Sorry for skipping next week; these past two weeks have been super hectic. But here I am! I'm back, baby!
Movies
Trying to stitch together the pieces of an anthology films into the veneer of a single narrative film doesn't ultimately help the problems of inconsistency that plague almost all anthology films, but the good parts here are very good, and this has a really long, impishly mean streak that I thought was great. Maybe a tad over-hyped, but in the context of most anthology films, this is up there. Grade: B
Another one of these Paul Schrader movies. The climactic violence isn't as steeped in irony as the climaxes in the best of his movies in this format tend to be, but Susan Sarandon is, as always, such a force to be reckoned with on the screen that she handily becomes the best iteration of the "pure-hearted woman is a redemptive foil to the troubled man" trope that Schrader trots out in every one of these. That trope is a problematic one that Schrader consistently has trouble making work, so it's no small feat what Sarandon does here with her role: fierce, believably kind, and, incredibly, able to own a scene alongside Willem Dafoe's animal sexuality and cavernous face. I cannot fathom the power of a person who can go toe-to-toe with Dafoe and not just crumble. Grade: B+
This is pretty dumb, and the series mythology is just leaden at this point, five movies in. But I dunno, the main draw for me to the Nightmare on Elm Street movies is the gonzo effects and surreal framing of the kills, and this movie pulls out all the stops here. Characters jumping into comic books and becoming animated? Freddy using his own severed arm as a seatbelt? A girl getting food shoveled into her face until she inflates like a balloon? Weird, wild stuff, and a supercut of the dream scenes in this movie would be a pretty good experimental film. Grade: B-
This movie's narration is full of some of the most nonsensical of French philosopher nonsense, while also being surprisingly orientalist—like, half of it is basically the philosophy grad student's version of "the Japanese sure are different, amirite?" What makes this movie hard to dismiss is that this narration is set to some absolutely stunning montage footage. It maybe would have been something on the level of Koyaanisqatsi if it had simply been scored rather than been tied to these insufferable words. In fact, the score we have here is pretty spectacular: full of textured ambient sounds and kosmische musik style early electronic atmospherics. Shame about the spoken word. Grade: B-
Marginally better than the original, which isn't hard. This is a fairly competent retread/revision of the first one, tightening up the first movie's amateurism somewhat into a decent parade of sex and kills involving admirably irritating teens. But the flimsiest of the Big Three slasher franchises remains flimsy, and I remain only slightly interested in continuing after this point. Grade:C+
People keep saying that this movie is a huge step down from the first two, but I dunno, this just seems in the same ballpark of "meh" to me—though that being said, I kept falling asleep during the back half, butI'm not sure if that was my fault or the movie's (I was pretty tired!). Also, I don't know why this bothers me any more than the litany of other stupid things in this franchise, but why does the title switch from using Arabic to Roman numerals in this one? I'll excuse plot inconsistencies, but typographical inconsistencies? You gotta draw the line somewhere. Grade: C
This fits snugly alongside Piranha as a Joe Dante/John Sayles collab that sneaks social satire and a smirking sensibility into a movie that uses its low budget to impressive ends. It's not quite as ambitious or as funny as Piranha, nor is it as balls-to-the-wall gonzo as other Joe Dante projects, but the effects are very, very good—some really gooey werewolf transformations and some really tactile gore. And the pitch-black cynicism of the ending is delicious. Of the wave of werewolf movies that hit theaters in 1981, I definitely prefer An American Werewolf in London, but this is solid. Grade: B
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