drqshadow

This is a Christopher Nolan movie set in the age of heroes and mythology. You should already know it’s a big, sweeping epic based on that data alone. Apart from acknowledging that the incredible visual effects and sound design make the most of the in-theatre experience, what more can be said? The Odyssey checks the same boxes we expect from Hollywood’s resident big-time director, and it checks them well. It looks and feels wonderful, especially in a pumped-up setting; a hypnotic, enveloping spectacular that constantly flaunts its creator’s mastery of the medium. These aspects are worth recognizing, but now I’ve recognized them, and we can move on to the more distinctive bits. It’s not a flawless effort. Nolan’s decision to use the modern dialect robs poetry from some very ripe scenes. The climactic fight amongst the king’s suitors falls flat, a little too much flashy Hollywood action cliche and one-man-army plot armor nonsense. It can be accused of allowing its heavier moments to stretch and linger. Agamemnon’s behemoth armor stands right on the line between bold/cool and forced/ridiculous. But these are just about the limits of my complaints, and if it feels like I was reaching just to get that far, that’s because I was. One thing that kept occurring to me, as the various players ran their wriggling routes like lost ants under the gaze of unseen spectators, is that Nolan has been training his entire career for this moment. Here he’s tackled multiple narratives and time paradoxes, extremely familiar concepts to veterans of his filmography, but he’s done so smoothly and cleanly, without showy gimmicks or extravagant techniques. The narrative skips around, quite a bit in fact, but those gaps and misalignments (and their resultant revelations) serve the greater saga. More importantly, they flow naturally. By taking those wobbly steps in Tenet, by wowing us with the IDEA (in bold, stylized font) during Inception, he’s worked out the kinks in his method and exhausted his need to take an on-screen bow. The Odyssey thrives in this aftermath and reaps its benefits. Matt Damon’s Odysseus is wise and honorable without being overbearing. His journey, wild and dreamlike as it may be, serves as a tough rumination on the challenges of relating with a broader world. In addition to cursing his own moral weaknesses, Odysseus is forced to admit the futility of honor and tradition in the face of peoples and civilizations that don’t recognize or understand such things. His peril is not just in personal failings, but in the short-sightedness of his society’s moral code. And in the metaphorical monsters that so effectively dominate the screen. Hey, what’s a little philosophical anguish without a few genuinely frightful giants stomping around to really underscore the point? At the risk of writing an epic of my own, I’ll stop here. Though it changes a few shapes and rearranges a few themes, The Odyssey delivers on its promise. This is three hours that will move you; a significant duration which earns its emotional payoff. It’s not my favorite Nolan movie, maybe not even in the top five, but it might be the one I most admire. Here’s a man who set his sights on Olympus and proved up to the challenge.

It’s a wild, versatile world out there, living in society’s aftermath, and in many senses The Bone Temple is as dissimilar to 28 Years Later as that film was to its immediate predecessors. Sure, there are common factors - the tireless threat of roving, athletic zombies is a (walking) dead giveaway - but the tone of story and the style of its telling are a distinctive departure. This edition is less about the careful details of survival in the new land and more about the various shapes and colors that have emerged after three decades of isolation. We catch quick flashes of the old, cautious ways emphasized by the first (third?) film, but those are quickly laughed off and cast aside as aggressive new ones arrive to overwhelm the mice and steal their harvest. And yet, despite the change in timbre and tempo, some recurring themes still bubble to the surface. My main takeaway was this: everyone handles the end of civilization in different ways, with their own interests and priorities. Human nature can be as fluid as any species in the animal kingdom, adaptive to environs both internal and external. Cut off from broader human contact, a man’s methods might shift in strange and uncomfortable ways. We see this from the Clockwork Orange style gangland leader, the great “Sir Lord” Jimmy, who thrives on manipulation and lack of compassion, and from the naturalist Dr. Ian Kelson, the last film’s proverbial old wise man. Both have built comfortable livings based entirely on instinct. Jimmy confidently smashes and grabs, distributing grotesque forms of torture with all the concern a bank teller might give a lolly. Kelson effectively uses science to deter the marching monsters and superstition to ward off the human threat. From a comfortable distance (say, from our cushioned seat in the movie theater), these two extremes seem antithetical. One subsists on furor and might, the other on willpower and knowledge. But they’ve both been driven to these ends, essentially climbing to the top of their local food chain, for the same reasons. Without differing voices and opinions to temper our wilder impulses, mankind sinks into an echo chamber. The feedback loops and amplifies. Weird tendencies get weirder. And, on opposite ends of the same spectrum, behaviors grow apart. When these two ways clash, unpredictable recoil should be the expected result. The strange ways grow even stranger. And the audience gets a show. All that said, I can understand why this wasn’t for everyone. It wasn’t always for me. The resolution seems superficial, a conundrum that’s solved with surprising ease. The gang’s brutal ways are often extreme only for shock value; meant not so much for the eyes of the cast as for those of their viewers. It lacks for emotional resonance and purpose, which weren’t problems in 28 Years Later. It’s not as strong a package as 28 Years, either, but the place it sets for the inevitable, forthcoming conclusion might have more lasting value. This franchise isn’t through yet.

In the wake of Tim Burton’s Batman, major studios were clamoring to launch a dark and moody anti-hero franchise of their very own. As it happens, Sam Raimi was shopping a script that traced similar lines. Raimi allegedly made a bid for Batman before Burton came around, and then for The Shadow a short time later. He scored neither gig and wrote Darkman instead, which proved a better fit for his campy brand of over-the-top creepshow zaniness than either of the established characters. Darkman may not be a traditional superhero - no costume, no powers, no catchphrase or theme music - but his thirst for vengeance, penchant for striking dynamic poses and kinda-sorta secret identity fits the mold. Close enough for Universal Pictures, at any rate, who pushed a load of marketing muscle behind this film despite private reservations about its eccentric manner and wild tonal swings. Nothing a little meddling and last-minute production notes can’t fix, am I right? Even with the late edits (which Raimi understandably *hated*), Darkman is a loose, goofy, semi-serious romp that slots in nicely beside the Evil Dead films in this director’s early filmography. That said, Burton’s influence is all over the end product, and not just because Danny Elfman contributed a few characteristically jaunty, quirky soundtrack cuts to the mix. It’s also equally grim and fantastical, pairing seedy gangsters and mature scenarios with childish logic and silly action. This is made clear in the film’s first scene, where a peg-legged mafia underling walks into a no-weapons warehouse meeting, calmly removes his prosthetic leg at the knee, then cackles and pogos in place while a buddy opens fire with a foot-shaped machine gun. The photography may be dark, the underlying themes cynical and modern, but Raimi just can’t bring himself to take the funny out of the funny books. The really funny thing is just how serious the two primary actors would prove, later in their careers. Darkman marked Liam Neeson’s very first starring role in an action film, though his presence is largely relegated to a pair of darting eyes under heavy gauze. Frances McDormand, meanwhile, had already been nominated for an Oscar and probably regrets this entry on her resume. She claims second billing, but is generally just there to play the captive and wear large shoulder pads. This isn’t a good movie, not at all, but it is an entertaining movie, and that counts for something. It’s certainly more fun than Alec Baldwin’s feeble Shadow flick from a few years later. The hole-laden plot, absurdly flat supporting performances and shaky grip on reality are big problems, as are the wildly ambitious montages that miss far more than they hit, but there’s life and spirit and style and originality here. No matter how ham-fisted and stupid the end product might have turned out.

I’ve got a little place in my heart for empty-brained screwball comedies. The kind of junk cinema that doesn’t even make an effort to say something with its storytelling (or really to do anything more than back up its one-word title) and, instead, invests that energy into the pursuit of dumber, louder and wackier punchlines. Dodgeball fits that description to a tee, and while it’s been quite some time since my last viewing - maybe even since it was still in theaters - I still knew exactly what to expect. It’s actually, somehow, both better and worse than I remembered. This is a Jekyll and Hyde story behind the cameras: raw, unrestrained comedy paired with a fussy, hand-holdy style of editing. The laughs are there, but the production is just so damn hokey; I can almost hear the rimshots and slide flutes every time something funny happens. The execs who made these decisions are the same breed who thought TV audiences would be scared and confused without a canned audio track to show them where it’s okay to laugh. You’re not adding, guys, you’re actively detracting! Fortunately, Ben Stiller is here in über-character mode, Rip Torn is here to spit ridiculous phrases with a straight face, Milford from Office Space is here to be Milford from Office Space in a gym setting and there’s a bottomless assortment of near-celebrity cameos to fill in all the gaps. It also might just be the single most meme’d movie ever made. From “if you can dodge a wrench” to “it’s a bold strategy, Cotton,” Chuck Norris to ESPN8, the hits just don’t stop coming. Like I said, it’d been a while, so I was floored by just how thoroughly Dodgeball has permeated online culture. And it should be noted that, even when you know they’re coming, even when you’ve seen them a hundred times before, the high-water laughs still deliver. That’s not to say there are no low-water spots, of course. Not every riff works. It would be generous to say this bats .500. Not every player lights up the screen like Stiller’s one-note gymbro maestro. It’s not easy to be the straight man, but Vince Vaughn looks completely bored with his leading role. At the end of the day, this is just what it looked like: a dumb movie with weaknesses a’plenty and a plot thinner than a can of Campbell’s. The peaks are steep, but the valleys are well below sea level.

This was a first-time watch, and holy crap, now I understand why it was so buzz-worthy during COVID. It’s downright eerie how close Contagion lands to that mark, from infected bats and social distancing to incorrectly-fitted masks and politicized distrust of the scientific authorities. It’s even accurate about panic buying and empty grocery shelves, although it didn’t quite pinpoint the target. Not even Hollywood could imagine how highly we’d value toilet paper at the end of the world. Thankfully, things didn’t get so crazy as to induce riots and looting back in the darkest days of 2020, but let’s be honest, it felt awfully close at times. Some types of people just can’t stand being alone with their thoughts for that long. There’s a good reason for the scientific credibility - screenwriter Scott Burns consulted with the World Health Organization to study their scripted response to a then-hypothetical pandemic - but the film’s on-point depiction of the broader social reaction seems to have come from within. And man, what a damning reflection that turned out to be. A major recurring theme is paranoia and desperation; the masses, restless at the lack of immediate explanations or medical breakthroughs, vent their frustrations through thuggish and mindless means. Politicians and fringe media opportunists use the churning unrest to boost their own visibility (and/or cover their butts), paying no mind to how it affects the men and women in the labs, killing themselves to find a breakthrough. Far easier to sow distrust and allege conspiracy than to actually hunker down and do the dirty work. This is humanity at its ugliest, raw and vivid, and while the film is ultimately able to deliver a certain degree of closure and comeuppance, the real world still waits for that delivery. As it turns out, truth really is much stranger, and meaner, than fiction. I found it hard to spend much time concentrating on the story, inundated as I was by so many dark mirrors and uncanny premonitions. What’s there is okay, if a little formulaic and simplistic, and the brisk, multi-faceted narration skims on a lot of character detail. I appreciate that it spares no stars - they get sick and die just like the rest of us - which does serve as a sort of bitter, lasting message here. At the end of the road, no matter how diamond-crusted the trail may have been, we all wind up in the same place. Some characters come to terms with that, learn to admire and appreciate what they’ve got, while they’ve got it. Others fight and strain against the current, and its alleged unfairness, until the end.

Is Obsession about a killer crush? About a creepy old-world love potion for the Tinder generation? About confrontation paralysis, inexperience, weakness and selfishness? Yes to all of the above, but especially so to those last points. The very first time we meet Bear, he’s stumbling and flailing his way through a disastrous heart-to-heart. Even in practice, amongst friends, he can’t find the right words to buck his friend zone status with a heavy infatuation. That’s an uphill climb for even the most suave among us, and Bear has almost no tact, courage or self-respect. The simple truth is, this guy’s still playing childish games and he’s woefully unprepared for the barreling freight train that is adult life. Saying something deep and personal to the object of his private desire, overcoming a puppy sort of love and showing a little backbone, is only the first step. One he’s about a decade behind schedule in taking. We’re shown that point, over and over again, as Obsession’s supernatural mechanics grab hold of Bear’s life and wrench his little social circle through the wringer. By not making a decision, or worse, by backpedaling and trying to convince everyone (particularly himself) that things aren’t actually as bad as they seem, he embraces his cowardice and accepts the repercussions. It’s a metaphor that works on many levels, in this era of awful powers beyond our control, but the underlying message is clear: be honest with yourself and resist the things that don’t feel right, even if that leaves you in a less-comfortable position. Because doing anything else means you’re complicit. Bear’s complicit, all right, even if he didn’t initially believe in the fairy tale magic that makes this whole story move. His moral weaknesses are punished at every step, but he swallows the pain because, in a twisted sort of way, he’s still getting what he wants. He’s got the girl. He’s nailing the girl every night. He’s finally become the cherished object, and it feels good to be the center of somebody else’s world. Even if it took artificial means to get there. Even if it means havoc for everybody else. Even if it’s obviously putting the girl he loves through hell. It’s unusual for a horror flick to make an audience sympathize with the monster, to distrust the supposed victim, but Obsession didn’t need very long to get me there. Bear’s the real problem here; the curse only keeps burning because he’s feeding it more fuel. A complicated, fascinating film. Its conceit may be familiar, but the sleeve-worn influences are elevated by its stark, minimal production values and an exceptional central performance from Inde Navarrette as the girl/devil next door. Yeah, I think this one’s going to stick with me for a while.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller team back up to deliver a warm, motivated science fiction adventure that mixes its engineering fancies with dashes of buddy comedy and convenient fits of short-term amnesia. We know this former elementary school teacher, Ryland Grace, has boarded a crazy, hypothetical, outer-space vessel because the world needs saving. After a quick montage of waking up and collecting context clues, he knows the same. What we don’t know is why he volunteered, what he’s meant to find, or how the two additional members of the expedition already wound up dead. Or who’s behind the wheel of the unusual, jumbo-sized tinker toy that just pulled up beside him. Spoilers that aren’t really spoilers, but it’s an alien. A curious sort of conscious rock, actually, with a background in engineering and an eagerness to compare notes. Watching these two learn the ground rules of each other’s biology and gradually devise ways to communicate, that’s Project Hail Mary’s lifeblood. Their willingness to trust one another, to share the joys of discovery and the pains of their isolation, is some genuinely life-affirming stuff. Ryan Gosling is great in the human role, wearing his wonder and determination like a full closet of fluffy sweaters, but he gets a big assist from the puppetry (and voice acting) of James Ortiz, who manages most of the skittering critter’s mannerisms with an equally open heart. Ortiz was originally meant to serve as a placeholder, a cue for Gosling to hit his marks, but was upgraded to a full cast member during production and it’s easy to see why. His unassuming charm and sparkling manner serve to ground the role in ways that would’ve been lost beneath a more recognizable (or professional) performance. Neither of these guys would be their planet’s first choice for a savior, but they’re doing the best they can. Thus, their identities should feel more working class and casual. Rocky, as he’s affectionately known, wouldn’t have seemed half as friendly if he were voiced by Morgan Freeman. At the end of the day, of course, this is a big-budget space blockbuster, so we do indulge some moments of loud action and epic soundtrack cuts between all the softer character building exercises. Lord and Miller balance these well, serving up the spectacle without slicing away any flavor. Their adaptation is less stuffy than Ridley Scott’s preceding turn on The Martian; a snappier ride that’s more fun to watch. They also deliver emotions with a little more depth and meaning. And, at the end of the day, they’re able to maneuver an ammonia-breathing boulder into showing us what it means to be a human being.

First-time director Kane Parsons leaves room for his creepy YouTube shorts to expand and level up, but not to lose touch with what made them so provocative to begin with. Just like its quick-hit predecessors, the Backrooms feature-length pairs a distinctly ‘90s aura, all faceless fluorescent buzz and sterile cubicle décor, with a glitchy, game-inspired tilt of the surreal. Impossibly-sized rooms with pointless corridors. Stairways to nowhere. Broken physics and a vague, unsettling sense of shambling life just around the corner. Like a headache in analog, this setting should provide unconscious winces and a strong, inexplicable urge to escape for anyone who served time as a twentieth-century office drone. Honestly, it might be one of the most effective horror settings ever for members of that crowd. I just wanted to get out of there. While the aesthetic is certainly Backrooms’s strongest asset, the scant, metaphorically-rich storytelling worked for me, too. Like most good mysteries, it shows enough to make us think without explaining enough to tell us *what* to think. I saw a lot of pressing modern topics behind the cover story here - notes about toxic masculinity, runaway ego, the empty American dream, surveillance states and artificial intelligence - but those are subtle, not plastered in bold type, and they’re rarely the focus. No, we’re primarily here to plumb the depths of this weirdly alluring underground labyrinth, but if you’re looking for something extra underneath the wallpaper, there’s plenty to find. Like an Eraserhead for the COVID generation, Backrooms bears powerful feelings, distressing visuals and an essential sense of familiarity that grounds the whole package somewhere adjacent to reality. It’s a skewed reality, like the outcome of feeding Silent Hill 2 and Paranormal Activity into a hallucinating machine, but a recognizable one. I’m eager to keep chasing this rabbit, to see how deep his hole really goes.

After spending a year in isolation, studying snakes(?!), the handsome young heir of a brewing fortune (Henry Fonda) boards a ritzy ocean liner and immediately becomes a target for every available woman onboard. Included amongst these lascivious lasses is a real black widow: Jean (Barbara Stanwyck), the daughter of a notorious hustler and con man, whose apple doesn’t fall far from her father’s tree. Though she easily nets her target, Jean soon becomes the victim, won over by the gent’s earnest demeanor and then dumped when he learns of her duplicity. You know what they say about hell’s fury and a woman’s scorn? That goes double when the gal has no ethics to start with. I thought we were really cooking when the couple sat down for a gimmicked game of cards with dear ol’ dad, midway through the first act. By this time, Jean has fallen head over heels, and while nice guy Charles is completely oblivious to the shady goings-on, the two seasoned scam artists work to constantly one-up and out-trick each other. The old man still wants to milk this **** dry, but the daughter has pity, so they each use every trick in the book to get their way in a crafty, entertaining series of palmed aces and trick decks. That’s really the only time we see the core of these characters - essences of black, white and sorta-grey - plain as day, in a playful, unique, interesting conundrum. It’s soon left behind in favor of simpler tricks and strained conceits. I don’t know if it was the soft storyline, the unconvincing romance(s) or the outdated humor, but this just wasn’t for me. Judging by the film’s rich array of accolades, clearly I’m in the minority. I’m not immune to comedies of this era - His Girl Friday arrived a year earlier, and I love its rapid repertoire of sharp zingers - but about 95% of these punchlines land flat, and the few that do register are merely enough to merit a light scoff or brow-furrowing. Not only do the laughs come up short, so does the romantic chemistry. We don’t really see this couple fall in love, per se, they just blink and become devoted to one another. This happens several times as their paths cross, mingle, collide and split apart, before finally reaching a measure of unmerited accord at the last stop. Love can be a funny thing, cooking despite a clash of ingredients, but this one is almost impossible to comprehend. Is this guy really such a sap? Does this girl have selective amnesia? Why are they suddenly a hot ticket again? Some (most) might see this as a comedy classic. I couldn’t get past the washy cast, whiffed gags and wasted potential.

Way back in the year 2000, when I told my dad how much I liked Gladiator, he suggested I watch Ben Hur, but I think he was actually remembering Spartacus. Maximus and Spartacus start in different places - one a decorated Roman general whose family is his life, the other a born slave who’s never so much as sniffed a woman - but their paths run parallel once they touch the combat arena's sand and their noble fates end in a similarly proud tragedy. These stories are powerful by design - grand and sweeping examples of broad revolutionary drama - and their stars’ struggles are backed by large, noble, philosophically-minded supporting players. Lots of orchestral swells, hopeless charges and bold, gut-moving monologues in these films. They were also both helmed by noteworthy directors in need of a hit. Ridley Scott’s career enjoyed a mild revitalization after the critical and commercial success of Gladiator, and while Spartacus is almost certainly the most popularly-acceptable of Stanley Kubrick’s films, I think he hated that about it. This was the last time Kubrick would complete a picture without complete creative control, and the lack thereof was a constant source of friction between the director, his screenwriter (Dalton Trumbo, initially working under an alias to avoid the blacklist), studio execs with little patience for his picky eccentricities, and his star. Kirk Douglas had been a proponent of Kubrick’s for some time by this point, leveraging his stature to help produce 1957’s Paths of Glory and calling Kubrick’s name when this film’s original director was removed early in production. The pair clashed frequently during filming, with Kubrick famously cutting out most of Douglas’s lines in the opening half-hour, and wouldn’t work together again. All this noise didn’t harm the director’s reputation, however, nor did it damage the picture. This may have a more mainstream flavor than the rest of Kubrick’s catalogue, but it doesn’t feel out of place alongside Dr. Strangelove or Barry Lyndon. Spartacus is long, and moves at its own steady pace, but its length is justified by its thematic riches and depth of character. This could’ve been a great prestige TV miniseries; it’s that jam-packed. Of course, much of the extra meat came about due to arguments between the more recognizable members of its star-studded cast, each competing for greater definition and more screen time. Just another example of a troublesome production reaping benefits for the finished product. Kubrick had more good material than he could handle here. He also had plenty of liberty behind the lens, essentially telling the studio-assigned cinematographer to take a break and then stealing the job for himself. The end result of *that* squabble? Incredible photography that smashes through visual boundaries and makes impressive use of its ten thousand extras. In Spartacus, we don’t just see the size of the armies; we feel their magnitude. After Douglas delivers one emotional battlefield proclamation, he leaps into the saddle, races off and spurs the murmuring background mob into visible action. No cuts. It’s a dazzling display of spectacle, backed by substance. Such is true of the complete package. We’re given plenty to goggle over, but also plenty more to think over. Kirk Douglas may be cut from marble but he’s also human, gradually developing a warm, compassionate connection with both his troops and his lady. Where he goes, so goes the film. There’s much more than just sword-swinging and slobber-knocking to contend with here.

I didn’t realize this was an indie video game adaptation by a famous YouTuber until we started it up and learned as much in the crawl of opening credits. At times, it shows those colors - the story is told in a very game-friendly manner and the production quality occasionally belies its small crew’s relative inexperience - but overall? Iron Lung reaches its goals, makes a few impressive technical waves, ramps and layers the plot to the point of near-madness and benefits from a surprisingly credible performance by its one-man-band star/writer/producer/director. This wasn’t an easy pitch to hit, but Markiplier has made solid contact and pressed for extra bases. Atmosphere-building is the main pursuit here. After being dropped in a tight, claustrophobic submersible, we’re introduced to the pilot (a convict who’s been promised freedom in exchange for participating in this experiment) and fed just enough detail to get the plot’s ball rolling: most of the universe has suddenly blinked out of existence, but a mysterious moon with an ocean of blood offers the scant crew of survivors some grim sense of hope. We’re being sent below the crimson depths, essentially flying blind through a sea of tomato soup, to search for... whatever. Let’s just see what we find, okay? Obviously the handlers know more than they let on, and there’s more to the story of our convict than a simple case of mistaken identity, but this is a marathon, not a sprint, and the film’s ability to patiently dole out details is a big strength. That restraint makes the early tidbits more interesting, and the later, wilder swings more powerful. The story, like the little malfunctioning sea vessel that contains it, seems to grow and expand as we get to see more. It’s got some tics and warts, important bumps in the road for a fledgling director, but Iron Lung remains an impressive debut effort. The ambiance is just right, the scenery and practical effects are convincing, the voice acting is excellent, the pace is well-executed and the climax doesn’t blanche from any of the necessary craziness. This is dark cosmic horror with an edge, with a comprehensive finale that’s well worth sticking through the slow-moving early scenes.

As a sorta-followup to his bonkers 2018 directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters depicts a similar set of lower-class victims in a similarly unpredictable, ultra-maxi, often delirious manner. Where his first film followed a beaten-down call center employee on a nightmarish hunt for promotion, Boosters chases clout with a trio of frustrated, homeless wannabe fashion designers. These opportunistic young women see a string of high-profile shoplifting sprees as their ticket to Robin Hood notoriety, lifting seasonal ensembles from the racks of the haves so the subterranean have-nots might look sharp at a more reasonable price. And, of course, it’s a fringe benefit that the girls committing that hustle should pocket a little spending money for their trouble. Everyone in this vibrant, mixed-up world is fighting to climb over somebody else, whether it’s the vengeful, delusional corporate designer at the head of the table or the angry, proactive denizens tucked away under her floorboards. It’s an angry time and place to live, after all, one where fresh allies seem increasingly few and far between. I was grinning and rocking right along with this ride for the first hour, then suddenly reached the edge of my sugar rush and hit a wall. Or maybe I just went numb. Watching I Love Boosters is like taking a long swig from the Technicolor fire hose, a rich and syrupy blast of raw creativity that hammers the consciousness with bold hues, wild ideas, rumbling metaphors and more than a little toxic, random craziness. That was the case for Sorry to Bother You, too, especially as its train jumped the tracks into unbridled mayhem on the home stretch, and this iteration goes several steps further in most every sense. If you’re into chaos and volatility, a wildly spinning compass that never points the same way twice, I Love Boosters is gonna be your jam. If you crave order and resolution... well, you can still absorb some imagination fuel, but you can also probably expect to walk away unsatisfied. I guess I count myself in that second camp. Riley’s vision is an uncontrolled burn of hyper-inflated imagination, and a high-strung vent of many real, pertinent societal frustrations, but its confusing plot structure and empty, subversive resolution left me wanting a little more. Or maybe a little less.

Sometimes it’s easy to see the backstage mood of a production. That’s definitely the case with this first Beverly Hills Cop, where Eddie Murphy and company are clearly having a great time while adding to, riffing on, and stepping over the script. Sure, you can predict the entire plot in the first ten minutes, but that’s true of a lot of action/comedies from this age and most aren’t nearly this much fun. Fresh off a run with SNL, a wildly successful stand-up comedy tour (as seen in Delirious) and a training-wheels feature film (48Hrs, starring alongside Nick Nolte), Murphy was at the height of his powers in late 1984 and his loose, playful demeanor is at the heart of everything that works in BHC. Murphy’s character, Axel Foley, is smooth and casual; a quick-witted detective who can be silly and mischievous without losing his charm or his credibility. He can crack puns and pull practical jokes while still portraying an adept cop, in other words, which isn't always a given. Axel doesn’t annoy or push too hard for laughs. We want to see him win, even when he’s transplanted from a less regimented Detroit police department to the stiffer, by-the-books Beverly Hills station and gets on the locals’ nerves. Watching him break the ice and make pals with everyone from the bristling, unpleasant lower-level flatfoots to the stern, barking lieutenant is an effective good time. Impressive that he’s able to do so, cleanly and convincingly, while also juggling the details of a murder mystery. Sometimes the pieces just fit. This isn’t going to change the way you see cinema, not even semi-serious ‘80s action cinema, but it’s a fine way to enjoy a Saturday night and a key showcase for its star. It’s also loaded with familiar faces and unexpected secondary players. Jonathan Banks (Mike from Breaking Bad) is the villain’s top henchman! No wonder he started shaving his head - even in ’84, he didn’t have much to work with up there. Bronson Pinchot is in it, three years before he’d play Balki in Perfect Strangers! Paul Reiser is here! Damon Wayans makes the most of a ten-second bit part! Someone in the casting department had very good instincts.

Will Ferrell hits both sides of the scale as Harold Crick; a stiff, no-fun IRS auditor who loses his grip, loosens up and eventually finds happiness. Crick is a loner by choice, strictly obeying a tight daily routine (even counting his toothbrush strokes) because he’s a numbers guy who relishes conformity and loathes surprises. That changes when he starts hearing voices. Actually, just one voice: a storybook narrator who breaks his rhythm, drives him to uncharacteristic mistakes and softly drops hints about a premature death. That’s an interesting concept, particularly when Harold seeks help from a flaky psychiatrist/literary expert (Dustin Hoffman, in a well-suited but limited supporting role), but one that loses momentum as it’s probed and explored. This is a mystery that would’ve been far more interesting as a lightly-explained device and/or allegory. Instead, we get it all spelled out in neat typesetting. While he deals with the disruptive narrator, Harold’s life is thrown into further disarray by a spark of romance. He doesn’t get off on the right foot with Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a cute baker who’s been leaving her business taxes intentionally unpaid as a form of silent protest. She’s a fight-the-power independent type and he’s a happy cog in the establishment’s machine, but opposites do sometimes attract and she eventually recognizes a playful spirit in him, fighting to break out and try something new. This development is highlighted by a creatively-framed sequence aboard an articulated bus; seated characters move in and out of each other’s field of vision as their awkward conversation weaves from approval to dismissal and back again. Will they or won’t they? I guess it depends on where, and how, their ride finally stops. Ultimately, they prove to be a sweet couple, and a few effective soundtrack cuts underscore the charming clumsiness of their initial hookup, but their connection never really seems as permanent as the story wants us to think. They race from light flirtation to adoring cohabitation because the plot dictates, and because it’s coming time for his dance with fate, not because it feels earned or natural. Stranger Than Fiction works, but it doesn’t overachieve. Its character is strong, pairing a whimsical mood with a pertinent sense of big-city claustrophobia, but its metaphors don’t always land and its dreamy conceit feels humdrum and unspectacular by the end. Ferrell is good, flexing a few nuanced instincts that are completely ignored in the rest of his filmography. The rest of the story is light by comparison.

It’s never easy to follow a phenomenon. Maybe that’s why it took five years for the Ghostbusters gang to reconvene for a sequel: fear that it wouldn’t measure up. As Ghostbusters II proves, the cast was right to be so wary. Where the original played like a bunch of friends having fun with a silly concept and flying by the seat of their pants, this one is more like a group of uninspired creatives forcing ideas in a writer’s room. Everything’s tight and clinical, antithetical to the loose, winking, take-things-as-they-come attitude that made the first film so irreverent. Gone is the quirky, distinctive piano score that once served as a warm, human heart, replaced by a glossier, pop-driven soundtrack that strains to re-bottle the lightning that was “who ya gonna call?” The slappy ad-libs that so effectively showcased the unique identity of each ‘buster? MIA. The well-scripted chemistry and witty repartee? Squandered. Venkman’s amusing “game show host” act falls on the wrong end of the smarminess scale. Even the effects-laden spooks don’t really measure up. Interesting that this sequel missed on so many of the elements that made the first Ghostbusters such a classic, because it’s clearly quite eager to replay the hits. The plot may involve an underground river of pink goop, reactive to shouts and sarcasm, but the structure is a thorough mimic job. Despite the entire city cheering as they tackled a walking marshmallow **** five years prior, nobody believes that the work the Ghostbusters do is legit. Then ghosts start showing up. The boys run a wacky commercial! This is fun! Wait, now things are less fun, because Peter's love interest is wrapped up in something lofty and serious. While the heroes cut through bureaucratic red tape (there’s even a new smarmy legislative underling), she’s held captive in a building with unique architecture and faced with the very real possibility of a permanent demonic possession. That’s... basically the first movie all over again. More talking paintings, granted, but still... way too many replayed beats and rapidly diminishing returns. Given a finished product that lacks enthusiasm, humor, spark and originality, my question is: why did these stars agree to come back at all?

It’s telling that Chevy Chase still considers Fletch a personal favorite, given that the script (which “allowed me to be myself”) largely presents him as a smarmy, below-the-belt a-hole. He’s only the hero of this story because the other lowlifes kicking around its ugly rendition of mid ‘80s Los Angeles - twisted cops, cantankerous editors and white-collar criminals - are even bigger jerks than he is. Yet, regardless of how much of a reach this role may (not) have been for the famously **** SNL alum, there’s no question he makes it his own. Fletch’s rambling, lackadaisical personality is an ideal fit for its star, who lankily jaunts through a large number of wardrobe changes and sticky situations, only to get serious at the last possible moment and frantically ad-lib his way to safety. He constantly gets to play the smartest/wittiest guy in the room, he bags both girls, the production always finds time for a few extra physical Chevy-isms... no wonder he enjoyed himself! The plot revolves around a one-man murder contract. Working undercover as a hobo, LA Times columnist Fletch is mistaken for the genuine article and recruited to help a CEO commit suicide without triggering the disclaimers on his life insurance policy. Easier to get away with this, I guess, if the perp is a complete nobody. On the surface, the whole scheme is presented as a busy, shadowy conspiracy, but as we get closer to the point, everything becomes very loose and convenient. The complications only exist so Chase has a reason to don a disguise and launch a fat-fingered fishing expedition in various locations. That continuous dress-up act sometimes bears fruit (the prostate exam is particularly funny) but more often plays as forced and unimaginative. Maybe if we put him in a *different* silly hat, the audience will be distracted from how redundant this scene is! At the end of the day, Fletch offers a few good riffs and a remarkably of-its-time soundtrack by Harold Faltermeyer, but very little heart or purpose. I kept waiting for this to find a higher gear, but it was content to putz around at or below the speed limit for a hundred minutes.

How was this a first time viewing for me? I grew up on exactly this sort of cruddy, sweaty, big-bicep, blow ‘em all up ‘80s action turd. I wore Rambo PJs, for crying out loud! Whatever the reasons for this delay, Commando is no longer a blind spot in my personal library, and let me tell you, that made my night. It can be awfully tough to thread the needle between too-stupid and too-serious in this specific subgenre. I’ve gotta be able to enjoy the absurdity of the moment without feeling like I’m being pandered or that the film is totally in on the joke. Sometimes Arnold toes that line while delivering his painfully flat one-liners (*lord* are there a lot of bad puns in this movie) but I’m convinced that the laughs this particular over-oiled muscle monster thinks he’s pursuing are not at all the ones he’s delivering. And as for the plot? Well, surely somebody out there in la-la land had to know this was completely ridiculous, a reach towards new levels of strained credibility, but I never caught sight of a wink or elbow to imply as much. Commando is incredibly stupid, but it’s also incredibly straight-faced, which means the end product is incredibly hilarious. No matter what you might be expecting, the plot is even simpler than that. Schwarzenegger is a former military bad boy who’s been living a quiet retirement under an assumed identity. No word on whether John Matrix is his real name or the one he’s been assigned for this new, uber-simple home life, but it doesn’t really matter. The minute we see his patty-cake relationship with a young daughter (Alyssa Milano!), we can pretty much connect the dots for the rest of the movie. Hey, this thing ain’t playing at Cannes. Grab the kid, offend the dynamo, get some explosives in his hands, let nature take its course. That’s why we’re here, no reason to **** foot around. Leave that to the oddly effeminate Australian villain wearing what appears to be a handmade crochet vest. I don’t know what they were aiming for with that guy, but they hit something completely different. Without exception, every choice Matrix (and the script) makes is the dumbest one imaginable. John leaps from an aircraft roughly 100 feet off the ground, lands in a knee-deep marsh and emerges without so much as a limp. John uses a telephone pole as an impromptu braking device and again suffers no injury (nor does his helpless passenger). John bodyslams an occupied telephone booth and it’s AWESOME. John gets into a fight with something like 75 mall security officers. Why does this particular shopping plaza need so many rent-a-cops? Again, it doesn’t matter. They respawn like **** soldiers in a Call of Duty mission because this page in the screenplay reads “big big fight scene wow look at his pecs so greasy.” I may be paraphrasing. Fans of bad cinema, rejoice! This is a gift that never stops giving! Well, apart from the valley in the middle, that is. Which is really the only reason I’m not giving this a testosterone-soaked eleven-point-five out of ten. The opening hour is a nearly-perfect amusement park ride, and the momentum returns in time for a suitably idiotic crescendo, but there is a pretty sizable stretch in the second act where it feels like Commando has blown its wad. Thankfully, it’s got a lightning-fast refractory period.

Disney brews up a very kid-focused science adventure that’s half Jules Verne Extraordinary Voyage and half Absent-Minded Professor. Rick Moranis plays the whiffle-brained dad, dedicating himself to the development of a homebrew shrink ray (and all manner of smaller, less purposeful inventions) while his family life teeters on the edge of dissolution. The kids are upbeat and optimistic about this situation, especially his young son who’s essentially a geek’s Mini-Me, but the wife has clearly had enough of the chaos and threatens to walk out. Perfect timing for a high-concept traumatic event! I’m told nothing makes you appreciate what you’ve got like the threat of losing it. Surely that’s what was going through her mind as she dangled precariously from a backyard clothesline, squinting through a magnifying glass in search of her freshly millimeter-sized children. Little surprise that the film’s head honcho, Joe Johnston, was a fresh delivery from the visual effects department. Moving up the ladder after a successful career with ILM (where he designed the Millennium Falcon and co-created Boba Fett), Johnston places a heavy emphasis on grand set pieces and stimulating ideas. Elephant-sized pet ants, water droplets that hit like artillery shells, blade-of-grass slides, Lego apartment blocks, the list is pretty extensive. After we’re through the extended introductions (which, for the record, are brutal), the film’s practical effects do a great job of resetting the scene and establishing an unusual sense of scale. It’s akin to a wild and crazy trip through one of the educational rides at a theme park, all sensory magic and high concepts. Enough to send the kids home happy, anyway, assuming they didn’t fall asleep during the setup chapters. As a curious little flea-sized spectacle, this is just fine. Enjoyable, even. When it tries to touch the other bases and actually tell a story, though, whew, it’s a struggle. Low rent, cable TV-grade script and acting, through and through. I can cut a little slack given the target audience, but c’mon guys, throw a bone or two to the parents who were drug along to this. The best we get is an obviously slumming Matt Frewer, who hams through an over-amplified role as the family’s obnoxious, sports-oriented neighbor. If Jim Carrey weren’t a total nobody in 1989, I’d have thought Frewer was shamelessly stealing his act.

Another wacky whodunnit / howdunnit from Johnson and Craig that drops, stylishly, into the crossroads between an Agatha Christie novel and the Clue movie. This time around, the setting is a lovely chapel in upstate New York, a magical blend of old world architecture and lush foliage that makes for some magnificent, painterly screen compositions. Therein, a tight cluster of unfriendly parishioners huddle around a charismatic, outspoken clergyman and collectively ward off any newcomers who might stop in for a service. Until the main man winds up dead, that is, mysteriously stabbed in the back in the middle of a service. That lures the famed detective, Benoit Blanc, and the requisite swirling tempest of intrigue that always seems to follow in his wake. As in the two preceding Knives Out murder mysteries, Blanc **** up all the air in a room when he’s around, so it’s good that he holds out until the second act to make his grand appearance. Daniel Craig seems to lean a little further into the comical eccentricity of this character each time he takes up the mantle, and while Wake Up Dead Man finds his ridiculous accent somewhat diminished, Blanc’s mustier appearance and renewed personality quirks ensure he’s never at risk of having a scene stolen. Not that he wants for competition. Josh Brolin is feisty and magnetic as the defiant deceased pastor at the center of all the fuss, while his overly-protective flock is studded with equally colorful, if reductive, role-players. They all mix and stir like ingredients in a busy stewpot, each frantic and suspicious in their own way, for their own reasons. Unfortunately, the game seems a little less exciting this time around, with neither the unreliable narrators of Knives Out or the clever misdirections of Glass Onion. This is more straightforward than the preceding films, a bit less playful and inventive if no less colorful. It’s still a good time, and I was surprised by its ability to treat organized religion with dignity (fully expected a few cynical japes there), but most of the lingering flavor lies in Craig’s portrayal of the headline hero and not the mystery itself.

There’s no preamble to this plot: Sam Rockwell stomps straight through the doors of a busy diner at the one minute mark, loaded for bear in the most crackpot homemade science fiction maniac costume one can imagine, and lays it all out for us. Hey gang, I’m from the future and I’m here to recruit a squad of nobodies to help save the world. Oh, and also, I’ve made this speech, to this room, more than a hundred times already. We haven’t managed to get it right just yet. Cue the police sirens and the first of many frantic escape sequences. It’s a goofy premise that acknowledges as much. Perhaps too much, if I’m being completely honest... there’s a *lot* of conspicuous winking going on. And while the narrative toys with all sorts of pointed, valid, high-tech phobias en route to its explosive finale - AI, VR, engagement algorithms, school shootings, drones, clones, pervasive gamification - for me, that inauthentic weirdness calls its intent into question. Is this just a cheap effort to use our societal disarray for fake depth, or does it actually have something to say? The first act seems to imply one answer, but the balance flips as we wade deeper into the conceptual weeds. By the climax, I was beginning to feel annoyed. Are we going to crap here, or are we just going to hang around on the pot for a couple hours? As the journey proceeds, we cut away to document each supporting character’s immediate origins. How their day was going before they entered the restaurant. In each case, not so good. Without exception, these play like a procession of sugared-up Black Mirror episodes. In a few cases, I think their concepts are actually lifted directly from the show, watered down and over-saturated in the name of broader entertainment value, then plugged back into the machine. The first example, a treatise on inattentive teens and shell-shocked teachers, is amusing but light, and the returns diminish from there. These sidetracks offer a lot of color and wacky ideas, but never resolve. Even as their subjects are summarily killed off. On a strictly superficial level, Good Luck is abstract fun in the same vein as Everything Everywhere All at Once, but it lacks that film’s conviction and often gets hung up on proving it’s half as clever as it thinks it is. Loudly insecure, I think, is the right way to put it. A big, erratic caper with wild ideas and eccentric performances, but it’s so focused on gaining our approval that it forgets to follow through on its promises.

The Coens try their hands at slapstick in the wild and lonesome southwest. Nic Cage plays this story’s instigator, a trashy repeat convict with zero impulse control. That key trait has led him astray for most of his life, primarily due to a fixation on robbing one particular convenience store, but eventually plants him on the path to redemption when he spontaneously ties the knot with a smitten female cop. When the new couple learns they can’t have children, though, and a high-profile set of quintuplets are delivered on the other side of town, those old temptations rise up once again. With that many kids, they’ll never miss just one... As the writing and directing duo’s second feature film, Raising Arizona represents a significant departure from their first (the serpentine Blood Simple) and a good indication of the unpredictable career they’d share over the ensuing decades. Despite the anxious subject matter, this is a very light, silly film that leans hard into its peculiarities. Cage is a wonderful wacko, as always, but there's fierce competition for our attention with Holly Hunter (his somewhat cracked lady love), Randall “Tex” Cobb (the grimy, flat-snouted bounty hunter who steps over from a completely different film) and John Goodman (the odious, dumbass, manipulative prison buddy) on-hand. And those are just the most focally-positioned examples. Without exception, everyone’s turned their personality up to eleven in Raising Arizona. Sometimes that can be too much - there are definitely spots where this just feels like a bunch of weird characters running around being weird characters - but heaping helpings of eccentricity are an essential part of the film’s DNA. These zany, dreamy kooks are the fuel that powers the engine. And besides, it’s stupidly fun to just sit back and watch what they’ll say (or do) next. Sometimes the silliness goes too far (the baby abduction scene is the wrong kind of screwball, like a mini Baby’s Day Out) and I’m not sure what its purpose really was, but I enjoyed this all the same. It’s been forty years now and I don’t think anyone, Coens included, has produced anything even remotely similar. That’s gotta count for something.

A young musician, struggling to find his voice, backs into a gig as spot keyboard player for an eclectic art rock band whose lead singer wears a large papier-mâché mask at all times. Though his first performance is a disaster, the fresh recruit is invited to join the group in an open-ended rehearsal / recording session / retreat somewhere in remote Ireland. There, the close quarters and limited social opportunities force them to hone their sound and face the tumult of adding a new member. Having played with a number of bands myself, I can recognize and relate with Frank’s depiction of a dysfunctional group creative process. Getting any number of smart, devoted, protective artistic types to agree on a direction can be an exercise in futility, especially without someone decisive and commanding at the helm. Frank, he of the big fake head, is a musical savant who can pick the most savory bits from an idea, adapting and expanding their essence into something rich and meaningful. An essential component of any successful group, but not necessarily what you need in a leader. That hasn’t been a problem for these guys so far, because they’re content to live in a van and essentially play music for themselves. When the new guy pushes them towards a broader audience, Frank’s thrilled, but the rest of the crew is skeptical. Doubly so when someone mentions toning down their sound. Are we trying to be radio-friendly now? I didn’t sign on for that. Building a great band is hard. It takes a lot of stale repetition. Personalities will rub wrong. There will be jealousy and gatekeeping as ideas are overlooked or discarded. And, even if you get over those humps, there’s no guarantee you’ll find the right ears or that your tenuous private alliance will survive the spotlight. Most of Frank’s band is damaged goods. Frank is damaged goods. Their faults feed the music, but for some that’s not a healthy loop. We see that in full effect during the film’s third act, where everyone’s cracks and faults are stressed and stretched, and suddenly it’s not such a fun ride. Delightfully obtuse at its best, I much preferred Frank’s first hour, where the band is fighting to create and not simply fighting. Its latter explorations of mental illness and social misunderstanding can be poignant, but very drab. After sixty minutes of fraught color, it's difficult to appreciate something so bleak.

Calm, pleasant, even-handed Destry (James Stewart) rolls into a rowdy western town to help its new sheriff clamp down on disorder. The resident lawman once worked with Destry Senior, a famous gunslinger, and expects a similar no-nonsense, no-prisoners demeanor from the son. Instead, he gets a pacifist who’d rather smooth feathers than ruffle them. Stewart is magnetic in that role, the rare genuine guy in a roomful of lowdown dirty scoundrels, and his dedication to straight talk proves the breath of fresh air this town (and the film) really needed. Though he’s ridiculed for stepping off the stagecoach unarmed, a casual demonstration in his first week proves that’s a choice made of principal, not inexperience, and earns him a measure of growing respect from most observers. Not so for Kent, the saloon owner who always gets his way, or Frenchy, his singin’, drinkin’, brawlin’ live-in burlesque girl. In addition to a well-suited starring vehicle for Stewart, Destry Rides Again serves as a comeback opportunity for Marlene Dietrich. Following a string of flops and a salty industry designation as “box office poison,” Dietrich accepted the role of Frenchy to prove she could play against type as a nasty, fresh, short-tempered sort. Plenty of opportunity for that, between the bawdy musical performances, flirty acts of manipulation and dirty extended cat fight with a justifiably furious housewife. I made it about thirty seconds into her opening tune before realizing who she reminded me of: Frenchy was parodied/paid homage, thirty years later, in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles. I spent the rest of the film waiting her to belt out a version of “I’m Tired.” I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It’s offbeat but earnest, grinningly upending the well-trod stereotypes that had already settled in on the western genre (before John Wayne and company would bring ‘em all back again) while still managing a few good meanings and messages along the way. Stewart is always in command of a situation, even when he’s at a social disadvantage, and always ready with the right quip to turn the tide. Dietrich is suitably loud, a whole lot to handle until she’s caught flat-footed by Destry’s sincere character and kinda-sorta sees the light. And, in the end, everybody gets what they’ve got coming. Ninety-odd minutes well spent.

Vengeance comes knocking for a wealthy attorney when a paroled ex-client discovers holes in his defense, long after the fact, and makes a daily creeping nuisance of himself. The viewer might not blame Nick Nolte’s withholding evidence for moral reasons, but in the eyes of the state (not to mention those of his disgruntled patron), a lawyer’s job is to set aside personal feelings in the name of fair representation. This leaves Nolte’s character out in the cold, so to speak, as the stalker’s threats and actions grow bolder while his own legal protections fall into question. This is Martin Scorsese chasing a mainstream hit with an uncomplicated plot, loud treatments and superfluous camera angles, not unlike Francis Ford Coppola’s efforts toward the same end in Bram Stoker’s Dracula the following year. Scorsese credits Alfred Hitchcock as his chief influence here, a tip of the cap that’s made doubly-obvious by his use of a Bernard Herrman score and Saul Bass title sequence, but Scorsese missed an important element of Hitch’s craft: subtlety. Cape Fear has no sense of chill whatsoever. If it’s at all relevant to the plot, you’re going to see it, in extreme close-up, with all the important words underlined. Not every Hitchcock film was perfect in this respect, but the best certainly were. They’re almost as interesting for what they hint or imply than for what they spell right out. Scorsese’s camera choices skip the nuance and move in for the kill straight away. Likewise, his cast may as well string character archetypes around their necks. Hi, I’m the adolescent daughter. I have daddy issues. Did you know the antagonist was convicted of **** a girl exactly my age? He’s cute! So the stylings are a bit excessive, and the story’s a bit spelled-out, and the running time is a bit long, and the climax is a bit convenient... but what’s it got going for it? Robert De Niro. Robert De Niro chomping scenery and flexing a shredded, tatted physique under the guise of greasy hair, gross wardrobe choices and an atrocious southern drawl. He’s forced and fake, just like the others, but it’s fun to watch Big Bobby D going way, way over the top in this kind of lightly campy villainous role. I’m flummoxed he took home an Oscar for it, though. Maybe I needed to see it in the context of 1991. It's *very* of its time.

A curious blend of hard edges and soft emotions from writer/director Luc Besson, who would apply a similar mix of antithetical senses in his 1994 international breakthrough, Léon: The Professional. Nikita (the “Femme” was added after its French release) is the story of a strung-out punk rock junkie, whisked away after a deadly police shootout and unwillingly trained to be a secret government assassin. If that sounds like a huge leap, it is, and the reason for her selection is never really explained beyond the weirdly passive handler who “sees something in her.” But regardless, she gets into the program, overcomes her addiction, ruffles feathers with her gruff demeanor, eventually faces facts and graduates into a cushy life as an on-call killer. Many of these developments feel abrupt or confusing due to the film’s tendency to skip weeks, months or years in a flash. In just a few minutes of screen time, she kicks her anti-authority ethos to the curb and reclines into a sort of submissive acceptance. If we pay attention, the film leaves plenty of hints that she’s been through a rigorous psychological indoctrination, but those details are mostly left to our imagination. Weird to skip the sordid transformation scenes like that, but also refreshing. That reprogramming isn’t a point of emphasis for Besson, so he doesn’t obsess over it. Instead, we spend a lot of time watching Nikita enjoy the fruits of her new life. We don’t know how she wound up in such a dark place to begin with, smash-and-grabbing drug stores with a crew of grungy criminals, but we can see her enthusiasm about making the most of a fresh start. Left to her own devices between jobs (another risky call from her superiors), she immediately sets to building a happy, comfortable, quiet life with the friendly cashier of a local grocery store. It’s great cover for a part-time executioner, and the awkward balancing act doesn’t seem to upset things all that much. Not until a job finally goes wrong and suddenly she’s in deep water without a buoy. Both sides of this cinematic contradiction are well-developed. The action is bright and loud, an exciting relic of mid-budget ‘80s blowouts on VHS, while the playful romance develops into something warm and effervescent. The whole third act is a chaotic riot, a spike of difficulty and consequence that’s driven by a single-minded Jean Reno, and while I wasn’t satisfied with its resolution, I was wrapped up by the young love affair while it lasted. A loose, ambitious, free-spirited film that leans on both its star’s unusual brands of feminine allure (Anne Parillaud isn’t your traditional badass bombshell) and its director’s unique sensibilities.

The final film of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s sensitive, loosely-connected Colors trilogy involves overlapped lives in the heart of a busy European metro. The odd, unexpected rapport that develops between once-strangers Valentine and Joseph (a warm, restrained young woman and a cold, cynical older man) soaks up most of the screen time, but we’ll encounter a number of other individuals, equally tangled in the messy web, before it’s all said and done. Near-misses and unconscious influences that cause ripples in each other’s days, overlooked or unregistered by the characters but lain bare for the audience. A sort of butterfly effect for French romantics. There’s a tasty contradiction at the heart of Valentine and Joseph’s unlikely friendship, both in their ethical outlooks and their personalities. His prime years have tapered off, leaving nothing but spite, regret and bad memories. Her adulthood is just beginning, pregnant with wonder and promise, but she’s allowed a possessive partner to cage her spirit. Joseph repulses her, both for his sour nature and his voyeuristic habit of eavesdropping on neighbors’ telephone conversations. Valentine intrigues him, both for her compassionate optimism and her youthful naïveté. They challenge each other, push each other, demand defense of the principles which make them who they are. And, shockingly, they each listen, grow from the debate, and nurture a strong mutual respect. Ideological rivals needn’t necessarily be incompatible dinner partners. Watching this relationship develop is a beautiful thing. So is the lead actress. A returning veteran from Kieślowski’s international breakthrough, The Double Life of Veronique, Irène Jacob is just as stunning, lightly perturbed and melancholy in this role. Her nuanced emotions carry a lot of weight here, and so do her unique physical charms. She’s the ideal vehicle for Red’s moods and meanings: simultaneously certain and uncertain, confident enough to stand up for her beliefs but also willing to be disproven and convinced. C’est la vie. Or at least, it should be. A deep, lovely, thoughtful film. My favorite of the three.

I’m of two minds when it comes to F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. Its lasting impressions, the items that stick in our memory banks, are the stuff of legend. That dense, pervasive atmosphere, impossibly effective given the constraints of age, location and budget. The powerful compositions and creepy special effects that transform a crumbling between-wars German village into a steep, shadowy nightmare landscape. The unsettling monster, effectively eight feet tall, whose buck-toothed fangs, delicate fingertips and bulging eyes mock the human figure. In these senses and more, Nosferatu has proven a weighty, lasting influence for generations of fans and filmmakers alike. It sure leaves a great aftertaste. But this time, the film’s less-than-stellar elements, those which fade with time, caught me unprepared. It’d been a good quarter century since I last sat for a viewing, and my own recollections had been reduced to playful tricks of light and Count Orlok’s unmistakable visage. I remembered this as an all-killer, no-filler smash of creativity. I’d forgotten the leisurely, repetitive story, stuffed with long-winded inter-titles and endless retreads. The extreme overacting (even by silent film standards) which frequently threatens to spoil the mood with misplaced comedy. The nonsensical explanations and ruthlessly simple characters. Basically everything preceding that first encounter with the night creature, and the short epilogue after he’s been dispatched, serves as a reminder that yes, this film is more than a century old and no, we hadn’t quite cracked the medium’s code just yet. At least, this particular group of DIY German sorta-plagiarist moviemakers hadn’t done so. In the end, we’re left with two polar extremes. One set of dull, over-hammed, excessively overwrought bookends, with a single, distinctly unforgettable act smashed in the middle. That’s where its legacy derives: on the stiff, bony shoulders of a peculiar man and the backs of an inspired art department. After a hundred-plus years, it still offers excellent artistry, with an incredible central performance and... a whole lot of space on either side. The best parts will knock your socks off. The worst will knock you unconscious.

There are few things more miserable than a zany screwball comedy that doesn’t work. Sorry to say it, but I found the new Naked Gun thin, try-hard and utterly excruciating. It waves its wackiness under our noses, somehow carries things further over the top than the original films, and winks, gratingly, after every weak punchline. Felt like I was being constantly elbowed in the ribs here. I got the joke, thanks, I just didn’t think it was very funny. Repeat that about two hundred times. Upon reflection, there were precisely two ideas that hit me right and drew a laugh, and those were quick one-offs that disappeared faster than a flash in the pan. Otherwise? Pandering, repetitive, lowbrow nonsense. The first Naked Gun was lowbrow, too, and equally hit-or-miss, but it never felt like a **** and its well of ideas was damn near bottomless. And it had a far more versatile, expressive star in the driver’s seat. At first glance, casting Liam Neeson in that primary role seems like a daring choice; a good sign that the new producers aren’t afraid to take a few risks and differentiate their take from the franchise’s earlier installments. Neeson isn’t known for his comedy chops, but that idea was mined to tremendous effect in a short segment on the Ricky Gervais series, Life’s Too Short, back in 2011. Then, as now, Neeson was only regarded as a stern, gravel-voiced action star and Gervais leaned into it, using the star’s severe demeanor and one-minded focus on dark subjects to deliver a fabulously unsettling series of improv takes. We try the same thing here, but his edges are softer, the setups are more transparently scripted and he’s more brazenly self-aware. He also appears positively geriatric. Leslie Nielsen never looked so pained in his action scenes, but then, Leslie was also a decade younger, despite what outward appearances might lead us to believe. Maybe this caught me on a bad night. Maybe I’ll find a few more reasons to chuckle if I lighten up and settle in for a re-watch alongside a more receptive audience. Maybe I’ll owe Neeson (and supporting star Pamela Anderson, who bored me to tears) a big apology. Or maybe this just ****.

Darren Aronofsky sets aside his usual dark, distressing fare for something a little more superficial and exciting. The guy who made Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan has directed a quirky homage to the late ‘90s crime caper? That idea gave me a moment's pause, too. Rest assured, this is *not* oppressive and soul-crushing like Aronofsky’s other stuff. There are dark hints and dangerous turns, no doubt, but it’s primarily an example of a director leaning deep into his inspirations and doing them a service. His appreciation of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and its ilk waves like a flag in the wind. The setup is pretty simple: a failed baseball phenom slips into his neighbor’s mess when he agrees to do a bit of weekend pet-sitting. Cue the missing mob money, bad actors, lead pipes, short fuses... you get the picture. Our ballpark reject isn’t much of a fighter, especially when outnumbered and caught by surprise, but he trusts his reads and can outrun just about anyone in the city. Those instincts serve him well and make him something of a novelty in the modern action scene. We’ve all seen Jason Statham, Liam Neeson or Keanu Reeves square up and walk through waves of opposition in the past ten or fifteen years; it’s refreshing to see this handsome lead take a whupping and lose a kidney along the way. Austin Butler fills that role well, charismatic enough to remain appealing despite his personal failings, but he’s just the plot’s pilot. Like the classic Ritchie riots of a quarter-century back, much of Caught Stealing’s flavor is derived from its wealth of colorful supporting characters. Most noteworthy among these are Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Hasidic hitmen and Matt Smith’s carelessly connected British punk. Butler gets down and dirty with the lot of them, deepening his hole with every tooth-skinned getaway, and we all benefit from the increasingly spiked stakes. It’s a wild ride, absolutely stuffed with big personalities and melting pot eccentricities, that still left me wanting more. This one really hit the mark.

Blaming conspiracies and secret societies for what they perceive as the orchestrated collapse of fair society, a Dollar Store Charles Manson (Jesse Plemons) and his neurodivergent cousin/acolyte (Aidan Delbis, making his feature film debut) clumsily kidnap the high-profile CEO of a major pharmaceutical company (Emma Stone). They’re sure she’s an incognito extraterrestrial, their ticket to an audience with Adromedan royalty, and subject her to all manner of bizarre tinfoil-hat tortures to prove as much. The socio-political parallels are pretty clear here, with both ideological extremes mocked and stereotyped in similar fashion. Stone’s cold, callous capitalist is every bit the loathsome mogul type, Jeff Bezos in pumps, splashing on ultra-chic trappings while grinding the working class beneath her heel. A face for our corporate distrust that’s remarkably easy to objectify and hate... right up until she’s shaved bald and left shivering in a dark, dingy basement cell. Her captors, meanwhile, are eccentric hayseeds, the type of grassroots wackjobs who call late night talk radio shows to debate ESP and crop circles. We can relate with their pain and frustration, recognize their impotence as helpless cogs in a gigantic machine, while still blanching at the lengths of their violent recourse. Whether purposeful or not, this setup almost exactly mirrors the Luigi Mangione killing and once I recognized that, I couldn’t stop seeing the overlaps. I get it, I don’t like being abused by the big players either, but I’m not quite ready to start gunning down board members in the street. Or lathering them with lotion and strapping them to a car battery, as it were. If that makes Bugonia sound like a total drag, commentary with a hint of plot, then I’ve given the wrong impression. There’s rich, dark humor in the absurdity of all this, doled out with patience and efficiency. High-pressure tension, too, as both parties try to meet in the middle and cracks show in the captor-captive veneer. Plemons and Stone flash a great rapport as contradictory mouthpieces with an equally passionate faith in their beliefs. It kept me on the hook throughout, vibrant metaphors for societal disarray and crazy, twisting head games alike. And holy crap, what an ending! Faced with a resolution that might have favored one party or the other, Bugonia determines that we’re all wrong. And right. And brilliant in our misguided stupidity. I love that it went there.

MTV Films produces a live-action version of their cult cyberpunk cartoon, and the network’s buzz-enamored influence is hard to overlook. Back in the early ‘90s, Æon Flux was a foggy, sleazy highlight of Liquid Television, the channel’s experimental half-hour animation showcase. Her bite-sized adventures (only a few minutes long, and she usually died at the climax) were quirky, creative and memorable enough to merit three seasons of a standalone series. This film represents another step up, but also an extra layer of studio influence. Creator/showrunner Peter Chung was said to be humiliated by what it became, and I can’t blame him. Both iterations of the animated series were fundamentally edgy and challenging, not just in what they said or did but in how they looked. By contrast, this is about as soft and watery as it gets. Charlize Theron looks good in black - we’re provided ample opportunity to appreciate her curves - but she doesn’t resemble the character from the show. TV Æon was erotic but not always sexy, if that makes sense, while Charlize is every bit the traditional bottled beauty. She wasn’t hired for her stunt work, let’s put it that way, although it’s virtually impossible to tell where she ends and her double begins. This editing is so hyperactive, I felt like I’d been mainlining Jolt Cola for a month. Action scenes flicker like fluorescent bulbs, trying to cover for bad practical effects with a flood of obtrusive camera angles. Fights average around three cut-aways per punch. It’s downright epileptic. I guess the filmmakers sought that additional sizzle to make up for their narrow, boring vision of a dystopian future society. In a city of five million, last bastion of humanity after a near-extinction event, everyone speaks in the same dull, faux-cool monotone and nothing matters. Not even the female ninja with a set of surgically enhanced hand-feet has a scrap of personality. Don’t waste your time with this. Revisit the animated versions instead.

Leaning into his typecast as a crusty, grimy, over-liquored lowlife, Billy Bob Thornton stuffs the holiday season with all manner of withering glares, acidic snipes and piss-puddle pass-outs. Thornton isn’t just a bad Santa, he’s a bad human being... though not quite so bad as the others in his orbit. In the midst of a decade-long bender, he’s barely functional enough to pull off the annual Christmas Eve robberies that fund his sad, hedonistic lifestyle. Does anyone really expect him to fill out his cover story as a picturesque, compassionate, attentive mall stand-in? He’d just as soon drown these kids as hear about their dreams or pose for their mothers’ **** Santa really only has one note: watch its stars behave like a crew of misanthropic ogres, then contrast the rotten mood with a dash of childish innocence. Slimy people doing slimy things in inappropriate locations. Ad nauseam. That repetition grows even more pronounced when a young bullying victim gives the pathetic, red-suited wretch a swanky place to lay his head. This kid’s already been abused and abandoned by his peers and parents; seems like as good a place as any to pile on. Thornton wastes no time, barely registering his host as more than a nuisance. He doesn’t even offer a hint of changing his ways until the film has about five minutes left in its running time. Why bother with a character arc when we can keep hammering the same crass, unimaginative jokes and phone it in at the finish line?Pointlessly mean-spirited and not even particularly amusing, this makes a better low-concept movie poster than it does a ninety-minute comedy. Thornton wetting himself on Santa’s throne is the enduring image, and for good reason. His apathy and meandering listlessness runs parallel to the film’s. I couldn’t wait for it to end.

How’s that for a descriptive title? Every year, fifty boys line up on a desolate stretch of highway and commence marching until only one remains. Slow down or stop for too long, you’re dead. Leave the path, you’re dead. Outlast the others, though, and you’ll score wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Riches and the fulfillment of a personal favor. No matter where they finish, then, these young adults’ lives will be forever altered. Despite the simplistic premise, The Long Walk’s execution is shaky. As these games have been running for quite some time now, the participants should have no illusions about what they’re in for. And yet, each has plans for his future, win or lose. One kid plans to write a tell-all book about the experience. Another says he’s here to make friends. Are they expecting a different set of rules? As the road extends, we catch little peeks at the faded American flag behind all the misery - quick flashbacks that float ideas of civil unrest and fascist thought police - but these are thin and dopey. Tough guys bully artists. Kids are sent into the meat grinder for some sort of vague national entertainment, then saluted for their naïveté. The ideas seem pertinent, especially in the modern political climate, but they don’t yield much to closer inspection. Along the same lines, I didn’t really connect with any of the characters, because each can be boiled down to one or two basic traits. Here’s the native kid with a grumpy attitude. Here’s the kid with a Walkman (even the main characters struggle to remember his name). This kid might be too young for the competition. This kid chews gum. The actors do a good job of conveying their youthful optimism, and the eventual thousand-yard-stare of their attrition, but when it comes to meaningful development, there’s not much to go around. Even the more substantial backstories just feel like they’re checking boxes on a registration sheet. Apparently recognizing this, the editor lathers on an extra helping of weepy, drawn-out, emotionally manipulative music to help us understand what we should be feeling. It’s unbelievably heavy handed, like an after-school special. By the time we hit the home stretch, and its ridiculous string of final eliminations (essentially a back-to-back-to-back set of “I don’t deserve this as much as you guys, so I’m giving up”), my patience had reached its limit. The Long Walk has some good ideas. It features some memorable performances, particularly from Mark Hamill, who hams it up in his best Hank Williams Jr., all hat and aviator glasses and goateed accent. It’s well-produced and evenly paced. But it doesn’t make for good cinema.

Hate to say it, but here’s more proof that father time is undefeated. It’s been forty years since This is Spinal Tap so wickedly illustrated the less-glamorous aspects of arena rock ****, and like the group’s throngs of jean-jacketed supporters, the magic has long since dissipated. The reality of Guest, McKean and Shearer’s screen reunion mirrors that of their dim-witted alter egos on the lighted stage. Three aging former sparkplugs, brought back together after decades apart, who can’t find the fire that once fueled their notoriety. They go through the motions, play the hits, try to fake it, but there’s no denying the truth. This ship sailed **** ago, for characters and comedians alike. The long-awaited Spinal Tap sequel isn’t completely devoid of wit. I found a few chuckles, but never once flirted with hysterics like I did (and still do) so steadily in the first film. As I feared, many of the best punchlines are in the trailer, and it wasn’t even a very good trailer. The scant plot is weighted down with cameos, including two distinguished members of rock royalty who look even older than the band does, but a vast majority of these guest shots are simple coast jobs. Famous somebodies who pop up and smile for the camera, confident that their mere presence will be enough to prop up an otherwise mediocre scene. Most returning members of the original supporting cast also fall into this category. It was nice to see Fran Drescher again, if only for a few moments, but couldn’t they have given her a laugh or two? I guess those are in short enough supply as it is. This is mighty soft stuff. Soft, unnecessary and a little sad. Hobbled by age and complacency, the stars muster no energy at all, not even when they’ve reached the stage of their big comeback show and perform a medley of favorite old tunes. Not even in the shadow of a correctly-sized Stonehenge prop. Like most belated comedy sequels (see Anchorman 2 or Zoolander 2), I couldn’t find it in me to skip this one, but now kinda wish I had.

In the late nineteenth century, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are stranded on a secluded lighthouse island. Their shift is scheduled for four weeks, but then ugly weather intervenes and patience runs thin. As do inhibitions, wits, stories and supplies of alcohol. While they’re fairly well-behaved for their scheduled stay, the drinking gets out of control during the pair’s interminable wait for relief. That leads to arguments, fights, songs, speeches, twisted hallucinations and a general sense of unsteady mania. Imagine Eraserhead were penned by Herman Melville. Writer/director Robert Eggers uses every tool in his box to emphasize the tandem’s turmoil and loss of reason amidst trying circumstances. His choice of an extremely narrow, boxy aspect ratio makes the screen feel crowded and claustrophobic. Sharp, high-contrast photography matches the actors' dark demeanor and allows the fabulous camerawork and visual artistry to sweep us away. Intense moods and thick, liquor-bleached hallucinations pepper the narrative, bending reality until it’s almost indistinguishable from delusion. If you look deeply enough, or know the stories well enough, you’ll find a wealth of mythological references to reinforce The Lighthouse’s messaging. It’s a complex work, a deep one, that takes no half-measures. At times, it can be intimidating, dominating, smothering, but that’s kind of the point. The guys up on the screen are feeling the same way and reacting in kind. With the assistance of some seriously mood-altering intoxicants. Dafoe crushes his role as a ranting, raving, whip-cracking old graybeard, while Pattinson meets him in the middle as the rankled apprentice whose will is tested and ultimately loses his grip on reality. They're both excellent performances, rousing portrayals of lunatics at the end of their ropes, but Dafoe is downright magnetic. I dare you to tear your eyes away from his harrowing, unblinking two-minute monologue, the impetus of a wild, violent climax. The pair’s thick accents, uncertain language and slurred speech may render some dialogue unintelligible, but we get enough hints from their expressions and body language to figure it out for ourselves. Not like they’re talking a lot of sense by that point anyway. A tough watch, a rich watch, an enlightening watch, and not a watch I’m in a great hurry to repeat.

Frank Capra had been perfecting this formula for more than a decade before It’s a Wonderful Life. Earnest, uplifting stories that emphasize a few recurring points: the importance of family and community, the scummy presence of bad actors at the top of the food chain and the imperative for the former to oppose the latter at every opportunity. Don’t settle for the fatcat’s scraps, in other words, and don’t let him box you into living, acting or doing business the way he deems most appropriate. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town brought us the same type of naïve protagonist, thrown into deep financial waters against his will. You Can’t Take it With You portrayed a similar big-bucks property grab and popular backlash. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington showed us the power of one staunch, convincing voice against corruption. All three featured a plucky, likable cast with quaint little quirks and a stern sense of resolve. We get all of the above, plus a heavy dose of snowy holiday feelings and a loose **** adaptation, in It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey (James Stewart) is an admirable young man, the rare banker-with-a-heart, who takes a personal interest in the character of his little town. Despite private hardships and economic downturns, he maintains a steady ship, convincing neighbors to chip in, do their part and strive together for a better tomorrow. His is a wonderfully optimistic ideal, especially in uncertain political or economic times. See the best in people and they’ll also see it in themselves. Do the opposite and, well... you know the rest. There’s a visible dichotomy between his crew, who believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that of the embittered opposition, threatened by the possibility of the next guy getting a better deal. They’re both anxious, worried about the future, but one side builds and sacrifices while the other hoards and divides. Some disputes are timeless. So is the concept of a well-intentioned doormat. Poor George is so caught up in the idea of improving his neighbors’ lives that he neglects his own. When a run of bad luck calls his precarious position into doubt, he responds like I suspect most would. He bares his frustrated side, his resentful side, his human side. Nobody’s perfect, after all, and George has his share of faults. I love that this film takes the time to demonstrate those, to rebuff the model of a perfect man and note the cracks in his facade. I’m less impressed by how easily that dilemma is resolved. The happy ending vibes are lathered on awfully thick and the heavy-handed religious metaphors may as well have been wedged in with a crowbar. Light and dreamy, the climax stands in stark contrast to the vivid, realistic moral fiber of the first two acts. I didn’t want to see George lose everything here, but Capra and company put in the work to get us this far. Why the easy exit? That’s a minor gripe, anyway, and one I know I don’t share with most viewers. And I’ll admit, the sudden rush of optimism plays well with the expected seasonal emotions. Despite the tagged-on feeling of that home stretch, I can recognize that the good of the preceding two hours far outweighs my own private ****. A great picture, and a justified holiday classic, that lands a step or two below the director's other cornerstones.

A scant, observational documentary about various breeds of insect and the unusual ways they go about their business. Produced in tandem by several international film companies, Microcosmos skirts the language barrier by opting for almost no narration - just a short, poetic introduction and a bookended farewell blurb - which leaves plenty of room for the audience to add their own. That’s the way I took it, watching on the couch with family over the Thanksgiving holiday and marveling at how little we know about the tiny worlds beneath our gaze. It's excellent curiosity fodder / conversation starter. I don’t need my hand held for this kind of material. Limited-narrative films like Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi are on my all-timer list. I’ve happily devoured a majority of David Attenborough’s catalog, including at least a dozen viewings of Planet Earth. By comparison, Microcosmos is like aimlessly leafing through a glossy nature magazine. Its sharp, detailed visuals are mesmerizing, but that’s pretty much all it has to offer. There’s no segue between subjects or loosely-overlapped chapters, no knowledge or general enlightenment beyond what we can see and surmise for ourselves. In the blink of an eye, it’ll absently bounce from watching a freshly-born butterfly dry its wings to tailing a tumbling dung beetle through the desert. No rhyme, no reason, just pure fickle distraction. This makes for very light, relaxed (if vacant) viewing. Hey gang, let’s go stare at the pretty pictures for a while. Even with the sometimes-ugly subject matter, it’s good for at least that much. Extreme close-ups and careful time-lapses speckle the screen; expert photography that nears the level of those top-notch docus I mentioned above. You’ll get a great idea of what it looks like when a wasp larva seals itself up before undergoing its metamorphosis, but not how or why that change occurs. It just does.

I didn’t have kind memories of this one. A cheap, light comedy with a softball concept, reliant upon a very specific time and place, starring Pauly Shore? Brendan Fraser as a mostly nonverbal caveman in sunglasses and jam shorts? Lord have mercy. Imagine my surprise upon discovering it was halfway decent. Make no mistake, Encino Man is no landmark of cinema. It’s easy laughs and transparent setups, all the way. Even a cro-magnon could predict where the plot’s going. One visual punchline is so absurdly stupid, it’s become a lasting meme (imagine the single worst dusted white boy flattop of all time). But there’s also a unique charm to it, a loose sense of humor that just does its thing and hits its notes without worrying about what any outsiders might think. Encino Man was Shore’s first big shot after catching eyes and ears on MTV, so it’s hardly surprising that he lathers it with as much Totally Pauly valley boy attitude as he can muster. Keep riding the horse that got you to the race, right? That character wouldn’t have a very long shelf life - he’d nurture full go-away heat within the year - but as a herald of the ‘80s hangover, the ultimate affable SoCal stoner, his act actually sort of... works? Maybe because I hadn’t seen it in a long, long while and ninety minutes wasn’t enough for it to beat me over the head. He’s certainly the fuel behind this fire, lording over the high school arena and dusting it with a certain sense of skunky authenticity. Surrounded by so much outlandish culture and fashion (almost every scene includes at least one ensemble garish enough to elicit gasps and snickers) he seems right at home. He’s often a little above the melee, actually, snickering and cajoling like a slim, pink-headbanded pixie. Is this going to move you? No. Will it give you cause to roll your eyes? More than a few times. It did popularize the phrase “weazin’ the juice,” after all. Will it bore you, insult you, drive you to verbal violence? Nah. It’s silly but harmless, a mindless dose of inoffensive entertainment with more quality laughs than you might expect. Victims of Pauly Shore overload who are still coming to terms with their PTSD should steer clear, however: he’s everywhere, and he’s exactly how you remembered.

In the summer of ’98, the idea of an absolute nobody becoming a celebrity, living his whole average life under a camera’s eye, seemed a little far-out and scary. Flash forward thirty years and the one-two punch of social media and influencer culture has made this a dream occupation. Of course, the difference is Truman didn’t realize he was under constant surveillance, his emotions mined and manipulated for maximum dramatic effect, but otherwise the parallels are pretty shocking. The difference in perception is also rather telling. When Truman discovers the truth, appalled at the idea of what he’s been subject to, he panics and bolts. Society (both in the viewing audience and in their twisted cinematic mirror image) cheers his escape; the orchestra swells; the vibes are good. The little man is resisting a truth that’s been imposed by external forces. I wonder how many modern viewers smile and switch off the television, then reach for their phone and check their favorite livestream without registering the irony. Peter Weir’s direction really emphasizes the uncanny and off-putting aspects of Truman’s existence. The brow-furrowing moments that threaten to shatter the illusion, like the best buddy who expertly positions a beer label before making a toast. The hip checks and shoulder blocks that physically redirect a too-polite nice guy away from his heart’s desire and into the arms of the woman producers have already cast as his designated love interest. These little beats are crucial in deconstructing the lie. He might not think much of them at the time - that was a little weird but whatever - but once he’s been given a legitimate reason to doubt the fantasy, they all come flooding back in a rush. In that leading role, Jim Carrey first exudes a great cheeseball suburban white guy attitude, then visibly cracks and spirals into conspiracy-induced mania. Everyone watching at home knows he’s in the right, but we also recognize how impossible it must have felt to earnestly believe one thing and hear something different from everyone who’s ever meant anything to him on a personal level. That’s good philosophy fodder, a debate about the meeting point of free-will and social expectation. What are the limits of the cage we compose around ourselves? The Truman Show doesn’t delve too terribly deep into these weeds - this is a big-budget summer movie, after all - but it gives its audience enough to get dirty if they’re so inclined. Pretty impressive that it can work just as well on that front as it does a broader, pop-friendly, crowd-pleasing one.

Steve Carell’s first major starring vehicle is just as profane and improv-happy as any other jam by Apatow's crew, but the serious beats have a little extra heart. Carell is picture perfect as the über-tentative introvert for whom “it just never happened,” plucking exactly the right notes of social awkwardness and apprehension without casting any shade or drawing any simplistic conclusions. Here’s a guy who marches to his own beat, maybe a little autistic, who’s carved a happy little life for himself without caving to society’s pressure to pair off and settle down. His coworkers at a big box electronics store poke and tease him over it, but this is just how their little bro circle operates and, once he’s had time to recognize that the jeering is their way of welcoming him into the fold, he embraces it. I was working at Circuit City when The 40-Year-Old Virgin hit theaters, and it’s an incredibly accurate rendition of the locker room kinship I experienced, spending shifts with that kind of job in that time and place. As is often the case with this sort of drive-by ensemble comedy, not every joke lands. Plenty do, though, and the bigger set pieces, rife with visual humor, excel. Carell’s chest waxing scene, which he underwent for real, is still an absolute riot, both for the patently absurd things he says and for the inimitable way he shrieks and contorts as the hair comes off. With a cavalcade of about-to-be-big comedy names in the background - Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Jane Lynch, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart and about two dozen contemporaries - the star doesn’t need to do quite so much heavy-lifting and can focus on adding a little pathos to his punchlines. He’d make a pretty good career of that in the ensuing years, and I’d argue this is the role that showed he had such versatility within him. There’s real sweetness in his rapport with a middle-aged love interest, Catherine Keener, and her nearly-grown daughter. Something with a little more complexity than “I love lamp.” This isn’t an upper-tier comedy, but it’s an easy watch that shouts a good message. Its heart’s in the right place, even if it phrases its thoughts in obscene, juvenile ways.

Given the sensitive, politically-charged subject matter - a full classroom of children disappearing overnight - I expected another heavy “horror as social commentary” type of film here. Spoiler warning: it’s not that. Weapons is horror in the same vein as an eerie fairy tale. Kids are always being stolen and/or eaten in those stories, in equally puzzling ways and for equally crazy reasons. Once I recognized that, I was able to exhale and relax a little bit, to better enjoy the ride as something a little more traditional, with less stress on my metaphorical tripwire sensors. Suburban neighborhoods aren’t an original setting for this type of movie, but this example is loaded with cold, modern familiarity. The closeness of American society has decayed in the past few decades; we keep to ourselves more and trust our neighbors less. In an era of always-watching smart doorbells, closed social circles and parent-teacher shouting matches, it’s much easier to believe a community could turn upon itself like this. In the aftermath of the mass disappearance, misplaced blame abounds, with desperate parents openly baring their prejudices to muster their own boogeymen. That's an effective note, reinforced at several points, which provides a more uncomfortable type of chill. Something a little closer to home. This is where the film is really at its best; creepy and unsettling, but firmly planted in reality. Eventually, though, those more nuanced ideas get left behind, relegated to accents and afterthoughts by a more colorful, typical baddie. The finale is a blood-soaked bonanza, a cruel and creepy climax that balances grim outcomes with a few well-timed doses of dark humor, but it doesn’t suit the setup. The answers are too forthcoming; the payoff is underwhelming and a little cheap. Once its hand finally tips, Weapons pivots from an enveloping, suspenseful mystery into a simple supernatural screamer. It’s an interesting story, told in an interesting way, with an effective setting and a number of memorable performances, but that too-easy resolution left me hanging.

Why are so many mafia movies so good? Is it the intrinsic drama of a hard-and-fast way of life? That potent mix of secret dealings and violent repercussions? The allure of big spending, exorbitant lifestyles and loud personalities? The mere wish fulfillment of doing something selfish, swinging your balls around and getting away with it? Whatever the reason, the organized crime subgenre has a disproportionate number of bangers. Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s fast-paced take on the rise to riches and fall from grace of a real-life crook, slots in right alongside the greats. I might even say it’s better than The Godfather, although it almost certainly wouldn’t have been the same film without Coppola’s influence. In some ways, it’s almost a counter-point to that 1972 standard-bearer. Where The Godfather immerses itself in the machinations of running a criminal empire, the necessary maneuvers and backstabs behind the curtain, Goodfellas leans more into the superficial, gratifying image the families present to the public. It’s most interested in exploring the seductive power of the mafia lifestyle, all the showy fringe benefits that would make a kid in 1950s New York gaze out his greasy bedroom window and proclaim “I wanna be a gangster.” We’re swept away by the romance of that dreamland, led on a swirling tour of VIP entrances and private tables and first-name relationships with celebrities; living the high life while also being taught the pecking order that makes it possible. If you want to spend big, we can definitely make that possible, but you’ve also got to earn big. And honor a rigid code of conduct. Scorsese essentially wraps his arm around the viewer’s shoulder and takes us into that fold. We meet all the big players, a blur of names and faces, but settle down with an ambitious trio of go-getters. Jimmy (Robert De Niro, whose notoriety and connections make them viable), Tommy (Joe Pesci, a thin-skinned instigator whose impulsive nature pushes them forward) and Henry (Ray Liotta, the never-enough protagonist who balances the others’ fire and ice) form a tight-knit bond, spend most every waking moment together and work the ladder for all it’s worth. As time passes in big, colorful chunks, we stick to these guys and see how their game changes to match the world around it. The rewards increase, but so do the risks, and that’s not necessarily such a great thing as success goes to their heads and their unsightly little tics blossom in the spotlight. These guys never met a pair of britches they didn’t think they could fit. The director once said he shot Goodfellas to play like “a two-and-a-half-hour trailer,” and that’s exactly how it’s paced. Everything is a rich, quick peek through the window: a busy city childhood; a lavish stay in the clink; workplace disagreements; fence-swinging scores; unrecognized mutual tailspins. Like a life quickly lived, the plot races past in a string of highlights, but that’s not to say it lacks for depth or substance. Scorsese delivers those, too, equally saturated and at a breakneck pace. An easy ten out of ten.

The title sets the stage for this, another twisty, **** pickle. On a long rail commute into the city, two men make small talk and casually hatch a hypothetical double-murder plot. At least, one thinks it’s just speculation, laughing off the whole conversation and disembarking without a second thought. The other sees it more like permission and sets to holding up his end of the bargain. Both have human obstacles in their lives, people that would serve them much better in the morgue, so why not scratch each other’s back? Why not exchange that messy work? The more reluctant conspirator is a tennis hotshot (Farley Granger, in an appropriately stiff, polite performance), while the other’s a roguish cad (Robert Walker, who plays his role like a barely-closeted queen), quite accustomed to pushing and pestering until he gets his way. As soon as he’s shoveled dirt over his new buddy’s estranged wife, Walker makes a big nuisance of himself, regularly interrupting and imposing upon the befuddled athlete’s private life. It’s tough not to hold our breath each time this irritating busybody inserts himself on the scene, smiling proudly as his flustered cohort tries to explain his presence away. Hitchcock plays that suspense in his typical fashion, cranking up the heat until things reach an unbearable boil at the beginning of the third act. There’s a great back-and-forth sequence here, both men hurrying to finish an obligation before dark, that merits a spot on the director’s extended highlight reel. Strangers on a Train has its share of moments where Lord Alfred overplays his hand, pursuing daring visuals at the expense of good mechanics, but not here. This one’s a masterful display of tension, delivered with the director’s customary panache. While the suspense works, the noir-influenced cinematography is delicious and the story’s grim novelty is appreciable, this film’s reliance upon coincidence and bad judgment quickly wears thin and things go completely off the rails at the end. There, everything suddenly explodes in a loud cacophony that’s so contrived, I couldn’t help laughing. C’mon, Alfred, surely you can do better than that!

Recruited in secret, an international team of mercenaries plots to swipe an extremely well-protected briefcase from a French motorcade. In other words, your standard action/heist setup, albeit one that’s spiced by some rock-solid direction, flavorful locations and top-shelf casting. And if that doesn’t catch your eye, might I interest you in two GREAT high-speed car chases and a toe-curling backroom bullet extraction scene? Directed by a motivated John Frankenheimer and starring Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgård and a mess of “that guys,” Ronin is loaded with talent, but ultimately boils down to a one-man show. De Niro does almost everything, the fabled master of all trades, and while he does absorb his share of scuffs and dings (he dictates his own surgery in the aforementioned post-gunshot-wound spectacle), it does begin to feel like he’s descended from gods or something. When there’s an ambush coming, he’ll sense it and immediately spot the hidden snipers. When it’s time to do recon, he’ll take the lead, guiding his clueless boss through the art of hiding in plain sight. After the crap hits the fan, he settles into a repetitive pattern of spot-on hunch-chasing. Even when he doesn’t know what to do next, De Niro knows what to do. He’s a likable character and his budding friendship with Reno is as cool and masculine as one might expect, but his broad capabilities do stretch credibility. I like more flaws in my protagonists. While the action is excellent, this is a film with an identity crisis. One that strains and struggles to mean something more than powerful cars, quick triggers and a high body count. Its frequent references to The Tale of the 47 Ronin don’t exactly fit, even after a minor supporting character spells everything out for us with tiny samurai miniatures. Fleeting connections to the IRA and last days of The Troubles fare no better; we’re reminded that these things are going on nearby, and the group’s handlers speak in a Northern Irish accent, but Ronin’s plot is only vaguely connected. Such labored efforts give the impression that it’s ashamed of itself, eager to transcend into a genre we might consider more respectable. Which is a bummer, because I was enjoying its proficiency at those big, mindless blockbuster thrills. Why fight it, when you’ve already got a good thing going?

This seminal zombie movie was also a chance to learn on the job for the debuting independent director George A. Romero. From a critical perspective, it’s easy to point out the mistakes in Night of the Living Dead: gradual pace, weak acting, clumsy production, iffy effects... the list is pretty lengthy. None of the women amount to more than hysterical obstacles. Its efforts to establish a set of zombie ground rules are inconsistent and contradictory. But despite all that, there’s an admirable sense of self-assured determination at play here; the thrill of tackling a challenge head-on and bending a few rules to get it done. Romero’s moaning, simmering, flesh-eating character piece really shouldn’t work at all, but somehow, the finished product greatly surpasses the sum of its parts. Foresight is a big part of the reason. This thing is *way* ahead of its time; thematically, intellectually and culturally. In an age where most horror movies were aimed at immature audiences, Night of the Living Dead had the balls to take itself seriously. Its evaluation of humanity, as a fundamentally paranoid flock of sheep, is cynical but sincere. I could see most of us landing in this situation: holed up, cowering behind poorly-boarded windows, waiting for the TV to tell us what we should do next. At the mercy of the two alpha males locking horns in the dining room. Romero’s constant use of handheld cameras in close quarters includes us in the claustrophobia of these desperate moments, both during the persistent zombie raids and the raging human conflict. His casting of a black actor (the eloquent, Poitier-esque Duane Jones) as the de-facto protagonist, a strong voice of reason, is noteworthy for its even-handedness. He wears his blemishes, just like the rest. The racial undertones are there if you want to look for them, but they’re not emphasized. Jones is just one more frantic body, trying to find its way out of a horrendous bind. Near the fall of society, maybe we've finally begun to realize that everyone looks the same on the inside. And, no two ways about it, this is utterly bleak and hopeless. Even for a proto-zombie movie. Grim, dire, nihilistic, pick your adjective. It’s speckled with dashes of fire and stumbling mayhem, but most of the action is cerebral. I didn’t care for it in my twenties, but now that I’m a bit more seasoned, I can see why it’s become such a genre cornerstone. Crude, but impressive.

Dark, twisted and meaningful, like the best fairy tales, Pan’s Labyrinth mixes elements of dream, fantasy, history and horror in a single, simmering vat. At its center is Ofelia, a young girl struggling to retain innocence in the aftermath of an ugly civil war. Though the conflict is officially over, resistance outfits still dot the countryside, disrupting the fascist transition with guerrilla raids and ambushes. As the adopted daughter of an occupying officer, Ofelia’s caught in the middle and uses her imagination to escape as often as she can. In the wilds of 1940s Spain, there’s plenty of room to indulge those whims. Amidst the split trees and stone monuments, she finds an overlap between fact and fable, where strange creatures roam the shadowy overgrowth and fill little heads with ripe delusions. Ofelia doesn’t always know who to trust, and neither do we. In these unstable political times, the right secret in the wrong ears can be fatal. Thus, everyone in town is extremely guarded and suspicious, and the mythical creatures in the girl’s fantasies follow suit. Tangible fears color her invisible fancies. Like the rebels she admires, though, and the pregnant mother she adores, Ofelia endures and persists. In both worlds. I’m not sure which side of the story is most unsettling. The dreams are certainly more vivid, which makes them more memorable. Writer/director Guillermo Del Toro sends this sweet young thing into all sorts of terrifying nightmare scenarios, dim and musky corridors of ancient evil with unsightly guardians. This is all incredibly realized, a genuinely disturbing realm of ornate uglies that borrows from and iterates upon the director’s preceding work in Hellboy. I fell into the mental trap of expecting less from a foreign-language film and was bowled over by the top-notch costume and atmospheric effects. Pan’s Labyrinth delivers on the premise and then some, lending an air of strange possibility to its fiction. This looks good enough to believe in. There’s ample heart to go with that imagination, too. Heavy heart, with a lot of looking-through-our-fingers moments, but heart all the same. It’s not easy to marry reverie with reality, to tangle the two until they reach a cloudy, extra middle ground, but Del Toro has managed it. The grandness of this drama, and the bittersweet nature of its twin conclusions, is a crooked parable on par with the Brothers Grimm.

Obey! Conform! Marry and Reproduce! These are the demands of an oppressive ruling class, pasted in secret script behind the billboards and TV commercials consumed by LA’s blue-collar working stiffs. The addled, harassed population can’t see those hidden messages, but they certainly feel their effects, ineffectually shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes until the ideas sink in and they resume a mindless pursuit of phony happiness. There’s almost no shred of subtlety to John Carpenter’s wacky, hallucinatory They Live, which peels back the cover of that secret, authoritarian society after discovering a set of magical Ray-Bans. These special shades cut through the noise and reveal the truth, baring both the curt, black-and-white commands plastered everywhere and the grotesque alien monsters profiting from our compliance. Carpenter’s metaphor is almost as blunt as the bad guys’ mandates: a loud, frustrated call to arms against rampant materialism and the soulless fatcats who hoard its spoils. It was a me-first world in 1988, and almost nobody seemed immune to the attraction of bigger homes and shinier jewelry. Wish I could say that idea’s gone out of fashion in the ensuing forty years. Roddy Piper plays the face of the resistance, a serene drifter who’s happy to earn an honest paycheck until those specs change his outlook. He’s in for a wild ride, but not always a cohesive one. His stroll through the gates of subliminal insanity is a happenstance affair, a constant case of arbitrarily bumping into the next plot development, which makes the story feel flat and aimless. Carpenter visualizes a lot of crazy ideas, and Piper delivers his own unique blend of cool, confident and charismatic, but the puzzle pieces don’t always fit together. A supremely fun concept with great meme material, several hilarious curveballs and a pertinent underlying message, it’s not exactly satisfying as a finished picture. The message gets lost in the shuffle, and that ending sequence might be the most taped-together gob of afterthought nonsense I’ve ever seen.

George Romero returns to the zombie subgenre, ten years after Night of the Living Dead, to up the ante with this edgy, very ‘70s horror classic. Right from the get-go, Romero lets us know what kind of ride it’s going to be, hitting the audience with a big, wet exploding head at the eight minute mark. He may as well have held up a blinking neon sign: “If you’re squeamish, it’s not too late to pick a different movie!” As advertised, this is a total gore-fest, depraved in the most hilariously creative ways, and while that’s a point of emphasis, it’s not the only thing Dawn of the Dead is about. Alongside the snuff, we catch short glimpses of a wider post-societal mayhem. Two of our protagonists escape from a crowded TV studio, where the crew noisily broadcasts whatever unsubstantiated rumors and frenzied opinions they can find before locking up, hunkering down and going off the air. The other two refugees are delivered straight from a vicious, aimless SWAT raid that seems to serve no purpose beyond shotgunning frightened minorities. Later, on their helicopter-powered flight from the city, that quartet spies a crowd of rural rednecks, merrily slamming beers and hunting zombies for sport. Amidst a clear lack of order, the law of chaos has settled right in. Having seen all this, our group agrees that isolation sounds pretty good. They’re fortunate to land on the roof of a swarmed shopping mall, holing up in a hidden administrative office while steadily feeding hordes of undead to the proverbial meat grinder. That dirty work gradually clears showrooms and opens up the empty-toy-store setting of a lavish shoppers’ paradise, back in an era when that still meant something. Thirty years ago, I never would’ve expected something like this to hit my nostalgia buttons so hard. Romero finds opportunities for social commentary here, too, portraying the zombies as a sort of shopping dead and opining that they were drawn to this spot because the mall was an “important place” in their previous lives. Imagine being so wrapped up by window displays and Orange Julius that your body still yearns for those comforts after you’ve reached the afterlife. Man, that’s sad. So there’s more to this than just a feast of chunky, hyper-exaggerated blood and guts. I mean, there’s a lot of that. A *lot* a lot, enough that budding effects guru Tom Savini could build a long and storied career around this specific demo reel. In addition to the carnage, and the surprisingly complex characters, and the all-time great setting, and the underrated world-building, and the general sense that literally nothing is out of bounds, it’s got some intelligent things to say. Sure, the production values are loose and trashy. The blood looks like paint and you can see all the seams if you advance the video frame-by-frame. I’d argue those are fond hallmarks for this age of horror. That it still manages to do all the rest is what separates it from the pack. Either way, Dawn of the Dead is a genuine genre cornerstone.

A whole mishmash of cherry-picked folklore inspired this furry member of the Universal Monsters family. In this first installment (four sequels would swiftly follow), we’re introduced to the ground rules of lycanthropy, aka werewolfism: toothy infection, midnight transformation, thirst for unprotected jugulars, aversion to silver... the basics. Most of these strict guidelines are proclaimed by an astute gang of roving fortune-tellers, particularly their ominous matriarch, whose son suffers from the same condition. Unfortunately for the locals (and for the grieving mother), that original wolf managed to pass along his curse before falling beneath a heavy, silver-handled cane. That’s how affluent local son Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) gets into this mess. Trying to impress a disinterested girl with bravery and valor, he suffers a grave chest wound while dispensing the night-stalking creature. Before becoming part beast, Larry just seemed creepy and desperate. An expert stargazer, he fixes up his father’s telescope and immediately angles it to more terrestrial subjects. The family observatory, he’s pleased to discover, offers an unobstructed view of the town beauty’s bedroom window. After satisfying his urge to peep, Talbot then hoofs straight down to introduce himself, using detailed knowledge of her private chambers in a misguided pickup attempt. Is that the moral of this story? That chasing the affections of the right (wrong?) woman can turn even the most sophisticated gentleman into a dog? Either way, the story isn’t the main draw, no matter how stubbornly it’s emphasized. I’ve gotta imagine most folks are here for the spooky aura, and that’s one thing The Wolf Man has in spades. It boasts a wonderful old-school haunted house atmosphere, complete with foggy marshes and gothic European architecture. This corner of the world is dark and nutty; a skittish, gossipy little community that’s packed with shadows and secrets, quaint spooks and misty moods. Chaney’s famous slow-fade transformations are memorable, too, but not nearly as spellbinding. Maybe that would’ve been a different story eighty-plus years ago. Not the best Universal ghost story, certainly not the worst. That particular brand of monster mayhem had grown awfully derivative by this point, but there was still enough ambiance left in the tank for a solid evening’s entertainment.

Richard Donner helms this small-stakes fantasy plot that mixes a plucky thief with a set of cursed lovers, a remorseful monk and a conniving bishop. Matthew Broderick overplays that first role, winking at the camera like Ferris Bueller while he slips through secret passages and swipes gold from unwary guards. He’s way too much, an annoying sorta-protagonist that was meant to be appealing, but as he’s the film’s only sense of light-hearted relief, he stubbornly sticks like the crap under our boot. Broderick’s over-the-top comedy act serves as hard contrast to the grim, funereal roles played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer. They’re sweethearts of the star-crossed sort, doomed to spend half the day as wild animals, but not the same half. Said monk applied this hex and his commander, the bishop, gave the order, which accounts for each of our major players. Pfeiffer is sweet but restrained, appearing more often as a hawk than a human, while Hauer is cut from the stoic, hard-headed warrior mold. He makes a lot of speeches about family honor and doesn’t gladly take advice. I needed three sittings to get through this. Just couldn’t keep my eyes open. The story dwells and plods, squeezing its revelations for more than they’re worth, and indulges in a lot of quiet, reflective spells. Such breaks are often beautifully shot, adding mood and color to a film that’s limited in both respects, but this viewer could only tolerate so many brooding sunset panoramas before unwillingly finding one or two of his own. Flat action and dated special effects don’t help matters. Rutger Hauer cuts a mean figure, but he’s handcuffed by the unwieldy, gem-studded claymore his character drags everywhere. And, as he’s at the heart of every fight scene, the important melees mostly consist of lightly-armed men standing around, waiting to be slashed. Or shoulder-blocked by his giant, twitchy black horse. Special negative points for the mismatched score, a bouncy synth-fest by Alan Parsons Project member Andrew Powell (Parsons himself produced) that would be more appropriate in an aerobics class than a grim, medieval fantasy tale. Famously terrible, this schlocky assortment of Casio demo tracks reliably zapped me out of every moment. I suspect Donner and company came to the same realization during editing, as the peppy muzak tunes mysteriously disappear somewhere in the third act.