Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926)

Director: Harry Edwards

Cast: Harry Langdon, Joan Crawford, Edwards Davis, Tom Murray

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Let me guess. You’ve clicked on this review assuming that this was going to be a Chaplin movie, didn’t you? If I wasn’t weirdly zeroed in on Chaplin’s features, I probably would have thought the same thing.

There are certainly enough qualities to make this similar to any number of silent comedy features, including those produced by Chaplin. Mistaken identity, hapless marching straight through danger as if it doesn’t really exist, and a vein of populist wish fulfillment with the downtrodden pure hero coming into great riches. The whole thing tends to the episodic, as most of the screen comedians of the era (including Chaplin, for that matter) had not yet worked out how to maintain things for over an hour without starting and stopping things constantly.

Langdon does offer a bit of a different energy from his contemporaries, which is good, but it also leads to the film’s chief, glaring problem. He is childlike, where Chaplin and Buster Keaton were sad clowns, and Harold Lloyd had a more wry detachment from the chaos which surrounded him (although I may be responding to the glasses there). It’s a unique flavor that probably appealed more to kids of the era, and which kept me from too much thinking him just a knockoff of his contemporaries.

And yet, the whole thing ends—completely divorced from any tie to the footrace which propels the loose plot—with several minutes of Langdon playing his own character’s newborn infant son, just mugging as a baby. As much as I’ve written about some silent comedy features not having the idea of a feature plot quite nailed down yet, this almost seemed like they were filming the entire movie live, realized they needed to run a bit longer on time, and slapped a diaper on Langdon, hoping for either the best or that the audience would already be grabbing their coats by then.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Director: Rachel Talalay

Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Zane, Shon Greenblatt, Yaphet Kotto

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Pretty sure about that one.

Did I Like It: And that’s where I’ll open with something kind of sort of nice about this last—lies—entry in the house Wes Craven built, which subsequently built New Line Cinema. Where A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) blended together into one giant stew of mediocrity punctuated by occasionally interesting creature effects. This one is certainly distinctive, and incredibly difficult to confuse with other films in the series.

That’s partly because it really, truly goes out of its way to suck.

I’m not sure if it is the hoary shots set up for a 3D presentation which would have been all-but-useless outside of the film’s opening weekend in 1991, or if it is the weird melange of cameos which drift in and out of the movie, but either of those elements certainly don’t help me forget the other. The 3D scenes are only even in the film’s climax, but when it does start down that path. Wikipedia tells me the theatrical cut had Maggie/Katherine (Zane) inexplicable don her own pair of 3D glasses before battling her (spoilers) father. That might have added some camp value, but then just having things (including Englund’s head) flying toward the middle of the camera isn’t exactly the film walking so Avatar (2009) could run.

Speaking of camp, let’s dwell a bit on those cameos. If ever you were to need a nexus between Roseanne, Tom Arnold, Alice Cooper, and Johnny Depp (who is apparently either playing himself, or his already dead character in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) now residing in Hell, not that you or I care) in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, then this film might be the one for you.

Hey, look at that. I found one more nice thing to say about the movie. Other than that, though…

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Director: Stephen Hopkins

Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Kelly Jo Minter, Erika Anderson

Have I seen it Before: I’m not even sure that’s a valid question anymore. I oddly do have a strong memory of being in the video department of a grocery store* and being absolutely transfixed by a large cardboard ad for the movie, with Krueger (Englund, Dream Demons bless him for hanging around this long) admonishing those walking by to be quiet, as the baby in the bassinet from hell was sleeping. Also, I thing I read a submission by the screenwriter for an anthology I was working on years ago. For the life of me, I can’t remember if we bought the story or not.

Did I Like It: Clearly, I’ve watched A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), and these two films so absurdly blurred together that if I were to ever break my rule and write a second review for a film I would probably still be just as uncertain that I’ve ever seen the film. For two films which were not

In that way, it’s oddly a little a bit like Star Trek: Generations (1994), or better yet Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Now, stay with me here, no matter how much you may not want to. At this point in time, the series was putting out a movie a year, and Freddy was appearing weakly as a host (and occasional character) of his own syndicated horror show. The franchise was clearly spread just a bit too thin. Freddy is over-exposed. Throw in a writer’s strike for full production chaos flavor, and voila, a franchise that vacillates between being over-produced and forgettable, yet strangely cheapened from its heyday.

*This was in those halcyon days when you could rent movie about five feet from the deli department of any grocery store. I’ll never know why they always put the video department right near the deli…

Starman (1984)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: First of all, I’m just going to say this part simply and quickly. Any movie where the antagonist has a complete change of heart and helps the heroes escape after getting a dressing down from his superiors for being “a GS-11.” I like that a lot. I had forgotten about it. Even if this hadn’t been one of Carpenter’s films, I would have on the whole liked it quite a bit.

That being said, it’s weird to see Carpenter—and he really didn’t try it again, until Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) maybe—make a film that doesn’t have a pitch black heart.

It’s even weirder that Carpenter made this film shortly after—Christine (1983) only remains in the gap—he made the bleakest tale of alien visitation, The Thing (1982).

But, at his best, that’s what John Carpenter does: surprise.

It surprises not only in Carpenter’s choice of genre—alien invasion as hybrid of mediation on grief, romantic comedy, and road picture—but also in terms of casting. Carpenter would have been forgiven for using the Robert De Niro to his Scorsese and putting Kurt Russell in the role of Starman. That would have been a mistake, though. Whether Carpenter had the presence of mind to go another way, or he had the idea thrust upon him by the studio, but there’s an inquisitive, guileless innocence to Bridges that Russell didn’t even have when he was outwitting Cesar Romero.

It almost, just almost, makes one want to ignore that Carpenter isn’t using Dean Cundey as cinematographer. It might be a bit too much to allow for Carpenter to not writing the score. Unless you’ve managed to get Ennio Morricone, there’s really no excuse for that kind of mis-fire.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Lisa Wilcox, Danny Hassel, Tuesday Knight, Robert Englund

Have I Seen it Before: I honestly don’t remember. I’m going to hazard a guess and say I have not.

Did I Like It: The hoary cliche is to say that no movie in the Nightmare series beyond the original completely sucked. It’s reductive, of course, especially considering for my money the first film is likely over validated, but I would say both that the seventh is far and way the best film of the series*.

But there is a reason that the sequels receive mostly side eye from people. The novelty of Dream Warriors is long since gone, connections to the beginnings of the series have disappeared (a quick look-see into the history of the series indicates Wes Craven was even interested in continuing his re-connection with the series, but New Line myopically had no interest in his pitch), and what we’re left with is movies that bleed together and can’t even manage to entertain in the depraved way that even the basest horror films can accomplish.

One might think that I made a typo in the preceding paragraph when I referred to “movies,” but I assure you that was intentional. This movie is so blandly inconsequential that I was tempted for more than few minutes to write my first ever dual review, as this and The Dream Child (1989) are basically interchangeable. Even a schlocky—but somehow still over-validated—movie maker like Renny Harlin only manages to prove why he shouldn’t have briefly been given the keys to a-list movies, and only produces journeyman level work. He had to have either sold his soul to some supernatural entity (who isn’t Freddy Krueger (Englund)) or really delivered this one under budget to get where he got. That second one tends to make a lot more sense, because after Cutthroat Island (1995), everyone came to their senses.

*And, in an opinion that is likely to get things thrown at me, the best film Wes Craven ever made.

The Little Mermaid (2023)

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina

Have I seen it Before: So, here’s the thing. I saw this in the theater. Twice. Why? Perfectly reasonable question, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

Did I Like It: It may not matter if I like it or not. By and large, I do. Bailey has the perfect combination of charisma and curiosity to effectively sell herself as the youngest princess of the ocean. If you have a problem with her, I’ll have to leave you to quietly contemplate your reasons. I might be urged to say that the amount of computer animation needed to make the ocean come alive and resemble a 35-year-old cartoon doesn’t really make this all that different from the original. The “live-action remake” moniker for some of these Disney films can only go so far, right?

Given that I’ve seen it twice, I have found myself lazily singing or humming several of the film’s songs. I can tell you right now that every one of those songs were also found in the original. Even as I write this, I find the rhythm of my typing occasionally syncs up with “Under the Sea.” If you put a gun to my head, I wouldn’t be able to remember any of the new songs. They aren’t offensive; they merely blend. That is, aside for “Scuttlebutt.” A rap duet with Sebastian (Diggs) and Scuttle (Awkwafina) which seems specifically designed to annoy. Such a total tonal misstep, I’ve been reasonably sure that the guy who directed Cats (2019) had somehow once again been let loose on a big-budget film. I was visibly shocked to learn Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the new songs and am now forced to believe his intent was to annoy with “Scuttlebutt.”

Lora, the avowed Little Mermaid fan in our house indicated she preferred this film to the original, owing in no small part to the fact that Ariel’s agency—noticeably missing from the animated version—is given narrative weight, with King Triton (Javier Bardem, looking a bit like he might have shot all of his scenes before being properly caffeinated for the day) eventually saying, “You shouldn’t have had to lose your voice to be heard.” It’s a nice thought, and hard to dismiss.

But, yes: How did I come to see this twice? My niece, “still four,” as she would describe herself, wanted to go see it, and as Uncle Weird Little Movie Guy™, I was more than willing to sit through it again to be part of a relative’s first trip to the theater. Now, we can all wrap ourselves in our cynicism about Disney’s crass money grab in repackaging things we’ve already seen. We can look dourly upon the occasionally dodgy CGI (Sebastian’s eyes are fascinating, but often unsettling), and decide that the whole thing looks like the lighting department were out getting Bardem’s coffee. We live in cynical times, especially when it comes to our art. I get that, but when Niece saw the tableau of Ariel’s cave of treasures, she exclaimed “Wow!” with a complete lack of artifice. You can’t argue with that kind of a review.

By the same token, when she came in with the one-two punch in the films last half an hour—after our haul of snacks had run dry—with first a question (“When will this movie be over?”) and then finally a proclamation (“I have been sitting in this chair for so long!”), you can’t argue with that review, either. There was no reason to expand this one from the trim 83 minutes of the original two 135 minutes here. Your audience has spoken, Disney. The audience is here for these live action remakes, but expanding them beyond any normal snack arrangement, or the reasonable attention span of a 4-year-old, you’ve got problems.

Maybe if you had cut out “Scuttlebutt…”

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Director: Chuck Russell

Cast: Heather Langenkamp, Patricia Arquette, Larry Fishburne, Robert Englund

Have I Seen it Before: Yes? As the Nightmare movies are not really my go-to slasher series, I get a little bit fuzzy outside of <the original>, <Freddy’s Revenge (1985)>, and <Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)>.

Did I Like It: My uncertainty only grows when I realize that this film certainly does distinguish itself in the series. The effects work is sufficiently gross (and I mean that in the best way) with the the worm creature Freddy takes the form of early in the film is easily memorable.

I’m always a little bit suspicious of long-running horror series becoming transfixed on their own mythologies as a replacement for building actual tension. It had frequently threatened to kill the Halloween series, it essentially did slowly eradicate Hellraiser, and for my money, Jason Voorhees never had anything to lose under the weight of too much backstory. Here, there was always a mythic quality to Freddy, and while New Nightmare may have tapped into that quality with more confidence and resonance, the little bit of additional backstory we get about Freddy here manages to not be too much. And, besides, “the bastard son of 100 maniacs” is the kind of pulpy fun that makes one glad they are alive to take in such fluff.

Most importantly, though, this film exists ahead of its time. Almost every recent new entry in long-running horror series has an underlying theme of protagonists taking power back from their tormentors, but the story of the titular dream warriors here is a precursor to that trend, made all the more strange by the fact that it exists at a time where the slasher genre was content to be nothing more artistic than the local butcher, forming their cuts out of the caucuses of people in their mid-twenties desperate to pretend they are teenagers.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson

Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez

Have I Seen it Before: Nope!

Did I Like It: These movies are making me feel quite foolish.

Years ago, when Sony announced that they were bringing their admittedly haphazard skills to an animated Spider-Man movie focusing Miles Morales (Moore), I was skeptical. Morales is a big part of the comics, but a pretty deep cut for the larger audience. Additionally, Sony Animation had appeared to go out of their way to avoid tapping into a breakthrough hit, unless one counted Hotel Transylvania (2012)—which I wouldn’t—or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009–which I probably should, as Lord and Miller were also involved in that case.

Boy, was I wrong.

The original Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)* is so good that the live-action Spider-movies have become tame (if still enjoyable) by comparison, to the point where Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) had to reach for a bit of the—pun not intended, but resigned to—multiversal madness.

So, when the sequel came around, I was pretty sure I had it all figured out. The LEGO Movie (2014) was resplendent, but The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019) was merely a passable animated film, and once again, Lord and Miller were involved there. There is no way that more time with Miles and company would measure up.

Boy, was I wrong.

Everything that was great about the first film here is expanded and made all the more poignant here. While multiple universes are performing a delicate dance/traffic jam around this movie, the theme of Miles and Gwen (Steinfeld) ongoing uncertainty about where they belong goes beyond the meet-cute of the first film. The film is just as, if not funnier than its predecessor, which is no small feat, as I could have easily been turned off by the fact that Spider-Ham and Spider-Man Noir—easily the two most demonstrably funny characters from the first film—are relegated to a silent cameo in the film’s final moments. Some might be turned off by the cliffhanger here, but I imagine anyone complaining about that at this point will be mollified when the entire picture of the trilogy is complete.

But next year’s Beyond the Spider-Verse couldn’t possibly be any good, right? How many trilogy cappers are truly satisfying?

*How could that have been nearly five years ago? Why is time becoming increasingly wild, with certain years flying by in a snap, and other years feeling like they are a decade long? Don’t answer that, I think I may know the answer.

Christine (1983)

DIRECTOR: John Carpenter

CAST: Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE: Funny you should mention that. (The answer is yes.)

But when I saw Halloween Ends (2022) last year, I even remarked at the time, “Oh. This one has an auto garage as one of the central locations. That must be a reference to Christine.”

At the time, it had probably been twenty years since I had last seen the film. Upon watching this film again, I realize I may have been underselling it. I even had the patently ridiculous thought while watching this that I wish the powers that be made legacy sequels to all of Carpenter’s library, when I realized that Ends is a slavishly devoted to this film, as Green’s Halloween (2018) was to Halloween (1978).

And that’s good. We may be slightly flirting with the period (long since gone now) where Carpenter could be talked into directing a movie for the money or to position himself better in his career. Dean Cundey might not be shooting things for him anymore (and would only intermittently return), but we have a full Carpenter score to feast our ears upon once again.

Is it a little silly (bordering on Love Bug-ish) to have a car be the unrelenting embodiment (a Carpenter archetype, to be sure) of death and chaos? Sure. That does sap the film of some scares, but there really wouldn’t be a way to adapt King’s novel without making it about a car, so I’m willing to give the man a pass, even though he took this movie as things had stalled on the eventual Firestarter (1984), which he was slated to direct at that point. Any improvement in Firestarter would have been a quantum leap forward (although the recent remake muddles that declaration somewhat).

And yet there is tension—if not terror—in a teenage guy getting his first taste of power and freedom behind the wheel, and that set of wheels eventually completely subsumes him. I can’t deny that.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Director: Wes Craven*

Cast: John Saxon, Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund

Have I Seen it Before: Oh yes. This was the last movie I joined Beyond the Cabin in the Woods before they asked me to join the show permanently. It seems like a couple of lifetimes ago. That’s probably because it sort of was…

Did I Like It: In the past I’ve always been sort of ambivalent about this movie. It’s never felt as relentlessly terrifying as Halloween (1978), or as trashy as Friday the 13th (1980), or as insidious unnerving as Hellraiser (1987). Where does it really fit in to the horror pantheon, especially when I would point to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) as the best edition in the franchise.

This time, however I found more to like about it than I had ever before. I must becoming soft in my increasing age. The surreal, almost cubist images in character’s dreams always feel like a more realistic depiction of the ephemeral nature of dreams, far more than what most might find in cinema.

That manages to paper over some of the flaws I still can’t quite get over. The teenagers are relatively well cast, but a bit too earnest for their own good. I also can’t help but laugh a little bit when adolescents in movies are having astonishingly good sex, when anyone over the age of 25 is pretty certain that no adolescent has ever had any good sex since time began.

Ultimately, though, when the characters start talking about the nature of dreams, the film becomes less of a cinematic experience and more a videotaped podcast on the subject of dreams. To be fair, Craven has that problem in his films. New Nightmare had the same problem occasionally, although those instances felt more natural in light of that film’s more mythological undertones.

* I may have said this before, but it bears mentioning again. The man had the best name of a horror director ever. It was like if James Whale had been nicknamed John Spookyfuntime, or if John Carpenter had been name John Relentless-Suspense-And-Never-Being-Bogged-Down-By-Excessive-Backstory.

Planet Terror (2007)

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Cast: Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn

Have I Seen it Before: Now that is an interesting question. I missed the original Grindhouse double feature when it originally hit theaters. In the ensuing years, I definitely know I’ve watched Tarantino’s half of the project, Death Proof (2007), but as I watched the film unfurl this time, there were parts of it that struck vague memories, but other parts which I had both completely forgotten, and would have assumed I had remembered. So I can only offer a 75% certainty about any answer to that question.

Did I Like It: Not being all that certain that I’ve seen it before is probably a pretty thorough—if soft—indictment of the movie, but I also say that I had about as much fun as I possibly could at this point with what I was seeing.

I can’t watch the film without thinking that Dimension picked the wrong guy to direct the nearly concurrent remake of Halloween (2007). Here, Rodriguez has tapped in such subtle ways into the energy on display in Halloween II (1981), that I would have far preferred to see what he had to offer on Michael Myers. At first I thought I was imagining things, but when William (Josh Brolin) reaches to stab his wife, Dakota (Shelton) in the eye with a syringe, I became unassailably convinced that Rodriguez knew exactly from whom he was borrowing.

I was far more interested in those touches than I was in the larger subject matter, though. I’ve long since been fed up with the zombie genre on spec, that I could see past the inherent nihilism of the genre for any stretch of time is surely to Rodriguez’s credit. That I was able to have any amount of fun with the film when the imprimatur of the Weinsteins is all over it, and McGowan has since indicated that she was exploited by the filmmakers… well, that might say less about Rodriguez’s skills and more about my—admittedly not great—ability compartmentalize my experience with entertainment.

Maleficent (2014)

Director: Robert Stromberg

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I admire the idea behind the film. Trying to tell the story of a famed villain from their perspective already offers more from a live-action Disney remake than the rest of the (largely money grabbing) genre has managed to generate so far. But there’s more to it than that. If kids can begin to grasp, even if it is on an unconscious level, that the apparent villainy of some might have their own motivations and intentions, then there might be some hope for future generations*.

The execution of the film leaves a little bit to be desired. I’m not sure if Jolie ever actually shared a scene with any of her co-stars. Especially in the early scenes, it is looking an awful lot like Jolie showed up for a few days of green screen work to glower, look bemused, and shout pronouncements to characters several hundred yards away. Things might improve a little bit as the film’s central story kicks into gear, but not a whole lot. It might be an intentional choice to make Maleficent distant from everyone else, but I can’t watch it and not think Jolie lives that distance from the rest of humanity every day.

I might be willing to call that element one of the film’s secret, if tragic, strengths, but other elements aren’t doing the film any favors. Much of the CGI already looks dodgy, further cementing the sinking realization that as time progresses, the half life of special effects only shrinks. That, too, can be forgiven, but the film also is so preposterously weighed down by endless voice over narration. I’d bet a not insignificant amount of money that the narration was added late in the production at the insistence of the studio, as it is as disconnected as Jolie is from the film it inhabits.

*That is assuming that future generations have any amount of disagreements, or even basic human society to enjoy in the years to come… Geez, that footnote got dark.

The Thing (1982)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Richard Dysart

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, of course. In fact, I was a little surprised that I hadn’t written a review of this one, as the we did do the show on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, but it must have been in that brief time between when I joined the show and when I started these reviews.

Did I Like It: An idiot out there might say—and probably did when this film was initially released—that decided that Carpenter had effectively run out of juice after Halloween (1978)*.

This film is an absolute triumph of everything Carpenter excels at. It is lean. It is mean. What it adds to the proceedings that Carpenter’s earlier films—largely out of necessity—lacked is a visceral (and I do mean of, pertaining to, or possessing qualities of viscera…) . The various Thing-creatures are some of the most nauseating and unnerving creature work in the movies. Those images stuck with me before I ever even managed to see the movie. I remember a kid’s book from the library I devoured when I couldn’t have been any older than six or seven featuring various movie monsters. Godzilla was there, and Dracula, but also the recently revealed Norris-Thing (Charles Hallahan), all contorted face and absurd limbs. It stuck with me then, and it sticks with me now.

What’s more, this film is still unnerving and still scary as hell. The scene where MacReady (Russell) is testing the blood of the other men. I’ve seen this film. I know how it ends. But I’ll be damned if I don’t feel every inch of the tension as it proceeds, and I’ll be doubly damned if I wasn’t completely thrown for a loop when the blood finally reacted.

If a movie can blow past forty and still hold power on multiple viewings, that’s magic of a high order, and no one can take that away from Carpenter. He certainly never ran out of juice by the time The Thing was released, and for my money he never did. He may have eventually given it up after he didn’t have any use for it anymore, but that’s up for debate.

*The original The Thing from Another World (1951) was, naturally one of the films playing on TV during Carpenter’s breakthrough hit. The other was Forbidden Planet (1956), and I’ll never not wonder what Carpenter’s remake of that film could have been like. Might even be better that it is always something that I’ll have to just imagine… Unless, you know, he decides to make one on his couch. It just now occurred to me that Russell would probably have to play the Walter Pidgeon role… Which, now that I think about it is essentially Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2019). God damn that was a long footnote…

The Ring (2002)

DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski

CAST: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Brian Cox, Amber Tamblyn

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE: Never.

DID I LIKE IT: It is an odd experience to take in a horror movie not in anticipation of some future podcast discussion, but this one has been a bit of a blind spot on my radar for a number of years.

The images are certainly evocative, I’ll give it that. And there’s a weird undercurrent of nostalgia to see a movie about a print journalist (Watts) fixated on a VHS tape. When she makes use of a payphone in at least one scene, it’s almost like watching a period piece.

But there’s one problem that may have as many as three explanations.

Those image might just be a bit too iconic. I’ve seen that little girl crawl her way out of that well so many times, there’s just no hope of surprise when I finally took it all in with context. I can imagine The Blair Witch Project (1999) will elicit similar response to the uninitiated, but this film doesn’t have anything resembling that earlier film’s unrelentingly unnerving last few minutes.

There may be just a bit too much bleakness in the film for the proceedings to ever really ramp up to genuine terror. Ari Aster has the same problem for me, although in his case it’s virtually impossible that misery porn buffet is not the filmmaker’s absolute intention.

On the other hand, my horror callus might be too rough for anything to ever properly hit a vein. It’s a reality that has to be confronted at some point. But then again there is the hope that the next film around the corner will manage to surprise. Unfortunately, this isn’t that film.

The whys are probably incidental. What we have here is a perfectly competently made film that failed to leave any kind of resonance, or draw out any kind of reflexive response from.

The Goonies (1985)

DIRECTOR: Richard Donner

CAST: Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Ke Huy Quan

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE: Yes, but…

DID I LIKE IT: I feel like I’m obligated as a byproduct of my age to not only like the movie, but love it to the expense of both movies.

It is certainly not the best Amblin movie of the 80s, not by a mile. You always have to eye a movie with a story by Spielberg, but that he eventually decided against directing*. He had to have thought it was a good idea at some point, and then turned back from it. Very damning, and as I write this I’m trying to avert my eyes from the forthcoming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

I can’t even count in Richard Donner’s best films, when the Lethal Weapon movies can remain so unassailably watchable, despite the insistent existence of Mel Gibson**.

It’s not even the best 80s movie with Ke Huy Quan (yes, in this house we defend Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)).

But all of that is not to knock the film entirely. For the first half, the score, the breakneck pace, and the likable performances from the main cast are positively electric. But, every time I see the film—and this dates back to the 80s when I was probably first obligated to start loving it—the film meanders after the halfway point, and my level of interest wanes considerably. The kids are still all right, but I’m think of better times with them (Temple of Doom, again). Then the ending comes around, in one of my least favorite trends, not because it is a conclusion or punctuation to the story, but instead because they ran out of runtime.

I like the film, but I don’t love the film. And for that, I can only offer a half-hearted apology.

*Along with Poltergeist (1982) the collective wisdom indicates he might as well have directed the movie, but just opted out of taking that particular credit.

**Is anyone, and I mean anyone at all interested in a Donner-less fifth Lethal movie, much less one (as all signs point to) helmed by Gibson? The mind boggles

Small Soldiers (1998)

Director: Joe Dante

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Gregory Smith, Jay Mohr, Phil Hartman

Have I Seen it Before: Ahem. So, here’s the thing. I’m about a month away from what I hope to be a peak movie experience. Circle Cinema will be running Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). This would be enough to get me there with bells on. That it will be projected in 35mm is enough to make it worth a trek of many miles, to say nothing of going across town. That film alone gains more than perhaps any other by being projected on film, as the film infamously breaks by design. What’s more? Joe Dante himself will be there in person. June of 2023 will be a peak month of movies for me.

I’m stalling. You’re wanting to know if I’ve ever seen Small Soldiers. I did go see it in the fall of ‘98 at a second run theater, and the friends I went with got bored pretty quickly. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly not bored by the whole thing. They wanted to leave. I thought the movie would get better, but bowed to peer pressure and went with them.

So, yes. It’s with supreme shame I admit that the one film I’ve ever walked out of in the theater was one directed by Joe Dante. Is it possible to feel guilty about not thinking much of a movie several decades later.

Did I Like It: I’m comforted by the realization, after a little bit of further reading, that Dante never felt particularly thrilled with the film, as he was initially hired on to make a Dante film, with subversive and demented being the guiding words. Then, the studio decided that this had the potential (or market research) to be a big summer movie for kids, and the whole thing got smoothed out.

That’s why it will never be among the great Dante films. But that doesn’t make it uniquely unfortunate. As long as Dante kept making big studio films after Matinee (1993), or probably after Gremlins 2, those studios tried to reign him in. That’s okay. You can only get away with absolute heists of movies so many times before the powers that be get wise.

But he still manages to fit in some singularly Danteian things. The fundamental construction of the piece is a little subversive, with the monstrous creatures the heroes and the soldiers being (without much modification) the villains. References to movies like Bride of Frankenstein (1935) abound to let us big kids know that the man is still trying to show us all as good a time as possible.

Rocky IV (1985)

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Dolph Lundgren

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, but let me tell you. We could dwell for a long spell on the fact that this is a film where the Balboa family buys—and incorporates into their family dynamic—a robot.

It’s a deeply perplexing turn in a series of films which is, at least nominally, about boxing. For years, it bugged me. Honestly, it should have bugged humanity. So, in the lead up to the release of Rocky Balboa (2006), when Stallone started answering questions coming from the readership of Aint It Cool News, I had the temerity to pose the question, and he answered it*. Honestly, he seemed kind of put out by being reminded about it. Cut to several years later, and apparently he included it because it was therapeutic to his autistic son and thus meant a lot to him. Had that been the answer back then, I might have felt bad about it at the time.

Did I Like It: Here’s a potentially controversial statement: If Stallone isn’t a truly great director, then he is certainly one of the most consistently underestimated directors. Truly, the fact that he was able to assemble one of the most beloved 80s cinematic confections, when the objective truth is that there is 40 minutes of actual plot here (the rest is filled with endless variations on the same montage), and that plot centers around a former low-level mob enforcer single-handedly winning the Cold War with his fists… Well, it’s a Rocky film, the fists aren’t even all that important. The guy defeated the Soviet Union by being able to take a punch.

I can’t account for how the film is so insanely watchable even now. So much so that it’s certainly on my agenda to take in Stallone’s recently released director’s cut.

I even hear that he cut the robot out of the new version. Maybe he felt bad about it, too.

*Don’t believe me? You can read about it all here. I swear to God I had a devil of a time trying to track down a 17-year-old article in the archives of a website which has essentially—and justifiably—been abandoned. Coming up short for the better part of an hour, I was starting to feel like Winston Smith quietly suspecting that the truth about Eurasia (or a robot named Sico) had been deleted by forces unknown.

Rocky II (1979)

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: It’s been the one entry of the whole series (aside from the positively inert Rocky V (1990)) that I have re-visited the least.

For so many years, I had dismissed it as just Rocky (1976) except Balboa (Stallone, taking over directing duties here from John G. Avildsen) wins his fight with Apollo Creed (Weathers) at the end.

But that’s not quite right, I’ve realized. To say nothing of the fact that Tarantino went on and on about how this one is not only great, but perhaps even better than the original*, it was definitely worth a re-examination.

I’ve long defended Rocky III (1982) as the story of someone who may have peaked, and yet struggles to find a continuing source of the drive that got him there to begin with. This is—despite my deep, nostalgic-tinged love for it—the assessment of a fifteen year old. That quality that Stallone can—and eventually does—tap into in his sleep is really on full display here. At least it’s more poignant here, to a near 40-year-old. Finding drive after you have reached the unassailable top of your game is a story of interest to only a few. If these movie reviews somehow made me the next Siskel and/or Ebert, I don’t think I would be all that worried about keeping the hustle going.

As Rocky had his shot at the title, trying to move on from that glorious moment is something he’s just not that equipped to do. How does a hero move on from the reasonable conclusion of his story? he has to go through the ordeal all over again. That ethos that I always saw in the third Rocky had been staring at me in this one**. I’m going to have to re-order my order-of-preference for the series.

• I love you as much as the next guy, Q, but let’s get serious…

** Could it be that “Eye of the Tiger” recommends a movie that strongly?

Too Late for Tears (1949)

Director: Byron Haskin

Cast: Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Is it really possible to not enjoy oneself for 100 minutes in a darkened room with access to M&Ms with one hand, and buttered popcorn in the other? Probably not. Thus, reviews of movies can become a little difficult at times. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of watching the movie, and it had almost nothing to do with the guy in the front row that hooted and hollered with every turn of the plot, or the fact that I got my final grades for the semester just as I was going into the movie…

Although it probably had a little bit to do with the snacks.

Unfortunately, this movie was more than a little weighed down by at least three points that could have easily served as an ending. That’s fatal for noir, where the stories of the best films begin to resemble a noose slowly tightening around the worst characters. Here, the noose tightens, loosens, and retightens several times. It’s like one of the Lord of the Rings movies, except with a measure more gin being poured. Interest wanes right along with the tension.

One does not want to introduce a degree of shallowness in his movie reviews, but I feel a little bit safer flirting with such a perspective when the genre is more than content to trade in it. So many characters are utterly bewitched by Jane Palmer (Scott) and her sister-in-law Kathy Palmer (Kristine Miller) is portrayed as some kind olympic level spinster. I don’t buy it, even a little bit. Mrs. Palmer never looks like she’s disinterested in murdering someone, and I guess that’s just a turn off for me.

Maybe I’m weird.

Peter Pan (1924)

Director: Herbert Brenon

Cast: Betty Bronson, Ernest Torrence, Mary Brian, George Ali

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Here’s a little tip for the uninitiated. This was the film featured for this month’s Second Saturday Silents at Circle Cinema. I’ve been going to those for the last several months and enjoying them quite a bit. Thus, with Mother’s Day weekend upon us a confluence of scheduling snafus led me to walk out of the film (a thing I have not done since my second view of The Scorpion King (2001), for reasons I won’t go into here. I figured I would be fine, as the film has long since lapsed into the public domain, and I could easily find it only to pick up the last twenty minutes.

I do not recommend seeing the first three-fourths of a silent movie with a good, friendly crowd and live organ accompaniment, only to pick up the last half an hour watching a print any old person bothered to upload on YouTube. The experiences are starkly different.

Did I Like It: There’s more than enough charm in this, the only cinematic adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s story upon which Barrie himself had a creative influence, that it’s not hard to imagine this becoming a foundational movie for a young Walt Disney. You can see the influences for his eventual animated adaptation.

Even now, I’m left surprised by a few things. I was consistently surprised at how much Ali could manage to be in a dog suit for his entire role and not make a violent mockery of the uncanny valley the entire time. As film technology advances, we keep missing that mark somehow.

What’s more? The first introduction of Tinker Bell (x) left me sitting in the theater (as indeed, this was still the part where I was in the theater) what I would imagine was just a light on a pole flew through an open window, a window of which I can clearly see all four edges. How did they do that? How can a movie leave me wondering “how did they do that?” when it is nearly 100 years old?