Madeline's Madeline

2018 fragmented drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A troubled girl deals with her mother and a mother-figure who runs an experimental theater group.

"You are not the cat. You are inside the cat." An actress playing a nurse says that to either the audience or a character who is off-screen. And so opens this fractured drama about mental illness, abusive mothers, oppressive theater directors, and art like an unruly peeping pickpocket. Honestly, I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be paying that much attention to role of art in the artist's life and vice versa, the meta-commentary not really apparent to me for a while. I almost feel like seeing this again with that in mind because I'm only able to skim the surface right now.

As an English major, you'd think I'd be good at understanding metaphors. This movie jumps out of the gate practically announcing that it's a metaphor, and the idea of metaphors is a recurring element. Unfortunately, I don't have a firm grasp on what the metaphor is. I need to read the Cliffs Notes version of this or something.

It's entirely possible that Madeline's Madeline is not a good movie, but one thing is obvious: Helena Howard, who plays Madeline's Madeline's Madeline, gives one of the best performances of the year. She is mesmerizing, and it's almost impossible to believe that this is her first movie gig. She shines as a kitten and less so as a tortoise, and there's a monologue she delivers in this that stunned me. The other actors responded in a similarly stunned way, probably because that's what the script demanded from them, but I'm going to imagine that acting stunned was easy for them because what Howard did there was stunning.

Miranda July is also really good as the mother, alternating between insanely mousy and insanely domineering. And Molly Parker completes the trio of females at the center of this as the theater director. Performances that manage to stick out in something this visually and aurally bold must be really impressive. Director Josephine Decker delivers all these odd camera angles, out-of-focus shots of insignificant chins, and surreal sequences that duplicate the fragmented mind of our protagonist, Madeline's Madeline's Madeline. It's effective, but it arguably makes this a difficult viewing experience.

As I wrote, I'm not sure if this all works or not. I need time and another viewing or three. One character talks about a pendulum swinging from sense to nonsense at some point in this. At times, it feels like this is a lot of experimental nonsense. But this is definitely an intriguing and unique movie, and the world sure could use more of those.

High Hopes

1988 comedic drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A working-class socialist and his wife deal with an obnoxious sister and even more obnoxious brother-in-law, a senile mother, and the mother's snooty neighbors. Oh, and an extraterrestrial.

With Naked being one of my favorite movies ever, it's strange how I never bothered watching Mike Leigh's other movies. This one, kind of about how much of a boner kill Thatcher is, is English enough that I'm likely missing context. And it took me a while to adjust to Leigh's rhythm here, but once I did, I really enjoyed spending time with these characters. They're broad, especially those neighbors who make the neighbors in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation look like people who might actually exist, but they all effectively add textures of meaning to this nearly plotless slice of life.

As Chekov said (and I'm paraphrasing), "If the director puts a cactus in the first act of a movie, then in the second act, it should be fired." I'm not sure it was, maybe not even metaphorically.

Why is Karl Marx buried in England anyway?

I really liked the plucky music in this (Andrew Dickson, who seems to work exclusively with Leigh), but it was a little much at times.

Widows

2018 heist movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Widows use comprehensive notes left behind to pull off a heist in a corrupt Chicago.

Of the two female-driven heist movies from 2018, I prefer this Steve McQueen flick. There's definitely a lot more going on in it. You've got a narrative involving corrupt politicians that is almost as important as the widow heist storyline. And you've got the heist storyline which, if you're a heist movie aficionado in this to see a heist intricately planned out and executed, might disappoint. And you've got some half-told, more personal stories of the characters that are told with snippets of information or in flashbacks. It's a lot to take in, probably why there's not much room for those Oceans-type moments where the crew is sitting around a table and planning and wisecracking.

There are a lot of effective moments--a car chase with a single, intense perspective; a tense moment with Viola Davis's dog; a really nice driving shot where Colin Farrell and his paperweight have a conversation with the camera showing two sides of Chicago and gives us a peek at an individual overhearing the conversation. Though the interweaving narratives aren't always completely engrossing or believable, the performances always keep this interesting. Davis is very, very good with what's she's given, but the character isn't very consistent. Less consistent are two other members of the widows crew although both Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki are fine. Daniel Kaluuya is a presence, and Brian Tyree Henry's also good. And it's nice to see that Robert Duvall isn't afraid to be this despicable this late in his career. Oh, and Liam Neeson is in this, too. He spends almost every scene with his lips on Viola Davis.

With all the divergent parts, this is surprisingly by-the-book. It hints at bigger ideas involving race, female empowerment, and political corruption, but none of it really sticks as McQueen is more interested in the twists and turns of the story. I guess I expected more.

Let the Corpses Tan

2018 neo-Spaghetti Western

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Gold thieves hunker down at the run-down residence of an artist, and bullets start flying once the police arrive.

In the past, I've pretended to be critical of style-over-substance movies. With the work of Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the duo behind The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears, I probably have to stop pretending and just admit that I don't need things like cohesive narratives, solid character development, or rich themes to fall for a movie.

Like Strange Color, this confused me a little. I had trouble understanding the motivations of some of these characters, and to be honest, I had a difficult time even remembering who some of these characters were halfway through this. The main sources of conflict are easy enough to understand, an overall arch that has to do with greed or lust, but individual pieces of the story are befuddling. Unless your smarter than this viewer, you'll be asking yourself "Why is so-and-so doing that?" or "What exactly is their plan here?" or "Why don't they just do such-and-such?" or "Who the hell is that person again?" throughout this.

None of it matters as every single visual and aural decision feels so inspired. There's barely a second of this that isn't fascinating because of what's going in your eye and ear holes. Initially, I wondered if Cattet and Forzani could keep this hallucinatory fever dream pace for the duration of a feature length movie and whether or not it would grow tiresome. Their bag of visual tricks, however, is huge, and they pull all sorts of things that, if I've seen them before, I've never seen compiled into a single piece of art like this. A lot of it recalls old spaghetti westerns. Imagine those kinds of shots and quick zooms and camera movements or the amplified sound effects that make a spaghetti western a spaghetti western. Do you have that in your head? Now imagine 90 minutes of that. You've got a sense of what Let the Corpses Tan looks and sounds like. It's very exciting.

The pair definitely take some narrative chances that, depending on the viewer, may or may not work. There are time jumps, the same events seen from multiple perspectives, flashbacks or fantasy sequences that are thrown at you without warning, and the pretentious use of ants. It's all going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, and chances are that a large percentage of anybody reading this nonsense will think that this movie is nonsense. It's an intense experience, something that my computer seemed to realize as technical difficulties gave me a few breaks from the onslaught of challenging visuals.

I'm not going to say anything about the dopey title.

Cam

2018 webcam thriller

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A webcam exhibitionist has her account taken over by a doppelganger and gets all pissy about it.

This Netflix release was not made for grouchy old men. This particular old man doesn't even understand this webcam culture. Sure, I enjoy watching women spank themselves as much as the next guy, but. . .

I can't even finish that sentence.

This movie seems like it actually wants to say something about women and their bodies and technology and control, but it's more interested in creating a 21st Century mystery that is never adequately explained. Maybe a female director would have been able to articulate the message more clearly. This director/co-writer (he did write it with a woman, it should be noted) seems a little more interested in showing these webcam shows. We don't spend nearly as much time looking at screens here as we do in Searching, the other ultra-21st Century thriller from this year, but it does have a little too much screen time.

I'm not the audience for this. I'm a grouchy old man.

Wildlife

2018 family drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A kid watches his parents' marriage fall apart.

Jake Gyllenhaal has a tendency to choose very interesting projects for himself. I'm not sure this directorial debut from Paul Dano is one of them. There's nothing really wrong with it, but it's a fairly vanilla family drama with too-obvious symbolism. Its real strength is in the trio of performances, all three which manage to excel more in what is not said or not done with the characters than what is. While that symbolism might be a little too obvious, the character development is sneaky and effective.

Gyllenhaal is always good, and here, he's a picture of regret, ennui, boredom, restlessness, and unrealized potential. It's a physical performance from a character wearing fatigue like a woolen sweater. Carey Mulligan is even better as his wife, a woman impossible to pin down. She's got the same regret, ennui, boredom, restlessness, and unrealized potential as her husband, but rather than fatigue, she's adorned in all these contradictions. She wears contradictions like cosmetics. I'm not sure what young actor Ed Oxenbould is wearing. Oh, wait. I do know. He's wearing those hilarious novelty glasses with the springy eyes because he spends most of the movie in a kind of stupor as he watches his parents make baffling decision after baffling decision. We see the disintegration of his parents' relationship through his eyes mostly, so luckily, his eyes are gigantic.

Dano's direction is confident, allowing the characters and the performances creating them to tell the story. It makes sense since he's, you know, an actor himself.

I suppose the final shot could have been seen coming a mile away, but I didn't see it coming and therefore liked it. You have to appreciate that the movie ends by allowing the three actors who have used their faces so effectively to use their faces effectively one last time.

The Stranger

1946 Nazi-hunting movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Edward G. Robinson looks for a Nazi.

Wait, was Orson Welles' character supposed to be German in this? He certainly didn't sound like a Nazi, but maybe that was part of the disguise. Maybe it's his vocabulary and flowery language that is supposed to make him vaguely Nazi-esque. And maybe he's the "stranger" in this movie because how he communicates is so different from the inhabitants of this podunk town, especially the town clerk Checker fiend at the general store played by Billy House. That character, by the way, should probably be in every single movie.

This is the first feature film to contain actual footage from the Holocaust, and it seems way early for something like that, especially since this really has no purpose other than to be a thriller. I'm not sure the footage was appropriate. It was needed for a character and a decision other characters want that character to make, but I don't know why it was needed for the film audience. Maybe that was a little tacky, Orson Welles.

The way Welles directs movement, especially in the early parts of this, is mesmerizing. A sort-of chase sequence in the opening moments of this is gripping, not because we know the characters or care why one is being chased, but just because of how it all looks and how it's all edited together. In the early going, there are more shadows of people in this than actual people. This really has some zip as a thriller, only slowing down to develop characters and plot. It's not all thrill, however, as Welles sneaks in a little dark humor now and then. Consider the sign about using an apparatus at your own risk in one scene with Edward G. Robinson.

Welles' character is quite the villain. He can strangle somebody--after a prayer even--quicker than I think I've ever seen a movie character strangle another movie character. People must have died more quickly in the mid-40s. And the character has no problem hurting a dog. I mean, I guess if you're a Nazi, one of the main architects of the Holocaust, that kind of behavior shouldn't surprise anybody.

Dig that clicking of the clock or the bell tolling. Welles had so many tricks at his disposal, and they're all on display here.

This might have my favorite death scene that I've seen all year, and it definitely has my favorite scenes involving Checkers.

The Accidental Tourist

1988 romantic comedy that isn't funny

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Following a tragedy, a travel writer and his wife split up. He meets a whimsical dog trainer who won't leave him alone.

This movie becomes really unlikable when it turns into a Burger King commercial, almost as ridiculously obvious as the McDonald's commercial in Mac and Me. All it needed was Geena Davis rapping in a bear suit, something that I'm kind of surprised wasn't actually in the movie. She has the acting chops of an animated mannequin in this, and that William Hurt's character didn't file a restraining order at some point really makes the whole thing difficult to believe.

William Hurt's character, like this somnabulistic Garfield, is difficult to connect with. It's hard to buy the character in any state the character happens to be in because Hurt's performance is so deadpan. There's a moment when he loses his cool, and it almost seemed like a continuity error. I didn't really like Hurt or his character here, but I think the performance might have been made worse by the drooping John Williams score that kind of weighs down the entire movie. It's almost like Hurt's character is wearing the John Williams score, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Any nice tender moments in the screenplay--and I did like the final shots of this--are ruined by the acting of Geena Davis's kid. The performance of the dog was better.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

2018 Western anthology

Rating: 16/20 (Dylan: 13/20; Jen: stopped paying attention)

Plot: Six darkly violent stories from the wild west in the mid-19th Century.

With the first of the six short stories in this Western anthology, the Coens gleefully announce, "Hey, audience! We're going to kill characters you just met and maybe fell in love with, and we're going to have a blast doing it!" The first installment features the titular singing sharpshooter, and it contains a couple tunes that could be mistaken for songs straight from an earlier musical Western if you aren't paying close attention. The notes echo off canyons, and Tim Blake Nelson, all dressed in white like the good guy he isn't, shows off his pipes as this seemingly affable but appallingly sadistic cowboy. Then, you get the violence, as cartoonish as a Looney Tune or Tom and Jerry. It's all done with the kind of visual flair and flamboyance that made Raising Arizona so much fun. You get sunlight through bullet holes, an outline of canyon dust in the shape of Buster as he slaps himself free of it upon entering a saloon, and even a shot from the inside of the guitar that Scruggs strums as he rides his percussive horse.

Not all of the six shorts share the lighthearted and violent tone of the first one, but they all have death as a thread that weaves them together. The sixth ties their room together like Lebowski's rug, nailing down a not-all-that-complex theme that probably didn't need nailed down. All of these shorts look spectacular enough to make me wish I'd seen this on the big screen, some Wild West establishments that look about as authentic as a technicolor set from a 1950's pop Western and loads of gorgeous shots of the prairie or a stream near a prospector's Mr. Pocket. The sixth--"The Mortal Remains"--is maybe the most visually evocative. Most of it showcases the five characters in a stagecoach, but a perspective shot of a haunting driver, the look of the middle-of-nowhere town they arrive in, and a shot of some characters walking up some stairs are probably my favorite shots in these.

I thought for sure each of these was going to have an important animal in them. Scruggs had his President Pierce, James Franco had his own horse (Dan the horse), Tom Waits' prospector had a mule named Lucky and a nosy owl, and a really smart chicken plays a key role in one of these. Oh, and one has a dog that plays a prominent role. The last has a horse, but the damn thing doesn't even get a name.

The danger of an anthology film is that some of the chapters could be significantly weaker than the others. I don't think that's the case here, not one of the six really serving as a weak link.

The second, the one with James Franco, is hilarious tragic, giving me the phrase "Pan shot!" to yell at my confused family members when they least expect it and ending with a final observation that is likely the second most touching thing in the movie. The narrative bounces far too many places in the short running time, but "Near Algodones" is likely the funniest of these.

"Meal Ticket" has a darkness rivaled only by "The Mortal Remains," but it still seems like the set-up of a macabre punchline. Liam Neeson is mostly (entirely?) silent for the duration, and Harry Melling never shuts up as this limbless orator/actor/reciter. They're both great, but what Melling does is nearly perfection.

"The Gal Who Got Rattled" almost has a spoiler in the title. Here the Coens get downright romantic although given the theme they're exploring with these Western short stories, you can probably guess how it all turns out.

And there's Tom Waits himself in "All Gold Canyon," a great role for him as he gets to show off an ability to carry a chunk of movie with nobody to talk to but himself, a mule, and Mr. Pocket. He's so fucking good, bringing to life this prairie-wise old prospector that might shoot him near the top of my favorite Coen characters. And that says a lot because the Coens have a terrific collection of characters. Waits even gets to sing a bit.

This will go down as a lower-echelon Coen project, and although I'm not sure it's all that deep or complex, it's the most fun movie they've made in over a decade. It almost seems like they had some goofy demons to exorcise or something.

Actually, Hail, Caesar! seems like they were having a lot of fun, too. So forget I said that. Hail, Caesar! is a lot more complex, however.

Talk Radio

1988 talk radio movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A talk radio host, on the eve of his show's national expansion, starts to get a little stressed out.

It seems like this is the third time I've seen this movie, and I think I like it less now than I did back when I first saw it. Eric Bogosian's performance has a real electricity, and he's just captivating as a guy you either love to love or hate to love or love to hate or hate to love. I forget what he claimed now. Combined with Bogosian's performance is the way this radio studio, nearly the only setting for this movie, is shot. At times--all the right times--the setting is claustrophobic, darkness almost swirling around the character. You can almost feel the demons lurking in the corners or huddling behind radio equipment. At other times, this is almost shot like an action movie. There's a scene when the camera whirls around Bogosian during a key monologue, and another where he is trying to get a restroom break in during commercials that had me on the edge of my seat. I really like how characters are shown in backgrounds. They're visual reminders of some of the pressures our talk show host is feeling while the auditory reminders--the callers he's giving a voice to, for better or worse--provide a relentless soundtrack.

It's unlikely to happen, but I'd love to discuss with somebody what this movie is actually about. What's Oliver Stone's message here? I don't think Bogosian's character has much of a center to him. What's at the center of Stone's movie about him?

Suspiria

2018 remake

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Witches at a dance studio scheme to get power.

I haven't seen the Argento version of this witchy dance-off in a decade and can really only remember that it's violent and has a lot of color. This remake's got the violence, but strangely, the colors are almost drained from it. It's like a sickly Suspiria, or a deceased one on a table at a morgue, like Luca Guadagnino is making a conscious effort to make this look as pale as possible. The cinematography is gorgeous, and there are some moments where colors really pop and make this look like what one might expect from a remake of Suspiria. A climactic dance sequence with loads of reds and whites is especially evocative, edited in a way to make it feel like the audience is being stabbed to death. The most impressive visual moments are some sharply edited dream sequences that were just breathtakingly horrifying.

Speaking of horror, it's hard to label this a horror movie. It's hard to figure out what this is actually. It's artsy-fartsy, but some very silly moments really made it difficult for me to take it all seriously. At times, I wasn't sure if things were supposed to be funny or not. It's a puzzling movie, one that requires you to put pieces together while assuming a dog or something has already eaten a few of them, but it's sort of puzzling in a superficial or artificial way, almost like Guadagnino is being deliberately opaque because he thinks it'll give him street cred with the avant-garde crowd or something. I'm sure some scenes in this are intentionally funny, but some moments when Suspiria wanted me to take it seriously made me roll my eyes.

Allusions to terrorist activity from the late-70's was confusing, and attempts to link this whole thing thematically with past German sins actually seemed a little offensive or, at the very least, cheap. Throw in Cold War references with frequent shots of the Berlin Wall, halfhearted feminism, witch power struggles, an unclear narrative perspective, shifting protagonists, and pointless flashbacks, and you almost forget this is a movie about witches at a dance studio. There are individual parts to enjoy, but as a whole, it's really hard to like this bloated mess of a movie.

Dakota Johnson's had herself an interesting year, hasn't she?

Mississippi Burning

1988 racism movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Some FBI guys venture into a small Mississippi town to find out why it's burning.

After a sad opening shot of two water fountains, some arson, and a seemingly innocuous Mississippi billboard that still somehow manages to be chilling, I probably expected a little more from this. It's almost worth it just to hear Gene Hackman say "sumbitch" like he thinks he's The Rock or something, and I did enjoy watching both him and Dafoe. The auxiliary performances are all fine too, giving this period and place authenticity. Jessup County is alive, becoming this hatred-fueled character itself, and there are striking images of this place that a viewer in 2018 realizes probably hasn't actually changed all that much.

I'm not sure director Alan Parker and screenwriter Chris Gerolmo needed to play around with the story as much as they did. The facts, in this case, might have been just as good as the fiction they create. The various clashes in this movie should probably be more interesting than they actually end up being. You've got the racial division in Jessup County, of course, and that's displayed pretty much how you'd figure it would be in a movie from the 1980s. You've also got the clash of Northern and Southern ideals, the clash between outsiders and the inhabitants of a small town like this, and the clash between FBI procedure and whatever Gene Hackman's character wants to do. That last one is the one we can blame for this going off the rails a bit.

Shots of Gene Hackman wearing a towel: 0

He does get a great monologue about a mule though.

Shirkers

2018 documentary about a lost movie from 1992

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Back in 1992, a youngster from Singapore and some friends make themselves a little avant-garde road movie called Shirkers, and now in 2018, a documentary called Shirkers about the making and subsequent losing of Shirkers has come out. Shirkers.

I've been critical of Netflix's movie releases for some time, but this past month, I've really been thankful to have that streaming service. I mean, I always have been because how would I get to see the same episodes of It's Jessie! or whatever that show is over and over again without Netflix?

Note: Apparently, that show is just called Jessie. I apologize to any fans of the show who stumble upon this.

Metronome alert! The film-within-the-documentary, which shares the documentary's title, includes a cool use of a metronome.

I think it might be nearly impossible to make a documentary about yourself and friends, include your own narration, and not seem self-indulgent. I really wanted to like Sandi Tan--the screenwriter for the 1992 Shirkers and the director of this documentary--a lot more than I did, but when you're making a first-person documentary like this, you've got some obstacles to overcome in any quest for likability. The movie also has excessive music that started to get on my nerves.

But the story itself is engrossing, and the images from 1992 are really cool. I really enjoyed seeing these snapshots from Singapore, the biggest dog in that island nation, and that metronome. Tan wears her influences on her sleeve perhaps, but it's interesting to think about how she could have grown as a filmmaker and developed what likely would have been an original filmmaking voice if she had been able to stick with it.

Of course, the visuals--and that's really all we get here since the narrative for the original Shirkers is never very clear and there's no sound--were really courtesy of the film's director (or co-director?), a Georges Cardona who operates as the mysterious villain for the documentary's narrative. Cardona's a fascinating creep, and I don't think that's a spoiler since he gives off a creepy vibe from the first time we meet him. I mean, anybody claiming to be the inspiration for Spader's character in Sex, Lies, and Videotape is likely not to be trusted, right?

With a lot of twists and turns in this, it's probably best that I just recommend it without saying anything else. I watched this because it was paired with the new Orson Welles movie on The Next Picture Show podcast, so I have them to thank for putting it on my radar. They're likely doing better things with their time than reading this though.

The Little Devil

1988 Italian comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A priest exorcises a demon from a woman only to have said demon mess up his plans.

I'm not apologizing for my love of Roberto Benigni. There's something about his manic brand of comedy that appeals to me. And with a score from Evan Lurie, a role for his brother John Lurie, cinematography from Robert Muller, I figured I was in for a treat with this.

And things started out really well with Walter Matthau as the straight man to Benigni's hyperactive and mischievous demon character. I was convinced that there was a subtext to this comedy with Benigni's titular demon representing self doubt, fear, and a loss of faith. When this was just Benigni and Matthau, I thought this worked really well.

But ironically, it loses its fire and brimstone around the time when John Lurie's character pops up. That's the part of the movie that Benigni's future wife, Nicoletta Braschi, also pops in. I like her. She's got an allure, and she's probably not wearing undergarments, and that's all I really need. Benigni spends a lot of time in this movie staring at her crotch, and I imagine that's what convinced him to marry the actress.

A few of the gags in this seem like they either take forever to set up or go on for a little too long. Benigni has some pacing issues with his comedic bits. Still, this has a lot of humorous moments that make it worth watching if you're a fan of what he does or enjoy looking at his hair.

I wonder why Roberto Benigni never appeared on the Fishing with John show.

Dangerous Liaisons

1988 period comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A lothario makes a wager with his gal pal that involves the sexual corruption and ruination of a young woman. It's dangerous!

I was going to penalize this movie for including the word "liaisons" in its title because no word should have that combination of vowels, but I can forgive it for giving me an excuse to use the word "lothario."

Like Ridicule from 1996, this has a great combination of beauty and bite. Clearly, Glenn Close and especially John Malkovich are having a ball spitting out these bile-filled lines like they're in a more overtly randy Shakespeare play. The screenplay's playful and mean and a lot of fun.

Overboard

1987 crime drama

Rating: 7/20

Plot: A carpenter decides that two wrongs can indeed make a right and kidnaps a rich amnesiac lady, forces her to do chores around the house, and eventually has sex with her after convincing her that they're married. That's the sort of thing that was funny in the late-80s.

And I'm glad about two things as a 45-year-old man watching the original Overboard:

1) That I am not so old that I can no longer appreciate the posterior of Goldie Hawn. If I reach that point, I have given instructions for my family to euthanize me.

2) That I've grown enough since I first saw this as a middle schooler in a theater with my brother to understand how reprehensible most of what this movie passes off as comedy really is.

None of these characters--and I'm including the trio of obnoxious children, one who speaks in a funny voice because that also passed as comedy back in the late-80s--deserve a happy ending. But it's a 1987 comedy, so they all get a happy ending. Not only do they get a happy ending--no, they get themselves an ultra-happy ending. Because you can't just get by being with the man or woman you love because the script tells you to love him or her or having a family that was pieced together using trickery and some light kidnapping, enslavement, and rape. No, you also need to end up filthy rich. It's the exact problem that Crispin Glover claims he had with the Back to the Future ending. Here, it's arguably more sickening because these are all terrible human beings, and you just know that the money is going to make them even more terrible.

One wonders what will happen with Mike Hagerty's character. His mulleted friend suddenly being hoisted into a higher echelon of human being--because everybody knows that money makes you better--is probably going to leave him alone and, you have to assume, suicidal. You don't need a wing-man when you've got nothing to do but sit on a boat and admire Goldie Hawn's buttocks, right?

I haven't seen the sequel to this and probably won't, but I assume it's a cinematic act of revenge.

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead

2018 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The true story of the last film from Orson Welles. At least that's what it says on the poster up there.

You can tell this was directed by Morgan Neville, the same guy who did the Mister Rogers documentary from earlier this year. He's got a style.

I don't have much to say about this. Really, I just have three things to say.

1) I think we might get more posthumous Orson Welles movies. He has a chance to be the Tupac of film directors.

2) Orson Welles never sneezes. Somehow, I knew that had to be true even before I heard anybody mention Orson Welles and sneezing.

3) The story about how Welles became angry while staying at Bogdanovich's place whenever there were no Fudgsicles might be the best thing I've heard all year.

This is required viewing after you've seen The Other Side of the Wind.

Midnight Run

1988 action movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A bounty hunter is given the easy task (a "midnight run") of taking an accountant across the country, but it doesn't go as planned.

Robert De Niro operates on easy cool as this swaggering, streetwise weisenheimer. He's fun to watch, even when the movie tries to give him all this emotional depth that there might not be that much room for. Charles Grodin is a perfect foil as this timid but sneaky guy. You can never trust what's going on with that character, and you're never sure if you like him or not. The pair have great buddy rapport.

Unfortunately, my enjoyment of this kind of stopped there. The action was a little generic, and the score made me realize how much I hate saxophones and electric guitars from the 1980's. This was not one of Danny Elfman's finest moments.

Skyscraper

2018 movie with The Rock

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A one-legged guy has to save his family from a towering inferno.

I missed seeing this in the theater and felt like making it up to The Rock with a little Movies-a-Go-Go action. So here are my thoughts as I watched this movie that reminded me of a whole bunch of other movies while simultaneously making me wonder what I was doing with my life.

Just had a conversation with my son about The Rock after I told him what I was watching. He said, “Oh, so you’re excited? You like The Rock.” And I do, but I’m not sure if I like any of his movies that aren’t Fast and the Furious movies. He’s just never quite as ridiculous as I want him to be. Hopefully, this Die Hard rip-off will give me some ridiculous Rock action!

The Rock nearly died in the first 5 minutes of the movie, and all I can think about is how fast the elevators would have to be with the titular building.

This giant skyscraper has as many balls as Hitler. Rim shot!

We're five minutes into a Movies-a-Go-Go, and I've already mentioned Hitler. What is wrong with me?

“You OK?”
“Yeah, just some leg stuff.”
Leg stuff?

Without that leg, The Rock’s still got about twice as much leg as I’ve got.

It didn’t take me very long to use the word “titular” in this write-up, did it?

Was that butt slap improvised? I’m going to assume it was because it somehow makes the world seem like a better place.

Daddy’s got to go to work, kids. (This is a reference to the greatest scene in the history of cinema in case you don’t know.)

I just met The Rock’s friend here and spent about 2 minutes in a futuristic elevator with him, but I’m assuming he’s going to be working with the bad guys. He's sketchy.

Navel surgeon? She only operates on belly buttons? I didn’t know that was a thing. [Note: I'm aware that none of this makes sense to anybody who isn't watching the movie with me. I apologize if you've gotten this far.]

Oh, no. That weird-looking dude (kind of looks like John F. from They Might Be Giants) is obviously the bad guy. There are all kinds of skyscraper moles in this thing.

What is going on with these high-tech mirrors in the building's ball? This guy wanted to have the highest-elevated funhouse in the world?

This is totally going to end like Enter the Dragon or The Lady of Shanghai, isn’t it? A final battle in a funhouse?

He hasn’t touched a gun in ten years? So he hasn’t put suntan lotion on his biceps?

This character development on the boat is excruciating. Let’s see some punching and/or explosions!

If I had a nickel for every time I ate a weird candy and missed pandas because I was throwing up, I wouldn't have nearly enough to buy a bitchin' souvenir panda hat like The Rock's son is sporting.

I hope this panda hat survives the movie.

The Rock’s daughter is apparently a feminist.

Ben is doing too much talking here. It's like he thinks he's a Batman villain.

The Rock’s having a difficult time in a fight with this Ben fellow...this doesn’t bode well.

Ripping off The Rock’s leg is pretty low. At least it wasn't his good leg, I guess.

“Light a man’s house on fire, and you find out what he truly loves.” You can tell the burly villain guy’s been planning that one a long time.

I hope the pandas are going to be ok. I guess that's just as important as the panda hat being ok.

I just saw an Asian Allen Ginsberg fleeing the building.

I’m either confused about what’s going on or I’ve lost interest in what’s going on. It’s hard to tell with a movie like this.

Who do you think would win in a fight? The Rock’s severed leg or a normal human being?

I need to turn this up. I think The Rock just told his wife to meet him in a Cinnabon.

The weird-looking guy is as clueless as me, so I was wrong about him being a bad guy.

I wonder if there are other movies where The Rock has responded with “Whoa whoa whoa whoa!” after guns have been pointed at him. It’s happened twice in this one already.

I suppose if anybody ever pulls a gun on me, I'll just raise up my giant biceps and start saying, "Whoa whoa whoa whoa!" and see how it goes.

This mean lady doesn’t like when people talk about how smart they are, I guess.

The Rock’s climbing a big crane, and it seems like they might be ripping off King Kong now. This movie doesn’t have a lot of original ideas.

I can’t even do monkey bars when they’re 7 feet off the ground. I can’t imagine being this high up and depending on the strength of my fingers.

What did the building’s owner just hold up that the bad guy wants? It appeared to be an odd-shaped dildo, but I doubt that's right.

With the weight of a second leg, he probably wouldn’t have made that jump.

Note: I'm not sure how much difference there is in weight between a normal human leg and a fake leg. I imagine it would have to be about the same, right?

I might have been more excited during that big jump-from-the-crane sequence if I hadn’t already seen it in the preview.

Fire can only make a park in a skyscraper more fun, right? Lighten up, children!

Ok, so I was right about that weird-looking guy after all. He is bad news.

“If you can’t fix it with duct tape, then you aren’t using enough duct tape.” Tim Allen wrote this screenplay?

I could have watched The Rock pull shards of glass out of himself in front of that pretty backdrop for a little longer.

“Are you okay?” Umm...look around, Rock. Everything’s on fire! 

I guess there was no time for a “How the hell did you get here?”

If this little girl was really The Rock’s daughter, she would have headbutted these guys, taken their guns, and thrown them into the inferno below. The fact that she’s running around screaming “Daddy!” makes this pretty unbelievable.

I had to pause here because the generic action had become a little too intense. I'm getting some tea.

This is no time for TV, The Rock!

More duct tape?

“This is stupid.” Aww, come on, buddy. It’s not that bad!

Ok, after that whole sequence where he was trying to get a door open, I have to agree with him. This is stupid.

“Got any duct tape?” This really has been a movie more about duct tape than a skyscraper.

And here’s that funhouse sequence that we all knew was coming.

If the line “My ball’s on fire!” isn’t in here somewhere, I’m going to be really disappointed.

Uh oh. This is setting things up for a cat fight!

A cat fight with biting! That was pretty hot.

Ummmm…I can understand how a bunch of mirrors can trick you into thinking somebody is not where you think they are. But can they trick you into thinking you’re hearing a sound from somewhere else?

If anybody actually read this before seeing the movie, would any of this even be considered spoiler material? I mean, anybody who has seen a movie is likely going to be able to figure out where everything ends up in this one, right?

A sprinkler system? I was kind of hoping the fire would be put out with those pandas.

I’m starting to wonder if this building’s even got pandas! Give me a CGI panda or two, Skyscraper!

Speaking of pandas, what do you think happened to the son’s ugly panda hat? It seemed like the sort of thing that could be fireproof.

Yeah, laugh it up, lady. You have no idea if your husband and daughter are even alive.

I’m really hoping they put the building back together using nothing more than duct tape.

That's it. I really lost steam with this one. 

The Other Side of the Wind

2018-ish posthumous movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A director shows off his latest movie at his birthday party as he tries to get financing to finish it.

It's 2018, and I'm getting ready to write about a new Orson Welles movie that was released on Netflix. Let that sink in.

In this, Welles asks what all cinephiles have been thinking for years: "Is the camera merely a phallus?" His answer is probably that it isn't, the question more a non sequitur than anything that's actually worth probing. I didn't have a firm grasp on what Welles was trying to do here. Is it autobiographical, an honest look at a himself as an artist and a human being? Is it a parody, some curmudgeonly shade throwing at avant-garde film-making from the 60's and 70's? Is it experimental comedy, a comical nightmare, existential slapstick?

The documentary also released on Netflix helps out somewhat although thankfully allows a lot of the mystery to remain mysterious. But I'll write about that separately.

What is clear from a first watch of The Other Side of the Wind is that Welles still had a lot of juice left in his bulbous tank. This is freeform faux-documentary making, spliced and diced and glued together in a giant slop that might be frustrating to people looking for a narrative or even a character study but will be rewarding for those able to allow themselves to be absorbed into its rhythms. A choppy and fragmented mosaic, this just begs to be watched multiple times to see if there are pieces that are supposed to be connected. It leaves questions, ones that I'm sure Welles wouldn't even be able to answer. But even if you don't understand why there are little people or why the mannequins are being shot up (is that a spoiler?) or what it means when the lights go out, there's a jazzy buoyancy to this whole thing that keeps this thrilling even when it starts to feel a little redundant.

I'm not sure if Welles is using different cameras because he was forced to as he filmed this thing over several years or if it was all part of the plan, but it gave the birthday party scenes a unique look. The real visual splendor is in the film-within-the-film which was titled The Other Side of the Wind. I was blown away by some of the images in that, and that's not just because Oja Kodar was naked almost the entire time. Welles may have been poking fun at European filmmakers with the film-within-a-film, but he really showed off a great eye for pretentious and likely meaningless imagery.

The scene that really blew me--and apparently a lot of other people--completely away is a sex scene in the film-within-a-film. Rhythmic sounds of railroad tones, windshield wipers, chimes, passing cars, and jewelry blend with all these fantastic colors and lovely fake-movie rain to make you believe you're seeing things you're supposed to be hearing and hearing things you're supposed to be seeing. It's one of the most gorgeous things I've seen in a movie in a long, long time.

I could talk about the performances (John Huston is especially good, bringing this gravitas to a Hemingway-esque figure), but they don't matter as much as the editing. The documentary has Welles talking about divine accidents and how he wanted to approach this film as a director "fishing" for those accidents. I can't imagine what work went into this (I believe by Bogdanovich) to piece loads of footage into something semi-coherent, but this works. Huston gets progressively drunker, the friction between characters gets more frictiony, and the nightmare deepens as this birthday party continues. By the end, we wrap back around to meet the beginning again, a snake eating its own ass, and we're left to try to put all the pieces together.

This thing's got layers, man. It's a movie about making movies, of course, and that leads to enough meta shenanigans for most people. It's hard to not think it's at least partly autobiographical, but there's another layer where Welles knows that people know it's autobiographical and is likely playing around with people, messing with the mystique, goofing with the gossip. Whatever screenplay Welles stumbled into the production with was ever-evolving, shaped by changes in Welles' actual relationships during the period of time during which this was filmed. There are suggested betrayals, fractured mentorships, incomprehensible midgetry, unspoken jealousies, laughable pretenses, and derided romances. It morphs into a story about a director trying to finance his independent productions because Welles had trouble financing his productions and then had trouble financing this production which is likely what he knew would happen all the time.

This makes me want to revisit F for Fake. And that makes me want to start wearing a cape.

I was so pleased to see Angelo Rossitto. He has a little cowboy friend, too.

Anyway, I wasn't planning on writing very much. This is more for Josh so that he has a place to put his thoughts.

Mid90s

2018 movie about skateboarding

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Not much of one actually. A troubled kid meets some older skateboarding kids and almost kills himself a few times.

I'm going to have a problem if Lucas Hedges is going to be in every other movie. He's in this, and he was in two movies that were previewed before this movie. I just checked, and these are his only 2018 movies, so I guess I can cool down a little.

I didn't think I was liking this nearly-plotless first feature from Jonah Hill. It's less a story than a series of vignettes, but the parts add up to a whole that creates some likable characters and even more likable relationships. I ended up liking the characters, both the parts of them that were lovable and their flaws. There are some tense moments, some funny moments, and some moments that manage to be funny and tense at the same time, and by the end, you appreciate the series of vignettes for how well they create these characters and this particular time in these characters' lives.

Sunny Suljic is actually in just as many 2018 films as Hedges. He's good here, especially since of how much he's asked to do here. The wrong kid here, and this might have been Jonah Hill's final movie. The quartet of skateboarding pals are all newcomers, having only five movies counting Mid90s on their combined filmographies, but there's something very natural and likable about them. They've got the skateboarding chops, likely why they were hired, but they also show off a great rapport. It felt like Hill had forced them to hang out a whole bunch and become actual friends for several months before shooting anything. They're refreshing performances.

Hill shows promise as both a writer and director, and it's especially impressive how he doesn't fall into any melodramatic traps. There were moments when he could have leaned on tragedy, and while that might have been easier, he was more drawn to the effects of friendship.

Filled with old-school hip-hop and 90's-era alternative (Hello, Morrissey!) and some dope skateboarding sequences, this will hit the sweet spots of a certain chunk of the population. I might be in that chunk even though I could never even stand on a skateboard.

Horse movies and skateboard movies abound this year. Of those, this would make a nice companion to the documentary Minding the Gap.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

2018 movie based on a true story

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A once-successful-but-now-struggling author finds a new career in writing fraudulent letters from famous people.

It's quite possible that this is my favorite Melissa McCarthy movie, but I'm not really in any shape to put a lot of thought into that. McCarthy's good here as this miserable human being wallowing in her own filth. Lee Israel's got the right mix of misanthropy and bite to make her appealing to a misanthropic biter like me. Israel, I imagine, wouldn't be likable to most people, but McCarthy does enough to let the humanity bleed through. There's pathos in this often-funny story of fraudulent epistles, best scene in quiet scenes with a possible friend or a cat or a filthy apartment.

Richard E. Grant is really great as Israel's gay friend, and he gets one scene to try to win himself a best supporting actor award.

If you've got a typewriter fetish, this might be the movie for you. I could have used a few more typewriting scenes actually. The cat is also a great animal actor. This movie might have some narrative redundancy and suffer from some of the issues that your typical biopic might, but it's a film that is very easy to watch.

Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things about Me?

1971 dark comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: It's a day in the life of Georgie Soloway, a rich and successful songwriter who is not successful in love. 

You know what I needed in this movie? I needed a scene that explains how Georgie Soloway got his surname like in that Han Solo movie. Of course, it might be an explanation that's as boring as it being the last name of his father. Soloway. That's as obvious a name as I would have given a character in some of the crap I wrote in high school.

I was distracted during the early parts of this movie while trying to think of movie titles that were longer. I know Borat has a longer subtitle that nobody would ever bother saying, and that Ray Dennis Steckler Incredibly Strange Creatures movie has a really long title. And then there's Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. That has to be the longest title for a movie I've personally seen. 

I've got nothing better to do with my life and decided to research it. Typing that out has made me almost unbearably sad, by the way. Turns out that the de Sade movie has the second longest title. Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating Subhumanoid Zombified Living Dead, Part 2: In Shocking 2-D is the movie with the longest title. This movie gets bonus points for both having a long title and ending in a question mark though.

For a song about a musician, you might expect some music. There is a bit, but it's not Dustin Hoffman who gets most of the big moments. He dicks around at a guitar and a piano in brief scenes and mumbles his way through some rudimentary songs, and there's a really great moment on a plane where he and Barbara Harris sing a "Ricky Ticky Song." Children's poet and raunchy songwriter Shel Silverstein wrote that and a few of the other songs in that movie, and it was a lot of fun seeing him perform one of those songs. Man, that guy had a lot of energy, just the type of performer who seemed like he could chew your head off at any moment. There's also a steel drum infused "Jump Now" song in a dream sequence that was a real knock-out. And Soloway's psychologist, played by a daffy Jack Warden, gets a surprising musical number.

That shocking psychologist musical number is just one of many playful moments in this. The movie opens with a suicide, a long fall from a penthouse where Hoffman, aided by some truly magical early 70's special effects, dances through the air and the opening credits. The irreverence sets you up for a frolicsome but also sneakily dense and nearly profound look at lost time, self-sabotage, and ennui. The story takes place in a single day of Soloway's insomniac life, but it blends into flashbacks and dream sequences effortlessly. It constantly surprises, even for people who have seen similarly playful movies in the last 50 years.

There are times when things get a little too silly--hello, Santa!--but this has a lot of great moments. Dom DeLuise plays an accountant in one nice scene where his character has to be a friend to Soloway. There are a couple tender moments between Hoffman's character and his father played by David Burns who died the year this movie was released. And Barbara Harris is just fantastic in every scene she's in, especially an audition scene. The way Hoffman studies her in those scenes is very likely acting, since that's what Dustin Hoffman does, but there's part of me that wonders if he was just as blown away as I was watching her.

The script is sharp and smart, and I'd like to see this again sometime to put some pieces of it together more. Hoffman's in, as I recall, every single scene in this movie, and he's really good as this Dylanesque figure. So much of what he does just seems like he's doing his Dustin Hoffman thing, but he's so gifted at finding all this space with his characters that other actors might not find, all these little gestures and expressions.

As expected, this movie ends in a completely unexpected way. 

Let's Scare Jessica to Death

1971 psychological horror

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Jessica, fresh from a mental institution, moves to a big house on an island with her husband and a friend with cool sideburns. A female drifter is already living there, however. Jessica either loses her mind or there are vampires.

With a dumb title, a shockingly silly poster, and the tagline "Something is after Jessica. Something very cold, very wet. . .and very dead," there's all sorts of misleading going on with this one. It's a slow-burn psychological thriller, and if scares are your thing, this might let you down. If a super-creepy vibe is what you're after, this will hit the spot.

This is really a more nuanced mentally-ill character study than it is a horror movie although there are some nearly-horrifying moments. I don't want to say much about any of those specific moments for two reasons. First, watching this one without spoilers is likely a more enjoyable experience. And second, I'm really feeling pretty lazy and don't want to write more than I have to.

Jessica is played by Zohra Lampert, and she's really good with this wild-eyed fragility.

A creepy location, creepy extras, these creepy disembodied voices, and a creepy score by somebody named Orville Stoeber contribute to make up for this terrible title. This was directed by John D. Hancock. I don't know him, but I want to see the his first movie, the short film that preceded this, just because it's called "Sticky My Fingers. . .Fleet My Feet." I like film titles with ellipses.

Oh, my God! Hancock directed Prancer!

Minnie and Moskowitz

1971 romance

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A parking garage worker and a lady who work in a museum hit it off. Sort of.

The titular couple aren't exactly made for each other, but who is? I mean, as long as they both enjoy hot dogs, things should all work out.

Minnie was looking for a Bogart, but Seymour Moskowitz's mustache is irresistible.

This reminded me of a noisier Aki Kaurismaki movie, and there are a few tender moments that I really connected with.

The Last Picture Show

1971 coming-of-age drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Teens in a tiny, tired Texas town pass time.

Perhaps I was too young at 20-something to appreciate this when I saw it mumble-mumble years ago. Not enough life had passed since I was young and aimless to when I was slightly older and aimless.

It opens with a tumbleweed, an apparently non-functioning stoplight, dilapidated buildings that can only belong in a world of black and white, and this thick wind that is somehow visible, and these characters are lucky if they're inhabiting a ghost town and probably a little less lucky if they're in some sort of dusty purgatory. Old people are feisty about their high school football, teenagers are perpetually horny and not interested at all in the poetry of John Keats, and we're back to a time when America was great and gym teachers could call their students pissants, accuse them of running like a goddamned goose, or give words of wisdom like, "If you all didn't jack off so much, you'd be in shape." A truck struggles to life, and Hank Williams haunts the air with his voice.

The adults are clinging to memories; the kids are creating memories that they will be the only things they can cling to in thirty years. The adults pine for lost times and loves; the kids are reaching for a something they don't even understand because they don't seem to have any role models who have shown it to them. Just watch that nearly heartbreaking silver dollar story of Ben Johnson's Sam the Lion, that zoom in and then out as he shares it. It's almost a warning to the kid, isn't it? Like, you'd better watch it or all you're going to have when you're my age are a handful of grubby stories.

Most of this movie is made up of snippets of memories. A collective urging Billy Boy on as he prematurely ejaculates over portly Jimmie Sue, a bra hung on a rearview mirror, two dogs going at it outside the window of your classroom while your teacher prattles on about Keats or whatever the hell he's talking about, another dog chasing down your car, a hand against a garter belt and ensuing blue balls, diving board stripping, greasy burgers, a nap in a sombrero, your shadows on a white coffin. Snippets of moments.

Man, Jeff Bridges really hasn't changed all that much. He almost grumbled in his youth, didn't he? A young Randy Quaid is also in this. His "I did it last Easter" in reference to that aforementioned diving board is positively nightmare enducing. And look at Cybill Shephard, speaking of diving boards! The way she is lit in this movie makes her look almost otherworldly, and it's obvious this purgatory isn't holding her.

This is gritty in a glitzy Hollywood way, and it manages to be entirely realistic melodrama with the exception of a moment when a kid doesn't want to sleep with a virginal Cybill Shephard.

Anyway, I'm older than I was when I first saw this. And I'm older than I was when I first started writing this. And my window of opportunity for showing off my goods on a diving board is likely closed.