Wicked Little Letters (2023)

Director: Thea Sharrock

Cast: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan, Joanna Scanlan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Sad to say that I probably liked the trailer a fair bit better than the actual film itself. I’m in a weird period of my life right now where I have the opportunity to see the trailer for pretty much every independent film about two or three times. This one seemed jumped out at me those handful of times as the right mix of quaint British countryside humor and palpable tension that is the stuff of the most entertaining films. It looked like this could be this year’s answer to Fargo (1996).

And all of the elements are there. The mystery of just who is writing the scandalous letters is dispensed with fairly quickly, but the question as to whether or not the likable Rose Gooding (Buckley) will be found innocent, or if justice will come around to the fundamentally hateful (but still ultimately human) Edith Swan (Colman) is fueled with just enough uncertainty that the film goes down easy enough. It helps that the film is based on a true story (more so than Fargo can actually ever claim to be) that isn’t well known. The film is peopled with the right number of eccentrics, anything less would have been something criminal for a light British entertainment.

So then why am I not more effusive about the film? The simplest explanation is probably that there is just nothing new here, and the film is content with being a slight entertainment and nothing more. The thing that gnaws at the back of my mind is that sometimes a film may be built with all of the right elements and all of the right intentions, but for reasons beyond our understand the film doesn’t quite come together.

You Can Call Me Bill (2023)

Director: Alexandre O. Phillippe

Cast: William Shatner

Have I Seen It Before: No.

Did I Like It: But I went into the thing pretty sure that it didn’t have anything new to say about the man who once played James T. Kirk. That may not be a fair criticism from or for a general audience, but we’ve got to remember that somewhere out there is a home video footage of me in the 90s unwrapping one of Shatner’s numerous ghostwritten memoirs and you could have sworn the book played Mario, for the reaction it got out of me*.

There’s also the weird effects that The Holodeck is Broken has had on me in these last few years. Well into my 30s, I would have said Shatner—even with all his well-documented prickliness—was one of the people I most admired. Something about watching Star Trek: The Original Series in recent years has made both the man and the inevitable first line of his obituary a little less special than it once was.

So what can this movie do for me, and what can it do for you?

For one thing, it isn’t only a rehash of his career highlights. It isn’t only a meditation on the. Cadence. We've. Allcometoknowsowell.

It’s a conversation with a man who’s presence has been large than life, but realizes that by any rationale measure his life is coming to an end. It is rambling, sure. One gets the sense that this was like sitting in the production offices while he tried to articulate what he wanted Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) to actually be about. There are moments that seem as if self-awareness was not something for which he never felt much need.

But it was surprising, and it is heartfelt, far more so than any work of autobiography Shatner has ever attempted before. On that front alone, it is certainly worth a look.

*It was Star Trek Movie Memories, and regardless of whether or not Shatner ever even read the book, or if an ounce of it approaches even minimal accuracy, I still really like that book.

Men in Black II (2002)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith*, Lara Flynn Boyle, Rosario Dawson

Have I Seen it Before: Only once, so far as I can remember, on its opening weekend all those years ago. Maybe I was in a singularly bad mood in those days, but the film failed to make much of an impression then.

Did I Like It: And I’m not sure it has improved much. It is not altogether funny. With an alarming frequency, it falls into the trap so many blockbuster sequels fall into, where it seems like we’re supposed to be content with this new entry echoing lines and scenarios from the original, while also positively straining its narrative muscles to cancel any conclusions from the first film. I’m ultimately willing to overlook that deficit when I realize that the original film wasn’t nearly as funny as we collectively like to try and remember. The series is more possessed of light science fiction/space opera injected with a certain degree of Peter Gunn energy.

And on that front, the film delivers what it promises. I’m even willing to acknowledge that it aptly takes itself less seriously than the earlier film and embraces the sci-fi cheese that is at the core of its being.

So, does the film work better now than it did back then? I’m in agreement with my previous self to say that as appointment-viewing blockbuster viewing, it feels too slight for its own good. But as a light entertainment to play on a lazy Saturday afternoon while trying to catch up on some writing? A movie that Rob Gordon in High Fidelity (2000) might describe longingly as “something I can ignore”? It works perfectly. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but the world certainly needs movies to play in the background.

They just need to get past opening weekend.

*Man, Jones’ agents must have made one hell of a deal on Men in Black (1997) to still be getting top billing in the new millennium.

The Untouchables (1987)

Director: Brian De Palma

Cast: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, Robert De Niro

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure*.

Did I Like It: I’ve been on a bit of a gangster movie kick as of late, having watched all of The Godfather films recently**, and Lora has taken to dismissing them as “Pacino De Niro Scarface movies.” I don’t know if I’d be willing to back up that assertion, but she came in and out of the room while I was watching the film, and eventually summed up her criticism of stray scenes by saying: “This film is kind of corny.”

Here, she might be on to something. Throw out a couple of truly tension-filled scenes (and even those are cribbed from Eisenstein; it’s not a vice to go watch a silent movie, folks) and there’s a movie occasionally fixated on being strangely old-fashioned. The question then becomes is that quality an earnest attempt to bring the movies back to something resembling a cop show from the 50s? Or is it a stealth commentary on that earnestness so present during those older days? I’m tempted to lean towards the latter. How could we not chuckle at a scene where Ness (Costner) and his wife (Patricia Clarkson, in her feature debut) muse about naming their new infant son after J. Edgar Hoover? Then again, how can we not collectively roll our eyes in any scene of domestic bliss when Morricone’s score positively groans under the weight of its sentimentality?

Then again, how could a movie—if even occasionally—screw up the use of a Morricone score? Is it possible I don’t like this movie… No. I do. I do.

I struggle mightily with expressing why I don’t mind all of those problems, but I don’t.

*I was definitely tempted at that moment to impart an anecdote where I once made a political speech based mostly on quotes from Sean Connery in this film. I won’t tell that story but will say: Don’t do that, but if you do, don’t worry about it. Hardly anyone will get it.

**Director’s cut on Part III, I’m not an animal.

Mean Girls (2024)

Director: Samantha Jayne, Arturo Perez Jr

Cast: Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Jaquel Spivey

Have I Seen it Before: Well… Is it even really an appropriate question in this context?

Did I Like It: I had been on the fence about seeing the movie at all, ultimately. How different could it be? Thankfully, it is different enough that although one takes in the same story* with almost no variation, there are enough new Tina Fey-isms to make one feel like they haven’t been cheated by the experience. I laughed with some regularity.

Where the film exceeds expectations is in its casting. Although all of the new plastics and the other students at North Shore evoke all of their predecessors, but never once feel like they are doing an impression of Lindsay Lohan or any of the others. That adds more to the experience of what essentially is watching the same movie again. But that’s not really what I mean about the casting, what I mean to say is I am unwaveringly impressed by the fact that Rice absolutely looks like she could be the daughter of Jenna Fischer, and Rapp absolutely looks like she could be the daughter of Busy Phillips. So few movies ignore such considerations—including the original Mean Girls (2004)—and it has a nasty habit of taking me out of the film.

Unfortunately, this will end up being something of a mixed review. The songs offered here are fine, but there is not one that burrows into the mind and soul like a great musical. This might be forgiven, if it weren’t for the fact that the only reason I did break down and watch it was because Lora and I had binged all (so far) of Girls5Eva and I was struck by how great Jeff Richmond’s music complemented the comedy of his spouse. Here, the music isn’t doing much beyond giving the characters an excuse to sing. The crew involved here can do (and has done) much better in other work.

*Parts of the plot—indeed, some characters—are pared down, and a few parts are expanded, but if you’ve seen the original Mean Girls, you’re taking this in as an exercise in cinematic comfort food.

The Godfather (1972)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, come on. There was one particular Ken in Barbie (2023) that I felt called me out specifically, and that’s probably all you need to know.

I remember first seeing it in the days of the two VHS tapes, as a reward for an unusually industrious book report on the novel in the seventh grade. Before any public school teacher would dare to let me take on such a notoriously vivid novel.

Why has it taken nearly six years to get a review under my belt for this one? Oh, who the hell knows, but I did manage to catch part of it on Thanksgiving while stuck with extended (that word is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence) family. These folks had motion blurring on, drying out every ounce of shadow from Gordon Willis’ photography and rendering the whole affair to look like a soap opera from a third-world nation and not one of the good ones. It was the third most horrifying my senses took in during that particular holiday.

So, yes, I’ve seen the movie a couple of times.

Did I Like It: You might get the sense that I’m spending more time than normal on the “Have I Seen It Before” section than I might for other movies. I’d imagine you’re probably coming to the same conclusion that I did as I started the review: What more can one say about the film that hasn’t already been said?

A movie only runs out of things about which one can say about it if that movie has a nearly perfect degree of staying power. Every single time I see it, I can’t help but think about its airtight plot, its almost overwhelming sense of inevitable tragedy, and the insurmountable need to partake of good Italian food as quickly as possible.

The Godfather has that kind of staying power. If you’ve seen it many times before, but it’s been a while, it is definitely worth another look. If you’ve never seen it, I envy your ability to watch it for the first time. You should take care of that as quickly as possible, and I’m totally fine with being a little bit of a Ken by making that proclamation.

Just, do me a favor: Turn off the motion blurring.

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

Director: Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes

Cast: David Dastmaclchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: And yet, I worry I might have been ever-so-slightly overhyped on the film before going in. There’s nothing especially new on display in the film. It will not completely change the way you look at horror films. As much as people were talking the film up, I might have been secretly hoping for something at that level. Everything about the possession of Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) has all been done in movies since The Exorcist (1973). The unravelling which inevitably follows after trying to harness the occult for success paints every inch of Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Your mileage with found footage might vary, but at best there’s not a lot of unexplored potential after The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007).  Filmmakers continue to try to set their stories in the 1970s, because… I don’t know. The decade is scarier than all the others?

What happens here, is that all of those elements are fused together into something that may not be entirely new, but is refreshing. Much more importantly? All of those elements are executed near flawlessly.

Trying to make a period setting believable is an almost guaranteed recipe for failure in a movie. I see the 2020s in a moment. Not here. The filming styles (alternating between film and video) makes everything seem like it is of the era, and that’s coming from the guy who spent large portions of the pandemic watching network newsfeeds from the Watergate era in order to self-soothe.

The possessed little girl feels familiar, but after dozens, if not hundreds of rehashes of the form—including quite recently—this girl feels unnerving from the first moment she appears on screen. She has a stare that Linda Blair would envy.

Adding a twist onto the found footage, the film rather ingeniously harnesses its unreality to introduce the doubt—even now, several days after seeing it—about just what I saw? Was I just as hypnotized as the characters in the film? Probably not, but can I say with 100% certainty I am aware of what happened both to the characters, or myself. If that’s not great horror, I don’t know what is.

If this isn’t the best—or at least most finely crafted—horror film this year, then we are truly in for a great year.

The Terminal (2004)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. One of those movies I saw during a summer in Fort Worth where I saw everything, mainly because what else does one do in Fort Worth*.

Did I Like It: I seem to remember in my recent review of 1941 (1979) that I wonder what Spielberg’s career might have become if he his first comedy had been either funny or a hit. It took him the better part of twenty years to come back around to it, but he found the right combination to try again. Sure, one might argue that Always (1989) and Catch Me If You Can (2002)** are comedies, but neither is played largely for laughs.

Harnessing the pure charm which made Frank Capra’s films work, Spielberg finds the right tone. And by that pure charm, I mean having Jimmy Stewart in the film is that right combination. Given that Stewart died in 1997, putting Tom Hanks to work got the same effect done.

That all sounds like I might be denigrating the movie with some faint praise, but Spielberg utilizes some real craft to make such a gentle film feel like it is effortless. Coordinating the large set—what? airports weren’t wild about film companies shooting in their international terminals a couple years after 9/11?—to make it always seem interesting and almost never forces me to focus on just how much a multi-story Borders Bookstore ages the whole thing is something more people should be analyzing to death.

*This doesn’t even try to cover all the other summers where I committed to see anything and everything that came out. Maybe there just isn’t anything to do in Texas or Oklahoma.

**Looking over the filmography Spielberg made both Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Minority Report (2002) in the same year as each of those examples. The man may not be human.

The Last Starfighter (1984)

Director: Nick Castle

Cast: Lance Guest, Dan O’Herlihy, Robert Preston, Catherine Mary Stewart

Have I Seen it Before: Sure, but it was never a big movie for me… And yet somehow in the last couple of years I got about 150 pages into writing a new novel which stole one of its load-bearing plot points from this movie. Apparently it had seeped into my mind far more than I had thought. Thankfully I realized it when I did.

Did I Like It: But then I wonder if I could do that bit (I’m not going to tell you what it is) a little better? I respect Nick Castle, quite possibly the greatest head tilter in the history of the movies, but I don’t think he ever became the director he wanted to be.

This movie has a pretty good pitch behind it, and a couple of good performers cashing a check (Preston and O’Herlihy), but not much else.

Everyone wants to celebrate movies which were one of the first (this one and Tron (1982)) to use CGI. Honestly, I need to ask why? The vast majority of CGI ceases to work on an even basic level within five years of release. The effects here had to look like it belonged in a toothbrush commercial by 1986.

I could see why a studio executive green lit the movie in the first place. It’s like Star Wars (1977), who cares if it is a thoroughly cheap alternative? After 1983, it’s not like George Lucas is going to make anything else to compete…

Ahem.

I’m normally one to feel an extra pang of nostalgia for pantheon of 80s sci-fi, but I might, *might* be prepared to dub this one the worst of the genre. Even Dune (1984) had failed ambitions.

Apparently, I do think I can do it better.

Idiocracy (2006)

Director: Mike Judge

Cast: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Does anyone get out of the mid-aughts without having seen it? Although it has been years, the refrain, “spelled thusly” is frequently repeated in these parts.

Did I Like It: Since those years have passed, there arises one fundamental question: As we have made quantum leaps in the field of willful ignorance in those intervening years, does the film remain as funny as it once was, or has it been rendered utterly depressing?

There are plenty of jokes which I can’t imagine played all that well nearly twenty years ago* that I just have to sit stone faced through now. Just because they are being uttered by avowed morons. But aside from that, the film is just as perfect a blend of science fiction and the mid-aught comedy sensibility of the time that I’m prepared to say to say that it still holds up.

In fact, as I type that, I might be willing to go a step further and say that it remains a step above other films which might lay claim to that same genre. Movies like Men in Black (1997) or Galaxy Quest (1999) might be sci-fi comedies, but ultimately too tame to actually have anything to say about the future**. Then—when I think about comedies twenty years ago***—I wonder what a movie like this would be if it were directed by Judd Apatow or any of his acolytes, and it is almost guaranteed that the film would be something less than still watchable.

*You’ll pardon me, while I disappear into the mists of time for just a moment.

**Yes, even Galaxy Quest. You know where to find me if you want to fight me.

***Whoops. There I go into the mists again.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Director: Gil Kenan

Cast: Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace

Have I Seen it Before: I once had a VHS filled with old episodes of The Real Ghostbusters and so, yeah, I may have seen the whole thing many, many times before.

Did I Like It: That last statement will make you think that I did, in fact. not like the latest Ghostbusters film, but let’s get a few things straight before we proceed: I’ve never disliked a Ghostbusters film. Never.

What I find most shocking about this film is that I wasn’t at all excited about. I enjoyed Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) (see above) but the prospect of more time watching ghosts get busted barely registered for me. Just a few short years ago, the prospect of seeing Murray, Aykroyd, and Hudson once again fill the firehouse would have gotten me to line up for a week beforehand. Now, I kind of wanted to see it, and Lora and I didn’t have anything on the schedule for Saturday afternoon of opening weekend*.

I’m just sort of ambivalent. Some people despise it, and I don’t disagree with what bugged them about it, but I don’t think I can get too worked up about a film that’s probably underwhelming. (I think something about The Flash (2023) might have broken me.)

Oddly enough, some of my quibbles with Afterlife were actually addressed here. We’re presented with a new Big Bad. No one cares about Zuul, no matter what they might say. The original surviving Ghostbusters are more than just glorified cameos, aside from Murray, who barely shows up in the movie and perpetually gives the impression that he’d like to sneak just outside of frame, if only no one would bother to notice.

The real problem? The thing that could have made me a believer in the movie despite my ambivalence going in? It needed to be funnier.

*Now that I think about it, I had roughly the same level of interest in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania (2023). Is it possible this an example of some unfortunate side effect of Paul Rudd?

Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)

Director: Frank Pavich

Cast: Alejandro Jodorowksy, Michel Seydoux, H.R. Giger, Chris Foss

Have I Seen It Before: That’s the real question, isn’t it?

Did I Like It: I think I came to the realization about halfway through the documentary that Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film of Frank Herbert’s novel not only would have been difficult at the time—a talking head reductively compares the scope of the film with the Star Wars prequels—but with all of its ideas probably couldn’t have been contained by a movie, or even a series of movies. This is before Jodorowsky walks into Disney, insists that the movie be 10 hours long (the Mouse House was amenable to a 90-minute version, which simultaneously makes them sound imminently reasonable and the movie sound inoffensively terrible), and still can’t understand decades later why that was a problem.

That’s part of the appeal of the movie: we’ll never see it. A movie you haven’t seen yet is all potential, all possibility. It may be terrible. It may be, again, inoffensive but bland. It may be one of those movies that completely re-wires your brain, and you’re not the same afterward. Before seeing any movie, it could and is any of those things. After seeing it, it is confined by the restrictions of the form (to say nothing of runtime) and becomes finite.

The movie that never was, aiming for a cast including Orson Welles (excellent, if slightly mean casting for Baron Harkonnen) and Salvador Dali (what an Emperor he would have been!), can stay that way, just as say (oddly enough) David Lynch’s Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) will always be just beyond our comprehension.

How the documentary plays out might vary. It’s sanitized in that way documentaries about movies often are, but that’s to be forgiven when the subject—had it ever seen the light of day—was supposed to be the cinematic equivalent of LSD. Your affection for the Jodorowsky himself is… Well, I generally liked him a great deal and found him interesting, but I certainly had to do more than a little mental gymnastics when he compared creating a cinematic adaptation of a novel to rape, and that they are both the only way to produce a child…

Chaplin (1992)

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Geraldine Chaplin, Kevin Dunn

Have I Seen It Before: There was a stretch there in the early 2000s where I likely ran my VHS copy into sputtering dust from repeated viewings. But then, I’ll admit, I was sort of a strange kid. While I surely tried to keep the man Chaplin in my head when I was writing both The Devil Lives in Beverly Hills and parts of The Once and Future Orson Welles, but it would be hard to deny that a bit of this movie didn’t leak in there around the edges.

Did I Like It: But that may be the central problem with the film. I still enjoy it, but I do wonder if the whole experience rang hollow for many (and I can see now how it might be that way for some) because Chaplin himself is an unknowable figure, and therefore maybe not the best subject for a biopic. His contemporaries didn’t really know him. Attenborough and the screenwriters never really attained the level of understand for which they may have strived, hence the soft dramatic structure* of the film being a conversation between Chaplin (Downey) and the editor of his autobiography (Anthony Hopkins, never quite looking like he is doing anything other than doing Attenborough a favor). Even Chaplin himself never seemed to really know himself, as the filmmakers can’t help but note that his autobiography** is a prolonged attempt to dodge connection with the reader. Even Downey only seems to understand the man in fits and starts, although even that might be a bit of subterfuge hidden behind the confidence and craft on display.

That’s what we’re left with, unfortunately. A hagiographic survey which tries to re-create decades old comedy, but done well with Downey’s skill so it isn’t an embarrassing display of mimicry. That, and a John Barry score which sounds like it was taken from rejected tracks for a Bond score. 

*And to have a dramatic structure at all does put it above the larger pack of biopics. I’m looking in your direction, Napoleon (2023).

Little Monsters (2019)

Director: Abe Forsythe

Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Alexander England, Josh Gad, Kat Stewart

Have I Seen it Before: No. And I’m very, very mad at myself for having waited as long as I have to fix that.

Did I Like It: If Lupita Nyong’o is in a movie, my temptation is to reduce my opinion to one simple question: Is the film featuring as much Nyong’o as it possibly can. The Star Wars sequel trilogy is frequently frustrating*, whereas Us (2019) was easily my favorite movie of that year. Here, the movie threatens to derail by not delivering on its promise for quite some time, but after Nyong’o does show up, she gives a delightful comic performance that is not necessarily in line with her other performances, only underlying the range she possesses. Is there anything she can’t do? And with the implied answer to that question, is it possible I’m going to find the majority of films frustrating because they don’t even bother to have the minimal amount of Nyong’o on display?

Beyond that, I can only suppose I had some hesitation about watching the film was because my patience level for anything zombie had been absolutely sapped by The Walking Dead, but even with a different cast (the kids are all great and believable, which is more than enough to earn the film a recommendation) this film would work. I realize now that I’m not sick of zombies entirely, but instead sick of the zombie apocalypse. Were this story to have taken place during an apocalypse, all the characters would have to look forward to is more zombies. Bleak, sort of exhausting, and no amount of comedy is likely to change that. Here, with a relatively isolated outbreak, the situation is dire, but there is hope.

That’s all I really need out of a story. That, and Nyong’o.

*Even when it is good. Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) is an the best entry since Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) (fight me, I don’t care), but yet my only complaint is the obstinate rationing on Nyong’o.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Austin Butler

Have I Seen it Before: In as much as I’ve read the novel and seen all of Dune (1984) I’ve been through all of the story beats, but no. I worry I missed it on IMAX…

Did I Like It: Somewhere between seeing the movie and writing this review, someone asked me what I thought of the movie, and I said “it was more of part one.” That seems reductive, but it is meant in a positive way. The scale is epic, the movie is not weighed down by a too much*, and the performances are uniformly pretty great, even in the context of a story where one might have been forgiven (I refer again to the David Lynch original) for appearing to be slightly embarrassed by the whole affair.

As with most adaptations, the more interesting parts are where the filmmaker decides to make things different. In the novel Chani (Zendaya) is shunted aside almost glibly (you might disagree with that interpretation) but the film goes out of its way to give her agency and a measure of righteous rage. Those decisions aptly introduces the idea that the Muad’Dib (Chalamet) might be just another villain in the piece.

Maybe he’s a well-meaning villain, but I’ll just have to read further into Herbert’s saga to make that final decision. That is ultimately the best thing I can say about the movie. It might be more of the same, and lose a bit of its surprising qualities in the process, but any movie that would make me want to continue with such a densely packed series of novels clearly has something going for it.

*It’s probably impossible to completely shed all of the silly exposition when one is adapting Herbert’s novel.

Sky High (1922)

Director: Lynn Reynolds

Cast: Tom Mix, J. Farrell MacDonald, Eva Novak, Sid Jordan

Have I Seen It Before: Never

Did I Like It: I’m not entirely sure where the line of demarcation is between a nearly lost film, a well-preserved film, and a lost film. The Last Trail (1927), the silent movie I took in for last year’s Tom Mix day, barely exists anymore beyond a rudimentary sense that there might be some difference between light and shadow. Something like City Lights (1931) looks as good today as it did all of those years ago. And then there’s this film, which purportedly was selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry, but parts of the film look mostly fine, and others look like the best version of the footage exists from a cheap VHS. Might just be the copy we watched, but the practically fried in watermark for the first few minutes couldn’t help but take me out of the proceedings for a little bit. The big appeal of seeing these movies in a theater is to hope that for brief moments I can feel like I’m watching the movie at the time of release. It didn’t happen here, and for once it had nothing to do with someone’s cell phone going off.

And yet, there’s something in this film that probably should be seen to be believed. Yes, there is something to the first motion picture footage shot at the Grand Canyon, but beyond that there is an honest-to-god shot where a stuntman dangles from a rope tied to a biplane high above the said Canyon. That’s the kind of thing you can’t even see Tom Cruise do now. Usually when I glance at information about these kind of things, the magic goes away a bit. Here, the fac that the guy nearly died trying to pull this off somehow makes it even better.

Imaginary (2024)

Director: Jeff Wadlow

Cast: DeWanda Wise, Tom Payne, Taegen Burns, Pyper Braun

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Brand new.

Did I Like It: Or is it? What a twist! Tell me, have you, dear reader, seen a horror movie with the following premise? An uneasy family moves into a home with which one or more of them have a—likely traumatic—connection. Supernatural things happen. The family is either trauma bonded, irrevocably torn asunder, or maybe both.

You have seen that movie? Well, then, let me save you a little bit of time: You’ve seen this film as well.

That’s not an irredeemable sin for a movie to commit. If there is truly nothing new under the sun, then a cynical viewer might be able to level that condemnation even at horror films which work. The real problem with matters is that—aside from a few correctly executed startles (you’ve seen those, too)—the film is resolute in its commitment to not illicit any kind of response whatsoever. You know things are bad when the single largest moment of tension during the film was when I was supremely worried that the people sitting to my left were going to confront the people sitting to my right for having their cell phone continue to go off* throughout the film.

The film isn’t scary. It isn’t interesting. It is so far weighed down by exposition that it feels like the writers convinced themselves at some point that they had a nine-movie series on their hands, eventually came to see reason and realized they barely had one movie on their hands, but felt compelled to burn through all of this mythology all the same.

*I, too, had my phone on throughout, as it was my only note-taking solution for the forthcoming Beyond the Cabin in the Woods episode. It was under the table and at a minimum of illumination, but I was prepared to pretend like I didn’t have a dog in the fight if push came to shove.

Dune (2021)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin

Have I Seen it Before: Never. See my remarks about my boneheaded Dune-related decisions in my review of David Lynch’s Dune (1984).

Did I Like It: It’s going to be difficult to find something to say about this film that isn’t immediately clear from being exposed to any piece of information about the film. It is a sumptuous production, being a nearly perfect fusion of modern special effects and epic filmmaking of old. The performances are finely tuned, with excellent performers managing to inhabit a space opera with not a single one of them looking embarrassed that they are taking place in the proceedings. Preceding decades may have been filled with varying degrees of false starts, but this is unequivocally the best possible adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. It is all made more impressive by the fact that Villeneuve and company had to accept that they only had the resources to tell half of the story (to say nothing of the larger tale of Paul Atreides (Chalamet) and his heirs) with no guarantee that the film would catch on with audiences to necessitate the rest of the story going before cameras. It’s not a fair example, but the makers of Battlefield Earth (2000) made the same gambit and had it blow up in their face. This film had to be good, and it shows.

Had we been left with only this film, it might have been a supremely unsatisfying experience. What’s more, in stark contrast to David Lynch’s version of the story, much is left unexplained. I’m honestly surprised that the film did as well as it did, as the uninitiated might have found some of this inscrutable. Against all odds, I’m really glad that I read the book first. Take that to mean what you will.

Dune (1984)

Director: David Lynch

Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Brad Dourif, Patrick Stewart

Have I Seen it Before: Never. So here’s what I did that was kind of stupid. When Dune (2021) came out, in one of my book-buying binges, I picked up Frank Herbert’s original novel and told myself that I wasn’t going to watch any of the films until I read the source material. Cut to three years later and I finally got through that thing* and I have a lot catching up to do elsewhere.

That doesn’t really account for the additional thirty-five-plus years I’ve spent avoiding the film.

Did I Like It: In the first few minutes, there was a very real chance I was going to hate the film very, very deeply. Opening with a V.O. narration is usually a way to get me to check out, having it come from a floating head among the cosmos would pretty much seal the deal of my antipathy. That this opening from Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen) is so weirdly uncertain that it really felt like I could start writing my review in the first five minutes.

Then again, injecting the character into the film in this way is a pretty faithful adaptation of the book itself. That may be the film’s biggest ambition and ultimate weakness. It is a slavishly faithful adaptation, but feels the need to zip through all of the story points to get things in around two hours. What Herbert does best doesn’t get any time to simmer here, so instead we get a lot of exposition machines flitting in and out of the frame.

And yet, I can’t completely dismiss the film either. It does manage to effectively depict the worlds of the Duneiverse at a time when science fiction films had to often make do with their limitations.

*I didn’t read the appendices. Even I have my limits.

Rocky vs Drago (2021)

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Carl Weathers, Dolph Lundgren

Have I Seen it Before: Huh. Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it? I’ve never seen this movie like this. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to watch it, either.

Did I Like It: I mentioned a couple of things in my review of the theatrical cut of Rocky IV (1985) that probably bare mentioning again. If you cut out all examples of montage from the film, it would run about twenty minutes. Also, one of my weirder movie moments was when my question about Sico the Robot got included in a Q and A with Stallone and aintitcoolnews.com (kids, ask your parents).

So what do we have here? I’m a little leery of director’s cut as a genre. We can get an infinite amount of re-edits of Blade Runner (1982), and it still never works for me*. The Godfather: Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020) is still, basically The Godfather Part III (1990) with a slightly more sensical ending. And Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) I was so tried of talking about by the time that it premiered, that it’s the only review I’ve so far outsourced.

Here, the robot is nowhere to be found. Could I have gotten into Stallone’s head? I can’t imagine so… And yet, I can’t rule it out, so that’s fun. Ultimately, the first half of the film is far less ashamed of itself than it once was, freeing it to be more about the friendship of Rocky (Stallone) and Apollo Creed (Weathers) that was started in Rocky III (1982). The second half of the film is largely the same, with a couple of exceptions. The politburo doesn’t get won over by Rocky’s victory. Also, there is no echo of the end of Rocky II (1979), which I only realize now never worked for me.

This is ultimately still a movie aggressively tethered to the 1980s that is about a man winning the Cold War using only his fists, but it is a much better version of that insane movie.

*You can direct your ire to the comments section of that review.