Chicago

Chicago

Another Best Picture Winner off the list, this is one of the only films adapted from a Broadway musical that my musical theater friends don't actively complain about. It's also arguably what rebooted the trend of movie musicals, which continues to this day.

I naturally have a chip on my shoulder about this movie because it beat out The Pianist and my favorite Lord of the Rings film (The Two Towers) for Best Picture of 2002, but that's not really the movie's fault so I can shut off this bitter part of my brain. I'm also not familiar at all with the original musical (I only knew "Cell Block Tango" from other theater kids playing it in high school), so I didn't have that context going in either.

Overall this is a pretty silly movie with a couple of really strong elements in it.

The film takes place in the 1920's, and the actors seem to mimic the voice and style of acting that was popular at that time, which comes off as a little goofy and over the top, but that's the tone the movie chooses to take (the only two actors that aren't doing the sort of "nyah, see, nyah" accents are John C. Reilly and Queen Latifah). In the case of Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere this acting style is pretty cheesy and not very believable (Gere in particular is an actor I've never believed for a second, probably because of his dead, soulless, doll eyes (see Matthew Broderick)). However, Catherine Zeta-Jones fully commits to this style and creates an electric, animalistic performance that is actually incredible to watch. Any song with her is a must-watch because of how wild she is when she dances and performs. John C. Reilly is already one of my favorite actors, and he's perfectly pathetic in this as the dumb, cuckolded husband, giving easily the most grounded performance in the film. Queen Latifah is just herself, but that works for her character and she's fun to watch as well.

Where this movie really excels is in its visuals. The production design is fantastic, with all sorts of ridiculously fun sets, make-up, and costumes, and the cinematography captures it all very well. The editing is also solid, with a whole bunch of match cuts that show that the filmmakers were really trying to make something unique and visually engaging and for the most part succeeded.

There's one big part of the storytelling in this film which consistently bothered me, which is the "stage performances" that the movie uses for obvious symbolism. For instance, when Richard Gere is speaking for Zellweger to the press, it cuts to Gere singing with a bunch of ventriloquist dummies. Do you get it what it means? Yeah? You got it immediately? Cool. Enjoy this terrible sequence for five more minutes. Hey, John C. Reilly's kinda like a sad clown, right? Let's have him sing as a sad clown for another five minutes. Hey, Richard Gere's really doing a good job of getting out of trouble in court. Almost like he's tap dancing. Let's show him tap dancing. You get the idea. However, this actually does lead to my favorite sequence in the movie, which is Roxie's big number. Zellweger is on top of her performing game, she wears a great silver dress, and it's just her against a black backdrop as she interacts with mirrors. It's so simple and visually stunning (almost like a stripped-down Busby Berkely number), and it shows the full potential of what a movie-musical can achieve. The Cell Block Tango is the most talked-about scene in the film, and it's a lot of fun, but Roxie captures that truly classic movie-musical feel that I love so much, making it my favorite part.

Everything about the movie is over the top and campy, which works a handful of times, but it's just not really my thing. Anyone doing musical theater of course should check it out if they haven't seen it already, but otherwise there's not very much to get out of it. If anything just check out the Catherine Zeta Jones songs and Roxie, those are what the movie for me.

John Wick

John Wick

I love when a movie knows exactly what it is and just leans into it, and it's hard to think of a better example than John Wick. Almost like the Cabin in the Woods of action movies, only we never see the control room, John Wick is boiled down to the most basic bullet points (the only points John Wick uses) that every action movie has, and fills out the rest of the runtime with nothing but action.

Keanu Reeves is utilized perfectly as John Wick, who, like any action movie hero, is a lonely guy whose wife died, then when he runs into (who else) rowdy Russian gangsters, they decide to take away the only thing he has left: his dog. But the gangsters realize they've messed with the wrong man, and John Wick takes them down one by one.

It's every single Charles Bronson/Mel Gibson/last 10 minutes of The Revenant basic revenge plot, but it's SO basic and SO efficient that it's somehow all the more satisfying, perhaps because it isn't trying to be anything more than what it is. Again, it's how well the movie knows itself that makes it so satisfying. They know every single beat of every action movie ever made and they don't divert from them in the slightest, choosing to instead make those beats a platform that they can do as much fighting as they want on.

Now as satisfying as this film is on a story level, the fight choreography and shootout sequences aren't really anything new or creative or even that good. It's by no means bad, but when there's directors like Edgar Wright, George Miller, and Jackie Chan out there it's hard not to think about how great this could've been. I'd argue that what hinders the movie from becoming a modern classic is the fairly standard cinematography/editing and uncreative fight choreography. Again, it's not bad, but it's nowhere near as good as it could be.

If you're like me and tired of movies overcomplicating themselves to try and "subvert expectations", order some pizza, crack open a beer, relax, and let John Wick do what it does. Just don't expect Kill Bill Vol. 1 levels of stylized action glory.

Stripes

Stripes

Sometimes movies think too hard. They get bogged down in plot and end up getting in their own way by becoming overcomplicated. These movies need to sit down, take a breath, and ask simple questions, like: "What if Bill Murray joined the army?" which ended up being enough for people to discuss to this day. But does it hold up?

Bill Murray lost his job, car, apartment, and girlfriend all on the same day. His best friend Harold Ramis is kinda bored. Together, they decide to join the army because they think it'll be funny. This is where Ed Wood's "suspension of disbelief" has to come in, because otherwise the movie does not work. They go to the army and two military policewomen immediately have crushes on the two goofballs (again, suspension of disbelief). Much like Full Metal Jacket, we spend what we think is going to be the whole movie at boot camp, but while Full Metal Jacket's boot camp sequence was only about half an hour, this is an entire movie's worth of content. Then, after an hour and a half, the movie goes rogue and decides to keep going, becoming a Star Wars-esque rescue mission. It's very weird.

I've talked before about how I don't really care for the classic National Lampoon films like Animal House and Caddyshack because they feel like footage of a party that I didn't actually go to and therefore have a natural distance from, and while this isn't as extreme as those examples it does still go into that territory. It's clear that the actors are having fun improvising and being generally zany, but so much of it is being directed inward that I have a hard time catching those laughs. Arguably there aren't any jokes at all in the whole movie, the humor comes entirely from wacky behavior, which is tough to fill two hours with.

Obviously Bill Murray is great as Bill Murray, which might be all people thought he was capable of doing at the time, (since I believe this was before Tootsie and certainly before Ed Wood, Rushmore, and Lost in Translation) but he's so charming and cool as himself that it's hard not to be satisfied on his personality alone. Harold Ramis is Harold Ramis, which also works because of his own unique brand of nerdy charming coolness, but the truly great performance comes from John Candy, who was not really known at the time and justifiably broke out with this role. Candy has such an instant lovability to him that he can be in the middle of a sleazy, uncomfortable, fairly gross mud wrestling scene where he appears to be actively beating up women, and it's just so hard to be mad at him because of how effortlessly sweet and hilarious he is.

The movie has the unfortunate 80's-party-animal-movie trope of women not being actual characters but instead just being prizes and/or things to have sex with. The matching love interests for Murray and Ramis are clearly solid actresses and they bring as much personality as they can to their characters, but they still come off as two-dimensional sex objects despite being military police. And that mud wrestling scene really is gross, no exaggeration there.

My note would normally be to cut the last half hour and the depressing mud wrestling scene so that the movie is shorter, smoother, and more fun, but those are actually the things I remember the best. I  miss movies not being afraid to have a few scenes that have nothing to do with the rest of the plot, because, as this movie proves, those often end up being the most memorable moments. In the specific case of this film I wish these diatribes were of higher quality, but I can appreciate it for what it is.

Overall I'm not quite sure why this film is still talked about today. While it hasn't reached the legendary status of Animal House, it's still relevant enough to be referenced in modern film and television, which means it's still floating around in peoples' heads. Maybe it's because of the bizarre plotless scenes, the improvised feel, or the charismatic actors just playing themselves, but there's something about this movie that's caused it to remain in the public conscious after all these decades. I personally didn't get much from it and can't really recommend it, but its status as a classic comedy sort of takes that out of my hands. Check it off your list if it's on there, but just don't come in expecting much.

Celeste and Jesse Forever

Celeste and Jesse Forever

Co-starring and co-written by Rashida Jones, this film finally gives us a taste of what she's capable of as a creative human. It's also a chance to see Andy Samberg as a romantic lead, forcing him to play a much more grounded character than he's ever had to before.

A somewhat bizarre setup for a rom-com, Celeste and Jesse are a recently separated married couple who are still very close friends. This upsets their other friends and they don't really understand why. They try to date other people but it's difficult, and that's kinda the rest of the movie.

It captures a feeling of aimlessness that most other rom-coms shy away from, preferring to show characters meandering and being frustrated with their predicaments as opposed to being shot forward in a formulaic trajectory. This is what I'd consider to be the film's greatest strength, refusing to shy away from the loneliness and confusion that often takes place in the being-single world.

While there are some funny bits between Jones and Samberg, as well as some moderately bizarre characters, for the most part the film rides the not-too-funny-but-not-too-serious line, perhaps trying to invoke the tone of Freaks and Geeks but feeling a bit more like Netflix's Love, which I watched all of and am still not sure how I feel about, much like this film. Freaks and Geek's dramedy tone works because the humor actually is laugh-out-loud funny while the drama is truly emotionally effective, whereas something like Love, or this film, is so in the middle on everything that the tone is somewhat difficult to pick out.

It's never too boring or predictable but it's also not terribly exciting or engaging. Almost every aspect of the film lands right in the middle of the quality spectrum. The writing is fine, the acting is solid, the cinematography is there, it's all good enough as opposed to great.

If you're a rom-com fan but you wanna find something that breaks the traditional mold then I'd recommend this film for its little flips on the formula, which is what makes the film unique and gives it a special spot in that genre, even if I didn't end up being that impressed.

Hereditary

Hereditary

The newest release from A24, everyone's favorite indie movie studio and new standard for consistent film quality, Hereditary is one of the couple of critically-acclaimed horror films we get every other year or so, in the vain of It Follows, The Babadook, and (my favorite) The Witch. Mostly a tense, anxiety-ridden family drama, people who enter this film expecting a non-stop scare-fest will have to be very, very patient for what is inarguably a great payoff.

I'm not gonna go into details on this one, because going into it blind made it all the more fun, but I'll quickly brush over the things I enjoyed: Toni Colette deserves an Oscar (as is always the case, but especially here), Alex Wolff is better than I ever thought he could be (I haven't seen him since The Naked Brothers Band), the cinematography more than once had me thinking "how did they do that?!" which is the greatest compliment I can think of, the music (while fairly traditional for a horror film) is very effective, and the story (while getting convoluted towards the end there) had me fully and consistently engaged and surprised the whole way through.

Again, people who are going out for a fun horror movie night should know that the scares aren't cheap or loud, they're quietly haunting and creatively disturbing, using every element of filmmaking available to create a full, horrific experience that everyone will be talking about this year. Go see it (if you dare)!

Repo Man

Repo Man

I think I need to watch this one again, because I did not expect any of it. I knew it was about punk rock kids and that it's an Alex Cox film, but there's a whole other element that I was totally not expecting.

Emilio Estevez plays an aimless, disillusioned youth who has hippie parents and hangs with punk kids. He gets tricked into hanging out with repo men, and ends up becoming one of them. All day they repossess poor people's cars and that sometimes goes well and sometimes doesn't. Also, there's aliens. Or mutants. Or something. This is where I get lost.

I really like the cinematography and the characters, and I think they both help to create a unique and memorable world. I just didn't get the sci-fi element. Again, I'd love to give this one another watch because I feel like I can't properly talk about the film without understanding this element, but I really like the performances from Emilio Estevez and the late great Harry Dean Stanton. I just don't get the thing with the trunk and the flying green car.

I feel bad even posting this review, but this is kinda all I got. I really liked Walker, another Alex Cox film, but I just didn't get this one. One day I'll return to it. Promise.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Creature from the Black Lagoon

According to IMDb trivia, Ingmar Bergman would watch this film every year on his birthday. This is weird because the movie didn't come out until he was 36 years old and also it's terrible.

I'm gonna start with the good here, because I believe it's a classic for a reason.

While the land cinematography is overall pretty standard and forgettable, the underwater shots are surprisingly gorgeous and impressive for the time. The water is so clear that it has to have been filmed on a set, but the water goes so deep that it's hard to think of a set that would allow for that. It's also crazy that they made the stuntmen stay down there for so long, especially the Creature.

The other great thing is the titular Creature. It's a unique and unusual design, a great addition to the classic monster canon. Though he's unlike the classic monsters in that there's nothing particularly tragic about him. While Frankenstein just wants to feel human and the Wolfman is a good guy who has an uncontrollable curse, the Gill Man (that's what they call him in the movie) has a lot more in common with the Xenamorph in Alien in that he really just wants to kill people.

Now the bad.

The acting and writing are awful. It's that classic Ed Wood-esque, stiff, awkward, 1950's b-movie acting that's so unique to schlock of its time. The one female character is written by males to be hot, dumb, and useless. She's supposed to be an archaeologist but instead she leaves the science up to the boys and wears designer outfits and heavy makeup instead. It's pretty insulting. Also, these are the worst archaeologists of all time. At one point they poison an entire river in order to kill one Gill Man, undoubtedly killing almost everything else in the water. It would be so-bad-it's-funny if it wasn't so boring, but it is so it isn't.

Watch a compilation of scenes with the Gill Man on YouTube. That's all you need here.