Movies
Three Identical Strangers (2018)
The film wields one particular event (involving the death of an individual central to this documentary) as such a cudgel that raises a lot of the ethical questions that the film uses to critique the twin study at the crux of this doc—as does the very premise of turning the lives of real people who have been so exploited into a rip-roaring docu-thriller. It helps that the "identical strangers" have given their consent, but honestly, would we gobble up this story any less readily if it had been told without their consent? I'm doubtful, and in general, I wish that, for all its Errol Morris-aping aesthetics, the movie had a bit more of a Morris-like streak and used interview as tool for philosophical treatise as much as narrative delivery. But it is a thrilling story, and I was admittedly gripped, aesthetic and ethical nags be damned. So in the end, what can I really say? Grade: B
Trapped (2016)
Trapped is centered around the struggles of several women's health clinics as anti-abortion legislation hamstrings their ability to function. It's not a particularly elegant documentary; it kind of meets halfway between a Wiseman observational style and a more traditional talking-heads issue doc, and it serves neither style as well as a more dedicated commitment to either would have (I'm left wanting both more rigorously informative work on the specifics of the issue and more anecdotally patient footage of the minutiae of the clincs' day-to-day operations). However, as a piece of ideology (a resolutely pro-choice one, it must be said), it presents the exact factors in the abortion debate that make me (while pro-life in philosophy) pro-choice in practice: the fact that anti-abortion laws don't really curb abortions, just the safety of them, the empty capriciousness of anti-abortion laws, the callous disregard for the realities of healthcare by anti-abortion politicians, the collateral damage of anti-abortion laws on other health services. To put it another way: the only Planned Parenthood in Knoxville is down the street from my house, and it is the only healthcare provider that is not a dialysis clinic for miles; every morning, there are people protesting abortions on the sidewalk in front, and honestly, if they truly wanted to decrease the number of abortions, they should be petitioning the city, state, and federal governments to incentivize outpatient facilities and reliable pharmacies and primary care physicians and, I dunno, a hospital to come to East Knoxville. But no. Apparently the best thing to do is the yell at the women who come to the sole women's health clinic in the area. Grade: B-
Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013)
I'm much more a fan of David Lowery when he's in Ghost Story mode than when he's in Malick-lite mode, as he is here. The camerawork and acting are beautiful, but it lacks tangibility in the editing and story structure that made '70s Malick (which is definitely the Malick this wants to be) so perfectly celestial and Americanan. Nor is its writing specific or grounded enough to get the soulful tragedy of something like Sugarland Express, which Ain't Them Bodies Saints also really wants to be. I guess what I'm saying is: GIMME S'MORE OF THAT COSMIC WISTFULNESS, LOWERY. Grade: B-
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
The characters are paper-thin, I don't know what this movie's trying to do thematically, and all the franchise-connectivity stuff feels like an afterthought—good on the film for finally taking advantage of the "lucid dream superpowers" thing, but bad on the film for not going anywhere with it. But who cares about those things when you have these magnificent dream sequences? Tricycles spontaneously melt; solid objects like walls and chairs become diffuse and dangerous; there's an honest-to-goodness stop-motion sequence. It's all kind of amazing and nightmarish in a way that feels almost like a proto-Michel Gondry without all the twee. I can't say the movie really hangs together, but I could have spent a long time with this movie's sensibilities. Grade: B
Zombie (Zombi 2) (1979)
Ostensibly a sequel (thanks to dodgy Italian copyright law) to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, but that doesn't really make any sense, especially given where the movie begins and ends. There are moments of sublimity here: a zombie wrestling a shark underwater, a notorious eye-gouging scene, the non-sequitur editing, the admirably gross zombie makeup (immortalized in the film's iconic poster), the score—that's all great. But the movie surrounding those moments is pretty rough, which yeah, I know, Italian low-budget, etc. But still. It would have been nice to have something to appreciate when the movie wasn't going pedal-to-the-metal sensory/gag-reflex overload. Also, I guess this just kind of comes with the territory, but surely women don't scuba dive naked, right? Anyway, even if they did, I haven't seen a camera so nakedly lecherous in a long while. Also, I wasn't really expecting this movie to lean so hard into the traditional voodoo zombie lore, given that one of Romero's big contributions to the genre was excising that stuff. Anyway, like a lot of voodoo zombie stories, this one has the whiff of racism, and while I guess there's a reading that positions this movie as anti-colonialist (there are lots of references to conquistadors [apparently pronounced "concweestadores"] and slavery in a way that's often linked to the undead), the movie certainly doesn't put a lot of effort into advancing it. Anyway, the good parts are good enough that I'll probably remember this movie pretty vividly, but golly, that's a lot of caveating I'm doing here. Grade: C
Night of the Demon (1957)
As far as the Jacques Tourneur canon goes, Night of the Demon is no Cat People, lacking that movie's ink-black nights and engaging characters. I also think the movie softballs its narrative by allowing Mr. Square-Jawed American Rationalist to triumph in the end; when we're dealing with the conflict between ancient paganism and modern reason, it's a bit too safe for a horror movie to massage our contemporary belief in reason over the supernatural. Gimme those incomprehensible forces that confound the modern scientific mind! But nonetheless, it's supremely atmospheric in that oh-so-Tourneur way, and the final fifteen minutes or so are terrifically tense, as is a mid-film séance. A good time, if not a flat-out great one. (P.S. This movie's shorter, American cut goes by Curse of the Demon, which raises the question of why American localizers thought "Curse" sounded cooler than "Night," but whatever; the main thing is that I couldn't find any posters for Night, which is why I have a Curse poster instead. Just wanted to settle that for all you pedants out there.) Grade: B+
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