Mr. Cellophane

In a location adjacent to a place in a city of some significance, what comes out of my head is plastered on the walls of this blog.

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

This week in podcasting.

The latest series of Get Me Another just began and this time, they’re gonna be looking at the films that followed in the wake of Fatal Attraction. I don’t wanna claim that this had something to do with the Letterboxd list I made some time ago, but I totally will anyway because this is too damn impressive to be chalked up to mere coincidence.

Speaking of serendipity between me and the podcasts I listen to, one of the most recent episodes of the podcast Colors of the Dark - who, sometime ago, did an episode that inspired me to create my many ‘horror Oscars of the (insert decade here)’ posts - saw the hosts casting their ballots for the works of the 2000s. All told, it was a rather disappointing listen. The Descent. The House of the Devil. Let the Right One In. Jennifer’s Body. Drag Me to Hell. Ad nauseum. (I know this was the remake era, but good God, there were other movies that came out in that time.) The boner for the latter was particularly disturbing. Even now, I can’t possibly see how I’m able to derive entertainment value in rooting against a young woman who wants nothing more but to improve her station in life and for an ancient Karen that could’ve easily solved her own problems ages ago without having to damn an innocent soul to hell. (Though the lead actress’s fervent support of a certain blithely destructive asshole does go some ways to making her character as unlikable as we’re apparently supposed to find her to be.) Another podcast bites the dust.

And sadly, Best Movies Never Made is still MIA. I really miss those guys.

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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Oscars: Better late than never.

Usually, there's an Oscar reaction post at the blog sometime in late January, but I've been distracted by...stuff. The ceremony is less than a week away, so I'm gonna try something new.

Picture: Ten nominees. Ten. I remember when they had five. Eh. I’ve only seen one of them and, really, I couldn’t see myself checking out the others, especially given the controversy wafting off of one of them. You all know which one.
What would I have put in the category: Saturday Night. Seriously, how did the buzz on this slip away? See also: The Bikeriders.
My pick: The Substance and don’t tell me it couldn’t happen. Four words: The Shape of Water.

Actor: I’m not sure who to pick, not because I felt that all five performances were that mindblowing, but because I didn’t see any of the movies (and I’ll be goddamned if I dignify that psychopath destroying this country, in any way). I got to pick somebody, I suppose.
Who would I have put in the category: Glen Powell for Hit Man and…Josh Hartnett for Trap. Bold or controversial? You make the call.
My pick: Ralph Fiennes. He is long overdue.

Actress: Unlike the other acting categories, I actually got to witness one of the nominees making magic…and, also, this category has been a ride. Two nominees dividing the awards attention and another’s offensive tweets resurfacing. That’s the 21st century, for you.
Who would I have put in the category: Just June Squibb (for Thelma) and Jodie Comer (for The Bikeriders). The summer is not kind to Oscar bait.
My pick: That one nominee I saw? Demi Moore.

Supporting Actor: Didn’t experience any of these nominees, which is a bummer, but I have liked them in other things…well, most of them; I have never heard of the guy from Anora.
Who would I have put in the category: Hell, I could craft a brand new lineup with my choices. Willem Dafoe (Nosferatu). Hugh Grant (Heretic, presuming A24 wouldn’t run him for Leading). Tom Hardy (The Bikeriders). Richard Roundtree (Thelma). Denzel Washington (Gladiator II).
My pick: Eenie, meanie, miney…Kieran Culkin.

Supporting Actress: Okay, another example of how I should watch more of these movies. None of them appealed to me, so I’m going by name. A name that has been a reliable player for many decades. A name that, remarkably, had never been Oscar-nominated before. A name whose name is the result of a legendary actress and a renowned director. She played a nun. I don’t know how I can make it clearer.
Who would I have put in the category: Margaret Qualley, obviously, but also Joan Chen for Didi. Her mother character pretending that she cares for her shitbird son instead of choking him until he turned green is some of the best acting anyone has done in the last decade. It really hammers home how misused Chen was in Hollywood schlock like On Deadly Ground and Judge Dredd (though the “Bitch!”/“Judge Bitch.” exchange from the latter still makes me giggle).
My pick: Isabella Rossellini

Director: Another category, another one-out-of-five choice. Ah, to hell with it. As with the Presidential election, I’m voting for the woman.
Who would I have put in the category: The guy who did Hundreds of Beavers. Yes, really.
My pick: The Substance

Original Screenplay: Okay, ignoring my pick, I’d be interested in seeing the award go to A Real Pain. Just because.
What would I have put in the category: Juror #2. If an Oscar went to a movie like this, studios would be falling over themselves to make nine or ten movies like it a year and I call that a win for everybody.
My pick: The Substance 

Adapted Screenplay: Okay. Can’t pick The Substance this time. Also, I haven’t seen any of the contenders. Well, I’m stuck.
What would I have put in the category: Really, just Saturday Night and Hit Man…and maybe Nightbitch.
My pick: Conclave

Cinematography: I barely paid attention to the camera work in the one nominated movie I saw. Not sure how I could judge fairly.
What would I have put in the category: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
My pick: Dune Part Two.

Editing: …yeah, I have absolutely no dog in this fight.
What would I have put in the category: The Substance?
My pick: Conclave, I guess.

Production Design: I’ve only seen one of the nominees…and, remarkably, it’s not the one I would’ve chosen for to receive the award.
What would I have put in the category: Gladiator II, Heretic, Red One. A lot of a room for improvement, I have to say.
My pick: Wicked

Costume Design: A pretty solid set of nominees here. That’s all I have to say.
What would I have put in the category: They could’ve included The Bikeriders for something (relatively) contemporary.
My pick: Wicked, because duh!

Original Score: Not gonna waste my energy or bandwidth on the unmemorable wastes in this category, so I’ll just talk about the two scores that, more or less, deserve to be here. Wicked didn’t linger in the memory as much as I’d have liked, a symptom of being bound so tightly to Sondheim’s melodies that an identity of its own never really develops. Even so, a John Powell Oscar nomination is a John Powell Oscar nomination. Kris Bowers’s score for The Wild Robot made for an eclectic accompaniment to the well-made but curiously overpraised animated movie.
What would I have put in the category: The question here is 'what wouldn't I have put in the category?' Young Woman and the Sea and Inside Out 2 made the category's shortlist and beyond that? Here, The Lord of the Rings: the War of the Rohirrim, That Christmas, Fly Me to the Moon, Saturday Night. (Side rant: You’d think, at the very least, that this film would squeak into this category for some kind of representation, but it was completely shut out. Granted, the only true things about the film were the names of the people involved and the date on which it took place but, really, much phonier biopics have cleaned up at the Oscars.) Seriously, do the people choosing the nominees for this category even like music?!
My pick: The Wild Robot

Original Song: As with a number of the major categories, I have experienced a grand total of none of these nominees, so anything I say won’t have any effect on anything ever.
What would I have put in the category: Not a single movie song in the past year struck me as memorable as the song parodies from Ricky Stanicky. For real, I would buy an album of those tunes. (And I’m still sore about last year. None of the songs from Wonka were nominated, much less shortlisted. How do you justify that?!)
My pick: “Never Too Late”. Why? It’s Elton John, mate.

Animated Feature: All the expected movies received nominations. The least known of this year's nominees, Memoir of a Snail, received only one screening in the last few weeks (though who knows; maybe, it will expand like Robot Dreams - the least known of last year's nominees - did...and I'll probably end up considering this the worthiest of an Oscar win). My favorite animated movie of the year was Inside Out 2, though the popular opinion is leaning toward The Wild Robot. If it had focused more on the robot and less on the animals, it would be the most deserving. Flow truly blew me away with its animation and lack of dialogue. It would be just as worthy as IO2.
What would I have put in the category: Nothing. Much as I liked Kung Fu Panda 4, it was never gonna happen.
My pick: Flow.

Visual Effects: Haven't seen Wicked or Dune and I don't care how accomplished the effects are in Better Man. Somebody - anybody - needs to send a message to Hollywood: if this (and the Legos of Piece by Piece) are the best you can do in spicing up music biopics, stop making music biopics! Alien: Romulus was decent, even with the in-my-opinion-not-as-bad-as-people-whine-about deepfake of Ian Holm's Ash. Even now, it struck me as organic to the story. Weyland-Yutani would seriously not have copies of their androids? The motion capture effects of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes were the most impressive, perfectly on brand with the reboot franchise.
What would I have put in the category: Twisters had some impressive effects depicting its hurricanes.
My pick: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Make-Up and Hairstyling: Much like a multiple-choice question, you can automatically delete two answers to improve chances of getting credit, so adios, Wicked and Emilia Perez. The makeup for Nosferatu was incredible, turning Bill Skarsgard into the bloodsucker and, as I understand it, A Different Man changed Sebastian Stan to look like he had the disorder that his co-star, Adam Pearson, suffers from in real life. Still, the 800-pound gorilla in this category is The Substance. Love the ending or hate it (*coughpussiescough*), the makeup for Monstro Elisasue was incredible. If the film has a chance of winning any category, it is surely this.
What would I have put in the category: It's fine the way it is.
My pick: The Substance

I know less than nothing about these next few categories, so no 'what would I have put in the category?' here. Just simple, 'names from a hat' bullcrap.

Animated Short Subject: By definition, these have to be the least depressing nominees of these next few categories. Reading up on them - because the days of me actually wanting to see these in a theater like I did in my 30s are slipping away fast - I’m gonna go with Magic Candies.

Live-Action Short Subject: The best thing I can say about the nominees of this year‘s category is that none of them are indulging in heavy-handed racial issues and depressing tones, practically begging for Oscars (though it seems like some of the shorts tiptoe up to that line, judging by their plot summaries on Letterboxd). I vote optimism in this category. I’m Not a Robot.

Documentary Short Subject: Two stories of brutality and forgiveness, two stories of women in music and something that looks at the horror that a number of people face in the streets every day. I really see this going to Incident.

Documentary Feature: No Jim Henson Idea Man. No Music by John Williams. No fucking way. Still, any one of the actual nominees winning would be enough to piss off the current administration, so okay, let’s play ball. Porcelain War.

International Feature: A mild dilemma: do I my embrace my cynical side and pick Flow, believing that the Academy is still slobbering the knob of The Wild Robot and they’re gonna wanna give the loser something or do I listen to my heart? Hell with it. I’m going with heart. The Girl with the Needle.

Sound: I don’t know. Let’s focus on the movie centered around music. Ah-ah-ah-ah, the non-controversial movie centered around music. Ah-ah-ah-ah, the non-controversial, but-still-likely-to-be-shut-out-of-its-other-categories movie centered around music. A Complete Unknown.

Sunday March 2nd. Who will be Carrie before the prom and who will be Carrie after? I guess we'll find out then.

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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Ah, yes, the remake era.

And so, we make it to the 2000s. Despite the proliferation of horror remakes, some of them ended up amazing and the comparatively original movies were good, too.

Best Picture
American Psycho
Coraline
Frailty
The Mist
28 Days Later


Best Actor
Christian Bale, American Psycho
Bruce Campbell, Bubba Ho-Tep
Crispin Glover, Willard
Ron Perlman, Hellboy
Kurt Russell, Death Proof

Best Actress
Halle Berry, Gothika
Vera Farmiga, Orphan
Nicole Kidman, The Others
Michelle Pfeiffer, What Lies Beneath
Naomi Watts, The Ring

Best Supporting Actor
Ossie Davis, Bubba Ho-Tep
R. Lee Ermey, Willard
Woody Harrelson, Zombieland
John Hurt, Hellboy
Matthew Lillard, Thir13en Ghosts

Best Supporting Actress
Carrie Fisher, Sorority Row
Isabelle Fuhrman, Orphan
Pam Grier, Bones
Marcia Gay Harden, The Mist
Gena Rowlands, The Skeleton Key

Best Director
Orphan, Jaume Collet-Serra
Hellboy, Guillermo del Toro
Bones, Ernest Dickerson
Frailty, Bill Paxton
Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright 

Best Original Screenplay
Bones, written by Tim Metcalfe & Adam Simon
Dead Silence, screenplay by Leigh Whannell, story by James Wan and Leigh Whannell
Frailty, written by Brent Hanley
Shaun of the Dead, written by Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg
Trick ‘r Treat, written by Michael Dougherty

Best Adapted Screenplay
American Psycho, screenplay by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis
Coraline, screenplay by Henry Selick, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman
House of Wax, screenplay by Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes, suggested by the short story "The Wax Works" by Charles S. Belden
Sorority Row, screenplay by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, based on the screenplay Seven Sisters by Mark Rosman
Willard, screenplay by Glen Morgan, based on the 1971 screenplay by Gilbert Ralston and the novel "Ratman's Notebooks" by Stephen Gilbert

Best Cinematography
Bones, Flavio Labiano
Dawn of the Dead, Matthew F. Leonetti
The Forgotten, Anastas Michos
Hellboy, Guillermo Navarro
Willard, Robert McLachlan

Best Editing
Dawn of the Dead, Niven Howie
Dog Soldiers, Neil Marshall
Final Destination 2, Eric Sears
The Ring, Craig Wood
28 Days Later, Chris Gill

Best Production Design
Hellboy
Hollow Man
House of Wax
Thir13en Ghosts
Van Helsing


Best Costume Design
Bones, Dana Campbell
Dawn of the Dead, Denise Cronenberg
Hellboy, Wendy Partridge
Van Helsing, Gabriella Pescucci and Carlo Poggioli
Zombieland, Magali Guidasci

Best Original Score
Darkness Falls, Brian Tyler
Hellboy, Marco Beltrami
House of Wax, John Ottman
Van Helsing, Alan Silvestri
Willard, Shirley Walker

Best Original Song
"According to Plan", Corpse Bride, music and lyrics by Danny Elfman
"Other Father Song", Coraline, music and lyrics by John Flansburgh and John Linnell
"Remains of the Day", Corpse Bride, music and lyrics by Danny Elfman
"Tear Me Up", Sorority Row, music and lyrics by Lucian Piane
"Tears to Shed", Corpse Bride, music and lyrics by Danny Elfman

Best Sound
Cloverfield
The Hills Have Eyes
The Mist
The Ring
28 Days Later


Best Visual Effects
Cloverfield
Dog Soldiers
Final Destination 2
The Mist
Slither 


Best Make-Up
Black Sheep
Hellboy
Thir13en Ghosts
Van Helsing
Zombieland


Best International Feature
Black Sheep (New Zealand)
Brotherhood of the Wolf (France)
Dog Soldiers (Luxembourg)
Ginger Snaps (Canada)
The Host (South Korea)

Will I do the 60s? Does anyone care?

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Friday, February 14, 2025

Love and Bullets (Lalo Schifrin)

 


Phoenix cop Charlie Congers (Charles Bronson) is charged with retrieving Jackie Pruit (Jill Ireland) from Switzerland, as the authorities believe that her proximity to mob boss Joe Bomposa (Rod Steiger) could be sufficient enough to put him behind bars. A needlessly cruel narrative choice near the end aside, this is an entertaining and scenic yarn. Bronson is Bronson and he's good at that and Ireland's Dolly Parton cosplay is surprisingly endearing.

In the midst of one of the most creatively fruitful periods of his career, Lalo Schifrin responded well to the international setting with one of his most colorful scores (the "Opening" alone spotlights harpsichord, cimbalom and harmonica!).

Love and Bullets
composed & conducted
by
Lalo Schifrin

1. Opening 2.16
2. Mourning 0.27
3. Bombed 0.16
4. Drive to Train 0.52
5. Mountain View 0.08
6. Biding Time 0.34
7. On the Move 1.45
8. Lobo's Last Ride 1.15
9. Conflicted 0.40
10. Call to Vittorio/Stakeout 1.28
11. Strudel Promise 0.13
12. Being Watched...and Followed 2.30
13. Kandersteg 1.11
14. Detour 0.49
15. Cold Pursuit 0.49
16. Eat at Joe's 0.15
17. Travel Montage 1.36
18. Fox in the Hen House 1.38
19. The Search Continues 2.31
20. Fast Getaway 1.56
21. Peaceful Slumber/Homemade Weapons 3.48
22. Shopping Spree 0.27
23. Made 2.10
24. Sneaking Around 3.33
25. Catching the Boat 1.25
26. No Driver 1.13
27. Relaxing Night 1.55
28. Goodbyes 0.36
29. All for Nothing 1.03
30. Back to America 0.30
31. Take a Swim 0.41
32. Water Torture 0.54
33. Drive to Joe's 0.24
34. Charlie Meets Joe 1.31
35. End Credits 1.36

Here's a sample:


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Friday, January 31, 2025

The film music of 2024.

So many scores, so little patience.

Well, may as well get this back from memory.

My favorite scores of 2024:

      
      (Michael Abels - Back Lot)
Abels brilliantly (and appropriately) channeled Thomas Newman for the underrated Adjustment Bureau variant.
Favorite tracks: "Main Title", "White Tears Meter", "Run to Destiny"

      (Jeymes Samuel - Milan)
Samuel‘s lush score for his own biblical epic harkens back to the music of the Golden Age.
Favorite tracks: "Mary Magdalene", "Those Who Are About to Die Salute You", "Walking on Water"

      (Daniel Pemberton - Platoon)
Pemberton‘s music is delightful; a spirited accompaniment to the 60s-set romcom.
Favorite tracks: "Kelly Jones, Creative Director", "Sketchbook", "Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins"

      (Alan Silvestri - Sony Classical)
Silvestri’s heart-on-sleeve music once again achieves the sincerity that Zemeckis’s movie strived for.
Favorite tracks: "Extinction", "God Help Me", "End Credits"

      (Andrea Datzman - Walt Disney)
Datzman follows up Giacchino’s original with style, highlighted by a wry motif for Anxiety.
Favorite tracks: "Riley Protection System", "To Protect and Disserve", "Done Track Mind"

      (Marco Beltrami - Back Lot)
A great improvement over his pallid Silent Night, Beltrami’s music for John Woo‘s remake is nicely colorful.
Favorite tracks: "Candles for the Dead", "Morgue Shootout", "Zee's Reckoning"

      (Stephen Gallagher - WaterTower)
Almost like Basil Poledouris and Frederic Talgorn had a secret love child and he grew up to write this exceptional score.
Favorite tracks: "The Witan", "Edoras Burns", "A Shield-Maiden of Rohan"

      (Chris Benstead - Atlantic)
Benstead tipped his cap to Morricone with his lively score to the enjoyable World War II caper.
Favorite tracks: "A Team of Misfits", "Beer Bossa", "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"

      (Dave Metzger - Walt Disney)
Metzger‘s history as an orchestrator served him well, Zimmer‘s original melodies given a new coat of paint.
Favorite tracks: "The Race", "Elephant Stampede", "The Earth Will Shake"

      (John Powell - Netflix)
Perhaps, Powell‘s most purely entertaining score of the year; tuneful and bursting with energy.
Favorite tracks: "Washington By-the-Sea", "The Twins' Christmas", "Boxing Day"

      (Kris Bowers - Back Lot)
Bowers’s multifaceted music is far closer to perfection than the film for which it was written.
Favorite tracks: "System Breach", "Rockmouth", "Robots vs. the Wild"


(Amelia Warner - Walt Disney)
Warner’s driving music hints at a deservedly promising future in film scoring.
Favorite tracks: "Sisters", "We Go to England or Die Trying", "Beach Celebration"


Other good scores: 

Bolt from the Blue (Xander Rodzinski), Drive-Away Dolls (Carter Burwell), Forever Mine (Anne-Kathrin Dern), The 4:30 Movie (Bear McCreary), Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Dario Marianelli), IF (Michael Giacchino), Megalopolis (Osvaldo Golijov), No Time to Spy: A Loud House Movie (Jonathan Hylander), Saturday Night (Jon Batiste), Space: the New Frontier (Alan Williams), Treasure Trackers (Robin Hoffmann), Twisters (Benjamin Wallfisch) and Unfrosted (Christophe Beck)

My favorite CDs of 2024:

Arsene Lupin (Debbie Wiseman - Music Box) - The absence of the theme song is a minor complaint against an otherwise complete presentation of one of the most exciting and colorful scores of the 21st-century.

“Bond, James Bond.” (John Barry/George Martin - La La Land) - It’s not much of a stretch to say that the label outdid themselves with these releases from the funk of Martin’s Live and Let Die to the interstellar thrills of Moonraker and the brassy fun of Goldfinger.

Death Hunt (Jerrold Immel - Dragon’s Domain) - The almost forgotten outdoor adventure received an appropriately sweeping score courtesy of “Dallas” composer Immel.

Death of a Gunfighter/Skullduggery (Oliver Nelson - La La Land) - Nelson is not very well known even amongst film music fans (even I am barely familiar with his work), though this double header of his inventive scores should change that.

Dinosaur (James Newton Howard - Intrada) - The first of Howard’s animated scores is exciting and rich in African flavor.

Edge of Sanity (Frederic Talgorn - Intrada) - Talgorn‘s albums are all too scarce and I have no doubt that this score for the forgotten Jekyll and Hyde variant is just as exceptional as you’d expect.

Fear (Carter Burwell - Intrada) - Though the film was little more than junior league Fatal Attraction, Burwell’s music skillfully dug at the psychological layers hinted at by the script.

The Godfather, Part II (Nino Rota & Carmine Coppola - La La Land) - Rota returned for the sequel and, aided by the director’s father, rode this comeback to Oscar glory.

Nightbreed (Danny Elfman - Intrada) - It took a little time, but Elfman‘s beautiful music for the uneven Clive Barker thriller is here in full.

Torn Curtain (Bernard Herrmann/John Addison - La La Land) - It’s always a treat when a replacement score and a rejected score share the same disk space and it’s nice to have a deluxe presentation for one of the most infamous examples of all time.


Other great CDs of 2024:

Backdraft (Hans Zimmer - Intrada)

Backstairs at the White House (Morton Stevens - Dragon's Domain)

Blade II (Marco Beltrami - Varese CD Club)

Eye of the Needle (Miklos Rozsa - Varese CD Club)

The Joe Kraemer Collection - Vol. 1 (Dragon's Domain)

The John Ottman Collection - Vol. 1 (Dragon's Domain)

Out of Africa (John Barry - Intrada)
 
Resurrection (Maurice Jarre - Intrada)

Spider-Man 2 (Danny Elfman - La La Land)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Gabriel Yared - Music Box)


Random thoughts:

The r/soundtracks sub-Reddit gave me a lot to chew on this past year. A thread wondered if film soundtracks as a medium are dying as a number of scores - such as The Crow, Y2K and The Killer's Game - didn’t even see release from their respective studios' soundtrack shingles. This was my response almost verbatim: "As a film score collector for the last 25 years, this is depressing beyond reason. It was bad enough when studios stopped licensing their scores to labels like Varese Sarabande and Milan for physical releases and decided 'who needs to bother with all of that noise when we can just throw digital files of them on Spotify and call it a day?'. Unacceptable.

You would really think that, with movies costing upwards of nine figures these days, they could carve out a quarter (or half) of $1 million and get a quality score recorded and put on a physical disc. Nowadays, one in ten scores for movies in current release end up getting a physical CD, but quite often, that particular score is not worth the expense, but that is a conversation for another time.

I truly don’t know what else to say about this other than to hope that studios get their shit together and realize that film scores have as much value to a movie production as every other element and that they should be preserved as such."

Even more, with rare exceptions, themes seem to be on their way out too. r/soundtracks also had a thread recently where people offered unpopular opinions on film music. One stated that "the reason leitmotif and melody are missing from modern films is because, whether we like it or not, people are tired of it and find it childish and annoying. Also, producers are afraid of any sort of feedback from focus groups that the music was distracting or too on-the-nose, so they go for safer choices which don’t draw as much attention to themselves, which feeds into a cycle of audiences being less accustomed to hearing them and reacting negatively if they do”. Not helping matters, as far as I’m concerned, are filmmakers that won’t try to push back against this. I’ll tell you this much for free: if I was a film maker - and God willing, I will someday be - I would sooner drink battery acid than tell a composer to not write themes for their scores.

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Friday, January 24, 2025

The movies of 2024.

Yeah, we need movies more than freaking ever, these days.

My favorite movies of 2024:

10. Hundreds of Beavers - I was worried that people were overselling this by calling it a live-action cartoon, but the description is very accurate. See it in a theater, if you can.

9. Juror #2 - The only honorable thing for Warner Bros. chairman (and enemy of art) David Zaslav to do is find some kind of machine to sap away his lifeforce and give it to Clint Eastwood if it allows the latter to make more unpretentious thrillers like this.

8. Hit Man - Low-key but enjoyable story of a teacher and his unusual (and dangerous) hobby. Watching this, it’s no wonder Glen Powell is a star.

7. The Bikeriders - What if Martin Scorsese applied his Goodfellas/Casino template to the story of a motorcycle gang? It’d probably look like this.

6. Trap - It’s worth all the strange dialogue and oddball plot twists in the world to get such solid genre pieces from M. Night Shyamalan.

5. Carry-On - It is impossible for me to be objective about the ‘if you don’t do this (illegal) thing, we’ll kill your loved ones’ subgenre, so I’ll just call this one a winner.

4. Inside Out 2 - Granted, the Pixar team was playing the same song this time out, but it’s a good tune and the fuller orchestrations are delightful.

3. Saturday Night - The only true things about this movie may be the names of the people and the day it took place, but who the hell cares? Amusing, affecting and perfectly cast down the line.

2. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare - Guy Ritchie tamps down his time-jumping sensibilities to deliver a straight-up WWII adventure. I’d watch two or three more of these if the same crew joins up.

1. Jim Henson Idea Man - A truly heartwarming look at a singular talent and how his ambition created practically a new genre of entertainment.

Runners-up:

Abigail - Radio Silence delivers another bloody and (bloody enjoyable) contained horror movie with a wry sense of humor.

The Beekeeper - What seems on the surface to be an ordinary Jason Statham vehicle is engagingly eccentric.

Flow - A truly spellbinding animated film that relies on visuals to tell its story.

Gladiator II - Much pulpier than the first movie, but one can’t deny that Ridley Scott has a way with spectacle, and Denzel Washington is incredibly entertaining.

The Killer's Game - Fine mix of solid love story and cartoonish yet fun fight scenes.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes - Meanders a bit, but still an exciting and evocative addition to a surprisingly durable franchise.

Music by John Williams - Little more than a stirring tribute to a master musician and who could ask for more?

Rebel Ridge - Modern variation on First Blood weaves some strong social commentary within its action beats.

Snack Shack - Quite likable coming of age comedy-drama that captures a real feeling for time and place.

The Substance - A truly strange and also truly compelling variation on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Underrated:

The American Society of Magical Negroes, Drive-Away Dolls, Kung Fu Panda 4 and Y2K

Overrated:

Didi, The Wild Robot and Your Monster

Streaming exclusives that should’ve been released in theaters:

Carry-On, Hit Man, Ricky Stanicky

Theatrical movies that should’ve been sent to streaming:

Afraid, Venom: the Last Dance

My favorite things in movies - 2024:

The baptism in The Book of Clarence

Channing Tatum having the time of his life as Gambit in Deadpool and Wolverine

Chevy Chase meets Milton Berle in Saturday Night

Demi Moore gets her makeup just so in The Substance

Hugh Grant uses various incarnations of Monopoly to explain religion in Heretic

The ice skating scene in Saturday Night

The interview montage in Hit Man

"Maybe, I just woke up." - Carry-On

Reggie cleans house in Bad Boys: Ride or Die

The showcase of the various types in The American Society of Magical Negroes

The song parodies of Ricky Stanicky

"They need us more than ever now." - Red One

Random thoughts:

- I had heard things about I Saw the TV Glow. I thought it could've been an interesting horror-adjacent movie for me to watch in October. As a friendless introvert who got lost in (now that I look back on it) cheesy 90s television (and still does, in a sense), the first half of this movie kicked me in the stomach with how relatable it was. But then, the second half happened and it flew off in directions I didn’t exactly hate, per se, but I just couldn’t relate to any more. It took an episode of The Horror Virgin to get me to understand the (barely sub) text that the writer/director was laying down. If not for that episode, I'd have been content to place this film on my ‘overrated’ list, but now, I think I need to carve out some space and really give it another look knowing what I know now.

- The Wild Robot was a critical and commercial success and quite possibly, a front runner for the year‘s Best Animated Feature Oscar. If I’m being perfectly honest, when the film focused on the titular robot - beautifully voiced by Lupita Nyong’o - it was every bit the masterpiece that people claimed it to be…but every so often, it’d focus on a less interesting (or in most cases, annoying) animal character, and the spell would be broken. The character of Fink, in particular, I liked much better when he was named Nick Wilde. (Hell, this wasn’t even the best animated movie with 'Robot' in the title that I’ve seen in the last 12 months. Robot Dreams eats this movie's lunch, dinner, and the following day's breakfast.)

- Seriously, are we just not gonna go into the potential platform that got Walter Peck elected Mayor of New York City in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire? No? We're just leaving that up in the air? Well, shit.

- The remake of The Crow was greeted with near universal vitriol. Whether, it was a natural revulsion to remakes or because the original was seen as some sort of unimpeachable masterpiece or both, Lord knows. I saw the 1994 original for the first time last summer and though it had a strong, visual aesthetic and a marvelous performance from the late Brandon Lee, I was left with the most overwhelming feeling of ‘…that’s it?’. The ridiculous wrinkle with Danny Huston‘s kingpin villain aside (Demon powers? Seriously?!), I found the remake perfectly cromulent.

- So, yeah, The Garfield Movie. The animated movie of 2024 for which my hopes were sky high. The director of Cats Don’t Dance and The Emperor’s New Groove, Mark Dindal, had been lost in the woods for some time, but the film was a box-office smash, reinvigorating his good name for years to come. Now, if only the goddamn thing had been any good. You can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers hate the ostensible title character as much as he hates Mondays. This movie bears all the signifiers of ‘Christ’s sakes, it doesn’t need to be good! It just has to keep the ankle biters off my back for an hour and a half!’ cinema: lame humor, obvious needle drops, bright colors, painful product placement. Now, it’s not illegal to have all of this stuff in a movie geared toward children…yet, but if a movie is ostensibly about the famous comic strip (and cartoon) character Garfield, shouldn’t it be…about Garfield? The cat is practically an extra in the movie that bears his name and Jon doesn’t fare all that much better, but why waste valuable narrative real estate on familiar characters when we have to establish brand new ones like Garfield’s deadbeat dad and the star-crossed cow couple and the overbearing feline villainess that sounds like the overbearing broad from The Fall Guy? Sadly, the voice acting in this movie - with one exception - is commiserate with the total lack of care cited elsewhere. Harvey Guillen makes a valiant effort following in the footsteps of Gregg Berger by doing a lot with very little as the voice of Odie, but no one else in the big-name voice cast sounded like they wanted to be there and it shows. But like I said, the film was a box office smash. For all the money it made, it would be monstrous to not put a little more effort into the inevitable sequel. It’s not illegal to put effort in a children’s movie…yet. I mean, this ain’t a goddamn Minions movie, you know?

- The year in PG-13 f-bombs: Venom: the Last Dance and my favorite - Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

- Last year saw no fewer than half a dozen youth-oriented period pieces. The most memorable aspect of these movies, unfortunately, is just how over-the-top some of their mother characters were. Setting the story amidst the Terri Schiavo situation was...certainly a choice made by Suncoast's writer/director, but the thing that will stick with me most is how they pulled a Freaky Friday on the dynamic of The Edge of Seventeen, making the mother the incredible pain in the ass and the daughter the one frustrated at being unable to deal with it. Laura Linney is a terrific actress, but I can’t think of a moment in this movie where I didn’t want to slap her character silly. The 4:30 Movie saw Kevin Smith casting a glance at his teenage years while struggling mightily to fill 88 minutes of runtime, so he had Rachel Dratch (fresh from her American Home Shield commercials, apparently) stretch one excruciating minute of material into ten as the main character’s incredibly overbearing mother. Perhaps the universe was living up to Ian Fleming‘s line about once being happenstance, twice being coincidence and three times being enemy action, because by the time Lisa Frankenstein rolled around, I was not prepared for Carla Gugino‘s feature-length Lady Tremaine audition reel. However, it was gratifying to see that the mother characters of Snack Shack, Y2K and especially Didi were comparatively normal.

- A Quiet Place: Day One was quite effective, but it had another logic hole that matched the ones from the original movie: I don’t care how much that pizza place meant to you and your father. When there are monsters about, you get the fuck to safety, period.

- Despite strong word-of-mouth and critical notices, The Fall Guy was an unfortunate flop this past summer. More ridiculous than anything were all the people online bemoaning that an original movie like this can’t succeed in today’s IP-obsessed Hollywood, which only reinforces the need for a more widespread version of what TV Land used to be; even a cursory amount of research would reveal that this was an 80s TV show with a kick-ass theme song. I thought the film was pretty good fun save for one element that even now struck me as incredibly phony: the romance between Ryan Gosling‘s Colt and Emily Blunt's Jody. So, she was able to waste valuable studio time and money redoing one stunt just to punish Colt? Also, late in the movie, Colt was running from the gun-toting bad guys, but there was still time to talk on the phone with Jody to try and repair their relationship? That does not pass the smell test!

- For roughly 90% of its running time, Your Monster was a charming variant on "Beauty and the Beast"…but then came the ending. I don’t know what it is this past year with female writer/directors and shitty endings to otherwise damn good genre movies, but that needs to stop. Melissa Barrera’s Laura was an aspiring actress who was diagnosed with cancer. Her playwright boyfriend, Edmund Donovan‘s Jacob, responded to this the way any good-hearted individual would: he dumped her in the midst of treatment and, to add insult to injury, he decides to cast someone else in his play's leading role that he developed with and for her. In most circumstances, a guy like this would absolutely deserve to be torn apart by a monster, but this is one instance where an 'I am the bigger person' ending would’ve worked perfectly. At the end of the movie, however, Laura - having recovered not long after the movie began and ultimately, receiving the lead role that was initially hers - confronts her scumbag ex-boyfriend, Tommy Dewey's Monster waiting in the wings, then the Monster charges Jacob, the lights go out and when they come back up, it’s just Laura on stage, covered in blood and standing next to Jacob's dead body. Apparently, there never was a Monster. What a tweest! I’m sure that writer/director Caroline Lindy thought she was oh-so-clever with her little Fight Club homage, but think about it: what in the hell is Laura going to tell the authorities, much less the audience that witnessed this gruesome scene? "A monster did it!" Good luck seeing the outside of a women's penitentiary or an insane asylum for the rest of your life.

- Argylle, or ‘yo dawg, I heard you like twists, so I put a twist in your twist so you can twist while you twist’, was acceptably mindless for a while. However, the overwhelming need to throw rug-pulling twists at the audience made the experience a trial to endure. (I’m not saying that I exclaimed, “What the fuck?!” at the twist involving Bryan Cranston‘s evil agency head, but I’m not not saying it, either.) I feel like I’d be better off sticking with Romancing the Stone or Knight and Day or The Long Kiss Goodnight or any of the other movies this one so blithely rips off. To end on a positive note, though I suppose ‘positive’ is a relative term here: chunky Bryce Dallas Howard is really doing it for me.

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Thursday, January 09, 2025

If only it were Unseen by me.

What should’ve been a simple work assignment was wrecked by the scanners not working like they should be. In case you think this is another post of me whining, read on.

As ever when I’m in the office, I while away the time listening to podcasts. Pods Against Tomorrow sounds promising, especially as one of their most recent episodes covered The Unseen, which I just laid into in my previous post.

While they felt that the little girl was annoying, the hosts’ opinions of the film, for the most part, matched my own, compounded by one of them citing my Letterboxd review.

It’s nice to get some acknowledgment that what I do matters in the world. No matter what else happens today, I’m on cloud nine.

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