Hard Boiled (1992)

Director: John Woo

Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Teresa Mo, Philip Chan

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: How frenetic is too frenetic? Because honestly, there was a long stretch of this where things were moving so fast I wasn’t sure who was working for whom and who was betraying whom, and just how much trouble they might be in because they happen to be working for or betraying certain people. If that’s a satire of witless complexity in American action movies of the time, then bravo. The film played me like a pointedly American fiddle*.

But then the film moves on to a one of the most breathless second halves of any movie, ever. I’m imagining it is this part (pretty much after every main character enters the hospital) with which people have been so enamored for so long. It might feel like a nearly calamitous tone shift when a bevy of defenseless patients are gunned down, even after the equally ruthless Alan (Leung) and Mad Dog (Philip Kwok) declare a truce over that very same issue. It makes me feel sad, when nearly every inch of film at this point in the story is designed to thrill and amuse. There might be a statement about the fundamentally destructive nature of violence in there, but the film forgets them just as soon as they dispose of them.

I enjoyed the experience of watching the film, for the most part, but as I just spent two paragraphs complaining about it, I wonder if I truly did enjoy it. I really want to say yes, because those parts I did enjoy were rapturous, but it is a liking with some severe reservation, and those reservations only come about when I think about the film for longer than a few minutes.

*Or clarinet, if that helps.

Wonka (2023)

Director: Paul King

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Indeed, it was particularly off my radar as any attempt to catch the magic of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) ought not be worth anyone’s time. I did see large swaths of the end credits over the last month, incidentally, cleaning up the big theater at Circle before screenings of White Christmas (1954). So that’s got to count for something, right?

Ultimately, a weird twist of fate and my wife’s belated office holiday party put me in a seat at my favorite theater while the movie happens in front of me.

Did I Like It: Ultimately the film is inoffensive enough, and more interested in harnessing the energy of the original film—I’m looking in your direction, Tim Burton…-- that I’m willing to give the film a passing grade. Chalamet can’t quite measure up to Gene Wilder, but few could, and he brings some manic glee—if none of the menace—to the role. What’s more, seeing even a few members of the troupe that brought BBC’s Ghosts to the airwaves getting more exposure is always good news.

Is it possible I like the film?

Let’s talk a little bit about that magic I opened up with, shall we? I watch the climax of these films and can’t help but be a little revolted in watching people joyfully eat chocolate in which characters had been swimming in only minutes before. I never thought about that in the old film, even though terrible things happen to the people and the sweets in that one, too. Maybe it says more about me as I become an increasingly old, increasingly fuddish duddy, but I’m more than a little prepared to say that it says more about the film being a homogenized piece of entertainment that we’re all liable to forget almost immediately.

1941 (1979)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, Lorraine Gary

Have I Seen It Before: Yes. I have the strongest memory of sitting in my bedroom and watching the thing on VHS. Why wouldn’t I have done so? Spielberg? Check. Aykroyd and Belushi? More check. Script by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale? Yet more check.

Did I Like It: Well, I suppose Coppola went to Vietnam, and Spielberg decided to instead go to Santa Barbara… Both of them probably thought on some level that they were going to war in their own way.

Spielberg was absolutely right in understanding that he was two-ish decades away from being ready to handle a serious war movie, and so went lighter with the whole affair. Thank God he got the idea that he could do a big, John Landis (if not out-and-out ZAZ-style) comedy out of his system here, or we might have been forced to endure Bill Murray as Indiana Jones or something unfathomably awful by the time he came around to Saving Private Ryan (1998).

And I say this all without trying to say that the film isn’t worth a look. Spielberg is working with that same “Gee, Sammy Fabelman loves movies more than the rest of us ever could” energy that made virtually every other film he’s ever made a classic. The John Williams score is exactly what any reasonable person would want out of one of his score. If the film had stuck with the collective imagination a little (probably a lot) more than it did, it might have joined the pantheon of his great works.

It's just not very funny. I can’t remember laughing once during the thing. That’s okay, there are plenty of great films that aren’t particularly funny. Zemeckis and Gale harnessed similar energy in Romancing the Stone (1984), and yes, even in Back to the Future (1985). Spielberg, certainly in this era, is the absolute, undisputed king of light pop entertainments. But it is impossible for a viewer to look at Aykroyd, Belushi, or even John Candy and think they are supposed to laugh. And when those laughs come, there isn’t a whole lot else to say.

Destroy All Neighbors (2024)

Director: Josh Forbes

Cast: Jonah Ray Rodriguez, Kiran Deol, Thomas Lennon, Alex Winter

Have I Seen it Before: Two weeks into the new year, and this is the first new movie I’ve managed to see. On that metric alone, it’s an early favorite for the best movie of the year.

Did I Like It: As a horror movie, it’s ultimately too cheap and bending over backwards to find justifications for its makeup effects to really love. Going beyond that, it’s more interested in being gross before it ever tries to be gory, and it really took me to get to this film before I realized that gross without gore is just gross, and it takes more than a little bit to offset the original imbalance.

I might get to the point where I actively dislike the film when I come to the inescapable conclusion that I actively dislike all of the characters, protagonist and antagonist alike. Vlad (Winter, also co-producing) is a finely-tuned creation of irritation, but William (Rodriguez, also also co-producing*) is the same kind of deeply frustrating person that makes life and the human experience may be designed to irritate only.

All of that would be an easy way to say that I’m thoroughly displease with the film, but damned if I didn’t find myself laughing throughout. It almost, almost (but not quite) repairs my diminished first impression Shudder left on me**.

But truly, I hate the title of the film. It’s something people would come up with for a bargain basement video game in the early 2000s. Honey, I Dismembered Vlad would have worked a lot better. Almost anything. Sophie’s Choice would have been a better choice for the movie.

*If others were involved with this movie, one would be hard-pressed to deny that the film would be right at home on a newer episode Mystery Science Theater 3000.

**Honestly, the thing is buggy with a heavily diminished library. It’s as if the worst impulses of both Netflix and Paramount+ were forged into a separate streaming service.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I’m desperate to go through the whole Hitchcock library like I did with the Carpenter library last summer. But considering I never quite got myself through to Ghosts of Mars (2001), it may take me a while.

Did I Like It: You get to a certain point with films where you can’t help but begin to think you know where it’s going.

But then you hit a Hitchcock film and you should really know he’s playing with you from beyond the grave and you should never feel comfortable you know what you’re getting.

You is me, in this equation, if anyone was wondering.

Hitchcock, with this subject matter, memories of Rope (1948), and with a little bit of Farley Granger to add into the mix and one (one is me) would be forgiven for thinking that this would be a tale of two different sociopaths find each other and think that murder is just one way for adult men to forge friendships.

Once it is clear that Granger is playing something of a milquetoast who quickly finds himself in over his head, the construction becomes one of a fairly typical film noir. Hitchcock sees me coming from a mile away and just as I’m confident that Guy Haines (Granger) will unfairly get overwhelmed in both matters of tennis and murder by the machinations of Bruno Antony (Walker), a flashy, borderline ridiculous sequence involving a merry-go-round later and I should have really known that the whole thing was never going to go the way I thought.

Add in just enough of the macabre humor that elevated Hitchcock on spec beyond his contemporaries, and I really, really, must make a point to follow through on that promise to go through the rest of his films.

Airplane! (1980)

Director: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Cast: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I always preferred Airplane Ii: The Sequel (1982), but then again I was ten, and not terribly bright. But this film had the first pair of boobs I had ever seen legitimately. Man alive, PG really meant something different back in the day.

Did I Like It: This movie has a lot to answer for. It was a big—and far more importantly, relatively cheap—hit, and as often happens in these cases, the wrong lessons were learned. Thus, they make an army of similar movies, that’s why in the early aughts*, you got an endless series of “spoof” movies that were just an endless series of the same old gags reproduced over and over again. I’ll admit, Scary Movie (2000) probably has quite a bit of blame in that combination, but it’s sort of like blaming the parents of Typhoid Mary for what happened after. But now that I think about it, if Typhoid Papa and Typhoid Mama taught the apple of their eye about proper disease prevention…

This is the part where all of the passengers line up to beat me senseless, right?

Anyway, what separates this from all of the immitators that came to follow? One might be tempted to say that the ZAZ team is the secret ingredient, but all of them eventually went on to make films that were far more part of the problem than not. For every Naked Gun that was to come, there were also An American Carol (2008), Rat Race (2001) (which I didn’t hate, but didn’t love), and even a few of those Scaries Movie (that’s how you pluralize those) in there two.

I think the true secret ingredient that got forgotten along the way was not the act of making a story around the gag that is special in and of itself, but having an  (even if it is a bizarre sense of) affection for the types of movies being sent up. These early movies understood that the best spoof movies that have an affection for that with which they poke fun. Mel Brooks understood that, especially in the earlier years of his career. Those guys who I can’t even be bothered to look up who are trucking in those types of films these days. They’re just a few steps away from an AI engine randomly spitting out things that might have otherwise been tagged as humor.

That Thing You Do! (1996)

Director: Tom Hanks

Cast: Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler, Johnathon Scheach, Tom Hanks

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I was alive in 1996. In that far flung land of long ago, we welcomed that little ditty, as it saved us—or at least freed us—from months of vagaries at the hands of “Macarena.”

Did I Like It: There’s a number of things I’d like to talk about with Tom Hanks if we were in a private conversation. What typewriter is best? Who is the best character on For All Mankind* and why is it Molly Cobb? Was he ever really hovering around the Zefram Cochrane role in Star Trek: First Contact (1996)?

Also, the big question I would have for him, before I would annoy him in a Chris Farley show-like spiral: Did he write this movie for himself years earlier for him to play Guy? Because Scott is really channeling that pre-Philadelphia, post-Bosom Buddies Tom Hanks energy. Maybe it’s the kind of movie you only get to make after you’ve won two Best Actor Oscars in a row, but it is so breezily charming, that it becomes a perfect distillation of the movie star persona behind it.

But that’s all it is: likable. Maybe it doesn’t need to be anything more than that, but maybe the bigger question is whether or not Hanks really wanted to direct movies, or just saw the opportunity to try it on for size. Some stars like Eastwood and Redford started directing and never looked back. Shatner only did it only because Nimoy got to. Hanks is somewhere in the middle.

But damn if that song isn’t catchy as hell. I’d like to see Eastwood try to write a hit. No, on second thought, I’ve seen Paint Your Wagon (1969). No, I don’t. Everybody is doing exactly what they are supposed to.

*Don’t tell me he doesn’t watch…

Rashomon (1950)

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura

Have I Seen It Before: Never. I have, however, watched at least five sitcom episodes over the last thirty years, so based on the law of averages alone, I’m familiar with the effect.

Did I Like It: There’s probably a warning that might need to be attached to any review of this film. No, it’s not that it’s sub-titled. Get comfortable with reading a movie. Not only are you limiting yourself, but do you ever miss really watching a movie without looking down at your phone? I’ve seen the future of active watching, and it is subtitled. No, this is a warning that, sight-unseen, one might be forgiven for thinking that this is another samurai adventure story in the vein of Yojimbo (1961), Seven Samurai (1954), or The Hidden Fortress (1958). It is a drama, and a harrowing one, but definitely one worth watching.

Ok, so I’m not 100 percent sure if the Japanese generally are just better than us cinematically, or if Kurosawa is better than everyone cinematically, but it is definitely one or the other. Thematically, there is something so central to the western identity that says “I am right, you are wrong” that every single Rashomon-rip off* hints that there is an objective truth and one of the story-tellers is right, and the others are wrong. What Kurosawa does is be content that everyone—victim and criminal; dead or living—has an equal level to their own delusion and deception.

*For all the shameless copying of the form done in American television, I can’t immediately think of a lot of American films that truck in the same construction. Vantage Point (2008), I guess, but that’s more of a question of what an individual can see, not so much a description of what they’re willing or able to see. So odd the divide on the device. Someone—please, not me—should write a paper on it.

Rat Race (2001)

Director: Jerry Zucker

Cast: Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Have I Seen It Before: Have I? I’m almost positive I haven’t. I’d remember it, right?

Did I Like It: I think there’s a certain dishonesty to a certain generation when they say that It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) is… oh, what’s the word…? good. The moment when a boomer got a hold of the rough concept, the first thing he did was chop down the running time by about half. I’m not sure a single comedy could ever successfully fill two VHS tapes. Billy Wilder understood it, Mike Nichols understood it. Even Kubrick—he being unafraid of a long film, to be sure—understood it.

Zucker understands it, too. Unfortunately, the film forgets to be funny in the meantime. Maybe Zucker didn’t get it, had a three-hour version of this film and chopped it to fit the modern sensibility.

I sat there stone-face aside from a few moments, which should open and immediately close the case on the film. One might argue I’ve been sleep deprived and wouldn’t have cracked a smile at Chaplin if he started churning out films again, but I’m submitting that the film is the one which is sleep deprived. The two biggest comedic beats of the movie are that John Cleese has improbably white fake teeth, and that Rowan Atkinson is sometimes very foreign, sometimes very sleepy, and occasionally both. Blink and you’ll miss whether or not Seth Green’s brother is foolish or pitiable, and if you’re thinking that deeply about this question, I would forgive you for neglecting to laugh. I sure did. I still don’t understand what Cuba Gooding Jr.’s problem is. Are football fans usually this worked up about the coin toss at the top of the game?

Also, Smash Mouth is there. They’re naturally hilarious. Ahem.

Wayne's World 2 (1993)

Director: Stephen Surjik

Cast: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Christopher Walken, Tia Carrere

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: As I watch it this time, it didn’t work for me as much as it had in years past.

For years, I would have sworn by the fact that this is just as good as <Wayne’s World (1992)>. When Carvey has spent the last several decades insisting he wasn’t very good in the film, I blanched. When there was never a Wayne’s World 3, I always shook my head. We got three (and a perpetually fourth threatened) Austin Powers films, but we were only left with this? The kung-fu dubbing was (and still is) pretty great. The joke about the sweet shop owner works on me every time.

And that’s kind of the problem. I didn’t need to be told that Myers went off and wrote a completely different version of the movie—one in which Wayne (Myers) and Garth (Carvey) secede from the United State and form their own nation*—that was well into production before Paramount scuttled it as no one had bothered to get the rights to adapt the source material.

So we’re left with this. A couple of amusing bits, but the whole thing reeks of a single all-night writing session where the eventual answer was to dust off a bunch of sketches that never made it past the Friday Night slaughter.

I guess I’ve truly grown up. I only like the first Wayne’s World now. I’ll studiously avoid re-watching that one for a while. I’m not sure what I might do if that film doesn’t hit the same anymore.

*A comic concept that, if not original in its own right, would have certainly been strange for a movie based on an SNL sketch. Just imagine the Blues Brothers trying that. Ok, I could imagine that. Imagine the guys from A Night at the Roxbury (1998). Actually, that’s pretty funny, too. Why hasn’t this come to pass yet? At any rate I can still imagine the downside being that the idiots of the here and now would have taken some supremely stupid inspiration from that.

The Voices (2014)

Director: Marjane Satrapi

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, Jacki Weaver

Have I Seen It Before: Wasn’t even aware of it until it got on the to-be-watched list for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods.

Did I Like It: It’s probably not a great sign that I feel overwhelmingly compelled to view the film as a series of parts rather than as a whole package. If the movie doesn’t hit one as single entity, there’s something wrong in the mix.

I think the death of Lisa (Kendrick) is one of the more deeply unsettling things I’ve seen in a horror movie. It isn’t flashy or salacious. It’s slow and painful and deeply terrifying. Then Jerry (Reynolds) cuts her head off.

Reynolds himself is aquitting himself well in the film, giving a hint of the chaos he never was allowed to unleash in X-Men: Origins: Wolverine (2009)* and would eventually be granted the liberty to be the most Ryan Reynolds he could be…

And yet, I don’t love that ending. This all ends with a musical number, and in the context of Jerry’s final synapses firing, I suppose it makes sense, but from a perspective of tone alone, am I supposed to believe the basest parts of his brain just wants everybody to be happy, and is in fact jaunty and happy itself?

That all could be forgiven, and maybe even written off as a matter of mood of the reviewer at the time he watched the film. What can’t quite be shaken off is the fact that, even above the horror movie average, the plot flies apart with even the most casual of scrutiny. The amount of people who die here, simply because they took it upon themselves to look into the disappearance of another character without even mentioning it to the police almost absolves poor Jerry of some of his guilt.

*I don’t know if I’ll ever come around to watching that one again to write a review, but it probably is worth mentioning: If your title needs more than one colon, you’re in trouble.

Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922)

Director: Benjamin Christensen

Cast: Benjamin Christensen, Clara Pontoppidan, Oscar Stribolt, Astrid Holm

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I suppose it makes sense why documentary has yet to appear in the round table of genre in silent cinema that might or might not work a hundred years after the fact. Outside of news reels or the occasional train heading toward the camera*, it never feels like the kind of genre that would lend itself to a time before synchronized sound.

Then again, is this even really a documentary? There are long stretches of frames focused on pages of books that no doubt got Ken Burns all hot and bothered, but there are long stretches where the director dresses up like the devil and black sabbaths are depicted, ultimately leading to the unravelling of a film, only to turn back in on itself and take a look at how the superstitions have shifted from the then-modern perspective of the clearly enlightened 1920s.

Honestly, after all of that I probably need to admit that the film is truly difficult to get a bead on. But by the same token, thoughts of the film haven’t left me since I watched it last week, which automatically puts it in the above average column for the silent films I’ve watched this year. An undercurrent of oddness punctuated by some even odder imagery may be all I require from a film anymore. The live music accompaniment that didn’t just rely on the theater’s pipe organ.

*I honestly thought that Behind The Screen (1916) was a documentary subject, when it was actually just one of Chaplin’s shorts… Now I kind of want to watch that one right now. That’s got to be an indicator of a pretty good movie, right? It causes your mind to wander and want to watch other movies.

Napoleon (2023)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, Rupert Everett

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. It took a devil of an effort to sneak away for a few hours to see it.

Did I Like It: I really wish I did. There’s plenty to like. Phoenix once again fully commits to the role at hand, so much so that if we got anything less from him, we would be gravely disappointed. The scope and scale of the movie is pristine, but then again anything less and we would be gravely disappointed in Ridley Scott. Although, to be fair, I don’t think we’re likely to see another film with special effects so pointedly wielded toward the end of showing the most vivid horse murders that American Humane is likely to allow.

One flaw persisted throughout the film, although it might be a little unfair to judge the film by a flaw to which so many films of the genre also fall. All of the characters speak English, even though they clearly spoke French in reality*. That’s a phenomenon I can usually get used to. I had no problem with it in movies like The Mask of Zorro (1998). But here I’m taken out of the proceedings every moment we linger on a document like an annulment or abdication and even it is written in English. It’s bad when Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) offers a more accurate depiction of the little frenchman, right?

This all, too, could be forgiven if there was a narrative on display here. It doesn’t have the depth off a real biography. Nor should it. That’s not the job of a movie. But it also shouldn’t be a rough outline of what a biography might be. It hits all the moments one might expect from a depiction of his life, but at no point do I get the sense that Napoleon is the protagonist of any kind of story. When he (spoiler) dies at Saint Helena, it doesn’t even qualify as an anti-climax because there was no series of events that begs for a climax of any kind.

*That alone will pretty much account for the nearly unanimous loathing from French critics.

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Director: Takashi Yamazaki

Cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: I’m really annoyed with this film. Deeply, so.

I got to November and I was really quite sure that I had my top five movies of the year all figured out.

Now? Now, I’m stuck either giving Tetris (2023) or Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) the bad news that one of them gets relegated to the top ten with the likes of jokers like Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 (2023), or worse yet, The Flash (2023)*. It is easily my favorite action or sci-fi film of the year.

Not only is this one of the best movies of the year, it’s also moved me from being a relative Godzilla agnostic to an absolute believer in the King of All Monsters. I want to see all of the movies in the series now, and I might even try to get back into the recent American series. Matthew Broderick is probably still on his own.

I can’t readily think of a film that so winningly depicts the Japanese post-war experience, and that’s before we get to the giant lizard of it all.

And, man alive, has that lizard never looked better. There are sequences where’s he’s a frightening face that won’t die coming through the water. There are times where I’m relative sure that he’s just a guy in a suit. And it all works as a piece. Yes, even the lurching figure lumbering his way through Ginza works. I was surprised, too.

It might have helped that the crowd I watched it with was just about perfect. Monday afternoon. Maybe half a dozen people including myself. Spoilers, but when Shikishima (Kamiki) makes his escape from his plane just as Godzilla’s head explodes, we all cheered. All of us.

Please go see this movie. Do it with a crowd.

*This is why I don’t do a top ten list. It will force me to really reckon with how I feel about The Flash. This movie cost about 5% of what The Flash cost, and now my head hurts.

Eileen (2023)

Director: William Oldroyd

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland, Anne Hathaway

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I probably went into the day of the screening a little bit more during my review of Don’t Change Your Husband (1919). A perfect movie day, even if the movies themselves were not my favorite.

Did I Like It: I’ve been watching a lot of noir lately, and the rhythms become all too comfortable. That also probably puts me probably in the wrong headspace for any film that trucks in a lot of the noir tropes, but then tries to subvert them.

I’m on board with nearly every element of this film. Hathaway slithers through the film with barely contained chaotic energy. She doesn’t get nearly enough credit for her ability to vamp through a movie, largely because she’s only been really allowed to flex that muscle in forgettable or mildly disappointing movies like The Witches (2020) or The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Her chemistry with McKenzie is electric, then sexy, then a perfect synthesis of unsettling and revolting. It’s very nearly a perfect amalgamation of all the elements that made those noir films so great, but with the added feature of not being weighed down by the Hays Code, allowing the film to be unrelentingly unflinching.

But some of the fun of movies like these is the palpable tension that comes with the world closing in on the main character who have wandered off the straight and narrow path. Here, though, the movie doesn’t so much concludes as it just stops. One might be able to make the argument that the movie isn’t about the escalating ring of murder surrounding the characters, but more about Eileen’s (McKenzie) shedding the elements of her life that are holding her back*, but it also leaves the entire affair a little unbelievable. There’s no way this girl doesn’t get picked up for murder before she gets past the Massachusetts border.

*A quick scan of a summary of the source material indicates it doubles down on that notion, which may ironically enough make this film better than the novel upon which it is based.

Don't Change Your Husband (1919)

Director: Cecil B. Demille

Cast: Elliott Dexter, Gloria Swanson, Lew Cody, Sylvia Ashton

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: It was a nearly perfect day at the movies. Catch the morning screening of this, help host two screenings of White Christmas (1954) and manage to fit in another matinee—this time of Eileen (2023)—throughout the day. I had the opportunity to talk to any number of people about the movie, and I’m now beginning to wonder if my views on the silent movies aren’t that oddball after all. Most people would say that they love the slapstick or pantomime comedians of the era, and I would say that form is the one that truly holds up without dialogue.

Only trouble? This film—the first collaboration between Swanson and Demille—leans heavily on the drama side of the comedy-drama spectrum. It was a perfectly pleasant way to spend an hour an a half. It gave me a chance to—as Gene Siskel once identified the one great constant of going to the movies—the opportunity to sit in the dark and eat popcorn. What’s more, it occasionally gave me the opportunity to think about my life and the things I need to do in the course of that activity. If that’s not the kind of endorsement someone should put on a poster, I don’t know what is…

The movie isn’t completely without enjoyment on its own terms. There’s a bit with some salt shakers that—while it didn’t make me laugh, as such—did bring a smile to my face.

And now I’m stuck here trying to come up with thirty more words to wind up the review. If there isn’t that much in the movie, am I still obligated? Shame that some movies from the era have disappeared forever, where still others persist.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)*

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Literally Everyone

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. It was one of my parents’ favorite films. At the tender age of ten, I was entranced both by anything with the Three Stooges in it, and by the fact that it could only be contained by two (count them, two!) VHS tapes, which obviously meant it was a movie meant for grown-ups.

I’m sad to report that the Stooges show up for all of five seconds, do absolutely nothing*** it bored me to tears—such is the relationship of a ten-year-old to a grown-up movie.

Did I Like It: Spoiler alert: I must have dozed off—and at that for maybe a moment—and missed The Three Stooges entirely.

That doesn’t exactly bode well for a revised take on the film.

If comedy really does live in a close-up, then nobody bothered to tell Mr. Kramer. The scope is too epic, and the pace doesn’t speed up to justify such things.

Maybe I’m still just a ten-year-old at heart.

*Really, that thing runs a couple of weeks and it careens wildly into a few weeks where no one felt like laughing for any reason whatsoever. Thank goodness the President wasn’t a character (they probably could have fit Vaughn Meader in there, right?) or they would have had to burn the negative.

**I being in that time of life where a boy ought to find them fascinating; a boy is never truly a man until he realizes that The Marx Brothers are so much funnier than the Stooges that it isn’t really even a contest

***Is a Stooge even a Stooge without slapstick? They’re firemen who appear in one shot, and it only hints at a dumber, but far more entertaining movie. Incidentally, this review is having almost as many footnotes as this movie has cast members.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

Director: Joseph Zito

Cast: Kimberly Beck, Peter Barton, Crispin Glover, Corey Feldman

Have I Seen it Before: I dunno… maybe?

Did I Like It: And that’s the real problem with the whole series. Well, at least one of them. The whole series bleeds together. Don’t believe me? Quick, name the final girl in the first Friday the 13th (1980). No, it isn’t Kevin Bacon. I’d even give partial credit if you can name how many films in the series she appeared in. Can’t do it, can you? I can’t do it, and my horror movie literacy is at least above average, and it isn’t like I’m about to look it up.

That all sounds like I’m going to start trashing this one, too, but there’s an odd uptick in improvement. This fourth entry is certainly better than Friday the 13th Part III (1982). Dim praise, maybe, but it’s imminently encouraging that the series kept the hockey mask, but dropped things point at the center of the frame and the weird disco riffs in Harry Manfredini’s score from the previous film. It’s a reversion to the dull mediocrity of Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), perhaps, but the series can probably—and likely will—go on ad infinitum content to be a Great Value version of the Halloween series.

But there are some casting choices here that are not only back to average, but above it. Crispin Glover certainly hasn’t become anyone’s density or destiny yet, but it’s always at least a little bit interesting to see him in anything. And then there is Corey Feldman, who is something of a presence in this movie and movies going forward, and if I remember right, becomes a regular foil for Jason Voorhees (Ted White, uncredited).

Now if only I could remember the character’s name… Ah, well. Maybe that’ll stick more in future entries.

Power Rangers (2017)

Director: Dean Israelite

Cast: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Banks

Have I Seen It Before: Oddly, yes. One of those moments where I had to get an oil change, the oil change was going to take longer than two hours, and my lube place was within walking distance of a theater, all at the same time.

Did I Like It: I apparently liked it well enough to watch it again which I’ll admit surprised me a little bit. The movie is, at it’s core an incredibly average and occasionally cheap superhero affair. I’m sure that Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Banks managed to quite effectively remodel something in their houses but accomplished little else. The actual rangers are fine enough, understanding the assignment of bringing a pinch of modern* The Breakfast Club (1985) to the convoluted mythology that launched a thousand action figures.

It would be damning praise, one would assume, to say this is probably the best one could hope from for a big screen adaptation of Power Rangers, but as I watch this for what I imagine would be the final time, I’m struck by—despite all of its profound pandering; indeed, because of that pandering—just how effective an adaptation of the old TV show this is. This is filled with warmed over material from other—if not better—more successful films, but have you ever actually watched an episode of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers? If you haven’t, I wouldn’t say I blame you, but the show is actually built around footage from another (it sort of shames me to admit) Japanese TV show, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. It wouldn’t be Power Rangers if it wasn’t sort of disappointing and essentially the cinematic or televisual equivalent of leftover casserole.

*Would a modern audience have genuinely been unable to handle a genuine 90s (or even 80s?) energy to the proceedings? If you’re going to go for homage, follow through does count for something.

Rudy (1993)

Director: David Anspaugh

Cast: Sean Astin, Ned Beatty, Charles S. Dutton, Jason Miller

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: There’s a certain emotional target that I imagine most films are probably aiming for, and if they hit that target they move beyond the confines of normal movies. It is an ephemeral goal. For every, say Rocky (1976) or Saturday Night Fever (1977) that hits it, there are any number of examples like say… Staying Alive (1983) (to mix and match the same ingredients) that miss it entirely.

It doesn’t matter what the topic of the film is, if the target is hit correctly. I return again to my affinity for the Rocky (and by extension, Creed) films. I couldn’t possibly sit through a single boxing match. For that matter, I don’t really have any particular desire to serve in a maximum security prison, but I don’t think that a year has gone by where I haven’t watched The Shawshank Redemption (1994).

If the target is hit, it doesn’t matter if the story is schmalzy or too melodramatic for its own good. It doesn’t matter if—in the case of Rudy—that the “based on a true story” parts are, if Joe Montana is to be believed, more of a joke than a rousing triumph of the human spirit. As long as that spirit is right and properly roused, we tend to ignore any and all flaws.

Maybe it’s all tied to Jerry Goldsmith’s score (which I could eat with a spoon, were the opportunity afforded), or maybe it’s that deadly earnestness at the film’s core, but Rudy hits the target with room to spare. It doesn’t really matter that I couldn’t give even a little bit of a crap about football or the University of Notre Dame. It doesn’t matter that Rudy’s (Astin) goal is kind of singularly nuts and he may just need some therapy*.

But it’s probably a good thing he Ruttiger didn’t get involved with ending the Cold War.

*They had therapy in 1972, right?