By: Henry J. Fromage –
The first week of 2021 saw a New Year’s visit from Ken and a hodgepodge of films to keep us warm in yet another Midwestern snowstorm.
1. Let the Fire Burn
I randomly drew this documentary from my big list ‘o films, but it turns out it plays very well with recent watch and 2020 film 40 Years a Prisoner. This film is also about the antagonistic relationship between the City of Philadelphia and the activist group/cult MOVE, which in the former film culminated in a violent shoot-out that left a police officer dead. That film doesn’t address that there was more to this war, though, which built to a final confrontation in 1985 in which the police department firebombed the latest MOVE residence, taking most of the neighborhood with it. Director Jason Osder builds a damning yet rounded case against the kind of institutional rot and festering hatred that felt like it met it’s inevitable end in fire. Two Beers.
2. Gregory’s Girl
At first blush, this Scottish film looks to be a stinker, with its terrible dubbing and fairly sophomoric and perhaps a tic dated sense of humor. The group of young men and women that make up the ensemble gradually win you over, however, as does the realization that this was likely a triumph of low-budget indie production at the time (40k wasn’t very much even back in 1981). By the end, well, you’re as likely to be as surprised how charmed you are as I was. Three Beers.
3. The Slumber Party Massacre II
This 80s horror sequel is a notorious stinker, but not having seen the I’m sure cinematic masterpiece first film, I’m a bit flummoxed as to why it’s held to be any worse than your average low budget, boobs & blood slasher of the time period. Oh, maybe it’s because the killer is that fine fellow up above, playing some strange combination of Axel Rose, Chuck Berry, and Prince’s falsetto as he uses his drill-tar to phallically perforate the interchangeable teens. At least his songs don’t suck as much as the “band” that half of them are in. Five Beers.
4. Next of Kin
Atom Egoyan’s debut feature is another low-budget indie coming from a time when that was far from a common thing to accomplish. I’ve not seen any of the Canadian-Armenian auteur’s films yet, so I suppose this is a good start. Here he’s crafted an intriguing story of a young man who feels alienated from his family, so he joins another one- an Armenian family whose own son was put up for adoption about the time he was born. What develops is a surprisingly heartwarming tale of intercultural and family dynamics and choosing those you love. Three Beers.
5. The Crimson Kimono
This short Noir from Sam Fuller of course is notable as a well before its time Hollywood film with a non-white romantic lead- in this case, James Shigeta, who would go on to a few more such roles at a time when it was literally unheard of. He’s great here, too, as one half of a hard-boiled partnership who threaten to be torn apart by the dame they both fall for in the course of investigating the murder of a burlesque dancer. Mark it down as another undersung classic from the most unique studio director of his time. Two Beers.
6. Shadow in the Cloud
2021’s literal first big release (it landed on New Year’s Day) stars Chloe Grace Moretz as a stowaway on a WWII flight over the Pacific who finds herself fighting two foes- outrageous 1940s sexism and a literal gremlin (fun fact: the concept of a gremlin comes from WWII British RAF crewmen as a humorous concept to blame mechanical troubles on). Somehow, director Roseanne Liang propels her short, flamboyant actioner to even more ridiculous heights that will lose some, but let me just say that Moretz ripping off her sleeves to go and kick some gremlin ass is exactly as effective as it seeks to be. Just outrageous fun. Three Beers.
7. The Golden Holiday
At this point, I’ll watch a Korean movie a week until I die, so I’m lucky that film industry is consistently watchable even at its most uninspired. This one is a comedy starring The Wailing‘s Kwak Do-won as the least corrupt cop in his squad who the others convince to take a long begged for vacation to the Philippines to pin their kickbacks fully on him. While he’s there he looks up his former best friend (a delightfully crusty Kim Sang-ho) who’s the reason he’s about to lose his house, who happens to be in Filipino jail and in possession of the secret location of a stash of Japanese war-crime gold. Broadly telegraphed yet still generally amusing hijinks ensue. Four Beers.
8. The Climb
It’s not often you see a pure comedy draw the critical notices this one has, and they’re well-deserved. Michael Angelo Covino (a dead ringer for Oscar Isaac at certain angles, down to the tooth gaps) and Kyle Marvin (who sounds disconcertingly like John C. Reilly when he’s vexed) here expand their award-winning short, in which the former lets the latter, huffing behind him, know that he slept with his bride-to-be. It’s an uncomfortably hilarious setpiece, that these two spin out a whole history and future of a fucked up but relatable friendship from. Two Beers.
9. Castle in the Sky
The last of the Miyazaki films my wife and I consumed when Ken was over, this one once again expounds on his love of environmentalist themes, steampunk, characters who inhabit the sky like the sea, and kickass princesses, but ages things down a few years. In any case, it’s yet another rollicksome adventure in which people aren’t always who they seem and treasure isn’t always that which gleams. Two Beers.
10. Quackster Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx
Ken started with a theme of absurdly long-titled films that morphed to one of unappreciated classics, and this fit the bill both ways. I’m not sure I’d agree so far as calling it a classic, but there’s no denying literal Irish shit-shoveler Gene Wilder’s odd energy & charisma nor the quick rapport he builds with Margo Kidder’s curious American college student. Number this among the truly quirky romances of the 70s, who did it like no others. Three Beers.
11. Cocktail
My wife insisted we give this one a watch, and its 7% Rotten Tomatoes rating certainly caught my attention. After watching, though, I was surprised at that- is it cheesy? As fuck. Is it chock full of Hollywood wish fulfillment and skeezy gender politics? You betcha. Is it noticeably more of either than, say, the 92%-rated Risky Business? Not nearly to this extent. If you’re looking for hot, young Tom Cruise in his prime and something that won’t tax a single grey cell, this fits the bill. Four Beers.
12. F/X
Cocktail led Ken to recommend another underappreciated flick based on their Bryan Brown connection. Here he stars as a Special Effects maven who’s hired by the cops to fake the death of a high-profile mobster who’s going into witness protection. Since this is a Hollywood thriller, all’s not what it seems, of course. This inventive piece of Hollywood hokum spawned a sequel, and it’s frankly a surprise nobody’s hooked onto the f/x artist as unwitting action hero conceit since then- it’s a great one, executed for entertainment here. Three Beers.
13. Koko-di Koko-da
All I really knew about this absurdist horror film before watching was the above image, which is featured on the poster (and spoiler alert that I wish I’d known- isn’t actually a scene in the film). It’s great, ain’t it? In any case, what this really is, is a Norwegian mindfuck that’s a bit like if Michael Haneke remade Groundhog Day, with an additional layer of obtuseness. You’ll know whether this is for you based on that description… Ken and I didn’t hate it. Three Beers.
14. A Karate Christmas Miracle
Who else but BabyRuth scrounged up this cheapo holiday film about a young boy whose father was abducted by a killer clown or Eric Roberts or maybe Eric Roberts is a killer clown, but in any case decides that if he completes his tasklist of totally achievable goals, like becoming a black belt (the only one I think that is actually ever mentioned, now that I think about it) by Christmas, his dad will come back home/to life, or whatever. Anyway, this monstrosity is clearly cobbled together from up to 3 terrible low-budget films, and is directed by a New Jersey bullshit artist Trump apologist with a kid who can’t act and the ability to conjure up D-list artists for his every awful project. It’s… a Christmas miracle. Six Pack.
15. Soul
Pixar and Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up, Inside Out) have done it again- just as you knew they would. I actually only knew the first half of this film’s plot- a jazz pianist on the cusp of his big break falls down a manhole and ends up on the conveyer belt to the Great Beyond, but refuses to go silently into the light and ends up bounced to a world where new souls wait to be birthed. Turns out there’s a lot more, which I’ll let you discover, but in the end Docter aims for the metaphysical heights of his own Inside Out and not quite, but darn near, reaches them. Two Beers.
16. Cry the Beloved Country
The final of Ken’s official underappreciated classics trilogy, this one I do agree is a classic, and is very clearly the most underappreciated of the group- it’s literally not available on any format in the United States. A German DVD and a region-free DVD player, later, though, and I’ve finally watched it after literal years of waiting. Starring the great Canada Lee in his final film (he died of heart attack soon after) and Sidney Poitier in only his second, this is a knotty film of crime and punishment that rages against the conditions of Apartheid South Africa, shooting there illegally and in great danger to reveal to the world its awful conditions. Come the fuck on, already, Criterion Collection. Two Beers.
17. Yearly Departed
I had room in my heart for one more humorous sendoff to the godawful year that was 2020, but just one. Good thing I gave Amazon’s shot a try, in which a bevy of the best female comedians around deliver a humorous eulogy about one of the many concepts and ideals that 2020 took from us. Sure, the consistency varies, but all-in-all this is even more the funny finale we were looking for from Death to 2020. Sarah Silverman for the win, btw. Two Beers.
18. Second Chance vs Magnum Force
Who but Redlettermedia would dig up the ballistic version of Surviving Edged Weapons? The ostensible purpose of the film is to sell Second Chance body armor, but former pizzaboy turned armed avenger turned body armor inventor Dave Kotwick is too strange an egg for that, filling two hours with reenactments of firefights where his vests saved lives, weird comic interludes, scenes of him shooting up cars and knifing slabs of meat, and inept sexual harassment in the name of weird comic interludes. It’s a trip. Six Pack.
19. Fourteen
This small indie got a nice signal boost from the AV Club, who placed it in their Best Films of 2020, noting writer/director Dan Sallitt is a film critic himself. Here he crafts a two-hander about childhood friends who drift apart over the years (time jumps are sudden and decisive, yet never jarring) that ends up being a story of how one person can’t save another no matter how close they used to be, which is naturalistic to a fault, but which it’s easy to surrender to the strange rhythms of. Two Beers.
20. Workforce
This somewhat hidden but universally well reviewed (100% RT at present) Mexican film is a social issues film that keeps morphing on you into a different kind of social issue film without hardly realizing it until the ending drops on you like a clearly inevitable yet somehow still surprising anvil. Just a taut, thorny, masterful piece of filmmaking from writer/director David Zonana. A Toast.
21. The Hole
My wife brought this film up apropos… of something. Ah, Dexter‘s Desmond Harrington, who here plays a high school kid as convincingly as Michael C. Hall did in those terrible flashbacks, sporting what appears to be the exact same wig. He’s one of four prep schoolers who spend a terrifying 10ish days in a bomb shelter or sewer pumphouse or something, the only survivor of whom is Thora Birch at her Thora Birchiest (the others being an actually young-looking Keira Knightley and Laurence Fox, who shows his dick a lot in this but subsequently appears to have become a politician to the right of Boris Johnson somehow). This is one of those risque early 2000s thrillers that thinks it’s twistier and edgier than it is and now would likely be best known by high schoolers at the time it came out who remember it for that Knightley flashing scene, if any remember it at all. Not that it isn’t entertaining, though… Four Beers.
22. Acute Misfortune
This Australian film combines the cold misanthropic aura of Aussie indies like Snowtown and disturbed artist biopics in this examination of the twisted relationship between modern artist Adam Cullen (a volcanic Daniel Henshall, who coincidentally played the homophobic killer in that film) and his young biographer (Toby Wallace, who you may recognize from Babyteeth). You never quite know whether this is going to end up a murder or at least suicide flick, nor who the perpetrator is likely to be, which apparently does justice to the talented but demon-filled Cullen. Not a fun watch, but an often captivating one. Three Beers.
23. Nationtime
This short documentary is a simply delivered one- it was intended to be a news report on the 1972 National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana. Featuring prominent black voices including Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Betty Shabazz, Amiri Baraka, Isaac Hayes, Richard Roundtree and narrated by Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, the film was apparently considered too militant for television broadcast at the time. Suffice it to say, on a day of true historical import, watching this prior to, and then hours after watching live news coverage was an uncanny accent to the day- and ultimately a promising one. A black Vice President will be certified, the second black person in the White House- but there is still a long ways to go. Three Beers.
So, did I get outside this week? Does driving to Wendy’s or walking to Wally World count?
