Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Director: Mike Nichols

Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: You know, kind of? 

I never really had any interest in the work of Elizabeth Taylor. I think because as she became more well known for her marriages than her acting, the pictures fell by the wayside. If you’re born after 1980, she’s just that lady that was in the perfume commercials and showed up in The Flintstones (1994)*.

So, it’s to my enduring surprise she (and Richard Burton for that matter) could be in a movie so deceptively simple, and so watchable. Maybe Cleopatra (1963) is actually worth a watch? For that matter, the forging of a real movie couple usually spells certain doom for the watchability of a film, but in this context it’s hard not to believe the long stretches of fury punctuated by intermittent moments of something resembling affection. It has to be hard to forge a play written to within an inch of its life into something like pseudo-documentary, but I’m struggling to think of an instance where Mike Nichols fell short of making a great film.

His skills at theatrical adaptation are unparalleled, too. I recently watched Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and was struck by the fact that very little was done to the source material, almost to the point where the film becomes a filmed stage performance. In this film, however, the camera bobs and weaves through the setting, elevating things beyond their origin. I almost feel like a clandestine voyeur to these people and their lives, hiding behind what is happening. It’s a much more theatrical experience than just placing the camera on a tripod and hoping everything will work out.

* I’ve never been more convinced that my generation was full of crap than when I just typed that sentence.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Director: James Foley

Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris

Have I Seen It Before?: Yes. I may have had the DVD on my shelf for the better part of twenty years, and I’m reasonably sure I haven’t watched it since buying it.

Did I like it?: That’s not to say that the film has no quality! I’m thinking the main reason I haven’t watched it in the last few years because the prospect of watching anything with Kevin Spacey in it is pretty icky. Thankfully his character, Williamson, may not be the villain of the piece, but he certainly gets berated for being subhuman by literally every other human being in the film. We’re not supposed to like anybody in this film, I’d imagine, but there’s something right about people repeatedly telling Spacey to go fuck himself.

Cinematically, the film is flimsy in the extreme. Stylistically stuck in the early nineties, the opening credits almost feel like they belong to a movie made for cable TV. The rest of the film is stagey and practically frozen.

I’m probably tempted to forgive the film for those missteps. While there could have certainly been a bit more adaptation (other than Alec Baldwin’s work in the film’s early minutes, which bewilders me that the play could survive without it), but anything that strayed too far from Mamet’s play would have probably missed the point. We’re not here for camera acrobatics. We’re here to see great actors shout at each other at the top of their lungs and ultimately be made into chumps by fate, Roma included. Honestly, is there anyone in the film who ends up with anything resembling dignity? Even Baldwin’s character is relegated to vain attempts to motivate people he clearly thinks are beyond help. Roma’s (Pacino) lost the Cadillac and may only just barely make it with the steak knives. They’re going to catch Moss (Harris) before too long, especially when Shelley (Lemmon) gives him up to weasel out of the trouble he’s found himself in*.

Is it possible that, at the end of the day that Spacey is the only one who got out ahead? Is he really Keyser Soze? Ugh. I really could do without watching him ever again. Anyone got a bead on grafting Christopher Plummer into the movie?

*I’m now honestly wondering if Moss, despite all of his talk, had anything to do with the theft of the Glengarry leads. Shelley took the opportunity, finally, and it likely destroyed most of them.

Amadeus (1984)

Director: Miloš Forman

Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly. Despite its R rating, I have a strange memory of see most of the movie in my youth, as showing (certain parts) of the film was the “giving up” action of a music teacher in elementary school. That’s an ugly way to see a movie, honestly. Let the kids skip the movie, and watch it in its full context later on, if you ask me.

Did I Like It: I’m pretty sure only Forman could bring to life the ultimately vulgar reality of Mozart to life. Between Andy Kaufman and Larry Flint, it might seem like the story of the greatest classical composer would be an aberration. But working with source material like Peter Shaffer’s stage play makes it almost inevitable that Forman and Mozart would find one another.

The production is immaculate, with every attempt made to authentically recreate the later years of the eighteenth century, even if the vast majority of the audience would have no way of knowing if the film achieved any sort of historical accuracy. It largely is not accurate, as scholars have long since proven that Salieri could not have been responsible for Mozart’s death, and Mozart was not dumped in a mass grave. However, there is no trace of contemporary fashion in the production, so people years from now would not be able to place it in the context of other films produced in the 1980s. Timelessness in this fashion lends credibility, even if the story is nearly completely fiction.

Tom Hulce brings the title character to such vivid life, it’s a wonder that he didn’t enjoy a more notable career in motion pictures beyond the role. It’s also hard not to imagine what might have happened if Mark Hamill might have played the role instead, as he was playing the role on Broadway at the time, but was dismissed as a prospect for the movie because Forman decided people would not be able to think of the actor outside of his involvement with Star Wars.

But this movie is only tangentially about Mozart, right? Abraham as Salieri is one of the more delicate balancing acts of the movies. Functionally the villain and the protagonist of the story (Mozart has no arc other than to burn out his talent and die), he is sympathetic, likable, odious, and unrepentant, often moment-to-moment. His tale of woe and jealousy fueled by a contempt for a world which did not see fit to reward the sacrifices he thinks he has made for his future success. In that sense, even though the film is a foreign subject made by a foreign director, the tragedy of Salieri might be the most American tale ever put to film.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Director: Jon Favreau

Cast: Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell

Have I Seen it Before: Yep.

Did I Like It: On spec, this a movie I’d be there for opening weekend, which I was. Harnessing the best parts of John Ford and Sergio Leone to tell a hybrid tale incorporating the quintessence of Spilebergian awe and wonder? The film practically makes itself.

Except, it didn’t. For the years since the film’s release and lukewarm reception, that failure seemed like a mystery to me. Were people so bothered by the mere existence of a post-modern western that they couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea of having fun with the prospect? Is the same thing that causes people to bafflingly look down on Back to the Future Part III (1990) still unfairly affecting the moviegoing public twenty years later?

On this viewing, I don’t think so. At the very least, I don’t think that reflexive boredom with cowboys doomed this film to be instantly forgotten. That sense in the movie watching public may yet exist, but the movie’s problems exist beyond. For two out of three acts, the film is a good homage to those classic westerns and is well on its way to be one of those brilliant genre mashups that—like the Cornetto films of Edgar Wright—stand the test of time. And then the conclusion is a mishmash of cliches not of every movie it is trying to emulate, but every frozen TV dinner action movie released around the same time. Many of those films were written by the same writers who wrote this film, and that is a pretty good reason why most of them don’t write feature films anymore*.

The film has good performances. Daniel Craig cuts a convincing mysterious cowboy figure, especially when one considers that Robert Downey Jr. was originally cast in the role. While charming, he would have been completely wrong for the role as it was eventually presented, and even for the genre, now that I think about it. Even Harrison Ford looks like he’s mostly awake through the film, in an era of his performances where that was pretty rare. Had the film tried just a little bit harder and reached for a little bit more in its conclusion, it could have been something really great. Then again, Favreau certainly has proven his adeptness with similar material with The Mandalorian. Maybe if the focus had been on the aliens, and the cowboys were secondary, we’d be having a different discussion now.

*Granted, Lindelof was always better at TV and returned where he could unfurl his true skills. Kurtzman is a better producer than he ever was a writer, although many current viewers of Star Trek might take great pains to disagree that he’s worth anything. Roberto Orci can’t seem to get projects off the ground anymore, which feels like something approaching justice.

Clash of the Titans (1981)

Director: Desmond Davis

Cast: Harry Hamlin, Laurence Olivier, Judi Bowker, Maggie Smith

Have I Seen it Before: I think so? Lora and I talked about it as we started watching, and we both think we spun the DVD shortly after we met but aren’t sure. It kind of tells you how I feel about the movie.

Did I Like It: Ray Harryhausen* is a genius, but to feel true appreciation for much of his work, I kinda think you have to have been steeped in it from a young age. I’ve also never been overwhelmingly into Greek mythology**, so this film is already working at something of a disadvantage. I can’t help but feel the film is largely a B-movie effort that I don’t get, filled with bland matinee-idol actors engaged in derring-do, and a few great actors slumming it for an above average paycheck.

But then there is the Harryhausen of it all. After this—the final and some might say greatest film he worked on—plenty of people trucked in stop motion animation in an attempt to harness the nostalgia of the method. I’m mostly thinking about Tim Burton here. Every time It’s used in the last forty years, it’s been a throwback. Here, it’s hard to deny that I even found the various creatures put in the affecting. The man was a genius and an artist, and I don’t have to have grown up with his work to get that much.

*Didn’t direct the movie, by the way. Does anyone not think of the author of this film as Harryhausen? The auteur theory is right, except for all of those times it is laughably, irrevocably off the mark.

**Thank Zeus I’m not a producer on mythology podcast. Oh, wait… Maybe I like Greek mythology just fine, and I just happen to be less interested in it than anyone else I know.

Jurassic Park III (2001)

Director: Joe Johnston

Cast: Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola

Have I Seen it Before: I saw it in the theater… I think I’m still waiting for the final reel of the film to be delivered.

Did I Like It: Which brings us to the big question. Jurassic Park (1993) is the most Spielbergy of all the Spielbergian films. The Lost World (1997) was a pleasing enough diversion in which all of the key players felt like they were asleep at the wheel. The later movies (Jurassic World (2015) and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)) are engaging enough legacy sequels made by a creative team who clearly has an abiding affection for the source material. 

This film, however, sticks out like a sore thumb, or a thumb chewed off by a compy, or whatever dinosaur metaphor strikes your fancy. I like director Joe Johnston; The Rocketeer (1991) is one of my favorite movies. He’s been handed table scraps, here, though. The movie looks cheaper, with the CGI not aging as well as it does in the original movie (The Lost World had the same problem, but both films are saved from the absolute dregs of a Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)) and story being thin enough to drive an SUV through.

By all indications, that story underwent a lot of last-minute changes. The script as written was thrown out right before production in favor a much simpler search and rescue storyline. Problem is, so many of the set pieces had already been storyboarded within an inch of their life. Thus the movie ends up trying to be two different movies, neither of which have anything resembling the spontaneity of anything resembling the human experience. One might think I’m being unfair thinking that a movie about dinosaurs meant to goose the numbers on action figure sales needs to feel authentically human, but when I can’t get over the fact that it is spectacularly divorced from the people making it, it bears mentioning.

This doesn’t even cover the fact that the movie doesn’t so much end as simply stops, with our heroes reaching the shoreline and the Marines and Navy are ready with Operation Deus Ex Machina. I liked spending some time with Dr. Grant again, but this isn’t the movie anyone would have hoped for.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Richard Schiff*

Have I Seen It Before?: I was there opening weekend with everybody else. I remember the film mainly as the first film to feature the “bright colors” Universal logo, after several years of my favorite Universal logo, which was first introduced in Back to the Future Part III (1990). Yes, I have a favorite Universal Pictures logo. Wanna fight about it?

Did I like it?: Spielberg has made dozens of films, some of them are bound to not be especially good, right? And, really, I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with the film. It is a prime example of big-budget spectacle of the era. The performances are good, with Jeff Goldblum taking on the chore of Jeff Goldbluming in a film the way no one else can. Several of the shots are quite dynamic and interesting. The final act of the film is legitimately thrilling. Some at the time of the films release said the film had superior special effects, but watching it on my television twenty-plus years later, I would say the CGI looks a little less rendered and the animatronics look a little more like puppets.

And yet, there’s not really anything there, is there? The plot ambles along (pun not intended, but accepted) and by the time everything is over, I’ve enjoyed some popcorn. Had almost any other filmmaker directed the film, I think both the contemporary reaction and history would have been much more favorable. Maybe Spielberg was too focused on perfecting Amistad (1997) or he had truly exorcised the last of his spectacle-based instincts with the first Jurassic Park (1993), but there’s no way to view this film other than through the context that Spielberg’s heart just wasn’t in the proceedings. To borrow and modify a phrase from Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), this is just a lot of running and, um, screaming. There’s just not a lot of “ooh” and “ahh.” Spileberg is one of cinemas greatest magicians, but he’s never been terribly good at repeating the same trick twice. Except for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). That movie is terrific, and I’ll have words with anyone who says otherwise. Including Spielberg.

*He gets like nineteenth billing, but if Richard Schiff appears in something, I’m giving him as high a billing as I can.

The Right Stuff (1983)

Director: Philip Kaufman

Cast: Charles Frank, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Lance Henriksen

Have I Seen It Before?: Maybe? There’s a half-remembered viewing on cable back in the day when people would watch movies on cable, but I couldn’t swear to it. I have read the book, though.

Did I like it?: In assessing the movie, I think I only have two complaints. First, I think the long runners at the beginning and the ending involving Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) were extraneous. It really delays the film from where I am sitting, and doesn’t Yeager deserve his own feature, not just the short before this true story develops?

Second, tragically, there is no way a film features synthesizer music and isn’t either made in the early 1980s, or insists on making us think it was made in the 1980s. Thankfully composer Bill Conti kept his worst 80s impulses (see some of the early Rocky sequels for more examples of how bad it could get) in check for the most part and only a few scenes date the proceedings with their production, and not their settings.

Aside from that, the film is terrific. I blanched at its three-plus hour run time, mainly because I wasn’t sure what could be shown about the Mercury 7 that couldn’t be wrapped up in a tight two hours. I may have been right about that, if I focus on my complaints about the Yeager section, but aside from that the film zips around. The film is perfectly cast, with Ed Harris particularly equating himself well as the politician (and at that point, potentially future president) in pilots clothing, John Glenn. It’s a unique balance to fill a cast with character actors who also manage to pull off a job that is almost exclusively the province of big-name movie stars: remaining charming, even when they’re acting like complete assholes.

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Director: Marcus Nispel

Cast: Jason Momoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan

Have I Seen It Before?: There is literally nothing in this film that has not been seen before.

Did I like it?: It’s probably unfair to expect a good Conan movie, but Milius ruined that for everyone who followed. Even a hypothetical late-stage Arnold King Conan would probably be something of a letdown, after one was subjected to Conan the Destroyer (1984). I’ve been intermittently reading the Robert E. Howard canon of stories since recently re-watching Conan the Barbarian (1982) and from a laundry list of muddled, droning sword and sorcery tales, films like this one are what Conan adaptations probably ought to be. At least this film sports a solid R rating, and doesn’t continue the trend of making the stories suitable for children, starting with Destroyer. Movie series like Robocop can’t seem to shake of the need to smooth rough edges to a dull, PG-13 shine.

That preceding paragraph may sound like some sort of absolution for the film, but it isn’t. This film tries for nothing, nearly to the point where I began to wonder if the production was an ashcan attempt by some half-baked production company to keep the rights to the character. Momoa has proven himself since to be a charismatic movie star, and he is probably closer casting to the original character than even Schwarzenegger was, but he barely appears in half the movie here—the first third of the movie consumed by a needless prologue that the original Milius film dispensed with in a few minutes. Where the formation of Conan’s sword makes a visceral experience out of the opening titles in the original, here it is barely-rendered and boring CGI, tossed off because it is a list of things a producer wanted included in the movie, not something that serves the story.

Scenes that hardly needed to be shot in front of a green screen are, giving the film an antiseptic feeling, where a Conan film should be anything but antiseptic. It should be positively septic, bordering on gangrenous. Oh, and it was converted to 3D at the last minute, which was probably useless beyond the tanked opening weekend, and makes it pretty much in line with every film released during the era*.

Eventually, I was consumed by noticing things that couldn’t possibly work, even in the context of the film. The battlefield c-section that brought Conan into the world? Dubious. Conan freeing a village of slaves, and then carrying off one of their women? Counterintuitive. The henchman who had his nose cut off by Conan, and the rails about the injury while sounding like nothing might be altering his speech? Likely the only thing I will remember about the film.

*The new trend in film releasing in the 2020s? Skipping the theater altogether.

Bill & Ted Face The Music (2020)

Director: Dean Parisot

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine

Have I Seen it Before: No. Haven’t seen this Bill and Ted movie before. Feels nice to type that.

Did I Like It: As I type this, it’s been about two days since I watched the movie, and I can’t quite get it out of my head. That’s a good thing.

I could talk about flaws that any film might have. Some of the jokes and plot points are telegraphed. I had a feeling that Rufus’ great prophecy would have quite a bit to do with Bill (Winter) & Ted’s (Reeves) daughters after about twenty minutes. I figured Deacon (Beck Bennett) was going to be Missy’s new spouse after I heard the casting announcement.

But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the film took years to get off the ground, and I was pretty sure there for a while that it wasn’t going to happen. I love Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), and have since they were brand new. My affection for those films only grew as I did, when it became clear that the films (and their protagonists were way smarter than they first let on. This is the only film still standing in the 2020 release slate that I was looking forward to. I’m really glad that I got to watch it.

It’s genuinely, off-the-wall funny, perhaps just as much so as its predecessors. The robot charged with assassinating the great ones (played by Anthony Carrigan) is one of the nimbler comic creations in recent memory. I’d say more, but it would be ruining most of the fun for you. To not belabor the point, I’ve just mentioned the character’s name a couple of times since seeing the movie, my wife and I break out into laughter.

But this film is of a piece with the rest other films in the series in a far more profound way. I’ve always viewed the more harebrained time travel shenanigans were a metaphor for the writing process. Forgot to introduce the trash can before you needed it to get out of trouble? Just go back and put it in. Time travel is like that, and so is writing multiple drafts of something.

Here, the forward motion of the plot solidified something I knew about the creative process but puts it into stark relief. Billie and Thea try to help their Dads by going back in time and forming the greatest band in the universe to play the song that will put the universe back on track. Where to start? Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still). Hendrix can only be convinced if his hero, Louis Armstrong (Jeremiah Craft) is brought into the mix. Armstrong brings in Mozart (Daniel Dorr). Mozart yearns to jam with Ling Lun (Sharon Gee), who ten imagines that rhythm began and end with Grom (Patty Anne Miller). The band is formed, but the Preston/Logan scions don’t think they are the genius behind the music. But they are the ones that can bring the greatest bass player in the universe, The Grim Reaper (William Sadler). They just like what they like, and they put together what worked.

But that’s all they ever needed to do. It’s all any creative person can do, really. As somebody who’s work has been dismissed a number of times as just fan fiction, I knew that, but it was nice to hear it.

I really love this movie. It is my favorite movie of 2020. Had we gotten the pleasure of a full slate of movies this year, I imagine I would still put it at number 1.

Clue (1985)

Director: Jonathan Lynn

Cast: Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd

Have I Seen it Before: Yes…

Did I Like It: How do you broach the subject of writing about a nearly universally loved film, when you don’t like it even a little bit?

Don’t go, don’t go. We can talk about it, right? 

I like the cast. Some of them have appeared in some of my very favorite films of all time. Christopher Lloyd, who I adore, sleepwalks through the film, in sharp contrast to Tim Curry who is probably too frantic here for his own good. The late, great Madeline Kahn can’t help but shine, with her “flames” speech being my biggest laugh during the film.

Yes, I didn’t laugh much during the film, and if you’re not laughing while watching a comedy, that’s pretty much the beginning and end of it. There’s some wordplay, which I’m always in favor of, but the dialogue is spit out with an almost sleepy indifference (Kahn notwithstanding). 

But the problems for me go deeper than the fact that I didn’t think the film is all that funny, and it goes to the core gimmick that has cemented the film in most peoples memories, the multiple endings. While it would have been an intriguing prospect to see the film multiple times and having a different experience in the theater, but after it moves into home media, we are subjected to all three endings in quick succession*, which makes the true messiness at the core of the movie hard to ignore. How can a mystery work if it truly, deeply, doesn’t matter who was the murderer/murderers? Communism may be a red herring, but in this Schrödinger’s mystery, everything is a red herring. Hardly seems worth it.

Also, what the hell does Cluedo mean? Why do people call it that outside of the country?

* DVDs and Blu-Rays give the viewer the option to view only one ending at random, but that hardly seems like the same thing.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray

Have I Seen It Before?: Any time I talk about one of my books, I inevitably say something with the syntax of, “Everyone knows (blank) did (blank). What this book presupposes is: Maybe he didn’t?” There were a number of years where I wanted to make films like Wes Anderson makes them.

Yeah, I saw this one on opening weekend.

Did I like it?: Clearly yes. I’ve probably seen the movie a dozen times over the last twenty years, and each time I’m floored by those opposing paintings of a gang of maniacs on dirt bikes. It’s that funny. The rest of the movie is, too.

On this viewing, however, I dug a little deeper. I actually had the screenplay open in front of me, and read along with what played out on the screen. I don’t really recommend doing that, especially if this would be your first viewing of the film. But it was an illuminating way to see it. For all of his well-earned reputation as a visual stylist, Wes Anderson (still working here with Owen Wilson, who really should be writing more, if these early Anderson films were any indication) is also an immaculate writer. It’s hard to conceive of a film where Bill Murray’s improvisational skills don’t make up the lion’s share of his screen time, but I can attest that Raleigh St. Clair appears almost entirely as he does on the page.

The story is pristine as well. There are few movies that truck with voice over narration as much as this one does and still feels like a movie and not an audio book. I was struck by how my memory seemed to think that Alec Baldwin’s narration was spread throughout the film, but really only appears in the first half an hour and then in the last few minutes. The screenplay makes the case for its characters so cogently, that even if I wasn’t giggling throughout, it would have been a film that stuck with me.

Anderson may be the only kind of director who can get away with that.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Director: Marc Webb

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan

Have I Seen It Before?: Yeah… But it was in one of those perfunctory, watch-on-demand viewings long after the obituaries on this series had already been written. I think Tom Holland may have already been cast as Garfield’s replacement at this point.

Did I like it?: In my review of The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) I ended up landing on the significantly positive side of the film, extolling three virtues:

1)      Spider-Man (Garfield) is an active participant in his own origin story.

2)      The James Horner score absolutely slaps, and we aren’t going to get any more of those.

3)      I’m of a certain type who will be more impacted by encouraging words of decency from Jed Bartlet than I would be from Charly.

It’s sad that I have to report that this film continues none of what worked about its predecessor. Uncle Ben is mentioned, but he gets no flashbacks or voiceovers, whereas Captain Stacy and Peter’s parents do. It’s a weird omission, but the movie is already far too overstuffed with characters who have very little to do, why bring back Sheen?

On that note, Spider-Man as portrayed here has surprisingly little to do with the proceedings. He has no intention, other than being positive Danish in his level of indecision regarding his relationship with Gwen Stacy (Stone). Even the hero has little to do. It is as if the entire film is forged by the studio in their flailing attempts to keep the right for the character to revert back to Marvel. One wonders how there was such a shift from the first film, but there are Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, getting primary credit for the screenplay. It’s probably for the best—in so far as big-budget spectacle movies are concerned—Orci can’t seem to get work anymore, and Kurtzman is relegated to a Rick Berman-esque role over the Star Trek franchise*.

Then there’s the music. James Horner is nowhere to be found here, and the score in its place is… Well, it’s bad. It inspires no feeling but is augmented with enough pop pablum to really make you want to stay as far away from the soundtrack as possible.

Some movie series die young and it feels like something has been stolen from us, and while there can certainly be arguments for the needlessness of rebooting the series for the first time, it is pretty clear another reboot was needed from here.

Although, to be fair, and I didn’t mention this in my review of the last movie, it is interesting that Andrew Garfield is the only wall-crawler of film who actually sounds like he might be from Queens. If only actors like Jamie Foxx and Paul Giamatti didn’t feel so out of place in the film.

*Don’t get me wrong, I like the new Star Trek, but my good will is ultimately an exhaustible resource.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Director: Marc Webb

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary

Have I Seen It Before?: Yes. I eventually came around to it, but I didn’t see it in the theater. As my mind tends to wanders in these reviews this year, that statement tends to make me feel wistful, as its entirely possible I may never see another movie in the theaters again. Back then, though, I was put off by the disappearance of Sam Raimi, et. al. and struck by how it would have definitely been an also ran in the summer which brought us The Avengers (2012).

Did I like it?: A few things that can happen to a big tentpole movie like this that are unfair, but pretty lethal. A star that owned the central role and the creative team can leave the franchise. Think On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) or Batman Forever (1995). It can be especially unfortunate when the viewer can’t help but wonder what the franchise would have been like if the studio left it alone. One imagines what Sean Connery or Michael Keaton would have done with those films (in either order, really…) and so as this film projects you can’t help but think about what Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire would have done had they had the chance to rebound after the admittedly wobbly Spider-Man 3 (2007). The Lizard could even come to play, except played by Dylan Baker. Throw in a Mysterio courtesy of Bruce Campbell for good measure.

Does this film completely surpass those limitations? No, we are still subjected to another scene of a young Peter Parker looking with full Spielberg-face as a spider descends from mysterious cluster of scientific wonder, followed by an extended montage where our friend Parker slowly comes to the realization that something changes. Ben Parker will die too. Great power; great responsibility. That whole routine. It was truly refreshing when the MCU dispensed with all of that when it began its lease on the franchise with Captain America: Civil War (2016).

Still, there are things to recommend this film. For one, Martin Sheen is in it. Not to put down the late Cliff Robertson, but if a film wants to make me not want to disappoint someone, they could do a lot worse than Jed Bartlet. The film also sports a score by the late, great James Horner which—even if we weren’t going to be getting any more of those—is right at home with some of his best scores. It doesn’t have the same ring-in-your-head quality as Danny Elfman’s work in the prior series, but I’m not going to knock it.

Those elements are merely cosmetic. I can’t help but applaud the film for rolling with its inherent limitations and offering us a story where Peter Parker’s transformation into the friendly, neighborhood wall-crawler is tied to a very clear search for his identity, weaving in Parkers lost—and seldom mentioned—parents into the origin so that Parker is not simply a victim of his transformation being a million-to-one shot, but a byproduct of his search for that destiny.

Now if only the studio had kept their head on straight for the sequel…

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Title: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Director: George Roy Hill

Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross, Strother Martin

Have I Seen It Before?: I have a vague memory of catching it on cable at some point in the last twenty years, but it certainly isn’t in my pantheon of re-watched films.

Did I like it: There’s no deny the film’s place among the great Westerns. Every dusty gunfight and wide view of picturesque landscapes make it clear that while there is plenty of the spaghetti westerns in Red Dead Redemption, there is plenty of this film as well.

Redford and Newman were never better or more charming here. Redford especially disposes of his often too-earnest screen persona to be just as funny as Newman. It is slow to start, which his far from any sort of sin, but for someone who hasn’t spent the last 50 years in love with the film, it can be a little hard to get into. How many films can we the same about from the era? Probably a lot.

But here’s the thing. I don’t think it is the fault of any of the filmmakers here, but after Spider-Man 3 (2007) I can’t help but the only reason to include “Raindrops keep Fallin’ on My Head” in a film is because the film has completely run out of ideas. I’m sure when this film was released, the song was a nice little interlude, but it feels so out of place in a western this many years later. Now that I think about it, all of Bacharach’s score feels more out of place than not during the run time. I don’t want to blame that on films like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), mainly because such an assessment makes me look like a cinematic rube. But I also can’t help but think I’m not alone in thinking that the iconic qualities in this film have only hurt it over time, as other, lesser films have imitated it to diminished effect.

The American President (1995)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox

Have I Seen It Before?: My DVD copy is one of those weird half-cardboard numbers Warner Bros. put out in the world twenty years ago? Whatever happened to those? This is all to say I’ve spent several years putting it on just as regular of re-watch as my DVDs of The West Wing, which is quite a bit.

Did I like it?: Criticism of the work of Aaron Sorkin be a tricky thing. One either has no taste for him, or absolutely adores him. You’d think that this divide might exist with some correlation to political differences, but that isn’t always the case. Certainly, he has a propensity for writing women character who are by all rights intelligent and self-possessed, but somehow end up spending a great deal of time having passages of Intro to US Government explained to them by male characters. He uses certain lines* across his work so often that I’m a little worried he doesn’t remember having written them before his sobriety.

But plenty of people—yours truly included—who have tried to imitate him, so I don’t quite buy the temerity of the latter-day naysayers. At the very least, I am in the camp that lives and dies with his writing, and this was a test-bed for everything that made his greatest work as good as it was. The optimism and decency leaps from the words and lives within you. At least, it lives within me. Your mileage may vary.

Beyond that idealism that admittedly confirms my own thinking about the world, this might even work better as a pure romantic comedy than it does as a polemic. Even then, I can’t conceive of a conservative who might be warmed by the proceedings, even though Ted Cruz somehow managed to plagiarize the climatic speech President Shepherd (Douglas) uses to win Sydney Ellen Wade (Bening) and the country back when he was defending his wife from attacks by the garbage fire that eventually won that election. So, who knows?

* “All you have to do at the end of the day is come home.” “This isn’t camp. It’s not important that everyone gets to play.” “If you had invented/written/created Facebook/Whatever the hell was so goddamn important on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” Google common Sorkin lines; there are gigabytes of articles on the subject.

Superman (1978)

Director: Richard Donner

Cast: Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder

Have I Seen It Before?: Any number of times. It is, incidentally, the only film that I’ve owned two copies of at the same time. I have it on blu-ray, along with the Donner cut of Superman II (1980, although that cut was released in 2006). I also have a DVD set that includes the theatrical cuts of all four films in the Reeve series. I keep that set only for completions sake to have the theatrical cut of II, and Superman III (1983) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). Thus, I have the first movie in the same version twice, simply because I can’t bring myself to buy another copy of The Quest For Peace in another format.

Is anyone still reading after all of that?

Did I like it?: On paper, this movie is the perfect alchemy of everything that made big studio films great in the 1970s. Marlon Brando “stars,” but really makes enough money for the rest of his life for a couple days’ worth of work. John Williams’ score finishes the one-two punch he started with Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). And much of the same production team and facility that made the Roger Moore era of Bond movies the pure cinematic confections that they were is on full display here. It is big budget entertainment done perfect. It certainly goes on the list of movies I regret watching for the first time via a VHS copy.

And much of the intangibles justifiably recommend the film, and unfortunately inspire a spiral of increasingly icky sequels to come. Christopher Reeve so thoroughly inhabits the role (and yet somehow, third-billing) of the Last Son of Krypton that everyone else who has attempted has been varying degrees of pale imitations, from the likable if slight Brandon Routh in Superman Returns (2006) to, well Dean Cain. The less said about Dean Cain, the better off we all are. Including Dean Cain. Gene Hackman cuts a deliciously roguish figure as Lex Luthor, especially when stacked up against the woefully mis-cast Jesse Eisenberg, and the completely unwatchable Kevin Spacey. Margot Kidder is the right type of performer for Lois Lane, but ever since the DVD/Blu Ray documentaries put into my head that Stockard Channing was in contention for the role, I can’t help but think they may have missed the mark ever so slightly.

But there are some things that work on the nerves, despite the film’s legendary status. Some of the miniature work is obviously miniature work, which serves to undercut the epic scope of the movie, but that the film delivers on its promise to make one believe a man can fly tends to forgive any technical details which may have aged more aggressively.

And still, that sequence where Lois performs “Can You Read My Mind?” as a poem recitation while she and Superman are in mid-flight sets my teeth on edge every time I watch it. It might be hyperbole to say it is my least favorite thing that has ever been in a movie I otherwise like, but it wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration.

Paul (2011)

Director: Greg Mottola

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman

Have I Seen It Before?: Certainly.

Did I like it?: It feels fundamentally unfair, but when Pegg and Frost headline a film, one can’t help but long for Edgar Wright to be at the helm of the film. They should be allowed to work on their own projects, right?

Also, I can’t help but feel that as Simon Pegg becomes more and more successful with mainstream audiences that his nerd credibility has also become diminished.

But to judge the film on its actual merits, and not some artificial sense of its context among other films…

To its credit, the special effects are pretty subtly great. Nearly ten years after the release, Paul (voiced by Rogen) remains a fairly believable CGI creature. That’s no small feat. Greg Mottola is fine as director, and the whole film works as an innocuous comedy. And yet, the whole film never quite launches past the orbit of other American films of the last fifteen years or so (call it the Apatow era, if that helps). It also trucks in dread “reference rumor,” that same style of writing that fueled “The Big Bang Theory” through 912 seasons. Here it is supposed to be enough that much of the film takes place at Sand Diego ComicCon, but the context of why we appreciate the things celebrated there isn’t quite there. Somebody like Edgar Wright would have made one of the best close encounter movies of all time, and it would be thoroughly amusing as something of an afterthought.

I guess I did manage to find a way to bring the specter of Edgar Wright back into this review. I guess I’m still irate that he was chased off of Ant-Man (2015) is all.

But, again, that doesn’t really talk about this film, does it? The script came from Simon Pegg (and Frost), who wrote those superlative Cornetto films, you’d think something would leak in, but it again, remains just a comedy. Had Pegg and Frost not been in the film at all, I probably wouldn’t be thinking along these lines at all.

The Time Machine (1960)

Director: George Pal

Cast: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot

Have I Seen It Before?: Here’s a deep, dark secret to start off this review. If I have any sort of reputation in this world, it’s as some manner of student of time travel. I’ve written about it ad infinitum, I’ve talked about it, and several are under the assumption that I’ve lived it. When it comes to H.G. Wells’ classic tale, I’ve read it a number of times in various editions, count Time After Time (1979) as one of my favorite films of all time, and have even written a sequel to the adventures of The Time Traveller.

And yet, somehow, no. I’ve never gotten around to seeing this one.

Did I like it?: That’s where the true tragedy of me somehow avoiding this film really comes in. I never got around to this one for no other reason than I always thought it would be too camp, or too geared for children to play to my taste. I’m not sure why I allowed that thinking to stop me, if for no other reason than “too geared for children” or “too campy” is pretty precisely my aesthetic.

Also, the film works. It is visually interesting, with the special effects work in the film rightly garnering an Academy Award, and still largely holding up sixty years later, minus a monorail or two. It goes through all of the beats of the classic story, including the breaking down of the fourth dimension, which inexplicably remains my favorite section of the book. It also does so at a lively pace and offering enough imaginative exploration into the anxieties and fears of the mid-twentieth century, just as much as the novel ruminated on the anxieties of the late nineteenth. There’s really not much more one can expect from an adaptation of the Wells book, or really any time travel story.

Hearts of Darkness (1991)

Director: Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola

Cast: Eleanor Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen

Have I Seen It Before?: I have a vague memory of watching a battered VHS copy long ago. It is odd that I have stronger memories of this film than of previous viewings of Apocalypse Now (1979).

Did I like it?: Usually when I start these reviews, unless I’m seeing the movie in the theater (kids, ask your parents)—I’m typing as the film still plays out. I’ve had the damnedest time starting (to say nothing of finishing) this review, as the film is so engrossing. Most behind the scenes material is produced with the intention of promoting the eventual finished film. Much of the material here is produced with that same idea, but the work of putting that material together has created something far more honest about art and obsession. Certainly, the talking heads are still trying to maintain their, likely self-serving, version of events. But their facial expressions won’t lie. I don’t think we got all of Coppola back after this movie. I’m glad we got most of Martin Sheen back. Dennis Hopper was largely unaffected either way.

It’s sort of unrelentingly strange that the first filmmaker to kill somebody with a helicopter was John Landis and not Coppola. Whatever insanity the actual film depicts had to be harnessed from the production of the film, and there is plenty to harvest.

To talk more about the film might be to deprive you from experiencing it for yourself. As much as the scene of Willard/Martin Sheen freaking out is unsettling in the context of Apocalypse Now (1979), the uncut version depicted here is hollowing to the viewer, especially when you realize that Willard as a fictional construct barely exists. The helicopters that never fail to impress me in Apocalypse Now becomes all the more impressive when you realize they appear only via a tenuous agreement with the Philippine government, who was also a little preoccupied with a civil war of their own. It’s sort of wild to think about how other troubled productions pale in comparison to this. Somebody like Josh Trank tripping over himself to screw up Fantastic Four (2015) couldn’t possibly know trouble like this.

Community was right. It’s way better than Apocalypse Now. To my mind, it may be the best thing with which Coppola has ever been associated. That’s saying quite a bit.