Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
★★★½
Vulgar auteur western attack of the clones. A more retro exploitative direction and experimental take on fury road’s subconscious. Revisiting the prior film may have did this a disservice.
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
★★★★½
Jane Schoenbrun has one of the best handles on analogue horror: nascent internet age manifested mental illness and eerie word of mouth cultural ephemera. I was prepared to dig this being a kid who was introduced to episodic “adult” tv narrative growing up watching Buffy every week with my mom. At the same time, confounding seeing someone with such surreal horror chops lean more towards suburban coming of age indie/queer hangout vibe. Contrived David Lynch-ism for the creepypasta sect in some ways, but in others it’s daftly weaving its Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Edgar Allen Poe, and Videodrome influences into a compelling trans coming of age drama. Worth revisiting!
The Living Daylights (1987)
★★★½
Exit: Moore; Enter: Dalton. The brief Dalton era has aged well, with the most recent Bond being in some ways his spiritual successor, but at the time was regarded as somewhat of a commercial and critical low light. One of the better Bond cold opens transitions to one of the better opening sequences of the series as Bond works to free a defecting KGB general. It's all great throwback Cold War Bond action. The middle lags a bit with a few typical action showcases, including Glen's 10000th ski chase down a hill (this time in a cello case). The film oscillates between more hardboiled Dalton fare and throwback Moore camp and schmoozery. It does feature one of the best ending sequences with Bond helping the brave mujahideen warriors board a cargo plane and take down some Soviets. The mujahideen even show up at the big party at the end! I wonder if Charlie Wilson was on MI6's guest list?
Bond Girl Corner: Starting in the 1980s, the Bond series responded to changing social mores by making the Bond girls accomplished 'career women'—the most notable being the titular Octopussy. Yet for all their talents and accomplishments, these women still feature in the same shrieking damsel mode as the models of the classic 60s and 70s Bond flicks. Kara, the cellist played by Maryam d'Abo, fits this anachronistic mold. It doesn't help that her and Dalton have negative chemistry and it's a big reason why much of the middle of this movie sags. 3/10
Licence to Kill (1989)
★★★★½
Probably the closest Bond ever got to being a full blown exploitation film: with Bond goin' rogue in a Miami Vice-style action revenge romp against drug dealer Sanchez after his goons murdered Leiter's wife and permanently maimed Leiter in the process (don't worry, he seems in good spirits by the end of the film all things considered). What I would consider the last 'classic era' Bond as John Glen would bow out with his final directorial effort, and it is the final involvement of Binder and Cubby Broccoli, with the former dying and the latter stepping away from the series and passing away shortly after the next film's release. Crazy to think that this is a 1989 film, only 6 years removed from the next film in the series—the longest hiatus in the Bond franchise up until the recently delayed No Time to Die—because this thing feel 15 years older with its flat, overlit direction. Luckily its pretty breezy and features some pretty gnarly action sequences, especially that final chase with the gas trucks. Q even gets pretty involved in this one!
This was a personal favourite of mine as a kid as it was sold to me by my dad as a more serious, darker and more dangerous Bond, but it really is a breath of fresh air when you watch this after the previous Glen films. Dalton in this is the WORST Bond has ever looked, just totally disheveled and schlubby the whole film, he even even smokes cigarettes and wears a t-shirt at one point. There's something truly frighting in seeing Bond in a t-shirt. I'll take Moore in a clown suit any day of the week.
Bond Girl Corner: Carey (and?) Lowell plays Pam Bouvier, the sharp and determined ex-Army pilot-turned DEA informant. With respect to Rigg's Tracey Bond, Bouvier is my favourite Bond girl to date: an active participant in most of the action of the film who is presented as a more competent pilot than Bond himself. She's also very good looking without being a complete damsel in distress, if that's your thing. She's so fun in this I kind of wish they made a spin off buddy movie with her and Q. 11/10.
GoldenEye (1995)
★★★★½
Exit: Dalton; Enter: Brosnan. Goldeneye is a consequential film in the series: a new Bond debut, the first post-Broccoli, the first true original story, the first post-Cold War Bond (which is a major element of the story), the first Judi Dench appearance as M. I can go on-and-on. For a generation of 90s kids like me, particularly those who were born a couple of years into the decade, your first experience with Goldeneye was probably the Nintendo 64 game instead of the film. Whenever I come back to this film it’s hard to separate the game from it. The score, the characters, the scenes, so much of my feelings of this material comes from sinking hours into that game.
I mentioned in my review of the previous film that it felt SO much older than 1989. I don’t think Goldeneye is a perfect film, but it really is such a breath of fresh air to come to this after a decade of Glen’s lunch pail action efforts. Martin Campbell gives this film some visual panache. His experience directing neo-noirs and crime thrillers is a good fit for this entry. Bond is frequently shot in close ups and sometimes even obfuscated well with shadows as opposed to the flat, overlit style of the 80s films. The score is super synthy and electronic, a big departure from the typical orchestra stringy scores of the past. Even the effects, while dated today, seem bolder and cleaner than ever before. Welcome to the 1990s.
As for Brosnan, he’s quite a fuckboy in this, isn’t he? Moore was a schmoozer but you got the sense that the prior Bonds could never really wheel if they tried and were aiming WAY out of their league (particularly Dalton, who is of course a handsome man but a bit of a dull lug by Bond standards). Brosnan feels like the first Bond since possibly the very early Connery films that you can take seriously as a handsome, seductive man. The scenes with him and Onatopp, with all their smoldering eye fucking and innuendos, are actually intense! Maybe I’m biased here since Brosnan was MY Bond so I’ll always have an affinity for him, but he’s really excellent here. Weird to think of an alternate future where Dalton featured in this film, because frankly Brosnan is a bit hardboiled and Dalton-esque in some scenes and he was never quite that guy in the rest of the series. But I’m not sure I believe Dalton could pull the charm on Famke Jansen, especially with his dishelved, t-shirt appearance in Licence to Kill so fresh in my mind. Yecch!
Bond Girl Corner: Giving Onatopp ‘B’ Bond girl credit here because she’s a big part of the first half of this film and is one of the most iconic women in the franchise. If I must pick my own death, give me ‘crushed to death during sex’, am I right fellas? Swedish model Izabella Scorupco plays Natalya Simonova, a Russian programmer who survives the initial Goldeneye attack and ends up paired with Bond by circumstance. I rather like her effort here; she gets a much longer and extended introduction than most of the women in the series and she’s another active participant in all the action. It’s fun seeing her flummox Bond with all her funny fake computer hacking skills. We’ve come a long way from the DOS machines in A View to a Kill. She just feels like a normal woman who stumbled into the Bond universe. 8/10.
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
★★★★★
“Will you stand up for me?”
The last hour of this is a masterpiece, and am I wrong in thinking Nick’s mom’s feelings towards Mabel really softened? The way she looks at her when she leaves the house speaks volumes. Watching this after Husbands (review coming following the podcast), and I’m starting to develop a take that John Cassavetes is actually a horror director.
Husbands (1970)
★★★★★
A couple of weeks ago I went on a trip to Toronto with two friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen since high school. I’m pretty sure we even had that exact same conversation about athletes and aging that Harry and the guys do. We were hardly as lecherous and repugnant as these men, but Cassavetes really captures the comradery of male friendship—helped by the fact that Gazzara, Cassavetes, and Falk were all good friends in real life and most of the scenes were shot in his typical improvisational style. It was interesting to jump to this film after recently watching Cassavetes’ earlier works. The turn to colour gives this a lot of vibrancy and mood, but it still feels a lot like those earlier pictures: so loose yet sharp; frenetic and emotional; scenes drawing belly laughs and others that are so dread-inducing that they make you hide your eyes in anguish. The camera is just so jittery and anxious with so many close up shots that barely captures faces or expressions in full frame, often lingering on different body parts or transitioning abruptly to different characters.
A lot of the derision towards this film stems from those who merely see this as a proto-Hangover bro comedy, which I think is missing the point. In The Hangover, Phillips wants you to feel elated and love the guys and their antics. In Husbands, Cassavetes wants you to go down on the sinking ship with them. In place of a lifeboat: a couple of cars, a few kids, two houses, and wives (not shared of course). Do you continue on an aimless bacchanalian journey or settle in suburbia? Or is it all just quicksand for unresolved grief?
Night of the Demon (1980)
★★
Proto-SOV bigfoot slasher/mystery with a heavy dose of Herschell Gordon Lewis style gore. Very syrupy. With some rather… orgasmic kills? Has some occasional cool shots and some funky music by Star Trek composer Dennis McCarthy. I love how randomly convoluted and nuts the story gets. Wish we got more bigfoot but judging by the costume probably for the best.
Clearcut (1991)
★★★★★
"You hate me, don't you? You hate me so much you're scared shitless! You see, a man tears the wings off a bird and he hates it because it can't fly and then it scares him because he doesn't know what it's good for- floppin' around on the floor like a fish"
One of the biggest "where has this been all my life?" revelations of the year. Watched this on Shudder expecting a gorier slasher pic and got a bleak, mean as hell folk survival thriller that devolves into a surreal 'Heart of Darkness in Thunder Bay' confrontation between capitalism, liberalism, Native peoples and the natural world. Bleak without being completely maudlin, just authentic rage at a machine that devours your culture and history to the benefit of those you both oppose and rely on for support. Everyone on here is justifiably raving about Graham Greene, and he really is captivating in this film, deftly blending sinister and silly. If he was born in the States he'd be a Harrison Ford level star easily.
Airplane! (1980)
★★★★
"Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"
Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
★★½
Had memory holed this as a prestige Oscar picture when it's wholly a swampy southern Nick Sparks Romance/courtroom drama based on a paperback. Very 1995 vibes. I'm not made of steel, I did find this very sweet in a few spots. I also got a kick out of the town being continuously horrified by the 'swamp girl', who, in the events of the film, appears to be an attractive, totally normal and self sufficient young woman who spends most of her time making beautiful sketches (that she's able to sell to publishers for 40k in 2024 money!). Hardly the ogrish vagabond I was expecting from that opening. A new addition to the 'wifecore' canon.
You got to imagine the Chase Andrews murder is TOTALLY ripe for 2024 true crime podcasters.
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
★★★½
Pretty fun whodunit mumblegore-style slasher comedy (admittedly VERY light on the laughs) with some slight Clue, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and even The Haunting vibes. Had an ending twist that genuinely surprised me! This seems to be a bit of a flop among the Letterboxd critics I tend to admire, but I will say I thought it was shot surprisingly well: often dark yet well lit and clear, panning that showed geography of the house, and the lens was even a bit glossy and gave a filmic look. I just wish this was shot on 35 whole heartedly.
Seeing a lot of people taking this film to task for being a weak satire, but I don't think it's all that much of a satire at all? If anything, it would benefit from a lot MORE goofball levity in the second half when it's engaging in a lot of shouty drama.
Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)
★★★★★
If SPM1 was a product of the early 80s—sleazy, cheap, plenty of tits, and product of the Golden Age of Slashers—SPM2 is pure late 80s: neon, MTV, Freddy Kruger, silly and willing to play around with tropes, and comparatively prudish.
The first Slumber Party film was produced by Corman but written and directed by women, with the script adapted from a satire of misogynist slasher films. For all its claims as a feminist masterpiece (and look, I am willing to revisit), it's a pretty straightforward male gazey slasher that only really clicks in its final 30 minutes with memorable ending. Its sequel is a considerable leap, as our 90210esque cast of girls take their bandmates to a nearby house for a slumber party, while Courtney (the young girl babysat in the first film) has scary dreams of the killer (I think) from the previous film, who is now dressed like Andrew Dice Clay and brandishing an electric guitar drill(?!). Much like the Freddy flicks, the surreal dreams and hallucinations give way to reality (and some incredible musical numbers).
This film is just completely my shit. An Argento-coloured punk rockabilly blowcore masterpiece with some genuinely gnarly kills. That 'Lets Buzz' number is so mean as hell, and an ear worm to boot. Enjoyed watching this on The Last Drive-In with casting trivia provided by Joe Bob. The idea of this film as a lesbian film, in a similar vein to Freddy's Revenge (as a gay film), is something I'll have to pay mind to on rewatch.
Before Sunrise (1995)
★★★★★
"I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between."
Shocker: It's great. I'm in lock-step with the masses here. I can understand why some people might reject this as being cloying, smug, plain, a Mount Rushmore 'men writing women' film, you name it. But I watched this with my wife and it brought us back to the early days of our relationship: those subtle looks and touches, the awesome power of our first kisses, and aimlessly walking around the city to various coffee shops, cinemas, and campus haunts (and even for the other girls I dated, it reminded me those magical one or two off dates that remain perfect, unblemished episodes in my memory). The film understands YOUNG love as this ethereal, transitory, magical thing. A spark that lights a steady flame.
Linklater and Daniel shoot this with a loose prosaic style, which allows you to really hone in on Delpy and Hawke's nuances. But I love that first scene after the train where they run into the Austrians that invite them to their silly play. "Why are you in Vienna?". It's an objectively beautiful city but it's not Berlin, Paris, Rome, or Madrid. When sunrise happens, we see a pretty boring city. But all cities are capable of beauty, whether it's the City of Lights or Winnipeg, because they are a collection of people and the stories of their lives.
Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
★★★
*ron burgandy voice* specs killed a guy
Pretty sick that one of our premiere horror franchises involves a 70-something woman and her Scooby Doo sidekicks going on spooky ghost adventures, with all the OG cast members re-appearing film-after-film. Really dug this one following the fairly sleepy Chapter 3—lots of lore for the Elise heads, and the creepiest demon yet. Wish it was like 30% meaner. The suitcase scene was really great. I assume the implication being that this demon has possessed and killed many women, who are trapped in the Black Lodg- I mean the Further.
Insidious: The Red Door (2023)
★
Star and debut director Patrick Wilson clearly has some affinity for the story of the Lambert family, which we last left off in a Shining-esque finale. I think exploring their fates (and no doubt the severe trauma and PTSD left behind) isn't a bad idea, but everything feels so surface level and undercooked. It sucks that the coolest thing here (all the art class/psychotronic horror stuff) gets mogged by all the BORING Josh B-plot stuff. We get it, you're a fortysomething guy with the sensibilities of a 1970s goofus husband. Just tell your son you love him you freak!
The Renai reveal really killed me. Lady, your husband and son are suffering from PTSD and trauma that has destroyed their relationship, not to mention your own marriage, you don't think that maybe that's something worth revealing? At least she got some good alimony. Send her ass to the further PRONTO.
Art School Confidential (2006)
★★★
We continued our impromptu 'art school' double feature with this Zwigoff flick that's one of my wife's favorites, featuring a young Max Minghella as a "he's literally me fr" art student. Pretty good black comedy even if the satire is a bit plain.
Cackled like De Niro in Cape Fear when I heard that out-of-nowhere f-slur.
Rock ’n’ Roll High School (1979)
★★★★★
Can definitely see audiences (especially younger, contemporary ones) reject this for being “cringe”, but when I was 12 years old I loved The Ramones, Disney’s Recess, and teen films, so this is an essential canon film for me. A fun, surreal teen comedy and combination jukebox musical and concert film. If you can accept the film’s slant that “the ramones are the modern Beethoven” it’s a total blast.
Faces of Death (1978)
As Lee Demarbre said, roughly paraphrased: “you will remember seeing this at the Mayfair for the rest of your life.”
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
★★★★½
Revisit before ‘In a Violent Nature’. Beautiful commentary with amy steel—seems like such a fun crew.