The Third Man (1949)

Director: Carol Reed

Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. You don’t write three—count ‘em, three—books about Orson Welles without wandering into this one a few times. Still not entirely sure why I didn’t include it in the massive Orson Welles re-watch I did before publishing The Once and Future Orson Welles, other than the fact that Welles didn’t direct the movie. But it should have been, right under scenes from Citizen Kane (1941), its scenes from this one that always make it into quick and dirty Welles retrospectives, along with radio clips from the War of the Worlds, or maybe a commercial or two for Paul Masson.

Did I Like It: When you think of the cream of the crop of film noir, you might want to swing your rhetorical arms for Peter Lorre, or Edward G. Robinson (really, there is a fine line between a gangster movie and film noir, although that Venn diagram can resemble an oval), but this is the A-list standard of the genre.

The cast is perfect, and I’m only kind of talking about Welles. You put a-list talent in a movie, and nearly any genre can transcend. Or, at least, it used to. Throw in a score that flies in the face of every convention, and you’re practically guaranteed to have a classic on your hands.

I was talking with another writer in recent years. They wrote crime novels (or, at least, tried to) and railed at how The Third Man’s crime story doesn’t quite add up. I get talked at a lot—or at least, more frequently than average—about Orson Welles films, and it often starts to resemble the grown ups in Peanuts cartoons trying to talk to me. But here, I could kind of see his point, Martins (Cotten) search for what happened to Harry Lime (Welles) meanders a bit in the middle, to where true enthusiasts of the genre might indeed lose patience.

But you know what? I’ll tell you what I told him. Why does that matter? So much Film Noir is all about mood, and between this film’s zither music and Welles eventual entrance into the picture, there’s more than enough mood to go around. The plot is fine, but it is absolutely not the reason you should have shown up in the first place.

Murder by Contract (1958)

Director: Irving Lerner

Cast: Vince Edwards, Phillip Pine, Herschel Bernardi, Caprice Toriel

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Any quick glance into the film’s history and legacy tells the reader that this film was foundational to the early work of Scorsese. It’s easy to see it, Claude’s (Edwards) early, nervous leaps into the world of violent crime bring to mind some of the eccentricities of Robert de Niro’s performance as Travis Bickle. The style of the film is also the sort of vibrant, pleasant surprise one always hopes to get from a B picture. The score alone practically (although not totally) obliterates the memory of  a climax that plays a little too quickly and awkwardly for my tastes.

But there’s more than seeing were young Marty started to absorb some of his stylistic choices. Where there’s never any degree of doubt that the hero of Taxi Driver (1976) was crazy, Claude slinks through most of the film never boiling beyond a slightly raised voice. He’s far more frightening. He might show up at the door, and if he shows up at the door, it’s far too late for you. You might even think you have the angle on the world and hire him out yourself, but that is hardly going to save you from much of anything.

Honestly, this film has had more impact on the genre of crime films than even anything that Scorsese did, or even more than the likes of The Godfather (1972). I’d be willing to put a decent amount of money on the notion that the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto III was taken from our anti-hero here, not just in name, but in cool everyman silence that is far more unnerving than any psychotic the movies it influence might throw our way.

Village of the Damned (1995)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Christopher Reeve, Linda Kozlowski, Kirstie Alley, Mark Hamill

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I’m not 100% sure how, when my average of watching some of Carpenter’s later films has been low for quite a while, but I imagine it showed up on a Netflix recommendation at some point, and the thought becomes, “John Carpenter and Christopher Reeve? What could possibly go wrong?”

Did I Like It: And nothing much really does go wrong, so there’s that, but I can’t report much goes right, either.

With every one of Carpenter’s later movies, I keep lamenting the fact that at a certain point Dean Cundey stopped shooting his pictures. I mean, I guess Cundey at this moment is off shooting movies for Spielberg and the like, but is it really that hard for him to make the time for his older friend Carpenter? It seems like Carpenter is in a pattern with every othe movie in this phase of his career. With They Live (1988), I’m very nearly prepared to let Cundey go the way he wants to go (which was apparently directing Honey We Shrunk Ourselves (1997)) and just go withe the flow and accept what Gary B. Kibbe has to offer. Then I’m struck with Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), and I yearn for Carpenter’s glory days. But then, right on schedule In The Mouth of Madness (1994) threatens me with a Carpenter renaissance.

And now we’re here. One might want to nitpick the little things that went wrong. The special effects aren’t anything beyond the 1960 original, which really leaves one to wonder why they felt the need to remake the story in the first place. Reeve is solid, but he managed to be solid in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), so that defense will hardly work in the film’s defense. Alley made her bones in genre movies (or rather the genre movie, by way of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and I can’t ever dismiss someone who was in that movie), but it feels like she has just spent too much time doing sitcoms (again, anyone on Cheers on which I cannot and will not turn my back) to bring any degree of earnestness to really much of anything.

Ultimately, there is one problem that governs the film’s failures. Carpenter has been on the record saying he was a gun-for-hire (despite him getting his name above the title once more) , but there is not a moment where I needed him to tell me that. Everything here is perfunctory, and that is the last thing one wants to see from a Carpenter film. Ultimately, it’s unfair to think that Cundey shooting the thing would have saved much of anything.

Spielberg (2017)

Director: Susan Lacy

Cast: Steven Spielberg*

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Had been on my HBOMax to-watch list (or whatever the hell they called it) for years. Now that HBOMax is dead (long live, Max, apparently), and I’ve now watched The Fabelmans (2022) three times in as many months, the urge to finally view it became near overwhelming.

Did I Like It: Even that proved to be a several days long project. Not because the documentary is tough to get through. Quite to the contrary. I saw two minutes of this thing and it was so immediately beguiling that I felt guilty continuing without Lora.

Normally I view a documentary with a very specific list of criteria. First, is it professionally made? Does the sound all go together, and was it filmed with equipment indicative of someone trying to make money off of the endeavor, or someone with home video equipment who didn’t know any better. (It is sometimes more challenging for a film to clear this hurdle than one might think.) This certainly clears that, with HBO’s money backing it up and what appears to be a modicum of cooperation from the subject, one would imagine that the filmmakers wouldn’t deign to cheap out.

Does it have an unusual or surprising level of access to the subject? As mentioned earlier, Spielberg does sit down for some talking heads, although they appear to be taken over time and very well could be pulled from electronic press kits from any number of movies, but we also have footage of Spielberg blocking scenes from Bridge of Spies (2015)… which, now that I think about it, very well could have come from that film’s EPK. Might give this one an incomplete on this front. It isn’t like the movie dwells on any of Spielberg’s relative missteps. 1941 (1979) is given a moment to show Spielberg’s fallibility, but Hook (1991), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) are given the briefest of b-roll appearances, although I’ve always felt that a very honest documentary about the fourth Indiana Jones entry would be worth its own feature length documentary.

Does the film remember it is trying to tell a story? Here is where the film truly shines. Is a lot of this also covered by The Fabelmans, sure, but depicting Spielberg as a gifted man with a fair amount of doubts and insecurities about himself—to say nothing of giving the production of Schindler’s List (1993)—is where the film becomes truly fascinating, and more than worth a recomendation.

*Normally, I would put the first four billed stars of a film. This usually makes listing documentaries a little difficult. Here, where the is only a single central figure, and brief talking heads by everyone else, it is doubly so.

A Fool There Was (1915)

Director: Frank Powell

Cast: Theda Bara, Edward José, May Allison, Mabel Frenyear

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Given the near total disappearance of much of Bara’s filmography, it might never have occurred to me to watch it. Enter Circle Cinema’s Second Saturday Silent series.

Incidentally, as I continue to attend these screenings, I keep finding more and more theater behaviors that normally annoy me, but then desperately annoy me when I’m trying to fool myself for even brief flashes that I might be enveloped in the time of the silent picture, ripped free from my own stupid decade and century. This screening was no different. Now, with a film that has resoundingly slipped into the public domain, there’s probably not going to be any real standing for me to object to the person sitting next to me pulling out their cell phone and taking a picture while the film is playing, but it is certainly not something that people of the past had to deal with.

Did I Like It: I’ve often complained that many early sound films are stiff affairs barely qualifying as a motion picture. I might have over-romanticized the silent format too much, as it turns out. This affair—pun accepted, if not intended—plays out like reels of a home movie, barely coagulating into something audiences—both modern and of that era—would barely recognize as a story.

So, the film itself inspired in me a thought that feels antithetical to my own values. Age has worn down parts of the movie. Any number of cutaways to correspondence between characters is so unreadable and clearly a still photograph of a surviving frame that I could barely stifle laughter when they came on the screen. That degradation is to be expected, ultimately. The film surrounding it is such a dismal, enervating exercise that I actually started to entertain the notion that some films might deserve to disappear due to lack of preservation. It feels wrong, doubly so when one realizes that our current trash is unlikely to disappear, regardless of whether it deserves to or not.

In The Mouth of Madness (1994)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Porchnow, Charlton Heston

Have I seen it Before: Oh, sure. Oddly enough, my strongest memory of the film comes not from the film itself, but from the TV spots, ominously warning a ten-year-old me that, “In 1978, he scared you with… <Halloween>… In 1983, he terrified you with… <Christine>… His name is John Carpenter. It’s 1995.” Definitely inflamed the imagination, considering that was at a time when I had seen none of those films. Then again, if the ad campaign only served to entrance ten-year-old boys who couldn’t get a ticket under their own power, no wonder the film (yet again, for Carpenter) tanked at the box office.

Did I Like It: The man was ahead of his time, though. This would be right at home with many of the elevated horror films coming out today. No wonder Carpenter doesn’t really want to make films anymore. He’s pretty much already made every kind of film that might be able to get any kind of money behind it*.

Or maybe Carpenter was at exactly the right place and time to make this movie. Between this and <Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)>, there was a brief moment, just post-proper-Krueger where New Line was willing to embrace meta-horror before the movies really hadn’t even tried to grasp such a concept.

Philosophically, I’d say it’s a good thing that Memoirs of an Invisible Man happened, even if that film doesn’t amount to much of anything. It brough Neill and Carpenter together. Given Neill’s association with <Jurassic Park (1993)>, he was probably able to get any number of films off the ground, and that he was more into the idea of a Lovecraft-infused Carpenter horror picture. He provides an interesting counterpoint to Carpenter’s normal muse, Kurt Russell. It’s nice when Number 1 on the call sheet is an Olympic level asshole, but number 2 becomes your buddy.

My only qualm, and it is a minor one, is that the climax feels alternately cheap and rushed, to the point where the eldritch-y horror of the whole thing culminates in what amounts to a clip show of the movie I just watched. A constraint of budget, or a nervous studio dealing with an auteur who hadn’t had a hit in a number of years**, but I smell a film whose true ambitions for Weird-with-a-capital-w didn’t make it to opening weekend. Somebody ought to write a book about all the films of the early-to-mid nineties that mutated heavily in the editing room. Maybe I should…?

*Other than a superhero film. Could you imagine? Then again, <Starman (1992)> and <Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)> are out there. That probably shouldn’t count.

**Doubtful, as the head of production at the studio was the screenwriter, although a quick look at IMDB might point to some New Nightmare envy, especially after one of the only films for the studio he wrote was <Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991).>

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

Director: Aaron Horvarth, Michael Jelenic

Cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: Well, here’s the thing, if you’ll forgive me for getting into the review right away. As much as people—and by “people”, I also include both the corporation and creative professionals behind this movie—have looked down on Super Mario Bros. (1993) in the last thirty years, both of these films feel the need to start with nearly the same presence. Mario (Pratt, strangely not nearly as miscast as he appeared on spec) and Luigi (Day) are brave but put-upon Brooklyn plumbers who are pulled into a adventure taking place in a myserious world existing below the New York they know, with the help of a princess (Taylor-Joy) to put a stop to the evil plans of a… guy?… who might be alternatively called Bowser or Koopa, depending on the territory.

Those are the same movies, right? It wasn’t like establishing the brothers in our world was something with which the video games never seemed to bother.

Did I Like It: Aside from that strange parallel to its predecessor, I had to say I was pleasantly surprised by the majority of the film. As I said, Pratt wasn’t nearly as bad as he could have been. The rest of the cast equates itself well, and up until the moment he starts signing, Black is completely unrecognizable in the role. The humor and adventure are well-calibrated to not unduly favor one over the other. That feels like its a complaint, as if it couldn’t be bothered to be interesting, for fear of failing in the attempt, but I understand where they are coming from after everything that happened with the live action attempt. It is a safe, inoffensive piece of entertainment.

In fact, the only particular complaint I can reach for is the strange preponderance of needle drops littered throughout the film. “No Sleep till Brooklyn” might feel like it belongs in the movie, but it’s the Beastie Boys (I’m usually against them showing up anywhere in film, just see <Star Trek (2009)>, but they’re already in Brooklyn when it plays, and I’ve managed to beat all of the NES Mario games, but I apparently lack the skills to understand what “Take on Me” is doing here, other than the fact that the rights holders for a-ha are hard up for cash and willing to let it go for next to nothing.

Kindergarten Cop (1990)

Director: Ivan Reitman

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Penelope Ann Miller, Pamela Reed, Linda Hunt

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, definitely. I, too was six in 1990, so I’ll never not be the same age as these kids, no matter how old I get. I think the phrase “Mr. Kimble, are you all right?” is one of those top-five uttered phrases in my house. Oddly enough, I think I’ve probably seen it far more from a VHS-recorded broadcast on the NBC Sunday Night Movie in the mid-90s. It’s still weird to hear some of the characters swear mildly in a PG-13 sort of way. “Shove it up your ass” lives in my memory as “shove it” and “How did it feel to punch that son of a bitch” swaps out to “SOB.”

Did I Like It: As I started to type this review, the word “flawless” keeps floating through my head, even if that feels like something of a ridiculous word to bandy about in a film whose plot hinges on trope after trope after trope, when it isn’t pushed forward by bouts of food poisoning. But, what else is the film really aiming for? What’s more, the film manages to be surprisingly enlightened (minus a few moments where a large germanic man is making children march in coordination) on its views of early childhood education.

Schwarzenegger is aptly game, increasing his comic acumen that he all of a sudden revealed to everyone (by way of Reitman) in Twins (1988), and proves that he at least has less of an ego about his film persona, and in fact might simply be funnier than his contemporaries. Sure, Bruce Willis might have become famous with a comic persona, but it wore away as the years went on, give or take a The Whole Nine Yards (2000). Stallone can try to do an Oscar (1991) or, god-forbid a Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992), but he never got anywhere close to being believably flustered by a comedic situation.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, John Rhys-Davies

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: As much as I might have been anticipating <The Flash (2023)>, I was equally dreading this film. There are a lot of complicated feelings going into it before the film even begins. The early reviews out of Cannes were harsh in their apathy, but it isn’t like that crowd has gotten every call right. We all had our feelings about <Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)>, so much so that the nineteen years we spent clamoring for a fourth film guaranteed that collectively no one spent the last fifteen asking for a fifth. Pretty much everyone had a certain amount of doubt about Steven Spielberg not helming the fifth entry, but after <Logan (2017)>, I at least was comforted that the right man for “one last ride with a beloved character” had been hired. As much as we may have judged George Lucas harshly for his various excesses in the 2000s, I felt like everyone—including Lucas—was a lot happier with him having moved on.

So, what’s the verdict. There is a convoluted time travel plot (yes, you read that right) at the core, and if we remember from my review of <Terminator Genysis (2015)>, I’m willing to forgive quite a bit in the service of convoluted time travel.

The most refreshing element of the film, though, is its restraint. One of Crystal Skull’s less talked about flaws is that it is largely built on a foundation of leftover parts from <Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)>, but aside from some obligatory beats calling back to the original film in this picture’s final minutes, there is a surprisingly low amount of fan service on display. A few photographs in Indy’s (Ford) apartment. Some legitimately earned mediations on grief, which also will shut up the dunderheads in 2008 who said the franchise was going to be handed down to Shia LaBeouf. One throwaway line referring to his father’s watch and another to the blood of Kali. That’s all. I really expected to needing my re-watch of the series this week.

Are there flaws? Sure. There are special effects that—while not ruining the whole affair—do distract. Several shots during a massive parade set piece don’t pass the smell test now, and will only get worse as the film ages. A WWII-set prologue uses a de-aged Ford almost works, although young(er) Indy can’t quite escape the uncanny valley when any sort of light (simulated or otherwise) passes over his face.

All in all, this is a perfectly serviceable Indy adventure? Is it the perfection of Raiders? Is it the breathless insanity of <Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)>? Not quite, but it may be unreasonable to expect any movie to reach to those levels. Is it the fine-tuned crowd pleaser that is <Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)>? Probably pretty close, and that is far more than I expected as I went in to the theater.

Sinister (2012)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Thompson, James Ransone

Have I Seen it Before: Really, really, completely unsure if I had, as I started things. Pretty quickly became convinced that I have not. But only marginally, so. Great. Have I become my father? The man has hardly ever remembered any movie he’s ever seen.

Did I Like It: I don’t usually like to start my reviews with the negative, but that is unfortunately what my mind keeps coming back to several days after watching it. Where would the horror genre be if people searching for good real estate deal? As long as I keep paying my mortgage, does that mean I’m going to avoid those deeper, cosmic horrors?

What’s more, where would the horror genre be without people like the Oswalts allowed to make snap new decisions about their living situation in the middle of the night? Maybe the genre would be able to survive, but third acts might have a rough go of it.

I’ll push a little harder. Ellison Oswalt (Hawke) may be one of the least observant horror movie protagonists in memory. Spooky things are perpetually happening at the edge of the frame, and he just refuses to be looking in the right direction at the right time, allowing the movie to continue for longer than ti might otherwise have any right to. Things come to a head for him when, after drinking everything in sight throughout the runtime, downs a cup of coffee that has been laced with just enough poison to knock him out to be murdered by his daughter. Now, before we go judging the child too harshly, she did leave a note for him.

Lest we think I don’t like the film at all, I actually kind of enjoyed it. With the amount of horror movies I take in on a regular basis, I do worry I’m starting to develop something of a reaction callus. I can like the style or ideas (or lament the implausible characters) in something from time to time, but how many horror movies are still at all scary? This one, in fits and starts, actually accomplishes that tall task. That should probably be enough of a recommendation.

Asteroid City (2023)

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Anderson’s movies remain triumphs of immaculate art direction. The juxtaposition between the televised examination of the play we never quite see and the delightful weirdness surrounding the alien which visits them both is a delight. There are plenty of absurd laughs to be had, and he has really tapped into grief in a way that he hasn’t really managed to tap into since The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). So, before I get into the large meat of this interview, please know that I enjoyed the film immensely. It’s worth catch, and worth catching in the theater, especially as it looks like it will show up on streaming by the time I finish typing this review.

And yet, for every element in his work that is just as strong as it ever was, I wonder if something hasn’t quite been lost over the years. His early films, especially Bottle Rocket (1996), and the aforementioned Tenenbaums had a certain quality about them as if Anderson were convinced the powers that be would take away his ability to make movies. Now there is a serenity to his films which only servers to keep me at an (admittedly negligible distance. The early films had the vibrant energy of a someone not sure if they were going to get away with what they wanted to do. Maybe he is just in a bit of a slump on this front, and I may be having a reaction to this and The French Dispatch (2021). Maybe as Anderson has aged and matured as an artist, it is unreasonable to expect him to hold on to that rebellious spirit.

Maybe he just needs to work with Owen Wilson again. I’m honestly not sure why they don’t write together anymore. And I really don't know why he isn’t in this film at all. Honestly, as I type this, that may be my only real complaint.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Chevy Chase, Daryl Hannah, Sam Neill, Michael McKean

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly (and somewhat horrifyingly, as it turns out) enough, I’m reasonably certain that this is the only of Carpenter’s directorial efforts (so far… he said somewhat hopefully, while at the same time ignoring The Ward (2010)) that I saw during its original theatrical run.

Did I Like It: I mean, I don’t want to knock a guy like Carpenter while he’s down. But if he were here, I can’t imagine he’d defend the movie. Hell, it appears to be his only directorial effort that doesn’t have his name above the title. Everything here seems like it almost works, which is all the more frustrating. Carpenter making what amounts to a loose remake of <North by Northwest (1959)> is strong enough of a pitch to paper over most problems in most movies. Now that I type this, I think we should all collectively let him just do that. He can do it from his couch. We’re not that picky.

The special effects are a unique blend. We have the pointedly retro, as Chase pulls a pretty eerie echo of Claude Rains unwrapping of the bandages from The Invisible Man (1933), and what I’m pretty sure is some stop motion animation when Chase tries to prove to a camera in an empty room that he is in fact invisible by chewing some gum. It also manage to display some more cutting edge tricks by animating just what happens to an invisible body when it tries to smoke or eat.

And that’s where things start to fall apart. There are few performers that come to mind who are more throughly dominated by their ego than Chevy Chase. Hence, any attempt the film makes to reach for tragedy or pathos in the plight of Nick Halloway have to be immediately undone because in the 90s Chase couldn’t possibly end a film without him successfully seducing his leading lady. He’s not very believable or interesting in the role, and in a trend that was going to come up a lot more as the 90s trudged on for him, he isn’t very funny, either. What else is there? Somewhere in that spectrum had to be where he was aiming.

Frankenstein (1931)

Director: James Whale

Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Edward Van Sloan, Dwight Frye

Have I seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, I’m more mystified that it has taken me this long in the course of these reviews and not managed to re-watch this one yet. What have I been doing this whole time?

Did I Like It: I mean, I think I get why. I’ve always had a certain partiality to Bride of Frankenstein (1935), so it usually gets my attention when I’m in the mood for anything Whale. The relationship between this film and its sequel is not unlike that of Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). One is a perfectly fine horror movie that captured the imagination of people with its iconography and pathos, while the sequel is an exercise in blissful artistic anarchy.

This is not to take away from the original, though. Here, Whale manages to still tap into his better instincts more often than not with a perfect exercise in tone, supported by perfect (and yes, sometimes perfectly campy) performances, right from the little fellow (Van Sloan, who is unrecognizable from his later role as Dr. Waldman or even his Van Hellsing in Dracula (1931)) who comes out from behind the curtain before the film to warn us about what we are about to experience* to the blustery Baron Frankenstein (Frederick Kerr).

I would put it at the very top of the early Universal horror films, just a hair below its transcendent sequel, but certainly ahead of Dracula, which may yet qualify as a sedative.

* I don’t know why more movies didn’t do this back then or even now, as it is legitimately charming and even here manages to be a little unnerving, promising horrors that might have diminished in the last 90 years. I mean, I do get it. The preamble was added by a studio afraid that the God-fearing in the movie houses would riot if they saw a man try to give life on a corpse. Once they only mildly objected, future horror films could get away with just letting reel one being without additional comment.

Terminator Genysis* (2015)

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah.

Did I Like It: And you know what, I kind of liked it back then. Sure, it’s a film powered almost exclusively by convoluted time travel, but I like convoluted time travel. Convoluted time travel is my bread and butter.

But here’s the problem, man can not live on convoluted time travel alone, nor should he try. Ultimately, this film reminds me of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Wait, wait. Come back. I’ll explain. I had spent several years between screenings of that most infamous second film directed by Orson Welles. The ending was taken away from him, re-shot by Robert Wise, a perfectly accomplished filmmaker in his own right, if more of a journeyman than Welles. Now Ambersons has never been my favorite Welles film, and I always thought the legends about the bastardized ending were off, but during my most recent viewing of the film, it was such a stark difference between the work of Welles and Wise that it had become inescapable how altered the movie had become.

Similarly, when comparing the work of Taylor against the work of Cameron—especially in those scenes where Taylor is recreating Cameron’s earlier work in The Terminator (1984), that difference is once again inescapable.

This is not to say that the film isn’t riddled with plenty of other unforced errors at which I could wag my finger. The film is riddled with awkward Riker Moments, where one character describes a phenomenon in the most convoluted technobabble available, forcing another nearby character to describe the same thing in terms so simple that even the not-so-bright kids will get it. Narration repeats stuff ad nauseum, just in case those same kids didn’t get the dumbed down explanations the first time. This renders the whole thing a pretty depressing affair, even if, again, some of that convoluted time travel still tries to justify this film’s existence far more than was done for its equally dim-titled successor, Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).

But do you want to know what really annoys me about the film this time, if for no other reason than I am mad at myself for not noticing it the first time. This film is so slavishly devoted to the mythology and iconography of the Cameron-helmed Terminator films. One can take that as a flaw or a comforting dose of nostalgia. Both perspectives are valid. But how in the hell does Kyle Reese (Courtney) have a photograph of Sarah (Clarke; not that one; no relation) just moments before he climbs into the time displacement field, when the first film really goes out of its way to show us that same photo burning during a Terminator attack? I’m willing to acknowledge that the makers of this film probably saw the original. I’m just not so sure they were paying that much attention.

*I needed several tries to get that title right. It is, truly, an insipid way to spell that word. Everyone was right on that front, at least.

They Live (1988)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster, Raymond St. Jacques

Have I Seen it Before: I had to have, right? The images are so indelible that I know them as much as anyone. But it’s possible, and I’m just going to put it at “slightly possible” that I’ve never actually sat down and watched the film from beginning to end. I’m going to say yes, as that is the only way I think I can look at myself in the mirror anymore, but the doubt exists.

Did I Like It: Up until this point—and really, after it as well—I would never dream of describing Carpenter as a political filmmaker. Sure, Escape from New York (1981) has an institutional nihilism at its core, but that is a statement about politics and the establishment, not a specific statement at the expense of the politics of a particular age or the figures which dominated it.

Rejecting the excesses of the Reagan years and ensuring that it was out and available for people the week George H.W. Bush won the election to give everybody four more years of Reaganomics (you know, as a treat) is a ballsy move, and in doing so managed to find a new frontier in unpredictability in his work… that was sadly rapidly snuffed out by uncaring studios.

The film is not without its flaws. There’s a reason that Roddy Piper didn’t rise to the level of movie stardom enjoyed by a Rock or even a Hulk Hogan. He was probably a fine wrestler in his day, but that involves exhibiting an attitude, which he does here in spades. Unfortunately, he doesn’t embody a vibe, which movie stars both great and not-so-great manage to do. It might have been too much of a good thing, but Kurt Russell could have played the hell out of Nada, and reuniting him with David would have been icing on the cake.

Also, it’s a small moment, but I’ve got to wonder what Siskel thought about specifically being called out as a Ghoul. It was far subtler than the hits they took in <Godzilla (1998)>, but unfortunately the extensive archive of their reviews available on Youtube came up short in this regard. Even Ebert’s website would seem to indicate that he (and possibly Siskel) never reviewed the film at all.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Director: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley

Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Sophia Lillis, Hugh Grant

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: When I watched the movie it was the weekend. As I type this, it is… Tuesday…? and I’m in day… is it three…? of a massive power outage. I’m typing this while at the first opportunity I had to charge my devices while an episode of Frasier plays on my phone and I have ice in my glass. I am watching an episode of Typing is strange. Remembering movies are strange. How do they work again? How does any of this work again? This will teach me to delay a review for a day or more.

I see many of you on Twitter and elsewhere complaining about/celebrating the failure of The Flash (2023). I see many of you out there there talking about movies you’re watching, movies you’re dreading, movies you’re anticipating, and the

Like, I just like Frasier and ice in my glass. Is that too much to ask?

Ahem.

I now resume this review several days later. The power has been back on for a few days, and while I’m fairly certain not all of me came back from the great blackout of 2023, I am also certain that whatever the preceding paragraphs were, they weren’t much of a way to proceed with a review.

Assuming that the parts of me that are still here are the ones that watched the movie, it ended up providing more than what it promised. Funny and charming in equal measure, it is easily more fun than any single D+D session I’ve ever wandered into.

What’s the movie’s big mistake, ultimately? Had they not tied the whole affair to the brand, this thing could have become a very moderate hit. You, the one reading this review, should give it a look regardless of your thoughts on the game that wrought it.

The Flash (2023)

Director: Andy Muschietti

Cast: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Ron Livingston, Michael Keaton

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: Quick question before we begin: Exactly how fast would I fave to run to be able to go back in time to 2018 and stop myself from writing a review of every movie I watch? Asking for a friend. Who is also me.

There’s so much to cover in this review, and I’m a little bit dreading getting into it. I feel like not addressing everything about the film would be worse than if I missed something with almost any other film. Both a monolith of controversy and (as I write this well into opening weekend) something that looks as if it will fail to fully capture the audience’s imagination. On a personal level it has promised both a shopping list of what I’ve wanted out of superhero films for a number of years, and been a repeated source of frustration. To put it simply, the film is slippery from this critic’s perspective.

Is Ezra Miller a serial abuser shielded by the possibly impenetrable privilege of being white and a movie star at the same time? Or do they struggle with any number of mental health problems exacerbated by sensational tabloid stories orbiting around them? Or is it both? I really don’t know. Plenty of people have refused to go see the movie as they reckon with those questions. I’m not bothered by anyone coming to that conclusion. I can only hope those people aren’t too terribly bothered that I decided to go see the movie, or that I’m going through all of these mental gymnastics to get me in the theater. But then again, I may have to accept it if they are.

This film is largely an engine of crowd-pleasing. Well, maybe not crowd pleasing, but there is quite a bit about it that seems designed to engender good will from me. It’s a time-travel comedy that owes as much to Batman (1989) as it does to Back to the Future (1985). For the few minutes in which it is a Justice League film, it’s easily DC’s breeziest, most enjoyable effort in that arena. Ben Affleck has two scenes in the film, and he makes the most out of them, even if his final scenes in the cowl are among several scenes with some rushed special effects*.

Which brings us to the Keaton of it all. On some level, I’ve wanted Michael Keaton to return to the role of Batman since I was ten. There were years where I would have said I definitely wanted it when it wasn’t even a possibility. And now, with all of the Twilight Zone-style monkey’s paw qualities of this film, I got my wish. For my money, he is really great in the film, channeling a lot of the same energy he brought to the earlier films. His Bruce Wayne spent two entire films avoiding people like the plague, so hermit-Bruce feels like a natural extension a

And then, they go ahead and kill him. Not only do they go ahead and kill him, but when Barry manages to reset the timeline one more time after accepting that he can’t save Batman (or, for that matter Kara Zor-El/Supergirl (Calle, who the film wildly underserves), the Bruce Wayne of that universe is… I can’t believe I’m typing this… played by George Clooney.

And I’m fine with it, actually. No, really. If you had pitched me in year’s past a movie where Keaton’s Batman dies and Clooney’s Batman lives, I would have not been in favor of that movie. It’s clear an alternate ending was filmed where Keaton (or a variation of him) was once again the Batman of the main DC film universe, but that would have flown against the film’s heart, even if it means that not just Batman and Supergirl, but the entirety of Earth-89 are sacrificed to General Zod (Michael Shannon, bored but I don’t blame him as the film gives him only moments from Man of Steel (2013) to replay).

Just as Barry has to let his mother and his control over the universe go, I’ve got to let my favorite Batman go. There’s probably a few things I need to let go of, but none of us need me to convert this review into an ad hoc therapy session. That’s the lesson the movie wants to give me, I think, if you look through all the (frequently cameo-filled) noise.

Oh, one more thing. If you think this is the best superhero movie of all time, I think that may mean you need to watch more movies. That’s okay. There’s plenty of time, and plenty of methods to watch them.

* Everyone is so irretrievably bothered by some of the special effects, as if Muschietti wasn’t also the guy who made <IT - Chapter Two (2019)>. Dodgy CGI is the guy’s aesthetic.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Donald Pleasance, Lisa Blount, Victor Wong, Jameson Parker

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know, I know. And in an interesting turn of events, I would normally watch this film later this year for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, but it is still up next on my summer of Carpenter re-watches, so that will certainly save me the time of having to do my podcast notes and review later.

Did I Like It: I had that sinking feeling about halfway through the film that I wasn’t going to enjoy this as much as some of Carpenter’s other films. I’ve said before that Carpenter works best in a milieu of ruthless simplicity, and this one may just have too many characters for its limited setting. To the film’s credit, there’s a running gag where even the characters—trying to wrap their heads around the scientific and theological implications of the apocalypse—can’t seem to remember names and faces of everyone involved in the plot.

Even in a lesser Carpenter film, there are joys to behold. For one thing, there are some legitimately bewildering things done with insects in the film, to the point where I somehow have an even lower opinion of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). And there frankly should be a lot more films that hinge on Donald Pleasance—here called simply “Priest,” just in case anyone was worried about Carpenter completely abandoning his ruthless simplicity—monologuing about the nature of “pure evil.”

These are perhaps trivial things to pick out, the kind of things a critic might reach for when discussing a film they don’t really like, but something happened to me as the film concludes. I started thinking of it less as an overstuffed, claustrophobic riff on The Exorcist (1973), and more of an Assault on Parish 13. I really started to like it, and the ending was so authentically unnerving that I couldn’t help but love it. Goddamnit, Carpenter. You got me again!

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah. Of all Carpenter’s films, this is the one I’ve never quite loved as much as other people (Some eagle-eyed readers will note I’ve always been a little cool on The Fog (1980), but I really do prefer to think people are more with me than not there.)

Did I Like It: That’s all different now. Where some of Carpenter’s best films are exercises in ruthless simplicity, this is a sometimes overwhelming feast for the senses, but in true Carpenter fashion, it wastes no time getting to what it promises, and seeing Russell let loose and have fun with Carpenter at his side.

And then I’m starting to run out of things to say about the film. Maybe I don’t like it as much as I want to. Is it because it might be a bit problematic around the edges, featuring an asian-influenced story brought to you by a white director and two white leads? It’s certainly possible, but I already had this reaction when I first saw the movie. Also, Burton is pretty thoroughly depicted as something of an idiot in over his head, so I think (read: want to believe) that counts for something.

Is the vibe of the film just a bit too aggressively 80s for my taste? Probably. I always blanche at that, wanting my films (and Carpenter certainly does this with many of his earlier works) to have a timeless quality to them.

Maybe the real problem is that Carpenter’s tough luck in the box office of this era, he couldn’t launch forth with the sequels he might have been actually interested in making. The Thing (1982) and Escape from New York (1981) (I know; bad example), but this is ultimately a good looking pilot for a series the network didn’t pick up. This is ultimately a beginning with—through no fault of Russell or Carpenter—no follow through.

Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Director: Ronny Yu

Cast: Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Ken Kirzinger, Robert Englund

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. It feels like one of those movies where, considering that I lived in a dorm room from the fall of 2003 through the summer of 2005, somebody somewhere must have had it playing on a DVD player.

Did I Like It: It’s sort of mystifying that a film can both feel like it wastes no time at all, and spends the films first several minutes with an extended voice over narration explaining how we’ve gotten to this point.

This is especially baffling when there is no conceivable way that this film could find an audience that wasn’t at least nominally keyed into the basic elements of Kruger’s back story. It’s especially telling that Voorhees doesn’t get the same treatment, because it is a little known fact that the Friday the 13th series not only has no backstory whatsoever, but in fact no entry in the series has been produced from a screenplay, outline, or cogent thought*. Yes, they eventually throw away a couple of lines of Voorhees’ convoluted origins, and even revisit those in a Krueger-influenced dream, but who really cares?

Ultimately, this is a disheartening way for Englund to bow out of the role (it might be the best entry in the Friday series, although I inexplicably have fond memories of Jason X (2001)), especially when he delivered his franchise-best work in the immediately preceding Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994).

One more thought before I leave: The characters—yes, there are a motley crew of teenagers to sleep and be dismembered throughout the film, although they could be cardboard cutouts for all the film cares—cheer on the “joy” (and boy do I use that term loosely) that is Everclear. Has anyone ever bothered to drink Everclear outside of the early to mid 2000s? I honestly don’t think I was handed a bachelor’s degree and the manufacturer immediately went out of business. It might be that no one outside of college, or those who view mouthwash as “too sweet.”

*One wonders whose side I’m taking in the whole “vs.” question?