Rocky V (1990)

Director: John G. Avildsen

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Sage Stallone

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve seen it less than all of the other Rocky films. That much I’m damn sure of.

Did I Like It: Does anyone? Even Stallone, and he wrote it?

There’s any number of things one might fixate on to reckon with the film, and while I’m tempted, I’ll avoid dwelling on Stallone recently calling a certain someone the second George Washington. That whole bit had put me off re-watching any of the Rocky films as of late, before I remembered that the lion’s share of the rights had been wrested from Stallone’s hands, an watching the series is not an act of support for House Stallone.

In re-watching the series, I’m struck again by how likable Balboa is. Never one to take a cheap shot, I have a hard time imagining he would hardly make such brain-dead comparisons. But, as all series re-watches must, one must hit the nadir. And so, in this uniformly accepted worst of the franchise, Rocky becomes a gibbering fool.

That’s the first problem. The second problem is nothing happens in this film. The Balboas lose all of their money, move back into the old neighborhood, meet a guy from Oklahoma* (Tommy Morrison, who makes other athletes turned actors seem like Brando in comparison), before Rocky gets into a brawl with that same Okie.

That’s it. That’s the whole movie. I’ve now saved you the trouble. You’re welcome. This is certainly a series that struggled with coming up for any kind of rationale for further entries, but this is the only film in the series that seems to exist for the sole reason than United Artists decided it had been a while since anyone made a Rocky film, and it was already way too late to get particularly bothered as to whether or not the story made any sense, especially since communism was once brought into the scenario.

No, I don’t really want to take on those subjects. The thing that really sticks in my mind is not any of the above mention plots, or lacktherof. It’s that apparently Rocky and Adrian (Shire; between this and The Godfather - Part III (1990), she wasn’t having the best winter possible) spent five Christmases in a row in Russia, thereby allowing Rocky Jr. (Sage Stallone, not nearly as bad as one would assume) to become the main source of a hopeful future for the family.

Brain damage, indeed. Oh, well. They can’t all be winners. At least I now get to re-watch Rocky Balboa (2006) again now.

*Thanks for that, Sly.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Director: Henry Selick

Cast: Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It’s one of the clearer memories I have of being excited about a movie as a kid, being a little disappointed by it at the time*, and then realizing within a few short years that I was a fool.

Did I Like It: Just as the Star Wars prequels might be the most cogent argument for the auteur theory in semi-modern moviemaking, this film is its antithesis. If the director is the author of the film, then this should be thought of as Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.

But it really, really isn’t.

It makes Tim Burton such a fascinating filmmaker. He can have such a singular, easily identifiable point of view. In some films (Batman Returns (1992), Edward Scissorhands (1990)) that vision comes through. In others, (Batman (1989), Planet of The Apes (2001)) he’s a hired hand, meant only to offer his name, and almost no artistic vision to the the proceedings.

And then there’s this film, which might be the most fully realized manifestation of the Tim Burton image, and he wasn’t the director.

I’m not going to say that this is my favorite movie of all time, or even that it ranks in the top twenty. Ultimately pure Burtonianism might work in small doses, but it is one of the most successful mastering of a film succeeding on its own terms. There is never a moment of doubt—unlike Jack Skellington’s (Elfman singing, Sarandon for everything else) arc—as to what this film wants to be. Every single decision serves the mise en scene.

And if that wasn’t enough to recommend the film: I’ve even started to like the songs. Amazing what thirty years can accomplish.

*Not one commercial made it clear that I was walking into a musical. Nine-year-olds really need to be warned about such things.

Hamnet (2025)

Director: Chloé Zhao

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn

Have I Seen It Before: Never. This year has run so completely away from me that, to my horror, I’m getting to see very few new release this fall. I’m almost tempted to give the film a positive review only on the fact that I could fit in a screening, not go to a theater I don’t care for, and I could get everything else done I wanted to that day.

Did I Like It: Back to the question at hand. One might be tempted to say that, for all its unflinching view of the worst possible moments in a person’s life, the entire affair ends on too happy of a note. That happiness further undercuts the film’s greatest surface strengths. Centering a film on the Agnes* Hathaway (Buckley) and Hamnet** Shakespeare

(Jacobi Jupe), figures only remembered by history for their accidental association to certain playwrights*** tells their stories for the first time is a thrilling choice. They are given dimension and vibrant life all of their own, and exist beyond the tragic footnote or the frustrating anchor that history’s hero had to overcome to become William ShakespeareTM (Mescal).

But constructing the story so that they can only come to some sort of peace via the genius of their husband/father puts both characters back on the shelf where they’ve before the credits roll. This is a well-made film, with performances at the center that should receive attention at awards time.

I just wish it didn’t feel the need to put everything back the way it has been this whole time. Maybe I can move on from the ending. It helps to remember that William and Agnes hardly lived happily-ever after. But that means I have to meet the film more than halfway.

*You might know her as Anne.

**One of the big theses of the film is that spelling was less of a science and more of a moment-to-moment experience in the late-Tudor/early-Jacobean period, and it kind of all adds up, I suppose.

***Why can’t my own era be a little looser with the spelling? Because I have real opinions about how that word should be spelled.

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Chelsea Field, Noble Willingham

Have I Seen It Before: Never. It’s been sitting on my to-be-watched disc shelf for over a year, but then Circle’s Graveyard shift decided to close out the year with a Tony Scott double feature, and here we are.

Did I Like It: I’m reasonably sure I was over-hyped on this. Everyone talked to made it seem like it was such an insane example of a 1990s action movie, that by all rights it should have no business even existing.

It isn’t. It’s a pretty basic 90s action movie. Parts of it are funny, never less so than when I realized in the film’s opening minutes that we’re looking at what a Brit thinks of the American fascination with American Helmeted Rugby. Other parts of it don’t age so great, but no less. There are moments where the Michael Kamen score starts to get going, and I can almost imagine that this is a lost Die Hard film.

But it is, ultimately, just a movie, and another in a long line of similarly paced buddy action films written by Shane Black. The essential quality of this genre is accomplished, as Willis and Wayans have good chemistry, made all the more impressive—and unsurprising—that they didn’t get along. Did either of these two guys ever get along with their co-stars?

The moments where it is more a neo-noir piece centered on Bruce Willis’ private detective character, are intermittently clever. It’s not enough that an old friend (Bruce McGill) sets him on a routine job that turns out to be a massive case, but the old friend was hoping he’d get killed in the process, so that he can keep sleeping with Willis’ wife. The old friend promptly explodes.

I enjoyed myself, but make no mistake: you’re just watching a film. It won’t re-wrinkle your brain. What’s more, it’s not terribly interested in trying to do so, nor should it be.

Friday the 13th - Part VIII: Jason Take Manhattan (1989)

Director: Rob Hedden

Cast: Jensen Daggett, Scott Reeves, Barbara Bingham, Kane Hodder

Have I Seen It Before: Never. For some reason, I felt like I had to subject myself to the rest of the films in the series before I could finally fulfill the ambitions of a five-year-old.

I remember the ad campaign for the film in that heady age of the summer of 1989, helped considerably by the fact that I captured—while recording Batman (1966) on VHS—the 30 second spot that opened with “New York, New York”* before becoming about Jason Voorhees (Hodder, returning from the last film). That thing so captured my imagination as the kind of scary movie that true grown ups, sophisticates that they are, go to the cinema to experience.

Did I Like It: I’m a man now. I guess. I’ve seen it.

This film is reviled by the fanbase of the series. Never mind that there is a fanbase for this series, and they almost certainly have to be populated by the kind of people you never hope to encounter down a dark alleyway. I submit this question to you: Aside from possibly being in search for a more accurate title, is the film really any worse than the rest of the series? I’m serious, I think most complaints would vanish in vapor if the film was called Friday the 13th - Part VIII: Jason Goes On A Cruise, After Which He Spends An Abbreviated Third Act, Mostly In Times Square, Which Nobody Really Counts As Manhattan Anyway, Oh. Yeah. Also, Jason Melts In The Daily Midnight Flood Of Toxic Waste That Flows Under Times Square In The Days Before Giuliani.

But that would lack poetry, wouldn’t it?

*At least, I think it had that. It very well could have been “Rhapsody in Blue”, but it feels like that would be just a hair to esoteric for the audience who might be into seeing an eighth film in this series. Memory is a funny thing, isn’t it?

The Court Jester (1955)

Director: Norman Panama, Melvin Frank

Cast: Danny Kaye, Glynis Johns, Basil Rathbone, Angela Lansbury

Have I Seen It Before: Never. After years now of helping to host the White Christmas (1954) sing-a-longs at Circle Cinema, the warm embrace of Danny Kaye* has always been off there in the distance. This year, as I ease myself back into the occasionally bewildering world of the Columbia Inn, I’m using this film to ease myself back into the swing of things.

Did I Like It: Last year, I picked Holiday Inn (1942) to ease me back into things. It seemed like the logical choice, as White Christmas is ultimately a loose remake of that earlier film, but it also turned out to be a horrifying relic of its time.

Seriously, do not watch Holiday Inn, if you know what’s good for you. I did, so you don’t have to.

The Court Jester fares quite a bit better. It’s a light sword and castle fantasy, it doesn’t ask too much of us as an audience. The cast is pretty great, with Basil Rathbone plays the role in his repertoire other than Sherlock Holmes with aplomb, and it’s hard not to be delighted by the presence of either Glynis Johns (you’re thinking of her as the slightly dotty grandmother in While You Were Sleeping (1995), while I’m thinking of her more as Shelley Long’s mother on Cheers) or Angela Lansbury. What’s more, the amount of funny mugging versus sweeping musical numbers favors the prior. Big musical fans might be disappointed, but without Gene Kelly involved (see the previous footnote) that’s probably the ratio I prefer.

I was so delighted by The Court Jester that I think I might be ready to make a bold proclamation.

Do you promise to not blow up my spot if I say this?

Okay.

Bing holds Danny back.

All right. Now I’m ready for Christmas again.

*I always wished the second banana had been played by Donald O’Connor, but that may owe itself largely to how much I prefer Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Shh. Don’t tell anyone. I’ve got a reputation to keep up.

Love and Death (1975)

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Jessica Harper, James Tolkan

Have I Seen It Before: Ok. So, here’s what happened. Two years before even starting these movies reviews, I went to go see Cafe Society (2016). And I have yet to watch a Woody Allen movie since. I suddenly felt like I had a grown past his frantic romanticizing of infidelity. I may have grown up.

And then the accusations against him from the 90s were renewed again. Where I had previously hidden behind the “He was never charged” defense, the notion that it was less a lack of charges and more a lack of wherewithal on the part of prosecutors to get bring charges, I never really looked back.

Then Diane Keaton died. She had defended him in the ensuing years, which was never quite good, but she was great in other movies for years, and I had a hankering to watch one of her movies.

And, damn it, I missed this one. Time was, I had watched it at least once a year. Although not even remotely a Christmas movie, the score adapted from Prokofiev just feels like Christmas in my head.

Although probably not anymore.

Did I Like It: As much as one can still “enjoy his earlier, funnier films” this one does still hold up. Filled with enough references to Russian literature and non sequitur to nimbly switch gears between the silly and the profound, I found myself laughing frequently. One forgets how on equal footing Allen and Keaton were as performers, and she is far more than “the girl” in this movie. I’m glad I picked this one as a RIP Keaton screening, as opposed to Annie Hall (1977) or, worse yet, Manhattan (1979).

And yet…

Someone once described Manhattan—where Woody in his early forties dates a seventeen year old (Mariel Hemingway)—as the filmmakers version of the O.J. Simpson book If I Did It. That’s pretty funny, because its mostly true. In my naïveté of several hours ago, I figured I was safe of having to seriously process whether or not Allen is just a creep, or a thorough monster.

Then Keaton’s Sonja goes to seek wisdom from Father Andre (Leib Lensky) after Boris (Allen) has grown inexplicably suicidal. Senile because insanity is the film’s default point of mockery, the priest tells her the secret to longevity and life is “blonde twelve year old girls, two of them whenever possible.”

Sonja expresses her disappointment (not horror) with the Priest, as if he had said something uncouth, and proceeds with the absurdity of the story.

Blech. Doubt I’ll be coming back to this one any time soon. He’s probably confessed a little bit throughout most of his films. Best to leave them where they are. Maybe try The Godfather - Part II (1974) if you’re feeling some Diane Keaton nostalgia.

Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Missed it in the theater.

Had a sense that there was probably a reason for that.

Did I Like It: Sometimes a movie will be helpful and give you its whole mission statement in the first line of spoken dialogue. It can be as simple as “Anything Goes” — Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), or as profound as “What came first, the music or the misery?” High Fidelity (2000). It can be in the high-class, as in bringing us into the mystery by whispering “Rosebud” Citizen Kane (1941), or as mass-market entertainment as when Lor San Tekka (Max von Sydow) opens Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) with “This will begin to make things right.” It doesn’t even have to accomplish the goal set forth, they’re just calling the shot before it’s taken.

So it’s telling that the first line of this, the seventh entry in the Jurassic series, that a wear worker of inGen mutters to one of their hapless colleagues, “How many more times are we going to have to do this?”

That’ll pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the film. It feels not only perfunctory, it seems disinterested in even going through the motions for the sake of everyone else. It may be a tall order to get the movie-going audience excited about dinosaurs walking the earth, but depicting a world that is as bored of this series as we are isn’t the way to accomplish that lofty goal. It may sufficiently divorce itself from what preceded—there is one references to Alan Grant, blissfully no references to whoever Chris Pratt’s character was, and only one scene with raptors—but the movie not only can’t justify its own existence, it refuses to even reckon with the issue.

We really don’t need another Jurassic movie, and now that Amblin has finally scraped the final elements of Michael Crichton’s original novel to adapt (rafting, anyone?) maybe we can all move on.

But then, it made plenty of money in an age where other seemingly sure bets can’t find the fairway. This may be the Jurassic World that we’re actually looking at.

Swing Shift (1984)

Director: Jonathan Demme

Cast: Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Christine Lahti, Ed Harris

Have I Seen it Before: Never. To wit, before this last Friday, I had never even heard of the film. But there sure is something about checking into a hotel late, turning on the TV, working through whatever motion blurring difficulties you might be subjected to, hoping that the cable package includes TCM, and just going with whatever might be on.

It’s a unique way to take in a movie. There aren’t a lot of reasons to miss cable, but TCM is one of them. Aside from re-watching Romancing the Stone (1984), I didn’t get to watch nearly enough random movies from cable this vacation.

Did I Like It: There’s a thinness to the whole affair that I can’t quite get over, that’s only exacerbated after I read that the film was largely taken away from Demme in favor of Hawn, who put more focus on the relationship between her and Russell, even though neither of them are asked by any version of this film to do anything that made them objectively stars, and subjectively undeniably watchable.

What we’re left with is a distressingly tepid World War II homefront drama. Lora mentioned as she was half-falling asleep that there is almost nothing—even up to the structure of the screenplay itself—that wasn’t done during A League of Their Own (1992), and it’s hard to argue that. I’m tempted to give this film a degree of credit for getting there eight years ahead of League, but that movie obviously has more of a hook than what we’re given here, a far deeper roster of a supporting cast, and two leads in Tom Hanks and Geena Davis who are far better cast here than Hawn or Russell are in this.

I’m still glad I got to watch it, though, even if it was by accident.

Mother (1996)

Director: Albert Brooks

Cast: Albert Brooks, Debbie Reynolds, Rob Morrow, Lisa Kudrow

Have I Seen It Before: Yes. I remember this film eerily well. I honestly think it aired on HBO, I recorded it, and I watched it over and over again.

Did I Like It: It’s odd to say that Brooks—and specifically Brooks’ character in this film—was something of an heroic figure for my adolescence. He made a living writing science fiction books. I wanted* to make a living at writing science fiction novels. What’s more, I wanted to just happen upon beautiful women out in public who are so windswept by my typing that she’s willing to follow me to what would be to any rational observer a meetup for serial killers, and that would solve all of my lovelorn problems.

Forget the fact that he has a painfully neurotic relationship—matched only by his brother (Morrow)—with his mother, is irretrievably blocked** on his next novel, and that he has been twice divorced. John Henderson had the life.

And he fixes his relationship with his mother (Reynolds)! What more could a man want out of life when he gets to his forties?

The humor of the film is lively, making conscious decisions at every point to not descend into sitcom cliché and make every beat not only emanate from the characters as we’ve come to know them, but be in service of the characters ongoing development. It’s an exceptionally, almost deceptively well-crafted comedy. So much so that by the resolution, there might be a flash of feeling cheated, but not everything has to end with one more punchline.

And if you think it was easy for me to admit that, you’re crazy.

The casting is also quite good. Brooks plays the same leading-man he has created for himself previously, but does it without any trace of a self-consciousness that you might come to expect from writer-director-stars. Look out for Lisa Kudrow’s near-cameo. I think we all get how good she really is, but opting to be “the blind date” in an Albert Brooks’ movie is a more purely comedic choice for an actress at that point in her career, when she could have just as easily been the second half of any cookie cutter romantic comedy, and made plenty of money in the effort.

Then there’s Debbie Reynolds. Picking up her career after several years away, she’s as natural as she was in decades past. It’s infinitely fascinating that Nancy Reagan (of all people) seriously considered playing the part before ultimately passing. She wouldn’t have been nearly as good—and indeed, never was—as Reynolds, but my, oh my, would that have been a fascinating version of this film.

*I haven’t given up the ghost on it, but… You know. I live in the real world.

**I get the need to introduce complications into the life of a main character, but blocks are for chumps. Throw him Grady Tripp’s (Michael Douglas) problems in Wonder Boys (2000) and then we have something.

Friday the 13th - Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

Director: John Carl Buechler

Cast: Lar Park Lincoln, Kevin Blair, Susan Blu, Kane Hodder

Have I Seen It Before: Maybe? I’m honestly so tired of answering this (self-inflicted) question for this film series.

Did I Like It: Has anyone ever made an improvised slasher movie? I’m not talking about something like Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)* that brings comedy to the genre, I’m talking about forgoing the idea of putting together a script, and just planning on hitting a loose list of beats. It’d be easier on everybody. This was purportedly written by two writers, but what could it possibly matter? Do you remember what happened in Friday the 13th - Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)? Does it have anything to do with the waif of a telekinetic (Lincoln) who might be finally able to put Jason Voorhees (Hodder) in his final grave**? I don’t known, and this film isn’t giving me any inspiration to go as far as to look back on my review to see if there is some connective tissue. One wonders if those writers watched the last film, either. If they did, this is less a film and more the lashing out of the abused.

Before we conclude that I have nothing positive to say about the film, this is the first film to feature Kane Hodder in the role which made him moderately famous, and with which Jason is most commonly associated in fandom. He’s good. He brings a bewildered physicality to the role which against all odds moved the man with the hockey mask beyond the category of the cheapest of Michael Myers substitutes to… a moderately cheap substitute of Michael Meyers.

That ain’t nothing.

*God bless the predilection of horror movies to over-stuff their titles. They’re saving me from having to pontificate on this film for too long before hitting my word count.

**She won’t be able to, in case you were wondering. The series at this point is still cheap enough that Paramount could only stop making them if they lost interest in making money. Which apparently they did in the 90s and aren’t likely to get over it any time soon.

L.A. Story (1991)

Director: Mick Jackson

Cast: Steve Martin, Victoria Tennant, Richard E. Grant, Marilu Henner

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: It’s hard for a comedy to have any staying power. Tell a guy a joke once, and he might laugh. Tell it to him again, and what other reaction is left? I had mentioned in my recent review of There’s Something About Mary (1998) that some kind of heart has to exist at the core, or the older comedy inevitably becomes unwatchable**.

And yet, there is the joy of rediscovering a comedy that you may have dimmed in memory over the years. All of the jokes here still work. The quiet mystification of vapid attachment to gadgets seems aimed at the absurdity of Los Angeles thirty-plus years ago, it seems all the more appropriate for everyone now. Weird to find a film’s running gags that are dated, but only work better now.

But the point still remains, the heart is what will make a film live beyond its shelf life, and this film would have been forgiven, possibly, for not going so aggressively for our hearts in its final minutes. The vast majority of romantic comedies are content to show the situations unfurling both before and after a couple gets together. This film makes its final impression not a joke***, but an almost silent scene depicting the sort of quantum inflection point in a romance—filled with nervous desperation—where love may or may not be requited, before it irretrievably happens or doesn’t.

I’m not sure what else a movie could hope to accomplish.

*I don’t even have a footnote, but this is a side note that must be addressed. Isn’t that a great poster? Hints at the mood of the movie, but gives away nothing. Good luck finding a mention of the movie from after the year 2000 that isn’t fixated on bad photoshops of Martin and Sarah Jessica Parker. That’s undeniably selling people a false bill of goods.

**Unless you’re the Marx Brothers, of course.

***Ok, there is one more joke centering on Bo Diddley’s “Diddy Wah Diddy” (which I only learned that was the title of the song just now), but if that’s your takeaway from watching the film… Boy, have I got a poster with Sarah Jessica Parker for you.

Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981)

Director: Graham Baker

Cast: Sam Neill, Rossano Brazzi, Don Gordon, Lisa Harrow

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It’s an interesting byproduct of finding a good price on a movie series box set that I feel obligated to watch more sequels than I had planned to for a movie, but I should probably reserve pontificating on that unfortunate phenomenon until I force myself to watch Omen IV: The Awakening (1991).

Did I Like It: I’m trying to get caught up on some reviews as I write this, and thus the last few minutes of The Final Conflict are playing while I am typing. So, no, I’m not a fan.

Had anyone but Sam Neill played the role of the adult Damien Thorn, the film would have been forgotten beyond the point it already has. Faint whiffs of his solid performances to come* are there, but the film isn’t offering a whole lot else. There’s a lot of talking about how grave a problem the antichrist is, countered by an equal amount of talk from Damien and company about how annoying the Nazarene is.

Not the stuff of great cinema, and that is before we even start talking about how making the antichrist not a little kid anymore reduces the creepiness quotient. The movie is also withholding on the promise of its poster. Neil sits there with the seal of the President behind him, and things would be significantly more dread-inducing if Thorn was the leader of the free world, and not angling very hard to lead some commission with the UN.

At least Jerry Goldsmith pulls up on his scores, and the music here is perhaps a bit unremarkable, but a significant improvement over the orchestral grunts he had to offer in Damien: The Omen II (1978).

*He seems to think he was woefully in over his head when he did a screen test for The Living Daylights (1986), but I think he would have equated himself rather well, and if you think that was easy for me to say at our last opportunity to get Timothy Dalton in the role, you’re wrong.

The Carpenter's Son (2025)

Director: Lofty Nathan*

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Noah Jupe, Isla Johnston, FKA Twigs

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. This had not been on our schedule for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, but as we approached Predator: Badlands (2025), I got the sense that film was going to shape up to be more action than horror, I—and I fully admit this—pushed to make this our final film of the season. I got everyone’s approval, had them watch the trailer.

I thought it was going to be an absolutely batshit swing for the fences, featuring a Nicolas Cage past his tax troubles and doing precisely what he feels like at any given time.

Did I Like It: Boy, was I wrong.

Helpfully, I knew this film was going to be a chore within about 90 seconds of it beginning as Joseph (Cage, ultimately just playing Cage) gets just a taste of angels (as of treat) as his adoptive son is born.

And then we had to sit through 90 more minutes of an inexplicably bland film punctuated by a mostly reigned-in Cage. My expectations of the film, not unlike Joseph’s calm throughout the ordeal, is absolutely shattered.

Who the hell was the film for? Anybody (me, it’s me) who’s theology was largely formed by watching Dogma (1998) will walk away from the film feeling they were sold a false bill of goods, and that the film is oddly reverent and would actually fit in a double feature with The Passion of the Christ (2004), and desperately try to remind people that a film is not a sermon. Anybody deeply religious will likely turn their nose up at the film because on its face it looks like it is sacrilegious.

Nobody’s happy.

*What’s the over-under on the revelation (pun not intended, but accepted) that Lofty Nathan (who doesn’t appear to exist before this film) is actually just Cage wearing some kind of fun hat? Asking for a friend.

Hot Cars (1956)

Director: Don McDougall

Cast: John Bromfield, Carol Shannon, Joi Lansing, Ralph Clanton

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It wound up on the second half of a double-feature with Mysterious Intruder (1946), a film so indifferently hacked together that I fell so soundly asleep in the middle of it*, completely missed the ending, and even after reading a plot synopsis, so I’m probably never going to review that film.

Did I Like It: Had I fallen asleep through this film, I would wind up thinking that the film was just another b-noir picture. Made from the same parts in an assembly line, good enough, but unimaginative.

Then came the film’s last ten minutes. There’s a shootout, sure. There’s a fella (Bromfield) who is basically decent, but gets in a little too deep with less-than-savory elements, sure. The walls come closing in on our guy, to the point where some kind of catharsis must transpire, sure. There is some guy (Mark Dana) who’s less troubled by the world in which he finds himself, and the comeuppance comes for him far more than our guy, sure. All of that is in there. It accomplishes the self-imposed goals of the genre.

But they didn’t have to set that final confrontation on an operating roller coaster, did they? Ratcheting up the dynamic qualities of such a conclusion, probably giving a coronary to any insurance people who might have underwritten the production**, and making the film something for which no B movie has any realistic ambition: Thrilling and somehow memorable. As I’ve gone through some of these reviews in this year of the 1000th review, there have been some titles where—despite having definitely seen the film in the last two years—I have no memory of the film in question. Not so here.

*I can only hope—and not terribly confidently at that—that I didn’t snore.

**Yeah, it’s probably adorably naive of me to assume that the B-production arm of United Artists was even at all interested in the notion of insuring their productions.

Best in Show (2000)

Director: Christopher Guest

Cast: Jennifer Coolidge, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins, Michael Hitchcock

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Are the films of Christopher Guest “ha-ha” funny (a joke delivery system), or “oh no” funny (designed to make one feel uncomfortable to the point where laughter is the only response remaining)? I’m tempted to say the latter, and that’s not a criticism. “Ha-ha” funny can fade once you know where the punchlines are. Even if your memory fades and you revist the film after some years, the memory never fully goes away. “Oh no” funny may turn some people off*, but when you re-visit a film like this after some time, the feelings of pity, contempt, and empathy that made you initially laugh all those years ago can be just as potent now.

Finding anything important almost invariably looks a little bit like madness to an outside observer, so we can look at the human contestants of the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show with a little bit of judgment, but just as the “oh no” starts to subside, the viewer who is engaging with the film will start to see themselves in the characters, even if they don’t own of show dogs.

There’s a certain modular quality to the film, and I almost start to see the seams where hours upon hours of takes pieces together to forge something resembling a narrative. That might take away from total enjoyment of the film, but I think it exemplifies just why the improv-only format is the best way to make a mockumentary with any kind of verisimilitude.

Maybe that’s actually why people keep telling me that can’t stand to watch The Office.

*There are apparently a vast army of people out there who won’t watch The Office for this same reason, and they’ve all committed to the obligation to let me know about it.

7th Heaven (1927)

Director: Frank Borzage

Cast: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Ben Bard, Albert Gran

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I reflexively want to point to some of the last films of the silent era as the more cinematic entries in the form, as if before filmmakers started synchronizing sound, Hollywood was committed to perfecting the form.

That notion holds up for the most part here, but maybe not entirely. I keep wanting to point to Chaplin’s slow, uneasy transition to sound. He had something to prove by keeping words out of the Tramp’s mouth for as long as he did, hence City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and to some degree The Great Dictator (1940) were among his best films.

This film ends up being better than most of the sound films produced in the era, never once feeling like a stage play recorded for wider distribution, but it is not to the level of those other films, not even close. The production value is superb, believably traveling from the slums of Paris, all the way through a semi-believable depiction of World War I.

With that scale comes some problems that only get worse for movies as time goes on. That range of scope also gives the film an inability to focus. Is this film about a man (Farrell) rising up from the sewers to become a street cleaner? Is it about that same man’s eventual service in the war? Is it about his wife’s (Gaynor) belief that he is still alive and will come back to her? Is it about her earlier days as a prostitute pimped out by her sister (Gladys Brockwell)? Beats the hell out of me, and the film doesn’t seem particularly sure on the answers, either. It also ends half a dozen times before the end credits finally roll.

I will give the film credit for one thing. Characters return to Chico’s loft several times over the course of the film, and every time it happens I’m left wondering exactly how they did the shot. We follow characters as they move tentatively up several flights of stairs to the room in question, following them from floor to floor. Was it an optical wipe going from several different shots, a significant evolution in montage theory only a few years after Battleship Potemkin (1925)? Or did the filmmakers embrace the expense of building an elaborate set that went all the way up? I honestly couldn’t tell, and if a film nearly 100-years-old can leave me wondering how something was done, it can’t be all bad.

Face/Off (1997)

Director: John Woo

Cast: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon

Have I Seen It Before: Never. I always suspected that there was a reason for that.

Did I Like It: The virtues of the film are encapsulated in its poster. Take two movie stars—and both Travolta and Cage were at the top of their star-power post Pulp Fiction (1994) and The Rock (1996)* and allow them to play both the virtuous (possibly to the point of insanity) hero and the scene-chewing villains. If only the Batman series could have offered Michael Keaton that same deal, he might never have hung up the cowl.

And then there’s two and a half hour beyond that pitch where you’ve got to fill. Perhaps the delineation between Sean Archer and Castor Troy isn’t all that well defined, ultimately. Both of the main characters seem to randomly find a moment or two in the course of day to have a complete emotional meltdown, and never quite for the reasons you might suspect. Or any reasons. At all.

This might be forgiven, if not completely ignored, if it weren’t for the fact that the action movie surrounding this conceit is a little pulse-less. It’s not even remotely as innovative as Woo’s efforts before being swallowed whole by Hollywood**. It’s not even the kind of guilty pleasure one might get from watching Michael Bay’s bloated music videos of the era. There are plenty of films that came to exist merely because it was a good business deal/ego-trip for the parties involved, but few that feel so obviously mired in that initial decision and no others.

*I am by no means equating these two films as a matter of quality, just in their collective ability to allow Cage and Travolta to make whatever film they wanted.

**We all—Woo included—could have enjoyed a lot less confusion over the next several years if he could have gone back to Hong Kong before Mission: Impossible II (2000).

Dave Stevens: Drawn to Perfection (2022)

Director: Kelvin Mao

Cast: Billy Campbell, Thomas Jane, Joe Johnston, Dave Stevens

Have I Seen It Before: No. I’m finding it a real failure of our supposedly comprehensive algorithmic age that this film hasn’t come across my radar up until this point.

Did I Like It: My normal critical scale for a documentary might be a little moot in this situation. The film is competently—if not engrossingly—shot. It might be at home as a special feature on a 35th anniversary re-release of The Rocketeer (1991). It has an unusually strong level of access to its subject, offering up previously unseen footage of Stevens pontificating on his work, which makes the film all that more special.

But neither of those mattered all that much, when we come to the third criteria: My level of interest in the subject. I love Stevens work, and not just the movie it wrought. Reading The Rocketeer is a completely different experience from seeing the (still relentlessly terrific) Disneyification of Stevens character. His predilections that wouldn’t have fit with the mouse house are relentlessly terrific for completely different reasons, and this film certainly examines those. Bettie Page—and Stevens friendship with the real Page—is all throughout this film. I might have liked a little more study of his affection for pre-Superman pulp heroes, but that aspect speaks for itself in the work, and if you don’t pick up on it, no documentary is going to make it clearer for you.

I feel I know Stevens the man a bit better—or as well as anyone did—after seeing the film and the people whose lives he impacted. He was an artist who was never fully satisfied with his work, despite our collective adoration of it. He was also fond of curvy women. Respect. To gain that knowledge and respect has got to be the reason we started making documentaries, wouldn’t you think?

There's Something About Mary (1998)

Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly

Cast: Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, Ben Stiller, Lee Evans

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. It released in that unique period of life where I had to exercise diplomacy and rhetorical skills that normally would have gotten me a job with the United Nations so that I could record an R-rated movie off of HBO for my future edification. It certainly helped that dear old dad thought it was the funniest movie he had ever seen, and needed his son to bear witness to it.

Did I Like It: Although, the experience of watching it on release at the age of 14 is a stark difference from re-watching it again after a long time at the age of 41. The embarrassment hits differently. The nostalgia, too. Regret for missed chances*.

That’s a lot for a comedy to fall into, much less aspire towards. I think one of the few things that has become abundantly clear lately is that comedy inherently ages poorly. Everybody quotes lines from Anchorman (2004) for the better part of a year, and the memory of laughing so hard you lost your breath begin to fade, because there isn’t much else there. Ace Ventura Pet Detective (1994) goes from being every ten-year-old’s favorite movie to a willfully toxic, singularly unwatchable mess.

Here, though, there’s an interesting alchemy in mixing the pitch-black heart of masculinity gone wrong and genuine warmth. It makes the jokes still work. It makes what we would easily call political incorrectness still amusing, when it is coming from either human error (hair gel, I’m looking in your direction), or the willful caterwauling of the worst people you can imagine (now it’s your turn, Matt Dillon).

In short, the comedy of There’s Something About Mary still works because there is something human at the core of it all. I wasn’t expecting that upon re-watching it all these years later.

*This feels like what Heather Burns called in You’ve Got Mail (1998) as “like people who brag because they’re tall,” but I’m not cursed with too terribly much of that particular problem.