Another week, more movies.
22. Vampires (1998) - January 22nd
A movie directed by and with music by John Carpenter is always a recipe for great cheesecake, and James Woods is just the icing on top. Carpenter may have made his name as cult filmmaker with films that are actually great, blowing away expectations with Assault on Precinct 13 or re-shaping a genre with Halloween, but I'll always appreciate him most for the combination of horror and comedy with action, creating tension by making a joke out of overdone masculine bravado and then putting that in a context that tears it down. Give me They Live, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, or The Thing any day; now that I think of it, it's also why a movie like Predator is one of my all-time favourites; I absolutely love ridiculous action movies with ridiculous action heroes, and I love poking fun at them just as much.
I appreciate this to an extent in Vampires. The way the movie starts with a cheesy rock number as a bunch of guys suit up with all manner of silver-slinging weapons, acting all tough and ready to go, before the music stops completely and silence falls as they enter the house, the machismo now gone, it's a charming reminder of Carpenter's style. Likewise, the first vampire attack at the motel is really quite enthralling, with Valek establishing himself as a credible threat while Carpenter employs more hilariously over the top imagery. Unfortunately, these are the only scenes in the film where it gets remotely scary, a bit of a surprise from a director who made some of the scariest movies of all time. Equally as unfortunate is that as the movie slowly slips in to seriousness it gets considerably less interesting; the film gets slow as it becomes weighed down with developments expressed mostly through exposition, losing that tone of self-silliness that made it so fun in the first place.
That said, the best part of the movie remains the best throughout the entire movie: James Woods. His character is an excessive mix of the hard-boiled and the tightly-wound, dropping great and stupid action movie lines with intense manliness and a noticeable self-awareness. It's reminiscent of his character in The Hard Way, but with a lot more winking at the audience and far less redeeming qualities, and it's pure entertainment to watch him do his thing from start to finish. His character is so utterly unlikable, just a constant stream of dick-headed one-liners that make him sound tough, and Woods willfully, wonderfully makes every line his own. Even as I stopped caring for the plot, James Woods kept me invested in the experience with his performance. - 5/10
23. Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) - January 23rd
Considering how much I love Godzilla and monster movies, there's still plenty I should've seen by now. This is particularly important in the case of Ghidorah, since it's the origin of Godzilla's greatest foe, and it contains their first titanic battle.
The fight is as great and terrible as you would expect from a movie released in 1964 using guys in rubber suits. For its time it's iconic, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that more monsters on screen creates more hype; a three-headed, golden dragon and a giant dinosaur is great, but it's better when you also throw in a giant pterosaur and humongous moth larva. It also helps that Rodan and Mothra were pre-existing monsters; it makes this film quite literally the Japanese equivalent to Marvel's Avengers team-up movies, almost fifty years before The Avengers. In retrospect, of course, it's hard not to laugh at the effects. Sure, it was what they were capable of in 1964, and I have the utmost respect for that, but it's inescapably cute rather than awe-inspiring when looking from this perspective. That said, it seems a fitting transition given how Ghidorah is presented.
As far as tone is concerned, Ghidorah is quintessential Showa-era camp, from the hilarious scenes of UFO crackpots scolding non-believers to the use of theremin for that spooky sci-fi feel, to the fact that the human subplot involves a princess being mind-controlled by aliens who's also the target of assassins, it's all as weird and lacking in seriousness as you would expect from a kaiju film in this era. It's not yet at the point where Godzilla is being targeted directly at kids, but it's a step in the direction of ramping up the silliness to make it more palatable for a younger audience while emphasising the space and sci-fi themes that were becoming all the rage at the time, the sort of aspects of the film that would continue through the series until the end of the era (I still need to see the likes of Godzilla vs. Megalon, but the fact that in that film Godzilla tag-teams with a super sentai designed by a child and named Jet Jaguar is enough for me to get the picture). I do appreciate that regardless of stylistic choice, the film maintains the series' goal of addressing and reflecting society with its themes, even if it doesn't really comment a whole lot on the nature of society's growing fascination with space at the time and its words about natural disasters are no more than what previous entries in the series have already talked about. This isn't as good as the likes of Shin Godzilla or Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, which hold the standard for great Godzilla sequels that carry on the spirit and themes of the first with a new approach that's cleverly conscious of the current in their respective societies, but Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster is a monument to what monster movies would become, with a rampaging rumble that I can't wait to see replicated in the upcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters. - 6/10
24. The Greatest Showman (2017) - January 24th
I saw this at the cinema after a number of old friends recommended it to me. It was overall decent, with magical musical numbers offset by a mediocre story. My full review for it can be found here. - 6/10
25. Last Flag Flying (2017) - January 25th
Richard Linklater has always been a compelling oddity to me. With the exception of Bernie and A Scanner Darkly, all the films I've seen from him have this sort of romantic verisimilitude, this depiction of life that feels both genuine and too well-spoken and good-willed to be true. The Before Trilogy, Boyhood, Everybody Wants Some!, they've all been presented in a realistic, character-motivated fashion, with the conversations directing the film rather than some sort of plot kicking up and pushing the whole thing forward. Last Flag Flying is a sort of half-exception. It's directly motivated by plot rather than life or happenstance, but there's still ample time given to the conversations of the characters that the plot is happening around rather than to the plot itself. The concept is relatively simple, a man who has no-one implores some old friends to come with him and see his dead son's body before his son is buried. The film's only direct plot turn is when they decide to take him to be buried beside his mother instead of the original intended place. But the characters are given enough of the breath of life, by their writing and by the excellent contrasting performances of Cranston, Carell and Fishburne, to make it worthwhile, even as the film begins to feel like it drags on. The characters are Vietnam War veterans; that isn't the plot, but it has everything to do with the characters' actions and reactions. Cranston, belligerent, washing away his life in alcohol. Carell, reserved, never uttering more than a word of what he has to. Fishburne, pious, working to redeem himself every day for his actions. The conversations develop the three from these initial points with little subtlety, but they don't ring hollow, and maintain the air of "wishing there could be easy answers but knowing there isn't" that has resounded in Linklater's romantic realism for over two decades now. Unfortunately, the way the film is character orientation doesn't allow for a lot of depth in the text beyond the personal. The film makes some passionate parallels between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, but doesn't follow through on examining them deeply. This is still a good film, but is a sort of half-execution of Linklater's usual filmmaking style. - 7/10
26. Carrie (1976) - January 26th
This was utterly insane. Carrie was of the last of the Great Horrors of the 70s and 80s that I had yet to see, and aside from the pig blood plot twist I was totally unprepared for this. I was floored by the performances of Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, the dynamic they created between Carrie and her mother was so believably yet incredibly uncomfortable. Every scene they shared made my skin crawl and left me squirming in my seat, and carried with it (no pun intended) the weight of the rest of the film's context. The way it shades its horror with sharp wit to offset the slight ridiculousness of an otherwise disturbingly effective (and melodramatically exaggerated) situation just makes the experience that much better. Such moments as Carrie getting revenge on a teasing child by telekinetically knocking him off his bike, or the way thunder claps as Carrie's mother asks sternly "...Prom?", in response to Carrie saying she's been invited, just enhance the more horrifying moments with a humorous contrast. The same can be said for the cuter scenes, the calm before the storm. By the time they happen you know exactly what's going to happen, even if you didn't know beforehand as I did, and the whole thing has an excellent emotional juxtaposition of joy and dread. The way this is all fueled by Carrie's own self-hatred incited by her mother's draconian methods is just great groundwork to make the discomfort of the inevitability of these scenes just the icing on the cake. The actual moment and what follows is excessive in terms of technique, one of the few dissenting opinions from critics at the time that I agree with, but Carrie's rampage is otherwise the stuff of horror legend, pure chaos and destruction sold by Spacek's cold, unforgiving eyes. The fact that Stephen King stories with a supernatural twist seemingly can't end without divine intervention isn't enough to put a dampener on proceedings, at this point rote rather than retch-worthy. - 8/10
27. Lights Out (2016)
This movie starts on a fairly strong note, a familiar but effective horror opener that makes clever use of lighting and positioning to be at least chilling and memorable. It keeps some of its momentum with the performances from its leads, and a premise that makes the monster more meaningful in a way similar to The Babadook. Unfortunately, it becomes repetitive with its scares, and a little ludicrous to make its gimmick work. The horror is couched in the need to keep the lights on and the threat of them being turned off. This works in situations where lights naturally do that on their own, such as in the opening scene or in a later scene involving a flashing neon sign, but it becomes artificial as the movie tries to use every source of light it can think of to keep the tension high, in the process almost doing the opposite. The metaphor for depression is kept fairly consistent and works for the most part, with the moment the mother silently cries out for help done particularly well, but when the movie's conclusion is to have the mother kill herself, the film outright destroys its message in the process. In this way, I'm tempted to look on the movie quite poorly, because intentional or not, the message of the film becomes 'if you kill yourself all of your loved ones' problems will go away'. At the same time, I'm not one for looking down on a film just because its message is not something I agree with; it's not what the film is, but how it is, that matters. The movie is good enough at what it does enough of the time, even if it's re-treading old ground instead of breaking new. - 6/10
28. Sabrina (1954)
Watching films like Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, and now this has taught me that Billy Wilder is a magnificent writer. His dialogue sounds natural yet clever; it's too fast to sound like a normal conversation, but it's smart about the information conveys, even when it's too direct. I think it has something to do with the way these movies have a sort of fairy-tale approach; classic Hollywood "and they all lived happily ever after" even in the face of considerably more complicated situations. The films take place in "movie land" where everyone knows just what to say and just how to say it without it sounding like exposition. You don't need David to explicitly say that Linus is a workaholic, you just need David to be lightly disappointed that Linus is going to work on a Sunday. You don't need Linus to tell you that David's a mess by something as direct as "you need to clean yourself up", you just have Linus correct David on the fact that it's Wednesday and not Sunday. Sabrina is somewhat of an exception to this; the opening narration feels out of place as a narrative tool, at least in how straightforward it is, but it fits the fairy tale theme and is at least a bit clever about how glib its direct statements about the characters are. The story arc is familiar, with couple of characters learning from one another by revolving around a third person, but the film goes to great lengths to tell it well. The direction is similarly effective; pulling out from a single sign to show several to convey just how big money the Larabees are, a fade to the moon from Sabrina after she states dreamily "the moon is reaching for me". It's a lot of big moves that are so obvious it would be silly to do anything else, but also a little bit silly for doing it at all because of how obvious it is. That said, I'm not knocking it, in fact quite the opposite; it's economic visual association, moving the story forward with visuals that match the scenes they're in or transitioning to. Within all this, it's supported by a fantastic cast. Hepburn is at once magical and hilarious; she knowingly conveys Sabrina's naivete without diminishing her value as a character. Bogart is intriguing, far less bitter without losing any sense of the sardonic attitude; it's not the most complex character, but at the meta level it's interesting to see how this contrasts with Bogart's usual hard-boiled detective type. The whole film is just delightful. - 8/10
Re-watches
7. Some Like it Hot - January 22nd
This was easily one of the best movies I watched in 2017 and has quickly become one of my favourite movies of all time. The humour drawn from every single situation is just pure gold, it's just constant, fast and light, while still being layered enough by the sheer silliness of the situation that it lands hard every time. Curtis and Monroe give excellent performances, but anything would pail in comparison to Lemmon, who is just perfect here, one of the funniest comedy roles I've ever seen and such a great character arc in the context of the film. The way he goes from incorrigible tail-chaser to one of the girls by learning what it's like to be a girl in that time is sublime, fitting at every single turn of the story, with such work by Lemmon in the role to deliver it perfectly. He's seriously one of the greatest here.
The writing is such brilliant comedy, both in terms of situational comedy and dialogue. Everything moves quickly, but the way it leans in to its set up at every opportunity carries with it the weight of every joke that came before it, so from the moment the idea of these guys dressing up as girls to dodge the mob is planted, the film just ekes hilarity out of every chance it gets. It reminds me of Dr. Strangelove, ramping up the comedic tension and getting as many laughs as it possibly can out of one idea that progresses naturally and believably within its own context, toeing that line between reality and absurdity with expert maneuvering. The gender politics at play are also surprisingly progressive for 1959; like I said, the best part is Jack Lemmon learning how life is for women by way of becoming one of the girls, and while on second viewing the progression is less than I thought, it's still more than I'd expect for the time.
A small final thing, but I love jazz, so any movie that emphasises it in their soundtrack gets an extra point from me. This was a 9.5/10 the first time I watched it, but all of the jokes landing just as well the second time around, everything just fitting like a dream, how influential the film is, how brilliant Jack Lemmon is, and how much I love the film, I'm comfortable knocking it up to a - 10/10
Published January 28th, 2018
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