The Godfather

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Writers: Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
Released: 1972
Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Abe Vigoda, Talia Shire, John Cazale

The Gold Bug

Director: Robert Fuest
Writer: Edward Pomerantz
Released: 1980
Cast: Anthony Michael Hall, Roberts Blossom, Geoffrey Holder

A Christmas Story

Director: Bob Clark
Writers: Jean Shepard, Leigh Brown, Bob Clark
Released: 1983
Cast: Peter Billingsley, Darren McGavin, Melinda Dillon, Ian Petrella, Scott Schwartz, R.D. Robb, Tedde Moore, Zack Ward, Yano Anaya

I.O.U.S.A.

Director: Patrick Creadon
Writers: Patrick Creadon, Christine O'Malley, Addison Wiggin
Released: 2008
Cast: David Walker, Robert Bixby

NIKKI says:
So, oh my fucking god. The state of the world is worse than I imagined. And George W. Bush has had a more catastrophic impact on the world than I imagined (and I thought his war-mongering and his time as the Texacutioner couldn't be topped!).

This was less a documentary and more a horror movie. I gasped and jumped and couldn't believe much of what I was seeing. Even the beginning -- did you know that the economic crisis was predicted during White House speeches back in the days of Eisenhower? Pretty much every president mentioned in speeches throughout history how American people are spending more than they're earning. They all talk about the ramifications of that spending and massive debt generations are leaving for their offspring.

And now it's at crisis point. When they made this film, the National Debt was 8.7 trillion dollars and growing. America owes everyone and everyone in America seems to owe someone else and standards of living are plummeting because no one can afford anything. This movie details how the debt became so big and what needs to be done in order to get America's finances back in order.

Just like An Inconvenient Truth, the solutions are relatively simple, with great impact. But those solutions mean stepping out of our comfort zones and changing the way we live. I just don't know if I can see people doing that on such a large scale. Someone says it in this movie -- America does not respond until catastrophe. So, I can't see anything being done until the money literally dries up and Americans at large wind up on the streets. It's a tragedy. Maybe Barack Obama can do something about it?

This movie is highly informative, and simplifies much of what is happening as far as the debt goes to make it understandable. It's scary, really, just how easily it all can be simplified -- we spend too much, America spends too much, George W. Bush doubled the National Debt in just eight years in office. The movie uses cool little graphics to get its points across. It's also got some cool characters in David Walker and Robert Bixby -- men on a mission to inform America of its financial woes.

It's funny, educational, and terrifying as hell.

4.5/5

Charley Varrick

Director: Don Siegel
Writers: Howard Rodman, Dean Riesner
Released: 1973
Cast: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Andy Robinson, John Vernon, William Schallert, Norman Fell

The Killers

Directors: Marika Beiku, Aleksandr Gordon, Adrei Tarkovsky
Writers: Aleksandr Gordon, Adrei Tarkovsky
Released: 1958
Cast: Yuli Fait, Aleksandr Gordon, Valentin Vinogradov, Vadim Novikov, Vasili Shukshin

STEVE says: I had my writing class read Hemingway's short story this week, so this one's been on my mind. Whereas both feature versions of The Killers (1946 and 1964) use the story as an opening, telling the full story in flashback, this Russian student film is the story. And it's not great.

That's nothing against Hemingway's story, and it's not to take anything away from Tarkovsky as a filmmaker - but this just didn't work. Pacing was the big problem for me. When Nick Adams goes to the Swede's room to warn him somebody's out to kill him, one expects him to be gasping, out of breath, maybe urgently delivering the news... Not so much, here. Adams walks in, tells the Swede some guys are out to kill him, and it's all done in a very funereal sort of style, as though they're already lamenting the Swede's passing. It just didn't fly.

It's good to have - Criterion can really put a disc together, yeah? - but not so much to revisit. For that, I've got the Robert Siodmak version.

2/5

The Shining

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stanley Kubruck, Diane Johnson
Released: 1980
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd

STEVE says: The Shining is a movie I'm not overly fond of, but keep coming back to again and again just to see if I can find something - anything - I like about it.

No luck so far.

And I don't care how great you think Nicholson is, this movie Sucks Out Loud.

But let me tell you why.

King's book was about a haunted man. Jack Torrence is haunted by the student he attacked in Stovington, his careless abuse of his son, his own alcoholic father, his failure as a husband to properly provide for his family, etc. Kubrick decided that none of this was important and just went for the haunted hotel angle. Whereas the book was about the characters and their motivations, Kubrick's movie was about Nicholson going mad.

It's one thing to change a story when adaptation to a new medium demands it; it's another to completely dispense with character development and plot because you want to tell a different story. If you want to tell a different story, Tell A Different Story, don't fuck up a perfectly viable one because you don't understand it.

Kubrick jumped over the character and plot development with the "one month later" title card after Jack and his family arrive at the Overlook. This is important stuff! It's where Jack starts losing it - how can you skip over that?

I know Kubrick was a genius. There's a lot of his stuff I didn't like when I was younger, and I'm perfectly willing now to accept the fact that it was me; I didn't get it. But The Shining is just not good at all. Apart from the lack of character development, there's the Scatman Crothers thing: As a plot device, he's there to give us info on Danny's abilities, which is fine. And at the end, his return to the Overlook acts as a device to pull Jack away from the bathroom door and let Wendy escape. Fine, again. Killing him, however, serves no purpose whatsoever! If you're just going to kill him, Wendy may as well have been able to squeeze through the window after Danny. The thing with the woman in room 237 is the definition of anti-climax. When Danny goes into the room, we never see what he sees. When Jack goes in, he finds a woman who turns into a rotting corpse (after he starts making out with her, which begs some explanation), then comes back and tells Wendy he didn't see a thing. It's so much more effective if we see what Danny sees, and then Jack goes up because we know what's waiting there - whether he actually sees it or not. As, by the way, it was done in the book.

Bottom line is, the guy didn't believe in the material and it shows - but that doesn't stop the idolatry. The poster at the top there isn't from the movie; it's from a Shining convention held in Timberline, Oregon this past Halloween. There's even been an art show dedicated to the movie.


Click the creepy girls to check it out. Even I have to admit, it's kind of cool - even if the movie leaves me cold.

1/5

Frankenstein

Director: James Whale
Writers: Garrett Fort, Francis Edwards Faragoh
Released: 1931
Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan, Dwight Frye

Dracula

Director: Tod Browning
Writer: Garrett Fort
Released: 1931
Cast: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloane, Herbert Bunston, Frances Dade

Lifeforce

Director: Tobe Hooper
Writers: Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby
Released: 1985
Cast: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Mathilda May, Frank Finlay, Michael Gothard, Aubrey Morris, Patrick Stewart

The Lottery

Director: Larry Yust
Writer: Larry Yust
Released: 1969
Cast: Olive Dunbar, William Benedict, William Fawcett, Joe Howarth

STEVE says: There's something to be said for a film that manages to be suspenseful and shocking, even though it has one of the most famous endings in literary history.

I tried to watch this as someone who wasn't familiar with the story, and it wasn't easy. Like the last ten minutes of The Wicker Man, where you just know Edward Woodward is going to be burned alive, but you're still waiting for someone to swoop in and rescue him - no matter how many times you've seen the movie. It was a lot like that. But I was able to appreciate the lead-up a lot more, knowing how it was going to turn out. Yust (and Shirley Jackson, it must be said) highlights the banality of evil before the audience is even aware that evil is in the picture. Genius.

After watching this short film, I'm reminded of the woman in Fahrenheit 9/11 who was pro-war until her son was killed. In The Lottery, Tessie Hutchinson - like everyone else in the town - is all for the lottery, until it affects her personally. Then, suddenly, "It isn't fair!" Considering "The Lottery" was published in 1948, this short was made in 1969, and the themes were still relevant in 2004... Well, "the more things change", I guess...

3.5/5

NIKKI says:
There's something about old farm-lookin' dudes from the backwoods that just creeps me out. And this has lots of 'em. But that's not the point of the story... so it is a famous story, and it's still as scary as it ever was. Amazing how after so many years and so many retellings you still sit there in shock that the townspeople are actually going to go through with the ritual. Maybe it's because after all those retellings, there's still no actual reason why they do it.

Steve and I decided the themes in the story have much to do with conscription and sending kids off to war. We openly and randomly choose names from a hat and send people to war to be killed. This is a simplified exploration of that very strange practice that, when laid out in this way, just seems insane. Like so many things, I guess.

3.5/5

The Dark Half

Director: George A. Romero
Writer: George A. Romero
Released: 1993
Cast: Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, Michael Rooker, Julie Harris, Robert Joy

STEVE says: Not one of the best Stephen King adaptations, but surely one of the better ones. The fact that it's Romero gives it a bump, as well.

3/5

Re-animator

Director: Stuart Gordon
Writers: Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon
Released: 1985
Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson

Rawhead Rex

Director: George Pavlou
Writer: Clive Barker
Released: 1986
Cast: David Dukes, Kelly Piper, Declan O'Brien, Niall Toibin, Niall O'Brien

STEVE says: Clive Barker has apparently disowned this movie - and he wrote the screenplay. Nothing I can say will give you a better idea of how bad this movie is.

In truth, though, it tries. It tries too hard. The story - ancient fertility god accidentally released from his subterranean prison wreaks havoc on Irish countryside - isn't the problem. Much of it is the direction, the fact that this is all taken so earnestly - the same problem Sometimes They Come Back suffered from. Everyone is so serious throughout, you'd think they were in an Ibsen play or something, rather than a schlocky monster flick.

And that's the second problem: the monster here, the titular Rawhead Rex, looks ridiculous. He's meant to be eight or nine feet tall (yet is able to walk through standard doorways whenever the plot calls for it without banging his skull), and this is achieved by placing Rawhead's head on top of - not over, mind you, but on top of - the actor's head. This makes his torso look longer in proportion to the rest of his body, and causes his arms to protrude from roughly the middle of his ribcage. It's not pretty. Neither are his crazy, rolling red hypno-eyes, or his mouth which seems to have no movement beyond simple open/close. I really half-expected to see a zipper running up his back.

Come to think of it, that might have made it all worth it.

2/5

NIKKI says: For the longest time I thought Rawhead Rex was a big scary dog who fought against Peter Weller. I would have sworn those two things were central to the film: dog and Peter Weller. I have no idea quite what planet I was on when I decided that. Bizarre.

I had no idea it was a Clive Barker story, either, though I probably read it as a kid. Back when I thought Cabal and Jacqueline Ess were, like, the goriest things ever and I was just so cool and grown up for not vomiting while reading them. I think back on them now, and I probably couldn't stomach them as well as I used to.

Anyway... Rawhead Rex was fairly lame. But I put that down to over-the-top acting and the worst make-up effects ever put on film. What possibly made these filmmakers think the big plastic head with the Mattel-like flashing red eyes could possibly be scary? I realise the film was made in the mid-1980s but there were scarier demons around at that point. It just looked like a big plastic mask. It barely moved. There was nothing real about it at all. Who thought of that? Ugh, terrible.

I had a hard time following the story, possibly because that awful mask was so disstracting. And I didn't feel what I think I should have after the little boy was killed. That seemed very out of place. Perhaps if I'd had more of a sense of just what Rex was up to, it may have come together a bit better. Reading up on the story later, I can see what was going on. I didn't grasp it so well watching the thing.

Peter Weller and a dog... if it's not this, what the hell am I thinking of?

2/5

Dellamorte Dellamore

Director: Michele Soavi
Writer: Gianni Romoli
Released: 1994
Cast: Rupert Everett, Anna Falchi, François Hadji-Lazaro, Mickey Knox

STEVE says: Sorry, did I say things could only go downhill after The Exorcist? My mistake. I didn't anticipate Dellamorte Dellamore being our second film.

Released in the States as Cemetery Man in 1996, I gave it a miss because the ads just made it look silly, and even back then I was sick to death of horror comedies. Five years later, my friend M'ike coerced me into watching his imported copy of the original Dellamorte cut, and I'll never be able to repay him. It was so incredible, so beautiful, so fucking amazing, I sat through the credits, rewound the tape, and watched it again. I watched it again the next day, and again the day after that, never tiring of it, never ceasing to find it enthralling.

And to this day, I still have no idea what it's really all about. To be honest, I don't want to know. It's like a Rorschach test: different people are going to see different things. But Martin Scorsese reckons it's one of the best Italian films of the 1990s, and if Marty likes it, I feel pretty secure in rating it as I do.

4.5/5

The Exorcist

Director: William Friedkin
Writer: William Peter Blatty
Released: 1973
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb.

STEVE says: October is going to be horror month for us. As if we need to set aside a whole month, having watched 120 horror movies already this year, but it's October and it's timely and I like horror movies, so that's reason enough.

I wanted to start it off with a bang, though - something that packs a punch - and all credit to Universal Studios, I didn't think Dracula, Frankenstein, or The Wolf Man were going to quite set the tone. The Exorcist won out over such classics as Rosemary's Baby, The Shining and, yes, Fright Night, and I'm glad we went with it because, even though it's not what I'd class as "scary", it's still - 35 years later - one of the creepiest flicks ever.

What bugs me about it is, there's no wiggle room for those who might be, like myself, Faith-Challenged. There is no question that Regan is possessed. Even though we're given plenty of alternative medical explanations as to what might be wrong with her, including a "lesion" in her brain ("My name is Legion, for we are many."), it's pretty clear that reason loses the battle here and superstitions are put forth as fact. Since Father Karras is having a crisis of faith, and since proof denies faith, I think the story would have been better served had Karras not seen actual proof of Regan's possession, but only inferred whatever proof he needed to confirm his faith in the end, you dig?

Hey, whatever, The Exorcist works, and I'm glad we chose it to kick off the month. Only problem now is, it's pretty much all downhill from here.

4/5

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, dir. Asia Argento (2004)

NIKKI says:

I said to Steve after this one -- if we're going to continue to support Asia through all these bizarre aspects of her career, she's gonna have to start giving something back. But then, I don't think it's entirely her fault that this one runs off the rails as much as it does. Perhaps she thought she was making a true-to-life film about JT LeRoy's terrible upbringing. For all she knew, and the rest of the world, LeRoy's story was true. It came out a while back that it was all bogus. JT LeRoy was really Laura Albert. And watching it with that knowledge, it's very hard to relate or sympathise with any of what goes on.

And I have just discovered that Asia was not angry with Leroy when she discovered the hoax. She is quoted: "If the literary world wanted to believe Leroy was real, it's not Laura Albert's fault. She just wanted to have her novel published."

Isn't that like saying, it's okay to perjure yourself for your own ends? Why does Laura Albert get to suck out my sympathies with these horrendous lies about this poor, neglected child just so she can be a published writer? I'm shocked an artist like Asia, who must know what it means to strive for truth and authenticity in one's art, could simply overlook Albert's deception.

And that makes the movie less of an accomplishment for me. So here's the story of these fake people doing awful things. Why do I care? By the end, Steve and I were picking out the next level of pain for the kid -- Well, now he's been abused, he'll have to get into drugs... Now, he's done drugs, he'll have to shoot someone... It was just blow-by-blow every sob story you've ever heard rolled into one big one. Snooze. 

All that aside, Asia's style is tremendous. I can forgive her only because she is such an artist. Her blending of styles, her attention to detail (the images of Americana seen throughout the film are effective), her ability to fully immerse herself in a character. She is incredibly skilled. But, man, what a waste of all that this story was. The story was so awful, the characters so stupid, the situations so standard, that even the artistry could not redeem it.

.5/5

STEVE says:

The controversy of the JT LeRoy/Laura Albert thing was lost on me, I'll admit. I don't follow the literary world that closely, and what news I get is generally filtered through Nikki. I remember when this all went on, all the Oprah controversy, and I remember being mildly annoyed by it, but not enough to make a federal case out of it.

This movie, though, is something else. I don't care if it's true or not, or how many people in the film and publishing worlds were duped by the whole thing. What bothered me was how poorly constructed the story was. Cliche after cliche heaped one upon the other does not make a story. 

I mean if you're going to make something up, at least make it believable.

.5/5

I Know What You Did Last Summer, dir. Jim Gillespie (1997)

STEVE says:

Couple days ago we watched an episode of VH1's Super Secret Movie Rules featuring Slashers. While it tried to go through the "rules" of a slasher film - Sluts Must Die, Loners are Goners, etc. (most of which were covered in Scream, anyway) - it didn't work for me because it went movie by movie instead of rule by rule. You bring up one rule, you can talk about eight, ten movies and how each handled it. Instead, they focused on one movie and how it handled a specific rule. Kind of backwards, but no one asked me.

However, since the movies were presented in chronological order, we got to see an overview of the evolution of the Slasher flick, from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974 to "the beginning of the end for the horror film" (as Joe Bob Briggs put it) with Scream in 1997 to the complete travesty that is the Scary Movie series in the present. It was kinda fascinating.

One of the movies covered in the chronology was, of course, I Know What You Did Last Summer. I saw it in the theatre, and I remembered not hating it. But once again, memory has used me hard and left me bleeding.

There's s plenty to hate about this movie. Kevin Williamson's script, for starters. It's not uber-smart like Dawson's Creek, and it's not clever like Scream. In fact, it's the opposite of both - ultra-dumb and derivative. How many times can the Killer predict where each of our Teen Stars is going to be in order to jump out at them? A lot, it seems. He can also pack a dead body and about a thousand crabs in the back of J. Love's car, and when she runs off for help, remove the body and the crabs in a matter of minutes - in broad daylight. Niiiice! There's also the matter of the Killer wearing this rain slicker all the way through the film, right up to the end where he pops out in Average Joe Wear because we're supposed to not know it's him. It should be noted, too, that Ryan Phillippe is just plain awful as the asshole boyfriend who's first instinct in a crisis is to yell incomprehensibly and grab people by the throat. Not that that's Williamson's fault, I guess, I'm just saying.

I'm left wondering what the moral of the story is, here. These four kids are involved in a hit-and-run, are stalked and killed (along with at least two people who had nothing to do with the hit-and-run whatsoever, but whatever), and don't cop to it in the end, anyway. Where's the acceptance of responsibility? I'm pretty sure that goes against one of the rules, yeah?

1.5/5

NIKKI says:

Wow, does it take me back. To the days of Dawson's Creek and Party of Five and afternoon-long talks on the phone with Deb about Dawson's Creek and Party of Five. Those were the days, too, when Love Hewitt's tight shirt was the height of contemporary sexy. Compared to 10 years later, she may as well be Amish in this.

So, that's about all this movie is needed for today. A flashback to times gone by. To new horror and Love on the music charts. The movie is not at all frightening -- it never really was. And it does very little to advance what appeared at the time to be an advancing genre. At least in a direction away from the norm pre-Scream. But as Kevin Williamson's follow-up to Scream, this needed to be far better than it was. 

I thought Williamson was up on horror, as demonstrated by Scream. But when you look at this, he appears to know very little. People die who needn't, there's very little suspense, and the killer, unlike Jason or Michael, alters his MO when it suits the mood. Faceless black slickered ghoul one minute, nice old man with no black slicker the next, for instance. It just didn't come together well enough to be any kind of memorable piece.

Still nostalgia value gives it a place in our collection. That and Love is hard to throw away. 

2/5

Horton Hears a Who!, dir. Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino (2008)

NIKKI says:

It was a last minute decision arrived upon after our selected movie (The Alibi) had some sound issues that meant Rebecca Romijn wasn't really speaking her lines but mumbling as though in the middle of a large mouthful. 

I had high hopes for Horton. I read the book as a kid, and have always loved the Seuss-ian Whos. They're pretty much the cutest things ever. It's a sweet story, and deserves to have it's adorable (and ever-timely) message out into the world, and this movie is the perfect vehicle for that. I loved it. Shoot it right to the top of the best-of-2008 list. Finally, there's something there that's not a horror flick.

There's not that much else to say here. Everyone knows the story, everyone knows the big-name actors involved. Everyone is reliable, the story is extremely faithful to its source, and the animation is some of the most realistic I've ever seen. The field of pink clover and the water in Horton bathing pond were especially remarkable. How do they do that? The details in this were amazing, especially in Whoville where every inch of the screen was filled with something interesting. The care taken here shows. I've not been so impressed by an animated film for ages.

(Losing half a point because I still think Kangaroo gets off too easy!) 

4.5/5

The Deliberate Stranger, dir. Marvin J. Chomsky (1986)

NIKKI says:

You know, I really didn't think Mark Harmon could pull it off. But, even without really showing him being abusive and violent until the end, he was, in this movie, downright freaky. He didn't play it freakily, he didn't channel Ted Bundy in any noticeable way. He just had that look about him, that perfect balance of normal guy and sociopath. He did exactly what he needed to do here -- play it straight, with that edge of terror. Mad props, as the kids say, to Mark Harmon.

Incidentally, my co-worker Steph told me the day we watched this that she planned to go to America and marry Mark Harmon so she could become famous. Yeah, I don't get it either. And, incidentally again, Mark Harmon is married to Pam Dawber and is about to turn 57. What?!

For a three-hour telemovie, this moved surprisingly fast. It steadily crafted the story of this up and coming young politician with a secret life as a mad killer. It resisted exploitation, and genuinely tried to tell the story smartly and interestingly. Granted, there were too many times characters longing wished for Ted's "kind of future" that made us cringe a bit, but for the most part, this was very good. And it was filled with a million and one faces from the '80s that we could sit and point out. That was fun.

Oh, Ted Bundy. Has there ever been a stranger incident of sociopathy? There've been more depraved and weird killers, but did any lead the sort of life Ted did? He's a case unto himself, I reckon. And while Dahmer and Gacy did some horrific things, Ted's the guy who gives me nightmares. I've gone home with cute, smart strangers myself. I've helped them out of jams. Who hasn't? It's because of Ted, too, I think, that I'm convinced everyone has a secret life of crime.

Anyway... good movie. Great work from Mark Harmon, but no awards. I may need to go start a Facebook petition to get Mark a retrospective Emmy nomination for this. Now, there's a crime.

3.5/5