Yeah Dude, Okay

Film Collection: mother!

November 4th, 2026

Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Written by Darren Aronofsky
2017 | 121 minutes | English
Blu-Ray

Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brian Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Kristen Wiig, Jovan Adepo, Patricia Summersett

What it’s about: The otherwise unnamed mother (Lawrence) lives alone with her husband, Him (Bardem), in a sprawling country house, which she has been restoring for him after a fire. Their relationship is not exactly comfortable–despite her devotion to him, he is distant and insensitive to her, focusing more on his writing and absorbed in the egoism of his creative process. He also keeps inviting pushy, invasive strangers into the house, beginning with a man (Harris), who then brings his wife (Pfeiffer), who are then followed by their sons (the Gleesons), one of whom kills the other in a dispute over a will. Things continue to spiral wildly out of control, even as the mother becomes pregnant, increasingly fragile, and aware of a growing rot within the house she can’t seem to leave or exert any control over.

Reflections: I saw this when it came out and I remember it confusing the hell out of people expecting a psychological thriller and getting a deeply allegorical surrealist nightmare instead. The Biblical retelling is fairly straightforward: Bardem’s God character brings light and creation in the form of the mother and the house; Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel are introduced, proliferating into a worshipful but destructive explosion of humanity–down to the first time the house is cleared out of the encroaching crowd coming after a pipe breaks, causing a flood, nodding to the subject of Aronofsky’s previous film, 2014’s Noah. On its most obvious, surface level, the story puts us in the perspective of a natural world being assaulted, raped, and pillaged by an indifferent humanity. At one point, mother asks a stranger, peeling away boards from her walls, why he’s doing it and he answers with a shrug: “to prove we were here.”

What’s more interesting is the religious deconstruction; God is not a sympathetic figure here. He is sometimes powerful and protective, but other times indifferent, self-absorbed, childlike, or even menacing, such as when he watches mother protecting her newborn child with the emotionless, unblinking stare Bardem is so good at. “It’s never enough,” he tells her with a disturbing gentleness; “This is what I am.” Lawrence gives her character a bewildered meekness disguising a powerful fury, only truly unleashing in a few satisfying moments, but nonetheless carrying the film. Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique keep the camera uncomfortably close to her most of the time, following just in front of her face or behind her head as she moves through the increasing chaos around her. None of the supporting cast has nearly as much to do as the two of them, but Michelle Pfeiffer gets to be detestably minxy and there is a moment where Kristen Wiig goes down a line, executing POWs, which is a kind of an absurd laugh as the situation spirals truly off the rails and takes the movie with it.

The thing it’s doing is so idiosyncratic and specific–such a big, weird swing–that it’s a love-it-or-hate-it kind of proposition. Time and space are intentionally distorted, insane leaps of behavioral and narrative logic only escalate as it goes on, and very little is explained, all of which is going to turn off a lot of people. That’s justified–even Aronofsky himself cautioned The Guardian in a contemporary interview, “you shouldn’t over-explain it,” because it gets muddy and falls apart a little upon meticulous inspection. But what it’s going for seems to be something less intellectualized–a more experiential panic that unsettles almost-subconscious ideas about faith and reality and our relationship to the world around us. And it is a deeply uncomfortable, frequently unpleasant movie, so I think it is successful in capturing something, getting the wheels turning by almost daring the audience to sort out the mess of it. I also, personally, enjoy art that’s willing to go a little nuts, and the exclamation point in the title is a good clue about what to expect in that regard.
Film Collection: The Bat

November 2nd, 2026

Directed by Crane Wilbur
Written by Crane Wilbur
1959 | 80 minutes | English
DVD

Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead, Gavin Gordon, John Sutton, Lenita Lane, Elaine Edwards, Darla Hood, John Bryant, Harvey Stephens, Mike Steele, Riza Royce, Robert B. Williams

What it’s about: Based on the 1920 play by Mary Roberts Reinhart and Avery Hopwood (itself adapted from Reinhart’s 1908 novel The Circular Staircase), the story is narrated by Miss Cornelia van Gorder (Moorehead), an affluent writer of mysteries. She and her maid Lizzie (Lane) have rented The Oaks, a country mansion in the small town of Zenith, owned by John Fleming (Stephens), president of the local bank. As it so happens, Fleming embezzled a million dollars from the bank and hid the money somewhere in the house before he died. Meanwhile, a serial killer known as The Bat–a black-suited, masked creeper who kills with steel-clawed gloves–is afoot and seems to know about the money, staging repeated invasions of the house. But where is it hidden? And who is The Bat? Is it the scheming local doctor, Malcolm Wells (Price), an old friend of Fleming’s? Is it Warner (Sutton), Cornelia’s new chauffeur with a shady past? Lt. Andy Anderson (Gordon), head of the Zenith police detective’s unit, seems to suspect them both.

Reflections: I picked up this two-pack in a $5 bin ages ago and hadn’t gotten around to it until now. I was expecting some B-picture silliness, and while there is a bit of that–the notion of a costumed killer is a bit unserious on face, especially nearly 70 years later–there is also an engaging whodunnit here, and one with a bit of style. For as silly as he is, The Bat is a visually compelling figure, a mysterious man in black with just a hint of the inhuman about him, slinking through the opulent house, his presence known only by lighting flashing his silhouette on the wall. He’s a little timid by the standards of a modern killer–there is some narrative convenience in when and whom he chooses to attack, versus hiding or fleeing–but that’s part of the vintage charm here.

Moorehead, as Cornelia, is not one to take these incursions lying down. She’s packing heat–the character in armaments and the actress in a sharp, tough performance. She plays the scenes reasonably rattled by events, but never out of control, determined to get to the bottom of the problem, and with an arch disaffection in calmer moments that’s quite fun to watch. Price is relatively young here and riding a fine line between cheer and ominous sleaze, such that you’re never quite sure how trustworthy he is. Of the supporting cast, Lane is the most fun, nailing the comic-relief timing of a common woman who didn’t sign up for this shit.

It’s a little uneven, and all rather neat by the end, but short, fun, and it’s an engaging mystery with a sort of psuedo-gothic atmosphere. It’s not high art, but it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be, either. Apparently it was not terribly well received at the time for its period setting (contemporary to the play), but with a little cultural distance, that distinction collapses a little and lets some of the film’s charm shine through.
Film Collection: Halloween

October 31st, 2026

Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter & Debra Hill
1978 | 92 minutes | English
DVD

Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nick Castle, Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews, John Michael Graham, Nancy Stephens

What it’s about: On Halloween night in 1963, six-year-old Michael Meyers (Castle, mostly) stabbed his sister to death. For 15 years, he was studied by Doctor Loomis (Pleasance), who concluded the boy was a soulless creature, incapable of understanding good and evil, incurably driven to murder. And on the night before Halloween in 1978, he escapes, with Loomis hot on his heels. The next night, in Michael’s old neighborhood, bookish teenager Laurie Strode (Curtis) is stuck babysitting young Tommy Doyle (Andrews) while her friends Annie (Keyes, credited as Nancy Loomis) and Linda (Soles) are sneaking off to fool around with their respective boyfriends. But Laurie is on edge, feeling a strange presence around town, and Tommy’s fear of the Boogeyman isn’t helping.

Reflections: Films like Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre may have come before it, but John Carpetner’s third film and true breakout feature is the moment that came to truly codify the slasher film. For all its legendary importance, it’s a small movie–gore is minimal, the body count is low (three onscreen kills), the real action takes place mostly in two houses–but it’s the impeccable way in which its executed that makes the magic. There is the score which, aside from the iconic main theme, washes the tension in synths that never drown out what’s onscreen. But it’s also a surprisingly beautiful movie to look at, with Dean Cundey’s camera bringing out not just a lot of dynamic movement, but also Carpenter’s painterly composition–see: the shot of Laurie on the sofa after she stabs Michael with the knitting needle that’s almost like a pulp novel version of Edward Hopper. Letting the tension play out slowly, leaving the specter of the killer in the background gets the viewer scanning every one of these composed images, making every shadow, every corner feel potentially dangerous, and the actual scares are paced out masterfully.

The leads take kind of opposite approaches to a script that isn’t necessarily more than it needs to be in the dialogue department. On the one hand, Pleasence quietly hams up Loomis into an almost religious fervor, spouting his doomy lines (“Death has come to your town.”) almost gleefully. On the other hand, Curtis–in her debut–brings an immediacy to Laurie that makes the film work. The other victims are dispatched before they can react, but her escalating fear–culminating in the famous closet sequence–and earned resourcefulness are what ground the experience, setting the template for a thousand Final Girls to come.

But slasher movies are more defined by their villains than anything, and Michael Meyers is one of the best, especially here. He never speaks a word and his inhuman resilience is never explained. The famous mask makes his face stand out, even spied at a distance, but is also uncannily blank, revealing nothing of his motives or intentions. He is simply an unstoppable force, both within the film and in terms of his impact on popular culture and the direction of horror cinema. This is one of the all time classic films, not just horror films, and if you’ve never seen it, it’s absolutely still worth watching.
Film Collection: Kiki’s Delivery Service

October 29th, 2026

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
1989 | 102 minutes | Japanese
Blu-Ray, English-dub version

Kirsten Dunst, Phil Hartman, Tress MacNeille, Janeane Garofalo, Debbie Reynolds, Matthew Lawrence, John Hostetter, Kath Soucie, Jeff Bennett

What it’s about: In the vaguely modern but timeless world adapted from Eiko Kadono’s 1985 novel, witches are uncommon but still exist, and have a custom of leaving home at the age of thirteen to spend a year learning to hone their skills and make their way in the world. Kiki (Dunst) has been eagerly awaiting this journey, and leaves her small town with her feline familiar Jiji (Hartman) for a large coastal city, but finds it a far harsher place than she was expecting. Eventually she falls in with kind baker Osono (MacNeille), attracts the attention of local flight-obsessed geek Tombo (Lawrence), and starts a service, delivering pies and presents and lost items around the area with her broom. But making one’s way in the world is a big task, full of pitfalls and challenges, and we watch as this big-hearted young girl learns to face them, come into herself, and rise to the moment.

Reflections: I got this a while ago, but hadn’t gotten around to watching it yet. Part of that is because the description of it makes it sound very simple, a warm-hearted adventure for kids of all ages. That kind of entertainment is often a little disposable, rote, shallow. And while it is that kind of fable, it is not simple or shallow. This movie made me cry at least four times. I should have known, because Miyazaki does that almost every outing, taps into an almost primitive emotional well that feels completely open-hearted and completely serious and cuts through the defensive cynicism of a world-weary adult perspective like it’s nothing. And this is one of the best of his I’ve seen–despite being a movie about a witch, the fantastical touches are light, and mostly taken for granted by the characters and the nostalgic, ambiguous world around them, making it feel tender and grounded in a way the more surreal films sacrifice to their respective visions.

I watched the dub because the English versions of Ghibli films post-1997 (this is the second English dub, recorded in 1998) are pretty top-tier and that is the case here. Dunst (16 or so, at the time) is throwing her back into the voice work in a way not all primarily live-actors do. A lot of the movie rides on her selling Kiki’s precociousness in her delivery, wobbling across that line of maturity and awareness, and she pulls it off with bells on. Garafolo is pitching her voice up, giving her character–an artist that Kiki befriends on a misadventure–the lighter, more enthusiastic side of her energy. Reynolds is perfect for the kindly older woman who takes a shine to the ambitious girl, and it’s fun to see a legend like her pop up in something like this. Lawrence gives his crushed-out geek a little bit of edge–a little pushy and clumsy, but with a little more to him than a first glance. And Hartman, MacNeille, and Soucie (as Kiki’s concerned witch mother) are pros at this.

And, of course, it’s beautiful to look at. Right from the opening scene, as Kiki lies in the swaying grass, listening to the radio, every brightly-colored detail and moment of lingering atmosphere (Miyazaki’s fondness for the concept of Ma) seem specifically designed to create a simulacrum of collective memory, stirring something in the back of your mind you can’t quite name. There’s a reason this studio and this creator have the reputation that they do; each film is a magical experience and this is, again, one of the best. Even if it’s in a way that’s difficult to convey–it has to be felt.
Film Collection: The Ides of March

October 27th, 2026

Directed by George Clooney
Written by George Clooney & Grant Heslov and Beau Williamson
2011 | 101 minutes | English
DVD

Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Max Minghella, Jennifer Ehle, Gregory Itzen, Charlie Rose

What it’s about: This adaptation of Williamson’s 2008 play Farragut North (itself loosely based on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign) follows Stephen Meyers (Gosling), a slick political operative working for the campaign of Pennsylvania governor Mike Morris (Clooney) during the Ohio Democratic presidential primary. Behind the back of his boss, campaign manager Paul Zara (Hoffman), the true-believer Stephen meets with Tom Duffy (Giamatti), campaign manager for Morris’s chief rival, setting in motion a political trap. As it plays out, he also comes to know campaign intern Molly Stearns (Wood), herself the daughter of the DNC chairman, and comes to learn some troubling information about the leader he once believed in. The two converging situations force Stephen to play a radical hand, in the process losing some of his soul to the great game.

Reflections: I saw this movie shortly after it came out, but remembered nothing about it going into it now. That makes sense, I think, because it’s a slow, kind of understated and deeply cynical thing. It takes its time setting up a wide variety of chess pieces before they start moving and, although there is a good deal of scheming and power-playing once they do, the story is less about any specific politics than the tragedy of the moral compromise that comes with the bloodthirsty nature of our–perhaps any–system. Clooney’s emerging style–this was his fourth turn behind the camera–fits this moodiness well; it feels lush, but cool and restrained. Shadowy figures lurk in dark hallways, the brassy lights of a diner glare against someone waiting and watching the grey outside, the camera lingers on the exterior of a car in which an important conversation is taking place, unheard. The atmosphere is melancholy, but gives the actors plenty of room to breathe.

Gosling was playing stoic cyphers around this time (see also: Drive, this same year) and he plays Stephen with a quiet affability that first masks his detachment, and then the lack of it. While he’s not doing enough to call it one of his best performances, he pulls off that switch. Hoffman is reliably great as a flustered guy with his own set of principles. Giamatti gets to be Machiavellian, which he’s delightful at, and Jeffrey Wright has a blustering turn as a rival candidate offering an endorsement. Marisa Tomei is charming as a reporter and kind of conscience figure. The standouts though are Clooney himself and Wood. He weaponizes his own charm and charisma, using that as cover for an unsettling menace that only comes forth in the climax, and she evokes the only genuine sympathy in the whole sordid thing, giving a bit of humanity to a sacrificial lamb of a character.

Watching this now, its politics feel somewhat quaint–Giamatti has a line about how “[Republicans] are more disciplined than we are” that hasn’t aged well, and the whole notion of what a scandal even is or means seems to have been wildly innovated upon in the past fifteen years. But the soul of the movie, the more abstract crisis of it, rings even more true now than it would have in 2011. It’s a solid, if dour, political thriller–there’s noting revelatory about it, it’s not saying anything we haven’t known since there have been stories about power, but we obviously still need reminders of those lessons, and it does what it’s doing well.
Film Collection: Lake Placid

October 23rd, 2026

Directed by Steve Miner
Written by David E. Kelley
1999 | 82 minutes | English
VHS

Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson, Betty White, Meredith Salenger, David Lewis, Tim Dixon, Natassia Malthe, Mariska Hargitay, Adam Arkin

What it’s about: Kelly Scott (Fonda) is a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History who gets dumped by her boss (Arkin) and sent to Maine. A Fish & Wildlife guy got attacked by something in a remote lake up there, and they found an almost-prehistoric looking tooth in him. So city-slicker Kelly sets out with stoic F&W investigator Jack Wells (Pullman) and the cranky local sheriff Hank Keough (Gleeson) to find the killer beast. They are joined, somewhat against their will, by Hector Cyr (Platt), a wealthy and eccentric professor of mythology, convinced (correctly) that the beast is a crocodile, an animal that should not be in Maine, and is determined to preserve it as an ecological miracle. But despite the reptile’s impressive size, even finding it will be a challenge, let alone trying to capture it. Especially if it has help.

Reflections: This is not about lawyers and/or Boston, so David E. Kelley is out of his wheelhouse here, and he’s not good at it. Instead of characterization, we get a lot of quippy sarcasm and childish bickering that I think is supposed to be funny, but is actually much more annoying. The actors involved are all much better than this and none of them seem to be relishing it other than Betty White (a frequent collaborator and apparent muse of Kelley’s). There are fat jokes, although calling them jokes is generous, casual misogyny, the invoking of a lot of obviously basic stereotypes. And the story barely does anything–moments of action or tension are sparse, leaving plenty of room for the characters to argue about dumb shit.

I inherited this from a house I used to live in, where it was one of the movies that would get put on coming home from a night at the bar. And it’s perfect for that. On the one hand, it’s so stupid, it’s kind of breathtaking sometimes. As just one example, there is what should be a kind of “oh shit” reveal during the climax, but the movie does absolutely nothing with it and returns to the status quo immediately–it’s bonkers. There are lines of dialogue that are completely baffling. What little scientific premise there is is hand-waved away. The romance is bizarrely flat. It’s all madness. And then on the other hand, I’ve seen this movie sorted as comedy horror, but I would not call it that. It’s barely a comedy, and more like a slightly gorier cousin to something like Dante’s Peak or Twister, where a force of nature is out of control and must be respected and feared. But there is a pretty good shlocky horror movie in here somewhere. A giant crocodile tries to bring a helicopter out of the air. A dude’s head gets bitten off so fast, no one sees it. If the movie had decided to be more that instead of leaning into the banter stuff, it would’ve been pretty good and there is enough of a streak of it that it’s fun to imagine.

This is a bad movie. I don’t even know if I’d call it a good bad movie–honestly, it’s kind of grating, especially during the first act. But I do have a certain sentimental fondness for it and I find it fascinating in the way it wants to be so many things and doesn’t manage to pull off any of them. Why does this exist–what made David E. Kelley, arguably at the peak of his success with Ally McBeal and The Practice, write this? How did such a talented cast end up in this cheapo, 82-minute B-movie (at best)? Why is it called Lake Placid when the name of the lake is Black Lake? It boggles the mind, and there is a certain pleasure to that.
Film Collection: David Lynch: The Art Life

October 22nd, 2026

Directed by Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm & Jon Nguyen
2016 | 88 minutes | English
Criterion Blu-Ray

David Lynch

What it’s about: The filmmaker David Lynch recounts the story of his life, from early childhood in the late ’40s and early ’50s through the filming of Eraserhead in the mid ’70s. His narrations are broken up into discrete anecdotes, detailing memories from growing up in Idaho and Washington, moving to Virginia as an adolescent, discovering a love of painting as a teenager, rejecting art school, living in Boston and Philadelphia, and eventually receiving an AFI grant and being accepted into the Center for Advanced Film Studies. As these stories unspool, we see intercut live footage of the narration, contemporary footage of him in his studio, a wide variety of his cinematic and visual artwork, and archival photographs and home-movies of his younger world.

Reflections: David Lynch was a fascinating character of a filmmaker–his works are known most for being compellingly inscrutable and his name has become an adjective (“Lynchian”) for a certain kind of dreamlike, uncanny atmosphere. He also seemed to be a gentle soul, reportedly cultivating a warm and collaborative environment for those who worked with him and coming off authentically encouraging in his surprisingly prolific social media presence. And it’s fascinating to listen to someone who often preferred to let his work speak for itself explain some of his understanding and artistic motivation. There is some pleasure to be had in connecting some of the childhood memories he recounts to moments he would recreate–he details an encounter with an apparently abused woman that is almost exactly like a scene in Blue Velvet–but the real pleasure of the film is coming to appreciate the worldview that is summed up by the titular phrase.

Lynch was a painter first and a filmmaker second and the visual aspect of the film is built around showcasing his work, with the present and archival footage feeling more like context than content. Here again, the filmmakers make connections between the stories he tells and the surreal scenes he depicts with a textured, mixed-media approach. But what’s exciting about that is the way in which art becomes a vehicle for processing the world, a way of seeing and thinking and being present. And having that obliquely laid out by this odd, kind of gnomish guy with a uniquely nasal voice and a wry, iconoclastic sense of humor is compelling and inspiring.

There are a handful of documentaries I turn to when I’m in a creative rut–Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground, or Wild Combinations: A Portrait of Arthur Russell. There is a fundamental stimulation in listening to artists I respect engage with their process. That’s what I come to this movie for, and it delivers on that level. There is a kind of insular, isolated quality to it, and it is rather light on biographical facts in a way that I could see being unsatisfying for some. But also, that’s who David Lynch was, and if you’re inclined to watch a documentary about him in the first place, you can probably appreciate that.
Film Collection: Night Shift

October 21st, 2026

Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel
1982 | 106 minutes | English
DVD

Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton, Shelley Long, Gina Hecht, Pat Corley, Bobby DiCicco, Nita Talbot, Basil Hoffman, Tim Rossovich, Clint Howard, Joe Spinell, Richard Belzer, Kevin Costner, Shannen Doherty

What it’s about: Chuck Lumley (Winkler) is a meek dude: he hides from his neighbor’s dog, is browbeaten by his neurotic fiance Charlotte (Hecht), and retreated from a successful career in finance to work in the city morgue. But his ordered world is disrupted when he’s put on night shift with Bill Blazejowski (Keaton), a loose-hanging, motormouthed “idea guy” determined to get Chuck to let his hair down. Chuck also meets Belinda (Long), a sex-worker who happens to be his neighbor and comes to the morgue after the murder of her pimp. Without him, she and her colleagues are working without representation and, at Bill’s urging, he and Chuck become their business managers, operating out of the unsupervised morgue at night. And wouldn’t you know, through the ensuing hijinks, Chuck learns to grab life a little more by the horns.

Reflections: I wouldn’t exactly call this movie sensitive in its portrayal of… well, anything, really–there are moments that have not aged well. And there are funnier comedies from the period, certainly, but there’s something about this movie that is just irrepressibly charming. Some of that is Ron Howard beginning to find his voice as a director–this was his big break, his second theatrical film and his stepping out from under Roger Corman’s wings and the crucible of TV work. Its success set him up for Splash, and the rest is history. That voice is difficult to define, but it’s kind of an earnestness that elevates the material–this is a film that could have been very crass very easily, occasionally even still drifts there. But there is a heart and humanness to it that shines through and overcomes that without being cloying about it.

Another part of the film’s charm are the three leads. Winkler had been in a couple of movies, but was still playing The Fonz at this point and brings an entirely different energy to Chuck, all wryly-frustrated patience and explosive anxiety. Keaton is breaking out of the film (his first speaking film role, landed after a sitcom with Jim Belushi), both in performance and career-wise; his Bill rides the line between obnoxious and likeable and a lot of that is down to the sharply timed, often childlike (in a good way) and physical energy he gives off. And Long (who had just landed Cheers) carries the emotional weight of the movie with an assured ease and gives maybe the best performance of the three. Plus Kevin Costner shows up as a frat boy, Richard Belzer is a murderous henchman, and Shannen Doherty is a girl scout that beats Chuck up, so that’s pretty fun too.

It’s a knowingly silly movie with a lot of heart, in that kind of quintessentially ’80s comedy way, before the cynicism, irony, and post-modernity of the ’90s and what followed. It’s also an intersection of the beginning of several big and interesting careers. It’s a little bit sexy (if almost blushingly so) and it has Michael Keaton singing The Rolling Stones and diving off a balcony in a loincloth. It’s not gonna blow anyone’s mind, but it’s very fun and that’s more than enough.
Film Collection: The Wizard of Oz

October 18th, 2026

Directed by Victor Fleming
Written by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf
1939 | 119 minutes | English
VHS

Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton, Charley Grapewin, Pat Walshe, Clara Blandick, Charlie Becker, Mickey Carroll, Billy Curtis

What it’s about: Based on roughly the first half of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, the movie begins as Toto, the dog of Kansas farmgirl Dorothy Gale (Garland) has bitten snooty bigshot Almira Gulch (Hamilton), who demands the dog be taken away and dealt with. To avoid this, Dorothy runs away and is convinced to go back by a marooned circus performer (Morgan), but a tornado strikes and Dorothy is conked on the head and whisked to the magical (and technicolor) land of Oz. She is set off by the Good Witch Glinda (Burke) along the Yellow Brick Road to see if the Wizard of Oz (Morgan again) can send her home. Along the way, she picks up fellow travelers, The Scarecrow (Bolger), The Tin Man (Haley) and The Cowardly Lion (Lahr), and has to tangle with the Wicked Witch of the West (Hamilton again), who has her eye on a particular bit of footwear.

Reflections: Gee, what do I say about one of the most widely-seen and referenced, most beloved, and most heavily analyzed and chronicled films ever made? I don’t need to say this movie is great–of course it is. The songs are mostly great, and choreographed with wild, colorful spectacle. The old-timey practical effects aren’t exactly convincing, but they still look good, full of theatrical creativity. The set and design work is almost psychedelic. The plot is thin, but it’s fine. And there is just a palpable sense of spectacle and whimsy about all of it that it still resonates, nearly a century later.

It’s sort of heartbreaking watching Judy Garland (sixteen or seventeen here), knowing some of what she was being put through behind the scenes, but she brings a kind of bright, intense energy to Dorothy that is a big part of what keeps the film together. And, y’know, girl could sing. Frank Morgan seems to be having fun in his multiple roles–“Well bust my buttons!” has lived rent-free in my consciousness since childhood. Hamilton is gloriously chewing the scenery and her death scene is one for the ages. Lahr is going the biggest of the trio of companions–a lot of scenes focus on his antics, like his comical run and dive through a window in fear of the wizard–and it’s very over the top from a modern sensibility, but it’s charming also. Haley (replacing Buddy Ebsen, famously made ill by the makeup) gives the Tin Man a kind of mincing quality; Bolger’s charm is more restrained (especially given they cut his wildest dance number).

If you’re even reading this, odds are good you’ve seen this movie, but on the chance you haven’t, it’s definitely of its time and a bit weird, but it holds up. If you haven’t seen it in a while, it’s worth revisiting. Appreciate it for the classic songs and elaborate dance sequences. Enjoy it for the balls-out color, uncanny backdrops, and wild performances. Enjoy it for a story that started as an allegory for the politics of grange farming (or something, it’s been a while since I read the book) but has been distilled down to its most innocent, imaginative essence. Enjoy it because it’s strange and fantastical and does sync up surprisingly well with Dark Side of the Moon (for the first half or so at least). But it’s part of the culture, embedded so deep in the collective unconscious, it is a thing you should know.
Film Collection: Fear

October 17th, 2026

Directed by James Foley
Written by Christopher Crowe
1996 | 97 minutes | English
DVD

Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, William Petersen, Alyssa Milano, Amy Brenneman, Todd Caldecott, Tracy Fraim, Jason Christopher, Jed Rees, Gary John Riley

What it’s about: Nicole (Witherspoon) is sixteen and has spent the last year living with her dad Steve (Petersen), and step-mom Laura (Brenneman) outside Seattle. Their relationship is awkward and her once-estranged father wants to give her space, which she uses to go out to cafes and clubs with her friend Margo (Milano). On these outings, she catches the eye of David (Wahlberg), a guy in his 20s with a murky background who sweeps her off her feet. Everyone is charmed except Steve, who just can’t shake a bad feeling, and even as Nicole begins to see the cracks in David’s romantic facade, her father’s escalating interventions catch her between a rock and a hard place. Eventually, however, David goes too far and the family must come together as his obsession with Nicole descends into all-out violence.

Reflections: I haven’t seen this in quite a few years and I remember it being sort of mid, an impression its reviews seem to back up. But taken in the context of unhinged ’90s thrillers–a subgenre I have a fondness for, I admit–there’s a lot to enjoy here. The plot is certainly not invested in subtlety, but when it does veer into the ridiculous–the tattoo scene leaps to mind–it’s both funny and uncomfortable. Wahlberg–in his third film and first starring role–is a little wooden as David, who is written as essentially a cypher anyway, but he brings a kind of thick malevolence that works for a movie that’s less about following through on logical details than rolling along through big, dumb emotions. And there are moments when it works well; the rollercoaster scene is objectively silly, but captures that adolescent feeling of sexual awakening in an almost fantastical way.

The biggest problem, I think, is that the movie is pulling in two directions: one where it’s Nicole’s story, a coming-of-age romantic thriller; and one where it’s Steve’s story, about paternal anxiety and the primal instinct to defend one’s family awakening an unknown vitality. It’d be great if they met in the middle, but they don’t, quite. By the end, Nicole feels a little sidelined, and neither of them are fleshed out as much as they should be. Both actors are bringing what they can, though. Petersen leans into the unsympathetic aspects of his character, going for kind of a suppressed, midlife-crisis edginess, like the smug satisfaction of telling David off at the door. And Witherspoon is selling what she has, pulling a fine line between burgeoning independence and total naivete from a script that doesn’t seem to relate to her quite as much.

This came out the same year as Scream, so it barely predates the teen-slasher resurgence, but it’s tapping into the same cultural moment–the top billing of two hot young stars early in what would be major careers, the of-the-moment soundtrack (Bush, The Sundays’ cover of “Wild Horses”), the way the questionably-sexy first half transforms into a home-invasion film by the final act–it’s just trying to modernize psychological horror, rather than gore. Seen through that lens, it’s different enough to be interesting. Even if there is definitely a far more interesting movie in what it only gestures at, there’s a lot it does well, and while it’s very silly, it is also genuinely unsettling at times and I had a good time watching it.