Mandy

2018 action horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A lumberjack gets his revenge on a trio of demon bikers and a religious cult after his wife is abducted.

This is clearly a cinematic portrayal of Kubler-Ross's stages of grief.

Stage 1: Free yourself from barbed-wire shackles, metaphorically, of course.
Stage 2: Drink, growl, scream, cry, and drink some more while wearing a tiger shirt and your underpants in a bathroom.
Stage 3: Forge your own bitchin' battle axe, motherfucker!
Stage 4: Take LSD and have your face melt off.
Stage 5: Kill the demons, and kill them good!
Stage 6: Chainsaw fight!
Stage 7: Smile a blood-toothed smile at a hallucination.

In Terre Haute, there's an old record store run by hippies. It's been there since the late-60s and manages, probably since they sell a variety of other things, to stay in business despite this particular type of store seeming like a thing of the past. On the exterior of the little building Headstone Friends operates in, there are these paintings of dragons and things. My mother never wanted me to go in there because there were rumors that they sold drugs, but that, of course, turned out to be pretty far from the truth. They were a nice group of hippies. When I first started going in there while in high school, it seemed forbidden. The incense was strong, the heavy metal they liked was blasting, there was little light, and there was a vaguely druggy ambiance. There was one particular room, about the size of a large closet, where they had these fluorescent pictures illuminated by black light. Walking in there, a person almost seemed obligated to put up a couple finger devil horns. That little room was, at least to me as a kid, the most rock 'n' roll place on earth.

Mandy is that room. I've seen it compared to heavy metal cover art or paintings on the sides of vans, and those are appropriate comparisons, too. Johann Johannsson's final score combines with the hallucinogenic artsy-psychedelia to scorch your lobes, Nic Cage manages to be simultaneously subdued and swing battle axes and chainsaws and scream "You ripped my shirt! You ripped my shirt!" like he only watched Brad Pitt's "box" lines for preparation, and the dark imagery and ridiculously bleak vibes in the characters' interactions with each other make the whole thing seem like there was a massive goth leak at a Hot Topics or something. Panos Cosmatos's long-awaited follow-up to Beyond the Black Rainbow is meticulously excessive in almost every way, every breath this movie is an inhalation of some cosmic energy and exhalation of fiery funk. The movie is nuts, but it's the product of a singular vision and refusal to compromise that has to be appreciated. You imagine people seeing a storyboard for some of this heavy-metal mayhem and telling the director that he can't do some of this before being answered with a "Yeah? Well, watch me do all of this, mo-fos! Rock 'n' roll!"

So there are cheddar goblin commercials, Erik Estrada knock-knock jokes, ax-forging montages, tigers, knife dicks, cultists entertained by automatic windows, horn of Abraxas ridiculousness, animated dream sequences, chainsaw battles, gnarly psychos, and angry power masturbation after somebody who will not be named doesn't appreciate a song that is obviously better than anything the Carpenters ever put out. The colors are otherworldly, the imagery is hellish, and the world is populated by biker demons. And Nicolas Cage has a tiger face on his shirt because why wouldn't he?

How's Nic Cage in this? Perfect! The film opens with his silhouette waking from a falling tree while King Crimson plays, and it ends with a meme-worthy smile that is as haunted as Cage has ever been on screen. In between, he does some of the best work that he's done in a while. Either he found a project that fit him perfectly or Cosmatos just knows exactly what to do with an actor that has Cage's skill set. Cage gets to be an absolute badass in Mandy, and in a lot of ways, it feels like the exact kind of performance I've been waiting for for a really long time.

My favorite moment: After a really silly playing of the "horn of Abraxas" by the bald cult guy, the cultists wait in their van for something to happen. One cult member starts playing with the automatic window. It was really funny. There were actually lots of moments of humor in this, something that keeps you on your toes.

Some Came Running

1958 melodrama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A wayward son returns home to Parkman, Indiana, juggles a couple of dames, catches up with an older brother, and befriends a gambler who is having a love affair with his hat.

An oddly-foreboding opening tune clues us in that not all of these characters are going to wind up with happy endings as we watch small-town America from the windows of Sinatra's bus. The colors just pop in this opening scene, and the colors pop throughout the movie, right to the almost-expressionistic climax with its carnival lights and cartoon darkness. Sinatra's Dave Hirsch answers that Parkman "used to be" his hometown, but you can't lose a hometown any easier than you can shake the past, and Hirsch is about to find that out.

There's a lot to like about this Vincente Minnelli picture though it hasn't aged well. The men in Some Came Running are all jackasses. Seriously, every single one. They're the kinds of dudes who refer to all women as "dames" or, when they've got a little alcohol in them which seems to be all the time, "pigs." The chauvinism dims the experience of watching  some interesting but entirely flat characters doing interesting and sometimes flat things. Dialogue hints at pasts that the characters understand even if the actors don't, and there's always a quick bite. And as I said, the colors pop.

Sinatra and Arthur Kennedy and Dean Martin and Dean Martin's hat are all serviceable, but it's Shirley MacLaine who really steals the show. She acts circles around the others here. Her best moment is when she interrupts a nightclub performance by belting out a stirring rendition of "After You've Gone." What a dame!

Minnelli shows off during a nighttime chase sequence at some sort of carnival that has conveniently rolled into town. A shot with an out-of-towner in front of a wall bathed in this red light with this intense score swell made me laugh, but I later liked characters shot in front of a colorful Ferris wheel. There's a story about Sinatra not enjoying his experience in Madison, Indiana, and threatening to not finish this movie during the filming of that scene when Minnelli wanted to move that Ferris wheel about six feet. That enhances my enjoyment of the entire movie.

I'm sure Madison, Indiana, still looks a lot like this.

Silent Saturday: Berlin, Symphony of a Metropolis (or Berlin, Symphony of a Great City)

1927 documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A day in the life of bustling Berlin.

The wild editing and music (the Olympia Chamber Orchestra was in this version that I heard) reminded me a little of Koyaanisqatsi a little. The chaotic arrival of a train hooked me, and then my eyes were glued to this thing. Typewriter dizziness followed by monkeys, fun animatronics in shop windows, the innards of factory machines, traffic, the hustle and bustle of pedestrian and vehicle traffic. I don't know what it reveals about Berlin, apparently a great city, unless the intent was to show off the "hat game" of Berliners during the nightlife scenes at the end. With that sort of hat game, no wonder Kennedy was proud to proclaim that he was a Berliner.

This whole thing is just so musical, so the "symphony" in the title is apt. Fiercely-edited juxtapositions, perfect camera angles, and some 1920's movie trickery give this a rhythm that, even watching this 90 years after it was made, is refreshing. There are a lot of more poignant moments, too, including a windy section in Act 4 where there's an apparently suicide, completely staged by director Walter Ruttmann, I suppose. It makes the whole thing a little difficult to trust, but it can be forgiven because the way the lady's eyes are shown in that scene is such a powerful image.

Oh, and Charlie Chaplin's feet make a cameo appearance.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

1988 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A surgeon has sex with a bunch of women in Czechoslovakia as Russians invade.

If I'm working on a best-of-1988 list, I can't pass up a movie that features Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche, can I? There are so many accents going on in this, but both give great performances. And so does Lena Olin, who I don't think I know. There's a physicality to the performances. A great early scene has Day-Lewis chasing Binoche through an old-folks home, and it's filmed really well but also features these performers who know exactly what to do with their bodies. And that continues throughout--from the quiet scenes where characters are reflecting on something to the numerous sex scenes.

Most of those sex scenes are wild endeavors, like director Philip Kaufman and the actors wanted to go at them like they were action sequences. The first time Day-Lewis and Binoche get together, for example, made me wonder how at least one of them didn't get seriously injured. They're erotic, but Kaufman isn't really filming them with the purpose of being erotic.

However, I have to say that there's a recurring bowler hat here that had a "Pavlov's dog" type of effect on me. An early scene has Lena Olin writhing and crawling over a mirror on the floor, and she's wearing the bowler. Later, the bowler was used in some sort of foreplay again, and eventually, I started to get aroused every time I saw that bowler. Nice trick there, Kaufman. Nice trick.

This is often a sprawling and difficult-to-follow story that feels a little pompous, but I did like some comedic bits thrown in. There's some fun visual humor with a lady and a dog in a car, and there's another moment with a fellow passenger on a train that was almost funny. There are also a pair of pigs that play a single pig, and their performances were really good.

The best scene has Day-Lewis staring down a cactus because if there's a scene in which Daniel Day-Lewis stares down a cactus in a movie, it's probably going to be the best scene.

Who Wants to Kill Jessie?

1966 Czech sci-fi comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A married pair of scientist find themselves in some trouble when the wife's dream experiments unleash her husband's dream characters into the world.

Czech sci-fi comedy is where it's at! This was recommended by Eric. Last year, I made it a goal to watch more movies from Czechoslovakia because they usually hit my sweet spot. They're usually so imaginative and fun. I think I watched somewhere around five. So that wasn't good. I don't remember seeing any that showed us both a glimpse of a cow's dream and a child urinating on a superhero dream character as he tried to climb out of a sewer.

There's a lot of creativity here as three dream characters--the fetching Jessie who I just couldn't stop leering at like I was also some sort of comic book villain, a cowboy villain, and some sort of caped strong man villain--pop into the real world. There's chaotic destruction, but they also take time to play a piano or, in my favorite recurring reference, drink a baby's milk. This reminded me of the Batman television show that came out at around the same time. It didn't have the onomatopoeic effects, but the dream characters did communicate via talking bubbles that were hilariously swiped or shot away and in one instance even turned so that other characters could see what was being said. I liked how the husband character always had to look up to see what Jessie was saying since it couldn't be heard.

There are all sorts of fun throwaway moments that keep things wacky, but I wonder if there's a subversive message to the whole thing, something about a "freedom from dreams" or the obligation we have regarding our dreams. I'd like to know what a feminist would have to say about where the husband and wife end up by the end of this.

I don't know this director--Vaclav Vorlicek--at all, but he's apparently still working at the age of 80-something. Maybe I'll Czech out more of his work soon. 

The Thin Blue Line

1988 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A look at the murder of a police officer in Texas and whether or not the man in jail is actually the one who committed the crime.

Burger King product placement made me laugh as I was supposed to be focusing on how the "wheels of justice" are capable of doing a lot of harm. There's a lot that is haunting about this Errol Morris look at the story of Randall Dale Adams, a drifter who was accused and convicted of a murder he didn't commit. Knowing that the whole thing has a semi-happy ending with this documentary playing a part in the discovery that Adams was indeed innocent makes it a little easier to watch, but here's a guy who lost 11+ years of his life, prime years when he could have gotten all kinds of women with that bushy hair and mustache combination that he had going on. Most chilling might be a tape recording played right before the closing credits. The crime is also shown from various angles in these artsy reenactments. I didn't know how to feel about them at first, but that slow-motion flight of a Burger King cup with a chocolate milkshake convinced me that I was watching something great. Also chilling were these words--"It takes a great prosecutor to convict an innocent man."

I'll tell you what really threw me off here. In the interview segments with Adams, I couldn't help hearing Nicolas Cage. He has a very similar cadence or rhythm to his voice as Cage.

Loved the score, a very typical Philip Glass thing that fit perfectly.

I wonder what Werner Herzog had to eat after Errol Morris completed this documentary. My guess--a Burger King chocolate milkshake.

The Asphalt Jungle

1950 heist movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A recently-released criminal gets a team together to pull off a heist.

Marilyn Monroe's first performance although I don't think she ever looks quite like she does on the poster. I think I'd like to see Monroe's appearances in chronological order to check out the development of her mole.

This has just enough style and some good performances (I especially liked Sterling Hayden), but the double crosses seem a little Hollywoody. A good heist movie is only as good as its big heist scene, and this pulls its off with style and suspense. It's reminiscent but not as good as the one in Rififi.

My favorite part is close to the end. This is probably a spoiler, so you might not want to read it if you haven't seen the movie, but I believe it's suggested that some horses are going to devour one of the characters.

Hiroshima Mon Amour

1959 first movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A French actress has a brief affair with a guy in Hiroshima.

So this was Alain Resnais's first feature film? It's so confident that that's difficult to believe. And so enigmatic. That opening, with the entwined bodies glistening and eventually covered in ashes, is almost coming out and announcing, "Hey, everybody, hold on! This is going to be a masterpiece!" Then, there's haunting and horrifying Hiroshima imagery--a museum tour, a bouquet of bottlecaps, wounded people--and you're almost convinced that this is going to be a documentary with some intercut artsy-fartsy sex scenes.

It is not a documentary about Hiroshima although that public tragedy plays a big role in the understanding of a character's very personal tragedy. No, this is a movie about the "horror of forgetting," a look at memory and the inability to forget, fears of futures, fears of indifference, other unknown fears, dreaming, being unaware of dreams. A character claims, "You think you know, but no. Never." The script is poetic to the point where it's unreal, the kind of dialogue that could only be found in an intellectual's wet dream. But it adds to the lovely mystery. It's a movie you understand with your bowels or those parts of your mind that can't shake the past's regrets or memories of misfortunes. Or maybe you don't understand this one at all? This is another one of those movies that you just let envelop you, one you feel.

The cinematography, by Michio Takahashi (who I've not heard of) and Sacha Vierny (who I have), perfectly adds to that mystery. So does the score, a really good one for the 1950s.

And oh! I almost forgot to mention Emmanuelle Riva, the French actress who plays the French actress. This is her first film, too, and she's just about perfect, a real case of "1,000 women in one" as the guy character says.

Some favorite moments: that opening, of course; the shimmering light in a scene that takes place in a tea room, a possible nod to Casablanca; mirror inner monologue; and a remarkable old lady at a train stations who sits in between the couple as they have a conversation.

Journey to Italy

1954 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A married couple visit Italy.

There's no time to read about the ending of Roberto Rossellini's anti-romantic drama and sightseeing tour of Naples, Italy, and I'm not sure what to think of it. I didn't like it, but it didn't sour me on the rest of the film, one of those that ties its setting to its drama so perfectly. The symbolism of the places Bergman's character visits is a bit on the nose, but they're cool to see and well filmed. The part in Pompeii is especially poignant though I would rather watch the Coogan/Brydon Trip to Italy again before watching this. It's got more impressions and sing-a-longs, and it doesn't force you to watch the disintegration of a marriage, something that's a little depressing.

You could argue that the disintegrating marriage is the main character in Voyage to Italy, but I do like how both of the characters are created. Their conflicts have begun a long time before we see them riding in a car at the beginning of this, that disintegration en media res, and it's entirely unclear what happens after the credits roll. Their differences are clearly defined by Bergman and Sanders desiring different things at this stage in their relationship. Bergman's character's fueled by some inner anguish, and there's a lot of subtlety to her performance. Sanders appears to be an actor tortured by this entire experience, and that adds some depth to his character here.

By the way, George Sanders' character mentions being bored a handful of times in this, and it's a little hard to watch that a few decades after he wrote a suicide note about being bored before taking his life.

Alex van Warmerdam Fest: The Northerners

1992 black comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Residents of a one-street suburb next to an artificial forest try to figure out what they want in a mailman.

Possibly, this is Alex van Warmerdam critiquing repressive nature of Dutch suburbanites. The town does have its own school, butcher shop, and forest, and they do have access to a church in a nearby community, but they're really closed off from the rest of society. The characters feel like pieces in a playful allegory. The blind hunter guy, the postman, the other postman, the kid on the motorcycle, the horny butcher. Add in a vulture, a religious icon coming to life, forest butt temptation, surprise sainthood, and an inept traveling museum, and you've got a lot of pieces that don't really come together but feel like they have to be about something.

Regardless if the non sequiturs and absurdist humor really add up to anything at all, this might be the van Warmerdam movie that I've enjoyed the most so far. I think I've decided that I have a sense of humor that fits right in with the collective sense of humor of Scandinavia. Kaurismaki, Andersson, Bergman. van Warmerdam. These guys are hilarious!

If you need any evidence that van Warmerdam is a comedic genius, look no further than the scene in this where a guy pops in to sell ice cream.

Bad Movie Club: Zolar

2004 television sci-fi action movie

Bad Movie Rating: 2/5 (J.D.: 1/5; Josh: 1/5; Lisa: 1/5)

Rating: 4/20

Plot: Aliens are trying to do something, and kids into extreme sports team up with the titular blue alien, also into extreme sports, to stop them.

Does a hybrid of extreme sports and science fiction sound like the kind of thing for you? Do you like movies from the 1990's that seem like they can't let go of the 80's but were actually made in 2004? Do you long for the type of action provided by old-school Power Rangers episodes but can't find even though there are a seemingly endless amount of incarnations of that product? Well, Zolar might be the movie for you!

Obviously, the actors were hired for kind of being able to skateboard or whatever more than having any ability to act. They're mostly bad in the typical ways teenagers are bad. Jordan Hoffart, the kid covered in the blue paint and (I hope) is given prosthetic ears and a fake nose, is a special case. Sounding inauthentic as either a kid or an alien, Hoffart gives a performance that somehow manages to offend. Look at this fucker:

C. Thomas Howell, an actor who probably should know better, is even worse. He's not in the movie as much, playing a character who, even though he's supposedly the main villain, does next to nothing. It's a hilariously bad performance, aided by his ridiculous costume. I mean, look at this fucker:

None of them are helped by the script, penned by some guy named John Derevlany, a guy who's been nominated for a Primetime Emmy. Instead of winning something like that, he should probably be bludgeoned with one.

Most inexplicable moment: It has to be how it takes about a half an hour of movie time with Zolar before the kids realize he's not human. They think he's one of those blue-tinted people from Kentucky.

In the Mood for Love

2000 romance

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Neighbors connect after discovering their spouses are cheating on them with the other's spouse.

Kar-Wai Wong could say that he finds the story of the tragedy of missed connections or failed romance as beautiful as a love story with a happy ending, but I wouldn't understand him because we don't speak the same language. This movie has language, but it's the visual language that really communicates here. Wong's a wizard in the ways he conjures these colors, colors that just made me swoon. I could spend two hours just looking at the dresses in this movie, especially if Maggie Cheung's wearing them because quite frankly, I enjoy her shape. I'm not able to articulate exactly what any of these color combinations mean because they're not communicating on a logical level. They mean something in some recesses of the soul.

This is one of the best-looking movies I've ever seen. The colors are part of it, but the framing of these shots, the recurring visual motifs, this crisp cinematography, these two gorgeous human beings, and the movie's rhythm all contribute to its aesthetic appeal. I loved all these random shots--of excessive smoking rising into a light (smoking has rarely looked this good in a film), the panning shots of food during a reenactment that looked more like how a tennis movie should be filmed, lots of clocks, those walks for noodles at the noodle stand, Mahjong tiles, lots and lots of hallways, shadows of a blowing curtain.

The leads are filmed with the same eye as the colors. Cheung and Tony Chiu-Wai Lang really are gorgeous, but they also know how to move. Both make all sorts of barely-perceptible movements that have enormous amounts of meaning. Sadness, longing, jealousy, more longing, horniness, indecision, understanding, not understanding, more longing, desire, and every other possible emotion that two people in this couple's particular situation could have are articulated without any verbal communication. They verbally communicate, but you could watch them work their bodies and get the same messages. Wong also frames them so well, using the architecture and set design to help us understand these characters and their situations. Walls trap them, ceilings seemingly cave in on them, bars and other obstacles obstruct. Sometimes, they're just shadows.

"The past is something he could see but not touch. And everything he see is blurred and indistinct." Oh, shit!

Lola

1961 non-musical

Rating: 17/20

Plot: I saw on Twitter yesterday that a movie critic isn't supposed to start a review with a plot synopsis, so I'm going to pretend I'm a movie critic and not include one here.

Demy said this was a "musical without music," but it does have music. That includes a use of the second movement of Beethoven's second symphony, the music that I'd like to die to. That's twice in about half a month that I've heard that piece of music in a movie, so at this rate, I'll hear that in around fifty movies. That likely means I'll die while watching a movie this year, so that's bad news.

Anyway, even if this didn't have music, the movie and its characters still move musically. Most musical in her movements is Lola herself, the titular cabaret dancer who we find out has a backstory that doesn't quite match her bounce. She's hardly still, and even when she is, she moves. The first time you see her, you know two things about her based on the way she smokes a cigarette, moves, and invades personal space (not in an unwelcome way, it should be noted): she's dangerous and she's going to break hearts. The other characters move as well, of course, but they're almost like mannequins compared to Anouk Aimee. Well, not those randy sailors. They start dancing as soon as they enter a room.

Movement is important here because the characters are mostly restless. Roland doesn't believe in dreams but dreams anyway, and he's bored and antsy. The teenager ready to burst out of adolescence. Her mother, you sense, wants to be whisked back into the past. The sailor's a stranger in a strange land and in a hurry to grab on to every available memory he can before he skiddoos. Michel has already run off to have his adventures and is ready for a next stage. Lola's son has too many trumpets, so who knows what his future holds.

While I watched, I had to get out the old tackboard, some string, and some thumbtacks to keep track of the web of character connections in this, all the romantic links and the parallel experiences. Once things all start to come together with these characters and you realize that that's what the movie's really about, this really becomes something special.

Sansho the Bailiff

1954 drama

Rating: 18/20

Plot: After a governor is exiled for being too nice, his wife and daughter experience misfortunes.

A beautiful downer, this film lets scenes of these characters' plights unfold in a way that makes them deeply felt by the viewer. I can't remember seeing a movie in which this much time unfurled so naturally. Lots happens, mostly tragic, but by the end of this epic, it's all so focused on one main idea--that the world is cruel, probably even crueler for those who live selflessly--that it almost feels like nothing's happened at all. How Mizoguchi packs in so much story and still allows enough space to appreciate it all in a film a little over two hours is probably what is the most masterful about Sansho the Bailiff.

That title is a strange one. I can't imagine why this is named after the main villain, who only gets about ten minutes of screen time tops. I assume it's because of his beard. He hardly seems all that vital as a villain as the movie makes clear from the words I had to read at the beginning that this is a world "when mankind had not yet awakened as human beings." Clearly, it's the world that is the villain here.

It's a hard film to enjoy because you can't enjoy what happens to these characters. Each one experiences, some offscreen. They lose things, they long, they despair, they give up on their ideals, they redeem themselves, they wander off, and they sacrifice. It's all so quiet, Mizoguchi apparently afraid that if he draws any more attention to what is going on, it would be too much for the audience. Moments still stand out though. The resolve of the titular bailiff's son, the sacrifice of a sibling, the skepticism of a downtrodden character. These are images that I'm not likely to forget.

L'Atalante

1934 romance

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Newlyweds live on the barge the husband captains with a first mate and a cabin boy. They have early marriage troubles.

If I have a movie goal for 2019, it's to fill in some embarrassing gaps in my movie watching and see some movies that I probably should have seen a long time ago. This Jean Vigo romantic comedy is one of those, and I'm glad I watched it because it's just lovely.

Part of my trepidation with any movie from the 1930's is an assumption that the movie's score will be oppressive, but I liked the score here. I was hooked initially when some ringing church bells worked their way into the score, a scene where the newlyweds are walking from the church to the dock while onlookers follow to wish them a hilariously apathetic farewell.

The boat itself might be a sort of metaphor for the voyage of marriage. At the very least, the clash between the husband's desire to be on the river and the wife's desire to explore the sights on land are a good representation of the kinds of conflict that can get in the way of people just being in love. Gorgeous shots of fog and boat clutter are visuals representations of just how lost young lovers can be.

With a romantic story like this, you'd expect the married couple to be at the center of this, and they are. But that doesn't happen at the expense of a third character, the first mate Jules who is played by Michel Simon. He's a great character, one with all sorts of untold backstory and relationships with the other characters that are almost impossible to pin down. When you meet him, you think he's going to be a dumb brute of a character and largely background, kind of like the cabin boy ends up being. Instead, he's integral. And I'll tell you--he's one sexy beast of a boatman! I mean, when he's showing Juliette the contents of his cluttered cabin, his knickknacks collected from around the world, and says, "I'll show you my puppet," I swooned. These souvenirs from all over the world are things that could each have their own story, and spin-off films detailing the misadventures of Jules would have been worth making. Jules is a character who has possibly loved, maybe even loved and lost, but those are the kinds of details you have to figure out for yourself.

"I'll show you my puppet." Swoon!

There are some beautiful shots in this thing. At various stages, you get to see a montage with all three characters on their own search for something, and those shots are just wonderful. Vigo also makes this clunker of a ship feel like the most romantic place on earth at some points, and there's a scene near the end that almost approaches a kind of magical realism with some double-exposure shots that I really liked.

Silent Saturday: True Heart Susie

1919 romance

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A plain girl sells off her possessions, including a cow, in order to help her beau pay for college. When he returns, she's upset to see that he's got eyes for other gals.

Lillian Gish as a "plain girl" is a little difficult to buy. She makes some interesting decisions here as an actress in 1919, but she doesn't bring a lot of facial expressions to the table. Look at that goofy poster for the movie. That's pretty much the expression she makes the entire film. She makes it when she's looking at her boyfriend lovingly. She makes it when she's watching him with other girls. She makes it when she has to sell her cow.

Spoilers, by the way.

It's a little difficult for an audience watching this 100 years after it was released to root for Gish's beau, played like a walking piece of cardboard by Robert Harron. You could probably forgive him for damaging a tree because carving initials into bark was literally the only way one could show affection for another human being in the early part of the 20th Century. But when he returns from college, he's kind of a dick. He's got the adorable Lillian Gish fawning over him, but he's horny for girls with fancy dresses and make-up only. And then he marries one after knowing her for somewhere around five minutes because that's how movie characters did things back then. And then she's not even nice to him, and he still can't figure out that Lillian Gish was the one for him all along. It's not until his wife dies that he is able to figure everything out, and I'm not sure there's anything here that really helps this character earn a happy ending. I'm not sure what the moral of the story is supposed to be.

This looks good for the 19-teens, and it's always good to see Gish do her thing, even if "her thing" is just making slight variations of the same facial expression over and over again. But I like her face quite a bit and probably shouldn't complain.

By the way, I'm not sure if this is a return to Silent Saturdays or not. Watching a movie on a Saturday was more of an accident, but I didn't see nearly enough silents last year and should probably make it a habit once again. They're good for my heart.

November

2017 folkloric romance

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A love triangle in a superstitious land.

Something like this, steeped in so much Eastern European folklore and a highly-artistic black and white, might be expected to be a stodgily humorless endeavor, but I was pleased that this has so much humor. Even so, I had to penalize this a point for an audible fart. But then, you know what? I remembered that I'm a huge fan of farting in movies and gave that point right back!

That's especially true when the offending flatulator is a Satan-created slave creature called a Kratt. I couldn't tell if it was stop-animated or a product of some pretty good CGI, but I loved seeing the thing in every one of its incarnations. Once, it even gets to be a snowman and will easily be my favorite talking snowman that I see all year, at least in a movie. And yes, I'm aware that a Frozen sequel is coming out sometime this year. I'm not even sure of Olaf farts. He probably does. When the Kratt in this movie farts, it's in a wonderful moment that takes place while a character fiddles with a jew's harp. I loved the shambling movement of this Kratt thing. Maybe not when it demonstrates an ability to helicopter into the air while stealing (or moving?) a cow in an early scene. But when it's a three-legged rolling thing with a skull? That's pretty awesome to see.

I'm actually doubting my knowledge of geography after typing confidently in that first paragraph that Estonia is in Eastern Europe. I actually have doubts that Estonia is a place at all and that this is all part of some elaborate practical joke. If it does in fact exist and is in fact in Eastern Europe, I'm not sure it's right of me to assume that it's filled with stodginess or humorlessness either. But I'm an American, so my lack of knowledge about world geography is expected and my impulse to stereotype people has to be excused.

Wherever this takes place, it's a a fun world. Seemingly, the story and the stories-within-that-story that take place in this world are a mashup of various folktales. A love triangle between a peasant girl, a peasant boy with higher aspirations, and the daughter of a fancy-pants aristocrat is at the center of things, but there are various side stories, and near the end, that snowman even shares a story of his own that I imagine has roots in Estonian folklore. This is a land filled with magic, werewolves, people turning into various animals, ghosts or bread-chomping spirits, witches, somnambulism, plague goats, and the devil, the latter played by a guy named Jaan Kooning with chortling glee. The people are superstitious, as seen in the hilarious way they try to escape from the wrath of the aforementioned plague goat--apparently, two asses are needed to avoid the plague--but they're also spiritual. There are references to Christianity here, but like the magic, the people are just using it to try to get ahead on earth or to feed their greed. I wish I had a better handle on what director Rainer Sarnet was getting at with the religious references.

My favorite bit of dialogue:

"Shall we make those pants dance?"
"Leave my pants be!" 

The Dress

1996 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A dress is designed and created and goes through various owners.

An impromptu Alex van Warmerdam fest has commenced! This, a freewheeling sorta-anthology film with some recurring characters, meanders beautiful, a comedy more about the gags than it is any of the characters or even the story. It's got a Scandanavian comedic vibe, one scene involving some sort of puppet-stage/calliope ending up in a river even reminding me of Roy Andersson, and chances are that if you have the sensibilities for that particular brand of comedy, this will hit some sweet spots. Unlike van Warmerdam's Borgman, which I'm still convinced is some sort of allegory I didn't understand, this just seems interested in giving the audience opportunities to laugh at the misfortunes of the characters because anybody who comes in contact with this dress or even the idea of the dress has very little luck.

Cleverly, this really is the life of the titular article of clothing. We see its conception, its birth, its early life, its mid-life crisis, its death, and its comic afterlife. The dress isn't exactly cursed, but the human beings it comes into contact with seem to be. It doesn't seem very nice to laugh at these sad souls, but it's hard to help it. Things are always so unpredictable, and the surprises just get you.

Van Warmerdam himself plays a character named De Smet. Translation: The Stain. The ticket taker who keeps popping into these mini-stories isn't necessarily a great character for the #metoo era, but I thought he was great anyway. That probably disqualifies me to be president of the United States.

Leviathan

2012 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An intimate look at commercial fishermen doing their job.

Aquaman as directed by Stan Brakhage.

I'm trying to decide if my favorite shots are the waves of netted fish tumbling over each on the boat, the fish heads trying to escape the boat, a seagull (apparently wounded) trying to find a way out, the shots of seagull flying overhead, or the extended sequence where we get to see a guy fall asleep. No music, no narration, no narrative. This just throws you into to the working lives of fishermen we barely even see and immerses us in the sweaty chaos.

Love

2015 avant-porn

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Threesome fantasies turn into betrayal for a prospective American filmmaker and his French girlfriend.

Not seeing this in 3D, I feel that I probably missed the full effect of this avant-porn film from Gaspar Noe, a director who is either a lot smarter than me or who has completely lost his mind. I'm not sure if the 3D would have enhanced the jism shots directly into the viewer's lap or the sex scene from a prospective within a woman's vagina. Or an intense finger-point from Mr. Noe himself, who I suspect only put himself in a minor role in this so that he could give himself a brief sex scene.

No amount of 3D could have saved the acting which is unbelievably bad. The threadbare story and an embarrassingly whiny screenplay don't really help the performers out much, but they're really awful when they're not having sex with each other. The protagonist, who unfortunately is in nearly every frame of this movie, is played by Karl Glusman, and he's not really good at conveying any emotion or state of mind other than lukewarm perplexity. Giving Glusman lines was a huge mistake, but letting his thoughts be heard through voiceovers was an even worse one. The girlfriend is played by Aomi Muyock, and neither my ear or the subtitles seemed to know what she was saying part of the time. As a character, she's almost as interesting as a day-old baguette. Noe is also really bad, maybe just a notch above somebody like Tommy Wiseau. It's hard to imagine that he could watch dailies, see the job he's doing on screen, and think to himself that he's really nailing it here.

The opening shot is sex, and there's sex peppered throughout the thing. It's so much that I actually got bored with sex, something that almost never happens. The sex is filmed nice, succeeding in making it at least look like art rather than just straight porn, and we can probably thank cinematographer Benoit Debie for that. The film frequently looks good even if it's dull and silly.

Despite being shown something that I've never seen before, this is not something that I'd ever recommend to anybody. I do imagine my experience isn't much different than those early film audiences who freaked out seeing a train on screen for the first time.

Snake Eater

1989 action movie

Bad Movie Rating: 3/5 (Josh: 3/5; Fred: 2/5; Lisa: 2/5; J.D.: 3/5)

Rating: 7/20

Plot: An ex-marine tries to rescue his sister from some sinister hillbillies.

With our first Bad Movie Club watch of 2019, I'm apparently in the minority with the appraisal of Lorenzo Lamas as an action hero. He looks the part with a good build, facial stubble, and puffy hair that, if you look at it from certain angles, is nearly a mullet. In an opening scene and maybe a few others, he shows the ingenuity of a MacGyver or a Kevin McCallister, and he's got plenty of one-liners even if none of them are any good. He's got some of that bad boy charm you'd associate with a lot of more iconic 80's action heroes.

However, as a couple of my friends have pointed out, he doesn't do very much here. The movie's got a body count that it can be proud of, but when you look at the amount of bad guys that Snake Eater actually kills, it's a little embarrassing. He spends the majority of the movie getting captured and hung in a sleeping bag from a tree or crashing whatever vehicle he happens to be riding. The female characters and even a tractor actually might out-kill Snake Eater.

No, I have no idea why his name is Snake Eater. There is a reference to eating a snake in the movie--a clever reference to a forced blow job, I assume--but Snake Eater isn't even around during that conversation. I assume they just named him Snake Eater because he has a shirt that says "Snake Eater" on it.

I looked it up, and apparently, "Snake Eater" is an elite division of the Marines. I don't know enough about these sorts of things to know if that's legitimate information or something manufactured for this movie.

The main appeal for me is the collective of ornery hillbillies here. They're led by Junior, played by a a perpetually snarling block of man named Robert Scott. There's also Slim, Sissy, Clyde, Torchy, Sissy Clyde, Uncle Joe, Uncle Slim, and Uncle Sissy, all yee-hawin' and yelpin' like they're not sure if they'll ever get a chance to act in a movie ever again. They don't really bring an authenticity to the proceedings, but they're definitely a colorful and randy lot. I also liked Ronnie Hawkins' character, a guy named King. Hawkins wasn't in a lot of movies, but he did play "Bob Dylan" in Renaldo and Clara, a movie that Bob Dylan was in. Hawkins is in a great action scene in this where our hero--Snake Eater--is fighting some hillbillies on the dock and King bursts out on a motorcycle and immediately flies into the water while Snake Eater--our hero--succumbs to his only weakness--an empty plastic gas can to the back.

Another interesting side character--guy with a necklace of teeth.

Anyway, this movie has a pair of sequels. I imagine we'll watch those someday because we really don't have much else to do with our lives.

Y Tu Mama Tambien

2001 road movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: After their girlfriends travel to Europe, two bored young men convince an older cuckqueen to travel to an imaginary beach with them.

A road movie with a homoerotic subtext? Sounds right up my alley! Actually, that subtext isn't that subtextual. It's right on the surface of this movie, isn't it? The dual protagonists talk about each other's penises, masturbate together on diving boards, and make googly eyes at each other. Tenoch and Julio sure talk a straight talk, including more than a few homophobic slurs, but they've at least got some curiosity and quite possibly have the hots for each other which, of course, makes the ending doubly tragic. This is one of those stories where everything is unspoken is likely more important than anything spoken here.

That's why the omniscient narrator, a bit reminiscent of something like Amelie, is vital. Cute asides aside, the narrator gives us glimpses at these character's secrets, and the more of these little details you have about what's going on in their minds, these sneaky parallels, these half-relevant memories, and these shadows of their futures, the more you fall in love with them.

Alfonso Cuaron likes his water and his beaches, doesn't he? Pools with leaves, pools with jizz, pools without leaves or jizz, waves, an ocean full of fish, showers. Lots and lots of water here. That's not all it has in common with Cuaron's latest feature, Roma. Social and economic class, politics, personal tragedies. There other links, too, and one of these movies is the little brother of the other one.

What a lovely and heartbreaking journey, one that makes you nostalgic for journeys you never took and hopeful that you too can someday take a trip to an imaginary beach with the lovely Maribel Verdu even though you know it's already too late.

Aquaman

2018 superhero movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Aquaman has to retrieve a magical fork so that he can defeat his half-brother, become king of Atlantis, and stop an impeding war with the people on land.

Jason Mamoa is a hunk of a man, but he's got less personality than most of the CGI aquatic animals in this movie. Part of his problem might be that the movie doesn't seem all that interested in creating anything but a hunk of a man. He's got some cliched reluctant superhero issues--parent issues, not fitting in anywhere, romantic troubles, general cockiness--but there's very little that distinguishes him from other superpeople or makes him non-generic.

James Wan knows how to pile ridiculousness on top of ridiculousness, and what makes this kind of fun is just how stupid it can be. The action set pieces--one on land in Sicily, most under the water with all sorts of ocean life and explosions--contain fathoms of CGI. They're very cartoonish, the kinds of things that old men might have a difficult time even comprehending. The cartoonish, very silly quality Wan brings to this sort-origin story clashes with the DC movie aesthetics. The brooding, bombastic score, the heroic poses and heroic quick zooms to characters, the rubbery-CGI fights, and the weird jagged pacing that I'd associate with the Justice League character movies take away a lot of the personality this movie should have. It's loud in superhero movie ways, it's trying to be funny in superhero movie ways, and it's exciting in superhero movie ways, but it struggles to become anything other than just another superhero movie albeit maybe a slightly goofier one.

Some of the actors don't seem to fit all that well. Momoa and Amber Heard are fine, and Nicole Kidman, even though it seems like she probably should have better things to do with her time, isn't completely out of place. Patrick Wilson's face doesn't seem to fit in this world at all, and Willem Dafoe looks completely lost, like he just stumbled onto the set and they decided to give him a role. Now he's played Jesus, Bobby Peru, Van Gogh, and a guy who rides on a hammerhead shark. Dolph Lundgren's also in this.

Hammerhead-shark riding is something I can handle in a movie like this. Where the goofiness really gets in the way are these other ill-timed moments that just get in the way. There's a moment in this when two characters kiss each other that was about as stupid as anything I've seen in a movie. There are too many moments like that, times when this thing needs to flow but kind of clunks along instead.

Still, I really enjoyed a lot of the visual appeal. The underwater stuff--the glowing cities, the bioluminescent ocean animals and a lot of the imaginary creatures, some of the costumes (I was particularly fond of one of Amber Heard's outfits, a dress that had a collar of jellyfish and waving tentacles), the modes of transportation including both the technologically-advanced ships and the riding on seahorses and hammerhead sharks--kept my eyes glued to the screen even when I was a little bored. I liked the look of giant-headed, bug-eyed villain (Mantis, I guess), too, although his character arc was both generic and implausible.

I wish the conflict with the Atlantis folk and the land people would have been developed a little better. It seems like Wan wanted to address environmental concerns or something like that but just didn't have the heart.

Dr. Caligari

1989 cult film

Rating: 11/20

Plot: The goings-on at the Caligari Insane Asylum where a doctor, the great-granddaughter of a more famous Caligari, conducts controversial experiments.

You could argue that Stephen Sayadian just needed a bigger budget to realize some vision he had with this project, but I don't think money was the main issue. The production design--minimalistic and quirky, like a mix between videos you'd expect to see from The Residents and, as you'd probably expect, day-glo 1920's expressionist films--made this worth watching, and Sayadian's perverse ideas, which he doesn't seem to have a shortage of, made this fascinating even as it didn't quite work. Giant tongues coming out of walls, failed scarecrow fellatio, a woman chanting "Chinchilla," elongated boobage. There's a lot going on within a screen that is largely black. By the end, the cheap avant-camp look wore me down a little, the aesthetics becoming a little tedious, but I never thought it was an issue with money.

The main problem is that Sayadian doesn't seem to know what tone he wants to establish and therefore fails to establish one. The dialogue and delivery of the lines are just a little too goofy. I'm pretty sure none of this is taken seriously--not by the writers, by Sayadian, or by any of the actors. I wish there was a little less Troma here, I guess. Actually, maybe I wish the movie would have been silent. It starts with 8 dialogue-free minutes, and I liked that part fine. There's a muted vibe that keeps the story, the dialogue, and the characters from ever being nearly as interesting as the props and visuals. The colors, the way characters kind of swoop in or pop from beneath the frame, and the perversity should have a little more zip than they do, but the writing kind of weighs on them. Maybe it was a lack of range. The inventiveness is easy to appreciate, but it's just not enough to give this movie a voice.

I don't think this is much different from a film I might have been able to make when I was in my twenties, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's something that I would enjoy.

Producer Mitchell Froom did the score for this. It's pretty good, especially if you enjoy pipe organs.

Support the Girls

2018 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A day in the work lives of a general manager and some waitresses at a Hooters-esque sports bar by the highway.

My recollection of Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess, the only other movie I've seen by the director of this, is limited. I really only remember that I didn't get it. I looked him up on IMDb and saw his next projected. A CGI-remake of Lady and the Tramp? What a bad start to my Saturday at a little after noon.

This is a movie that is easy to get with characters who are identifiable and extremely likable. Bujalski clearly also has a love for this collective, and the ensemble cast does a good job creating personalities without creating too much personality. Rule number 1, after all, is "No drama," and if any of these characters would have gone too big, this wouldn't have worked. At the center of the everyday chaos in this slice-of-life sports bar 24-or-so hours is the general manager character. She's played by Regina Hall who balances all sorts of emotions without making anything obvious. It's a great performance, Hall giving her character just the rights amount of power and defeat to make her very natural, very real.

This is bookended with traffic ambiance and has a powerful and strangely uplifting final shot.

With its emphasis on female empowerment and camaraderie in the face of dickheadedness, this one might be a good one to put in a time capsule to represent 2018. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

2018 cartoon

Rating: 15/20 (Dylan: 14/20)

Plot: A graffiti artist turns into another Spider-Man and gets his own origin story.

Not being well-schooled in Spider-Man aside from bits and pieces of the cartoon I saw as a kid (When's Firestar getting her own movie, by the way?) and the various movie incarnations, I felt that I missed some inside jokes in this one. There are various Spider-People in this, and I was pretty sure that most of them (Spider-Lady, Spider-Man Noir, etc.) were taken straight from comics although I had my doubts against the silly Spider-Pig. With all those Spider-People and with this plot involving multiple dimensions, this could have been a complete mess. Hell, I have trouble understand superhero movies anyway, so this one probably should have baffled me. Instead, I thought it was tightly-constructed, a story that works as a smooth and natural origin story while having a lot of heart. The action scenes are thrilling, even when they're a little confusing, and there's some great humor. A Nicolas Cage-voiced character who calls somebody a "turkey puncher," and Jake Johnson is the perfect voice for an out-of-shape surly version of Peter Parker and Spider-Man.

The real stand-out is the animation. There are some things in here that I don't believe I've seen before, and the way these different character's styles--the slapsticky cartoonish Spider-Pig stuff, the brooding black-and-white Spider-Man Noir, the anime-looking little girl with her Spider-Robot friend--are blended together is really something. The action is vivacious, but even when it's just our main character walking around Brooklyn or painting on a wall, there's a really liveliness to the animation. I also liked the texture in a lot of this. At times, you can see texture that makes this seem like it's straight from a comic book page, and onomatopoeia splashing or zooming across the screen or occasional thought bubbles add to that comic-y feel. Funky, psychedelic multi-dimension machine mayhem made colors I doubt I've seen on the big screen before. It's very very cool and wildly entertaining.

I enjoyed the voice work in this. It was a pleasure to hear Cage, and I bet as a comic fan, he had a lot of fun playing this particular character. I already mentioned Jake Johnson who might have had the funniest lines, and John Mulaney was funny as the Spider-Pig. Spider-Ham is apparently what he's called. My Spider-senses thought it was Nathan Lane, but my Spider-senses were apparently off this afternoon.

My son says this is the best Spider-Man film ever made, and I'm not sure I can argue with that. Of course, he's not seen 3 Dev Adam.

Love Exposure

2008 love story

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy chases after the girl he's in love with.

Take away the ninja peek-a-panties crews, the Sion Sono blood splatterings, jabs at the perversity of Catholicism, cult gang brainwashing, cross-dressing, castrations and castration threats, and readings of New Testament verses, and you've got a fairly conventional love story. Or maybe a conventional love triangle.

This is a four-hour movie, but I didn't think it felt like one. It seems like Sono had a limited budget, but the sheer amount of ideas he stuffs into this makes up for that. Sono's film isn't exactly wild, but it's rarely predictable, and I'm surprised at how well paced his story is since it's coming at the viewer from so many angles and pulls the viewer is so many directions. Though Takahiro Nishijima's Yu is clearly the movie's main character, each of these characters--Yoko, his love interest; Koike, his nemesis; the father; the father's on-again-off-again girlfriend; even the other members of Yu's gang of acrobatic upskirt photographers--could have enough for their own spin-off movies. The one character I'd love to know more about is a guy who was in about fifteen seconds of the four-hour film--a guy who makes a bomb.

Mary Poppins Returns

2018 belated sequel

Rating: 15/20 (Buster: 18/20)

Plot: Mary Poppins returns.

I love Disney's character posters like the one above. Angela Lansbury is in the movie for maybe five minutes. She's about as essential to the movie as the bird woman in the first Mary Poppins, but there is is on her own poster.

One of most anticipated movies of last year, Mary Poppins Returns finally arrived. Unfortunately, I need to see it again as I ended up in a situation where I had to watch it in the very front row of a theater. As much as I've fantasized about being really close to Mary Poppins, it just wasn't much fun having the screen a few feet from my face. It's also not the idea situation for a person with a neck.

This is a lot like The Force Awakens which I think means we can expect a darker, more subversive sequel that will irritate a lot of Mary Poppins fanboys. Like that first movie in the new Star Wars trilogy, this gives people exactly what they want, almost to a point where you want to roll your eyes. It's almost a Poppins greatest hits, and in fact, I think if you put the two movies on top of one another, scenes would even match up. Mary Poppins would descend from a cloudy sky at around the same time. Clean-up times would occur at the same time. Characters would leap into a cartoon world and even dance with penguins at the same time. Meryl Streep's scene--boy, she's doing whimsical exactly like you'd expect her to do it--where they visit a friend and experience a ceiling happens around the same time as the Uncle Albert "I Love to Laugh" scene in the original. The movie doesn't have chimney sweeps, but it does have lamplighters, and they get an acrobatic and mesmerizing subterranean dance sequence at roughly the same time as that thrilling root top choreography. And at the end, kites are replaced with something else in a scene that is not quite kites but might as well be. And then, Mary Poppins returns to wherever she came from, and the audience thanks Disney that this isn't an origin story, that the mystery of Poppins is intact.

But you know what? It's all done well enough that the near-plagiarism doesn't annoy. Actually, a sequel that comes 54 years after the original should be expected to be a little something like this, hitting all those nostalgic beats a little too perfectly. This justifies its existence by having a real drive. There are stakes for the characters--Michael and Jane, who haven't aged 54 years, and the former's children--and just like there's a need for Mary Poppins in their world, you feel like there might be a need for another Mary Poppins movie in ours.

Emily Blunt's Poppins doesn't quite have the sex appeal of the Julie Andrews' Poppins. Maybe it was because I was irritated about being too close to the screen, but my bOner with a capital O didn't poppins once. I thought Lin-Manuel Miranda was really good as Bert. I mean, Jack. Jack's the Bert of this movie. He has a nice little song that bookends the films. It isn't quite "Chim Chim Cheree," but it's about as close as a song could be. The songs are at the very least serviceable. I can't remember a stinker among them, but I also can't be sure I'll remember any of them. Of course, I haven't heard them as many times as the songs in the original. I do like the score in between the song-and-dance numbers, a lot of it recalling songs from 54 years ago. I like Ben Whishaw here much more than I liked the kid who played Michael in the original, and there's a real emotional weight to the character that he and his mustache pull off. That character is really given some heartbreaking moments in this thing.

Dick Van Dyke deserves his own paragraph. I knew he was in this and even predicted exactly what his character would end up doing in this movie, but I kind of expected him to limp out like the nonagenarian that he is and not do a whole lot. But he does something in this that almost made me stand up in my seat and give a whoop, and I probably would have if i hadn't been in the front row and in danger of getting a concussion by hitting my head on the screen. I can't wait to see his scene again because I was a little distracted wondering if CGI legs were involved or something. That's the biggest smile I've had on my face in a really long time.

Habfurdo (Foam Bath)

1980 animated feature

Rating: 16/20

Plot: On his wedding day, a guy with a great mustache gets cold feet and tries to get out of his marriage with the help of a medical student.

Starting the year the right way with surreal Hungarian animated shorts, my favorites being Istvan Baynayi's "Hamm," a 1977 short about the cycle of greed; "A Legy" (The Fly), Ferenc Rofusz's artistic look at a few minutes in a fly's life from the fly's perspective; and Jozsef Nepp's darkly comic "Murder for Five Minutes."

This is the only feature film from Gyorgy Kovasznai, and it's a doozy. I was hooked from the start by the chipmunk funk through rain and traffic, my kind of 70's animation. Then, a psychedelic trip through a room, as dizzying as that Rofusz short about the fly, before this reveals itself as a musical. Suddenly, I'm hot for large-breasted teacher although she actually turns out to be a medical student. Then--the guy, fantastic mustache, my kind of 70's animated mustache! These characters move like no animated characters I've seen before, and Kovasznai's animated always surprises with warping backgrounds, rubbery character movements, changes in head size, random light flashes. The music groove-funked its way into Hungarian hearts, songs about window dressing and having a lot of appliances. It was exhilarating although it did grow a bit tiresome by the end.  It was difficult to follow the plot, mostly because I didn't want to take my eyes off the ever-shifting imagery to read the subtitles.

2018 Year in Review: Part Five (The Final Part!)

The Zap Rowsdower Achievement in Bad Action Heroism Award

Charles B. Pierce is an easy winner here. It seems he made Boggy Creek II only to show off his talents as a potential action hero. And failed in spectacular ways.

Worst Ensemble Cast

Those three guys in 15:17 to Paris. What were you thinking, Clint?

The Tootie (Worst Performance by a Child Actor)

There are always plenty of these to choose from. This year, we saw Ray Dennis Steckler’s offspring Linda and Laura, equally bad in Blood Shack. They also are in The Thrill Killers but might be a little bit better.

There’s also Chris Kroesen, the little punk in Magic Christmas Tree who couldn’t open his eyes and hollered all his lines.

The winner is easily Connor Dean, however, as Butch the Bully in Cool Cat Saves the Kids. It’s almost a performance so legendarily bad that I want to name the award after him, but I really hate Tootie.

Best Villain

Neil Lawrie as Dr. C. Jolly in Crime Wave was awfully cool, but Rotimi Paul, as the terrifying Skeletor in The First Purge, wins this award.

Best Extra

There’s a kid going to town in his nose in the background of a shot in Blue Is the Warmest Color.
Another kid with an umbrella lunches at Alan Arkin in The In-Laws for no reason.
Yet another kid eating ice cream and wearing a terrible vest while sitting next to a jukebox was easy to notice in Alice in the Cities.
I also liked this street performer with an accordion and a gigantic bell hat in Wrong Move. There was a crazy guy screaming about how the characters are pigs and planes racing through heads in the same movie.

The winner is that little nose-picking fellow though. But only because I want to type “You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, and you should be able to pick a take that doesn’t have a kid in the background picking his nose.”

Best Cameos of the Year

Tim Heidecker in Brigsby Bear, a film-within-a-film that isn’t the main film-within-a-film called "Hockey High"
Brad Pitt in Deadpool 2
Paul Bartel in White Dog
William S. Burroughs in Drugstore Cowboy

Burroughs ordinarily would have this in the bag, but Alan Arkin, in his own Little Murders, was just too good to ignore!

Best Auxiliary Character of the Year

This guy:

Best Posters of the Year

Worst Poster

Best Film-within-a-Film

Tough category this year!

There are numerous little snippets in Crime Wave, some cute little things (including roller-skating camels) in The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, a play-within-a-movie in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, another play-within-a-movie in The Baby of Macon, the garden thing from Borgman, Jack’s narrated slide show of his “ballbusters” in Carnal Knowledge, and of course, The Other Side of the Wind.

The winner is Brigsby Bear, however, because as I mentioned before, the premiere of the movie-within-that-movie and those touching bad special effects made me cry.

Best Opening Shot

The Bothersome Man, with its grotesque smooching
SpaceDisco One, Packard’s cheapo sci-fi roller skating rink action
A Perfect Day, a shot of a bloated body at the bottom of a well
Mo’ Better Blues, the fetishizing of a trumpet
First Reformed, a very slow pan to a church
Hereditary, a long slow pan from a tree house to miniatures to a room in a dollhouse that becomes a real room
The Baby of Macon, a swinging old guy with a speech impediment and a huge hat

My favorite: Roma, an invitation into a dream

Best Closing Shot

Nostalghia, a zooming out with a reclining guy, a dog, and all this impossible snow
Call Me by Your Name, a shot from the perspective of a fireplace
The Bothersome Man, from within the luggage compartment of a bus after a character has been dropped off in the snow
Buzzard, an enigmatic final shot with some televisions
You Were Never Really Here or Private Life, shots that have similar settings
First Reformed, a swirling and a cut to black
The Three Colors trilogy, all three which show a character crying and smiling at the same time
Goodbye Uncle Tom, an angry black guy popping a beach ball
We the Animals, flight and a shadow
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, a boat
Roma, a nice bookend with the opening shot
45 Years, a woman

The winner is The Florida Project, an almost magically realistic one of a familiar location

Best Extended Shot

Maybe my favorite category.

Nostalghia, a who-knows-how-many-minutes shot of a dude carrying a candle across a spa
The Sacrifice, more Tarkovsky with an opening tracking shot that is so sneaky and meticulous
The Shop on Main Street, a guy hiding from a camera that keeps on finding him
The Baby of Macon, several but an auction scene and a rape sequence are highlights
Henry V, a post-battle sequence
Assassination Nation, a terrible movie with one great long tracking shot with fiends stalking girls in a house
Roma, that climactic beach scene

And I can’t really believe that the shot in Roma didn’t win this, but unfortunately for Alfonso Cuaron, I saw a few Tarkovsky movies this year. And the best extended shot is a scene with a house on fire in The Sacrifice. It might actually be the best thing I’ve ever seen.

My Favorite Shots of the Year

Crime Wave, a recurring image of a street light glowing to life
The Bothersome Man, the main character just standing up
Florida Project, many but that miraculous rainbow or that shot of Dafoe and his magical cigarette
A Night to Remember, a menacing rocking horse on the Titanic
Force Majeure, a character disappearing into a chilly mist
The Lock In, surveillance video footage of Justin the camera man screaming at a demon and running
The Sacrifice, a curtain blowing and light pouring into and out of a room occupied by a sleeping little man
Hereditary, many here, too, but that spider-mom in a background that got people going in the theater was fun
Double Life of Veronique, an upside-down landscape from a train
The Assassin, fog or cloud billowing up and engulfing characters on a hill
Red Desert, more fog absorbing characters
It Happened One Night, a fade to black except for a Claudette Colbert tear
For All Mankind, loads provided by our astronaut heroes
Idaho Transfer, an inexplicable rainbow
Carnal Knowledge, ice skater transition
Roma, with so many that it’s impossible to pick just one

Best Use of Narration

Coleman Francis in The Thrill Killers! Oh, it was such a pleasure hearing this Yucca Flats writer/director/narrator again. He’s a legend.

Most Narrators

Congratulations, Mudbound! You won something!

Best Use of Stock Footage

It has to be the 10 minutes of random rodeo footage that had to be added to Blood Shack in order for it to be long enough to be a feature film.

Most Cameramen Spotted

Garbanzo Gas, multiple times, mostly in hotel room mirrors

Best Continuity Error

Before the Rain 

Best Opening Credits

Game Night with a cascade of game pieces and production company logos
Cool Cat Saves the Kids with the titular character dancing and dancing and dancing
The Hawks and the Sparrows with credits that a woman sings for us
Young Adults, showing the inner workings of a cassette player and one of those colorful Maxell cassettes I used to use for my mixtapes when I was in middle school
Faces Places, with a cutesy animated opening
Deadpool 2, a meta Bondsy riff
American Animals
Who Is Harry Kellerman. . ., with a falling and dancing Dustin Hoffman

Best End Credits

Game Night again, this time with a detailed look at somebody’s intricate plans
Annihilation, like being inside a busted kaleidoscope

Favorite Title Card of the Year

“Any similarity between Hellzapoppin’ and a motion picture is purely coincidental.”

Most Surprising Shot of a Grown Man’s Ass

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? 

Best Breaking of the Fourth Wall

Deadpool is known for it, and Hellzapoppin’ did it 80-some years earlier. But this award goes to Cool Cat because when he broke the 4th wall, he also broke my fucking mind.

Best Movie with a Terrible Title

Let the Corpses Tan

Actually, typing that changed my mind. That title rules!

Best Tagline

“The United States Supreme Court has ruled that ‘Carnal Knowledge’ is not obscene. See it now.”

Random Favorite Moments That I’m Not Sure Fit Anywhere Else

Officer Ruda with an egg in D’Curse
The floating in The Fits
The part in Hurricane Heist where a character yells “Damn you!” at a tornado
The father crying in Force Majeure, apparently a scene based on a Youtube clip
The bell scene (and many, many others) in Andrei Rublev
The coronation scene in King of Hearts, likely because it involves a camel
The bit in The Brand New Testament when people find out when they’re going to die
The Miracle Worker fight where Anne tries to get Helen Keller to fold a napkin and eat her food with a fork
The big mushroom people payoff in Attack of the Mushroom People
The seance scene in Hereditary 
The final heist attempt in American Animals
Loads in the Mr. Rogers documentary. . .the kid in the wheelchair, the story from the black gay guy and the pool, the part where he persuades a cynical senator
The climactic musical death and life-flashing sequence in All That Jazz
A Benicio del Toro wet willie in Sicario
Musical composition in Blue, all out of focus with instruments added one at a time
The photo booth scene in Alice in the Cities where they both frown, one smiles, the other smiles, and then they both smile together
A train shot where Volger’s character is watching a woman on another train in Wrong Move
Carrey showing off the mask’s powers to Ben Stein in The Mask, the lone funny moment in that movie
The stop-animated sequence in Sorry to Bother You
The “congratulations” scene in My Left Foot
And two words for you to describe the best scene in Heat and possibly any movie: GREAT ASS!

Best Voice Acting

Maybe I’m giving Ice-T (the voice of the Cool Mule in Tommy and the Cool Mule) a boost because I was entertained by his Twitter conversations about never having a bagel, but he’s getting the edge here over whoever voiced the dog in Love on a Leash.

Best Television

“Finding Frances,” apparently the last episode of Nathan for You

Best Horror Movie

Hereditary

Best Musical

The Young Girls of Rochefort. Sorry, The Greatest Showman fans.

Best Animation

Isle of Dogs. Mind Game, Incredibles 2, and The Secret of Kells were also good ones. Wes Anderson wins!

Best Documentary

2018 was a good year for documentaries with films like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Tower, Free Solo, and Minding the Gap. My favorite was an oldie though, one I watched to try to fill in some gaps for one of the movie years I did--For All Mankind, with the Eno score and those fantastic shots. I loved that, and it might have ruined that First Man movie a little.

Best Silent Movie

After watching at least one silent movie a week last year, I dropped back into bad habits and didn’t see a lot this year. L’Inhumaine, which I’d been wanting to see for a while, was the best of them.

Worst Movie

Note: These are movies are not Manos-eligible movies, bad movies that I enjoyed watching. You know, the good-bad ones. These are the bad-bad ones.

With MoviePass, which unfortunately is not something that works for me anymore, I saw a lot of terrible movies in theaters. I hated Winchester, Fifty Shades Freed (ok, I kind of loved it, as well as Fifty Shades Darker), Death Wish, A Wrinkle in Time, The Hurricane Heist (which I also kind of enjoyed), Unsane, Action Point, Ready Player One, The Happytime Murders, and Assassination Nation. I also hated some old ones I watched--Queen of the Desert (sorry, Werner), Bad Moms (seriously--I watched this?), Maleficent. And then there was the bizarrely bad Bird Box, the recent Netflix release.

But this isn’t about the worst movies--it’s about the one worst movie. And that was Clint Eastwood’s embarrassing 15:17 to Paris.

Moments That Gave Me a bOner with a Capital-O (Favorite Nicolas Cage Moments of the Year)

Speaking German in The Trust when trying to buy a drill bit. I can only imagine that it’s perfect German
Actually saying a text abbreviation (“JK”)
Wheezing twice and complaining about how a sandwich recipe has been changed before immediately changing his mind and saying that he approves
“On three-3, 2, 1, 3!”
Reenacting a train crash at a breakfast table and ending with a giggle
A wonderfully-timed “Oh, oops!”
Saying “Can’t hear you” and putting his thumbs (not his fingers) in his ears
Ominous tickling
Watching pornography and sleeping on the job
A discussion of anal beads with the boyfriend of his daughter
That aforementioned “I was gonna grab the world by the balls” soliloquy
A “You, motherfuckers!” delivered as only Cage can deliver it as he tries to get to his kids in the basement
Counting to six but somehow missing four
Actually saying “You killed me!” to another character and meaning it literally
The sawzall pun
The assembling and then unassembling of a pool table, all with a dancing Nic Cage and a singing of “The Hokey Pokey”

And no, I haven’t seen Mandy yet.

Best One-and-Done Performance

Vik Rubenfeld, director of Alien Private Eye
Jason Wayne, Daniel in Blood Shack
Keith O’Brien, the best-worst of the maniacs (the one with the ax) in The Thrill Killers
Christopher Thies, the writer/director of Winterbeast
Tim R. Morgan, Sergeant Bill Whitman in Winterbeast. Bob Harlow and Mike Magri were also one-timers.
Ralph Lombardi, Raw Force

The winner is Klaus-Michael Gruber, Hans in The Lovers on the Bridge. As I wrote in my post, “If you’re going to only appear in one movie, I guess you’d want to make it a performance like this one.” He has one moment that is about as touching as anything I saw in a movie this year.

The Wiseau 

Best-worst work from a guy who wrote, directed, and acted in a movie. It’s named after Tommy Wiseau. Our nominees:

Ray Dennis Steckler (Cash Flagg) in The Thrill Killers, but at least he does his own stunts
Charles B. Pierce, Boggy Creek II
Alex Maisonette, D’Curse
Damian Lee, Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe
James Nguyen, Replica (though I can’t count this in good conscience because he only does cameos like Hitchcock)

Not a tough choice here because I watched Cool Cat Saves the Kids this year. Derek Savage wrote that, directed that, and acted in it as Daddy Derek. Congratulations on your Wiseau award, Mr. Savage!

The Torgo (Best-Worst Performance by an Actor)

Billy Blanks, the bad guy in King of the Kickboxers who either grunted or said all his lines really slowly
John Alexander, Scamma in Alien Private Eye (with an Igor voice that made me laugh every time I heard it)
Jason Wayne, Daniel in Blood Shack, scream-drawling his lines and perpetually carrying a shovel
Barney Barnett, a drunkard at a party who can’t even clap and watch dancers right in The Thrill Killers
Vietnam Ron, the cow in Garbanzo Gas
Charles “Foxy” Fox, Willie in The Corpse Grinders
Tommy Wiseau, Best F(r)iends
Trever Shirin, “Justin” in The Lock In
Ralph Lombardi, a Hitler-stached villain in Raw Force
Rick Camp or David Nguyen, the scientist and detective respectively in Replica

And in what might be a surprising upset, this one belongs to Trever Shirin. Way to go, "Justin"!

The Livingstone (just like the Torgo but for the ladies)

Ann Noble, the gravedigger’s wife (with her doll) in Corpse Grinders
Estelle Piper, Toasters in Chickens in the Shadows
Jana Camp, from Love on a Leash
Lana Dykstra, Replica
Sharon Kent, Indecent Desires

And this award belongs to Jana Camp!

Best Actor

Kyle Mooney, perfectly deadpan in Brigsby Bear
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Menace or My Left Foot
Timothee Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name
Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther or Fruitvale Station
Homayoun Ershadi, Taste of Cherry
Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here
Brady Jandreau, The Rider
Denis Lavant, The Lovers on the Bridge
Burl Ives, White Dog
Ron Silver, Reversal of Fortune
Jermey Irons, Reversal of Fortune
Jean-Louis Trintignant, Red
Michael Sugich, The Night God Screamed
Ben Dickey, Blaze
Charlie Sexton, Blaze
George C. Scott, The Hospital
Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
John Huston, The Other Side of the Wind
Kenneth Branagh, Henry V
John David Washington, BlacKkKlansman

Winner: Brady Jandreau! I guess. I mean, that performance in My Left Foot is one of the best ever. And I love Denis Lavant. I really have kind of given up with this whole thing at this point.

Best Actress

Brenda Fricker, My Left Foot
Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue Is the Warmest Color
Sally Hawkins, Paddington 2
Margot Robbie, I Tonya
Brooklyn Pierce, Florida Project
Rachel McAdams, Game Night
Cherize Theron, Young Adult or Tully
Jessie Buckley, Beast
Meredyth Herold, Singapore Sling
Shirley MacLaine, Postcards from the Edge
Juliette Binoche, Lovers on the Bridge or Blue
Toni Collette, Hereditary
Irene Jacobs, The Double Life of Veronique and Red
Ida Kaminska, The Shop on Main Street
Linda Fiorentino, The Last Seduction
Patricia Gozzi, Sundays and Cybele
Vanessa Redgrave, The Devils
Barbara Harris, Who Is Harry Kellerman. . .?
Carey Mulligan, Wildlife
Helena Howard, Madeline’s Madeline
Oliver Coleman, The Favourite
Yalitza Aparicio, Roma
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

I drew a name out of a hat and the winner is Vanessa Redgrave!

The Manos (Best-Worst Movie of the Year)

Bad Movie Club fizzled, and I didn’t watch too many bad movies on my own. There aren’t as many nominees for this prestigious award as usual. The best of the best-worst were the following:

Alien Private Eye
Blood Shack
D’Curse
The Corpse Grinders
Pieces
Replica
Raw Force
The Magic Christmas Tree


A top four would look like Cool Cat Saves the Kids, Winterbeast, The Lock In, and the winner. And the winner? The Manos this year goes to Love on a Leash. Woof!

My Favorite Movies I Saw This Year

I don't feel like doing this one. As a regular reader of my blog, you know which movies I really like.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Stay tuned to see if I keep this crap up at all. I know that it'll exist in some form, but there's no way I can do another year of reviews as long as I've done the last couple of years. I've been on Letterboxd the past year and enjoy that a little more than this, and people there seem to appreciate brevity. Maybe I'll write all my reviews in haiku form.

Have a happy and movie-filled 2019!