MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2025

Horror movies were the MVPs in 2025, and as a lifelong ride-or-die fan of the genre I say, “Thank you!” I mean, a year that brings us Sinners, Weapons, 28 Years Later, Bring Her Back, The Monkey, Presence, Good Boy, Final Destination: Bloodlines (nope, didn’t have that one on my Killer Bingo card), Companion, Dangerous Animals and Together is a memorable one! And I still haven’t yet seen The Ugly Stepsister, It Ends, Best Wishes to All, Heart Eyes, 40 Acres, and The Long Walk.

**Good Boy is a really cool haunted house movie told from the perspective of a Retriever named Indy. And he is a good boy!**

Not all horror movies worked for me, though. I was really bummed that Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein just never came to life. Del Toro is a director whose work I’ve adored in the past, and the story of Frankenstein is one I’ve loved since before I even hit double digits in age. But this version just laid there … dead. It was the biggest movie disappointment for me in 2025. As far as I’m concerned, Boris Karloff remains THE Frankenstein Monster of record, 95 years and countless adaptations later.

**The Monster may have been brought back to life, but Frankenstein the movie is dead on arrival.**

A ubig srprise, however, was director Bryan Fuller’s feature debut Dust Bunny, an action-horror-comedy-fairy-tale of a family movie that’s been unfairly slapped with an R-rating. Let your kids see the damn thing, they’ll be better for it. The whimsicality and heightened visuals are just what you’d expect from the mind behind television’s Pushing Daisies and Hannibal, and Sigourney Weaver facing off in stiletto heel gun shoes against hitmen, FBI agents and one really hungry monster is one of my favorite movie moments this year.

***Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley gets a wardrobe glow-up in Dust Bunny.***

I did, sadly, feel let down by comedy movies this year. I mean, if ever there was a time we could’ve all used a hearty laugh it was 2025 (just hold your fucking beer a moment, 2026). The awkward straight male bonding movie Friendship bored the crap out of me, and I laughed just twice watching remake/reboot/sequel The Naked Gun. (And yes, I know you all loved it, so I’ll take the rap. But … really?!) Splitsville was pretty good, some really funny scenes, but the movie does labor its run time.

I saw a lot of documentaries, and some of them make my Honorable Mention list:

Devo is as entertaining, weird and visually engaging as the Akron, Ohio new wave band it highlights.

The Perfect Neighbor, told mainly through police bodycam and doorbell camera footage, recounts a distressingly tragic tale of a neighborhood bully, race, class, violence, the inequity of Florida “stand your ground” laws, and the inability of our 911 systems to provide conflict and dispute resolution.

In 2003 eight artists created a secret apartment in a new Providence, R.I. shopping mall, living and working in the space for four years before being caught. Through real-time video footage, the documentary Secret Mall Apartment explores the conception and construction of the living space and the birth of an artistic community which still flourishes 20 years later.

I Know Catherine, the Log Lady is not a trailblazing documentary, but it is an honest, emotional and very intimate look at the life and career of actress Catherine Coulson, particularly her last weeks in 2015 as she faces death and prepares to film her scenes for director David Lynch’s long-awaited third season of Twin Peaks. I bawled.

“Welcome to Twin Peaks. My name is Margaret Lanterman. I live in Twin Peaks. I am known as the Log Lady. There is a story behind that. There are many stories in Twin Peaks — some of them are sad, some funny. Some of them are stories of madness, of violence. Some are ordinary. Yet they all have about them a sense of mystery — the mystery of life. Sometimes, the mystery of death.”

Predators is an insightful look into the television and podcast phenom To Catch a Predator and the vigilante movement that has followed in its wake.

My Honorable Mention list also includes:

28 Years Later, a second sequel to a 23-year-old dystopian horror movie (28 Days Later) that is more an epic coming-of-age tale than it is a zombie flick, a surprisingly emotional (and not-so-surprisingly brutal) journey that avoids franchise brain rot;

Superman, a welcome return to the Man of Steel’s roots. Less Zack Snyder moping and angst, more DC Comics kindness, compassion and hope — three values that have been mocked and targeted these days;

We were blessed with two movies from Dazed and Confused and Before Sunrise director Richard Linklater this year. I’m a sucker for movies about movies, and Nouvelle Vague beautifully reenacts the making of the revolutionary 1960 French movie Breathless. The result is a movie that looks as if it indeed was also made in 1960.

*“Quand on parlait, je parlais de moi et toi de toi, alors que t’aurais dû parler de moi et moi de toi.”*

Linklater also directed Blue Moon, one night in the life of Lorenz Hart, half of the legendary Rodgers and Hart songwriting team. On this pivotal night in 1943, the musical Oklahoma! premieres on a Broadway stage and Hart realizes he has been replaced by Oscar Hammerstein. I expect Ethan Hawke will get an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Hart.

Predator: Badlands. Who knew the Predator series still had some zing … and that it could be so much fun … and with a PG rating! One of two delightful performances by actress Elle Fanning this year.

The worst movie I saw? Easy: The Lost Bus, with Matthew McConaughey. Another true-life story given the Lifetime Network treatment: drained of anything that seems either true or real, armed with a sledgehammer to drive all of its points home, with wooden dialogue that threatens to feed the flames surrounding the titular bus and its clichés-with-legs passengers. A chore to sit through. Directed by Peter Greengrass, who has done much, much, much better work, like United 93 and Captain Phillips.

And now, in ascending order, my favorite movies of 2025:

10. SENTIMENTAL VALUE

This family drama spoke to me, moved me, touched me in a very personal way. Grace, understanding, and forgiveness are often hardest to extend to one’s own family. Sentimental Value introduces us to characters with messy, full-blooded histories and emotions, traumas that have been looked past, resentments which have festered, regrets that have calcified. The acting is terrific: Stellan Skarsgård as a legendary film director, charming, narcissistic, burying his own childhood trauma; Renate Reinsve as his daughter Nora, a stage actress struggling with depression and intimacy issues; and Elle Fanning (again!) as a Hollywood movie star who comes between father and daughter professionally and personally. Can these characters relate to each other, either in real life or through their art? A relatable journey for anyone with complex family issues.

9. SORRY, BABY

“*I’m sorry that bad things are going to happen to you. I hope they don’t. If I can ever stop something from being bad, let me know. But, sometimes, bad stuff just happens.”*

Continuing the theme of trauma recovery, Sorry, Baby writer-director Eva Victor portrays Agnes, a New England college professor who has been grappling with depression in the aftermath of a sexual assault, her personal and professional lives seemingly grounded in apathy. This may sound like grim fare, but the movie, often surprisingly funny, refuses to lock Agnes in victimhood. She copes with a dark sense of humor as she watches the world — her friends, her co-workers — move on around her. Sorry, Baby is a character study, tracing the progression of Agnes’ recovery over a period of five years. Her actions might sometimes confound you as they do her acquaintances, but that’s the thing about trauma. She often surprises (and frustrates) herself. The symptoms of the trauma can be upsetting: fury, despair, humiliation, and confusion arise without warning, but there is genuine joy in Agnes’ recovery strides, both small and large. One scene in Sorry, Baby is among my favorite movie moments of 2025: Agnes pulls her car into a parking lot as a panic attack completely overwhelms her. She meets a concerned stranger there who offers her a sandwich and an ear and more compassion, more kindness, more hope than anyone else has in five years. It’s an extraordinary scene in its simplicity (hat tip to the always dependable John Carroll Lynch).

8. BLACK BAG

*“When you can lie about everything, when you can deny everything, how do you tell the truth about anything?”*

Like Richard Linklater, director Steven Soderbergh has been a busy guy, with two movies in 2025. The haunted house drama Presence hit cinemas in January, and Black Bag in March. Presence is good entertainment, but Black Bag is the perfect spy movie as far as I’m concerned. Tight at just 90 minutes, sexy, polished, droll, intelligent, suspenseful, playful. The supporting cast is delightful but make no mistake: this movie is hot thanks to the seductive pairing of Cate Blanchette and Michael Fassbender. These two long-married spies are accused of “flagrant monogamy,” yet could possibly be fucking each other over professionally. The fun is in the hunt. A spy vs. spy gem.

7. WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

*“Daniel in the lion’s den. David facing off Goliath. Young, dumb and full of Christ. Ready for anything.”*

I’m a sucker for whodunnit mysteries, have been since my youth in the 1970s, movies like The Last of Sheila, Sleuth, Murder on the Orient Express, Murder by Death and Death on the Nile. And 50 years later I still seek them out. I liked the first two Knives Out movies well enough. They weren’t great movies but entertaining enough, so I wasn’t expecting much of the third in the series, Wake Up Dead Man. Surprise! I head-over-heels loved the movie. It is by far the best of the three, funnier and twistier, and sincerely makes me hope director Rian Johnson is planning a fourth. Daniel Craig returns, Foghorn Leghorn accent intact, as “the world’s greatest detective” (his words) to investigate another “impossible murder.” But in a successful switcheroo, Blanc plays second fiddle this time around, only showing up almost 40 minutes into the movie. The MVP this time? British actor Josh O’Connor (younger Prince Charles in The Crown) as newly arrived priest Father Jud Duplenticy. Within weeks of his arrival he is investigating a murder in which he is the prime suspect, a possible witness, and a potential victim. Wake Up Dead Man makes great use of the Catholic Church background, finding the humor and danger in the disconnect between the younger priest’s idealistic faith and his pastor’s inflexible traditionalism. And while the detective values reason over religion, the movie itself never mocks faith and theology. In one memorable scene, Father Jud counsels a woman over the phone for hours while the detective impatiently sighs in another room. The scene adds nothing to the investigation of the murder but is essential in revealing who this priest is and how his relationship with the detective evolves. It’s a beautiful thing. And I must give kudos where they are due. I’ve been very critical of Glenn Close for several years (harshly, perhaps, but justifiably), but she is terrific in Wake Up Dead Man as the rectory housekeeper who, like every other character in the movie, knows more than she’s saying. The biggest laughs here — and I laughed out loud several times — are courtesy of Close. She and Craig and O’Connor and the movie are sublime. And I never would’ve believed I’d shed a tear or two during a Knives Out movie. Rian Johnson has outdone himself. Don’t listen to the haters.

6. IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT

An Iranian car mechanic abducts a man he suspects is the regime goon who tortured him years ago. He spends a long, crazy 24 hours in a van with his hostage and a group of fellow torture victims, intent on extracting an admittance of guilt and meting out some sort of retribution. But a confession and a concession on what punishment or vengeance looks like are near impossible to attain. The events of the day get stranger and the passengers waver in their certainty the captive is actually the man they all feared. It Was Just an Accident has the classic structure of a comedy, and it is often funny. But there is an increasing sense of dread as the characters tussle with each other and their own consciences over what to do with their hostage, and after a day of absurdities the final 20 minutes of this moral dilemma are so riveting, so emotionally ravaging, I’ve not been able to let it go for two weeks. The very final scene is another of my favorite movie moments of 2025, an overwhelming reminder that for these survivors there is never really “closure,” only a sound, a smell, a memory that will return without warning at any time to haunt them forever.

An important note on the production of this movie: Jafar Panahi, the director of It Was Just an Accident, has been arrested several times by Iranian forces and sentenced to serve six years in prison, his movies censored and banned as “anti-Islamic Republic propaganda.” He is banned from making films in Iran for 20 years. Despite this ban, Panahi surreptitiously filmed It Was Just an Accident on the streets of Tehran and in the desert outside the city. Some of the women characters aren’t wearing hijabs, which is required by law in Iran.

5. PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF

My favorite documentary this year is Pee-Wee as Himself, a story of two clashes. Director Matt Wolf and his subject, actor Paul Reubens, fought for creative control. Wolf didn’t want to lose control of his movie, and Reubens didn’t want to lose control of his own story. And Reubens’ fame as his global phenomenon alter ego Pee-wee Herman clashed with his determination to remain anonymous, to conceal his homosexuality from the world. Even now, decades after Pee-Wee’s heyday, Reubens found it difficult to have honest on-camera interviews with Wolf, often guarded, sometimes evasive, responding with sarcasm or diversion. Saying the words “I am gay” on camera is clearly difficult for him. Paul Reubens died from cancer before production was completed. Amazingly, the resulting documentary is a wondrous thing, a meaningful, joyful warts-and-all appreciation of a truly original American artist and his subversive and obviously inclusive (sorry not sorry, MAGA) creation, Pee-Wee Herman. A keeper.

4. THE SECRET AGENT

*“Brazil, 1977. A time of great mischief.”*

My favorite movie in 2024, the #1 on that list, was I’m Still Here, the true story of a family who, for 45 years, searched for answers in the disappearance and murder of their husband and father by the Brazilian military regime. A year later, I’ve just watched The Secret Agent, set also in the 1970s Brazil, during the 21-year military dictatorship. This is not a spy thriller. The title subverts the fanciful fiction of secret agents and asks what the secrets are, who the agents are. Wagner Moura (Pablo Escobar in Narcos) is a Brazilian university professor who ends up in hiding after resisting political and corporate corruption. He hides “in plain sight” at a safe house for fugitives in the city of Recife, where he also works under an assumed name at the city administration building. As he prepares to flee Brazil with his young son, hired killers arrive to kill him. Meanwhile, a dead man rots for days in a gas station parking lot for days under the hot sun, ignored by all but hungry dogs. And a shark lies on a slab with a human leg protruding from its belly. And a crooked police chief wants that leg now. And the movies Jaws (of course) and The Omen are all the rage at the local cinema. And in that same theater, someone brazenly pulls an Alanis Morrisette — but no biggie, happens every day. There’s also a scarred Holocaust survivor, but local gossip insists he’s a fugitive Nazi officer (RIP, Udo Kier!) And a sloppy gunman bungles his job in a most spectacular way. All of these ideas would come across much differently if The Secret Agent were indeed a secret agent movie. But here, the absurdities pale in comparison to the absurdities of life under a dictatorship. And in a stunning parallel to life in the US today, government-led conspiracy theories and lies keep the public occupied and entertained while malfeasance and “mischief” goes unchecked around them. In fact, I’m fairly sure director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who was born and raised under that military dictatorship, is reminding us that the traumas of years past never really completely heal, and we must continue to resist the threat of repression and authoritarianism.

3. SINNERS

*“See, white folks, they like the blues just fine. They just don’t like the people who make it.”*

I think by now we’ve all seen Sinners (and if you haven’t, well, your loss, schmuck), and what a glorious treat it is! The movie is classified a horror movie, and yes, there’s a lot of that. It’s also an exploration of Black history and culture and a celebration of Black music. The movie also confronts racism, bigotry, and the Jim Crow South. But most important, this movie is ALIVE. It’s alive with the Delta blues. It’s alive with the spirit of 1970s blaxploitation movies. It’s alive with stellar supporting role performances by actors who should be better known — Miles Caton, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller. It’s alive in my #1 favorite movie moment of the year: Sammie the Preacher Boy and his guitar in front of a crowd for the first time, a blues song which gradually intensifies and transforms the juke joint dance floor into an electrifying decades-spanning rave-up of Black music past, present and future. Tribal drums, gospel, blues, jazz, hip hop, rock and roll. This 5-minute scene is a cinematic orgasm in IMAX, and I’m forever thankful that’s the format I saw the movie in. I knew immediately I had just seen the best movie sequence of the year, if not the past five. Director Ryan Coogler had a vision … it is enthralling to live in that vision for two-and-a-half hours!

Note: I’ve struggled with placing Nos. 1 and 2. I go back and forth between the next two movies. This is my tenuous decision today. Tomorrow it’ll likely be different. I’ll reconsider in a year or two.

2. WEAPONS

*“Every other class had all their kids, but Mrs. Gandy’s room was totally empty.”*

Without doubt, the most fun I had at the cinema in 2025 was Weapons, and it is also the funniest movie I saw in 2025. Kudos to the movie’s marketing team for creating a restrained promotional campaign that inspired dread and a sense of mystery. The trailers intrigued and excited me without telling me much. Unlike most other movies today, on first viewing Weapons is full of surprises. There is nothing predictable here. If you haven’t seen it yet, you probably don’t like horror movies, and there’s not much I can tell you to convince you to see it. There are surely scary moments, and some bloody moments, definitely a few WTF moments!, and the movie is powered by a strong sense of dread. But Weapons is also very funny. The biggest laughs I’ve had in a theater in 2025 were in this movie’s last half hour. I mean big, hearty belly laughs, and to share that with an audience responding the same way — movie heaven. I will say I saw the movie with friends who are not horror movie fans, and they loved the movie. I won’t discuss what it’s about here. That’s for viewers to discover themselves. Take a chance, check it out. Weapons is one for the ages. We’ll be talking about it for years and years.

1. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

*“I can’t do her hair, man. You know that? I don’t know how to do her hair right.”*

In my book, a new movie from director Paul Thomas Anderson is AN EVENT. I mean, this is the guy who gave us Boogie Nights … Magnolia … Punch-Drunk Love … There Will Be Blood … The Master … Phantom Thread … Licorice Pizza. And true to form, One Battle After Another is an experience, a zany comedy about serious business. Zany comedy, you ask? Yes! I think of it as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Revolution. For more than half the movie’s 3-hour run time, a very befuddled (read: stoned) Leonardo DiCaprio runs around in a bathrobe. Benicio Del Toro is a karate teacher with “a little Latino Harriet Tubman situation going on at my place. All legit.” Sean Penn is a far-Right racist with a hard-on for Black chicks, an Army colonel who demands respect and authority and attains neither. And everyone crosses paths with a White supremacist group of wealthy politicians and billionaires called the Christmas Adventurers Club who proclaim, “Hail Saint Nick!” This is a PT Anderson flick, so you can expect incredible cinematography (visually breathtaking in IMAX) and some memorable set pieces, including a few car chases that have already become legendary. At the heart of the madcap madness is a strained but loving relationship between a father and daughter. An early scene between DiCaprio’s ex-revolutionary stoner dad and his daughter’s high school teacher bolsters this: what starts for laughs as an awkwardly unbalanced conversation about American history education becomes suddenly poignant when DiCaprio breaks down in tears over his daughter’s accomplishments. I didn’t realize until my second watch that this is a profound scene and the key to what the movie is actually about. Right wing media made a fuss about One Battle After Another back in September, wringing their hands over “fears” the movie would incite Leftist violence and woke-woke-something-something. Don’t listen to them. They don’t like Sesame Street either and they are not serious people. One Battle After Another is an energetic, exhilarating, entertaining satire of America today. I love it.

MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2020

When most of the world shut down in 2020, that included my favorite sanctuary, the movie theater. And with cinemas closed, production companies pushed their scheduled releases to later in the year or into 2021. Some big Hollywood studios got nervous in the dog days of summer as it became clear relief was not on the horizon, and first-run movies, small and large, suddenly began appearing on streaming platforms like Netflix, HBO Max and Amazon Prime. As we move into the new year with great hopes and expectations, many movies we were anticipating before COVID changed the rules still sit waiting to be released (Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, Scott Cooper’s Antlers, the new 007, Dune). If I recall correctly, I saw only eight new movies in cinemas during 2020: 1917, Harriet, Birds of Prey, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Invisible Man, Emma and Tenet. I do realize that is still more than many of my friends see in theaters in a normal year, but it’s a fraction of the 25-30 I see outside the home annually. I’m very fortunate that two friends, also founding members of my Saturday Night Cinema Crew group, were determined to continue our weekend movie get-togethers. They built a movie theater in their backyard and we spent our Saturday nights watching a haphazardly curated collection of old movies, new movies, B-movies, foreign films, classics, trash, and anything else that struck our fancy. These outdoor screenings saved my mental and emotional well-being. So, while 2020 was almost a complete wash for many aspects of life for all of us, there were some good movies — even some great ones — that were released. We just had to find them. Of course, no year is complete without the stinkeroos, and 2020 saved its own surprise case of cinematic COVID for the last weeks of the year, infecting us all over the holidays with a cruddy case of sequelitis. Yes, I’m talking about the wretched Wonder Woman 1984, and enough said about that. Let’s talk about the movies I loved this year, in ascending order …

8. THE VAST OF NIGHT

*“… and found only on a frequency caught between logic and myth.”*

What I said in May: “… a throwback to The Twilight Zone of the late ’50s, early ’60s. No big stars, no budget, no real action scenes, not many special effects. But in its minimalism, The Vast of Space is riveting, eerie and gosh-darn charming, with an exhilarating visual style and a sound design that will creep you out. Weird noises on phone calls and radio frequencies lead a radio dj and a switchboard operator to suspect something unearthly is disturbing their small New Mexico desert town.”

7. MARONA’S FANTASTIC TALE

Marona’s Fantastic Tale (orig. L’extraordinaire Voyage de Marona), by far the best animated film this year, is a French story about a dog’s life, told in flashbacks from the dog’s memory as she lies dying after an accident. We accompany her as she is adopted, lost, rescued, abandoned, rescued again, from family to family, and bestowed with four names through her life — Nine, Ana, Sara and Marona. It’s a warm story about human nature as seen from a dog’s perspective: “For dogs, happiness is different than it is for humans,” she says. “We want things to stay exactly the same. But humans always want what they don’t have. They call it dreaming. I call it not knowing how to be happy.” What puts this Fantastic Tale a dog’s year ahead of other animated films is the imaginative and diverse animation techniques and styles used, almost as a collage, in telling the story. Each chapter of the dog’s life has its own artistic style and color scheme, which gives her adventures and misadventures with different humans unique tones. The animation pulls us into the dog’s experiences, wraps us up in loving arms, elevates us, spins us, exhilarates us, heightening Marona’s joy in being loved, protected and sheltered. But it also brings us to some very dark places as well, in her abandonment, loss and grief. Marona’s Fantastic Tale is a beautiful homage to man’s best friend, a loving reminder to give your critter another hug.

6. COLLECTIVE

*“When the press bows down to the authorities, the authorities will mistreat the citizens.”*

In 2015, a fire raged through the Bucharest nightclub Colectiv during a concert, a deadly inferno almost exactly like the one that ravaged the Station nightclub in Rhode Island in 2003. The Colectiv fire claimed 26 lives that night and injured 146. However, 38 of the injured died in Romanian hospitals in the weeks and months after, many from treatable but unchecked bacterial infections caused by unsanitized hospital conditions. The Romanian documentary Collective (orig. Colectiv) is not about the fire or victims or the survivors. It is about the long-established governmental corruption which led to the utter mismanagement of the country’s entire health care and hospital system, and the ferocious and frustrating battle journalists wage against uncaring politicians and bureaucrats to get the truth. Journalists today are maligned the world over, but I work with reporters every day, and I find them mostly to be hardworking professionals who are doing a public service. Collective underscores that ideal of public service. The Romanian journalists investigating the health care corruption are lied to, threatened, scorned by one unfit leader after the next as “enemies of the people” (where’ve we heard all this before?), but they press on, resorting to the age-old tricks of the trade — collaboration, days-long car stakeouts, months of research (which includes sifting through the most mundane public records and documents), and cultivating sources. And the more they press, the worse the revelations get, a seemingly bottomless pit of political rot. There are no “talking head” interviews in this documentary. The filmmakers were given extraordinary access, and the corrupt individuals do not fail them. Lies, distractions, distortions, contempt, and utter apathy for lives of citizens are all captured by the camera. Collective is great journalism about great journalism.

5. THE INVISIBLE MAN

A few years ago, executives at Universal Pictures thought it would be a great idea to emulate the Marvel Cinematic Universe model, a series of interconnected stories — shared characters, situations, themes — that build upon each other movie by movie. Of course, Universal wanted to bring their stable of classic monsters to their so-called “Universal’s Dark Universe,” including Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Bride, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. To push the Dark Universe in motion, the studio brushed the cobwebs off the 1932 Boris Karloff classic The Mummy and handed it to … Tom Cruise?The Dark Universe promptly disappeared into the black hole of that ill-conceived movie’s ridiculous mess. Instead, the studio offered the opportunity for filmmakers to rethink those classic monsters and create stand-alone features. Lucky for us, director Leigh Whannell is first up with a modern-day approach to Universal’s The Invisible Man, swapping bubbling potions and gauze bandages with quantum technology and a full-body optical suit. Add in a timely gaslighting #metoo storyline, and this upgraded Invisible Man becomes an intense, intelligent thriller. Actor Elisabeth Moss, a self-professed longtime horror movie fan, is terrific as a victim of domestic abuse, the “invisible crime” — it’s a metaphor that works brilliantly here. A smart move, changing the story’s perspective from the Invisible Man in the 1933 original to that of an “invisible” woman in this smart and entertaining remake. With stand-alone remakes of The Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein in various stages of preproduction, there might yet be life in Universal’s Dark Universe.

4. CRIP CAMP

“Would you like to see handicapped people depicted as people?”
“Excuse me?”

My favorite documentary of 2020 is Netflix’s Crip Camp. In 1971, a group of disabled teenagers attend a free-spirited rural New York summer camp “run by hippies.” It’s an enlightening and empowering experience for these youngsters, many of whom had not, until that trip, met another handicapped person. For the first time in most of their lives, the campers were able to participate in activities they had been excluded from: swimming, baseball, dances — even dating and kissing (and more!). As they experience opportunities most of us take for granted, the campers are inspired to become politically active. “At Camp Jened we were able to envision a world that didn’t have to be set up in a way that excluded us,” one camper remembers. “We started to have a common vision and were beginning to talk about things like, ‘Why are buses not accessible?'” This awakening leads several of the campers to become leaders in the disabled activism movement, taking on cities, states and the federal government — memorably President Richard Nixon’s veto of the Rehabilitation Act of 1972. Incredibly, many of these audacious and persistent rebels find themselves in the front line of the battle to get the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 passed. This documentary is as unpretentious, adventurous and tenacious as its subjects. It’s boisterous rather than sentimental, joyful rather than didactic. Crip Camp is a keeper.

3. DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA

“Maybe you wonder where you are
I don’t care
Here is where time is on our side
Take you there, take you there”

In March 2018, David Byrne, former lead singer of the band Talking Heads, released the album American Utopia, a melodic collection that swings, in true Byrne fashion, from anxiety to optimism — often in the same song. A month later I saw Byrne’s American Utopia tour in San Diego, a dazzlingly buoyant and euphoric concert of motion and sound, one of the best live music experiences I’ve ever had. In December 2019 I saw Byrne’s American Utopia reinvented on a Broadway stage. It was an emotional experience — joy, tears, rapture — the audience rarely sat. Director Spike Lee captures all of this and more in his filmed version of Byrne’s stage show, while also injecting just the right amount of Lee’s own trademark style and personality. A great match. I enjoyed this truly American experience just as much the third time.

2. SPONTANEOUS

*“I’m just trying to say that we’re so glad you’re okay. And that your classmates are just regular assholes and not evil.”*

I have to thank Matt Rotman at the great horror and exploitation movie site Bonkers Ass Cinema for bringing Spontaneous to my attention at the very end of the year. In fact, Spontaneous is the very last movie I saw in 2020, as the clock neared midnight on New’s Year Eve. It made the top of Matt’s year end list and came pretty close to swiping my #1 spot. And it was the perfect movie to watch as we ushered 2020 out the door. The movie is based on a 2016 novel and was filmed before the COVID pandemic, but the parallels between the story and our own life-altering reality are uncanny. When teenagers literally and inexplicably start exploding (yes, like POP!), students at a suburban high school are confronted with an inept government response, quarantine, conspiracy theories, conflicting medical advice, and an ever increasing number of dead classmates. Sure sounds like a topical drama, but Spontaneous is something else — a teen romance? A high school comedy? A sci-fi/horror movie (“It was like a Cronenberg movie,” one student marvels after a classmate “pops”)? At times, Spontaneous is each of those things, sometimes all of those things at once. Lead actors Katherine Langford and Charlie Plummer have chemistry to spare as Mara and Dylan, who fall in love as the community around them goes to hell. The story is Mara’s, and her personal journey from cynical, shallow teen to empathetic, attentive young adult is compelling, thanks to a helluva performance from Langford, who you might know from 13 Reasons Why or Knives Out. Take a chance on this one. It’s probably the funniest movie I’ve seen this year, as well as the most affecting and surprising. Spontaneous is a bloody good time.

1. POSSESSOR

Possessor is the one movie this year that completely took me away from my environment, made me forget for nearly two hours the messy state of the world and my own living room isolation. It’s that good. But most of my friends will likely stay far, far away from this movie, and with a few exceptions, that’s okay, because Possessor is a brutal, incredibly violent, pitch-black, nihilistic, bleak, unsettling, visceral nightmare of a film. If you’re still with me, well … great!, because Possessor is also crazy entertaining, unpredictable, fascinating, unique and mesmerizing. And extra points for Jennifer Jason Leigh, always a welcome presence for me, in a casually amoral key role. Tasya Vos, portrayed by Andrea Riseborough, is a corporate assassin who can take control of another person’s body by way of a microchip implanted in their brain. The “vessels” are carefully chosen for their proximity or access to targets, and when the kill is complete, Vos returns to her own body by making the vessel commit “suicide” … and posthumously get the blame, of course. All’s well for the assassin, her employers and their clients … until a lucrative job goes horribly awry. The latest vessel might not be completely under the control of the assassin, and a routine hit spirals into a chaotic bloodbath. Did I tell you Possessor is violent? Yes, it is, and that violence goes to extremes many movies wouldn’t dare. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, lightweights. But Possessor is a suspenseful, thought-provoking piece of fiction that has quite a bit to say about our lives, our dependency on technology, and the manipulation of that technology by increasingly parasitic corporate entities. This is director Brandon Cronenberg’s second full-length movie. His name might sound familiar — his dad is veteran filmmaker David Cronenberg (who gets a funny shout out in my #2 movie, Spontaneous), the guy who made The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly, Dead Ringers and Existenz. Dad’s obsession with body horror has obviously been passed on to junior, but Brandon doesn’t mimic David’s classics; he has his own style and his own vision. I’m very excited to see what he creates next. He’s set quite a bar with Possessor, a movie that’s going to be remembered and talked about for a long, long time.

MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2014

The following list is from the movies I saw in 2014. Some of the recent films I’ve been patiently waiting to see — INHERENT VICE, SELMA, A MOST DANGEROUS YEAR, STILL ALICE, MAPS TO THE STARS — hadn’t been released in San Diego by year’s end. Others — INTO THE WOODS, BIG EYES — you can’t make me suffer through because you’re not paying me. INTERSTELLAR is not on my list because it was the year’s biggest disappointment to me, a big flatulent misfire from a director whose work I’ve enjoyed previously. Other movies were good, but didn’t grab me like the 10 I’ve listed; the second tier would include SNOWPIERCER, THE IMITATION GAME, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, BIRDMAN, THE BABADOOK, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING and FORCE MAJEURE. One movie I saw had great performances from Steve Carell and Mark Ruffalo, but as disturbing and sad as FOXCATCHER is, the pacing felt ponderous and strained. So here they are, O’Rourke’s Class of 2014:

(1) NIGHTCRAWLER

Dan Gilroy’s NIGHTCRAWLER came as a surprise to me. I hadn’t heard of it before release, didn’t know much about the story when I saw it, and truly had no idea where the narrative would lead once the movie began. We’ve all known Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the better actors of his generation — BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ZODIAC, PRISONERS — and here he creates a grotesque, narcissistic slimeball whose quick climb to success parallels his descent into soulless depravity. His character is the ghastly brother to Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle from TAXI DRIVER and Rupert Pupkin from THE KING OF COMEDY. But there’s a bigger monster here: the news media, a corporation so desperately driven by ratings and dollars that it’s lost the meaning of news and shame. Sure, a repugnant story about repulsive characters, but NIGHTCRAWLER is thoroughly entertaining, exciting and funny, LA film noir at its finest.

(2) WHIPLASH

Intense, intense, intense! This movie is a brutal battle of wills between an aspiring jazz drummer and his tyrannical band instructor. Probably the bloodiest movie I’ve seen all year. Loved every minute.

(3) BOYHOOD

A gimmick? No, a commitment. BOYHOOD was filmed over 12 years, with actors returning to the set annually to film scenes depicting moments in the lives of one family. Nothing really happens … except life. The movie focuses on the childhood of the young son; no kidding, we watch him grow from a youngster to a young man in a few hours. But the movie might actually be about his parents, portrayed by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke. These 12 years are mapped on their faces by film’s end.

(4) GONE GIRL

I loved the book and was very relieved to hear David Fincher would direct the movie. He done good. GONE GIRL is a thrilling adaptation, even for the millions of readers who already know the answers to the book’s riddles. Ben Affleck is perfect as the charming and shallow husband, flailing in a miserable economy and desperate to improve his lot, and Rosamund Pike is a revelation as “Amazing Amy,” the wife we meet in flashbacks from her diary, a frightening and alternately sad and funny log of a marriage gone horribly awry.

(5) LIFE ITSELF

We thought we knew Roger Ebert, the argumentative film critic sitting across the cinema aisle from his television partner and rival Gene Siskel for 25 years. Turns out we hardly knew him at all. An old-school newspaper man, Ebert’s first loves were movies, booze, and deadlines; then, in 1992 at age 50, he met the true love of his life, attorney Chaz Hammelsmith, who would marry him and become his lifeline and inspiration during his 10-year battle with cancer. This documentary details in loving and often painful detail his love affair with the movies and with Chaz, and his refusal to “be quiet” when he loses his voice permanently in 2007. A great, great documentary.

(6) THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Wes Anderson creates movies that are delightful, whimsical, odd, stylized, visually artificial, funny and implacably poker-faced. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is all of those things, and a subtle sense of melancholy floats through the movie’s fictional history. Anderson’s core acting troupe — Tilda Swinton, Ed Norton, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel, Owen Wilson, etc. — appear in the madness, but lead actor Ralph Fiennes is a comic wonder as legendary hotel concierge M. Gustave. This movie is a keeper.

(7) PRIDE

This one’s a real crowd-pleaser, and the good will PRIDE earns from audiences is well-deserved. Sure, an age-old story: Two disparate groups learn to overcome their dislike or distrust for each other, find they’re not so different after all, and win a critically important fight. It’s a true story, but this British import avoids the cloying Hollywood sainthood bullshit that mars many docudramas. During the devastating British mine workers strike in 1984, a group of gay and lesbian activists began raising money and awareness to support families in Wales, a community not known for its support of gay issues. The alliance is an uneasy one at the start. I wore a big smile through most of the movie (even as the occasional tear rolled down the cheek). The cast is a big reason for the film’s success — from the young newcomers to seasoned vets like Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Paddy Considine. And yes, there is Detective Jimmy McNulty from THE WIRE, Dominic West, as an unrepentantly flamboyant and peroxided gay man. The movie received a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. The audience was almost as appreciative the night I saw it.

(8) THE EDGE OF TOMORROW

Don’t fall over, but yes, a Tom Cruise movie has made my year end favorite list. And no apologies, either! THE EDGE OF TOMORROW (a bad title that I hear has been changed to LIVE DIE REPEAT for the dvd release) is a thrilling, fun action adventure movie …the best action movie I saw this summer, better even in my book than GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (go ahead, take your shots at me, I do not care!). And Tom Cruise even actually acts in it! Now, to be fair, Cruise does solid work when he’s challenged, and here he plays completely against the “Tom Cruise” type. His character is a military public relations officer (hey!) who has so far managed to avoid any combat duty against the Mimics, an alien race that has invaded Earth and is pretty much winning the war. When his lucky streak runs out and he ends up on the front lines, he’s dead within minutes. But not so fast. He wakes up the day before … and ends up right back where he was, again and again … and again. Can he start learning from his mistakes and change an outcome that looks worse than bleak? A hell of a lot of fun.

(9) THE NORMAL HEART

Wait! An HBO cable movie on my list? Is that cheating? No! THE NORMAL HEART is definitely one of my favorite movies from 2014. That says a lot, because my expectations were depressingly low for this. I’d seen the Broadway play a few years ago, loved it (though “loved” is a strange word to use for an experience that felt like having my gut ripped open and my heart pulled out). I was excited to hear HBO was tackling the difficult adaptation … until I heard that GLEE and AMERICAN HORROR STORY creator Ryan Murphy was directing. I have serious problems with Murphy as a writer and a director. His work is typically messy, sloppy, undisciplined and distracted. The stage production of THE NORMAL HEART is a focused, articulate and anguished scream of rage. Murphy’s scattershot style on his television series seemed a misguided match. But he proved me wrong. Larry Kramer’s fury is as loud and clear as ever coming from the talented lead actor Mark Ruffalo, and if anything, the human tragedy — the demoralizing and devastating loss of a generation of young men to AIDS, either ignored or mocked by an uncomfortable society — is more vivid onscreen than it was on stage. Great cast, superb adaptation, heartrending experience. You WILL notice, you WILL be angry, you WILL cry. And you WILL NOT forget.

(10) UNDER THE SKIN

UNDER THE SKIN, a strange movie — is it science fiction? is it drama? is it a thriller? — is also a difficult experience. I get that. The lead actress is Scarlett Johansson, but this is no Hollywood blockbuster. There are alien beings, but this isn’t Michael Bay territory. What little dialogue there is is difficult to hear, and when you do hear it, the thick Scottish brogue is hard to decipher. This is intentional. I understand this is a tough sell in today’s movie market, but I can only say that no movie in 2014 stayed with me, teased my brain, got under my skin, HAUNTED me like this one. What’s the story? Simply, Scarlett Johansson’s character is an alien being, newly arrived here. She drives the streets of Glasgow picking up strangers and “repurposing” them. Johansson’s performance is probably the best of her career. What does it mean to be human? Do we learn to be human? How do we learn right from wrong? Do we learn to feel? The movie is not told from our perspective, but through the eyes of Johansson’s alien. That is why the dialogue is difficult to understand and the streets seem frighteningly unfamiliar. But something begins to happen to this character; watch how the atmosphere, the environment, the relationships begin to change .. and compare that to what begins to happen to Johansson’s face. I totally understand and appreciate that a lot of my friends will hate this movie. It’s a traditional fish-out-of-water story told in a very untraditional manner, and answers aren’t explained in last reel conversations. This is a mood piece, a unique experience that asks YOU to be the alien for a bit, the stranger looking at the unfamiliar and wondering what your place in this world is.

1 Comment

IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU AND YOUR CRAZY TWIN SISTER

“It was all a ridiculous mistake. There was no body.”

Okay, if you’re still looking for the right movie to get you in the mood for Halloween, here’s an old favorite of mine from director Brian De Palma. You know his later movies: CARRIE, DRESSED TO KILL, BLOW OUT, SCARFACE, BODY DOUBLE, THE UNTOUCHABLES, MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE. He also directed THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, which I recommended a few days ago. SISTERS is one of his early films, a loving homage to Hitchcock psycho-thrillers. It’s wicked, sharp, suspenseful, funny, and, like the best of the De Palma thrillers, delicious enough for multiple screenings. De Palma is crafting his wonderful style here — inventive camera set-ups; split screen storytelling; murder and mirth in equal measures; women who are more compelling than the men; and a pointedly funny ending.

SISTERS boasts two fantastic performances: Margot Kidder as a formerly conjoined (“Siamese”) twin, and Jennifer Salt as a witness to a murder nobody else believes has occurred. And perhaps most importantly, the movie is enhanced by a frightening music score from Bernard Herrmann, the maestro behind Hitchcock’s classics. (And look for Olympia Dukakis in a very small, early role!)

SISTERS is a class act!

<br

2 Comments

IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU RISES FROM THE GRAVE

With only three days before Halloween, we’re getting down to the year’s final scary movie recommendations. Still looking for the right film to keep you company while the little ones are terrorizing the neighborhood? Here’s a chiller from 2009, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, a nifty little throwback to the horror movies of the late 1970s and early ’80s.

College student Samantha needs some extra money for the rent, so she takes a job babysitting an ailing old woman in, of course, an old, dark house. Bad idea? No. TERRIBLE idea.

Director Ti West shot in 16mm film to give the movie a ’70s vibe, and it works. If you’d stumbled across the movie while scanning channels on your TV, you might wonder how you’d missed it three decades ago.

Babysitters. Mysterious couple. Old woman locked away upstairs. Big dark house. “One Thing Leads to Another” from The Fixx playing on a Walkman. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Seen it all before!” But the filmmakers and the cast have taken quite a bit of care to create a genuinely scary movie, one that uses the clichés and devices of post-Watergate horror movies to actually be a better horror movie than most from that period … or any time since.

3 Comments

NIGHT OF IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU

Every Halloween season I watch THE OTHER, a favorite among forgotten or unsung horror films. This is one of those movies near impossible to talk about without spoiling some secrets, and THE OTHER is all about secrets. I can safely tell you the movie takes place in 1935 New England, and concerns one summer in the life of the Perry family, particularly the twin boys Niles and Holland. Underneath the pastoral landscape of the town, lies and secrets fester … and suspicious deaths occur fairly regularly. Director Robert Mulligan also filmed TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and THE OTHER can be read as the dark reverse of MOCKINGBIRD’s deeply felt nostalgia. Under the hot summer sun, behind the barns and bales of hay, down in the apple cellar, something is very, very wrong.

1 Comment

IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU, PART 2

Today’s Halloween movie recommendation is a quieter brand of horror, a black-and-white supernatural and psychological thriller based on Henry James’ classic 1898 ghost story THE TURN OF THE SCREW. But before you yawn and write it off as potentially dull, there are some diabolic currents running through the 1961 adaptation THE INNOCENTS. No surprise, Truman Capote wrote the screenplay from the novel. This movie will creep up on you, wrap its cold arms around you like the chilliest mist, and you’ll find yourself thinking about it again days later. There were things you couldn’t talk about in polite society in 1898 — or even 1961, for that matter — but those things are here, just out of sight, registered in the expressions of the adult and children characters … deadly questions that are never completely asked.

10 THINGS I LOVE FROM THE MOVIES, PART 5

This is a regular list of random things that have fueled my love affair with cinema over the years.

I LOVE the “Mr. Creosote” sketch in MONTY PYTHON’S THE MEANING OF LIFE. The movie’s a collection of hit-or-miss skits, not my favorite from the British comedy troupe (can never decide if that would be THE HOLY GRAIL or THE LIFE OF BRIAN) … but this skit is comic genius. Thoroughly disgusting and, in true Python fashion, preposterous and hilarious. Terry Jones (Creosote), John Cleese (maître d’) and Eric Idle (waiter) are wildly funny together.

I LOVE the evocative black-and-white photography by Robert Surtees in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. The movie, directed in 1971 by Peter Bogdanovich from the novel by Larry McMurtry, is a coming-of-age tale set in a dying Texas town in the 1950s. Bogdanovich reportedly wanted the movie to look as if it were actually shot in the ’50s, and Surtees’ cinematography also evokes the bleak, aimless, dead-end lives of the residents of a dried-up town in Northwest Texas. Powerful imagery.

I LOVE Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as punk rocker Sid Vicious and his foul-mouthed muse Nancy Spungen, perhaps the most damaged and doomed romantic couple that ever hooked up, in the 1986 biopic SID AND NANCY. I can’t think of two people in rock and roll lore I’d least like to have spent a few hours with in a room — Sid an inveterate junkie with an infantile lack of restraint and Nancy a shrill, obnoxious Yank always spoiling for a fight. If you don’t know how the true love story between the Sex Pistols’ bass player and his Philadelphia girlfriend ends, the movie was originally titled LOVE KILLS. From all accounts, the real Sid and Nancy were impossible to tolerate, but I’ll be damned if their tragic story, directed by Alex Cox, isn’t eventually affecting. That’s thanks to the two actors, Oldman and Webb, both at the beginning of their careers. Funny, exasperating, defiant, loud and never apologetic, they bring Sid and Nancy back to life for a few hours … you’ll want to kill them several times yourself, but you’ll also, against all reason and odds, have a hell of a good time with them

.

I LOVE the super-exciting car chases in Quentin Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF, one half of GRINDHOUSE, his tribute to the sleazy, cheap exploitation movies of the 1970s. Tarantino has claimed he feels DEATH PROOF is the worst movie he’s made, but I’m not buying it. QT staged a hell of a car chase here, a deadly battle between two movie stunt professionals, Kurt Russell as psychotic “Stuntman Mike” and Zoe Bell as, well, herself. They’re both badass, and so is the scene.

I LOVE Gary Jules’ melancholy remake of the Tears for Fears song “Mad World” over the haunting end of Richard Kelly’s 2001 brain twister DONNIE DARKO. I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had … I don’t know what inspired Kelly to write this trippy mind-fuck of a movie, but “Mad World” could certainly have been it. Went to school and I was very nervous, no one knew me, no one knew me … Curt Smith of Tears for Fears has said, “It’s very much a voyeur’s song. It’s looking out at a mad world from the eyes of a teenager.” Perfect description of the movie as well. And Gary Jules’ piano cover perfectly accompanies the DONNIE DARKO’s sad coda. Hello, teacher, tell me what’s my lesson?, look right through me, look right through me … Hits me every time.

… and the music video, created by Michel Gondry, director of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, fills my heart every time I watch it.

I LOVE Joan Cusack, one of the most entertaining and versatile character actresses of her generation. She may not have the traditional leading lady features of some of her peers, but Cusack has the talent to convincingly portray everything from misfits to mothers to murderers. Every movie she is in is certainly not great, but I insist that every movie she’s in is better because of her. Producers, find this woman more great roles!

SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984)

WORKING GIRL (1988)

ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1993)

GROSSE POINTE BLANK (1997)

IN & OUT (1997)

ARLINGTON ROAD (1999)

SCHOOL OF ROCK (2003)

FRIENDS WITH MONEY (2006)

TOY STORY 2 (1999) and TOY STORY 3 (2010)

I LOVE the score to the 1947 movie THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR by Bernard Herrmann. This is magnificent music, dramatic and emotional, a thrilling peak for the maestro responsible for some of the best movie music ever created. Herrmann’s work here is as tempestuous as the sea crashing against the rocks and cliffs of the English seaside town … and as intensely yearning as the impossible love between the ghost of a long-dead sea captain and the young widow who moves into his once quiet cottage.

I LOVE this insane trailer for a crappy little 1968 Japanese/U.S./Italian science fiction movie. (And for crazy trivia, the groovy theme briefly heard at the end of the trailer — Green Slime! Green Slime! Green Sliiiiiiiimmme! — is a snippet of the full song written by Charles Fox, the composer who wrote Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly”.)

The movie is more of the same, so … HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. And the poster is pretty damned wonderful also.

I LOVE the first Winkie’s Diner scene in David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE. This is a deeply unsettling and endlessly fascinating movie, one that on first viewing can seem stubbornly enigmatic, even meaningless. Open your eyes and your mind, drop your defenses, allow yourself to fall into Lynch’s vision. MULHOLLAND DRIVE is a disturbing and frequently funny descent into crushed dreams, disappointments, delusion and shame, the dark side of the fantasy of Hollywood fame and fortune. This is one of my favorite moments in the film, an odd and increasingly creepy scene that seems totally unconnected to the narrative that precedes it. Don’t be fooled … this quintessential Lynchian weirdness is actually working with the narrative, commenting on things that have happened … or will soon happen … or …! Watch how the camera moves while the two men talk in the restaurant. Note how objects very subtly disappear. Why does the camera linger on the pay phone for a second when the men leave the diner. Why does the frightened man react to the entrance sign? What happens in the two later scenes set at the same diner? This dread-laden clip contains many clues to help unlock the mysteries of the movie.

I LOVE this movie:

http://vimeo.com/73417097

It’s astonishing to remember CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was only Steven Spielberg’s second theatrical film, following JAWS by two years. He was barely 30 when he made it! This movie speaks directly to me because I grew up on a steady diet of Hitchcock thrillers, mid-century science fiction movies and the Disney animated classics … just like Spielberg did. And CE3K is a loving tribute to all three of those influences. Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST is all over the middle section of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, with Devil’s Tower subbing for Mount Rushmore. The song “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s PINOCCHIO floats through the movie, underlining Spielberg’s themes. And the excitement and mystery of visitors from other worlds fueled the plots of those Saturday afternoon science fiction repeats. But more than that, Spielberg’s epic made me believe in extraterrestrial life and made me believe in movies. I was 13 when my family saw CE3K at the cinema in 1977; I was dazzled, I was hooked. The term “jaw-dropping” has become a cliché, but I remember vividly the expressions of nearly everyone leaving the theatre that night — wide eyes, big smiles, one-word proclamations of “Wow!” And, like any classic movie, I’m still spellbound when I watch it, 37 years later. This is one of the movies that made me the movie fanatic I am.

2 Comments

10 THINGS I LOVE FROM THE MOVIES, PART 4

This is a regular list of random things that have fueled my love affair with cinema over the years.

I LOVE seeing my hometown in the movies. Although it’s been three-and-a-half decades since I left Philadelphia, I love the city from afar, and seeing it on the screen always triggers mixed emotions in me — nostalgia, a bit of pride, a love of family, fleeting homesickness, relief that I’m now over 2,000 miles away.

Whether it’s the gloomy blue-collar mid-1970s neighborhood that was Sylvester Stallone’s urban gym in ROCKY,

or the socially diverse human interest map of TRADING PLACES,

or the fantastically imagined near-future dystopia of Terry Gilliam’s 12 MONKEYS,

or the quiet but very menacing haunted row homes of M. Night Shyamalan’s THE SIXTH SENSE,

or the streets and sites, both mundane and grand, photographed so mysteriously and mythically in Shyamalan’s UNBREAKABLE,

… seeing this city again on the screen reminds me that Philadelphia is an exciting, spirited and remarkably historic city, and it was an inspirational and fun place to call home the first 15 years of my life.

The movie with the most vibrant and beautiful shots of Philadelphia is definitely Brian De Palma’s BLOW OUT. From the patriotically decked-out tourist destination of Penn’s Landing on the Delaware River to City Hall, the nation’s largest municipal building; and through the display window of Wanamaker’s, the city’s first department store, to the marble, gold, red and cream interior of the 30th Street train station (see UNBREAKBLE photo) and the pedestrian walkway beneath the Wissahickon Bridge in Fairmount Park, BLOW OUT is an authentic tour of the City of Brotherly Love in the early ’80s.

Damn!, what is that feeling? Homesickness? I think it’ll be time for a trip back to Philly soon!

I LOVE Barbra Streisand’s film debut as Fanny Brice in the 1968 production of the musical FUNNY GIRL. Streisand played the role on Broadway from 1964-66, but producers wanted a more established Hollywood actress for the movie. Shirley MacLaine turned it down, and director William Wyler insisted on Barbra. The movie might be sketchy on biographical truth, but there’s no denying Streisand’s extraordinary, powerful intorduction to film audiences. A star was indeed born.
(Streisand split the Oscar for Best Actress in a rare tie with Katharine Hepburn in THE LION IN WINTER.)

http://vimeo.com/75714386

I LOVE the attack of the skeletons and sword fight in the 1963 fantasy adventure JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. The movie was helmed by a television director, but stop motion animation genius Ray Harryhausen directed the special effects scenes, including the giant living statue Talos, the murderous winged Harpies, and the seven-headed snake creature Hydra. But the most memorable of Harryhausen’s Argonaut antagonists is the army of sword-fighting skeletons. This scene has been copied many, many times in the 50 years since, but never with the imagination, patience, sense of wonder, excitement, talent and love of craft that Harryhausen brought to all of his creations, from MIGHTY JOE YOUNG in 1949 to CLASH OF THE TITANS in 1981.

I LOVE this movie poster. EYES OF LAURA MARS will be on another of my lists soon enough, thanks to a challenge from a friend, but this striking image has been a favorite since the night in 1978 that a 14-year-old me sneaked into a theater to see the movie.

I LOVE the scene in HIGH ANXIETY in which Mel Brooks is attacked by birds. He’s poking Alfred Hitchcock in the ribs, of course … these birds don’t want to peck eyeballs, they’re just doing what birds do. HIGH ANXIETY isn’t Mel’s best movie — hello YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, hello BLAZING SADDLES, hello THE PRODUCERS — but it is a delightfully chaotic mix of two particular favorites: 1970s Mel Brooks and Alfred Hitchcock’s entire film canon. (I also love the joke about movie music cliches: During a suspenseful car chase, Mel Brooks is jolted and confused by the sudden rush of bombastic, overwrought action movie music. An orchestra is performing in a bus that passes him in the next lane. Classic Brooks. And I just adore Cloris Leachman as sinister sex fiend Nurse Diesel.)

I LOVE Oddjob, my favorite James Bond villain, portrayed by Harold Sakata in GOLDFINGER. That hat, those heads …
(Strangely, hours after I added Oddjob to my list, I read Richard Kiel, the actor who played “Jaws” in the James Bond movies THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and MOONRAKER, had just died. Jaws was an effective bad guy also … at least until he switched sides in MOONRAKER to help Bond.)

I LOVE James Coburn’s bid for freedom on a bicycle in THE GREAT ESCAPE. Australian Flight Officer Sedgwick is a secondary character in the movie, but he is “the manufacturer,” the go-to guy who can build or repurpose just about anything to help his fellow POWs escape a Nazi camp. During the mass prison break, Sedgwick snatches a bicycle to start his solo journey through the German countryside into Nazi-occupied France. THE GREAT ESCAPE is filled with the toughest, coolest, smartest men’s men of the era: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson, Richard Attenborough and Coburn; but though he had the least amount of screen time and lines among his co-stars, Coburn’s Sedgwick calmly and in good humor performs his tasks and waits for his opportunity, not even breaking a sweat during a close call with Nazi officers at a French cafe.

I LOVE the soundtrack for Brian De Palma’s 1978 suspense thriller THE FURY. John Williams composed the music during his 1970s peak, but the work is much different, darker, more other-worldly, than JAWS, STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, SUPERMAN or his other soundtracks of the period. It most resembles his score for the sadly forgotten DRACULA of the same year, the version with Frank Langella, Laurence Olivier and Donald Pleasance. Both THE FURY and DRACULA soundtracks are hard to come by: They’re out of print and will cost you a few pints of blood … though if you ask nicely I might burn copies for your late-night listening pleasure.)

I LOVE the scene in David Lynch’s THE ELEPHANT MAN in which John Merrick shows his benefactors a photograph of his mother. This is a moment of wonderful acting from three veterans … watch how characters react to the photograph and how they react to each other’s reactions. Splendid, heartbreaking. “I must have been a great disappointment to her.”

I LOVE the 1941 romantic screwball comedy THE LADY EVE. Barbara Stanwyck plays a card shark who boards an elite cruise ship with her con artist father to cheat lots of money from wealthy passengers. She sets her eyes on Henry Fonda as an easy mark … and of course falls in love with him. Stanwyck is absolutely enchanting, and Charles Coburn is a hoot as her father, a criminal with the perfect touch of brains, heart and class. “Don’t be vulgar, Jean,” he reminds her. “Let us be crooked, but never common.” Henry Fonda is the consummate foil, head over heels for Eve and smart enough to know he’ll be better off for it. I’m so ferociously critical of romantic comedies that my friends think I just don’t like “that kind of movie,” that I’m missing some sort of gene that would allow me to moon over the happiness of characters in movies. No. Rather it’s that today’s romantic comedies are creatively stillborn, unimaginative, cheap wish fulfillment fantasies for lazy sods. I actually really love romantic comedies, thanks very much, and THE LADY EVE is one of my favorites.

6 Comments

10 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THE MOVIES, PART 3

This is the third of a weekly column of random things I love from movies I’ve seen over the years. And tell me in the comments something you’ve never forgotten from a movie.

I LOVE Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams in the 1991 and 1993 feature film versions of the Charles Addams New Yorker comics and the mid-1960s television sitcom. Ricci is so perfectly cast, so marvellously deadpan, as the darkly serious daughter in a family full of eccentric misfits, it’s really no wonder Hollywood has had no idea how to cast her in films since — to many, she’ll ALWAYS be Wednesday Addams (it’s the Anthony Perkins/Norman Bates Syndrome). The actress was only 11 when she first portrayed Wednesday, but she demonstrated natural talent and the camera loves her dinstinct feature … I truly hope she has a future in the movies.

I LOVE the stunning cinematography of the 1955 movie THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. That this incredible film was the only one ever directed by English actor Charles Laughton is a mystery … the director’s vision is inspired and wholely unique, and he is supported by a literate script, superb actors and, most critically, gorgeous photography by camera master Stanley Cortez. Laughton and Cortez looked back to the German expressionism of the 1920s and ’30s to tell this dark fairy tale, using the same shadows, nightmarish sets and distorted arrangements that were popular in horror and noir. This is such a great movie that almost any facet of it — Robert Mitchum’s evil preacher, Shelley Winters’ widowed mother, Lillian Gish’s take-no-guff redneck, the love-hate knuckle tattoos, the menacing hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” — could make my 10 Things I Love list. But the cinematography, that is what has haunted and affected me for decades.

I LOVE Sting’s fabulously tricked-out Vespa in the 1979 feature film adaptation of The Who’s rock opera QUADROPHENIA. The film producers wanted Sting’s character, Ace Face, the “ultimate Mod”, to ride a vintage Vespa 160, but the model had been discounted years earlier and the scooter company couldn’t find enough identical bikes to satisfy the filmmakers’ continuity needs. More modern scooters were rebuilt to replicate the rare GS, which makes the tragic end of Sting’s beautiful set of wheels much more easy to bear.

I LOVE the twisted relationship in THE GRIFTERS between Lilly, Roy and Myra, a trio of con artists who scam, cheat and deceive their way into the mother of all Greek tragedies. Anjelica Huston, John Cusack and Annette Bening are aces in this 1990 crime drama. It breaks my heart that this movie is all but forgotten today; it’s ripe for rediscovery … and just try to predict the outcome of this con game, based on a hard-boiled novel by tough guy Jim Thompson.

I LOVE that California new wave/ska/rock band Oingo Boingo starred in the movie FORBIDDEN ZONE one year before the release of their first album, ONLY A LAD. And if you’re familiar with Oingo Boingo, you’ll guess that this is one crazy frigging movie. What do you expect? — Hervé Villechaize, Tattoo from FANTASY ISLAND, is also in it, as is Susan Tyrell, the oddball actress from Andy Warhol’s circle. Boingo’s lead singer, Danny Elfman, is now one of the most sought-after film composers in Hollywood. This is his first score. Of course, mainstream audiences found the movie offensive, but it has since become a midnight cult favorite.

I LOVE the fantastic opening scene of Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL. For three-and-a-half minutes the camera tracks both a car with a ticking bomb and a couple walking through the streets of Tijuana. There is no trickery and no film edits. The camera glides over rooftops, around corners, alongside moving cars and pedestrians, all while staying in perfect step with Henry Mancini’s hip jazzy score. This is the kind of filmmaking that invigorates my love affair with the silver screen.

I LOVE that the best thing about JAWS 2 is a 13-word tagline … one still used by people who weren’t even born yet in 1978.

I LOVE Bernard Herrmann’s woozy score for Hitchcock’s VERTIGO.

I LOVE Edward Norton’s incredible film debut in the 1996 courtroom drama PRIMAL FEAR. Norton introduces himself with a powerful performance that will leave you guessing until the end, and he has certainly made good on this calling card. The last two movies I’ve seen him in have both been directed by Wes Anderson — MOONRISE KINGDOM and THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL — and Norton has thrived in that director’s rarefied world. In this PRIMAL FEAR clip, Norton manages to hold attention in the company of some terrific co-stars, including my favorite, Laura Linney, and Frances McDormand, Alfre Woodard and Richard Gere.

I LOVE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Not the Disney animated musical. I’ve never seen that version. I’m talking about the breathtaking 1946 French version, LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE. This was directed by Jean Cocteau, a hypnotic, romantic, visually enchanting masterpiece — yes, I’ll say it: One of the greatest motion pictures ever made. It’s one of the few I watch annually, a movie that always delights, always entertains, always restores a bit of childlike wonder.