Top Secret! (1984)

Director: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Cast: Val Kilmer, Lucy Gutteridge, Christopher Villers, Michael Gough

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know, I’m not sure how I made it this far, either.

Did I Like It: I laughed, mostly at non sequitir, but then again I’m a sucker for that which avoids sequitirianism. On that front, as a comedy, it hit its target. Did I laugh as much as I might have in Airplane! (1980) or The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)? Probably not.

What went wrong? A couple of things. First, Val Kilmer isn’t really funny. At all. I’m mystified to learn (and am still more than a little skeptical that it actually went down this way) that he sang all of his songs through the film, but he’s just not funny at all. Somebody like Robert Hays or Leslie Nielsen can milk all of the laughs they want out of playing things straight, but Kilmer can’t find that magic. I did like seeing Kilmer play off of the great character actor Michael Gough—who can be funny—but that’s more for other reasons.

Any movie would be doomed if it is that fundamentally miscast for the number one on the call sheet, but problems go deeper than that. Spy movies can be spoofed, sure. As much as the whole shtick got a little tired, the first Austin Powers largely works. Other genres are apt, like cop movies and the disaster film. By now, literally every genre has gotten the treatment with wildly varying degrees of success. But who literally cares about Elvis pictures? Even those who view the King as some sort of semi-religious figure can’t with a straight face claim that Viva Las Vegas (1964) and Blue Hawaii (1961) were worth a damn. A genre has to have some sort of quality to it before it can be ripe for satire. The Elvis movie is barely a genre, much less a beloved one.

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Director: Fede Álvarez

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced

Have I Seen it Before: No… Except for… No. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Did I Like It: With last year’s strike, it feels like there just haven’t been that many movies released this year, and as such I was a little worried that my best-of list at the end of the year would be mostly 2023 films which didn’t see a wide release until this year.

Happy to report that his film shoots up to the tippy-top of the list. It is the best film of the series since Aliens (1986) by several miles. The production design of the film is top notch, always selling me on the fact that this takes place between Alien (1979) and its sequel. I’ve never been more delighted to report that in the future, the Commodore 64 will see something of a renaissance.

The movie takes the Xenomorphs in new directions, and nearly all of those new directions are terrifying. I spent most of the two-hour runtime with my with my jaw on the floor or recoiling in terror. Much of my obscene tank of popcorn masquerading as a small did not get eaten.

This praise is not without some very real reservations. While it is the best since Aliens, neither of the first two movies’ positions as all-time greats are threatened here. Mainly my qualms comes in the shape of fan service. I’m not reflexively anti-fan service. A film can truck exclusively in fan service (I’m looking in your direction, Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) and still be enjoyable within that context. References to what has come before are fine too. I’m honestly kind of charmed by this film being a soft reboot for the franchise, while also not being at all ashamed of what came before, when we might have forgiven them for ignoring some of what had come before. The problem comes with dialogue call backs. Andy (Jonsson, easily the MVP of the cast) indicates he prefers the term “artificial person,” I’m fine. When Andy also tries to give one of the xenomorphs an order which we all heard before, I rolled my eyes, but everyone else in the theater cheered. Maybe I’m wrong? When Rain concludes the film with a log entry proclaiming her final girl status, I can’t help but be a tad disappointed that a film which was so well-crafted and felt so fresh (the intermediate stage between full-xenomorph and chestburster, anyone?) decides to offer us these sort of nuggets that never feel quite as right as the rest of the film surrounding it.

UHF (1989)

Director: Jay Levey

Cast: “Weird Al” Yankovic, Kevin McCarthy, Michael Richards, Victoria Jackson

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. Oddly, the thing I remember most from the film is that the DVD commentary goes a step above and “Weird Al” (must I use the quotation marks each time?) offers specific addresses for every location used. A weird running gag for everyone else, but for someone living in Tulsa, it was pretty helpful.

Also? Family lore does tell that for that brief moment where there were signs for the fictional “Spatula City” my mother expressed that it was a good idea and that we needed new spatulae*.

Did I Like It: Yes, but I can see why this wasn’t the beginning of a long happy career as a comedic leading man for Yankovic. When being the frontman of parody and comedy songs, he’s got more than enough charisma to sell spoofs of a wide genre of music. As a leading man, he never feels anything other than awkward. We didn’t buy him at the head of a movie, and I don’t mean that as any kind of insult. I think he would agree with that, hence why he didn’t try again in the ensuing 35 years.

Here’s where the film kind of works, some of the movie spoofs are a little scattershot, but they’re of a generally higher quality. I’d put them right up there with the best of the ZAZ crew. I laughed several times despite myself.

Other comedic performances are pretty good. Always nice to see John Paragon. Victoria Jackson isn’t all that funny, but she isn’t especially annoying either, so that’s something. Michael Richards manages to create a sort of proto-Kramer here that works so well that there are moments you forget the pariah he eventually became.

But you know what really brings me into the film, or at least what lured me into watching it this week? I saw Twisters (2024), and while I didn’t like the film very much, I was most annoyed by the fact that it is a very Oklahoma film, but from an Oklahoma that doesn’t mean much to me. The two main characters have their obligatory bonding during a rodeo in Stillwater. The female lead says at the top of the film, “I love Oklahoma,” where I spend most of my time trying to tunnel my way into pretty much anywhere else. The cowboy is hero here. And not the John Wayne cowboy that’s problematic enough or the Clint Eastwood cowboy that might as well be a samurai, but the kind of cowboy that lives exclusively in music videos that air on CMT, and would likely die because they were out and about on days when bad weather was coming in. Every Oklahoma movie, including the original Twister (1996) and The Outsiders (1983). But this movie, even though it is silly and occasionally proudly stupid, is an Oklahoma more interested in making weird stuff, unnerving the buttoned-down establishment, and confusing creativity and imagination with having seen too many movies. You know, the real Oklahoma. Or at least the one I’ve seen every day for forty years.

*That’s the plural of spatula, right? Or is that the plural, and the singular form is spatul?

Twisters (2024)

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Maura Tierney

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Took me more than a few weeks to get around to it. For this whole time I just wasn’t excited by a sequel to Twister (1996).

Did I Like It: In a word, no.

I like that the climax of the film (spoilers) takes place in a movie theater, although I don’t love so much that it is at least possible in the Twister-verse, a 35mm print of Frankenstein (1931) accessible to theaters in Oklahoma perished under the tantrum of an F5 cyclone.

Anything else, I’m pretty not wild about.

The original Twister wasn’t exactly a thinking man’s thriller, but it had a breezy (pun not intended, but I accept your condemnations), unassuming quality that makes it likable enough. The cast though was a murderer’s row of interesting character actors. The cast here is—with the exception of Ramos—drab and boring. Powell is handsome and charming, and I spent several seconds thinking thinking that David Corenswet should be playing Superman before I remembered that he is, in fact, on deck to perform that very task.

There are other, deeper problems with the cast. I like Maura Tierney. I watched NewsRadio and the later seasons of ER just like everyone else should. But you’re never going to convince me that her role was originally supposed to be played by another performer, but Helen Hunt said no after the producers had any sort of inclination to fundamentally re-work the beats of their script.

There’s an ounce of freedom if—even if it is by necessity—that the film doesn’t feel compelled to be slavishly devoted to what came before as many legacy sequels can’t seem to help. As a matter of fact, the only slight reference to the original in the entire film is a Dorothy doppler device in the film’s opening scene that is judged to be past its prime.

If only the film could somehow overcome an absolutely plague of “As you know, Bob” dialogue. The original Twister had the good sense to bring along someone who didn’t know anything about tornados to be a receptive vessel for exposition. Here, everyone has a advanced degrees in meteorology, but feel the need to tell everyone else about every little thing that happens.

Somehow, I came out of Twisters not only finding it kind of an eye-rolling bore, but it made me realize I may owe Jan de Bont an apology for spending the better part of thirty years rolling my eyes at a movie better than its reputation.

Cast Away (2000)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Chris Noth

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, boy. How much time do you have? I’m reasonably sure I saw it three times in the theater. I can remember so clearly being at my first job—sacking groceries for a now defunct purveyor of “fine” foods—being told that they had over-scheduled for the shift and needed someone to clock out. They had barely gotten the sentence out by the time I was already walking to my car, and heading to screening #2*.

And yet, for some reason, I have not seen it in… I don’t know how long. I’m going to guess its been about twenty years.

Did I Like It: I spent so much time writing about my experiences with watching the film in the far flung past, what more is there to say? It’s a rather brilliant way to make a movie, leaning into the central problem of trying to depict a man stranded on an island and just make two separate shoots out of the thing. Can any other actor hold a film all by himself for as long as Hanks does here? Everything is working to the film’s favor.

Some might complain about an ending that tries to put a bow on everything, but I couldn’t disagree more. The real movie for me starts when Noland (Hanks) gets back to the civilized world. He had to be so terrified that he would only make things worse by trying to leave the island once it became even remotely possible. And when he returns, the reality of the situation is not all he imagined (or had to imagine) it to be. But then he is free to live any kind of life he might imagine in that final moment. Leaving the island paid off. Some might say he goes immediately back to the angel wing girl (Lari White) and that puts too much of a bow on things. I think he might do that. But the point is he can do whatever he wants.

*I said once recently that “leaving work early to go see a movie” is my love language, and it not only goes back that far. I was not-yet six and my first time seeing Back to the Future – Part III (1990) (something about Zemeckis films released in years ending in “0”, I guess… Don’t bring up The Witches (2020), please.) was probably the incident which wrinkled my brain in such a way, and I wasn’t even the one taking off of work for it.

Prometheus (2012)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba

Have I Seen It Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: Is it possible to give a film partial credit? The last entry in the Alien franchise*, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection (1997) benefited from an (just ever so slightly) above average script, but was weighed down by visual effects that removed any of the threat from the xenomorphs. This is working with the other formula and hoping for some degree of better success. The visuals are often stunning. The interiors of the ship Prometheus pull elements from the design of the Nostromo in Alien (1979) but extend it into a new environment that is always interesting to look at. I almost don’t mind that I can’t even kind of believe that the tech on display in this film looks wildly more advanced than the tech on the Nostromo, despite that first film taking place thirty years later.

Then there’s the story. One of the great “what the hell is that?” moments of Alien is the landing party coming across the Space Jockey. Alien doesn’t feel the need to tell us everything about how that poor unfortunate soul got something to leap out of them. It is content instead to let us wonder about how deeply weird this universe might be the deeper into the cosmos you drift. Jumping off with the idea of how that guy got into that seat is a shaky one to begin with. Jamming all of the wonder of that moment into its own two hour movie is pretty much guaranteed to dampen that wonder when one goes back to watch Alien again. But the film isn’t even really about that. It’s about those people, but LV-426 is kept as far away as possible. Even those squirrelly xenomorphs are only injected—sort of—as an afterthought that reeks of a studio note. How does one classify a bad idea that’s ultimately also a half-measure? “Uneven” is probably the nicest one for which I can immediately reach.

*I’m not looking in your direction any vs. Predator films, not because I’m looking down at you, but more because I can make the following point more smoothly without you getting in the way.

Thelma (2024)

Director: Josh Margolin

Cast: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Clark Gregg

Have I Seen It Before: Nope. I’ve been oddly thwarted in my attempts to see the film over the course of the summer. Not the troubles I had with Wildcat (2023), but then again few things are. Imagine the egg on my face when I emerged, bleary-eyed from a screening of Horizon – An American Saga: Chapter One (2024) weeks ago to find that my plans to immediately pick up a screening of this, only to find that it had been sold out.

Did I Like It: This movie is sort of spooky, if I’m being perfectly honest. Sure, it’s a wonderful twist on a tried and true format of someone getting wronged, finding the world doesn’t really care, and the taking matters into their own hands, except the Charles Bronsan character is played by a woman in her 90s (Squibb). That subversion of the form provides some fresh avenues for humor, but it is never at anyone’s expense. Thelma may be diminished (as her friend Ben (Roundtree) might say) by age, but she is no dummy, nor is she the kind of quaint bumpkin-sage who Forrest Gump’s their way to a successful evening of the score. Similarly, her gen-z grandson Daniel (Hechinger) is lost in and overwhelmed by a world for which he wasn’t ready, but he takes enough after his grandma that when Thelma tells him she never had to worry about him, we aren’t worried about him either.

But how is it spooky? Well Daniel is a 24-year-old underachiever rambling around town in a mid-80s Diesel Mercedes barely kept together and far too messy for any reasonable adult to comprehend. As someone who was once a 24-year-old underachiever (some may say I got my act together just under the wire before 24, others may shake their head just as hard at the 40-year-old version) that strikes a little closer to home. There’s that moment in your life where you look at your parents and it seems like you’re being asked to play poker with Monopoly tokens, and your grandparents are similarly put upon for exactly the same reason. Maybe I just miss my various grandmas, but I’ve been thinking about them and Thelma since finally getting to see the movie.

Zoolander (2001)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Christine Taylor

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, as I was watching it, I was surprised to realize that bits of the movie had drifted into my vernacular over the years. Any time I hear the world derelict, I want to put the accent on the wrong syllable. Mer-man. Crazy pills. The film has far more sticking power than I would have thought.

Did I Like It: It’s humor still holds up reasonably well, which probably elevates it above many of the other comedies of the era. We may try to forget the movie after the rather odious sequel (a film I couldn’t even bring myself to finish) but giving it another shot is bound to give you some degree of enjoyment. It may not be at the level of some of Stiller’s other, more cerebral work like The Cable Guy (1996) or Severance, but if we judge every film for not having any sort of idea behind it, we probably wouldn’t watch much of anything anymore.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s my one irretrievable problem with the movie. I’m not going to name any names*, but I was supremely not in any sort of mood to laugh after hearing from the fourth person in the movie to have any dialogue. You’ll know the moment when you see it**. He shows up in all sorts of movies during this era. And I can’t help but wonder if there is truly nothing—from the “On Our Own” music video from Ghostbusters II (1989) to Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air—that this guy can’t ruin just by showing up. That’s clearly not Stiller’s fault, but one wonders if those odious platforms designed to edit out any sort of adult content from films could actually be re-directed to doing something useful.

*If for no other reason than one does want to avoid getting into an equal time problem…

**If you don’t know the moment, then you may need to re-think large portions of your life.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Your mileage on this film is going to largely depend on the era in which you watch it. As a diligent movie freak in my younger (and now older) years, I made a point of watching it. In the early 2000s, the threats of the last century had already seemed quaint, and so, too, did the movie itself.

But now?

With a world swinging wildly between the abjectly horrific and the sublimely absurd (or is it the other way around?), the jokes hit quite a bit harder. That might be a bit unfair, and risks drifting into that same nostalgic way of thinking that insists that the world was a simpler place when we were younger. It isn’t so much that I wasn’t able to get into the film in the year 2000, it’s probably more that the world isn’t crazy enough for a fifteen year old to really enjoy the potshot.

But Kubrick isn’t a comic filmmaker at his core. Judging the film just by the standard of how much it makes one laugh is only part of the equation. Normally immaculate in each of his films, Kubrick lets the film surrounding this funhouse mirror reflection of the world in 1964. The expansive war room brought to life by Ken Adam—you’ll see his aesthetic all over the early Bond films—contrasts with the cramped spaces of the B-52 bomber. Visually, it keeps one interested, but all stays of a piece with each other. Aurally, too, the War Room echoes cavernously with every shout while the bomber clicks and whirrs with every mechanized horror they implement. Kubrick never cedes control over his films, even when what is being displayed is pointedly chaotic.

Alien Resurrection (1997)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. You buy an Alien box set in a couple of different formats, and you’re bound to give in. My biggest memory of the film, however, is it opening along with the grand opening of the AMC Southroads 20 here in Tulsa, and my poor little 13 year would have wanted nothing more in life than to just go to the theater of my own accord and watch a mindless monster movie sequel.

Did I Like It: I’ve been watching a lot of 90s late-series genre movies lately, and there’s no way to judge this movie by exceptionally harsh standards. Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) should have probably been cancelled before shooting began. Batman & Robin (1997) is a movie I have been spending a lot of my life really loathing, and for some good reason, but I’ve come to understand that someone out there might enjoy it. Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) I keep referencing in recent reviews, mainly because the more I think about it, the worse the movie gets. Ultimately, this one could be a lot worse, and sort of works in fits and starts as a b sci-fi movie. It’s a step up from Alien 3 (1992), although the last entry didn’t exactly leave us with a lot of beloved characters to suddenly kill in a prologue.

One doesn’t necessarily want to engage in a lot of blind praise for Joss Whedon, but the story of this film is its strong suit. Ultimately the pitch of “a prototype version of the crew from Firefly and Serenity (2005)) up against a new batch of Xenomorphs is a nice idea for a movie. Sure, the notion that some of Ripley’s (Weaver) memories survive into a clone is a little silly, but the cloning plot line does give the movie something of a reason for existing, and more importantly gives Weaver new and interesting things to do. All of this concludes with an ending that seems ready for a future (that was not meant to be) for the series—which Alien 3 was resolutely against—even if that history was meant to focus on Ryder’s Call, always inhabiting the film as if she is waiting to take over in the event Weaver gets bored.

Special effects are the film’s Achilles’ heel, though. There is some interesting and genuinely unsettling creature work when the film focuses—really only for a single scene—on the array of Ripley clone drafts. But our friend the Xenomorph never looked—and never would look—so underwhelming. Physical actors in suits look like the costumes were hastily put together. The otherworldly quality of H.R. Giger or Stan Winston are gone. The less said about the more extensive attempts—Alien 3 tried it occasionally—to render the creatures using CGI, the better. If I had wanted to play the Alien Resurrection game on the original Playstation, I would have just done that.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)

Director: Mark Molloy

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Judge Reinhold

Have I Seen It Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: The fourth film in the series is occasionally quite amusing, and always a little more than amiable. This immediately puts it ahead of Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) which is an interesting anti-comedy singularity, whose super gravity makes everything around it less funny, and for which I keep wanting to add things to my review*.

It’s also not nearly as funny as the original Beverly Hills Cop (1984). That’s not a terrible sin. Quick: Name a sequel that’s as good or even better than the original. I’m sure you’re coming up with several examples. And you’re right. Let’s make it a little more challenging: Name a comedy sequel that’s anywhere near as good as the original. I’ll wait**.

The slightly more troubling quality is that the film is thoroughly committed to eliciting memories of the first film, especially with those needle drops, that I think I may owe Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) an apology, as I callously accused that film of the same thing, and now never in a million years would I accuse Tony Scott of eating Martin Brest’s leftovers.

Also, did I hallucinate this, or did Axel (Murphy) claim to be celibate at the weirdest possible time in the weirdest possible way in this film? I mean, the notion of a comedy action star claiming to eschew the flesh isn’t the worst jumping off point for a movie, and in fact it would have been weirdly original idea. But here, it’s thrown in the mix without anything to back it up or pay it off, I can’t help but wonder if Murphy insisted on adding it into the film. Which only makes it weirder…

*Why the hell didn’t John Singleton direct that? He was right there. Come to think of it, why are all four directors in this series white? This feels a pointedly dumb ongoing choice.

**I might, might, give you Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) up against Lethal Weapon (1987), but I would contend that the original Weapon is far less of a comedy than the first Beverly Hills Cop, and it would likely be the least controversial opinion I would express that day.

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Jimmy Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It’s been a couple of years. I’m reasonably sure that the last time I watched it was probably 2008. I’m going to take that as a positive omen and not dwell on it much further.

Did I Like It: I always feel as if I’m on uneven footing when I embark on reviewing a movie so classic that everyone has seen a few minutes of, and almost everyone hasn’t actually seen the whole movie. How can I convince you to see it if you’ve not already seen it? More importantly, is there anything new—I’d settle for unusual—to say about it?

I suppose the thing I’m most struck by is not the heart-on-the-sleeves optimistic patriotism, or the pure “aw, shucks” energy that was encased in a shell that looked like Jimmy Stewart. I’m most struck by the things that Capra and Company might have said about America in the years leading up to World War II, but either couldn’t or might never have thought to say.

In an effort to reach for a timeless quality, the film doesn’t seem to acknowledge that the world at large is mid-disaster at the time. I’m sure a Boy Scout camp is a great idea when Europe is swinging hard towards fascism. There’s a layer of optimism beyond Smith’s (Stewart) wielding of the filibuster in that. A cynic in 1939 might try to hedge their bets and allow for the possibility that western civilization was nearing its sell by date.

This is also a profoundly white movie. An absolute infant of a traditionalist might blink at that observation, but you can’t help but focus on the dejected faces of porters in the train station sequences, but the ret of the film has people of color throughout. They’re in the background, as if they are waiting in the background of America. Maybe Capra is trying to say something additional that the one-two punch of the Hays Code and Harry Cohn would have never let get to the surface.

Maybe I’m wanting to see it in the film. Maybe I’m wanting to see that in the world.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen

Have I Seen It Before: Nope. Did a quick survey of MCU films since Avengers: Endgame (2019), and I’m running at just over 50%. So the fact that I made a point to see this on opening weekend has to count for something.

Did I Like It: I’m not sure if I did love it.

I almost want there to be some calamitous reshuffling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point, where there’s a promise that anything—good or bad—can happen from here on in. This film threatened it, promising a traffic jam with all of the non-MCU movies, but everything is put to essentially back to the status quo by the time we reach the post-credit tag. I was more intrigued/flabbergasted (and equal measures of both) by the announcement at Comic Con that Robert Downey Jr. will make a return paycheck—er, performance—as Victor Von Doom in the forthcoming Avengers films than anything that happens in the film.

A best, the film seems to acknowledge the errors—both forced unforced—in The Multiverse Saga, and want to poo-poo the whole practice of multiverse movies totally. Will it even be called The Multiverse Saga anymore? One has to wonder. But try as it might not to complete re-write the formula, Deadpool (Reynolds) and company seem to want to let the fanboys know that the studio is aware there’s a transition going on, and so it manages to be at least nominally weighed down by the same table-setting that soured the fun in some of the weakest entries in the series like Iron Man 2 (2010) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).

But who cares about all of that? Was the movie, despite all of the fan service that it needs to accomplish—funny? Largely, yes. I was laughing throughout. Some of the comic sequences are pretty inventive—especially the opening where Deadpool puts to rest how the movie will handle Wolverine’s (Jackman) death in Logan (2017). Word play abounds. But is it a great sign—for me as a human being, or the film as an enduring comedy—that the two jokes which I laughed at the loudest and are stuck in my head a day later both deal with famous people divorce? One of those jokes even appeared to be delivered without the subject being aware—thanks to Deadpool’s easy to ADR costume—but the other one had full—if appropriately weary—participation from the part involved.

Alien 3 (1992)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Lance Henriksen

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I get the complaints about the film. Hell, I feel the complaints about this film. Having an opening sequence designed solely to take the air out of any positive feelings one might have had at the end of Aliens (1986) feels like an injury one is not likely to overcome over the next nearly two hours. I think it is probably pretty fair to say—and Fincher would likely to agree—that David Fincher with one arm tied behind his back is not the filmmaker that James Cameron or Ridley Scott are in their prime. Editing problems abound. Early CGI effects abound that seem less designed to wow than to try and paper over some of those aforementioned editing problems. It all ends in a bummer. For a big summer movie, it’s a sad, not very thrilling affair.

And yet…

I’ve had the weird misfortune of watching a lot of misbegotten 90s sequels lately, and the more misbegotten those films are, there’s a rash of “Where’s Skippy?” moments. A beloved—or even liked—character from previous entries is missing from the entry. Inevitably, the actor reads the script and bows out of the prospect of more-of-the-same. The script isn’t re-written to be not include the character. Instead, there’s is fifteen seconds of dialogue about why the character is just off camera (“I broke up with Jack” Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); “Taggart’s retired in Arizona” Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)), after which we are introduced to the same type of character so that the script wouldn’t have to be re-written and… gasp… the movie might lose its release date.

That doesn’t happen here. We can be horrified by Newt and Hicks’ fate (or lack of one in this film), but at the very least the filmmakers have something akin to the courage of making Ripley (Weaver, still good despite doing one film too many) always seem as if she is in mourning. The film may not care about characters from Aliens, but at least they didn’t send them to Arizona. It’s a film about mortality and mourning, and while the mangling of a big studio movie that would make any big studio nervous dulls that theme somewhat, the theme can’t be extinguished.

Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)

Director: John Landis*

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Héctor Elizondo, Theresa Randle

Have I Seen it Before: Never, and it’s a weird thing because I know I have seen moments from this film any number of times, as each of them tweaked a memory as the film unfurled. Swinging for the big Memorial Day weekend movie of 1994 as it was trying (and failed) to do, 30 second spots for this appeared all over my excessively re-watched VHS tapings of the series finale and fan-favorite marathon of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Did I Like It: Reviled for thirty years, and basically ensuring that we would have to collectively agree to eradicate even the faintest gleam of memory of the film before a fourth movie could even be considered, I went in thinking surely the film couldn’t be that bad. Certainly not as fresh as the original Beverly Hills Cop (1984), but Eddie Murphy in an R-rated comedy directed by John Landis** has to have some redeeming value to it.

And yet, no. This is some kind of weird void of anti-comedy. Did the editor lose a bet and have to come up with the worst possible takes for each shot? Was this the true start of the several years in which Murphy couldn’t find a joke in a film with a flashlight and the Lord on his side? Maybe all of these things, but I found this a surprisingly laugh-free endurance test, weirdly focused on the ins and outs of jurisdictional issues and theme park management.

Most people—including Murphy himself, if memory serves—have said that the problems center on him, not feeling the mood of Axel Foley during the filming and only taking on the film because it was a guaranteed big paycheck at the onset of what would prove to be a bit of a career downturn.

And then something occurs to me. I know now why I have such a weird memory for moments in this film. There’s only about 30 seconds of Murphy being light on his feet—or, for that matter, smiling—through the film, and that was what made it on TV way back when.

But you’re telling me that Landis*** couldn’t have at least made something lively out of this? Didn’t he make The Blues Brothers (1980)?

*Insert your own “what’s the worst thing John Landis has ever done” joke here, and be duly awarded your bad taste points.

**One more chance for that joke. Nothing yet? I’ll see if I can check back in before the end of the review.

***Last chance!

Air Force One (1997)

Director: Wolfgang Petersen

Cast: Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Even at the tender age of 13, I knew I was being sold a carefully crafted bill of goods. That’s probably not a great sign. At 13 you should just take a movie on its face and think that everything—especially the R-rated stuff you managed to sneak by your parents, as they were fine with violence, but squeamish in the face of sex--in a movie is just great! More, please!

The film is a rather brazen Die Hard (1988) clone, in an era where Die Hard clones proliferated at the point to define them as an epidemic. This at least has a hook beyond the same summer’s Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997). Die Hard on a… the President’s plane. Sure, let’s watch that. And the President is the one who has to re-take the plane? Bonus points, especially in a time where we had a President who—even if you supported Clinton—you couldn’t imagine taking any kind of actual active role in a situation…

Is it possible that a Jerry Goldsmith score is all I really need out of a movie? Well, that and Harrison Ford being demonstrably awake for the runtime will paper over quite a bit.

Come to think of it, have we ever had a President for which such a heroic role doesn’t seem like the height of silliness? Eisenhower? Washington? Even both of those guys feel like they’re going to be more at home in the scenes taking place in the Situation Room (which here looks more like the Roosevelt Room). Now that I think about it maybe Teddy Roosevelt could take something back from terrorists. Now there’s a movie Die Hard, but its Teddy Roosevelt.

Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Jürgen Prochnow, Ronny Cox

Have I Seen It Before: Maybe pieces of it? Probably not a great sign that I can’t honestly differentiate cable airings of either of the first two films from each other.

Did I Like It: That sameness can be somewhat of charming in a film series I  already love (I’m awkwardly looking in your direction, Back to the Future (1985)), but here going through the same beats and the same lines (I don’t know why I’m mainly thinking of Paul Reiser’s “This is not my… (blank)”, but I am) means that the whole affair is an exercise in everything that is bad about a sequel*.

In fact, there only seems to be two main difference between this and the first Beverly Hills Cop (1984). The only real difference seems to be is that you can see it in Murphy’s eyes. He’s not happy to be here like he was in the original. This feels like the beginning of a long slow descent for Murphy into frightfully unfunny family films. He only lights up when he meets Hugh Hefner, in a moment that seems to have been built solely to fuel a trailer. Murphy isn’t helped by Tony Scott, primarily not a comedy director, although he does do what Tony Scott does well enough.

If the film were smarter, and fresher, you’d think there would be plenty of room for Tony Scott to do his Tony Scott thing. But no, the Tony Scott-ness takes all the air out of the room and what we’re left with is a pretty okay action movie.

*I will admit I am saying all of this having as yet watched Beverly Hills Cop III (1994).

**I will admit I am saying all of this having as yet watched Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) (dumb title). Maybe he gets better?

Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)

Director: Jan de Bont

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jason Patric, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison

Have I Seen It Before: Never. It’s always hung out there as some sort of ominous chore from the summer of 1997*, and I’ve missed it for this long.

Did I Like It: The movie presents a fundamental critical question: Is it the wretched, ill-considered sequel which simultaneously no one requested, and which sent de Bont’s career on a decade-long nosedive just as it was starting to get off the ground? Or is it the underappreciated gem which brazenly sported that peak 90s movie imprimatur: “Two Thumbs Up!” ~ Siskel & Ebert.

There are moments where the film does have the same breathless charm of its predecessor. Divorce it from any other context, and one could be forgiven for thinking it is certainly above average for an action movie of its age. Bullock is at the peak of her charms. Dafoe is giving us just a taste of his movie baddie skills, but it is a pretty good taste. Mark Mancina does the score, and while he is absolutely no Hans Zimmer, Jerry Goldsmith, or (hilarious even to bring him up in the same breath) John Williams, he has a singular 90s movie action charm that people like Harold Faltermeyer brought to the table ten years earlier, and Steve Jablonsky or Ramin Djiwandi did ten years later.

In short, you’re likely to get your money’s worth out of the movie, depending on how much money you spent on the endeavor. So, maybe that doesn’t apply to 20th Century Fox.

And yet…

The movie does lose one pretty quickly in its climax. A bus keeps moving and with some speed, but the cruise ship always seems improbably slow. That feels like something that should have buffed out in a screenplay that wasn’t written as quickly as possible, because the PC they were typing on would explode if it went below a certain amount of pages per hour. Now there’s an idea. It’s also probably a victim of its own time, coming six months before the cruise ship disaster movie to end all cruise ship disaster movies.

But let’s not kid ourselves, the real problem is all over this thing. I mentioned that the script seemed to be rushed. With all that extra time they saved writing as fast as possible, you would think the production would have been able to do some more serious work on their film when Keanu passed. Instead, Jason Patric plays some guy who is a hot-shot LAPD officer with more bravery than sense… He’s playing Keanu’s character. A control-F and a couple of lines about this being a new guy was all they could manage. It makes the whole film seem like the type of garment you buy on vacation. It never quite fits right when you get it home, and everyone looking at it can kind of tell it was a misguided decision.

So the answer to the big question lands—as most answers to profound questions usually do—somewhere in the middle.

*Is there are more disappointing summer of movies out there. Between The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Batman & Robin (1997), franchises were laid low. Even with Men in Black (1997) things were a bit on the ho-hum, and we didn’t get a really memorable film out of the year until Titanic (1997) and that came out in December.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Director: Martin Brest

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Ronny Cox

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, sure. A guy has cable growing up, he’d almost have to.

Did I Like It: A movie like this, so firmly established as one of the great action comedies can really only be analyzed through a series of questions.

How can a film that weirdly defaults to casual homophobia still be charming or even amusing several years later? I’m not sure I have a lot of answers for that one, or at least any satisfying ones. Eddie Murphy is charming, but funny foreign voices are sure carrying quite a bit of the weight here.

What happened to Eddie Murphy? Your mileage may vary, but this is about as good as Murphy gets on film. He’s funny, but it’s more than that. There’s a fierce intelligence to Axel Foley that makes every laugh stick harder than it might otherwise. He’s a hero for the cinematic ages, not unlike the wily nonconformists found in Bugs Bunny and Charlie Chaplin shorts.

But let’s get to the big question: What happened to Martin Brest? He made great movies (I have a vague but insistent desire to watch both Midnight Run (1988) and Scent of Woman (1992) right now. I’d even be up for taking in Meet Joe Black (1998), crazy bus crash and all, as long as I could run the trailer for Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) beforehand and have everyone leave before the movie starts. He makes one notable flop in Gigli (2003) and never gets to make a film again? What about Tim Burton? He hasn’t made a really interesting film in thirty years! What if we decided to return Steven Spielberg to the store after 1941 (1979)? Can anyone really account for the litany of do-overs we keep giving to J.J. Abrams.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)*

Director: John McNaughton

Cast: Michael Rooker, Tom Towles, Tracy Arnold, David Katz

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I remember being unnerved and nauseated by it even back then. Before my fellow Polterguides on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods ask, yes. I was the one who put it on the schedule for this year. I did know what we were getting into, and I did put up fair warnings.

Did I Like It: And that’s pretty much held up until today. Is it possible to truly “like” something so willfully repugnant? Probably not, and this thing continues to seemingly delight in nauseating. This is all before it—and by “it,” I do mean both the film Henry and the character Henry (Rooker)—really pulls the rug out from under you and confidently declared that monsters are not charming, nor do they secretly have a heart of gold, but are instead malevolent forces walking among us.

And yet, the film should be watched and is made with more skill than many of the horror movies of the era. Unflinching as it is, it is impossible to quietly root for Henry as we do for several of the other horror baddies who dominated the 80s. Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Chucky, and Pinhead all became cult heroes despite their depravity. Just as we might think that Henry is depraved but has at least a little bit more heroism to him than his buddy Otis (Towles) could ever dream of…

But he doesn’t.

As Roger Ebert** often noted, Jean-Luc Godard said the best way to criticise a film was to make your own film, and McNaughton is offering an indictment of unthinking horror-fandom here, to the point where the viewer can’t—or at least I can’t—look at other horror films and ignore that somewhere in all the quips and mystery lies something with which we may not be collectively prepared to effectively deal.

*Some confusion about just what year spawned the film. Produced in ’86, it appears to have wound its way through the festival circuit before getting any kind of wide distribution in early ’91.

**Eagle-eared listeners of Beyond will note the recent addition of the Roger Ebert rule, but I say this one doesn’t apply, as I had both seen and had a reaction to the film before ever knowing what Ebert or Siskel thought about it.