A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. Hell, there was a stretch there in the early 2000s where watching the movie, or listening to the score (that carried over to the 2020s, now that I think about it) were just about the only thing that could get me through any sort of brain freeze on a school project. That’s probably less than healthy, now that I’m really thinking about it.

Did I Like It: The odd thing about revisiting media that you know well but haven’t taken in more than a few years, there are things you never noticed before that now you can’t help but fixate on. Think Danny Pudi being one of the Santos campaign staffers in the last season of The West Wing, like the whole show was a Community prequel this whole time, and I never noticed. Here, Anthony Rapp—not the wide-eyed kid from Adventures in Babysitting (1987) mind you, but a discernably grown Rapp—runs around as one of Nash’s (Crowe) mathematician colleagues, and I’m left wondering someone is going to break the Prime Directive before everything is said and done. It really shouldn’t be difficult to separate an actor from the role with I most identify them, but when they were stealthily there the whole time, it’s just spooky.

Is that a sufficient criticism of the movie? Probably not, but it is the “new thought” I had to share, to be sure. Howard does tend to be the most journeyman among his elite level of filmmaking peers, and this is one of those examples. Strip away the James Horner score, the Roger Deakins cinematography, and most of the performances, and what you have is not much more evolved than a TV movie-of-the-week from days of old.

But how can you strip that many elements away from a film before you make assess it. Time may have been altogether kind to it, but it still tugs at all of the emotions that it wants to target.

The Dead Zone (1983)

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Martin Sheen

Have I Seen it Before: Yes… It’s been a number of years. I love me some Walken, Cronenberg, and don’t get me started on Martin Sheen…

But Sheen playing an evil President of the United States who brings the world gleefully to its destruction? That’s something that makes one feel unwell and relegates the film to the not often re-watched list.

Did I Like It: Prepping for an episode on the movie for <Beyond the Cabin in the Woods> I read the King novel as well as screening the film, and I’m torn about how I feel about the adaptation. On one hand, the novel is of that era in King’s work where he claimed he could work while coked out of his gills, but it wouldn’t be controversial to say the resulting book is a bit cluttered and overlong. The movie does a stellar job of paring down the story of Johnny Smith’s (Walken) into its most essential elements.

On the other hand, there are some strange choices. One can’t help but wonder if Cronenberg was less auteur than hired hand here, as aside from one errant pair of scissors there isn’t a lot to suggest the Cronenbergian motif as we have collectively come to understand it. That’s a mild complaint, at best, as the film still works despite the lack of the artists touch. Other idiosyncratic filmmakers don’t work out so well when they go off that idiosyncratic path and lend their name as brand to a film. I’m looking in your direction, 21st century Tim Burton.

What’s more, I think the casting of Walken is at best a partial success. Scenes that show him as an increasingly isolated loner are so in his wheelhouse that it almost doesn’t seem like a challenge, but early scenes where he is asked to be a romantic lead, naturally attracting the affections of Sarah (Adams) are a little giggle-worthy, as Walken is not quite able to tune down his fundamental Walken-ness. The rest of the cast is almost too well cast, though, perhaps even unintentionally*. I’m looking in your direction, Mr. Sheen.

Which reminds me. If you’ll excuse me, I now have to mainline as many West Wing episodes as I can possibly stomach to get rid of this icky feeling I’ve been having since I finished watching the film..

*Jordan Peele would one day make great hay out of quite pointedly co-opting cast members of The West Wing to keep white liberals like your humble correspondent off balance.

From Here To Eternity (1953)

Director: Fred Zinnermann

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I mean, I’ve seen that one shot any number of times, but there’s a whole dynamic movie outside of those waves!

Did I Like It: And one that really puts into sharp relief just how stupid an undertaking Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor (2001) really was. The film might be a bit weighed down by the trappings of a Hollywood product of the era, but any film that tracks in the inevitability of a looming historical event and still manages to milk tension out of that dread is worth a look. Even in the film’s climactic act, the production does not cheap out on the scope of the attack. There’s a little bit of stock footage—and it works well enough—implemented, but there’s more than enough Zeroes actually being shot from the sky to make it all credible as if it was actually taking place in December of 1941.

People might get bent out of shape about Lancaster or Clift not winning the Best Actor Oscar that year, but I think this is another example of a great film clearing the big awards only for its best elements. The two leading men may be wielding the most dynamic acting craft then available for the screen, but they are fundamentally just accomplishing the pedestrian task of being romantic leading men.

One might even bring themselves—and apparently even the Chairman himself thought he was more deserving for later work—to say that Sinatra isn’t doing much more than being comic relief. But to watch a man whose entire iconic image is so far from a comedian thoroughly fight every instinct he must have is worthy of at least some hardware. The fact that nearly any time some one is singing in the film, he just stands there at the edge of the frame, likely seething at a bunch of amateurs taking the focus away from him only clinches the deal.

Act of Violence (1948)

Director:  Fred Zinnemann

Cast:  Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: It’s a perfectly formed movie for what it is, so much so that I worry I may not have any greater insight about it. It offers no easy answer as to who might be considered heroic and who might not, and it is sort of jarring to see anyone have the same kind of reservations and angst about fighting in World War II that one would assume didn’t enter American life until the second half of the 20th century, but you take all of that in from reading a below average plot summary of the film.

But presentation is worth more than what we sometimes think it is. Displayed in 35mm is automatically a feature that will make the film appointment viewing for me, I think my record is pretty clear on that. But something dawned on me during this viewing that hadn’t really crystalized in other 35mm screenings at Circle Cinema. Sometimes their projection is a little wonky. A reel will change, and the new reel kicks in not quite aligned with the screen, taking a moment to re-orient itself. A flaw, sure, but a charming one. This screening did remarkably well in this regard, but the frame was still not quite right. The top of the frame bled ever so slightly into the ceiling. When, as tends to happen in a black and white noir film, a wobbly light fixture dangles from the ceiling and the movie, and causes the light to dance inside the room. I look around in these moments and something dawns on me. When a film is projected in black and white, the theater itself is reflected in those same shades of grey (minus an emergency exit sign or two). The border between the unreal and the real became thinner in that moment. Even when a little wonky, film is just better than any digital format you might be able to find.

That all may sound like the film couldn’t hold on to my attention, but it did. The flaws in the presentation only ensnared me further into the film.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Director: George A. Romero

Cast: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, Gaylen Ross

Have I Seen it Before: Somewhere in the deeper corners of my mind is a half-remembered lazy weekend afternoon in college where I watched it. I thought it was sort of fine, back then. This, of course was before The Walking Dead managed to beat out of me any possible enjoyment I could have for the zombie genre.

Did I Like It: But, against all odds, I liked it even better this time. Maybe I’m mellowing as Walking Dead no longer has its cultural ubiquity that it once did, and I can just sit back and enjoy such a story without having to roll my eyes at the army of people out there who fancy themselves Daryl Dixon.

First of all, the film is legitimately funny, while still maintaining the tension of the threat that surrounds them. The echo of the emptiness of contemporary American life in the 1970s—spoiler: it’s only gotten worse in the 2020s—permeates every moment of the film, even the ones you wouldn’t necessarily think about. This leaves one—and it might be cliché to even mention this—with a zombie story that is not only immensely entertaining, but with something to say.

Even if the message somehow got lost over time or by the medium, one still can’t help but marvel at the singular focus of Romero. Some filmmakers got stuck in a particular genre due to commercial constraints. Maybe this happened to Romero a little bit, but I also tend to think he kept making zombie films—and didn’t terribly stray terribly far from the zombie path when he did branch out—because he truly loved them and wanted to try and do new things with the form. This is the masterpiece of a true artist at work.

Just please don’t make me watch the Zack Snyder version. There’s only so much I can take.

The Departed (2006)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Any time I hear “Gimme Shelter” I can’t help but think about the film (I was surprised by just how much the Stones tune actually does appear in the film). I heard the song on the radio this morning and it became clear to me just how much I wanted to re-watch the film today.

Only, my DVD—which I probably haven’t watched in fifteen years wouldn’t play. Set aside the horror upon realizing that physical media might one day degrade even if kept in essentially ideal conditions, I was glad a streaming option existed.

Did I Like It: Set aside all of the pointed commentary about how Scorsese’s Oscar win for this film was less about the actual qualities of the film and more about how profoundly he had been robbed in years past. Set aside the fact that at it’s core it is a very basic cops and gangster story, with the requisite byzantine plot that needs the audience’s full attention, meaning it would not be the kind of wide release hit if it were released today*. Set aside the fact that I’m not entirely sure Alec Baldwin didn’t think he was in some kind of broad comedy here.

This is quite likely the last great performance we’re going to get from Jack Nicholson. I’ve written in other reviews that he—more than maybe any other movie star in the history of the moving picture—is able to make objectively reprehensible characters undeniably charismatic, and even likable. If that’s not enough to recommend a film, I don’t know what is.

*That might read as commentary on the eventual awards and financial fate of Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), but its more a commentary on the fact that we so rarely get those kind of adult-oriented action thrillers anymore.

Three Ages (1923)

Director: Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline

Cast: Buster Keaton, Margaret Leahy, Wallace Beery, Lillian Lawrence

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: It would be pretty impossible to say that one might have a bad time during a Buster Keaton movie. Perhaps eve more than his contemporaries, Keaton just looks funny. He can stand there in his iconic pork pie, or a toga, or a pelt (in this instance), and people are laughing. Chaplin always had a wry awareness of the creation of his pathos, Harold Lloyd was always more willing to go the extra mile to make people think he might be truly insane, but for a century, no one has forgotten to laugh at Buster Keaton. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that if someone can make a person laugh more than a century after doing the thing that was supposed to be funny, that is a unique kind of magic. To my mind, those three people I’ve mentioned—with Keaton in the lead—and Mark Twain are capable of that sort of sorcery.

One might complain that the disjointed nature of the movie doesn’t quite come together like the great features of the era, but I would say that this very nearly qualifies as the first sketch comedy film, and its influence is certainly present in later movies like History of the World - Part I (1981).

But what I was most impressed by the film was in its special effects. Stop-motion animation for dinosaur appearances probably didn’t pass muster 100 years ago, but they probably play for just as many laughs then as they do now as well. Scenes depicting the Roman Empire have a surprising degree of production value. If I don’t quite believe that Buster Keaton exists among the gladiators, I find the degree to which they tried the most memorable thing about the film.

The Fly (1958)

Director: Kurt Neumann

Cast: Al Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price, Herbert Marshall

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I’m a little surprised as well. I’ve seen the remade The Fly (1986) any number of times, but the original stayed just off my radar. If it hadn’t been the one-two punch of picking up the Shout! Factory box set of all the Fly-films, and that one of my co-hosts on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods really made the case for this being the superior attempt at the story, I might never have gotten around to it.

Did I Like It: I’m not sure why precisely I would have resisted as long as I did. I have no qualms about claiming 50s Sci-Fi as a favorite. Vincent Price has never been bad, even when he was in something horrible.

Even so, the Goldblum version is so good, that I can help but sit through large swaths of this resolute in my commitment to not enjoy it all that much. It’s a bit too mannered for it’s own good. Is it possible it’s just too Canadian for it’s own good, making the entire affair seem a bit ridiculous, beyond that which one might expect to find in a story where a man slowly turns into a fly.

But damned if the thing didn’t win me over after a bit. There’s no gore to set one’s teeth on edge. The eventual makeup work is quite correctly hidden for most of the movie, because once it is finally revealed its just as likely to amuse as it is shock or horrify. But there are a couple of added dimensions here that the other film doesn’t bother to use. For one, the terrible fate of the family cat in this film is far more frightening than anything that happens to any baboon in another movie. The notion that there might be some fate beyond the act of teleportation that still allows one to meow so that people can hear it is one of those unnerving elements of a horror movie that stick with you long after it is over. For another thing, there is the idea that not only there is a man who is slowly becoming more fly-like with every passing moment, but there’s also a fly who is slowly becoming more man-like with every passing moment. The “help me” moment may be famous, but it plays far better than its reputation suggests.

Wicked Little Letters (2023)

Director: Thea Sharrock

Cast: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan, Joanna Scanlan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Sad to say that I probably liked the trailer a fair bit better than the actual film itself. I’m in a weird period of my life right now where I have the opportunity to see the trailer for pretty much every independent film about two or three times. This one seemed jumped out at me those handful of times as the right mix of quaint British countryside humor and palpable tension that is the stuff of the most entertaining films. It looked like this could be this year’s answer to Fargo (1996).

And all of the elements are there. The mystery of just who is writing the scandalous letters is dispensed with fairly quickly, but the question as to whether or not the likable Rose Gooding (Buckley) will be found innocent, or if justice will come around to the fundamentally hateful (but still ultimately human) Edith Swan (Colman) is fueled with just enough uncertainty that the film goes down easy enough. It helps that the film is based on a true story (more so than Fargo can actually ever claim to be) that isn’t well known. The film is peopled with the right number of eccentrics, anything less would have been something criminal for a light British entertainment.

So then why am I not more effusive about the film? The simplest explanation is probably that there is just nothing new here, and the film is content with being a slight entertainment and nothing more. The thing that gnaws at the back of my mind is that sometimes a film may be built with all of the right elements and all of the right intentions, but for reasons beyond our understand the film doesn’t quite come together.

You Can Call Me Bill (2023)

Director: Alexandre O. Phillippe

Cast: William Shatner

Have I Seen It Before: No.

Did I Like It: But I went into the thing pretty sure that it didn’t have anything new to say about the man who once played James T. Kirk. That may not be a fair criticism from or for a general audience, but we’ve got to remember that somewhere out there is a home video footage of me in the 90s unwrapping one of Shatner’s numerous ghostwritten memoirs and you could have sworn the book played Mario, for the reaction it got out of me*.

There’s also the weird effects that The Holodeck is Broken has had on me in these last few years. Well into my 30s, I would have said Shatner—even with all his well-documented prickliness—was one of the people I most admired. Something about watching Star Trek: The Original Series in recent years has made both the man and the inevitable first line of his obituary a little less special than it once was.

So what can this movie do for me, and what can it do for you?

For one thing, it isn’t only a rehash of his career highlights. It isn’t only a meditation on the. Cadence. We've. Allcometoknowsowell.

It’s a conversation with a man who’s presence has been large than life, but realizes that by any rationale measure his life is coming to an end. It is rambling, sure. One gets the sense that this was like sitting in the production offices while he tried to articulate what he wanted Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) to actually be about. There are moments that seem as if self-awareness was not something for which he never felt much need.

But it was surprising, and it is heartfelt, far more so than any work of autobiography Shatner has ever attempted before. On that front alone, it is certainly worth a look.

*It was Star Trek Movie Memories, and regardless of whether or not Shatner ever even read the book, or if an ounce of it approaches even minimal accuracy, I still really like that book.

Men in Black II (2002)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith*, Lara Flynn Boyle, Rosario Dawson

Have I Seen it Before: Only once, so far as I can remember, on its opening weekend all those years ago. Maybe I was in a singularly bad mood in those days, but the film failed to make much of an impression then.

Did I Like It: And I’m not sure it has improved much. It is not altogether funny. With an alarming frequency, it falls into the trap so many blockbuster sequels fall into, where it seems like we’re supposed to be content with this new entry echoing lines and scenarios from the original, while also positively straining its narrative muscles to cancel any conclusions from the first film. I’m ultimately willing to overlook that deficit when I realize that the original film wasn’t nearly as funny as we collectively like to try and remember. The series is more possessed of light science fiction/space opera injected with a certain degree of Peter Gunn energy.

And on that front, the film delivers what it promises. I’m even willing to acknowledge that it aptly takes itself less seriously than the earlier film and embraces the sci-fi cheese that is at the core of its being.

So, does the film work better now than it did back then? I’m in agreement with my previous self to say that as appointment-viewing blockbuster viewing, it feels too slight for its own good. But as a light entertainment to play on a lazy Saturday afternoon while trying to catch up on some writing? A movie that Rob Gordon in High Fidelity (2000) might describe longingly as “something I can ignore”? It works perfectly. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but the world certainly needs movies to play in the background.

They just need to get past opening weekend.

*Man, Jones’ agents must have made one hell of a deal on Men in Black (1997) to still be getting top billing in the new millennium.

The Untouchables (1987)

Director: Brian De Palma

Cast: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, Robert De Niro

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure*.

Did I Like It: I’ve been on a bit of a gangster movie kick as of late, having watched all of The Godfather films recently**, and Lora has taken to dismissing them as “Pacino De Niro Scarface movies.” I don’t know if I’d be willing to back up that assertion, but she came in and out of the room while I was watching the film, and eventually summed up her criticism of stray scenes by saying: “This film is kind of corny.”

Here, she might be on to something. Throw out a couple of truly tension-filled scenes (and even those are cribbed from Eisenstein; it’s not a vice to go watch a silent movie, folks) and there’s a movie occasionally fixated on being strangely old-fashioned. The question then becomes is that quality an earnest attempt to bring the movies back to something resembling a cop show from the 50s? Or is it a stealth commentary on that earnestness so present during those older days? I’m tempted to lean towards the latter. How could we not chuckle at a scene where Ness (Costner) and his wife (Patricia Clarkson, in her feature debut) muse about naming their new infant son after J. Edgar Hoover? Then again, how can we not collectively roll our eyes in any scene of domestic bliss when Morricone’s score positively groans under the weight of its sentimentality?

Then again, how could a movie—if even occasionally—screw up the use of a Morricone score? Is it possible I don’t like this movie… No. I do. I do.

I struggle mightily with expressing why I don’t mind all of those problems, but I don’t.

*I was definitely tempted at that moment to impart an anecdote where I once made a political speech based mostly on quotes from Sean Connery in this film. I won’t tell that story but will say: Don’t do that, but if you do, don’t worry about it. Hardly anyone will get it.

**Director’s cut on Part III, I’m not an animal.

Mean Girls (2024)

Director: Samantha Jayne, Arturo Perez Jr

Cast: Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Jaquel Spivey

Have I Seen it Before: Well… Is it even really an appropriate question in this context?

Did I Like It: I had been on the fence about seeing the movie at all, ultimately. How different could it be? Thankfully, it is different enough that although one takes in the same story* with almost no variation, there are enough new Tina Fey-isms to make one feel like they haven’t been cheated by the experience. I laughed with some regularity.

Where the film exceeds expectations is in its casting. Although all of the new plastics and the other students at North Shore evoke all of their predecessors, but never once feel like they are doing an impression of Lindsay Lohan or any of the others. That adds more to the experience of what essentially is watching the same movie again. But that’s not really what I mean about the casting, what I mean to say is I am unwaveringly impressed by the fact that Rice absolutely looks like she could be the daughter of Jenna Fischer, and Rapp absolutely looks like she could be the daughter of Busy Phillips. So few movies ignore such considerations—including the original Mean Girls (2004)—and it has a nasty habit of taking me out of the film.

Unfortunately, this will end up being something of a mixed review. The songs offered here are fine, but there is not one that burrows into the mind and soul like a great musical. This might be forgiven, if it weren’t for the fact that the only reason I did break down and watch it was because Lora and I had binged all (so far) of Girls5Eva and I was struck by how great Jeff Richmond’s music complemented the comedy of his spouse. Here, the music isn’t doing much beyond giving the characters an excuse to sing. The crew involved here can do (and has done) much better in other work.

*Parts of the plot—indeed, some characters—are pared down, and a few parts are expanded, but if you’ve seen the original Mean Girls, you’re taking this in as an exercise in cinematic comfort food.

The Godfather (1972)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, come on. There was one particular Ken in Barbie (2023) that I felt called me out specifically, and that’s probably all you need to know.

I remember first seeing it in the days of the two VHS tapes, as a reward for an unusually industrious book report on the novel in the seventh grade. Before any public school teacher would dare to let me take on such a notoriously vivid novel.

Why has it taken nearly six years to get a review under my belt for this one? Oh, who the hell knows, but I did manage to catch part of it on Thanksgiving while stuck with extended (that word is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence) family. These folks had motion blurring on, drying out every ounce of shadow from Gordon Willis’ photography and rendering the whole affair to look like a soap opera from a third-world nation and not one of the good ones. It was the third most horrifying my senses took in during that particular holiday.

So, yes, I’ve seen the movie a couple of times.

Did I Like It: You might get the sense that I’m spending more time than normal on the “Have I Seen It Before” section than I might for other movies. I’d imagine you’re probably coming to the same conclusion that I did as I started the review: What more can one say about the film that hasn’t already been said?

A movie only runs out of things about which one can say about it if that movie has a nearly perfect degree of staying power. Every single time I see it, I can’t help but think about its airtight plot, its almost overwhelming sense of inevitable tragedy, and the insurmountable need to partake of good Italian food as quickly as possible.

The Godfather has that kind of staying power. If you’ve seen it many times before, but it’s been a while, it is definitely worth another look. If you’ve never seen it, I envy your ability to watch it for the first time. You should take care of that as quickly as possible, and I’m totally fine with being a little bit of a Ken by making that proclamation.

Just, do me a favor: Turn off the motion blurring.

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

Director: Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes

Cast: David Dastmaclchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: And yet, I worry I might have been ever-so-slightly overhyped on the film before going in. There’s nothing especially new on display in the film. It will not completely change the way you look at horror films. As much as people were talking the film up, I might have been secretly hoping for something at that level. Everything about the possession of Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) has all been done in movies since The Exorcist (1973). The unravelling which inevitably follows after trying to harness the occult for success paints every inch of Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Your mileage with found footage might vary, but at best there’s not a lot of unexplored potential after The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007).  Filmmakers continue to try to set their stories in the 1970s, because… I don’t know. The decade is scarier than all the others?

What happens here, is that all of those elements are fused together into something that may not be entirely new, but is refreshing. Much more importantly? All of those elements are executed near flawlessly.

Trying to make a period setting believable is an almost guaranteed recipe for failure in a movie. I see the 2020s in a moment. Not here. The filming styles (alternating between film and video) makes everything seem like it is of the era, and that’s coming from the guy who spent large portions of the pandemic watching network newsfeeds from the Watergate era in order to self-soothe.

The possessed little girl feels familiar, but after dozens, if not hundreds of rehashes of the form—including quite recently—this girl feels unnerving from the first moment she appears on screen. She has a stare that Linda Blair would envy.

Adding a twist onto the found footage, the film rather ingeniously harnesses its unreality to introduce the doubt—even now, several days after seeing it—about just what I saw? Was I just as hypnotized as the characters in the film? Probably not, but can I say with 100% certainty I am aware of what happened both to the characters, or myself. If that’s not great horror, I don’t know what is.

If this isn’t the best—or at least most finely crafted—horror film this year, then we are truly in for a great year.

The Terminal (2004)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. One of those movies I saw during a summer in Fort Worth where I saw everything, mainly because what else does one do in Fort Worth*.

Did I Like It: I seem to remember in my recent review of 1941 (1979) that I wonder what Spielberg’s career might have become if he his first comedy had been either funny or a hit. It took him the better part of twenty years to come back around to it, but he found the right combination to try again. Sure, one might argue that Always (1989) and Catch Me If You Can (2002)** are comedies, but neither is played largely for laughs.

Harnessing the pure charm which made Frank Capra’s films work, Spielberg finds the right tone. And by that pure charm, I mean having Jimmy Stewart in the film is that right combination. Given that Stewart died in 1997, putting Tom Hanks to work got the same effect done.

That all sounds like I might be denigrating the movie with some faint praise, but Spielberg utilizes some real craft to make such a gentle film feel like it is effortless. Coordinating the large set—what? airports weren’t wild about film companies shooting in their international terminals a couple years after 9/11?—to make it always seem interesting and almost never forces me to focus on just how much a multi-story Borders Bookstore ages the whole thing is something more people should be analyzing to death.

*This doesn’t even try to cover all the other summers where I committed to see anything and everything that came out. Maybe there just isn’t anything to do in Texas or Oklahoma.

**Looking over the filmography Spielberg made both Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Minority Report (2002) in the same year as each of those examples. The man may not be human.

The Last Starfighter (1984)

Director: Nick Castle

Cast: Lance Guest, Dan O’Herlihy, Robert Preston, Catherine Mary Stewart

Have I Seen it Before: Sure, but it was never a big movie for me… And yet somehow in the last couple of years I got about 150 pages into writing a new novel which stole one of its load-bearing plot points from this movie. Apparently it had seeped into my mind far more than I had thought. Thankfully I realized it when I did.

Did I Like It: But then I wonder if I could do that bit (I’m not going to tell you what it is) a little better? I respect Nick Castle, quite possibly the greatest head tilter in the history of the movies, but I don’t think he ever became the director he wanted to be.

This movie has a pretty good pitch behind it, and a couple of good performers cashing a check (Preston and O’Herlihy), but not much else.

Everyone wants to celebrate movies which were one of the first (this one and Tron (1982)) to use CGI. Honestly, I need to ask why? The vast majority of CGI ceases to work on an even basic level within five years of release. The effects here had to look like it belonged in a toothbrush commercial by 1986.

I could see why a studio executive green lit the movie in the first place. It’s like Star Wars (1977), who cares if it is a thoroughly cheap alternative? After 1983, it’s not like George Lucas is going to make anything else to compete…

Ahem.

I’m normally one to feel an extra pang of nostalgia for pantheon of 80s sci-fi, but I might, *might* be prepared to dub this one the worst of the genre. Even Dune (1984) had failed ambitions.

Apparently, I do think I can do it better.

Idiocracy (2006)

Director: Mike Judge

Cast: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Does anyone get out of the mid-aughts without having seen it? Although it has been years, the refrain, “spelled thusly” is frequently repeated in these parts.

Did I Like It: Since those years have passed, there arises one fundamental question: As we have made quantum leaps in the field of willful ignorance in those intervening years, does the film remain as funny as it once was, or has it been rendered utterly depressing?

There are plenty of jokes which I can’t imagine played all that well nearly twenty years ago* that I just have to sit stone faced through now. Just because they are being uttered by avowed morons. But aside from that, the film is just as perfect a blend of science fiction and the mid-aught comedy sensibility of the time that I’m prepared to say to say that it still holds up.

In fact, as I type that, I might be willing to go a step further and say that it remains a step above other films which might lay claim to that same genre. Movies like Men in Black (1997) or Galaxy Quest (1999) might be sci-fi comedies, but ultimately too tame to actually have anything to say about the future**. Then—when I think about comedies twenty years ago***—I wonder what a movie like this would be if it were directed by Judd Apatow or any of his acolytes, and it is almost guaranteed that the film would be something less than still watchable.

*You’ll pardon me, while I disappear into the mists of time for just a moment.

**Yes, even Galaxy Quest. You know where to find me if you want to fight me.

***Whoops. There I go into the mists again.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Director: Gil Kenan

Cast: Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace

Have I Seen it Before: I once had a VHS filled with old episodes of The Real Ghostbusters and so, yeah, I may have seen the whole thing many, many times before.

Did I Like It: That last statement will make you think that I did, in fact. not like the latest Ghostbusters film, but let’s get a few things straight before we proceed: I’ve never disliked a Ghostbusters film. Never.

What I find most shocking about this film is that I wasn’t at all excited about. I enjoyed Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) (see above) but the prospect of more time watching ghosts get busted barely registered for me. Just a few short years ago, the prospect of seeing Murray, Aykroyd, and Hudson once again fill the firehouse would have gotten me to line up for a week beforehand. Now, I kind of wanted to see it, and Lora and I didn’t have anything on the schedule for Saturday afternoon of opening weekend*.

I’m just sort of ambivalent. Some people despise it, and I don’t disagree with what bugged them about it, but I don’t think I can get too worked up about a film that’s probably underwhelming. (I think something about The Flash (2023) might have broken me.)

Oddly enough, some of my quibbles with Afterlife were actually addressed here. We’re presented with a new Big Bad. No one cares about Zuul, no matter what they might say. The original surviving Ghostbusters are more than just glorified cameos, aside from Murray, who barely shows up in the movie and perpetually gives the impression that he’d like to sneak just outside of frame, if only no one would bother to notice.

The real problem? The thing that could have made me a believer in the movie despite my ambivalence going in? It needed to be funnier.

*Now that I think about it, I had roughly the same level of interest in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania (2023). Is it possible this an example of some unfortunate side effect of Paul Rudd?

Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)

Director: Frank Pavich

Cast: Alejandro Jodorowksy, Michel Seydoux, H.R. Giger, Chris Foss

Have I Seen It Before: That’s the real question, isn’t it?

Did I Like It: I think I came to the realization about halfway through the documentary that Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film of Frank Herbert’s novel not only would have been difficult at the time—a talking head reductively compares the scope of the film with the Star Wars prequels—but with all of its ideas probably couldn’t have been contained by a movie, or even a series of movies. This is before Jodorowsky walks into Disney, insists that the movie be 10 hours long (the Mouse House was amenable to a 90-minute version, which simultaneously makes them sound imminently reasonable and the movie sound inoffensively terrible), and still can’t understand decades later why that was a problem.

That’s part of the appeal of the movie: we’ll never see it. A movie you haven’t seen yet is all potential, all possibility. It may be terrible. It may be, again, inoffensive but bland. It may be one of those movies that completely re-wires your brain, and you’re not the same afterward. Before seeing any movie, it could and is any of those things. After seeing it, it is confined by the restrictions of the form (to say nothing of runtime) and becomes finite.

The movie that never was, aiming for a cast including Orson Welles (excellent, if slightly mean casting for Baron Harkonnen) and Salvador Dali (what an Emperor he would have been!), can stay that way, just as say (oddly enough) David Lynch’s Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) will always be just beyond our comprehension.

How the documentary plays out might vary. It’s sanitized in that way documentaries about movies often are, but that’s to be forgiven when the subject—had it ever seen the light of day—was supposed to be the cinematic equivalent of LSD. Your affection for the Jodorowsky himself is… Well, I generally liked him a great deal and found him interesting, but I certainly had to do more than a little mental gymnastics when he compared creating a cinematic adaptation of a novel to rape, and that they are both the only way to produce a child…