing about it? I could actually see the bones of the story working in the hands of another filmmaker, but then maybe the flaws are what make it function in the unique cultural light in which it currently exists.

Frank Tashlin was a Looney Tunes director who turned to live-action. He worked with Jerry Lewis a fair amount, but I don’t care for Jerry Lewis much. Tony Randall, however, I think is an underrated comic genius, and he stars with in Tashlin’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). Jayne Mansfield also stars as an irritating Marilyn Monroe-esque ditz in this zany, surreal comedy about an ad exec. The jokes are very cartoony, giving the film a sheen of wacky surrealism. In many ways, pretty ahead of its time. Randall has a fourth-wall-breaking acting style that sometimes feels like he’s always reassuring the audience that he understands he is in a movie (kinda like later Cary Grant a bit, but sillier).

René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960) is a sexy French flick about Tom Ripley, a deceptive character created by American novelist Patricia Highsmith. Tom Ripley (Alain Delon) is an elusive foreigner who befriends Phillippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) in Italy. He starts to become interested in pretending to be Greenleaf. He even entangles himself with his fiancée (Marie Laforêt). Murder and deceit follow. Alain Delon plays Ripley shirtless, tan, and blue-eyed. And that’s the biggest thing going for this movie. I like the locations, but I like to feel a little closer to the characters, understand their motivations, and know where I am in the story.

You wanna see something punk af? Go watch Gakuryū Ishii’s Burst City (1982). Hard to pinpoint a plot really. It’s more of a vibe. A world. An ethos. Truly, I have never seen a movie like this. The filming is frantic and aggressive. Cars and guitars. It’s unique and special, and I don’t mind not really understanding it.

Finally saw Jordan Peele’s divisive Nope (2022). I put this below Get Out, but above Us. That’s who I am. I liked the look of it and a lot of the clever themes and breezy vibe. It’s not scary, but it has disturbing enough things in it to classify it as horror.

SPOILER: I loved the design and the concept of the alien. I love that it seemingly has no intentions. It is merely an organism with predictable behavioral patterns that need to be learned, but can never be controlled. The theme is reiterated nicely with the horse trainers and with the sitcom chimp. The weirder turns are ultimately what won me over.

Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda team up to stick it to their sex pest boss (Dabney Coleman) at their patriarchal office. It’s Nine to Five (1980), guys! It’s breezy and fun, and Dolly Parton sings the theme song.

Larry Cohen and William Lustig return to the grimy world of undead, unkillable police officers, and Maniac Cop 2 (1990) is an upgrade on Maniac Cop. It’s got more Maniac Cop (Robert Z’Dar) action, more crazy kills, and a wild twist halfway through where Maniac Cop inexplicably teams up with a prostitute killer who lives in the sewer. The duo form a bond not wholly dissimilar from that of E.T. and Elliott. These movies know what they are, so they do get graded on a curve.

Ti West’s prequel to X (which I have not seen), is a darkly funny melodrama and character study about a misunderstood girl with a problem. Mia Goth plays Pearl (2022), a lanky, naive hayseed with dreams of getting off the farm and being a star. Goth’s performance is iconic, and absolutely sells the zany horror while also keeping her a complete and compelling character. The retro film style and saturated color add an extra oomph of surreal whimsy rendering the brutality that much more of a blindside.

I had seen several of Jean Painlevé’s early documentary shorts before, and they are hypnotic and wondrous. The Sounds of Science (2002) combines several of his aquatic shorts and sets them to an original score by Yo La Tengo. As spellbinding as these documentaries are, I can’t get over how mind-blowing these must have been when they were first released.

Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid (2023) is a three hour descent into deep anxiety horror. After Hereditary and Midsommar, Aster appears to be getting comfortable becoming increasingly surreal and surprisingly funny. Joaquin Phoenix is Beau, and the film is the subjective prison of his own perceptions. It is one wild, weird, and very tough sell, but I enjoyed it and it might be one of the funnier movies I’ve seen in recent years. Co-starring Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Pattie Lupone, Amy Ryan, Richard Kind, Stephen McKinley, and Armen Nahapetian.

I’ve been revisiting David Lynch films. I always liked him, even when I didn’t fully understand him. Mulholland Drive (2001) is a surreal neo-noir and satire on Hollywood. It’s like if Under the Silver Lake had dialed up the dream logic to eleven. Why bother explaining the intricate mental mysteries of the plot, when I could just tell you to see it for yourself?

I like Wim Wenders, even though his films can be very long and very slow. The American Friend (1977) is the second Tom Ripley movie on this list, and we liked it a good deal more than Purple Noon. Bruno Ganz plays a terminally German man who gets roped into being a hitman. Dennis Hopper is Tom Ripley, a weird outsider who seemingly befriends him. Like all Wenders films, this one looks absolutely great and is a whole vibe.

David Lynch again. Also Dennis Hopper again. Blue Velvet (1986) is another neo-noir that, like Twin Peaks, explores the seedy underbelly of Anytown, USA. Just because a place seems quaint doesn’t mean it ain’t full of insects beneath the surface. Kyle MacLachlan plays a guy returning to his hometown and decides to start sleuthing while romantically pursuing the police chief’s daughter (Laura Dern). Dennis Hopper is the unpredictably depraved, amyl nitrite-huffing maniac, Frank Booth. He is genuinely a scary character. Nightclub singer, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), is his tormented prey. This sweet little town is a nasty if you poke through the cracks. Unlike the other Lynch movies on this list, it’s a fairly linear story that won’t break your brain, so if you’ve never seen one of his films, this might be a good place to start. Also features Dean Stockwell, Brad Dourif, Jack Nance, Priscilla Pointer, and Frances Bay.

More Lynch! I didn’t like Lost Highway (1997) when I saw it in college. Didn’t get it. Upon rewatching it now, I think it might be my favorite David Lynch movie. It’s another dark neo-noir thriller that delves into identity, insecurity, memory, and the depths our minds will go to protect us from ourselves. Or something. It’s all so dreamy and weird. Legitimately hilarious at turns. Utterly terrifying at others. Totally enigmatic for the whole ride. It’s dream logic, baby! But that doesn’t mean it can’t be unraveled. Frequent musical collaborator, Angelo Badalamenti, is doing more great work. Starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Loggia, Natasha Gregson, and Robert Blake.

Lee Chang-dong adapts Haruki Murakami in Burning (2018), a Korean neo-noir (five neo-noirs in a row? We get it! Watch other things) about a Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), a shy guy who winds up in a strange love triangle with an old childhood friend (Jeon Jong-seo) and mysterious guy name Ben (Steven Yeun). Burning is a slowburn, but it does burn. I won’t be giving more away, but it is a brilliant movie.

Now this is why we watch movies. Switchblade Sisters (1975), aka The Jezebels, Playgirl Gang, Maggie’s Stiletto Sisters, and The Warriors II: Las Navajeras, directed by Jack Hill, was everything I wanted it to be and more. It’s kind of an exploitation flick about gang and bad girls behaving badly, but the performances (Robbie Lee, Joanne Nail, Monica Gail, Don Stark, Marlene Clark, Asher Brauner, Kate Murtagh) are all delivering and the plot is solid. It may be a bit of a ham sandwich, but it’s held together with nails. The whole time while watching it, I kept thinking that the script seemed almost too good for how amateurish the production seemed the be. What could account for such a tightly plotted exploitation movie about bad girls? Turns out, it was ripped from Shakespeare’s Othello. Kind of like how 1979’s The Warriors was based on the Xenophon’s ancient Greek play Anabasis. It just goes to show, if you want to tell a timeless story, look to the past. Like a lot of things, it won’t be for everybody, but if the nasty politics of a violent girl gang intrigue you, check this one out.

LAST FEW MOVIES LVX: Congratulations, Michelle Yeoh

We watched a bunch of movies again. Michelle Yeoh appeared in some of them.

I want to respect the hustle, but Death Kappa (2010) is just kind of ugly and annoying. At this point, I’ve seen so many movies that I’ve become very demanding of my yokai and kaiju fare. Waste of time.

I love big lug Lou Ferrigno in a low budget Italian sword-and-sorcery epic (thinking mostly Hercules, I guess). That said, Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989), directed by Enzo G. Castellari and Luigi Cozzi, suffers greatly from two glaring flaws: overall kidsie tone and the majority of the action being narrated by tension-murdering voiceover. Frequent Dario Argento actress, Daria Nicolodi, was apparently added in during post production to salvage a cinematic mess in Peter Falk a la Princess Bride type bookend segments, which really undercut all of what little build the film has going for it.

Cruel Jaws (1995) is a Jaws ripoff that’s pretty dumb and bad, but the shark is kind of cute in it.

The trifecta of Italian horror schlock bands together to make a movie that has a bit of a cult following, but frankly bored us. Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2), Lucio Fulci (Cat in the Brain), and Bruno Mattei (Cruel Jaws) team up to for Zombi 3 (1988), a jungly mess of flying heads and helicopters. The word tensionlessnss comes to mind. We all enjoyed the disc jockey though. Should have done more with that.

Michelle Yeoh stars in Magnificent Warriors (1987), an action-packed kung-fu Indiana Jones-style adventure set in a remote kingdom in Tibet during the Second Sino-Japanese War. On paper, I should love this. I understand that I’m a monster, but I absolutely could not focus on anything here. There’s some excellently choreographed action sequences, but the story is joylessly wacky, weightless, and weirdly without any personality. And all in service of saying that Japanese Imperialism is bad but Chinese Imperialism, well that’s another story. When it ended, I realized I had seen this on TV years ago… and didn’t really enjoy it then either. I love Michelle Yeoh, but she’s been in way better movies. Richard Ng is the best thing going here.

Brain De Palma does Hitchcock, softcore, and transphobia! It’s Dressed to Kill (1980), starring Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, and Angie Dickinson. I think if the whole movie were as bonkers as the last ten minutes, this would have worked better for me. But seriously, if you’re going to draw this many parallels to Hitchcock’s Psycho, you better bring more to the table than split diopter.

This movie is objectively bad and makes no sense, but it was exactly what I needed when it came into my life and I love it. Spookies (1986) boasts some isolated moments that are wild and/or so-insane-it-transcends-reason. A grim reaper explodes. An adult man uses puppets for everything. A woman turns into a spider monster. There are farting poop ghosts. A man dives through door. And none of it even comes close to coming together.

In a movie about every animal in the North American woods attacking a group of hikers, the best thing about Day of the Animals (1977) is a power-tripping shirtless Leslie Nielson. Take a shot every time Nielson calls Christopher George “hot shot”.

Robert Siodmak directs a British noir starring Charles Laughton. Sounds like great ingredients to me. The Suspect (1944) should have been more fun. It’s got a few suspensful scenes and a some nice fog-soaked streets, but it’s a bit slow and the atrocious fake English accents really got to me. I guess I prefer American noir.

I was a massive fan of the Adult Swim show throughout college. A part of me will always have a soft spot for Frylock, Meatwad, Master Shake, and Carl. Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm (2022) (the second feature-length Aqua Teen Hunger Force film after 2007’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters) differentiates itself from the show in that it kind of has a plot and a point to make. There’s still a lot of stream-of-consciousness surreal gags and purposely stupid nonsense that goes nowhere, but it’s mostly a jab at Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk (though it’s obviously no Sorry to Bother You). Is it good? Look, it’s beyond that, and I watched it on a plane. I was just happy to see the boys back together again.

David Cronenberg is such a perfect little sicko. I unabashedly love how grimy and gross he makes Canada look in his early films. Rabid (1977), like his earlier Shivers, is another non-zombie zombie movie. And it’s WAY weirder than rabies. After a pandemic, perhaps this movie is even more relevant now. Plus, there’s something really viscerally upsetting about a slimy, blood appendage with a fang on it that emerges out of a pulsing orifice located in the armpit.

Turkish action star, Cüneyt Arkın, stars in The Sword and the Claw aka Lion Man (1975), a pre-Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (aka The Man Who Saved the World aka Turkish Star Wars) medieval adventure about the rightful heir to the throne growing up a feral wild man with the strength to murder hundreds of men simply by touching their faces. The colors are garish, the costumes are cheap, the action is ludicrous, and the music is pilfered from better movies. But that’s kind of why you’d watch this sort of thing.

Gramps Goes to College (2014) is one of the worst movies I’ve seen in awhile, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a great time watching this cringey vanity project. Imagine, if you will, a 60-something year old man writing and starring in a movie about a 60-something year old man going back to college and trying to course correct America’s evil secular academic institutions with embarrassing mic drops stolen from even more embarrassing Christian apologetics books. It’s a real treat that feels pretty confident it completely obliterated the theory of evolution by comparing the human brain to a computer.

Twentieth Century (1934), directed by Howard Hawks, is a pretty mean-spirited pre-Code Hollywood screwball comedy about an underwear model turned stage actress (Carole Lombard) and her rise to stardom under the tutelage of an egotistical terror of a director (John Barrymore), and her escape to Hollywood, and the pair’s subsequent reunion on a train. It’s essentially a comedy about grooming and manipulation with casual gags about suicide and religious people being off their rocker. It’s high energy, that’s for sure. A lot of yelling and screaming and fast-paced dialogue. But that wacky, shouty, angry atmosphere does become tiresome before the film’s conclusion. Narratively it’s a bit shapeless, but I admire a lot of its roughness and John Barrymore’s absolutely Looney Tunes performance. I can see how it would have worked as a stageplay. As a movie, it’s interesting and I would love to see Barrymore in more comedies.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) is perhaps lesser Hitchcock, and it doesn’t hold up nearly as well as some of his best. There are a few pretty classically executed suspense setpieces, but the thing that really holds this one back (and I hate to say it) is Jimmy Stewart. I love Jimmy, but here he comes off as too oafish, creepy, and hostile with his wife (played with spunk by Doris Day). But that orchestra sequence! Also, I have to give it up to Brenda de Banzie in a small role but she brings a lot to it.

Doris Day is back. I saw these proto rom-coms a lot when I was a kid. Lover, Come Back (1961) was the follow up to Pillow Talk (1959) and it once again casts Doris Day as an uptight, sexless killjoy and closeted actor Rock Hudson as the serial womanizer and all around lovable cad. Tony Randall (the best thing about any of these movies) is the wormy little fop. The plot is basically a retread of the previous movie, but it has some great jokes and gags (alas, no Thelma Ritter in this one). These films are interesting in how much they lay the groundwork for romantic comedies to come, and for how poorly some of the gender politics have aged. The trio would later appear together again in Send Me No Flowers (1964).

Duke Mitchell, a nightclub crooner and Dean Martin wannabe (who starred alongside the most irritating Jerry Lewis clone, Sammy Petrillo, in Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla), apparently hated The Godfather. If he didn’t, he arguably wouldn’t’ve written, produced, directed, and starred in Massacre Mafia Style (1974) (aka Like Father, Like Son).

Like a lot of vanity projects of this ilk (i.e. small man contrives scenarios to portray himself as the coolest and best at everything and the most sexually desirable yet ultimately still put upon victim who deserves our empathy despite his massive onscreen killcount), it’s cringey and comical, but, unlike a lot of other examples of the subgenre, it’s actually shot decently and Duke, despite how much you hate him and his stupid hair, actually can deliver his overwrought lines pretty well. But it just sucks that he insists on giving himself so many lugubrious soliloquys, some of which seek to justify his character’s (or his own) deep-seated racism, sexism, and egomania.

Massacre Mafia Style has a point of view and is almost refreshing in its smaller, anti-Hollywood indie vibe, but fails fantastically under the weight of several huge time jumps, never knowing what is happening scene to scene, and the monumental hubris of its lead architect. I can respect the attitude that perhaps The Godfather perhaps does a disservice to Italians and mafiosos, but this movie manages to do far worse to them while also being a terrible film. All in all, a fascinating display.

Separated conjoined twins Duane and Belial Bradley return in Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case 2 (1990). The budget is bigger. The world is bigger. The monsters are more numerous and ghoulish. I defintitely appreciate how it picks up right where the first film left off and expands upon the lore and doesn’t do the same thing. This time, the boys end up in the safe haven of Granny Ruth’s secret home for mutant outcasts and such. It’s good. It’s clever. But, for me, I’m a sucker for the griminess and meanness and surprisingly complex nature of that first microbudget outing.

I suppose, as a treatise on beauty and aging and life and all of it, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (2013) a rather alienating presentation. Beautifully shot. Beautifully scored. Beautifully paced. Beautiful fashion. Beautiful vistas. It’s beautiful. But I can’t relate to any of it. This movie excels at making being rich and famous, yet blissfully detached and above it all in an extremely horny, dreamy Rome look good. But then…how could it not? Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) is always cool. He’s always smoking. He’s always more real than anyone else in the room. But then, if that’s our starting point, it’s a little insufferable watching a self-aware, mediocre man of high stature who got everything he ever wanted simply take a peaceful, soul-searching saunter through the tranquil Italian city and come to the conclusion that life has a lot of stuff in it that some of it is rather nice. It’s tough, because I guess I do like it, but I don’t like like it.

Charisma-less blank slate, Olivier Gruner, stars in the late Albert Pyun’s sci-fi masterpiece, Nemesis (1992). Don’t ask me to recount the plot. It’s a low budget movie with a lot of action occuring in dusty junkyards. It may be cheap and stupid, but it’s got style and wild camera movement that’ll keep you engaged. Also features Tim Thomerson, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Deborah Shelton, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Brion James, Merle Kennedy, Jackie Earl Haley, and Thomas Jayne.

Maggie Cheung (Irma Vep), Michelle Yeoh (Supercop 2), and Anita Mui (Rumble in the Bronx) star in the superhero fanatasy action comedy, The Heroic Trio (1993). Chinese cinema of this stripe sometimes throws me with its tonal shifts. It’s all wacky, silly, cartoon mayhem until one of our heroes drops a baby down a shaft and its head lands on a rusty nail and the baby dies. But we’re quickly past grim violence like that and back to motorcycles spinning through the air and splitting bullets in half with shurikens. The plot’s kinda all over the place. A crazy guy is kidnapping babies to raise them as his unstoppable cannibal army, but none of that is particularly interesting. It’s more about the bonkers action. I do love Cheung, Yeoh, and Mui, and I feel like they deserved a better script to showcase their abilities, but I understand this is mostly a broad action comedy with goofy slapstick…that also blows up children while they piss themselves. Not their best work, but it’s definitely something and we had fun watching it. Every shot looks amazing with wind and fog and dramatic angles.

Looking for a classic East Asian cowboy kung-fu Western? Before America’s Shanghai Noon and South Korea’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird and Thailand’s Tears of the Black Tiger there was Hong Kong’s Millionaires Express (1986), written and directed by and starring the great Sammo Hung. It’s a well constructed sendup of the cowboy genre that features some fantastic kung-fu combat and daring stuntwork that should satisfy your itch for cowboy action comedy. It’s also a who’s who of Hong Kong action cinema. If you’re even just a passing fan, you’ll probably be like hey wait was that guy in so-and-so? It’s good fun. My only complaint: not enough train. The bulk of the movie takes place in a dusty town.

I’m still a big Arnold fan. Total Recall, Terminator 1 and 2, Predator, Conan, and Commando (1985) (and yes, in that order) are all amazing films and classics of a particular style of roided up American action flick. Commando is a simple story. Arnold Schwarzenegger is John Matrix, a retired special agent whose daughter (Alyssa Milano) gets kidnapped. This setup allows for our protagonist to go on a savage murder spree of hulking bad guys to get her back. Arguably the dream of every straight American male. It’s breezy and dumb and is peppered with the ratatat of bullets and plenty of explosions. If the opening credits featuring Matrix having cute excursions with his kid (sharing ice cream and petting baby deer) doesn’t clue you in to the winking nature of what’s going on then we must just speak a different cinema language.

We, as a society, can be pretty dumb about food. People seemed pretty divided on The Menu (2022). I went knowing nothing about it, and that’s probably what made me like it so much. I like a dark comedy that satirizes high society and gets a bunch of actors in a room together for a simple yet smart setup.Maybe it could have gone harder in any direction, but it satisfied me well enough. Ralph Fiennes (questionable regional American accent aside) is always fun to watch, and it is a joy to watch him devour every scene. And Anya Taylor-Joy eating a hamburger is the best ad for McDonald’s I’ve seen in years.

What happens when you put Stranger Things, Attack the Block, and The Thing in a blender? You get Nyla Innuksuk’s Innuit sci-fi body horror Slash/Back (2022). A handful of young girls in a tiny town in northern Nunavut are the only thing standing in the way of alien annihilation. Some of the kid acting and dialogue might not be the strongest, but the movie is a breath of fresh air. We need more gateway sci-fi and horror for kids. Not enough Gremlins, Krampuses, The Gates out there.

Road Games (1981) is a seemingly forgotten Australian truck thriller. It’s kind of like Rear Window, but for a trucker. This movie made me have to reassess what I think Stacy Keach is capable of. He carries this film and he plays it super weird. He’s funny and imaginative, but odd and poetic. Honestly? More likable than Burt Reynolds in Smoky and the Bandit. Dual is still the better truck movie, but that was Spielberg and who could compete?

What do ya know? I never saw Jennifer’s Body (2009) before, and, in a more just world, this would have been a bigger hit than Twilight. Snarkily written by Diablo Cody (Juno) and stylishly directed by Karyn Kusama (The Invitation), Amanda Seyfried stars as the nerd girl who watches her hot bitch friend (Megan Fox) succumbs to supernatural cannibalistic powers. It’s all done so well (even if it is SUPER 2009) and captures that caustic high school energy you need for a story like this. It reminded me of Ginger Snaps in that it uses monsters and magic to show how female relationships can change drastically over time.

Golan/Globus and The Cannon Group appeared in the opening credits and we braced ourselves. X-Ray (1981) (aka Hospital Massacre) was so much more fun than we expected. A woman (Barbi Benton) goes to the hospital for a routine checkup and the film unleashes a cavalcade of murder and terror. The way it teases you with anyone and everyone possibly being the crazy killer you have to watch out for is actually so dumb it’s genius. Everything scary about the hospital is here and dialed up to 11. Also there’s a crazy killer on the loose for some reason.

For me, Six String Samurai (1998) is all about the vibe. It’s a tongue-in-cheek rockabilly action flick loaded with kung-fu kicks and sick guitar licks. It just looks cool. A post-apocalyptic wasteland stands in between our hero and the mythical city of Lost Vegas. There is an annoying kid in this, but I’m willing to look past that for the film’s better points.

Pixar not even flexing hard here, but Luca (2021) was a visual delight. An adventurous fish boy runs away to hideout from his parents in a small Italian village. He makes friends and enters a local bicycle race. The stakes may seem little, but they are perfect. Luca has such a beautifully fresh feeling to it and the character arcs for both the parents and their kids is heartwarming. It may be lesser Pixar, but it’s cute and the lessons are nicely done.

Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash (2015) is a gorgeous looking drama that felt like a sexy cross between Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast and Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac. It’s the psychological horror of univited guests ruining your peaceful vacation…and your life. Tilda Swinton (I love you) plays a rockstar recovering from surgery on a tranquil Italian island with her partner (Matthias Schoenaerts) when suddenly her manically extroverted old flame and producer played by Ralph Fiennes (I love you) shows up with his maybe-daughter (Dakota Johnson) in tow. The rest of the movie is the screw slowly turning and the sexual tension building, and it is marvelous. Ralph Fiennes can do anything.

Sometimes you gotta watch something more than once.

Folk music is an interesting thing to me. I was not around in 1960s Greenwich Village to see it all unfold firsthand, but I can see how it might be easily mocked and derided. What does New York City know about folk music? Isn’t American folk of this time kinda schmaltzy and kitschy? And what a curious oddity that even when the genre is being thoroughly lampooned à la a mockumentary like A Mighty Wind, it still somehow produces unironically catchy tunes that are just so bright-eyed and wistful that I find myself saying, “wow this is hokey. I love it.”

I saw Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) in theaters ten years ago. I dug it well enough, but at the time I didn’t appreciate the genius of it. It’s the story of a loser (Oscar Isaac) who has talent, but can’t seem to not step on rakes in his path. His decisions hurt himself and everyone around him. He’s a blackhole of failure. It’s a bleak portrait of an artist, but it’s not without empathy, and it is laugh out loud funny once you get on its wavelength. Midway through the film, Llewyn takes a car trip from hell to Chicago with an old, crotchety jazz musician (played by the always amazing John Goodman) who maybe puts a curse on him for a disrespectful (although deserved) response he receives. Was the jazz man a witch? Is magic real in this universe? Would it even matter or be detectable or change one thing about the already doomed trajectory of Llewyn’s life? Probably not. And that’s the kind of thing I think the Coen Brothers do best.

I feel like Inside Llewyn Davis doesn’t get enough credit among Coen films and deserves another look with fresh eyes. The look (cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel), the music (by Dave Van Ronk and T Bone Burnett), and the elusively elliptical structure of this film are all so well done. It’s like a darkly whimsical purgatory of cringe. The title character seems to be trapped inside the lyrics of a song he might have sung. Oscar Isaac is absolutely fantastic in it, and it’s worth it just to see him do a wacky little ditty with Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver.

After seeing Dressed to Kill, Brian De Palma redeems himself here. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see Carrie (1976). A bullied girl from an abusively religious home discovers she has telekinetic abilities. The whole movie is a masterpiece, and I’ll chalk a good 75% of that up to Sissy Spacek’s face selling the hell out of it. I love stumbling into greatness like this. It’s why I watch movies in the first place.

Michelle Yeoh won her Oscar for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and since we’d been on a kick of watching some of her earlier work (courtesy of Criterion Channel), we revisited one of her best. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) is a loving, poetic, and beautifully told romantic tragedy that embodies all the hallmarks of the wuxia genre. I’ve seen this movie a dozen times and it still dazzles me. Yeoh, Chow Yun Fat, and Zhang Ziyi exhibit their athleticism and acting chops in equal measure here. Yuen Woo-ping’s fight choreography is as breathtaking as ever (maybe even more now after a glut of overwrought-with-CG lesser action flicks). Anyway, if you never saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, go check it out. They really don’t make movies like this anymore.

Last Few Movies LVIX: Take a Shot Every Time “Blood” is in the Title

Why do I do these things?

MISTAKES WERE MADE

OK so first of all, Hitler’s Girl (2013) is barely a movie. It’s mostly unrelated footage of director Paul Katturpalli on vacation in Yellowstone, Niagara Falls, etc. The rest is a pseudo Crash wannabe with the main plot (if there is one) centering around a college student whose Jewish girlfriend discovers that his grandfather was friends with Holocaust architect, Eichmann, and breaks up with him. We only watched this because we saw another Katturpalli movie (that will appear later on the list) and we thought we found another Breen. And he kind of is. But far less ambitious.

Bloodstone (1988) an extremely bad riff on the Romancing the Stone style movie where young sexy couple has an exotic adventure and sociopathically murder many men and remain blissfully unfazed and probably bone at really inappropriate times.

The pluses: Rajinikanth rocks (and he should be the hero!!!) and there is one (1) pretty nice car crash.

The minuses: there’s a lot, but Charlie Brill’s Kermit the Frog take on Indian people is pretty insufferable, so much so that the perplexing badness of the performance actually somehow eclipses the vicious racism of it. I actually kinda feel for him. He thought this was his Peter Sellers moment. And he totally biffs it.

Given the cast, Deadfall (1993) is an impressively bad film. Christopher Coppola doesn’t seem to understand mysteries, thrillers, neo-noir, or suspense. You got one weird Toni Clifton-inspired performance from Nicolas Cage for a bit (the only reason to watch it), and then you’re stuck with an achingly uncharismatic Michael Biehn for the rest.

Hell High (1989) is a fairly run-of-the-mill high school/teacher revenge thriller, but they really needed to recast the teacher to make this something somewhat good, which is a shame because it showed some promise at the start. After a solidly child-scarring prologue that ought to give our heroine the proper pathos needed to develop her into a full character, the movie veers off to be about a gang of high school bullies and their group dynamics. You know where it’s all heading, but it takes its time. Also slime is a thing. Slime is naturally occurring. Never evaporates. Will remain constant for decades. Slime. Yeah, I don’t know what they meant. In the end, slime aside, Hell High is an ersatz facsimile of the far superior Class of 1984.

A FORGETFUL BLUR

A true blur. I don’t seem to remember much beyond copious amounts of female decapitations and a cozy grandpa Lucio Fulci ambling around aimlessly playing himself. Cat in the Brain (1990) is unique. Fulci wanders from scene to scene and is haunted by grisly visions of murder (but moreso, his therapist). I guess I prefer his earlier giallo thrillers over this meta-commentary on violence in cinema (or rather a slight satire on the brouhaha surrounding its effects on society).

Demon Wind (1990) is a decently fun Evil Dead ripoff. Genuinely impressed by the film’s audacity to continuously introduce new characters. Can someone explain what happened to his head at the end? The monster was cool.

Patrick Swayze is Pecos Bill, and this movie, unironically, is the version of American idealism I choose to believe in. Tall Tale (1995) is a lightweight family adventure that uses classic American heroes like John Henry (Roger Aaron Brown) and Paul Bunyan (a diabolically miscast Oliver Platt). I give a lot of points for the innocent concept and its heart being in the right place, but I cannot in good conscience say this is good.

In a high concept sci-fi adventure horror comedy where Dennis Quaid is a saxophone playing, horse track junkie who gets recruited to save the president of the United States by entering his dream world and facing off against nightmare imagery and the bad guy from Warriors, Christopher Plummer not blinking remains the most impressive aspect. Dreamscape (1984).

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

We watched The Astrologer (1975) aka Suicide Cult, directed by James Glickenhaus. But it was an accident. We were trying to watch The Astrologer (1976), directed by Craig Denney. The Astrologer is supposed to be super bad and weird. The Astrologer turned out to be too. But The Astrologer, I think, is supposed to be the weirder and funnier one between itself and The Astrologer. We’ll try to find The Astrologer next time. In the meanwhile, The Astrologer was also pretty bad and weird.

Look, The Mummy Theme Park (2000) is another movie that is barely a movie, but I actually gotta give them some credit for their in-camera tricks to make rooms look bigger. What can I say? I’m a sucker for model work.

Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood (1973) doesn’t make much sense, and it looks like a very stinky sort of place, but using a nasty old amusement park as your horror backdrop is always fun. Feels like a weird dream. A weird, stinky, yucky dream. I especially liked when the dad blows up his RV (offscreen) and afterwards it’s just a boxspring and few pieces of wood somehow.

Charles Band’s Blood Dolls (1999) is an intriguing one. In a movie that has an insane billionaire with a cartoonishly tiny head, a spiritualist clown butler, an eye-patched dwarf in a tuxedo, and a gaggle of caged punk rock chicks who provide the diegetic soundtrack, and a plot revolving around the nature of power and love, the eponymous blood dolls are the least weird and least interesting thing here. It’s wild and insane. Not sure who this is for. But it swings for the bleachers, and you gotta respect that.

SOMEHOW COMPELLING

There’s no surprise Blood Tide (1982) isn’t fondly remembered. It’s a very slow creature-feature that has only 4 seconds of creature in it. BUT, it does have James Earl Jones absolutely chewing this movie apart and adding so much gravitas, ethos, and subtext to the script and characters (both his own and others whom he endows with backstory through his totally off-book performance). Jones is killing it. He’s drunk and in Greece shooting a B-movie, and he’s having a blast acting everyone under the table. He is utterly beguiling, and the fact that the movie itself doesn’t seem to grasp that is a tragedy. Who this movie chooses as its protagonists is deeply misguided.

Lila Kedrova, another treasured veteran thespian, is also bringing a lot to a nothing, throwaway role. Her scenes with the completely wooden (but lovely) Deborah Shelton are actually laugh-out-loud hilarious. Lila is doing great work with a role that required nothing, while Deborah is just a cinder block. You get whiplash watching them together.

Anyway. Not a good movie. Almost no monster and pretty stupid. But cool location, and recommended just to see a true craftsman like James Earl Jones bring so much cosmic life and energy to a film that simply does not deserve it. Lila Kedrova too, though she’s not in it much.

A John Carpenter movie about the end of the world featuring Victor Wong, Donald Pleasence, and Alice Cooper really ought be better than Prince of Darkness (1987). It has some cool visuals speckled throughout, but it squanders a neat premise and just feels a little too slow and devoid of compelling characters.

Cat People (1982) is a super horny and incestuous spin on werewolfism from the twisted mind of an Episcopalian. It’s weird and yucky and, despite kind of disliking it, I think I sort of respect it(?). That arm getting ripped off death was genuinely shocking. Couldn’t shake it for awhile. Wished it had like 30% more were-cat transformations and cat antics and like 80% less incest, but them’s the breaks. Paul Schrader, you little weirdo.

Fatal Deviation (1998) is a homemade Irish kung-fu flick that’s pretty lo-fi and silly, but there’s an earnestness that’s hard not to like. A man (James P. Bennett) returns home to find out who killed his father. Bad filmmaking, poor writing, and sick karate kicks ensue. Unlike a lot of bad movies that are fun to watch for their misplaced hubris, Fatal Deviation is more just watching a few good old boys having a bit of fun in their hometown. In that regard, it’s closer to Wakaliwood than Wiseau. This movie comes from a pure love of the genre it’s homaging, and less of an arrogant display of ineptitude.

THE MIDDLE BIT

Gilda (1946) is your boilerplate classic noir. There’s a lot in here that had been done better already in other films, but Rita Hayworth is having some fun.

Who has even heard of Carl Reiner’s erotic thriller spoof, Fatal Instinct (1993)? Armand Assante not getting to become another Leslie Nielson is a bit of a tragedy. Sean Young also gets it. She’s great. It’s no Naked Gun, but it’s that same comedy wheelhouse and there are a few sight gags that really got me.

Watched this one for Boris Karloff, who gives a great performance. Isle of the Dead (1945) is perhaps novel for the time as it centers around the horror of disease, death, and the susceptibility of the mind to superstition.

We finished rewatching the Alien Quadrilogy! There are no more Alien movies. None. Don’t worry about it. Given the seemingly limited new places the franchise was willing to go, making it sillier and grosser was at least a choice. Alien Resurrection (1997) is steeped in 90s French cinéma du look style (thanks to City of Lost Children director Jean-Pierre Jeunet at the helm now) and reeks of 90s meta snark (thanks to Joss Whedon’s script). It’s a mixed bag; more watchable and fun than Alien 3, and that’s something! Taken on its own as just a goopy science-fiction thriller with the odd touch of humor and Ron Perlman, it’s actually pretty solid. Forget about those first two movies. Those are long gone. This is 1997 now. And I know it’s controversial, but I think the new xenomorph design they went with for the end is effectively scary and weird. Good monster.

The Appointment (1981) is a British film that boldly asks: what if you were a middle-aged English man and you were possibly attracted to your teenage daughter but then you had to give evidence for an inquest to defend your firm on the same day as your daughter’s violin recital, and also three years earlier another random girl was sucked into a garden and police built a fence rather than solve the crime, and NOW you and your wife are having the same dream that rottweilers keep appearing and causing you to crash your car? What if that though? Like but what would you do? Anyway, this movie is a puzzlingly banal family drama that culminates in a truly spectacular car accident sequence. I may not really get the point, but I appreciate that this much time was devoted to such an odd project.

Yes, that is a bloodied Kyle MacLachlan with a flame-thrower. The Hidden (1987) is a classic detective thriller, but the killer is an adrenaline junkie space slug that hops from one human host to another. There are some things I would have liked to have been done differently, but I can’t fault a movie this direct and earnest. I wish the whole movie was William Boyett just stealing cars, eating steak, and taping up his body.

Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig return to the Knives Out world with Glass Onion (2022). It’s a fun, star-studded, twisty-turny, Agatha Christie-styled whodunnit. My only real beef is that it’s hard to outdo the surprise delight of the first movie or seeing that world through the eyes of Ana de Armas’ character. But, as someone who loves a classic detective story, it definitely scratches an itch.

PEEKING

I dig Andrew Callaghan and most of what Channel 5 (previously All Gas No Brakes) does. This Place Rules (2022) is their consolidation of the cultural vibes at play in America leading up to the January 6th attack. I may prefer their shorter YouTube interviews and minidocs, but this documentary does have enough going for it to make it well worth a look. It doesn’t cover new ground, but rather more intimately treads familiar territory in a more brutal and humanizing way.

If you ever wanted to see Guillermo del Toro’s monster-y aesthetic rendered in glorious stop-motion animation (and who wouldn’t?), Pinocchio (2022) is here. Co-directed by Mark Gustafson, this retelling sort of shifts the tale to be about fascism, death, and the importance of disobedience. I may have a few gripes with pieces of it, but on the whole it’s wonderful to see such a richly realized and original take on a classic.

Some might have watched Wendell and Wild (2022) for Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key as the eponymous demons. I love Key and Peele. But I watched this for Henry Selick’s twisted animation. Selick’s animation team is really pushing the limits of the medium. Astoundingly good character design and sumptuous worlds wondrously realized. The story is also pretty dense (perhaps scattershot even) and full of ideas with a lot to say.

Weird: the Al Yankovic Story (2022) is the biopic Weird Al Yankovic deserves. It captures that sense of irony and goofiness abundant in his songs, and Daniel Radcliffe’s performance is absolutely heroic. Magnificent.

I respect how unabashedly unromantic this film is. Swept Away (1974) is brilliant, but also a very hard watch. The classic set up of a spoiled bourgeois girl and a beleaguered communist sailor getting stranded on a desert island is ripe for wacky rom-com hijinks. Lina Wertmüller’s film is decidedly a much more nasty depiction of hypocritical class warfare as it gets consumed by latent retrograde gender politics…that are also ultimately stupid, abusive, and doomed. The comedy is supremely dark and steeped in things that are perhaps too real to truly laugh at. It can be, at times, uncomfortable. But that’s kind of it, isn’t it? Life is a mess and everyone is hypocritical and deeper than you think. I’ll recommend Seven Beauties over this one for folks interested in Wertmüller.

HIGHER GROUND

Legendary kaiju director, Ishirō  Honda, works on a smaller scale for Matango (1963), aka Attack of the Mushroom People. It’s a shipwreck survival story that employs interesting fungal props

Chef (2014) is what happens when you make Jon Favreau direct too many big budget studio blockbusters. This is his best, and one of his smallest. It dares to ask the question: why are you doing what you are doing? What does the art really mean to you? What is important in life? It’s a wonderfully positive story about doing what you love, learning from your mistakes, and drooling over food porn.

Several European women get kidnapped by a female Mongolian chieftain and just kind of hang around with them and observe their lives. What starts out as a stagey, gay variety show on a train eventually shifts almost into a documentary about life on the steppe. Ulrike Ottinger’s Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989) is long and odd and has its own energy and style, but if you get on board, it will take you to places movies don’t often go. Ottinger’s films are definitely unique, and I’m interested in exploring more.

Wolf’s Hole (1987) is an odd little Czech riff on teen horror movies. Directed by Věra Chytilová (Daisies), it follows several high schoolers as they go to a mysteriously isolated ski camp run by a guy (Miroslav Macháček) who is clearly up to something. Although a little slow and misleading, it had a really compelling mood and solid kid performances. There is a sense of dread and unease that never lets up, and, while I might have liked a more spectacular ending, it was a cool subversion and ultimately more hopeful and optimistic than a lot of American slashers. Maybe because it’s actually about living under Soviet occupation and not shocking kills. An interesting, moody curiosity. More snow horror, please.

Here’s the other Paul Katturpalli movie. Clash in the College (2011) is the kind of incoherent garbage that we love around here. Recommend. So what is it? One passive Indian man’s seemingly detached interpretation of American ideological differences and the drama that can come out of that. Somehow the sound and editing remain the most egregious. Anyways, all the stars.

Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s Party Girl (1995) might as well be called “Parker Posey: the Movie”, because Parker absolutely makes this. She plays Mary, a loosey-goosey rave chick who winds up working at her godmother’s library and must learn how to turn her life around. It’s a breezy setup, but the wacky 90s indie style really hit the right combination of nostalgia buttons. Shot in two and half weeks on a budget of $150,000, it’s a reminder of what indie films can accomplish. Daisy’s mother, Sasha von Scherler, also gives a very nice performance as the tough but caring godmother.

THE COOLEST STUFF

Needs more Barabra Steele! That being said, Mario Bava’s first movie, Black Sunday (1960), is a pretty richly atmospheric gothic horror with plenty of stark, spooky shadows, an awesome castle setting, and a truly horrific prelude. Still needed more Barbara Steele.

It’s a simple, little tale about friends breaking up, but also it’s about The Troubles, and even more it’s director Martin McDonagh returning to Ireland and taking Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson with him. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) is one of them gently sad and funny yarns (i.e. very Irish). It’s gorgeously shot and very well acted and made me feel sick. I love McDonagh’s rough and snarky hitman/crime movies, but there’s a steadier hand here that trusts the audience a bit more to go along for a little ride. Kerry Condon maybe steals the show with her handful of scenes. It’s not exactly Fatal Deviation, but ah, it hits me in me heart, it does.

Elem Klimov’s harrowing Soviet anti-war film, Come and See (1985), has gotten a lot of attention in recent years among certain extremely online cinephiles. I had put it off so far because I knew it would be heavy and couldn’t find anyone to watch it with. The story concerns Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko), a young Belarusian boy with wide-eyed aspirations of leaving his podunk hamlet and attaining glory and adventure on the battlefront. War is not glorious. War is not an adventure. War is hell. War is the worst of humanity. The film chronicles the grisly horrors or war through the terrifyingly evolving visage of Flyora. You watch as innocence leaves him. You watch as he becomes things he never dreamed of. You watch as he becomes a shell. Heartbreaking, soul-crushing images abound, yet the film never takes us into a single battle. These are only the skirmishes and small interactions on the far outskirts of greater and much more terrible battles taking place elsewhere. It’s a masterpiece.

Hands down, Frank Henenlotter’s best film. It has to be. Brain Damage (1988) is a grungy, gross science-fiction horror-comedy about an ancient, silver-tongued, brain-eating space parasite and symbiote who manipulates his human hosts to get the delicious brains he craves. But the whole schlocky veneer is really just goopy subterfuge for a fascinating and humanizing allegory for addiction. It’s fast, clever, slimy, and if you’re like me and you enjoyed Basket Case and Frankenhooker, treat yourself to this mad magnum opus. Henenlotter brings an intelligence to schlock that is rare and I daresay artful. Perhaps that’s the most subversive thing of all.

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).

Last Few Movies LVII: It Done Happened Again

The last few movies I watched in an order representative of what I generally thought of them.

I shall not be stopped.

24. Being the perfect wife in a man’s world is a dystopian nightmare. Many talented people gathered together around a premise that was ripe for horror and satire and completely biffed it with this truly awful attempt at comedy called The Stepford Wives (2004). It pained me so much because there was so much potential!

23. The Alligator People (1959) is exactly as classy as it sounds. Cheesy science-less B-movie nonsense with flat-lighting, bad accents, and a depressingly bloated Lon Chaney, Jr. Points for having actual alligators on set and for the fun fake swamp scenery.

22. Sometimes you want something trashy and painfully early 2000s, and Queen of the Damned (2002) has you covered. Stuart Townsend stars as Anne Rice’s vampire Lestat, and boy oh boy could you have not asked for a more early 2000s pretty boy vampire guy tragically devoid of charisma. Like Stepford Wives, this thing had potential. A cursed vampire wakes up after 100 years and becomes a rock-star, and if the movie were actually about that, it could have been great. The rest is boring characters skulking around and glamoring everyone until the first vampire (played by the late Aaliyah) gets woken up and causes some mischief. It’s a very Korn and Linkin Park kind of a soundtrack.

21. Listen, David Lean is a filmmaking legend and I love me a light ghost comedy, but Blithe Spirit (1945) is not a particularly memorable one. Rex Harrison stars as an exceedingly English writer who hosts a séance as a lark and accidentally conjures his previous dead wife (Kay Hammond). This obviously leads to some complications with his current wife (Constance Cummings). It’s a wacky premise that’s just a little too stuffy and dry to do anything interesting with it. I want a whole movie about the quirky, old medium played by Margaret Rutherford.

20. A soldier assumes the identity of a dead waiter in order to kill Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (played by Erich von Stroheim). A few tiers beneath Morocco, and several football fields behind Casablanca, Five Graves to Cairo (1943) is a WWII spy thriller that I may remember for its haunting beginning (a tank, most of its passengers dead, careening aimlessly through the sand dunes) and for being one of those dramas having been made during the war.

19. Friday Foster (1975) is no Coffy. Based on a comic strip about a freelance photojournalist who chases the scoop, this murder investigation flick is pretty forgettable apart from its cast (Pam Grier, Yaphet Kotto, Thalmus Rasulala, Carl Weathers). It desperately needed more Eatha Kitt. She’s a joy to watch.

18. Please, do not ask me to recount the plot of Demonia (1990). The imdb summary says: “A Canadian archaeological team in Sicily accidentally unleashes vengeful ghosts of five demonic nuns who were murdered 500 years earlier, and the ghosts now set out to kill the group and townspeople alike.” And yeah, that sounds about right.

17. I Like Bats (1986) is an oddball Polish vampire comedy that bears the unique distinction of being the only depiction I’ve encountered wherein vampirism is a metaphor for being unwed. It’s a weird one, and I wished the themes were a bit more consistent or it explained more. Hard to recommend, but interesting for what it is. Also, what is with the whistling score?

16. Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, and Pam Grier star in Original Gangstas (1996). The new gangs are not like the old gangs. They’re all bravado and displays of cruelty. They have no honor or respect and exhibit no restraint. The only ones that can stop them and make the streets safe again are the old timers who may have started the whole cycle of violence way back when.

15. Italian genre movies between the 1960s and the 1990s were something else, weren’t they? Boldly stylish and absolutely inscrutable. Footprints (1975) [aka Footprints on the Moon, aka Primal Impulse, aka Le Orme] concerns a Portuguese translator (Florinda Bolkan) living in Italy following a freak-out causing her to wake up seemingly missing several days. She follows a series of clues to a mysterious but familiar hotel on the island of Garma. Also the film keeps cutting back to black-and-white footage of Klaus Kinski performing an experiment where he leaves an astronaut on the moon to watch him die. It’s a standard weirdo Italian fuzzy dream logic thriller that’s pretty slow-going, but boasts some nice cinematography by Vittorio Storaro, a wild finale, and a pleasant but brief appearance by Lila Kedrova.

14. Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. stars as a sort of Zorro of the high seas in The Black Pirate (1926). It’s got the biggest pirate ships you’ve ever seen and some classic silent swashbuckling action. It also is a very early example of two-tone Technicolor.

13. Rhys Darby is so breathlessly funny and likeable that he elevates the Canadian time travel comedy, Relax, I’m from the Future (2022), to heights that might have bee unattainable otherwise. It’s a clever little sci-fi adventure about an incompetent time traveler that taps into a lot of current day anxieties. Weirdly, the stuff that doesn’t work for me here is what was taken from the original 2013 short (a depressed cartoonist gets his attempted suicide interrupted by a fan from the future). Which is a shame, because the rest of it is pretty cool. Gabrielle Graham also gives a great performance as Darby’s present-day confidante.

12. I dig Sparks. Most folks who have chanced upon them, also do. Edgar Wright made a documentary about them. It’s called The Sparks Brothers (2021). They are a weird group. It dives into the band’s evolution from 1966 until now. And if you don’t leave without a massive crush on Ron Mael, I don’t know what to do with you.

11. Julie Andrews really is sensational. I grew up watching Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, but was never exposed to Victor/Victoria (1982). I was also a big Pink Panther fan, but this might be my favorite Blake Edwards movie I’ve seen. Andrews plays Victoria, a destitute soprano in 1934 Paris. She gets taken under the wing of an aging gay performer (played wonderfully by the Music Man himself, Robert Preston) who is also down on his luck. He proposes that, in order to get work as a novelty act, she pretend to be a gay man whose schtick is impersonating a woman singer. The gender bending scheme comes to fruition and soon hits a snag when a Chicago gangster (James Garner) is suspicious of the act’s realism based solely on his attraction to her. It’s a pretty funny musical, quite progressive for the time, and I love the chemistry and friendship between Andrews and Preston. It’s a movie to just make you feel good.

10. For a more authentic French musical, Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) is a romance in three parts starring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo. Two young lovers, a poor mechanic and an umbrella shopkeeper, fall in love but when the girl is drafted to fight in the Algerian War, the girl has to decide how she will go on. Sumptuous colors paint the streets and interiors with such vibrance, that that alone should make it worth the viewing. It’s very French.

9. What an illustrious career arc Nicolas Cage has had. From Leaving Las Vegas to Con Air and Adaptation to Mandy, he’s carved out a uniquely unhinged niche for himself. Wild at Heart, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, National Treasure, Face/Off, The Rock. Come on. The guy’s unstoppable. Vampire’s Kiss (1988) is the one all the memes are from. In it, he plays a New York yuppie literary agent who, after binging cocaine and alcohol and chasing money and women for so long, starts to believe he is becoming a vampire. The thing I think people making fun of this movie don’t get is that it is a comedy. It’s a black comedy about a man going insane and abusing the people around him, but it is a comedy. And it rules.

8. Following a peculiar assassination inside the Seattle Space Needle, an American journalist (Warren Beatty) gets caught up in a twisted web of political intrigue and conspiracy in Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974). One thing I really liked about this movie is the big, imposing spaces and the ever-present sense that our protagonist is being watched…also that the nefarious machinations pulling the strings in the periphery are always occluded in total ambiguity.

7. Olivier Assayas gets meta in Irma Vep (1996). Framed as a story about the troubled production of a remake of a silent French pulp serial by Louis Feuillade, it’s a movie about making movies, but it really delves into the precarious state of contemporary French cinema in the 90s. Plus Maggie Cheung is fun playing herself.

6. Michelangelo Antonioni utilizes stark industrial factories, empty interiors devoid of warmth, and desolate landscapes ensconced in smoke and fog to depict the state of extreme mental isolation of a woman (played by Monica Vitti) in Red Desert (1964). It’s a coldly beautiful and haunting film that requires an appreciation for its use of space and architecture as the driving force behind much of the emotion.

5. What if The Avengers were just a ragtag troupe of Italian sideshow performers caught up in the chaos of World War II, and instead of fighting some apocalyptic space laser they were just trying to stop a train? Gabriele Mainetti’s Freaks Out (2021) might be a skosh too long, but it is an energetic adventure that I’d highly recommend to anyone who wants an offbeat quasi-superhero movie with a bit more heart and balls. Is it a more important film than Antonioni’s Red Desert? No. Am I more likely to watch it again? Yes.

4. I finally finished George A. Romero’s zombie trilogy. Night of the Living Dead (1968) is an original masterpiece. Dawn of the Dead (1978) is basically the greatest zombie movie ever made. Day of the Dead (1985) brings the nihilistic undead horror trilogy to a fittingly gruesome close. Mad science is pitted against the evil military and a few survivors are caught in the middle. Also there’s like a million zombies outside the compound. Scathing social commentary and gore galore!

3. I first encountered Kaneto Shindo’s minimalist Japanese folk horror, Onibaba (1964), years ago for a college radio show I was hosting. It has never left me. And this re-watch kind of reminded me why. It’s a sweaty, visceral psychology play, pared down to essentially three characters: a widow, her mother-in-law, and a dirty man returned from the war. Amidst feudal wars, these characters eke out a meager existence in the tall grass, motivated only by food an survival. The widow starts a romantic fling with the man. Worried she will be left alone and not be able to survive, the nasty mother-in-law tries to manipulate and terrify her daughter-in-law into staying put. Gorgeously shot, superbly acted, and just a well told story.

2. Re-watching the Alien franchise might have to stop with Aliens (1986), because honestly after the amazing peaks of the first two, it’s all downhill from here. Both films are absolute masterpieces of sci-fi horror and action. The character of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is developed even more and becomes the ultimate badass. The rest of the series tries to get by on the atmosphere, chills, and Gieger xenomorph designs, but the first two films utilize all those things to perfection in service of a compelling survival drama in a true nightmare scenario.

1. Fans of absolutely breathtaking animation and sweet Japanese folktales look no further. Studio Ghibli’s Isao Takahata’s final film, The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013), is a lush, impressionistic, vibrant, tragic, inspiring, affirming story about growing up. The minimalist animation is executed with such sensitivity and deceptive complexity and the score is sparse but elegantly employed. This fairy tale chronicles life of a moon girl who emerges out of a bamboo shoot and is raised by a poor woodcutter and his wife. Like all good and very old stories, it uses the fantastical to reveal truths about humanity. In life, there are always too many goodbyes and different paths we might have taken.

Last Few Movies LVI: Everything, Everywhere, Altogether Now

I did it again.

25. Demonwarp (1988) is a classic example of how deceptive poster art can be. Because that poster slaps! The movie does not. George Kennedy stars (for a bit anyway) is this low-budget horror flick that features Bigfoot, zombies, aliens, nudity, human sacrifice, and still manages to be both boring and incomprehensible. I’ll say it. Bigfoot is a boring monster. If you think about Bigfoot and are full of wonder, consider you maybe don’t have any creativity or point of view.

24. I feel for director Bobcat Goldthwait here. He’s an interesting guy and I wanted to like God Bless America (2011), but the satire just rings hollow. A guy gets a terminal diagnosis and goes on a murder spree (along with a young girl who admires his gumption), offing anyone he feels is an asshole unworthy of life. It’s Saw, but as a quirky indie road comedy. It’s an angry film that hates a lot of the right stuff, but it’s caustic cynicism runs out of relatable righteous wrath by about 20 minutes. The movie feels small and weirdly cute, despite all the murder, and sadly, most of the comedy doesn’t work for me.

23. I mostly like the James Bond movies. Most of them are breezy and passable enough, even when they’re not great. I was cool with Daniel Craig as 007. I didn’t see Spectre, so I may have been missing something when I put on No Time to Die (2021). I liked the start, but quickly got bored. Maybe the sexy and suave super spy action thriller is a bit of a cozy relic from another time that doesn’t hit the same anymore. I don’t remember anything about this movie except that I wanted more Ana de Armas.

22. In the wake of movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a whole subgenre of transgressive rock musicals emerged. Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984) is a weird collision of hokey 50s style teen romance and tacky sci-fi cheese. This extremely cartoony movie is about some aliens (robots??) trying to find music on other planets (I think). It feels thrown together and is full of bizarre choices. For instance, Ruth Gordon (Harold and Maude, Rosemary’s Baby) is like 80 years old and is a tiny UFO-obsessed town sheriff and Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes) plays a chainsaw-wielding maniac for some reason. Despite most of the songs being forgettable, a fascinating romantic twist towards the end caught me off guard and had me respecting it more than I thought possible. Points for surprising me, movie. Points. There’s also a Jermaine Jackson music video in the first act. Better than Vicious Lips.

21. If you want to be trapped in a poorly lit house with a couple drunk Canadians and immobile ant monsters, then have I got the movie for you. Things (1989) is among the three most hard to endure movies I have ever seen. It is aggressively, incompetently, and incoherently made. Things is quite insane and it feels like you are losing your mind as your brain tries in vain to make sense of the murky, muddy images on the screen and the truly bizarre interactions between the characters. It’s also a hard one to sit through. On par with Alien Beasts and Black Devil Doll from Hell. We watch movies like this because they are an ordeal. Our group hated this one, but we felt it was somehow important for just how spectacularly awful it is. On every technical level, a much worse film than Demonwarp (and just about every film ever), but there’s something almost commendable about how bad it is. You’ve been warned. Now go hurt yourself.

20. I approve of filmmaker Jon Moritsugu taking PBS money and making this extremely punk indie flick. It’s decidedly edgy, countercultural, and John Waters-esque, but for me Terminal USA (1993) was not an altogether enjoyable cinematic experience, even if I respect its balls and how angry it made people. Indie films back then were just indie-er, y’know? I miss that.

19. Henry Jaglom’s Tracks (1976) is a weird little character study that takes place entirely on a train. The character in question is 1st Sgt. Jack Falen (played by Dennis Hopper), and, although he presents himself as put together, he is not exactly doing well. Love me a good trapped-in-one-location story. This 70s drama also has a nice meandering vibe that introduces a lot of random passengers to help populate the world.

18. I have a real love/hate thing with Raising Arizona (1987). On the one hand, this early Coen Brothers flick is well cast (Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter!), uniquely stylish, and Barry Sonnenfeld’s amazing camera work is mesmerizingly playful. On the other hand, the zany live-action cartoon physics and tone shockingly get boring to me after awhile. There are so many wonderful visual jokes that are inventively filmed, but there’s an emotional barrier that keeps me at such a distance that I must confess this is perhaps one of my least favorite Coen flick. (Although, lesser Coens is still watchable.)

17. I saw Barbarella (1968) years ago and remember thinking it was better than Flash Gordon. Upon re-watch (for the bits I stayed awake through), I must admit I was mistaken. Both movies are campy, brainless space mayhem, but Barbarella is just running on the fumes of how horny it is. Jane Fonda is fun in the role, and there are a couple good jokes and plenty of amazingly cheesy sets and over-the-top costumes. It’s a sleeker production, but I prefer Star Crash.

16. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are Steven Spielberg (George Lucas, too) and Harrison Ford at their peak. Visually, kinetically, they are perfect American popcorn adventures. I’ve always had mixed feelings about the second entry, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). It looks incredible and has amazing action in the first and final act. The middle section gets sluggish, racist, and overly dark (however, memorably sick). People rag on Kate Capshaw’s grating performance as Willie Scott and Ke Huy Quan as Short Round signifying the series was becoming more kidsy, but honestly, Harrison Ford’s performance is so cold and distant that Indiana Jones himself kind of saps a lot of the joy out the film. Jones’ relationship with Scott is gross. His relationship with Short Round is odd. Maybe it’s a lack of chemistry between the actors. I don’t know. The bit with the bugs is fun and the minecar is still thrilling. Nobody cares about the magic stones though. Mixed bag. Some series highs and some series lows.

15. Richard Linklater returns to the trippy world of rotoscoping (his third, after Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly) with Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022). The premise: in 1969, NASA scientists approach a 10 year old Houston kid to be their secret astronaut, after embarrassingly designing the cockpit to their rocket just a bit too small. From there, Jack Black’s narration launches us into a series of vignettes that go on to list every last detail of life in America at that time. It’s basically a boomer nostalgia overdose, but it’s entertaining and quirky and, having grown up with Nick-at-Nite and boomer parents, a lot of it felt familiar and cool. Ah, to have been a child in the 1960s.

14. Life, Animated (2016) is a feel-good documentary about a nonverbal autistic child discovering his voice through Disney sidekick characters. We follow Owen Suskind as he navigates the world and heartbreak and being alone. It’s a gentle peek into the lives of the Suskind family and an inspiring examination of the power of animation.

13. Robert Altman seeks to dismantle western mythology, and does so with some stylish costumes and a solid cast in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976). Like M*A*S*H, it’s a sprawling film with lots of characters and a lot to say. If you’re like me and into American history (particularly how Buffalo Bill Cody basically defined the modern conception of the cowboys and how the west was won with his travelling circus show), then you’re going to find this one pretty enjoyable. Stars Paul Newman as the lonely, insecure Buffalo Bill, with a supporting cast of Will Sampson, Frank Kacquitts, Burt Lancaster, Geraldine Chaplin, Harvey Keitel, Shelley Duvall, John Considine, and Joel Grey.

12. More angry movies about the increasingly perplexing nature of the world. Lu Lee Cheang’s Fresh Kill (1994) is a dry, experimental movie about a lesbian couple in quasi-dystopian Staten Island that is beset by television ads and evil corporate pollution. It’s weird and a whole vibe, but this is the version of New York City I choose to believe in.

11. Pirates of the Caribbean director, Gore Verbinski deserves credit for being the weird filmmaker he is. He swings big, and, even when it doesn’t fully work, it’s kind of amazing they let him get away with it. The Cure for Wellness (2016) is an expensive looking production. It’s a sleek thriller about the horrors of Swiss people and working too much. Vacation is presented as the enemy for many of the characters, which is kind of a refreshing twist. It’s all slow and classy until the end where it starts to get increasingly campy and silly, but as someone who enjoys classic horror melodramas, I was on board with it. It’s not amazing, but I’m a sucker for movies about health cults (The Road to Wellville is another example, although not really a good movie).

10. Don Bluth left Disney in the late 70s and became the studios biggest rival in the 80s. Bluth and company’s talents for animation are visionary. Sadly most of the movies they made were not particularly good. The Secret of NIMH (1983), is easily their best. Mrs. Brisby, a widowed single-mother mouse with a sick infant, must go on a harrowing quest to save him. This formidable quest introduces her to fearsome cats, ancient owls, and disturbing science experiments conducted on hapless rats who have mutated to become something more. Kudos to Bluth for having the audacity to willfully scare, disturb, and depress children. I mean that. This movie is full of fear and peril and the animation is so fluid and captivating (those smooth flowing capes and those herky-jerky walk cycles!). It’s a masterpiece of animation, hampered only by a somewhat obnoxious Dom DeLuise role as a clumsy crow (but the animators make the complex movements balletic). I could listen to John Carradine voicing the Great Howl forever though. That scene is also a perfect example of Bluth’s specialty: heightened animated horror. The owl is caked in cobwebs and has glowing eyes and a voice that sounds like the hollow of an ancient tree. It’s amazing. I just hate Bluth cutesie, twee stuff. Luckily, Secret of NIMH has very little of that.

9. Speaking of mice and Gore Verbinski, Mousehunt (1997) is a movie about two squabbling brothers that inherit a house that they wish to auction off, but first they must deal with a pesky rodent problem. I’ve seen this movie a hundred times and liked it a lot when it came out, and it only got better on a recent re-watch. On paper this should be a basic slapstick children’s comedy with cute animal hijinks. In execution it is a grungy, darker than-you’d-expect comedy that pays homage to classic comedy teams (like Laurel & Hardy, Abott & Costello, The 3 Stooges, etc.) as well as the golden age of Looney Tunes. But the real thing about this movie is that despite its squeaky, silly premise, every single person involved goes so hard. Nathan Lane gives a truly special performance as the egotistical Ernie Smuntz (as does Lee Evans, playing his softer brother). Their chemistry together is great. Verbinski’s immersive directing and Phedon Papamichael’s kinetic cinematography really pop. Christopher Walken has a very funny cameo as a creepy exterminator. All this is great, but the real MVP is Alan Sylvestri absolutely bringing it with a big orchestral score that builds so much of the scope and logic to this cartoony world. Drop a piano on my head, but Sylvestri’s work here is even better than Back to the Future. With all this great stuff, you honestly forget there’s a mouse in this movie.

8. More angry. People who have no interest in Vikings and Nordic culture will watch this because they loved Robert Eggers’ The VVitch and The Lighthouse. I know because I’m one of them. The Northman (2022) is a sweaty, blood-soaked historical revenge epic full of bone-crunching sound effects and deep, resonating throat singing. Based on the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth (itself an inspiration for Shakespeare’s Hamlet), The Northman recounts the tale of a man who seeks to avenge his father, save his mother, and kill his uncle. Insane attention to historical detail, an incredible cast (although I could have used more Willem Dafoe and Björk), and a cold bleakness that feels like arctic wind cutting through to your bones all cohere to bring this testosterone-fueled tale of cycles of violence to life.

7. Before Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission Impossible, Brian de Palma directed a wacky comic rock opera that is an adaptation of both Phantom of the Opera and Picture of Dorian Gray and is also a painful, brilliant satire and takedown of the music industry featuring songs by Paul Williams. It’s Phantom of the Paradise (1974). There’ve already been a few angry films on this list so far (and there’s more to come). It’s fresh and amazing and full of big feelings and predates Rocky Horror by a year. Check it out if you haven’t seen it.

6. I’ve reviewed Jim Sharmon and Richard O’Brien’s pseudo-sequel to Rocky Horror Picture Show before. But I had to see it again and I will remind people this exists any chance I get. Shock Treatment (1981) features a candy-colored aesthetic that lampoons American media, predicts the rise of reality TV, and boasts more O’Brien songs that genuinely rival its predecessor film. It’s anarchic and smart and full of frustration about marriage and romance and corporations and the vacuousness of TV culture. My only note is that it’s too complicated, a little unfocused on any particular character, extremely meta, and a skosh too clever for its own good. It’s got almost too much to say, and you definitely have to pay attention to follow it. I still love it unconditionally. Returning from Rocky Horror are Richard O’Brien, Nell Campbell, Patricia Quinn, and Charles Grey. Newcomers Barry Humphries and Cliff DeYoung (in an incredible dual role) are marvelous and major props to Jessica Harper, star of this, Phantom of the Paradise, and Suspiria.

5. It’s good to know there’s creativity and kindness out there. Directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, have proven themselves a formidably bizarre force with shorts like Interesting Ball, music videos like Turn Down for What with DJ Snake and Lil Jon, features like Swiss Army Man, and now Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), a multiverse kung-fu comedy adventure fantasy that’s ultimately about love and family starring the great Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis. I sometimes praise a film for its humanity, and what I usually mean by that is its tenderness and compassion. Every Everywhere All at Once, for all its anarchic action, wild costume changes, and fluorescent colors is a very intimate and human movie. I thrilled. I laughed. I cried. Definitely deserving of the hullabaloo and general hoopla surrounding it.

4. God, Anna Biller’s retro style powers are captivating and unmatched. The Love Witch (2016) is a brilliant flick running on the fumes of its cleverness and vibes. Elaine (played wonderfully and hilariously by Samantha Robinson) is a hot, young witch casting spells to enchant men so that she can find the most amazing and important thing in the world: love. Not often does one encounter a satire about how romance itself is romanticized wrapped in a frilly, candy-colored 60s veneer reminiscent of a Hammer horror production, but Biller nails it. Sleek, cheeky, clever, and sexy.

3. You may have noticed I like my movies to have something unique about them. I saw this years ago and thought it was fun, but seeing it again with more grownup eyes made it me appreciate it so much more. Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984) is a surreal fairy tale for adults and the best version of Little Red Riding Hood you’re likely to find. From it’s knobbly, gnarly forests shrouded in fog to it’s magnificently grotesque werewolf transformations, this movie scratches the itch for dark fantasy that respects its audience. I’m also a bit of a sucker for the Saragossa Manuscript-esque framing device of stories within stories. How many dreams have you had that have had their own lore? Also, Angela Lansbury is Granny.

2. I love an old timey boat movie, and there are plenty of stories about cruel sea captains high off the smell of their own farts (Mutiny On the Bounty, Moby Dick, The Caine Mutiny, etc.). This one, based on a Jack London story and directed by legendary filmmaker Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, Robin Hood, Captain Blood), stars cigar-chomping Edward G. Robinson as The Sea Wolf (1941). Beginning on the moody dark streets of San Francisco one night, circa 1900, a sordid collection of disparate characters haphazardly enter each others lives, and, through the tangles of fate, find themselves all onboard the infamous ship which never comes to port called The Ghost, helmed by the volatile and violent Captain Wolf-Larsen. I kind of love this stuff. Menacing, atmospheric shadows; smoke and fog; grizzled, sweaty sailors with gunk in their beards and grime under their nails. Lush cinematography by Sol Polito aside, the dark London tale of a domineering but insecure man of action clasping tightly on what little he does control while age and ailments – as well as a phantom rival brother out to murder him – gradually catch up to him is just compelling. This film has three cipher characters entering this unwelcoming world all from different angles, adding to the tension. I maybe even dug this more than John Huston’s Key Largo (if only because it’s more boaty).

1. I saw Alien: Resurrection on TV as a kid. At the time, I liked it well enough. In college, I finally saw Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979). I thought it was great, but never watched it again. Instead, like many, I revisited the more action-oriented sequel, Aliens, much more. Aliens 3 was in there too. I used to say Aliens was my favorite. Let me adjust that state. While the story beats for Alien were not knew at the time, they were a masterclass in nailing those familiar beats with goopy flair to spare. Like the monster-in-the-house had never looked and sounded or felt quite like this before. And while the aesthetic has been duplicated countless times by other films, nothing quite compares to the nihilistic, claustrophobic, nightmare horror of Alien. It’s a perfect horror movie. It’s scary, yes, but it’s also fascinating because it is about the gruesome life cycle of a horrific, newly discovered organism. Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartright, John Hurt, and Harry Dean Stanton are all wonderfully cast, but it’s also the H. R. Giger xenomorph designs that make this movie stand out among a sea of copycats and wannabes. It has such iconic sci-fi imagery that it’s easy to take it for granted, but you really got to respect the classics, especially when they’re this effective. Still my favorite Ridley Scott film.

SHORTS:

What did New York City look like in 1921? Manhatta (1921) will show you. No narration. Just moving pictures. Experience the wonders of time travel!

The Delian Mode (2009) is a short doc about Delia Derbyshire, one of the pioneers in electronic music. It’s a fascinating look at the complexities of creating unique sounds in an analog era, as well as the life of one of its most influential co-creators. Crank the Dr. Who theme and pour one of for Delia.

One of the many uniquely American musical genres is the blues. Sit yourself down on a creaky porch and get out of the sweltering Texas sun and learn about the The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins (1968).