Minority Report (2002)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: When Spielberg dies, this won’t be even in the top ten films mentioned as his most memorable. In any retrospective of the Philip K. Dick adaptations, this film probably won’t be one of the first ones mentioned. Considering Tom Cruise will likely continue reaching for cinematic excellence after he has grown beyond the use of his physical body to await Xenu’s return, there’s a very real possibility this won’t even rank in the top thousand memorably Cruise roles*.

And, for the life of me, I can’t quite figure out why any of those things are true.

It is far and beyond the best adaptation of Dick’s work ever produced, and yes, I count Blade Runner (1982) in that equation (although I don’t care for it, which I understand already renders me suspect) and Total Recall (1990) (which I ultimately kind of like). It takes a kernel of an idea—which is all Dick was ever really good for—and flushes it out into an actual story that sticks with you.

There’s not a genre which Spielberg hasn’t conquered, so it’s almost a tragedy that he hasn’t done more hard-boiled detective stories. He didn’t even need to include any of the Dick-ish trappings present here.

Cruise may still be working through his post-Mission: Impossible II (2000) malaise, but he’s approaching his later day renaissance with the vigor even his detractors must grant him.

*As I type that, I feel like I’m being unfair to Scientology. I might have saved this revelation for my eventual review of Top Gun: Maverick (2022), but I’m struggling to think of any religion not built on a foundation of abuse. Only one religion has its adherents speaking out against the horrors of motion blurring on HD TV sets. So, even though it might not bring me the kind of power of a Cruise or the horrors of a Kirstie Alley, I may need to keep a more open mind.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, Harold Perrineau, John Leguizamo

Have I Seen it Before: I can say with certainty that couple with being alive and conscious in the 1990s, and having HBO for most of that time, I had plenty of opportunities to see the movie. Ultimately, owing probably due to a measure of unavoidable—but able to be shed—adolescent chauvinism, I don’t think I got much of anywhere past the scene where Romeo (DiCaprio) first lays eyes on Juliet (Danes).

Did I Like It: A Shakespeare adaptation is about the easiest thing not to screw up, sort of like the dramatic equivalent of boxed Mac & Cheese in the food world. As such, it can be the purview of the profoundly lazy. Dress everyone up in period-specific attire, don’t futz with the script too much (it’s got to help that Shakespeare can’t bring a case to arbitration with the WGA), and you even get bonus credit if you just copy and paste the full text and make us sit there for four hours.

But really, you should get even more credit for fitting the expansive scope of any one of his plays into a manageable running time.

This would count then, wouldn’t it?

Real credit, though, should be given when a Shakespearean adaptation reaches for the Orson Welles standard and tries to make that text work in a context that feels closer to the audience for which it is intended. One could have just put DiCaprio (who, let’s face it, has more interesting work ahead of him after he could sell an army’s worth of tickets with just his face alone) in the role and called it a day. Actually giving a MTV-obsessed generation some identification with the material, all the way to the point where the various Montagues and Capulets might have been equally at home in a season of The Real World as in Verona (or Verona Beach), would have made Welles—and quite possibly the bard himself—proud.

This doesn’t even begin to cover the delightful, anarchic absurdism at the core of any Luhrmann work, does it?

Batman: Year One (2011)

Director: Sam Liu, Lauren Montgomery

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Ben McKenzie, Eliza Dushku, Jon Polito

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah… I mean, I know that I’ve read the source material a couple of times, and I’m, like, 75% sure I watched the movie at some point.

Did I Like It: This really should have worked. Other animated DC films have attempted the unenviable task of translating—that should probably read jamming—stories of epic scope into runtimes which can only be feebly called a feature-length runtime. Here, a four issue miniseries seems apt for the adaptation. One could conceivably read the entirety of the series in the time it would take to watch a movie.

And yet, this one doesn’t work for me. Maybe I’m just fundamentally underwhelmed by the level of animation available for a direct-to-DVD release. Maybe I blanche at the idea of fully going along with anything Frank Miller does anymore, after he wrapped himself up in fascism and rationalizing it away as libertarianism, and the book itself wouldn’t hit the same way any more (to say nothing of revisiting The Dark Knight Returns or any other Miller-Bat-book). Miller might have chilled out a bit again in recent years. The jury is still out on that assessment, but in any event, damage to his reputation has already been done.

No, the real flaw is the casting. McKenzie never feels like Batman, which is probably right on the money as the first line of his obituary is likely going to be his portrayal of Jim Gordon in Gotham*. Miscasting the central role is bad enough, but even the casting decisions which are right on the money feel like they are poorly served. Both Cranston as Gordon to Dushku as Selina Kyle could have easily played their roles in a live action production, but instead feel like they are phoning in their performances. I honestly don’t blame them. The only performer who manages to pull off anything resembling magic is Polito in the relatively small role Commissioner Loeb. While watching, I would have sworn Ed Asner was actually playing the role, much to the late Polito’s credit.

*Which, even as of this typing is a show for which I have tried desperately, but continued failing, to amass any affinity.

Defending Your Life (1991)

Director: Albert Brooks

Cast: Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Lee Grant

Have I Seen it Before: Yep, but it’s been so many years and I watched it a time when I was watching everything I get my hands on that the memory of it has likely faded somewhat.

Did I Like It: There’s not a lot discussion I’ve seen as to just how much this film influenced the sublime experience that became Michael Schur’s The Good Place, but the relationship between ancestor and descendant is certainly there, and I doubt that there is higher praise I can give to either endeavor than that.

Whereas that later work widened the lens to present as perfect a speculative comedic novel in visual form as we’re likely to ever get, this film takes a particular focus on the subject matter and manages to make a Woody Allen-esque* out of the raw material. That would be enough to highly recommend the film, but there’s something so deeply affecting about—of all things—the film’s underlying theology.

Utilitarian good and bad are concepts so difficult to define—to say nothing of enforce—that they threatened to unravel all of existence in The Good Place. In Defending Your Life, intentions behind actions are the governing principle. Was the good or bad done on Earth coming out of fear or love? What’s more, there is no damnation for a botched attempt on the first go around. You’ll move on when you’re ready, or you might not, but that would only come with an insistence to not improve. This may be the only grander design for the nature of the universe that can lay claim to any degree of benevolence and still account for the deeply heinous among us dumb 3-percenters.

I may be a bit of a Brooks-ist at my core.

*Which is the only way I can take in his particular brand of comedy these days without it adding a serious black mark to my own eventual assessment in Judgment City.

District 9 (2009)

Director: Neil Blomkamp

Cast: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Vanessa Haywood

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. It’s been a while, probably since it was first released.

Did I Like It: Reactions to some movies will be forever altered by these first few years of the 2020s. Even in its time, this was a great throwback to the sci-fi films of previous decades, which could eschew entirely becoming an action movie by default and still having some kind of intriguing notion at its core. That quaintness has only become more pronounced in the decade-plus since its initial release.

But really, I can’t help but think as I watch this now that if Wikus (Copley) had just bothered to wear his mask (at the risk of appearing, as he so helpfully puts, like a pansy), then none of this would have ever happened.

And that’s where the movie begins to unravel, and indeed, Blomkamp’s entire output takes on a failure-to-launch quality about it. The film is desperately trying to tell two different stories, that of the Prawn’s escape attempt from Earth and Wikus’ transformation from human to alien. The former would have happened without the latter, and the latter has not so much as a conclusion as a stopping point. It might be a wrenching tragedy, but there’s always the hope that the return of Christopher (Cope) might offer him deliverance, or that he may be better off as a Prawn than he was as a human.

This struggle with a dual nature is present throughout the film. Is it a straightforward aliens-on-earth story, or an attempt to forge the found footage/mockumentary genre together where others might have blanched at their fusion? The film honestly seems unsure of which one it wants to be at any given moment. I’m tempted to give the film credit, and say that this disjointed quality thematically echoes its protagonist.

But that might be giving Blomkamp credit for more than he’s actually striving.

Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)

Director: Various

Cast: Kevin Conroy, Crystal Scales, Alanna Ubach, Core Padnos

Have I Seen it Before: In the lead up to The Dark Knight (2008), this was marketed as the bridge between that film and Batman Begins (2005), so there wasn’t much of a chance I was going to miss it immediately after release.

Did I Like It: I’ve had a generally dim view of the DC animated movies released over the years. The age of things like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) was eventually shuffled off in exchange for adaptations of some of the most epic stories featuring the DC stable of characters that functioned no more than a synopsis of those larger, better stories.

This one might have been the starting gun for the modern slate of those movies, but it fares far better than its descendants. It helps that it isn’t trying to take a year worth of comics and jam it into a 70 minute runtime. It’s style—brought to life by prominent anime studios and filmmakers—has style to spare. That aspect might have recommended the material for a series than a feature. Indeed, the first segment “Have I Got a Story for You” is a fairly inventive remake of the The New Batman Adventures episode “Legends of the Dark Knight,” which itself was based on a comics story from the 70s, “The Batman Nobody Knows!”

The cast is generally good. One can’t go wrong with putting Kevin Conroy as the voice behind the Caped Crusader, and none of the rest of the cast distracts from the proceedings, which can be a challenge for these films. It helps that—for pointedly understandable reasons—none of the presented shorts feature the Joker. That’s usually where some of these can fly apart if they aren’t inviting Mark Hamill along for the ride.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Director: Jonathan Demme

Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine

Have I Seen it Before: One doesn’t start a Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins) podcasts without coming across this one at some point in their past.

Did I Like It: Can a review of this film over thirty years after its release add anything new to the discourse about it? Probably not, aside from the need to say that whatever you remember about the film, it’s better than that memory feebly maintains.

It’s such a singular cinematic experience that our episode of Friendibals did kinda, sorta descend into an effuse-fest.

And I’m actually okay with that! The movie is that good, and stands far and ahead above any other attempt to bring the character to life, with the exception of—against all odds—the tv series Hannibal.

But after that bloom of rediscovering the film withers even slightly (it’s been several days since I screened the movie and recorded the episode), are their complaints that I can reach for?

A reflexive criticism I could see is that it, at the most basic level, implies some very not-nice things about transgender people. The film doesn’t do nearly enough (or at least as much as Thomas Harris’ novel) to make explicit that Jame Gumb’s (Levine) is a monster who thinks he is a transgender, not that trans people are akin to monsters.

That all might be forgiven, and a degree of nuance is on display here, if only the film weren’t so good that it isn’t just an extremely good way to spend two hours, but that it singlehandedly re-defined the serial killer genre through the present. We could (and I, inevitably, will) talk about the glut of Hannibal Lecter sequels and prequels we got in result to the film’s ubiquity*, but nearly every serial killer movie in the last thirty years. Just look at Instinct (1999), a movie I was only 50% certain I was remembering correctly before looking it up. Any film featuring crime of any sort absorbed the sounds, but not the language of this film. Just look at Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). There’s a mean-spirited, at best, but ultimately hatefully violent myopic discourse regarding the trans community now, and while it would be exceptionally reductive to blame that all on this film, every stunted attempt by filmmakers to give their monsters more dimension for three decades might very well have done so.

If only the film weren’t so good.

*Another thing I forgot during the podcast: In the book and in Ted Tally’s screenplay, the iconic muzzle placed on Lecter was written as a hockey mask. One could imagine why that didn’t survive to the final cut.

Dances with Wolves (1990)

Director: Kevin Costner

Cast: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney Grant

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I’m not entirely sure why, but a nearly four hour run time has probably scared me off for over thirty years. Is it even possible to get a hold of the theatrical cut—the one that everyone loved so damned much—on disc?

Did I Like It: It’s rare that a four hour movie becomes is best self in the final quarter of the runtime. All of the fat in this special edition cut is up front. Sure, a little bit of Dunbar’s (Costner, pulling Welles-ian triple duties as Star, Director, and Producer) life before coming to the frontier can buttress not just character development but story logic, but the full hour we spend seeing him encounter death in the Civil War, becoming an improbable war hero, requesting to escape the world around him in favor of the frontier, finding that frontier does not reflect his prejudices, and then embracing his isolation could have been—and presumably, were—handled with much more brevity in another version of the film.

Characters like Major Fambrough (Maury Chaykin) and Timmons (Robert Pastorelli) might even be able to prop up an entire (probably less affecting) film in their own right. Here, they are merely added color to fuel a plot that should have already been underway by the time they are dispatched. By the end of the film, I’m feeling a great deal of affection and sadness for the Sioux as depicted here, and have all but forgotten the early parts of the film which dragged. In fact, the only thought I give the first hour is wondering how in the hell Dunbar survived a quickly infecting wound at the time that he did.

All of this is symptomatic of a problem Costner would display to greater detriment later in his career. As an actor, he has a fine presence. Sure, he would be miscast in things like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and astonishingly well-case (if underserved by the writing) in Man of Steel (2013), but he is certainly a movie star for the ages. As a behind-the-scenes force he was far too over validated far too early in is attempts, that he lost all sense of what is (or ought) to be part of the film at hand, and what isn’t. Thus, we’re eventually left with things like Waterworld (1995) and The Postman (1997). Art thrives in restriction, so there was very little hope that an expanded cut of Dances with Wolves would somehow improve upon what might have rationalized such an exercise in the first place.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Director: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis

Have I Seen it Before: No…

Did I Like It: Holy shit.

There was always a chance that I would go into the film overhyped. There was always a chance that, along with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), and the one-day-maybe-soon release of The Flash, the market might be a bit too flooded with multiverse films in a market that where audience’s attention spans are dwindling by the minute. There was always a chance that Jackie Chan (the fool) would have taken the offer, or Ke Huy Quan (who’s been great his whole damn life; he could have been great for years!)had stayed retired from acting.

Thankfully, that is not our universe.

It’s almost laughable how superior this film is to the Strange sequel (a film I ultimately kind of liked). There have been plenty of instances in parallel development in big Hollywood films experiencing nearly concurrent releases, but I struggle to find two films of such sharply levels of quality. Sure, Deep Impact (1998) and Armageddon (1998) have different priorities as films, but it isn’t like one of those movies beat the other one up and stole their lunch money.

I hate to contribute further to the possibility of overhyping, but if this film isn’t the best movie of the year, then 2022 will prove to be the greatest year for movies in some time. It was impossible not to love Michelle Yeoh before this, but while we all may have thought we appreciated her enough in years past, we haven’t been doing nearly enough. This doesn’t even begin to cover the absolute wonder that is the ego-less commitment to the moment of latter-day Jamie Lee Curtis.

Even if the film wasn’t one of the most chaotic, imaginative things to have ever been forged, it’s Herculean task of turning nihilism into a joyful, beautiful thing is enough to make it astonishing. Only a film with one foot in several different realities can be 100% clever plot and 100% heart at the same time.

By the time you’ve read this, Everything Everywhere All at Once will be available via VOD. You have no excuse. You should not live in a universe where you haven’t seen this film.

Firestarter (2022)

Director: Keith Thomas

Cast: Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Michael Greyeyes, Gloria Reuben

Have I Seen it Before: Well, we’ll see, but it has been only a hot minute (see what I did there?) since I saw the original 1984 film, so we’ll see what’s changed up.

Did I Like It: Nope!

You probably want more if you’ve come this far. This remake does manage to improve on a number of deep flaws from the original film. Armstrong and Efron are giving more easily plausible (I’m not going to go as far as to say believable) performance, easily accomplishing the tasks of both behaving as if they were father and daughter, and had ever spoken as humans in the first place.

The special effects are sturdy, if not overwhelming, which is certainly more than can be said for the original, although one has to admit that the only objective difference between the effects here and in the original film is that these effects are only new, and not inarguably better.

The final act is not punctuated with a new mission for Charlie (Armstrong) to expose the evil misdeeds of the people that doomed her parents and damned her out of anything resembling a normal childhood. In the original, the post-truth world we live in can’t help but lead one to wonder how Charlie might expose the truth. Here, it is dutifully ignored.

That will easily be the last nice thing I have to say about the film, and especially the last act. Rainbird and Charlie walk off together in the night, and I can’t even reach into the depths of head canon to make that choice work. Poor Kurtwood Smith very nearly gets the Mark-Hamill-in-The-Force-Awakens deal and may not quantifiably be in the film. Every character—including Charlie—feels like they are barely in the film.

Lora posed the question of whether or not King’s work just doesn’t translate to film well. I think with an IT - Chapter One (2017) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) that seems an unfair generalization.

But I’m reasonably certain that this King story may eschew any sort of adaptation.

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

Director: Don Coscarelli

Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis, Ella Joyce, Bob Ivy

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Here’s the thing: Take Elvis (Campbell, in a dual role as the pauper who took the place of the king, Sebastian Haff) and JFK (Davis) out of the equation, and a story about two guys at the end of their rope taking on a mummy in the most depressing nursing home ever would have worked just fine.

Well, maybe the mummy thing wouldn’t work so hot on it’s on. Ho-Tep (Ivy) is probably a below average film monster, all things considered. There’s nothing new about our mummy that wasn’t already charted by Boris Karloff. My memory is fuzzy, but I think the Scarabs and their works didn’t quite live up to any degree of believability upon the film’s release.

These are minor complaints which could be leveled at any b-horror film of a similar budget. One must manage expectations. So, what keeps bringing me back to the film? The high-concept sell of Elvis and JFK versus a mummy definitely gets the thing greenlit, but if every poster was immediately indicative of how good a movie was, The Shining (1980) would be the worst movie of all time, and most other horror movies would yearly duke it out for Best Picture. Campbell is always charming (even when he’s aiming for unlikeable curmudgeon), and seeing Davis embrace the absurdity of his role is a good start. The music score—from Bryan Tyler—sticks in your head, which is impressive enough in an era now where nearly every score—even from composers previously legendary—is adequate noise. Tyler deserves every big job he’s gotten since.

Those help elevate the film, but the real, secret strength is that the film (almost despite itself) is at its core a redemption story. Without Elvis coming to grips with all of the mistakes—both improbable and banal—he has made, the film would still be relegated to the static of other B-movies.

The X-Files (1998)

Director: Rob Bowman

Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Martin Landau, Blythe Danner

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I think we’d struggle to find a movie in the summer of ‘98 that I didn’t see. The movie also coincided with the briefest of moments where I was super into the TV show while it was still airing.

Did I Like It: And my memory was that being completely immersed in the (ultimately filled with dead ends) mythology of the show was about the only way that this film would make any degree of sense. But after watching it again after all of these years, I’m struck by just how much the film does work on its own merits. Maybe I’m even more steeped in the lore of the show during this viewing, and all the little nods connect more than they did in the past. Perhaps this is a byproduct of living in an era where the predominant cinematic genre is the Marvel movie and their imitators.

I think its more likely that at its core, the film strives to be like Three Days of the Condor (1975) or The Parallax View (1974). The same might be said (and in fact, has probably been said with an almost nauseating frequency) about Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)>, but here the need to pay off the churning miasma of mythology is largely thrown away in favor of the chase.

Now, the more, I think about it, the reality is that since Chris Carter had no real sense with where he was going with his larger story, this is free to be a medium-impact late-90s thriller, which is precisely what the film needed to be. The Truth (or, at least, the full truth) was never out there, as it turned out, but the more self-contained an X-File is, the more enjoyable it is, and this film contains itself largely despite what one might expect.

Both of my seemingly conflicting thoughts are somehow true. See? Now I’m all turned around. Thanks, Chris Carter.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Rachel McAdams, Xochitl Gomez

Have I Seen it Before: Feels almost normal to be catching a film on opening weekend.

Did I Like It: The first Doctor Strange (2016) had enough, er, strangeness going for it that it elevated a character for which I had absolutely no feeling previously and made him one of my favorite Marvel characters (I’m still marching my way through the Masterworks volumes). When the title for this, his second solo-film* was announced, I thought it just might be one of the wildest titles ever dreamt up by anyone. When the imminently competent Scott Derrickson stepped aside from directing duties on the sequel, owing to the ubiquitous destructor that is “creative differences**”, only to be replaced by Sam Raimi, it seemed like this one was well on its way to being one of the all time greats in all the MCU.

And… it’s fine. It is (in frustrating fits and starts) more interested in table setting than being as weird as it could be. We get how the X-Men and the Fantastic Four might join the MCU after Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, but that act isn’t really committed to. It’s not like we’re getting a post-credits scene of Avengers Tower being converted into the Baxter Building. As far as table-setting films in the MCU go, it probably fairs better than Iron Man 2 (2010) or Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), but the film is doomed to be less than the sum of its parts.

It rises above those other films, likely due to Raimi’s sure hand and singular style. There’s a reasonable argument to be made that this can probably double as the least satisfying Evil Dead film as well, so even Raimi isn’t really showing up to play, although I don’t get the feeling throughout that the man really wanted to get fired. I’m looking in your direction, Spider-Man 3 (2007).

*Has there been a character who has guest-starred in more Marvel movies? To my memory, I can’t come up with one.

** How many “could have beens” are there in the MCU? I’d attempt to list them, but after dwelling on just how great Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man (2015) might have been, I’d probably just get depressed and stop right there.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Director: Edgar Wright

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terrence Stamp

Have I Seen it Before: Never, but man, how I’ve wanted to. The film had completely flown under my radar until seeing a trailer for it tied to No Time To Die (2021). The marketing was spot on. Beside both films sharing an essential Britishness, there are plenty of subtle Bond nods in the film, including setting the film precisely in time with a massive Thunderball (1965) poster greeting us in the past, and characters reflexively ordering Vespers.

Did I Like It: In my review of The Night House (2021), I remarked that it was possible that the fusion of ghost stories and Hitchcockian thrillers was intuitively obvious, but ultimately disappointing.

I spoke too soon. Wright has yet to make a bad movie, and this is a perfect fusion of style and suspense. That alone would merely meet expectations, but the man who has made his bones making confections of almost pure homage in the TV series Spaced and his collaborations with Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World’s End (2013)) has moved on from purely making a reference to something else, but instead charting his own course.

This type of film isn’t going to be at all accepted by the audience of the visual world is not completely immaculate (and other examples of the genre can at least lay claim to that much), but here the true legacy of Hitchcock is maintained and the plot is completely immaculate. I may have had a sense that Ms. Collins (Diana Rigg, who died shortly after production and ended her stellar career on a high note) knew more about what was happening to Ellie (McKenzie, also perfectly cast) and so the big twist may not have hit as hard as it had been intended, but the trip trough it was so delightful, I couldn’t possibly care. After all, who younger than the age of 60 saw Psycho (1960) for the first time and didn’t know what was coming in the fruit cellar?

Wright here has pulled over a supreme trick, and one for which I cannot readily award another filmmaker. He has grown up beyond the types of films which made him famous (films which I enjoyed immensely) and leaves me in equal measures not mourning the fact that he might not make those types of films ever again, and supremely excited for what he might have up his sleeve next.

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen

Have I Ever Seen It Before: Never, which seems like preposterous blind spot, I know.

Did I like it: Is there any director other than Ridley Scott who has such a tonnage of absolute classics under his belt (and a few stinkers; let’s not completely lose our heads), and have those classics reside in such complete different genres? Spielberg may be as prolific, but he generally has his Amblin period, and his Oscar-bait period, and nearly every one of his films can fit into those large categories. Kubrick is certainly varied, but between a more high brow sensibility and a compulsive need to do scores of takes, there are only a handful of films in the canon. It’s Ridley Scott and only Ridley Scott for this particular category.

And so it is with this film, that an unlikely source creates an unabashedly feminist film. If the film came to the surface now, it would be beset by complaints over over-wokeness, and the only comfort I get from that realization is that it was also beset by those bad faith arguments, so maybe all lousy criticism (including, sometimes, the ones that appear on this site) will eventually evaporate into the ether, and the really good stuff will remain. Every man in this movie lands on some end of the terrible spectrum, and if that bothers you, well, 1991 called and wants its bullshit back.

And that’s what this is, the writing is top notch, often funny, and never boring. Sarandon and Davis are never better, bringing the simmering strength and still ingrained weakness in equal measure. There’s an absolute reason it is a classic.

Which brings us to the ending. No conversation about this movie would be complete without touching upon the final moments, as those are the ones that have become the most iconic over the years. It may be my least favorite thing about the film. The action of driving the car off the cliff feels tacked on somehow. The action of going out in a blaze of glory is fine, and absolutely flows from the film that precedes it. Perhaps the production ran out of money to have they turn around and make the various cops pay for their chase. Maybe I’m just bothered by how the polaroid of them from the beginning managed to stay just so on the backseat through that whole action sequence, only to fly off at the moment of maximum pathos. Maybe I don’t like the fact that my idiot brain thinks for a moment they might have made it.

It’s a minor complaint.

The Night House (2021)

Director: David Bruckner

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Evan Jonigkeit, Stacy Martin

Content Warning: Suicide

Have I Ever Seen It Before: Never. Had it not been for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, it would have completely missed my radar.

Did I Like It: Pieces of the film work well. Rebecca Hall is always an interesting performer, and aside from a few effects in the early goings, the cinematography and art direction are pristine throughout.

Aside from that, though, it feels like the film will disappear from my memory at or near the instant I finish this review and/or the Beyond Cabin episode posts. At its core, I think it makes many of the same mistakes made by Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath (2000)—another  movie that has long since inspired echoes of, “Wait, that was a movie?” Both films are trying to embrace a modern Hitchcockian sensibility, but the trappings of a Hitchcock yarn are apparently not enough for the modern audience, so it also has to be a ghost story.

Maybe this fusion can be done well, but the plot machinations that make Hitchcock Hitchcock have to be as immaculate as the cinematography and art direction. Here there are just one-too-many-red herrings (was her (Hall’s) friend (Goldberg) also having an affair with the husband (Jonigkeit); what did the neighbor know?) that it feels like a lot of wasted screentime dwelling on them.

These could be forgiven alone, but the movie also spends a significant amount of time—and doing so with some skill—communicating Beth’s intelligence to us. The sequence where she does a little bit of magic with MacOS and begins to unfurl her husband’s secrets was good in its simplicity, but the problem remains: If Beth is truly this bright, how did she not piece together that something was not quite right while Owen was still alive? I believe it was Siskel and/or Ebert who would complained at no end about a movie that arbitrarily needed its characters to be stupid to contain the story at hand. I can only imagine (and could probably go look it up, but again, this movie is already slipping from my memory) what they might have said about a movie that suddenly needs a character to be smart for the first time in fifteen years, for fear of the plot collapsing in on itself.

One more note before we leave: Some streaming services will offer some manner of content or trigger warnings, and it should really be standard across platforms. I’m not bothered by depictions of suicide, but it can cause real harm.

Firestarter (1984)

Director: Mark L. Lester

Cast: David Keith*, Drew Barrymore, Freddie Jones, Heather Locklear

Have I Seen It Before: Never, although it feels like one of those movies I should have taken in by cable osmosis over the years.

Did I Like It: Even the most cursory glances at the history of this movie shows one that there is an alternate universe where The Thing (1982) was an absolute monster hit (which would have been a good thing, heh) and John Carpenter would have gone on to direct this movie.

And I’m not certain that would have improved things. Not to knock Carpenter (hallowed be his name) at the peak of his powers, but taking the one-two punch of a King story that doesn’t feel as if has a whole lot to it* and Dino De Laurentiis continuing a nearly unbroken trend of turning even potentially good movies into something less than they might otherwise have been. That statement will at least be given a somewhat thorough test in a couple of weeks when the remake comes to the surface. At least that one, I’m pleased to report, will have a John Carpenter score, so that’s at least something it will have going for it. Even a Tangerine Dream score is a pale substitute, and they do certainly feel like they’re going for something in that era of Carpenter’s musical output.

Here, though, ever performance is so pointedly self-conscious—with the possible exception of Martin Sheen who I would watch do anything—that I’m never afforded a moment of peace to even dream of suspending my disbelief. This certain goes for Barrymore, who a more talented director could have gotten a more engaging performance out of, but also goes for Keith, who never believes a moment of what’s happening around him (I don’t blame him), but also goes doubly for George C. Scott, who should have known better, if even only as a matter of taste.

* Not Keith David, for anyone who was getting inordinately excited.

* Others have told me it is actually one of his best. I believe them, and yet am not in a hurry to go track it down. (He types, in the very same instant that he stops the review to go look into a Kindle copy, and even then, deciding not go through with it.)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Tetsurō Tamba

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: And yet, beyond <Dr. No (1962)>, <From Russia with Love (1963)>, and <Goldfinger (1964)>, I make a suspicious habit of not keeping Connery’s other three (official, and unofficial, for that matter) outings as Bond on regular rotation.

People might complain about Connery’s performance in the role, as he felt like he was at the end of his time in the role (he skipped out on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)), but I don’t see it. There’s something so singular about Connery in the role that even while Daniel Craig unassailably did more with the role than anyone else, I still picture Connery (even with his series of weird hairpieces) in the role before anyone else.

The plot is fine—it’s no sin for a Bond film to feel just a wee bit interminable, I love them, but the vast majority of they are a slog in the middle—and there’s scarcely better casting for a Bond villain in general (and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, specifically) than Donald Pleasance. It’s an exotic travelogue, the theme song (from Nancy Sinatra) was an absolute banger, even before Mad Men made it the stinger of their greatest season.

Is there anything else one needs from a Bond film? I’m racking my brain as I type this to quantify why this is one of the also-ran Bond films. It shouldn’t be. It’s just weird enough (and, for that matter, just early enough in the saga) that it doesn’t fall into the occasional problem Bond films have where some entries so, desperately want to be Goldfinger (1964) in every measurable way.

I guess that means You Only Live Twice is actually one of the all-time greats… That’s the thing I’m realizing as I watch some of these for these reviews: some of the entries I have spent this whole time discounting have been my favorite this whole time.

Red Dragon (2002)

Director: Brett Ratner

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Kietel

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. For some reason I can’t remember if I saw this or Manhunter (1986) first, but I think it might have been this one, as I saw it in the theater during my halcyon days as a high school senior, and I’m almost certain I didn’t see Manhunter until college. But who can remember anymore? My memory palace is for shit, if you’ll forgive my rudeness.

Did I Like It: No discussion of this film—as the eventual episode of Friendibals will attest—can be complete without dwelling on one topic before any others. No, it isn’t the inevitable comparisons of William Petersen vs. Edward Norton (they’re both fine; Petersen is more demonstrably mad around the edges), Ralph Fiennes vs. Tom Noonan (Fiennes feels more developed, but that might owe more to the script than anything else), Mann vs. Ratner (Mann is always stylish to the fault, so much so to the point that his films feel dated minutes after they’re released, while I don’t think Ratner has had an artistic ambition greater than calling “action” and “cut” when he’s supposed to), and ultimately Cox vs. Hopkins (the pictures for Hopkins’ obituary will inevitably include Lecter, although he feels bored and overly hammy here, whereas Cox relaxes into his evil).

While an analysis of all of these topics will give a pretty good picture of where this film lies not only against its previous adaptation, but among the rest of the Lecter series and serial killer films as a whole, the one topic that must, without a doubt be discussed is Mrs. Doubtfire (1993).  Yes, that one. The one with Pierce Brosnan*.

While going through the Leeds home, Graham (Norton) looks through a drawer of VHS tapes, before watching their home movies and staring at, but never really seeing the way he will catch the Tooth Fairy (Fiennes). Among the tapes area copy of Jaws (1975), which makes sense as it is also a Universal Release, the artwork features nothing that might run afoul of likeness rights, and most importantly, clearly something that would be available on home video “several years” after Graham runs afoul of Lecter in the film’s prologue.

But why the hell is Mrs. Doubtfire there? Are we saying this film takes place in (at the earliest) 1994? What does this say about when The Silence of the Lambs (1991) or, for that mater Hannibal (2001) take place?

I may have missed the point of the whole thing, but if I can zero in on that for most of the film’s runtime—in a series that’s main stock and trade is characters noticing things and making connection which not everyone else might—then maybe it’s the film’s—and really, Ratner’s—fault for not getting Doubtfire out of the Leeds’ house. I submit to you that, for all his journeymen level work and the cast’s impressive ability to elevate the proceedings, Brett Ratner missed the point, not I.

*Am I remembering that right? Was Pierce Brosnan in Mrs. Doubtfire. I’m almost sure he was, and I kind of don’t want to go look it up to find out.

Scream (2022)

Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Cast: Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Where Scream 4 (2011) seemed like it didn’t have enough targets and not enough time had passed since the original films to have much of anything to say about how horror and movies have changed in the ensuing years, there are an army of legacy sequels to fuel this film’s runtime, to say nothing of an ongoing, tense meditation between the more confectionary pleasures of slasher films and the rise of so-called elevated horror. 

At the beginning of this, the fifth film in the Scream series, the idea of continuing the series felt like a bit of a chore for this viewer. Indeed, had I not been on the upswing of my Beyond the Cabin in the Woods renaissance, I probably would have been content to miss this one. I’m glad I didn’t. The mystery of just who is the killer is played exceedingly well, to the point where I dismissed my initial, correct instincts. “It can’t be the boyfriend! They already did that,” I told myself, stupidly. Every ounce of the movie is designed to subvert expectations, right from the moment that the first idiot who decides to pick up a landline call in the 2020s actually makes it to the end of the picture.

Additionally, I have ultimately given up the ghost(face) on seeing Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell, winning this year’s “Mark Hamill in Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) award for barely showing up in the a legacy sequel, despite being integral to the film’s advertising) be the killer in one of these movies. It’s never going to happen, and now I can make my peace with the fact that it will never happen. I’m glad that there can be a horror movie legacy character who has mastered the ability of not letting their trauma dominate them. It’s just another subversion of expectation from a franchise built, at its best, on the idea.