Month: October 2024

I was traveling in Italy recently, so it’s been a while. But I’ve watched 12 movies since the last roundup:

• It maybe is a victim of all its own hype, but I found Longlegs to be somewhat oddly disappointing. Exceptionally creepy and well made, to be sure, with plenty of very good and unsettling performances, but a little thinner in the story, both in terms of plot and thematically, than I might have hoped.
• The number of times Exhuma feels like it’s reached a safe and satisfying conclusion only to fully ramp up and reveal new scares is genuinely impressive.
• Thelma is delightful, both silly and tenderhearted. A lot of that is due to an incredibly winning performance by June Squibb, but the supporting cast is also universally good—particularly Richard Roundtree in his final feature film.

It’s What’s Inside plays with some interesting ideas and takes some clever turns, but it doesn’t quite hold together as well as I might have liked.
• Maybe as quiet and understated as a spy thriller can be, The Human Factor boasts some very good performances, notably by Nicol Williamson.
• Woman of the Hour is remarkably assured for Anna Kendrick’s first film as director. If it doesn’t say anything especially novel about violence against women, the film does a fantastic job of placing its focus on the victims of that violence, and not the man who perpetrated the crimes. The framing of the story is a little odd—in reality, Rodney Alcala’s appearance on The Dating Game is not much more than a weird footnote to this true crime story—but this is a very effective film, and I look forward to more from Kendrick as director.

• At best fitfully amusing, Brothers squanders the talents of Brolin and Dinklage in what is somehow both an overwritten and entirely predictable pale imitation of a Coen Brothers movie.
• Crime Wave does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a simple but effective noir.
• Laurel and Hardy are amusing, but there’s maybe not enough of that for a full-length feature, even one as short as Way Out West.

• An underrated gem, The Night Digger owes a lot to the central performance by Patricia Neal.
• Creature from the Black Lagoon never feels like anything other than a man in a rubber suit, but it’s a well designed rubber suit, and there are some genuinely creepy moments in this otherwise silly and dated monster feature.
• The less you know about Strange Darling going in, the better. But it’s a fun and wicked ride.

I also re-watched George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead. They’re coming to get you, Barbara!

I watched 6 movies last week:

• Roger Ebert called The Milagro Beanfield War “a wonderful fable, but the problem is, some of the people in the story know it’s a fable and others do not.” I’m not sure he’s wrong about that. There’s a lot to like about the movie, with some very agreeable characters and amiable pace, but it does seem a little uncertain what kind of story it wants to be.
• Start the Revolution Without Me has some goofy charm, but not enough to be more than passingly amusing.
• Wolfs is entertaining enough, buoyed by the two leads bouncing gruffly off of one another, but it feels like a movie designed to be forgotten.

• Someone’s Watching Me! feels like a TV movie, but John Carpenter does bring a certain creepiness to it, and Lauren Hutton’s off-kilter performance keeps things interesting. Too bad about that very anticlimactic ending, though.
• At the end of Will & Harper, the pair joke about hitting the road again and doing their road trip again in reverse. Reader, I would watch that movie. There’s a wonderful warmth, honesty, and empathy to their journey together, even when things get difficult or the world around them gets ugly and cruel.
• Alison’s Birthday is not without its share of creepy moments, and that ending, though belabored, is interesting. It’s just never entirely satisfying.

I also re-watched Murder by Death, which was more than a little dated—Peter Sellers’ Charlie Chan impersonation really only works because the movie calls him on it, and that’s the point of it, but even then it’s a little cringe—but it’s still very fun and silly fun.