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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
A disaster. Made for TV level
This is a case study in why the first one was a classic and why this one is not. There was satiric caricature there and yet everyone felt like a real person, somehow even Beetlejuice himself. That Danny Elfman music was so explosively great that when it starts up again here it is surreal to remember films once had that level of music.
By comparison, the sequel fails on every level the original succeeded. This is shot and scripted like a really mediocre TV show. Everything falls flat, it has nowhere to go, and every time it does achieve a story, it rushes through every plot beat at breakneck speed. The movie seems annoyed with itself, like, they just wanted the characters to show up on screen again and leave it at that.
This is also maybe one of the worst movie villains I've ever seen. She is like a bad riff on Eva Green in Dark Shadows, and even that was dumb.
The main problem with this film is that it has no idea what to do with Lydia. I thought at some point, it's not Lydia, it just seems like Winona making crazy eyes. This is the problem because she is the central character of the movie, and she is lost on screen. It is utilizing a very sitcom trope of her neuroticism. Yet it still devolves to everyone irrationally wanting to marry her. But Juice's motives are not interesting or clever. He just sees Lydia in the newspaper and goes, this time I will marry her for real. As an agent of chaos, neither good nor bad, what it is missing is that he is so unpredictable that he is sometimes scary. He does not even function as a trickster agent in his own sequel, his actions are constantly unfocused, scattered, and random.
Lydia in '87 was generation defining. It was a total mistake to have Ortega riffing on that, because she is painfully dry. Ideas and moments that Lydia could evoke, shots of her reacting to things are like little works of art. The green light on her face through the door. Her guessing Beetlejuice's name. She wasn't a sarcastic goth queen, as in that was not a character she wore, she felt like a real person feeling those emotions. Ortega cannot hold a candle. How about make the daughter an actual normal, popular teenager that Lydia never was? It gives us something to start with.
The rest is just agh, like cringing at every piano note. Why is O' Hara still this one note person grinding in the art scene 40 years out? Is the art scene even anything like that today? It would be all on social media, I would think. Why the bizarre and gross stuff around Jeffrey Jones? It the one element that leaves a really bad taste in the mouth. Every new character is flat and dragging the movie in the wrong direction.
One problem with late reboots is they can't resolve the passage of time. O'Hara and Keaton locked the characters down in their muscle memory, but that also aren't doing anyone else any favors because they are the only two elements that work on screen, and it leaves everyone else high and dry. I really think that everyone involved in this have no understanding just how good the first screenplay was, or they would have searched harder. It makes me sad because the reviews are so high, everyone is lying to themselves. Burton ended with the CGI revolution, but I think there is a case to be made his final masterpiece was Sweeney Todd, if you want to be charitable you can make a case up to Miss Peregrine, but that is the extent of it. It feels like everyone involved got together to make this sequel, but no one realized they didn't have a script, which is a classic problem in Hollywood. Then they scammed us all the way to the box office. I remember dozens of moments from the original, brilliant bits of scripting and storytelling. There is not a single thing in this movie that I will remember.
Murder She Purred: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (1998)
Better than it has any right to be
The talking animals could have sunk it but they aren't the main focus. Lake is perfectly cast and plays alongside the whole southern ensemble well making you think she could have easily worked in a prestige film, say directed by Robert Altman. The movie has an authentic character to it with its location, staging, and acting, that is realistic and low key. That brings us to the animals. Actually a nice touch, like okay, it could be a complete farce, but somehow this is a serious talking animals film, they fit right in the ensemble. I watched the film for Johnny Cage (actor Ashby), but then I kind of shrug and go... yeah, it's not as exciting as I thought that Johnny Cage is there. The YouTube video rip showed all these holiday 90s commercials from the VHS tape it ripped from, which was a complete mind trip. The conventions at the time had a lot of dutch angles and wide angle lenses, just a tad more creative than what we get today. At the same time it is the beginning of the end with the relentless drive to get you to consume.
Wu suo zhu (2024)
Life changing
I put this film on as a gag for my friends who tend to only watch sports and sitcoms. I explained that this film played in an important film festival. Of course I had seen all of Tsai's films and was a fan. I wanted to see how people would react with no background about him. Naturally it began rough. After about ten minutes of cracking jokes and making fun of the movie, something happened. They all went quiet. I kept looking at them every ten or fifteen minutes seeing if they were on the phone, but they were transfixed by the film. This character of the Buddhist monk walks really slowly through situations you would pass without a seconds thought. Bus stops, gardens, monuments, city streets. Every scenario we see him in, there is a long sensation of anticipation until his foot gradually touches pavement, then relief, then we do it all over in a new environment. He is both redefining the landscape of everyday reality, while he is a part of society in a way that you do not doubt. Society accepts that there is a Buddhist monk up to something, and they allow him, occasionally snapping a photo of him.
Part way in, I looked at my sister and tears were rolling down her cheeks. She was saying how the police might stop him and call him mentally ill, while he isn't bothering anybody.
I think what is happening is this film is attempting to put our consciousness in the frame of a landscape or a mountain, anything to get us outside of ourselves.
Because many times in this film, I was also moved to tears. I remembered that famous photograph of a man dying in a bus station and a Buddhist monk was holding his wrist and whispering a prayer for him. He was offering comfort to the man's spirit and helping guide him to the other side, knowing if there is a spirit it might be confused, scared, or lost.
After the film was over my friends and family went on like nothing happened to their sports and TV shows. Some of them remarked, the film isn't artistic, it's just a joke. They have not seen any of Tsai's films, but they have now. The film will change you, maybe without you even realizing it.
Best Seller (1987)
Giga kino
This film is special because it has the most unique chemistry between two actors you'll see. It is theater grade. There has never been such a great counter to James Woods' shenanigans than Brian Dennehy, he can counter everything he does with one single look, which is surprising because in most films, Woods blows the other actors off the screen. Not here. It is the picture of a devil. Woods is almost too comfortable playing a total psychopath, making me at points feel this character is the one closest to who he is. It carries this artful meta-structure about reality and fantasy that gives it so much extra meaning. Woods character is preoccupied with his life turning into a story that he's a hero, a way to grapple with his conscience, if only intellectually because an actual conscience is not there. The last thing why this transcends a mere film is the cinematography. One review said it is a master class in blocking. Who would know that framing can resonate so much? It is constantly pleasing to watch with an unusually satisfying visual structure, reminding me of master directors like Richard Rush's Freebie and the Bean and its depiction of San Francisco like a visual puzzle. This movie is full of riches and where, it falls short, it is bigger than the screen, depicting the saying, a film you didn't know you wanted.
Jane's House (1994)
Meaningful
This is a great film, were it in the box office it would have been a big hit. It plays like a classic 1950s melodrama. The various metaphors around the house resonate constantly. Part of its greatness is the machination of James Woods performance playing a house-dad with a haunted past being larger than the screen. His pain and resilience counters with the woman, who is one of the saddest characters I've seen. Middle aged romance has far different stakes that films seldom explore. There are so many subtle items of commentary here. The Barry Bonds cameo shows the power of love can do the impossible, that we are in a universe of miracles. The most powerful moment in the movie is entirely visual, it is the stark difference between his suburban home and the tennis star's gothic cathedral city flat; her place is like where the yuppies in the Devil's Advocate hang out. Further, every time we see her at work, she hates them. Counter this to how the major beats are in Woods' home, the boy hiding in the secret basement, their eventual ability to clear the house out. Such subtle commentary points to a bigger picture of her, beyond her being, just a little too perfect, an angel come out of heaven to solve his problems. The interesting thing about Woods' movies is that I can always see elements why they interested him. They are never just outright junk, there is always some level of art to it that he is bringing out.
God's Lonely Man (1996)
More Ferrara than Scorsese
This guy has a schizoid extrovert vibe, a guy who won't leave you alone, rather than a reflective introvert going mad. Of course at points he is a dead ringer for DeNiro, other times he looks like Richard Edson, or has this Michael Richards fish-out-of-water body language. Point is the main guy isn't lonely, he is totally spiritually at odds with his surroundings.
Films like this might have landed flat at the time because a lot of those beats are a little too familiar; you stay for the vivid settings, pre-digital revolution. It becomes art, ripe for discovery. The acting across the board is superb, especially the women.
Dismissing it as a Scorsese knockoff falls flat when everything under the sun is today, such as the Joker movie; I see this as a comparison to prize, instead of knock.
I feel the same I do about it as I did the Jared Leto film, Chapter 27, another powerful film inspired by the same, except hanging that film on myth becomes innately profound. One Hour Photo. The formula just works whatever it is.
The main guy, I can't even begin to remark on, is he miscast? Is it a bad performance, is it fascimile? I just know that you can't take your eyes off him, he is fun to watch, and tips over into scary in the right places, that shows the mark of a skilled actor. Because he is at times scary as hell, the exact kind of unpredictable derangement that make you feel unsafe. You sort of see how he blended in and why it shocked the video store girl when he revealed he weirded out. His performance is a magic trick that keeps you on the edge, and frankly where it diverts in an eye opening way, he is uncool. DeNiro is so cool in Taxi Driver it is hard to see the social commentary. I don't want to oversell this movie; what it has going for it is this lively, guerilla energy that provokes discussion.
Paganini (1989)
A masterpiece channeling De Sade
An obsessive, neurotic, schizoid masterpiece that is so far ahead of its time that its time is still ahead. It is a Rorschach test that will reveal the level of your soul. Yes, a dark evil film but a cinematically productive one, reading from Kinski's intuition about how his forms can read for us. The film, for decades, like a mad person, has been confined to an insane asylum, and considered a danger to society. It was like an unspoken secret not to see it.
I always liked it but I have been psyched out over the years from the orthodoxy insisting on its lack of merits. It has been enraging people for decades and I assumed in the restoration it would find a new life, only to find it is enraging the modern critics as well. A bad time to re-discover Kinski's Paganini (the only director other than Fellini who should have his name in the title of the movie). In our sterile climate of unprecedented conformity and rigid views of art, this reception is a mark for the film, not against it.
For all of Herzog's bad mouthing of Kinski, this film has had a grander restoration and release than his own output. Remember it was only together they made their enduring masterpieces; so badmouthing Kinski's B-movies maybe we can do the same for Herzog's nature channel documentaries or Hollywood Nicolas Cage Michael Shannon embarrassments.
I am being defensive of this movie because it warrants it, and I sense he didn't want it to impede on their works together, as if that was in danger of happening.
The cinematography brings a kind of gorgeous ancient European feeling. The editing is crass, obscene, appalling of course, it is Paganini. When have we ever had an edit like this? It is utterly mad, but it works as the most frightening tone poem ever on film, akin to even the weirdest underground Japanese cinema.
You almost don't want people to get it, and to continue to live in a state of blissful oblivion. And yet through its runtime it is a nonstop poem of madness, sex, only missing drugs; (as Dali said, and it might as well have been Kinski, "I do not take drugs, I am drugs".)
It is not for pretentious people. I can illustrate that I have watched Ken Russell's composer biopics recently, and while they are far from vanilla, in fact they are often quite daring, Paganini exposes them all as practically Disney fare.
And yet, we shouldn't take this all so literally either. I have always had a question of how mad Klaus Kinski actually was. I can tell you that you cannot make hundreds of films without having a firm grasp of reality, in fact, you must to survive in that business. He showed up on time, he made the films, he went home. The behind the scenes documentary of Fitzcarraldo shows him throwing a temper tantrum, yes, but it also shows him doing scene after scene with the utmost professionalism. The behind the scenes of Cobra Verde shows no tantrum at all.
So the depiction of this man is that he was a wild animal, a mad man, that does not gel for film business professionalism or the work the two created.
Point is, it is key to see this all as an artistic point of view. Kinski was not a De Sade figure, but it was how he played it. The film expresses both his inner dragon, but more, how he wanted to be seen.
What stands out here is that it's told without a hint of irony, like the followers of Herzog's bourgeoisie 'weird cinema' sensationalism. This is perhaps why it provoked them so greatly, he is showing the real thing.
Any bit of humor we can laugh at, such as the audience of women going crazy for him, is actually not as one would think, there for cinematic spectacle, but to express surreal excess, the contagious euphoria of being on stage. The film's goal is to capture is in this same trance.
The restoration finally brings the film to life for the first time ever. I am not sure if Vinegar Syndrome perceived its artistic virtues or did it to highlight it as a disastrous spectacle, but whatever is the reason, it's there to infuriate people for the rest of time. Kinski went farther than almost anyone, like Paganini he was not playing to the audiences, but to the fates.
Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976)
Fellini's Casanova
I am reminded in this one of the Picasso quote about how he learned how to draw like a child again. This movie is so child-like, despite its extreme qualities. It begins gentle, tactile, and exploring a sense of play on screen, like a circus via ballet, elegance crossing in with a hint of the grotesque. Sutherland makes the character his own, countering that he is in a Fellini movie by just being totally committed to the role. It is an impressive performance, almost like hypnosis. His general arrogance with womanizing is truly off-putting, also coming off like a Roman senator. It is begins like lavish primitivism, feeling more some kind of moon-world, eventually accelerating into something that reminds me of Ken Russell's Listzomania. Meanwhile it is talking about art, alchemy; for a film about hedonism it is using intellectual excess as well. The movie felt like a cousin-film to Satyricon, but also I can say it is a brother to Jodorowsky. It is like a finely crafted paper crane, incisive but big impact. Both his maddest film one that finds an air of humility, the cracks begin to show and you see the person behind the legend.
Antony and Cleopatra (1972)
Who has ever done it like him?
It is one of the best Shakespeare films I've seen. It offers something different over the pyrotechnics adaptations or the word salad of Kenneth Branagh's, that he shouts everything in the same tone ale Will Ferrell. Charlton Heston has a way of both stepping back and stylizing it at once, in the process of honoring it; they say filmmaking is a young man's game but here is showing the virtue of mature, seasoned filmmaking. That brings us to its strength, it is a canvas of performance. It is like everyone is right at home in this universe on screen. At its worse it feels stretched thin as actor-directors sometimes struggle in creating a focused vision, but it not being an over-the-top visionary cinematic spectacle works to its favor, we have seen too many of those. The film really resonates in the days after, due to the acting and mood. It has one of the great, dramatic movie scores, and these women actors calling to mind great italian cinema, one of the best Cleopatras I've seen. Heston is always only interested in the iconic, they say he acts for statue-sculptors, not for the screen, but who has ever done it like him? It is glorious. Of course we have seen the story, the scenarios, so many times, the familiarity really hurts it, you have to see this version as its own thing.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
Miller has gotten senile
Insane how good the reviews are for this. Too much CGI and green screen makes it feel like a cheap Marvel film. Too many "mission" scenes that become like a videogame experience. One after another these generic villains get blown away and you stop caring after the 800th one. It is also really gross which is an unwelcome change from FR. Maggots, amputation, and body horror that feels like a bait and switch from what we were promised. That brings us to the worst component and why the movie fails, comparable to why the fourth Matrix failed. The casting. Anya just cant carry a film like this no matter how much gritty makeup they cover her in. Any time she talks all tough you want to just cringe. They knew this so gave her as few lines as possible and just made her look cool. But you can't hang a film on an actor with such little charisma. And what on earth is Chris Hemsworth doing in this movie? He is badly miscast and half the time you wonder how he's supposed to be the villain when he's so light hearted and likeable. This kills the core of the revenge story. You should be hating him more than she does. The other guy, the guy she teams up with should have been the villain--he looks and acts ice cold--and Hemsworth should have taken his role. The movie tried to cover up the flaws with cool looking shots, and at times I felt this is so trashy that they must be doing it as a gag. But no it is dead serious. This is a major step down from Fury Road, it is not carrying the torch of action filmmaking like that film did, with real stunts and old school effects, in the way it was nominated for ten Academy Awards. It's like Miller has gotten senile, every single decision is more baffling than the last.
The Stunt Man (1980)
Crazy movie
It almost comes across as outsider art. A director who understands the craft effortlessly but isn't interested in it. He is too above it. Too intuitive. Reminding me of Welles. But what is here is that ingredient in genius, who knows what that is. Cinema technicalities are all here in droves but the movie isn't concerned with them as the end all, as the trap auteurs fall into. For one that it is adapted from a book shows a respect for storytelling leading the cart, in fact, a critique of vulgar auteurism that was all the rage in the moment. Directors of that era were attempting to work in comic satires, such as Richard Lester, Ken Russell, or Robert Altman, making them culminate in the dark; todays directors start, end, and brush with aesthetic, unconcerned with anything else. You can name them. Rush's film is in the MASH mold, with its preoccupation with grotesque warfare, vietnam, and murderous social politics, alongside its lightness, is saying something about capitalism and the arts. It is fatalistic, but also joyful and celebratory. Like Freebie and the Bean, during many stretches you feel you are watching a masterpiece, but also like it, a defiance against film as a formal artform.
Cold Heaven (1991)
Found art
Its cinematic treatment of the dead coming to life is the most interesting take I've seen on the genre. He is like coming apart at the seams. Its job is to cast a spell around the rest of the movie. This is the stuff of high theater. It is both literal and symbolic at once, a very Japanese treatment. Every time I remembered it from my first viewing it was just that guy's portrayal of the undead.
Somebody said it's like a soap opera performance, but this is exactly it. He is performing a soap opera character except vomiting blood, hurling, and having Frankenstein meltdowns. Instead of using soap as a pejorative, we can say it is a high art treatment of a soap. But the average viewer might not realize it, somehow this might play straight to them.
There is something about the contrast of the cable TV movie, with a Nic Roeg film, that is both jarring and weird, but never operating outside the viewer and the screen.
The climax of the movie is a cross being burned into the hill by God, then she runs in his arms, the saxophone plays. The film is about her thoughts of infidelity haunting her, and her returning to live in service to God.
I was not sure if she would run into the lovers arm because that would be a valid reading of the film as well. To forget her husband, he was dead all along, to move on. It would be a tale of sexual healing and grief. But Roeg had made that film several times by that point. Instead, to elevate such a small human dilemma to the grandest stage is the power of melodrama, the power of art.
Some of the early Peter Weir films dealt with white guilt and aboriginal spirituality with some of these tones. Another review said with auteurs we don't watch their filmography expecting them to top themselves, we go for the small pleasure of how they have twisted the dial slightly differently. All that is interesting in his films are here, although it does a disservice to put them into words. So a Christian work is unexpected, but using his avant-garde eye becomes a spontaneous combustion; it is impossible to go wrong dealing with the very symbols of reality, life, death, love, morality.
The lightning bolt awakening becomes something in films; that enlightenment isn't just about that, but about the inverse, a complete intolerance toward immorality. This is why her awakening is triumphant. It brought him back, finally, for real. Roeg was the rarest thing, a western auteur, uncompromising and without commercial interests. But this, his most obscure work is somehow his most directly meaningful, but at the same time you sense that having such direct answers is kind of a problem for him.
Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
The Criterion Collection
It is really hard not to overrate this movie now that it is in Criterion, because looking it at it in the frame of an important film, its satire, its time capsule, its vignettes, and the general intelligence of it, reflects really well with the label. It was always a cult classic, but seeing it as avant-garde, it reaffirms that art and comedy form a productive trade. "This is a fancy restaurant!!" He really detests elitism, giving him targets in every direction. Any of his ire becomes productive for the audience because he is such a good stand-in for our consciousness. Which is the whole point of a clown. Yet there is a specificity to his targets that are so personal to him that it makes it an auteur work. He just made himself the butt of the joke which is a long tradition and why it endures, but also why it endures as an avant-garde kind of experience, is that moment in history is so far removed from today... but what he is remarking on is, the insanity of the western capitalist materialism, the entertainment conglomerate. How the system systematically turns us against our community, our family, through dehumanization, and robotification. These are things we thought the movie was probably about, but in current day it is so glaringly obviously about. Some comments say it is a parody of gross-out films, but I think it is more him showing them how it's done.
There are important films like that, hard exposes of societies in a state of madness and collapse, like the Fireman's Ball, Sweet Movie, or Daisies, of course those are avant-garde European films. But you know there weren't western film artists doing that at that moment in time, just careerists and opportunists, because of the film brats casting a shadow on the generations that followed, that the west had main character syndrome-- look at all the hero savior tropes. Our artists were all too busy participating in the beast attempting to be its champions.
So you almost have no choice but to look to the clowns to understand its time. Like clowns, it's celebrative. It was always fun, but this time it felt substantive
For instance. The scene where Green gets the million dollars, and says, hmm, I wonder what I am going to do with this million dollars; as if it is the most natural thing in the world to blow the money. In film, money is one of the most powerful shorthands for a viewer. The Joker, the Beach Bum are other movies money is lit on fire and it has an effect on our consciousness. Tom Green blows the million just like he is blowing it on the movie itself. It frees us from the material, which is a cosmic ability that only art can do. There are so many tangents in this movie that you can get lost in.
Freebie and the Bean (1974)
I thought I had seen everything.
This is the biggest WTF ever. The way I would describe it is a movie you don't want to see, that you are dragged into, and realize that is exactly who the film was made for. It starts as one thing and then it feels like they gave up and just made it up as they went. Like imagine The Naked Gun but as a serious movie.
With San Francisco locales and Laslo Kovacs lensing this all becomes an outright surreal fever dream. I am also reminded of Richard Lester films, how he thinks in comic vignettes but isn't necessarily a comic director. Like, when violence happens it's brutal, suddenly it's like Dick Tracy. The characters yell at each other start to finish but they don't hate each other, it's just how they communicate. The director is doing a madcap comedy, Kovacs is filming for an oscar, the writers are doing like a Neil Simon Dragnet, and the actors think they're making the French Connection.
People should study this movie if they get into filmmaking or screenwriting, it will change how you see movies, because every element is disparate, they're all making a different movie in their heads, but it works. You imagine them writing it off, saying they just made a flop, pointing fingers, but then it came out perfectly. It isn't doing those Pauline Kael big zeitgeist things, it is almost sending them up which is endearing. Its modest ambition may take points off compared to its class, but who cares, it is certainly a classic to me. I only take a half point off because you have two choices, give it an F or give it an A minus.
C'era una volta il West (1968)
Fascinating
I have had a strange experience with this movie. I saw it in a midnight screening in 2008, and I found it painfully boring. Tons of people walked out the screening. By the end, I was frustrated and felt I wasted my time. Any time I reflected on the movie I got annoyed and felt it is massively overrated. I never re-watched the movie again.
But about 2 years ago, I woke up one day and out of nowhere, I realized that it is one of the greatest movies ever made. I finally rewatched it now, and I agree with myself. So what I think happens is that we watch a movie, our mind rewatches it, the movie matures as we mature.
Some movies we thought would mean more to us, don't mean much with time. Some films that we ignored, suddenly become important. Some films can latch onto your spirit when you don't expect it.
8 Mile (2002)
A western without guns
After 1 1/2 hours you realize you haven't seen them sing at all. Then they draw their metaphoric guns, it becomes like High Noon. The experience of how the film draws you into its world allows it to explore the catharsis of art and pain. The things he's singing about, you have now seen with your own eyes, so it is as shocking for us as it is the audience, because suddenly he rises above even we, the viewer. The doorman going from hating him, to respecting him, becomes participatory with the audience. And the stakes couldn't be any lower. This isn't a TV show in front of millions of people, or a boxing match covered by national media. It's just a basement rap-off. Notice how the song is about authenticity and respect, and he destroys the other guy for having no authenticity, for not earning his art. He has earned it through poverty and pain. Interesting this is not the measure of how the world works--a Clarence will go farther in life in every institution, highlighting how rare an Eminem is in the world. Also illustrated, with the factory manager. So he got extra shifts, who cares? He gets to work a terrible job even more, and it's treated as some kind of victory. Well. The universe is rewarding him with more responsibility. It is treated, cinematically, as a gigantic victory for him.
This film, 8 Mile, is teaching us the most brutal of lessons, that enlightenment comes through participation, presenting the most rigged, unfair, horrible conditions through both spiritual constructions (stoicism, buddhism, christianity), and genre film constructions (samurai, western, sports). However art is the most potent of cinematic symbols because it is the direct proxy for mastery and nirvana. It is also why it also doesn't show him getting famous. His small victory here, scales in our imagination, however, he could easily be pushing the rock up the hill for his whole life. Enlightenment becomes a process, just in the case of it being productive for the viewer, it must come with capitalist rewards to make sense for us. This is just the easiest shorthand for a film. He takes the new shifts, accepts the suffering, and churns it all into Art, by mastering this craft he is portraying integration, he becomes Enlightened. Because there is no material equivalent to godliness, so you are just handed the entire kingdom. He becomes 'Eminem', a billionaire, rich, famous, all his dreams happening; but it is just one way there, no other way, and it doesn't show it happening. It fades out at the crescendo, showing wisdom. The good films sort of hint this direction because it puts it in our hands.
Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989)
The only thing it's missing is the mall being alive.
This movie was not made for 80s audiences but for future audiences to relive the vibes of the 80s. As a 1980s hyperreal fetish object it is superb. It's why a lot of b-movies from the time have become treasured, but even among a lot of them, the DTVs, the slashers, the Empire films, this is a step up. You start with that Gothic will work no matter what. Every time it cuts from mall settings to the phantom, you are getting cinema. Crawling through air ducts, piecing things through security cameras, these are all details in Gothic noir. Even better that Pauly Shore is there. In recreating a 1980s fetish object directors would certainly put him in their movie, not to say anything of his artistic significance, it is just like palm trees in California.
The camera cannot be cheated. It is a strange facet of cinema that you can go to the ends of the earth, to strain on screen, but then just, mall, gothic, Pauly Shore, the film exists in the simplest way, and works nicely. If I am underselling it to say lower your standards, it is more to have no standards at all and look at it more like an audio-visual National Geographic exhibit of the "mall". I read both essays in the package of the Arrow Video set, and both are focused more on the death of the mall, rather than the film itself, and this concept of the mall, yes it is extremely nostalgic and packed with emotion for an audience. I take more for why this works, the Phantom of the Opera, the Gothic shorthand. Of course it will end with gore, people on fire, the entire mall exploding in glorious fashion. But with the death of the mall, it takes on a double meaning. Gothic always knew the pain the suburbanite, of the 80s/90s kids, our nostalgia, loss and sorrow in great economic change. Gothic knew. This is just one of the films that made a very intellectual association in combining these subject, as we age to become haunted Gothic figures ourselves.
Up in the Air (2009)
Counterfeit, insincere Hollywood dreck
This film is a lot like Groundhog Day, the monotony of 10,000,000 miles might as well the repeating days, but a more pitiful one. Airports and schools (and libraries, and malls) are archetypal places symbolizing the temporal nature of earthly reality from one place to the next (reincarnation, hell, or ascension). The pilot at the end is mythic, a Demiurge. The audio goes quiet, the light around him shines. Clooney won at life... it is important in the pilot representing the Demiurge, he is representing capitalism, not enlightenment. So there's no reward, in fact he is disappointed, they both are. Spirituality is in alignment with capitalism in cinema, these tools, while incompatible, are simultaneously rhyming and opposing symbols of meaning. Clooney won but he lost by not perpetuating the journey to nirvana to extract meaning through family, relationships, and commitment; so he completed the journey but missed the point about sharing, giving, and providing. The movie is not too hard on him for sitting in his karmic lot, of course, the entire thing is a fabrication without an ounce of authenticity. It is as boring as his lectures to corporations.
The fact they fire people, in the film, it is really framed as tragedy, an assassination to be rejected by capitalism, which is nauseating cinematic hyperbole. "Go become a chef/vet/chef, your dream", is the answer that films like Fight Club, Pig, and Up in the Air give to capitalistic despair. Reitman is a director who pretends to be subtle while stating the obvious-- the way it fetishizes the performances of those people getting fired is unbelievably self-important. Compare the subtlety of Alexander Payne's The Descendents, also with Clooney, Payne can nail subtlety while simultaneously going mainstream. And Clooney played a hitman in another thing too, he is always 'the guy that does the thing'. But the concept of someone whose job is to fire people is also a non-starter. The girl quitting at the end is not a journey, it is the obvious thing to do on day one.
I saw it in 2009, I hated it then and I hate it now. It's a lousy movie as compared to Groundhog Day or The Terminal, both films I rated as five as masterpieces of symbology. This one is saying participating is not enough, but it stops before the second act to show his leap of faith. I should also say at the time of this in 2009, millennials, like Anna Kendrick, were entering into the work-force. Asserting meaning onto others through work is just the different side of the same coin, it is over-correcting being a corporate cog, by being a nuisance destroying the fabric of society. The same lesson goes to both sides of the aisle, 'work to live, don't live to work'. Only someone like Reitman would think this is a profound lesson, because he has never done either.
Le viol du vampire (1968)
More than a vampire film
I went in hoping for a French New Wave vampire film ala Truffaut or Godard, an elevated amateurism in a gorgeous aesthetic, and free-spirited vigor; and it succeeded at that from the very first minute. But by the end, I was a fanatic. I did not fully understand the film until I read the booklet, where Rollin said he intended the film to be a serious vampire epic; he was horrified that audiences laughed during every screening. Suddenly the film clicked. This wasn't a FNW deconstruction of the vampire film, he wasn't a Godard refreshing the science fiction serials and noirs in his own eye; 'Rape' is actually an unironic vampire film. The film suddenly becomes outsider art. Because we see outsiders doing genre films sometimes, it's not my thing. But when a director is in France in the 1960s, an image-smith, and making outsider art, you are now in the zone of hard arthouse. Just from the time and place, it can never just be the thing at face value. And the amateurism you would not even think to remark on because it is so thoroughly and confidently staged, and gorgeously photographed. What it lacks in intellect it reaches the same ends through its creative force of will, which is the purpose of film prose. Inherent to the subject of a vampire erotica, its very existence is subversive; audiences only choice is to laugh, or riot. It is why artists are drawn to the Gothic, it is impossible to steer wrong because we understand Gothic. The shorthand is so powerful, nothing needs to be added, so these additional filmic ingredients to Gothic create an overwhelming experience. It was one of the more substantive experiences in my recent goes.
Last Summer (1969)
An arthouse cliche at this point
This one got under my skin. The three characters are these fetish objects of happiness. The camera clings to them, and I wonder why? Finally I realize it's because the director detests them. They are... white people... normals, the enemy of cinema. He then brings us this outsider foil girl, of course she is a gem, very cute and endearing, and they go on to destroy her. So the filmmakers, they went out their way to cast the realist, most sensitive woman they could find, breathe as much life as they could into her, and then just break her. Beating down a woman, who is already beat down, is non-participatory for an audience, just in the way the film holds us at a distance in their vacation at the start, it is just there to provoke us with its resolution. The movie just did too good of a job of pressing your buttons, and just because they can, doesn't mean they should. It's the rare film that makes me second guess my enjoyment of the directors other works.
The Holdovers (2023)
Bait and switch. You've got to hear me out.
On paper it hit its notes, but there was something wrong with it that I could not articulate. Then I realized. It's a bait and switch. They broke the entire concept of the movie. The entire premise is that they are stuck in the school together, to the point where when the helicopter takes off, you feel a sense of dread that they're now alone, trapped together and must make due, must find grace in the discomfort, learn all those lessons. This is a great premise for a film and it must work in that premise. SUDDENLY, they're going out to bars, to parties, to the city, to insane asylums, to bowling alleys. This is is a problem so fundamentally wrong with the movie it sinks the entire thing in my view. To start with, it's lazy, but artistically, it's cowardly. The helicopter taking off now means nothing because they hit the road regardless. Imagine in The Breakfast Club they escape the school and go on a road trip with ten different stops. It's no longer The Breakfast Club then, it becomes Ferris Bueller's Day Off; as in here, in the Holdover, there is no Holdover to speak of. They aren't trapped in the school, they just go wherever they fancy, with this gigantic god-eye copout of 'well we have a field trip fund so let's throw the screenplay out the window'. Bait and switching the premise is one of my great pet peeves in films, and it's a shame because they set out to make a great film but Payne couldn't help it, he is unable to break out this mold of making road-trip films, and there I was refreshed going in that he was trying something new.
Edit: It has just came out that the screenplay was accused of plagiarizing the script for "Frisco". This to me goes a long way of explaining how forced the structure of the film feels. It is like the tail leading the horse. They mapped out the movie, colored in the lines, and hoped no one would notice that it was copying an entirely different movie. No wonder. A new low for mass produced Hollywood awards bait.
Trespass (2011)
Time has made a bad movie good.
An actual good Cage performance, that we have forgotten about after over a decade of utter dreck. I will say at the time, this film was that very dreck. He has been doing these kind of performances, one after another since 2011, but when I go back and see Trespass, I wonder why? He did it all perfectly here, to where the others seem like imitation and are coming up shorter. That is because creating a character rings differently than just running through a 'mad man' shtick he repeats. I think it is because of Joel Schumacher. He was a real actors director, a master director who worked in the confines of mainstream film. Rediscovering his work from ground up from the 1980s, I see his mainstream films in a new light, from Phone Booth, to this, he never lost that artistry, even if it came in more outrageous packages.
Road to Nowhere (1993)
A statement
To me, this is not a "microbudget film", it is simply film, and it is the work of a seasoned, natural filmmaker operating outside of capitalism, becoming an important bit of counter-culture. The craft is razor sharp, in fact this is an aesthetic filmmakers today, even on budgets, are driving to emulate in their desperation for the authentic. They are shoplifting the styles of the past attempting to consume it. From the inherent subversion of the existence of DIY filmmaking at all, the beauty is how the forms contrast. The naturalism is profound, and this hint of Herzog or Weir-esq poetry that seeps in the scenes that builds to the transcendent. I found the performances the sort of pleasure I get out of Mike Leigh films, or Italian films, everyone is memorable and the characters are lived-in. There is a fly on the wall quality that this is going on with or without a camera capturing it, high praise, yet the formalism comes through at key moments, across these perfect, tight compositions. I am reminded of Sidney Lumet saying a great filmmaker realizes that you only need one or two close-ups across an entire film, but they must be at the exact right moment. When you are involved in the film festival circuit, the true indies, they're often quite good, and not disposable as one assumes. So I have seen films like this that weren't given new life, or life at all. But history brings things into light for a reason, and here, it is the sheer integrity of the filmmaking. Every moment of the movie felt that everyone involved was treating it like the most important film in the world, and that reads twice as big from the David v Goliath feat of its existence.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
More than the sum of its parts
You watch these movies young and are right there with the infectiousness of the movie. I watch it older, and suddenly I'm a 1950s audience who is taken aback by how gleefully immoral it all is. The novelty of crime as fun is painting a picture of youth itself, and the picture of aging by contrast. The vigor. Beatty's performance is so natural you take for granted he is carrying an entire film with his charisma. The film has a cozy quality to it, almost like a sleepover, and even finds time for vignettes like the Gene Wilder bits. Or these unforgettable characters like CW's dad, a Hackman performance so good that you go, oh yeah, he's an actor and not actually that person. I also adored The Sugarland Express which is almost a remark on this movie, taking it into the 70s loser rebellion, there is something to be said with the suits and hats and tommy guns here, the charisma and class, and the total lack of glamor to those Sugarland characters. I found both Bonnie and Clyde, and Sugarland to be tremendous films. The point of these movies is the audacity that may be lost on people. They are two films simultaneously, you have to watch the movie, as well as watch your own reaction to it.
Last Days (2005)
Great as ever
The fact there was a Hollywood director using his power to do slow films like those has become a little bit of American film history. This even before the digital revolution took over, the film is as great as ever.
All the vignettes, how it's weaved and structured, they set in all at once. The slow films plant the seeds and blossom in the days after. One criticism is they should utilize the face more, instead of buildings and nature. But Buddhists consider the landscape, the world, on the same plane as the face. It is playing to the memories.
Then that it's Cobain is an entire movie inside a movie that is always registering huge even as it does nothing. This is the biopic he would have wanted. That it does not end on a rock song but some kind of choir is saying something how we only pass through our lives. The subject of the rock star is so great I thought of David Bowie too, in The Man Who Fell to Earth, and his general commitment to the art world. There was this awareness of being a modern myth, a modern Egyptian god, and the only way he could stay sane to it was by creating a professional distance, making his myth a frame he could walk within and out. It's the ones like Michael Jackson, or Cobain, their lives become the art, then they drown in it.
Gus Van Sant didn't continue this style after his trilogy, although occasionally he will put something in his films making you recall them; even now they still remain as important as ever to the American arthouse. And who has followed his lead? I can't think of a single one.