Shivers (1975)

  If they showed this move in high school Sex Ed, teen pregnancy and STIs would drop to zero.  

An unethical scientist (Fred Doederlein) uses his teenage lover (Cathy Graham) as a guinea pig to breed a parasite that turns people into sex maniacs.  He murders her but the damage is done and the parasite spreads through all the residents of an isolated luxury apartment building, despite the best efforts of the resident doctor (Paul Hampton).

Okay, so this movie is gross on so many levels.  

Level 1:  Intentionally.  Cronenberg has made an entire oeuvre of body horror and this is no exception.  Lumps swell under skin, slithering around inside the bodies before a hand-sized leech is expelled in bloody vomit.  It's nasty but acceptable.  

Level 2:  Disease horror.  This is not the movie to watch in the middle of an actual pandemic.  I just wanted to scream at all of these people for not washing their goddamn hands or wearing even the barest bit of PPE.  These are supposed to be doctors and a nurse for God's sake.  Again, though.  Horror movie.

Level 3:  Sexually.  Everybody gets raped.  Everybody.  It's A. Lot.  There's a ton of gratuitous nudity.  It's the 70s.  Okay.  But not a single woman in the film owns a bra?  Also, yikes.  

Level 4:  Violence against women in particular and some smattering of racism.  Did I mention all the raping?  Plus, the main character pointedly ignores the only Black female being assaulted in front of him to waste three bullets on a guy who had already committed murder.  

Level 5:  Implied pedophilia.  The gross dude who engineered the parasite is casually mentioned to have started a "relationship" with the girl he murders when she is twelve.  This goes unremarked upon for the rest of the film.  There is a scene in an elevator where a parasite-ridden waiter attacks a woman standing with her prepubescent daughter.  It cuts away but the implication is strong, bolstered by a later scene where the elevator opens and the waiter and child are sharing some gross, strawberry jam-filled pastry over the disheveled body of her mother.  Critical high level of nope there.

In terms of sheer audacity of violence and gore, it rivals The Last House on the Left, Hellraiser, and any place exploitation crosses with horror.  It's not a fun watch.  I found it kind of a slog, if I'm honest, but I can see its influence in other, later films which is worthwhile.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel or for free on Tubi.

Big Eyes (2014)

  In a lot of ways, this is a perfect distillation of a Tim Burton film:  slightly creepy but whimsical, a washed out blonde lead, plastic suburbia, and a focus on the fake 50s nuclear family, but without the crutches of Johnny Depp, Danny DeVito, and Helena Bonham Carter.

Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) became a household name in the early 60s art scene for her painting of sad children with oversized eyes.  She painted hundreds and sold millions of dollars worth of original art as well as licensed reproductions in posters and postcards.  But no one knew because all the credit was taken by her husband Walter (Christoph Waltz), a brash, charming salesman.  It took a court case for the truth to out.

I've never liked the kitsch movement but Margaret Keane should be rightfully hailed as an icon, if only for the courage to insist on taking credit for her efforts in a time where good married ladies did not.  The movie is strong on portraying this and it does an admirable job.  Adams has always been good at vulnerability while Waltz has made quite a career out of cheerfully menacing characters.  He had to walk a particularly fine line to bring out the absurdity of Walter Keane while not detracting from his bullying.  

It's not a movie I'd throw into regular rotation.  It's a little too cynical to put next to Big Fish or Edward Scissorhands, but it's not bad.  Currently streaming for free on Tubi.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

  You guys, I'm so bad at Mondays.  And there was a holiday in the middle of the week, even.  I still could not get this post out.  Hopefully, it will just be an extra one today.

A pair of neighbors in 1960s Hong Kong, Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung), discover that their respective spouses are having an affair so they decide to have one as well.  What begins as a therapeutic revenge quickly grows into actual feelings and thus, a dilemma.

This film launched Wong Kar-Wai into international acclaim and it's easy to see why.  It's a visual feast, even if I felt some of the shots to be jarring.  I also dislike jazz and that seems to be the comparison everyone makes to this film, so your mileage may vary.  It's worth it for the costumes alone but also the desperately restrained longing between Cheung and Leung is just *chef's kiss*.  I hate romantic dramas with a passion (ha!) and I liked this film.  People who enjoy that sort of thing are going to be over the moon.  It's currently streaming on Criterion, HBO Max, and Kanopy.

Harriet the Spy (1996)

  This must have been one of those films you had to be in the moment for.  I can't imagine anyone choosing to watch it now.

Harriet (Michelle Trachtenberg) is an 11-year-old dreaming of becoming a writer.  Her nanny (Rosie O'Donnell) told her to write down all her observations in a notebook but when a bully exposes Harriet's unvarnished opinions, even her closest friends won't stand by her.

This was a major success for Nickelodeon's venture into motion pictures.  I fucking hated it though.  The main plot doesn't start until fifty minutes into the 100 minute runtime.  There are multiple subplots concerning the people Harriet spies on which are never explored, just given a pat answer at the end.  And Harriet is an unlikeable character.  She's a total brat who, when faced with the consequences of her own cruelty, doesn't apologize but doubles down on enacting vengeance on the people who are mad at her.  It's basically Mean Girls: Middle School without the wit, humor, or introspection.  But it is streaming on Tubi if you maybe have nostalgia or something.

Duck Soup (1933)

  This is not my favorite Marx Bros movie but it is still considered a classic comedy.  Its IMDb trivia page is wild, by the way.

Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) is named head of Freedonia after a wealthy widow named Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont) refuses to loan the government any more of her money unless it is so.  Meanwhile, Ambassador Trentino (Louis Calhern) plots to woo Mrs. Teasdale for her money and hires spies Chicolini (Chico Marx) and Pinky (Harpo Marx) to dig up dirt on Firefly.  This is the only part of the plot that makes any sense.  Everything else is just an excuse for the Marx Brothers to be the Marx Brothers.

Part of the problem of being an innovator is that if you don't see the original first, it looks derivative because of all the imitations it spawned.  This movie was made in 1933 and a lot of the gags were completely novel.  But watching it for the first time in 2020, it seems very old hat.  The dialogue is still super crisp and witty but the physical comedy just wasn't doing it for me and the musical number slides into minstrel-esque.  Not a good look but a product of its time.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Saving Face (2004)

  Okay, so this was supposed to be Beasts of No Nation but I really wasn't in the mood to watch child soldiers.  Turns out I was also not in the mood for systemic racism even if it is wrapped up in a cutesy love story, so no Hundred-Foot Journey either.  Where did that leave me, other than two days behind schedule?  Back at Saving Face (the other one)!

Wilhelmina (Michelle Krusiec) is a promising doctor and dutiful Chinese daughter.  When her mother (Joan Chen) is alienated by her own father (Jin Wang) for getting pregnant out of wedlock, Wil dutifully takes her in, even as she struggles to balance work and a burgeoning relationship with her boss's daughter, Vivian (Lynn Chen), a ballerina under her own familial strains.  Ma refuses to say who the baby's father is, enduring date after date in order to find a husband to return her to her family's good graces.  Wil is terrified of coming out to her mother but also of losing Vivian.  

This is a great indie film, both from an LGBTQ standpoint and an immigrant/diaspora narrative.  Queer rom-coms are still pretty thin on the ground and they especially were in 2004.  The story beats are very trope-y but there is value in having gay relationships normalized.  It was obviously a deeply personal story for writer/director Alice Wu and her cultural nuances are integral to making the story feel lived in.  If you swooned for Crazy Rich Asians but wanted it gayer, this is the movie for you.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

3-Iron (2004)

  This poster is gorgeous.  Unfortunately, I didn't like the movie all that much.

A young man (Hee Jae) breaks into people's houses while they are away.  He doesn't steal, just uses their shelter and facilities, maybe eats some food, and repairs small things around the house.  All harmless until he breaks into Ming-yu's (Hyuk-ho Kwon) house and discovers the man's battered wife, Sun-hwa (Seung-Yun Lee).  They run away together but the law is on Ming-yu's side and the young man is imprisoned.  Can the lovers find their way back to one another?

I don't like romantic dramas and I didn't know that's what this was going in.  It's not terrible, as these things go, but it's really not something I enjoyed.  The two main characters have one line of dialogue between them the entire movie and I found many of their choices bizarre.  Also, the whole "breaking into people's houses and sitting around until they come home" thing gave me anxiety.  It's currently streaming for free on Tubi.

The Missing Picture (2013)

  This was supposed to go up yesterday but I only got through 2/3 of it before I had to do a bunch of other stuff.  Wish I could say it was worth the wait, but...

Rithy Panh was a child in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took over.  He chronicles his painful memories using hand-carved clay figures in astonishingly detailed dioramas supplemented by historical footage of the regime.  

I watched this on the Criterion Channel and I'm actually really annoyed about it.  There was no option for closed captioning or to watch in the original French with subtitles.  The English narrator (Jean-Baptiste Phou) has a very heavy accent and the film was extremely hard to hear.  It sucks because this was a really important story for this man to tell and treating the film like this is disrespectful.

Hope Springs (2012)

  I very nearly didn't get to this movie in time to review it.  I started The Fault in Our Stars, got to the cigarette metaphor, and facepalmed so hard I think I have a permanent dent in my forehead.  Rat Race started with the absolute lowest of stupid humor and I was just not in the mood for it.  And The Heartbreak Kid made me want to scream at my TV within 15 minutes.  I'm not a big Ben Stiller person to begin with and that character was so irritating.

So the answer to the question no one asked is yes, I would rather watch old people fucking than cancer kids or Ben Stiller.  I would give Rat Race another shot because the billionaires-getting-their-comeuppance angle might be enough to get past the sophomoric jokes.

Kay (Meryl Streep) is very unhappy with the state of her marriage to Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones).  After 31 years, they are stuck in a loveless, joyless rut and Kay has had it.  She books a week of intensive couples counseling in Maine, led by Doctor Bernard Feld (Steve Carrell), in a last-ditch effort to save their  relationship.

Seriously.  It's just an old Midwestern couple going through counseling.  There's no big reveals, no juicy twists, just two people who once loved each other trying to find their way back to it by listening to the other's needs and learning how to give a decent blow job.  Streep is absolutely invisible because she's Meryl fucking Streep and that's how acting works and Jones is basically playing the same character he's played for the last fifteen years but it works.  Carrell's character is played absolutely straight, no jokes, no sign that he is a comedian, though I imagine behind the scenes were hilarious given the dialogue he had to say.

It's currently streaming on Starz which I have through Amazon and is perfectly nice, perfectly bland, and has absolutely no Ben Stiller or Shailene Woodley whatsoever.

Annie (2014)

  This was supposed to be a review of Corpus Christi, a Polish drama, but I made it 30 minutes and was bored so I turned it off.  Then it was supposed to be a review of Ali but that's no longer on streaming (for free anyway) so that was also out.  Annie popped up while I was looking for Ali.  I didn't even know it was available because, as it turns out, it's extremely difficult to constantly manage the inventory of seven different streaming services.

Annie Bennett (Quvenzhané Wallis) is a foster kid in New York City waiting for her parents to come back.  She runs into billionaire mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) by accident while chasing after some boys trying to hurt a stray dog.  Stacks' campaign manager (Bobby Cannavale) realizes that Annie is a public relations goldmine and pushes Stacks to become her temporary guardian.

This is a modern update of a very old story and I was a little surprised they kept all the musical numbers from the 1982 film in addition to some new songs.  It didn't update as much as I thought it would though it is by nature a very simplistic story.  There were things I liked and things I didn't.

Pro:  Cannavale is very good as the smarmy point-obsessed campaign manager.  Having him do "Easy Street" was also a great idea.  

Con:  Cameron Diaz is a terrible Miss Hannigan.  She can't sing this part.  She is a great dancer and very funny but "Little Girls" was a trainwreck.  It's even more egregious because Tracie Thoms is Broadway trained, extremely versatile, and would have blown the doors off that role.  And she was relegated to less than five minutes of screen time as the Fake Mom.

Pro:  The original songs were good, especially the solo for Wallis, "Opportunity".

Con:  There are a number of loose plot holes especially at the end of the movie.  You really can't think about it too hard or the whole thing falls apart.  It brings up the concept of cell phones tracking our every move several times and then shows zero negative consequences.  I get that having Stacks face censure for monitoring the users of his cell phone network to track down a little girl is kind of a downer but don't bring it up if you're not going to see it through.  

Anyway, Annie is currently streaming on Tubi.

Saving Face (2012)

  Here's a funny story.  Way back in 2011/2012, I was trying to add all the Oscar nominees to my Netflix queue (as usual) and was having a bitch of a time finding the shorts (also as usual) so I added a film that had the same name from 2004.  Then eight years went by and I kind of forgot it was supposed to be a placeholder.  So I'm looking up the 2004 one (a POC LGBTQ rom-com) on Prime and right next to it is the Oscar short and suddenly I remember, "dang, I'm supposed to watch the one about women having acid thrown in their faces, not the one with a queer happily ever after."  And I did and that's the review you're getting today.  But here's my dilemma:  should I... a) toss the placeholder and move everything up a spot, b) keep the placeholder but drop it down to the bottom like it's a new movie, or c) leave it in place and just watch it next time I rotate through?

While you're debating, I'm going to talk about this short.

Every year, hundreds of women in Pakistan are victims of acid attacks.  Men, sometimes a husband, sometimes just a rejected prospect, throw caustic or flammable substances into the faces of girls as young as thirteen for the high crime of disappointing them.  The laws against such attacks are a joke and one woman, Zakia, is about to become a test case for enforcing a new Parliamentary edict calling for life imprisonment upon conviction.  Zakia was routinely abused by her husband and filed for divorce.  On the steps of the courthouse, her husband threw battery acid into her face causing extreme disfigurement and the loss of her left eye.  A Pakistani-born plastic surgeon with a thriving practice in London returns to Pakistan every year to provide reconstructive surgery pro bono to Zakia and the the hundreds of women like her.

Zakia is mostly the focus of the 41-minute film but several women are interviewed and their experiences are uniformly horrifying.  Fortunately, in the eight years since this film, new legislation and tougher restrictions on the sale of acid have cut down the numbers but the underlying causes of misogyny, poverty, and abuse still exist.

Currently streaming on HBO if you were feeling too good about the world and needed something to bring you back down.

Mirai (2018)

  I did not enjoy this movie and it's such a shame because the animation is stunning.  It just was not for me.

Kun (Moka Kamishiraishi) travels backwards and forwards in time to come to terms with the addition of little sister Mirai.

Mirai is gorgeously animated and really thoughtful about the meaning of family and how expectations can change.  Parents and people much closer to their families (or who wish they were) will probably be very moved by this film, which is streaming on Netflix right now.  It also has the option to watch in the original Japanese or the English dub but it defaults to the dub so check before you're disappointed.

I have an extremely low tolerance for children crying and I don't mean it fills me with empathy.  I leap straight to irrational anger.  There are children I like but I don't have any of my own for a reason.  So in that respect, I found this movie incredibly annoying.  It just ruined the experience for me.  But that is obviously a very specific take and there's no real reason to assume you won't like it, unless you have the exact same reaction.  Give it a shot.

The Mod Squad (1999)

  Happy Dia de los Muertos!   Hope everyone had a safe, socially distant Halloween.  We are now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

A three-person squad of former criminals is tasked with undercover missions infiltrating clubs and other "cool" places cops can't go under the supervision of Detective Greer (Dennis Farina).  When Greer is murdered, the three must investigate his death and the connect theft of drugs from evidence lockup.

This was not a great movie when it came out and it has not improved over time.  It feels decidedly unfinished, like it was held back from achieving its full potential but whether that is a writing mistake, a studio mistake, or a directing mistake is hard to tell.  The plot is very basic, the characters one-dimensional, and as much as it wishes it had some, there's no style.  It's just 90s cliches spouting 60s cliches and hoping that counts as character development.  If it were funny maybe it could get a nod into the so-bad-it's-good bin but it's not.  Giovanni Ribisi is just annoyingly slapstick and the running joke about the car being damaged lands flatter than an Acme anvil.  Also, this has one of the worst romantic subplots I've ever seen.  But hey Josh Brolin!  

It's available on Amazon Prime and Tubi but why?

In happier news, I finally finished season 2 of Once Upon a Time.  It was kind of a slog in the back half.  I also decided to give the NBC streaming service, Peacock, a try.  The test case will be Battlestar Galactica. I am currently about halfway through season 2 of that.  It's a show I never got to finish while it was on so I'm looking forward to catching up a little.