Girl Shy (1924)

Director: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Richard Daniels, Carlton Griffin

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: It’s been a little while since I last saw a Harold Lloyd film, well over a year if my reviews are any indication, Dr. Jack (1922). In that time I’ve watched more than a few silent comedy films. In all that time, I’ve tried to piece together what separates the big three of the era, Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin. Ultimately I’m increasingly of the opinion that comparisons between those three might not be the most productive way to think about the genre. All three must trade in pantomime in order to get their laughs. All three have moments of sublime perfection in that pursuit, and those moments are the perfect blend of thorough planning in the attempt to depict pure chaos. Each of them do it, and the only valid comparison between the three is a question of how much they engage in this transcendent pursuit, and then you’re basically not engaging with the movie at hand, but instead stating your preference for a performer’s body of work in total.

The better framework for judging silent comedies is on their own merits, and with that in mind Girl Shy runs squarely in the middle of the pack. The longer portion of this film is a slightly repetitive romantic farce, which can be enjoyable enough. However, just as things begin to settle into a pattern one might want to call monotonous, the final chase begins. Harnessing the power of the short, and later inspiring the final sequence of The Graduate (1967), Lloyd is allowed to let loose. As he careens towards the pending nuptials of his leading lady (Ralston), Lloyd surprises and bounces from conveyance to conveyance, reminding the audience why he belongs in the pantheons with the other greats who for a time could blur the line between comedy and ballet.

The Truman Show (1998)

Director: Peter Weir

Cast: Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, yes. The summer of 1998 was one of those summers where I diligently saw everything on tap. I remember so clearly going to see this one with some friends. I arrived on time, but later than everyone else. While they grabbed seats, I grabbed popcorn for myself. When I returned, the movie had started. I couldn’t find my friends, and eventually had to give up and find a seat. It took a solid five minute to realize I had wandered into the wrong theater, which was currently about an hour into running the film. So, that first day I saw the scene where Truman (Carrey) is reunited with his father (Brian Delate) twice.

Did I Like It: And the film worked pretty well in both contexts then, and it ages insanely well today. It’s nearly impossible to peg this as a 90s film, and indeed could have been produced (with maybe some slightly tweaked special effects in just a few spots) ten years early or ten years later. It may be the most ageless summer comedy ever produced.

It’s the perfect vehicle for a Carrey looking to diversify his image from the broadest possible comedies and Batman villains*. Allowing Carrey to occasionally indulge in his instincts, but ultimately needing a fully-fleshed out performance to deliver a real story, it’s the perfect stepping stone between The Cable Guy (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999)**.

Ultimately, though, it is that thing that was rare enough in its day and is almost unheard of today: a big Hollywood movie with some ideas. I remember that day after my friends and I had seen it the first time (while I saw it 1.25 times). On the way home we talked about free will, and the inclination of powers greater than us to thwart the exercise of free will. It was heady talk for a smattering of 14-year-olds. I can reassure you we didn’t have anything like the same conversation on our way out of Armageddon (1998).

*Not that there is anything wrong with either of those things. I happen to like both of those things a great deal.

**Again, two things I happen to enjoy a great deal.

Angel (1984)

Director: Robert Vincent O’Neil

Cast: Cliff Gorman, Susan Tyrell, Dick Shawn, Donna Wilkes

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Before the all-night filmfest that had this as second batter (behind MaXXXine (2024)), I had never even heard of the film. Not to knock the lineup of that night, but I had the hardest time remembering the movies that were on the list, which really couldn’t be a great sign. Long story short, I had a hard time admitting I had heard of the film right up until the moment it actually started.

Did I Like It: God help me I enjoyed this film a whole lot. I enjoyed it certainly more than I might have thought I would have enjoyed a film about a straight-A teenager who moonlights as a prostitute in order to afford the private school that will get her off of Hollywood Boulevard.

This is an exploitation movie through and through. A scene involving the killer (John Diehl) and a raw egg goes on for long enough that you’re laughing uncontrollably at the end, but I’m also wondering if Stallone suffers from a lack of ambition when he was playing Rocky Balboa.

The film rises above its trappings by making us care about the characters immensely. We have wall-to-wall eclectic characters including a Chaplin-esque Yo-Yo performer (Steven M. Porter), a drag performer with an acid tongue and a heart of gold (Dick Shawn, stealing every scene), and a man who might be senile, but might actually be a cowboy movie star long past his prime (Rory Calhoun). No spoilers, but: When one character eventually dies at the hands of the killer, it is impossible not to feel sad. The crowd I saw it with voiced their objection. When another character nearly dies but survives at least long enough to bring the killer to his appropriate fate, we all cheered. That’s all you need out of a movie whether or not there’s a child prostitute in it.

You want to know how much I enjoyed the movie? The distributor of the remastered blu-ray had a shop set up in the lobby of Circle, and I immediately bought a copy. There are two more films in the series? I’ll probably end up watching those, too.

That was not how I thought the evening would end.

MaXXXine (2024)

Director: Ti West

Cast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Kevin Bacon

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Finally managed to catch a new release on opening weekend. What a luxury. It was appended to an all-night marathon with a series of other films with similar settings and themes. I had the ambition to make it the whole night, but you can imagine how that went.

Did I Like It: I had a little trepidation going into this. I’ve seen X (2022) but haven’t gotten around to watching Pearl (2022), and I figured I would be more than a little lost. Thankfully, you dear reader will really only need X to follow what is going on. Pearl—the villain of the first film—is an incidental presence in the film, which only makes me worried that Pearl is something of an incidental film, but that’s an issue for another review.

Where X was a straight-ahead (if well-crafted) slasher, this trucks in a lot of the same trappings of a slasher film, but ends up being a fairly serviceable mystery as well. You might be saying to yourself that such a description doesn’t really distinguish itself from Scream (1996) or any of its sequels. But there’s an undercurrent of tension in this film that I really think sells the possibility that Maxine herself is the killer, and makes that possible ending not a complete betrayal of everything that has happened before. That uncertainty alone makes the film worth a watch.

I won’t spoil what is happening in the film here, but it certainly helps matters that by the end of the film anyone who survives is not going to have any degree of innocence. Everyone has blood on their hands, and almost none of that blood owes itself to madness, but instead to ambition, ruthlessness, and a reflexive, compulsive desire to keep things “the way they ought to be.” This is Hollywood, after all.

Short Circuit 2 (1988)

Director: Kenneth Johnson

Cast: Fisher Stevens, Michael McKean, Cynthia Gibb, Tim Blaney

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, yes. Many, many times. For many, many years the only copy of the film I had was a hastily record VHS taping from an airing on HBO. So hasty, indeed, that we only got the tape started after the rather charming sequence where a toy Johnny 5 careens through a Simpson’s department store. Until DVDs could finally set me straight, for all I knew this movie began with the line “Silence is better than Little Richard?” Weird that I could be so enamored with a film I’ve only seen a part of.

Did I Like It: Ok, so we all know what the problem is with the film, beyond the fact that your relative enjoyment of the film might be directly tied to how close to the age of 5 you were when you watched it. And this is a difficult age to compartmentalize the elements of art, to say nothing of light entertainment. But if you’re wondering whether this movie holds up nearly forty years later, let me assure you with this: When the movie is about (and I am choosing to believe this is canon in the film) a clearly disturbed white guy (Stevens) in brown face trying to get his US Citizenship, despite clearly living in a truck in downtown Toronto, it’s an unblinking, if awkward, dark comedy. Taken on its own terms, however, its really awful.

When the film is a light comedy about a haphazard jewel heist thwarted by a robot with a soul (Blaney) who just wants to understand people better despite losing all self-control when he is within eyesight of a book store (relatable) it is still the film I remember, the one I kept only part of for years, with “SHORT CIRKIT 2” scrawled on its label, that was punctuated with an episode of the short-lived Encyclopedia Brown tv series from the 80s.

There are parts of the film to still enjoy.

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)

Director: Kevin Costner

Cast: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi*

Have I Seen it Before: No. Tried to orchestrate a delicate movie watching schedule for the 4th of July, only to pick this one, then find my choice for second movie had sold out. The best laid plans, I suppose…

Did I Like It: Which might be the perfect point into which I should enter the review proper. I spend the first half an hour of this film really gearing up for the reality that I’m going to have a uniformly bad time. The villagers of Horizon we meet in the opening of the film are dumb. They are a gentle kind of dumb, but they have invited the disaster that befalls them. Granted, I tend to think that about a lot of people in our own chaotic day and age, but it became clear I might not be the right audience for this.

Then the movie makes it pretty clear that they were duped and are pretty dumb for it as well. That almost wins me over, but the reality is a film that has a wide array of engaging moments, is more often than not content to be pretty run-of-the-mill western, and is pointedly disinterested in having any kind of catharsis (see the apt reference in the footnote about Giovanni Ribisi). It’s stuffed to the brim with characters, and edited with enough lag to the proceedings, I’m really not sure why this didn’t become a prestige television series. It’s going to spend the vast majority of its life watched in essentially that format, why hang everything on theatrical grosses?

The question isn’t really if I’ve ever seen it before, remains will I ever see it again, or watch any of the other parts… Eh. I might wait for it to show up on streaming.

*This year’s winner of the Mark Hamill Award for getting high billing on a movie, despite only appearing for a fleeting, wordless moment at the end of the film… Which was really only a trailer for the forthcoming Chapter 2. That would be kind of like Mary Steenburgen receiving near-top billing for her extensive work in Back to the Future: Part II (1989). I feel like I should get a lot more credit for only mentioning Back to the Future in this review in a footnote.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Director: George Miller

Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, and now we’ve reached another moment of necessary confession. When this one came out, everyone thought it had reinvented the wheel (despite making extensive use of them, har har). When I finally came around to it—I did miss it in theater; at the rate I’m going these days, that surprises even me—I thought it was well made. It had what at least appeared to be a lot of practical effects, and it would be hard to deny that the thing moves along at brisk pace, but I really didn’t see what the big deal was.

Did I Like It: Now that I’ve given you the appropriate amount of time to at least think through your admonitions, given that I kind of liked the rest of the films in the series now that I’ve had occasion to watch them, surely I’ll be set straight.

And for the most part, either the hype has long since passed or I got my head out of my ass long enough to enjoy what was present. The series proves to be the most adaptable of the action franchises. Any series that began as testosterone filled as this would have been forgiven for having difficulty embracing feminism in its old age, but this creates a new hero in Furiosa (Theron) that—had we been diligently going to the theater this summer—would have no problem being the face of the franchise, and with no diminishing of its hard edge.

I’m also cured on the second viewing of this movie of a wrong-headed desire I’ve had for the films. After Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) I keep wanting to see some sort of catharsis for Max (Hardy) I the future. By continuing to break Max a little bit with every film, Miller is proving that catharsis is not what these films are about. Obviously they’re about survival, and if a post-apocalyptic film can get me on board with survival, that’s got to be worth something.

*Including all of the ones which awkwardly star Mel Gibson, whom I could ignore/tolerate for longer than I would have thought, and including Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), which I was surprised by how much I enjoyed even on first viewing.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Director: George Miller, George Ogilvie

Cast: Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Helen Buday, Bruce Spence

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: It’s a weird question about which to ultimately be on the fence, but this is either the worst of the Mad Max series, or the best one. It’s entirely possible that it exists in a quantum state, where it is both the worst and the best film in the series.

The hard edge simplicity of the film previous (and to a large extent, the latter) films in the series is gone, and in its place are an array of kids and a couple of power ballads from Turner. This is fundamentally a run of the mill American action movie of the 1980s. It doesn’t really need to feature the Australian Wasteland, or even Max (Gibson) at all. The way I know this is that somebody like Kevin Costner could—and did, now that I think about it—make similar movies for the next ten years. As a whole this series seeks to thrill more than it makes one want to feel, but here the mixture is tilted in the other direction.

Perhaps sensing that the series might be getting too big for its origins, we are served with more than a few great action sequences—especially the fight in the titular Thunderdome, the power ballads are actually quite good (I’ve been singing “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” to myself for days now), and that pathos brings Max to as close a conclusion as his world and trauma might allow… Which is, of course, reset years later by Mad Max Fury Road (2015)*.

But do you want to know the most insidious part? With this film approaching a thematic ending for the character (while still not quite pulling the trigger), and the power of Max maybe finding redemption (or at least an ending) I would kind of be interested in one more Mad Max film with the old road warrior reaching his conclusion, either with some peace or with complete destruction. With Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) not doing so hot at the box office, and Gibson ramping up to release a sequel—yes, you read that right—to Passion of the Christ, it’s probably not going to happen.

*While the series is supremely disinterested in continuity or canon, today I learned that you van form a loose continuity by tracking the injuries to Max’s eyes and knees. Now you know, too.

The Big Combo (1955)

Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Cast: Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I worry I’m slowly running out of things to say about the noir genre, or at the very least I’m running out of things to say about the rank and file of the genre. Some of the dialogue is very much like the other examples, the plot is relatively cookie cutter, and I’m becoming increasingly of the opinion that at some point someone shot a few dozen feet of a squad car pulling into the covered garage of the Los Angeles Police Department and leading a clown car’s worth of local hoods into the station for questioning. I think I’ve seen it in at least three films now.

That’s not to say the experience is negative. If you are both inclined to and have the opportunity to watch this film*, you’re probably going to have a nominally good time. The film’s characters are a bit more on the eclectic side. Two button men (Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman) are far more obviously in love with each other than one might have thought would make it through in the 50s, and if you ever really wanted to see a scene heavily imply Richard Conte performing oral sex on a woman, then brother, are you in luck**. The real pleasures, though, are likely in the cinematography from John Alton. A—if occasionally frugal—symphony of playful shadows keeps one interested in the film when the trappings and restrictions of the genre blend into the background.

*Such opportunities should be plentiful, as the film tripped over itself into the public domain. Could you imagine a film released today that just “forgot” to register its copyright? It boggles the mind.

**Why that had to be more obliquely displayed, where two men in a healthy and committed—if murderous—relationship is completely beyond me, but that’s a topic for a different time.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

Director: George Miller

Cast: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Kjell Nilsson, Emil Minty

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Maybe? It’s going to be hard to watch Gibson do much of anything anymore, that’s just the reality of it, but it’s always a little bit easier to look at him when he’s still got youth and the apparent ability to hide some of his more hateful tendencies. Is that a reasonable way to judge a movie? I’d say yes. He’s a pretty bad guy, and it’s probably not a great idea to grade him on a curve because only some of his worst traits might engender an assault charge if he weren’t rich.

Well, now that we have that out of the way. I felt like I went to easy on him in my review of the original Mad Max (1979).

Where the original film felt like an entry from an entirely different movie series, this all feels like a Mad Max movie. Anyone who loved Mad Max Fury Road (2015) or Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) will probably find plenty to enjoy here, if they can get over any of the stuff I complained about earlier, and are fine with a film that is happily of an era unconcerned with injecting feminism into its action films.

There is grime, and despair, and yes, Virginia, there is a tanker truck. What would one of these films be without a tanker truck? Probably the original film, or, worse yet, Waterworld (1995). Ultimately, though the film has that secret sauce that I think makes these films as watchable as they are: very little dialogue. Nothing will ruin an action movie set “a few years from now” more than the need to explain how things came to be this way, and Miller understands this. If anything else, the less we have to hear Gibson, the more we can still tolerate him in the here and now.

Mad Max (1979)

Director: George Miller

Cast: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Is the question whether or not one recommends this movie, or if one would recommend this movie to audiences who have enjoyed the rest of the series, and especially Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) or Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)?

This first adventure into the bleak and desperate with Rockatansky (Gibson, improbably baby-faced here) has a lot of what one might ask from a film like this. Yes, there’s testosterone and petrol-drenched action for long stretches. The future is bleak. Everyone has an Australian accent. You are unlikely to ask for your money back.

If we’re going by the second question, I’m not sure I would recommend it. Everything is incredibly detached from what follows. We’re told society is breaking down, but society is everywhere, or at least it seems like a vaguely recognizable version of the austere level of society we all claim to enjoy today. This would be pretty easily forgiven. Miller and company were working with a shoe-string budget and still figuring out what they could or wanted to do in the movies. The problem becomes that offering this much back story into Max and offering us a glimpse of the world before everything went wrong, I’m stuck watching the movies to follow and can’t help but wonder how things went from some sub-Robocop level of lawlessness to the highly stylized anarchy—let’s call it Planet of the Aussies—of the later films. I think if you’re going to watch Fury Road wondering how things could get this theatrically bad in the hypothetical lifespan of one man, then you’re probably going to have a bad time. This is not the film series for those kinds of questions.

The Watchers (2024)

Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: One doesn’t want to blindly impugn the work of a first time filmmaker, and there are things to recommend here. The film has an agreeable dark fairy tale vibe throughout, and much of the cinematography is pretty stellar. For the most part, when the script isn’t getting in their way, Fanning and the cast are solid.

That’s all I’ve got, unfortunately. The rest of the movie is a vague but insistent disappointment. All of the mood rather adeptly set up in the film’s first half beings to crumble away just as soon as the story feels the need to hemorrhage exposition to explain and give any degree of sense to its army of fairies*. Rules are spat at us and just as quickly ignored. Beyond that, the dialogue just gets plain dumb. “It’s a door!” one character exclaims, when a door is suddenly revealed. The creatures depicted are pointedly nothing special, made all the more derivative when the A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) played right before. These fairies jump out of the far end of the frame and rattle with the same vibe as the aliens in that series.

All of this might be tolerated if not completely forgiven when we see this as the first exploratory attempt of a new filmmaker. The inescapable problem really comes from the fact that this might only be remembered as one of the great missed opportunities in film. I won’t indulge in any sort of discourse around nepo babies, but if I had the opportunity to direct a major motion picture before I turned 30 largely because my father is one of the more iconic—if not consistent—filmmakers of the last 30 years, I would be desperate not to make a film so insistently like the films my father produces. I’m not sure if the studio needed something that fit in with the Shyamalan brand, or if it never occurred to the filmmaker that something else would not only be needed, but appreciated. But more creative heads should have prevailed.

*Spoiler alert? Maybe.

Remembering Gene Wilder (2023)

Director: Ron Frank

Cast: Gene Wilder, Alan Alda, Carol Kane, Mel Brooks

Have I Seen It Before: Nope. Even went to go see it in the theater, and wouldn’t you know it? It gets released on Netflix the very next day. So there I am, sitting in the theater, surrounded by geriatrics occasionally muttering, “Oh, well, he’s dead now.” If I really wanted to do that, I’d just go to work. I love you, movie theaters, but you test me sometimes, ya know?

Did I Like It: The film is very entertaining, but that’s because Wilder himself was a genius. The film is filled with clips of his greatest moments. That’ll make a 90-minute runtime rush by. It also made me want to re-watch The Producers (1967), Young Frankenstein (1974), and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). I also spent more than a few minutes trying to track down copies of The Frisco Kid (1979), The World’s Greatest Lover (1977), and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975). I’m probably willing to concede that means the film hits its target, but again that is because it is being propped up by other films.

But this is ultimately a competent, but not exceptional documentary. Talking heads abound. Mel Brooks is a delight as always, Harry Connick, Jr. doesn’t really have much to say. There is plenty of very good narration from Wilder himself, but all of it is taken from the audiobook of Wilder’s memoir, Kiss Me Like A Stranger… Which I’ve already listened to. The only sections where the film tries to go beyond the territory of a DVD special feature is when it focuses on Wilder’s final years and his struggle with Alzheimer’s. It’s a deeper look, but somehow manages to be both intimate to the point of being intrusive and reticent (perhaps rightly so) to say anything revelatory about the disease or people’s experience with it. Those sections are unusual, but they have too much of a home video quality to recommend.

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Director: Mel Brooks

Cast: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn

Have I Seen It Before: Yes? I’m pretty sure I have. I never liked it as much as Young Frankenstein (1974). Westerns were never central to me, and it always seemed like my father liked it a bit too much, if you know what I mean. That hardly covers the times when other family members would try to parenthetically try to quote the film and ruin Johnny Carino’s for everyone.

Maybe I only saw it on cable…

Did I Like It: The prospect of watching the movie with an audience in the year of our Lord 2024 presents are certain amount of dread, and yet I serve at the altar of the cinema. Indeed, the crowd was at least somewhat made up of people who bemoan that such a movie could never be made today, like an infant who wants to watch cartoons right now.

They all laughed a little too loud at the wrong spots—again, if you catch my meaning—but the mythology around the film makes it seem like those people are the ones who really appreciate the film, but the truth is that the film is making fun of them—nay, mocking them mercilessly—and they don’t know any better. The comedy isn’t in the idea of a black sheriff (Little, a paragon of perfectly calibrated charisma) coming to defend the town, it’s in the townspeople who would rather be terrorized by the goons at the employ of Hedley Lamar (Harvey Korman) than have a sheriff. Bart is—sometimes literally; I’m not sure what movie the rest of you are watching—Bugs Bunny, harnessing chaos from rubes to semi-heroic ends.

Speaking of chaos and the essential Bugs-ness of the proceedings… The final minutes of the film are undeniably the most enjoyable section of the film is when things completely fall apart and the movie is a real problem for the safety and security of the Warner Bros. lot. You can say a lot about Warners, but there really aren’t any studios that are willing to let filmmakers mock them while on their dime. The few that do experiment in the idea are just mimicking the shield.

Run Lola Run (1998)

Director: Tom Tykwer

Cast: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Nina Petri

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Everyone is progressively more shocked when they hear that.

Did I Like It: A mild aside before I get into the real meat of the review, I think it might be time to herald the virtues of foreign films. Especially as I slip into the fatigued days of middle age, there’s at least a 25% chance that any film in English will put me to sleep by the time things are done. Subtitles keep me in the game.

I went into this expecting a breathless, small-scale action thriller. And yet, I was so pleased that it was so much more. I’m not entirely sure why Sliding Doors (1998)--the other branching timeline movie of that year—gets all of the name drops in the years since, as that film was to my memory a fairly pat romantic comedy starring someone who never really got the knack of that genre, where this trucks in the same conceit, and manages to be a small-scale action thriller. It’s also what it appears to be on first blush.

That statement may be slightly unfair. This movie does a lot more with its brisk runtime. It views our everyday interaction as the absolute branching point in the lives of those with which we interact. Sometimes to amusing effect, sometimes to horrifying, sometimes both. It’s not just enough to wonder how our own lives are significantly different based on one quirk of fate, its far more humanistic to briefly flash on how our quirks of fate effect total strangers.

It is also unfair as, although people don’t make as many direct references to this film as others of its genre, its influence is everywhere. Don’t believe me? Watch one episode of Alias. You’ll see.

Intolerance (1916)

Director: D.W. Griffith

Cast: Vera Lewis, Ralph Lewis, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron

Have I Seen It Before: Nope! I recently saw Three Ages (1923). That ought to count for something.

Did I Like It: Given that I live in an era where the ongoing quest to argue against social condemnation is now a 24-hour a day concern, I was bracing myself to really not like any of this film at all. Griffith was hurt or defensive about reaction to Birth of a Nation (1915)? That only leads me to a few reactions. First, I’m heartened to learn that someone bothered to say that film might have been misguided way back when. It also allows me to roll my eyes with impunity at contemporaries who decry some sort of recent advent of cancel culture. Similarly, I’m a little bit relieved to live in my own era. When painful bores decry any sort of consequences or criticism of their half-baked opinions and priorities, they don’t usually take three and a half hours to finish the job. Ultimately, I’m still pretty sure that Griffith shouldn’t have leveled his considerably cinematic inventiveness to lionize a subject as pathetically foolish as the Klan.

And he does have those considerable skills. No, I’m not saying Griffith swayed me by comparing not receiving completely unanimous praise from his contemporaries to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (Howard Gaye). That’s actually one of the horrible parts of the film, but the scope of the things is real. I look at many of the backgrounds, and I’m trying to figure out how real it all is. Parts of the platforms appear to be occupied by real extras, others seem to be some sort of theatrical illusion, but I’m never 100 percent sure which is which. That’s not something anyone is particularly bothered by in a film made in my own lifetime.

Not to say that I’m reaching for an excuse to be bewitched by some of the epic scale, I was also genuinely left at the edge of my seat as to whether or not The Boy (Harron) will actually be executed for the crime he didn’t commit. One tends to believe some kind of happy ending is on the horizon, but Griffith is certainly trying to make a point here, so there’s always the possibility he will fall through the gallows.

If only Griffith could remove the humongous chip from his shoulder and accept that a) The North won and b) not everyone has to like Birth of a Nation.

Last Action Hero (1993)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin O’Brien, F. Murray Abraham, Art Carney

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Naturally, given some of the work I’ve done in the semi-recent past, I kind of avoided the film. Sort of like people did in the summer of 93. Ha! That wasn’t fair; I think I was there opening weekend.

Did I Like It: It’s a nice idea—God knows I’d be a little disingenuous claiming anything else—and there are moments of the film that are delightful. You’ve probably seen all of them occasionally crop up on youtube. Schwarzenegger hating himself. The cartoon cat* (Danny DeVito**) popping up every once in a while. Stallone actually being in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

But none of it quite comes together to be a good movie on its own terms. Some of the jokes are less clever than groan inducing (Leo the Fart, anyone?) to anyone over the age of eight (I was nearly nine when it came out). Austin O’Brien’s character is prime 90s era movie kid, complete with randomly vacillating between preternaturally wise, and absolutely infantile. This feels like a role written for Macaulay Culkin but which either couldn’t meet his quote or came at the time when Culkin couldn’t possibly be interested in being in a movie again.

The ultimate problem, though, is that for a movie attempting to be a blend of action and comedy, it’s not nearly funny enough to be a good (to say nothing of great) comedy, and it is a pointedly inept action film with a sluggish pace, flimsy stunts, and damp editing. McTiernan—I offer The Hunt for Red October (1990) and, or course Die Hard (1988) as evidence—should have at least been able to deliver an action film which at least doesn’t consistently mistake satire as an act of self-shaming.

*One can’t help but wonder what kind of series of movies Jack Slater actually was… All I know is it’s got to be pretty weird.

**Just one example that having Schwarzenegger serving as executive producer will get a lot of different people out of bed)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2023)

Director: George Miller

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne

Have I Seen It Before: Nope!

Did I Like It: I struggled with it for a good long while, not unlike I struggled with Mad Max Fury Road (2015). I know I am supposed to like it. A lot. I’ve gotten the memo. And yet… The craft of the stunts are pretty great (although my memory is telling me that the CGI here is a little wobblier than its predecessor) but the bombast and supposed hopefulness of the characters always leaves me detached from the proceedings. I’d be absolutely useless in a real apocalypse; I’m pretty useless when they’re depicted on screen.

But still, after a bit of slow going, I found myself oddly charmed by this one. I might be the perfect audience for the series as it continues. Apparently the series doesn’t even care about continuity, so for a long stretch I just assumed Praetorian Jack (Burke) was Mad Max—Burke is more of a dead ringer for a younger Mel Gibson than Tom Hardy ever was—and had fun with it. I guess I was wrong, but I’m not entirely sure Miller cares how I have fun with these movies, as long as I do.

Then there’s the ending, where I really think the film becomes special. Any number of revenge epics—sci-fi or otherwise—come to a head where the protagonist finds the object of their, well, fury. The story can really only go one way from here, but this movie acknowledges that, makes that part of the character’s struggle, and then finds a surprising and just fate for the evil that men do. I’ve honestly been thinking a lot about that ending since walking out of the film. Action movies have a hard time doing that these days.

Oddly enough, with that in mind, I now have a hankering to watch Fury Road again. That’s probably a pretty good endorsement for this, all things being considered.

Wildcat (2023)

Director: Ethan Hawke

Cast: Maya Hawke, Rafael Casal, Philip Ettinger, Cooper Hoffman

Have I Seen It Before: Funny story, that. I keep teetering on the edge of writing it all down here but let’s leave it at this: If you see me out in the world, ask me about the time Ethan Hawke specifically and directly wasted 105 minutes of my time.

But no, I’ve never seen the film before today.

Did I Like It: Any kind of artists probably spends a large part of their existence hoping that no one will see the seams in their work. That’s infinitely complicated by the fact that those seams are likely the only thing the artist can see anymore.

I think Ethan Hawke would admit, if pressed, that he didn’t on the page have much of a movie here. That’s not fair. Every moment in the movie is telling me that; we didn’t have to press him at all. There is no narrative in the life of O’Connor (Hawke), and the rest of the movie is filled in with imaginative vignettes depicting O’Connor’s work with the cast re-packaged as the characters.

There are moments, though to really recommend it. I viscerally feel one of the opening scenes where O’Connor bristles at her disinterested editor contorting himself to similarly warp Wise Blood into a more conventional package by outlining the thing before it is done. Several other moments rang true, which is impressive enough when I often have trouble relating to the—one doesn’t want to say “excessively” but the gentler correct word escapes me—religious. Several of the vignettes of O’Connor’s world are evocative and would make astonishingly good short subjects, but they aren’t. Admittedly, the film accomplishes that goal that I often look for in biopics like this: It made me want to seek out the author’s work. Unfortunately, here, it is only because I feel like I got short shrift in the process.

It is all as if the elder Hawke might have really wanted to make a documentary about O’Connor with those fictional interludes spliced throughout, and just… didn’t. An admirable disappointment, but still a disappointment.

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Director: Matt Reeves

Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Amiah Miller

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I’m a little resentful at myself for having seen Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) before re-watching this one. I probably would have been a little less forgiving of Kingdom had this one been fresher in my head. On the other hand, this one hits just a little bit harder because it is not only the final entry in Caesar’s (Serkis) story, but also the likely (but not definitely) last time we will see Serkis in the series*.

While I was still writing The Once and Future Orson Welles I did a blog post reflecting my own anxieties about how trilogy finales are always a tough nut to take in (to say nothing of cracking it in on the part of the creator). I didn’t include this film in those posts. Now, that’s largely because the film hadn’t been released then, but is also much more because this one sticks the landing. Shedding the need for exposition outside of a few brief (and they are brief) title cards, we’re able to tell a ruthlessly simple story with Caesar. Even references to films in the original series are kept to a bare minimum, and are oblique at that. To my count, only the Alpha-Omega regiment and the human girl’s (Miller) being named Nova, this is an almost completely original journey into the world of the apes, even if the general plot is roughly similar to the much, much worse Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).

Serkis has brought the character so far in a short amount of time, flawlessly playing the coming-of-age Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) through to the old man having to confront his own well-earned hatred here. It’s rare that a high-genre movie released in this century can really grapple with these kinds of questions, and then come to grips with the fact that the answers might not be nearly as important as coming to peace with the questions themselves. His tragedy and—if primates might forgive the expression—humanity come through to culminate this series on its strongest note, not just managing to save itself from the natural embarrassment of a part 3.

*I always got the sense that Serkis could certainly play his own descendants, especially as Roddy McDowall did so in the previous series, but alas, as Matt Reeves moves on to Gotham City, this series may truly be over here.