About Fred

I watched a dozen movies last week:

• Pressure Point sometimes feels a little too stagey, but it has some strong performances and interesting things to say.
• Plane is never terrible, but it never does anything remotely interesting. Memorably terrible would be a lot preferable to the boring paint-by-numbers actioner we get here. As Nick Allen writes, it’s “the case of an action movie in which the dumb title—the most memorable thing about it—isn’t an artistic statement, it’s an alibi.”
• Jarhead is like a war movie without the war. As Ebert writes, “It contains no heroism, little action, no easy laughs…[and] is about men who are exhausted, bored, lonely, trained to the point of obsession and given no opportunity to use their training.”

• Even Maika Monroe can’t save Tau, a never exactly terrible but also instantly forgettable film whose sci-fi premise would probably feel tired even if the film itself brought anything remotely new to the table.
• “‘Old School‘ wants to be ‘National Lampoon’s Animal House,'” wrote Roger Ebert in his review, “but then don’t they all.” Will Ferrell’s sincere commitment to the bit is occasionally almost-endearing, but there’s not a single moment in the movie that I would call funny, and it’s all held together in the laziest way possible.
• There was a time when A Touch of Class was nominated for Best Picture. Even discounting the quality of the other four films nominated that year—The Sting, The Exorcist, Cries and Whispers, American Graffiti—that’s kind of astounding. I suppose the movie has its lazy ’70s charms in Segal and Jackson’s performances, but the characters feel very dated and unlikable, and the whole thing feels perhaps best left in 1973.

• Cut The Resurected‘s runtime (and probably its number of characters) neatly in half, and you’d likely have a very credible entry in a horror anthology television show. It boasts some impressively gruesome special effects and decent performances, especially by Chris Sarandon, but the dialogue often feels stilted, and the runtime really drags halfway through.
• The Osterman Weekend doesn’t make a lick of sense. You get the feeling that the cast is really trying, but the finished product, as Roger Ebert wrote, “resembles the proverbial movie that was fed through an electric fan and then glued together at random.”
• The Evictors doesn’t entirely work, especially once it answers the mystery of what’s been going on, but there’s a reasonably effective creepiness up until that point.

• Separate Tables has some lovely performances and quiet tender moments.
• The Queen isn’t revelatory (or even necessarily informative) about the drag queen subculture it presents, but it is an interesting snapshot of a moment in a time, especially daring for 1968.
• By turns hypnotically slow and brutally violent, I’m not altogether sure Valhalla Rising has a whole lot to say, but it is often visually stunning.

I watched just five movies last week:

• Hit Man is very amiable, like a lot of Richard Linklater movies, and the two leads, especially Glen Powell, are very good. I’m just not sure it totally earns the darkly comedic places it winds up going.
• Frank is oddly endearing and often quite funny.
• The exceptionally creepy animation notwithstanding, I found Stopmotion mostly insufferable, and there’s never any surprises as to where this descent into madness story is going. As critic Peter Sobczynski writes, “Although it clearly wants to be seen as some kind of wild hallucinatory exploration into the heart of madness, [the movie] eventually reveals itself to be little more than a collection of barf-bag visuals and tired conventions that are occasionally enlivened by some nifty animation and the strong performance from Franciosi.”

• Under Paris plays things very straight, which does not necessarily always work in its favor, given the ridiculousness of its premise. (Only Anne Marivin, as the mayor of Paris, seems to understand the over-the-top silliness that premise suggests.) The movie’s fun enough, but also a bit forgettable.
• Tension at Table Rock is a fun little Western.

I also re-watched The Wicker Man for the first time in some twenty years. The first time I watched it, back then, I remember not enjoying it very much, indeed finding the movie more quaint than scary. I enjoyed it a lot more this second time around. Which is odd, considering how this time I knew how it would end, for whatever reason—maybe Edward Woodward’s performance—the movie worked a lot more for me on the re-watch.

• This Happy Breed is the British domestic drama that all other British domestic dramas want to be when they grow up. Not above being a little sappy, there are nonetheless some wonderfully staged moments throughout, and I found it very satisfying movie.

The one thing you can’t say about Love Lies Bleeding is that it doesn’t go hard.

Brooke Adams is good in Vengeance Is Mine, but for all its interesting moments, the movie feels very muddled and unsure of itself.

• Short Sharp Shock feels very much like a ’90s gangster movie, one heavily indebted to its American inspirations of Scorsese and Tarantino, but the three leads are also very good together, in this simple story of the bonds of friendship, betrayal, and violent crime gone wrong.

For a lot of its run, Dinner in America feels like it’s trying a little too hard. But by the end, there is genuinely a sweetness (nonetheless undercut with nastiness) between these two characters.

Am I OK? is…OK. It doesn’t entirely come together, especially at the end, and there are a few scattered bits and even characters I might have cut. But the film is full of funny and tender moments, as well as a thoroughly endearing performance by Dakota Johnson.

I also re-watched and really enjoyed Bull Durham (1988).

Last week, I watched 10 movies:

• “I see that I have neglected to summarize the plot of Porky’s,” Roger Ebert wrote at the end of his original review. “And I don’t think I will. I don’t feel like writing one more sentence (which is, to be sure, all it would take).” Its plot is very thin, desperately crude, misogynistic, and more than a little creepy since these characters are supposed to be high school students. The movie probably benefits from the fact that there are worse versions of this kind of teen comedy, many of them inspired by Porky’s, but that doesn’t make it worth seeking out.
• Our Body is remarkably intimate, patient, and empathetic. It quietly observes these women, often in their most vulnerable moments with their doctors, and we understand that we are seeing them on their best, worst, and sometimes last days.
• There are good performances in Girl, Interrupted, but they often feel like performances in search of a character, and the movie feels episodic in a way that never quite adds up to anything.
• Babetida Sadjo is fantastic in the Our Father, the Devil, an “eloquently composed” and “bleak, slow-burn character study” (in the words of critic Robert Daniels).
• There are no shocking revelations in wait in Butterfly in the Sky, but that doesn’t make it a less lovely or insightful stroll through the history of Reading Rainbow.

• If The Gift doesn’t entirely work, it does have some moments of real tension, and some good performances. I think Bateman, in particular, weaves a really interesting character by the movie’s end.
• Sasquatch Sunset is just too deeply weird and novel to write off completely. It’s not particularly successful as a narrative—it veers wildly into absurdity and never really develops these creatures into characters—and yet the film is strangely kind of moving.
• Jim Henson: Idea Man is genuinely enjoyable. It’s full of interesting history and fond reminiscences by those who knew and worked with him. It’s also not entirely uncritical of the man, although it does feel like there’s a fuller picture than what Ron Howard’s talking-heads documentary provides.
• Going in Style is never what I would call funny—indeed, there are scenes, like a late trip the characters take to Las Vegas, that feel interminable—but there are moments of bittersweet amusement.
• Godzilla Minus One is a lot of fun. Who would have thought that marrying a wartime melodrama to a giant monster movie could be this effective?

I also rewatched Waking Life, for what I think was the second time, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for the first time in many decades. Waking Life is, as always, interesting, full of compelling visuals and ideas. Snow White, meanwhile, succeeds largely on the strength of its storybook animation, mostly in the scenes involving the wicked stepmother.

• The remake of Flatliners somehow manages to be even worse than the original, which wasn’t a very movie good to begin with.
• Waterworld is surprisingly not terrible. But I guess when you cost that much, at least in 1995, not terrible isn’t nearly good enough. It’s not a great movie—it largely squanders its premise, and there’s limited evidence of that skyrocketed budget on the screen—but it’s surprisingly entertaining.
• Prom Night is surprisingly terrible, a mostly dull and confused plot with few if any scares or even tension. If it truly is “one of the most influential slasher films of the period,” that may say some pretty terrible things about the genre.

• There is some stunning use of color, as well as black and white, in Bonjour Tristesse, along with lovely performances all around.
• Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos are both phenomenal in Blue Is the Warmest Colour. The film is maybe best known for its very graphic (if simulated) sex scenes and its length, but it’s also a genuinely touching story about the awakening of desire and about how a love can fall apart.
• If Dune: Part Two doesn’t hold together as a narrative quite as well as the first half, that might be Frank Herbert’s fault as much as Denis Villeneuve’s. The second half of the novel is a lot more complicated—and also the part I don’t remember as well from decades ago when I last read it. But as compelling as the movie often is, even at three hours, and as stunning as a lot of its visuals undoubtedly would have been on a giant screen, it often felt oddly paced and a little padded. I enjoyed the movie a lot, and may do so even more when and if I revisit both halves as a single film, but the end felt less like a satisfying conclusion than the set-up for the sequel, which is reportedly already in the works.

I also rewatched the (still delightful) Before Sunset.