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When I began this blog….oh, sometime back in 1934…my very first column was a rant complaining how the studios were so focused on the shiny new gimmick called Blu-ray that they were ignoring a lot of great films as yet unreleased on DVD.   If you’re interested in cyber-archeology, that column is here.

I gave a Wish List of my Top Ten MIA titles that had never made it to disc.  Most of the titles were pretty minor and obscure, flawed…certainly not classics, and all except two did eventually get released.

My second column was another rant (here), saying I resented having to re-buy my film collection again on BD, but that I almost certainly would in time.

Well, I did – and 386 Blu-rays later, here I am…

And the same damn thing is happening again!

Ten years later, yet another format shift is taking place, with the studios re-releasing their biggest/newest titles in 4K or UHD, while once again slowing the release of their catalog titles down to a crawl. 

And this time it’s not just niche films, but many well-known and much-loved titles – some of my all-time favorites – that are long overdue… 

I get it, I do.  The studios are going to try to re-sell and re-sell the same products – that’s their job!  It’s my job as a movie fanatic to not keep falling for it and just be content with the format I have.  And I am.  I feel like Blu-ray quality is a perfectly suitable – and beautiful – resolution, and this upgrade really does seem like a narrow one aimed only at true AV fanatics.

In any case, my upgrading days are over.  I’m done.  No, seriously…  First of all, I’m broke.  I don’t even want to think of the not-so-small fortune I have squandered over the years on building and updating my collection; and with today’s options even I can see the common sense of being a little more picky about what movies I “need” to OWN.

All the photos included in this column are from movies that have not yet been given a quality US Blu-ray release…

How many can you name?

It’s true that I’ve said all this before…

And just like old journal entries, those initial blogs have more than their share of embarrassing and cringe-worthy declarations.  

At the time, I complained Blu-ray was only a “slightly improved format”.  That, obviously, was just stupid.  As televisions grew bigger and bigger, the Blu-ray upgrade literally became crystal clear.  My only defense is I just didn’t have a sophisticated or large enough system back then to appreciate the leap in quality.  I could foresee that TV screens would “go widescreen”, imitating the cinematic aspect ratio, but I had no idea the screen size would be such that we would all end up with actual cinemas in our living rooms!  My friend Lou has an 80-inch screen and watching movies on it – in the comfort of a recliner, no less – is pretty much the closest thing to movie heaven I can imagine.

I also complained about everything from High Definition exposing too much of the film grain, mistakes in special-effects or make-up, all the way down to how the uniformly blue cases ruined the eclectic look of my movie shelves. 

I’m not afraid to say it…  I was an idiot.  

But my basic complaint of having to rebuild my collection yet again was totally rational and justified – if a little naive…

Now, as physical media in ALL its forms really does appear to be dying off, the studios realize this might be their last bite at the apple.  The catalog titles that are being released are averaging between $20 and $30.  This has me making a habit of going back and watching my DVD copy and asking myself if I still feel the same way about the film, if I should upgrade at all.  A surprisingly long list of movies have not survived the cut, including: Where Eagles Dare, Wolfen, The Ninth Configuration, The Reivers, Bedknobs & Broomsticks, The Trial Of Billy Jack (oh boy), Husbands & Wives, The Russia House, and most recently, Mikey & Nicky – which I once thought was a cool little art flick, but now just plays like a complete mess.  There’s a weird mixture of heartbreak and liberation when you realize a film is not as good as you remember it, no longer requires ownership.  It’s cleansing though.  I recommend it.  I suggest everyone put their all their old titles – most of which, lets face it, we haven’t seen in years – through a similar gauntlet.  Whittle your collection down to the essential; the films that you have to own.  The reasons don’t have to be rational, just deeply felt, and yours. 

More than ever, I understand the appeal of having a “digital library”.  For starters, I wouldn’t need a shitload of boxes and a pick-up truck every time I move.  And negotiating shelf space becomes more and more of a Rubik’s Cube.  But I still love being able to look at the titles I own all lined up together and run my finger along their plastic spines.  It makes picking out a movie to watch on a moment’s whim feel tangible and like the special privilege of ownership.  Using a remote control to scan down a list on a screen and pressing a button just doesn’t feel the same – just as reading a book on a Kindle, though perfectly fine, is not the same as turning the pages of a real book.  No, I like to feel my collection is a real curated autobiography that takes up an actual corner of my room. 

I’m of that generation that didn’t even have VHS until I was 18-19.  The idea of being able to watch any movie (or season of a TV show, for that matter) anytime I want still fires off endorphins for me, it’s still a small thrill.

Obviously, younger people who have always had “content” just a double-click away have none of that feeling.  And why should they?  They know it will always be somewhere when they want to see it…on a streaming service, at a Redbox, or On Demand.  I get it.  It’s a complete paradigm shift.  But while it makes complete sense to me intellectually, I just don’t feel it in my bones. 

I guess I’ll always have one foot in the 20th Century.

So…  Time’s up.  How did you do?

Can you name all these MIA movies?  Oops, a few more…

Okay, okay, just two – no, three more…  

This list is Lemmon & Matthau heavy – so it’s fitting that we started with them and we finish with them.

How did you do?  

They are, in order from the top down…  The Front Page, Catch-22, A Little Romance, Urban Cowboy, Murder On The Orient Express, The Heartbreak Kid, Paper Moon, La Vie En Rose, And God Created Woman, Defending Your Life, War Of The Worlds, The Survivors, The Candidate, Tin Men, The Hill, Save The Tiger, Sleuth, Ragtime, Prince Of The City, Play It Again Sam, Days Of Wine And Roses, After Hours,  Muriel’s Wedding, The Last Of Sheila, Day Of The Locust, Searching For Bobby Fischer, The Dead Zone, The Parallax View, Ice Castles, Killing Zoe, The Waterdance, Never Cry Wolf, Once Around, The Bad And The Beautiful, The Out-Of-Towners, and of course, The Bad News Bears. (12 left to go)

Whew.  Quite a list.  I got a little carried away there.   

But, believe it or not, the sad thing is there are many more I didn’t include…  I guess patience will have to be my New Year’s resolution for 2019.  

The good news is…it took me so long to finally get this article up on my blog that a few titles on my Wish List are slated for release soon. 

A Face In The Crowd, Klute, and Mad Dog And Glory

Someday my collection will be up-to-date and complete at last.  Then what will I complain about? 

What exactly are we looking at?

69 gone terribly wrong?  A prequel to The Human Centipede?

Nope, just one of the oddest movie posters of all time.

This was the main image used to advertise THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN, a now almost-completely-forgotten star vehicle for Robert Redford and Jane Fonda released at Christmas time in 1979.

What was the film about?  Allow me to copy and paste…

Norman “Sonny” Steele is a former rodeo champion now reduced to making public appearances to sell a brand of breakfast cereal.  Prior to a Las Vegas promotional appearance riding the company’s mascot, a $12 million champion thoroughbred, he discovers the horse has been injured and drugged. 

Disillusioned with the present state of his life, Sonny decides to abscond with the horse and travel cross-country in order to release him in a remote canyon where herds of wild horses roam.  Hallie Martin, a television reporter eager to break the story, locates and follows Sonny on his quest.  While en route, the unlikely couple starts a romance as they avoid the pursuing authorities.

You can tell it’s the 1970’s because corporate evil is just a breakfast cereal and intrusive media is a rogue lady reporter with a hunch.

Of course, this image tells us absolutely nada about the actual story.   And that was sort of the point.  The story was irrelevant.  This was a big star vehicle at a time when putting together two big names – REDFORD…FONDA, as the poster shouts, no first names necessary – was the real bottom line.  Movie stars were everything.  Even the title of the movie was irrelevant!  ELECTRIC!  Forget the Horseman part.  Who cares about the horse?  Who wants to see a movie about a junkie horse anyway?  Do you wanna’ see two beautiful people with their faces buried in each other’s crotch?  Damn right you do.  So line up already!

It feels cynical and very quaint at the same time.

But effective: it definitely catches your eye, piques your curiosity…

The shot/position depicted is part of a sequence where Redford and Fonda tussle.  This half-sheet fills in the rest:

I don’t recall what happens next, but I’m pretty sure Redford doesn’t slam her down in a pile-driver hold and leave her for dead.

No, these folks are just letting their sexual tension turn playfully violent.  This happened a lot in the 70’s, kids…  You had to be there.

Part of me misses when iconic actors and the chemistry between them were a huge part of what made movies so special…  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.  In this case, the result was a B+ at best.  Two diverting if not incredibly memorable hours – but if you stumbled onto it on TCM at 2 am, you’d probably make some raisin toast and stick with it till the end.  Because at least the star system meant stories about adult relationships and adult problems, with people actually talking to each other.  Is it me or does that seem refreshing right now?

Sydney Pollack, the director here, once said that no matter the genre every single film he ever made was a love story.  The Way We Were and Out Of Africa are obvious, but even his spy thriller Three Days Of The Condor has a romance between Redford and the woman he takes hostage, Faye Dunaway.  (Kidnapping was also sort of hot in the 70’s – try not to judge)  He was fascinated by the push and pull, the dance, the tussle between men and women.  He saw it as the central story around which all other plot revolves, because that’s the one story everyone can see themselves in.  And movie stars like Redford & Fonda were our love surrogates, our better-looking bigger-than-life avatars.  We slipped them on like a rental tux, found comfort in their glamour, and followed them loyally from movie to movie.

That kind of stardom was starting to fade even in ’79…and doesn’t really exist today.  Spectacle is the star now.  How many superheroes and CGI effects can you cram into one scene?   It’s BIG alright, just less and less recognizable as life.  Look at the hyped pairing of Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in Passengers –  the spectacle was fine, the chemistry and connection was a no-show.

The reason I thought of all this – and this weird poster – was because I just watched these two in one of their earliest films together, Barefoot In The Park, and followed it with what is likely their final pairing, Our Souls At Night, on Netflix.  It was a shocking bit of time travel.  The first was fast, funny and sexy – for a Neil Simon play; the latter slow, somber and funereal.

Such is the circle of life.  Even for movie stars.

This was the “couple” in 1967…

And in 2017…

Redford says he is retiring soon.  Fonda has a new movie out this week, Book Club, which looks like it might just be a sleeper hit.

Years ago, both walked away from acting at the peak of their career.  Redford created Sundance.  Fonda created…Jazzercize.

Redford probably has the most memorable films overall, but Fonda is having the better “Third Act”.   She seems to have aged with grace and style, adjusted to each new stage of life with realism, humility.  Redford has remained hamstrung by vanity and ego, never really stretched himself as an actor.  He directed many films, but only 1 1/2 of them are great (Ordinary People, Quiz Show).  He won and deserved the Best Director Oscar for the former, but never did win for acting.  Fonda won two acting Oscars, produced but never directed.

When they die, there will be lots of tributes and talk about what they represented – the last of the “real” movie stars.

Young people will shrug.

The Electric Horseman won’t even be mentioned.

And the horse, he’s been dead for decades.  Wha’d I tell ya’?  It was never about the horse.

–RR

UPDATE:  I probably have too few posts and too many updates on those few posts, but a couple days after posting this I discovered Starz Western channel happened to be showing The Electric Horseman.  I watched it and was pleasantly surprised.  Yes, it was as slight as I remembered, but it held up surprisingly well.  In the second half, when the now-dated  satire of the premise gives way to a quiet two-hander between the stars it really begins to sing.  The dialogue by Pollack’s go-to script doctor, David Rayfiel – instantly recognizable to this fan – is clever and romantic without being smarmy.  But best of all, Jane Fonda is really wonderful.  She gives a much more natural and vulnerable performance than I remembered.  Her hesitant first kiss with Redford is a master class in acting all by itself.  And the release of the horse at the end is genuinely stirring – just a great “movie moment”.  Overall, I recommend you check it out if you do happen to stumble onto it late at night while making raisin toast.  It’s a relic of another time, yes, but a warm one.  A feel-good memento from the late great Sydney Pollack.

There were some nice tributes to Milos Forman in the media this week following his death at age 86.

But also some glaring omissions…

Obviously, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest got top billing in every obituary.  And deservedly so.  An instant classic in 1975 (winning all top 5 Oscars that year), it has only grown in reputation ever since.  I don’t think I have ever read a negative review of the film, never heard anyone even say they didn’t like it – how rare is that?  It is an iconic moment in pop culture, occupying that unique space where art and entertainment overlap.  It is Forman’s masterpiece.

Second billing went to Amadeus – which makes sense, of course, as it also won Best Picture in 1984.  Beautifully made, it was never really a favorite of mine – but that may have been my own immaturity at the time it came out.  I am inspired now to rewatch it, see if the themes of jealousy and bitter mediocrity resonate more with me today (ahem).  I do remember how Forman managed to infuse the “classical” piece with his usual shaggy humanity.  Who else would dare cast Tom Hulce of Animal House as Mozart?  Or Jeffrey Jones as an Emperor?  Hell, who else would have even cast Americans??  But I think he loved pricking pomposity that way, cutting through any type of snobbery.  And as a proud immigrant, all his US films are unabashedly American.

The third title mentioned, The People Vs. Larry Flynt from 1996, certainly fits that bill and was a solid enough work, but seems to be included only because it was his most recent box-office success (a modest one) and more identifiable to a younger audience.

It all made for a pretty half-assed summary of his career.

What they so blithely left out were…

TWO of his most accomplished US films, his very best Czechoslovakian film, and a “lost” title that begs for reassessment.

Hair (1979) is quite simply one of the greatest adaptations of a musical ever put on film.  That’s not opinion, it’s a fact.  The only reason it’s not celebrated as such really comes down to bad timing.  Released in ’79, I’m afraid it was both a decade too late and ten years too early.  America was on the brink of the Reagan era, making a hard right-turn toward conservativism, and not (yet) feeling any nostalgia for its Hippie years.  Even though that specific perspective is the reason the movie hasn’t dated at all – a period piece, especially one that winks at the absurdities of said period, never really ages – it also meant memories of protest and political division were still very fresh in the public’s mind.  This made the material much less “safe” than, for example, Grease, which was a colorful ’50’s cartoon with two big stars attached.  At least, that’s the theory.  It’s still not a good excuse if you ask me.  Because I loved it, the critics loved it (see: poster below), and just like Cuckoo’s Nest, I have never met anyone who didn’t at least like it a lot.  But once audiences stayed away, for whatever reason, the critics folded like a cheap tent – withdrew all their praise and dismissed it as a “flop”.  That dreaded label triggered a kind of lazy groupthink from then on and the film never regained its rightful place in film history.

On my grudge list of criminally underrated films, Hair is the one I find the most baffling and depressing.

If you have never seen this glorious film: Rent it, buy it, stream it, find the biggest screen you can, turn out the lights, turn up the volume and ENJOY!

It should be added that along with Forman’s dynamic direction and a perfect cast, Michael Weller’s script is brilliant.  He takes what was a formless mess on stage and shapes it into a potent emotional statement on the Vietnam war.

Weller also wrote the other overlooked film in Forman’s resume from that period, Ragtime (1981).  Based on E.L Doctorow’s bestseller, the movie was considered a bit of a letdown at the time by readers of the book because it didn’t (couldn’t) include many of the novel’s multiple plot threads.  It was judged more on what hadn’t made it into the film.  But now, decades later, what is on screen looks damn good.  It’s a grand tapestry of human folly at the start of “America’s Century” – zeroing in most powerfully on the story of Coalhouse Walker (Howard E. Rollins, Jr), a black ragtime pianist, who suffers a small but vile act of racism that ultimately leads to the loss of his wife and child and transforms him into a revolutionary.  A story that sadly feels relevant again today.

Again, it’s hard to believe such a high-quality film was given such shoddy treatment at the moment of its release.

I can only guess it left Forman feeling a little confused himself.

Maybe I’m making too big of a deal out of this, but I honestly wonder if the capriciousness of the critical reception to these two films and the subsequent slavish praise for Amadeus were at least partly responsible for Forman’s more sparse output in his later years.  Did it make him more reluctant to commit to projects?  Doubt his creative instincts?  See it all as too much of a gamble?  I don’t know the answer.  But I think most film fans would agree with my wish that he had produced more work than he did.

With a talent like his, you get greedy.

The Czech film I referred to is Loves Of A Blonde (1965), a sly comedy about a girl who pursues a young man after their one-night stand together.  Like a lot of films made under communist rule, by ignoring politics and just concentrating on relationships, it makes love feel subversive.  Though shot in austere black-and-white, it radiates Forman’s trademark wit and warmth.

And the film most in need of reassessment?

His version of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, Valmont (1989), which, in another case of awful timing, came out the year after the enormous success of Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons.  Most critics drew unfavorable comparisons and wrote it off as softer and less edgy than the melodramatic Glenn Close/John Malkovich pairing.  But another way of looking at it would be that Forman’s rendering was more human and blackly comic, more genuinely sexy and more compassionate.  It has a glowing early performance by Annette Bening (as well as Meg Tilly and Fairuza Balk, quite the trio of babes), and a more convincing lothario in Colin Firth.  Like Amadeus, it’s been a while since I’ve watched it, but I own the DVD and plan to soon.  My memory is it’s only real shortcoming was a somewhat abrupt and anti-climactic ending.

The bottom line is even the most flawed Milos Forman film is worth your time.  I keep using the word “human” – that was his gift: collecting all these recognizable human moments and telling stories that honor our sloppy, imperfect lives.

It irked me then that, even in death, some of his best work was being dismissed by people who have probably never even seen it.

But to err is human…

Thank god film is forever and always there to be rediscovered.

So long, Milos.  Thanks for all of it.

 

After a spectacular start with Brian DePalma’s original entry, a terrible sequel by John Woo, a slightly-warmer JJ Abrams revival, and two absolutely crackerjack installments by Brad Bird and Christopher McQuarrie —

The trailer for the new Mission Impossible film is out…

My first reaction is – Wow.   And Wow.

The MI films are now officially eating James Bond’s lunch when it comes to high-quality action and great locations.  The Tom Cruise stuntwork is jaw-dropping as usual, with the helicopter sequence looking especially amazing.  It makes the pre-title sequence for Skyfall, where Bond fights a man in a spinning chopper above a crowd of people, look rather lame and unimaginative by comparison…which it was.  And while the trailer boasts a few scenic barren vistas ala Spectre, there also appears to be a tense motorcycle chase sequence through the heart of Paris.  When is the last time you saw 007 in real action in a major world capital?

As always, it pains me to make these comparisons.

I’m a lifelong Bond fan and I would really like to believe that the Bond films are still the best in the spy genre.  It’s just not true anymore.  Not even close.  Daniel Craig and the endlessly inept producers Barbara Broccoli & Michael G. Wilson have not only sapped the franchise of any real escapist joy, they have also gotten lazy with the action and cheaped-out on glamorous locations.

The last two MI’s, Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation, have shamed their Bond counterparts in every possible way – as thrilling roller coaster rides in exotic locales with eye-dazzling production design.  All the money is on the screen, as Cubby Broccoli used to say.  The opera sequence alone from RN is the cleverest and most Bondian thing I’ve seen in any action film in the last 20 years…

Is that a beauty or what?

And with Rebecca Ferguson in a sexy dress with a high-powered rifle.

That’s a spy movie.

Meanwhile, the Bonds have degraded into ponderous, pretentious, overlong melodramas mainly about Craig’s paycheck.

Granted, this was just a trailer – we don’t know if the finished film will make good on its promise.  But writer-director Chris McQuarrie delivered in spades on the last film and Cruise’s injury midway through the shoot actually gave him extra time to whip the story into shape, so my hopes are high.

Fallout does appear to have a darker, rougher edge to it – with much less of the sophistication and gadgetry of the last two entries;  and the inclusion of Hunt’s forgotten wife and the villain’s personal threat to Ethan does make it feel like a Craig-like mission of revenge.  (Or, even Dalton-like…as the sequence of Sean Harris’s prison transport being rammed into the water, ostensibly to be freed by his cohorts, feels lifted directly from Licence To Kill)  But the truth is I’ve never really been opposed to injections of grit into the spy mythology, even some cold hard reality.  I just want my hero to rise to the occasion and be a hero.  Cruise has never been afraid to make his hero sweat, or get bested and beaten, but he still delivers true popcorn derring-do when the time comes.

When I first read the script for Casino Royale by Paul Haggis, I loved that he shook up the formula, gave it a fresh start.  That’s what all franchises must do every once in a while.  Each film has to deliver certain beats while still moving forward, having its own distinct personality.  But Craig’s blank stare created a grim cipher out of Bond, left a big hole in the center of the reboot.  There was an absence of personality.  And the series has been stuck in a retro rut ever since, all brute posturing and static tableaus, instead of moving forward.  Quantum Of Solace, even with its botched editing, is the only one of Craig’s films I actually enjoy rewatching because it feels and moves like a modern-day action movie.  And yet it includes some of the darkest 007 material I’ve ever seen.

It’s all in the execution.

If McQuarrie goes a little more rough-and-tumble this time, gives the gadgets a rest, and finds some new emotional depth, so be it.  Just as long as you give us a great piece of entertainment.  Keep it moving.  Make it exciting.

From the looks of it, that’s exactly what the audience is going to get.

Plus, Rebecca Ferguson.

I can’t wait.

Robert DeNiro kissing and comforting Ellen Degeneres at The White House, where they were both receiving the Presidential Medal Of Freedom from President Obama.

Just because it’s unexpected and wonderful and makes me feel good…

Shout Factory – or, rather, Scream Factory, their gore-centric wing – has made a lot of “Horror Geeks Of A Certain Age” very happy with the release of vintage 70’s thrillers on Collector’s Edition Blu-rays.

They include two certified masterpieces – Carrie (1976), The Thing (1982) – as well as more obscure cult classics that could have easily been lost to time and never given the full BD treatment, including The House That Screamed (1970), Willard (1971), and Black Christmas (1974).

There are plenty of bloody goodies in their impressive catalog – go check it out – but the above five titles are personal favorites of mine and I’m very grateful to finally have them remastered and in High Definition.

Scream Factory always offers a full roster of Special Features and obviously takes great care in presenting these old films with the love they deserve. That love is especially rare in a time of diminishing returns for collectors of physical media – and given the nitpicky nature of that fan base, often a thankless task.  We film geeks need to support their good work.

That’s why it sucks I have to add to the nitpicking and offer a small caveat on two of these otherwise excellent editions…

I guess it was inevitable that the classics, Carrie and The Thing, would be much more scrutinized and our expectations impossibly high.  And the films do look as crisp and detailed in HD as you could hope – adding information, particularly to the darker scenes.  But, unfortunately, at the same time, the color timing feels slightly off: with Carrie skewing green, The Thing bluer than blue.

The latter may seem appropriate for a film that takes place in the frozen tundra, but the subtle effect is a slightly drained, monochromatic color palate that dilutes some of the more beautiful visuals.

Or to put it more simply: Where did all the purple go?

This has sparked a fierce debate among the fanboys online, and since Arrow has announced an October release of its own Region B edition of the film, from a 4k scan of the original negative, the debate is sure to rage on.

The visuals in Carrie are even more beautiful.  It’s a dizzying feast for the eyes, DePalma at his very best.  The color “changes” here actually bothered me more, even though the majority of fanboys seem to be thrilled with this release.

It’s true that previous versions leaned pink and skin tones felt flushed, but that sort of fit with the theme of the movie.  If any film ever begged for a red “push” it’s this loving ode to blood.  Watching the new SF edition, I appreciated the clarity – especially given the diffused 70’s cinematography – but something felt wrong.  It was colder somehow, uglier, more disjointed visually.  Was I imagining things?  To test it, I did something I’ve never done before: I put on the older Blu-ray right after and watched the whole movie again.  It confirmed what I thought. While “softer”, the older version felt more fluid and pleasing to the eye.  At least up until the climax at the prom where the SF edition wins out.

Now I am old enough to remember seeing – and instantly loving – both these films upon their theatrical release in ’76 and ’82.  That doesn’t make me an expert, obviously – but it may mean my eyes have a wider frame of reference than those who have only seen it on video.  Whatever the case, wrong or right, I can’t ignore what they are telling me.

I still STRONGLY RECOMMEND both SF editions – they offer a wealth of cool extras, and your mileage will definitely vary.

Just do like I do and slip other discs/editions into paper sleeves and add them to the SF case so you’re covered and can make your own comparisons.

(The larger problem here may be how movie geeks in search of THE DEFINITIVE VERSION of their favorite movies need to ultimately come to terms with it being a futile search with no end )

As for the remaining three titles: The House That Screamed, Willard, and Black Christmas, Scream Factory gets an unqualified A+ all the way around.  The films look fantastic and, like I say, I truly doubted I’d ever see them get proper digital treatment, so it feels like a small miracle of the movie gods.

I remember when I was one of a nerdy few who obsessed over Bob Clark’s creepy holiday classic, Black Christmas.  In the last decade or so the internet has changed all that, with the film’s reputation growing exponentially every year.  It is now widely (finally) recognized for what it is: a seminal benchmark in the slasher genre and superbly-crafted filmmaking.  That is why it was so baffling when the quality of each new video release over the years seemed to only get worse and worse.

Scream Factory offers a disclaimer right off the top about “limited source materials”, but no need, they have done a gorgeous restoration.

This truly is the best it will ever look.

After a minor hiccup with the mono soundtrack, SF went to the great trouble of promptly replacing fans’ discs, and it’s that original soundtrack that I definitely recommend you use.  Sound is a crucial aspect of this film…

As far as being influential and stylistically ahead of its time, the same could be said about The House That Screamed from four years earlier…

This Spanish film originally titled La Residencia was directed by Narciso Ibanez Serrador.  Shot in voluptuous widescreen, with gothic atmosphere, swooning music and a bevy of teenage girls, it is a clear precursor to both Black Christmas and Carrie. One death scene in particular, where a girl sneaks into a greenhouse for a late night tryst and is stabbed to death, has the disturbing soft-core slo-mo lyricism that would later be Brian DePalma’s trademark.  The whole film bristles with sexual repression, and the killer hides rather brilliantly in plain sight throughout. It may turn out to be exactly who you think it is…but the final reveal, when we find out what all this killing has been in service of, is a wonderful shock ending.

SF offers two different versions – the longer Spanish release and the edited US print.  It’s the rare instance where the shorter one is better.

If you’re a horror buff who has somehow missed this drive-in gem, trust me, buy it blind – you can thank me later.

Finally, Willard…   

On the commentary, lead Bruce Davison says he doesn’t even think it technically qualifies as a horror film – and he may be right, it’s closer to a black comedy.  Just a simple parable of a young man falling in with some bad rats.  Call it Southern California Gothic.  Whatever it is, it stands up amazingly well after all these years, looks great for a such a low-budget film.  And it still works.

A surprise sensation when it came out, it triggered a long line of “Animals Attack” movies, a popular sub-genre of the 1970’s.

Ben (1973), the weaker sequel, remembered mostly for its saccharine Michael Jackson theme song, is offered as well for completists.

Whatever the quibbles of people like me, I do hope Scream Factory continues to bring back well-made schlock from the past…

My own personal Wish List would include House On Haunted Hill (1959), The Masque Of Red Death (1964), Bluebeard (1969), Bug (1974), Rec (2006)/Rec 2 (2007) and Inside (2008).

Here’s to Screaming.

It never gets old.

–RR

UPDATE:  I, of course, ended up buying the Arrow releases of The Thing and Carrie.  The Arrow Thing is definitely more reliable in its color timing than the SF version, as expected, but the overall HD quality may not be quite as sharp.  The fanboys are still arguing over which one they prefer.  I’m just glad to own both editions and will work out which is my favorite somewhere down the line…  Or never?  Who knows?  The Arrow Carrie, on the other hand, at least to my eyes, is clearly superior to the SF disc.  The color is dead-perfect from first frame to last.  I know because I stopped thinking about it and fell in love all over again with every shot.  Maybe the “definitive” remaster is not a futile search after all…  If you own a multi-region player, that is…

 

Dear Saul –

Can we get on with it already??!

I just watched S3E4 and once again was left with a bad case of blue balls.

Like pretty much everyone in the known world, I was a huge fan of Breaking Bad.  The measured storytelling, the cinematic visuals, the mix of black comedy, brutal violence and banal domesticity – it all built to what was, without a doubt, the most electrifying final season in TV history.

The prequel, Better Call Saul, was always going to be a more subtle beast.  From the start the pace wasn’t just measured, it was positively glacial.  Just like its lawyer anti-hero, taking a series of baby steps into more criminal behavior. Which was fine because the character detail and subplots were so smart.  There was great fun in anticipating how Saul/Jimmy’s and Mike Ermantraut’s very different worlds would come into collision – or perfect harmony, depending on how you look at it.  Just like with Walter White, we’re rooting for both men to go “bad”…to break out of the constraints of normal society and embrace their true identities of slimy crook’s counsel and cold-blooded hitman.

Season 1 worked like a Swiss clock.

Season 2 was almost as fun but started to test my patience near the end.

Season 3, so far, has me squirming in frustration.

Must everything happen so slowly??  Can somebody please get killed?  Could it be Chuck so I never have to hear his annoying whine ever again?

I like stories that take their time, but this season feels more like it’s padding out an undernourished plot than carefully setting up for eventual payoffs.  It’s so thin, I have no idea if Jimmy and Kim are still in a romantic relationship or if they have put that on hold for the sake of their business.  This week he seemed to be sniffing her longingly as they worked side by side, but shouldn’t I know where they are as a couple?  The same goes for the scenes between Mike and his widowed daughter-in-law…which, in this episode, consisted of her asking him if he was okay.  Even the return of Gus Fring feels stiff.  Why aren’t the writers using this opportunity to fill in this villain with some nuance or backstory? Instead, we get a long scene with a Mexican drug lord pitting his minions against each other that feels derivative of countless movies from the 1980’s.

Now Jimmy and Kim finally seem to have a trick up their sleeve for putting Chuck in his place at last…though, yep, you guessed it, we will have to wait another week to find out what the plan is, let alone its outcome.

And the scenes from next week do not signal any speeding-up of the narrative. Jimmy’s hearing to keep his law license felt as if it was going to be the lever that gives him his new identity as Saul, but now I’m not so sure.  And since it has taken four episodes to get Mike and Gus to where I expected them to be in S3E1, I’m not expecting anything very dramatic there either.

At first I told myself all of this will play much better when one binges the show in the future, watching 2 or 3 episodes at a time…but none of this feels rewatchable to me.  The show needs to entertain us from minute to minute, making the journey as pleasurable as the destination, and it’s not doing that.

It has become airless, claustrophobic…and – I hate this word – just BORING.

I’ll still be watching the rest of the season, of course.  I doubt I will ever truly give up on it.  But something precious has been lost for good now.  I’m not sure how much I care anymore, and that’s a shame.

–RR

Interesting New Yorker article by Emily Nussbaum here on the final episode of Girls.

I don’t agree with her on everything, but she’s dead-on about the noise around the series being exhausting.  It will be nice to never read any more bloviating social commentary on what was always just an extended, edgier female-Woody Allen movie.  Dunham would hate that classification because she assumes Allen is guilty of the baseless charges made by a bitter ex-girlfriend, but I mean it as the greatest compliment.  Like Allen, she is a major comedic talent of our time. Her “Hannah” may not be the voice of a generation, but she is – was – a hilarious voice of selfish, quirky, wonderfully human angst.

Nussbaum is right: the finale was raggedy and anti-climactic, but also in perfect keeping with the digressive style that distinguished the whole series.  No pat answers, no promises of sudden maturity, just the trial of motherhood testing Hannah’s fragile mental health.  I loved the montage of her trying to reason with her fussy baby.  Talking to him like he’s just another disappointing male in her life.  This maternal thing is going to be a very slow turning, bit by bit, nipple by rejected nipple.  She’s still a child herself.

But ironically, like so many social critics of the show, Nussbaum wants to inject politics and see the fight between Hannah and her mother as a sop to said critics. I don’t think so.  It was just good brutal writing.  Dunham was not about to let her character off the hook just because the series was ending.  Same as she resisted the urge to reunite the girl foursome for some maudlin group hug, or to make Marnie less of a neurotic mess (her British stewardess sexual fantasy was so oddly specific and politically incorrect – the show at it’s best).  She has the faith in her audience to expect them to forgive Hannah her outbursts, or to understand at least.  Her last look straight into the camera was relieved, but also as nakedly vulnerable as any of the series’ infamous sex scenes.

What critics on both the left and right continue to get completely wrong is that Dunham is too smart to fall for either traditional tropes or strict feminist dogma. She knows her messy contradictions are to be savored.

The season as a whole was bumpy, but with some classic moments.  Which, again, describes the entire series.  The third season was a pretty dismal failure, but the writing rebounded beautifully in the last few seasons.  A highlight for me was Hannah’s untethered detour into bucolic college life in Iowa, where she felt like an alien pervert in her writing workshop and her bike was immediately stolen New York-style.  The surfing camp episode this season was a close second. It was in these fish-out-of-water moments that Dunham’s self-awareness really shined for me.  The laughs were choking and bittersweet.

As unlikely as it seems, given my age and sex demographic, her work, like all great work, inspired me to be more honest in my own writing…

And ultimately, I admire the way she refused to wrap the show up with a bow, stuck to her short-story aesthetic all the way to the end.

It will be fascinating to see where Dunham’s career goes from here.  Ater making such a grand autobiographical statement before the age of 30, how will she apply her genius to other formats and stories?  It may be that by middle-age she will have taken over Judd Apatow’s position as comedy guru and puppet master for younger “voices”.  Maybe she will turn to drama instead.

In any case, she has already achieved something writers often attempt but rarely succeed at – turning flaws of body and heart into pop culture gold.

Recently, I was very sad to hear that Caroline Aherne had died.

It’s a celebrity loss I feel more acutely than the death of pop legends like Bowie and Prince because my relationship to her work felt so much more personal.

If you’ve never heard of her, and it’s too bad that most Americans haven’t, she was a brilliant comedic actress and writer who created an absolutely genius British sitcom called The Royle Family (1998) which lasted three seasons and spawned several one-hour specials.  And yes, that’s Royle, not Royal.  It’s the ironic last name of a working-class family in Manchester, England, and the episodes take place almost exclusively in their cramped living room, where they mostly sit and watch TV.

And that’s it…that’s the show.

That’s why it was genius.

Forget Seinfeld, this was the real show about nothing!

No plots, no big events, just everyday life in all its humdrum glory.  If art holds up a mirror, this was a mirror under a microscope; revolutionary in its minimalism. And yet, it very pointedly seemed to ask: Isn’t this type of listless gathering and idle family chatter the real meat of our lives?  And isn’t there something kind of wonderful about that?

I stumbled onto the show on BBC America one day in 2001 and was instantly sucked in by the simplicity of it.  It was the perfect antidote to the forced mayhem of most American sitcoms.  Of course, I had trouble at first with the characters’ thick Manchester accents (thank god for subtitles) and I had to learn a whole new vocabulary of British slang, but that only made the discovery more exciting.

And, as a writer, I knew all too well such simplicity was an illusion.

“Effortless” naturalism does not come easy, it requires tremendous skill.  Aherne possessed a perfectly-tuned ear for the way people really talk – especially when they are lying to themselves; and she and co-creator, Craig Cash, managed to hide a cutting, scalpel-sharp wit behind every seemingly inane line of dialogue and pregnant pause, finding the poetry in the crude and inarticulate.

They rightfully won multiple BAFTA awards for their work on the show, and I ended up buying the published scripts so I could pore over every word, study their precision and learn from the best.

The famous Television-POV opening credits for “The Royle Family” with Oasis song. (To play, press the long link code below.  Recorded from, where else, my own TV.  Please forgive the shaky-cam framing)

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Meet the Royles:

The patriarch Jim, like most fathers, enjoys ranting at the world from the comfort of his easy chair.  His wife Barbara, is ever the peacemaker, smoothing out his temper with her eternal optimism.  Denise (played by Aherne), is their spoiled princess daughter who makes an art form out of laziness.  Younger brother Anthony, the put-upon baby of the family, is frequently abused as slave labor. And then there’s Dave (played by Cash), Denise’s fiance/husband, a gormless bloke completely unburdened by higher thought.

The characters are silly, peevish, vulnerable and fiercely loyal all at once.

The show makes fun of them, yes – but lovingly, never meanly.

The first two seasons (or “series”, as the Brits say) are sheer perfection.  The first leads up to Denise and Dave’s wedding, the second to the birth of their son.  As hilarious as they are, they each finish with a powerful emotional wallop.

The third season is fine, but has no such story arc and feels less focused.  Then there are several one-hour Christmas specials of varying quality – the very best being The Queen Of Sheba, which deals beautifully with the passing of the family’s Nana.

A talented sketch performer, Aherne was also beloved for her parody of an elderly talk show host called “Mrs. Merton”

I have to admit I became obsessed with Aherne – my admiration for her work mixed with a schoolboy crush.  Like Lucille Ball or Gilda Radner, she was hugely appealing.

Hunting for more info online, I found out she was a brassy Manchester girl in real life as well – prone to drinking too much and loving the wrong people. Unfortunately, her every vodka shot and stumble became fodder for the tabloids. In one incident, well in her cups at an awards show, she got impatient with a winner’s long-winded speech and yelled “Get on with it!” at the top of her lungs.  I thought that was hilarious.  It just made me love her more.  But, unfortunately, it was also a sign of a big substance problem.

Her addiction issues were fueled by a tragic life.  She survived two bouts of cancer, one that cost her an eye as a child.  She lost one boyfriend to cancer and another to suicide.  She herself attempted suicide with an overdose of pills and champagne after frequent battles with depression and was committed to a mental hospital.  All of this was chronicled in gleeful detail by the British press. Eventually, she felt the need to “escape” to Australia just for the privacy and space to recuperate.

Not to be melodramatic – which she would hate – but it seems she spent the majority of her very successful career just fighting to survive.

Then by all accounts, in the last decade or so, a happy calming.  Things quieted down and she was finally at peace with herself.  She moved back to Manchester to be close to her family.  Returned with the occasional Royle holiday episode, which was always much anticipated and a big ratings winner.  Made a good living with voice-over work.  No longer in the white-hot spotlight, no longer the wild phenom or “future of British comedy”, but having beaten her demons and enjoying a simpler life.

Until, in a sick joke of fate, she was attacked by cancer for yet a third time.  This time it was lung cancer.  This time she lost the battle.

She died all alone, in her home, having only the day before reassured her brother over the phone she was “feeling fine”.  Almost certainly a lie.

She was 52.  Robbed of a good 30 more years of hard-won happiness.  As we were robbed of her comic brilliance, her crooked grin, and one helluva’ memoir.

I never knew the woman.  But I wish I had…

Her work was nothing less than a joyous celebration of humanity.

Sometimes it’s just easier not being a genius.

–RR

Wait…  Am I late?

Everyone has to have their own distinctive gimmick.  Mine is to wait until nobody in the world gives a shit anymore and THEN, AND ONLY THEN, share my thoughts.

But I know three people have been waiting breathlessly for me to list my Top Ten films of 2015.  So here you go.  And I think we can safely agree it’s the last word on the matter.

It consists of a lot of the “usual suspects” from other people’s list, but a few of my lower-brow entries have surprised even me.  And I saved a real shocker for the #1 spot.  My favorite movie of the year was, as far as I know, completely ignored by all the critics and did not win a single award.  I kind of love that.  Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded your taste is your very own and not just a parroting of the so-called tastemakers.

Let’s face it: too many people these days nod their heads along to the viral hype as if it were gospel.  For some good examples, see my 10 Worst Movies list tagged onto the end – sort of a bonus – which commits heresy, contains a few critical darlings.

(If you’re one of those cynical people who love the negative stuff more, just skip on down)

Overall, though, I think it was a good year for film.  I really do.

Okay, ready?

10) Bone Tomahawk

Without a doubt, this was the surprise hit of the year.  A genre-bending slow-burn trip straight into the mouth of Hell.  Is it a Western?  Is it Horror?  Yes.  It’s neither and both. It plods along at a deliberate pace, reveling in droll period dialogue and quirky character a la the Coen Bros, building a real sense of place…only to descend into a nightmare third act that has us squirming in our seats.  All the cast – Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins, Lili Simmons, Matthew Fox – do a great job, uhm, fleshing out their characters. But the real star here is Writer-Director S. Craig Zahler, who knocks his debut film right out of the park.  He creates the most terrifying human monsters we’ve seen on screen in a very long time and gives us one gloriously gruesome death for the record books. Tarantino served up the same tired schtick in The Hateful Eight, but Zahler gave us a genuinely original, exciting spin on B-movie tropes.

9) Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation

Really?  A sequel in an action series?  The fifth one no less?  A strange choice, I know.  But when I really search myself, this was probably the most fun I had in a movie theatre this year.  As a diehard Bond fan who has suffered through the deadly dry Daniel Craig era – and Spectre, though a tiny step in the right direction, was no exception – I find the Mission Impossible series provides my 007 fix with about ten times the entertainment value.  This is what a spy film is supposed to be:  Slick, cool, and light on its feet.  I’ve watched it a few times now and it just gets better with each viewing.  The opera sequence alone is worth the ticket price.  The MVP is newcomer Rebecca Ferguson, who steals every scene as a sexy double agent every bit Ethan Hunt’s equal.  When she casually climbs bad guys and breaks their neck with her thighs, I get the giddy feeling of being 13 years-old again. The great news is she’s returning for Mission Impossible 6, as is director Christopher McQuarrie.  James who?

8) Furious 7

Really??  A sequel in an action series?  The SEVENTH one no less?  How lowbrow can I go?  What can I say?  I have to be honest.  This was a close second on most fun in a movie theatre last year and the capper in my trilogy of popcorn flicks – my way of scaring off the film snobs right off the bat.  This one provided the other half of my 007 fix with an orgy of crazy car stunts and jaw-dropping action. Just a complete blast from start to finish.  It even throws in Kurt Russell!  Is it very silly?  You bet.  And corny.  But the heart behind Vin Diesel’s “family” (and the surprising poignancy in the way it handles the real-life loss of Paul Walker) makes all of the absurdity go down easy.  There’s not a mean bone in this film’s body.  It just wants to give you all the thrills and spills you can handle.  And that it does, outdoing itself in scene after scene, until you can no longer contain the smile on your face.  It’s pure kinetic joy.

7) The Martian

This is one of two entries on the list where I think a great film has been made out of a somewhat mediocre book.  The Martian was a huge bestselling novel, I know, but it was actually pretty bloated and boring on the page.  Screenwriter Drew Goddard and Director Ridley Scott trim all the technical fat and give us a zippy best-parts version.  Some people might still argue that it lacks suspense or sufficient tension.  But by keeping it low-key and “real”, and our hero coping with his struggle with lots of humor, the story is able to sneak up on you emotionally.  By the time it reaches its powerful climax, it has transformed into the most uplifting and inspiring movie of the year.  And in these times, there is something so refreshing about that.  It’s a movie about the future that reminds us of our great NASA past, what human beings are capable of achieving if we just believe.

6) The Revenant

Okay, I’ll concede that it may be five minutes too long.  All the other criticisms I don’t understand. Yes, it’s grueling – that’s the whole point.  It’s meant to be an immersive experience, to give you the feeling of really being left for dead in the wilderness.  In most movies, DiCaprio’s character would have stumbled back into civilization after a couple quick fade-outs.  But here we feel every inch of his journey, the pain of his injuries, his starvation, and his moments of madness.  We feel the sharp pain over the loss of his wife and son.  It wins our empathy with pure visceral filmmaking.  It’s Terrence Malick with a ruthless edge.  I loved it.  I honestly worry audiences are losing their attention span.  I heard some people bitch that it was just a revenge story – what’s wrong with that?  DiCaprio’s blank gaze directly into camera at the end tells us he is just as burdened after he exacts revenge as before, and his mind still not made up between life and death.

5) Spotlight

This movie is so subtle, so finely calibrated, it’s easy to forget the million and one ways it could have gone wrong.  Simplicity is often the hardest thing to pull off. And when your subject matter is as disturbing as the true story in Spotlight, the feat becomes even more difficult.  The trick here was to concentrate on an old-fashioned newspaper procedural and let the full breadth of the widespread child abuse seep in slowly.  In this way, it reminded me of Schindler’s List.  There is no one scene where it blatantly appeals for our tears, they just keep accumulating details of the church’s cover-up until the weight of it hits you in the chest like a bullet.  The list of locations with abuse claims at the end of the film may not be quite Holocaust-sized, but it’s gasp-inducing nonetheless.  Todd McCarthy and his cast follow the reporter’s code: Tell the story and get out of the way.

4) Sicario

In contrast with my popcorn entries, what makes Sicario the best thriller of recent years is that it is decidedly NOT an action picture and it never cheapens its story by devolving into one.  Call it a slice-of-death from the War On Drugs. Tense, brutal, sloppy, and terrifyingly ordinary, it’s all gray area and no heroics. Instead of a car chase, we get a traffic jam…and a bloody shootout that doesn’t solve anything.  It’s the perfect metaphor.  Just like our heroine, we never really grasp what’s going on, or even who in fact the title hitman is, until it’s much too late.  It reminded me of the great crime films of the 1970’s, where the thrills came from keeping it real and moody.  And in this day of comic book excess, what a pleasure to have our intelligence as an audience respected.  Emily Blunt is rock solid in the lead and Benicio Del Toro does his best work in years.  The script by  Taylor Sheridan, the directing, the cinematography, the music, it all gels together to make a modern classic that would fit perfectly on a double bill with No Country For Old Men.

3) Mad Max – Fury Road

If there is one thing this list of movies proves, it’s that letting more female energy into our movies, no matter what the genre, enriches them, makes them better. Not just by adding complex dimensional heroines, but also in a general sense, by highlighting compassion, sensitivity and hope.  I’ll make a confession: I never loved the previous Mad Max movies. They had their moments, great stunts and visuals – George Miller has always known how to stage an epic (even primal) car chase – but ultimately, they all felt sort of empty.  What he does here is take the exact same template he’s been using for thirty years and finally make it resonate on a much deeper level.  And it’s because women, and the hope they offer for a humane future even in an apocalyptic wasteland, are the heart, the soul, the actual McGuffin of the piece.  Once that becomes clear, and Charlize Theron allows beautifully nuanced chinks in her one-armed armor, this film becomes so much more than just another Mad Max, more than just a genre flick.

2) Brooklyn

Talk about female energy.  If you had told me a year ago that a very old-fashioned movie about an Irish girl’s move to 1950’s America would be one of the most affecting films of the year, I would never have believed it.  But there I was, eyes welling up like a baby before the first act had even ended.  It shows the power of simple, honest storytelling.  What should have been a corny mess of cliches, instead feels completely authentic and universal.  Chalk it up to a terrific script by Nick Hornby and an absolutely radiant performance by Saoirse Ronan.  The whole thing rests on her alabaster shoulders and her sad, slightly odd face, on which we can read her every thought.  As she overcomes homesickness and falls in love with an awkward Italian-American boy, it feels like a perfect microcosm of the immigrant experience.  When she finally stands up for herself against small-minded gossip and chooses a bigger life, it feels like a huge triumph.

1) Mr. Holmes

What did I tell you?  You weren’t expecting this one in the top spot, were you?  No wonder, since it was roundly forgotten by almost everyone at the end of the year. Nonetheless, it was my most overall gratifying and surprising experience in 2015. I’m an enormous Sherlock Holmes fan, but I went into the film with very low expectations.  The source novel, “A Slight Trick Of The Mind”, was a real snooze, with barely any plot and a whole lot of pretentious ambiguity.  It was hard to imagine how anybody could make a movie from such thin material.  Enter Bill Condon.  Through some creative alchemy, he manages to turn it into a witty, moving, even profound meditation on aging and regret, without ever sacrificing the mystery (albeit low-key) and nifty deductions we expect from The Great Detective.  He also very wisely changes the ending – not to pander, but to give meaning to the story.  Sherlock finally solves the case of his own ego.  It’s a miraculous adaptation and how it got passed over by Oscar I will never know.  But then Ian McKellen’s incredible work as Holmes (at different ages, levels of mental acuity) was also ignored.  Maybe someone needed to cry ageism.

I love this film.  I believe its reputation will only grow.  It’s a brilliantly realized, layered piece of entertainment – as old-fashioned as Brooklyn and just as transcendent.

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Okay, what about the worst?

As mentioned before, I try not to attack easy targets and obvious flops.  There’s no point in beating up a corpse.  So these are all “quality” films, several of which were on other folks’ Top Ten lists.  They’re still terrible, in my opinion.  Some are disappointments by talented people, others just vastly overrated pieces of shit. But all are missed opportunities.

10) Jurassic World

A gigantic box-office hit, but so so dull.  Maybe the real problem here is the original film isn’t as good as Millennials remember, so the third faded Xerox copy of it can only do so much. How many PG-rated variations are there on dinosaurs eating people?  Thank god for the pterodactyls, the only scene that delivers true monster mayhem.

9) The Hateful Eight

It starts with a fun conceit, Agatha Christie in the Old West, but nearly three hours later I just wanted to die myself.  I keep waiting in vain, year after year, for people to wake up to Tarantino’s repetitious bag of tricks.  But if this exhausting exercise in futility didn’t do it, nothing will.

8) Tomorrowland

I know what Brad Bird was aiming for, but what a strange misfire this was.  It’s too bad because there are some great scenes, cool effects, intriguing ideas, and we desperately need more blockbusters with original stories.  Unfortunately, it’s all undone by clumsy storytelling and a vaguely creepy feeling of stunted pre-pubescence.

7) The Big Short

I’m in the extreme minority, no doubt.  As a black comedy, it didn’t make me laugh – as a tragedy, it didn’t stir my emotions.  In the final analysis, it’s the financial collapse through the eyes of a bunch of obnoxious millionaires who don’t end up losing anything.  Outrage and glibness don’t marry well.

6) Mississippi Grind

The title deliberately recalls one of my favorite gambling movies, Robert Altman’s California Split.  I was expecting that level of realism.  Or at least a genuine study of gambling addiction.  Instead, I got a contrived buddy flick I didn’t believe for a single moment.  Which would be fine if it was fun.  It’s not.

5) Carol

As usual, Todd Haynes gets all the detail of the 1950’s production design meticulously right.   If only the human beings were recognizable.  The two heroines at the center feel false, their love affair stilted and ice cold.  Half of the running time is Mara Rooney gazing pensively out a car window.

4) Crimson Peak

A crushing letdown.  I’m a sucker for Del Toro’s gorgeous visuals and was excited to see his take on a gothic romance/ghost story.  Neither sexy or scary, we spend two hours waiting for the lead character to figure out what we already know and no longer care about.  What a waste.  This and Tomorrowland did real damage to the Non-Sequel Blockbuster.

But I have a special antipathy for these “top” three…

3) The End Of The Tour

To quote Roger Ebert, I hated hated hated hated this film.  It’s hard to say what’s more galling: a film that thinks it’s smart and literate when it’s really as deep as a bottle cap, or the fact so many people seemed to fall for it.  Jason Segal’s award-hungry performance is so precious and simpering, if late author David Foster Wallace saw it he would have to kill himself all over again.

2) It Follows

I don’t know what bribes or sexual favors horror filmmakers are handing out these days, but like The Babadook and The Guest from the year before, another absolutely lame, amateurish horror film became all the rage with the critics.  This “masterpiece” is not scary, not witty enough to be fun, not provocative in the least (the sex-as-contagion concept has been done better…well, everywhere, you name the movie), and, stylistically is a total washout.  What has happened to American horror?  “It Sucks”.

1) Joy

Finally, the biggest failure of the year by far.  It’s not even a close call.  This one is pure torture.   The original draft by Annie Mumolo (Bridesmaids), was a funny, heartfelt American success story and one of the best scripts I have ever read.  But David O. Russell, presumably in a fit of Oscar hubris, threw it all out and wrote this condescending “parable” of female empowerment instead.  It was a crime against screenwriting.  The resulting travesty wastes the talents of our best young actress; not to mention, Mr. DeNiro and an ace supporting cast.  Don’t take my word for it – there are articles outlining the crime here and here.   To think of what might have been just kills me.  American Hustle was a bad sign, but now it’s official: Russell’s swollen head is firmly lodged up his ass.

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…So there you have it.  At long last, my two cents.

Vehemently disagree?  

Good.

Leave a comment… 🙂