Introducing: Gemko Quibi! (Patreon)

TL;DR: I've started rewatching a bunch of additional films, and at the top of each month will post brief reviews of everything from the month prior. (In this case, there are a dozen; it'll probably be more in future.) If you don't care about what prompted this—and why should you, really?—feel free to skip past all the blather to the reviews themselves.

So. Because it's difficult for me to just sit down at the computer and get right to work on something that requires any actual cogitation, I tend to have some sort of mindless project going at all times, to which I can devote five or ten minutes and sort of get my motor idling. Recently, that project has been tagging films on Letterboxd with the theater in which I saw each one—information that I never previously thought to keep track of, and don't always remember, but can usually reconstruct (particularly anything I saw in NYC rep houses) by going through newspaper archives. So far I've completed 1992 through March 2008, discovering that I saw at least 1500 movies at MoMA, Film Forum and the Walter Reade during the 17 years that I lived in New York. (Roughly 500 at each venue. And I'm still more than a year away from June 2009, when I left.)

Then at some point I noticed that my pal Don Marks has logged many films going way back in the calendar, with a tag noting "approx." By which I assume he means that the logged date is approximate. Because you can't tag a film on Letterboxd without logging it, and I didn't start my viewing log until 1992, I'd assumed that was as far back as I could go. But "date approx" would work fine, especially since in the '80s and early '90s I tended to see movies pretty much the instant that they opened in San Jose. (That's Ed, there are exceptions. I know of one for sure: The Man in the Moon, starring a very young Reese Witherspoon, opened near me in September 1991, and wound up being the first film I ever logged, on 2 January 1992. So it took me a good three months to get to that one...by which time, I've now learned, it was only playing at the dollar theater. Yes, one dollar!)

Anyway. Though I have ready online access to the New York Times, it turns out that the only way to determine which theaters movies played at in San Jose decades ago is to hit the main branch of the San Jose Public Library and—gack—go through ancient microfilm. Which I hadn't done since maybe the mid-'90s, at NYU. Still, it sounded "fun" to me, somehow, and so during the week that I spent visiting my dad for his birthday last month, I spent one afternoon doing just that. Easier than I thought! I managed to get through all of 1991 and half of 1990, working backwards. And as I went through the print ads for those many films, I felt numerous strong tugs of nostalgia. That was, after all, both my youth and my initial flush of cinephilia, and most of the movies in question I saw the once and have never revisited. That includes a lot of hugely popular titles: I saw when they opened, and not since, the likes of Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Fatal Attraction, Beverly Hills Cop, Ghost, Dances With Wolves, on and on. Seeing the ad for, say, Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again, I'd recall how stoked I was for that movie, based on the trailer and my love for Henry V, and wonder what I'd think of it now. Don't even really recall what I thought of it then, apart from it not living up to my expectations. On top of which, I'm anal-retentive enough that not having rated so many notable films kinda bugs me.

Point is, I came away from this exercise (to be resumed on my next visit to San Jose; it's gonna take a while) with a hankerin' to revisit a whole lotta films that hadn't been on my (originally pretty huge, though dwindling now) list of old movies to revisit. Problem is, I also have a gigantic list of films I've never seen and very much want to. Didn't care to supplant those. Solution: Watch more films than my usual ~6 per week. Except that every additional film I watch amounts to giving myself more work to do (which is why I've spent a lot of time in recent years catching up on vintage TV, which I feel no obligation to write about). Solution: Watch more movies, but don't review all of them. Except that I regret not having recorded my opinion of various films in the past (and was overjoyed to find that I actually did record a bunch of opinions in emails to a friend—there's an example below).

Final solution (not that one!): Watch more movies, review the nostalgia-driven ones in brief, spending no more than 15 or 20 minutes on each. (You'd be surprised by how long even my single-paragraph standard reviews take. I refine the living shit out of those.) And that's what this here is the first installment of. These will all, "by definition" (not literally, but I can't think of a better phrase), be films that I haven't seen in more than 20 years, since everything I've watched since 2003 has already received a rating. Most of them won't be films I love, as I'll generally have revisited my favorites sometime during the past two decades (though stay tuned for Impromptu and Hear My Song, which were once on my 1991 top 10 list. Oh, and Four Weddings and a Funeral, which I loved back in '94). And, again, they're all films that I hadn't planned ever to rewatch, absent a specific request. So this is all a bonus for you—the number of films that I'd have otherwise watched and reviewed will remain constant. I'm a little worried about cannibalizing the request pool for Films I've Seen, but that constitutes a whole fucking lot of films. Many of which nobody cares about. Show of hands, who's clamoring for my thoughts on Class Action? Bueller?

For now, it'll mostly be stuff that's about to expire from a streaming platform to which I subscribe. Might as well grab the low-hanging fruit.

Here's the July rundown:

The Mask (1994, Chuck Russell): 47/100

Previously seen: 16 August 1994, San Jose, CA (Town & Country Village).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, basically no thanks.

Now: Thoroughly enjoy Carrey as Stanley Ipkiss, am more exhausted than amused whenever he hulks out, so to speak. Being shown a Tex Avery excerpt as prep feels downright insulting. You'd never guess (and I certainly did not, 29 years ago) that Diaz has a lick of talent, though to be fair the character's incoherently written and meant to be pure a-oooga a-oooga. Peter Greene, excellent in other films around this time, makes for a singularly dull villain. Sole outright laugh: At the jail, cute dog instructed to fetch keys, instead grabs cheese. (Also the dog refusing to let go of objects pays off nicely there.)

Crimes of the Future (1970, David Cronenberg): 28/100

Previously seen: 10 July 2002, New York, NY (Anthology Film Archives).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, pretty sure I hated it.

Now: Theoretically admirable, of keen interest as a catalogue of future obsessions (including of course Crimes of the Future '22, which expands like two lines of narration spoken here, plus one weird prop, into an entire feature), and just tedious as fuck to actually sit through. It's too solemn to work as comedy and too clinical to have any real-world resonance. Though now I'm thinking that I really need to rewatch Moodysson's Container (#7 on my 2006 top 10 list), which is conceptually similar in some respects, as I recall.

Living on Tokyo Time (1987, Steven Okazaki): 55/100

Previously seen: ca. 1987–88, San Jose, CA (probably at Camera One or 3).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, no memory whatsoever beyond "not ecstatic."

Now: Hard to imagine anyone experiencing ecstasy re: something so drolly low-key. Tweaks the Stranger Than Paradise "formula" in a potentially interesting way by having a Japanese woman marry (for her green card) a Japanese-American man whose identity skews 95% to the latter half of that hyphenate; less gets done with that idea than one might have hoped, but Ken Nakagawa, who's never acted onscreen again, gives a hilariously bland performance, by design. ("He used to go fishing with my brother. The fish had more personality.") Also worth watching now just to gawk at all the fantastic '80s t-shirts.

Shrek (2001, Andrew Adamson & Vicky Jenson): 32/100

Previously seen: 10 May 2001, New York, NY (press screening, Beekman).

Original opinion: Hot garbage. (C-) Here's the Time Out New York review.

Now: Cold garbage. It's a horrible indictment of society at large that a movie pandering nonstop to the lowest common denominator became such a massive hit that even Pixar felt compelled to shift at least a little bit in its direction (which is how we ended up with Larry the Cable Guy the Non-Cable Car). Jokes are all still terrible—literally did not laugh once—but this time I was mostly repelled by how incredibly ugly everything is, and not in a subversive, ugly-is-beautiful way. Speaking of which, for all Shrek's progressive lip service, Farquaad is basically Randy Newman's "Short People" minus the ironic critique of racism.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994, Alan Rudolph): 57/100

Previously seen: 24 November 1994, New York, NY (Angelika).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, basically "It's no The Moderns."

Now: As Emperor Joseph II would complain: too many wits. For The Moderns, Rudolph invented almost everything, relegating the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein to comic bit players; this proper biopic is (necessarily) much more Mank-esque, struggling to accommodate the entire ART. (Never realized what an apropos acronym that makes.) Strongest when speculating about Parker and Benchley's platonic love affair, weakest when indulging in such eye-rollers as "Well, if it's about New York, why not call it The New Yorker?" JJL's typically good, but Parker does sometimes come across like Hudsucker's Amy Archer on Xanax. (She presumably played those two roles back to back.)

Last Action Hero (1993, John McTiernan): 46/100

Previously seen: 20 June 1993, San Jose, CA (Century 22).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, think I thought it squandered a good premise.

Now: Peaks super early, with its spot-on opening parody of the '80s action-movie climax. Once that unbelievably annoying kid uses his magic ticket, the film's just a big dumb loud Purple Rose of Cairo with comparatively feeble jokes. And for a contemporary of Jurassic Park (the two were released on successive Fridays, 11 and 18 June), it's got some startlingly bad digital F/X; every explosion's palpably pasted onto an undamaged background. Nostalgic bonus points for getting the kid alone by having him watch Jack Slater IV at midnight, when the projectionist checks the newly arrived print prior to opening day; I used to do that regularly when I worked at a multiplex in the summer of 1985.

Within Our Gates (1920, Oscar Micheaux): 53/100

Previously seen: 27 June 1997, New York, NY (MoMA).

Original opinion: "This silent Oscar Micheaux film is far better than his 1937 sound picture Underworld, which is the only other Micheaux I've seen to date. [2023: I've now also seen Body and Soul, just a week or so ago as I write this. You'll already have received that review.] Still, it's of more historical than aesthetic interest, despite a few good performances. Soapy plot way too complex to summarize—I couldn't even follow it. Sad that even in a film made by black people for black people, it's still kindly rich white folks who save the day. (It's pretty clear from both Micheaux films, however, that black audiences of the period loved to hiss at Uncle Tom characters." [Email to my friend Eric, 2 July 1997.]

Now: It's not so much that the plot's hard to follow as that it's all over the place. Starts out by introducing romantic intrigue on multiple fronts, winds up ignoring most of that in favor of the protagonist's effort to save an African-American school in the South (by getting financial assistance from a white lady; I'm less inclined to blame the film for what was presumably just, y'know, reality), and then concludes with a harrowing flashback that's not strictly relevant to the present-tense story. Kind of a muddle as a movie, but invaluable all the same.

Mission: Impossible II (2000, John Woo): 48/100

Previously seen: 21 May 2000, New York, NY (press screening, Astor Plaza).

Original opinion: Did not shout woo woo. (C+) Here's the brief review on my site. (I also reviewed it for Time Out New York, but archive.org didn't scrape that one, and in any case it's really just slightly reworded from the website version.)

Now: Apparently I'm so starved these days for any overt sexiness in Hollywood blockbusters that even this film's rather tepid first-act flirtation seems welcome. (If nothing else, the across-a-crowded-room flamenco-scored eyefucking feels like it means business.) Dougray Scott remains the most boring villain in action-movie history, though, and Woo can't just make Cruise into Chow Yun-fat no matter how hard he tries. Also, I'd forgotten how truly absurd the mask stuff gets in this one, culminating in a reveal that's at once obvious and impossible. Glad to see I noted the scarf moment, which leapt out at me all over again.

[NOTE: White Men Can't Jump was originally meant to be here, but I'd forgotten that someone requested that—it was only around for two weeks, slipped my mind completely. When I saw that, I went ahead and wrote a longer review, as I try to do for all requests. So if you want to make sure that I give a film extra attention, request it!]

Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989, Wayne Wang): 54/100

Previously seen: 22 July 1992, San Jose, CA (on laserdisc).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, no recollection.

Now: Should note that I watched Wang's new, significantly shorter (by ~17 minutes) cut, though it's not as if I registered any differences more than 30 years later. So murky was my memory, in fact, that I completely misinterpreted Ben Loy's apparent lack of sexual interest in Mei Oi—not only is he not secretly gay, as I'd assumed, but the movie's employing erectile dysfunction as a cultural metaphor, suggesting that the stress of being torn between two countries made Chinese-Americans feel functionally impotent. Which I submit is kinda silly, at least as handled here. Some fine performances (Victor Wong's always a joy), and Wang's a stronger formalist than I'd realized; the shot in the barbershop, racking focus from reflections of three men in two mirrors to one of them as he leans directly into frame to speak to the other two in confidence, is so simple yet dynamic that I can't believe it hasn't been copied a zillion times.

(These are already starting to get longer, I can't help but notice…)

Best in Show (2000, Christopher Guest): 52/100

Previously seen: 7 September 2000, Toronto, ON (TIFF, Varsity 2 or 3).

Original opinion: C+. Here's the Time Out New York review.

Now: Despite being populated with actors I find hilarious, Guest's improvised comedies never really work for me, and I'm finally getting a handle on why that is. Part of it's just the nature of on-camera improv, such that we're getting absolutely useless stuff like this exchange between Hitchcock and Posey, in which you can actually hear her working out where he's taking the bit: "And now I'm a big ol', y'know, chai tea latte soy milk kind of guy." "Yeah, soy, yeah." "Because of the lactose." "Mm-hmm. You're lactose intolerant now." I did howl all over again at Willard's commentary, and it occurs to me now that you really need Jim Piddock sitting there not trying to compete with him at all, just being the perfect barely flappable straight man. Only one of the owner duos that kinda works that way is Jane Lynch and Jennifer Coolidge (neither of whom I think I knew by name in 2000); Lynch in particular now seems obviously, well, see title.

The Goonies (1985, Richard Donner): 22/100

Previously seen: ca. June 1985, San Jose, CA (Century 22).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, but I vividly remember: Make. It. Stop.

Now: I had the power to literally make. it. stop, and was sorely tempted to exercise said power. Funniest moment, in a grim sort of way, sees the gang start banging on pipes in an effort to attract attention up above—"Maybe if we make enough noise," someone says, as if the movie hasn't been at maximum fucking volume from frame one. (Even the Cyndi Lauper song is ultra-shrill.) To be fair, this thing was clearly targeted with near-surgical precision at 11-year-old boys, whom it presumably delights; I was already 17 in '85, so it was way too late for me to feel anything but contempt, thereby ruling out any nostalgic indulgence today. I just sat there wishing painful death upon every single screeching character. Failing that, maybe ease up a little on the testicle-abuse gags? Nope. Saved from one-star ignominy by Grusin's fun chase theme and Martha Plimpton (but decidedly not Josh Brolin or Sean Astin) evincing occasional hints of future talent.

The Anniversary Party (2001, Jennifer Jason Leigh & Alan Cumming): 50/100

Previously seen: 31 May 2001, New York, NY (press screening, probably the Disney room)

Original opinion: C+. Here's the Time Out New York review.

Now: Wouldn't change a word of that review, though I didn't reread it in advance, had forgotten what happens, and spent the whole first hour thinking I'd been unduly harsh 22 years ago. Literally as soon as someone spoke the word "ecstasy," it all came flooding back. Still, a pleasure to see Jane Adams in peak neurotic form, and I now feel bummed that Mina Badie—who, I've just learned, is Leigh's half-sister, despite looking like Michelle Monaghan's full sister—hasn't had a more prominent career. Also, while it'd been seven years since Phoebe Cates had last appeared onscreen at that point, I couldn't know then that this relaxed quasi-cameo would be (apparently) the last time we'd ever see her. Their son directing one of my least favorite films of 2022 is not an acceptable trade-off. 

Big Top Pee-wee (1988, Randal Kleiser): 45/100

Previously seen: ca. July 1988, San Jose, CA (Century 24)

Original opinion: Unrecorded, massive disappointment.

Now: Yeah, this is just too darn ordinary. Should Pee-wee join the circus or stay on the farm? Solution: Combine the two! Surrounding the character with watered-down versions of Freaks' ensemble only serves to undermine his peculiarity, and Reubens compensates by reviving (I believe, though I've never seen the original stage show) Pee-wee's horniness, so that the inordinate length of a slow pullback from he and Gina making out is itself the joke. Or something. Flights of fancy seem random (Pee-wee dreams of being Tony Bennett?), the talking pig's straight out of any generic kids' movie (certainly in no way a subversion of that trope), and I was frankly on the angry storekeeper's side in a scene that's meant to establish Unnamed Burg's close-minded and uptight adult populace. This movie's existence makes Big Adventure seem like even more of a demented miracle.