From transsexual Transylvania

Phantasm

(1979)

No, I didn't really plan to watch a low-budget creeper on Halloween; I planned to watch The Shining, but after weeks in the clear in my Netflix queue, at the last minute it turned up Short Wait, and this was my fallback position, which is interesting, since falling back is sort of a climactic moment.

Let's see if I have this straight: the beautiful woman who likes to fuck in the cemetery, then stab her mate, isn't really a woman but rather the tall (didn't look all that tall to me, but everybody calls him tall, so I guess he's tall) mortician, who isn't really a mortician but an alien whose funeral home conceals a dimensional portal to his home planet, where he ships the corpses he's converted into Jawa-looking dwarves (so that they can deal with the gravity there) as slaves (but if it's his planet, and he's tall, how does he survive the gravity? . . . ) Oh, and if you should happen to cut off one of his fingers, it'll bleed yellow for a while before becoming a rabidly carnivorous insecty sort of beast.

Yeah, I think that's about it. A film in dire need of Bruce Campbell.

The honey shot

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Crit

OK, I never saw Jersey Girl, so I can't say for a fact that I've now seen Kevin Smith's gooeyest, most sentimental film ever, but I've certainly seen the gooeyest, most sentimental film I hope ever to see from Silent Bob. Don't worry: that's not bodily fluids dripping from you as you rise from your seat; it's just syrup.

That said, I didn't hate it: Seth Rogen can pretty much always charm me, and there were lots of yuks (and one extraordinary yuck that will have you shying away from your videocam). I gotta say, though: Elizabeth Banks just doesn't do it for me; excuse me if I'm repeating myself from Definitely, Maybe and 40-Year-Old Virgin reviews (actually found her tolerable in W.), but that's one bland blonde, not appealing in any way.

But you're wanting to know how it rates on the Peter Meter: well, we see lots of the outlandish silicone of Katie Morgan (for whom this was, per IMDb, the 184th film and the first that didn't go straight to video; you could look it up), we see momentary boobage of a few other strippers, we see one brief full-frontal of a young woman I assume was Lena Cheney (Auditioning Girl in the cast list), and we see enough of Jason Mewes to fuel months of nightmares, if not a long stretch in therapy. But really, it's not about that. Well, it's about that, but it's not. It's, like, a first-date movie if you want to find out far more about her or him than it's generally wise to learn on a first date.

Oh, and you already know this if you're even as moderate a Kevin Smith fan as I, but no matter how badly you need to pee, don't leave when the end credits start.

Puttin' on the Ritz

Young Frankenstein

(1974)

The one Mel Brooks film that always works for me (yeah, yeah: I suppose I do need to give Blazing Saddles another chance [literally could not watch more than about a half-hour last time], but I'm afraid I'm never going to take to The Producers; I don't know why).

As to why this one does work for me, I think it's because it doesn't try so damned hard all the time. Maybe it's the influence of Gene Wilder on the script. I dunno--can't explain comedy.

Here's a Cheeseblabbery bonus, to help you win a bar bet: if the question comes up which two 1974 films have both Gene Hackman and Teri Garr in the cast, this one's the hard part of the answer. As for the easy part, well, it's easy, so I'm not gonna tell you. Discuss it amongst yourselves, and I'm sure the title will come up in conversation.

La sangre es la vida

Dracula/Drácula

(1931)

While Tod Browning was directing Bela Lugosi in what may be the best-known and most-seen horror film ever, Universal was getting more bang for its peso by using the same sets at night, after the English-language crew had gone home, to film a Spanish-language version, directed by George Melford (despite the fact that he didn't speak Spanish) and starring Carlos Villarías (who overacts every bit as much as Lugosi, though in different ways).

I gather from some of the comments that the disc that Netflix rents includes the Spanish version, but I'm not sure. Mine is the Universal Legacy 75th anniversary edition, which does, and watching both versions back to back is a highly recommended trip.

On the one hand, the two versions are mostly shot-for-shot duplicates . . . and yet the English-language version (and no, I'm not saying it doesn't merit its reputation as the horr-Ur-text) rushes through the plot as if the sun were coming up 75 minutes in. The Spanish version takes its time scene by scene--it's 100 minutes long, though it adds probably no more than two or three scenes--and thus boosts the creep factor. The writing is also better--and yes, I can grasp enough Spanish to recognize that the subtitles I'm reading are accurate, and that Baltasar Fernández Cué's script is more poetic and more evocative than Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston's. I won't go so far as to say I'll never again watch Lugosi as the Count, but the Spanish version will be my first choice henceforth. See it.

Caché

Un Secret

Crit

It's never just one, is it? A more apt title might be Beaucoups des secrets, or peut-être Un Treillis des secrets, a latticework of inextricable lies and concealments--of life and death, love and betrayal, identity and disguise, family history, all arranged, moreover, in a triple chronological frame, the most recent level of which, oddly but necessarily, is thirty odd years ago.

A beautiful and affecting film, though the career direction the protagonist (Mathieu Amalric in the adult avatar) realizes from having the onionskin of secrets peeled away seems a bit pat and tangential.

Dead guy walks into a salad bar . . .

George A. Romero Double Feature of the Dead

Night of the Living Dead

(1968)

No, seriously, sit down and prepare for a genius pitch: while watching this, I kept thinking of that ad for Smith and Wollensky steak house in Manhattan: "Horrifying vegetarians since 1977," and I was gonna change the date and use that for my tagline, but then I had an even better idea: Night of the Living Vegan: the dead come back to life and they're not interested in ripping out human entrails, but they cannot be stopped from plundering fields, gardens, supermarket produce sections, farmers' markets . . . Producers, please make out your checks to Cheeseblab, LLC.

I forget how good this film is. Last time I saw it was two Halloweens ago, but I'd already forgotten again, and I'm not sure I'd ever noticed how beautifully written it is. Of course, Romero made it for $7.82, none of which was wasted on acting talent, but the script--particularly the radio and TV news reports--is perfect (and, oddly, scarcely diminished by the amateurish delivery most of the lines suffer).

Another thing I'd never noticed before, which I was made more conscious of as we're on the verge of electing a black president: the conventional wisdom is that the denouement of the film is a commentary on racism, as (sorry, folks: spoiler coming up, but you seriously need to have seen this flick by now--it's the same age as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were in 1979, and I'll bet you'd seen both of those by then) the lone African American in the cast gets drilled by a zombie-killer (a killer of zombies, i.e., not a zombie who is also a killer, which is, in any case, redundant) despite the inconvenient truth (known only to us, not to the shooter) that he remains a nonzombie.

But look: these guys have been mowing down a gazillion zombies, and the ones we see are disproportionately (exclusively, I think) white. So they can scarcely be charged with racism for serving him the same as they've served the others--they shoot him, duh, because they think he's a zombie. That's he's not is tragic, OK, but it's an understandable mistake. If it's a commentary on anything, it's on the mob mentality that inevitably converts execution of an unpleasant but necessary task into unthinking sport. So it's anti-NRA, maybe, but it's not specifically anti-Cracker.

Diary of the Dead

(2007)

This was just released in New York in February and died after earning less than a million bucks (half the reported production costs) at the box office in eleven weeks--and, more to the point, before reaching my particular hinterland. So when it came back to life recently on DVD, a Halloween-season rental was a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, it suggests that the franchise itself may be in need of a merciful bullet to the cerebellum: it's an oh-so-reflexive meditation on the life-chomping quality of modern media, where every sex act, bowel movement, and (worst of all) nap seems to be available online. Romero tries valiantly to show that the exhibitionism of this film, and the voyeurism it encourages, are different, but I, for one, find it hard to swallow.

A boy's best friend . . .

Psycho

(1960)

My Halloween celebration begins with one of Hitchcock's creepiest, and perhaps his most influential.

Countdown

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

Crit

I read something recently that suggested that the term mumblecore is passé, but hey, if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck . . .

Anyway, if that's its genre, it's my favorite since Funny Ha Ha, which is the quintessence of mumblecore. This despite a female lead who says things like "I hate museums" and "Books suck." For one thing, you have to give some credit to a film set in LA that has its characters walking and taking the subway. Yes, LA has a subway. Oh, and the opening sequence is painfully hilarious.

The film's other obvious progenitor (and, now that I think of it, this is perhaps the m'core Ur-text) is Richard Linklater's heartbreakingly perfect Before Sunrise, and indeed Linklater is among those thanked in the end credits.

Agnus diabli

Black Sheep

(2006)

If you've ever wondered, "When is somebody going to make a really funny ovine zombie flick?" this is the golden fleece you've been seeking. It's a New Zealand film, but it breathes the spirit of Troma.

Step 8

Rachel Getting Married

Crit

I could swear I recently saw something else in which the protagonist asks the same key question that Anne Hathaway's Kym asks here (except that in the other one it was an issue of age, not impairment), but having looked back a couple of months, I haven't been able to refresh my memory.

Anyway, the widespread suspicion that this would be Hathaway's breakthrough seems well founded, and the film itself, though there are a few moments that seem manufactured to fit the requirements of the story, is one of the best of the year, and certainly one of the most emotionally intense. First I've seen Debra Winger since 1993's Shadowlands, and I hadn't realized how much I'd missed her.

Trailers

• Bride Wars--Another Anne Hathaway/wedding movie, but this looks like lotsa catfight clichés.

Misunderestimated

W.

Crit

A very odd film--Stone apparently couldn't decide whether to lampoon the president or to humanize him, so what he ultimately created was a two-hour Saturday Night Live sketch w/ only intermittent humor and a Greatest Hits revue of 43's most famous malapropisms and mannerisms. Some performances--Josh Brolin as Bush, Richard Dreyfuss as "Vice"--are scarily spot-on, while two of the three most important women in his life are grotesque caricatures: Ellen Burstyn seems less like the second woman to marry a president and give birth to one than like a professional wrestler, while Thandie Newton, unrecognizable (and unnaturally unsexy) as Condoleezza Rice, is a simpering, schoolgirl-crushy embarrassment; if the real Condi were anything like this, she'd have ended up as secretary and mistress to some investment banker, not as the most powerful woman in the country.
The most interesting element of the film is the Oedipal speculation: with a ballbusting father (James Cromwell--and what a career he has had since his breakthrough at age 55 as the owner of a talking pig) who constantly compares him unfavorably with his younger brother Jeb, W seemingly has no choice but to become president.

Trailers

• The International--With the recent landmark Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that makes gay marriage legal in my state, Jennie Tonic has suggested that I can now begin to refer to, for example, My Future Husband Clive Owen. Well, we'll see--but we probably won't see this apparently formulaic action/suspenser.
• The Spirit--Looks goofy, which is not to say it doesn't look possible.
• No more Morning Light trailers, 'cause it opened!

Sympathy for the devil worshiper

The Seventh Victim

(1943)

Oh, this film makes no sense at all--a naïf, a missing sister, a shrink, a lover, a poet, a murder, and a coven . . . and yet, the dream logic is perfect, perfectly creepy, perfectly sad, perfectly haunting--as is the face, bizarrely framed in a Cleopatra-esque helmet of black hair, of B-movie veteran Jean Brooks. Classic Val Lewton. Also notable for the leads: Kim Hunter in her first film and a pre-Beaver Hugh Beaumont.

Machiavelli the Knife

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story

Crit

OK, what's wrong with this amateurish doc is easy: a complete lack of awareness of history. Not only is there no hint that American political dirty tricks are literally as old as American politics (and racist dirty tricks almost as old, dating to Adams vs. Jefferson 1796), there's not even a nod to the "ratfucking" of the Committee to Reelect the President in 1972. You'd think from this film that Atwater invented the genre.

On the other hand, this is a useful reminder of what we do owe the late hatchetman: not only Bush I, via the Willie Horton ad and the Dukakis-in-a-tank ad and others (without which, as Dukakis half-jokes, Bush II would have withered in utero), not only the education of Karl Rove, but maybe even, as one talking head suggests, the wingnut godfather himself, Ronald Reagan, who was foundering in 1980 until the thirty-year-old Atwater led the effort to derail John Connally in the South Carolina primary. The rest is depressing history.

Difficult labor

Inside

(2007)

Holy fucking shit! I don't think I could by most standards be considered squeamish, but holy fucking shit! Glad I didn't watch it while pregnant, that's for damned sure. Filmmakers thank Sam Raimi in the end credits, adding, "he'll never know why." I think he knows, kids; I think he knows.

Circles of hell

No M# this holiday weekend--relatively uncompelling offerings, plus I wanted to save energy for an upcoming visit from hundreds of (well, three) relatives. So instead, a NoHa2--first trip there since my adventure of late April, and my first trip to any 'burbplex since July.

Blindness

NoHa

Not hard to see why opened last week to barely $2.5 million--not exactly a viewer-friendly film, but a courageous one, faithful to the disturbing novel by José Saramago. A second-class citizen locally: did not open at the Post 14 in Milford, as films that open in North Haven almost always do, and this week it's down to two screenings per day at NoHa.

The reviews have been mixed and mostly unenthusiastic, and I'll grant that Saramago's tightrope-walking brand of (god, I hate this term) magical realism works better on the page (yes, even in English: Saramago has always paid close attention to the translation process, working for more than a decade with a single translator who rendered his niggardly punctuation and dialogue sans quotation marks and clear indicators of who is speaking), but a negative reaction to the film is really a negative reaction to Saramago's leftist-humanist fable--an understandable reaction, but one I clearly don't share.

To mimic the novel's pointed obscurity of place, the film creates a city that is a digital composite mostly of São Paulo, Montevideo, and Toronto. Oh, and speaking of Canada, fans of Twitch City and Slings and Arrows will be glad to see Don McKellar (who also wrote the screenplay) and Susan Coyne.

Body of Lies

NoHa

Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) loves his family, America, spycraft, and Ben & Jerry's; Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) loves truth, honor, justice, and an Iranian-born Jordanian nurse who gave him his rabies shots after he was bitten by two dogs while assassinating a guy (it's a long and implausible story; just trust me). A lot of familiar ground covered, but Ridley Scott knows where all the buttons are. I have to assume it was some meddlesome producer who insisted, "But there's gotta be a love story!"

Trailers

• Twilight--Looks pretty pro forma, Dr. Debs; my vampire movie of choice for the weekend remains Låt den rätte komma in (Let the right one in).
• Bedtime Stories--Isn't it about time for career intervention for Adam Sandler?
• Yes Man--Isn't it about time for career intervention for Jim Carrey?
• Also, saw a longer, more-backstory, but no more persuasive version of the Defiance trailer, but the real killer, which I had to sit through twice, was a 2½-minute National Guard commercial in the form of a music video of a "song" called "Warrior" by Kid Rock, with participation by Dale Earnhardt. "Freedom ain't so free when you breathe red, white, and blue." Hey, wait a minute: isn't that from Wag the Dog?

Thank you, Joe Lieberman

Recount

(2008)

OK, look: I know that only a half-dozen or so people ever read this, and seriously, I don't mind. But if you know anyone in Florida, or anyone in Ohio, or anyone in Virginia, or anyone in Indiana, or Colorado, or Missouri, or Nevada, please, forward them this, and tell them that they can ignore all the film-crit shit but just read the next four paragraphs:

Vote.

Vote carefully.

No, really: it's not as simple as it ought to be: read the instructions. Carefully. Look at the ballot. Carefully. Then vote. Then double-check your vote before you pull the lever or whatever you have to do to finalize it (and yes, I hate the word "finalize," but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for this cause).

Thank you, and God or Krishna or whatever bless America, and save us from ourselves.

Quite a film, not least because, dammit, I knew how it was going to turn out (put it top-of-queue, in fact, as the start of my pre-Halloween horror-film stretch), and yet much of it was exhilarating, and even more of it was funny. Until it wasn't.

Everyone is wonderful, but two actors merit special mention: Laura Dern as Katherine Harris made it impossible for me not to think of glue-huffing Citizen Ruth, and Tom Wilkinson as James Baker made it impossible for me not to think of the last HBO product I saw him in, when he was Benjamin Franklin.

And another thing: as fucked as the 2000 election may have been, at least it kept that fucking pigfucker Joe Lieberman the fuck away from the White House.

Irishigulous

The Brothers McMullen

(1995)

This is another of those I-seem-to-recall-liking-this-when-I-saw-it-and-it's-really-cheap purchases from a few years ago, when I was young and impetuous. OK, less old and impetuous.

But while I certainly didn't need to own it, it holds up pretty well. The acting is almost uniformly amateurish (one exception: Jennifer Jostyn as the auto-mechanic soulmate of brother Patrick), and there's nothing groundbreaking about the writing, but the story of warped Catholic guilt resonates.

Foo unto others

Religulous

Crit

I may not agree with your beliefs, but I will always at least feign respect for them: I will call you an irrational loony only behind your back, while discussing your beliefs with fellow nonbelievers or doubters. This may be hypocritical, but it reflects my liberal humanist understanding of the social contract.
Bill Maher is not having any of that shit. He's not only going to tell you how ridiculous your beliefs are; he's going to try to reason you out of them. This film is nothing less than an antireligious jihad.
My point in avoiding confrontation is that--just as I don't want anyone else telling me what I can or cannot believe, or, to the extent that it doesn't do anyone else any harm, what I can or cannot do--I don't think that I have any right to pull the wings off of anyone else's beloved butterflies of belief.
Maher's point is that there is no such thing as religious belief that does him no harm--that even apart from what he sees as the Quran's inescapable declaration of holy war against the rest of us, and the historical culpability of the two other monotheistic biggies in countless atrocities--the sheer intellectual bankruptcy that religion demands makes his world an uglier and unhappier place.
Well, that's as may be, and I must say that I'm made uncomfortable by polls showing that huge majorities of Americans embrace religion, and by the political correlative whereby an atheist cannot be elected to an office of any responsibility, and the Democratic Party feels compelled to establish its evangelical bona fides.
But come on, Bill: do you really think the way to people's brains is by pissing on their hearts? Isn't the sort of hypocrisy that says, "Look, I have no problem with what you believe, and I won't try to legislate against it; but to be fair, to be logical, don't you therefore have to accord me the same tolerance?" Yeah, I know: that doesn't work, either; but at least it lets me continue to think that I'm embracing the principles on which the democracy was founded. If I start calling people fucking idiots, I'm thinking they're even less likely to come around to my side of the argument.

Trailers

• Morning Light #6. Incidentally, I noticed this yesterday: one thing I like about the trailer is the chair Roy Disney is sitting in when he gives the crew its pep talk; check it out. Only other trailer was for W.; somehow I think it's going to get a bigger share of the Religulous crowd than is the Disney heartwarmer.

Cigarette?

The Gay Divorcee

(1934)

Oh, this is just a silly movie, beginning with the opening scene, where two guys at a French restaurant can't find their wallets but one of them is wearing tap shoes. Then later that guy happens to have a road-closed sign in his car just when he needs it.

There's a wacky case of mistaken identity, which is part of an ever wackier plot revolving around a silly aphorism, and oh yeah, did I mention the paper dolls on the phonograph turntable? Finally, everything depends upon a doofus ex machina. It just really doesn't hold up to rational analysis.

It does have a hell of a sex scene, though.

The second coming et al.

Choke

Crit

Who would have thought a film based on a Chuck Palahniuk novel about sex addicts, one of whom is a mother-smothered professional manipulator who may be the half-clone of Jesus (yeah, I could explain, but then I'd have to baptize you) would turn out to be so darned sweet? You knew Sam Rockwell and Kelly Macdonald would be tough to resist, but who knew that the secondary couple, played by the Seth Roganesque Brad William Henke and the out-of-nowhere Gillian Jacobs, would tug our hearts too?

Appaloosa

Crit

Lac . . . lac . . . what's the word I'm lookin' for, Everett? Laconic. Right: laconic intellectual gunmen in love. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Sometimes that means suspending civil rights, sometimes it means reading Emerson, and sometimes it means saving your friend from his woman's unfocused libido.

Then again, woman's gotta do what she's gotta do, too.

Ed Harris cowrote, directed, and costars with Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger, and Jeremy Irons, and it's a mostly lovely project, a quiet visual poem, but somebody should have talked him out of singing that tells-the-story-of-the-movie song over the end credits.

Trailers

• RocknRolla--Guy Ritchie and gangsters; need we say more?
• Pride and Glory--Wait, isn't this Infernal Affairs/The Departed again?
• Saw the Morning Light trailer for the 5th time, I believe (yes, confirmed), and also saw a different W. trailer, featuring "Once in a Lifetime" (which is never a bad thing).

Well-wrought urn

The Big Chill

(1983)

Eighty-three was a transitional year for me, and like (the much better) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this nailed me in a vulnerable spot, and I stayed nailed for several viewings across several years until suddenly I just couldn't watch it anymore.

With this film it was nothing political; it was just that the machinery had become so obvious, the well-oiled cogs suddenly creaky.

But as with Butch, this had once held such a place in my heart that I thought it was time to give it another shot. And some moments still hold up--it's fine with me if I can't even hear "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" without wanting to do the dishes--but there are few lines of that dialogue that once seemed so perfect that ring true in any way save as Clever Movie Writing. Even the timing of lyrical cues in the (still wonderful) soundtrack, which once seemed so brilliant, now just strikes me as rote.

It is just too neat, too symmetrical (as it admits in so many words at the end): Tab A fits into Slot A, Tab B into Slot B, and all through the alphabet. What it needs is a little messiness; next time, I'll rent Return of the Secaucus 7.

Where's Fluffy?

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Crit

Yes, you know where it's going from the start, yes, some of the characters are straight out of Central Casting (the cuddly gay guys, the hideously villainous ex-girlfriend), and yes, I suppose I might have better spent the time with onscreen people my own age.

But there are enough twists to make it worth following, the downtown location shots are so not Toronto, and the you-should-pardon-the-expression climactic scene features a much-neglected item (in movies, anyway) from the sexual menu that, in 2008, qualifies as downright sweet.

I wonder whether people seeing themselves on the screen now will fall in love with this flick only to have that love fade a few years down the road (see this evening's home entertainment). Maybe the messiness that this film allows itself will be a saving grace.

Trailers

• Zack and Miri Make a Porno--Was thinking I'd already seen a trailer for this, but clearly not. Could be disastrous, but Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen get the benefit of the doubt.
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop--Oh. My. God. Agonizingly unfunny trailer. Yeesh.