Super (2010)
Before Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn made a couple of movies about superheroes from different perspectives. The Specials of 2000 was about some lower-grade superheroes dealing with ordinary life, while Super turned around to show an ordinary man trying to become a costumed hero. Definitely a step up from the previous, this has a surprising cast that was willing to work for scale for an indie production, but Gunn had gained fame for Dawn of the Dead and Slither also in the meantime. While this was criticized for the violence and gore being inconsistent with a perceived more comic tone, I actually thought the gore had a good rhetorical use, reminding us of what violence is like when we don't have super powers. It wasn't a contradiction to me, so much as a more general scattered quality. Pre-Guardians there's Michael Rooker and brother Sean Gunn, as well as Kevin Bacon, who gives quite a spirited performance with several different shades of slimy.
Before Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn made a couple of movies about superheroes from different perspectives. The Specials of 2000 was about some lower-grade superheroes dealing with ordinary life, while Super turned around to show an ordinary man trying to become a costumed hero. Definitely a step up from the previous, this has a surprising cast that was willing to work for scale for an indie production, but Gunn had gained fame for Dawn of the Dead and Slither also in the meantime. While this was criticized for the violence and gore being inconsistent with a perceived more comic tone, I actually thought the gore had a good rhetorical use, reminding us of what violence is like when we don't have super powers. It wasn't a contradiction to me, so much as a more general scattered quality. Pre-Guardians there's Michael Rooker and brother Sean Gunn, as well as Kevin Bacon, who gives quite a spirited performance with several different shades of slimy.
Monster on a Plane (2024)
Passengers with German accents on a flight from some apparent tropical island to Hamburg are attacked by a puppet that didn't make the cut for Gremlins. A more interesting derivation about the monster taking on other guises that are lures just gets tossed into the mix and turns out to be a fart joke anyway. Another Euro semi-pro B-movie entry (see Sky Sharks).
Passengers with German accents on a flight from some apparent tropical island to Hamburg are attacked by a puppet that didn't make the cut for Gremlins. A more interesting derivation about the monster taking on other guises that are lures just gets tossed into the mix and turns out to be a fart joke anyway. Another Euro semi-pro B-movie entry (see Sky Sharks).
A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
The restless effort of it never comes off as more than that, even at wit. It's a hodgepodge with each of the parts derived as a type or generic idea, but the quiver of stylistic arrows from Trainspotting doesn't bring it all together.
The restless effort of it never comes off as more than that, even at wit. It's a hodgepodge with each of the parts derived as a type or generic idea, but the quiver of stylistic arrows from Trainspotting doesn't bring it all together.
Without Warning (1980)
Characters are attacked by flying pentagon-shaped disks that attach themselves and start dispensing ketchup and mustard, while aging actors -- Martin Landau, Jack Palance, Ralph Meeker, Neville Brand and Sue Ann Langdon -- are lined up in deep focus shots in a bar. David Caruso does his obligatory horror movie service for young actors in the 80s.
Characters are attacked by flying pentagon-shaped disks that attach themselves and start dispensing ketchup and mustard, while aging actors -- Martin Landau, Jack Palance, Ralph Meeker, Neville Brand and Sue Ann Langdon -- are lined up in deep focus shots in a bar. David Caruso does his obligatory horror movie service for young actors in the 80s.
A Kiss Before Dying (1991)
A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
The later version of Ira Levin's book shows how the thrillers of the 80s and 90s could be more self-consciously movie-fied, tricked up, than even 50s movies. James Dearden wrote and directed the 1991 version, and changed the story so that two sisters are twins, both played by Sean Young, and the social-climbing main character, played by Matt Dillon, has a boyhood resentment from living not only on the wrong side of the tracks, but almost right on them, to see the copper magnate's logo on the train cars. Locations look as costumey as the actors, and dialogue for the exteriors is not well dubbed, so for a while, the acting does not come off well. The machinations cover lots of time and ground, and the movie calls on Vertigo for as much of them as the source book or predecessor. It takes a while to settle down into something that lets Young or Dillon breath life into the characters for suspense. The 50s version, on the other hand, discarded not only the background of the book, considerably more including World War II involvement, but any to start with, in order to give a much more sly opening bang especially for the 50s. Robert Wagner comes into a bedroom where a woman unwraps herself to reveal she's Joanne Woodward, and the scene otherwise inconspicuously reveals she's pregnant. The approach here is more reserved so that the locations and photography give it room for a kind of candor, but it settles down into something more stodgy in that 50s parlor drama way, and even opening it up to a giant strip-mining pit doesn't eliminate the stagebound action, or Jeffrey Hunter's hammy professor getup with glasses and pipe. More interesting still is that no matter what each movie version cooked up, they both dropped the third sister from the book.
A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
The later version of Ira Levin's book shows how the thrillers of the 80s and 90s could be more self-consciously movie-fied, tricked up, than even 50s movies. James Dearden wrote and directed the 1991 version, and changed the story so that two sisters are twins, both played by Sean Young, and the social-climbing main character, played by Matt Dillon, has a boyhood resentment from living not only on the wrong side of the tracks, but almost right on them, to see the copper magnate's logo on the train cars. Locations look as costumey as the actors, and dialogue for the exteriors is not well dubbed, so for a while, the acting does not come off well. The machinations cover lots of time and ground, and the movie calls on Vertigo for as much of them as the source book or predecessor. It takes a while to settle down into something that lets Young or Dillon breath life into the characters for suspense. The 50s version, on the other hand, discarded not only the background of the book, considerably more including World War II involvement, but any to start with, in order to give a much more sly opening bang especially for the 50s. Robert Wagner comes into a bedroom where a woman unwraps herself to reveal she's Joanne Woodward, and the scene otherwise inconspicuously reveals she's pregnant. The approach here is more reserved so that the locations and photography give it room for a kind of candor, but it settles down into something more stodgy in that 50s parlor drama way, and even opening it up to a giant strip-mining pit doesn't eliminate the stagebound action, or Jeffrey Hunter's hammy professor getup with glasses and pipe. More interesting still is that no matter what each movie version cooked up, they both dropped the third sister from the book.
Cleaner (2025)
Glossy, fluffy and slight. It's so polished and compressed, even trying to have scenes for a backstory, that at an hour and 37 minutes, it barely gets out of trailer mode. Despite its wishful similarities to Die Hard, even all the machinations with the bad guy gang tick off with the fairy tale ledge-climbing superskill and brother like a kind of children's book of thrillers.
3/28/25
Glossy, fluffy and slight. It's so polished and compressed, even trying to have scenes for a backstory, that at an hour and 37 minutes, it barely gets out of trailer mode. Despite its wishful similarities to Die Hard, even all the machinations with the bad guy gang tick off with the fairy tale ledge-climbing superskill and brother like a kind of children's book of thrillers.
Thrillers with a twist -- of flavor
Cold Pursuit (2019)
American Ultra (2015)
Mayhem (2017)
Thrillers have twists all the time, but here are three with enough of a different flavor to make them enjoyable even through the routine or less inspired parts. The first is like someone collided Taken with Get Shorty in a way that made both more interesting. Director Hans Petter Moland keeps the whole thing going with such a dry dispatch, it's as if the movie is riffing on the cliches itself. Of the three, American Ultra is the most typical action thriller, even the Bourne as a stoner comedy not that original, but trimmed down to a smaller scale and executed decently enough, it makes some good flourishes and particularly with its soundtrack. Mayhem might be the most ambitious, but the furthest from its ambition. Playing out the pandemic before the fact -- it gets points and is worth a look enough for that -- but as open social havoc rather than house shut-in, it's too shrill with its setup frame before it gets to the point of the virus: that it removes all inhibition. But the mayhem that unleashes gives enough of a different kind of slasher or zombie movie, where it's all just exuberant violence outbreak in its own right. It's not quite Weekend, but a suggestion along those lines.
Cold Pursuit (2019)
American Ultra (2015)
Mayhem (2017)
Thrillers have twists all the time, but here are three with enough of a different flavor to make them enjoyable even through the routine or less inspired parts. The first is like someone collided Taken with Get Shorty in a way that made both more interesting. Director Hans Petter Moland keeps the whole thing going with such a dry dispatch, it's as if the movie is riffing on the cliches itself. Of the three, American Ultra is the most typical action thriller, even the Bourne as a stoner comedy not that original, but trimmed down to a smaller scale and executed decently enough, it makes some good flourishes and particularly with its soundtrack. Mayhem might be the most ambitious, but the furthest from its ambition. Playing out the pandemic before the fact -- it gets points and is worth a look enough for that -- but as open social havoc rather than house shut-in, it's too shrill with its setup frame before it gets to the point of the virus: that it removes all inhibition. But the mayhem that unleashes gives enough of a different kind of slasher or zombie movie, where it's all just exuberant violence outbreak in its own right. It's not quite Weekend, but a suggestion along those lines.
The Straight Story (1999)
There's a joke in the title about David Lynch, how this work isn't twisted the way his other stuff is, even if "Straight" is also the name of the real person the story is based on. It was co-written, with John E. Roach, by his long time collaborator, editor, and sometime wife Mary Sweeney, but it also shows the woof and warp of Lynch. What's common with even the uncanny is the ordinary, what might be called simple, although there's a trick to that. It's not just what but how, the way Lynch pays attention, and perhaps as much what he doesn't let get in the way of that, isn't bothered by paying attention to. So here, you get the conversations this opens onto in a manner we don't pay attention to much with movies, if we do in real life. The war stories told by two old men in a bar break open the past like the distance covered in the main character's trip on a riding mower, what's as much beyond the horizon as the future, and just now what we did in World War II to become what we are has a whole other kind of pertinence. And then there's the great economy of the ending, the beauty of it in such a simple stroke. Lynch clears away things to present others, the uncanny of real life as much as dreams.
There's a joke in the title about David Lynch, how this work isn't twisted the way his other stuff is, even if "Straight" is also the name of the real person the story is based on. It was co-written, with John E. Roach, by his long time collaborator, editor, and sometime wife Mary Sweeney, but it also shows the woof and warp of Lynch. What's common with even the uncanny is the ordinary, what might be called simple, although there's a trick to that. It's not just what but how, the way Lynch pays attention, and perhaps as much what he doesn't let get in the way of that, isn't bothered by paying attention to. So here, you get the conversations this opens onto in a manner we don't pay attention to much with movies, if we do in real life. The war stories told by two old men in a bar break open the past like the distance covered in the main character's trip on a riding mower, what's as much beyond the horizon as the future, and just now what we did in World War II to become what we are has a whole other kind of pertinence. And then there's the great economy of the ending, the beauty of it in such a simple stroke. Lynch clears away things to present others, the uncanny of real life as much as dreams.
T.R. Baskin (1971)
It wasn't well received when it came out, and even director Herbert Ross wasn't happy with the script by Peter Hyams. It got pretty much lost, unavailable on video until a 4K remaster was released in 2023. While it seems in line with lots of quirky character movies of the 60s and 70s, it's quirky in a good way, because it's about that, in the title character played by Candice Bergen, and rather than flying kites on beaches or montages with convertibles, it keeps things to the confines of her alienation in the big city of Chicago where she has launched herself apparently from her family in a small town in Ohio. Reviews at the time of its release seemed to be disappointed with it as a plot, and with the ambivalence of the characters. But as a character study it's about ambivalence not the least in T.R. Baskin herself, when you want to be accepted for what you are, but so much of what you are is also defense against others. If you haven't known someone like this, it might seem implausible, but everyone has their own shtick. The character's acerbic wit and penchant for incongruity, delivered from a perpetual lying-in-wait stance, make her seem both smug and nerdy, and the role has the most interesting nuance of anything Bergen has done: clever, defiant, foolish and vulnerable. The fact it's also about the plight of women comes in stride, and there's a sequence about the sort of solitude where banality seems a bottomless pit, the gaping hours of the day seem the greatest existential challenge.
It wasn't well received when it came out, and even director Herbert Ross wasn't happy with the script by Peter Hyams. It got pretty much lost, unavailable on video until a 4K remaster was released in 2023. While it seems in line with lots of quirky character movies of the 60s and 70s, it's quirky in a good way, because it's about that, in the title character played by Candice Bergen, and rather than flying kites on beaches or montages with convertibles, it keeps things to the confines of her alienation in the big city of Chicago where she has launched herself apparently from her family in a small town in Ohio. Reviews at the time of its release seemed to be disappointed with it as a plot, and with the ambivalence of the characters. But as a character study it's about ambivalence not the least in T.R. Baskin herself, when you want to be accepted for what you are, but so much of what you are is also defense against others. If you haven't known someone like this, it might seem implausible, but everyone has their own shtick. The character's acerbic wit and penchant for incongruity, delivered from a perpetual lying-in-wait stance, make her seem both smug and nerdy, and the role has the most interesting nuance of anything Bergen has done: clever, defiant, foolish and vulnerable. The fact it's also about the plight of women comes in stride, and there's a sequence about the sort of solitude where banality seems a bottomless pit, the gaping hours of the day seem the greatest existential challenge.
Donnie Darko (2001)
Richard Kelly's director's cut is more a recreation than a restoration. It seems doctored up in a different manner in response to how people have reacted to the movie. There's an interesting idea about the time looping and the consideration of different paths of possibility, but all the business put on that skeleton, good grief. Adding the little artsy inserts of the book pages, to give chapter or phase headings to the action, doesn't change the convenient idealization. The very name, the title. The stuff with Drew Barrymore is a perfect example of how it's all convenient setup, groaningly so. The old woman, the motivational speaker, it's all sculpted and contrived in that way like American Beauty. And the therapist -- Ordinary People to boot! So lazy and yet still so overused. Killing Moon was taken off the beginning in favor of an INXS song, but I don't think it's really better to have better taste in music here: e.g., Love Will Tear Us Apart for a teen party scene. As if thinking you're the fate of the universe isn't the very problem of adolescence.
Richard Kelly's director's cut is more a recreation than a restoration. It seems doctored up in a different manner in response to how people have reacted to the movie. There's an interesting idea about the time looping and the consideration of different paths of possibility, but all the business put on that skeleton, good grief. Adding the little artsy inserts of the book pages, to give chapter or phase headings to the action, doesn't change the convenient idealization. The very name, the title. The stuff with Drew Barrymore is a perfect example of how it's all convenient setup, groaningly so. The old woman, the motivational speaker, it's all sculpted and contrived in that way like American Beauty. And the therapist -- Ordinary People to boot! So lazy and yet still so overused. Killing Moon was taken off the beginning in favor of an INXS song, but I don't think it's really better to have better taste in music here: e.g., Love Will Tear Us Apart for a teen party scene. As if thinking you're the fate of the universe isn't the very problem of adolescence.
Last Breath [documentary] (2019)
Last Breath (2025)
Alex Parkinson directed, with Richard da Costa, a documentary about an incident with divers who maintain pipeline in the North Sea, where one was rescued after being stranded for about 30 minutes after his backup supply of oxygen had run out. Parkinson then directed, and co-wrote, a non-documentary version, a dramatic rendition of the same story. Werner Herzog has done the same with his Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Rescue Dawn. When a dramatization has a non-fiction version so close to it, it raises questions about fictional accounts of true stories, the whole matter of "based on," from the basic question of why one rather than the other. Watching a fictional account often makes you want to know the actual facts. But the after-the-fact assemblage of recounting in the documentary can make you imagine the run of events, the real time progression, and want to see it recreated. As Maurice Blanchot was keen to point out, the event is as much dependent on the recounting as the other way around. The doc version here has so much incredible material from cameras, the actual events, that its used even in the feature film. And on the other hand, the doc uses some re-enactment of its own for things it didn't have recorded on the spot. Parkinson has general restraint, compared to blustery sensational material, to the point where some might consider both of these too dry. In the remake, there's a notable dispatch to it all, keeping to the frame of the incident, and not stretching scenes out with too much milking. The music counters this more reserved style. While it's tolerable in the doc, despite also a lot of cliches in modern documentaries with music, it's sometimes incongruously conspicuous in the feature film, as if from another movie.
Last Breath (2025)
Alex Parkinson directed, with Richard da Costa, a documentary about an incident with divers who maintain pipeline in the North Sea, where one was rescued after being stranded for about 30 minutes after his backup supply of oxygen had run out. Parkinson then directed, and co-wrote, a non-documentary version, a dramatic rendition of the same story. Werner Herzog has done the same with his Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Rescue Dawn. When a dramatization has a non-fiction version so close to it, it raises questions about fictional accounts of true stories, the whole matter of "based on," from the basic question of why one rather than the other. Watching a fictional account often makes you want to know the actual facts. But the after-the-fact assemblage of recounting in the documentary can make you imagine the run of events, the real time progression, and want to see it recreated. As Maurice Blanchot was keen to point out, the event is as much dependent on the recounting as the other way around. The doc version here has so much incredible material from cameras, the actual events, that its used even in the feature film. And on the other hand, the doc uses some re-enactment of its own for things it didn't have recorded on the spot. Parkinson has general restraint, compared to blustery sensational material, to the point where some might consider both of these too dry. In the remake, there's a notable dispatch to it all, keeping to the frame of the incident, and not stretching scenes out with too much milking. The music counters this more reserved style. While it's tolerable in the doc, despite also a lot of cliches in modern documentaries with music, it's sometimes incongruously conspicuous in the feature film, as if from another movie.
Bad Fish (2024)
Giving a bad name to mermaids, this leans toward the better end of homespun, with some decent performances, though it still has the feeling of life dramatized in a fish bowl.
Giving a bad name to mermaids, this leans toward the better end of homespun, with some decent performances, though it still has the feeling of life dramatized in a fish bowl.
Harvey (1950)
Someone had to make the explicit, if not definitive, dramatization of American goodwill. Mary Chase did with her play, that she adapted for the screen with Oscar Brodney, for the movie directed by Henry Koster. If not exactly Pollyanna, or purely optimism, it's the statement of bonhomie, friends with everyone, and it really is as much a statement as a parable. Would you rather be smart or pleasant? With the line delivered by James Stewart: "Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me." (I actually made that line sound sleeker. There's way more windup for it.) Not as well-concocted as Capra, but that also means less concocted, more plainly stated. The drama spun up for it is about putting Elwood away for his imaginary 6'3" rabbit friend, but of course that only puts us in for lots of conversations with the blessed fool, where we see that what he doles out is really much more sound and certainly appealing than from most supposedly sane folk. Just sitting around the bar with him really is the spirit of it, so the plot is a lot of bluster. There's the tension between defiance of convention and then domesticating that again (compare Lars and the Real Girl), which belongs as much to the frame as the portrait, and what makes an even more curious strain of that is liquor. Despite the obvious comment about drinking and seeing big rabbits, this belongs with The Thin Man and Whisky Galore in the goodwill towards liquor genre.
3/18/25
Someone had to make the explicit, if not definitive, dramatization of American goodwill. Mary Chase did with her play, that she adapted for the screen with Oscar Brodney, for the movie directed by Henry Koster. If not exactly Pollyanna, or purely optimism, it's the statement of bonhomie, friends with everyone, and it really is as much a statement as a parable. Would you rather be smart or pleasant? With the line delivered by James Stewart: "Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me." (I actually made that line sound sleeker. There's way more windup for it.) Not as well-concocted as Capra, but that also means less concocted, more plainly stated. The drama spun up for it is about putting Elwood away for his imaginary 6'3" rabbit friend, but of course that only puts us in for lots of conversations with the blessed fool, where we see that what he doles out is really much more sound and certainly appealing than from most supposedly sane folk. Just sitting around the bar with him really is the spirit of it, so the plot is a lot of bluster. There's the tension between defiance of convention and then domesticating that again (compare Lars and the Real Girl), which belongs as much to the frame as the portrait, and what makes an even more curious strain of that is liquor. Despite the obvious comment about drinking and seeing big rabbits, this belongs with The Thin Man and Whisky Galore in the goodwill towards liquor genre.
Enemy (2013)
Director Denis Villeneuve's best movie, based on a Jose Saramago story, quiet and rapt, draws us in to what seems a thriller, not unlike Vertigo in that approach, but then winds more into the figurative, an even wider mystery of status or perspective, with reaches similar to Persona. Apart from lifting the frame from the line between plot and dream, or literal and figurative, it also shows how images can be more effective across that line, disturbing more than as just scare tactics.
Director Denis Villeneuve's best movie, based on a Jose Saramago story, quiet and rapt, draws us in to what seems a thriller, not unlike Vertigo in that approach, but then winds more into the figurative, an even wider mystery of status or perspective, with reaches similar to Persona. Apart from lifting the frame from the line between plot and dream, or literal and figurative, it also shows how images can be more effective across that line, disturbing more than as just scare tactics.
The Brutalist (2024)
It's a composite of artistic flourishes -- I'd say artsy, but that depends on how well they're done, some of them better than others. It's projection, and where it comes off worst is as story or narrative. Strip that away, maybe just take off the dialogue track, and it might succeed at its lush, brushy projection without creating the problem of distortion. Like the size of the model the architect character builds, this strains for drama greater than fact. Is it necessary to turn the experience of a refugee artist into literal rape to make the point -- or rather than give an account of what anyone actually went through? Apart from some very clumsy drama that makes, to put it mildly, what is this doing with the heroin addiction? There are moments that make you think of the subtler forms of prejudice, preconception, even as magnanimity and appropriation, but that would require subtler dramatization than this, however sophisticated the flourishes.
It's a composite of artistic flourishes -- I'd say artsy, but that depends on how well they're done, some of them better than others. It's projection, and where it comes off worst is as story or narrative. Strip that away, maybe just take off the dialogue track, and it might succeed at its lush, brushy projection without creating the problem of distortion. Like the size of the model the architect character builds, this strains for drama greater than fact. Is it necessary to turn the experience of a refugee artist into literal rape to make the point -- or rather than give an account of what anyone actually went through? Apart from some very clumsy drama that makes, to put it mildly, what is this doing with the heroin addiction? There are moments that make you think of the subtler forms of prejudice, preconception, even as magnanimity and appropriation, but that would require subtler dramatization than this, however sophisticated the flourishes.
A Boy and His Dog (1975)
In case you forgot or don't know just how wide the post-apocalypse variety stretches, here's another example. Remember, we had nuclear holocaust hanging over us for decades. Based on works by Harlan Ellison, this is also notable as an early role of Don Johnson, and written and directed by L.Q. Jones, also a great character actor, particularly in Westerns but also tons of TV (e.g. The Wild Bunch, Columbo). It's distinguished from typical Omega Man, Mad Max survivalism by the clever black humor in the dialogue between the "boy" and his apparently telepathic dog, and by an underground society that's an interesting cross of Our Town and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Perhaps even better than a different inflection on apocalypse, it works as an antidote to talking animal movies.
In case you forgot or don't know just how wide the post-apocalypse variety stretches, here's another example. Remember, we had nuclear holocaust hanging over us for decades. Based on works by Harlan Ellison, this is also notable as an early role of Don Johnson, and written and directed by L.Q. Jones, also a great character actor, particularly in Westerns but also tons of TV (e.g. The Wild Bunch, Columbo). It's distinguished from typical Omega Man, Mad Max survivalism by the clever black humor in the dialogue between the "boy" and his apparently telepathic dog, and by an underground society that's an interesting cross of Our Town and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Perhaps even better than a different inflection on apocalypse, it works as an antidote to talking animal movies.
Demon Seed (1977)
About now with AI stepping into uncomfortable territory, some of the thrillers of the past, if not cautionary tales, about robots and computers becoming super intelligence and taking over, don't look so far-fetched. Or at least are interesting again. Like the earlier Colossus: The Forbin Project, this is about a super computer -- and what's an even greater comic effect looking back is how big they were -- but this one gets a lot more personal. As the title proclaims, it's combining the computer with the demonic possession fad of the era, and this is the Rosemary's Baby or Omen of the AI set. Despite Julie Christie, some work by abstract filmmaker Jordan Belson as part of the computer effects, and some fairly interesting design ideas for geometrical appendages, this can't overcome the more ponderous kind of hokey of 50s sci-fi run through the mystical speculation of the 60s as in popular sensational non-fiction books: the computer saying, in Robert Vaughn's voice, "I've investigated eternity." Director Donald Cammell gives an interesting frankness at times, but part of the problem is playing it so straight.
About now with AI stepping into uncomfortable territory, some of the thrillers of the past, if not cautionary tales, about robots and computers becoming super intelligence and taking over, don't look so far-fetched. Or at least are interesting again. Like the earlier Colossus: The Forbin Project, this is about a super computer -- and what's an even greater comic effect looking back is how big they were -- but this one gets a lot more personal. As the title proclaims, it's combining the computer with the demonic possession fad of the era, and this is the Rosemary's Baby or Omen of the AI set. Despite Julie Christie, some work by abstract filmmaker Jordan Belson as part of the computer effects, and some fairly interesting design ideas for geometrical appendages, this can't overcome the more ponderous kind of hokey of 50s sci-fi run through the mystical speculation of the 60s as in popular sensational non-fiction books: the computer saying, in Robert Vaughn's voice, "I've investigated eternity." Director Donald Cammell gives an interesting frankness at times, but part of the problem is playing it so straight.
The Last Showgirl (2024)
Sean Baker knockoff. It's a patchwork that way, including Jamie Lee Curtis's gutsy, gritty realist performance, which was overdone already in The Bear and Everything Everywhere All at Once, and the reverie shots standing out in odd places to catch the Vegas scenery behind them. I laughed thinking of having the women go running through hotel breezeways together, or through the grass. The backstory points are all fitted out to the purpose -- it's reverse engineered from the desired effect. Pamela Anderson's performance -- even more so than Demi Moore in The Substance -- strains the line of whether really doing anything significant to win a new, let alone renewed admiration, or whether it's just automatic, served on a platter by the context. Does Pamela Anderson deserve this sort of thing? The script by Kate Gersten makes an effort to cover this, even the issue of what sort of value her career had, but when she starts protesting at her audition it presses the issue from the other direction. Does Anderson have unlimited right to her fame, our attention, and even if so, can she demand it? The script also answers this -- right there with the man auditioning her, and then the closing credits song lyrics in another way, about the light shining on another pearl -- in fact answers this almost too well, like declaiming the theme or the points.
Sean Baker knockoff. It's a patchwork that way, including Jamie Lee Curtis's gutsy, gritty realist performance, which was overdone already in The Bear and Everything Everywhere All at Once, and the reverie shots standing out in odd places to catch the Vegas scenery behind them. I laughed thinking of having the women go running through hotel breezeways together, or through the grass. The backstory points are all fitted out to the purpose -- it's reverse engineered from the desired effect. Pamela Anderson's performance -- even more so than Demi Moore in The Substance -- strains the line of whether really doing anything significant to win a new, let alone renewed admiration, or whether it's just automatic, served on a platter by the context. Does Pamela Anderson deserve this sort of thing? The script by Kate Gersten makes an effort to cover this, even the issue of what sort of value her career had, but when she starts protesting at her audition it presses the issue from the other direction. Does Anderson have unlimited right to her fame, our attention, and even if so, can she demand it? The script also answers this -- right there with the man auditioning her, and then the closing credits song lyrics in another way, about the light shining on another pearl -- in fact answers this almost too well, like declaiming the theme or the points.
George A. Romero's Resident Evil (2025)
This gives a fairly involved rundown of Romero and then the video game Biohazard, aka Resident Evil, before going into the main subject, how their paths would literally cross. Despite some attempts at evoking the art of the game and would-be movie, it's actually sort of droning, especially a segment with one talker coming through a speaker, recording another audio device in citation, that just goes on and on.
This gives a fairly involved rundown of Romero and then the video game Biohazard, aka Resident Evil, before going into the main subject, how their paths would literally cross. Despite some attempts at evoking the art of the game and would-be movie, it's actually sort of droning, especially a segment with one talker coming through a speaker, recording another audio device in citation, that just goes on and on.
Fierce Creatures (1997)
It was a nice idea to have the same four principal players from A Fish Called Wanda (see below) play other roles, so that the inevitable sequel wasn't a sequel, but like another work in a repertory. Unfortunately it doesn't live up to its predecessor, with the larger ensemble spinning their wheels in one location, a zoo, with tepid farce and costume gags. Robert Young directed, but then Fred Schepisi came in for reworking, and it is like too many cooks. It looks like it might've been done as a benefit for animal conservation, so that's a nice thought to make it feel better.
It was a nice idea to have the same four principal players from A Fish Called Wanda (see below) play other roles, so that the inevitable sequel wasn't a sequel, but like another work in a repertory. Unfortunately it doesn't live up to its predecessor, with the larger ensemble spinning their wheels in one location, a zoo, with tepid farce and costume gags. Robert Young directed, but then Fred Schepisi came in for reworking, and it is like too many cooks. It looks like it might've been done as a benefit for animal conservation, so that's a nice thought to make it feel better.
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
In the dance of blunders style of Fawlty Towers, John Cleese managed to wind a plot up tightly enough to carry a comedy of manners, sneaking it in for those, especially Americans, who would see this as just a madcap caper comedy. It's a social comedy like the Ealing Studio films of the late 40s and early 50s, and more particularly The Lavender Hill Mob, whose director Charles Crichton co-wrote and directed this with Cleese. The self-consciousness of Brits gets exposed by Americans -- and Cleese gave choice roles to Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline (he won an Oscar for supporting performance) -- but who are just as much shown up for their own pretense, and Cleese & co. were particularly crafty with the Kline character, whose DIY bravado for intellectual, sartorial and other prowess only ensures functional idiocy. The updating of the social comedy is the role of sex in all of it.
In the dance of blunders style of Fawlty Towers, John Cleese managed to wind a plot up tightly enough to carry a comedy of manners, sneaking it in for those, especially Americans, who would see this as just a madcap caper comedy. It's a social comedy like the Ealing Studio films of the late 40s and early 50s, and more particularly The Lavender Hill Mob, whose director Charles Crichton co-wrote and directed this with Cleese. The self-consciousness of Brits gets exposed by Americans -- and Cleese gave choice roles to Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline (he won an Oscar for supporting performance) -- but who are just as much shown up for their own pretense, and Cleese & co. were particularly crafty with the Kline character, whose DIY bravado for intellectual, sartorial and other prowess only ensures functional idiocy. The updating of the social comedy is the role of sex in all of it.
There's Something About Mary (1998)
The Dumb and Dumber duo strike again, directors and part writers Bobby and Peter Farrelly. There's a citation effect to this, as if everything's held up as figure. Of course there's caricature, but it's not even so much characters as the situations, relationships, ideas. It's as if it's built on the same principle as the scare stories people tell children: what happens if you masturbate, do drugs, go after an old flame. Even the snake bears this out. The plot actually works to batten down the sort of free-floating wackiness of Kingpin, but even the obvious things, the golden profile of the girl, the good-hearted melodrama, don't get too lead-footed. In the interesting cast, it's Matt Dillon who has the most surprising resonance. The great idea of Jonathan Richman as the singing narrator and the gags made of his appearance in the scenes gets watered down by the usual callout soundtrack.
The Dumb and Dumber duo strike again, directors and part writers Bobby and Peter Farrelly. There's a citation effect to this, as if everything's held up as figure. Of course there's caricature, but it's not even so much characters as the situations, relationships, ideas. It's as if it's built on the same principle as the scare stories people tell children: what happens if you masturbate, do drugs, go after an old flame. Even the snake bears this out. The plot actually works to batten down the sort of free-floating wackiness of Kingpin, but even the obvious things, the golden profile of the girl, the good-hearted melodrama, don't get too lead-footed. In the interesting cast, it's Matt Dillon who has the most surprising resonance. The great idea of Jonathan Richman as the singing narrator and the gags made of his appearance in the scenes gets watered down by the usual callout soundtrack.
L.I.E. (2001)
(The title stands for Long Island Expressway.) Paul Dano's first major role (at 16) is a study in abandonment in plain sight for even well-off suburban kids, directed by Michael Cuesta, and written by him, Gerald Cuesta and Stephen M. Ryder. With a good touch of moodiness, but enough restraint in that and sensationalism, it sets the lurches of peer pressure against grooming, but the surprise path makes the analogy of the predator, played with the usual great offhandedness by Brian Cox, not only with the father but the boy.
3/12/25
(The title stands for Long Island Expressway.) Paul Dano's first major role (at 16) is a study in abandonment in plain sight for even well-off suburban kids, directed by Michael Cuesta, and written by him, Gerald Cuesta and Stephen M. Ryder. With a good touch of moodiness, but enough restraint in that and sensationalism, it sets the lurches of peer pressure against grooming, but the surprise path makes the analogy of the predator, played with the usual great offhandedness by Brian Cox, not only with the father but the boy.
The Good Nurse (2022)
Another case of institutional narcissism, where PR, reputation, enables worse crimes, in this case creating the very opposite of the function of the institutions: hospitals saving people. Writers Charles Graeber and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and director Tobias Lindholm trust the actual events will have any interest or suspense, so their dramatization is notably faithful to that. Compare with the Netflix documentary version Capturing the Killer Nurse, which includes Graeber who also wrote the book account. It's surprising only because of what so many other fictional accounts, based on true stories or not, do because they don't think things as they are would hold interest. What's also different in this matter, emphasized or at least brought out more, in this movie and the documentary, is the account of the ambivalence involved, thus the passability and susceptibility. The perpetrator was not a conspicuous monster, and the involvement with him presents the kind of twists real life gives to the formulas of fiction, more so as we don't pay attention.
Another case of institutional narcissism, where PR, reputation, enables worse crimes, in this case creating the very opposite of the function of the institutions: hospitals saving people. Writers Charles Graeber and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and director Tobias Lindholm trust the actual events will have any interest or suspense, so their dramatization is notably faithful to that. Compare with the Netflix documentary version Capturing the Killer Nurse, which includes Graeber who also wrote the book account. It's surprising only because of what so many other fictional accounts, based on true stories or not, do because they don't think things as they are would hold interest. What's also different in this matter, emphasized or at least brought out more, in this movie and the documentary, is the account of the ambivalence involved, thus the passability and susceptibility. The perpetrator was not a conspicuous monster, and the involvement with him presents the kind of twists real life gives to the formulas of fiction, more so as we don't pay attention.
Flesh Gordon (1974)
Porn joke title concept adds some more extensive B-movie art production and some stop-motion animation, but can't overcome the wacky acting trying to be humor and tepid orgy scenes (a strip parlor in San Francisco once had a sign outside that boasted "wall to wall sex," which was perhaps the right way to put how unappealing the idea is). One sequence attains the charm of Czech animation movies, which only serves to show how much better the whole could've been.
Porn joke title concept adds some more extensive B-movie art production and some stop-motion animation, but can't overcome the wacky acting trying to be humor and tepid orgy scenes (a strip parlor in San Francisco once had a sign outside that boasted "wall to wall sex," which was perhaps the right way to put how unappealing the idea is). One sequence attains the charm of Czech animation movies, which only serves to show how much better the whole could've been.
The Ladies Man (2000)
Stretching a skit idea to a feature length movie means backstory, melodrama, and even to some extent making things cute or sweet to be more reassuring: all the stuff that is predictable in SNL spinoffs no less than other movies. If you can tolerate that, they still get off some good ones, Tim Meadows gets to be even more winning with the character, and on the sweetness score, making STDs table talk rather than heavy has its uses.
Stretching a skit idea to a feature length movie means backstory, melodrama, and even to some extent making things cute or sweet to be more reassuring: all the stuff that is predictable in SNL spinoffs no less than other movies. If you can tolerate that, they still get off some good ones, Tim Meadows gets to be even more winning with the character, and on the sweetness score, making STDs table talk rather than heavy has its uses.
Gene Hackman tour
The French Connection (1972)
Anxious, moody, concentrating on atmosphere, when this police thriller won the Oscar for best picture, it was a breakthrough more for the New Hollywood than police or crime movies. Director William Friedkin imitated documentaries and was influenced by Le Samourai and Z. The movie in turn influenced Steven Spielberg and David Fincher, among just about everyone else, and especially Michael Mann. Along with the cops on the stakeout stuff (despite the step up in fashion) nearly every episode of Miami Vice uses the abrupt ending that doesn't resolve everything nicely, and music as mood setting, taking after Don Ellis's excellent score. Especially the piece during the last scene, this contributes to the bleak, unsettling tone. And of course, it was Gene Hackman's most famous character, "Popeye" Doyle.
The French Connection (1972)
Anxious, moody, concentrating on atmosphere, when this police thriller won the Oscar for best picture, it was a breakthrough more for the New Hollywood than police or crime movies. Director William Friedkin imitated documentaries and was influenced by Le Samourai and Z. The movie in turn influenced Steven Spielberg and David Fincher, among just about everyone else, and especially Michael Mann. Along with the cops on the stakeout stuff (despite the step up in fashion) nearly every episode of Miami Vice uses the abrupt ending that doesn't resolve everything nicely, and music as mood setting, taking after Don Ellis's excellent score. Especially the piece during the last scene, this contributes to the bleak, unsettling tone. And of course, it was Gene Hackman's most famous character, "Popeye" Doyle.
Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
The comic books have used the trick of burning things up and reviving from the ashes to meet or create new interest for a long time, but in the movie universe -- Marvel's is no exception -- it's more difficult to sustain through sequels. Marvel made the conflagration a peak moment and then they're responsible themselves for the saturation. There are just too many projects trying to repeat what's been accomplished, and turns in the stories aren't enough for innovation. Here they even make connections to the 2008 The Incredible Hulk, which wasn't the most illustrious piece of their tie-in scheme. A humorous bit with Harrison Ford as the president not wanting to exercise makes the reflexive humor trick, which Marvel has also carried beyond perfecting, ring another way: presidents on planes and firewalls, action movies, with shirt off to boot, as an octogenarian you really are too old for this shit.
The comic books have used the trick of burning things up and reviving from the ashes to meet or create new interest for a long time, but in the movie universe -- Marvel's is no exception -- it's more difficult to sustain through sequels. Marvel made the conflagration a peak moment and then they're responsible themselves for the saturation. There are just too many projects trying to repeat what's been accomplished, and turns in the stories aren't enough for innovation. Here they even make connections to the 2008 The Incredible Hulk, which wasn't the most illustrious piece of their tie-in scheme. A humorous bit with Harrison Ford as the president not wanting to exercise makes the reflexive humor trick, which Marvel has also carried beyond perfecting, ring another way: presidents on planes and firewalls, action movies, with shirt off to boot, as an octogenarian you really are too old for this shit.
Gene Hackman tour
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
As much as it was the butt of jokes, and for what it codified for the disaster formula of the 70s, following Airport -- the hook of who will survive the soap opera of the all-star cast -- there's actually an interesting thread to this, especially from a production design standpoint. The victims are trying to make their way through a capsized ship, so everything is reversed, upside down, and they're trying to advance upwards from top to bottom, ceilings to floors, level by level. Apart from the suspense of how they will get through the hull if they get there, there are giant light fixtures in the dining room to fall into and hanging barber chairs. Gene Hackman gives a spirited performance as a minister who's more hands on than most people, let alone clergy.
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
As much as it was the butt of jokes, and for what it codified for the disaster formula of the 70s, following Airport -- the hook of who will survive the soap opera of the all-star cast -- there's actually an interesting thread to this, especially from a production design standpoint. The victims are trying to make their way through a capsized ship, so everything is reversed, upside down, and they're trying to advance upwards from top to bottom, ceilings to floors, level by level. Apart from the suspense of how they will get through the hull if they get there, there are giant light fixtures in the dining room to fall into and hanging barber chairs. Gene Hackman gives a spirited performance as a minister who's more hands on than most people, let alone clergy.
Virtuosity (1995)
It's probably more fun to watch this now, than it was back then, and snicker at the attempt to make something sophisticated of virtual reality in the computer graphics of its day -- and also rather dinky production design, for things like labs and dance clubs. But it's also the same sort of devious fun to see Russell Crowe's hammy gleeful evil performance. There's also an attempt at a twist of what is material and what is virtual that might've been a reflexive moment, about movies themselves, but really makes no sense at all, especially when all the effects of the action, damage and carnage, are still shown in the "real" world.
It's probably more fun to watch this now, than it was back then, and snicker at the attempt to make something sophisticated of virtual reality in the computer graphics of its day -- and also rather dinky production design, for things like labs and dance clubs. But it's also the same sort of devious fun to see Russell Crowe's hammy gleeful evil performance. There's also an attempt at a twist of what is material and what is virtual that might've been a reflexive moment, about movies themselves, but really makes no sense at all, especially when all the effects of the action, damage and carnage, are still shown in the "real" world.
The Irish Pub (2013)
Anecdotal pose presentation -- shot setups like for still photos, but with, e.g., kids sticking their heads in the frame -- of some longstanding pubs in various Irish locations gives the local flavor grand and banal, chewing your ear style, although the music makes this more affected.
Anecdotal pose presentation -- shot setups like for still photos, but with, e.g., kids sticking their heads in the frame -- of some longstanding pubs in various Irish locations gives the local flavor grand and banal, chewing your ear style, although the music makes this more affected.
The Rock (1996)
As outrageous as it is the whole way, there's a charm to it, that comes from some nonetheless cleverness in the script and from the actors, a good ensemble cast but not least from Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. Who would've imagined that pairing, and yet even the incongruity of it works, and for Cage it's a more interesting character, because of the vulnerability, than some of his other balls out characters. But it's a Don Simpson / Jerry Bruckheimer production and Michael Bay directed. It's intermittently clever and stupid, sometimes from shot to shot. It's partially the script versus the direction, but it's also in the direction itself. There are clever flourishes in the dialogue, then there will be some horrible editing on that, or then something happens that's dragged out absurdly, like a 5-year-old playing with toys.
As outrageous as it is the whole way, there's a charm to it, that comes from some nonetheless cleverness in the script and from the actors, a good ensemble cast but not least from Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. Who would've imagined that pairing, and yet even the incongruity of it works, and for Cage it's a more interesting character, because of the vulnerability, than some of his other balls out characters. But it's a Don Simpson / Jerry Bruckheimer production and Michael Bay directed. It's intermittently clever and stupid, sometimes from shot to shot. It's partially the script versus the direction, but it's also in the direction itself. There are clever flourishes in the dialogue, then there will be some horrible editing on that, or then something happens that's dragged out absurdly, like a 5-year-old playing with toys.
Gene Hackman tour
Absolute Power (1997)
Interesting but bland. There are too many parts and it spends time with jags so that by the time we get to climactic moment, there's not enough left. It might be a nice idea to play something less action movie cliche, like the whole part about the daughter, but the setup with the safe in the room and the president of the United States seems hard to upstage dramatically, even it's not a big action climax.
Absolute Power (1997)
Interesting but bland. There are too many parts and it spends time with jags so that by the time we get to climactic moment, there's not enough left. It might be a nice idea to play something less action movie cliche, like the whole part about the daughter, but the setup with the safe in the room and the president of the United States seems hard to upstage dramatically, even it's not a big action climax.
Gene Hackman tour
Another Woman (1988)
It's got the terrible kind of narration Woody Allen later did with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, such bad writing, ushering the whole thing for us. It has none of the deftness of Hannah and Her Sisters for the similarity of pinballing so many different characters. Does Allen himself think that his comedy is just a mode, or that he's trying to adopt someone else's manner, Bergman, e.g. (as Pauline Kael said, this is another version -- homage or copy -- of Wild Strawberries)? Why drop the humorous touch, which is not necessarily less dramatic overall, especially when he's so much worse trying to play it straight. Without the humor, without the bounce of that cadence, the switchoffs bang around, a wad of dramatic assertions, thus the narration to patch them together.
3/4/25
Another Woman (1988)
It's got the terrible kind of narration Woody Allen later did with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, such bad writing, ushering the whole thing for us. It has none of the deftness of Hannah and Her Sisters for the similarity of pinballing so many different characters. Does Allen himself think that his comedy is just a mode, or that he's trying to adopt someone else's manner, Bergman, e.g. (as Pauline Kael said, this is another version -- homage or copy -- of Wild Strawberries)? Why drop the humorous touch, which is not necessarily less dramatic overall, especially when he's so much worse trying to play it straight. Without the humor, without the bounce of that cadence, the switchoffs bang around, a wad of dramatic assertions, thus the narration to patch them together.
Gene Hackman tour
Power (1986)
It's the Ides of March of its day, an attempt at a knowing look at the consultant and lobbyist world behind American politics. Whether the timidity comes from the time itself, or the makers, or it was imposed by movie executives, there's a lightness to this that seems to be keeping it from even its own serious reaches. It's closer to Shampoo than Network, but it's about like a mix of those, with it's seriousness overpitched in the more flip sprawl. Director Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon got that tone perfect, a candor and looseness to the unfolding of serious events, but this attempt at a cross-section makes it too diffuse. It's an interesting cast, including Julie Christie and Gene Hackman, and early Denzel Washington, before he and Richard Gere got on the bad cop movie track.
Power (1986)
It's the Ides of March of its day, an attempt at a knowing look at the consultant and lobbyist world behind American politics. Whether the timidity comes from the time itself, or the makers, or it was imposed by movie executives, there's a lightness to this that seems to be keeping it from even its own serious reaches. It's closer to Shampoo than Network, but it's about like a mix of those, with it's seriousness overpitched in the more flip sprawl. Director Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon got that tone perfect, a candor and looseness to the unfolding of serious events, but this attempt at a cross-section makes it too diffuse. It's an interesting cast, including Julie Christie and Gene Hackman, and early Denzel Washington, before he and Richard Gere got on the bad cop movie track.
Gene Hackman tour
Crimson Tide (1995)
This is a pressure cooker that happens to raise more complex matters. A table conversation, in which the Captain and his executive officer skirt around more profound ideological differences, tests the waters, and there's a more pointed discussion about military hierarchy and democracy. The climactic moment, rather than a showdown with a Russian sub or launching nuclear war, is one that raises the question about procedure and command, and thus of whether authority is the rules or the person. The unique situation posed includes whether a captain commits mutiny to take back his command if he has broken protocol (although what we have of the script, by Michael Schifffer, doesn't address this latter point directly). In the line of director Tony Scott's work, this is relatively subdued, but it's still cranked up as a thriller. Hans Zimmer's main theme sounds like "The Force Theme."
Crimson Tide (1995)
This is a pressure cooker that happens to raise more complex matters. A table conversation, in which the Captain and his executive officer skirt around more profound ideological differences, tests the waters, and there's a more pointed discussion about military hierarchy and democracy. The climactic moment, rather than a showdown with a Russian sub or launching nuclear war, is one that raises the question about procedure and command, and thus of whether authority is the rules or the person. The unique situation posed includes whether a captain commits mutiny to take back his command if he has broken protocol (although what we have of the script, by Michael Schifffer, doesn't address this latter point directly). In the line of director Tony Scott's work, this is relatively subdued, but it's still cranked up as a thriller. Hans Zimmer's main theme sounds like "The Force Theme."
Gladtwoator (2024)
I can't say this is much worse than the first one, because I thought the first one was already really bad. (See Gladiator.) But there are sharks -- in the arena. This is the level Ridley Scott has gone to. Sharkiator. Maybe that was to make the baboon devil hounds and rhino mount look more realistic. Or is that less realistic? Those Romans were amazing with the sealant they had back then. Or maybe they just had mighty good CG. The music is like Civilization, the game, but don't worry, it doesn't look like that. It still looks like a lifestyle commercial.
I can't say this is much worse than the first one, because I thought the first one was already really bad. (See Gladiator.) But there are sharks -- in the arena. This is the level Ridley Scott has gone to. Sharkiator. Maybe that was to make the baboon devil hounds and rhino mount look more realistic. Or is that less realistic? Those Romans were amazing with the sealant they had back then. Or maybe they just had mighty good CG. The music is like Civilization, the game, but don't worry, it doesn't look like that. It still looks like a lifestyle commercial.
The Method (2005)
This idea has been around more as rumor and comedy sketches than actual fact: a company throws candidates into a behavior experiment as a way to learn more about them and make a choice. The problem at feature length, long enough to constitute a storyline or plot, is that it can feel more like manipulation of the viewer. It's a good chance to see a fine Spanish cast, and the premise provides lots of good mystery and shades and turns of character for them to play on. The script, by Jordi Galceran, Mateo Gil and director Marcelo Piñeyro, tries to break up the pattern, and thus the predictability, of the experiment, but the trails it goes off on are more of a stretch and dubious for other reasons, especially as straight drama and not more figurative or surreal.
This idea has been around more as rumor and comedy sketches than actual fact: a company throws candidates into a behavior experiment as a way to learn more about them and make a choice. The problem at feature length, long enough to constitute a storyline or plot, is that it can feel more like manipulation of the viewer. It's a good chance to see a fine Spanish cast, and the premise provides lots of good mystery and shades and turns of character for them to play on. The script, by Jordi Galceran, Mateo Gil and director Marcelo Piñeyro, tries to break up the pattern, and thus the predictability, of the experiment, but the trails it goes off on are more of a stretch and dubious for other reasons, especially as straight drama and not more figurative or surreal.
Gene Hackman tour
Heist (2001)
David Mamet trimmed down to movie formula. The ambiguity of the characters becomes the function of the twists. Brisk and concentrated has the advantage of smoothing out some of Mamet's quirks, like the repetition in the dialogue, something that, strangely, he does as a writer that comes off worse when he directs. But for this reason, too, there's less flavor than other Mamet works, the versions of his plays, or Homicide or House of Games, even The Spanish Prisoner.
Heist (2001)
David Mamet trimmed down to movie formula. The ambiguity of the characters becomes the function of the twists. Brisk and concentrated has the advantage of smoothing out some of Mamet's quirks, like the repetition in the dialogue, something that, strangely, he does as a writer that comes off worse when he directs. But for this reason, too, there's less flavor than other Mamet works, the versions of his plays, or Homicide or House of Games, even The Spanish Prisoner.
Gene Hackman tour
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
It's not a comedy, but it's not really serious either. It's at a pitch of put-on as thick as the costumes and accoutrements and the photography that looks as though it had more color swabbed onto it. Sergio Leone made the movies more like comic books (see comments for Once upon a Time in the West). Sam Raimi's definitely aiming at Leone, and not least Once upon a Time in the West, but it's as if he used comics as the source.
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
It's not a comedy, but it's not really serious either. It's at a pitch of put-on as thick as the costumes and accoutrements and the photography that looks as though it had more color swabbed onto it. Sergio Leone made the movies more like comic books (see comments for Once upon a Time in the West). Sam Raimi's definitely aiming at Leone, and not least Once upon a Time in the West, but it's as if he used comics as the source.
Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World (2024)
This documentary about the most famous representative and survivor of the Little Ukraine neighborhood in New York City's East Village gives a good concise history of the diner / restaurant / hot spot (Anthony Bourdain had it on his show; Quentin Crisp was there on one of my visits) before it becomes the center of NYC's Ukrainian support effort for the war. Director Michael Fiore's account matches the temper of the place and it's owner and manager: tireless, attentive, matter-of-fact, but providing even good spirits along with the 3,000 handmade pierogis a day while keeping up the vigil for relatives in the homeland, and sponsoring many of them as refugees.
2/27/25
This documentary about the most famous representative and survivor of the Little Ukraine neighborhood in New York City's East Village gives a good concise history of the diner / restaurant / hot spot (Anthony Bourdain had it on his show; Quentin Crisp was there on one of my visits) before it becomes the center of NYC's Ukrainian support effort for the war. Director Michael Fiore's account matches the temper of the place and it's owner and manager: tireless, attentive, matter-of-fact, but providing even good spirits along with the 3,000 handmade pierogis a day while keeping up the vigil for relatives in the homeland, and sponsoring many of them as refugees.
Gene Hackman died.
Hackman with Al Pacino in Scarecrow, which Hackman said was the favorite of his career.
2/26/25
Hackman with Al Pacino in Scarecrow, which Hackman said was the favorite of his career.
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
The frame or overall gesture is the sort of cute American fable of Capra or Harvey, but in the updated manner of, say, Groundhog Day. The jump cut to the first appearance of Lars's new friend clangs, like a loud joke that's not really funny. But rather than play this as surreal, even in the American fairy tale way, it has lots of nice touches of a droll realism and it's also letting us see how the figure is functioning psychologically, without spelling it out too much. The insertion of the sex doll into the banality of everyone else is the fun part of the incongruity, again a figure that's hard to accept completely, but we do for the sake of the argument, which is also seeing how we do for the sake of another, and that's carried off with a sweetness that's not saccharine and has its sly observations. (See Ascension for a different approach to the banality of sex dolls.)
The frame or overall gesture is the sort of cute American fable of Capra or Harvey, but in the updated manner of, say, Groundhog Day. The jump cut to the first appearance of Lars's new friend clangs, like a loud joke that's not really funny. But rather than play this as surreal, even in the American fairy tale way, it has lots of nice touches of a droll realism and it's also letting us see how the figure is functioning psychologically, without spelling it out too much. The insertion of the sex doll into the banality of everyone else is the fun part of the incongruity, again a figure that's hard to accept completely, but we do for the sake of the argument, which is also seeing how we do for the sake of another, and that's carried off with a sweetness that's not saccharine and has its sly observations. (See Ascension for a different approach to the banality of sex dolls.)
Companion (2025)
There's a setup to some good moments about self-consciousness of couples in social groups and that leads into the twists that reveal the main premise. While the social comedy vibe keeps this from being too slick, like the faddish sleek design sci-fi stuff since at least Black Mirror, it moves on thriller mechanics and misses lots of opportunity with that dynamic of implication, the allegorical play, comic or dramatic.
There's a setup to some good moments about self-consciousness of couples in social groups and that leads into the twists that reveal the main premise. While the social comedy vibe keeps this from being too slick, like the faddish sleek design sci-fi stuff since at least Black Mirror, it moves on thriller mechanics and misses lots of opportunity with that dynamic of implication, the allegorical play, comic or dramatic.
The Gorge (2025)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith as The Hunger Games meets Pirates of the Caribbean with a streak of Castle Wolfenstein.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith as The Hunger Games meets Pirates of the Caribbean with a streak of Castle Wolfenstein.
Evilenko (2003)
Citizen X (1995)
Based loosely on Ukrainian born Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, this features Malcolm McDowell and the music of Angelo Badalamenti, including two songs with Dolores O'Riordan. The Italian production written and directed by David Grieco takes liberties for a more psychologically involved study, allowing McDowell an absorbing performance, though the character becomes something not so meek or retiring in other social exchanges, as for example portrayed by Jeffrey DeMunn in the more directly based Citizen X, the made-for-HBO movie of 1995. Evilenko also makes a strange path with Martin Csokas as the magistrate tracking the killer. His steely and foreboding resolve sometimes seems more menacing than the killer and sometimes out of sync, like a character from another movie. It leads to a strange interrogation scene that turns into something more like an experimental actor exercise and not as productive even artistically as the meeting portrayed in Citizen X of psychological profiler Bukhanovsky with Chikatilo. Citizen X is more modest, in conception and its bland TV show photography of blocking even in locations, but it manages a much broader study of the way hierarchical systems end up enabling what they would purport to prevent, the Soviet bureaucracy serving the same function as the Catholic church for deflection and misprision. In the depiction of serial killers, there's also the matter of the profile of the context, the environment they're in, which means the rest of us, too. And this depiction of the latter day Soviet system, even a bit pat, has another kind of pertinence when the ideologues refuse fact for the sake of the official representation of things.
2/21/25
Citizen X (1995)
Based loosely on Ukrainian born Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, this features Malcolm McDowell and the music of Angelo Badalamenti, including two songs with Dolores O'Riordan. The Italian production written and directed by David Grieco takes liberties for a more psychologically involved study, allowing McDowell an absorbing performance, though the character becomes something not so meek or retiring in other social exchanges, as for example portrayed by Jeffrey DeMunn in the more directly based Citizen X, the made-for-HBO movie of 1995. Evilenko also makes a strange path with Martin Csokas as the magistrate tracking the killer. His steely and foreboding resolve sometimes seems more menacing than the killer and sometimes out of sync, like a character from another movie. It leads to a strange interrogation scene that turns into something more like an experimental actor exercise and not as productive even artistically as the meeting portrayed in Citizen X of psychological profiler Bukhanovsky with Chikatilo. Citizen X is more modest, in conception and its bland TV show photography of blocking even in locations, but it manages a much broader study of the way hierarchical systems end up enabling what they would purport to prevent, the Soviet bureaucracy serving the same function as the Catholic church for deflection and misprision. In the depiction of serial killers, there's also the matter of the profile of the context, the environment they're in, which means the rest of us, too. And this depiction of the latter day Soviet system, even a bit pat, has another kind of pertinence when the ideologues refuse fact for the sake of the official representation of things.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
"It means something." The soul-searching and self-realization of the 60s and 70s is subsumed as spectacle. But it's a manic agitation, kinetic image as restless anxiety. The opening sequence with its broody, posey suspense has something of the Exorcist quality to it. It's affect but for the sake of plot propulsion. All that is turned around, as is so much sci-fi horror of the ultimate xenophobia, with the ending, and the movie is significant for giving us that different disposition and perhaps calling attention by exception to the preponderance of antagonism in our imagining extraterrestrials. Perhaps all the manic quality of the preceding serves the contrast, but it just as much works the other way. After being won over by the expectant and more receptive awe of the ending, there's a retroactive cast: why was all that so fraught? If the army and whatever organization "Lacombe" -- Francois Truffaut -- represents are really so accepting of this meeting, why the extent of their bogeyman tactics with the public? (How would they prevent that mother ship from being seen well beyond the area anyway?) Is this a confessional, or a justification, of sacrificing for one's art? For movie-making?
"It means something." The soul-searching and self-realization of the 60s and 70s is subsumed as spectacle. But it's a manic agitation, kinetic image as restless anxiety. The opening sequence with its broody, posey suspense has something of the Exorcist quality to it. It's affect but for the sake of plot propulsion. All that is turned around, as is so much sci-fi horror of the ultimate xenophobia, with the ending, and the movie is significant for giving us that different disposition and perhaps calling attention by exception to the preponderance of antagonism in our imagining extraterrestrials. Perhaps all the manic quality of the preceding serves the contrast, but it just as much works the other way. After being won over by the expectant and more receptive awe of the ending, there's a retroactive cast: why was all that so fraught? If the army and whatever organization "Lacombe" -- Francois Truffaut -- represents are really so accepting of this meeting, why the extent of their bogeyman tactics with the public? (How would they prevent that mother ship from being seen well beyond the area anyway?) Is this a confessional, or a justification, of sacrificing for one's art? For movie-making?
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
The rough edge of the original Mad Max also included some clunky story-telling. George Miller was right not to throw off the kinetic tack, but to make things even more on that principle. His sequel was the better movie, making it more bare of a point, smoothing it out as kind of epic simplicity. Now we see he wasn't done, after Fury Road that he could even make this more poetic -- Thunderdome showed more touches on the way to that -- but Road Warrior classed up the action movie, a western with horseless vehicles, and certainly the post-apocalypse or biker gang variety.
The rough edge of the original Mad Max also included some clunky story-telling. George Miller was right not to throw off the kinetic tack, but to make things even more on that principle. His sequel was the better movie, making it more bare of a point, smoothing it out as kind of epic simplicity. Now we see he wasn't done, after Fury Road that he could even make this more poetic -- Thunderdome showed more touches on the way to that -- but Road Warrior classed up the action movie, a western with horseless vehicles, and certainly the post-apocalypse or biker gang variety.
The Wild Women of Wongo (1959)
Of all the caveman and primitive tribe dumb projections in jokes, skits and movies, this might take the cake. The Film Crew dug this up from oblivion to unleash on the world again. With the sophistication of a revue show at a fraternal club smoker, this proposes a setup where Mother Nature and Father Time put the ugly men with beautiful women on one island, and vice versa on another. Apemen are a catalyst to lead to the exciting conclusion that the beautiful end up with the beautiful and the ugly with the ugly, setting all right with square-assed simplicity.
Of all the caveman and primitive tribe dumb projections in jokes, skits and movies, this might take the cake. The Film Crew dug this up from oblivion to unleash on the world again. With the sophistication of a revue show at a fraternal club smoker, this proposes a setup where Mother Nature and Father Time put the ugly men with beautiful women on one island, and vice versa on another. Apemen are a catalyst to lead to the exciting conclusion that the beautiful end up with the beautiful and the ugly with the ugly, setting all right with square-assed simplicity.
Not of This Earth (1988)
Not of This Earth (1957)
The 1988 version came about because Jim Wynorski bet Roger Corman that he could make the movie on the same schedule, and with the same budget adjusted for inflation. Its other claim to fame was the casting of Traci Lords in her first non-porn role. The scripts are the same, most of the lines, but the later version adds some flourishes of its own. Wynorski not only succeeded with the bet, but his version has decent pacing that gives it some snap, especially in the beginning. It bogs down for the same reason as the original, the source material. I saw the later one first, and when the vacuum cleaner salesman shows up, I thought, wow, this guy's another version of Dick Miller. Guess who's the salesman in the original. Wonder why they didn't use him in the remake. Another dubious distinction of the remake: the opening credits are a highlight reel, not of scenes coming in the movie, but of other Corman movies, including Battle Beyond the Stars, Forbidden World, Galaxy of Terror, Humanoids from the Deep, Battle Beyond the Sun and Piranha, and footage from the same is used in the movie.
Not of This Earth (1957)
The 1988 version came about because Jim Wynorski bet Roger Corman that he could make the movie on the same schedule, and with the same budget adjusted for inflation. Its other claim to fame was the casting of Traci Lords in her first non-porn role. The scripts are the same, most of the lines, but the later version adds some flourishes of its own. Wynorski not only succeeded with the bet, but his version has decent pacing that gives it some snap, especially in the beginning. It bogs down for the same reason as the original, the source material. I saw the later one first, and when the vacuum cleaner salesman shows up, I thought, wow, this guy's another version of Dick Miller. Guess who's the salesman in the original. Wonder why they didn't use him in the remake. Another dubious distinction of the remake: the opening credits are a highlight reel, not of scenes coming in the movie, but of other Corman movies, including Battle Beyond the Stars, Forbidden World, Galaxy of Terror, Humanoids from the Deep, Battle Beyond the Sun and Piranha, and footage from the same is used in the movie.
September 5 (2024)
When the hostage situation broke out at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, it was in the wee hours of the morning and the ABC Sports night shift staff realized they were in place to cover the events well before their own network's news division could get there. This movie takes that perspective, following the segment and frame of the ABC Sports crew improvising it's own coverage of live non-athletic events. There have been other movies about the actual hostage situation, including documentaries, but this is about that attempt at coverage, and is reflexive of that even before other questions are raised in the dialogue about reporting, journalism, live broadcast, exploitation and the involvement of all this with and effect on the events themselves. We get mostly the view from the studio, and archival footage is seen on the monitors in the studio, including that of the real Jim McCay having to report on things other then sports. Director Tim Fehlbaum counteracts the fly-on-the-wall detachment by trying to make it sizzle more, with the jerky camera, suspense music, and lots of storming entrances and exits, but it's effective, and they countered current trend by going shorter rather than longer.
When the hostage situation broke out at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, it was in the wee hours of the morning and the ABC Sports night shift staff realized they were in place to cover the events well before their own network's news division could get there. This movie takes that perspective, following the segment and frame of the ABC Sports crew improvising it's own coverage of live non-athletic events. There have been other movies about the actual hostage situation, including documentaries, but this is about that attempt at coverage, and is reflexive of that even before other questions are raised in the dialogue about reporting, journalism, live broadcast, exploitation and the involvement of all this with and effect on the events themselves. We get mostly the view from the studio, and archival footage is seen on the monitors in the studio, including that of the real Jim McCay having to report on things other then sports. Director Tim Fehlbaum counteracts the fly-on-the-wall detachment by trying to make it sizzle more, with the jerky camera, suspense music, and lots of storming entrances and exits, but it's effective, and they countered current trend by going shorter rather than longer.
Sea of Love (1989)
Frankie and Johnny (1991)
Sea of Love has a thriller plot but a surprisingly humbler mien with more realistic dimensions, which, as things progressed through the late 80s into the 90s, would become more unlikely or oxymoronic. Al Pacino, returning to movies after about four years, Ellen Barkin, and John Goodman help with this, but they're certainly served well by it, too, the script of Richard Price and especially the direction of Harold Becker. It's more in line with Pacino's 70s material, in between Scarface and the 90s inflated performances that would become the source of Pacino parodies. Even a couple of heavy makeout scenes have interesting touches that are more about behavior and less about some steamy montage graphic ideal. There are also nice touches about personal ads dating, glancing poignant observations. There's no supercop, super killer, no super femme fatale. By contrast, Frankie and Johnny tries to be about humble things, both the charm of the downtrodden and the cross-bearing of romance, and even perhaps tries to be like those hearty Pacino roles of the 70s, but it ushers the experience so baldly, even that as quaint or guileless -- on top of the rest, montages put the various characters together to let us know how much it does care about them, in case we don't pick up on that or care on our own -- it's as if trying to reassure us it's romantic comedy (Terrence McNalley wrote and Garry Marshall directed). A revelation for Michelle Pfeiffer's character comes so late it makes all this more like farcical machination, instead of about the real problem, and this also makes Pacino's character not charmingly persistent, but pushy to the point of creepy. It's more like socially awkward, and he's supposed to have his own foibles, but even the response to the big reveal isn't deferential, not even cautious selfishly, and it's more that sort of behavior justified as true love in movies, like stalking in The Graduate. Sea of Love has the more deft depiction of foibles, apparently as a thriller, while Frankie and Johnny is the more contrived as romance or drama. Both movies make reference to older songs used also as the titles.
2/12/25
Frankie and Johnny (1991)
Sea of Love has a thriller plot but a surprisingly humbler mien with more realistic dimensions, which, as things progressed through the late 80s into the 90s, would become more unlikely or oxymoronic. Al Pacino, returning to movies after about four years, Ellen Barkin, and John Goodman help with this, but they're certainly served well by it, too, the script of Richard Price and especially the direction of Harold Becker. It's more in line with Pacino's 70s material, in between Scarface and the 90s inflated performances that would become the source of Pacino parodies. Even a couple of heavy makeout scenes have interesting touches that are more about behavior and less about some steamy montage graphic ideal. There are also nice touches about personal ads dating, glancing poignant observations. There's no supercop, super killer, no super femme fatale. By contrast, Frankie and Johnny tries to be about humble things, both the charm of the downtrodden and the cross-bearing of romance, and even perhaps tries to be like those hearty Pacino roles of the 70s, but it ushers the experience so baldly, even that as quaint or guileless -- on top of the rest, montages put the various characters together to let us know how much it does care about them, in case we don't pick up on that or care on our own -- it's as if trying to reassure us it's romantic comedy (Terrence McNalley wrote and Garry Marshall directed). A revelation for Michelle Pfeiffer's character comes so late it makes all this more like farcical machination, instead of about the real problem, and this also makes Pacino's character not charmingly persistent, but pushy to the point of creepy. It's more like socially awkward, and he's supposed to have his own foibles, but even the response to the big reveal isn't deferential, not even cautious selfishly, and it's more that sort of behavior justified as true love in movies, like stalking in The Graduate. Sea of Love has the more deft depiction of foibles, apparently as a thriller, while Frankie and Johnny is the more contrived as romance or drama. Both movies make reference to older songs used also as the titles.
Supervixens (1975)
In the 70s Russ Meyer ventured into more nudity and direct treatment of sex, though that treatment was camping it up. All Meyer's movies are essentially the same fabric and plan, not only the movie version of burlesque, but a burlesque of movies: wild angles and attack editing; montage sequences of figures, usually full ones, virtually or literally dancing; voiceover or dialogue haranguing a parody of plot and drama; music of various blaring varieties, wacky west, Nazi marches, Muzak, movie intermission fanfare, stripper jazz and pop. What he loses in the charm of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, he makes up for with focusing on the sex, and his work straddles the divide between porn and, well, non-porn, because it's as much a burlesque of the former. (Rudy Ray Moore gives him a run for the money, especially The Human Tornado.) This may be the most evened-out of his nudie pics, because it gets into more plot, but that's little more than dragging out sequences of action other than sex, mostly violence, like boring hump films.
In the 70s Russ Meyer ventured into more nudity and direct treatment of sex, though that treatment was camping it up. All Meyer's movies are essentially the same fabric and plan, not only the movie version of burlesque, but a burlesque of movies: wild angles and attack editing; montage sequences of figures, usually full ones, virtually or literally dancing; voiceover or dialogue haranguing a parody of plot and drama; music of various blaring varieties, wacky west, Nazi marches, Muzak, movie intermission fanfare, stripper jazz and pop. What he loses in the charm of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, he makes up for with focusing on the sex, and his work straddles the divide between porn and, well, non-porn, because it's as much a burlesque of the former. (Rudy Ray Moore gives him a run for the money, especially The Human Tornado.) This may be the most evened-out of his nudie pics, because it gets into more plot, but that's little more than dragging out sequences of action other than sex, mostly violence, like boring hump films.
Hollywood After Dark [aka Walk the Angry Beach] (1961)
Low-budget feature about a strip joint as the front for other criminal activity, but also as exploitation of would-be actresses, including one played by Rue McClanahan. While the movie itself is double-dealing, passing off as concern for the plight of the exploited the same mostly burlesque dancing, it has a pacing conducive to zoning out, with slack-handed long sequences not only of the dancing but lots of other incidental action. Now notable for featuring one of the Golden Girls in striptease, the movie was featured as a DVD release with commentary tracks by The Film Crew, a reformation of Mystery Science Theater 3000 members Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, that was also a precursor to their RiffTrax.
Low-budget feature about a strip joint as the front for other criminal activity, but also as exploitation of would-be actresses, including one played by Rue McClanahan. While the movie itself is double-dealing, passing off as concern for the plight of the exploited the same mostly burlesque dancing, it has a pacing conducive to zoning out, with slack-handed long sequences not only of the dancing but lots of other incidental action. Now notable for featuring one of the Golden Girls in striptease, the movie was featured as a DVD release with commentary tracks by The Film Crew, a reformation of Mystery Science Theater 3000 members Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, that was also a precursor to their RiffTrax.
A Real Pain (2024)
Jesse Eisenberg -- he also wrote and directed -- gives an account of heritage past and present that's also in the vein of errant travel movies like Irma Vep or Compartment No. 6. Calling it tragi-comic doesn't do justice to the way the social satire approach is actually more graceful and attentive, handling neither the serious subject matter too sanctimoniously, nor any of it as just wacky humor. As a particular example of the touch, there are elisions, little montage sequences, that make passing reference to things that otherwise might be the banality of situation comedy. The carriage of this is even in the title, the way the movie makes the literal meaning ring out again from the common sense of the expression.
Jesse Eisenberg -- he also wrote and directed -- gives an account of heritage past and present that's also in the vein of errant travel movies like Irma Vep or Compartment No. 6. Calling it tragi-comic doesn't do justice to the way the social satire approach is actually more graceful and attentive, handling neither the serious subject matter too sanctimoniously, nor any of it as just wacky humor. As a particular example of the touch, there are elisions, little montage sequences, that make passing reference to things that otherwise might be the banality of situation comedy. The carriage of this is even in the title, the way the movie makes the literal meaning ring out again from the common sense of the expression.
Sesevenen aka Sezen (1995)
David Fincher got it right with Zodiac. That is, if you consider an account of events that's plausible, let alone faithful, as far as serial killers, police procedure, etc., to be any sort of measure. This movie, on the heels of Silence of the Lambs, is more about baking up the lore. Though it has a spine built out of more careful consideration, the dialogues between Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt -- and there's one scene in particular, at a bar, that's very well done, the peak of the movie, and even has statements significant for cooking up and thrill interest -- the crime scene sets alone are Grand Guignol, and the ending, where it all leads, is way overdone.
David Fincher got it right with Zodiac. That is, if you consider an account of events that's plausible, let alone faithful, as far as serial killers, police procedure, etc., to be any sort of measure. This movie, on the heels of Silence of the Lambs, is more about baking up the lore. Though it has a spine built out of more careful consideration, the dialogues between Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt -- and there's one scene in particular, at a bar, that's very well done, the peak of the movie, and even has statements significant for cooking up and thrill interest -- the crime scene sets alone are Grand Guignol, and the ending, where it all leads, is way overdone.
Weird Science (1985)
It gets right to the point of the premise, and thus makes no bones about it: teen boys want to make their own sex object. Whether director and co-writer John Hughes is intentionally making a reflexive joke that the boys don't know what to do with that, the movie then shoots off on capricious tangents, and if it's about anything other than being madcap, it's social anxiety. Stepping up to character lessons from their fantasy companion -- Kelly LeBrock helps the twist by also giving a performance against expectations -- gets stretched by pulling things out of the air, including figures from other movies like The Road Warrior and The Hills Have Eyes. The gag setup delivery typical of Hughes is at its peak here.
2/6/25
It gets right to the point of the premise, and thus makes no bones about it: teen boys want to make their own sex object. Whether director and co-writer John Hughes is intentionally making a reflexive joke that the boys don't know what to do with that, the movie then shoots off on capricious tangents, and if it's about anything other than being madcap, it's social anxiety. Stepping up to character lessons from their fantasy companion -- Kelly LeBrock helps the twist by also giving a performance against expectations -- gets stretched by pulling things out of the air, including figures from other movies like The Road Warrior and The Hills Have Eyes. The gag setup delivery typical of Hughes is at its peak here.
Twisted (2004)
Philip Kaufman directed this, which might be the biggest surprise, depending on what you think of his other work or the auteur theory. It's an even more flashy, hustly thriller than some of the other Ashley Judd vehicles, at times approaching the kind of big movie absurdity that's as good as self-parody as in The Long Kiss Goodnight, Bad Company, or, my favorite, The Temp. There are moments in the middle where it hits notes of an interesting parable about sexism and role reversal, and considering Judd's real history you could make more of that. But the twist is not on twisters. Cf. also, Black and White, a TV-movie thriller with Gina Gershon.
Philip Kaufman directed this, which might be the biggest surprise, depending on what you think of his other work or the auteur theory. It's an even more flashy, hustly thriller than some of the other Ashley Judd vehicles, at times approaching the kind of big movie absurdity that's as good as self-parody as in The Long Kiss Goodnight, Bad Company, or, my favorite, The Temp. There are moments in the middle where it hits notes of an interesting parable about sexism and role reversal, and considering Judd's real history you could make more of that. But the twist is not on twisters. Cf. also, Black and White, a TV-movie thriller with Gina Gershon.
Murder by Decree (1979)
In the line of revisionist Sherlock Holmes set off in the 70s by Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Holmes and the Loch Ness monster), and which included The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Holmes and Freud), there's this cross with Jack the Ripper directed by Bob Clark (Black Christmas, A Christmas Story, Porky's). There's a more impressionistic approach, the leering streets of London in the fog (not unlike Dickens's chancery opening in Bleak House), but still a lot of it is shot with that strange, part misty, part shiny look sometimes popular in the 70s, meant to be I don't know what -- like everything's inside a tea service? Like those predecessors, this transfers the revelation and explication climax to broader matters, but this one has the most expository and least interesting summation. In this Canadian and British co-production, Christopher Plummer makes the least patronizing Holmes, and he's joined by Donald Sutherland, Susan Clark and Genevieve Bujold on the Canadian side; and James Mason (as his rather fatherly Watson), David Hemmings, Anthony Quayle and John Gielgud on the British.
In the line of revisionist Sherlock Holmes set off in the 70s by Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Holmes and the Loch Ness monster), and which included The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Holmes and Freud), there's this cross with Jack the Ripper directed by Bob Clark (Black Christmas, A Christmas Story, Porky's). There's a more impressionistic approach, the leering streets of London in the fog (not unlike Dickens's chancery opening in Bleak House), but still a lot of it is shot with that strange, part misty, part shiny look sometimes popular in the 70s, meant to be I don't know what -- like everything's inside a tea service? Like those predecessors, this transfers the revelation and explication climax to broader matters, but this one has the most expository and least interesting summation. In this Canadian and British co-production, Christopher Plummer makes the least patronizing Holmes, and he's joined by Donald Sutherland, Susan Clark and Genevieve Bujold on the Canadian side; and James Mason (as his rather fatherly Watson), David Hemmings, Anthony Quayle and John Gielgud on the British.
Blue Velvet (1986) ♠
In memory of David Lynch, I watched this again, the movie of his I had least recently seen. It's included in Film/Script, the "studies" section which is in the print version only, but I was struck again at how great this movie looks. It's singular, even for its era, the 80s when faster film stocks led to easier natural light look, but that to lots of just picturesque sunsets, not always something with a more distinct visual plan. Cinematographer Frederick Elmes began working with Lynch on Eraserhead. What they got for this was a soft-edge contrast: deep darks, soft light, a fuzzy edge, but still contrast. There's a murkiness but also a crispness, the scene with Laura Dern's robin dream, church windows in the background, one of the best examples. The daylight is like this, too, plush, as if not only the color of things, but the darkness in or behind things is blushing through the light. In the night scenes and indoors, there's a kind of iris effect. It's a whole kind of experience here, caught or expressed with this look (and Lynch's sound): home for the summer, hanging out at night and lazy late days, weird conversations, odd and exciting, boring and interesting, life behind the scenes. The way this looks, you can feel and smell the night air.
In memory of David Lynch, I watched this again, the movie of his I had least recently seen. It's included in Film/Script, the "studies" section which is in the print version only, but I was struck again at how great this movie looks. It's singular, even for its era, the 80s when faster film stocks led to easier natural light look, but that to lots of just picturesque sunsets, not always something with a more distinct visual plan. Cinematographer Frederick Elmes began working with Lynch on Eraserhead. What they got for this was a soft-edge contrast: deep darks, soft light, a fuzzy edge, but still contrast. There's a murkiness but also a crispness, the scene with Laura Dern's robin dream, church windows in the background, one of the best examples. The daylight is like this, too, plush, as if not only the color of things, but the darkness in or behind things is blushing through the light. In the night scenes and indoors, there's a kind of iris effect. It's a whole kind of experience here, caught or expressed with this look (and Lynch's sound): home for the summer, hanging out at night and lazy late days, weird conversations, odd and exciting, boring and interesting, life behind the scenes. The way this looks, you can feel and smell the night air.
Juror #2 (2024)
The script, by Jonathan A. Abrams, demonstrates the main problem of juries, the conflict between strict proof and feelings of the jurors otherwise, and the extraneous influences on deliberation, the lives of the jurors outside the case. But it's also constructed toward its more particular end of posing a bigger conflict, like one of those philosophical exercises of moral dilemma. Clint Eastwood's direction is quiet, patient, seems to be allowing consideration and not worried about spectacle, but it doesn't do anything to make the characters much more than the agents of the thought exercise. Nicholas Hoult is the right idea for the lead, but there is so much repetition of his perplexed reaction and smouldering moral conflict that it's hard not to think of the resemblance to John Boy Walton. (Cf. 12, especially for whether law, truth and justice amount to the same.)
The script, by Jonathan A. Abrams, demonstrates the main problem of juries, the conflict between strict proof and feelings of the jurors otherwise, and the extraneous influences on deliberation, the lives of the jurors outside the case. But it's also constructed toward its more particular end of posing a bigger conflict, like one of those philosophical exercises of moral dilemma. Clint Eastwood's direction is quiet, patient, seems to be allowing consideration and not worried about spectacle, but it doesn't do anything to make the characters much more than the agents of the thought exercise. Nicholas Hoult is the right idea for the lead, but there is so much repetition of his perplexed reaction and smouldering moral conflict that it's hard not to think of the resemblance to John Boy Walton. (Cf. 12, especially for whether law, truth and justice amount to the same.)
The Invisible Raptor (2023)
For a joke on chintzing out on special effects, the production quality is surprisingly decent. For stringing out the the joke as labored, prosaic if not truly serious plot for the repetition of body humor of which the gore is only a part, it has some surprisingly subtle touches. But that's a big pile of dinosaur shit to go through for a few kernels.
For a joke on chintzing out on special effects, the production quality is surprisingly decent. For stringing out the the joke as labored, prosaic if not truly serious plot for the repetition of body humor of which the gore is only a part, it has some surprisingly subtle touches. But that's a big pile of dinosaur shit to go through for a few kernels.
Jacknife (1989)
This has a bigger role for Kathy Baker, and the take gives interesting turns to Robert De Niro and Ed Harris. The take is something more like the road of good intentions and more ordinary pitfalls, but what could've been a major chance with -- what compared to most movies is -- a minor key sputters around with its own hesitation and manipulation.
1/22/25
This has a bigger role for Kathy Baker, and the take gives interesting turns to Robert De Niro and Ed Harris. The take is something more like the road of good intentions and more ordinary pitfalls, but what could've been a major chance with -- what compared to most movies is -- a minor key sputters around with its own hesitation and manipulation.
El [aka This Strange Passion] (1953)
I'm struck again at how straight, "classic," Bunuel's movie-making is. Looking up information, I read about Bunuel's "efficiency," which is really more like expedience with respect to the actual shoot. He planned the whole thing in script and drawing board stages, then shot as much to spec as possible, minimizing all the fuss and work of the shoot. Actors, like Catherine Deneuve (Belle de jour), talked about this. Bunuel was somewhat like Hitchcock or Fassbinder in that respect. Bunuel commented about his distaste for "beautiful" excess, the sort of anti-bourgeois sentiment of even the early Surrealist movement. So there is a kind of dressing down, but it's funny that coming from the viewer perspective, this can look like a pretty expedient, bare-bones kind of classic Hollywood shooting setup, "straight" style, or lack of stylization compared to someone like David Lynch. There's a great moment in the movie where the jealous man walks into a central hall with a stairway, by himself, zigzags up the steps, sits, finds some bar or stick, and starts banging it, making it more repetitive. Something like this stands out as a matter of plot or action, but not with particularly any other formal elaboration. There is a tendency towards reducing affect, but it's not Robert Bresson or Pier Pasolini level, and the acting tends to be quite conventional movie acting. It's as if the surrealism is operating at the -- conventional -- movie level. But how inadvertent, coincidental, is this? Is this a characteristic, an attribute? To be sur-real rather than, perhaps, sur-real -- or which way to even go with that? Resorting to something like stylized or sensuous or formal, to create surreal atmosphere -- is there an antithesis here, if only rhetorical?
I'm struck again at how straight, "classic," Bunuel's movie-making is. Looking up information, I read about Bunuel's "efficiency," which is really more like expedience with respect to the actual shoot. He planned the whole thing in script and drawing board stages, then shot as much to spec as possible, minimizing all the fuss and work of the shoot. Actors, like Catherine Deneuve (Belle de jour), talked about this. Bunuel was somewhat like Hitchcock or Fassbinder in that respect. Bunuel commented about his distaste for "beautiful" excess, the sort of anti-bourgeois sentiment of even the early Surrealist movement. So there is a kind of dressing down, but it's funny that coming from the viewer perspective, this can look like a pretty expedient, bare-bones kind of classic Hollywood shooting setup, "straight" style, or lack of stylization compared to someone like David Lynch. There's a great moment in the movie where the jealous man walks into a central hall with a stairway, by himself, zigzags up the steps, sits, finds some bar or stick, and starts banging it, making it more repetitive. Something like this stands out as a matter of plot or action, but not with particularly any other formal elaboration. There is a tendency towards reducing affect, but it's not Robert Bresson or Pier Pasolini level, and the acting tends to be quite conventional movie acting. It's as if the surrealism is operating at the -- conventional -- movie level. But how inadvertent, coincidental, is this? Is this a characteristic, an attribute? To be sur-real rather than, perhaps, sur-real -- or which way to even go with that? Resorting to something like stylized or sensuous or formal, to create surreal atmosphere -- is there an antithesis here, if only rhetorical?
Into the Deep (2025)
Double-dealing, using sharksploitation as shark conservation message, but also what is now very run-of-the-mill plot about divers encountering great whites as coming of age story. Richard Dreyfuss is the big catch, here, pulled in for the star appeal, and delivering a straight-up shark conservation speech during the closing credits. But his jittery smartass act looks very different nearing 80, and his character is oceanographer, marathon coach, personal trainer, drill sergeant granddad, who gives conflicting dictums like the water is their kingdom, gotta respect that, you're food, don't touch, go there and face them.
Double-dealing, using sharksploitation as shark conservation message, but also what is now very run-of-the-mill plot about divers encountering great whites as coming of age story. Richard Dreyfuss is the big catch, here, pulled in for the star appeal, and delivering a straight-up shark conservation speech during the closing credits. But his jittery smartass act looks very different nearing 80, and his character is oceanographer, marathon coach, personal trainer, drill sergeant granddad, who gives conflicting dictums like the water is their kingdom, gotta respect that, you're food, don't touch, go there and face them.
Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque [Le fantome d'Henri Langlois] (2004)
Expedient rather than fancy, like Langlois himself, this provides an impressive assembly of witnesses to the life, work and influence of the guardian angel of the 20th century art, the man who started film preservation as almost a hobby, when no one else was thinking of it, and became a curator of film more generally, inspiring particularly the French New Wave, but many others and generations beyond. With the state involvement came scrutiny of the work and the man, and there were comments about his sloppiness, as if a clean office would indicate more than the vast amounts of film he was constantly struggling to shelter. An attempt to remove Langlois sparked an event that was a precursor to the larger 1968 protests (as depicted in The Dreamers). Put this on your double bill with Film: The Living Record of Our Memory for your reminder of the matter of preservation -- the recorded image is not as immortal as we may think. See also See Through Film, which is also in Memories of Unproduction.
Expedient rather than fancy, like Langlois himself, this provides an impressive assembly of witnesses to the life, work and influence of the guardian angel of the 20th century art, the man who started film preservation as almost a hobby, when no one else was thinking of it, and became a curator of film more generally, inspiring particularly the French New Wave, but many others and generations beyond. With the state involvement came scrutiny of the work and the man, and there were comments about his sloppiness, as if a clean office would indicate more than the vast amounts of film he was constantly struggling to shelter. An attempt to remove Langlois sparked an event that was a precursor to the larger 1968 protests (as depicted in The Dreamers). Put this on your double bill with Film: The Living Record of Our Memory for your reminder of the matter of preservation -- the recorded image is not as immortal as we may think. See also See Through Film, which is also in Memories of Unproduction.
Incident at Loch Ness (2004)
Shaggy dog-umentary. The fun and even interest of this are as much in its modesty, not trying to make too big a deal outside the frame, even though they did play the joke that way too (it was promoted as if it were also the actual project within the frame). Zak Penn manages his homage to Werner Herzog with even the intentionally cheap silliness (the uniforms, the cryptozoologist, the Playboy model sonar operator with the U.S. flag bikini), and Herzog shows his gameness, and game, playing straight whether he's the disgruntled director or hosting a dinner party where he serves something he causally explains will be too poisonous if not prepared properly.
1/22/25
Shaggy dog-umentary. The fun and even interest of this are as much in its modesty, not trying to make too big a deal outside the frame, even though they did play the joke that way too (it was promoted as if it were also the actual project within the frame). Zak Penn manages his homage to Werner Herzog with even the intentionally cheap silliness (the uniforms, the cryptozoologist, the Playboy model sonar operator with the U.S. flag bikini), and Herzog shows his gameness, and game, playing straight whether he's the disgruntled director or hosting a dinner party where he serves something he causally explains will be too poisonous if not prepared properly.
Nosferatu (2024)
It's like cut scenes in a video game for interior decorators or theater set designers. Gymnastic actresses, inadvertent comic effects from some of the abrupt cuts intended for horror, others to move away from it -- or maybe it's supposed to be comic and I'm missing the point. Werner Herzog was audacious enough to remake Murnau's 1922 film, mostly as a homage and a link for New German Cinema to pre-war film legacy, but his 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre is one of the greatest movies ever, at least a top 10 favorite for me. This seems to be the opposite of that in just about every way.
It's like cut scenes in a video game for interior decorators or theater set designers. Gymnastic actresses, inadvertent comic effects from some of the abrupt cuts intended for horror, others to move away from it -- or maybe it's supposed to be comic and I'm missing the point. Werner Herzog was audacious enough to remake Murnau's 1922 film, mostly as a homage and a link for New German Cinema to pre-war film legacy, but his 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre is one of the greatest movies ever, at least a top 10 favorite for me. This seems to be the opposite of that in just about every way.
The Great Race (1965)
A childhood favorite. The spoof of Victorian or silent movie melodrama cuts the spectacle a la 50s/60s big parade floats, but there's a reverse effect of bloating. For the title matter, there's little automobile action in favor of grand action set pieces, including an entire Prisoner of Zenda subplot. Still, even that tones down the madcap quality from the line of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (also 1965). The cast serves and is used well, with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon following on their Some Like It Hot success, and lots of good supporting work throughout from, e.g., Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, Larry Storch, and Ross Martin, but it's Lemmon who's really the star, even in a sneaky way, with his more haggard villain Professor Fate and his effete prince. Lemmon's order to his Falk sidekick, "Push the button, Max" was the inspiration for the mad scientist line that ended episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I would still love to have a toy version of Professor Fate's Hannibal Twin 8, steampunk avant la lettre.
A childhood favorite. The spoof of Victorian or silent movie melodrama cuts the spectacle a la 50s/60s big parade floats, but there's a reverse effect of bloating. For the title matter, there's little automobile action in favor of grand action set pieces, including an entire Prisoner of Zenda subplot. Still, even that tones down the madcap quality from the line of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (also 1965). The cast serves and is used well, with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon following on their Some Like It Hot success, and lots of good supporting work throughout from, e.g., Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, Larry Storch, and Ross Martin, but it's Lemmon who's really the star, even in a sneaky way, with his more haggard villain Professor Fate and his effete prince. Lemmon's order to his Falk sidekick, "Push the button, Max" was the inspiration for the mad scientist line that ended episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I would still love to have a toy version of Professor Fate's Hannibal Twin 8, steampunk avant la lettre.
Same Old Song [On connait la chanson] (1997)
Directed by Alain Resnais, written by two actors also in it, Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, this borrows the Dennis Potter device of having the actors break into lip syncing of songs that occur "over" the diegetic sound, as if in imagination or another expressive level. There's a dedication to Potter at the beginning, so the connection is explicit. But rather than the grand musical number flights of Pennies from Heaven, this restricts the act to the characters mouthing the words, and it's much more sporadic about cutting into and out of the songs, with a wider variety of them, not like the discrete 30s/40s musical numbers. In this way, it's more like songs popping into our heads as associations. The cutout segment of these lives, the in medias res approach, makes it seem more arbitrary, at first, till you become more accustomed to what's going on, and then it's easier to settle into a kind of toss-off flair to it all. There's a suggestion that various characters also have other idealized or imagined versions of themselves or their situation, and later a jellyfish becomes a visual motif, possibly suggested by a trip to an aquarium. But like that image, there's a whimsy to all of it, not quite concerted as the musical exercise, the ensemble criss-crossing, or even the humor.
Directed by Alain Resnais, written by two actors also in it, Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, this borrows the Dennis Potter device of having the actors break into lip syncing of songs that occur "over" the diegetic sound, as if in imagination or another expressive level. There's a dedication to Potter at the beginning, so the connection is explicit. But rather than the grand musical number flights of Pennies from Heaven, this restricts the act to the characters mouthing the words, and it's much more sporadic about cutting into and out of the songs, with a wider variety of them, not like the discrete 30s/40s musical numbers. In this way, it's more like songs popping into our heads as associations. The cutout segment of these lives, the in medias res approach, makes it seem more arbitrary, at first, till you become more accustomed to what's going on, and then it's easier to settle into a kind of toss-off flair to it all. There's a suggestion that various characters also have other idealized or imagined versions of themselves or their situation, and later a jellyfish becomes a visual motif, possibly suggested by a trip to an aquarium. But like that image, there's a whimsy to all of it, not quite concerted as the musical exercise, the ensemble criss-crossing, or even the humor.
Seedpeople (1992)
Here's a case of a movie with lots of conspicuous B-movie or even bad qualities, but delivered with such energy and conviction, it creates even more the effect of grownups playing like children. The special effects are a microcosm of this, a lot of attention and detail to some creatures that still look pretty silly. But the acting and directing carry it most: if not quite the most professional polish, it's more intent than pure amateur.
1/16/25
1/10/25
Here's a case of a movie with lots of conspicuous B-movie or even bad qualities, but delivered with such energy and conviction, it creates even more the effect of grownups playing like children. The special effects are a microcosm of this, a lot of attention and detail to some creatures that still look pretty silly. But the acting and directing carry it most: if not quite the most professional polish, it's more intent than pure amateur.
Vibrations (1968)
Joseph Sarno ventured into the nether region of movies between sex and other depiction, between porn and the rest, or more particularly mainstream commercial movies. That's pretty much, well, where nether regions are not shown. In a society where sex and representation are equally matters of contention and repression, in moving images in particular sex gets separated from other depiction so it's boiled down to the blunt subject, if not very blunt act, while all the other elaboration is left to other movies which can't quite, or don't much use it for sex. In the low-budget realm that wasn't also the porn industry, Sarno tried his own approach to erotic material. The result as you could imagine, and this movie demonstrates, was neither the heights nor deprivation of either. There's attention to the photography, black and white, but certainly not to a script, and playing around with moody interior shadows and exterior ambling tones, as well as with stimulation, if not quite the act. Though people are doffing, the nudity is waist up, which of course also means emphasizing breasts. Although the women are thus mostly the objects -- or subjects in the visual sense -- they're also the main characters and point of view. There's the sensational projection of desire: when one character describes what's supposed to be some special technique or procedure as impossible to describe, and teasing like torment you wouldn't believe, it's laughable for what's shown, the means and scope of the whole thing. For that sort of exploitation, too, there's dropping in that the two main characters are sisters -- incest to outbid lesbianism -- and they're constantly being jumped back and forth over the line of overwrought reaction and provocation, the obsession incorporating the resistance, even burlesquing it. The cut-up slackness of it makes it alternate so that the non-sex scenes are also spacing for the sex, interval, relief and buildup, but then that makes both have the same sort of delirious circularity. All this makes it, perhaps more inadvertently, dreamlike, but that's also repetitive, if not monotonous.
Joseph Sarno ventured into the nether region of movies between sex and other depiction, between porn and the rest, or more particularly mainstream commercial movies. That's pretty much, well, where nether regions are not shown. In a society where sex and representation are equally matters of contention and repression, in moving images in particular sex gets separated from other depiction so it's boiled down to the blunt subject, if not very blunt act, while all the other elaboration is left to other movies which can't quite, or don't much use it for sex. In the low-budget realm that wasn't also the porn industry, Sarno tried his own approach to erotic material. The result as you could imagine, and this movie demonstrates, was neither the heights nor deprivation of either. There's attention to the photography, black and white, but certainly not to a script, and playing around with moody interior shadows and exterior ambling tones, as well as with stimulation, if not quite the act. Though people are doffing, the nudity is waist up, which of course also means emphasizing breasts. Although the women are thus mostly the objects -- or subjects in the visual sense -- they're also the main characters and point of view. There's the sensational projection of desire: when one character describes what's supposed to be some special technique or procedure as impossible to describe, and teasing like torment you wouldn't believe, it's laughable for what's shown, the means and scope of the whole thing. For that sort of exploitation, too, there's dropping in that the two main characters are sisters -- incest to outbid lesbianism -- and they're constantly being jumped back and forth over the line of overwrought reaction and provocation, the obsession incorporating the resistance, even burlesquing it. The cut-up slackness of it makes it alternate so that the non-sex scenes are also spacing for the sex, interval, relief and buildup, but then that makes both have the same sort of delirious circularity. All this makes it, perhaps more inadvertently, dreamlike, but that's also repetitive, if not monotonous.
Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me (1971)
Ambitious, as an attempt at non-narrative, about time and memory, at least in popular movies, if that's not a nice way of saying it's an attempt to popularize such form, derivative. But it's so capricious, compulsive in a kneejerk, distracted or impertinent way, at the same time that it's actually slow paced. It's too costumey and gimmicky, too, which ends up more goofy and square than hip about a songwriter associated with rock bands. And as part of that weird distraction, the premise of the title is scarcely used and even so you can guess where it leads. And this is directed by Ulu Grosbard, who did so much better with Dustin Hoffman with Straight Time. But it's worth watching for, even though you have to watch so much of it to get to, Barbara Harris. With her part, as well as some material before and after, it settles down into something you can grasp onto.
Ambitious, as an attempt at non-narrative, about time and memory, at least in popular movies, if that's not a nice way of saying it's an attempt to popularize such form, derivative. But it's so capricious, compulsive in a kneejerk, distracted or impertinent way, at the same time that it's actually slow paced. It's too costumey and gimmicky, too, which ends up more goofy and square than hip about a songwriter associated with rock bands. And as part of that weird distraction, the premise of the title is scarcely used and even so you can guess where it leads. And this is directed by Ulu Grosbard, who did so much better with Dustin Hoffman with Straight Time. But it's worth watching for, even though you have to watch so much of it to get to, Barbara Harris. With her part, as well as some material before and after, it settles down into something you can grasp onto.
Divorce Italian Style (1961)
The movie that gave the name to commedia all'italiana. Not the first to be classed as such but one of the earliest, it's a prime example of the type on the way from Neorealism to comedy, falling somewhere between. It's not slapstick or jokes or really even witticisms so much as a somewhat farcical delivery of serious stuff. You could almost do the same movie scene for scene straight, but the story is being held up in caricaturist quote marks by the acting (Daniela Rocca's beaming devotion, Marcello Mastroianni's self-pitying suffering) and the music (Carlo Rustichelli), which has a clankier glib quality especially to the processional pieces. This is one of the more notable roles in Italian film for Leopoldo Trieste, who may be best known to American audiences for his great bit in The Godfather, Part II as the landlord who trades in too much puffiness for rattled submission.
The movie that gave the name to commedia all'italiana. Not the first to be classed as such but one of the earliest, it's a prime example of the type on the way from Neorealism to comedy, falling somewhere between. It's not slapstick or jokes or really even witticisms so much as a somewhat farcical delivery of serious stuff. You could almost do the same movie scene for scene straight, but the story is being held up in caricaturist quote marks by the acting (Daniela Rocca's beaming devotion, Marcello Mastroianni's self-pitying suffering) and the music (Carlo Rustichelli), which has a clankier glib quality especially to the processional pieces. This is one of the more notable roles in Italian film for Leopoldo Trieste, who may be best known to American audiences for his great bit in The Godfather, Part II as the landlord who trades in too much puffiness for rattled submission.
The Big Lebowski (1998)
An example of the difference between the sum of parts and more. The Big Lebowski has all the parts, all the elements of the Coen brothers, the tone, the satire, the character and detail observations -- Jeff Bridges's Dude alone has that same stroke of prosaic type treated archetypally -- but it doesn't come together, doesn't roll, doesn't sing -- very nice surreal and Busby Berkeley style numbers notwithstanding -- the way their best work does: Fargo, No Country for Old Men, or even Burn After Reading. It lacks the kind of engine or thread or current that drives those.
An example of the difference between the sum of parts and more. The Big Lebowski has all the parts, all the elements of the Coen brothers, the tone, the satire, the character and detail observations -- Jeff Bridges's Dude alone has that same stroke of prosaic type treated archetypally -- but it doesn't come together, doesn't roll, doesn't sing -- very nice surreal and Busby Berkeley style numbers notwithstanding -- the way their best work does: Fargo, No Country for Old Men, or even Burn After Reading. It lacks the kind of engine or thread or current that drives those.
The Apartment (1960)
This became for New Year's, though by extension also the end-of-year holiday season, what Planes, Trains and Automobiles has become for Thanksgiving, by indirection and more in spirit a better regular than an official holiday movie. The comparison is interesting in other ways. The Apartment was a bigger deal right off, despite some ambivalence among reviewers, for Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, on the heels of Some Like It Hot, and a big breakout for Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, with Oscar nominations for the lot and a win for best picture, while Planes, Trains had its reputation build more slowly after its initial release. Both manage to touch on mores with an apparent comic approach in ways that if not necessarily more serious, end up being more poignant. More social comedy, if not satire, they avoid the direct approach of either the traditional sense of comedy or tragedy, or the more modern sense of melodrama or message movie. Some Like It Hot might seem closer to Planes as comedy, and it probably sticks out more in American movies as an oddball, but heading from one decade to the next, Apartment gets under decorum in a slier way than either 50s social drama or the kind of popularization of non-conformity that became itself conventional in the 60s (including other things featuring Lemmon and MacLaine). Apart from dealing with adultery, sex and pressured favors in the workplace, and suicide, the art direction and cinematography cut wide-screen spectacle with photo journalist realism, with shots of loner Lemmon against endless rows of office desks, an infinite park bench in Central Park, or a Broadway marquee, giving also as great a counterpoint of city life experience as holiday.
This became for New Year's, though by extension also the end-of-year holiday season, what Planes, Trains and Automobiles has become for Thanksgiving, by indirection and more in spirit a better regular than an official holiday movie. The comparison is interesting in other ways. The Apartment was a bigger deal right off, despite some ambivalence among reviewers, for Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, on the heels of Some Like It Hot, and a big breakout for Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, with Oscar nominations for the lot and a win for best picture, while Planes, Trains had its reputation build more slowly after its initial release. Both manage to touch on mores with an apparent comic approach in ways that if not necessarily more serious, end up being more poignant. More social comedy, if not satire, they avoid the direct approach of either the traditional sense of comedy or tragedy, or the more modern sense of melodrama or message movie. Some Like It Hot might seem closer to Planes as comedy, and it probably sticks out more in American movies as an oddball, but heading from one decade to the next, Apartment gets under decorum in a slier way than either 50s social drama or the kind of popularization of non-conformity that became itself conventional in the 60s (including other things featuring Lemmon and MacLaine). Apart from dealing with adultery, sex and pressured favors in the workplace, and suicide, the art direction and cinematography cut wide-screen spectacle with photo journalist realism, with shots of loner Lemmon against endless rows of office desks, an infinite park bench in Central Park, or a Broadway marquee, giving also as great a counterpoint of city life experience as holiday.
Thelma (2024)
It's especially good to see Richard Roundtree (this was his last movie) and Malcolm McDowell, and there are good turns by Parker Posey and June Squibb, and it's all around a solid cast. There's an anti-maudlin tack, even made express, and some nice touches that are against the grain of lots of movies about parents and children, as well as some spoofs of action tropes. But the main thread is similar to Nebraska which also only recalls how much better a movie that was, for Squibb, too. Ultimately it's fluffy.
1/3/25
It's especially good to see Richard Roundtree (this was his last movie) and Malcolm McDowell, and there are good turns by Parker Posey and June Squibb, and it's all around a solid cast. There's an anti-maudlin tack, even made express, and some nice touches that are against the grain of lots of movies about parents and children, as well as some spoofs of action tropes. But the main thread is similar to Nebraska which also only recalls how much better a movie that was, for Squibb, too. Ultimately it's fluffy.
Bread and Chocolate (1974)
Although fairly distinguished for its time -- and it was esteemed with various international honors -- the social themes that would give it weight are exaggerated more for the commedia all'italiana (the sawed-off furniture in a chicken coop; the drag act in a labor camp à la La grande illusion; a soccer match as irresistible trigger for expression of national identity). Nino Manfredi's lead performance gives decency to measure the madcap, but director Franco Brusati stretches out the bewildered reactions.
Although fairly distinguished for its time -- and it was esteemed with various international honors -- the social themes that would give it weight are exaggerated more for the commedia all'italiana (the sawed-off furniture in a chicken coop; the drag act in a labor camp à la La grande illusion; a soccer match as irresistible trigger for expression of national identity). Nino Manfredi's lead performance gives decency to measure the madcap, but director Franco Brusati stretches out the bewildered reactions.
A Different Man (2024)
This has a great idea about reversing perspective and approach to living in your own skin, and provides good roles for Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson. But there's an unevenness to it, which seems to come more from the direction, but is somewhat in the script as well. It's like a hesitation between registers, neither quite realistic, nor quite comedic, nor quite surreal, which makes it just seem hesitant overall, timorous, at times. Renate Reinsve straddles these the best, showing how to play the mix in a way that's more impressive than even her big lead in The Worst Person in the World.
This has a great idea about reversing perspective and approach to living in your own skin, and provides good roles for Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson. But there's an unevenness to it, which seems to come more from the direction, but is somewhat in the script as well. It's like a hesitation between registers, neither quite realistic, nor quite comedic, nor quite surreal, which makes it just seem hesitant overall, timorous, at times. Renate Reinsve straddles these the best, showing how to play the mix in a way that's more impressive than even her big lead in The Worst Person in the World.
The Ice Harvest (2005)
The best things about this are the way it portrays pretense, foibles and bullshitting without making that the complete character, and the little gad about town, mostly barhopping, on Christmas Eve for that stray dog holiday feel. As much as that of Christmas movies, it avoids some commonplaces of capers, the way the script, by Richard Russo and Robert Benton, concentrates on character and director Harold Ramis follows suit with cozy little gossip airs. And with a bit more to the roles, there are good performances from John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton and Oliver Platt.
The best things about this are the way it portrays pretense, foibles and bullshitting without making that the complete character, and the little gad about town, mostly barhopping, on Christmas Eve for that stray dog holiday feel. As much as that of Christmas movies, it avoids some commonplaces of capers, the way the script, by Richard Russo and Robert Benton, concentrates on character and director Harold Ramis follows suit with cozy little gossip airs. And with a bit more to the roles, there are good performances from John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton and Oliver Platt.
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
I don't know about Nikos Kazantzakis's book, but at movie length, the problems with compression only open it up more to the problems with the source material for both. There are three main movements: Jesus before accepting his role as messiah, thus in conflict between man and god; Jesus accepting his role as messiah; then the last temptation. The first part is so rushed it makes the dialogue sound like it's trying to be profound, but lurching, groping, reaching. It's as if the confusion of grasping neophytes were the frame itself. Then comes the realization of Jesus's role, but this is only a retelling of the story of the gospels, and as much as Kazantzakis or Martin Scorsese might be giving us another approach, it's going over familiar ground. When we get to the titular subject, the presentation is eliptical, dreamlike, with a solemnity that, if it's at all distinct, is still anchored by the preceding. I just couldn't shake the feeling of too many reverent religious dramas, let alone divine attributes for kenosis.
I don't know about Nikos Kazantzakis's book, but at movie length, the problems with compression only open it up more to the problems with the source material for both. There are three main movements: Jesus before accepting his role as messiah, thus in conflict between man and god; Jesus accepting his role as messiah; then the last temptation. The first part is so rushed it makes the dialogue sound like it's trying to be profound, but lurching, groping, reaching. It's as if the confusion of grasping neophytes were the frame itself. Then comes the realization of Jesus's role, but this is only a retelling of the story of the gospels, and as much as Kazantzakis or Martin Scorsese might be giving us another approach, it's going over familiar ground. When we get to the titular subject, the presentation is eliptical, dreamlike, with a solemnity that, if it's at all distinct, is still anchored by the preceding. I just couldn't shake the feeling of too many reverent religious dramas, let alone divine attributes for kenosis.
Ask the Dust (2006)
It's understandable that Robert Towne, who wrote one of the greatest screenplays about Los Angeles, Chinatown, would want to honor John Fante. But he's not the director he is screenwriter, doesn't compose the way, for example, Roman Polanski did for that previous movie to match the way Fante does in writing. As Charles Dickens demonstrates the problem: so many attempts to distill literature to merely plot when Dickens's writing does so many other things that are more cinematic. Here it's not even so much that Towne doesn't compose with scenes or sequences, doesn't create any distinct tone or mood or voice, let alone Fante's, as what he does with the acting. Farcical cute rascal business gives way to melodramatic seriousness, and it's all some key of staginess that lets in no air of candor.
It's understandable that Robert Towne, who wrote one of the greatest screenplays about Los Angeles, Chinatown, would want to honor John Fante. But he's not the director he is screenwriter, doesn't compose the way, for example, Roman Polanski did for that previous movie to match the way Fante does in writing. As Charles Dickens demonstrates the problem: so many attempts to distill literature to merely plot when Dickens's writing does so many other things that are more cinematic. Here it's not even so much that Towne doesn't compose with scenes or sequences, doesn't create any distinct tone or mood or voice, let alone Fante's, as what he does with the acting. Farcical cute rascal business gives way to melodramatic seriousness, and it's all some key of staginess that lets in no air of candor.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
Settling into the act means knocking the highs and lows off, but those are kind of the same thing when it comes to hyperactive pandering pop with CG. It may be a matter of staleness or numbness, but at least it's not as loud, showy, cloying. This works well for Jim Carrey, too. Calm down the hyperbolic mugging and there's actually room to see a character or some acting.
Settling into the act means knocking the highs and lows off, but those are kind of the same thing when it comes to hyperactive pandering pop with CG. It may be a matter of staleness or numbness, but at least it's not as loud, showy, cloying. This works well for Jim Carrey, too. Calm down the hyperbolic mugging and there's actually room to see a character or some acting.
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Entries by Greg Macon for the Facebook group Movie Brains, related to film comments on this website, Fixion. Text for movie comments this page © 2025 Greg Macon. Banner image and quote from Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.
Contact: mail@fixionsytes.net
On the Brains
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- The Straight Story
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- The French Connection
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- A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
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In Hollywood, everything revolves around the movies: the conversations, the people you see, everyday life. It's totally narcissistic. We end up forgetting why we do this job.
-- Gene Hackman in interview with L'Express, referred to in Le Monde 2/27/25
It's so weird, it's like everybody thinks that when you get that big, it's like you're a diva, you know? It's completely the opposite. The guy's unreal to work with. You'd see him helping a grip. It's like, "This is our job, this is what we do, we're blessed."
-- Danny Trejo on Robert De Niro, on comicbook.com
The film is the thing. You work so hard to get, you know, after the ideas come, to get this thing built, all the elements to feel correct, the whole to feel correct, in this beautiful language called cinema. And the second it's finished, people want you to change it back into words. And it's very, very saddening. It's torture.
-- David Lynch in a 2009 BAFTA interview