As a reminder: These are brief (though they always wind up growing longer and longer) thoughts on films that I'm revisiting mostly just because it's been at least 20 years and I’m feeling nostalgic and/or want to have a rating for them. Mostly stuff that's about to be removed from a streaming service to which I subscribe, so far. See the original post for a fuller explanation. (I'm now throwing in repeat viewings of more recent films as well; those generally used to get no additional words unless my opinion significantly changed or something new occurred to me.)
52 Pick-Up (1986, John Frankenheimer): 61/100
Previously seen: Uncertain. Wasn't in theatrical release. Vaguely recall renting it, most likely sometime in 1988 as I didn't have a VCR for most of '87. (I'd originally tagged it as seen in February '87, when I did have VCR access, but it opened in November and wouldn't have been on tape yet.)
Original opinion: Unrecorded, don't remember.
Now: Oh, right, this was my introduction to John Glover. He's fantastically sleazy, Clarence Williams III is chilling except when he's required to speak, and Robert Trebor, who I don't really know (never having watched any of the Hercules/Xena shows), turns in one of the all-time great sweat-stained logorrheic performances as a nebbishy wannabe crook in way over his head. Like many Elmore Leonard adaptations, 52 Pick-Up has remarkably low stakes—even adjusted for inflation, these dudes are committing murder to secure roughly $150K split three ways, hardly seems worth it—resulting in one of my favorite crime-movie scenes ever, as Roy Scheider's businessman invites the head blackmailer to look over his company's books and confirm that he's not as liquid as the crooks have assumed. Just delightful. Ann-Margret's a bit squandered here but does get gifted with a first-rate hubby's-confession-of-infidelity scene, written and acted the way that adults actually behave. Three major reservations, or rather two plus a question, question first: Why strap the wooden board onto Kelly Preston So Young I Didn't Recognize Her? Seemed unnecessary and made me spend much of the movie thinking it'd be revealed that she wasn't actually killed. And then I'm not keen on the ending, partly because SPOILERS FOLLOW Raimy should be highly suspicious of Mitchell voluntarily offering his Jaguar (also the tape playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" for a while before the car explodes is very dumb), partly because Mitchell has now committed a loud murder that's easily traceable to him (and can't really be justified as self-defense, even though Raimy did intend to kill him; hard to make that fly with a bomb you installed at home).
Lilies (1996, John Grayson): 62/100
Previously seen: 12 October 1996, New York, NY (Alice Tully Hall, attending NYFF as a civilian prior to my getting a press badge).
Original opinion: Three stars out of four. Briefly reviewed it on my site in an early "drive-by" format, playing NYFF catch-up.
Now: Decidedly a case of my being much less interested in the tale—a familiar tragic queer romance, undone by another's jealousy—than in the singular manner of its telling. Read my contemporaneous review for the basics; I'll add that nearly the entire cast is phenomenal, which is surprising given that virtually none of them went on to do anything else of note. (Exception of sorts: Brent Carver, who by this point had already won a Tony as Molina in the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, which is very easy to believe after seeing him play a woman here—"without," as I noted in '96, "an ounce of camp.") Prison setting inevitably calls Genet to mind but the film continually breaks free into the realm of imaginative memory, in its uniquely self-conscious way. One big stumbling block for me remains an act of what I guess you'd called invited murder, the impetus for which just isn't clear to me—it feels imposed upon the play for shock value + ready-made pathos. Greyson had previously made Zero Patience, which got some attention (and which I still haven't caught up with), but this turned out to be it, really, as none of his subsequent features have been widely seen.
Janet Planet (2023, Annie Baker): 58/100
Previously seen: 8 May 2024, Burbank, CA (press screening, Dolby Burbank).
Original opinion: 58/100. Reviewed it for y'all.
Now: Can't recall another instance of falling headlong in love with an artist's sensibility while not really responding to the work itself. I can tell that Baker, should she keep making films, will eventually knock me out...but I still find Janet Planet frustrating, mostly because it's structured around three interlopers and not one of those characters interests me—not even in how their presence and subsequent absence affects Lacy. The one exception being Lacy bonding with Wayne's daughter and losing a potential friend because Wayne turns out to be having some sort of unspecified breakdown. (Baker plays a bit fast and loose with how much the film is tied to and restricted by Lacy's perspective. Sometimes we know only as much as she does, but there are also scenes, like Janet's picnic with Avi, for which she's not even present.) The film starts losing me with the various Regina issues, which are too realistically petty to be very compelling, and then I just don't remotely care about the Avi stuff, by all means let the dude mysteriously vanish. Yet there's never a moment when I don't detect the hand of a formidable artist at work. Can't wait for the next one.
Why you should not trust my judgment: That's exactly how I felt about Arcade Fire's Funeral, which I still like less than Neon Bible and The Suburbs and even Reflektor. I don't own Funeral anymore tbh, kept only "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" and "Rebellion (Lies)."
Disclosure (1994, Barry Levinson): 41/100
Previously seen: 9 December 1994, New York, NY (Loews Village).
Original opinion: Unfavorable. Found a rec.arts.movies post responding to someone who wondered why the reviews were bad.
In my opinion, critics don't like the film because it's quite the stinker. Sure, it's a crowdpleaser, because there is no ambiguity whatsoever that could get in the way of the audience's desire to see Good rewarded and Evil punished. It's pretty much the same movie as Fatal Attraction, only with current hot topics like sexual harassment and virtual reality tossed in, and with the one-note performance of Demi Moore in place of the comparatively realistic and complex performance (until they decided to turn her into a knife-wielding, bunny-boiling monster) of Glenn Close.
Sadly, I have a paper to write, so I have to conclude my remarks at this time, but I may return later with examples of some of the patent absurdities seen in this incredibly stupid (and yet somehow strangely compelling, I have to admit) movie.
If I did in fact return later, that post has not survived. But the good news is that...
Now: ...I have plenty of time to list Disclosure's patent absurdities (most of which I'm surprised to discover originated with Crichton—the movie plays like something that's been radically overhauled). Main one being that there's no coherent narrative throughline at all: Meredith sexually semi-assaulting Tom, which might have made for a provocative thought experiment à la TÁR, ultimately proves to be irrelevant, since DigiCom was setting Tom up to take the fall for Meredith's cost-cutting Malaysia bullshit all along. And that nefarious plot hinges on the inane idea that a company would try to reassure future partners by having one of its execs expose another's ostensible incompetence in the middle of a merger conference. Mysterious email hints are dumb; virtual-reality sequences look so lame that they scared me away from VR for life; even Morricone's score ranks among the worst he ever composed. All the same, I was not wrong to call the film "strangely compelling." It's bad, but at least it's entertainingly bad (and I kinda dug Moore this time, at least early on—female characters who are sexually aggressive rather than seductive are so rare that watching Meredith dominate Tom feels genuinely kinky). Surprised I didn't remember Dylan Baker from this when he broke through via Happiness a few years later, it's a meaty supporting role. (Likewise to a lesser degree Jacqueline Kim, who wowed me in Charlotte Sometimes.) We got a truly great Ebert line out of it: "Much could have been made of this material. Much has been made of it. But not the same much."
These Three (1936, William Wyler): 57/100
Previously seen: 1 October 2002, New York, NY (Film Forum).
Original opinion: Unrecorded, no memory.
Now: Was quite curious about what I'd think, since I fuckin' hated (29/100) Wyler's unexpurgated (or at least much less watered-down) 1961 remake, The Children's Hour. Apparently that was due to attempted empathy that still comes across as grotesquely homophobic—not an issue here, obviously, what with the girl's false accusation having been changed to simple hetero indecency. But while I much prefer this earlier adaptation, despite its massive Code-dictated changes, it never achieves the excruciating power of, say, Miller's Crucible, due to some frankly baffling decisions. Even if there's no trial staged in the play (which seems unlikely to me), that ought to have been the movie's centerpiece; skipping from the kids being yanked out of school to the verdict robs this scenario of what ought to be its most potent moments. Also, while Bonita Granville does truly chilling work whenever Mary and Rosalie are alone together, she wasn't accomplished enough at age 13 to avoid overwrought shrieking (echoed by Marcia Mae Jones) at other times. Of the three adult stars, only Oberon gives a rich, complex performance; Hopkins and McCrea tend to coast.
Three Kings (1999, David O. Russell): 74/100
Previously seen: 3 October 1999, New York, NY (Lincoln Square); 26 January 2007, New York, NY (dvd).
Original opinion: B+ in '99, 74 (which is still a B+) in '07. Wrote a very brief review on my site upon release.
Now: That review implies a vacillation of tone, which isn't really the case—Russell just goes soft in the final reel, concocting a collective attack of conscience that feels fundamentally false. (A lot of alliteration etc.) Similar to L.A. Confidential's happy ending: "No, this isn't the movie I've been watching." That movie's downright scabrous and often almost effortlessly funny (by which I mean there are few jokes or one-liners or even overtly comic situations; to borrow a Living Colour song title, it's just a funny vibe), a Shrub-era gloss on Treasure of the Sierra Madre that replaces mining with looting, grizzled Bogey with suave Clooney, greed and betrayal with bumbling ineptitude. Russell somehow convinced Warner to pony up nearly $50 mil and all that money's onscreen, thanks to U.S. desert locations that pass reasonably well (much easier to simulate Iraq than Vietnam in CA); I was taken aback by how visceral the action sequences are, with details rarely glimpsed in other movies, e.g. the veritable rain of spent shells falling from a helicopter as one of its occupants fires a machine gun at our anti-heroes. Incredibly distinctive bleached look, too, which I'm surprised nobody's really mimicked since (apart maybe from Soderbergh in Traffic's Mexico scenes, and that was practically simultaneous with this).
Wall Street (1987, Oliver Stone): 58/100
Previously seen: ca. December 1987, San Jose, CA (Century 21).
Original opinion: Unrecorded, think I mildly liked it. My high school friend Matt and I were absurdly amused by one Sheen-Douglas exchange, which meant that e.g. confused taco stand employees ca. 1988–89 had to hear Matt ask "What should I get?" and me reply "The bid is 16½ and going down. As your broker, I suggest you take it" and Matt respond "Yeah well you take it! Right in the ass you fucking scumbag cocksucker!"
Now: I'd have given Douglas' Oscar to William Hurt, just because the degree of difficulty in playing believably dumb is so much greater, but Gordon Gekko really is immensely entertaining, right from his greeting Bud with "Nice to meet you, hope you're intelligent." (Wish I had the stones to say that in many circumstances.) Sheen's actually quite good, too, when he isn't being asked to stare out into the darkness and ask aloud "Who am I?" One of those morality plays where the rising action's far more compelling than what happens on the way down; think I start losing interest around the time that Daryl Hannah shows up as the epitome of pretentious classlessness. (Sean Young, on the other hand, absolutely nails a particular breed of New York socialite with hardly any screen time at all. Just superbly inflected.) Forgot this has a Stewart Copeland score, which I owned long ago on a Varèse Sarabande two-fer with Talk Radio; also forgot that it features two expert needle drops from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which I wouldn't have given Stone credit for even being aware of. Previously lacked the visual sophistication to clock a limo close-up that's clearly been optically created from the two-shot master—this time that made me shudder. Bonus points for Bud crying as he's led out in handcuffs at the end, which I can't fathom any current male star of Sheen's stature at the time going for today. Gekko doesn't really say anything indictable when Bud's wearing the wire, does he? I think the feds would need much more than they get from that conversation to make a charge stick.
Escape to Witch Mountain (1975, John Hough): 50/100
Previously seen: ca. March 1975, San Jose, CA (theater unknown, will have to check the newspaper archive next time I'm in town). Wasn't previously sure whether I saw this first-run, as it might have been Return From Witch Mountain; I'm now confident that I was taken to both, because I remember the child actors at both ages. (Kid who plays Tony looks quite different at age 16 in the sequel than at age 13 in the original.) Also have a vivid memory of specific moments from Escape: Tony "leaping" to catch a baseball way overhead, the helicopter landing upside down and spinning on its rotor like an amusement-park ride, etc. Stuff that a little boy would imprint on. Apparently my local cable channel (there was only one in those days) didn't have a deal with Disney, as this definitely wasn't something I had an opportunity to regularly revisit. Still, it stuck with me.
Original opinion: Unrecorded due to my being insufficiently precocious at seven years old.
Now: Cool sorta Jr. X-Men setup, and the two kids, while unmistakably delivering memorized lines in the manner of every preadolescent at the time apart from Jodie "The Miracle" Foster, are on the appealing end of that spectrum. (I discover now that Kim Richards subsequently became a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills for multiple seasons; so was and indeed still is her sister, formerly one of the kids Laurie babysits in Halloween.) And of course as a boy I had no idea how ludicrously stacked the adult cast is, with Ray Milland and Donald Pleasance as baddies and Eddie Albert as the crusty surrogate dad. Unfortunately, alien powers wind up playing second fiddle to standard-issue car-chase scenes, and Witch Mountain, which should by rights be something akin to Devils Tower in Close Encounters, instead is largely indistinguishable from a small grassy hill. Also it's just plain dumb that Tony's telekinesis requires him to play the fucking harmonica, though I gather novelist Alexander H. Key is to blame for that.
A White, White Day (2019, Hlynur Pálmason): 76/100
Previously seen: 14 September 2019, Toronto, ON (Scotiabank 5); 9 December 2019, Oxnard, CA (press link).
Original opinion: 76/100 both times. Reviewed it for y'all from TIFF, later wrote it up at greater length for the A.V. Club.
Now: As previously mentioned, I've written (by the time you read this, hopefully; haven't actually started yet as I type these words) the booklet essay for a forthcoming Blu-ray release, so must mostly reserve my thoughts for that. One thing I can reiterate here (since booklet essays don't generally voice criticisms or reservations) is that I've never much liked the film's final scene and still don't understand its purpose. Whether memory or fantasy, the sexual focus makes Ingimundur seem like a much smaller man than he'd previously been even at his most misguided/deranged. On the other hand, I can't claim that clinging to a lost love's eroticism is in any way unrealistic or inaccurate. As the final note, though, it disappoints me. (LATER: Essay now filed and despite having 2000 words I couldn't find a good place to mention a bit I love: Salka ignoring Ingimundur's proffered apologetic hand after he'd cruelly berated her and then grasping it moments later when it's proffered again, now covered in his blood.)
Genghis Blues (1999, Roko Belic): 55/100
Previously seen: 3 March 2000, New York, NY (MoMA; I believe they were screening the Oscar nominees for Documentary Feature).
Original opinion: B+. From my site: "Oh boy, a documentary about Tuvan throat-music...but it's actually pretty inspiring (not a word I often use) watching blind bluesman Paul Pena—among other accomplishments, he's the guy who wrote the stellar Steve Miller Band hit "Jet Airliner"—demonstrate his improbable mastery of another culture's decidedly exotic (to Western ears) vocal technique for the appreciation of the locals. Basically it plays like the coolest vacation footage that friends have ever coerced you into watching; there's a tendency toward self-congratulation, it's true, but that's balanced by glimpses of Pena's ongoing battle with depression, culminating in a distressing 'scene' in which he worries that he may start abusing his hosts if he can't get his hands on a prescription refill. Much better than the infomercial called Buena Vista Social Club, certainly; now I have something to root for in this category on Oscar night. Kind of a bummer that nonfiction films almost invariably look like crap these days, though—understandable, I suppose, given the greater physical versatility and relative inexpensiveness (English needs a better word for this) of video, but regrettable nonetheless."
Now: My tolerance for camcorder-shot movies featuring tons of amateurish-looking rapid dissolves (was surprised to find that Christopher Nolan, who was friends with Belic and co-directed the 1989 short "Tarantella" with him, is credited with "editorial assistance"; I'd seen Following by March 2000, but doubt the name leapt out at me pre-Memento) has severely diminished over the past quarter-century. I can still see why I enjoyed myself, as Pena's an engaging figure dropped into a fascinating milieu, but as a film this is borderline atrocious—not just because it looks so cruddy (though boy does it), but due to the erratic, one-airlifted-sentence-from-an-interview-at-a-time way that early exposition has been assembled. (I BLAME NOLAN. Hack!) Settles down once the team arrives in Tuva but never stops looking fundamentally unprofessional. Appreciated it this time as a heartwarming celebration of cultural appropriation, with the Tuvans absolutely delighted that an American has expended time and effort to learn their unique style of singing (well enough that he wins a local competition, though I wonder whether there's a dancing-bear factor in that victory).
Day Night Day Night (2006, Julia Loktev): 76/100
Previously seen: 9 May 2007, New York, NY (IFC Center); 14 October 2007, New York, NY (dvd).
Original opinion: 76/100 both times. Never wrote a proper or even improper review, but my nerd-group thoughts eventually got expanded into a Watch This piece for the A.V. Club, which ran in 2013.
Now: Really struck by how ineffectual Loktev and Luisa Williams (the latter appeared in Alejandro González Iñárritu's To Each His Own Cinema short the following year and then gave up acting) make the unnamed protagonist: She can barely separate her chopsticks in the Chinese restaurant, accidentally soaks her head when she tries to start a bath (been there), can't initially get the hotel-room hair dryer back into its wall mount, etc. Shamelessly but expertly makes you sympathetic toward and protective of someone who's determined to commit mass murder for reasons never known. (Fun fact: One of the three masked terrorists drilling her is played by Nyambi Nyambi, who I now know as Jay on The Good Fight. Only learned that via the credits, as you never see his face and rarely even hear his voice.) Don't know if I'd previously registered that Loktev has the car taking She to the bus station wait forever to make a right turn so that we get like 45 seconds of its turn signal sounding like a ticking bomb. Still wish the film had a stronger ending, even as I have no idea what that might entail; the final look around midtown streets from She's forlorn perspective just doesn't wallop me. Has Times Square radically changed since this was shot? The movie shows exactly what it looked like when I left in 2009.
(And then Mambéty's Le Franc, chosen specifically for its brevity as writing the White, White Day essay ate up most of my 31st, was supposed to be the last entry but it looks like absolute dogshit on Kanopy and I'd downloaded a pristine copy years ago just in case so those thoughts are now coming in June's rundown.)
As a supplement, some brief notes re: movies I bailed on last month. (Just one this time.)
Is God Is (Aleshea Harris): Just make an exploitation movie! The scenario doesn't need to be anywhere near this tortured. "Our daddy's a bad man and we're gonna kill the fucker though one of us has reservations and doubts," sold, I'm on board. All that you achieve with a laborious backstory in which the mother they thought was dead suddenly shows up like 20 years later with a dying edict that sets the plot in motion is to make me ask a bunch of questions that aren't relevant to the intended vibe. Not a dealbreaker per se but I also found some elements too cutesy (telepathic subtitled conversations when they brush their teeth, the ex who created a shrine to their dad's abandoned toiletries), and the whole idea's very Kill Bill-y.
Oh, and actually I forgot this one last month:
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta): This shouldn't surprise anyone who read my review of the previous film (on which I couldn't bail because I don't allow myself to do that if I've seen even one of the director's previous features, much less 13 of 'em as in Boyle's case). Granted, it's got more Ralph Fiennes, but that sequence was singular and unrepeatable; here, we get him dancing to Duran Duran with tranquilized zombies (or whatever), which no fucking thanks x 1000. And the other, increasingly sadistic/gory aspect never appealed to me at all. Let this "franchise" die imo.