Gemko Quibi: December 2023 (Patreon)

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.)

Enys Men (2022, Mark Jenkin): 78/100

Previously seen: 21 February 2023, Oxnard, CA (press link).

Original opinion: 78/100. I reviewed it for y'all.

Now: "No change," heh heh. I'm quite at peace with how deliberately cryptic this mood piece is—the balance between connections made (e.g. the Volunteer growing lichen in the same abdominal pattern as the Girl's cut) and lingering irrationality seems to me just right—and still find Jenkin's flat compositions and metronomic editing rhythm eerily mesmerizing. Yes, the film is repetitive, but in the same way that Jeanne Dielman is repetitive, with tiny deviations (mostly in angle, here) taking on great emotional significance. Every shot of the Volunteer dropping a stone into the pit has a slightly different affect, to use that word a bit unconventionally. (I also love how long Jenkin makes us wait for the log entry to be something other than "no change," even going so far as to place the camera such that her hand blocks our view of each new entry as she writes it.) Easily one of the year's best, to my mind; nobody else seems to agree, but that's my 2023 in a nutshell.

Heaven Help Us (1985, Michael Dinner): 49/100

Previously seen: I wanna say sometime around '87 or '88, San Jose, CA (either VHS or cable).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, no recollection.

Now: Oh my god Kevin Dillon's character never stops using the F-word. (Not "fuck.") Wish that I'd counted, because the number would be shocking. That's almost certainly period-accurate, given its similar deployment as young boys' all-purpose insult when I grew up in the '70s, but this still has to be some kind of record—it's just incessant, and tough to endure now. Nor is the surrounding Catholic-school reminiscence so good that you'd want to. Among the Brothers, you've got an over-the-top sadist at one pole and John Heard's hip, empathetic rulebreaker at the other, with headmaster Donald Sutherland leaning in one direction until he suddenly shifts to the other. The students are likewise a group of one-dimensional types: The New Guy (Andrew McCarthy), The Bully (Dillon), The Nerd (Malcolm Denare), The Freak (Stephen Geoffreys), and The Future McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey). It's the kind of movie that abruptly ends when someone finally punches the sadist and the whole school applauds. Doesn't help that I attended an all-male Jesuit academy—it wasn't even called a high school, but instead a college preparatory—and didn't recognize or identify with a damn thing (though admittedly it was two decades later and most of us didn't live on campus, plus many of the teachers were laymen). Mary Stuart Masterson squandered in a girlfriend role so dispensable that they eventually do in fact dispense with her. "Is that Yeardley Smith?" I immediately wondered when one minor character sounded almost exactly like Lisa Simpson (didn't know what Smith looks/looked like), and indeed it was.

Brainstorm (1983, Douglas Trumbull): 38/100

Previously seen: ca. 1990–91, San Jose, CA (VHS).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, no recollection.

Now: Really curious about how the VHS copy I watched handled this film's shifting aspect ratios. (Letterboxing was a thing by that point, but still pretty rare outside of the laserdisc world, which I hadn't yet quite entered.) In any case, Trumbull was clearly preoccupied with technological matters, 'cause Brainstorm's narrative is sheer nonsense—I threw up my hands when the headset shifted from present-tense experience to memories and then also somehow started depicting the latter from an omniscient viewpoint, presumably so that they wouldn't all look like Lady in the Lake—and Christopher Walken has been left utterly to his own devices, which is only a good thing in SNL's "The Continental" sketches (speaking of first-person camera). Is it Walken who's stuck with the deathless line "He's taken my work and turned it into something bad"? I wrote that down but can't remember now, a good week later, which poor actor had to speak it, might've been Louise Fletcher. Anyway, it's all very silly, with Inside Out-style memory orbs and newly deceased souls apparently touring Heaven immediately followed by Hell and oh dear lord a borderline-slapstick action climax that looks like it could have been lifted from the last few minutes of a Brady Bunch episode. I did appreciate the stray minor detail, e.g. marketing's effort to get the headset from impractically bulky to fashionably sleek; also spent perhaps too much time pondering how the tech could be used to torture someone indefinitely without actually harming their body—just unendurable transferred pain, potentially on an infinite loop. But that's me doing more work than the script bothers to. (And it's arguably less disturbing than my belated realization that this film is separated from Strange Days by only 12 years, whereas the latter is separated from us, at this writing, by nearly 30.)

The Birdcage (1996, Mike Nichols): 44/100

Previously seen: 11 March 1996, New York, NY (Loews Village).

Original opinion: 2½ stars (out of four). I reviewed it on my site at the time.

Now: The world has changed and so have I, as my contemporaneous review doesn't so much as mention in passing the aspect that swamps everything else now: Those kids are fucking awful. What they're asking Armand and Albert to do is simply unconscionable; the movie (which, as I noted then, already seemed 20 years out of date, for obvious reasons) tries to frame their requests as merely misguided, but by the time we discover that Barbara changed Armand’s surname from Goldman to Coleman, I just wanted to throw her and Val to the alligators and be done with this noxiousness. Less amused now by Azaria (who'd never be allowed to play that role today, cf. Apu), though he puts exactly the right spin on a line readily identifiable as Elaine May's (when Agador is unsure whether or not he's supposed to know Baranski's character): "May I take your purse as usual, or for the first time?" Williams, who's gonna be turning up a lot in these Quibi posts (already I've rewatched this, Moscow on the Hudson and Mrs. Doubtfire, and there are tons more to come), wisely allows Nathan Lane to go broad and keeps a comparative lid on it, to generally good effect. Most everyone's doing good work, but in service of a scenario that now just seems repugnant. Dept. of Admirable Subtlety: Albert gets introduced onstage to "The Man That Got Away," from the Judy Garland Star Is Born, and then a few minutes later shows up dressed for "Lose That Long Face." A nice in-joke for Friends of Dorothy plus those of us who can't understand how we aren't.

in water (2023, Hong Sangsoo): 73/100

Previously seen: 6 March 2023, Oxnard, CA (press link).

Original opinion: 73/100. I reviewed it for y'all.

Now: No change. As is so often the case with my favorite Hongs, I'm bewildered and amused to find that the folks who love almost everything he does are comparatively cool toward this one; can't find much written down, so it's unclear to me whether they dislike its formal gimmick or find its psychology flimsy or what. Cinema Guild, meanwhile, hasn't put much muscle behind in water, relative to other Hongs they've released, so it looks destined to become a little-seen curio, bypassing critics and cinephiles who don't make a concerted effort to look beyond awards buzz. Years from now, people will discover it and wonder how the hell something so singular received so little attention at the time—it literally looks like no other feature I've ever seen, which you'd think would excite some discussion at the very least. And I still maintain that it's coming at anhedonia from a productively sneaky angle, and would be of significant interest even had Hong shot it more conventionally. Even the lowercase title seems justified to me, and I hate those. Criminally overlooked, like virtually all of my favorites in this Year Of Finding Everyone Else's Top 10 Very Meh.

Scream 2 (1997, Wes Craven): 56/100

Previously seen: 13 December 1997, New York, NY (at the Sony State, I believe).

Original opinion: 2½ stars (out of four). I reviewed it on my site at the time, but mostly just waxed rhapsodic about Sidney and Hallie climbing over unconscious Ghostface in the crashed police car, which you can read an additional 1200 words or so about if you're so inclined.

Now: A fun benefit-of-hindsight experience: When I originally saw this, both Sarah Michelle Gellar and Timothy Olyphant were entirely new to me (didn't watch Buffy until quite recently), and neither one made any particular impression. In fact, when Olyphant grabbed hold of Go two years later, I don't think I even remembered that he'd played the [BIG 'OL SPOILER] in this film. Also was unaware back then that an online leak of the screenplay had forced Kevin Williamson to radically revise half of the plot; he's apparently denied that in more recent interviews, but it makes too much sense to be discounted, given how clumsily everything unfolds. Haven't seen any of the subsequent films, so I still get to think of Scream as a fun whodunnit (spoofing the slasher genre) that spawned one reasonably decent sequel, rather than another franchise that will never end. Read the Scenic Routes column linked above, though, if you haven't. That's the experience of Scream 2 that I'll always treasure, and I don't know that it could be replicated today, even via a rep screening.

Interview With the Vampire (1994, Neil Jordan): 42/100

Previously seen: 11 November 1994, New York, NY (Loews Village).

Original opinion: Unrecorded. Definitely didn't care for it much.

Now: Man, this is dreary. Possibly the worst of Pitt's early somnambulistic roles (I find him kinda funny in Meet Joe Black), and Cruise—who, lest we forget, rocketed to stardom by doing a dorky solo dance in socks and underwear—overcompensates for being obviously miscast as sex and danger incarnate by literally vamping in a painfully sweaty way. The movie does temporarily generate some juice when Kirsten "this will not be the one-off child performance that you naturally assume" Dunst shows up, though I much prefer Near Dark's more scabrous and darkly comic depiction of a vampire who's been around for many years but remains frustratedly stuck in a pre-pubescent body. Structurally unsound, too—the titular framing story has precious little function in this medium, and Rice apparently couldn't think of any way to get characters somewhere else other than burning their home to the ground, which happens three different times over the course of two hours and several centuries. I don't know whether to credit her or Jordan for Interview's one sublime joke, in which Louis experiences a sunrise for the first time in ages by watching Murnau, and we later see him exiting what appears to be a rep screening of Sunrise in 1988, only for the camera to pull back and reveal that the marquee reads Tequila Sunrise.

Primal Fear (1996, Gregory Hoblit): 54/100

Previously seen: 28 December 1996, San Jose, CA (VHS). Last film I watched that year.

Original opinion: Unrecorded. Was impressed by Norton, though by that point I'd already seen him in both The People vs. Larry Flynt and Everyone Says I Love You, having skipped this in theatrical release.

Now: Very surprised to discover that a full hour elapses prior to our first glimpse of Roy. That first half of the movie verges on downright dull, frankly (though it surely didn't help that I was impatiently awaiting the transformation this time); Gere's amoral lawyer isn't remotely compelling enough on his own to keep the wheeling and dealing lively, though Hoblit clearly thought of this project more as The Verdict redux than as the hokey potboiler that it fundamentally is. Courtroom scenes are hugely entertaining, though, and Laura Linney, in what I guess was her first really significant feature-film role* (though I tend to recall "discovering" her in Absolute Power the following year), brings so much blistering conviction to her stock antagonist-cum-love-interest that you really could think you were watching a serious, complex drama whenever she's onscreen. Mostly just fun to watch a 24-year-old fresh out of Yale Drama get handed a starmaking showcase and take full scenery-chewing advantage of the opportunity. Only a churl would point out that the final twist doesn't make any sense at all if you then try to work out why Roy, as opposed to Aaron, would have taken part in the Archbishop's videotaped kinkfests to begin with.

* Tales of the City was her actual breakout, I believe. But I haven't watched that.

The Full Monty (1997, Peter Cattaneo): 62/100

Previously seen: 15 August 1997, New York, NY (Angelika).

Original opinion: Three stars out of four. Wrote a drive-by at the end of my biweekly column, which was basically me trying to replicate the format of a print magazine online for some reason.

Now: Had completely forgotten that this was a fucking Best Picture nominee that year (back when there were still only five!). "Lightly charming" is the best I can manage, but that ain't nothin'. There are plenty of good jokes that don't directly involve the premise's basic incongruity: Lomper feeling genuinely touched that someone likes him enough to run over him with their car; the guys offering Arthur boner-killing things to think about, one of which is Dire Straits' double-live album Alchemy. (Best music joke in a British movie until Shaun of the Dead's debate about whether to throw Second Coming at the zombies.) Bonus points for having the climactic routine be truly terrible, and freezing on the full-monty moment (as seen from behind, so as not to restrict box office) deflects questions about how the audience feels about paying I think it was 10 bob apiece for a show that apparently lasts all of four minutes. That's not how any of this works.

Stephen King's Graveyard Shift (1990, Ralph S. Singleton): 27/100

Previously seen: ca. November 1990, San Jose, CA (probably at the José, a downtown dollar house).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, not favorable.

Now: Had no memory of who "starred" in this and cracked up—again, I think, 33 years later—at the final cast credit: "And Brad Dourif as The Exterminator." He gets to chew up the scenery in one lengthy, irrelevant monologue but actually gets outoveracted by Stephen Macht as The Sadistic Mill Foreman, speaking in the weirdest indeterminate accent ever attempted by someone other than Ben Kingsley. (Apparently it's supposed to be a Maine accent, but everyone seems to agree that it is not.) Meanwhile, our ostensible hero is an absolute void, befitted with neither personality nor agenda, and the narrative amounts to Alien in a textile mill but instead of H.R. Giger it's just King's description of an enormous bat-rat, which if ancient memory serves isn't even very effective on the page. Female lead seemed surprisingly authentic, and when I looked Kelly Wolf up I wasn't too surprised to find a Kenneth Lonergan connection. (She gets a special thanks in You Can Count on Me and plays a tiny role in Margaret.) This is basically Diet Pepsi product placement posing as a horror film, and I couldn't wait for the end credits...whereupon I sat bolt upright, because OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THAT SONG. Composers Anthony Marinelli and Brian Banks crafted a rhythmic groove peppered with lines of dialogue from throughout the movie, and I genuinely believe were directly influenced by My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; it got stuck in my head for weeks thereafter, and I'd walk around randomly intoning "the graveyahhd shift" in Macht's bizarre accent. This is why it's fun for me to revisit even the truly terrible movies that I watched during my formative years.

Volunteers (1985, Nicholas Meyer): 43/100

Previously seen: ca. August 1985, San Jose, CA (Oakridge 6, where I was working at the time).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, don't remember.

Now: Hanks is just miscast here, never credible even comedically as a privileged failson, his Brahmin-ish accent coming and going seemingly at random. And the narrative, which starts out as Stripes in the Peace Corps (with John Candy again playing an intense second banana), gets bogged down in dopey, mirth-free subplots involving a Chinese warlord and a deranged C.I.A. operative. We never even really see Lawrence Bourne III become worthy of Beth's love, though decades later that's outweighed by the fact that we definitely can see Hanks and Rita Wilson falling for each other. Couple of cute postmodern bits—car driving through the expository travel map (that gag would be done digitally today, looks like they genuinely created a gigantic map), Lawrence leaning forward to read another character's subtitles—but this isn't really that kind of comedy, alas. I did laugh again at the "time is money" routine (which my friends and I quoted heavily back then), and newly appreciated the uncharacteristically dry joke in which Gedde Watanabe translates Lawrence urging the Thai villagers to "Take advantage of it!" (meaning the opportunity) and then, when Lawrence adds, "Seize it!", just supplies the same exact translation and shrugs. 

Poor Things (2023, Yorgos Lanthimos): 75/100

Previously seen: 12 December 2023, San Francisco, CA (Alamo Drafthouse). Watched it again immediately because I (perhaps mistakenly) thought that my FYC link was about to expire.

Original opinion: 72/100. Most of you will recall the review.

Now: Slight rating uptick mostly reflects my greater enjoyment of the initial monochrome section—liked it quite well the first time, but knowing from the outset that Bella's odd behavior encompasses all of human development (as opposed to her being, as Max initially phrases it, "a very pretty [r-word]") eliminated some uncertain discomfort that I'd felt when I had no idea what was going on. Still think the final 25 minutes or so, in which McNamara apparently tosses the novel aside and invents his own didactic ending, are a major miscalculation, and wish the film had ended with Bella telling God, on his deathbed, that she'll become a doctor. That this is still in Upstream Color/The Witch/Duchess of Langeais territory (to name some other 75s) should give you a sense of how much I love everything else. Wanna quote more great lines but I'll save 'em for my top 10 entry, soon to follow. Forgot to mention last time: Having seen but endeavored to ignore social-media raves about Mica Levi's score for Zone of Interest, I mistakenly thought that she'd scored this film (credits only at the end); Jerskin Fendrix's work is fantastic, almost certainly my favorite of the year (Zone included), but there's one particular keening-string cue that's right out of Under the Skin. 

Lean on Me (1989, John G. Avildsen): 36/100

Previously seen: ca. March 1989, San Jose, CA (Century 24).

Original opinion: Unrecorded, don't remember.

Now: "You will sing the school song upon demand or you will suffer dire consequences!" What if J.K. Simmons' abusive taskmaster were Whiplash's hero, and all of his students, Andrew included, came to see him as a benevolent surrogate father? Dunno how accurate the film's portrait of Joe Clark is, but as written and performed (in what's admittedly an electrifying lead-role debut for Morgan Freeman, who'd just broken out at age 40 via Street Smart), he's downright nightmarish—genuinely concerned about the kids' welfare, yes, but far more invested in scuttling any challenges to his egocentric authority. We occasionally get a tiny bit of acknowledgment that he takes things way too far, but that's woefully inadequate to counteract all the lionization. Movie lost me early on when Clark fires the music teacher*, who's entirely in the right, and seems to perceive that act as fully justified rather than even a necessary evil. Avildsen paints in garishly broad strokes—the opening sequence contrasts a utopian scholastic vision, every child eager and excited to learn, with a ludicrously dystopian hellscape out of a Mad Max sequel—and Freeman, while exciting to watch (especially back then, when he was relatively unfamiliar), can't transcend mere grandstanding and arguably gets out-acted by Lynne Thigpen as the ostensible villain. Closing expository text is extremely notable by its complete absence—had Clark's approach worked, we'd certainly be hearing about it—and, sure enough, he wound up accomplishing nothing whatsoever, apart from inspiring this shameless hagiography. 

* A one-scene performance so impressive that I looked up the actor; her name is Robin Bartlett, which sounded vaguely familiar, and I then found that I'd given her Supporting Actress Skandie points for two performances in 2016! I know what I like, apparently. 

That's it! No W/Os this month, though I'm skeptical about making it to the end of Musical Color Purple in January.