Dune (2021)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin

Have I Seen it Before: Never. See my remarks about my boneheaded Dune-related decisions in my review of David Lynch’s Dune (1984).

Did I Like It: It’s going to be difficult to find something to say about this film that isn’t immediately clear from being exposed to any piece of information about the film. It is a sumptuous production, being a nearly perfect fusion of modern special effects and epic filmmaking of old. The performances are finely tuned, with excellent performers managing to inhabit a space opera with not a single one of them looking embarrassed that they are taking place in the proceedings. Preceding decades may have been filled with varying degrees of false starts, but this is unequivocally the best possible adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. It is all made more impressive by the fact that Villeneuve and company had to accept that they only had the resources to tell half of the story (to say nothing of the larger tale of Paul Atreides (Chalamet) and his heirs) with no guarantee that the film would catch on with audiences to necessitate the rest of the story going before cameras. It’s not a fair example, but the makers of Battlefield Earth (2000) made the same gambit and had it blow up in their face. This film had to be good, and it shows.

Had we been left with only this film, it might have been a supremely unsatisfying experience. What’s more, in stark contrast to David Lynch’s version of the story, much is left unexplained. I’m honestly surprised that the film did as well as it did, as the uninitiated might have found some of this inscrutable. Against all odds, I’m really glad that I read the book first. Take that to mean what you will.

Dune (1984)

Director: David Lynch

Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Brad Dourif, Patrick Stewart

Have I Seen it Before: Never. So here’s what I did that was kind of stupid. When Dune (2021) came out, in one of my book-buying binges, I picked up Frank Herbert’s original novel and told myself that I wasn’t going to watch any of the films until I read the source material. Cut to three years later and I finally got through that thing* and I have a lot catching up to do elsewhere.

That doesn’t really account for the additional thirty-five-plus years I’ve spent avoiding the film.

Did I Like It: In the first few minutes, there was a very real chance I was going to hate the film very, very deeply. Opening with a V.O. narration is usually a way to get me to check out, having it come from a floating head among the cosmos would pretty much seal the deal of my antipathy. That this opening from Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen) is so weirdly uncertain that it really felt like I could start writing my review in the first five minutes.

Then again, injecting the character into the film in this way is a pretty faithful adaptation of the book itself. That may be the film’s biggest ambition and ultimate weakness. It is a slavishly faithful adaptation, but feels the need to zip through all of the story points to get things in around two hours. What Herbert does best doesn’t get any time to simmer here, so instead we get a lot of exposition machines flitting in and out of the frame.

And yet, I can’t completely dismiss the film either. It does manage to effectively depict the worlds of the Duneiverse at a time when science fiction films had to often make do with their limitations.

*I didn’t read the appendices. Even I have my limits.

Rocky vs Drago (2021)

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Carl Weathers, Dolph Lundgren

Have I Seen it Before: Huh. Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it? I’ve never seen this movie like this. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to watch it, either.

Did I Like It: I mentioned a couple of things in my review of the theatrical cut of Rocky IV (1985) that probably bare mentioning again. If you cut out all examples of montage from the film, it would run about twenty minutes. Also, one of my weirder movie moments was when my question about Sico the Robot got included in a Q and A with Stallone and aintitcoolnews.com (kids, ask your parents).

So what do we have here? I’m a little leery of director’s cut as a genre. We can get an infinite amount of re-edits of Blade Runner (1982), and it still never works for me*. The Godfather: Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020) is still, basically The Godfather Part III (1990) with a slightly more sensical ending. And Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) I was so tried of talking about by the time that it premiered, that it’s the only review I’ve so far outsourced.

Here, the robot is nowhere to be found. Could I have gotten into Stallone’s head? I can’t imagine so… And yet, I can’t rule it out, so that’s fun. Ultimately, the first half of the film is far less ashamed of itself than it once was, freeing it to be more about the friendship of Rocky (Stallone) and Apollo Creed (Weathers) that was started in Rocky III (1982). The second half of the film is largely the same, with a couple of exceptions. The politburo doesn’t get won over by Rocky’s victory. Also, there is no echo of the end of Rocky II (1979), which I only realize now never worked for me.

This is ultimately still a movie aggressively tethered to the 1980s that is about a man winning the Cold War using only his fists, but it is a much better version of that insane movie.

*You can direct your ire to the comments section of that review.

Gun Crazy (1950)

Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Cast: Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Berry Kroeger, Morris Carnovsky

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Here’s the problem with writing a review for a movie nearly a month after actually watching it. Unless it was overwhelmingly memorable, the whole thing might have disappeared from my memory, and only insists on becoming a viable review because it’s not like its going to suddenly leap off my to-do list.

The film hits all of the right notes for a noir. There’s a hapless protagonist (Dall), probably ultimately a bad egg, but he goes full blown villain the moment he drifts into the proximity of a woman (Cummins) who is either the anti-christ, or possibly just a sociopath who enjoys far more money than their mate is ever likely to come up with via honest means.

What’s the twist here? Well, take a look at that title again. There are lots of guns here. Too many guns? And maybe just a bit too much of a semi-sexual obsession with the items on the part of the two main characters. I’m not sure if any of this was intended to be a comedy, but your humble correspondent and the people around him just couldn’t help ourselves when it turned out these two murderers were capable of love, but only for their revolvers.

I might have found the film more memorable if those two main performances left more of an impression. It’s difficult to look at Dall as anything other than the murder enthusiast from Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), but that’s hardly his fault. Unfortunately, Cummins fails to display much of a personality in her role, so the frisson that can really ignite the watchability of film noire never quite comes to pass. There is no tension—and probably not a lot of believability—as Dall falls for her, and there is no tragedy when they come to their inevitable end.

Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Director: Zelda Williams

Cast: Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Liza Soberano, Carla Gugino

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: It’s always delightful to come across a film that is both charming and more often than not surprising.

Williams makes a directing debut that is self-assured and clear headed about precisely what movie she wants to present. One might have had a hard time imagining that John Hughes and early Tim Burton would blend together so smoothly, but one might also hope that Williams doesn’t limit herself to that aesthetic in the future. Based on some of her short work, she could truly be a versatile director for years to come.

I for one enjoyed both Juno (2008) and Jennifer’s Body (2009), but I could see the validity of some who would complain that Diablo Cody’s dialogue spends a lot of time trying to keep the audience at a distance, but I was struck by none of those qualities here. Characters still have some idiosyncrasies in their speech, but it doesn’t necessarily sound like the dialogue that got routinely satirized in the late 2000s. Maybe she was shamed out of her weaker impulses, but I’d like to think that she is just more comfortable and no longer needs to rely on the same bag of tricks.

Performances, too are uniformly great. I know Ross’ kid from Friends and one half of the kid from Big Daddy (1999) grew up somewhere along the line, but as someone who never regularly had the Disney channel and still doesn’t understand the appeal of Riverdale, I didn’t know the guy was actually good, managing to turn in an authentically silent performance (in a movie written by Diablo Cody, no less), while Newton manages to be both believable and likable (probably needed qualities in what ultimately amounts to a romantic comedy) while she is slowly descending into what amounts to a murder spree.

* Genuinely surprised to learn it was only Cole who did episodes of Friends. Learn something new every day.

Ten Nights in a Barroom (1926)

Director: Roy Calnek

Cast: Charles Gilpin, Lawrence Chenault, Myra Burwell, Harry Henderson

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It was an odd screening, to be sure, filled as it was with members of the Tulsa Spotlight Theater, who have been staging The Drunkard—Ten Nights and The Drunkard are apparently based on the same source material—non-stop for seventy years. They had a certain keying into the film that I probably wouldn’t be able to lay claim to unless I spent several decade living with the story like it was a member of the family.

Did I Like It: Not exceptionally. The story was sufficiently bland that it probably guaranteed I would never go voluntarily to the Spotlight. The filming techniques on display are competent, but unremarkable. When the film isn’t being boring or cloying, it certainly is being moralistic about alcohol. During prohibition, I get why that would be the milieu, but the moment the Twenty-First amendment was ratified, the entire film becomes quaint.

But the fact that the film company behind it was committed to presenting African Americans on film in any way other than degrading minstrel cliche at a time mere minutes away from events like the Tulsa Race Massacre is endlessly fascinating. Away from the then-cottage industry sprouting up in Los Angeles, and making films that would only appeal to a small part of the population, and might horrifically infuriate the parts of the population that aren’t interested in seeing it? It’s not hard to imagine that the company only survived to make four films before folding. Failure might have been inevitable with all of those factors working against them, but the grit that caused them to try and the struggle to continue onward until they simply couldn’t manage it anymore?

Isn’t that the real movie we need to be watching?

Freud's Last Session (2023)

Director: Matthew Brown

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour

Have I Seen It Before: Never. I barely managed to catch the last screening here in town.

Did I Like It: There’s a challenge at the core of the movie, and at the risk of oversimplifying, it might be boiled down to this: Is the entirety of human experience governed by God or by sex?

What if you’re of the opinion—and maybe in fact live in a time that has nearly uniformly decided—that both conclusions are a little bit preposterous?

The pitch of letting these two titans of a differing worldview then falls flat, but what I was ultimately struck by how much I found Lewis (Goode) to be a likable chap, not unlike the Jesuits that people The Exorcist (1973)*. Religious, sure, but still existing in the world, acknowledging that doing so is to accept that doubt may be the thing which binds the universe together. In short, he’s someone you could still have a conversation with, and he might even have an ability to read the room and know when someone isn’t in the market for proselytism. In even shorter, he is not of the tedious, glassy-eyed variety.

I’ve got a couple more reasons to do it, but I’ve actually started to read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe after resolutely spending the better part of forty years avoiding it. It’s… fine.

And the more I think about the movie, it’s probably… fine, too. One would imagine that we would have largely moved on from the slavish adaptation of plays for the screen after we figured out how to move the camera around when its tied to sound equipment. Everything about this movie reeks of transcription over adaptation, working more as a conversation than a dramatized or visually interesting story.

Maybe I need to really break down and watch Shadowlands (1993). Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

*It’s entirely possible I am working overly hard to misunderstand the point of that novel, that movie, and for that matter, everything about C.S. Lewis.

The Fly II (1989)

Director: Chris Walas

Cast: Eric Stoltz, Daphne Zuniga, Lee Richardson, John Getz

Have I Seen It Before: Oddly enough, no. As much as I admire The Fly (1986), the reputation on this one has managed to keep me away all these years. If Shout Factory hadn’t decided to package every Fly movie together, I might never have come around to it. I do remember being oddly transfixed by the poster in some movie rental store somewhere—like you do when you’re a kid.

Did I Like It: I think no review of this movie would be complete, or even begin to address the fundamental, unavoidable problem, without first discussing Kelsey Grammer.

Yes, you read that right.

For the first few times, whenever Grammer directed an episode of Frasier, there was a very specific plot construction that told you he was directing before the credits even started to roll. Frasier’s going on vacation/going to a concert/visiting Freddy in Boston/searching for the lost Ark of the Covenant*. It allowed him to actually direct and not have to worry about much of a performance.

Why bring this up in the mostly forgotten sequel to Cronenberg’s remake? Well, Walas did excellent creature work in the first film, and while I think it would be probably hoping for too much for this sequel to be at the same level as the first, but one would be perfectly within their rights to expect a B-movie with some interesting effects work, but what we got instead was a B movie with incredibly sloppy creature work, I’m not sure what we were doing here in the first place.

If Chris Walas hadn’t put so much pressure on himself to both direct—virgin territory for him—and do the effects work, one of those aspects might have been able to stand on their own.

*I’m pretty sure I’m remembering that one right. Frakes would also do that the first few times he directed on TNG, but bringing up Frakes in this review wasn’t going to be nearly as fun.

Flash Gordon (1980)

Director: Mike Hodges

Cast: Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, Timothy Dalton

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: It’s probably one of those films that you had to take in at an early age, and then spend the rest of your life passionately and without reason*, and I came to it far too late. Even the always-welcome presence of Timothy Dalton (doing his best to not look vaguely embarrassed by the proceedings) can’t ultimately turn me around on it.

And really, I should be in the mood for it, right? I’ve been on a pulpy-action kick as of late, and if there is a film pulpier than this, I’m not sure it ought to be released to an unsuspecting public.

So why doesn’t it work for me. I offer three potential explanations. It feels like it is straddling two different eras of this type of film, with Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) being the line of demarcation. Before Star Wars, anything with even an ounce of pulp in it was treated as not just an adventure film, but exclusively children’s fare. See Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975) for the last (great?) example. After Star Wars, every movie was at least trying to be Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Flash Gordon has a lot of the big budget trappings (minus a handful of some of the dodgier SFX of the era), but never seems like its willing to make the pulse pound any more than it might otherwise. Some might call it camp, but it may have taken us a couple of years to learn this lesson**, but camp needs to be funny, and this ain’t it.

This might have all been covered up if Gordon himself (Jones) could carry the day through with his charisma. The Shadow (1994) might in fact be a terrible movie, if it weren’t for the fact that Baldwin took his obligations as an authentic movie star seriously for the last time. I understand the stiff-as-a-board qualities of Jones aren’t necessarily his fault, as Dino De Laurentiis chased him off before filming ended, but it is hard to ignore it.

But really? I’m just annoyed that Flash plays football vocationally. I’m not sure I get sci-fi fans thinking that’s a plus.

*I say that without judgment. I’ve got those films, too. Short Circuit (1986) comes to mind. Let’s not bring Batman (1989) into this if we can help it.

*After we fully internalized the implications of Batman (1966) and Batman & Robin (1997).

The Fly (1986)

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It even became the basis for an occasionally returned to rule on <Beyond the Cabin in the Woods>. Essentially: Toxic masculinity aside, when your penis falls off, you need to go to the doctor.

Somehow, I haven’t returned to the film since starting with Cabin and these reviews.

Did I Like It: Even though I’ve seen it probably a dozen times over the years, I’m struck by how much it works as a thriller. The lead up to the unfortunate fate of the baboon (and the relatively benign fate of his brother), Brundle’s (Goldblum) prowling for someone else to share of teleporting, his progressive unravelling right up until the point that he fused with his infernal machine. Each of those moments put me on the edge of my seat, as if I was watching the movie for the first time. I’ve seen other horror movies multiple times—Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Halloween (1978) immediately come to mind—but none of them hit me with that same instinctive feeling of terror as this does.

Even if the film’s pulse-pounding effects somehow dulled over the years, there would be more than enough of a great film to enjoy. I’m torn on whether or not this was the role Goldblum was born to play, or if he so thoroughly understood the task in front of him, but every stutter and twitch makes an audience believe that the border between man and fly is thinner than any of us might want to admit, and that’s before any special effect comes into place. And this entire review has managed to avoid talking about those very special effects. The makeup revolts and feels real, and it is supremely difficult for any horror movie to embrace puppetry and not feel silly, but when those last vestiges of humanity disappear, ti still feels as if there is something of Goldblum in there somewhere.

American Fiction (2023)

Director: Cord Jefferson

Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Sterling K. Brown

Have I Seen it Before: No, but by a strange quirk of the world I managed to see it twice before getting around to writing my review.

Did I Like It: There’s a moment of hesitation to offer anything either in praise or criticism of a movie like this. Even admitting that much runs the risk of not getting the point. I’ll accept any of those judgments. I understand that when it comes to a movie like this, I’m a guest. I’ll try to comport myself as such, if for no other reason than to act otherwise would be to surrender to being the butt of this particular joke. I may not be able to avoid it entirely, but it is worth trying.

The film is one of the best comedy/dramas I’ve seen in a long time. The laughs connect almost invariably. All of the satire may not hit everyone on a single viewing. There were certainly parts I laughed much harder at on repeat. The real relationships between these characters—frequently flawed and often unable to reach any kind of catharsis—feels real and lived in. Nearly every one of the characters is at time infuriating—at least those in the actual Ellison family—but never unsympathetic.

Wright—always terrific—is a revelation here, a torrent of frustration that is always trying to understand something (several somethings, actually) that brings him great pain. Brown—although I might have found his recent performance in Biosphere (2022) a bit more fully realized—is a perfect counterpoint to Wright. Where Monk is damaged, Cliff is brazen. Where Monk is self-assured, Brown plays Cliff like an injured animal. I’d almost forgive some idea-bereft fool (maybe even Wiley (Adam Brody)) for putting these two together in a buddy cop film at one point.

My only point of contention with the film is that for all of its brilliance, the turn where Monk’s secret anonymous novel ends up as one of the books considered for the literary award he has found himself judging feels so telegraphed as to almost feel perfunctory. Thankfully, for all the time the film ramps up to that moment, it doesn’t bother to dwell on how things escalated to this borderline-sitcom turn, and return quickly to the pristine satire it had offered before and after.

Poor Things (2023)

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Probably won’t share why precisely, but it was a screening with a pretty strange context.

Did I Like It: Context be damned, this is one of the stranger movies in recent memory. And that is mostly (although not entirely) tied just to that weird belch thing Dafoe does a handful of times throughout the movie. What was that all about? Aside from maybe being some kind of symptom of his looming mortality, but even then it feels like a weird flex of CGI for the sake of CGI.

Aside from that, the film is fine, providing a modern (in theme if not setting) riff on not just the Frankenstein myth generally, but Bride of Frankenstein (1935). I’ve been struck by that earlier film in recent years that for all of its predecessor’s concern about the procurement of viable human brains to animate their patchwork corpses, the sequel (which I still love, regardless of what I’m about to say about it) seemed more obsessed with a woman’s heart, and her brain was an afterthought. It’s only after seeing this film that I realize there was (as much as the Hays Code might allow) not just an omission of personhood for both the Bride there and Bella here, but a savage—even from those who might think of themselves and society would view as benign—hostility and need for possession at play here.

That fundamental oddness and the underlying message are ultimately subservient to the film’s central performance. Stone once again proves that she is willing to strip away most of the glamour normally associated with a movie star in order to display as unflinchingly and cogently as possible, far stranger characters than her early career might have shoved her towards.

The Holdovers (2023)

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa, Carrie Preston

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Kicked myself for missing it in the theaters, but Peacock is always there to pick up my self-imposed slack.

Did I Like It: I’ve been struck in recent years, and damn near feel like I’ve been choking on it in recent months, but somewhere along the line we absolutely lost all conception of what nostalgia means. I can’t remember the last time I went through any range of social media posts without some post algorithmically recommended to me that insisted the era in which Wendy’s served all of their food was the absolute pinnacle of western civilization*. Nothing was inherently better in those times; you were just younger then and weren’t terribly bothered by just how screwed up the world could already occasionally be.

That’s all to say that this film feels like perhaps the only object in years to understand the power of that wistful feeling we once properly identified as nostalgia. From its first moments dusting off the Universal logos that died with Back to the Future - Part III (1990) through opening credits that most people would see on TCM, the film manages to feel like a film that could have been released in some bygone year.

All of that is hard enough to do and more than enough to recommend the film. But it goes deeper than that. I may have never lived at a New England boarding school, but I did have a stunted view towards Christmas, and at least one teacher who might have thought I was bright but a little bit of a pain in the ass. There may be funnier Oscar contenders this year, but this one feels the most right.

*First of all, it wasn’t all that long ago. At least I don’t think it was…

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

Director: W. D. Richter

Cast: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. A handful of times.

Did I Like It: And in the past, I’ve never been a huge fan of it. Certainly not like other people do. I had decided somewhere along the line that this was just one of those films that I didn’t “get” like The Princess Bride (1987) or the Lord of the Rings series.

But as I continue with my creative work some of these last few years, I finally have begun to define just what my genre is. It’s not science fiction, certainly not of the hard variety to be sure. It’s not really historical fiction, per se, especially because I tend to not be able to help myself when it comes to sending my characters traveling through time. A reductivist will occasionally delight in calling it fan fiction, and if you hold true to that, the only defense I’ve been able to offer in the past i that I will occasionally delve into meta-fiction.

But that last term has never been able to cover it, really. All this time I’ve been trying to work in the milieu of neo-pulp.

And you’d be hard pressed to find a better example of whatever that might mean than this film. Clearly I needed to give it another chance, right?

And with that clarity of mindset going into the film, I definitely enjoyed it for what it is. The plot is a an elaborate confection of pulpy goodness, and the cast—especially Weller—has more than enough charisma to float things across any rough spots.

So what is the problem I’ve had with the film this whole time? I honestly think it was the film’s score. IT’s a bit too precious for its own good, and honestly, I’m still not a fan of it.

The Mask (1994)

Director: Chuck Russell

Cast: Jim Carrey, Peter Riegert, Peter Greene, Cameron Diaz

Have I Seen It Before: You don’t have your tenth birthday in 1994 and somehow avoid the film. This is going to seem like a strange idea, but it was only after re-watching it recently that it dawned on me just how much I must have watched this one back in the day. Individual moments--even including slight instances of behavior—tweaked a memory.

Did I Like It: And yet it’s been years, probably even decades since the last time I watched the film. Why? I think I made the decision at some point that of all of Carrey’s films in the first decade or so of his bona fide movie stardom, it wasn’t nearly as funny (even in an adolescent way) as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)*, or Dumb and Dumber (1995).

But there’s more to the film than that, at least nominally, as the last half hour of the film is so standard I think I suddenly remembered why I got to a point where I found the film underwhelming. If you can get over the fact that CGI ages  worse than new-off-the-lot cars, there’s an impressively credible quality of a cartoon come to life in Carrey’s performance, made all the more impressive by the handful of shots where he had to stop moving around for the pyrotechnics around him to work properly. All of the highlights of his career, especially the early years, might make one think that he was going through prolonged manic episodes barely captured by film, but it’s hard to ignore here that Carrey is a more finely-tuned machine than he generally gets credit.

I was also oddly charmed by the plot of the movie of all things. It might be an obvious change to have the spunky reporter (Amy Yasbeck) be the morally bankrupt betrayer, and the vamp (Diaz) has the heart of gold. On the topic of Diaz, Carrey might have to take a bit of a backseat to his leading lady, as she enters filmdom here with more charisma (and I do mean charisma) than reels of ogling could ever hope to obscure. There were probably any number of attractive actresses who could have been cast in the role, but few would have been able to make a career out of it.

*And I’m not sure anyone—regardless of what they feel about the modern world—can watch Ace Ventura and not feel a little weirdly nauseous about the whole prospect.

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.