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.

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

American Fiction (2023)

Felt like a bit of a bait and switch, but a thematically appropriate one, at least. The trailer had me imagining Boots Riley energy, or maybe an updated spin on Bamboozled, but a few sequences aside, that’s not what this is up to at all. This is a family dramedy with an occasional subplot about literary fraud, not an angry satire about the state of Black representation in pop culture. It does dig in on the satire every so often, and yeah some of those shots it takes are great (one involving an RBG poster definitely did me in), but that feels secondary to the real relationships that drive the film.

Which is part of what makes the ending feel like a cheat. More charitably, it makes sense for the satire I thought I was getting, but not for the human story that was actually the bulk of the movie. It leaves the whole thing feeling more muddled than I expected for a best picture nominee, but even that somehow seems like an extension of the point the film is making.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Ever since this was first announced I’ve been curious why Joel Coen would choose this as his first solo project. Now that I’ve finally seen it, I’m still unsure. I see the connections to other Coen works, but as far as why this film at this time, I’m still at a bit of a loss.

Visually it’s magnificent, and feels like a love letter to European arthouse from Caligari and Joan of Arc to the Seventh Seal. It feels meticulous almost to the point of being overfussed, but when you get images like the reflection of the weird sisters in their introduction, it’s hard to complain. The performances are also universally strong, at least in their individual moments, but there’s some of the same rigidity in the way they come together that keeps it from conveying the tragedy of the title. Even knowing the shape of the plot, I didn’t feel the sweep of the narrative, which was surprising given the calibre of talent involved in every part of this.

Certainly worth watching, but as a curiousity more than a statement.

Black Mirror: Demon 79 (2023)

I fell off of Black Mirror years ago, so no surprise that the episode that’s most criticized for shedding basically all the show’s hallmarks is also the one I’ve enjoyed the most in a long while. Nice period textures, goofy plot, more interested in story than message (though the political subtext is far from subtle)—it’s a 75-minute demon-murder lark and if a stalled spinoff of Black Mirror is what it took to get it made, so be it.

Starman (1984)

Nice to see John Carpenter straying from the nihilism of so much of his work for something sweet and even a little silly. Bridges’ performance as an alien discovering how to use its new human body could have been irritating, but he settles into the right balance of quirky but contained. I love the way his attention is always in motion, the way he seems unfamiliar in his body, never quite using it properly. Something about the physicality struck me as bird-like, and I really wonder if that was intentional.

I can see why the studios worried this would seem too similar to ET, but 40 years on, they very much feel like different stories for different audiences. Watching it I found myself thinking of Contact more than anything Spielberg—maybe because I’ve seen it more recently, but the sense of hope, the love of science (and SETI), the loathing of militarism, and even the basic idea of the alien taking the form of a lost loved one, it’s hard to deny the echoes.

His Girl Friday (1940)

A rewatch because it’s been more than a few years and my partner has never seen it. It’s billed as a screwball romance, but I’m not sure whether it’s a love story or a hostage negotiation. Either way I laughed a lot.

This movie basically never takes a breath, except when a room full of journalists pauses to reflect on the glibness and cynicism of their worldview, laid bare by a desperate woman at the end of her rope. The fact the movie finds room for that, and then jumps right back into the snappiest, overlappingest dialogue this side of, well, anything, is impressive as heck.

Insert Coin (2020)

Fairly standard talking-head-style documentary about Midway Games, the company behind Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and other over-the-top arcade classics. Good for background viewing, but not if you’re looking for something with a perspective or a message beyond “remember these games?”

A guy in this thinks he’s being charming by saying he used probably illegal clauses in contracts and an army of lawyers to coerce staff into turning down better offer from competitors. So many people think they’re clever when they’re actually just cruel.

Amelie (2001)

(Post-Valentines Day screening at the Globe Cinema)

23 years ago I watched this at a beautiful local art house that has since been demolished and turned into a seemingly permanent development project that was recently used as a post-apocalyptic ruin in a major television series. As far as cinematic experiences in Calgary go, that was a foundational one for me—it was a joyful shared experience and a high that I’ve had a hard time matching over the years. It was such a perfect film for me at that time, its breathless pace, the whimsy and inventiveness, and just the allure of something foreign and different was catnip to my inexperienced self.

I knew I wouldn’t have the same reaction watching it now, even if it was in the local art house across the street from the shell of where I first watched it. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much of that joy it still holds. There are a lot more choices in it that I would second guess, and it doesn’t feel so entirely sui generis, but it’s still lovely, funny, generous, and warm, with a fantastic score and a relentless pace.

I do miss that initial viewing, though, and I really hope this city still has places that can give young movie fans an equivalent experience.

Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

Just the kind of pulpy, dark, throwaway fun I was looking for. It reminds me of the sort of post-Pulp Fiction gangster comedies that were ubiquitous in the late ’90s, which I guess now count as comforting, nostalgic viewing for me. I don’t think this means I have to rewatch The Way of the Gun and Go now, but I suppose I should consider it.

It doesn’t quite have the Coen rhythm to it, but it feels like Ethan had a lot of fun putting this together, which is good enough for me. I hadn’t intentionally tried to watch this and Macbeth in the same month, and I don’t want to overstate how much each film says about directors who have made such a wide range of movies, but it’s interesting for Joel to swing so heavy for prestige and Ethan for pulp. If that’s reflective of their usual dynamic, it’s easy to understand why they’d want to splut up for a bit, but they’re definitely better together.

I hope Curlie is ok.

Uzumaki (2000)

Another one I haven’t revisited in probably 22 years. My first viewing was very much in my “weird for weird’s sake” phase of movie-watching (which is essential, but also probably a bit insufferable), so I was worried this wouldn’t hold up at all. Especially given all the middling reviews on Letterboxd and my own increased awareness of the source material.

Seeing it with relatively fresh eyes, I’ll admit it’s not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it does have an atmosphere to it, along with imagery strong enough to stick with me for two decades. Most of the credit for that goes to Junji Ito, I’m sure, and memorable as it is, the imagery doesn’t hold a candle to his original artwork (surreal horror will always work better in more abstracted media). But viewed on its own, this is still a solid slice of weird cinematic horror—not scary, not even really creepy, but still capable of getting under the skin.

Side note: I watched a somewhat low-res version in YouTube, and I have to say, the digital decay sort of suits it? The way large chunks of the screen pop in and out of clarity based on the whims of the algorithm, it has this ever-shifting lack of reality that just works. That notion that a medium’s flaws are what you end up nostalgic for, strikes yet again.

Capsule reviews and stray thoughts on what I watched in January (and a bit of December). All reviews via Letterboxd.

Poor Things (2023)

On the one hand it’s certainly fun watching a self-proclaimed hedonist destroyed by a woman who genuinely doesn’t care about the rules of polite society, and the way supposedly intelligent men fall in love with a mental six-year-old is obviously meant to be stinging. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is a very masculine take on female liberation, especially in its fascination with sexuality to the exclusion of almost everything else. Bella is a cipher for most of the film, more defined by her effect on others than by her own inner life. Her alternative to the possessiveness of men is pure callousness verging on intentional cruelty. She’s a spin on the magic pixie dream girl, but less a subversion than a caricature. 

Except when she isn’t, and maybe that’s part of showing someone essentially inventing themself, and pushing against social limits in the process. You can’t be fully developed and a work in process at the same time. So sometimes she’s a male fantasy or a nightmare, others she’s a real person trying to understand her past and define her future. 

Anyway, it’s impressive to see what a stylist Lanthimos has become here. The performances are mostly sharp, and the production design and costuming deserve all the awards they’re bound to get. This is vivid, imaginative, and fun, but it does leave me feeling conflicted.

The Creator (2023)

Hero’s journey, blow up the Death Star with the Force space fantasy with a bit of hand-wavey political subtext for good measure. I’m glad that a non-franchise story can get told on this scale, but if I’d realize I was getting into a 2.25-hour set of military skirmishes with shades of Eastern mysticism thrown in as set-dressing, I would’ve just accepted it as “not my thing” and moved along. There’s not nearly enough time spent establishing the relationship that’s meant to anchor the story, so it relies on indistinguishable action sequences and mawkish sentimentality for interest and gravitas respectively, and I found neither to be all that effective. I know others who enjoyed it, but aside from the visuals I found it quite dull.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023)

Our choice for first movie of 2024 was between this and a cult post-apocalyptic Aussie action film, and this was definitely the better choice. Sharp, fun, and genuine. Even with the title I didn’t realize how much religion would play into this, but even that is handled deftly. Good stuff.

Dream Scenario (2023)

I saw another review on Letterboxd that said this movie takes a fantastic premise and then takes the least interesting route at every opportunity. That’s overly harsh, but it’s not totally unfair, either. At a certain point, the movie drifts from being about a character responding to an absurd situation, to being about cancel culture and fame and the strokes just keep getting more and more broad. It gives way to a pretty rote downward spiral, which is disappointing given the odd but engaging specificity of the early scenes.

That said, I will always enjoy watching Tim Meadows doing his thing. I don’t know what it is exactly, but he’s just such a steady presence. He’s never let me down.

Paris, Texas (1984)

Mild spoilers

Travis starts the film as someone who doesn’t want to be saved, and ends it as someone who probably doesn’t deserve to be—he aims for understanding instead of atonement, and while he seems to recognize that he’s still a destructive force (hence the desire to disappear again), he doesn’t see that even his better intentions are still selfish and poorly thought through.

It’s tough, because Stanton is so likeable, and what Travis has done is so horrific. I want him to do better, or to be punished but it’s neither: he emerges from purgatory and then goes back to it, stuck in a stasis with nothing resolved. He runs from himself, puts himself in a place with no language and no memory, and leaves everyone else with the challenge of functioning and rebuilding and carrying on.

The Quick and the Dead (1995)

The ’90s were pretty great for getting a bunch of fantastic character actors, a weirdo director, picking an underappreciated genre, and just going for it. I don’t know for sure that this got greenlit after Pulp Fiction became a smash, but it really feels like it’s of that era where no one quite knew what was going to work, so they took a bunch of swings just to see what would happen.

Gene Hackman is great as always, a pre-Titanic DiCaprio is somehow already mocking his pretty-boy image a year before Romeo + Juliet even came out, and even dang-ol’ Woody Strode makes a cameo. Raimi takes the close-up-on-the-eyes thing to ridiculous extremes. Lance Henriksen gets to play the least Lance Henriksen role I’ve ever seen and he eats it up. Russell Crowe is even almost likeable.

This is just fun, is what I’m saying.

The Rat Catcher (2023)

First of Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl shorts that I’ve seen (we don’t have a Netflix subscription right now), and the tone is certainly something. Somewhere between storytime, children’s theatre, and student film, albeit with incredibly talented people handling all the details.

I almost would’ve preferred if the short hadn’t used a prop/animated rat at all—they were so committed to the bit of imaginary props that it was a bit of a letdown to drop it. Otherwise, I’m not really sure what to make of this. It’s a fun diversion, and it seems like that’s probably all they were going for, so… well done, I suppose.

Ruthless People (1986)

Would never have guessed that this is ZAZ (directorial trio Zucker Abrams Zucker)—the sense of humour is completely different from your Airplanes and Police Squads and Hot Shots, much more grimy and mean and, well, Danny Devito-y, for lack of a better term. And I think it would’ve been better with someone like Devito at the helm really playing up those elements, because as it is, it’s directed a little more lighthearted than the plot and subject matter really call for. In other words, it’s not vicious enough for how vicious it is, if that makes sense.

But Bill Pullman is phenomenal in this, and they gave Sally Cruikshank some work on the opening credits, so I’m still all for it.

Elemental (2023)

Something felt off in the scale of this. There’s such elaborate world building in its depiction of a massive city populated by elemental creatures; you just know someone has a 100-page bible outlining each Element’s architecture and cultural history and technological preferences. The story itself is relatively intimate and personal, but because the world is so elaborate, it feels like it’s is going to go bigger—there are recurring floods in the city that seem poised to open to some Chinatown-style conspiracy, or at least something that ties more deeply into the narrative—but it never does. It’s just there because the filmmakers needed a big set piece, even though the stakes of the smaller story would have been more than enough. 

Magic (1978)

It would be fun to sell people on this Anthony Hopkins muderous puppet movie by saying “it’s from the author of the Princess Bride” just to see what happens.

The main character, a musician/ventriloquist named Corky, is more a Michael Moriarty character than a Hopkins one—my memory is already sort of swapping in Moriarty’s jazz musician from Q: The Winged Serpent into the role—but Hopkins really does give this his all. Ann Margret has to sell the idea that anyone would find this act charming enough to throw away your life, and does a decent job showing the desperation that would require. It stretches credulity more than a few times, but it’s effective all around. 

I fully believe that Burgess Meredith’s aging agent would pitch a combination ventriloquist/magician act as the next big thing; less confident audiences would eat it up, but hey, I wasn’t alive in 1978 so what do I know. They reference Steve Martin and Rich Little and maybe they saw that as proof of a neo-vaudeville revival. So, sure.