The TV People.

Poltergeist — 3.5/5

This is my first time watching! Though I'd seen maybe the whole movie in bits and pieces across time. I'm in the camp that says that Spielberg was heavily involved in this, and it might be the most Spielbergian thing he's had a direct hand in? (Maybe 'E.T.', I'd need to rewatch it.) What his movies have is a greater sense of cinematography than people first think of, but I think the cultural feeling of Spielberg is much more downstream. There's a very '80s use of color in this and movies of its ilk that feel beautiful, but less overtly considered. Less film-ic. You know, more in tune to the choices of a middle-class suburban family. Lots of browns and yellows with pops of red which were iconic and symptomatic of the kitchens and clothings. This movie's style is closer to 'The Goonies' than 'Jaws.' (So, in this thesis, "Spielbergian" is directly tied to our concept of what the '80s looked and felt like, and perhaps why that Spielbergian feeling went away once we left the decade. His feeling is twisty-tied around a decade's aestheticization.) It's also the most overt horror movie this secret horror director has made. Unfortunately, the movie's visual effects allow it to go only so far. The parts that work, work remarkably; I think Spielberg's success as a horror director is being to tap into very normal, and very real residential fears. (What's that in the water? Is that guy following me? Why doesn't my wife understand me? What's that noise downstairs?) Stairs stacked in the kitchen? Killer. Anything having to do with flickering light? Homina homina. Things floating around a bedroom? Ehhhhh. Mostly everything that involves more complex visual effects leans closer to 'Ghostbusters' than 'Close Encounters,' which pushes this closer to a comedy than a horror film. And tone-wise, I love that balance as the actors play it. With JoBeth Williams, you get that wonder and terror all rolled into one. She's great! Her smile and laugh is wonderful, both on the verge of tears. She is both frightened for her child and amazed at what is happening. Heather O'Rourke carries the same ability. (Craig T. Nelson, on the other hand, is an actor I simply do not understand, a comedian who looks like he's running for senate as a Republican candidate. A man who makes you smile even as he tries to take away your abortion access.) But where it works in tone, it stops working in mood. The effects feel too fabricated, too much like a too-friendly horror movie where no one can really get hurt. I think it could have worked if they just left most of that stuff in people's reactions. We may need to see it to believe it, but we don't need to see it to be frightened of it. 

If a thing is always, if a thing is everywhere, that thing is believed by everyone.

Suspiria (1977) — 2.5/5 (rewatch)

I didn't get the appeal of this movie when I originally watched it, and I don't love it on my second watch, but I understand it better. An epiphany for me in the past year or two has been the notion of 'tone' in movies, and on the other side of that is 'mood.' Tone is words. Mood is visuals. I like tone movies, perhaps because I both desire and need things to be said aloud (because I'm a dumb-dumb). I like when the accompanying music has lyrics. They all work together to create a rhythm which my body falls into. I don't love mood films, as they seem very intent on things not being said aloud but inferred; a feeling created for you to identify (if you can). Movies for art directors, movies for people who want to admire the choices that were made. "Challenging, but worthwhile." "Great cinematography" as a marker for a movie's value. Given the choice to stare at a painting for an hour and a half, or read a story, I'll choose the words. This movie is very pretty to look at; it's got great mood. If you like to live in paintings, here you go.

I know. I'm lost. I'm damned.

Vampyr — 2/5

It's no -sferatu, ha ha ha. (The crowd roars, demands more.) Really fun visual effects for its time and the occasional beautiful sequence. "A dream-like quality." (The crowd storms the stage.) A scant one hour and 15 minutes and feels every second of it. (The crowd tears me apart; I am no more.)

Making enough money to keep body and soul together.

StageFright (aka Deliria aka Aquarius aka Bloody Bird aka Sound Stage Massacre) — 2/5

The first two minutes are a banger, and leads you to believe you're in for an MTV New Wave sex-killer 'West Side Story.' The illusion is quickly dispelled. 

Life's too short to be pussy.

London — 2.5/5

What a masculine movie. It has a lot of boys crying and releasing their deep-seated fears, but with such a laddish quality. The boys had too many drinks and are getting emotional. Worries about dick size and impotence and the proper fucking of women. I don't want to pass those off as silly because they are serious male concerns, but writing it down and saying it aloud, it feels so weak, doesn't it? Which is of course the dilemma. How does a man reveal himself without destroying what makes him a man? It's an interesting aspect of the movie! It's sub-Quentin Tarantino / Christopher McQuarrie by way of one-room play, but it's aiming for something deeper.

Also, I hate Chris Evans' hair in this movie. I think he's had trouble as a successful actor because he hasn't really figured out his role. At times he is the intelligent jock, the charming douchebag who can have a deeper conversation. He would perhaps have been equally good in any of Glen Powell's roles. But his Captain America role, which he excels at, really puts a blocker in trying to place a a consistent theme throughout his career. 

Someone... something, rules in his place.

The Masque of the Red Death — 3.5/5

Del Toro wishes he could capture the mood and artistry of this movie. Cheap around the edges, yes, but something beautiful and poetic about it. I'd put it adjacent to 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'? Though less outright crazy, and with more control on the part of the nobles who think their high status can save them if they just wall themselves off from the outside world. I think this movie does a good job of positioning satanism as less 'evil' and more of the 'I'm just a realist' variety, speaking plainly about the truth of the world as though it was the intention of the world rather than the thing to be solved. Using their power to keep things as they are, and to remind people that that's why it is, as though that was the right and total thing. Had he a kinder voice, Price's killing of the villagers who have sought escape from the Red Death might be seen as a mercy. He loses his "decency" by speaking plainly. He's paired well with Jane Asher who has a wonderful softness to her, making her a great guest into this world.

Always the bullet.

Jack Reacher — 3/5

Finally, I watched the correct one. Go me. This movie contains a banger opening scene, and honestly, separately, one of my favorite silly fight scenes of all time, the latter of which is also emblematic of the problem with the rest of the movie. Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher is just Serious Man Smarter Than Everyone Else. And I don't know if I can put the troubles on Tom Cruise as much as how the character and movie is built. Robert Duvall comes in towards the end and gives this movie a spark, partly because of just who he is, and partly because he's someone who can take the big man down a peg. Humor, in this movie, is a shining light of hope, making the movie repeatedly watchable as any good TNT movie is, and which it is often trying to completely smother with seriousness. I think people now associate action and humor as "The Marvel Tone," but it's really just as simple as the template to 'Cheers' and most decent sitcoms: say something serious, and undercut it with a joke. It's a great formula. And it doesn't mean you can't be grave; it just means that when that when that formula goes missing, you take the serious parts more seriously. I think it's why Avengers: Endgame works so well for me? All the jokes from all those movies allowed you to let your guard down, and be hurt by it. Anyway, uhhh this movie needed more humor, ty. Props also to Rosamund Pike who brings some comedy to the role, I didn't expect it from her.

I'm orgasming just fine.

Friendship — 3/5

Stuck somewhere between Tim Robinson in 'Detroiters' and Tim Robinson in 'I Think You Should Leave.' Guess which one of these I'm more a fan of. The first twenty minutes of this movie, I was surprised at how well it was pulling itself off. Tim Robinson was playing what he tends to play, and Paul Rudd was playing a spiritual successor to Brian Fantana, a mixture of A24's seriousness and Adult Swim's who-knows-what, creating a really lovely feeling. (Is Adult Swim just a pipeline to A24? Both have mastered a certain aesthetic, clearly skilled hands behind the wheel, but also the laziness of 'hey, it's not for everyone' which is just an intellectual disguise for 'maybe someone else will pour more meaning into this than we are capable.') But from there, I thought it would take me down a path of 'the awkwardness of ending a friendship', and the hallucinations of what a friendship actually might look like, and instead takes me to the inevitable end result of Tim Robinson's narcissistic manchild who is only a few degrees away from being an actual psychopath. I didn't like that following that journey as much. 

My wife likes me.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles — 2.5/5 (rewatch)

I've long not liked this movie, though I've felt wrong for it, and I can now in good faith put it behind me. To be fair, the ending is iconic! Five minutes of a great musical sound bed beneath an overwhelming sense of understanding and empathy. That five minutes can live alone, in isolation, for eternity, as a short movie unto itself. I think it's probably best viewed in that isolation! Because the preceding 90 minutes damage it. Both characters in this movie suck. Steve Martin in an obvious way: I don't like grumps, even when their grumpiness is well-founded. But John Candy also in an obvious way, but harder to point fingers at him because he's got a sadness and can turn that dial in his favor. The movie reminds me of the trouble I had with 'A Real Pain.' I'm not that interested in indulging in bad characters who don't have the ability to fundamentally change. This movie ends, that five minutes of emotional goodwill closes, and Neal Page and Del Griffith will return to who they are, rested after a Thanksgiving meal. That said, it feels like there's a longer movie in here. Neal's troubled relationship with his wife appears in hints, but feels like there was a larger story intended there. If I had to imagine what that was, and how that might have made this better: this movie is meant to be less about a man understanding another man's secret sadness, and more understanding how another person's love (a wife in both cases, and potentially Neal to Del and Del to Neal) can save a person and make them worthwhile. A person they don't need to change for, but want to change themselves for. In the movie, Neal's epiphany is about Del. I imagine in the longer movie, his epiphany is about himself. That's the imaginary movie, though. As it exists, I think this is a movie liked by difficult people.

The 'why' matters.

Ludwig — 4/5

It's a detective thing I like!! Which comes down to a few things. 1) It's a detective show that views its mysteries as provable by logic, which equates to, in many of the cases within its mystery-of-the-week formula, that you could in fact solve it on your own were you smart enough to do so but 2) I'm not smart enough nor do I feel dumb for not being smart enough, because no one else is either, placed next to as they are with the world's preeminent puzzle-setter who is 3) incredibly fallible. He's a know-it-all but he's pushed into a situation that's beyond him, which makes him uncomfortable and tests his faith in his knowledge, and he doesn't have that autistic asshole persona that often comes with these abilities. He is often the butt of the joke. And it's funny! And well-cast! And there's the feeling of a very serious mystery beneath the lightfooted-ness. 

These people have paid a lot of money for first class service.

Fight or Flight — 1/5

I honestly have no idea what guided me here. A stray comment on a 'best of 2025' blog had me chasing a nothing film, the hope of a light movie with larger ambitions, "fun fight scenes" capable of engendering epiphanous thought; the dream of 'Crank'. I am digging through the forgotten aisles of a video store to find the overlooked gem. I did not find it here. 

Yes, that's our wiggly wiggly.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery — 3.5/5

These movies keep getting better while continuing to be not as good as they should be. But this one has Josh O'Connor! Great actor, and great comedic actor. He's got a strong moral compass, and he understands his body and the directions in which to move it. Part of me wonders if the movie was better just being him as suspect and detective? The detective priest, rooting out the moral decay. The Culprit at the Pulpit: A Jud Duplenticy Mystery. But no, we still have Benoit Blanc, who is fun but also little more than an accent, and who is surrounded by famous actors who aren't given very much to play with, or who don't know how to play up what they have. But beyond that, a bit of an epiphany for me. The mystery is fine enough, and I've often claimed that a great mystery is a movie that you could have figured out, but didn't, 'Dial M for Murder' being my high expectation that no one else can meet. But the other aspect of detective things — and the latest season of 'White Lotus' fell into this as well — is that I can't fully lose my self-awareness if I'm focused on figuring it out before it plays itself out. I'm hyper-aware of clues and false leads, both a feeling of wanting to feel smart and wanting to not feel dumb. I keep trying to figure out the magic trick. I can't fully escape the box. So, y'know, I'll take personal responsibility for that bit.

They were stupid, stupid idiots.

Cocaine Quarterback — 2/5

In terms of the right things in the right place, this would have been a great article. And someone would have tried to turn it into a movie, and it would have been more entertaining but also less interesting. But instead they turned it into a three-episode docu-series instead of a full-length documentary because that form softens the edges of this thing which is already pretty soft around the edges. Told pretty straightforwardly, with interesting characters appearing here and there, a ridiculous amount of money passed back and forth by some idiots. It's fun enough! I don't know why I'm rating decently fine things so poorly lately! It's either because I have seen the mountaintops and all pale in its shadow, or that I just increasingly place value on my time, and whether or not it's being wasted. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

It's actually a pretty cool lifestyle.

The Final Girls — 2/5

It has a CollegeHumor sheen to it. 

I didn't think such violent things could happen to ordinary people.

Brief Encounter — 3.5/5

I think for me, there's a thought that if this were Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, I would probably be taken by it more; the natural charm, two people bigger than whatever current relationship they're in who find each other, but bound all the same by a pre-existing contract with a lesser being who isn't bad, simply nice enough. But I think the beauty of this movie is how normal Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are. "Do you realize, Sir, that if Celia Johnson could contemplate being unfaithful to her husband, my wife could contemplate being unfaithful to me?" is the truth of it. I appreciate from there the leanness of the movie; a grand romance told in 86 minutes and just a few weeks of knowing each other. There's an undeniable beauty here and I, like Alec, fall in love with Laura with her big eyes and pursed lips. Middle-class as they are, they both, bathed in the light of love, become more attractive as the film goes on. Though I think then, my ultimate disconnect is that I don't fall in love with Alec. He seems too forceful, too sure, the romance seeming less like an accident, a giant hole that they just happened to step into. She fell; he leaped.