Mini Film Reviews
I contributed some short, ghost-written movie reviews to a Huckberry Journal article (50 Movies to See You Before You Die), and I really enjoyed the way they came out, so I copied them here.
The Thing (1982)
This movie didn’t need to go as hard as it did. The sci-fi concept that drives The Thing—a shapeshifting alien that can perfectly replicate any life form—is scary enough that you could phone-in the filmmaking and still end up with a good movie. Thankfully though, nobody phoned it in.
John Carpenter traps you in the palm of his hand. Ennio Morricone's score is not heard so much as felt in the pit of your stomach. Rob Bottin’s practical effects are some of the best ever put to screen. And Kurt Russell is peak Kurt motherfucking Russell. Every department is firing on all cylinders for 109 minutes straight.
But technical excellence alone doesn't make a movie great. The feeling you get while watching it, or thinking back on it years later, that's what matters. And man, this movie plays me like a fiddle. It somehow gets to be an effects-driven creature feature and a paranoid thriller all in one. Heady, "elevated" horror meets a classic monster flick. And every single time I watch the nearly silent blood test scene, my heart rate jumps into tell-your-doctor territory.
Ran (1985)
If the list of all-time great filmmakers were three names long, Akira Kurosawa would be on it. You may think you disagree, but to watch one of his films is to accept, begrudgingly if you must, that the man was an artistic force to be reckoned with.
Kurosawa had a run in the '50s where he perfected the samurai movie the way John Ford perfected the Western. Rashomon, Yojimbo, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood—all are worthy of a spot on this list. But age changed the filmmaker, and after a long break from the genre that defined his early career, Kurosawa returned to samurai films with a copy of King Lear and chip on his shoulder.
Ran has zero romance for samurai. In this movie, they aren't swashbuckling heroes but petty, violent fools. The spilled blood isn't poetic or symbolic of anything other than brutality. In his mid-seventies and practically blind, Kurosawa painted his storyboards by hand—and he painted an epic tale of ruthless power struggle (imagine Succession but with swords). Enthralling action sequences and beautiful cinematography abound, but Ran is special for what isn't in it: mercy.
Gimme Shelter (1970)
By all accounts, Gimme Shelter should have been just another rock documentary. And while, with the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin at the helm, it was destined to be one of the good ones, I think what they captured makes this film so much bigger than a music story.
The movie follows the Rolling Stones on their 1969 US tour, and includes some crazy cool footage: their Madison Square Garden concert, recording "Wild Horses" in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Charlie Watts riding a donkey on a highway. But quickly the focus of the film turns to the band's preparation for what would become the disastrous Altamont Free Concert.
The camera gradually turns away from the Stones and towards the audience, as drugged-out crowds get rowdy and someone makes the fatal error of hiring Hells Angels as security. And while there's plenty of great tunes and classic rock 'n' roll antics in this film, Gimme Shelter winds up documenting the end of the hippie counterculture movement, and doc footage was used as evidence in a murder trial. So yeah, there's a lot more to it than "Sympathy For The Devil."
8 ½ (1963)
Federico Fellini is hands down my favorite director, and 8 ½—though it's maybe his strangest film—was the first of his that I saw. I can't overstate the effect it had on me. It challenged what I thought movies could be, or what movies were allowed to be.
8 ½ is a surrealist, meta comedy-drama, and it can't quite be understood so much as felt—but it's not plotless. The story follows an Italian film director stuck in a creative rut while trying to make a semi-autobiographical movie (see the meta-ness?). Fellini mixes dreams and reality, truth with fantasy, and the result is something so entirely singular it's hard to compare it to anything.
But if you're expecting some try-hard arthouse film, think again. 8 ½ isn't trying to be anything. It's a movie made by a master filmmaker tapping into unfiltered creative impulses—and the result is joyful, whimsical, and weird. By the end of my first viewing I was left with two things: 1) a frustration that there aren't more movies like this, and 2) a big-ass smile on my face.
The Shape of Water (2017)
Guillermo del Toro makes fairy tales for grown-ups, and I mean that as the highest compliment. What—if I want magical worldbuilding I have to watch something made for kids? I refuse to accept that. I don't feel like spending the rest of my life only watching movies about people talking in rooms.
The Shape of Water rocked my world when I first saw it. The film is about a girl-next-door janitor who works at a menacing government facility and falls in love with a fish monster held captive in a secret lab. Sure, that sounds a little weird. But it made me cry. Twice. Plus there's a scene where Michael Shannon shoves his finger through a guy's gunshot wound and drags him across the pavement. Hell yeah.
The film also doesn't get enough credit for how steamy it is. There's a beautiful love story at the center of The Shape of Water, but a very adult one—and I'm totally here for it. Del Toro makes some masterful choices with his filmmaking throughout, but this movie isn't cinema homework, it's a Brothers Grimm story for the modern age. With fish sex in it.
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
You know how underground musicians are sometimes called "your favorite artist's favorite artist"? Well I think Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves is like that but for movies. It's the centerpiece of the Italian Neorealism movement, and it marks a huge shift in film history from painted sets and Hollywood glamor to stories about real life and real people.
I don't really know what I was expecting when I saw it, but it floored me. The movie follows a poor father searching for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to keep his job. That's it. It sounds so small, but because this bike is the only thing keeping this family off the street, the stakes are incredibly high. It's intense, it's emotional, and it's so, so real.
Maybe there's no way for Bicycle Thieves to feel as groundbreaking now as it was back in 1948, but it sure as hell packs a mean punch. No big name stars, no fancy camera work, no studio budget (De Sica raised the money himself)—and yet if you're not gripped, moved, and gutted by this 90 minute masterpiece…buddy, I can't help you.
