Mank (2020)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Charles Dance

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know. It seems unlikely that I would have dodged this one, but I’ve spent more than a few years trying to keep my Orson and Kane-related palette as clean as possible, but no longer! 

Did I Like It: On spec, I’m probably obligated to dislike a movie where Orson Welles (Tom Burke) is clearly one of—if not the—villain of the piece, but honestly? The man probably has that coming. It’s difficult to say who was more put upon by the process of writing Citizen Kane (1941) but if the version of the story supported by Mankiewicz’s supporters (I’m mainly looking in your direction, Pauline Kael) has any degree of truth in it, then Welles was indeed the villain of his greatest triumph.

Stylistically, it feels like maybe Fincher was a bit too precious about the source material here, given that the screenplay was written by his late father. The constant sluglines as a visual motif grate on the nerves more often than not, but given the subject at hand can be forgiven. That obvious not in an effort to tell us this is about a writer doesn’t need to be there, though, it’s still a pretty tight story about a great writer often interacting with other great writers.

And, ultimately we come to the big question when it comes to films who depict Orson Welles in a narrative film. Some are eerie good, others are probably counting on memory of the man being dim in the public consciousness. Thankfully, this lands squarely on the first end of the spectrum. The voice is right, and there are several moments where Mr. Burke actually does look like the Welles of the era. It’s a fate many others have failed to accomplish, although it may help that Welles is far from a main character in the piece, and indeed flits through the proceedings as an ominous phantom.

The Howling (1981)

Director: Joe Dante

Cast: Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan, Christopher Stone

Have I Seen it Before: Never… Which ought to be somewhat surprising*.

Did I Like It: Joe Dante is a filmmaker who, for my money, has made an entire library of work while having one hand tied behind his back. There may not be a better forging of filmmaker and material than when Dante made Looney Toons: Back in Action (2002), but the film only managed to be a mildly pleasant diversion. I’ve never quite loved Small Soldiers (1998), even though some people swear by it and on paper I can see the appeal, but not everyone can make a hit every time at bat. Even Spielberg had 1941 (1979). Even Gremlins (1984) is only a glimpse of the unleashed demented genius which was finally given the keys to the studio for Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). Matinee (1993) is pretty great and also disproves the theory a bit. I’ll exchange words with anyone who says otherwise.

So, too, does this movie almost feel like a work of subversive genius, but only in those moments when the money behind a film aren’t paying attention. The film swings somewhat between being a serial killer cat-and-mouse thriller, an body snatcher-style invasion story, a marital drama, and ultimately in its final act the werewolf story advertised. By the time the heroine (Wallace) attempts to take control of the situation, and warn—at great self-sacrifice—the world of what is to come, the world reacts pretty much like the audience of a horror movie might, by shrugging and going on about their lives as if not much of any consequence has happened. It’s a pretty great ending for a movie, and the rest of the film—minus a set of cell-animated werewolves copulating—works against the Joe Dante curse and reaches for that brilliance Hollywood seems to want to stop him from accomplishing.

*To say nothing of the fact that this will be my first film back on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods. Life’s funny sometimes, and there’s always room to move forward and return to what worked in the past.

Mermaids (1990)

Director: Richard Benjamin

Cast: Cher, Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder, Christina Ricci

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It’s been one of those movies which Lora counted as her favorite and put an APB on picking it up if I ever found it on one of my prolonged DVD hunts. Coming up short, I eventually caved and ordered off of Amazon. Not how I normally like to procure my movies—there is something in the hunt I always enjoy—but here we are.

Did I Like It: There are some comedies which are powered entirely by how we feel about spending time with the characters. The story is meaningless, basically, but if we like the characters, everything works out okay for us the audience.

Here is the plot of Mermaids: A single woman and her two daughters move to a new town. The oldest becomes infatuated with a local boy, and kisses him. Because of this, the younger child falls into water and is injured. Everyone survives.

Not much, right? And that’s compounded by the fact that the majority of that synopsis takes place in the last thirty minutes or so, and doesn’t include Lou (Hoskins), one of the lead… because he has very little impact on the film itself. But the characters are quirky enough, and likable enough, and performed well enough, and there’s more than a few deep, sustained belly laughs in the film (“We’re Jewish…”) that everything works out okay for me. I enjoyed my time with them, and in all honesty, I screened the film about a week ago, and I haven’t been able to get Jimmy Soul out of my head most of the time. That has to count for something, right?

But one thing that continues to bug me, aside from parsing out Jimmy Soul’s lyrics. Why the hell is film called Mermaids? I mean, yes, I get Cher’s costume… And the fact that Christina Ricci is intermittently a good swimmer… But aside from that? Winona Ryder is pointedly un-Mermaid, and it feels like she is the main character.

Maybe someone else can explain it to me real slow.

My Favorite Year (1982)

Director: Richard Benjamin

Cast: Peter O’Toole, Mark Linn-Baker, Joseph Bologna, Jessica Harper

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, ages ago. I don’t know why it hasn’t been an absolute staple of my life. I had intentions to run it in the background while I got some work done, and now I’m just sitting here unable to take my eyes away from it all.

Did I Like It: I think that last paragraph tells you quite a bit. I’ve been having a reaction to a number of comedy films lately where the story registers not at all with me. Thus, I’m left only with a feeling for the characters and setting, and, you know, actual laughs. More than a few comedies still elicit a positive reaction from me, even if is increasingly feeling like something is missing.

I’m more than a little pleased to report that this film fires splendidly on all three fronts. I would love to be among the writing staffs of one of the old live comedy shows, so there’s not a moment during the hour and a half run time where I feel bored. The laughs are plentiful, with plenty of one-liners abounding and two physical comedians in O’Toole and Linn-Baker* working their best magic.

And this is the best part: the plot actually works and never lets up on the tension until the end. Its easy to see where this film provided the inspirational backbone of what eventually became 30 Rock. The best that show had to offer was perfectly contained comic tension machines, and that show owes this movie a great debt. My head canon? They take place in the same universe.

*Say what you will about Perfect Strangers—Linn-Baker’s main claim to fame—but both he and Bronson Pinchot knew what they were doing when slapstick was the order of the day.

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt*

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, but it’s been a number of years. I was probably a teenager when I first watched it, because, I was, ultimately, that teenager.

Did I Like It: I may be a bad fan of the films of Orson Welles, despite my compulsive need to do homework on the subject. I’ve never fully bought in to the great tragedy of Ambersons. When I first saw it, the whole affair seemed just a bit to twee to get truly invested in, and what’s more, I couldn’t possibly imagine an ending different from the one presented in the theatrical cut.

So I return to the film now. My eye—to say nothing of my taste—is a little more sophisticated. Perhaps the experience will be a bit different now.

And it is, sort of. The story of the Ambersons and their tragedy is just a bit too precious for me, still. In all fairness, it had that quality when I finally brought myself to read the Booth Tarkington novel a few years back, in an effort to gai na bit more insight into the Welles mindset.

But that’s not the point of this film, or any early Welles film, ultimately. Content is incidental. Had he bowed to studio pressure and made War of the Worlds as a feature after he was brought to Hollywood, it would have been the technique behind that story that made a classic film. Citizen Kane (1941) is much the same way. And so is Ambersons. 

Which is what makes the truncated ending so odd to me now. The film has long stretches that are just as vibrant and unexpected as Kane, but it’s all punctuated by one of the more blandly staged scenes of the era. It sticks out like a sore thumb. I really don’t know why a studio would have taken a film away from Welles, especially during this period**. A Welles film not directed by Welles misses the entire point of the exercise.

*For all of the film’s issues, I’ll never understand why Welles himself didn’t play the adult George. He was still the right age at the time. Then again, my main complaint about depictions of Welles in the 30s and 40s is that he always seems far older than a man in his 20s. Maybe he was never very boyish. It would be hard to go from even the younger version of Kane to someone so impish.

**All right, I kind of get it. Any responsible leader of business would probably have a hard time giving Welles a blank check twice at that point in time.

Citizen Kane (1941)

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane

Have I Seen it Before: Silly question at this point, right?

Did I Like It: I usually get a bit trigger-shy when writing up a review of any unusually iconic film. What is left to say about some films? This goes doubly for a film like this. 

I could write about the story of the making of the film, arguably more famous than the film itself. In an oblique way, I probably already have. I could write about the psychology on display, but that would probably not cover the 300-word minimum of these reviews. 

There’s probably a book someone (please, not me) somewhere (please, somewhere else) somewhen (please, let’s give it a few years) should write about how its allegedly Donald Trump’s favorite movie, which only really tells me that—in addition to all manner of things—the former president doesn’t understand 

On that note, it’s usually not a bad idea to distrust practically anyone—save for perhaps the recently departed Peter Bogdanovich*—who claims this is their favorite film. Met with a rather infamous degree of commercial hostility on its initial release, its not hard to imagine that far fewer people have actually seen it than claim to have done so**. 

So, about the film. I think Welles would be the first to admit that the story is on the main, fairly melodramatic. Big tycoon careens through his life, pretty much destroying everything he even thinks about touching, and in the end it’s largely because he never wanted to be rich and just wanted to spend a little more time with his sled.

Sad, yes. Earth shattering? Hardly. It helps that the film’s plot is constantly in a state of deconstructing and reconstituting itself, but even that only pushes the film into the unusual-but-not-quite-unique realm. Any film interested in tapping into the literary attributes of novels*** would opt for a similar structure. Kurosawa comes to mind.

The true strengths of the film, which go far beyond anything having to do with the sled lie with the technical craft on display. While the true possibility—and, clearly, the horrible potential—of silent film was ushered by The Birth of a Nation (1915) and for my money, perfected by Modern Times (1936), sound film had wallowed as not much more than turgid recordings of stage productions. See Dracula (1931) and yes, even—with all its strengths—The Great Dictator (1940). This film finally made the argument for the sound picture (barely ten years after the technology was seemingly perfected) by showing what all of the tools of cinema could do if brought to bear. Deep focus, optical printing, miniature, matte paintings, all are harnessed to tell a story not of fantasy, but of human tragedy. Few think of Citizen Kane as a special effects film, but that’s what it is. One of the key scenes where Kane (Welles) fires his old friend Jed Leland (Cotten) is heralded as a great example of deep focus, but that’s not what’s happening. The two characters are shot at different times, and optically forged together in a single frame of film. People complain about our highly technological style of making films where actors don’t ever have to be in the same room, but they’ve been innovating those methods for 80 years! It’s even COVID compliant!

That’s the film’s secret: it is a great film. It demands to be studied and learned about for its cinematic attributes. If you haven’t seen it, I’m not sure how you’ve made it this far on the site, but you should. If you’ve seen it before, it never really took hold with you, and you love cinema, then you need to see it again. And again. And read books about it. Then listen to the commentary tracks on the DVD. Go back to it as often as possible. I know I have.

*During my rewatch of the film this week, I did the regular film, and the commentary track from Roger Ebert, but somehow didn’t take in Bogdanovich’s track. May have to make amends for that sometime soon.

**I was on a podcast once where I had joked about never seeing the film. One of the other people on the panel cried, as if it finally connected us, “Me too!” They were aware of my other work. They had even reacted to my social media posts when I went to a 75th anniversary screening back in 2016. They were (and one imagines, still are) an idiot. I didn’t think that my review of this film would end up as a compare and contrast of my irritation with this person, and a few comments of Trump, but here we are, 2021.

***Has anyone ever tried to novelize Kane? Feels vaguely sacrilegious to even entertain such an idea, but it could be an interesting intellectual exercise. Let’s make that another project I should never again entertain. 

Gremlins (1984)

Director: Joe Dante

Cast: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Dick Miller

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, certainly.

Did I Like It: There are two types of Gremlins fans. The Danteians, and the Columbites. The first group will show up for the series* for the chaos of it all. They might be part Gremlins themselves, if we dared to map their genome. They may like this film, but they love Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). The Columbites view the original film as a grim exercise in suburban horror. They live for the Santa-in-the-chimney monologue. They think this film is better if Mr. and Mrs. Futterman (Miller and Jackie Joseph) died at the end of Mr. Futterman’s plow. They think the second film is silly.

Only one group is right, and you’re not going to need two guesses to find out into which camp I fall.

Sure, the rules governing the balance between Mogwai and Gremlin make no sense, and we’ll have to wait for a whole additional movie before that absurdity is embraced, but it’s not entirely this film’s fault that its sequel completely eats its lunch I can never look upon Kingston Falls and not be taken completely out of the film. It’s Hill Valley, and they’re absolutely shooting on the Universal backlot, but this film actually precedes Back to the Future (1985).

The creature effects here age poorly, but we know they do get better. That’s just six years worth of progress working against this film. If you think that I’m just being needlessly negative about the film, I think Warner Bros. tends to agree with me. Almost every promotional image of Gizmo for this film is actually an image of him from the sequel.

But even if this film is written by Chris Columbus and can’t help but reflect his ethos, Joe Dante can’t help but author some portions of the film. The villains’ collective decision to cease their reign of terror in favor of a late night screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) is peak chaotic energy, and fundamentally makes the film a comedy, regardless of what Mr. Columbus may have typed all those years ago. Then there’s, my favorite scene when Mr. Pelzer (Axton) is calling home from the inventor’s convention. Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet (1956) is there. The Time Machine (from George Pal’s The Time Machine (1969) is there (and then it isn’t). It’s just a little bit of chaos leaking into the film. IS it enough to raise it above the sequel in my estimation? No, but it is an appetizer to the feast that is soon to follow.

*By the way, HBOMax, while we’re on the subject… I was promised an animated Gremlins series in 2021. Joe Dante himself was consulting with it. What happened there? The internet seems to think that it will now come some time in 2022… I guess we’ll see.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Director: Lana Wachowski

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abudl-Mateen II, Jada Pinkett Smith

Have I Seen it Before: Well, there were a few moments there in the early going where I thought I might have…

Did I Like It: I never really liked the first two Matrix sequels, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003). I think the—perhaps over-lauded—philosophical depth of The Matrix (1999) became far too self conscious as the series progressed. The Wachowskis knew what side of their bread ought to be buttered, and so also made sure to stop the navel-gazing at various (occasionally incomprehensible) times to be an action movie again. The whole affair of those sequels only served to be so aggressively uneven that even now, nearly twenty years later, that’s the only real reaction I have to those two films.

So, I can say with some joy that, for the most part, this is the best Matrix film since the original. The first act is an interesting meditation on just what The Matrix has become since the premiere of the original film. It feels different, and even if it attaches itself to that ponderous quality which dragged down previous efforts, it is specifically calibrated to consistently surprise. 

Then it all becomes a very tedious continuation of the plot threads left dangling from Resurrections. A real big drag of one. Am I supposed to have some kind of reaction from a reunion with both General Niobe (Smith) and The Merovingian (Lambert Wilson)? If I am, I don’t think it’s the reaction for which Lana Wachowski likely hoped.

But then the finale, where Trinity (Moss) comes into her own and evolves beyond just being Keanu Reeves’ girlfriend that the film reaches (if not completely accomplishes) something more visceral, and potentially more special.

So, it’s all still suspiciously uneven. Again. That just makes it a very natural part of the larger saga. I’m just glad I can get on board with some of the parts presented, even if they don’t quite fit together as well as they could within the individual film in which they’re presented.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Director: The Wachowskis

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving

Have I Seen it Before: After The Matrix Reloaded (2003), I wondered if I even needed to see another Matrix movie, but sometimes you’re a college freshman and people are going to the theater, and it’s not like you have anything better to do.

Did I Like It: And at that time, I kind of liked, or at least I liked it better than I did the second film. It had a rousing finale. The duality between Neo (Reeves) and Agent Smith (Weaving) fills a few intriguing minutes. The realization that the only way the war between the human resistance and the machines will end is by them being forced to work together is worth chewing on for a few moments. I’ve seen far worse trilogy cappers, based on that list.

It’s almost enough to ignore the fact that I don’t think anyone can adequately explain just what happened at the end of the movie. Did Neo die? Did he become a machine? Did he become Smith? Does the end even matter? I suppose I can live with ambiguity in my movie*, or at any rate I’ll have to accept it because that’s all that we have on the menu. But did we have to put up with extended mech battles that seem like they were taken from a rejected version of Alien 3 (1992)? Or, more importantly, a scene that runs through what feels like its own feature length runtime and takes place entirely in a hermetically sealed subway station?

Maybe I don’t like the film at all, as it turns out? Should I even watch the fourth film?

I probably will… Probably. 

*Does the fourth movie resolve any of that? Still remains to be seen here on these reviews, but if I know my Wachowskis (or even half of them), I’m betting the answer is no.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

Director: The Wachowskis

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. After The Matrix (1999) I was pretty excited about it. When I heard the Wachowskis were producing their sequels back-to-back, a la the same process used for Back to the Future - Part II (1989) and Back to the Future - Part III (1990), I got even more excited. It felt like they were doing things right.

Did I Like It: And that excitement sort of evaporated. Instantly. The balance between mythologyesque/adventurey and the more religiousy/allegoryish elements of the original film moved all the way to the religiousy end of the spectrum. That may not be the right criticism for this movie in particular, but the Matrix sequels as a whole certainly landed there. This one seems more like a relentless chase sequence that expands on the original film’s main feature… And that is making a bunch of story promises that the additional movies can’t or wont’ payoff.

Sure, the freeway segment probably doesn’t get enough credit for being a pretty spectacular action sequence, but the extended rave sequence in the city of Zion is such a protracted exercise in self-indulgence that I honestly wonder if Kevin Smith didn’t direct it. It exists merely to be cool and has so little to do with the scraps of a story filling the remaining two and a half hours, that I’m sort of surprised that J.J. Abrams didn’t take over the production at some point.

I suppose that’s probably enough snark to spread around for one movie, but ultimately this feels like a list of cool things (raves, flying sequences, techno vampires) desperately searching for a story. They didn’t have a story to continue, but they jammed just enough philosophy and pyrotechnics into a package to convince some people.

The Matrix (1999)

Director: The Wachowskis

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, how would somebody get through the 2000s, own a DVD player the entire damn time, and not see this movie? I’m legitimately curious.

Did I Like It: As is usually the case, it’s difficult to write about a movie that changed the face of cinema ever since, and sometimes in good ways. One could write about how the mythology in the film influenced genre filmmaking, but then you’d also have to note how the series never quite capitalized on its singularly Campbellian display of the monomyth here, but that almost seems like a better discussion to have during the reviews of those movies, especially the persistently discouraging sequels*.

I could talk about how the narrative has changed slightly in the twenty-plus years since its initial release. It’s become something of a parable for the trans/non-binary experience, especially after the Wachowskis transitioned. But they deny that such a parable was at least consciously the case, and there are any number of other writers who could pontificate on that point far more eloquently than I could. 

I might go back to the critique I had of the movie back in the day, that Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) might have had a point. The real world of the story is so drab and awful and filled with frequent death, and the Matrix seems… okay enough? Who wouldn’t want to go back into The Matrix? Between the gender parable and just growing up a little bit, that criticism rings hollow.

So, where am I left in this review? It’s a very fine film and if you have, indeed, somehow made it to this point in life without seeing the film, you certainly should. The thing that I was struck by in this viewing was that I had always taken the film as a piece filmed in Chicago, with all of the character of that town. The Wachowskis come from there. And yet, the film wasn’t shot there at all, and instead is a product of Australia, utilizing studio facilities whose biggest contributions to the form up until that point was Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie (1995). I thought I had gotten so sophisticated in my viewing that I could always pick out when a film was shot in a real city or not. This film continues to surprise me. That’s more than a little something.

*At press time, I haven’t yet watched The Matrix Resurrections (2021), but I do get the impression that it isn’t exactly going to bring the whole together all of a sudden.

French Kiss (1995)

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Cast: Meg Ryan, Kevin Kline, Timothy Hutton, Jean Reno

Have I Seen it Before: …yes? Although as I type this I have virtually no memory for the individual moments for the movie. Maybe I saw it in the middle of it on Cable once? Maybe Lora was in the middle of watching it and I came in on the middle of it.

Did I Like It: I’m a little disappointed when writer-directors (like Kasdan) direct a movie they themselves didn’t write. It feels so mercenary. Is it art? Does a film even need to be art? Anybody who complains about the sameness of movies these days needs to understand that nearly any movie in this genre could be cut together in any haphazard manner, and it would all still kind of make sense. Kevin Kline might speak french intermittently, and Meg Ryan might be really into email and call-in radio shows at random times, but we’d all still have pretty good time.

That probably doesn’t have much to do with this film itself. All of the main players are doing their level-headed mid-90s best. Meg Ryan swings between high strung and adorable like she was put on the planet to do it (which, going by box office receipts alone, she was), and Kevin Kline becomes embodies the contradictions of a leading man and quirky character actor which I… just realized now he peaked in Wild Wild West (1999).

And that’s what most romantic comedies. Cookie cutter plots with people commercially proven to be likable. You can get extra points (possibly even on the back end, if you managed to finagle a producer credit, like Meg Ryan in this particular instance) if you can set the movie in some far flung location that has an aura of romance at its center.

It’s done well, but then again its not hard to do that well. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Director: Jon Watts

Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, and (wait for it… spoilers, but its way too late because the human eye has already looked at the end of the line) Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield

Have I Seen it Before: Feels both apt an strangely inappropriate to make a joke about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), so I’ll just leave it at that.

Did I Like It: This movie is already working at a disadvantage. A bunch of Spider-men in one movie has been done, and in an astonishingly brilliant way in the aforementioned Into the Spider-Verse. Tom Holland’s work in the role may have tragically peaked with his first, semi-solo outing, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), which is a nearly-perfect teen comedy, and features Michael Keaton in a central role*. Chasing after what came before is a curse of any trilogy capper, but the question remains does this film persevere against that limitation.

Yes, mostly. It’s not a film that’s going to have a lot of success standing on its own, if for no other reason than someone would need at least two (and as many as eight) prior movies for every moment to land. That’s more of a design flaw in the Marvel movies as a whole, the further the ongoing story of the MCU goes.

The multiverse storyline isn’t as manically unhinged as its animated predecessor. They could have offered brief moments with Nicholas Hammond, or even Shinji Todō. They could have gone a little further and explored live-action Spider-Man that never came to pass. I’m talking James Cameron-directed Leonardo DiCaprio and another check in with Donald Glover. Hell, Keaton could have shown up and made sure we all know he’s still Batman… But all of that would have made the film so over-stuffed as to be inaccessible to anyone but me. And DC will have me covered on that other thing. That being said, even after all of the hype and denials, it was still a nice little moment to get our old Spider-men back, if even for a bit. The movie even manages to accomplish that great thing of later/legacy sequels: improving the entries which previously left a bad taste. I’m looking in your direction, Spider-Man 3 (2007) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). If nothing else, Andrew Garfield is vindicated… even if he’s spent the last several months pointedly lying to all of us.

Now that I think about it, I can only point to one verifiable, undeniable missed call in the film. In the film’s nearly-final scene, Peter’s landlord couldn’t have been played by Elya Baskin (or, Mr. Ditkovitch from the Tobey Maguire films)? The MCU-series put J.K. Simmons in the role of J. Jonah Jameson again. There’s no reason they couldn’t have gone for two.

*If you didn’t think that one would rank as my favorite, then you’re new here.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones

Have I Seen it Before: Never! Which has been a source of some exasperation in my house over the years. I’m not against subtitles in a film, but I just never seem to be in the mood to have to read a film. Likely a symptom of most often being distracted by other devices whenever I take in a film. Now, I’m jonesing for a bit of subtitles, and it is time to ride that wave straight through the labyrinth.

Did I Like It: Yes, and there was never any reason to doubt that was where I was going to land on the film. del Toro doesn’t know how to make a bad film. I’ve always enjoyed whatever trip he wanted to take us down. Those trips are always surprising, and not just visually.

On spec, I thought this film was going to be far weirder, ultimately more labyrinthine. That’s what I get for trusting a title like some kind of chump. There are visual flourishes of great, slightly mad fantasy aplenty, and while some of those images became iconic after the fact, there are still plenty more that will keep the uninitiated on their toes. Much of the CGI ages poorly in the extreme, especially the tiny fairy that first introduces Ofelia (Baquero) to the notion that the world might be far stranger than it initially may have seemed. Is it even worth noting CGI from 15 years ago doesn’t hold up? The moment the render is complete, any computer-animated element starts aging like a new car. That’s a minor complaint, especially when many of the costumes and makeup worn by Doug Jones are truly mesmerizing.

But that’s not even what the film is about! It’s about a scared young girl living in an objectively scary situation, and the monsters are about the only thing that will help her, regardless of whether they’re real or not. 

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Max Von Sydow

Have I Seen it Before: I made a point of watching it when I was in high school, as I was in that phase when people (it might have just been me) aren’t really ready for the more important films of the world, but insist on watching them anyway. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) may have had something to do with it.

Did I Like It: It’s iconic qualities—again, see Bogus Journey—are hard to discount. It’s cinematography is stark and consistently interesting, even if it has a sort of almost-too-clean quality one might find in television productions over the next decade. Although, to be fair, that may be a byproduct of a trend in Blu Rays where the print becomes a bit too remastered for it’s own good. Thank God Bengt Ekerot wasn’t hiding a mustache under all that white make-up—a la Cesar Romero—or this film might have threatened to be fun.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? The film’s so aggressively self-serious that even in moments where there is comedy relief, it’s still a little bit about the weight of God and death. What’s more, the is a lot of road (well, at least 96 minutes of road) to get to the ultimate realization that hemming and hawing about the inevitability of death is a fool’s errand: death will still come and put you in checkmate. It’s such a self-apparent conclusion, that I was getting a little annoyed at the proceedings about three-fourths of the way in when I came to it. When, in its final moments, the film doubles down on my own perceptions, I wasn’t exactly sure why I had—for the second time in twenty years—gone through this exercise.

Maybe I need to give it another twenty years.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Director: Jason Reitman

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

Have I Seen it Before: Well… We’ll get to that.

Did I Like It: As I fully expected, I would be remiss to not spend a little bit of time in this review talking about Ghostbusters (2016). That movie was perfectly fine and more than a little funny. Sure, it looks like it was definitely filmed in front of a green screen for large stretches, instead of any New York I might recognize. I’ve never understood why that film had to be a total reboot. By 2016, Ghostbusters could have been a nationwide franchise, and that could have been the story of one of those franchisees with very little changed*. I saw Answer the Call in theaters twice. I bought it on Blu Ray. I’ve bought ever comic book that featured those characters. We—and by we, I mean America—did Ghostbusters (2016) dirty. It stinks that the movie became a political cause at a time when nearly every political cause only served to nauseate, and there was never a way a Ghostbusters film was going to be any fun when it was an issue we all had to take sides on. We now have twice as many Ghostbusters films as we did just over five years ago, and you all nearly ruined it.

Now, that I have taken up for the maligned, I feel like I can say that I looked forward to this film with more than a moderate amount of anticipation. The notion of a sequel to Ghostbusters II (1989) progressively felt like a shaky idea, especially after the death of Harold Ramis in 2014. But this film largely makes a case for itself in ways with which any other version of a direct continuation would have struggled. Ramis is given his hero’s sendoff, and Egon Spengler is a very real part of the movie. The remaining Ghostbusters appear sparingly, which is about right. I always said I never really wanted a Ghostbusters III, I was always more interested in a trailer, and that’s about the amount—aside from post-credits scenes—we get. The new characters are charming, and I feel sad for the five-year-old me who never got to see the Ghostbusters descend on Oklahoma. The film is fun, I’ll buy it on Blu Ray just as soon as it is available, and will delightfully consume any additional stories featuring the new characters, should they be in another movie or some other kind of ancillary material.

Here’s the problem: the film threatens to completely fall apart when it is desperate to recreate moments from the first film. Not characters and cast, mind you, actual scenes. Making Gozer the villain of the piece again, we see more comedies of error about Keymasters and Gatekeepers, that the whole thing almost, kind of, veers dangerously close to Gus Van Sant’s Psycho (1998) territory. I don’t give two shits about Gozer the Gozerian, Ivo Shandor, Zuul, or the rest. They should have gone with something new. That’s one more thing the last Ghostbusters film got right, and well… also got wrong in a post credits sequence, now that I’m thinking about it.

*That change could have also allowed them to not be essentially retconned out of existence with this entry, which would have made all the correct people furious all over again. But I digress, and that’s why that thought is footnote.

A Knight’s Tale (2001)

Director: Brian Helgeland

Cast: Heath Ledger, Mark Addy, Rufus Sewell, Paul Bettany

Have I Seen it Before: Never, which elicited a fair degree of shock from Lora… I have a vague recollection of it being the centerpiece of a girl’s night that my girlfriend at the time and her friends went to on opening weekend…

Christ, I’m already exhausted writing about this movie.

Did I Like It: The strengths of the movie are fairly easy to quantify. Health Ledger was both a discernible movie star, and a nimble actor in equal measure, and people were beginning to sense that even at the point this film was released. He was probably at the height of his popularity as a heartthrob here, and there are far dumber reasons to make a movie than it has attracted the interest of a handsome man with an Australian accent. 

A modernly wry take on Chaucer certainly is something that would have attracted more than a little top-flight talent, which then fills out the cast with more than a few stellar supporting talents. It’s a fun idea for a movie, if nothing else.

But then there’s the actual movie itself. The soundtrack choices, too, are clearly supposed to be fun. But who are they actually for? I kind of like many of those songs, and I couldn’t help but find them distracting and betraying a deep self-consciousness on the part of the filmmakers. The teeny-boppers of the era would have found the then-classic rock passé (believe me, they certainly did when they were what was playing on my radio at the time), and anyone who might be in the demographic for the film now would find the whole exercise preposterous in the extreme.

Not everybody can be James Dean, ultimately. And even those that can approach the legend-cut-down-too-soon status can’t make a great film every time they step in front of a camera.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Director: John Hughes

Cast: Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I think anyone who’s had cable at any point in their lives has probably pieced together the film a few minutes at a time.

Did I Like It: I think my reaction in the past to this movie is pretty easy to sum up. It’s a minimalist wonder, and I don’t like Molly Ringwald all that much. I never really liked Molly Ringwald, and I could never quite get through Pretty in Pink (1986) because of it.

But that feels like a reaction that’s not entirely equal to the current moment. In the past, the film’s refusal to answer the question of whether or not the characters would feel the same about each other on Monday as they did during their stint in detention was an optimistic choice, as we were allowed to believe that this Saturday had truly changed their adolescent lives. Not only were things back the way they were within the next week, by the end of April, 1984, I imagine they barely remembered anything that happened in March. I guess that is the cynicism that comes with time. It may not be the film’s fault.

Yes, this film proves to be largely less pointedly problematic as, say, Sixteen Candles (1984) seems to delight in being, but with a leering, abusive protagonist like John Bender (Nelson) at its core (and he is the hero of the piece, don’t kid yourself), the movie does seem to ever so slightly wilt as the years continue. That toxicity Bender delights in (and I’d venture to say might be Hughes’ true proxy in the piece) is pontificated on (among a larger reckoning with Hughesenalia) by Molly Ringwald in a recent piece for The New Yorker. I’d recommend you five the piece a read. It certainly moved me from being a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the film to someone who wants to keep its true nature in perspective.

Maybe I need to finally get over my bullshit and watch Pretty in Pink all the way through.

Touch of Evil (1958)

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Orson Welles

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. But I’m relatively certain I haven’t seen it since release of the restored version in 2008, which brought the film closer to the version detailed in Welles’ long-ignored notes made after Universal took the film away from him*.

Did I Like It: There are two things that stick in my mind most about this, one of Welles’ few studio-backed films. First, the conversation in Ed Wood (1994) between Wood (Johnny Depp) and Welles (Vincent D’Onofrio, but voiced by Maurice LaMarche**) where Welles complains that he’s about to make a thriller at Universal, and they’re insisting he cast “Charlton Heston as a Mexican.” Even Wood wouldn’t go that far. Essentially, this movie has all the trappings of a B-movie, and that is by no means meant as a dig. Gleeful, energetic, and as innovative as the form will allow (as directed by one of the few verifiable genius to have ever helmed a picture), it still is probably aggressively mis-cast, and every moment is meant to tantalize. It’s not art; it is pure entertainment.

And just as there’s nothing wrong with a film being a B-picture, there’s also nothing wrong with it being made for the sole purpose of entertainment. That’s because the second thing that always sticks in my mind about the movie is that opening shot. If ever a movie about corruption and explosions could reach for art, it was under this man and it would be this movie.

*If there’s one thing Orson Welles knew how to do, it was get a film taken away from him.

**Incidentally—and you know I’ve given this question at least an inch of thought—this is the best casting of Welles ever.

Addams Family Values (1993)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Cast: Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Joan Cusack

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Now, this is more like it. One doesn’t immediately think of this film in that vaunted pantheon of sequels that far outpaced their predecessor, but this film maintains everything that worked about the first film. The lively performances remain, augmented by the addition of the always-welcome Carol Kane and Joan Cusack. Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia continue to imbue their roles with respectively droll menace and manic energy, that its hard to believe Julia had only a year left to live. The delightfully (if you’ll forgive the expression) kooky production design is here as well and completely undiminished. But this sequel places those parts that worked amidst a story that is far more coherent, and much more adroit in its humor. This is the family Addams perfected. It boggles the mind that—aside from the fact that they are a recognizable property—why they ever tried to go back to this well after this.

Both A and B plots here cover keep things so lively, that I’m not entirely certain which is the A and which is the B. Debbie Jellinsky (Cusack) bringing terror and matrimony in equal measure fuels everything else that happens, but the horror Wednesday (Christina Ricci, who faces the unfortunate reality of making her most iconic impact on cinema before reaching the age of 18) faces at the grim Camp Chippewa could have easily maintained a feature-length runtime on its own merits. 

All this typing about the Addams Family today, and all I want to do is play the pinball machine. I keep thinking I’m above cross-corporate synergy, but tie-ins from the 90s still have the ability to draw my attention. I find it blindingly frustrating I don’t already have that table loaded on to my iPad.