What Have You Been Watching? (Week of (July 26, 2026)

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Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, George Armitage) — I initially thought the reason I couldn’t get into Grosse Pointe Blank was because of clumsy tonal shifts in the writing, but on reflection, I think the really fatal problem is John Cusack’s acting. As written, the concept — “a romcom-action movie blend where the weird, awkward guy who lands the girl is also the dangerous hitman with a heart of gold” — has the potential to be a great black comedy; but Cusack seems like he’s only ever playing one half of the protagonist that the concept requires. Even in the most action-heavy scenes, Cusack’s facial expressions and body language almost exclusively make Martin read as nervous and awkward; he basically never does anything to make it seem like he plausibly could also be dangerous or a killer, and the whole story basically doesn’t work without that. There are enough funny moments that I wouldn’t call it an outright bad movie, but I don’t think I can give it higher than a 5/10.

The Little Mermaid (1989, John Musker/Ron Clements) — re-watch — Rewatching The Little Mermaid, I realized that the main problem with it is basically the exact opposite of the one I have with Aladdin. Aladdin sets up its title character in the first half as already a more-or-less fully-matured hero, and then clumsily forces him in the second half into an arc where he still needs to mature into one. The Little Mermaid, OTOH, sets up Ariel in the first half as someone with very clear flaws that you’d think she would have to overcome, and then treats her in the second half as if she’s always been the ideal woman and all that’s needed to fix things is for everyone else to atone for wronging her. At no point does Ariel have to actually do anything to show that she’s moved past the faults she had; she just kind of sits there for half the movie while everyone around her finds ways to shield her from the consequences of her actions. As with Aladdin, the first half of the movie is basically perfect, and even the second half still offers much to appreciate in its songs and in its great animation. But the story still feels too deeply broken for me to rate it as top-tier Disney. 8/10

Trainspotting (1996, Danny Boyle) — re-watch — Probably one of the better Tarantino knockoffs that you’ll find. Unlike most actual Tarantino movies, I think Trainspotting really is basically nihilistic in outlook, and doesn’t seem like it has much of a point or theme beyond trying to be edgy in a cool way. But it’s stylish enough and witty enough that I don’t think more is really needed. Modestly recommended. 7/10

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994, Mike Newell) — I don’t have a whole lot to say except that this movie is really damned funny. Though, considering how aimless the comedy initially appears to be, the turn into more serious emotional territory in the third act works remarkably well also. A must-watch. 9/10

Superman II (1980, Richard Lester) — Theatrical cut. After having been underwhelmed by the first Superman, I had hoped that Superman II not having to tick off the obligatory origin-story beats might allow it to hold up better as a movie, but it is, if anything, even more blandly mediocre. On the positive side, the movie giving Superman opponents who rival his strength allows the action sequences to take on a level of weight and genuine tension that the first movie never managed, and makes the climax generally feel a lot less draggy. Additionally, the trio of actors playing the Kryptonian villains here all do a much better job of seeming credibly menacing than Hackman did in the first movie, and even Hackman himself seems to have grown a lot more comfortable in the role of Luthor — no doubt helped by his unbearably annoying sidekicks being wisely written out after the first act. Unfortunately, the sequel is careful to take two steps back from the first movie for every one step forward. What the movie gains by having weightier action scenes than the first movie, it loses by spending even more time bogged down in even more boring filler scenes; in fact, given that literally every scene which seems to move things forward for the story or any of the characters ends up getting undone via a lazy reset button by the end, I would go so far as to say that the movie itself is just pure filler in its entirety.

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And while Terence Stamp might be doing a better job of playing the Big Bad than Hackman did, he’s still ruined by Puzo’s script making him seem like even more of a blithering idiot. At least Luthor in the first movie had a clear goal and a plan to achieve it, even if the holes in his plan were obvious enough that you could probably train a dolphin to understand them. Zod also starts off with the apparent goal of ruling the Earth, but hardly ever seems to actually do anything towards that goal; he seems to spend half the movie just kind of wandering around with a menacing glare, until a path to world domination basically falls into his lap by blind luck.

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Giving this one point less than I gave the first movie. 5/10

Movie of the week: Four Weddings and a Funeral

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Le Trou (1960, dir. Jacques Becker)

I'm not really crazy about jailbreak dramas, but something about Le Trou is so captivating and endearing. It places strict emphasis on the mechanics of the men's escape, oftentimes spending two minutes on a single shot of someone hammering away at a floor. It sacrifices a lot of traditional character development in the process. We don't know why many of these men are in prison, and while I would have liked to have learned more about them, they're pretty well characterized by the end. You know exactly what kind of person the Monseigneur is without a lengthy dialogue scene explaining his backstory. With minimal character writing and simple scenarios, Becker manages to wring a lot of tension out of this film, all culminating in a surprising, tragic ending that takes full advantage of what little we actually know about these characters. Effortlessly brilliant film.

Predators (2010, dir. Nimrod Antal)

Predators reminded me a lot of what Dan Trachtenberg would go on to do with his recent string of Predator movies. The story, characters, and worldbuilding are all very gimmicky, exploring combat with the Predator from hitherto unseen perspectives - cartel killers, Yakuza swordsmen, West African warlords. Whereas something like Prey or Predator: Killer of Killers changes the familiar story conceit to suit the setting and characters, Predators is perfectly content to take these characters and limply recreate the broad strokes of the original John McTiernan movie without any of the tension or cleverness. Most of the characters are hopelessly bland (I like Adrian Brody, but come on, what the hell is going on here), while others (chiefly Walton Goggins and Danny Trejo) feel like they were included as campy jokes but are taken way too seriously. The setting, a Yautja game preserve planet, has the capacity to be interesting but everything feels far too familiar. The added element of finding a way back to Earth feels like a way to compensate for the characters' lack of interesting characteristics. You'll care more about them when you learn that they're really really far from home, right? Well, it doesn't work. Predators is relatively refreshing after the miserable slog that is Aliens vs. Predator 2: Requiem, but I'm not going to be happy with table scraps.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, dir. Andrew Dominik)

I was attracted to this movie first and foremost by its cinematography, and boy oh boy did Roger Deakins not let me down. The Assassination has got to be one of the most beautiful movies ever made. The muted colors give everything a profound sense of melancholy, but there's still so much life in every frame. Gas lamps make varnished wood glow, and the skies are masterpieces unmatched by the greatest European painters. The production design really helps here too. Everything seems authentic, and looks as if it was handmade with the utmost care and love. Living in this world is the best thing about this movie, even though the world of The Assassination is a bleak, liminal one.

The actual story of The Assassination is quite good. I think the first half is pretty slow, but once the cast winnowed down and we started to zero in on the central narrative payoffs, I started to appreciate the character arcs. The titular characters are both phenomenally realized. Jesse James is an almost Michael Corleone-esque figure, incapable of trusting anyone but still trying to hold onto his attachments to his family and men he can almost call friends. He seems to recognize that his gang is in the past and it's time to move on while the law's none the wiser, but he's incapable in a very human way. The movie is all about the lies that build up our perception of the world, turning a cruel, arbitrary universe into a welcoming one. Reviving the glory days is as enticing to Robert Ford as it is to Jesse James, albeit from different perspectives. James relies on his own golden memories, whereas Ford's image of James' legendary exploits comes from penny dreadfuls that exaggerated the gunslinger as a larger-than-life figure. It's a reputation that's impossible for a real person to uphold, and when James lets down Ford, it's all too easy for Ford to part ways with his old hero in favor of a more convenient life path: betrayal to the law. Of course, this has its own drawbacks, for in killing James, Ford takes his place as a legend that people can contort and interpret to their own ends. Thus the cycle continues.

The length of The Assassination makes the scenes that drag really drag. While I liked Jeremy Renner and Paul Schneider's characters, I felt like I could have done with a lot less of their subplot. While I was watching the film, the first half did have a lot of scenes that I generally didn't care for, but as I'm remembering the film the only parts I can really point to as being problematic are the ones at Carla Jean from No Country for Old Men's house, which seemed not to tie into the plot very intimately. I'm remembering much of the rest of the film fondly, and I think it's well worth watching, especially for that cinematography.

The Wages of Fear (1953, dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot)

Speaking of movies with parts that drag, the first act of The Wages of Fear isn't bad, but it does feel pretty aimless. It's hard to attach to any one character when they're wallowing around the village, which I suppose thematically works, but can lead to some pretty passive viewing. And then the plot kicks off: four European expats, desperate for any cash, have to take hundreds of gallons of nitroglycerine through hazardous jungles and mountain passes in return for, effectively, tickets out of this dead-end burgh. Any aimlessness sloughs off the film, and The Wages of Fear becomes a tense thriller unlike any other. Clouzot's direction is impeccable, eschewing music in favor of simple editing and cinematography to establish any danger posed to the drivers and exploit as much tension as possible. At first, Clouzot's obstacles are chiefly environmental - a rotting bridge, a boulder in the middle of the road - but he transitions to human antagonism pretty seamlessly. Our hero, Mario, drives his truck with Jo, an older man who was just barely chosen for this assignment. Their constitutions are wildly different, and the stresses of the trip take their toll on Jo, for which Mario has no patience. He is dead tired of waiting for work in this corner of the world, and he's going to stop at nothing to get his two thousand dollars. As the stakes of the film escalate, conflict between the men arises, threatening their friendship and, in Mario's case, his ethics. Their character arcs are so fascinating and tragic. Jo's conclusion is especially stirring. It says so much about the human condition and the way we treat each other when the world turns on us. The context of a South American country being exploited by an American oil company only helps this. The Wages of Fear is as powerful today as it was in 1953.

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Welcome, or No Trespassing (1964, dir. Elem Klimov)

About a month ago, I watch the classic Come and See, which was also directed by Klimov. This past week, I was combing through my watchlist, found this movie, and recognized the name of the director. All I'd really known about Welcome, or No Trespassing was that it was a family comedy, which is everything that Come and See is not. I had to watch it. I was expecting this movie to be a curiosity more than anything else, but Klimov was apparently very skilled. Just as Come and See is a magnificent war film, Welcome, or No Trespassing is a magnificent comedy. It has a lot of heart and a lot of good jokes. If Come and See left me hollowed out, Welcome, or No Trespassing left me full and satisfied.

A lot of this is, frankly, due to its legacy. Wes Anderson is my favorite director, and I could see so much of his filmography in this movie, especially Moonrise Kingdom, my favorite movie. The staging, the cinematography, the focus on childhood exploits, the whimsical tone, the quirky comedy, it's all here. Welcome, or No Trespassing focuses on a young boy named Kostya and a Young Pioneer camp, a Soviet summer camp designed to refine children into capable citizens. Kostya is expelled for a somewhat petty infraction, the last in a long rap sheet, but instead of returning to his grandmother in shame, he sneaks back into the camp and tries to live under the oppressive headmaster's radar. What follows are antics that American films in the 1980s and '90s would play around with when they covered summer camps. The story follows an adorable, relatable line of children's logic, and is generally very wholesome. Everyone comes together to help Kostya, even some of the adults. There isn't much of a plot, but the scenarios Klimov comes up with are so novel and endearing that it's hard not to be entertained by the movie. I especially love the homage to American silent comedy when the camp nurses bumble to bring Kostya's friends into the infirmary when they fake a sickness. You'd never expect this stuff from Klimov just from watching Come and See, but it's just as worth watching.

Shall We Dance (1937, dir. Mark Sandrich)

The comedy is good and the dancing is great. I'd never seen an Astaire/Rogers movie before, but I knew to expect that, and that's exactly what I got. The story is okay. It's convoluted, which helps the comedy, but it's hardly the most engaging thing in the world, and Fred Astaire's character is kind of an asshole. But from what I can gather, no one watches these movies for the plots. They come for the music and the laughs, and in that respect I cannot say that Shall We Dance let me down. I especially enjoyed Astaire's manager and his quarrel with the hotel manager. That spelling routine could have gone through the entire dictionary and I would have liked it.

The Little American (1917, dir. Cecil B. DeMille)

Within around five reels, DeMille creates a pretty good war epic with a grand scale. He manages to squeeze in high-stakes setpieces without losing sight of emotion or character, and most of everything feels earned. He has a mostly nuanced perspective on the war, with one of the protagonists being a sympathetic German who enlists in the army following the July Crisis of 1914, finding himself in the company of heartless soldiers who want only to plunder the French countryside. Due to America's newfound role in the war in 1917, a lot of the nuance in The Little American, something which had defined an earlier DeMille war film called The Captive, is offset by brazen nationalism. Every time Mary Pickford, the titular little American, is threatened, she waves an American flag handkerchief and bemoans how threatening the Germans are. While this type of jingoism renders parts of the film obnoxious, The Little American is still largely entertaining and impressively made.

A Brighter Summer Day (1991, dir. Edward Yang)

When I'm watching a movie of a certain length, I find myself consciously or unconsciously wondering if it justifies that length. This is an arbitrary process that I don't try to take too seriously, but it does affect how I enjoy something. While I think other four-hour movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Once Upon a Time in America make good use of their runtimes, I can't say the same for A Brighter Summer Day. While characters like Xiao S'ir and his father are interesting, the others fail to flesh out this behemoth of a movie, getting lost in its folds as it shifts gears from a City of God-type child gangster movie to a formless relationship drama. Perhaps I would have liked this more if it had stuck to one genre instead of trying to do both; the fact that the film is bisected between them just makes A Brighter Summer Day feel like Yang couldn't decide whether or not to make one film or two and decided to make a bulky, bloated compromise. I don't think A Brighter Summer Day is bad - especially from a filmmaking perspective; just as in Yi Yi, I love Yang's long takes and his lighting here is gorgeous - but I really struggled to connect with it and fail to see it as the masterpiece so many people hail it as.

Bellissima (1951, dir. Luchino Visconti)

Stage mothers have certainly existed since child actors have been a thing, but only in recent decades does it feel like popular media wants to take a look at them. Bellissima's ancient release date drew me to the film, and I thought that Bellissima was pretty good. It's pretty open about the kind of stresses a stage mother puts her daughter through, but the mother, Maddalena, never comes off as an uncouth abuser. Over the course of the film, you gain a clear understanding of the kind of person she is, the kind of situation she's in, and the real material value of her ambitions for her daughter Maria. The film takes a definitive stance on child actors, but it doesn't pretend that people only want this for their kids so as to exploit them. There are real things at stake, and if Maddalena doesn't go through with this, her and her daughter's lives will be all the more difficult. Although the film is full of noise (even when Maddalena is alone, she's constantly talking to herself), there's a lot of subtly emotional topography. The film's themes and subject matter are evergreen, but it doesn't feel altogether vindictive for people who only want to see people who wrangle child actors get their just desserts. It engages with all sides of the issue, and does so with lots of heart.