Tag: film

Film Collection: Phantom of the Opera

October 6th, 2026

Directed by Arthur Lubin
Written by Samuel Hoffenstein & Eric Taylor
1943 | 89 minutes | English
DVD

Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster, Claude Rains, Edgar Barrier, Leo Carillo, Jane Farrar, J. Edward Bromberg, Fritz Feld, Hume Cronyn, Frank Puglia, Fritz Leber, Steven Geray, Barbara Everest

What it’s about: In this loose adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, Erique Claudin (Rains) has been a violinist for the Paris Opera for twenty years, but he’s losing his ability to play and is let go. He’s broke because he’s been spending his money anonymously funding voice lessons for Christine DuBois (Foster), a soprano in the opera for whom he has developed a quiet devotion. He’s hinging his prospects on a concerto he’s written, but when he mistakenly believes a publisher is trying to steal it, he murders the man, gets acid thrown in his face, and retreats to the sewers, becoming the Phantom. Meanwhile, Christine is being courted by both Anatole Garron (Eddy), one of the opera’s stars, and police inspector Raoul Dubert (Barrier), both of whom try to protect her while apprehending Claudin for both his initial murder and those he goes on to commit to advance her prospects.

Reflections: When this movie came out, a lot of critics compared it unfavorably to the 1925 silent version with Lon Chaney, and I get it. Even accounting for the pacing of the time period, it kind of plods along, and it very much shies away from the spookier, gothier side of the story, playing it more like a criminal melodrama (a cousin to something like Scarlet Street). The edition I have is part of a Universal Horror collection, but I feel like that sets an unfair expectation for what this actually is, and with that adjustment of expectations… well, it’s still kind of slow and strangely muted, but there are some charms to what’s going on here.

For one, the overall production design is extravagant and expressionist–I’m thinking in particular of an early street scene in which Claudin walks between the opera and his lodgings, or the cavern below the theater where the Phantom meets his fate. But every set design has a kind of grandiosity to it, and the costumes and decor are doing a lot with creating a thick, rich, period atmosphere through almost excessive texture and color (despite the cover image above, the film is in color) and space. Of the cast, Rains is the standout–even when threatening murder as the Phantom, his Claudin has a kind of meekness about him, but also a believable desperation that dances on the line between faith and delusion. Foster is interesting as the ingenue figure–always accommodating but kind of centrally evasive, an object of projection, but also kind of working it. And Eddy and Barrier, who have been giving off distinct flavors of romantic hero throughout, have a fascinating moment with her at the end that seems to nod at a very sexually progressive subtext and, were I still in grad school, I could absolutely spin a paper out of that.

As an adaptation of Phantom, musical or otherwise, this definitely isn’t the best or most representative one. But if you’re already familiar with the story, this seems to be trying to do something different with it. And taken on its own merits as an eccentric ’40s psychological thriller, it’s weird enough that it’s interesting despite its flaws. I would say this is probably not for the casual viewer, but if you’re really into the source material or the period, it’s worth checking out–it’s pretty short. There are multiple extended opera sequences, though, so buckle up for that, but Franz Liszt pops up as a character, so that’s kinda fun.
Film Collection: Saraband

October 5th, 2026

Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Ingmar Bergman
2003 | 111 minutes | Swedish
Criterion Blu-Ray

Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Börje Ahlstedt, Julia Dufvenius, Gunnel Fred

What it’s about: Marianne (Ullmann) is a successful, semi-retired lawyer in her ’60s when she gets an instinctual urge to seek out Johan (Josephson), her ex-husband, twenty-or-so years older, whom she hasn’t spoken to for three decades. Johan, a womanizing former professor, inherited a fortune and retired to a remote family cottage with a lake house and now lives out his days in cantankerous contemplation of his life. His estranged son Henrik (Ahlstedt)–from a relationship prior to Marianne and nearly her age–has moved into the cottage’s lake house, but the two bear a deep animosity and rarely speak. Heinrik, also an academic as well as an organist and cellist, is tutoring his nineteen-year-old daughter Karin (Dufvenius) in cello, with plans to get her into a prestigious conservatory, as they each separately mourn her mother Anna’s death two years prior. The film–whose title refers to a slow and formal dance–is divided into ten scenes, each a conversation between two of these four characters, as well as a prologue and epilogue in which Marianne addresses the audience.

Reflections: Bergman is one of those titans of cinema that’s difficult to talk about because he’s been talked about so much. My experience with him has been that his films are often fairly minimal, but explosively intense narratively and often oriented around a powerful dramatic image. This was his final film and I’ve never seen it before, and it strikes me as a very composed way to go out. This is “just” ten conversations between two people, mostly in ordinary rooms. The one scene that takes place in a church (with Bach being played on the organ) feels grandiose in scale by comparison. And there’s no visual intensity here–nothing like the specter of death in The Seventh Seal or the spider vision in Through a Glass Darkly or the opulent theater environment in Fanny & Alexander. There are a few shots that break out, but mostly this is just faces. Bodies. Talking. And it is captivating.

It’s the work of an older person, one who has accepted a certain irresolvable quality of the human spirit. Marianne can’t explain to Johan why she came until after she sees a side of him she doesn’t know, and then she won’t. Henrik is jovial and good-natured until his mind turns to his father or the loss of his daughter and he becomes a different person. What plot there is centers around Karin’s future as a cellist and Henrik’s complex relationships with a hostile father contemptuous of him and a daughter whom he never got to know, but who frightens him with her talent and the echo of her mother. All four performers (there is one fifth, non-speaking role in the last scene) are firing at the levels a Bergman film requires, but despite the focus on the performances and the long monologues, it never feels stagey–the camera-eye is purposeful, even just lingering on one of their faces. And with Liv Ullmann in particualr, whose character is the outside perspective on the triangle of the other three, there is a feeling of saying goodbye to a friend.

This doesn’t have the artistic daring of a legendary director’s classic work–it feels like a small film. But that also makes it feel focused and intimate, and while there is very little spectacle to it, it’s never less than interesting. And while it is unsparing–he was not an artist known for his warmth–there is a gentleness to it, a regret but also a peacemaking. The character’s aren’t exactly happy, but they find what they need–even in the most extreme catharsis–and there is some satisfaction in following the experience of that as an artistic emotional journey. This is a movie that could wash over you if you’re not in the right moment in life, but if and when it hits, it will hit hard.
Film Collection: Titus

October 3rd, 2026

Directed by Julie Taymor
Written by Julie Taymor
1999 | 162 minutes | English
DVD

Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Colm Feore, James Frain, Laura Fraser, Harry Lenix, Angus Macfayden, Matthew Rhys, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Osheen Jones

What it’s about: An adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (c.1594), this begins with Roman general Titus Andronicus (Hopkins) returning to Rome with Tamora, Queen of the Goths (Lange) and her sons as his prisoners. He sacrifices the eldest to the gods for his own losses, leaving the spoiled and violent Demetrius (Rhys) and Chiron (Meyers) alive. He is then offered the chance by the senate to replace the recently deceased emperor, but declines and gives it to the previous emperor’s elder son Saturninus (Cumming), who has been competing with his younger brother Bassianus (Frain) for the title. Saturninus is a dick, though, and decides to take his brother’s lover, Lavinia (Fraser)–also Titus’s daughter– for his own bride out of spite. Bassianus spirits Lavinia away with the help of her brothers, including Lucius (Macfayden). The rigid Titus is dishonored by the actions of his children, and Saturninus decides to marry Tamora instead, who has definitely not forgotten the whole eldest son thing. All of these tensions spiral out of control, egged on by Tamora’s lover and attendant, the moor Aaron (Lenix), who seethes with hate for all of them and seeks to sow chaos.

Reflections: Shakespeare’s craziest play, being interpreted by a director whose whole thing is going wildly OTT, and running within spitting distance of three hours, this movie is a lot. The play itself leans into depravity; rape, murder, torture, mutilation, and cannibalism all factor into a story that deals with sibling relationships, the roots and inheritance of violence, the passing of the torch into a “less civilized” age, and the disruptive, retributive power exercised by those marginalized by race and sex. Onto this, Taymor weaves a relentless melange of styles and time periods–the scene will move from a dark and eerie Roman ruin to an industrial lounge with a pool table and arcade cabinets; Saturninus rides a Nazi-esque parade through the streets, while Demetrius and Chiron devolve into glammed-out future-punks. The costume and set designs are elaborate and insane–the metallic wolf’s head that rises over the throne room, or the… indescribable getups Tamora and her boys wear to drive Titus mad.

It’s all extremely theatrical, both in the aggressive stylization of it and in its stagebound roots. But Taymor and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli work the camera too, with dramatic swings, odd angles, rapid moments and bizarre fantastical sequences. The cast is equally dialed-up and all serving: Hopkins is giving the classic Shakespearian gravitas in the midst of the absurdity around him, every word coming out of Lange’s mouth could eat through sheet metal, Rhys and Meyers are feral and borderline incestuous, Lenix switches from jovially dark to seething yet thoughtful in a heartbeat, and Cumming is effete, pathetic, and dangerous. Almost everyone is horny and obsessed and violent and unpleasant–Feore’s Marcus being kind of a calm, grounding point–and despite its length, the movie whips through its escalating, labyrinthine plot with the force of a rollercoaster.

Ultimately, I think mileage with this movie is gonna depend on how much of a theater kid you have in you. I’m not familiar enough with this play in a scholarly way to comment on the adaptation, but it’s a movie full of texture and drama and expressive ideas, and the spectacle of it is thrilling. But it is also a lot of Shakespearean dialogue, often coming at you fast while the rest of the movie is beating you over the head with things to look at and digest–it takes a lot of effort to take in. And it is a dark story that leaves one unsettled, feeling a sense of loss and disgust at the pettiness of man. This is not a movie to put on for a chill time, this is something to strap in for. But if you’re up for that, it’s quite the ride with a lot of wild, interesting stuff to chew on.
Film Collection: The Lord of the Rings

October 2nd, 2026

Directed by Ralph Bakshi
Written by Chris Conkling and Peter S. Beagle
1978 | 133 minutes | English
VHS

Christopher Guard, William Squire, John Hurt, Michael Scholes, Simon Chandler, Dominic Guard, Norman Bird, Michael Graham Cox, Anthony Daniels, David Buck, Peter Woodthorpe, Fraser Kerr, Phillip Stone, Michael Deacon, André Morell, Annette Crosbie, John Westbrook

What it’s about: This adaptation of Tolkien’s trilogy condenses The Fellowship of the Ring and the bulk of The Two Towers (both 1954). The ancient Ring of Power sought by the dark lord Sauron has passed into the hands of Bilbo (Bird) and his nephew Frodo (Guard). Advised by the wizard Gandalf (Squire), Frodo and his friends Sam (Scholes), Merry (Chandler) and Pippin (Guard) hook up with the lost king turned ranger Aragorn (Hurt), the elf Legolas (Daniels), the dwarf Gimli (Buck) and the human prince Boromir (Cox) on a quest to destroy the ring before the riders of the Dark Lord can get ahold of it. They travel through the elf Kingdom of Rivendell and the Golden Wood of Galadriel (Crosbie), but Frodo and Sam become separated and proceed toward the land of Mordor, guided by Gollum (Woodthorpe). Meanwhile, the others strive to save the kingdom of Rohan from rival forces also seeking the ring.

Reflections: Growing up, I always assumed this film was connected to the Rankin & Bass versions of The Hobbit (1977) and Return of the King (1980), since it came chronologically in between them and covers the parts of the story they do not. As far as I can tell, that’s not the case, but it is an odd coincidence. Because this is a very different movie. Bakshi has a signature style, a kind of uncanny, comic-book influenced, rotoscoped look and applied here–the longest and arguably most ambitious of his films–it’s is a strange fit with the familiar material. Different textures of animation collide, characters move in weirdly flowing ways and make absolutely insane faces (that kind of reminded me of the CD-i Legend of Zelda games, or vice versa, I suppose), and the environments give off a hauntingly abstracted sense, especially as they turn darker as the film goes on.

The pacing is also strange. Major narrative beats flow by very quickly, but the film lingers on its long, dialogue-less action scenes and on strange moments like Frodo dancing on a table. Familiar dialogue and moments from the book (and Peter Jackson’s later films) pop up, but cramming two very dense novels into 133 minutes means important plot information is glossed over and several major characters are dropped, particularly women–Arwen isn’t here and Eowyn has no lines. The cast is… fine–it’s a bunch of wispy/reedy sounding British dudes, although John Hurt is, of course, recognizable, and it’s neat hearing Anthony Daniels do not-C-3PO. But the line reads don’t have a lot of variation in tone and that, combined with the psychedelic visuals and janky pace make the whole thing come off like a fantastical fever dream.

Whether that makes for an even comprehensible adaptation of Tolkien’s story, or a “good” movie… okay, not really. But it is cool. That same fever dream quality adds to the mysterious fantasy of it. The designs are kind of primitive but have that late-’70s fantasy vibe of creepy adventure. There are obviously better Lord of the Rings adaptations on film, and it definitely helps to be familiar with the story already, but this has a fun, late-night cult movie quality that is definitely its own. Spark a bowl and let it wash over you and it’s kind of awesome.
Film Collection: All of Me

October 1st, 2026

Directed by Carl Reiner
Written by Phil Alden Robinson
1984 | 91 minutes | English
Fullscreen Format DVD

Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Victoria Tennant, Madolyn Smith, Richard Libertini, Dana Elcar, Jason Bernard, Gailard Sartain, Selma Diamond, Eric Christmas

What it’s about: Roger Cobb (Martin) just turned 38, and even though he’d rather be playing jazz with his friend Tyrone (Bernard), it’s time to buckle down and get serious. His boss at the law firm, Burton Schuyler (Elcar)–who also happens to be his girlfriend Peggy’s (Smith) dad–takes notice and promises to put him on more important cases, including both his own divorce and seeing to the vast estate of sheltered heiress Edwina Cutler (Tomlin). After a life of being in a sickbed, she’s finally dying but has leveraged her wealth to enlist the eccentric Tibetan mystic Prahka Lasa (Libertini) to transfer her soul upon death into the body of the young and beautiful Terry Hoskins (Tennant) for a second chance at life. Roger reasonably thinks she’s bonkers, and isn’t shy about saying so, but it’s legit. Except, by accident, her soul ends up in his body instead, leaving her able to speak through his mouth and control his right side. And as they are forced to cooperate to rectify the situation, all manner of hijinks ensue.

Reflections: This was a first time watch of a movie I inherited from an old living situation, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I was struck by how charming it feels. It’s high-concept, but in a way that doesn’t feel engineered to make a point–it’s a wacky adventure with some broad moral lessons that’s a chance to allow its charming leads to shine. And they do. Tomlin is in the background for most of the movie–appearing in mirrors and providing voiced-over thoughts, but giving just the right amount of sauce to her naive, uptight, entitled but lonely rich girl. And Martin is doing some amazing physical work–his two halves battling it out or switching full control on the fly–while giving off a slightly acidic, beleaguered everyman appeal.

Beyond the comic star-power of the leads, there’s kind of an anything-goes ’80s vibe going on, for better and for worse. Casting Richard Libertini as a stereotypical Asian swami is… a choice that doesn’t exactly hold up, but he does play the character with a kind of knowing indifference–the joke feels like it isn’t that Prakha doesn’t know how to use a telephone, it’s that he simply doesn’t care to–that at least helps. There’s some sexual humor that doesn’t quite land as smoothly as the rest of it. And it hardly feels like a spoiler to point out one shouldn’t trust a British accent in an ’80s American comedy but Victoria Tennant does both the spaced-out hippie and the conniving schemer well enough.

This isn’t a movie I would call a laugh riot, exactly–unless incredulously shouting “I’m talking to a bucket!” really gets you. Nor is it aesthetically daring or richly textured, particularly–the mirror effect is the most interesting bit of the filmmaking. It all feels sort of quaint, but in a way that’s relaxed and warm. It feels totally appropriate that I just kind of wound up with it because someone I lived with remembered it from childhood–like something handed down from someone cool from my mother’s generation. And it’s pretty short, just WTF enough to stay interesting as a story, and an excuse to watch Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin together, which is a good time.
Film Collection: The Ladykillers

September 27th, 2026

Directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
2004 | 104 minutes | English
DVD

Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma, Ryan Hurst, Diane Delano, George Wallace, Stephen Root, Jason Weaver, Greg Grunberg, Bruce Campbell

What it’s about: Mrs. Marva Munson (Hall) is a proper churchgoing Mississippi widow with a cat named Pickles and a room to rent in her house. That room is taken up by fast-talking “Professor” Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr, Ph.D. (Hanks). He claims to be on sabbatical from a university to lead a renaissance musical ensemble, but in truth, his aim is to dig a tunnel from Mrs. Munson’s cellar to reach and rob the nearby underground vault of a local casino, and his so-called bandmates are, in fact, a motley group of criminals. There’s the booty-loving hoodrat and inside man, Gawain MacSam (Wayans), the IBS-afflicted munitions expert, Garth Pancake (Simmons), the reticent tunneling expert known as The General (Ma), and the thickheaded muscle, Lump Hudson (Hurst). Pulling off the scheme will involve keeping the old lady fooled while they work, but internal tensions in the group and the hand of fate itself seem to be working against their efforts.

Reflections: A remake, in premise at least, of the 1955 Ealing comedy, and the only Coen Brothers movie I hadn’t seen before, this has a reputation for being one of their lesser efforts and it is, but it’s still an interestingly odd movie. The tendency of their characters toward eccentric mannerisms and stylized dialogue is dialed up to eleven here, exemplified most by Hanks giving one of the weirdest performances of his career–a hifalutin’ hornswoggler with a cruelly arrogant streak and an awkwardly swallowed laugh who never uses one word where ten will do. The other criminals come off like cartoonish sketches that lean into the broad, often very slapstick comedy. It’s only Hall’s Mrs. Munson that feels like she might have some basis in an actual human person, and her forceful presence does a lot to keep at least one of the movie’s feet on the ground.

The Mississippi setting infuses the film with thick drawls and plenty of rousing gospel music, but what’s being done with it isn’t entirely clear. There is some kind of commentary on race happening–Pancake lording that he was one of the Freedom Riders, Mrs. Munson’s admiration of Bob Jones University (which has a long and notable history of regressive racial policies), the exchange between Gawain and his casino boss Stephen Root about a discrimination lawsuit, and so on–but the message of it gets a little lost amidst the poop jokes and inconvenient explosions. And despite the silliness of it all, the absurd convenience of the crew’s fate after the heist feels in line with the deeply cynical streak of the Coens’ other films in the mid-to-late 2000s. There is something vaguely dark happening here, but it doesn’t completely land.

But there is also a lot to enjoy. The movie looks typically gorgeous, with cinematographer and frequent collaborator Roger Deakins bathing the proceedings in golden southern light. And many of the gags and lines are genuinely funny, peppered with sly wit and acted out by an excellent cast. Ultimately, even a more half-baked Coen Brothers film is still going to be pretty good and, even if this one feels stretched a little thin by the end, it’s still too bizarre to be boring.
Film Collection: Notes on a Scandal

September 26th, 2026

Directed by Richard Eyre
Written by Patrick Marber
2006 | 92 minutes | English
DVD

Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson, Tom Georgeson, Michael Maloney, Joanna Scanlan, Shaun Parkes, Emma Williams, Phil Davis, Juno Temple

What it’s about: This adaptation of Zoë Heller’s 2003 novel is narrated from the diary of Barbara Covett (Dench), a self-described “old battleaxe” of a teacher at St George’s, a school in London. Barbara lives a spinsterish life, disillusioned with her job and highly judgmental of those around her but, at the beginning of a new term, her attention is captured by Sheba Hart (Blanchett), the airy new art teacher. The two women become friendly and Barbara worms her way into the life of Sheba and her much older husband, Richard (Nighy), eventually developing an erotic obsession with the younger woman. But one night, at a function, she stumbles upon Sheba being sexually inappropriate with a student named Steven (Simpson), and rather than report what she’s seen, she uses the secret to further gain a disturbing advantage in the pair’s relationship and advance her own agenda.

Reflections: One of the taglines for this was “loneliness can turn one into a monster” and the film rests on the shoulders of its two lead actresses giving us complex portraits of two women forming a connection that cannot overcome the loneliness that turns them both into predators. The film is told from Barbara’s point of view, but Barbara is not a reliable narrator–she constantly projects and assumes, clinging to a fantasy rather than taking responsibility for her own repression, and Dench capably conveys her hardened acidity while allowing a defensive humanity through in her more pathetic or vulnerable moments. Meanwhile, Blanchett embodies the ethereal beauty that keeps Sheba at a distance from the world, while bringing an internal intensity to the entitlement and desperate need to prove something to herself that leads her to ignore the consequences of her actions. The two performances–both nominated for Oscars–are fantastic, and constitute the meat of the film.

The movie around them plays out like a chamber drama that threads a line between elegance and pulp, cozy domesticity and torrid melodrama, but it knows where its heart is. The rest of the cast mostly stays out of the way, with a young-but-fierce Juno Temple being kind of the exception. The visual sense is grounded and ordinary, with neither Eyre’s direction nor Chris Menges’s cinematography being particularly showy. The score by Phillip Glass hits an appropriate tone without standing out. The voiceover readings from Barbara’s diary somewhat belie the novelistic origins, but it works and the (also Oscar-nominated) script keeps things brisk and moving.

This isn’t a film I hear talked about all that much, twenty years later, I suspect because it is sort of quiet and uncomfortable–the taboo subject matter, the fact that there’s not anyone easy to root for, and the somewhat irresolute ending that suggests Barbara hasn’t really changed all make it kind of an icky pill to swallow. But all of those things are also what make it effective. It’s definitely not a feel-good movie, but there is a real empathy threaded into the mundane horror that makes for a solid psychological character drama that left me with a contemplative, if somewhat sour feeling.
Film Collection: Day for Night

September 26th, 2026

Directed by François Truffaut
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard & Suzanne Schiffman
1973 | 116 minutes | French, English
Criterion Blu-Ray

Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Dani, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean Champion, Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Truffaut, Nike Arrighi, Nathalie Baye, David Markham, Graham Greene

What it’s about: This movie follows the making of a fictional drama film, “Meet Pamela,” under production in Nice. Among the stars of the film are Julie Baker (Bisset), an English actress who recently experienced a breakdown, Séverine (Cortese), an Italian diva, her old flame, the aging lothario Alexandré (Aumont), and Alphonse (Léaud), a childish and enthusiastic young actor whose less-interested girlfriend Liliane (Dani) he’s had hired as a script girl. The director, Ferrand (Truffaut), along with his shrewd AD Joëlle (Baye), are forced to marshal the circus of cast and crew, including all the interpersonal drama, various production setbacks, and a constantly evolving script that incorporates elements of true life into the melodramatic story of a woman who runs off with her new father-in-law.

Reflections: Making a movie is an odd undertaking–a large group of disparate personalities thrown together in intense collaboration, with actors exposing vulnerability pretending to be other people and crew being forced to perform and build all kinds of absurd things, a constant environment of hurry-up-and-wait, endless repetition and fragmentation, and the intense bonds that last for a shooting schedule before dissipating again to the wind. This, Truffaut’s 13th film, is a love-letter to that process and to the kind madness and belief that goes into that craft. The result is an energetic, warm-hearted, kaleidoscopic ensemble piece that sprawls out and constantly feels like it could go of the rails but, through some kind of alchemy, never does.

Truffaut performs a clever trick of seeming to pull back the curtain on the artifice of filmmaking–the movie begins within a shot of the fictional film before pulling out to the crew around it, has characters pull off wigs, or moves the camera to the exposed back of setting pieces–while keeping the larger film feeling naturalistic and grounded. His mis-en-scene is rich with color and ’70s style, and Georges Delerue’s score is sentimental but never sappy. The cast are all doing fine work–long-time collaborator Léaud captures an adolescent petulance that isn’t over the top, Baye is luminous and no-nonsense, and Bisset has a hard-earned determination to keep herself and the project together. And Graham Greene (the English author, not the Canadian actor) makes a surprise cameo as an insurance agent.

The main draw of this film though, which is hard to describe, is the way in which it captures a sense of the creative spirit–watching it makes one want to make things. It’s kind of loose, plot-wise, and no part of it particularly stands out in terms of craft, but it somehow comes together in a cohesive whole despite itself. And it’s a pretty clever thing, to be able to show the secrets of a magic trick and still leave the audience even more enchanted with the magic–no wonder this is often considered one of the director and legendary cinephile’s best films.
Film Collection: Demolition Man

September 25th, 2026

Directed by Marco Brambilla
Written by Daniel Waters and Robert Reneau and Peter M. Lenkov
1993 | 115 minutes | English
DVD

Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Benjamin Bratt, Dennis Leary, Bill Cobbs, Bob Gunton, Glenn Shadix, Troy Evans, Steve Kahan, Andre Gregory, Jesse Ventura, Jack Black, Rob Schneider, David Patrick Kelley

What it’s about: In the year 1996, rogue LAPD officer John Spartan (Stallone) is put into cryogenic sleep as a prison sentence after a number of civilians are killed during his apprehension of psychotic criminal Simon Phoenix (Snipes). In 2032, the also-frozen Phoenix escapes, wreaking havoc in the fascistic pseudo-utopia society has become, and contemporary cops–more used to dealing with curfew violations and curbing foul language–are unequipped to deal with his kind of chaotic violence. Lt. Lenina Huxley (Bullock), obsessed with the 20th century, suggests reawakening Spartan to deal with the menace, and partners up with him to help him find Phoenix while adjusting to an unfamiliar world of enforced civility and politeness. Phoenix’s escape was engineered by the dictatorial Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Hawthorne) as a means of eliminating Edgar Friendly (Leary), leader of a group of rebels who reject his new world order. But Cocteau may have unleashed a weapon he can’t control, and it’s up to the primitive “Demolition Man” to uncover the truth and save the future.

Reflections: The first two words that come to mind for this movie are “gloriously stupid.” It’s clearly intended to be satire, but it’s so broad and unsubtle, it’s difficult to say that it really lands. But in a way, that’s kind of what’s fun about it, watching it from nearly the future in which it’s set–the exaggerations of the anxieties of early ’90s culture feel sort of quaint, which makes it funnier now than it was even when I saw it several years after it came out. There is also an odd prescience to some of it–for example, the reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming president was intended to metatextually play on the rivalry between him and Stallone, a decade before he actually became governor of California.

The plot hits all the expected beats with little apparent interest in being surprising, and none of the characters have much to them, but the actors seem to be having fun. Stallone is in meathead-with-a-heart-of-gold mode, Bullock is playing up the perky naivete and grinning through her character’s frequent malapropisms, and Snipes is clearly relishing cartoonishly chewing the scenery at every turn. The supporting cast is sort of wild: did I expect to ever see Wesley Snipes beating up Andre Gregory? No, but it happens. Jack Black has an early, non-speaking background role. Dennis Leary tells Glenn Shadix he looks like a couch. Rob Schneider is… there. The action is about what you’d expect from a movie of this era, with a few particularly cool moments–Phoenix’s inevitable death scene, for example–and the effects hold up reasonably well, with a certain practical charm and ’90s dirtiness to them, even amidst the sleek sci-fi designs of the ultra-clean and tidy city.

There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense: references to Spartan having a daughter who might still be alive never pay off, a lot of the apparent laws and technologies raise serious logistical questions, the reference to Rambo in a movie starring Stallone is… confusing. But this is not a movie for thinking about that kind of thing, or much else. This is a movie for turning your brain off, watching stuff blow up, and laughing at the bizarre and, at this point, nostalgic retrofuturism. I haven’t seen it since I was a teenager, but I had a good time with it and some genuine laughs. And I kind of want some Taco Bell now, so I guess it got me.
Film Collection: The Deer Hunter

September 25th, 2026

Directed by Michael Cimino
Written by Deric Washburn
1978 | 183 minutes | English, Vietnamese, French
DVD

Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, Meryl Streep, George Dzundza, Pierre Segui, Shirley Stoler, Chuck Aspegren, Rutanya Alda, Paul D’Amato, Amy Wright, Joe Grifasi, Somsak Sengvilai, John McBeth

What it’s about: Mike (DeNiro), Nick (Walken), and Steven (Savage) are three steelworkers in a small western-Pennsylvania town in 1968. Steven is marrying Angela (Alda) and the others are going on one last hunting trip with their other friends before the three of them ship out to Vietnam. Once in country, they are captured by the Viet Cong and forced to participate in games of Russian Roulette before escaping, but during the escape, Steven is injured and Nick becomes separated from the others, eventually going AWOL and disappearing. Returning home, Mike is forced to wrestle with how the war has affected both him and Steven, negotiates a complicated relationship with Nick’s girlfriend/fiance, Linda (Streep), and eventually returns to Vietnam to try and find his missing friend.

Reflections: Winner of 5 Oscars in 1978, including Best Picture, Director, and Supporting Actor (Walken), this is a big, epic, lumbering movie that’s almost as interesting for the stuff going on around it as for the film itself. There’s the conflict over the script between Cimino and Washburn, and murkiness about who authored what. There’s the controversy over the ahistorical use of Russian Roulette as a major narrative device. There’s Meryl Streep, in her second film role and the first of her 21 (to date) Oscar nominations, taking the role to be with John Cazale, who was dying of cancer as the film was being made (and the poignancy that adds to the final scene, in which she mourns the loss of Walken’s character with Cazale next to her). There’s the fact this was one of the first major American films to deal with the aftereffects of the Vietnam war. There’s a lot going on in the context here that adds to the fascination of the film as a historical artifact.

The movie itself is a long, slow burn, spending about an hour setting up the lives of its protagonists in the few days before their deployment. Indeed, much of the contemporary criticism was directed at the length and pacing, favoring atmosphere over incident. But that’s sort of the point, also–to be absorbed and enmeshed in the world of these characters, Mike in particular, in order to feel the way that world shifts after the experience in the war as he tries to hold on to the things that used to give him meaning. Cimino feels meticulous as a director, lingering in long scenes and letting things be quietly observed rather than stated outright. He’s helped in this project by Vilmos Zsigmond’s gorgeous cinematography which draws out the gritty, chilly beauty of the Allegheny mountains, and by a set of fantastic, quietly-tortured performances, particularly from DeNiro, whose deeply held principles are shaken but not completely shattered, Walken, whose cheery breeziness breaks completely into nihilism, and Streep, juggling a complicated and conflicting set of desires as her Linda grows closer to Mike in Nick’s absence.

It is also a very dour experience, ending on an ironic and bitter note as the characters break into “God Bless America” after a funeral, and it asks a lot in terms of patience. But there is a sweep to it, and if one takes it more as trying to capture a mood and feeling rather than represent a historical event in a more literal way, it is moving, even if it’s not exactly the most fun way to spend three hours. There is some top-tier talent at work here, and taken on its own terms, it’s easy to get lost in it, even if it’s not without its flaws.