From The Bat to To Sleep With Anger
November 2023 at the Movies
From The Bat to To Sleep With Anger
A busy month of movie watching, as the year slowly comes to it’s end and I try to catch up on many films from this year that I’ve missed (as well as fitting in my normal viewing rotation). Some great, some not so, some in between, this month at the movies...
The Bat
Part of a massive collection of “horror” (the term is very loosely applied) DVD set a received well over a decade ago, The Bat is a Sherlock Holmes like murder mystery that features diamond theft, deceit, death, and more. Unfortunately, the one thing it is deeply lacking is any excitement or interest. This is a dull, dull film that justifies it’s relegation to public domain obscurity. Shot like a playhouse theatre piece, and with the killer being obvious from the moment he appears on screen, there is no need for a second paragraph to review this picture. This one can return to the obscurity from which it came.
Chameleon Street
Considered by some to be a forgotten masterpiece of 1980s American film, Chameleon Street is written, directed, and stars Wendell B. Harris Jr. as William Douglas Street, a prolific conman. Street takes the advantages and disadvantages of being black in America and uses them for his gain, turning the discrimination the black community faces every day into a weapon he can wield. A stunning and confident debut feature, the film follows Street as he moves from one area of faked expertise to another, all while moving from woman to woman with equal ease until his empire ends up crashing around him. Throughout it all Street’s quick wit and willingness to do anything to prove himself make him equal parts charismatic and dangerous.
A tale about the dangerous lethargy of American bigotry, the film is about how we shrug into our roles with little to no resistance. Whether that is the yuppie banker or the bigoted drunk, we are roles in the lives of the motivated. Street takes advantage of our inherent trust in the reality around us and uses it to fight, fuck, and thieve his way through life. Harris is confident in his decisions, both as director and writer, and while not every idea works to benefit the story, it is undoubtedly a single vision, and that is something worth recommending.
Confess, Fletch
I caught up to Mad Men after it had already established itself in the halls of great television, and even though I didn’t get to have the revelation week-by-week like the rest of the world, I was still left with one cold hard fact came the series finale: Jon Hamm is going to be a megastar. Unfortunately, the intervening years have not been nearly as giving to him as his hit AMC role. Side character roles in The Town and Baby Driver felt one-note and underdeveloped, his ensemble comedies Tag and Keeping Up with the Joneses falling flat and being easily forgotten. But with Confess, Fletch Hamm is finally given a role and a film that can keep up with his undeniable star power.
An incredibly witty and fun film, we follow investigative reporter and professional smartass I. M. Fletcher as he attempts to discover who has framed him for murder, who has stolen his father-in-law’s paintings, and why the Baltimore police don’t want their lead suspect working with them. Hamm shines as the lead but the supporting cast is what makes this film truly great, from Kyle MacLachlan’s EDM-obsessed art collector to Roy Woods Jr’s exacerbated detective. If we got one of these films every year for a decade I would never tire of it. Sharp, comedic filmmaking.
Daddy’s Home 2
The most surprising thing you’re likely to read today is that I was a fan of the original Daddy’s Home film. I am doubtful that opinion would stand on rewatch but as of now I still think that it was far weirder and far funnier than I was expecting. So I approached the sequel with a relatively open mind. Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrel have proven their comedic chemistry, John Lithgow is always a pleasure on screen, and Mel Gibson (setting aside his off-screen screeds) was one of Hollywood’s hottest commodities for a reason. But this film is exactly what I was worried the first film would be, a lazy, uninventive slog with nothing to inspire laughs.
A complete retread of the first film, with long-buried dramas dragged up out of nowhere only to be forgotten by the next scene. Wahlberg and Ferrel both seem bored on screen, and the jokes are telegraphed from a mile away. Gibson and Lithgow are both completely one-note, Gibson particularly not even a character as much as a sentient pile of Tough Guy cliches. Add on a healthy layer of completely unearned schmaltz in the final scenes and you get a film made because everyone wanted a second vacation home.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The film featured in this month’s paid subscriber exclusive The Favourites, you can read about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, pain, loss, grieving, and healing here.
The Exorcist
Considered by many to be one of (if not the) greatest horror films of all time, The Exorcist is a masterpiece of terrifying storytelling. It is the perfect set-up for a horror film, taking what may be the most innocent among us and turning her into a spectacle of evil. The possession of Regan is a wonder to see (and watching it on the big screen was a delight), truly shocking even decades after its initial release. Linda Blair gives a performance that sets the standard for possession, one that few if any people have been able to reach. The themes of redemption and forgiveness, masked by the brutality of the horror, resonate even deeper on this revisit, and I imagine will only grow further.
Jason Miller as Father Damien Karras is brilliant, broken but searching for redemption in a dark world he no longer recognizes. A priest wrestling with his faith after losing his mother, and while fighting for the life of an innocent, is such compelling storytelling that an actor could let the gravity of the situation carry itself. Miller doesn’t do this, instead embedding such deep catharsis and desire in the father that the final confrontation of the film is poignant, tragic, and beautiful all in the same beat. The world lost William Friedkin this year, but he gave us The Exorcist, so he will never truly be gone.
Good Morning
There is a beauty in the banal and few directors can capture that as wonderfully as Yasujiro Ozu. In his 1959 feature Good Morning, Ozu shows us a small, tight-knit community in rural Japan. The children go to school and play games with each other (mostly involving farts), the women gossip behind each other’s backs, the men drink their fill and return home after a long day of work. This isn’t an idealistic portrayal of a simple life, nor is it a condemnation of the quiet existence. It simply showcases the small moments in everyday life, the moments you have likely experienced, that when put on celluloid are revealed to be magical.
What little plot there is here involves one of the pre-teen boys Minoru (Koji Shitara) and his little brother Isamu (Masahiko Shimazu) going on a silent strike, demanding their parents purchase a television. Ozu doesn’t turn this into a wider metaphor or morph it beyond what it naturally is, a silly childhood tantrum that will become a fun story for years to come. Ozu is interested in capturing not grand lessons but the lives we lead, and showing us the power that we wield simply be existing. It’s a beautiful story in its simplicity, humor, and gentleness.
The Hangover
Returning to a comedy favourite from your teenage years is always a little risky. Not only do certain jokes age worse than dairy in the sun, but there’s also the risk of over-exposure having ruined the original film in the following years. That was the risk I faced when rewatching The Hangover. A colossal hit when originally released, this film single-handedly ruined comedy for years. Weaker jokes were repeated ad naseum, atrocious memes created in the most obnoxious of manners, not to mention the sequels which were just carbon copies of the first. So could the original still stand on its own after all this? Sort of.
The thing that shocked me most on this revisit was how rather mundane the antics the gang gets up to are. Of course, compared to reality they have a wild night out, but the level of debauchery is relatively minor compared to what you would see and expect out of comedies now. The least surprising aspect was how unforgivably annoying the character of Alan is. Zach Galifianakis is an incredibly talented comedic actor, but here he gives the most nails-on-chalkboard performance of the decade. The writing is poor at best for him and 90% of his bits fall flat. Cooper and Helms absolutely hold the film together, and there’s enough fun for you to get through the movie, but it’s not remembered as a classic for a reason. Ultimately a forgettable, annoying exercise.
A Haunting in Venice
I don’t always remember the plot of all the films I’ve seen, especially thinking back to ones I haven’t seen in over a decade. Line readings, character motivations, even basic storytelling, they all fade with time. But one thing that almost always will stick with me is the emotion, the guttural reaction, I had to the films. It can be fifteen years later and I can still remember the ultimate effect the film had on me. It’s one of the greatest joys of watching and thinking back on films.
Writing this now, I struggle greatly with remembering anything particular about this film, including the feeling it left me with. It’s been less than a month since I saw it and I’ve already filed everything about this film away as “better left forgotten”. I know I didn’t hate it, I even enjoyed it more than the last of Branagh’s Poirot outings (the truly dreadful Death on the Nile). And yet, there is a void in even considering this film. And for that, I can’t recommend it. I’d almost prefer to hate it, because then it would have made me feel something. Instead, I simply time-traveled two hours into the future and the film was complete, watched or not I can not be certain.
The Holdovers
Alexander Payne has never been a filmmaker I’ve had a ton of love for. While I have never outright dismissed any of his works, and greatly enjoy the majority that I have seen, he has never been someone who I’ve considered a must-see. With The Holdovers, that has changed. This is one of the best films of the year, a lovingly crafted ode to friendship and mentorship, found family, and discovery of one’s place in the world. Not sentimental, not cozy and cloying, a smartly beautiful take on what it means to form a connection with someone. A shot of dark brandy on a cold, lonely Christmas day.
Following a trio who are left behind at a boarding school over Christmas break in 1970, we see these three unlikely friends form an unbreakable bond over two weeks. Paul Giamatti gives one of the best performances of the year as Paul Hunham, the classics teacher at the school, a nearly universally disliked character, a man who uses robustness of language to spar away any attempts at penetrating his self-enforced solitude. Dominic Sessa gives a stunning debut performance as Angus Tully, the troubled teen who rebels for the sake of rebelling (a teenage right). Da’Vine Joy Randolph is Mary Lamb, the head cook, and mourning mother, her only son recently lost in Vietnam. The isolation of these characters, the loneliness that permeates from them, is the invisible thread that ties them together, and Payne is able to craft a beautiful and funny tale of sacrifice, dreams won and lost, and (possibly unintentional) creates a brand new instant Christmas classic.
The Killer
David Fincher is one of the best American filmmakers working today. His entire filmography is worth consideration, as themes of the depravity and isolation of modern life resonate throughout the majority of them. With The Killer, we see the ultimate end point of this isolation and the formation of a world that values efficiency over humanity. Focusing on Michael Fassbender as a hitman, the film follows him after a botched job. Pursued by his former employee and trying to get to safety, the film takes us across the globe as The Killer tries to set things right.
A plot that you have seen time and time again, this film shows that it is often how you tell a story that is more important than the story itself. The film is drenched in satire, with major global conglomerates seen being constantly used by The Killer in his brutal ways, by extension making them calibrators in murder. The voice-over, almost exclusively how we hear the near-silent killer, is constantly at odds with what we see on screen, creating a dichotomy between how The Killer thinks of himself and how he is. This gives the film a rich texture of satire, brutality, and loneliness as if we can’t even be who we think we are, then we are truly alone. A film that has already grown greatly in my mind, one that will soon be considered a must-watch.
The Lady Eve
Considered one of the best romantic comedies of all time, you won’t find me disagreeing with the sentiment. Following Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck as star-crossed lovers who fall in love, out of love, in love, out of love, and then right back into it again, the film is brimming with hilarious gags and bits that stand even eighty years later. Stanwyck bewitches as Jean Harrington, a con woman who ends up falling head-over-heels for her mark Charles Pike (Fonda). I won’t say more, because if you haven’t seen this film, it would be a disservice to not let you discover the twists and turns on your own.
Stanwyck and Fonda have possibly the best romantic chemistry captured on screen. Stanwyck is overwhelmingly sexy, with director Preston Sturges lighting her like no one else you will see on screen. Fonda is constantly off guard trying to keep pace with Stanwyck, and this dynamic makes for explosive sensuality and comedy. Add in a supporting cast that not only all have a chance to shine but are even given the best bits in an already hilarious movie, and we have an absolute classic you must watch.
Napolean
Few directors can make epics on the scale of Ridley Scott. Lavish set designs, costuming, and massive battles are all commonly found in his epics, from Kingdom of Heaven to his newest film Napoleon. This recent release is even grander in scale than previous efforts, as the film clocks in at a whopping four and a half hours in its complete edition. Unfortunately, Apple decided that this four hour cut would only be available on their streaming service and that theater audiences would instead see a two-and-a-half-hour version. You may be asking, how exactly do you cut two hours out of a completed film while keeping the essence of the original? The answer is you don’t (unless the longer cut is also a dull, incomprehensible mess).
I am not a history scholar, and saying my knowledge of Napoleon was little would be a massive understatement. Even so, after watching this film I feel I know nothing more about the man, his campaigns, his dreams, or his life. Insanely rushed and breathless in its pacing, years can be taken in a single cut, important battles swept away in a fifteen-second montage. Without any moments of just sitting with our characters, we know nothing about them, and the charisma that drove his victories is nowhere to be found. Joaquin Phoenix is a complete enigma, either not given the material or the time to give one of the most influential political figures in modern history any depth. Vanessa Kirby is given small moments to shine but is also sidelined in the pursuit of fitting a massive figure into a single film. A lumpy, overstuffed mess.
Pet Semetary
The first of the four Pet Semetary films I watched for last month’s article The Five Lives of Pet Semetary, the original adaptation of the novel was released at the peak of Stephen King’s powers in Hollywood. Following the doomed Creed family as they move to the small town as Ludlow only to have tragedy strike, the film was written by King for the screen (and features him in a cameo) and as such, for any fan of the novel, doesn’t have much to add to the story. If you enjoyed the novel, this comes across as a rushed, incomplete adaptation that lacks the interiority of King’s best work. But, if you are unfamiliar with the story, there may be some things to discover in this film.
I have a soft spot for schlocky, low-budget horror. Through barely scraping by films can find inventive ways to frighten you, and while this isn’t the lowest-budget film I’ve ever seen it certainly isn’t going to have state-of-the-art effects. The workarounds the artists end up using create surreal, frightening images that could easily stay with you forever. Even if the story is rushed compared to the source novel, King is still a powerful writer, and his narrative instincts still create a compelling story of grief and madness. Add in a genuinely creepy ending and we have a film that, while nothing special, is still well worth watching for any fan of 80s video store nostalgia.
Pet Semetary (2019)
This reimaging/remake/readaptation of the novel came out only a few years ago, during the resurgence of King in the film world, and has all but been forgotten by the public. The film follows the familiar formula found in the novel and the first film, with small changes to the story to help try and keep longtime fans of the material engaged. Unfortunately, these changes aren’t enough to breathe life into this long-dead story, and the execution of these ideas is as dull and lifeless as the bodies buried in the Pet Semetary.
Stylistically, this is a paint-by-numbers horror flick from the last few years. No scenes stand out, no scares will keep you up at night, and the little gore that does happen does little to frighten you. John Lithgow, an amazing actor in almost all regards, is an unfortunate downgrade from Fred Gwynne in the role of Jud Crandell. While Gwynne is completely believable as the New England lifer, Lithgow is actively working against his better instincts in the part. Similarly, Jason Clark should be a proper fit for Louis Creed, but lacks that level of madness that the role requires an actor to sink to. A lazy cash grab that is best left dead.
Pet Semetary 2
For the sequel to the original film, director Mary Lambert was given far greater creative control, and Stephen King removed his name from the project, which likely indicates the quality you can expect. Following a young boy Jeff (Edward Furlong) after he loses his mother, moves with his father to Ludlow, and is introduced to the Pet Semetary. A very similar (almost complete retread) of the first film unfolds, including the cute animal returning a bloodthirsty killer, the family member brought back from the other side, and the eventual madness that follows. But it’s one side character and a newly introduced plot that makes this film, if not good, at least not trash: Clancy Brown.
Clancy Brown, one of the best character actors out there, gives a fantastic performance in this tepid movie. Playing Gus, the local sheriff and the stepfather of Jeff’s best friend Drew. Menacing and mean-spirited to begin with, he accidentally gets killed one night, and to avoid trouble Drew and Jeff bury him in the semetary. What returns is something wearing Gus’ skin, a rotting zombie who proceeds to terrify everyone around him. Brown is wonderful, not holding back in the slightest, and it’s his unhinged performance takes this film from something completely forgotten to a little gem in the muck of this overdone story.
Pet Semetary: Bloodlines
The fourth and final (hopefully) Pet Semetary film, Bloodlines follows a young Jud Crandall as he discovers the dark secret Ludlow has been hiding. The film takes the story told by Jud in the novel and tries to craft an entire narrative from nothing more than an old man’s half-remembered nightmares. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach (and having the story be about those having to deal with the consequences of the Pet Semetary instead of using it themselves is a refreshing move) the film is so carelessly crafted that any goodwill won by this change-up is quickly lost.
This is easily the worst of the Semetary films, a confusing mishmash of half-thought ideas. Playing on tropes popular within modern horror but never diving into them with any knowledge or introspection, things like generational trauma and PTSD are used as set dressing instead of narrative storytelling. The scares are non-existent, the killer is transformed from the creepy, frothing zombies of the previous films to an intelligent hyper active killer. Half the cast sleepwalks through the film, and the other half is completely lost within a script that can’t have anything to say because the audience already knows what has to happen in the story. No stakes, no scares, no reason to exist.
La Piscine
A slow-burn French thriller and the first of two Alain Dolan features for the month, La Piscine follows a young couple as they rent an isolated country house for their summer vacation. A chance visit by an old friend and his teenage daughter causes tensions to rise in the couple, and as the summer days grow long and hot, the simmering emotions reach a boiling point. An incredibly sexy film, with undeniable chemistry between the cast, the film does fall victim to letting things simmer for far too long before they eventually explode. The middle part is languid and fairly repetitive, and by the third act, we’re begging for something to happen. And while the final event is indeed explosive, the build-up is a little too much.
Delon does a fantastic job as the jealous, petulant lover, part of whom is desperately trying to seduce the 18-year-old girl he’s newly met, the other part tortured by the idea of his lover having been with another man whom he despises. The sensual nature of Delon is needed to make this film work, and while it does support the film for the most part, it can’t help save the middle section of the film. Plagued with pacing issues and an ultimately underwhelming ending, there are better films within the French thriller subgenre one can go for.
Le Samurai
One of the most classically cool films you will ever see, and the perfect companion piece for David Fincher’s The Killer, Le Samurai is one of the most effortlessly influential films of all time for a reason. Following a hitman after he finds himself in trouble after a recent job, the film is incredibly smooth in all aspects of its delivery. Jean Pierre Melville lets us sit with the characters and feel the silences they do, notice the tiny details of day-to-day life they have to to survive. The camera guides us through this underworld with ease, and we can enter the tense mindset of these individuals through the lens.
Alain Delon puts in a career-best as the killer, the progenitor of the wannabe stone-cold killer for hire. While he does his job, we can see he is playing a part, playing up a mysterious stranger who feels nothing and won’t falter. But as Melville is building this myth, he is tearing it down at the same time. We see the emotions leak through, the cracks in the facade of the unaffected killer, and it’s in these cracks that the brilliance shines through. Delon carries himself with confidence at a glance and fear at a study, a balancing act few if any others would’ve been able to make. A brilliant performance in a brilliant movie (with a stunning ending).
To Sleep With Anger
A quiet masterpiece, To Sleep With Anger follows a black family in California as the parents receive a visit from an old friend from the South Harry (Danny Glover). Harry, a charming, influential man, ingratiates himself with the family and snakes his way into their lives, and his corrupting smile and charisma start to bring underlying tensions within the family to a boil. A perfect pairing of subtextual religious underpinnings with a broadly straightforward narrative, the film is one of the best of the 1990s and one of the best in African American cinema.
Danny Glover is perfectly cast as the all too charismatic Harry, his smile a little too broad and his jokes a little too bawdy, the kind of man who can only take. As his infectious laugh and bright eyes take hold of the more downtrodden of the family (the youngest brother Babe Brother (played fantastically by Richard Brooks)), Harry slowly twists Brother until he sees enemies where there are friends and family. Harry is not a directly evil person, but simply a force, an influence, the whispers of your darker half, and sometimes those whispers sound so sweet. While Babe Brother is taken under his spell, other friends in the neighborhood similarly lose themselves, and the patriarch of the family falls into a mysterious sleep, it’s only the bonds of family that can break these spells cast. A story of a conman in the most traditional of terms, and of the devil in the most subtextual, this is a film that must be watched again and again.