Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021): 4.5/5

Or, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE VALLEY (in 70mm)

Easy, breezy effervescence anchored by two absolutely impish charmers. So organic and delightful. Best PTA has done in a long time. Extra half star for Alana Haim who is a fucking SUPERNOVA star.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021): 3.5/5

A hypnotic and absurd satire on the childish, misinformed and hateful state of contemporary life. It definitely won't be for everyone, not least because of the hardcore pornography scattered throughout and the bizarre expression of feminist fury that is the conclusion. I will definitely re-watch this film at some point down the line. Also, it will be interesting to see how this film is going to age, as it is firmly planted in the year 2020, with the ubiquity of face masks throughout (sometimes worn under the nose, and commented on by other characters; Covid is never a major topic, though, merely a nuisance on the side that the characters are dealing with), but also its highly political themes. During the runtime I thought of both Chris Marker and Abbas Kiarostami. Those are lofty comparisons, especially for a movie so raunchy, but the unique blending of fact and fiction bears all the requisite hallmarks.

The Humans (Stephen Karam, 2021): 2/5

Most films and stories begin with indirect commotion to set the scene. An establishment of people, places and things relevant to the experience you're about to have. Idle chit-chat, a roaming camera perspective that hasn't settled on its primary subject yet. What THE HUMANS presupposes is, what if that were the entire movie?

By the time an actual non-ambient "set piece" occurs for the first time, the movie is 5 minutes from ending and I realized I'd spent 100+ waiting for it to start. It's a challenging way to tell a story - through off-hand gestures, fleeting dialogue exchanges, and heavily symbolic use of physical space. It's like you're strolling past the door frame through which the movie is happening but you never really stop there to observe it at length. Interesting, yes. Altman must be beaming in pride from the afterlife.

But I needed something to grasp onto. If the grand theme is something along the lines of: families are fragile and messy, corrosive and rotting, full of pain and excruciatingly mundane, but also unbreakable, a lighthouse in the stormy sea of life, then I get it and I got it within the first 5 minutes, hoping for an expansion, a deepening, a series of subsequent examples that really stoked some cerebral or emotional embers. Relationships can be dreadful. Okay. I must be missing something here. Intricate, unsettling sound design, arguably meticulous blocking and some observant bits of conversational nuance can't mean that much to me in a vacuum. Despite the A+ cast, this is the waiting room of films.

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Aleksandre Kobridze, 2021): 3.5/5

Still processing this but it's really quite lovely if you can persist through the lulls and grab onto the details as required. I really appreciated it as a romantic fable that didn’t try to manipulate you, and as a city symphony.

Spencer (Pablo Larrain, 2021): 3/5

Spencer soars in its technicals, and Stewart is a genuine doppelganger here. The Greenwood score, j'adore, especially when it's all plasticky beads and chintzy jazz, and Claire Mathon shot the hell out of this.

Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021): 3/5

Textbook Verhoeven. Her only crime was being horny and theatrical.

Last Night in SoHo (Edgar Wright, 2021): 2/5

Honestly the whole movie hinges on the wigs not looking stupid and they kind of do.

King Richard (Reinaldo Marcus Green, 2021): 3/5

This doesn't make any sudden moves and sometimes that's the assignment.

The Last Duel (Ridley Scott, 2021): 3/5

“Customary protestations.” If I feel angry at the state of current society I guess I only need to watch a historical drama to remind me of the progress we've made.

The most surprising thing about this medieval France Rashomon is how little the remembered accounts of the three characters differ in their basic facts, only disputing the degree of Matt Damon's loserdom.

tick, tick...BOOM! (Lin Manuel Miranda, 2021): 1.5/5

Glad theater kids finally got their BLACK PANTHER. Kinda a problem though when your least favorite part of a musical is the musical numbers.

Passing (Rebecca Hall, 2021): 3.5/5

A lot to admire here, especially in how confident Rebecca Hall's direction is in knowing that this is her first feature film behind the camera - and also in what she brings out from both Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. Extra half star for the queer subtext.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Michael Showalter, 2021): 3/5

Great to watch the incredible journey of Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain’s jaws continuously grow over the course of 2 hours.

The Beta Test (Jim Cummings, 2021): 3/5

The tone of Eyes Wide Shut with the script of a 40s hard-boiled film noir that has the anxious danger of American Psycho lurking just beneath the film's surface. Juggles so many different ideas and critiques that it is on the verge of thematic incomprehensibility at every waking moment, but Cummings's performance is so maniacal (and honestly probably pretty accurate) that it's not too difficult to get onto this movie's wavelength for a bit. It's not fully cohesive, but it certainly holds your attention.

There's Someone Inside Your House (Patrick Brice, 2021): 1.5/5

Pretty blah. Not sure why Brice is concentrating on cheap chills rather than making more uneasy comedies like THE OVERNIGHT. What's that? Ka-ching, you say?

Introducing, Selma Blair (Rachel Fleit, 2021): 3/5

"This is what happens that I don't want people to see," says actress Selma Blair, as her comfort dog jumps off her lap and her speech begins to painfully shut down into a pall of spastic tremors.

You can't watch this scene without feeling profoundly moved.

Nine Days (Edson Oda, 2020): 1.5/5

Way too cute and superficially inspirational for my taste. Also, why is all the tech in this non-Earthly realm specifically from about four decades ago?

L'humanite (Bruno Dumont, 1999): 1/5

Soporifically uninteresting on every level save for its sheer cussed unconventionality. And Schotte's bizarro performance pretty much kills the movie for me. A stultifying debut. Any debate about the identity of the killer or the details of the murder investigation is utterly irrelevant.

Polisse (Maiwenn, 2011): 2/5

Tonally, a total mess. Vignettes veer from comedy to melodrama to kitchen sink drama to after-school-special and back again. The end is a baffling--yet gorgeously shot--moment that is completely unearned since no character is developed enough to make the beats really land. Would have made a gripping television show, but, I think CSI's got that covered.

rewatched Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984): 1.5/5

I kind of hate Sam Shepard, to be honest (as a writer, including for the stage)—his spill-your-guts approach to dramaturgy, while catnip to actors, tends to be the exact opposite of what moves me, and the extended finale here, which I assume the movie's ardent fans treasure, still seems to me that most egregious of sins, the regurgitated backstory. (And what a weird way of saying he was an abusive pedophile. But ok... as long as he is sad about it!)

Also, maybe I’m too stupid to understand Harry Dean Stanton's appeal but he doesn’t have the chops in the form of silent charisma to carry a movie like this.

Gervaise (Rene Clement, 1956): 4/5

Perhaps the ultimate example of what the Cahiers du Cinema critics meant when they were denouncing "la qualité française." The thing about "la qualité française" is that it was still, well, quality. GERVAISE fits the Howard Hawks definition of a masterpiece containing three great scenes and no bad ones: a wince-inducing sudsy fight at a laundromat, a long dinner with a bunch of miniature arcs in its own right, and a feverish cup-massage scene that goes out of control. Lots of fantastic little details along the way – mud on boots in the Louvre, a bunch of tiny sight gags that reveal character at a show – and Maria Schell is a great lead.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jaromil Jires, 1970): 1.5/5

Narratively in shambles, as deeply surrealist stuff tends to be. There's also a great deal of unintentionally silly imagery being put to poor use (e.g. just about all of the Nosferatu-looking demons, the powdery make-up of the mother, etc.).

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Denis Cote, 2013): 1/5

SPOILER ALERT:

Strictly speaking, no they didn't.

The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson, Michael Lindsay-Hogg): 5/5

Massive. A band grinding out songs and arrangements, working hard and keeping things light and loose, inviting chance and grabbing ideas as they arise. You never get to see a band actually do this extremely common thing, and in this case WTF it’s the Beatles. Big takehome is how much John and Paul love each other. John would do anything for Paul except take seriously shit songs like Maxwell and The Long and Winding Road. Like late QT, Paul’s genius can no longer tell the difference between his hits and his misses, and he won’t listen or take hints. 

The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, 2021): 3.5/5

Anderson’s densest text yet, which will turn some people off. His stop-motion stuff and live stuff are merging, and this one is for those folks who didn’t think Grand Budapest had enough frames within frames, models and animated sequences. His movies always get better on re-watch, but I suspect this one will remain in the bottom half of his films for me.

Old Henry (Potsy Ponciroli, 2021): 4/5

Reminiscent of early Coen Bros: a genre piece full of violence and irony. Good script with a perfect (for me) balance between talk (not much) and action (much). 

The Beta Test (Jim Cummings, 2021): 3/5

Lacks the funkiness and warmth of Cummings’ Thunder Road and Wolf of Snow Hollow. The douche-chills fragility and vulnerability remains, and there is a more savage edge here, plus extreme lying. Gah, a miserable character!

Last Night In Soho (Edgar Wright, 2021): 2.5/5

Wright’s most adult movie, which still displays a teenage conception of the world, at best. As always, there are a lot of hot shit CGI transitions and edits that would have felt 10x better if accomplished, however arduously, in camera. I can definitely see how this is Beat Girl (see below) plus Blood and Black Lace (see last movie run-down), so good on ya!? Critical consensus seems to be that the first half is good but the second half bad. But I found the beginning and end to be fun and good and the second act to be boring and bad.

Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2021): 2.5/5

The conflict in this travelogue is nonexistent or else extremely, extremely sublimated. It would certainly fall into the bottom quarter of Bergman’s works. 

Encanto (Jared Bush/Byron Howard/Charise Castro Smith, 2021): 3/5

Unusually, the protagonist does NOT undertake a literal journey. The drama is internal (all taking place in a single house), and although it was too slow for many of the kids in the theatre (Jack was fine), I was surprised by ending’s emotional punch. Chock full of tuneless Lin-Manuel rap songs: yuk. 

Blue, 12 min. (Apichatpong Weerasethakul): 4/5

A woman lies in bed, dreaming and remembering, until her soul catches fire and consumes her and then the world. (Or at least that’s my guess). Huge symbols with the barest cinematic means. 

7362, 10 min. (Pat O’Neill, 1967): 3.5/5

An exercise combining Matisse’s cutouts, Rorschach, acid and naked ladies. What’s not to like?

Angel (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937): 3/5

An uncharacteristically serious outing for Lubitsch, and a better love triangle than, say, Sabrina. Until the end, I really didn’t know which man Dietrich would pick, and I confess I was a bit disappointed by her choice. Best ever love triangle movies? Design for Living? The Philadelphia Story? Casablanca?

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938): 3.5/5

Screenplay by Charles Bracket and Billy Wilder. “The class of people who come here gets worse every year. [looks Gary Cooper over suspiciously] and this year we seem to have next year’s crowd already.“ I’m not sure Claudette Colbert manages to stitch together a coherent character from scene to scene, still each bit is pretty amusing. 

Only Yesterday (Isao Takahata, 1991): 2/5

An unusually straight-forward drama (for an animated movie) about a young woman taking a long vacation in a farming region of Japan and falling In love with a young organic farmer—while also remembering/flashing back to barely relevant moments of her life as a young girl.  

Beat Girl (aka Wild for Kicks) (Edmond T. Gréville, 1960): 3.5/5

A juvenile delinquent, good-girl-gone-wrong movie, capitalizing (I imagine) on the sexual frankness of And God Created Woman four years earlier. Here, English Bardot-look-alike Noëlle Adam (who will later be picked up in the record store by Malcolm McDowell/Alex and mechanically screwed in fast-motion—as well as photographed in the nude by David Hemmings/Thomas) explores the gamey of world of London Strip clubs. Includes a half-dozen real boobs (in 1960) and an extremely sexy, frank and dirty strip club scene for the time—or any time. 

Novelistic-or-Not Film Fest

Re-watching Secret Sunshine just as I finished Franzen’s Crossroads (which I took great pleasure in) prompted me to think about what “novelistic” means. Setting aside the issue of “interiority,” we’re probably talking about movies that are long and full of characters and situations that evolve/change radically. Some movies that seem novelistic in this way, off the top of the dome: The Godfather, Giant, Gone with the Wind… (I’m afraid I’m not really doing much with this definition other than making Jerry’s skin itch, yet I persist).

Secret Sunshine, 2h22min. (Chang-dong Lee, 2007): 5/5

Zeroing in on this idea of a “novelistic” movie, here our heroine moves through the widest possible range of emotions and situations—which demonstrably changes her fundamental attitude toward her life and being alive, multiple times. Unlike so many movies focusing on female pain, her character remains active. Doing things (even if they are self-destructive and meaningless) seems powerful and hopeful—in fact pretty much the essence of the human condition. And Lee is smart to also include a more “basic” character to always ground her suffering in dumb joy and hope. 

Our Time, 2h57min. (Carlos Reygadas, 2018): 2/5

Not novelistic. Lots of beauty here but in its bagginess, indulgence and dissipation, the work it reminds me the most of is Inland Empire. Sicinski claims this tale of a humiliating open marriage is autobiographical enough to have “removed the frame” to the extent that he wonders whether it is even art (!?). If this is true, it is a true act of Fassbinderian masochism.

My Sex Life…or How I Got Into an Argument, 2h 58min. (Arnaud Desplechin, 1996): 2/5

Not novelistic.  A gabfest chock full of solipsistic characters, very much a la The Mother and the Whore and just as dull. I ask myself whether I would have liked and related to these characters if I was closer to their age, but I believe I would have then been if anything even more puzzled and antagonized by this tone poem of the sexy and self-satisfied. 

Once Upon a Time in America, 3h49min. (Sergio Leone, 1984): 3/5

Novelistic. Full of grand and epic street scenes, with 100s of people walking through massive sets or just 40 people casually sitting around. Three time-frames in a dreamy jumble. The kid stuff has a certain Bugsy Malone quality except there’s a lot of 14-year-old prostitution-adjacent content. In fact, the movie is fascinated in general with all possible below-the-belly-button activity, always to embarrassingly dated effect. For example, our fine, handsome and soulful protagonist very certainly commits two screaming, crying rapes. Yippee! To emphasize the grand emotions, the last 30 minutes slows to a deadly, Refn-ish crawl. 

Marketa Lazarová, 2h42min. (Frantisek Vlácil): 2.5/5

Not novelistic. In fact, barely narrative. Hawks, slaughter and miles of mucky pools of standing water in 16th century snow and slush. Do you find Andrei Rublev insufficiently dreamy and incoherent? Then this is the epic for you. 

Love Exposure, 3h57min. (Sion Sono, 2008): 1.5/5

Not novelistic. A silly, broad, adolescent sex comedy. This was something of a sensation in Japan, which doesn’t speak well for the country and its future. 

Margaret, 2h58min. (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011): 4/5

Novelistic. Addressing a complex moral problem (ones own responsibility for and contribution to the everyday horrors of the world) with many casually real scenes, filled with swirling and intense emotions and, at times, great acting. Also on some level a portrait of a divisive post-911 NYC. 

Dune (David Lynch, 1984): 1/5

Laughably bad at times, and even at its best it's just an imbroglio of half-baked "space" ideas; faces, places, names, and historic details come flying at you rapidly without ever being given the time to grow organically. And as if you somehow wouldn't have a hard enough time trying to remember all of the expository bile that's regurgitated at you, DUNE plays by its own rules, making up things as it goes along, never cohering to a single set of governing laws that attempt establish it properly. Its most justifiable reason for existence might be to provide a concrete example of how not to adapt a Sci-Fi Novel to the screen.

Dune (Denis Villenueve, 2021): 2.5/5

Agree with Justin's comment about its production design. Having said that, I didn't feel a single emotion for two and a half hours.

Tell No One (Guillame Canet, 2006): 2/5

The soundtrack is too bad to be true. Not a fan of Francois Cluzet; only here for KST playing a lesbian.

Blue Bayou (Justin Chon, 2021): 2.5/5

This film desperately wants you to believe that there are some good ICE agents in the United States. Bush-league copaganda.

Bitter Moon (Roman Polanski, 1992): 2.5/5

In the seemingly endless saga of films in which Hugh Grant plays a little bitch, this is by far the most unusual.

Lipstick (Lamont Johnson, 1976): 3/5

Weird to see Mariel Hemingway be a literal child and then 3 years later be Woody Allen’s girlfriend in MANHATTAN. Not a pleasant film to watch, but it was better than I expected it to be. Also, it has Anne Bancroft in it, which is always a good sign.

OCTOBER HORROR

Spirits of the Dead (Fellini, Vadim, Malle, 1968): 3/5

A schlocky anthology of three Edgar Allan Poe tales, translated to the screen by some of the biggest names in 1960s European cinema: Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini.

Vadim kicks off the morbid triptych with "Metzengerstein," a semi-incestuous gothic tale of Renaissance Fair proportions.

Malle's segment, "William Wilson," is a fascinating pre-Freudian horror story about a man haunted by his conscience, which externally takes the form of his doppelganger.

Fellini's ghostly final act though, "Toby Dammit," is the standout. A drunk and dissolute movie star is trapped inside a surreal purgatory of his own preeminent making, a spooky place that boasts a swirling band of media and paparazzi who vie for his attention.

Halloween Kills (David Gordon Green, 2021): 0.5/5

1/2 a star for Anthony Michael Hall's absolute commitment to the incredibly terrible lines he had to read.

Snow White: A Tale of Terror (Michael Cohn, 1997): 3/5

Surprisingly effective re-telling of Snow White that brings back a grim(m) edge to the story. Weaver was killing it in ‘97 with Alien Resurrection and the Ice Storm; this is arguably her most uncelebrated role.

Slither (James Gun, 2006): 2.5/5

A woman is forced to eat raw dead animals and gets so fat her skin literally just rips open and she explodes all over everybody. She is quite literally the size of 6 or 7 hippos.

An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981): 3/5

Filed under"decent-but-won't-be-watching-again-anytime-soon" Manila folder. Things start to derail a little for me when David begins his "relationship" with Nurse Alex, a strange detour that continually feels out of place and at tonal odds with the rest of the film.

Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954): 3/5

The creature's appearances provide a charge that transcends the rubber suit (especially when underwater; love the significant role silt plays in one tense sequence), turning this into a sort of proto-Jaws, albeit with an uncanny frisson. Workmanlike rather than virtuoso, but the bluster among the male stick figures amuses and Julia Adams makes an unusually imposing scream queen.

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931): 2.5/5

The weakest of Universal's classic horror movies. "What's that? Running across the lawn?" asks Harker, staring offscreen after Dracula departs. "Looks like a huge dog!" "Or...a wolf?" Even by early-sound standards, the stiff theatricality is overwhelming, and Browning seems oddly uncertain of what to do with the camera. All this film really has going for it is Lugosi and art direction, and one could even make a case for including Lugosi among the art direction. He's effective here the same way that Schwarzenegger is effective in the original Terminator: his foreignness makes him uncanny.

Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931): 3/5

As it is, there's more than enough Expressionist creepiness to compensate for the creaky '31 dialogue scenes. At some point I need to just accept that Hollywood endured a rocky half-decade immediately following the transition to sound, and that even the best films from that period tend to be somewhat compromised. The difference between Whale's work here and Lang's work in M the same year is truly remarkable—the latter seems an order of magnitude more advanced.

The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935): 2/5

I can't believe how little “the bride” is actually in the movie. (She doesn’t make her first appearance until about 6-minutes before the end credits roll.) I understand she is the relative apex of the film, but I don’t think it would’ve hurt to actually develop her—at least somewhat—as a character, rather than merely a concluding element.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh, 1994): 3/5

Branagh characteristically manages to make a very literal adaptation here, reverently underlining every thematic note. The ultimate Cool English Teacher movie.

Lamb (Valdimar Johannsson, 2021): 2.5/5

Did I find this productively about anything? No. But the central image is so arrestingly absurd, and when combined with the incredibly portentous tone, honestly that was enough to keep it afloat.

When a Stranger Calls (Fred Walton, 1979): 3/5

It’s like the first 20 and last 10 minutes are a horror movie and there’s just a random episode of Law & Order in the middle.

The Ninth Configuration (William Peter Blatty, 1980): 2/5

There's a part where Stacy Keach, single-handed and unarmed, kills an entire biker gang.

Prom Night (Paul Lynch, 1980): 2.5/5

A typical slasher bolstered by its leading player and giallo charms, PROM NIGHT is undercut by some era-centric elements. It is solid horror whose impact is lessened by disco.

Anguish (Bigas Luna, 1987): 3/5

Bonkers Eurohorror where Zelda Rubinstein plays a psycho hypnotist who brainwashes her schlub son (legendary “that guy” Michael Lerner) into becoming an eye-gouging serial killer who runs rampant in a local movie theater. Weirdest part is: it might be the very movie theater you’re currently sitting in, as reality folds in on itself in a mesmerizing “film-within-a-film” wormhole fashion where, roughly 40 minutes in, it becomes unclear as to who exactly is watching who (or why anyone is enjoying any of it). Think: Dario Argento does FUNNY GAMES in Spain, and you’re not too far off.

The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes, 2021): 3.5/5

No revelations for me, just enjoyable footage of Lou Reed’s expressive face and some of the greatest music conceived by mankind. 

Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021): 4/5

Little more than a series of diverting and unprecedented provocations, which I’m fine with. Not deep but not boring. On the other hand, it is a movie about a woman who turns herself into a man each morning to be seen as normal, so is it a trans text? Who knows, man. There’s a lot of stuff flying around.

* Dune (Denis Villeneuve, 2021): 3.5/5

Like Blade Runner 2049, it’s more of a production-design sizzle reel than movie, but what production design! And the sound goes: Bwwwaaawaaaawaaa in a bass tone never dreamt of by a piece of equipment within my house. I’m happy for its success, and I’ll be happy to watch part 2. 

Scary Movie Month

Universal Horror Mini-Fest

Dracula (Tod Browning, Karl Freund, 1931): 3.5/5

Lugosi’s clawed and spiderish hands do a lot of work here, as do those famed eyes. I have zero interest in vampires really, but this is quite a fun primal text, with plenty of sexy fade-outs and almost no background music to smooth over stuff like possums and armadillos scurrying around dirt-covered and coffin-strewn castle basements, Renfield’s mad-eyed fly-gobbling, and Dracula’s snake-like or beast-like comportment. No transformations, just a bat in a window, then a shot of the girl asleep in the bed, then a shot of Lugosi standing in the room. Simple, quiet and chilling. Certainly some racism here against dirty Eastern Europeans. 

The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1932): 2.5/5

Contains one great close-up (that they re-use a half-dozen times) of Karloff looking ancient and creepily powerful. The rest of the time it’s just Karloff wearing a fez and walking a bit stiffly. 

The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933): 3.5/5

There are the bandages of course, but when they are unraveled to reveal an utter lack beneath, we have a psychological portrait as well as first-rate special effects, especially for 1933. 

The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934): 3/5

Karloff vs  Lugosi. War criminals, satanic cults, figures in suspended animation, deformed henchmen, Karloff in  black lipstick and a weird pointy hairpiece. Yet I was disappointed in its lack of intensity. The main location is kind of modern and not really scary, and the title feline amounts to nothing. 

The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935): 3.5/5

Karloff and Lugosi again. Here Karloff again plays a hideous, murderous oaf, mouth agape and arms akimbo. This time terrorizing an sleep-over dinner party (?) thrown by mad scientist Lugosi in an old estate in a storm. Is there a secret laboratory behind a bookcase that turns like a revolving door? But of course.

The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941): 4/5

The subtext hovers everywhere, vibrating. It’s The Gypsy (Bela Lugosi) who is the first werewolf, so: racism. But also Chaney Jr. (who is demonstrated to be a peeping tom) is pretty aggressively trying to get a girl to come on a walk with him when the beast comes out—along with the consequent guilt about ones sexual feelings. At 43:20, Chaney 100-percent encounters a shaky, slender guy in a remote section of a park under the moonlight and, after a significant glance is exchanged, fully macs down on the guy. Hot. The sign of the werewolf is a tattoo-like star on the body, prefiguring/commenting on early reports of (?) the holocaust with its talk of “the unclean that must be forced for our community.”

Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935): 3.5/5

An MGM movie in the house style of Universal. Begins with a shot of a hanged man, moves on to an actual guillotine death, plus a murderer’s hands sewed onto the arms of a pianist, played by Dr. Frankenstein himself. Lorre plays a brilliant surgeon with all the yearning vulnerability of a 7-year-old child.

Dracula/Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958): 3/5

Like most Hammer I’ve seen, this offers swift storytelling with plenty of event but is really too theatrical to be scary—summoning, at best, moral revulsion. Definitely some vampire = much-desired yet forbidden and punishable sex. Serious gay-panic vibes in the final confrontation between Dracula and a decidedly curious Van Helsing. 

Carnival of Souls, rw (Herk Harvey, 1962): 4/5

Naturally, the carnival location is authentically abandoned, the paragon of found production values and the voodoo of location. Amazing sequence at the 50-minute mark when our protagonist is playing the organ—calliope and church music co-mingling—and she has a revery full of eerie images of faces underwater and zombie dancers spinning, very interior and effectively uncanny. Then in the last 20 minutes, as in Lynch/Meshes, our protagonist seems trapped within the mise en scène or within a genre beyond her ken. Six years before Night of the Living Dead and three years before Repulsion. Harvey’s only feature film, made for $33,000, and it’s all up there on screen, baby!

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964): 3/5

Another grotty and creepy English crime drama staring Richard Attenborough (like 10 Rillington Place). This time he plays a weak little man who is forced to kidnap a girl by his domineering wife who believes herself to be psychic. Deliberate and hard to watch but undeniably nightmarish. 

Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava, 1964): 4/5

Anticipates/invents the giallo and slasher movies in general. Colorful and stylish, and featuring a bevy of authentically pretty models all dressed up in couture and ready to be stalked, manhandled and killed. I didn’t even realize that telephones and mannequins came in shiny blood red. Very much conflates beauty and death. Richness (not brightness) of color is from Sirk/Hitch/Powell, but I also see Lynch and Scorsese. 

Repulsion, rw (Roman Polanski, 1965): 5/5

Genius-level use of image and sound to create tone and internal psychological space. A very “Me Too” movie about how gross, skeevy and aggressive men are. Come to think if it, Rosemary’s Baby is also a very “believe her” movie, which makes Polanski’s life story extremely ironic/self-loathing. 

The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966): 3.5/5

An arty and languidly paced if psychologically intense portrait of a man with a severely burned face who gets a mask that makes him look normal (although like someone else). Identity crisis and bad behavior results. Most of the joy of it is the guy walking around Tokyo in face bandages, followed by the fitting of the mask stuff, followed by him walking around Tokyo as a different actor with make-up making his face look like a mask, followed by the guy trying to pull the mask/face off from the bottom and then walking around with half his face just flopping 

The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968): 3/5

The threat in this Hammer movie is a mind-controlling satanic cult, and the resultant chalk drawings, cloaks and other Satanic ritual stuff is fun. I’m sure there are people praising the efficacy of a series of conflicts that consist solely of adults peering at one another until one collapses exhausted, but I found it a bit cerebral and unsatisfying. 

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, rw (Dario Argento, 1970): 3.5/5

Well-told and stylish giallo—a garish murder mystery with some excellent suspense scenes. 

Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972): 3/5

Wild tonal shifts, including a strongly implied gang rape scene followed by wacky Benny Hill-type music playing over a scene of people moving unconscious bodies. Pink Flamingos-level acting and sneering exaggeration. Still, when it gets down to the business of bloody murder, it demonstrates savant-like sensitivity—and suddenly the confusion of two emotions such as wistfulness and horror creates something like depth. 

The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976): 1.5/5

So goddamn boring. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick are so stiff and bourgeois and dumb that one longs for Satan to destroy their stupid privilege, which thankfully soon occurs.

Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977): 2.5/5

Proof that Julie Christie can arouse even silicon and electricity. Some wonderfully over-the-top New Flesh stuff, but it’s all pretty drawn out. This should have been Act One. Crazy to say this movie about a rapey computer is the most conventional Cammell I’ve seen.

Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980): 3/5

An ultimate document of some kind of extreme, including racist femur-chomping cannibalism and murder of the most grossly misogynistic, abhorrent and horrible. It does mine the power of the pure and documentary southern American jungle for its ample mysterious and real-feeling value. Proof? The filmmakers were accused of actually making a stuff film, or at least that’s the way the marketing went. 

Dead & Buried (Gary Sherman, 1981): 3/5

A gonzo mystery with gory scenes that are now just kind of an essay about the imaginativeness and limits of practical effects in 1981. Jack Albertson, the funeral director, turns out to be turning the whole town into zombies. Wow that was just a super spoiler.  

The Thing, rw (John Carpenter, 1982): 5/5

A movie all about what is shown and what is not, since the characters are safe as long as the camera is on them. When the camera is following one character, we don’t know what is happening to the others and therefore they are suspicious/vulnerable. Camera as protector.  

Prince of Darkness, rw (John Carpenter, 1987): 3/5

Definitely has a Hammer feel, where there’s a solid plot and it’s creepy and fun but not really scary. Unnerving and gross elements include garden sheer stabbing, a pile of beetles moving a guy around until his head falls off, self neck-stabbing, and Satan himself—all in a bland, flat, well-lit  80s palette and mise en scène. Jameson Parker is charisma-free but sports a mustache that would make the most hardened resident of Echo Park weep.  

Halloween 4 : The Return of Michael Myers (Dwight H. Little, 1988): 2.5/5

Michael Myers is wherever the camera is pointed. Power station out in the middle of nowhere? Myers. In an attic in a closet? Myers. Cop gets into a car? Myers in the backseat. The protagonist flees to the town’s elementary school, but who is there, already hiding in a janitor closet? If I saw this one by myself and a bit too young when my parents were having a dinner party in the kitchen and dining room (as was the situation when I first saw the original) would I think this was scary? I reckon so.  

Saw (James Wan, 2004): 1.5/5

I’ve enjoyed several Wan productions now, but this original offering was boring and shockingly incompetent on every level. 

Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021): 2/5

The weirdest thing is that there are a series of shadow animations beside the end credits that tell a coherent story about systematic generational racial violence and vengeance. Unfortunately the previous 90 minutes do not tell this story and instead offer an incoherent and unscary mishmash involving black fine artists and gentrification and five random white girls in a high school bathroom. Baffling. 

Horror Anthology Mini-Fest

At their best, these eliminate or at least reduce all the waiting around for the bango ending, where the monster is at last revealed and confronted. All killers, no fillers. 

V/H/S/94 – (Simon Barrett, Steven Kostanski, Chloe Okuno, Ryan Prows, Jennifer Reeder, Timo Tjahjanto, 2021): 4.5/5

I watched much of these three decadent creature features with my jaw hanging open. Swift, cheap, brutal, satirical and contemporary. You know: garbage!

V/H/S/2 (Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sánchez, Timo Tjahjanto, Adam Wingard, 2013): 4/5

More headlong craziness and violence, including more madness from Indonesian filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto, who should be given a Nobel Prize for rapid-fire depravity—then locked up. I swear these are better than any Miike. 

Asylum (Roy Ward Baker, 1972): 3/5

Each segment ends with the protagonist locked up in said mental asylum. Some nice images.

Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, 1945): 3/5

Well-regarded early horror anthology from Ealing studios. None of the episodes are particularly chilling, but at least they were all short and punchy.