THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (Anthony Minghella, 1999) Remember when they used to make those big, bloated, lavish Oscar bait movies, and everyone wanted to see them? With beautiful music, impossibly sexy actors, gorgeous locations, expensive clothes, stunning cinematography? Remember style? Remember taste? Remember class? Remember when people were excited about the movies? There’s something slightly off about the rhythm of this. It goes on and on, it’s dour and humorless, the characters are unpleasant – but who cares, I loved it anyway. The actors are perfect – this was Jude Law’s big breakthrough part! Matt Damon was known mostly for Good Will Hunting; here he plays the world’s most evil faggot – Yum! Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett are great too, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Everything looks expensive and tasteful, everything is well thought-out. The compositions are gorgeous, some even (dare I say) iconic. I loved all the scenes where they’re fixing drinks or espressos or eating pastries outside on little terraces or writing on typewriters or sailing beautiful boats. I wanted to get lost in this movie.
PREY (Dan Trachtenberg, 2022) Where’s Arnold? Where’s Sly? Where’s the NAVY Seals? Who’s this Pocahontas bitch? Why does she want to hunt so bad? Shouldn’t she be harvesting maize or gathering nuts and berries? How’s she going to kill the Predator when she can’t even get a rabbit with her tomahawk? So many questions! Lots of CGI animals in this. Mice, snakes, ants, mountain lion, deer, bear, birds, and so much more. The movie was kind of okay. I liked that it was unpretentious, lithe, a fair amount of carnage. The lead actress was good. The running time was correct. It was fine. I didn't live.
NOPE (Jordan Peele, 2022) I enjoyed the visual style, the ambition, the lead performance from Keke Palmer, the horrific sequence with the chimpanzee, the witty dialogue. I didn’t care for the twist, the third act didn’t work for me at all. Most of the roles were badly miscast. The creature design seemed weirdly cloying, like if Pixar tried to make a monster movie. Keith David had just one or two lines, why cast him at all? He should have been the main guy and Kaluuya’s character should have died at the beginning instead. I was alone in the theater but for two developmentally disabled women, who kept shrieking at the screen in obvious consternation, yelling things like “THIS MOVIE DON’T MAKE NO SENSE!” and so forth. I think I enjoyed it more than they did, but only just.
THE BLACK PHONE (Scott Derrickson, 2021) I loved this for some reason, the ending filled me with emotion. I kept thinking of Gene Siskel’s avowed hatred of films that put children in peril, and how I feel the exact opposite. I like when movies are manipulative, I like when kids are in danger. I liked how the kid comes of age in the torture cellar. In that regard it was similar to Prey actually – they’re both about finding your strength in the most challenging circumstances, and both use straightforward, uncomplicated genre trappings to riff on the hero’s journey archetype. The period details were fun, Ethan Hawke was creepy. Nothing groundbreaking, but it's slick and competent and sentimental in a nice way.
IT (Andy Muschietti, 2017) Boy did I hate this movie. So boring, so literal, what a piece of crap! Looks cheap even though it obviously cost a lot. The ghosts and ghouls all look dumb and fake, even Pennywise looks bad. The actor who plays him is fine, but they drown him in CGI, sucks. Plays like a series of bad outtakes from Stranger Things. Incompetent. Zero scares. The kid actors are annoying, none of the characters have any development or dimension. The music choices are weird. Nobody should be allowed to make a sci-fi/horror movie/show where a group of kids rides around town on their bikes while trying to solve a supernatural mystery for a very long time, a decade at least. It’s played out, it’s no good. Something else, something else.
EYES WIDE SHUT (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) One of the things film can do better than any other medium is mimic the experience of dreaming. Painting, photography, music, literature – they can all do parts of it, but as a fully immersive audio-visual experience, only film can truly capture the logic, the rhythms, the textures of the subconscious mind. Has any film better depicted the experience of dreaming a sexual nightmare than this one? One of the great surrealist masterpieces. The running time flew by, I couldn’t look away. The sets are glorious, so rich with character and detail. Nicole Kidman in her see-thru camisole, the bathroom behind her suffused in eerie blue light: iconic. Alan Cumming as the giggling gay concierge: yes! The sequence in the costume shop: sickening, debauched, uproarious. Every detail is perfect, every surface considered for maximum effect. The marble staircases, the hooker’s apartment, the jazz club, the red carpeting on Sydney Pollack’s pool table. Critics hated the orgy sequence when this was released, can you imagine? I found it suffused with power and strange mystery. There are glimmers of Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Żuławski’s Possession, other classic New York-at-night films like Scorsese’s After Hours and Schrader’s Light Sleeper. I was also reminded a bit of Polanski’s The Ninth Gate, released the same year – another unjustly maligned thriller featuring an iconic male actor stumbling into a cabal of wealthy occultists. This is the better one though, obviously – it's a classic, easily one of the best movies ever.
BODIES BODIES BODIES (Halina Reign, 2022) I liked this but I sort of get the feeling I might like it less in a few weeks. Remember Garden State? Ugh – I adored it…for 72 hours. Within a week of seeing it I despised it, and myself. I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t trust my own feelings, my own judgment. The movie version of Chicago? I had the soundtrack on CD, knew the words to all the songs. Then, at art camp, there was this other gay kid I didn’t like, he was playing the soundtrack on a boom box, singing along to all the words and dancing in an obnoxious way, doing jazz hands. Is that how I look to other people? I wondered. I didn’t watch another musical for years. I was obsessed with Donnie Darko all through high school. Later I was so embarrassed, how could I have liked something so silly? Now I think I would probably like it again. My tastes have reverted back to when I was 15. I’m going to start listening to Sublime, grow out my hair, wear giant hoodies and baggy jeans with patches sewn on the knees, smoke hand-rolled cigs, take mushrooms…Just kidding. What were we talking about? Bodies Bodies Bodies…I liked the humorous use of contemporary discourse lingo. I liked when the characters “called each other out” for comedic effect. I liked the actors. I liked that the ostensible heroine was kind of just a weird lump (relatable!). This was like a better version of Scream 5, what I think the Scream 5 filmmakers were going for, but with a much better grip on the narcissist zoomer "type," and sharper dialogue. Like Gosford Park by way of Jennifer's Body.
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