Free at last.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve posted my notes on the two film versions of The Thomas Crown Affair: 1968 and 1999. Both are slick, but thin on substance, which I think is their point. They offer impressions of the good life, which is all about expensive toys and being free. And this isn’t just the freedom to jet off to wherever you want, and do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, but freedom to be a total scofflaw.  Thomas is, after all, a criminal who gets away with it. In fact, he probably gets away with more than just the heists he likes to pull on the side. I can’t imagine Crown’s business, whatever it is it does, being squeaky clean.

In the 1968 version Thomas was a rebel, and thirty years later a libertarian. Is there some hypocrisy in the political right criticizing the Woodstock generation for its “freedom, baby!” attitude while presenting itself as the upholder of law and order? I think so. From Steve McQueen to Bill Clinton to Pierce Brosnan to Donald Trump: hasn’t Thomas Crown just got older, without changing party?

Game, set, and . . .

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching some film versions of Anthony Shaffer’s play Sleuth. Or at least the 1972 Laurence Olivier-Michael Caine Sleuth and the 2007 Michael Caine-Jude Law Sleuth, with 1982’s Deathtrap (Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve) sandwiched in-between. Deathtrap is actually based on Ira Levin’s play, but it also clearly derives from Sleuth, and may even be closer to Shaffer’s play than the 2007 movie, which was written by Harold Pinter.

Party time.

Over at Alex on Film I just put up my 1,000th post: some comments on Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room.

I wasn’t sure when I started my movie blog that I’d get to 1,000 posts. Then for a while I imagined I might try to do a special film to mark the occasion. Citizen Kane. Casablanca. Vertigo. Something like that.

One thing I’ve found as I’ve gone on, however, is that doing commentaries on those movies is nearly impossible. This is, in part, because so much (really, everything) has already been said about them. Just in jotting down some personal impressions and reflections, which is all I do at Alex on Film, would require too much work. I do listen to commentaries when available. I do try to read up on some of the basic background and criticism that’s out there. But the field has become so overgrown in many cases that the volume of it is self-defeating.

Who can hope to read everything that’s been written on Psycho? Who would want to tackle Blade Runner? These movies have millions of words dissecting their every frame in print, with millions more online. Nobody can read all of it. And what do you do when the DVDs for not-quite-great films like Fight Club or Hostel come with four full-length audio commentaries each?

I think this is the reason you find so many movie blogs talking about really obscure titles that almost nobody has seen. Critics want to feel like they have some elbow room, or aren’t just reinventing the wheel. What’s interesting is that the same attitude doesn’t seem to apply to fiction. A book that doesn’t find an audience, critical or otherwise, is just ignored. Nobody wants to go near it. Even if it’s a great book that somehow got overlooked. But even the dreariest exploitation flick from the 1960s seems to be able to find an audience today online. I’m not sure why that is.

Mr. Ray Winstone. No, not really.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching some movies loosely (very loosely) based on the Old English poem Beowulf. I’m not sure what the attraction for filmmakers is, since despite having lots of classic fantasy elements (a powerful hero, a witch, a monster), the story is kind of bare bones. As a result, these movies indulge in a lot of freestyle reinterpretation. Some of it works, some doesn’t.

Despite its reputation as a box office bomb, which may not be wholly deserved, The 13th Warrior (1999) is actually pretty good. Beowulf & Grendel (2005) only has a few moments set amidst some nice scenery. Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf (2007) has dated so badly in only ten years that it’s unwatchable.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve posted my picks in various categories for the best (and worst) in 2018 movies. What makes my year-end wrap-up different from other end-of-the-year lists is the fact that I only saw thirteen new (that is, released in 2018) movies in 2018. So I didn’t have a lot to choose from! That made things a bit difficult, But if nothing else, the nominees aren’t all the usual suspects.

I always wondered how she’d manage with a flat screen.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching a bunch of horror movies that fit into what I call the Ghostbusters paradigm, where a team of specialists equipped with all the latest toys investigate weird goings-on. I believe the genre started with the BBC film The Stone Tape, and it’s had a long and varied history. Of course, this being the movie business science is always shown to be inadequate when it comes to combating the forces of evil. Just as religion also usually fails. Anyway, here’s the line-up of movies I looked at.

The Stone Tape (1972)
The Entity (1982)
Poltergeist (1982)
Ghostbusters (1984)
Prince of Darkness (1987)
1408 (2007)
The Conjuring (2013)
Ghostbusters (2016)
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Rings (2017)

Just two of the contestants in this week’s quiz.

I’ve been posting weekly movie quizzes over at Alex on Film every Friday for almost a year now, and this week (a Black Friday, no less) posted my fiftieth. So I decided to give you double the number of images to celebrate. See if you can go fifty-for-fifty!

Over at Alex on Film I just finished re-watching Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch. I was curious to see how well these movies held up thirty years later. Answer: pretty well, but they were never great movies in the first place. It’s interesting they haven’t been remade given how well-known the gremlin mythology still is (don’t get them wet, don’t feed them after midnight) and seeing as they came out just before CGI changed everything.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching adaptations of Poe’s classic tale “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Animation seems to work best with Poe, and keeping things short. Anyway, here’s what the story looked like in 1941, 1953, 1991, and 2006. I thought the 1953 and 2006 versions were the best.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching some horror movies dealing with families who have locked themselves away from mortal threats in a post-catastrophe future America. Horror reflects broader cultural anxieties, so I guess there’s something in these tales of families in a bunker — It Comes by Night and A Quiet Place — that people relate to. (I’d also include 10 Cloverfield Lane in the discussion, but there the “family” is a demonic parody construct.) Basically these films take cocooning (a word invented by Faith Popcorn in 1981, I was surprised to find out) to its furthest extreme. The bunker-cocoon insulates the family from threats real or imagined, which have come to define the entire external world.

Of course bunkers are nothing new, as fallout shelters became popular in America as early as the 1950s. What’s going on now feels different though, less afraid of things to come than what’s outside our doors right now. I wonder if there’s any connection to our use of the Internet and the way we consume media generally, where we increasingly inhabit silos of news that we feel comfortable with while being distrustful of everything else (that is, the reality beating on the door). Whatever else is going on, it seems paranoid to me.