Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

I think I just realized that these Tolkien adaptations are the film and TV equivalent of giant essays on two sentences by Heraclitus.

 

A revival showing of "The Thin Man" at the Reading Cinemas in Manville, NJ. "Retired" private eye Nick Charles is asked to look into the disappearance of an old client, which leads to him investigating a very twisty murder case. The first in the series, and the only one with the properly-identified "thin man", it's a highly-enjoyable, and very funny, mystery. William Powell and Myrna Loy have excellent chemistry as Nick & Nora Charles, with semi-faithful dog Asta providing great comic relief. The mystery is also done well, thanks to a witty and intelligent script, which gets away with jokes and plot elements that would never have been possible after the Production Code went into effect. There's also fine cinematography from James Wong Howe, as well as some good montages. And, yes, it is, indeed, a Christmas movie.
In addition to the commercials, they only ran three trailers: "The Fire Inside" (based-on-fact struggling boxer movie, except the lead is an African-American woman), "A Complete Unknown" (the Dylan biopic), and "Mufasa: The Lion King" (Disney CGI prequel, and I wonder if they'll give Scar the Anakin treatment).

 

Tonight, at the same multiplex, my nephew Donny saw one of their surprise movie showings, where you don't know what it is until it starts. It turned out to be "The Fire Inside". As he put it in Facebook, "It was well acted and the story was okay, but pretty forgettable unfortunately."

 

Floating Weeds. Yasujiro Ozu’s remake of A Story of Floating Weeds is remarkably straight-on, with the addition of color and sound, and a bit of comedy with the supporting actors’ attempts to chase women, but a script that seems to be very much the same. Yet the film does feel even richer emotionally, with more small nuances, and a hair more emphasis on lead actor Ganjiro Nakamura’s struggle for his son’s respect. Ozu has only continued to increase his mastery of sympathy and emotional warmth, and it comes out in a visually and emotionally beautiful film that shows a deep love for the flawed characters who are clumsily seeking their best lives. Ozu has taken a great film and made it even greater.

 

Deadwood (2019).



A fun conclusion (if nowhere near the heights of the show proper at its best) but the complete abandonment of even the thin pretense of hewing towards history took some adjusting to - and also led me to expect a few plot twists that just straight-up never happened. Still, this alternate universe presents a scenario that is true to the characters of the historical fiction of Deadwood, so it’s clear Milch and any uncredited assistants still had a good handle on everything.

Though, coming fresh off the show, I could’ve done with fewer clips of the show, which were seemingly inserted constantly for fear I had forgotten something. Twin Peaks: The Return this wasn’t.

 

RED ONE (2024)

Who knows, maybe the generally mildly-to-very negative reviews set my expectations low, but I had a fun time with it. Sure, the Rock is playing the Rock. And no, there's nothing mind-blowing or profound here. That being said, it was a good time, and I think CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL nailed it, it's a mix of a Christmas movie and a super hero movie. It had some entertaining fun action sequences (that actually showed some creativity -- I really liked how Chris Evans' character relies on his quick wits and quick reflexes to improvise ways to use the environment to his advantage, and the Rock's size-changing powers were often better realized as a fighting technique than was shown with Ant-Man). and some of the creatures were very entertaining (menacing snow men, a bipedal polar bear security operative, and a very entertaining Krampus!), and the trick of being able to turn toys into their practical counterparts was pretty clever (sure, it allows for product placement!). It had a good heart, moved along pretty briskly, and was some good, fun light-hearted holiday entertainment.

 

The Prince and the Pauper. Mark Twain’s story is adapted into a fun little all-ages adventure with a role for prime-era Errol Flynn. I expected to enjoy it, but it’s better than I expected a child-actor-driven thirties picture to be.

Actual twins Billy and Bobby Mauch play the Prince of Wales and his beggar-boy lookalike. When they encounter each other and make friends, they switch clothes, and the prince gets kicked out by mistake. Henry VIII then dies, and unscrupulous nobleman Claude Rains figures out the situation and uses it to blackmail the imposter prince into appointing him regent. Meanwhile, the real Edward VI experiences a life of poverty and crime, but is protected by kindly and dashing soldier Flynn.

The boy actors are pretty good, the plot makes good use of its political intrigue, and there are strong villain performances from Rains and Alan Hale as his henchman. Flynn is at the peak of his powers, but his role isn’t exaggerated to overwhelm the movie. It’s just a well-put-together and charming movie, with a lot of appeal.

 

Smile (2022) – Parker Finn

I remember not really registering much about the initial trailer for Smile. It seemed like a pretty generic, Blumhouse-style horror movie. Maybe part of it was because Blumhouse actually did their own “creepy smile” movie a few years ago, Truth or Dare. But the trailer for Smile just kind of had that look, you know? The kind of sleek, generic look that signals a movie that might not be terrible, but certainly isn’t going to be particularly good. It just screams “middle of the road” to me. So, it was surprising to me when the movie started to roll out and I started to hear that it was better than expected. I decided to go see it and I’m so glad I did.

Smile turned out to truly be one of the best surprises in a long time, a genuinely fun horror movie that was also surprisingly dark and even emotionally heavy at times. Writer-director Parker Finn makes this a movie about trauma and the way trauma is self-perpetuating as well as a movie about super-creepy smiling people. Is this the most insightful movie about trauma you’re ever going to see? Of course not, but it’s better than it has any real right to be for a couple of reasons. I’m glad that Finn decided to go this route with the script, of course, because it adds a little needed depth. I also can’t praise Sosie Bacon enough for her performance in the lead role as the haunted Rose Cotter (great horror character name, by the way). She brings real weight to the movie and with a weaker performance in that central role, the movie wouldn’t have worked as well. The script has plenty of tropes (not that this is entirely a problem for me) and the story beats are very familiar. But Bacon’s performance is one that I couldn’t look away from and she kept the movie grounded and serious in all the right ways.

The movie is also extremely entertaining, however, and genuinely scary, even terrifying at times. I certainly don’t want to make it seem like Smile is some sort of super-intellectual, ultra-harrowing exploration of trauma in the way Hereditary was an exploration of grief or whatever. Smile is a good time for the horror fan. Caitlin Stasey isn’t in the movie very much, but she steals every scene she’s in by virtue of being the most convincingly psychopathic smiler. It is, by the way, the right decision to leave the smiling up to the actors and not tweak things with CGI or filters in the way Truth or Dare did. It makes the movie just feel less cheesy. But, of course, some people are better at creepy smiling than others and so I do have to give a shout out to Stasey who I found to be extremely unsettling. The movie also has the best jump scare I’ve seen since the original Conjuring’s “hide & clap” sequence, which is like ten years old now, believe it or not. It involves Rose listening to a recording on her laptop and the scene as a whole is a great example of what Parker Finn is able to do with the movie in general: he sets up an obvious jump scare and then just cranks the tension tighter and tighter until, even though you knew it was coming, it scares the **** out of you when it hits.

Do I have high hopes for Smile 2? Well, kind of. It has the potential to do a lot of things wrong and, as good as the script for Smile is, so much of it does depend on that central performance from Bacon who will, of course, be absent for this sequel. But writer-director Finn is back which is a good sign. End of the day, I’m super glad that I got to see Smile in a theater with a decent sized crowd that was ready to be scared; that’s going to be the best way to see Smile 2 as well, I’m sure, so I’ll definitely check it out in theaters. Regardless of where the sequel goes, however, I’m content calling the first movie a masterpiece that pulls off both superficial thrills and deeper disturbances to perfection. 4 stars.

tl;dr – Sosie Bacon’s fantastic lead performance and Parker Finn’s surprisingly thoughtful script help anchor a movie that also delivers superficial thrills; way better than I was expecting. 4 stars.

 

Dive Bomber. This looks and feels like a wartime film celebrating our military’s pioneering advances and professional excellence, but it was actually made and released just before Pearl Harbor. It’s just one of the trend of films in that period that found the military an exciting dramatic subject.

Its hero is Errol Flynn, playing a Navy doctor who becomes a flight surgeon researching the problem of pilots losing consciousness in high-G dives. He butts heads with gruff pilot Fred MacMurray, and there’s a very underdeveloped romantic rivalry over Alexis Smith.

It’s all fairly conventional stuff about bold innovators making discoveries and heroic pilots taking risks. But it’s executed well enough, if not with distinction, and Michael Curtiz makes sure to keep the energy up. The real appeal is the color flight footage of naval aircraft (with their lovely, colorful prewar paintjobs). It’s nothing all that special otherwise, but it’s pretty decent.