Capsule reviews and stray thoughts from March 2024. All reviews via Letterboxd.

Ghostwatch (1992)

Even knowing some of the stories (the public inquiry, traumatized children, banned from the air for a decade) I still assumed this would be more spooky than scary. I mean, how far would the BBC really go with a fake live broadcast ghost story?

Turns out, pretty damn far. Ghostwatch is exceptionally well done, slowly ratcheting the tension for the first 70 minutes and then absolutely going for broke. The backstory that develops is so much darker than I would have expected, and the “found footage” aspect is clever and effective, seven years before Blair Witch, and with the added credibility of BBC presenters.

Seriously scarier than most theatrical horror movies. No wonder the British Journal of Medicine apparently cited it as the first TV show to cause PTSD in children.

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future (1985)

I was expecting more Max Headroom in this, to be honest.

So you have an advertising conspiracy creating concentrated ads that have the potential to explode people—but only the laziest slobs who are most susceptible to overstimulation. You have the intrepid reporter as hero, the pirate TV host who stumbles into a hit show, and the glitchy CG character (actually just some well-made prosthetics) who’s destined to be a sensation.

A lot of good elements, but the whole doesn’t really add up to much. Impressive that someone saw the potential for a mass-market phenomenon in the tiny clips of Max, because this scrappy made-for-TV cyber-punk thriller really is just seeds and not much more.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Must be the season of the pulpy lesbian crime dramedy.

But despite the high-level, completely superficial similarities to Drive-Away Dolls, this is very much its own thing, a mix of magic realism, body horror, and off-kilter eroticism that’s hard to take your eyes off of (except in a couple of scenes that push the violence to limits where I had no trouble averting my eyes). I’ve heard complaints that the climax is too A24, but I haven’t hit my saturation point on their aesthetic and would gently push back on the idea that they even have a consistent enough one that it’s worth getting up in arms about.

Ed Harris would make a great Cryptkeeper.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Maybe it’s the depression talking, but I didn’t really connect with this. Not to say I didn’t marvel at it—Villeneuve is undoubtedly a master of scale and Dune: Part Two looks, sounds, and feels absolutely monumental. But that scale is a cudgel; I didn’t feel moved so much as beaten into submission.

Some of it I loved. The early shot of soldiers hovering up a mountainside was gorgeous. Javier Bardem smuggling unexpected warmth and humour into such a self-serious setting. The brief detour to HR Giger’s Riefenstahl‘s Ancient Rome under a black hole sun. The craft that went into all of this is incredible, and I’m glad to have seen it all on Imax, like God intended.

Aside from the score and a completely miscast Christopher Walken, there wasn’t much I actively disliked. I think it’s more that the scale demands detachment; when everything in a film is this large, it becomes inhuman, and the characters never managed to fill in that space for me. Maybe that’s appropriate for a story about destiny and the grand sweep of history, but this still could have used a bit more life.

The Holdovers (2023)

Not exactly a “they don’t make ’em like this anymore” situation, but it’s a bit telling that when they do make ’em, so much effort is put into creating the illusion that it’s a 50-year-old film that’s somehow been rediscovered.

Everything about this is comforting to me. The cranky holiday mood, the well-worn character arcs, just the right vibe for someone who ocassionally wonders if he’s a misanthropist but is very much a softy when you get down to it. Giamatti’s character is definitely how I’ve always pictured my future self, so even if his redemption arc is a little cliched, it’s still satisfying. And it’s impressive that this is Sessa’s screen debut; holding your own against Giamatti at his best has to be a daunting first assignment.

Small nit to pick, but with so much care put into making this feel period appropriate, it does seem like an odd choice to include a couple post-millennial songs on the soundtrack, even if they didn’t feel particularly out of place. Didn’t detract, I’m just curious what the logic was.

(Also, I’m very curious how the real-world plagiarism accusations pan out.)

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

I’m an unashamed member of the Dick Miller Appreciation Society, so it’s great to see him hamming it up in one of his earliest roles. Not as grisly as the title led me to think, with a plot that actually hews fairly close to Little Shop of Horrors (another Corman flick), but worth watching in its own right for the loving shots at Beat culture. The film opens with a poet who is meant to be pompous and insufferable and in all honesty, I kind of dug it. Not enough to embark on a murderous art career, but it still spoke to me, for whatever that’s worth.

Ishtar (1987)

I’m glad the consensus on this has shifted in the last few years so I don’t have to wonder if I’m just being contrarian when I say this was a delight. Some of the loudest laughter I’ve had at a movie in a long while. Beatty and Hoffman are great as aspiring songwriters who are blissfully oblivious to how awful they are, and the film strikes a good balance of laughing at them and buying into the joy of collaborating on even terrible music. (Having them play againt type is also fun; Beatty is surprisingly good at turning his charisma off completely.)

I do understand the criticism that it loses steam when they leave New York, but even if the idiots abroad plot distracts from what makes the first 20 minutes and especially the last 5 so great, it also gives us a blind camel and Charles Grodin’s CIA man, and I wouldn’t want to give up either of those things.

It really goes to show how much the pop culture memory of a thing can be so disconnected from the reality. I can’t imagine that audience would’ve viscerally disliked this if they’d actually seen it, and not been pre-poisoned by the bad press. There are much worse movies out there with much better reputations.

Road House (2024)

For a good Buick, watch the original instead. 

Everything has to be a trauma plot now. Can’t just have the world’s most competent zen bouncer working his magic. It has to be a borderline suicidal guy navigating his guilt and anger management issues — when he isn’t being incongruously zen, too. Very inconsistent characterization. 

My college essay of this would be on how the remake reflects the erosion of America’s faith in expertise, but that’s a bit much for what seems like it’s mostly an excuse for ol’ Jake to show off his abs (and I can’t blame him…). At least he seems to be having fun. 

The fact they renamed the road house Road House speaks poorly for the modern world.

Immaculate (2024)

If I was ever going to watch this (a horror film that’s probably most easily summarized as Suspiria meets Rosemary’s Baby in a convent), Good Friday was probably the right day for it. Otherwise a very middle-of-the-road horror film that I will probably forget about entirely in a week or two. Beautiful setting, though, and some pretty effective sound design.

Someone brought a kid who was maybe 12 to the screening, which seemed like an odd choice.