TWIN CRITIQUES: WELL, THAT SUCKED: Stuff From the Past Few Years I Merely Endured
Note: This piece is one of two yin/yang appraisals of my recent years of pop-culture consumption; refer to its twin for more favo(u)rable opinions.
Entertainment journalism is much like astrology, politics, or religion, in that it’s entirely subjective, devoid of science, largely meaningless if occasionally amusing, and you can make up anything you want, and if you say it with enough conviction, somebody will believe it. The subcategory of film criticism — which I call cinema criticism, as hardly anyone shoots or projects actual film anymore (more’s the pity) — is even loosier and goosier: that is, if you have an individual voice, which my award proves that I do have indeed. (In sharp contrast, most corporate critics say more or less what they’re told to say. Whereas these days I’m like, “Look, Ma! No editor!”)
The majority of the commentary in this essay and its twin concerns cinema, however there’s a bit of TV included, and an even smaller bit of music. Basically I’m blowing out the pipes: having consumed a lot of pop culture over the past few years — this is not only a 2022 wrap-up — I have a few things to say. During our pandemic era, it’s been possible for me to view no small amount of cinema, small-scale, usually for free, and minus the hellscape of traffic and the not-so-great unwashed. Often this practice left me with the desire to mouth off about what I’d consumed, but very tree-falls-in-the-forest, with no audience. Well, now I’ve got you. Bwah to the hah-hah.
Traditional methods of reviewing movies (or films) often leave little to no latitude for actually reviewing them, i.e. giving them real scrutiny, and real thought, and picking at the minutiae, and having a reasonable window of opportunity for a unique or even eccentric appraisal. (In the thick of it, back when there was a paycheck, I’d often attend a press screening on a Monday night, and have to turn around a review by early Tuesday morning; representing a couple of years of the work of hundreds or even thousands of people, within a span of hours. Often mangled by a “preditor” with no knowledge of the material (in some cases: with no knowledge). Ridiculous! But I did it. A lot. Could you? Think twice. It’s work.
In case you haven’t noticed, I love introductory paragraphs — a vital component usually butchered by incompetent “preditors” — and the grafs above amount to various degrees of explanation; yet here’s a specific disclaimer: Obviously (or it should be), stating an opinion about one aspect of something does not automatically define an opinion about any other aspect of it. Herein I’ll dis and dismiss an assortment of stuff which I’ve found to be derivative, disappointing, hackneyed, insipid, lacking, lame, moronic, stupid, tedious, or even weak (the go-to adjective for snobs), but my condemnation of the whole does not equal an attack on the parts. None of this is an affront to useless actors, deranged screenwriters, plagiarizing directors, bullying producers, or braindead executives. I’m picking on projects, not people. Many delightful people work on terrible movies. I myself worked on Necessary Roughness.
Worst Picture:
Parasite
Did you get your spit-take on video? Either way, let me explain: I like Bong Joon-ho — in fact, having followed his career for years, I like The Host, Snowpiercer, and okja much more than I could be said to like Parasite. (Even given that Tilda and the Captain America guy act so hard that they approach unwatchable.) Parasite swept at all the awards shows, and I truly enjoyed observing that process, as Team Bong looked happy and sincerely surprised, while the Irishman codgers Ubered back to the motel empty-handed every time. But why did Parasite win? Obviously the film’s got relatable characters and excellent performances, but Parasite won because it gave entertainment royalty an opportunity to examine their guilt over the countless struggling human beings they’ve shoved into lifelong servitude. The ones who ride the bus. I’ve ridden it with them, thousands of times. That’s what Parasite is all about, Charlie Brown. And that’s why it won all the awards. Its script is awful, a series of utterly unconvincing if/then equations: If I bring in my sister, then the matriarch will hire her, too. If she leaves her panties in the car, then the rich employers are guaranteed to fire their driver without questioning him. If the rich people suddenly return home from camping during a massive rainstorm during which they’d very obviously return home (duh), then they absolutely won’t smell the large quantity of alcohol that was just smashed all over their living room floor. And don’t forget to feed the little kid his favorite noodles at midnight! Parasite cheats so damned much that it made me dislike it. Plus there’s that hoary ol’ tuberculosis gag, and that cartoonish group-tumble down the sub-basement stairs, egad. Of course it’s not the worst picture. But is it really the Best? And I got your attention, didn’t I?
Being fair, I’d say the worst thing to happen to popular entertainment in the past few years was the purchase of Lucasfilm by the Mouse. In October, 2012, an entertainment icon ostensibly independent of the Mouse tweeted something along the lines of, “Finally! We own Star Wars!” Over time, that tweet disappeared (though the gloating sure hasn’t). I liked said icon a lot, so I won’t name him, but his attitude mirrored that of the silver spoon who was already busily wrecking Star Trek and would promptly advance to wrecking Star Wars, so George’s sale of his baby to the “white slavers” (his quote, on Charlie Rose) did not bode well, and things went to hell fast: Disney’s so-called “Sequel Trilogy” is an abomination, and the way they immediately welded redundant junk onto both ends of the Original Trilogy (2015’s The Force Awakens — the Force was sleeping?! and 2016’s Rogue One — tagline: They all die.) bespoke decades of resentment toward a geek with business sense beating Hollywood at its own game. (Should I admit that Solo—bearing the misfortune of promptly following their moronic 2017 offering, and thus flopping due to residual annoyance— is their one feature I mostly enjoyed? Nah.) Disney “Star Wars” represents a graceless and embarrassing coup. Sure, yeah, kill off the characters we love, then focus on cruddy, forgettable new ones. Nice plan . . . not. I know, they attempted to apply a few old-school band-aids via streaming shows, but please: I’m not giving money to Disney.
(I used to like Disney: they made fun movies like The Black Hole, and Tron, back when they were competing against Star Wars, instead of sneering and wiping their Mouse on it.)
Anyway: Star Wars: 1976 (I know) — 2012. Rest in Peace.
Similarly, we got a new Jurassic trilogy, and I don’t even feel like typing this paragraph. Same exact pattern: Some doofus was given control of material he didn’t understand, so he “directed” a bombastic rehash of the original which got people excited and made a lot of money because it had been a while, then some hired hand stepped in and “directed” an incongruous middle movie that derailed everything, then the doofus returned to attempt damage control with the third movie, instead making things stupider on an even bigger scale, to the point that even dedicated fans turned blasé. Yesterday’s “MUTOs” became today’s giant locusts. One tiny point for not murdering the legacy characters, I guess. But a thousand points subtracted for placing that dickhead who loves hunting in the lead. For Crichton’s sake!
Of course I’m precisely the demographic to adore the original Ghostbusters, so it was with considerable unease that I greeted Ghostbusters: Afterlife, its makers blatantly taking their cues from Disney’s “Sequel Trilogy”: pass the baton/lightsaber/proton-pack to a Mary Sue granddaughter of the legacy character least likely to impregnate anybody (Do you want to imagine Sheev Palpatine or Egon Spengler doing the horizontal mambo? With whom? With what?) — then play it utterly, crushingly safe, all the callbacks and comfy tropes, invite the confused kids to invest whilst vaguely placating their exhausted parents. I’ll tell ya, apart from the fat, brash one, I didn’t mind the Ghostbusters 2016 remake by Paul Feig of Zombie High and Ski Patrol fame: it’s sloppy and breaks no new ground, but Jones, McKinnon, and that Australian Thor dude are funny, and I hadn’t then seen enough of Wiig’s default smirk for it to become bothersome, so: lame script (if any), but fun movie! Whereas — reflecting back, now that Hollywood nepotism is insanely being defended by those most dependent upon it — I feel that the probably-well-intended son of the recently-late comedic genius Ivan Reitman, well, the son took zero chances. Most of Ghostbusters: Afterlife is Stolen Things (Stranger Things) Goes to “Oklahoma,” Canada (uh, sure, Egon moved to “Oklahoma” — the logistical problems are almost enough to make one watch sports), then the characters we actually like and haven’t seen onscreen since 1989 (!) finally show up over thirty years later to sleepwalk through a they’re-kidding-aren’t-they?-no-they’re-not-oh-no rehash of the original movie’s climax. Guys, I want to love Ghostbusters, but you have to do better than this. C’mon: imagination, verve, ¡cojones! And “Muncher” is as pathetic as “BB-8” and “Grogu” and “Blue” — bad moviemakers, bad! To the clearance shelf with your lazy knockoff merch!
Been There, Dune Bat, Watched a Few Minutes, Switched It Off:
The Batman (Live action, I’ll take ’66 through ‘97); Dune (I’ll take ‘84).
Also fits here: Confess, Fletch. (I’ll take ’85, of course.) Nice try?
Also fit here: Under the Silver Lake (though I watched Riki’s scene two or three . . . hundred times); Hereditary; Midsommar. Not-nice try?
Didn’t See the First One or Didn’t Like It, Pass:
The Top Gun sequel (never interested in watching the first one, with that guy from Losin’ It in the lead; and “ACTUAL JETS!!!” is no reason to watch a movie); the Avatar sequel with the title largely stolen from The Shape of Water (dutifully sat through all three years of the 2009 movie, annoyed by Cameron’s incessant thievery [Roger Dean, Fern Gully, “Dances With Smurfs,” and especially both the title {Avatar} and the concept {“Call Me Joe”} stolen directly from Poul Anderson!])
Another Worst Picture:
The Shape of Water
a.k.a. Amélie Fucks the Creature. (No, not The Jesus Rolls. Ha.) Hey, after seeing the likes of Crash and The Hurt Locker scattered among the undesired DVDs at a secondhand store, indeed I smile upon the ol’ AMPAS for occasionally deigning to let a fantasy take top prize. The Shape of Water wears its influences upon its sleeve, but at least they’re cool influences, and remember, kids: Fascism is bad. Ya think?! Twenty years ago, when I used to get paid by decrepit subhumans to do this sort of thing and have it mangled by their inept control freaks (one editor actually knew her stuff, so of course they fired her), I frequented a bookstore in L.A. (several, actually; there used to be several), and once a cashier glanced at my selections, and asked me if I knew Guillermo del Toro. I’d heard of him, but I did not know him, thus I asked the cashier why he asked. “You guys buy the same books,” he replied. So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice. Extrapolating upon this, at some point, Señor del Toro noted, in a tweet as I recall (it’s only paraphrased here) that movie directors are like cuckoos, essentially appropriating others’ “eggs” and “nests.” I guess he bought up the books I didn’t get first. He certainly enjoys showing off his stash. Anyway, unlike his buddy Cameron who cannot admit to lifelong pilfering, del Toro gets a point for owning it (along with everything else he can grab!) Some enchanting images, but he has yet to make a movie that truly wows me (I ducked into big-screen Crimson Peak after a different multiplex screening, and shrugged a bit at transforming a romance paperback cover into a full-length movie; then free HBO offered up his remake of Nightmare Alley, and I admired its technique without much enthusiasm [drop Nightmare Alley into Mediocrity Lane below, if that makes you feel better]), but I like the path he’s on, so I’m glad that his movies knock boring movies out of the way once in a while.
I Can’t Believe I Watched the Whole Thing:
Daniel Craig’s 16-year tenure as James Bond was a slow-motion trainwreck — let’s make Bond miserable, yay! — and I felt offended by the harsh shift from the fun, thrilling, and popular Die Another Day (guess Jinx was ahead of her time) to the grimy and morose Casino Royale (yeah, I’ve read it, but still). I couldn’t make any more sense of Spectre than its producers could, but believe it or not I liked the frenetic momentum of Quantum of Solace (it’s really well directed, if edited a smidge too tightly), and I attended the Skyfall junket, so I found bits of that one to, um, enjoy? No Time to Die, though, from its hideously ironic attempted release dates as Covid was killing millions, to its continued depiction of Bond as a shameful lout who might as well destroy himself — in the most idiotic way possible (empty courtyard; sure, man, let your guard down — missiles imminent; sure, man, forget those massive underground chambers, don’t just do something, stand there) — felt like unfair punishment for strongly preferring the Roger Moore Bonds. I’m probably as relieved about Phase Craig being over as he is. Then came “Scandinavian Gladiator,” or The Northman: I found The VVitch sufficiently creepy albeit silly (sure, superstitious settlers: remember to bring the most demonic-looking goat ever into the wilderness with you!), and The Lighthouse was like a long, rude student film successful at testing one’s patience, but I can’t say much in favor of Robert Eggers’ third feature, which is merely rugged and violent and Nordic and boring. Nerds can’t even caterwaul about “authenticity,” as the filmmakers on the commentary track note that they simply made up the costumes, to try to make the film look interesting. Oh, and also fits here: Blade Runner 2049, for the whole tiresome duration of which I was the only person in the theatre; a few nifty images do not a “visionary director” make. Watching gross Leto order the “Rachael” clone executed really nails how little everyone involved understood the original.
Horror Gutter:
The Black Phone: A few years ago, at the press screening of a huge studio movie based upon a popular book, I casually asked a friendly and famous film critic if he had read the book upon which the movie was based; briefly his friendliness dissipated, coldly came his reply: “I don’t feel it should be necessary to do homework in order to understand a movie.” Despite my general concurrence — never let anyone tell you how to do your job, especially not schmucks — I happened to find a paperback of stories by Joe “Hill” King (he didn’t go by Joe King? missed opportunity!), son of Stephen “King” Pollock, redesigned to market one of its stories, “The Black Phone,” which I read prior to watching this movie, only because both happened to be convenient. At this point, I haven’t read anything else by Joe Hill (who seems to be not a Millennial nepotism brat, plus, despite his having supportive parents — I myself was never burdened with a successful father — I can appreciate that he actually worked to establish his career), so this isn’t an appraisal of his writing in general, but I found “The Black Phone” to be a sketchy — even trite — little story, unpolished like a first draft in a college-ruled notebook, nothing to phone home about. Consequently — while I acknowledge that a slight work of prose can sometimes yield a satisfying movie — here we have this heavily padded production, which peculiarly recasts its fat, bald, old kidnapper as scrawny literary titan Ethan Hawke, ditches the grocery store but keeps the groceries he theatrically drops in order to distract the remarkably stupid lead kid, and then basement Saw-dungeon, incongruous phone, caring sister in It-kid yellow raincoat, villain’s brother dispatched exactly the same as the sheriff in Misery, and ghosts of previous kids who incomprehensibly wait until it’s almost too late to show up and actually help the lead kid. Lots of people have struggled to make feature films during the pandemic, and this is one of those, so yeah, they did finish the thing. But talk about annoying screenwriting. Rather than keeping his kidnapped kids in the empty house across the street that he also owns (third-act twist, screenwriters attempting Silence of the Lame [sic]), the villain instead keeps them in the basement of the house he shares with his attentive brother and a dog: a dog with dog ears that incredibly never hears the ruckus downstairs, plus nobody notices the pipes from the basement toilet being persistently flushed hundreds of times to remove dirt being dug for attempted escape? Like most of the movies here — Smile, to its dubious credit (it’s a mess), at least chooses to end horribly — The Black Phone is an exercise in logistical idiocy masquerading as a personal empowerment workshop. Cannot in good conscience recommend it. Nothing against its production company and their affable leader, though they are revealing a pattern of Important Theme Smothered With Irritating Nonsense.
The new Halloween “trilogy”: Heavy sigh. Thus far, thirteen official Halloween movies have been produced, and all but one of them take place partly or entirely (most of them entirely) in “Illinois.” Yet, to my knowledge, not one single frame of any of these movies has ever been lensed in actual Illinois! Does authenticity mean nothing? Do the producers not care? And what of the actual people of actual Illinois? Representation and economic stimulation could save them! The producers of the latest Halloween slop could have helped the Prairie State primitives learn rudimentary agricultural skills, construct basic shelter, dig latrines, that sort of thing. But no. The latest Halloween movies, set entirely in Illinois, were made in the Carolinas (wherever those are), and in Georgia. “Illinois,” in Georgia! Next thing you know, someone will pretend that Georgia is “Indiana.”
Halloween (2018) In September, 2018, my magnificent film school hosted a screening of the original Halloween (1978), and I attended, and stood in the back of the crowded theatre next to a wizened codger who reeked of stale urine who was not John Carpenter. The long-ago dropout did show up, though, and along with the much more jovial Nick Castle (an excellent director as well as, apparently, agreeable signer of photos of “The Shape”), he fielded questions from the audience, including one from a female student concerning “tropes,” which appeared to anger him, as he didn’t seem to understand the word. Meh, he made exciting movies four decades ago. The special guests were understandably cagey about the then-new Halloween (the third movie to carry that title), defaulting to an “alternate timeline” excuse, saying little more. If you recall, there was a lot of anticipation, enthusiasm, press, hype, and box office. I like Rick Rosenthal’s real Halloween II, a box-office hit and video nasty from long ago, so I was skeptical. But a few months later, after the hype dwindled, I watched the latest Halloween . . . and mostly hated it. Like several movies in this article, it’s merely bad fanfic: in this case, bewilderingly turning the long-established character of bookish Laurie Strode into hardcore-packin’ Sarah Connor from Terminator 2 (who herself peculiarly finally returned a year later and to no great shakes in Terminator: Dark Fury). Strode’s maturation into the wary, pseudonymous headmistress of a private school in 1998’s Halloween: H2O (a.k.a. Halloween: The Way of Water?) already succeeded. Why do it over again, and mess it up? Mess it up, they did. I vowed not to watch any more sloppy sequels.
Halloween Kills: One summer afternoon in 2022, I flipped on the TV to relax and watch a rerun of The Cleveland Show (its writers are creative and intelligent), and noticed that Halloween Kills would be on in a few minutes, via another free HBO preview. Ugh. I watched it. In two words: “Thrillingly Terrible!” This is why Southerners can’t have nice things. Some of the best farces emerge from the earnest efforts of people who’ve convinced themselves that they’re Saying Something Important, and just as I was about to give up on this hideous clownshow I realized that I was watching the funniest turkey since The Room. Were it not so resolutely brutal and disgusting, Halloween Kills would be a full-on unintentional comedy. Co-Executive Producer and Cameo Appearance actress Jamie Lee Curtis herself noteworthily proclaimed Halloween Kills “a masterpiece,” and as she hangs out with Christopher Guest, perhaps she was winking at us (she wasn’t). Despite trying to frame the movie as Significant due to the real-life social upheavals during its production (Covid delayed its release for a full year), reframing its Boogeyman as the ultimate misogynist, Halloween Kills is wall-to-wall fail, from its lame flashback attempt to weld itself onto the end of the 1978 movie (some guy on set happened to look like Donald Pleasence, so they gave him hilarious dialogue along the lines of: “Officer Hawkins, whose name I shouldn’t know except to set him up for this crummy cash-in . . . did Michael kill agayne?”), to its flubbed neighborhood-watch takedown of the baddie they all hung around for 40 long, uneventful years to encounter as a senior citizen on an indoor set of exterior suburban “Illinois.” Some online pundits have suggested that watching the brief sequence of “Michael Myers v Chicago Fire” is kinda fun (arguably, in a stupid way), but apart from that, this mess is propped up entirely by the completely invested performance of Anthony Michael Hall, taking over for Paul Rudd (from 1995’s intentionally entertaining Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers) as the adult version of little kid Tommy Doyle from the first movie. If you want to watch a completely deranged “Farmer Ted” lose his shit, here ya go. “EVIL DIES TONIGHT!” Surprise. No, it doesn’t. “The Shape”? For shame.
Halloween Ends: I just couldn’t. I gave at Christine.
The Invisible Man (2020) did so well with critics that I figured it would be good, but I figured wrong. Yikes. Hiding its narrative superlameness behind Social Justice Warrioring much as Halloween (2018) and other Important Theme/Nonsense movies did, and Halloween Kills soon would, this idiotic take on classic material boasts the worst logistical problems of any script in recent memory. Ostensibly they’re pushing the story of a completely innocent victim being pursued by the trendy-toxic-masculinity deranged fratboy-meets-Iron Man stalker who used be her live-in boyfriend in some coastal mansion in California, Australia. An invention in his basement, an invention that innocent victim eventually finds and instantaneously learns how to use despite zero training, is a high-tech invisi –oh, god, YAWN — a high-tech invisibility suit designed to make Hollow Man seem like a comparatively good movie. Under even the most cursory scrutiny, nothing in The Invisible Man (2020) makes any sense, but I’m particularly partial to a household with a spooky attic like in The Exorcist, where the tenants conveniently leave a full bucket of white paint with the lid off right next to the trapdoor, the better for innocent victim to spill upon invisible intruder, who manages to wash off all of said paint from the clunky suit covered in cameras and servos, in the kitchen sink, within seconds. Don’t forget to scrub your back, dude! This is a movie made for shouting mocking comments at the screen, but it’s not even worth that energy. If you liked it, go back to school.
The derivative and disposable Smile is the non-story of an irritating 30-ish psychologist (played of course by the daughter of two celebrities, thus speed-pass, no waiting, straight to lead role) who idiotically watches her patient from the movie poster slowly cutting her own throat and does nothing to help, thus causing her to inherit a curse that makes her hallucinate, kill her own cat and “gift” it to her nephew, very nearly murder one of her other patients in order to spare herself, then drive off to a combo Evil Dead cabin/Forrest Gump’s girlfriend’s childhood house to confront one of those trauma monsters that look exactly like Danny Elfman with the wrong hair dye. Everything she does and says along the way is incredibly stupid and makes life worse for herself and everyone who knows her, but the movie has those pretty drone shots common in movies like this one (there are many movies like this one), though for reasons unknown most of the drone shots are — symbolism! — upside down! Um, perchance Austin Powers could find some fun barking one of his less-charitable comments at this movie. Also, somebody saw Poltergeist, because a slumming Kal Penn tears off his own face for no reason. Why does junk this lame make money? Who greenlights this? Stop it. Seriously.
Oh, no, it wasn’t the superheroes; it was garbage horror killed the movies.
In closing (for this first of two twin critiques), let’s take a stroll down Mediocrity Lane, shall we? On the outro, just to lessen the sting of what actually sucked over the past few years (remember: these are not only 2022 wrap-ups), how’s about we briefly take note of movies that tried, and deserve no hate, although they’ll never be called great: Mr. Spielberg gave us his remake of West Side Story, illustrating yet again that attempting to best Robert Wise is a fool’s errand (see The Haunting remake, or The Day the Earth Stood Still remake, or don’t). West Side Story (2021) is perfectly watchable and perfectly forgettable, a big sleek vanity project with good intentions. But hey, at least it’s not Ready Player One: that sat on the DVR for two years, and even though it allegedly represents my generation, I just couldn’t, and I bless its accidental deletion. (Medium’s own Mr. Obama knows on which side his bread is buttered, so you can ask him about The Fabelmans.) As for other remakes, a DVD made itself available while I was finishing up these two essays, so I viewed the new version of Firestarter: a serviceable adaptation burdened by flat writing and the obvious limitations of making movies during Covid, but the cast and crew made it watchable, and I admire them for that, and doddering Mr. Carpenter & Co. added a familiar-yet-new score that makes the movie at least sound like four decades ago (though there was nothing wrong with the Tangerine Dream score in the 1984 version). Speaking of redundant Stephen King material, I was genuinely surprised to find that anybody cared about It anymore, but then I noted that most of the blank-stare consumers who donated their money to the big-screen two-movie remake of the TV miniseries weren’t born yet when the TV miniseries first aired. Smells like Stolen Things (Stranger Things), but both movies can help you down some popcorn. Better was the undersung Doctor Sleep, which took a cookie-cutter King novel heavily dependent upon the itinerant antagonists from Near Dark, and miraculously bridged not only the gap between King’s The Shining and Kubrick’s The Shining, but between a functional novel with region-specific characters and the casting mandates of Inclusion-Rider Hollywood. (Doctor Sleep is a fanboy movie, but it’s a rather solid and forcibly progressive fanboy movie.) I was also okay with the King Kong vs. Godzilla remake called Godzilla vs. Kong (though I preferred the murkiness of Godzilla: King of the Monsters [which met with pre-Covid disdain wheras its successor met with during-Covid gratitude], and the bureaucratic satire and freakiness of Shin Gojira, and I truly disliked 2014’s dull and lumbering Godzilla). Oh, of two used Blu-rays picked up for cheap, I found Interstellar typically Nolan-pretentious-and-protracted (not a fan), but kinda liked his cinematographer-turned-director Wally Pfister’s Transcendence, which dodges Nolan’s bludgeoning, joyless clichés and delivers members of his core cast led by Johnny Depp in some rare intelligent hard sci-fi from Hollywood. I mentioned The Jesus Rolls above, and while it pains me to see chère Audrey relegated to late-nite Showtime, John Turturro’s movie, while crude and featuring a climax both harrowing and literal (ick), does evince a callous appraisal of human frailty (or is it a frail appraisal of human callousness?) — plus it fits here among remakes, because it’s a remake not of The Big Lebowski (the faithful of which I never joined), but of (everyone in Beverly Hills suddenly perks up and pays attention: “French?! French?! He’s mentioning something French?!”) Bertrand Blier’s Going Places (Les Valseuses). And while I could go on, I’ll wrap up this lengthy, non-editor-approved paragraph with faint praise for X-Men: Dark Phoenix, my second-fave X-Men movie, itself essentially a remake of my fave: X-Men: The Last Stand. Poor Phoenix got a raw deal, as the Mouse ate the Fox during her production, and rumor has it that the Mouse inexplicably mangled it and gave its love instead to the similarly themed but badly miscast Captain Marvel. I’d like to thank these and other floundering studio movies for showing up nearly immediately on commercial television, where I could view and discard them with little to no personal hardship.
~Gregory
13 January, 2023
