Ain’t a one of us getting any younger, so let’s do this thing. (Spoilers, obviously.)
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AFRAID
In the year of our Lord 2024, the threat of AI replacing talented craftspeople and manipulating what we see and hear to turn people against what are erroneously considered threats is timelier and more real than ever before, so a movie raising consciousness about this is sorely needed. And, in fairness, for a while, this was that movie. A family led by John Cho (he of the far superior Sony-produced, “Technology, amirite?” thriller, Searching) and Katherine Waterston receives an AI in the hopes of smoothing out the bumps in daily life. For a while, this proves helpful just as the first half (despite an unusual prologue with a wholly unearned jump scare) was actually pretty solid, highlighted by a delightful Keith Carradine as Cho’s boss. However, after Carradine departed the narrative, it started to feel like AI took over the production, leaving a metric ton of questions for the viewer: why would the AI bother to get the daughter’s revenge porn ex-boyfriend in trouble with the law if it was just gonna kill him anyway? And why don’t we hear anything about the guy from that point on; no police report or nothing? Why introduce a spousal infidelity subplot, only to just forget about it almost as quickly as it was brought up? Why even have David Dastmalchian in this movie if you’re just gonna kill him off horribly? What was even the point of the other couple’s daughter being kidnapped? And most of all, did this movie really try to sell us on the idea that swatting was a good thing? Given a lot of his filmography, writer/director Chris Weitz is not an untalented individual, but all the same, I sincerely hope he’s been saving his money.
THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW
The relaxation of the standards code in motion pictures in the late 1960s may have been one of the best and worst things to happen in the movies. Things that were considered taboo on movie screens like profanity, graphic violence and sex soon became permanent fixtures of your best entertainment and once-prominent filmmaking aspects like subtlety, implication and decorum gradually fell by the wayside. I am far from one of those smooth brains who recoils at the thought of sex scenes in motion pictures, but what it really comes down to is just because you could doesn’t mean that you should… just like I could reduce my reasoning to why I hated this 1971 movie is because of its lengthy rape scene, but that doesn’t mean that I should. The scene isn’t great, but from that point on, the viewing experience is poisoned because, this being the 1970s and a horror film, who’s to say there aren’t more scenes like it on the way? There weren’t any, but the jumbled narrative and grim tone didn’t much help. This film has been noted as one of the touchstones of the folk horror genre alongside Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man. Needless to say, it is the least of the three.
FOUNDERS DAY
Now, as someone who has a) a degree in Media Studies - Film Concentration and b) been chasing a career in filmmaking for half of my life, I am perfectly aware that there are no truly original ideas out there and that making a movie can take a long time; from script to financing to pre-production, shooting, re-shooting and post-work. By the time your movie is in the can ready for release, some other movie comes along and does a lot of what your movie did...only better. Founders Day was released (or, more accurately, it escaped) into theaters in January of 2024. The problem with that was that Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving was still playing in theaters then, firmly establishing it as the Gallant to this film’s Goofus. There was another serial killer in an elaborate costume tied to the local history of the town in which the film was set and another group of young people being gruesomely picked off (two of whom were so unfathomably obnoxious, it was impossible not to cheer their deaths on in a crowded theater). But even independent of the plot's resemblances to Thanksgiving, this film was trash; overlong at 107 minutes and hamstrung by a confused political outlook, which wouldn’t have mattered all that much if it wasn’t supposed to be the spine of the fucking film. It’s set against the backdrop of an impending mayoral election, though the political parties of the candidates are so blurred (likely to avoid offending any actual politicos who might recognize themselves and assume something), you’re forced to wonder what the point even was. In fairness, at least no one in the cast was acting bad on purpose, though it’s hardly a coincidence that the one memorable performance came from the one recognizable name in the cast: William Russ, familiar from such credits as American History X, Disorganized Crime and, of course, “Boy Meets World”. Sadly, by the end, you even find yourself turned against his affable character. My exposure to this was the result of Regal’s Mystery Movie and, again, as an aspiring filmmaker, one can’t help but be irritated that Redbox(RIP)-level nonsense like this was able to squirm its way into theaters. No wonder people assume they like streaming better.
KING ARTHUR
You've heard it, no doubt. On every message board and on every social media platform, you've heard it. "Why does Disney keep making live-action remakes of their animated movies? When will they stop? Why can't they make original movies? I don't know how Hollywood works! I have a Poor Things brain! Waaah-waaah-waaah." And so on. Given that this little experiment has resulted in movies ranging from 'Not bad' to 'Huh. Who knew?' (with only the occasional embarrassment to speak of - Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio), to say nothing of the financial benefits, it's hard to see the studio stopping any time soon (and it's not like the originals are going anywhere; people need to Google '1944 Gaslight remake controversy' to see how much worse things could've been). I'm curious to see where this train is going to end up and if The Sword in the Stone is one of the remaining stops. Whatever ends up happening, I have absolutely no doubt that it will be a better telling of the story of Arthurian legend than this turgid, needlessly violent and overlong 2004 effort that pretty much stripped away from the story Merlin's magic, destiny and any of that pesky crap that made past film versions of the story interesting (for its impeccable production values, First Knight was kind of a slog, but it shined all the brighter next to this one). The cast was terrific, but it's one of those unfortunate cases where it might have been a better movie if it wasn't called (blank). I'm not sure how someone thought that 'the director of Training Day and the producer of Black Hawk Down could make a fun and entertaining King Arthur movie!' but, yeah, they did not.
MIDNIGHT RIDE
Unlike a lot of the movies on this list, my expectations were sky high for this one, so much so that I tweaked the premise for a script I'm writing. Over the years, this 1990 thriller has slipped through the cracks...for reasons that soon become apparent. A woman (Savina Gersak), at her wit’s end with her cop husband’s (Michael Dudikoff!) dedication more to his job than to her, decides to hit the road, spurring his pursuit. In her travels, she picks up a hitchhiker (Mark Hamill) and, faster than you can say ‘John Ryder’, she learns what a mistake she’s made. Reviewing what a movie should’ve been instead of the movie itself is the lowest form of film criticism, but one can’t help but lament what could’ve been: a woman escapes her abusive husband, only to be ensnared by a psychopath and her only hope is the man she tried so hard to get away from. Sleeping With the Enemy meets The Hitcher! An elevator pitch that you figure would be impossible to screw up. In this film’s favor are some vehicular stunts arranged by director (and former stuntman) Bob Bralver that briefly perk things up. However, Bralver is not what you’d call an actor’s director, as evidenced by the embarrassing, over-the-top performance from Hamill that throws the film askew. His incessantly deranged turn as Justin McKay (which might've worked with better writing and more years on Hamill's boyish face) is a long way from the Joker or even the Trickster on “The Flash”; one of those pantomime villain turns that actively damages the film it’s in (cf. The Frighteners, Urban Legend, The Hard Way). The cheapness of the production extends to Carlo Maria Cordio’s synth score, at one point appropriating Alan Silvestri’s Back to the Future. And that’s not even getting into a glum, two-days-for-a-paycheck turn from Robert Mitchum in the final reel. Just a misbegotten piece of work all around, but would you expect anything less from a movie produced by a man named Ovidio Assonitis? (P.S. The rest of his filmography ain't so hot, either.)
MY SISTER EILEEN
This past year, I decided to watch 100 movies from the Columbia Pictures library (with some Tri-Star flicks sprinkled in for good measure) to celebrate the studio's centenary. Looking back, I can't imagine - much less remember - what I saw in this movie that it should've made the list, but here we are. Based on a play that (as per the ad-line) ‘convulsed Broadway and the nation!’ ('convulsed'...I do not think it means what you think it means), this 1942 comedy - he said, sarcastically - centered around two sisters: Rosalind Russell's struggling writer Ruth and Janet Blair's aspiring actress Eileen. They move from their small Ohio town (mainly because of an embarrassing setback that saw a review printed for Eileen's incredible performance in a local play even though it was actually her understudy who was on stage, an admittedly novel beat that would've landed perfectly in a better movie) to New York City, hoping that luck will be on their side. Given the open-air basement apartment that awaits them, it will not. With how the various characters, from their goofy Greek landlord to the couple next door, breeze in and out of the place, the film plays like a not-very-good sitcom. It's all very inert, only enlivened - I'm sorry to say - by the unwanted interactions with men, from Ruth's supposed love-hate courtship with editor Brian Aherne to a parade of lustful Italian sailors who follow Ruth back to her place after a false tip to not one, but two consecutive scenes of Eileen threatened with sexual assault by wolf Allyn Jostyn and *checks notes* George Tobias?! The goofy landlord?! Seriously?! Ugh. As evidenced by His Girl Friday (not a masterpiece, but it's practically the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup compared to this), Russell has a way with a one-liner and her preternatural gift for sending even the lamest of zingers special delivery is tested to its breaking point. Interestingly enough, the additions of Jack Lemmon and Bob Fosse dance numbers only barely improved matters in the same-named 1955 musical remake and not even Elaine Stritch is compelling enough to make me seek out the short-lived TV series. Maybe, this material is just plain cursed...oh, and getting back to the subject of legendary comedy teams, screw you, My Sister Eileen, for that cameo at the end. You did absolutely nothing to earn that.
NATURAL BORN KILLERS
Apparently, this began life as a Quentin Tarantino script. Given his penchant for sharp dialogue exchanges and time-jumping storylines, one can imagine how amazing the film might have turned out and given that the film was released in 1994, when the sensationalization of serial killers was arguably at its zenith with the O.J. Simpson trial, this project should've been a slam dunk. But this potential satirical cruise liner ended up being felled by an iceberg named Oliver Stone. I’m sure that, at some point in the film's development, Stone saw the erratic editing, constant color switching, and overall noise as a way of putting the audience in the headspace of the titular killers and getting the people to see through their fractured view of a world that refuses to accept them or some such first-year-of-film-school horseshit. But, in practice, it makes for one of the most annoying things ever put out by an otherwise “revered" filmmaker. (Fun fact, fun being purely subjective here: co-editor Hank Corwin would end up doing, more or less, the same thing for Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, but I’m sure he’s a nice guy, otherwise.) All of the sound and fury signifying nothing in a tale told by an idiot wouldn’t have mattered all that much if there was even one character for me to grab onto in terms of likability. One could argue that, given their murderous intentions and general dementia, Mickey and Mallory weren't meant to be liked, but Christ's sake, the film's quote-unquote 'heroes' were even worse! You have Tom Sizemore's detective who tries to get himself a piece of Mallory, only to wind up surprised that she kills him (who saw that coming?) and then you have Robert Downey Jr. workshopping his Kirk Lazarus accent from Tropic Thunder, garnished with a generous helping of Robin Leach, as tabloid journalist Wayne Gale, who will do anything - even braving a fucking prison riot - just to get his story on the Bonnie and Clyde of the 1990s. Steven Wright’s cameo as a psychoanalyst was a(n all-too-brief) respite from the avalanche of shit, but not enough to make this seem like anything other than a giant waste of time. One of Stone's best-known credits is the screenplay for Scarface. It may be too obvious to suggest that this is what happens when a giant pile of cocaine gains sentience and makes a movie but...the ball is right there on the one-yard line.
SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG
At the time of this film's release, my father (God rest his soul) was a young man on the cusp of his twenties and not exactly on good standing with Johnny Law, so I can completely imagine this movie speaking to him...but as a 40-something blerd with discerning cinematic tastes and who (for the most part) has obeyed the law his entire life, this film slid right off of me. The 1971 yarn chronicled male prostitute Sweet Sweetback (played by the film’s writer/director Melvin Van Peebles) and the trouble that ensues when his defense of a victimized Black Panther results in the deaths of two racist cops. The messaging the movie delivers was effective, but, this being one of those movies made at odds and ends, it got lost in a repetitive storyline (it felt like half the movie consisted of Sweetback running across the countryside), seemingly artsy filmmaking tricks (thankfully, nothing quite as suffocating as Natural Born Killers, but still) and stilted acting. Also, it came off as one of those movies where the director wasn’t ever told ‘no’, which would explain a scene where a character had just finished doing a number two and a prologue which showed a young Sweetback (a then-thirteen-year-old Mario Van Peebles!) getting his start in the trade. Granted, the film helped pave the way for the Blaxploitation movement in film, launching a number of careers, and it is - for better or worse - the movie the senior Van Peebles wanted to make (a professional decision he pursued over a three-picture deal at Columbia following the success of Watermelon Man, which would not have been my choice), so the movie has worth as a historical document. As a coherent film, however...much less so.
TRADING MOM
It all started with 1999's Blast from the Past. As Brendan Fraser's slowly-going-stir-crazy mom, Sissy Spacek was the highlight of the film for me. I lamented that, fine dramatic actress though she was, there were so few opportunities for her to express what looked to be sound comic chops. By this point, you can just imagine the monkey's paw curling in such a way that left up only the middle finger. In this 1994 movie, a trio of siblings (played by a pair of 90s child actor trivia questions and the Girl from My Girl) were chafing under the (perfectly reasonable) rules of their mother, so they invoked a spell to make her disappear, then went shopping for a new matriarch at the Mommy Market. Not a bad premise for a storybook (which this actually started out as), and a good filmmaker could've found ways to open the tale up. However, the rudimentary treatment given by writer-director Tia Brelis (daughter of the original book’s author) more or less guaranteed the film’s path from production to home video to cable to obscurity to Tubi. It didn’t help that the ostensible heroes were quite unlikable in the establishing scenes and the repetitive nature of the script didn’t allow the fantasy to take hold like it should’ve. The primary reason to watch this movie was Spacek, who committed fully to her three cartoonish mother characters (even maintaining her dignity when her Cruella-esque mom was assaulted with a cowpie). It’s enough to make one wish that more people had seen this film (or that its execution were remotely equal to its premise), allowing Spacek to open her career up to different avenues.
THE UNSEEN
No, friends, this is not 1981's Michael J. Lewis-scored sleaze fest where incest baby Stephen Furst menaces Barbara Bach. If anything, this 1945 noir was far more disturbing*. Co-adapted by Raymond Chandler, of all people, from an Ethel Lina White novel (itself owing more than a nominal debt to Henry James' oft-filmed story "The Turn of the Screw"), the story takes place in the midst of a killing spree where several women have been murdered. Gail Russell stars as a young woman who becomes the new governess for a sweet young girl (Nona Griffith’s Ellen). The two of them seemed to have a natural rapport together, and their scenes were quite engaging. Unfortunately, this young girl had an older brother (Richard Lyon’s Barney), and they had a widowed father who seemed to be using his wife’s death as an excuse to be as cruel and standoffish as humanly possible. But how could that have been when the father was played by that paragon of warmth, Joel McCrea? In other hands, the empathy for this character and his difficult situation could’ve been easily engendered, but with McCrea in the role, the father was so cold and distant that you’d have to be the dumbest kid in class not to suspect that he’s either behind the killing spree or, at the very least, a person of interest. Not that the older brother is any better; whether casting sour-faced looks at his sister who, if given a chance, could probably have ended this movie earlier with a simple explanation or his just plain horrible treatment of Russell’s Elizabeth, this kid added new dimensions to the word ‘brat’. (Also, maybe it’s just me, but not once was he given any sort of physical incentive to not act like this. Hell, the girl from The Curse of the Cat People got spanked in one scene and she did nothing wrong! On top of everything, he took phone calls from a stranger that seemed to influence his bad behavior. Was ‘don’t talk to strangers’ not a thing in the 40s?!) Oh, and the ending asked me to swallow that, instead of taking the girl and running like hell, Russell would actually stay and be the new wife and mother to these horrible wastes of life. It almost made one long for schizophrenic Robert Ryan walking off into the sunset…almost.
* - Just playing, but wild dogs couldn't have kept me away from that gag.
Other bad movies I saw this year: The Avengers ('98), Dear Santa, Dragonball: Evolution, The Lady in Question, Madame Web, The Monster That Challenged the World, Playing With Fire (‘85) and Saturday the 14th
Things that annoyed me about movies that weren’t quite the worst I saw in 2024:
After Hours - My mother loves this movie and I love my mother, but I just couldn’t bring myself to love this movie. The film's one joke - Griffin Dunne's Paul just wants to get out of some strange situation only, bullshit bullshit bullshit, now he’s in a deeper hole - is pretty much beat to death after the first 30 minutes. One of the letterboxd reviews for this movie pretty much summed it up: "Everyone wants to feel unique for picking a movie that isn't even Top 10 of an auteur and call it 'underrated'. Sometimes, it's properly rated!"
Avalon - Clearly, an autobiographical labor of love for writer-director Barry Levinson detailing the roots of his family settling in Baltimore, but there are a few details here that absolutely don’t pass the smell test (so, the trolley just flew right off the tracks and completely totaled the family car? Also, the boys were warned not to play with fire several times by their families and yet they still mess around with fireworks in the basement of their fathers' department store, never mind that it ended up burning down due to an electrical thing rather than their ignorance?). I'm reminded of Spike Lee and Crooklyn insomuch that Levinson also laid these details bare instead of fudging them as most people would've done.
Bottoms - In the fall of 2023, this film was swimming in critical appraisal, but having seen it for myself, I'm forced to wonder - as with Drive and Nimona before it - what in the hell am I missing? About the time that the main characters' car lightly tapped the leg of football star Nicholas Galitzine...and he fell to the ground reacting like his legs had been cut off is when I started turning against the film. In the worst possible ways, this was a live-action cartoon untethered to anything resembling reality, culminating in a truly ludicrous ending of the school's football team - alongside the girl fighters - straight up murdering the opposing team at a football game, and there isn’t even the slightest whiff of consequence for any of the offenders. In fact, I’d say it sits comfortably next to Sorry to Bother You and the rightly forgotten Christina Ricci vehicle Pumpkin in the category of 'bad live-action "South Park" episodes'. It also must be said that Rachel Sennott was completely abrasive as PJ (though, thankfully, the actress redeemed herself as Rosie Shuster in Saturday Night). As far as recent stories where lesbian gal pals end up in a situation way over their heads, make mine Drive-Away Dolls.
Dead of Night - Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson scored made-for-TV gold with "Trilogy of Terror" in 1975, so who could blame them for wanting to see if lightning could strike twice two years later? The first story with a young Ed Begley, Jr. fascinated by a gas-powered car (gasp!) was entertaining, but then, the film started moving into horror territory and became significantly less effective. The second story would’ve been tolerable but for an ending that actually possessed the sack bag testes to combine the twists from Night Watch and the Donald Sutherland story of Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, two bad twists that twist bad together. The third story - basically, a naked recycling of the Zuni fetish doll showstopper from "Trilogy" - was somewhat familiar to me thanks to a viewing of 1996's "Trilogy of Terror II", but what may have worked in print does not work on film, assuming it ever did. Even the great Richard Matheson is allowed an off day, but, simply put, giving the menace dialogue proved to be the segment's downfall. Every one of Bobby’s lines could be summed up in the following manner: "Vaguely threatening statement, mommy!".
Donnie Brasco - With superb performances from Johnny Depp and Al Pacino, this promised to sit alongside the decade's other great, Mafia-inspired movies…but early on, there’s a scene where a character is recording something on a VCR. Even if the machines were somehow widespread in the 1978 setting of this film, there’s no way they could’ve been widespread enough for there to have been roughly 40 videotapes as seen in a brief moment, to say nothing of the heavy-handed use of nature footage, as if the filmmakers were nudging us, “Do you get it? Wink!”. However, these would be perfectly forgivable next to my greatest problem with the movie: Donnie’s wife. Given the one-dimensional nature of the character, Anne Heche did her level best, but her FBI agent husband is going deep undercover - a precarious situation under the best of circumstances - and she’s worried more about her family than his safety which could've potentially been in jeopardy if she started making a stink like this? If this is what actually happened in real life, again, lying is always an option when adapting a true story for the cinematic medium.
Fresh - The first half was, perhaps, the greatest Spike Lee movie that Lee never made, painting a vivid picture of the New York City streets and the life of the title character (a marvelous Sean Nelson)…then comes the second half where things just got ridiculous (it was well-established that his friend was a loudmouthed idiot, so why would he let him in on his action?) and mean (why did that dog have to die?).
Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes - Ostensibly, the serious version of the ape man's story; very austere and properly historical. This film, somehow, earned an Academy Award nomination for legendary screenwriter Robert Towne...'s dog. (Long story. Google it.) But the nearest comparison I can make is Hulk, where there is too much goofiness to wade through at odds with the serious tone, such as the lactating chimpanzee and the failure to cut around young Tarzan's...swing set, shall we say? John Scott’s beautiful music can only spackle over so much.
It Could Happen to You - Based (somewhat) on a remarkable true incident, this was a fairy tale-like story with delightful performances from Nicolas Cage (as good-hearted cop Charlie) and Bridget Fonda (as down-on-her-luck waitress Yvonne, with whom he splits his winning lottery ticket in lieu of a tip), but, really, what would a fairy tale be without a wicked witch to fuck everything up for the characters, as embodied by a supremely strident performance from Rosie Perez as Charlie's cartoonishly unpleasant wife, Muriel. One of the first things we see her doing in the movie is take money out of a blind man's cup that Charlie just put in there...and remarkably, she only gets worse from that point on. There’s absolutely no nuance to her in this story, not even a token "She wasn't always this bad. I guess I'm still in love with the Muriel I first met." line from Charlie. Hell, even Fonda's scumbag husband, Stanley Tucci’s Eddie, was treated with more humanity!
A Journal for Jordan - This romance was supposedly based on a true story. If that is accurate, then it was unquestionably the most Nicholas Sparks-seeming true story I’ve ever witnessed, this aesthetic perfectly embodied by the scene where Chante Adams' Dana gets into an argument with Michael B. Jordan's Staff Sergeant Charles - currently on active duty - about how he needs to drop everything overseas to get back home for her giving birth. Bitch, you knew the guy was a soldier when he knocked you up! (And given that she worked for a little organization known as the New York Times, she knew that the situation in the Middle East was precarious, to say the least.) A little late for buyers' remorse now, wouldn't you say?
The Karate Kid - Let's see: yelling at Ali who tried to console him after getting his ass kicked? Having a chance to walk away from Johnny, but instead, spraying him with water, thereby engaging him in a further fight? Holy shit, Barney Stinson was right. Daniel-san was the true villain of this movie!
The Last Seduction - We may never truly know if Linda Fiorentino’s career imploded because of getting blackballed by Weinstein or because she actually was difficult to work with, but this much is certain: I can only laugh hysterically in the face of anyone who calls this one of the greatest film noirs ever made. (You are on fucking notice, Paste Magazine!) It walked like a great noir and talked like a great noir, but after a while, you couldn’t help but notice that it wasn't that Fiorentino’s character Bridget/Wendy was smarter than everyone else so much as that everyone around her was dumber than shit, a very important distinction. "I probably shouldn’t turn my back on my wife and leave the thousands of dollars I just got out in the open instead of keeping it safe. After all, there is a lone shark after me." "This lady I'm supposed to be keeping tabs on offered me a plate full of cookies. Perhaps, I should check around my car to make sure she didn't do anything to it when I try to trail her." "I'm in a car with this woman, so I should definitely not indulge her curiosity about that stereotype concerning my people. It’s been well-established that this broad is trouble." And then, you have Peter Berg's Mike, who may as well have had 'duh!' tattooed on his forehead. Even if there wasn’t somehow a phone right in front of Brindy to call the cops as you’re indulging her sexual assault fantasy, maybe, don’t scream what you're doing at the top of your voice in case the apartment building might have other tenants listening in. Director John Dahl scored a home run with Red Rock West, so of course I was looking forward to this one. Maybe if - like Red - he had also written the film instead of leaving the driving to some no-name who (surprise, surprise!) hasn’t been heard from in the 30 years since, it would’ve turned out so much better.
The Last Shot - This comedy, based on a true incident, had a fantastic cast, but that only went so far when dealing with an off-putting streak of quote-unquote ‘quirky’ humor. About the time Toni Collette’s actress relieved herself in a champagne glass in the middle of a crowded restaurant was the time I mentally checked out. Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can, the Rush Hour sequels) made his directorial debut with this project, but even on something like this, it never hurts to have a fresh pair of eyes on the script.
A Low Down Dirty Shame - The action scenes of this Blaxploitation action-comedy were quite well-done. Unfortunately, writer/director Keenen Ivory Wayans couldn’t seem to leave "In Living Color" behind, as evidenced by gay stereotypes so hideously offensive, they make "Men on...'s" Blaine and Antoine look butch, and then you have Jada Pinkett‘s full volume performance as Shame's Girl Friday, Peaches. About the time she knocked out an actor because the character he played on one of her favorite soap operas was fooling around was when I started deeply disliking her.
Marnie - The leads were attractive, Bernard Herrmann’s music was terrific and the film was much sturdier than its reputation. I mean, I’m only 10 minutes away from the end, but this is definitely one of Hitchcock's hidden gems. Sure, the title character has five year's subscriptions worth of issues but I’m sure that’ll be explained effective...oh....ooh...woof. One of my favorite letterboxd reviewers, Marty McKee, said that this ending played like “Simon Oakland in Psycho on crack”. He was not incorrect.
Serial Mom - Without question, the superior of 1994’s 'sensationalization of a serial killer' satires. The first hour was absolute dynamite with Beverly’s killing spree, but then we get to her trial and her manipulation of events and witnesses, and the fact that she gets off scot free at the end - especially in the wake of November 5th - just did not sit right with me at all.
Starsky and Hutch - Once upon a time, Todd Phillips complained that "making comedies is hard now because of wokeness". (Of course, it could certainly be argued that - given a lot of his résumé - making comedies was hard for him before wokeness, but I digress.) Watching this movie, I couldn’t help but take that to mean, "All I want is for Will Ferrell to play a predatory gay prisoner! What the fuck is wrong with you snowflakes?!".
Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country - Following the much-maligned (I would personally say unfairly maligned) Star Trek V: the Final Frontier, bringing Nicholas Meyer back into the fold would seem to have been a smart move. After all, as memorably intoned in a USA Network ad in the 90s, "Even-numbered Trek movies don’t suck." Classy. This does have its good points, such as a stirring score from Cliff Eidelman, who I still lament didn’t have as big a career as an effort like this would’ve merited, and a wonderfully theatrical performance from Christopher Plummer as Gen. Chang. (Side note: excepting Ricardo Montalban and possibly Laurence Luckinbill, has an actor ever had more fun as the villain of one of these movies?) But it really seemed like fans and critics were so focused on what this film wasn’t, they didn’t stop to think about what it actually was. As far as I’m concerned, the positives were undercut by the heavy-handed racial aspects of the plot. In particular, I found Chekov's line, "Guess who’s coming to dinner.”, far more cringe than anything in Star Trek V. (The goofy-looking anti-gravity CGI blood in the murder scenes was pretty bad, too. They'd have been better off using traditional cel animation.)
Wicked, Wicked - As with a number of movies I know about in life, my primary knowledge of this one came from "Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide". Sometimes, I completely disagree with what he had to say about a movie and then, there are times when he and his team really hit the nail on the head. (This received a 'BOMB' rating, by the way, for reasons that should become clear.) A California hotel was besieged by a string of murders committed by a doofy-looking incel of a serial killer who seemed to constantly be able to avoid the authorities, all of it scored with heavy-handed organ music smeared over every scene. Writer-director Richard L. Bare, who directed almost every episode of "Green Acres", utilized an impressive split-screen technology designed to show the audience more than usual. Damn shame he wasted it on something like this. He'd have been better off making this a short subject a la his "Joe McDoakes" comedies...or not at all.
Wisdom - If nothing else, Emilio Estevez deserved credit for taking on the triple threat of writer, director and actor at an age before most people are even buying their first home, but his character John Wisdom walked into banks holding a gun (never mind the fact that he had no intention of shooting anyone) and he didn’t even think to wear a fucking mask? The police may have done him a kindness blowing him away at the end.
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