Top Views: March 2024
Two things have kept my film diet a little scarce this month: book promotion and baseball season. Both have begun. One is going better than the other. Nevertheless, I managed to see five new-to-me films this month I can mostly recommend, and there’s always at least one standout rewatch. Let’s dig in.
Top First-Time Views
Love Lies Bleeding
It’s always a good sign when a new film tops this list, and if Love Lies Bleeding doesn’t appear on my year-end Top 10, it will have been an extraordinary year. I reviewed the film in full here, but what’s still lingering is the power of the performances. We can talk all day about director Rose Glass’s influences, and what it means to make a queer film noir in 2024, but I don’t go in for formal experiments. I go to the movies to get to know people, and the work by Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian not only brings those two people to life, they make what could have been a genre experiment feel character-driven. That’s not easy to do.
Sinister
For most of my life, I was not a horror guy. Growing up, my family didn’t go for it. As an adult, I was scared of being scared. Only in the last few years have I started properly educating myself. It started when I heard Martin Scorsese say on the DIck Cavett Show that you can’t really be a fan of cinema if you don’t like horror. I get what he means. Terrifying an audience—in an honest way—requires a masterful understanding of craft. It’s provoking a physical response using the basic tools of cinema. That’s kinda magical.
Sinister is not an all-time great horror film, but it’s a helluva lot of fun. Ethan Hawke plays a true crime writer who moves his family into a house where the previous family was murdered—without telling them. Then a bunch of freaky shit happens. Again, I appreciated the attention to character; what transpires is as much a referendum on the protagonist’s moral choices as it is an opportunity to frighten, and Hawke, whose attitude of artistic integrity has always come with a little side of sleaze, absolutely nails it.
Road House
In preparation for the dreary new remake, I watched the original Road House for the first time. I only wish I had watched it at a sleepover when I was 10. Still, it held up at 43 as a so-bad-it’s-kinda-great action flick. Patrick Swayze plays a legendary bouncer who gets hired to clean up the Double Deuce, a bar where a fight breaks out every few minutes, the waitresses sell cocaine, and the band plays behind chicken wire. Honestly, I don’t know why they had to clean it up. It was perfect just the way it was.
It could have been a perfectly competent B-movie, but Swayze elevates it with his self-seriousness. It points towards his Point Break performance; he has a stillness here that hints at an internal meditative state. He’s not the best bouncer because he can fight the best; he relies on a nearly spiritual ability to see the moves before they happen. Road House fashions itself as a neo-western, but Swayze plays his character more like a samurai, who views his profession as a calling and violence as but a necessary evil. Necessary for him, fun for us.
Brightburn
I was drawn to Brightburn by its premise, which essentially amounts to, “What if Superman….but bad?” It’s the story of a childless couple (Elizabeth Banks, David Denman) in rural America that keeps an alien baby that crashes into their field. All is well until he reaches the age of 8 or so, when he starts developing superhuman powers…and doing some really evil shit with it. I wish the film had leaned more into the moral quandary of the parents, who must weigh their love for the boy with their responsibility to humanity. It’s a horror movie, though, so it leans into the gnarliness. Still, the kills are imaginatively staged, and it never outstays its welcome. As a busy man with several jobs, I always appreciate a film that tops out at 90 minutes.
Ricky Stanicky
I’m stretching a bit here, as Ricky Stanicky is not a good movie. I’ll give it credit for two things. First, its amazing premise. Four kids get into trouble one day, so they invent a friend—the aforementioned Stanicky—and blame it on him. Decades later, they’re still using him as an excuse, mostly to get out of unpleasant marital obligations; they say Ricky has had an accident and is in the hospital, and instead they go to Las Vegas. When their significant others catch on, however, they are challenged to produce Ricky, so they hire an alcoholic lounge singer (John Cena) to play him.
It’s a brilliant set-up, but the direction by Peter Farrelly is slack, and there are opportunities for comedy that fall by the wayside. Cena, however, is phenomenal. This film was released a few days before his nude gag at the Oscars, and he brings the same gonzo energy to the role of Ricky. He has a lot of great moments, but I never got over his Atlantic City lounge act, where he rewrites ‘80s rock songs to reflect his love of masturbation. “It’s a nice day to…jizz again!” Is it juvenile? Of course. Did I laugh my ass off? You bet I did.
Top Rewatch: On the Waterfront
It’s a shame when a great film gets reduced by history to a single moment. It’s also inevitable. Normies will remember Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” speech from On the Waterfront. Acting junkies will cite the moment when he is flirting with Eva Saint Marie, and he picks up her fallen glove and puts it on his own hand. As for me, I just think it’s a stellar piece of cinema. Reading it as director Elia Kazan’s defense of his own snitching before the House Un-American Activities Committee definitely sours things a bit, but his skill as a visual artist cannot be denied. With its tight pacing, thoughtful staging, and hauntingly beautiful cinematography, On the Waterfront looks and feels the way a great film is supposed to.
Worst View: The Last Samurai
The correct answer is probably the new Road House, but I already wrote about it. Instead, let me give a shameful shout-out to this 2003 Edward Zwick film that might as well be called Orientalism: The Movie. It’s about a traumatized Civil War hero (Tom Cruise) who gets hired to help the Emperor of Japan fight off a rebel army—and instead ends up fighting for the rebels. Its perspective on Japanese culture is painfully incurious, and Cruise lacks the ability to heighten the material through character work. It’s the last time he did a prestige drama, and you can see why. He just doesn’t have the gravitas or the goods to pull it off.
I’ll say this about Zwick, though: He knows how to stage a battle scene. I sang his praises in this space last month for his work on Glory, which is surely why he was hired here. It was a good decision, as he makes the best out of a mess, especially in the climactic battle, where Cruise’s army, which uses only swords, goes up against a powerful national army. It’s gruesome, harrowing stuff. I wish the rest of the film were either of those things.
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I also had a few pieces published last month. In advance of the Oscars, I wrote on Paul Giamatti’s fascinating career as a leading man.
After the Oscars, I wrote up my favorite speech of the night.
Then I dumped on this last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
And I reviewed a couple classic films for Washington City Paper.