Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, what would I have been doing with my life up until this point if I hadn’t? 

Did I Like It: It’s… Well, hell, at the risk of reading as needlessly melodramatic, it may, in fact be a perfect film.

And a perfect film the way that it was originally presented (see the footnote). Here’s some food for thought: Legend has it that the reason Lucas didn’t include the scene where Han (Ford) encounters Jabba the Hutt in the Mos Eisley Spaceport. 

It’s also the movie I point to when I needed an example of why widescreen was always better than full screen. Kids, ask your parents, as it’s not a debate that needs 

But all of that doesn’t matter when you see the twin suns of Tatooine and dream of a life beyond the one you’ve always known, and when Han return to the Death Star when he is needed the most, and when our heroes (sans Chewbacca [Peter Mayhew], #dontevergetoverthisone) get their reward at the throne room of the Great Massassi Temple on Yavin IV. This movie is simplicity itself, and even The Empire Strikes Back (1980) can’t hold a candle to that.

*I watched the original, completely unaltered version of the film (and will be doing so for the rest of the original trilogy). This was so unaltered that not only is Jabba the Hutt nowhere in sight, but the film isn’t even labeled as Episode IV or A New Hope at this point. That title was added on a later VHS release after The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters. The un-fiddled versions of the film are available in a limited edition from 2006 that is long-since out-of-print but are available on Amazon for about $60.00 per film. The original versions are technically a bonus feature on a second disc on each set and are what appear to be copies from even more antiquated laserdisc copies. Widescreen editions are available, but Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox went slight on the presentation features. It’s not anamorphic and your modern TV is going to find it a little befuddling, but if you’re in the market for looking at Sebastian Shaw as opposed to Hayden Christensen, this is the only way to go (more on that during my review of Return of the Jedi(1983).

Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, we came this far. Why wouldn’t we “finish” things?

Did I Like It: You know, it’s an odd thing…

I want to say that anyone who believes this film isn’t the best entry in the prequel trilogy is being disingenuous, at best. I also want to say that anyone who thinks this movie is better than any entry in the original trilogy, is also being disingenuous. And finally, anyone who puts The Last Jedi (2017)* above any of the prequel trilogy are turning what used to be fun movies about space wizards with laser swords into a real chore. Thanks, guys.

Sigh.

Criticism of the Star Wars saga can be thoroughly exhausting, and yet I continue…

In my reviews of the other entries of the prequel trilogy, I lamented that the one element that might have recommended the films previously—the largely computer-generated special effects—tragically age the film beyond anything that Lucas might have originally hoped for. In this final Lucas-directed film, matters have improved slightly. It may not be entirely that there was a quantum leap forward in the effects, but there are more instances of digital characters interacting with one another, and fewer occasions where such creations awkwardly share a frame with an actual human.

That is not to say that the film is without its flaws, but this film’s deepest flaws are with its inherent design, not necessarily its execution. The tendency of prequels to depict scenes that previously lived in the collective imagination of backstory makes those resultant scenes a little less special. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) had a similar problem. In my mind, the particulars of how Han Solo won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian was one of the greatest cons that ever transpired in this galaxy or the other. As depicted in the film, it’s just a well-played game of Sabacc. So, too, the duel on Mustafar between Vader (Christensen) and Obi-Wan (McGregor) always seemed sadder, and maybe a bit more minimalist as I imagined it. It wasn’t the huge, frenetic action sequence that Lucas ended up producing. It’s a minor nitpick, I suppose. Lucas was hell-bent on making the prequels one way or another; this was bound to happen.

Then there’s the real problem with Lucas’ contributions to cinema in the first few years of our new millennium. An advocate—nay, zealot—for shooting and projecting digitally, Lucas opened the century by insisting that if theater wanted to exhibit any of the new Star Wars movies he had coming off the line, that theater had to exhibit digitally. Most theaters acquiesced at least a little bit, and then realized digital projection was far cheaper across the board, and now here we are. Good luck finding a movie exhibited in 35mm. I can count on one hand the amount of movies I’ve actually seen on film in the last ten years. 

There’s a part of me that thinks the reel breaking during a screening of the special edition for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) in 1997 got back to Skywalker ranch, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and now we can’t have nice things anymore.

Do you miss those cigarette holes at the end of each reel? Do you miss the quietly insistent fear that the movie unspooling in front of you might just completely tear itself apart at any moment? Miss seeing the art of cinema displayed on the canvas for which it was intended? I sure do.

We shouldn’t blame Lucas for some fun adventure movies with some rough patches. We should blame him for film not being film anymore.

*That review of Episode VIII is going to be doozy, fam…

Knives Out (2019)

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis

Have I Seen It Before?: Nope. As I write this, it feels like ages since I’ve been able to pull away from work in the middle of the day to catch a matinee. So many movies missed. Wither thou, Jojo Rabbit (2019)?

Did I like it?: It is such a singular pleasure to walk into a movie with almost no knowledge of what is about to unfold, aside from cast, genre, and director. I trust Rian Johnson implicitly. Looper (2012) looked so blissfully stupid when I saw the trailer and became one of the more satisfying time travel stories ever.

Johnson hasn’t steered me wrong, and I’m now convinced he can bring something fresh to any genre that he decides to tackle. He is certainly one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Directors who take on the daunting task of churning out product in one of the largest franchises in the world might fall into doing so repeatedly. Directors with the level of taste necessary to bring a litany of original properties to the movie-watching public might turn up their noses at the idea of making the part 8 of anything. Johnson does both with aplomb.

Yes, The Last Jedi (2017) is a terrific film. Eat me. You think it’s a good film, too, but you’ve got some shit to work through. You know who you are.

Ahem. Anyway, about this movie…

And with that trust firmly in place, I could just sit back and let the mystery unfold around me. I wasn’t already writing a review in my head before the opening vanity cards unfurled. That is a luxury that the movie-theater-amenity-industrial-complex can’t touch. The cast is wall-to-wall stars, which is such a critical feature in a mystery. While watching any number of TV serials, I’ve had about an 85% success rating at figuring whodunit by just picking the actor who has a slightly higher profile than the other guest stars.

Here, the tagline really turned out to be true. Any of them could have done it. There was a solid stretch of the film where I even thought the victim (Christopher Plummer) was the mastermind. To illuminate any other element of the plot would take away the experience of watching the cast at work.

And what a cast it is. Everyone is doing eclectic work that is still somehow attached to their image as movie stars. Ana de Armas—the only performer with whom I had been unware—becomes a force to be reckoned with in films to come, while Daniel Craig proves that he might be the best pure actor to have ever donned the tuxedo of 007. Sean Connery and to some degree Pierce Brosnan went on to different roles after hanging up the Walther PPK, but never managed to step out of their screen persona in any real way. Craig steps out of anything suave to give us an eccentric that the other Bonds may have found unseemly. If Johnson makes good on his hints that this is not the last we’ve seen of Benoit Blanc, then I’m on board for a whole 9-movie saga about which people won’t be able to help complaining.

I will only be content with Johnson not directing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) because in doing so he might have deprived us of the unique alchemy on display here.

Star Wars - Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Christopher Lee

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. But, strangely, I’m thinking I may have not caught it until it had already been out in theaters for a few weeks, which may be the only instance of that during the Skywalker saga. Speaks to the state of Star Wars immediately post-Phantom Menace.

Did I Like It: Here’s a better question: What is the point in saying one likes or dislikes a Star Wars movie anymore? I say this is the worst Star Wars film, I’m just inviting a migraine inducing lecture about how The Last Jedi (2017) is the worst film in the series, which is fundamentally and objectively not true. I say this is actually the best—or at the very least most narratively consistent—of the prequels, the contrarians.

But this is a review, so I might as well go for broke.

Here’s where I land: this is not the worst Star Wars movie. The Phantom Menace (1999) is far harder to watch. Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor) in a solo Jedi detective story? Who honestly has a problem with that?

Now, is the romance between Anakin (Christensen) and Padmé (Portman) filled with a palpable awkwardness? Sure, but aren’t most romances that are doomed to absolute failure. He’s a rageaholic and she’s a classic enabler. Embrace the tragedy; this was the story the prequels—along with the rise of the Empire playing out mostly in the background—were destined to tell.

Now did the story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker ever really need to be told? I’m reasonably sure that it didn’t, but this is a laser sword movie with spaceships (and Yoda [Frank Oz] actually putting his lightsaber skills to use!) if we keep sticking our collective heads up our asses, Lucasfilm is going to start making the long-fabled sequel trilogy, and we’re going to inexplicably complain about those movies, too. Even if they’re good. 

So, you can kind of tell where my review of The Last Jedi is going to go already, right?

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

Director: Marielle Heller 

Cast: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: But the fact that I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not going to reach for every ounce of familiar comfort that it can get its hands on.

I’m legitimately torn about the casting of Tom Hanks. He looks nothing like the real Mr. Rogers, and in fact can’t realistically look like anyone other than beloved movie star Tom Hanks*. Then again, there would be no other credible star of a major film who would look like Rogers. Then again, again, if they were wanting anyone with enough positivity to have any hope of channeling Rogers’ essence, I can’t think of anyone better suited.

And the fact that I spent so much time while watching the film running through that line of thinking may indicate an issue with the film. It’s a pretty fascinating portrait of Rogers, wrapped in an otherwise unremarkable family drama. I got a much better tap into the man Rogers was, and felt more viscerally the kind of things Rogers would want us to feel through last year’s comprehensive documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

With one notable exception. At various points of the film, streaks of possible anger or at the very least less-than-total-perfection lying within Rogers are hinted at. It’s not meant to bring his stature down (there’s even a moment where the long-held urban legend maintaining that Rogers was either a Navy SEAL or sharpshooter), but to actually give the rest of us mere mortals a chance at reaching for his nigh-saintly nature. Even Rogers maintains that he feels angry at times, before delineating what he does to work through those feelings.

In the film’s final scene, Rogers watches the last take of the day on his TV show, and the production wraps. Everyone else in the studio leaves, and Rogers goes to the piano to tinkle the keys. He then pounds the low notes as the film ends, just as he told Lloyd Vogel (Rhys) he does when his temper gets the best of him. It’s a poignant movie to wrap things up, and man, do I wish I could have seen Rogers himself done the same thing.

*I suppose Polar Express (2004) is a fair exception, but even Woody the Cowboy Doll sort of looks like Hanks.

Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd

Have I Seen It Before?: I mean, c’mon. I was alive in May of 1999. How would’ve I managed to avoid it?

Did I like it?: When confronted with that question, all I can do is sigh.

As time has gone on, the prequels—and especially this film—have enjoyed a modicum of critical re-evaluation.

That kinder eye is, unfortunately, completely unearned. 

I could go through all of the things wrong with the movie. Every performance outside of Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor is leaden to the point of legally being classified as a sedative by the FDA. One might want to write off the performers as unequal to the task, although it feels like punching down to continue to dump on Jake Lloyd, to say nothing of the fact that the rest of the cast have done extraordinary work outside of the saga.

Time has somehow been less kind to the film. Expectation may have eroded away, but there is a reality that Lucas didn’t bargain for that cannot be overcome. If Lucas had known how then state-of-the-art CGI would fair over time, he may have waited even longer before embarking on the production of the prequels. Each CGI creation is fairly impressive in and of itself but loses any credibility as part of a real movie when it has to interact with real actors. It’s why Andy and the rest of the humans in the Toy Story films weren’t played by real humans. It wouldn’t have worked.

I could also drag the plotline for being unfocused at best, and willfully uninteresting at worst. However, try tearing away the C-SPAN in space and the half-baked children’s story about a vacant-eyed boy meeting a racist’s idea of a salamander. The Kurosawa for the 21st century, Space Samurai epic is a pretty watchable movie. Too bad that only accounts for—at best a third of the film. Sometime in the last year, I saw a section of the film with all color removed, and played with the Japanese dub. Someone really should put the whole film through that process. I’d watch it. I suppose it really wouldn’t take that much work to do that, but who really wants to spend any more time thinking about Episode I than they really have to?

There is one thing you can’t take away from this film. For better or worse, it is a George Lucas film. Completely unmoored from the restrictions of budget, the need to collaborate, or the question of success, he was allowed to make a film uniquely his own. Not since Welles was given carte blanche over RKO has someone singularly willed a major motion picture into existence. Take that, those that question the auteur theory!

The Monster Squad (1987)

Director: Fred Dekker

Cast: André Gower, Robby Kiger, Duncan Regehr, Stephen Macht

Have I Seen It Before?: Never. Where have I been hiding this whole time?

Did I like it?: Maybe not as much as I hoped I would, but it’s still packed with plenty of charm.

The film is surprising in a few ways starting out. First, who knew the guy who directed RoboCop 3 (1993) was capable of making anything even remotely watchable. The second is that while this film shamelessly trucks in the same milieu as The Goonies (1985), but manages to have characters who actually want something and something resembling a story.

One might blanche a little bit at the sour nature of the kids who we are supposed to root for, but as we are theoretically closer to the end of the era of South Park, if these children aren’t the sweet kids hoisted on us by Spielberg, that’s all right. Plenty of other 80s films don’t reach for any sort of enlightenment with their characters. Come to think of it, if the kids were a little nicer to each other, they would feel less real. I don’t remember other kids being nice when I was younger.

I know it’s going to sound like I’m the guy who walks out of Hamilton saying that it was pretty good, except for all the rapping, but maybe the kids were the weakest part? I would have loved a movie that featured the classic Universal monster lineup* making their way through the world of the 1980s. Who really cares about Colin Clive or Edward Van Sloan during the classic movies? Why make the film focus on them?

*For that matter, had the film been produced by Univerasal, we might have gotten the monsters in their more ubiquitous form, instead of something vaguely akin to those images.  

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong

Have I Seen it Before: It’d be weird if I hadn’t by now, right?

Did I Like It: It’d be weird if I didn’t right?

The big (and likely unfair) question one must confront when critiquing this movie is how it ranks against its predecessor, The Terminator (1984). Many say that this is the superior film, putting it in that rare pantheon of sequels that out-perform the original film, The Godfather, Part II (1974), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and another entry in the Cameron pantheon, Aliens (1986).

I’m not sure this one qualifies.

Don’t get me wrong, the tools Cameron brings to bear here (now with a full budget) cements his status as one of the greatest technical filmmakers. The then-embryonic use of CGI is perfectly applied, used to bring the T-1000 character to life at a time when it really couldn’t do anything other than give us strange metallic polygons. But at the same time, the use of puppetry, miniatures, and even rear-screen projection is used with just the right amount of restraint that it makes it all the more irritating when other filmmakers over the last twenty-five years have decided that even lesser quality CGI is all they needed to sell the reality of their films. Honestly, no one uses rear-screen projection anymore, even Cameron. It’s a real shame.

And yet, the restrictions make for a more interesting film. The restraint that Cameron uses here is all the more present in the initial film. There a fewer moments in the original film where I am thinking about the technology at play. I am more thoroughly immersed in the story there. Maybe the romance between Sarah (Hamilton) and Kyle Reese in the original film is a stronger engine for a story than the Shane built out of chrome on display here. No wonder Cameron got out of the cyborg game after this one, and with each new entry in the series why we wonder why they keep going.

Saved! (2004)

Director: Brian Dannelly

Cast: Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit

Have I Seen it Before: Several times. It’s one of my wife’s favorite movies, so it ends up being a movie I see roughly once a year.

Did I Like It: It’s charms cannot be denied. It could have been like any other number of teen comedies, especially of the era, but it manages to transcend.

Most teen movies are going to have the same general structure. Characters fall in and out of love. Misunderstandings abound. It all ends in a prom or other dance. To my mind, only John Hughes could eschew this format, and he only did so some of the time, and only when he tightened the focus of his adolescent epics to the timespan of one day. Even that most perfect of all movies, Back to the Future (1985) can’t quite pull out of that particular orbit.

So it is, too, with Saved. Many movies in the genre are content to hit those same beats and offer nothing new. They are quickly forgotten. What separates those special stories—like Saved!—that live within the trappings of a genre and manage to transcend things. For one thing, it’s the setting. While some version of Christianity is probably still prevalent in America, most can’t say they went to a private Christian academy for their High School.

Even I can’t say that, and I tragically got all of my education in the state of Oklahoma. Even if the setting is alien and interesting, the characters are familiar, or at the very least feel real. The writing is certainly critical to this quality, the performances cannot be ignored. Mandy Moore—long before she established her acting bonafides in NBC’s This Is Us—paints a villain that is both blindingly frustrating and totally human in her hostility. Mary-Louise Parker normally plays knowing and shrewd characters, but here plays largely oblivious but ultimately decent with the same level of believability. The relationship between Macaulay Culkin and Eva Amurri—despite coming from what on paper appears to be supporting characters—is the emotional heart of the film, as they are the true strangers in this strange land, but still manage to cut through any artifice they might have needed to survive only to believably wear their pathos on their sleeves. Other movies would be content to have cookie cutter characters lurching to something akin to life by actors either too bored or too unwilling to bring anything interesting to the proceedings.

That may be the secret to any film that exceeds expectations. Just tell a story using a familiar structure, in a completely unusual setting, with interesting characters. It must also be perfectly cast.

That easy, right?

The Aviator (2004)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Alan Alda

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, but it’s becoming abundantly clear that I may only remember about 10% of movies I saw in the mid-aughts. In some cases, that’s great. In other cases, I wished I only remembered about 10% of everything that happened in the mid-aughts.

Did I Like It: Yes. Way better than the 10% I remembered watching.

On first blush it doesn’t feel like DiCaprio is the right casting for Howard Hughes. He’s too boyish, even now in his middle age. Thus, the film wisely only hints at the broken man the tycoon would eventually become. It also doesn’t opt for a happy, if truncated ending, a la Ed Wood (1994) that leaves their doomed protagonist on top. Hughes is a doomed man here, and that would have to be the essential quality in bringing the character to the screen, something that Warren Beatty never quite captured in his long gestating picture about Hughes, Rules Don’t Apply (2016).

Thus, as the brash young man who needed the last two film cameras in all of Hollywood, DiCaprio is perfectly selected. With the possible exception of Cate Blanchett ably impersonating Katharine Hepburn, the other performances tend to blend into the background. This might read as criticism, especially given the high number of stars that round out the cast, but the electric quality of DiCaprio’s Hughes makes his inevitable fall that much more tragic.

Stylistically, it is an odd film for Scorsese. He embraces the computer tools of the era to display Hughes’ daring flights. It puts the camera where it might otherwise not want to go, but it also ages the proceedings in a way I can’t imagine Scorsese wanted when he set out to make the film. All too often DiCaprio looks like an actor sitting on a soundstage, rather than someone flying a plane only he believes will reach the air.

Bad Boys II (2003)

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Martin Lawrence (absolutely mystified that he kept top billing going into the sequel; will this keep up with Bad Boys For Life? [2020]?), Will Smith, Gabrielle Union, Jordi Mollà

Have I Seen It Before?: I have a vague memory of watching the first fifteen minutes of it on DVD at some point, but being bored by it. Is that even possible?

Did I like it?: A little less than the original Bad Boys (1995), and I’m left a little uncertain as to how to quantify that difference. Michael Bay is in fine form, eschewing the complete void of human interest that has become his later career. He really should just make clones of Lethal Weapon (1987) and leave the robots to… Well, no one, now that I think about it. 

Smith and Lawrence continue to effortlessly offer the one non-negotiable element for buddy cop movies: chemistry. Each are plenty charming on their own (although one may have more of a continuous record at the box office) but together their so imminently watchable that it isn’t a completely ridiculous notion that the two will come back together for a third film next year.

The movie is shamelessly what it is, for better or worse. So why doesn’t this one work as well as the previous film? Am I just wrong? A possibility. The film reached several worst-of lists in the year of its release. However, it does have a cultural reach that eclipses the original, although that may be more related to its being lionized in Hot Fuzz (2007).

It’s more difficult to quantify something so subjective at first blush, but if I had to pick one element that sinks or swims plenty of movies. The score here is produced by a different composer, and I really prefer the score in the first movie. It might be reductive to be down on a movie for one single element, but just try to watch films like Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), or better yet, Halloween (1978) without the music. Both films become equally unwatchable, which is simply unfathomable given how both of those movies turned out. Music counts, folks.

The King of Comedy (1983)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard, Diahnne Abbott

Have I Seen It Before?: Yes, but so much of it had disappeared from my memory, like some kind of dream that didn’t mean all that much. If you had asked me what I remembered from the film when Joker (2019) quite aptly put it back in our collective consciousness, I would have only been able to reach for long sequences of Robert De Niro waiting in Jerry Lewis’ reception area.

Did I like it?: I’m thrilled to report that my failure to remember much of the movie owes more to my fleshy, insignificant brain than to any problem with the film itself.

It’s hard to deny this film’s influence on Joker. I mean, look at that poster. The structure is almost totally aped from it. The thing that the new film changes is how it ends. In films today (and TV shows, now that I’m thinking about shows like Breaking Bad, and to a much lesser extent Dexter), people who do bad things need to suffer some kind of comeuppance, even if their descent into depravity is the closest these characters come to self actualization.

Here, Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) is just as ruthless as Walter White, just as mentally unmoored as Arthur Fleck, and just as oblivious to the world as Dexter Morgan. And yet, as this film ends, Pupkin is on top. He goes to prison for a flash, but the world loves him. It turns out he’s far funnier than we were led to believe. The world was actually keeping him down, as it turns out.

How the hell am I supposed to feel at the end of the film?

After John Hinckley cited Taxi Driver (1976) as the muse for his violence, it’s sort of a marvel that Scorsese would continue to tell stories about disaffected madmen in the few years immediately after the Reagan assassination attempt. It wasn’t like Salinger started writing the ongoing adventures of Holden Caulfield (or anything) after Catcher in the Rye.

Bad Boys (1995)

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith (last time he gets second billing, me thinks), Téa Leoni, Joe Pantoliano

Have I Seen it Before: I was a child of the 1990s and had cable, so I saw some version of this movie, to be sure.

Did I Like It: What’s not to like? How hard is it to make a buddy cop movie work?

That question may be unfair. The entire genre is dependent on chemistry between the two leads. If it works, you’ve got the next Lethal Weapon (1987). If you get it wrong, suddenly you’re saddled with another Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)*. In what must be unnerving for those who make movie in the genre, that chemistry is largely ephemeral, and can be waylaid by any number of factors and good casting alone may not be enough to save matters.

Luckily, the chemistry between Lawrence and Smith is nearly perfect in its calibration. When the two are sharing a frame and just talking, the film’s charms are undeniable. One can’t be certain if they’re improvising during these sequences, but it feels breezy in a way that seldom can be achieved outside of improvisation. They’re easily funny, which is starkly obvious when it appears that either of the stars deliver one-liners supplied by one of the four credited screenwriters.

This movie even comes from a time before Michael Bay went into autopilot mode while mashing action figures together, and while his style may be a bit too arch for some, it does feel at home in the Miami sun amid endless explosions.

*I’ll be willing to admit that one had some other problems, not the least of which appear to be that the entire rationale for its existence appears to be as a prank Arnold Schwarzenegger played on Stallone. Look it up!

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyleigh Curran, Cliff Curtis

Have I Seen it Before: Aside from wondering how much play they’re going to get out of the (computer generated?) recreated sets of The Shining (1980), but it certainly seems like Warner Bros. is going to get they’re money’s worth out of the effort.

Did I Like It: Sure.

I can’t help but think back to 2010: The Year We Made Contact (1984). Is there a need to make a sequel to a Kubrick film? Almost entirely not, and yet the foundation that Kubrick leaves us with is enough to make a pretty watchable movie.

And while Flanagan’s film has its flaws (it drags in the middle, and leaves perhaps one too many plot holes that aren’t helped by acknowledging that they exist), there’s more than enough to like. 

Do we give this film credit when a lot of what works about the movie is directly from the original? Yes, because for the most part elements from the first film are taken with some degree of restraint, and almost always in service of the story. I probably could have gone without the use of either the main title from the original film or “Midnight, The Stars, and You” in the opening and the closing of the film, as that moves the proceedings a little disappointingly into the territory of fan film, but it can be forgiven. The fan service could have been a lot worse.

Like with that earlier unnecessary but ultimately likable Kubrick sequel, the performances elevate. McGregor extends the sad, unformed wonder of Danny from the original to an adult with sadness metastasized. His arc toward hope (even if it means his physical doom) fuels the movie. Ferguson dances between the hypnotic and threatening qualities that the story demands with enough versatility that for much of the run time I didn’t recognize her as an actress I had seen in films before. Curran could have easily veered into too-precocious for her own good, but manages to be believable in a role that other films (including the original) would have relegated to a mystified mute. Carl Lumbly is so good as Hallorann that there were several moments I wondered if they had used some manner of computer trickery to bring Scatman Crothers back from the dead.

Will Doctor Sleep equal its predecessor? I can’t imagine it will, but it did manage to be watchable and not embarrass itself. That’s all I needed it to be.

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

Director:  David Wain

Cast: Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon, Paul Rudd

Have I Seen It Before?: Never. That’s the secret anxiety of these reviews: Learning just how profoundly behind I am on the great stuff. As the streaming singularity looms, it’s becoming clear that I could strap myself to a TV and never catch up

Did I like it?: Truly, madly, deeply, but it took a moment.

For the first several minutes of the movie I became very concerned that the film might be too earnest for its own good, but I think the genius is that it lulls us in with a sense that it might be trying to be a normal film, but secretly is nuts under the surface. 

One might even come to think that the tone is uneven. It is populated with performers who are more well-known from cerebral comedic material, passes itself off as a convincing replica of 80s films that had aged incredibly poorly, but it is actually an exercise in cascading non sequitur.

I can see why some people disliked the movie. I can even see why some people bordered on active hostility. It’s pointedly, blissfully aloof. I’ve been accused of the same more than once in my life, so the film becomes less a movie that I take in and try to detach myself from the experience to unpack what works and what doesn’t work. It’s more like meeting a friend for the first time who is—as unlikely as that seems to be at times—on my save wavelength.

So strange that I took so completely to something that I had missed for so long. I might delve deeper into the film but thank the Gods of streaming that Netflix decided to give us not one, but two seasons of additional stuff to watch. 

Is that how you’re supposed to feel about a movie after its over? I guess it is now.

Gangs of New York (2002)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent

Have I Seen It Before?: Never. I’ve been kind of on a Scorsese jag lately. Thanks, Joker (2019), I guess.

Did I like it?: Yes, but to qualify that statement I will say I watched during spare moments on my phone. Thus, I’m almost entirely sure that I did not watch the film in the way Scorsese intended to take it in, nor can I weigh in as to whether or not the movie is too long.

I’m a bit awestruck that this film ever got released. It is the meeting point of three of the most wildly controlling forces in American cinema, director Scorsese, star Day-Lewis, and producer Harvey Weinstein*. That it was only delayed for a year is something of a small miracle. That most—not all, mind you—of those delays owed to 9/11 is utterly flabbergasting, especially when one considers that there’s only a single shot that could be thematically related to the incident.

Does the end product end up compromised? No, not for the most part. Day-Lewis chews through every scene he has, and as I imagine with every film in which he has appeared, he is allowed to do whatever the hell he wants. The tone of the movie around him, however warbles between the kind of deliberate crime drama Scorsese has made his life’s work, and the kind of four-quadrant easily digestible pablum dressed up in the disguise of prestige drama that was Weinstein’s second favorite hobby. It’s designed so meticulously constructed toward the goal of evoking the history it fictionalizes that one can’t help but admire and often awe at the craft on display. And yet, the music feels so all over the place in a desperate attempt to nab one more nomination for best song for Miramax’s campaign money.

Legend has it that a work print/director’s cut exists and that it allegedly feels more focused. Scorsese insists that the final cut is his director’s cut. This may be one of the only times in his output that I wish for the former, but begrudgingly accept the latter.

*Naturally, Weinstein has plenty of problems other than being a control freak, but I can’t be the first one to tell you that, right?

Mr. Arkadin AKA Confidential Report (1955)

Note: For the purpose of this review I watched the so-called “comprehensive” edition released in 2006.

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Orson Welles, Robert Arden, Paola Mori, Akim Tamiroff

Have I Seen it Before: Never. That’s embarrassing enough and puts my reputation as the world’s only semi-pro Orson Welles historian, but I did manage to read the novel before getting around to the Criterion Edition DVD. God bless, Criterion, giving a fella something to read packaged with the DVD.

Did I Like It: Sure. What’s not to like?

This feels like a transition film for Welles. Gone are they heady days of playing with the biggest train set imaginable, as Welles once referred to working within the high-budget studio system. He would still go on to make Touch of Evil (1958) a few years after Arkadin, but the days of wine and roses are gone. He’s beginning to embrace the grittier, pseudo-documentary aesthetic that would come to dominate his final films like F For Fake (1973) and The Other side of the Wind (2018). And yet, there are long stretches where it feel like Welles is reaching for and more than often actually attaining the visual polish of the days when he was still a wunderkind.

Now, I understand that this is a prime example of one of Welles’ films that was so severely compromised that it could only be salvaged now by a bit of luck and the hard work of cineastes, but even so there’s something sort of tragic about the sound design of films of the era. Dialogue in motion pictures was barely twenty years old at the time, and the syncing of ADR is never quite right. That technology would still take a number of years, and even today can be a little wobbly without the use of computers.

As he continued to lose the resources of the major studios, he compensates by becoming more experimental. The camera flows through scenes like a swinging pendulum, which would have been unimaginable during his time on Citizen Kane (1941) or The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and really unimaginable for any film at all.

And so I’m left with the same rolling wonder that I’m left with after most of the man’s movies.

What would the movie had been like if he had gotten all of the resources he needed?

Terminator Dark Fate (2019)

Director: Tim Miller

Cast: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, no. For the most part. Who would have thought that any Terminator movie could reach for anything fresh? 

Did I Like It: Yes… But a qualified yes.

It’s probably unreasonable to ever thing that we’re going to get a Terminator film that is somehow better that the first two films directed by James Cameron. Several have now tried, and they’ve had varying degrees of ultimately disappointing success. Cameron is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Even his arguable failures like The Abyss (1988) never fall short of ambitious.

He’s now back in the business—if even in an ancillary fashion—and the results are remarkable. The film has a lively energy that none of the non-Cameron films could even hope for, and this is coming from someone who actually kind of sort of liked Terminator Genysis (2015), despite it being a huge convoluted mess of time travel with a crappy title. The clutter of previous entries has been swept away, and the action re-focused on the central element of the first and greatest movies, Sarah Conner as played by Linda Hamilton.

Now that doesn’t make it entirely fresh, as a rash of legacy sequels—most notably last year’s Halloween—have trucked in similar territory. This film isn’t quite as crowd pleasing as that other film, but one has to admire this for indulging only in the bare minimum of fan service (especially for the sixth film in a series). The only time nostalgia takes over is in the films opening minutes for a scene that takes place shortly after Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The technology on display to make Hamilton, Schwarzenegger and even Edward Furlong appear as if no time has passed since that peak of the series is staggering. Thirteen years ago we were subjected to the twitchy CGI horrors that were Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in the opening scenes of X-Men: The Last Stand, and four years since Schwarzenegger himself awkwardly appeared as his younger self in the aforementioned Genysis, but it truly seems like the technology has reached its maturity here. How long before we are treated to entire films using the same tools?

How long before this series clears the decks again and just gives us a an entire movie with those stars as they appeared in the 90s.

I suppose Dark Fate’s box office will dictate what that strange techno future will look like. 

Come to think of it, Dark Fate is kind of a dumb title that doesn’t really have much to do with the film that surrounds it. At least Genysis was the name of something in that movie…

Oh, well, start the clocks for the next entry Terminator: Woo-hoo b-words coming sometime in the next few years.

The Sting (1973)

Director: George Roy Hill

Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning

Have I Seen It Before?: I have the vaguest of memories of trying to watch it once on cable, but edited to within an inch of it’s life, the movie dragged on for far longer than its just-over two run time. Definitely felt like I was missing something at the time. It completely mystifies me as to why that was a mystery back then.

Did I like it?: Yeah, I think so.

I kept hesitating to watch this movie because it’s been lionized for its byzantine plot. By the time my DVD returned to its menu, I was struck with the need to ask “Is that it?”

I expected the need to pay attention to every second of the film to even be able to follow it. Instead, I think I may have become the quintessential bad audience member at a magic show. I’m not blinking, and thus I see the slight of hand as it plays out.

So, I suppose it’s on me that this film just didn’t work for me. And that’s the unfortunate thing that can happen when people don’t watch the classics as quickly as they possibly can. They end up seeing all of the stuff that was inspired by the ur-example. The magic of the original is diminished, or in some cases, completely gone.

So, I come here not to damn The Sting, but to damn us for not getting on the ball and watching the greats. Learn from my mistake. Make better choices. If you’ve got a choice between watching Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and this, watch this first. If you have a choice between watching Joker (2019) and Taxi Driver (1976). If you have the choice between watching Notorious (1946) and Mission: Impossible II (2000), for the love of God and everything that is Holy, watch Notorious.

Let’s make better choices all around, people.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybil Shepard, Albert Brooks

Have I Seen It Before?: Never. They’re coming to take my official film snob membership card as I type this.

Did I like it?: It’s an experience, but I’d have to be a certain kind of person (read: Hinckley) to say I really enjoyed it.

The movie is such an insistent attempt to make a film that eschews the usual trappings of Hollywood entertainment, but Bernard Hermann’s score (his last, he passed away before the wide release of the film) bubbles through the movie. If you were only listening to the proceedings instead of watching, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a romantic comedy in the early goings. Between that and the whole cowboy motif and homages to The Searchers (1956) it’s hard not to see this movie as the story of a man—and perhaps a culture at large—warped by exposure to cowboy stories that never fully came to grips with the violence that surrounds them.

And then there’s that ending. 

I’m so constantly annoyed by the rash of youtube videos “explaining” the ending of like, every film released. They’re boring bordering on odious. I don’t need an explanation of Joker (2019). It’s pretty straight ahead, if wobbly. For that matter, why would anyone need the ending of a movie like Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) explained. Most—if not all—current movies are as straight ahead in their proceedings as your basic fairy tale.

But I digress. I’ll be damned if at the end of this movie I didn’t want to rush to the internet and have the true nature of our final moments with Bickle spoon-fed to me. Thankfully—blissfully, even—there is no concrete answer. Both Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader acknowledge the interpretation that after Bickle guns down the gangsters, synapses fire in his mind for the last time and he imagines a world where he ended up a hero, but maintain that their intension was to display the irony of a monster like their main character slipping into a hero’s role purely by luck, with the knowledge that he will be nowhere near that lucky the next time. I like that version of the ending better; it inflames the imagination.