The Final Girls (2015)

The Final Girls is a satire of the 80s summer camp slasher movie. Some kids wind up in an old 80s slasher movie after they walk through the theater screen during a fire. I was entertained through most of the movie, but there was a point near the end when everyone is being murdered where I felt like something was off. That’s when I realized that the movie doesn’t show any of the kills and has very little gore. The 80s is notorious for showing off creative and innovative kill effects so for this movie to leave that out entirely felt like a cheap cash grab. Why was this movie made? Who is it even targeting? It feels PG-13 so if you’re targeting teenagers then they won’t have that nostalgia for 80s movies to really appreciate some of the nods to the movies of the past. If you’re targeting the adults that grew up with them then I don’t think they’ll appreciate this watered down version of what they loved either.

After I noticed the lack of gore, I started to get more critical and annoyed so the ending in particular really bothered me. The main girl kills the killer then wakes up in the hospital with all her dead friends who aren’t actually dead. The brother character shows off his stitched up machete wound, but two of the girls were blown up in an explosion so how exactly did they get patched up? They should have burns all over their bodies, or have their limbs reattached with giant scars. Instead they’re making small talk about tapioca pudding. Not only does the movie not show any gore when it kills the characters, but it doesn’t even kill them. They woke up in the hospital which turns out to be the sequel to the movie they were sucked into. It’s a great idea for a satirical movie, but they set up an entire plot line that gets ruined by this final joke. The movie started with a mother and daughter getting into an accident which the mother doesn’t survive. She’s an actress in the movie they get sucked into and the daughter has to find a way to accept her death and move on. You get that cathartic release at the end of the movie, and it should pay off by them returning home so the daughter can start the next phase of her life. The fact that they just get pulled into the sequel means that her whole character development meant literally nothing. I don’t watch slasher movies for the plot, but if you’re going to throw in a heart string tugging plot line then at least finish it.

I didn’t expect much from this movie so I can’t say I was disappointed. If you want something stupid to watch then sure this is fine, but don’t think about it too much.

Verdict: 6.9/10

As a bonus, I also watched 1981’s The Burning which is pretty much a serious version of the movie The Final Girls is satirizing. This movie had everything I would expect from a summer camp slasher: jerky characters who get their comeuppance, sex, and kills. There are a few good kill shots like when one of the characters get his fingers chopped off that made me gasp. It was generally more fun than The Final Girls and I’d wholly recommend that instead. Plus it has a young Jason Alexander so it’s like watching an alternate universe Seinfeld where George gets hunted down by a psycho at summer camp.

Horror Binge 2021

It’s been a rocky start to my annual horror movie binge. The timing has been horrible since I’ve been watching the qualifiers for the Classic Tetris World Championship on Twitch all week. As an aside, this year is looking to set all kinds of new records so if you’re interested be sure to check that out… it’s more exciting than you might think. But let’s get on to the real reason we’re here, horror.

The same rules apply as my previous years:

1. Movies off TSPDT are fair game regardless of their position on the list and have to be reviewed. *I’m not tracking TSPDT anymore, but this could be interesting so it stays for now
2. The only movies I can watch in October must be of the horror genre.
3. At least 50% must be movies I haven’t seen.

I didn’t write about my binge last year but I broke my record with a disgusting 62 movies in 31 days. Will I break that record this year? I hope not because my family might hold an intervention for me if I do. I’ll settle for somewhere between 31 and 62. Since time’s already tickin’ let’s get this show on the road!

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My inaugural movie is a giallo movie called Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key. I watched a few giallo movies last year and thought this could be a new sub-genre for me to explore. Can’t say I particularly liked this one though. The horror effects weren’t great, the pacing stunk and you couldn’t root for any of the characters. I didn’t like this one, but I’m not ready to give up yet. I’ll knock out a few more this month and see how I feel about the genre at that point.

Verdict: 6/10

I also watched Mother’s Day, which I was hoping would be something like My Bloody Valentine, but turned out to be more like Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. I don’t think I really understand horror comedies. They almost never work for me on either fronts. How am I supposed to be scared of something that acts like it’s a joke, and how am I supposed to laugh at people being murdered? I probably shouldn’t do such cold watches of movies because if I looked closer at its abysmal 1/100 Metacritic score I might’ve seen the writing on the wall.

Verdict: 4/10

I’m 2 in so far and I didn’t exactly get off to a great start. I want to be genuinely scared or disturbed here and I’m left feeling nothing! Hopefully one of the next 29 makes an impact on me…

Best Picture 1932

It’s been ages since I wrote my last Best Picture post and the reason for that, other than my own laziness, is that nearly every movie from this year was awful. They were so awful that I had to try multiple times to watch them, and I would use the term “watch” loosely. It was more like they played in front of my face while I wished for death. Before I get into the individual movies, let me briefly discuss the awards themselves. Well… nothing extraordinary happened this year. There were a few more firsts, like the youngest best actor nomination, a movie winning more than 2 awards, movies getting multiple nominations for best actor and so on. The movies themselves, however, left much to be desired and out-shadowed any monumental firsts that may have happened..

Nominees

Cimarron – A western period piece with… questionable characters and plot.

East Lynne – Another melodrama romance.

The Front Page – A “comedy” about some guys running a paper or something.

Skippy – A sweet movie about a boy and his friend and his friend’s dog.

Trader Horn – This guy goes to Africa and some stuff happens.

My Pick

My pick is not Trader Horn as you might have been able to guess by my informative synopsis of the plot. I hated this movie. I hated it so much. I tried maybe 4 times to finish it. For a quarter of it I was on my phone scrolling through Reddit, and for a third I was sleeping. I can’t even tell you which of the main characters was Trader Horn. It was either the guy with the oversized hat or the old guy. I don’t care if it was the first non-documentary movie filmed in Africa, it still has to entertain and it didn’t.

My pick is obviously not The Front Page. Another of the movies that I had trouble sitting through. I think I stayed awake the whole time, but I wasn’t paying attention. I mean it starts with some light comedy about hanging people. Sprinkle in a joke about a woman being hysterical and you’ve got the recipe for the most painful comedy of the year. This movie has aged like milk.

My pick is also not East Lynne. I had a hard time following along, but the biggest issue I had with it is that I wasn’t able to watch the full movie since the only available copy is missing the last 12 minutes. After getting to the “end” of the movie, I tried to find out what happened, but there is an extreme lack of information about this specific version. Although since it was based on a novel, I was able to find some information about the original story. It seems like this iteration deviated substantially from its source material. In the novel, she leaves her husband because she thinks he’s cheating on her. In the movie, she leaves her husband because… her husband thinks she’s cheating on him? In the play, she goes back to him because she finds out he wasn’t actually cheating and wants to be with her kids. In the movie, she goes back to him because… she wants to? In the play, she dies because she’s exhausted and women are weak like that. In the movie she… I don’t know because there’s no ending! Frankly, I was glad it was over and don’t even care to see the ending. Every aspect of this adaptation made it worse and I am sure the ending to the movie was equally as tragic.

My pick is surprisingly not the actual winner, Cimarron. Yes, you heard me folks, the movie about how America stole the land from the Native’s and called it their own did not win my pick for 1932. I expected to hate this movie because it’s a western, but I didn’t hate it because it was a western, I hated it because it was Gone With the Wind, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s levels of cringe. First I’m going to give you my reaction to this movie after I initially watched it, then I’ll give you my reaction to it now.

1932 Best Picture winner, the movie with such classic lines as “Look Isaiah [their black child slave], lot’s of watermelons over there.” and “How many times have I told you not to talk to those dirty, filthy Indians?” All these lines, of course, were said with utmost seriousness. People at the time just lapped this movie up. It got great ratings and made a ton of money. I suppose I can see how this movie could potentially have won back in 1932 since they didn’t exactly think how we think today in terms of human rights. It doesn’t hold up in a single way to a modern viewing though. It starts with white people getting to settle on Native land like it’s a big party and there’s a black slave who has to fan the white family while dangling from a ceiling fan. This kid dies for them and no one even cares. Watching it today is pretty revolting, there’s no question about that. With that said, I think story wise it’s a big step up from last year’s nominees, it’s just the fact that the story it’s trying to tell is gross. The quality is also sub-par, especially compared to the previous year’s winners. I guess they didn’t want to preserve this rotten piece of history.

So I wrote that after seeing the movie for the first time, and that reaction and feeling stuck with me for awhile. As I sat and dwelled on it, I found myself changing my opinion. It’s still a gross movie, but it’s not exactly fair of me to judge it with a modern perspective. I really did get the sense during the movie that it felt like it was being progressive and modern. The main character was trying to stand up for Native rights in a small way and I’m sure they felt like they were taking a step in the right direction for society. Since then we’ve come football fields of steps in that direction which is fantastic and I’m glad that the movie doesn’t hold up or it’d mean that we haven’t progressed at all in 90 years. I’m not going to say this movie is good, or even watchable, but it can have it’s place in history. I can see why it won Best Picture; with its grand scope, the big action scene at the beginning, and its “progressive” story. In either case, it still won’t be my pick.

My pick for Best Picture 1932 is somehow Skippy, the sweet little family film. I had such low hopes for this movie and was blown away. It even made me reflect heavily on what Best Picture really means. Before that though, let me say this movie is about a rich boy who likes to spend time on the wrong side of the tracks with his poor friend and his dog. It stars Jackie Cooper as Skippy and he carries the entire movie on his back. This kid is incredible. He’s such a joy to watch that it’s easy to look past some of the dated references and still have a great time. It made me laugh, made me cry, made me question Best Picture altogether.

Let me ask you, how can you even classify something as the best? Movies are art and art is subjective, therefore how do you determine the best movie of the year? I would say Cimarron had a grander scope and better production values than a little movie like Skippy, although Skippy was infinitely more enjoyable to me. Skippy made me cry and Cimarron made me cringe. Can I then say that Skippy is the best movie of the year? Objectively I can’t because there are people that will absolutely find it boring. Some people enjoy action movies, or comedies, or documentaries. It’s like if you had a yearly award for best fruit. Honey-crisp dominated the apple category, but this year it was time for an orange to win so this year the best fruit award goes to mandarin orange. Well not everybody likes oranges, some people just like apples. I think you get where my little analogy here is going… I don’t think Skippy is the best movie of the 1932, but of the 5 nominees it was my favorite. This year I liked the apple instead of the orange and maybe next year I’ll prefer the banana. If you also like apples then this is a great apple even 90 years later and I would recommend giving it a try.

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So this took me almost 3 months to write. I’m well aware of the fact that I’ve gone back to my old habits and I’m not going to make any promises this time. Getting this post out at all was a miracle because I hated 80% of the movies this year. It was a real bummer to say the least. I’m not sure what my next post will be about. It could be another Best Picture post, or maybe TSDPDT, or I might not be back at all until October for my annual horror movie binge. I want this to keep being fun, so I’ll see what inspires me the most.

Best Picture 1931

The 3rd Academy Awards took place in 1931 and covered the years 1929 to 1930. As far as Best Picture goes, the only interesting fact is that this was the first year where a movie won both Best Director and Best Picture, something that has become quite common these days. And for the awards in general, this was the only year where you could be nominated more than once in the same category. This means that an actor could be nominated for more than 1 movie in a single year, and indeed this is what happened. George Arliss won the award for Best Actor by beating himself in Disraeli. I actually like this idea and wouldn’t mind it being reintroduced. I imagine it’d be pretty rare for someone to be nominated so when it did happen, it’d be a huge talking point. Another piece of trivia is that this is the first year where siblings won awards, with Norma Shearer winning Best Actress, and her brother Douglas Shearer winning Best Sound Recording. Lastly, this was the first year where a woman won a non-acting award, with Frances Marion winning the award for Best Writing for the The Big House.

There are a lot of firsts this year, and the awards are getting closer to the ceremony that we know today. It feels even more like today’s awards when you get into the nominations for Best Picture, which might sound familiar.

Nominees

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) – A big budget film about the horrors of war. Your typical war Oscar bait.

The Big House (1930) – A prison drama, most notable for being one of the first prison movies.

Disraeli (1929) – A biographical film about the Prime Minister of Britain and his purchasing of the Suez Canal. Your typical Oscar bait British period piece, with an extra sprinkle of play adaption to make the bait all the more enticing.

The Divorcee (1930) – A dramatic love quadrangle where a husband cheats on his wife and the wife cheats back.

The Love Parade (1929) – A musical about a man’s fragile ego.

My Pick

My pick for Best Picture is absolutely not The Love Parade, as you may have guessed by my glowing summary. It’s a musical with music I did not enjoy about a man who marries a Queen and gets upset that she has more power than him. He throws a hissy fit when she orders him around and by the end they agree he should be in charge because he has a penis so he will now take over her job as Queen. Forget that she was an effective ruler before they met, now her job is to produce children. What a heartwarming story.

My pick for Best Picture is also not The Divorcee. I was interested in this movie for awhile, but I hate to say that I had a hard time following who was who. The main actors look too similar and I found myself confused about who was with who. I even started to get this movie confused with last year’s winner since these generic dramas are starting to blend together in my head. It could’ve stood out more if the wife, Jerry, didn’t run back to her husband, Ted, after he cheats on her. It left a sour taste in my mouth.

My pick for Best Picture is likewise not our prison drama, The Big House. I love me a prison movie, but the story felt so disjointed that there were times I wasn’t sure what just happened. I couldn’t tell where people were, who they were or what they were doing. I lost interest in this movie pretty early on, but I have to admit that I was severely influenced by the quality of the film itself. It was hard to find this so what I ended up watching was low resolution and the sound had all kinds of crackles and pops in it that were not pleasant to my senses. I like what this movie started because it gave me some of my favorite prison movies, but it didn’t do it for me this year.

My pick for Best Picture is obviously not the period piece, Disraeli. It’s no secret that I am not a fan of British period pieces. The most excited I ever got about this movie was when I almost couldn’t find a copy of it to watch. Sadly, I managed to find a copy which unfortunately suffered the same fate as The Big House where it didn’t exactly give me Best Picture vibes. Quality aside, I found the story boring and slow. I don’t know much about Disraeli history so I found myself googling who these people were just to follow along, and even knowing the backstory it’s still boring as a movie. I’m sure the stakes were high in real life, but the movie didn’t do a good job of showing that. It was very much a play in that it took place in a few rooms and you never got to see the scope or gravity of what Disraeli was trying to accomplish with his purchase.

My pick for Best Picture is the actual winner, All Quiet on the Western Front! Is it a coincidence that my pick turned out to be the actual winner this year? No, of course not. I knew this movie won before I watched the others. Not only did I know it won, but I already knew I liked it because I’ve seen it before and gave it an 8/10. Those were big shoes to fill… shoes so big it was like a toddler trying to fill clown shoes. To bias me even further, there’s the fact that this movie has an absolutely gorgeous HD restoration. Since this was the winner, great effort was taken to preserve it. Effort that wasn’t afforded to the other nominees. I don’t think the other nominees had any chance of changing my mind, and it’s something I’m going to watch out for in the following years.

But let’s get into what makes this movie so good, because it really is a great movie. The story follows young boys who are told how wonderful it is to fight for their country. “You’ll be heroes fighting to protect your friends and family,” they’re told. They’re shown propaganda and buttered up until they’re lining up in droves to enlist. We follow our main character, Paul, as he and his friends head out to fight in the first World War. It’s a dehumanizing, disgusting look at the trench warfare that much of the war turned into. They sit in mud holes, playing cards trying to pass the time while explosions go off all around them. There’s little to no food, and all they have for comfort is each other. There’s no glory as troops are commanded to hop out the trenches to try to gain a few feet of ground. The generals giving the orders don’t see the men as people, they’re just troops. It’s a numbers game. If we send over 200 men 80% will die but we’ll gain some ground. This is an acceptable loss so they command the men to their deaths.

The reality of what Paul signed up for quickly becomes apparent as he loses friend after friend. There’s a fantastic scene where one of his friends dies with some really great boots, so the boots get passed on to another man who then dies and passes the boots on to the next man. The camera follows the boots in this grotesque montage to give you the feeling that the only thing to survive a war are the boots. They’re merely passed from foot to foot. It’s a depressing thought, but the movie wants you to feel this way. It takes you down this road with Paul. After being worn down, Paul finally gets a break to go home, only it’s not the home he remembers nor is he the same man. He sees the propaganda being shown to the new recruits as the lie it really is. Those boys are excited to go to a war he knows is cruel, cold and unforgiving. There’s no place for him at home anymore. He goes back to the war where he can at least be with his friends who understand him. Except, in what becomes the last straw for Paul, he innocently goes out to greet his friend, only to have him taken away in a freak accident. He’s all alone in the trenches now. As he looks out over the trench wall, with bullets flying past, and explosions going off in the distance, he sees a butterfly and the movie ends with one of the most iconic shots in film.

This movie hit me hard, and seems so ahead of its time. It has a clear message about how horrible war is, made all the worse with the knowledge that another war is just around the corner. It’s sad and depressing and I love it. Even with all the biases I may have had towards this movie, I don’t see how any of the other nominees could’ve even come close to winning this year. This movie is just too good.

Even though this post took ages for me to write, I feel content knowing that I did my due diligence. I’ve got the next slate of nominees ready to go. Hopefully 1932 won’t take quite as long and won’t have any British period pieces or musicals.

Best Picture Series Change-up

So I’m a glutton for punishment and everything I ever do in my life I expand its scope until it reaches a point where I can no longer handle it. Obviously this was going to happen here too, although I didn’t expect it on only my 3rd post in this series. In the back of my mind I was always thinking what’s the point of doing this if I don’t watch the other nominees? I can’t determine if it “deserved” the win as, for the most part, I have never watched any of the other movies nominated. Why should I do something if I’m only going to half-ass it?

I did finish watching the winner for 1931 and was beginning to write the post for it when it only became more apparent to me that I needed to change. My plan for the new format is that I will watch the winner first, then all of the nominees and see how the year stacks up. So what all this means is that my next post will be even more delayed since I need to watch 4 more movies, but I think I’ll be much happier with the quality and it could be fun to relive the hype of the awards and find my own snubs.

Even with this change of format, I won’t be going back to the previous years and watching those nominees since what’s done is done. What a shame, I missed out on the year of silent movies, and the year of extreme corruption. I don’t know how I’ll live with that loss, but I’ll try and move on from it. Back to the 1929s and 1930s for me! I’ll be back soon with my next post.

Best Picture 1930 – The Broadway Melody (1929)

The 2nd Academy Awards took place in 1930 and covered the years 1928 to 1929. For this year’s awards they combined the previous two Best Picture awards into a single award called Outstanding Picture meant to highlight the movie with the best Production for that year. What makes this an important year in the history of the awards is that it’s the first year where “Talkies” were permitted. While some silent movies were still nominated for awards in 1930, this was pretty much their death knell. In fact, as you might already suspect, this year has our first talkie winner for Best Picture, The Broadway Melody. It’s a musical about two sisters caught up in a love triangle on Broadway. It doesn’t have the most original plot in the world, but this movie was a trailblazer. It was the top grossing film of 1929 and was MGM’s first full talkie and their first musical. It was so successful that Hollywood did what it does best, and started spitting out musicals left and right. I’ve heard it said that the fact that it started the musical revolution is the main reason why it won. So if it only won because of its novel idea, then does that mean it wasn’t a very good movie? Yes.

There were a few amusing sequences that I thought were well done, but overall I found my brain wandering off to think about something else. The story is very thin and you could probably tell it in just 30 minutes. It really is just about two sisters going to Broadway. There isn’t anything interesting to sink your teeth into. As far as the musical segments go, I felt like they were mostly filler. A lot of the songs didn’t relate to the plot or move it along and were simply there as entertainment. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but they were clearly there to entertain and were all painfully boring to me. Since it was the highest grossing movie of the year, the music was probably good for its time, however, this is 2021 and my ears kept trying to retreat back into my head.

While I didn’t like the plot or the music, I did like some of the characters and the acting. The two sisters, Hank and Queenie, had great chemistry and when it was them on screen together, this is when the movie was truly watchable. There is one scene where the sisters are singing with the male side of their love triangle, Eddie. Hank breaks out into a little jig of a dance. It was adorable and goofy, and I loved it. Sadly, this was quite early on in the movie and from that point on it went downhill. I felt myself drifting until nearly the end when the sisters got into a big fight in their dressing room. They both acted their butts off in this scene. Queenie gets a moment where she completely loses it on Eddie and it was marvelous. Then after she storms off, Hank sees that Eddie and Queenie should really be the ones who end up together and she pulls off an Air Bud moment. She tells Eddie she doesn’t love him and that he belongs with Queenie. After Eddie leaves to catch up with her, Hank cries at the door that she loves Eddie and wanted to be his wife. That moment tugged at my lone heart string, but then the movie lingered on the feeling which made it even more impactful. I wasn’t expecting an emotional moment from this movie, and while it didn’t make me cry, it definitely was a stand out scene.

There wasn’t a whole lot for me to like about this movie, and apparently I’m not alone. This movie is the worst rated film to ever win a Best Picture award. As much as I didn’t like it, I can’t believe that honor didn’t go to a certain other movie which I won’t get into just yet. This is good news for me though because it means it’s all uphill now. I don’t think I’d recommend this movie to anyone unless they want to see it for historical purposes then by all means knock yourself out.

Verdict: 5.9/10

Best Picture 1929 – Wings (1927)

I’ve been into the Oscars for a few years now, every year attempting to watch as many of the nominated films as I can. It was this year in particular that had me thinking about the history of the Oscars, with its re-ordering of awards and the short song “history” segment. A crazy thought popped into my head that I should watch all of the Best Picture winners. I don’t know what’s wrong with me and why I always have to watch lists, especially when I can never finish anything I start, but here we are anyways with the very first winner of the award for Best Picture, Wings.

The first Oscars was held in 1929, but was for movies that were released in 1927/1928 and it had an interesting set of “Picture” awards. There was an award for Outstanding Picture, which is for the best overall production and that award went to Wings. Outstanding Picture would later be renamed to Best Picture and it’s the same category as we have today so technically this is the first Best Picture award. However, there was another award for Unique and Artistic Picture which was supposed to award a movie for having the “most unique, artistic, worthy and original production.” This award went to Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and while it isn’t technically the Best Picture winner as we know it, since the category was removed in the next year this movie retroactively is considered the second Best Picture winner for the 1929 awards. I want to mention it now because I’ve already seen this movie, and while I didn’t write about it, I remember it being a slog so I have no interest in re-watching it right now. Not to mention that I’m not the biggest fan of silent movies and 1929 is in fact the only year where true silent films won Best Picture (you’ll have to wait 81 posts for me to explain what I mean by “true silent film”). All this was a long winded way of me weaseling out of watching two silent movies, so without further ado let’s get into the real reason we’re here.

Wings is about two men who become fighter pilots in WWI. I surprise myself constantly with how little I think of silent movies. I didn’t expect it to have an interesting story or any kind of production value. In my brain when I think of silent movies, I’m thinking of cheap sound stage productions and flimsy stories that don’t capture my attention. This movie couldn’t be further from that if it tried. I’m blown away by the scope and production value of this movie.

Lets start with the war scenes, where they had thousands of extras, real tanks, planes, and weaponry courtesy of the military. The military viewed the movie as good publicity that might increase enlistment numbers so they were on board to lend the crew some equipment. The real equipment and shear number of extras helped to make the war scenes feel modern and believable. I can only imagine what it must’ve been like when it premiered to see this in theaters after probably never seeing anything about the war before. It’s quite the spectacle and that alone is impressive, but that’s not all this movie did.

Think back to some old black and white movies you’ve watched where the characters are driving somewhere and I bet you’re picturing them sitting in a stationary car in front of a green screen. That’s what I would’ve expected from this movie for the plane scenes. Instead of taking the easy way out, they had the actors themselves learn to fly the planes. One of the actors already knew how to fly, but the other learned on the job for his role. They would go up in the air with cameras mounted on the planes to capture their reactions. Imagine not only having to act but, takeoff, fly and land a plane at the same time. It was worth it for the quality picture we got in the end. Since these were all real authentic elements, nothing has aged so you can watch this movie in 2021 and still be impressed.

Now, all that could make your film worthy of the best production of the year, but there was so much more going for it that I think put it over the top. The music is another element to silent movies that I normally can’t stand. In my mind they are boring and repetitive, but the soundtrack to this movie is fantastic. I was humming the main theme for hours after the movie ended, in fact I’m humming it right now. There is a distinct theme song which is great, but even the supporting music is done so well that it enhances all the key moments of the ending.

The ending. Oh, that ending. Remember how I said that I figured the movie would have some flimsy boring ol’ story? Not Wings! This feels like the blueprint for modern summer blockbusters. It’s such a classic tale, but it wasn’t predictable. I would love to talk about the ending in more detail, but I don’t want to spoil a 96 year old movie. It’s so much better when you watch it unspoiled. I don’t know if this has even happened to me before, but this movie made me cry. A silent movie made me cry.

I think that’s the perfect place to end this post. Clearly I enjoyed this movie. On top of everything I already mentioned there are so many things I didn’t even touch on: the infamous nightclub over the table panning shot, the first same sex kiss in film and the fact that it was lost until 1992 and then gorgeously restored in high definition. If you’ve never seen a silent movie before, I think this is the perfect introduction because it has enough modern elements that you won’t feel so culture shocked. I love that it’s the first Best Picture winner because I think this is the better initiation into silent movies compared to Sunrise. After you watch this, I wholly recommend #963 True Heart Susie (1919) and #300 The Kid (1921). Not as a shameless self promotion, but because these are two other silent movies I saw that really stuck with me. It will never be my favorite period in film history, but slowly I’m building up that acquired taste and getting to experience these little gems like Wings.

Verdict: 9/10

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

In an effort to try something new where I don’t over think every thing I do in my life, I’m going to write an off the cuff review of a movie that doesn’t take me weeks to finish. I picked the perfect movie to start with because I’m Thinking of Ending Things requires no thinking whatsoever. It’s a completely straightforward movie that will be a piece of cake to review.

I watched this movie because Netflix kept shoving it down my throat. “Hey, watch this, I bet you’ll like it. Our algorithm predicts a 97% chance that you’ll enjoy this movie.” I watched the first bit of the trailer today and saw it was directed by Charlie Kaufman who I sort of remember directed Anomolisa which I think I liked, and Being John Malkovich, which I definitely liked. I gave this the best shot I possibly could and I hated it.

The movie starts with a couple going to visit the boyfriend’s parents, while the girlfriend is thinking of ending things. It’s pretentious, but it isn’t completely confusing yet. In the beginning it’s “clear” they are going to see his parents and they are a couple. It takes a long time to get there and they jump from topic to topic so fast that it makes my head spin. This movie loves to jump around. You know what it is? The entire movie is like somebody telling you a dream they had last night. “Well first I dreamed we were going to visit your parents, but then your mom and dad were really old. But then your mom was like young again, but then even older! Oh and your dog, he was always wet and kept shaking to dry off. Then we went to an ice cream shop in the middle of a blizzard and then we ended up at your old high school and then there was a big dance scene and then you got a Nobel prize and everyone was in the audience with cheap old age makeup on, and finally you were in the play Oklahoma. Isn’t that wild?!” And you’re just sitting there, listening, all the while inside you’re screaming, “GET TO THE POINT!”

Throughout this entire movie, I was screaming inside. I’m trying not to make obvious jokes about the name of the movie, but I’m pretty sure it was called I’m Thinking of Ending Things because that’s how it makes you feel about your life as you watch it. It didn’t need to be over two hours long. The dialogue didn’t need to be so stilted. It didn’t need to just end out of nowhere. It’s incredibly difficult to review one of these “artsy” movies because inevitably someone will come along and say that I just didn’t get it. And you know what, that’s fine by me. I didn’t get it. I didn’t like it. I don’t recommend it.

Verdict: 5/10

January 2021

I woke up this morning, looked at the calendar, looked at my movie spreadsheet and thought why don’t I do a monthly summary? Apparently, as you’ll notice from the extreme length of this post, I had a lot to say. I watched 27 movies this month, with an average rating of 7.0876 and enjoyment rating of 0.56 (my made up system of enjoyment where 1 = thumbs up, 0 = Eh, it was ok, -1 = thumbs down, and -2 = the worst thing ever). Overall a pretty average month, but with some movies that got strong reactions of me. So let’s get into it.

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Best of the Best

Saturday Night Fever (1977) – 7.89

I’m hesitantly putting Saturday Night Fever on my best list. It’s the first time I’ve seen it and I didn’t know anything about it, other than Travolta doing disco in a white suit. Despite some completely deplorable scenes, I found myself kind of liking the story as a whole. The movie centers around Travolta who plays a young stud who goes dancing every night with his friends trying to pick up chicks. Him and his group of friends are despicable with how they talk about women and it almost turned me off from the movie. Then came Stephanie to save the day, a woman who tells Travolta just how little she thinks of him and I was back in. I loved her no shit attitude and that she didn’t fall for Travolta’s tricks. It was interesting because after being turned down so viscously, Travolta can’t stop thinking about her or what she said. It’s very much a character study movie and I was interested to see how Travolta would develop.

All that said, there were parts to the movie that were seemingly glossed over that made me question if it deserves to be a best movie. Spoilers ahead because I’m going to be real here. There was a scene of gang rape that barely even gets mentioned in the movie, and has the victim hugging one of the rapists barely 5 minutes after. She should’ve gotten the fuck out of there the second they stopped that car. But as sick and disturbing as it was, I don’t think the movie tried to paint those guys as good guys for doing that. It was more like the last straw for Travolta to realize he can’t hang around with his friends anymore. So in the context of the story it could be deemed necessary, but it is sickening. The poor girl just liked Travolta, she didn’t deserve that. Then there’s the part that I’m even more torn up about. Travolta attempts to rape Stephanie in the back seat of his car. She manages to push him off and get away, but then when he shows up on her doorstep at the end of the movie she lets him in. He apologizes to her and tells her how he wants to be a better man. I can appreciate the fact that she was hesitant to forgive him, but I don’t know how I feel about her ultimately agreeing to be friends with him after that. Again, it does something for the plot of the movie because it shows how Travolta is trying to grow by suggesting to be friends with a woman instead of just someone to have sex with. Movie wise… ok… maybe it can work, but I don’t think it was a good thing for Stephanie’s character or for women in general. It made the movie end on a happy, optimistic note, but I’m not so sure that is should have. I liked the movie, but definitely still torn up about it.

Tenet (2020) – 8

I saw Tenet for the first time a few days ago and I can’t get it out of my head. I heard all kinds of bad things about this movie, but I generally like Christopher Nolan and wholly like Science Fiction movies so I couldn’t resist. I will confirm one bad thing I heard about this movie, which is that the sound in it is atrociously bad. There are scenes with characters just talking to each other and there will be this aggressively loud music playing over top of their dialogue. It was so bad that I had to turn subtitles on so I wouldn’t miss anything. Intentional or not, it completely doesn’t work. I was also extremely confused by the idea behind the movie. It’s technically a time travel movie, but not in the way you’d expect. Instead of being transported to the past, the characters invert and go backwards from the present. The whole concept of this broke my brain. I only started to get it about half way in when the protagonist inverts himself for the first time. Once I started to wrap my head around everything I thought it was an amazing idea. In a sense you’re watching the movie forwards and backwards and I love that! Not only is the idea cool, but I marveled at the technicalities of people moving forwards and backwards in the same scene. It was so seamless I couldn’t even tell how it was done. The special effects are mind blowingly good. One part that stood out to me was when an inverted guy steps on a piece of rubble that then starts to un-rubble itself and flips him over in the air. It took my brain like 5 seconds to process what it just saw and then it was just speechless.

This movie is like Fight Club or Mulholland Drive where the twist changes your whole perspective and you want to go back and watch it all again to pick up on things you missed the first time around. It’s even more like Mulholland Drive for me because without knowing the full story I hated it, then when I got to the end and realized what was happening I ended up loving it. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Sure it has its flaws, and Christopher Nolan can be a bit much at times, but I give him massive credit for writing an original screenplay. It’s refreshing and interesting enough that I can 100% overlook the sound problems and exposition heavy scenes. This broke my brain in a way that hasn’t happened since I watched Primer. If you love time travel science fiction you have to see this. I know I’m going to be re-watching it again soon.

Dangal (2016) – 8

My best movie of January is going to be pretty out there. It’s a 2h 40m Indian movie about a father that trains his daughters to become gold medal wrestlers. This turned out to be a blast of a movie. The story is obviously right up my alley. I like feel good sports movies, musicals, and movies with strong female characters. This had it all!

There were a few catchy songs in the typical Bollywood fashion. Something about the way Bollywood songs sound just makes me happy. I wouldn’t have minded some more, but I liked the few songs that I got. Then I loved the fact that these girls were wrestling and beating the shit out of boys. I know I would’ve loved this as a kid because it wasn’t often I saw strong girls or women in movies. But I’ll admit that the story is very Hollywood, which is to say you could predict things from a mile away. For instance, the very moment we learn about this extremely difficult 5 point flip move that can be performed, it was clear that the movie would end with a gold medal match and that in the last second a 5 point flip would win the fight. You know it’s going to happen because that’s how all sports competition movies end. Call me a hypocrite if you want, because if you keep reading about the other movies in this post I totally am. Sometimes obvious plots piss me off, and other times I don’t even care because the movie as a whole is so good. This is a fun movie, with a well told intriguing story and I have no issue with naming it my best movie of the month. It’s on Netflix Canada and worth a watch.

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Worst of the Worst

I Wake Up Screaming (1941) – 6

This was the third noir I watched from TSDPDT and I would’ve done a whole post about it but honestly I don’t have much to say. The movie is about the murder of a young actress and the investigation into who killed her. My biggest problem with it is the fact that it’s not told chronologically. There are frequent flashbacks and sometimes I didn’t understand what was happening. I tried to follow along but I just couldn’t keep things straight. By the time I figured out who was who, I just didn’t care. Not to say that there wasn’t anything redeeming about it. There were some fantastically shot scenes of the suspects and witnesses being interrogated by police that was shadowy and perfectly epitomized noir. So while it felt like a noir, I just didn’t enjoy the story or how it was told. The only reason I put it on my worst list was because I wanted to mention it, and because it took me 4 tries to finish it which generally isn’t a good thing.

Sightless (2020) – 4

Next up is Sightless, a Netflix movie about a young woman who loses her sight in an attack and then starts to go crazy imagining things. It sounded like an interesting premise. I thought it’d be like Hush, which I loved, but wound up being one of the most maddening movies of the year. I’m probably going to spoil the whole thing, so, while I don’t recommend you watch it, if you plan to then skip ahead. This movie is the most beautifully shot garbage that I’ve seen in a long time. I hated literally everything about it from the plot, to the characters, to the dialogue to the actors themselves. The woman gets attacked for who her family is I guess? And her brother sets her up in some kind of recovery hotel with a young sexy male caretaker? The setup for the movie is stupid and from the first time I saw the caretaker I knew there was something wrong with him. It was so painfully obvious, and of course I was right. See he was pretending to be everyone! She can’t see so she doesn’t know who she’s talking to. He pretended to be doctors, neighbours, the police, every one. This “twist” just enraged me at how stupid it was. The acting reeks of teenagers trying to break out into more dramatic film roles and the main actress isn’t there yet. She tried way too hard and I couldn’t empathize with her in any way. Although I can’t completely blame the actors because they were given nothing to work. The dialogue in this movie is atrocious. The first scene has the protagonist talking to a detective about her attacker and he was like “How tall was he or she?” and the woman cuts him off and vehemently says “He. It felt like a man.” Oh sure, let’s base the entire investigation off your feelings. The movie’s riddled with lines like that that make no sense and no human being would ever say and it set me off every time. I’m trying to find more examples of how bad the movie is, but even skimming through it again is triggering me. Stay away from this movie. It’s not so bad it’s good, it’s just offensively bad.

Run Hide Fight (2020) – 6

I had a moral debate over what to rate Run Hide Fight and where to place it on my list. It’s about a girl who fights back when a group of kids takes some students hostage in a school shooting. This is an action movie along the lines of Die Hard, set in a school shooting. I enjoyed the movie, I think putting aside everything I’ll talk about soon this was more of a high 7 maybe even an 8. But then I think about the fact that it used a school shooting as a backdrop, an event that is still very much ongoing and severely traumatizing to anyone who experiences it and I can’t rate it that high. If they were trying to make a statement about school shootings, I could understand making this movie, but then what message would they be trying to send? The protagonist pretty much saves the day by fighting back like a badass. So the message I would take away from this is don’t listen to lockdown protocols which are laughably ineffective, and fight back. This is where I have a problem… you tell people to fight back and you turn school shootings into wars with even more casualties. You tell students not to trust teachers, or the security procedures and you’ll have people who don’t lockdown and get killed. You talk about all the short falls of lockdowns publicly and you’re just giving potential shooters tips on how to skirt lockdowns and find more victims. None of these are good message and I hate that I even supported this movie by watching it.

On the other hand, this movie might’ve been made not to send a message, but for pure entertainment value. In that case why did it have to be a school shooting? Sure it may be commonplace now, but it shouldn’t be! I don’t want to normalize this fucked up situation. How about the protagonist is working part time at a super market and some bad guys try to rob it. Maybe a bank, a plane whatever… anything but school shootings. I was in school when Columbine happened, but before they became this common. I didn’t have to walk through metal detectors, or do active shooter drills and I was never in fear for my life when I walked through the school doors. That’s how it should be and to pretend like anything else is acceptable makes me sick. I wouldn’t want to send my kids to school thinking I’ll never see them again. For that reason I’m happy to put this as my worst of the month because it’s a tasteless, disgusting idea for a movie.

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Biggest Surprise

Witchboard (1986) – 8

On to something happier. As I pondered what movie surprised me the most this month, it was clear Witchboard had to be it. I bought the In Search of Darkness II 80s horror documentary and as part of that they do these bi-weekly watch parties. This was the pick for the week and I had no hope of this being good. An evil Ouija board? Woooow, how original… But I haven’t been so surprised by a horror movie since My Bloody Valentine. The kills in this movie were shocking and they even happened to people you didn’t want to die. You start to get to know characters and you care about them as the movie progresses. They felt like real people that had emotions. Spoiler warning, the main character’s friend gets killed and our protagonist actually cries over his body. It made me sad. A horror movie made me sad. Usually a friend gets killed and nobody even seems to care, so this was unique and refreshing. The best part though was the ending which was totally badass and I loved every minute of it. The lead’s girlfriend who was using the evil Ouija board goes full on evil and kicks his ass. It was unexpected and awesome.

Now with all that said, this is an 8 on a horror movie rating scale. It’s not a masterpiece like Psycho or something, but if you like 80s horror this one is top notch. Don’t be turned off by the boring premise or generically weird title. It’s good enough that it might make its way into my Halloween rotation.

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Biggest Disappointment

Sixteen Candles (1984) – 5.8

Now lets end on a sour note. I decided to do a John Hughes day on the weekend and watch two of his movies that I’ve never seen, Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. The latter was alright; a typical dumb 80s teenager movie. While the former was cringey and dated beyond belief. I sort of knew the plot of this movie, or at least some key scenes, but I didn’t know the extent of the cringe. For example, the Chinese exchange student, Long Duk Dong… every time he’s on screen they add a gong sound effect. It’s the most embarrassing thing since Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I can’t even put my feelings about this into words. It’s terrible. And it’s not even the worst part of the movie. There’s this geek character who keeps trying to win the attention of the main character, Samantha. He puts his arm around her, flirts with her… sniffs her… tries to make out with her… gets her panties and shows it to all the guys at school… What a quirky guy, that isn’t creepy and gross at all! There’s another girl in the movie, she’s this beautiful popular girl who likes to party and at one point she’s completely plastered. Well this geek drives her home and then he realizes that he has this hot babe totally at his mercy. So what does he do? He tells his friends who take pictures of him posing with her to make it look like they slept together. Already this is fucked up, but it goes even further. The next morning him and the girl wake up in the back seat of the car, neither of them remember what happened, but apparently they slept together. The movie sets it up like the geek was drunk too so it’s ok, but he was not blackout drunk. The guy was sober enough to drive in a straight line, think about taking pictures with a girl and drove her out to a remote location. This guy was sober… and he took advantage of a drunk girl. Then she… liked it?! What a great message to send to kids. If girls don’t like you, get them drunk and have sex with them then they’ll realize how great of a guy you really are.

I honestly can’t look past either of these elements of the movie because they are there through the entire thing. It’s so offensively bad that I wouldn’t ever watch it again. A part of my brain knows that deep down, no one probably cared about these things when it was made, but I can’t look past it. I won’t fault the movie for being made when it was made, but I’m not going to hold it up on a pedestal just because it had a quirky scene at the end with kids eating cake while sitting on a table. This was no Breakfast Club that’s for sure, and I’m very disappointed.

High Sierra (1941)

Next up is a movie that’s probably only know for the fact that it launched Humphrey Bogart into stardom, 1941’s High Sierra. Bogart plays a gangster, Roy, who’s released from prison and heads out on another big heist. He meets up with all kinds of wacky characters and decides that he actually wants to be a good guy after all, but the world just won’t let him.

This is the perfect follow up to my last review. In Stranger on the Third Floor I mentioned how I’ve complained till I’m blue in the face about 40s and 50s romance. Here is the perfect example of the kind of romance I hate. Our lead, a 42 year old man, sees a 20 year old woman and instantly falls in love despite barely ever talking to her. In fact, I would say he falls in love solely based on the fact that she’s a cripple with a club foot. He tries to buy her love by fixing her foot. It’s clear he isn’t doing it purely out of the goodness of his heart; he wants something from her in the end. I understand that this is supposed to show us as the audience that this is a guy that just wants to settle down and live a quiet life, but he tries to buy the love of a girl half his age. I’m not even sure half his age is accurate, because she looked and acted just like a kid. Sorry for the spoiler, but she does not take him up on his offer of marriage. Marriage… when they haven’t even gone on a single date or anything. No “I like you, do you like me?”, he jumps right into “I want to marry you.” I’m not surprised in the slightest that she said no, I would’ve said no too. Then they make her out to be the bad guy in the whole situation. I’m supposed to feel bad for ol’ Roy because this ingrate didn’t want to marry him after he insisted she take his money for the surgery? Clearly, this plot thread did not endear me to his character in any way. It turned me off from him more than anything else. The only interesting thing I found out about Roy is that the dog that follows him around in the movie was Humphrey Bogart’s actual dog, Zero. I thought that was really cute… it must’ve been a blast to have his dog on set with him while he worked. I know that without the distraction of the dog, I would’ve have lasted nearly as long as I did.

Now I’ve gone on for a long time about these 2 characters, but they aren’t nearly the only characters in the movie. There’s the old guy that hires Roy for the heist, his bodyguard or something, a bunch of guys that come to the heist and then die immediately after, club foot, club foot’s grandparents, club foot’s mother, club foot’s guy from back home, Marie the “femme fatale”, the doctor, Roy and let’s not forget Algernon. Algernon is the cringey black character that painfully reminds you that you’re watching a movie from the 40s. Yes, sir… no, sir… let me be your punchline. He wasn’t a main character, but to see that 20 minutes in didn’t fill me with hope. Now let’s talk about Marie, the “femme fatale” I mentioned earlier because she’s important to the plot. She’s the one that talks Roy into bringing the dog along with him everywhere and sets up the ending. She also falls in love with him because he is a man and she likes man. Except this time he doesn’t love her. Wow, what a twist! Oh, but then he gets turned down by club foot and decides he loves Marie after all. How sweet. There’s nothing like the feeling of being somebody’s second choice.

Just like in the last movie, this one had a femme that wasn’t quite fatale. Except this time, the movie didn’t even have the other noir elements to prop it up. High Sierra was filmed on set instead of completely on a sound stage, so it’s very bright, the music is cheery, our lead wears 0 trench coats and there are no voice overs. The only thing I can pick out that makes it a film noir is the crime element, but that’s stretching it. If anything I would say this is just your run of the mill action, crime, drama movie.

I don’t understand why this movie gets more praise than Stranger on the Third Floor. It has horrible pacing, the character building is weak, and the plot is laughably obvious. I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. Roy could’ve died, Marie could’ve died, club foot could’ve died, I didn’t care. The only death that would’ve hurt me was the dog. It was boring, it didn’t age well, and it isn’t some ground breaking noir. I don’t regret watching it, but I don’t think I’d ever bother to watch it again.

Verdict: 6.9/10