by ·Comments Off on Kansas City / Jazz ’34 (1996, Robert Altman)

Finally a period movie that acknowledges that everyone is named Johnny. Altman took note of Jennifer Jason Leigh in the Hudsucker Proxy‘s 1930s and cast her in his own 1930s flick. It’s less a follow-up to Hudsucker than a precursor to Uncut Gems (someone tears around town making a lot of noise and pissing people off until they are shot in the head).

Rosenbaum calls the story “borderline terrible”:

It counts on the dubious premise that a gangster (Harry Belafonte) would fritter away a whole night deciding what to do with a thief who rips him off — thereby enabling the thief’s significant other (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to kidnap a society lady (Miranda Richardson) and Altman to crosscut to his heart’s content as he exposes the inner workings of a city on the eve of a local election.

“Democrats: they’re whatever they’re paid to be.” I could take or leave the Belafonte plot with Dermot “Johnny” Mulroney or the election rigging plot with Steve “Johnny” Buscemi (another actor cribbed from the Coens’ period films), but greatly enjoyed hanging out with Leigh and Richardson, the stars of Cronenberg’s eXistenZ and Spider.

Jane Adams:

Christian McBride:

–
Jazz ’34

All the music performances from Belafonte’s club in Kansas City allowed to run at their full length, with multiple narrators giving context. Not exactly a rock doc, but not far off – 1990s jazz guys pretending to be 1930s jazz guys, but they’re actually playing the music, so it’s a concert film. It is popular to say that this movie is better than parent film, but only I have the bravery to say: they are both good.

Ron Carter:

by ·Comments Off on Weapons (2025, Zach Cregger)

I noticed the parasite stuff on the classroom board long before it came up again via zombie-fungus-ant TV show, argh. The most mystifying was Handsome Family’s “Don’t Be Scared” (the “wake up, Paul” song) playing on the car radio to a cop named Paul. My conspiracy theory is that everything after Paul’s night at the bar with the teacher is his dream, that he fantasizes finding the missing kids (with help from his crack-addict tormentor) and almost saving them before getting paralyzed by a witch and then killed by his ex-girlfriend.

Pulp Fictioned-out story that keeps rewinding and changing perspective. Is it ironic that Brolin writes WITCH on the teacher’s car and the the villain turns out to be an actual witch? Effective blend of fairy-tale horror (pied piper children-napping by evil mind-control witches) with suburban dread/investigation drama. As for investigation, the cops are portrayed as even more ineffective than usual – the one we follow fucks up his home life, falls off the wagon, keeps getting stabbed by a crackhead, brutalizes civilians while disabling his car camera, then gets conquered by the witch, and killed with his own gun. As for the rest of the force, supposedly working hard on the case, nobody thought to check what direction the kids were running and then walk in that direction until the lines intersect – a parent figures this out a month too late.

Movies gain an automatic extra star when seen on the big screen. Packed weeknight crowd tittered at the suspense scenes, but their biggest reaction was upon seeing Justin Long The Mac Guy for some reason. Good movie but Parker isn’t wrong.

by ·Comments Off on The Empire (2024, Bruno Dumont)

The mythology of warring intergalactic races (the evil Zeroes and noble Ones) battling for control of the hearts of humanity is cheesy even for Dumont, but his French countryside weirdos-getting-exponentially-weirder schtick is on point. Both sides are pretty ramshackle, the antichrist kid Freddy is pretty easily kidnapped then re-kidnapped. If you follow the characters and story, it’s all deflated and lame – the long pauses and awkwardness and mismatched performances are the whole show. The space forces collide, forming a black hole over Earth which annihilates all of them and the police car belonging to Team Quinquin – Carpentier gets all the dialogue, the Captain now too twitchy to handle anything else. Elsewhere, the cellphone demon was in the latest Three Musketeers reboot, angel Jane in the latest Count of Monte Cristo.

by ·Comments Off on Heretic (2024, Scott Beck & Bryan Woods)

“That South Park musical kinda makes fun of us.” Hugh Grant invites in a couple of mormon girls who don’t quite talk like real people, but maybe that’s the point. He quickly proves to be weirder than they are, with his dogeared bibles of all religions and specific theological questions they can’t answer, his never-seen but oft-mentioned wife, the metal in his walls preventing cell signals. Hugh puts on a Hollies LP and calls the Book of Mormon a “zany regional spinoff edition” of the Bible over “The Air That I Breathe,” then drops the gentle facade and locks them in his Barbarian basement with an apparently dead woman. Resurrection, afterlife, and simulation theory are proposed, the girls realize they need to outwit Grant at his own theological game and call out some inconsistency in his story, leading to a final showdown which kills Sophie Thatcher (of the new Companion), leaving only the quieter Chloe East (Wolf of Snow Hollow) alive to escape, no thanks to Elder Topher Grace who’d been searching for them. Decent movie, we should cast Hugh Grant as a verbose psychotic in more movies.

by ·Comments Off on The Serpent’s Path (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

French remake of Kurosawa’s own film with Ko Shibasaki (Miike’s Over Your Dead Body) in the Sho Aikawa role, and Staying Vertical star Damien Bonnard as Creepy. This one is more straightforward, less cryptic than the original (especially in Ko/Sho’s plan and motivation), maybe more grounded and less absurd. As a spiraling-revenge film chock full of cool French actors (kidnappees, in order, are Amalric, Gregoire Colin, and Slimane the Temple Woods guy) I was bound to enjoy this, but after watching the original and its companion this year, and in the wake of the great Chime, this can’t help but feel superfluous.

by ·Comments Off on Trap (2024, M. Night Shyamalan)

M. Night sometimes likes to be grim and serious or to talk earnestly and endlessly about his big ideas, and sometimes he likes to weave murderous tension into scenarios so ridiculous they border on hilarious – a mode I far prefer, which is why this movie joins Old Beach and Lady in the Water among my favorites.

Josh Hartnett never better, not even in Valley of the Gods. With M. Night’s daughter as Lady Raven, Scott Pilgrim’s drummer Alison Pill as the mom, Jonathan Langdon as the merch guy with the outstanding dialogue, Rob Lowe’s wife from Stir of Echoes 2 as a fellow parent at the show, Bill & Ted 3‘s Kid Cudi as the guest star, and trap veteran Hayley Mills as the police psychiatrist.

by ·Comments Off on The Kid Detective (2020, Evan Morgan)

Thought this would be a low-stakes entry in the Inherent Vice / Under the Silver Lake / Big Lebowski burnout detective genre, and it mostly is, but with a biting ending as Evil Principal Peter MacNeill (sheriff of A History of Violence) reveals that detective Adam Brody’s new client is the daughter of his long-missing receptionist. “Now they’ll know what we were capable of.”

by ·Comments Off on South Terminal (2019, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche)

It’s time for Locorazo 2019|2024, kicking off with a competition title about a doctor who becomes interesting to at least two groups of warlords. Ramzy Bedia is good as the doctor, and wherever this country is (they’re not quite saying it’s Algeria) I would get killed there immediately, so let’s not visit. His buddy who helps him escape at the end was Slimane Dazi of Only Lovers Left Alive, and his boss who does not help at all is Slimane’s Forbidden Room costar Jacques Nolot.