The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

Director: Frank Oz

Cast: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I’m the guy who keeps noticing that the diner Jerry and George eat in the pilot of Seinfeld is actually the exterior of the luncheonette where the Muppets work here. It’s the movie released the weekend of my birth, no less.

Did I Like It: I really wished I did. It doesn’t have the heart of The Muppet Movie (1979), or the demented, anarchic glee of The Great Muppet Caper (1981). It might be unfair to say that a film based on characters who made their bones in a variety format is short on plot, but those previous films made good—and in the case of Caper, great—cases for their existence. Here, the Muppet gang are small-timers who want to make it big with their obvious talent and charm. Sound familiar from The Muppet Movie? It should. And then—surprise of all surprises—they do it. Without ornate sequences involving Kermit (Henson) and Piggy’s (Oz) nuptials and imagining the muppets as babies* which add nothing to the proceedings, the runtime might not have even qualified as a feature.

This is all perfunctory, as if all of the Muppet crew (here all together for the final time in a feature before Henson’s passing in 1990) desperately wanted to be doing something else. After reading the recent Brian Jay Jones biography of Henson, I’m thinking that was probably the case. Oz never felt comfortable with the Muppet label and seems to tolerate this exercise so he can have a hit under his belt so he could start directing what he might have viewed as real movies. The Dark Crystal (1982) bombed somewhat scandalously two years earlier, and I even get the sense throughout the is film that Henson hoped Crystal’s failure wouldn’t mean he’d have to be attached at the hip with Kermit for the rest of his days.

*Even the Muppets characters themselves stop the movie cold to eye a Saturday Morning cartoon deal.

Lightyear (2022)

Director: Angus MacLane

Cast: Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: The movie’s pitch is an intriguing one. But can this movie really feel as if it came from 1995? Largely, no. For every moment where Lightyear blows on his autopilot cartridge to get it to reset, there are more than enough moments where the film is squarely in 2022. No, I’m not talking about Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) having a same-sex partner. That almost hints that the world of the 1990s in Toy Story (1995) is actually a better version of our world, one where that sort of thing wouldn’t matter*.

I’m more talking about the digital HUD displays and the films need to swing back and forth between IMAX and regular 2:35:1 aspect ratios. That was not a 1995 film thing to do. It has a tag scene—and an incredibly perfunctory one, at that—which doesn’t feel like something that happened before Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). There is very little about the film that doesn’t loudly proclaim its status as a product of its true time.

And yet, there are moments where it reaches for that quality. It is almost as if that pitch was far more pure in some stage of the film’s development, and cooler, more conservative heads at both Disney and Pixar prevailed to make it more pedestrian. The film couldn’t exist in a world where it could be anything other than  a simple story with a convoluted time travel gimmick at its heart…

…which, in and of itself would have been the exact kind of movie I would have loved in 1995. Something more than I originally thought of that original promise may have survived to the final film.

* Although the implications that Andy never bothered to get a Hawthorne (either of them) action figure—or that the toy company never produced one—is kind of a bummer. The idea that talking Sox (Sohn) toys weren’t the single most popular toy of that world’s 1995 also beggars belief.

They/Them (2022)

Director: John Logan

Cast: Theo Germaine, Carrie Preston, Anna Chlumsky, Kevin Bacon

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Brand new!

Did I Like It: Nearly each—perhaps even every—moment of the film feels forced, mannered, and stiff. It’s truly a wonder that a directorial debut from an Oscar winning screenwriter would be forged of this much leaden dialogue. It’s an after school special at its core, even if it has its heart in the right place.

That doesn’t even begin to cover the perfectly obvious way in which the story unfolds. Movies like the recent <Scream (2022)> embrace the inclusivity of the moment, but also manage to make me invested and guessing about the mystery behind the violence on display. Here, I figured out the entirety of the plot by halfway through the runtime, and I think you will, too. It’s plot is on the complexity level of a police procedural, and not a very good one, at that.

The film also feels like a false bill of goods. Advertising points to the movie being a slasher flick wherein the horror of a gay conversion camp is what ought to be truly scary. It’s only kind of about that, and only in the last few fleeting moments of the film.

In short, I didn’t care for it.

And that’s okay!

Ungainly, mostly frustrating slasher movies fueled by heteronormativity are legion. It’s sort of encouraging that a film fueled by an honest attempt at inclusivity isn’t very good. It doesn’t need to be. I might be talking out of my depth here—but then again, more people may need to say it—but a bad movie will add to the normalizing of the LGBTQA experience. If this movie fails, it doesn’t mean that inclusivity—especially in horror—will wither on the vine and die.

Unless that’s where the discourse about the film leads. That would be the worst part about the whole enterprise, but it also would not be the film’s fault. It would be ours.

Life Itself (2014)

Director: Steve James

Cast: Roger Ebert, Chaz Ebert, Werner Herzog, Ava DuVernay

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, indeed. When I started out on these reviews, it came about after a binge of old Siskel & Ebert episodes on youtube, punctuated by a viewing of this film that hit me on a deep, profound level. That was nearly four years ago. Now I’m smack dab in the middle of another binge of S & E episodes, and the film’s been calling my name for rewatch for a while.

Did I Like It: After a number of years on the screening committee for the Santa Fe International Film Festival, I’ve come to some general but essential truths about the levels of quality in the documentary form.

First, a documentary needs to be competent on a technical front. Everything that ought to be seen, ought to be seen clearly. All things which should be heard are heard clearly. It feels like this should be an easy thing to master, but there are so many films which fail. A misunderstanding that the documentary form will be easier and not require the same kind of craft as narrative films has led many down the wrong path. Here, there is nothing to complain about. James brought us Hoop Dreams (1994), which was feverishly championed by Ebert as one of the best documentaries ever produced. This is certainly not—nor was it ever in danger or being—an amateurish effort.

The second threshold which can make or break a documentary is level of access to the subject. Here, there are no complaints, either. Ebert likely knew his time among the lving was not long even when he agreed to the production of the film. He certainly seemed to be at peace with his mortality, if his memoirs were any indication, after a number of years of illness and disfigurement. In stark contrast to the private way his partner, Gene Siskel, handled the public disclosure of cancer and its impact, Ebert let’s us see his life as it is, as unflinchingly as good taste would allow.

Clearing the first and second criteria will allow a film to achieve mere adequacy. Third, and this can be largely up to fate or the whims of the viewer: affinity for (or at least, interest in) the subject. Here, as I indicated above, I am transfixed. If there ever were an example to live life by, I might be most comfortable with that of Ebert’s. A youth can be somewhat misspent, but time will reveal the true valuable things, in increasing order of importance:

• Breasts.

• Movies*.

• The Written Word.

• People.

Throw in a complete disinterest in whether or not there’s an afterlife or not, and you actually have the makings of a fine religion brewing there.

* Yes, he gave an ultimately negative review to Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), even the greats can be wrong. Another encouraging message.

Nope (2022)

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott

Have I Seen it Before: No. But, a word about the crowd which surrounded me. I saw the movie in IMAX (hopefully, you can do the same) at the first available screening on opening day. As I’m departing the theater, one of my fellow moviegoers is walking beside me and says. “I can’t believe I paid money for that shit.”

I tense up for several seconds, not sure if a real-life Twitter conversation might eventually unravel into gunplay. I eventually offer a strident, “Well… I like it.”

The two Beavis and Butthead types about ten feet ahead of us didn’t like that. Not one bit. They whipped around, as if I had said something about their collective mother/cousin. “You liked that piece of shit? That ending fucking sucked!”

They immediately zero in on the other guy, thinking he had given the film a positive review. I, sensing that the discourse that was about to follow wouldn’t precisely be enlightening, immediately moved toward my car. I wonder if a fight broke out. I wonder if they worked through their misunderstanding and became the best of friends.

So first thing’s first: while I still love taking in movies on the biggest screen possible, I’m quickly reaching my wits end with the strangers who show up.

Did I Like It: Second, I have a feeling this is going to be Peele’s most controversial film yet. Some will love it, but some will not know what to make of it, and decide that is more than enough to cause them to hate it.

And they will be wrong.

I’ve taken a good week to digest the movie, and I may still put it third so far in Peele’s canon (behind Get Out (2017) and my unassailably favorite movie of the last year before COVID, Us (2019)). The story of the Gordy incident and how it relates to the Jean Jacket’s reign of terror feels too tenuous to make this plot gel together as well as Peele’s other films. Sure, you can make the case that Jupe (Yeun) has a far greater sense of just what floats above him than he let’s on, but the two traumas feel mostly unrelated until its far too late.

But this is a minor complaint. The plot doesn’t really matter in the end. I don’t think I’ve been as terrified in a movie theater as when we see the immediate aftermath of Jean Jacket descending on the audience of Jupiter’s Claim, or in those tense moments before Gordy’s fate is sealed.

Nope is a genuine terrifying trip, forging the best parts of Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)) into something entirely new. When most films disappear like vapor the moment you leave the theater, this one begs to be talked about repeatedly and re-watched just as frequently. Every performance is a delight, with Keke Palmer displaying enough charisma to power several decades worth of blockbusters, and Kaluuya turns down his considerable charisma and screen presence in a mesmerizingly understated performance.

Just go see it, and please: if you don’t already know your fellow moviegoers, just leave them alone. Especially if you’ve only got talking shit on your mind. We don’t need that.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Director: Jeff Fowler

Cast: James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Tika Sumpter, Jim Carrey

Have I Seen it Before: No. I even took it upon myself to re-watch the original film. Isn’t it wild that we now have entire film franchises which have existed only in the time of COVID?

Did I Like It: I probably already covered most of this in my review of the first film, but: I think the mythos surrounding Sega’s mascot was always, and will continue to always be a complete and utter bore. The game was a faster Super Mario Bros., which certainly has its place, and reaching for those Chaos Emeralds adds a fun challenge layer to the game. But Knuckles? G.U.N.? Don’t even get me started on Shadow the Hedgehog, which has to be the dullest extension of a video game since the right Pong paddle.

The first film shakes most of that loose in favor of an admittedly wobbly human-best-friend story, but it was all serviceable, and to see Jim Carrey reach back for his inner-Riddler from <Batman Forever (1995)> was a delightful treat, made all the more heartening by the through that it might inspire the youth of today to go seek out the Bat-films of yesteryear.

This film only has Carrey continuing that schtick. Sonic’s best human pal (Marsden) is here, but his storyline is so perfunctory that what scant logic we have here would not have been impacted if both he and Sumpter were completely excised from the film.

Where does the film find the material to fill out the rest of the film while working with those defciencies? In Emeralds, and Knuckles (Idris Elba, who I hoped paid off a mortgage here), and Tales (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and Shadow. I didn’t go into this film expecting much, but somehow it delivered everything I didn’t want.

Weird that a film would make me long for the restrained wonder that is Batman Forever, but here we are.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022)

Director: Bernard Derriman, Loren Bouchard

Cast: H. Jon Benjamin, Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman, Larry Murphy

Have I Seen it Before: No. Sadly, with an imminent dropping to streaming it wasn’t a priority to start breathing in other people’s air. Probably doomed the box office pretty quick, but once it did drop I was there.

Did I Like It: The show is unassailably the best animated comedy currently on the air, nimbly swinging between heartfelt and edge, and often managing to be both in the same moment.

It is regularly the most musically versatile show on television… well, ever, now that I think about it. Live action doesn’t even come close.

Gene (Mirman) and Louise (Kristen Schaal) often remind me of my sister and I as we were growing up, if the Belchers weren’t so much running a burger joint and instead straddling that fine line between oil and gas litigation and dulcimer music.

I love the show.

And the movie is a very fine episode of the show stretched out to two hours. The murder plot keeps things moving along through the runtime, and the sinkhole adds a certain more epic scope to the proceedings, but it’s not an elevation of the material. Maybe that’s because the material is so good to begin with. We may not have needed a film, unlike what happened with The Simpsons Movie (2007), where it came along when the best thing in the preceding ten years to happen to the family from Springfield in ten years was a video game riffing on Grand Theft Auto*.

But when it comes to recommending this film, I’m not sure I can land in the effusively positive column. If you enjoy the show, you’ll enjoy the show. It delivers the goods. If you’ve never seen the show, I have a hard time imagining that this would bring you into the Wonder Wharf fold. For that, you just need to take the show in as a whole, and by the time you reach the end of season 12, you’ll be ready for the movie like the rest of us.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Director: Taika Waititi

Cast: Chris Hemsowrth, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: The film is certainly less enjoyable than the sublime Thor: Ragnarok (2017). There are any number of reasons why. I think the fundamental listlessness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe post Avengers: Endgame (2019) (give or take a Spider-Man or three) is weighing down everything coming from Feige and Co.

That gives us a sense of the mentality that might have led to this, but doesn’t explain the anatomy of the disappointment. Whereas Ragnarok delightfully contorted itself into a cosmic Midnight Run (1988), this is content to be a benign and pedestrian romantic comedy.

Even that could have worked in a limited sort of way, so the real question becomes: why does (even two weeks after seeing the film) it leave a bad taste in my mouth?

It’s not the performances. Hemsworth is still pretty great, and manages to wring every laugh out of the proceedings any mortal man could. It also helps that for several moments he’s placed next to Chris Pratt for several scenes who has gotten blander and blander as time goes on, where Hemsworth continues to show an apt comic presence. While he and Portman don’t quite have the chemistry they possessed in the original Thor (2011), I’ve seen screen couples with far less chemistry, and many of those have had the Marvel vanity card in front of them. Christian Bale proves—not unlike Michael Keaton did in Beetlejuice (1988)—that all of the best Batmen could have credibly played the Joker if they absolutely needed to. Clooneys, Kilmers, and certainly Afflecks need not apply.

The thing that really irks me about the movie is the sharp left turns the story feels the need to take with the character. Some complain that Thor’s weight gain in the most recent Avengers films has been derided by some as a simplistic display of depression and trauma, but it was certainly an attempt to depict some kind of emotional arc for a movie superhero. If you didn’t like that choice, don’t worry. Hemsworth sheds the pounds—and, presumably, the emotions surrounding them—in the film’s opening minutes.

One might think that another left turn in the film’s closing minutes would set things right, but this isn’t missing your exit on the highway. It’s an attempt to hint—perhaps threaten—that Thor 5* will be a repackaged Three Men and a Little Lady (1990).

*Given why this film is called Love and Thunder, the title should have really been held for a next film, should it ever come.

Hannibal Rising (2007)

Director: Peter Webber

Cast: Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans, Dominic West

Have I Seen it Before: Well, isn’t this a topic of some debate?

Did I Like It: There’s an understandable impulse when watching a bad movie to let one’s mind wander to how the movie could have been improved, or even, dare I say, fixed entirely. It’s probably an unfair point to jump off for a critique of a film. One normally never knows what forces cause a movie to take its eventual shape, and if given the opportunity to steer a production, we all might come to the same blunders, or likely come up with entirely new ones*.

Here, however? I’ve got nothing. After two episodes of Friendibals, we’ve bandied about jsut what went wrong between this film and its concurrent developed novel, but it is ultimately a thing that should not be. Even a story that would have focused on those years of Hannibal in practice in Baltimore would have been less weighed down by the need to explain and make pedestrian Lecter’s (Ulliel) evil, it still would have been a largely inert tale, unless someone like Bryan Fuller was around to truly turn the proceedings on their head. Ultimately, Harris probably should have stuck by his guns and not been baited by producer Dino de Laurientiis into re-entering the fray.

But, just as Harris’ novel is an casserole dish full of uncooked noodles, this film is made up of good elements which sadly never come close to a satisfying whole. Ulliel and Li are engaging in their role, but the former never quite channels Hopkins like he he might have. For some reason, I would have believed rumored contender Macaulay Culkin more, but again, that casting would have been a near-miss. The score Ilan Eshkeri and Shigeru Umebayashi references the motifs in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) without ever feeling slavish. The camerawork and production design is sumptuous and there are brief fits where the film feels like it is a venture into Lecter’s memory palace, which feels like was the whole point.

But it isn’t enough. I’m not sure what would have made it so.

*See for an example how after Jurassic World Dominion (2022), I don’t think we’re going to hear any more about how Colin Trevorrow’s Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) would be any better than the film we got.

Hannibal (2001)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Ray Liotta, Frankie R. Faison

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. I wasn’t yet 17 when the film was release, but perpetually looking about five years older than I really am, I was able to buy a ticket for myself without much scrutiny at all.

And yet, I couldn’t even begin to guess when I last saw the film. For someone who’s taken to a <Hannibal Lecter podcast> in recent months, it’s odd just how little this film has lived in my memory all these years.

Did I Like It: For the first half of the film, I was struck by how faithful an adaptation this was of the original Thomas Harris novel. I’m not certain if that’s the most thorough praise, as Harris’ third Lecter novel isn’t quite his weakest entry, but it’s far, far from his strongest.

For what it is, things could be a lot worse. Is it a satisfying successor to The Silence of the Lambs (1991)? Certainly not, but then again, neither was the novel, so Scott and company are  at least hitting their target here. Performances are all around pretty good. Moore accomplishes the unenviable task of equating herself well, while having to be either the George Lazenby or Roger Moore to Jodie Foster’s Sean Connery. An uncredited Gary Oldman disappears into his part as the non-charming monster of the piece, but one can’t help but wonder if original choice Christopher Reeve might have made the proceedings even more unsettling than they already were. Hopkins himself—the main attraction—doesn’t feel like he is trying to eliminate the need for him to reprise the role again (Red Dragon (2002), I’m looking in your direction) and keeps the hammier parts of Lecter, but just barely.

The final act of the film, however is where a bad taste is left in my mouth. It is a thorough exercise in the practice of half measures. Starling and Lecter couldn’t become lovers, sure, although with the departure of Moore, maybe they could. The eventual comeuppance of Mason Verger is a great deal more satisfying in the novel, and trying to make Starling anything other than a tragic hero in this story is a flex that the preceding two hours can’t quite support. We’ll just have to take comfort in the knowledge that we did get to see Ray Liotta eat his own brain for a little bit.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Val Kilmer

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Missed any sort of convenient IMAX screening, and I’ll probably just have to live with that. Drifted into a matinee recently more than a month after the film’s release.

Which felt like a safe thing to do, not just from the COVID side of things, but because this tends to minimize encounters with the absolute dumbest people to emerge from underneath rocks. I’m definitely one of those guys generally less enthralled by seeing a movie with a crowd (although the right crowd—difficult though it is to find—does have its charms), than with seeing bigger movies on the biggest screen possible.

No such luck this time, though. The screening was already crowded when I got my tickets, which should have been my first alarm bell. I was enjoying my popcorn just at the limit of social distancing, and some jabroni takes the seat right next to mine. I’m doing a quick calculation in my head regarding the average vaccination status of a Top Gun audience on a Wednesday afternoon, and at first I think I have three choices. First, slap on my KN95 and abandon all hope of enjoying the rest of my popcorn. Second, just leave before the movie starts.

Both are unacceptable. So, in desperate need of a third option, I broke the social contract of the modern moviegoing experience and moved to a seat for which I had not bought a ticket. It felt simultaneously rebellious and safe, and I got to finish my popcorn. What’s more, I moved to the front row, and that was probably the better way to take in this film anyway.

Did I Like It: Oh, sure. You probably want to hear more about the movie itself. Much has been said about how much better this film is than the original Top Gun (1986). They are right, but I can’t help but wonder if this is because this film is truly that great, or because the original film is not much more than an energetic pageant of the state of masculinity in the mid-80s. This one has an actual story. There are stakes. Several characters go through something resembling an arc. That’s already something. Is the story kind of preposterous and ultimately hinges on the insane idea that an enemy (let’s not name them, because nothing in a film dates it more than identifying the collective bad guy) base has a mostly-ignored, still-in-working-order, retro-bordering-on-antique fighter jet ready for Maverick (Cruise) and Rooster (Teller) to use to make their escape? Yes, but it exists, and there’s a nice little romance between Cruise and Jennifer Connelly to help make the larger preposterousness go down easier.

I think what people are really responding to is the cinematography of the aviation sequences, which are truly an improvement not only for the series, but the idea of aerial photography in general. There were several moments I genuinely wondered how the production obtained the shots they did without just letting Cruise actually pilot priceless warplanes. I don’t think I really want to know.

Men in Black (1997)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D’Onofrio

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. While producing The Fourth Wall I had avoided watching it as the Venn diagram might interfere with the process. In fact, I think the DVD currently on my shelf was one of the first DVDs I ever owned.

Did I Like It: It was a strange experience watching this in the summer of 2022. This was the first time since the infamous Academy Awards slap that I’ve taken in a movie starring Smith, and when J first appears on screen, I had some kind of reaction to seeing him again. It wasn’t the return of a conquering hero, or the dread of seeing an aggressor at his prime. It was a degree of annoyance. It certainly seems like Chris Rock suffered no permanent injury, so I could really go the rest of my life without hearing about it. If I’m not alone in that assessment, one does wonder what shape Smith’s career as a movie star will take from here.

There’s nothing wrong with the film itself, but I think even in the 90s I had the sense that this was an exercise in half measures. It’s funny enough, but there are comedies—even high-concept ones—with a far higher laugh-to-miss ratio. The action is engaging enough, but I don’t even have to think all that hard to trip over more suspenseful action movies, even in the summer of 1997*. Ultimately, as a science fiction piece it could stand to be a fair sight weirder than it ends up being. Ultimately, the film is a near-perfect case study in making a big entertainment designed to not offend anyone, but never quite thrill anyone either. Whenever I see a bland monstrosity (including especially the sequels and spin-offs which were to follow in this franchise), I can’t help but wonder what movies might look like now if we hadn’t so thoroughly over-validated this one. back in the day.

*I’m looking in your direction, Con Air and Air Force One.

Beavis and Butthead Do The Universe (2022)

Director: John Rice, Albert Calleros

Cast: Mike Judge, Gary Cole, Nat Faxon, Chi McBride

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: The animation may be upgraded—and haltingly at that—past the point where it has any remaining charm from its 90s roots, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t laughing pretty consistently from beginning to end. In a year surprisingly full of multiverse-themed films, it proves to be my second-favorite example, right behind Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) but oddly more satisfying than the perfunctory Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

The movie is completely self-aware about its position in the universe, quite literally. Pitching itself as the dumbest science fiction movie ever made (it might feel a rivalry with Mike Judge’s other opus, Idiocracy (2006)) and luxuriates in that role. The plot is almost not worth mentioning, but due to the almost instinctual stupidtiy of NASA (the organization and their employees prove dumber than the protagonists) Beavis and Butthead (both voiced by Judge) are flung from the late 90s where we last left them, and into a COVID-less, but no less fraught 2022.

Do B and B have any place in our current era? If we take them on face value—as more than a few parents, including my own—did back in the day, almost certainly not. They are so unrepentantly venal that they make the cast of Seinfeld look like the Missionaries of Charity. And where comedies of the bleak-hearted surely lean on farce, but at his best Judge harnesses societal satire and seamlessly fuses it with the farce. B and B may be grotesquely stupid, but they were forged that way by the time which they came from, and as I type these words I realize that 2022 has been waiting for them to come home this whole time. Could they continue on like this? They’ve gotten this far, who am I to say?

The Black Phone (2022)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Cast: Mason Thames, Madeline McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Ethan Hawke

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Probably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been on the podcast schedule.

Did I Like It: Filled with enough of the same 70s/80s energy that fueled Super 8 (2011), it’s impossible to not like the movie. The moment I most responded to had nothing to do with the horror running under the proceedings, but instead the moment when Finney (Thames) loses himself in whatever film is airing on TV on a Friday night. It’s a movie consumption method completely lost to the sans of time, and I felt strangely wistful for it in that moment. The film, for the most part, feels like it may have come from the period in which it is set. That’s a difficult enough trick to accomplish, and probably leaves me with enough goodwill to recommend the film.

Hawke’s work as the Grabber certainly creates a menacing presence in the film. He clearly understood the assignment. The climax taps into just enough Hitchcockian tension for the film’s final act that once again, I think I’m landing in the “recommend” camp on the film.

My reservations are tied to the fact that there are more than a few plot holes dragging everything down. The Home Alone-ing of Finney’s cell proceeds with such little scrutiny that I was pretty convinced most of this was happening in his imagination or delusion. After about the third kid disappearance, wouldn’t this entire town be possessed of incredibly understandable paranoia? Instead, every adult seems even more committed to the idea of it being 1979 than the filmmakers were and proceeded as if everything was status quo. More to that point, the fact that Terrance appears to be entirely absolved for his abuse by a heartfelt/self-serving apology strains credulity in any decade.

Maybe if the film had been more throughly frightening, I’d be able to more completely get over those qualms. But it isn’t, and I’m not.

Top Gun (1986)

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards

Have I Seen it Before: I’m sure I have. All of the “big” lines of the film hit something like a memory, but I can’t say I can point to a moment where I saw the whole film from beginning to end.

Did I Like It: And that’s maybe part of the problem. This is a movie of moments which don’t really hang together as a whole piece. That quality—a collection of pieces which don’t measure up to a complete whole—is endemic of a lot of 80s films. For instance, Rocky IV (1985) might qualify as a short if you take away all of the montage—although I haven’t seen the recent director’s cut.

One can almost feel Cruise aching to take more direct control over the films in which he appears, but for the mean time has to be content with being charming but restrained in films.

And there’s more than enough charm to go around. A Harold Faltermeyer score immediately launches any film into the territory of pure 80s confection, even those he scored outside the decade. The cast is never not charming, including not just supporting turns from Kilmer and Edwards, but also blink-and-you-miss-them performances from actors who would eventually go on to bigger things like Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins. Yes, Robbins hovers around the edges of the film, spending the run time as not much more than a glorified extra.

One wonders how somebody like Robbins drifted (and I assure you, he does drift) into a film with such jingoistic politics. A film treating the essentially inevitable outbreak of World War III as  the feel good turn for the third act would never be made out of the 1980s (at least, I don’t think it would, I’ll let you know when I finally get around to seeing Top Gun: Maverick (2022)) and probably shouldn’t be made by any reasonable person, ever. Maybe if it did try to weave together a more coherent, fuller package of a movie, it would be impossible to have any fun with it at all.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern

Have I Seen it Before: Nope, although after those reviews opening weekend, my speed in wanting to watch diminished more than a bit.

Did I Like It: I’m glad that the movie has bad reviews, because it allowed me to go in with the lowest possible expectations. Is this the worst of all possible Jurassic movies? Almost certainly. Did I have something approaching a good time with it? Also, yes.

Many will complain (and fairly so) that the movie is only barely about dinosaurs, instead cooking up an often convoluted plot surrounding corporate intrigue, the vagaries of genetic research, and locusts. A bill of false goods, possibly, but anyone who has read the original Crichton novel would recognize some ideas brought to their perhaps incredulous conclusion. As I read that preceding paragraph, I’m not entirely sure I’m happy about this direction or not. I’ll only commit to the view that I don’t reflexively hate it as much as others might.

Any film that would give me this much Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is at least something of a winner. I’m looking in your direction, <Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2019>. The other legacy characters are a welcome treat, but I’m inevitably thinking about a far better film each and every time Neill and Dern share the frame. A film that would have been wall-to-wall these characters might have still been a letdown from previous entries in the series, but the film is at its most alive in those moments.

And that quality is in stark contrast to the lukewarm continuation of Pratt and Howard’s characters that make up the other half of the film. Most of Fallen Kingdom fell out of my head by the time I hit the parking lot, so offering us continuation of those themes never seemed like more than a drag. I honestly can’t remember the Pratt character’s name even now. I want to say Skip Burtman? Something tells me we won’t have to endure a legacy-legacy sequel in thirty years where Pratt and Howard sort out their issues and find golden year happiness.

But do you want to know what really irritates me about the movie? Locusts? I’m fine? Raptor trainer Biff Motorcyclovitz tries my patience on the way to becoming a better adoptive father? I can imagine there might be a fan of Fallen Kingdom who exists and would feel cheated without a third act to that story.

No, I can’t stand the beginning and ending of this movie. In recent years, there has been a trend of “The Ending of (insert movie here) explained” videos on YouTube where some smarmy jag with a Blue microphone* goes over the ending of every big movie and explains it to you, just in case you were unable to wrap your head around the intricacies of a movie geared toward ten-year-olds. They are deeply an unrelentingly irritating. The good news is that there is no need for such a video where Dominion is concerned. Trevorrow and company have included it right in the runtime! A movie is usually in trouble when it has to have a voice over to open and close things (you’ll notice <Jurassic Park (1993)> didn’t need one) but we have no entered the age when we apparently need a Youtube video to tuck is in before and after a movie.

We really don’t.

*As a smarmy jag with a few Blue microphones myself, I feel justified in that assessment.

Jaws (1975)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. No less, the poster is up in my living room*. As I type that, it’s more shocking than anything else that I haven’t re-watched in the four years since I’ve started these reviews.

Did I Like It: There’s plenty for someone to love about this movie even from a distance. The cinematography is as good as anything has ever been. Every frame of the movie has nearly perfect construction, which is all the more impressive when one considers that the entire film actively tried to shake itself apart from the beginning principal photography. As a first major release for Spielberg, the film proves beyond all doubt that he could turn disasters into hits. I’d submit that any of his New Hollywood cohorts would have collapsed under the pressure of making the film. Coppola? Lucas? Hopper? We never would have heard from Hopper again if he had to deal with the shark.

“The shark looks fake” is a hoary cliche of a joke, but it can really only be leveled at the sequels. Whether it is because of Spielberg’s inherent sense (brought to full bear in Jurassic Park (1993)) to avoid showing us the monster for as long as possible, or if that sensibility came about because the shark was an unreliable diva, the shark makes maximum impact when he finally does emerge from the water.

The score is arguably John Williams’ simplest, but it might also be among his most iconic. Not bad for what on first blush is just a cacophony of piano and bowed strings.

But the real secret power of the film—and one that many big movie entertainments did not try to emulate—are the performances. The movie may never be deep, profound drama, but each of the three main leads behaves in the film in a memorable way. When it’s now several days since I re-viewed the film, and I still can’t get “Show Me The Way To Go Home” out of my head, that may be undeniable proof that the movie is only kind of about a shark.

*Along with the iconic art deco poster for The Rocketeer (1991). There’s a certain odd symmetry between them, with both Cliff Secord and Bruce the Shark staring at a hook for hanging plantss that predates our buying of this house.

The Adventures of Really Good Man (2002)

Director: Mac Boyle (Hey! That’s me!)

Cast: Bill Fisher, Mac Boyle, Candacee White, Kerri Hensley

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, man. Where does one begin?

For the last couple of years I’ve been occasionally almost hyper aware that this day was coming. 06/15/2022. Twenty years since The Adventures of Really Good Man had its one and only public screening at the Aaronson Auditorium. Twenty years since I locked myself up in the editing room (really, Bill Bland’s apartment) with all the footage we amassed over two years, and didn’t emerge again until we had something of a movie I could show people.

Using a perhaps hilariously preposterously conservative estimate, I’ve seen the movie* about 50 times. I have not had occasion to watch it in ten years. For a brief flash of a moment, I thought we might do something more elaborate for the 20th anniversary. But in all honesty, I haven’t given the Average Avenger much thought over the last 8 years or so.

That’s the way he would want it, too, I think**. Looking back on it too often means other horizons might go unexplored. Really Good Man was absolutely, 100% my life from about the spring of 2001 to the summer of 2002. I lived and died by the ups and downs of the movie, and in my mind there should have been ten movies, 6 seasons of a TV show, a theme park, with a subsequent corporate takeover of the IP and in the process I’m banished to some kind of wilderness (which also has Wi-Fi, a refrigerator, and a microwave oven) where people could wonder what happened to me.

So yes, I’ve seen the movie before, and yes, I have a certain romanticized view of the whole thing. And in honor of its 20th anniversary, I’m turning these reviews back on to myself.

Did I Like It: There’s so many things about the movie I could say right out of the gate without rewatching it. The camera work is occasionally a frightful mess. I know whose fault that is; you don’t have to tell me. The sound recording is going to be so bad, that I can only hope the viewer likes overblown recordings of Oklahoma wind and traffic cut together badly. Again, I know who’s responsible. The performances (especially Bill) are genuinely pretty good, which of course I had almost no control over. Catching a Burger King drive-thru at precisely the right moment was pure serendipity.

And here’s the really odd thing that happened as I watched again for the first time in years.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared.

Some of the camera work is still pretty shoddy. I didn’t know how to stage a scene of dialogue (or, at least, didn’t have the resources to properly stage one) for the life of me, but in those long takes with no coverage to spare, the background sound is better than I remember. There aren’t a lot of jarring noises of traffic cutting in and out.

Bill’s performance is still an exceptionally deft melding of improv and scripted comedy. In scenes I know to be improvised, he is in the moment and reacting as the character would. In written scenes, every line reading is believable. A cynic might say he is playing a version of himself at the time, but I would counter that with the realization that every great movie star in history is doing precisely the same thing.

God help me, more than a few of the jokes still work. The line about stopping the Damsel in Distress-ish’s (Hensley) wedding was a good line then, and it’s a good line now. The Burger King scene is the movie I saw in my head the whole time I was making it. I had all but forgotten the new title cards I had written for the 10th anniversary edition, and they made me genuinely laugh now. If making yourself laugh ten or twenty years in the future isn’t a kind of magic, I don’t know what is.

Is the film objectively more than some kids messing around with a camcorder? Probably not. However, if we can accept “kids messing around with a camcorder” as a legitimate sub-genre of the movies, then I think it may be one of the best examples. I know, deep within my heart of hearts, it was the best possible movie I could have made at the time.

I look at it now and remember what it was like back then. We are all preserved at a particular moment which was fun and adventurous. I see all the people who were there and remember only happy times, and the hope at that moment that even happier times were to come. Most people have a yearbook. We have this.

What more could one want out of a movie?

*In all of its iterations: the 1:15 minute rough cut (which never screened outside of the MacBook upon which it was originally edited), the 1:05 minute version that screened in ‘02 and was given as a copy to anyone who would ask, the 35:00 minute version I cut together in 2007 after Bill and I during a casual chat agreed that if we had to do it over again, we’d do less, the 15 minute version we sent to fly-by-night film festival at OSU, and the eventual four-part web series recut from 2012, which is currently available on YouTube.

**And if I think something about Really Good Man, it is canon. Provided Bill agrees with it, too.

Rope (1948)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Joan Chandler

Have I Seen it Before: No. Let me tell you a story. Bouncing around the various streaming services in which I am somehow now obligated to subscribe, I was delighted to find Peacock possessed a wide array of Hitchcock films (to say nothing of the entire run of Alfred Hitchcock Presents/The Alfred Hitchcock Hour) including this one which, if you’ll remember from the beginning of this paragraph I had never seen.

Once I had cleared out some larger projects from the pending pile and was in a place where I felt I could actually enjoy an hour and a half of uninterrupted anything, I sat down to finally watch the movie.

Only Peacock had dropped it in those intervening weeks, and if it went to some other platform, it was one for which I wasn’t already paying.

What was I to do? Obviously, I could just rent or purchase the film from Amazon Prime or iTunes, but where is the fun in that? I’m not sure if immediate access to any film ever created for nominal prices has ruined film appreciation, but it has dinged the ecstasy a bit, hasn’t it?

So I ventured out into the world and tried to find Rope (I wasn’t just going to wait for the serendipity of stumbling over it again) on DVD (kids, ask your parents). I scoured ever used DVD shop in town, with no luck. I even drifted into a used music shop in some vague hope that they might also carry DVDs as well. They did have a very thin collection of films, but the more pressing issue was the earful I got from the proprietor about how I really needed to get into vinyl again. One antiquated thing at a time, pal.

At that point, one might have forgiven me if I had indulged the Bezos in his wares and at least ordered the disc to be shipped to me. Indeed, I could have done so, and the disc would have come to me within 48 hours.

This also feels like too quick, especially when I’ve already put so much work into this quest, just on avoiding getting on the music shop’s email newsletter alone.

So then I went to Barnes & Noble. Even in the before times, when people didn’t give you funny looks when it comes up in casual conversation that your DVD/Blu Ray collection measures up to in the 700s, B & N was never the place you’d go to grab discs. They’re prices were preposterously high, and are even more so now that the second-hand market is practically giving away discs by the truckload.

But I found it. Right there. For 30% off, no less. My gasp in the middle of that store tweaked the air pressure in the building, I’m sure.

There are so many moviegoing experiences which are in a state of flux, both post-COVID and in the midst of the streaming wars (which is what started this whole crusade in the first place), that it’s hard to imagine that the singular pleasure of going out into the world to track down a specific form of entertainment may be all but extinct.

Thus, the experience of taking in the movie was an imminently pleasurable one before I even hit play.

Did I Like It: After all that, what is left to say? The film itself is weighed down by the same problem which weighed down a lot of early talky films: the feeling that we’re watching a recorded stage production. This is certainly not an early talky, by any means, but in its experimental attempts to tell a story in one (albeit deceptive) shot, it can’t help but limit itself in this way. Reportedly, both Hitchcock and Stewart agreed with this sentiment.

Ultimately, the chief triumph of the film isn’t in its plot, or its performances, or even really in its staging, which is what everyone remembers. It’s a triumph of stage lighting, as the panorama outside the apartment slowly (although improbably) descends into night. But to call a motion picture a triumph of lighting is to pointedly damn it as a stage play recorded, so the object strengths reinforce its ultimate weakness.

But as far as films that might not have worked quite as well as everyone would want, there are far worse times to be had. There was one moment where Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson) is just about to open the chest. I have my feet up. I am eating some coffee ice cream with some dark chocolate syrup. I am having the time of my life. Even when Hitchcock trips up, he does so with ambition in his heart, and he still pairs great with coffee ice cream.

Minority Report (2002)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: When Spielberg dies, this won’t be even in the top ten films mentioned as his most memorable. In any retrospective of the Philip K. Dick adaptations, this film probably won’t be one of the first ones mentioned. Considering Tom Cruise will likely continue reaching for cinematic excellence after he has grown beyond the use of his physical body to await Xenu’s return, there’s a very real possibility this won’t even rank in the top thousand memorably Cruise roles*.

And, for the life of me, I can’t quite figure out why any of those things are true.

It is far and beyond the best adaptation of Dick’s work ever produced, and yes, I count Blade Runner (1982) in that equation (although I don’t care for it, which I understand already renders me suspect) and Total Recall (1990) (which I ultimately kind of like). It takes a kernel of an idea—which is all Dick was ever really good for—and flushes it out into an actual story that sticks with you.

There’s not a genre which Spielberg hasn’t conquered, so it’s almost a tragedy that he hasn’t done more hard-boiled detective stories. He didn’t even need to include any of the Dick-ish trappings present here.

Cruise may still be working through his post-Mission: Impossible II (2000) malaise, but he’s approaching his later day renaissance with the vigor even his detractors must grant him.

*As I type that, I feel like I’m being unfair to Scientology. I might have saved this revelation for my eventual review of Top Gun: Maverick (2022), but I’m struggling to think of any religion not built on a foundation of abuse. Only one religion has its adherents speaking out against the horrors of motion blurring on HD TV sets. So, even though it might not bring me the kind of power of a Cruise or the horrors of a Kirstie Alley, I may need to keep a more open mind.