An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Finally got Bethany to see this!  Only took three years!  Reposted 01 Jul 2017.  Why does it seem like I am always showing this to people who have never seen it before?  This have changed since 2012 but some things remain the same, like the number of sheltered people who have been deprived of seeing this film until they met me.  With that said, I'm going to introduce two new characters to this blog:  Tyler, my new boyfriend, and Bethany, my work wife.  Neither one of them has ever seen this movie because they are millennials and just don't know what they're missing.  Well, I managed to fix one of them.  Bethany, you are next!  I'm keeping a list in order to further your education.  Anyway, below is my original review.  It still stands.  Especially the shunning.  Originally posted 15 Jul 12.   

Now we're back in business!  While Rob is busy going where no man has gone before (and boldly, at that), I am taking a moonlit stroll right into werewolf country.  I had bought the Legacy editions of Dracula and The Wolf Man a long while ago and am very excited to finally break into the latter.  Of course, Rob has never seen the original Lon Chaney, Jr. classic and I'll show it to him, never you fear.  But I wanted him to see this one first, since it's basically the gold standard of transformation scenes.

Two American tourists, David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), are backpacking through the English countryside when they are attacked on the moors by a vicious beast.  David is the only one who survives and is taken to London to recuperate.  While there, he starts seeing smoking hot nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter) and also having severe nightmares about monsters.  Also, his dead friend Jack keeps showinig up and telling him to kill himself.  David ignores him because, hey, there's no reason for both their vacations to be ruined, amirite?  Then David turns into a bloodthirsty mindless beast and terrorizes the city.

This was clearly a labor of love for John Landis, who wrote and directed it.  Rick Baker did amazing work making the werewolf look menacing instead of like a plush toy but, to me, his real genius came with the makeup work for Jack as he goes through various stages of decomposition.  It looks fucking disgusting and awesome which is exactly how it should look.

Own this movie.  Or I will shun you.

Richard Jewell (2019)

  This wasn't as horrendously depressing as some of my recent choices so hooray.

Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) had always wanted to be in law enforcement but things just never worked out for him.  Even a job as security for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, feels like a pale imitation of the real thing.  Then Jewell sees a suspicious package which turns out to be a bomb and his actions in alerting authorities and crowd control save lives.  Suddenly, Jewell is the hero he's always dreamed of being.  But suspicion quickly falls on him, led by an ambitious reporter (Olivia Wilde) and a harried FBI investigator (Jon Hamm).  The eyes of the world are on this terrorist attack and the FBI is pressured for a quick solution.  Jewell fits the initial profile of a "false hero" despite the lack of any evidence, something his lawyer (Sam Rockwell) is quick to point out.

I remember the '96 bombing.  I don't remember the focus on Jewell other the initial hero story but I was a teenager and not interested in anything beyond Kerri Strug's broken ankle.  I do remember when the real perpetrator, Eric Rudolph, was arrested after hiding in the national forests for six years.  Eric Rudolph is a white supremacist domestic terrorist responsible for three bombings in addition to the Olympic Park bomb, one of which was in my home state of Alabama.  Rudolph stated his intentions were to stop the "homosexual agenda" by filling pipe bombs with nails.  Too bad he's gonna die in a supermax or he could be looking at a SCOTUS position.

But about this movie.  Eastwood has always been very minimalist behind the camera, choosing stories that don't have a great deal of nuance but do have tons of patriotism that focus on a lone individual/small group standing for their rights.  Richard Jewell is in keeping with this theme but there's less Rah-Rah-America here.  Jewell is definitely the underdog and Hauser plays him with a sweetness and vulnerability that really pays off in the third act.  Sam Rockwell is a national fucking treasure.  The End.  Kathy Bates is phenomenal, as always, giving me flashbacks to every Woman of a Certain Age that went to my dad's church.  

The only character that really fell flat for me was Wilde's reporter.  She's very obviously the villain of the piece, portrayed as abrasive, slutty, unprincipled, and grasping but she really only has about 20 minutes of overall screen time so her eventual Road-to-Damascus conversion and remorse feels tacked on and forced.  Hamm's FBI agent is a close second.  I really wish they'd just let Jon Hamm do comedy.  He's very funny and I'd love to see him follow more of a Timothy Olyphant/Chris Pine career path.

Anyway, Richard Jewell is currently streaming on HBO which I get through Amazon.

Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me (2014)

  I will freely admit I have never heard of Glen Campbell.  He was hugely popular in the 60s and 70s and my mom remembers him very fondly from the Smothers Brothers and when he had his own TV variety show but that was long over and done by the time I was born.  

This documentary doesn't cover a lot of his early career and it's not some Hollywood retrospective.  It's a snapshot of Campbell's life in his 70s with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's embarking on his last tour.  The fact that it's about a musical legend is probably what got it funding but it's really only incidental that it's Glen Campbell and more about how devastating Alzheimer's is for caregivers and family.  

It's not a super fun watch, is what I'm saying.  But it is engaging and you can clearly see that Campbell was a hell of a showman in his day as well as an incredibly gifted guitarist.  I don't know much about music but even I can recognize a talent that obvious.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

 

Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2014)

  This was supposed to go up yesterday but I had friends over within pandemic-approved strictures.  We had mulled wine and apple cake and it was very autumnal so I didn't want to ruin it by dashing off to write this post about a movie that is not smart, funny, or fun, no matter what the box art says.

Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell) is a genius dog who adopted a boy, Sherman (Max Charles), and built a time machine called the WABAC.  Sherman gets into a fight at school with bully Penny (Ariel Winter) so Mr. Peabody invites her and her parents for a dinner party to smooth things over.  Penny antagonizes Sherman into showing her the WABAC and the two children promptly test the elasticity of the space-time continuum.  

This is a regrettably stupid movie.  It would have been nice if the filmmakers had managed to incorporate any non-Euro-centric history, or even portray those eras correctly, but instead it's a rip-off of Bill and Ted without the charm, wit, or humor.  What a waste of top-notch animation.  It's currently streaming on Netflix but I assure you, you can do better than this.

 

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012)

   Barely made it before midnight but managed to get three movies this weekend!  Whew.  It has been a while since I managed to stick to my schedule.  Hopefully, that means things are calming down now and getting back to normal -- for a given value of normal.

Elise (Veerle Baetens) and Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) are in love.  They met by chance, immediately hit it off, and lived six wonderful and one terrible year together.  

The movie jumps all over their relationship, interspersing present and past to show the highs and lows.  It reminded me of Blue Valentine, Once, and Country Strong, but I don't recommend doubling it up with any of those unless you are just in a cathartic kind of mood.

Content Warning:  suicide, death of a child.  Spoilery, but that's kind of the point of a content warning.  It's currently streaming for free on Vudu with ads.

Strange Magic (2015)

   My mom recommended this to me two or three years ago and I finally got around to watching it.  It is not...terrible...but it's definitely not something I could see myself watching twice.

Marianne (Evan Rachel Wood) is a fairy princess about to marry the most handsome fairy, Roland (Sam Palladio), when she catches him with another girl the day of their wedding.  She has a full-out rocker-girl makeover, complete with smoky eye and sword-fighting lessons, and a newfound desire to avoid love.  Roland has not given up his quest to use Marianne to make himself king and convinces a lovelorn elf named Sunny (Elijah Kelly) to venture into the dark forest where the Sugar Plum Fairy (Kristin Chenoweth) is being held by the Bog King (Alan Cumming).  The Sugar Plum Fairy is the only one who knows how to make a love potion, which Roland hopes to use on Marianne and Sunny wants to use on her sister, Dawn (Meredith Anne Bull).  The Bog King is furious that love could be released into the world and takes Dawn hostage in exchange for the return of the potion.  Unfortunately, Dawn is dosed and accidentally falls in love with the Bog King.  Now Marianne and the Bog King must find the antidote.

On paper, this very much seems like the kind of movie I would love.  Plucky, independent female protagonist?  Check.  Angry, emo dude who hates love?  Check.  Realizing that mutual hatred of a thing is a common bond, leading to an enemies-to-lovers story?  Less of a check but I can appreciate it.  In practice, however, there was just something off about the whole thing.  Maybe it was the music.  Instead of using original songs, the movie is full of Top 40/pop love songs that just feel incredibly hackneyed and overused.  I think some original songs would have really given this movie the edge it deserved to have.  It's currently streaming on Disney+, so you can give it a shot and tell me what you think is wrong with it.

The Great Dictator (1940)

   I had never watched this movie before.  I didn't watch a lot of Chaplin films growing up.  In fact, I may never have seen any; I'd have to check.  This is a pretty good starting point, though.

A Jewish barber (Charlie Chaplin) returns to his shop after a long convalescent period due to war injuries to find that his friends and neighbors are being persecuted under the orders of dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Charlie Chaplin).  The barber just wants to live in peace but when stormtroopers attack and harass the washerwoman next door (Paulette Goddard), he steps in to defend her.  

You absolutely could double feature this with Jojo Rabbit.  I know a lot of people have made parallels between them and they are very complementary.  Another, if slightly more off-beat, choice would be Iron Sky, which directly references Great Dictator.  Basically, any movie where fascists get what's coming to them would be a good match.  It has to be a comedy, though.  Don't go watching Schindler's List or Night and Fog after this.  If you watch the Great Dictator before, those movies will seem extra depressing.  And if you watch it after, it will feel too cynical.  So be judicious.  

Also, if you're like me, you have inextricably linked Charlie Chaplin and silent films.  This is not a silent film.  That threw me a little more than it probably should have.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

The Mask (1994)

   I haven't watched The Mask in at least 15 years, probably longer but fuck it, it was on Hulu.  

Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) is a low-level flunky at a bank, desperate for love but without a prayer, when he finds an old wooden mask.  Putting the mask on turns him into a living cartoon character, freeing him from his anxieties and allowing him to pursue his dreams of being liked, the center of attention, and wooing club bombshell Tina Carlyle (Cameron Diaz).  Unfortunately, the mask's antics garner attention from cops in Detective Kellaway (Peter Riegert) to ambitious mob lieutenant Dorian Tyrell (Peter Greene).  Everyone wants the mask and Stanley is caught in the middle of the chaos.

I'm surprised how well this held up.  It was a huge hit for Jim Carrey and remains one of his most iconic performances.  I swear, every dude in junior high absorbed this as their whole personality for the entire year when it came out.  Just relentlessly parroted back every catch phrase.  So if you decide to show this to your pre-teens, know that you will hear "S-S-S-SMOKIN'" for the next 8-10 months or until you kill them.

Currently streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime.

Harriet (2019)

Happy Labor Day!     It took me a couple of days to get through this movie.  It's not necessarily a "hard watch" like 12 Years a Slave; it's more that the beginning is a little rough.  

Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) was born a slave to the Brodess plantation.  Her mother (Vanessa Bell Calloway) was supposed to be freed on the death of a previous owner, making Harriet and all other issue free as well, but the current owner, Eliza Brodess (Jennifer Nettles), is sinking into poverty and refuses to honor the law.  With no other recourse and facing a sale to another owner further south, Harriet escapes and makes her way alone to the free city of Philadelphia and Mr. William Still (Leslie Odom, Jr.), an abolitionist and conductor of the Underground Railroad.  Still gets Harriet a paying job and place to stay but she cannot enjoy freedom while her family is still enslaved and suffering.  She risks everything to make the journey once again to free those she loves.

The movie covers the basic facts that I remember from high school but verges almost into hagiographic territory in telling them.  Tubman did suffer from fainting spells caused by a head injury inflicted by an overseer but I do not remember hearing that she ascribed them to the voice of God.  The film basically makes her clairvoyant, which --and I realize that as a white person, this opinion is less than worthless-- is a little insulting.  Like, it takes away from Harriet Tubman, strategist and navigator, and gives all her ability to an outside force.  Honestly, though, it shouldn't have taken this long to get a fucking biopic of Harriet Tubman, no matter if they made her a prophet or one of the freakin' X-Men.  There should have been at least one of these a year for the last 25 years.  Then we could debate different approaches, different portrayals.  So I can't really knock this.  I will say that Joe Alwyn got way too much fucking screen time, though.

Harriet is currently streaming on HBO Max or with the HBO add-on on Amazon.

The Peanuts Movie (2015)

   I thought I had already posted this.  I swear, this house is eating my brain.

Charlie Brown (Noah Schnapp) desperately wants to impress the Little Red-Haired Girl (Francesca Capaldi) who moved in across the street but nothing he does goes right.  An attempt to impress at the talent show is nixed when he has to step in after his little sister's (Mariel Sheets) act flops, his honor won't allow him to take credit after a mixup with standardized testing mistakenly names him the smartest boy in school, and even painstakingly learned dance steps can't counteract the unfortunate clumsiness that plagues him.  How can he prove he is worthy of her notice when he can't even fly a kite?

There is nothing particularly novel about the story.  It feels like a greatest hits remix of every TV special and cartoon, populated with all the familiar characters doing all the familiar things.  That's actually a mark in its favor, believe it or not.  Why fuck with perfection?  Who is clamoring for a dark, gritty Charlie Brown?  No one.  Just enjoy the soft, 3D-like animation and let your mind relax for a couple of hours.  

Currently streaming on Disney+.