Welcome back gang. This was a really weird week for me. I started it out with the intent to watch some forgotten movies by icons. And I did on Sunday, getting through two of them. But then Monday, cinema suffered a huge loss with Wes Cravens passing. So since then I’ve been going through his work, mainly stuff I haven’t seen but some that I have (that’s when my girlfriend is with me). And while I haven’t gotten some great stuff from him in this run, it’s been interesting. I’m gonna continue this into the next week, which is gonna land me into some absolutely awful territory with him but a reputed high. So, we shall see. You can read a more in depth piece about the man by me here. Give that a read than give this a read. Or vice versa. Or not. Whatever man.
Lolita (August 30th, 2015)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: James Mason, Sue Lyon, Shelley Winters, and Peter Sellers
Well my complicated relationship with Kubrick hits a new low with this flick that I finally got around to. And this is not coming from me being a big fan of the book and disliking it as an adaptation. No, this is me just not liking it as a movie. Pretty much on all levels did I not like this movie. Aside from Peter Sellers’ performance and the visuals, this movie just didn’t work for me. The movie was either made in the wrong time or just shouldn’t have been made at all, because it just fundamentally fumbles the story that it’s trying to tell. This movie is so prudish about the story you wouldn’t even know sex is thing that happens in this world, let alone the fact that the sex involved is attempted than consummated pedophiliac sex. Yeah, the age of the titular child is never really mentioned. Like, at all. I may never have read the book but I knew the basics of the story and I honestly thought the character was a senior in high school. The movie has to dance around the subject completely and Kubrick can’t compensate so the story is just fumbled in a big way. And like I said, Sellers is really the only bright spot in this movie. He gives the picture a semblance of a pulse when he shows up and his presence is sorely missed in the large chunks of this aggressively long movie he isn’t in. James Mason just doesn’t feel right at all, coming off more like a bumbling character from a screwball comedy than the sick twisted fuck he actually is. And Lolita is just portrayed as a manipulative, self absorbed and greedy little bitch. It does everything it can to make Mason more sympathetic than he really should be. This is the first movie in Kubricks proper filmography that is a complete misfire, and he even agreed. If you are a Kubrick completist and have exhausted his other feature lengths, go ahead. Otherwise, stay the hell away.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, John Heard, and Teri Garr
The 80s was a weird period for Scorsese. He didn’t make bad movies or anything, but it took him a while to make a big splash after Raging Bull. The King of Comedy kinda disappeared immediately after it’s release, although it’s rightly found an audience later. And this movie too just didn’t connect in any meaningful way. That one two punch made him have to go and make The Color of Money as a career saver. And having now seen the movie, I can see why the audience didn’t show up. It’s a weird little movie with no real plot and a off kilter sense of humor. It’s pitch fucking black and does it’s own weird thing, sending this complete beta male computer worker (Dunne) into this late night NYC rabbit hole of a wonderland esque tale. Suicide and S&M and cat burglars and lynch mobs and just bizarre shit. So, it isn’t commercial and doesn’t have the dumb ass audience crutch of violence to keep it popular. But as a film, Scorsese doing his version of a Lynchian odyssey, it works. The cast is good and the situations are cool and build up to a natural insanity within the world of the story. And it has Cheech and Chong, so how could it be bad? It isn’t the best thing he’s ever done nor does it even top the best of the 80s. It isn’t for everyone but Scorsese has earned enough clout to give this a shot.
Rating: 8/10
Deadly Blessing (September 2nd, 2015)
Director: Wes Craven
Starring: Maren Jensen, Susan Buckner, Sharon Stone, and Ernest Borgnine
Oh the ending of this movie just doesn’t work. The movie was going at a nice little pace, doing solid if unremarkable work as a decent little horror movie. It had a nice tone and a decent story going with some good character interactions and dynamics that kinda goes off the rails before further going off the rails. We got a little religious sect in a little farming town run by Ernest Borgnine. They’re like the Amish on crack. Maren Jensen married his oldest son, therefore disowning him from the family. But when people start being attacked around the two households, tensions arise. But it’s not a real hellraiser of a movie. Tensions are kept low key and it’s actually interesting to see these sorts of characters in this kind of movie. And Wes manages to wring some tension out of some scenes. But then the ending just goes so far over the edge of ridiculous that it almost ruins the movie. There’s just two reveals that absolutely don’t fit with the tone of the rest of the movie and are kinda thrown out haphazardly. As a director this is a pretty good step up for Wes as we can see his maturity behind the camera compared to Last House and Hills. But fuck, the ending just reeks of a tacked on ending for a twist sake. Well, the second bad twist I mean. The first one I can kinda understand in a way but it’s still wild and out of nowhere. I’m glad I’ve seen the movie and I’m kinda anxious to listen to his commentary for this flick. He’s usually pretty candid on this things without being a bridge burner, so I’m intrigued. Fans of Wes should be pleased overall, but it doesn’t hit amazing heights before the loony ending brings it down a bit. Overall though I liked it.
Rating: 8/10
Vampire In Brooklyn (September 3rd, 2015)
Director: Wes Craven
Director: Wes Craven
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Angela Bassett, Allen Payne, and John Witherspoon
Not even Wes could manage to rattle something out of Eddie Murphy in that string of terrible movies in the early 90s. You can’t really blame him when the man who directed two Eddie classics, John Landis, couldn’t escape the blackhole that his ego became when they did Beverly Hills Cop 3. But I will say, Vampire In Brooklyn isn’t an absolute abortion like some of the stuff he did in the 21st Century. It feels like a first draft that had some good ideas that just got rushed out, which it kinda did since Eddie only did it to get The Nutty Professor made. The story is very much the Dracula tale of looking for his destined love but told with a Black twist to it, with pretty much all black characters and a Caribbean backstory and the kind of humor you can tell is in the same ballpark as Coming To America, but again first draft-ized. It’s actually filmed pretty well by Wes, his maturity behind the camera still growing. And it was released in between New Nightmare and Scream, and you can see his prowess grow in just those 3 only. New Nightmare and Scream are leagues better, but the technical skill is there. I got some chuckles out of the movie and I liked the twists on the Dracula mythos, but it isn’t great. It’s got moments and it’s a nice change for Wes, even if it’s got violence throughout. So I can’t completely recommend it for those that aren’t Wes completists.
Rating: 7/10
Music Of The Heart (September 5th, 2015)
Director: Wes Craven
Starring: Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Gloria Estefan, and Aidan Quinn
Wes wanted to do something totally different when he made this. And not different the way Vampire In Brooklyn was different. It may have been a comedy but it still had horror and violence in it. This was so far outside of his established work that you would be right to be surprised he did this if you didn’t know going in. It’s one of those movies we got in the 90s about some regular teacher going into the ghetto to parse out some learnings to the youngins of the hood. And it really doesn’t do anything different than those. That’s the biggest surprise in this, that Wes decided to parlay Scream 3 into the making of an aggressively regular movie. He does it well enough to fit into the genre, but it’s a bit disappointing since he’s always gone big with his stuff. But then again, he wanted a change and his biggest challenge was to fit in and he did. It’s a decent movie but it never rises above average.
Rating: 7/10
Top Movies
1. After Hours
2. Deadly Blessing
3. Music Of The Heart
4. Vampire In Brooklyn
5. Lolita
- Tom Lorenzo
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