Category: Ratings

The Scarlet Letter (1934, Robert G. Vignola)

The Scarlet Letter’s opening title card explains while the Puritan customs might be atrocious to modern eyes, “they were a necessity of the times and helped shape the destiny of a nation.” Not on board with the former, but it’s definitely accurate for the latter. Especially since this version of Letter is about a white man avoiding taking any responsibility for himself until the last possible moment and being a martyr. However, given the third act positions Hardie Albright’s reverend as the protagonist—how could it be about anyone but him, after all, certainly not the woman he canoodled with (Colleen Moore) or their child, born out of wedlock (Cora Sue Collins).

But then the first couple acts were basically all about Henry B. Walthall coming back after two years of being presumed dead to find his wife, Moore, a recent mother. Walthall shows up with a Native American guide (Iron Eyes Cody, but don’t think it’s woke; he was Italian and changed his name) and quickly discovers Moore’s story. It’s the first or second thing everyone’s talking about. They’re going to watch Moore get her scarlet letter while holding her newborn as everyone—including Albright—begs her to reveal the father’s identity. Walthall watches, now significantly invested himself, but Moore refuses. She’s going to carry the burden for both of them.

Moore has subsequent scenes with Albright—confirming he’s the daddy—and Walthall, who reveals his return to life to Moore and pledges vengeance against this unknown baby daddy. He makes her promise not to tell anyone he’s really her husband (he’s taken on a silly name new identity).

Jump ahead five years, and now the baby is Collins, who’s just the age she’s starting to notice the other kids are shitty to her. Meanwhile, the other adults are shitty to Moore. Much of the second act consists of the village ladies shit-talking her, which may pass Bechdel at times (though their God is definitely a dude, so maybe not). That material’s no good. What’s good is Walthall.

Despite Cody—nope, sorry, despite Espera DeCorti—apparently sticking with Walthall the entire time, we don’t get to see him again until the end of the movie for the big finale. He’s just a face in the crowd. Now, Letter’s very low budget—the production design is an incredible mishmash of styles and time periods—so they likely just filmed their crowd scenes together. But still. I spent most of the movie just waiting for the awful way DeCorti would return.

Anyway.

Walthall.

Walthall has become the beloved town doctor and Albright’s best friend. He’s in Moore’s orbit because Moore is a saint who cares for the sick women who’d previously been cursing her. Moore’s got no character arc. She exists to serve Walthall or Albright, but most of her scenes are with Collins for a while, and very little comes from them. Even when Moore’s fighting the town bullies—intellectually—the movie’s careful never to lionize her. Scarlet Letter is a bewildering story to try to tell under the new-at-the-time Hayes Code, and the result is about what one would expect.

Though not Walthall’s Machiavellian plan to ferret out his cuckolder and ruin the man’s life. If he’s got to kill some kids along the way….

Walthall gives a malevolent, deeply disturbing, cruel performance. He’s awesome.

Albright’s not good. He’s also not sympathetic. He needed to be one of them.

Moore’s pretty good, considering, but rarely unqualified. It’s a poorly written part, and director Vignola has no time (or ability) for directing actors.

So then the better performances come from the film’s only running subplot—buddies Alan Hale and William Kent. Hale’s the handyman; Kent’s a… something or other. Doesn’t matter. Kent’s courting Virginia Howell, who’s Moore’s primary detractor, and Albright and Walthall’s landlady, except Kent’s a nebbish and Hale’s a whole lot of man. So Hale and Kent have this series of comedy sequences involving it. Hale’s really good. Kent’s funny. Howell’s a lot better in those parts than when she’s slinging shit at Moore.

Technically, nothing stands out. Leonard Fields and David Silverstein’s script does have some occasionally impressive olde time dialogue—usually for Hale and Kent—where they get to flex for entertainment purposes and not so Moore can wax on about how hard it must be for someone else to have to know she’s in this position and occasionally see her on the street.

But, given the numerous, significant constraints, it could’ve been a whole lot worse. And the scene where Collins tells someone on their planet, Moore’s “A” might be a letter, but on her planet, it stands for “Mommy’s the Best,” is pretty awesome and gives a peek into a better version of the film.

20 Feet from Stardom (2013, Morgan Neville)

According to the opening titles, 20 Feet from Stardom will focus on background singers and session vocalists Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, and Judith Hill. Love and Clayton started in the sixties, Fischer in the eighties, Hill in the aughts. If they’re the main cast, the supporting are Claudia Lennear and Tata Vega. The principals providing additional commentary and context are The Waters (Oren, Julia, and Maxine Waters), Gloria Jones, and Patti Austin. There are many mega-stars–Sting and Mick Jagger offer very different takes (Sting’s blue-eyed soulful while Jagger drools over Lennear memories), and then Bruce Springsteen’s the de facto narrator for the first half. Stevie Wonder’s around a bit, too, especially in the second half.

Though even though Sting and Wonder get more in the second half when Springsteen disappears too much, his absence spotlights Stardom’s big problem. It doesn’t know where it wants to go. It knows where it doesn’t want to go. When the film’s covering these entirely BIPOC women’s attempts at being solo artists in the late seventies, it doesn’t want to talk about disco. When talking about their experiences in general, it rarely wants to talk about race. Some interviews discuss it towards the beginning, but in the “it was another time” way.

And it was another time, and while all interviewees who talk about the sixties to seventies musical changes directly refer to race, director Neville hurries through it. There’s no dwelling, no exploring, which is Stardom’s other problem. Neville doesn’t know what to do with divas, which Clayton tells him straight up when the film crew—in the first few minutes and the only time they’re really present—wants her to turn off the music in her car, and she says something to the effect of, “You can’t tell a diva to turn off her music.”

Because there is no great recording session with all these amazing vocalists. There’s one, with many of the amazing vocalists, but not all of them. And not necessarily the ones you want to be teamed up. Well… it’s strange, actually. It’s a number for Love, and she so entirely captivates it doesn’t matter who’s backing her up. It’s also not an ensemble number.

Now, obviously, Stardom’s on a budget. One interviewee tells Neville they certainly wouldn’t be giving him an interview if they became a star. But while Neville does understand the potential for filming these women singing, he doesn’t fulfill it. Giving Stardom a strange parallel to the conventionally agreed upon reasons for some of these women not becoming solo superstars—they didn’t have the best writers or producers; they didn’t have anyone who knew what they could do with their music.

Since the film’s about celebrities, it’s also got some poorly aged elements. Hill got her first big break singing at Michael Jackson’s memorial service. Stardom’s from before further allegations and substantiations. What would Neville have done? Well, given the villain in Love’s career was very much Phil Spector, and the film did drop after those allegations, substantiations, and incarcerations, it certainly seems like Neville wouldn’t have wanted to go there. And it just makes Hill’s inclusion seem strange.

Especially since she just shows up in the second half (despite being around for a couple sessions in the first), like the film’s going to focus on her and her interactions with these other background singers. And… nope. Neville gets them together and does nothing with it. It’s an incredible miss.

But it’s also still an incredible show because every few minutes, there’s one great performance clip or another—presumably for budgetary reasons, there’s not an accompanying twenty-disc soundtrack. The snippets are often frustratingly short.

Fischer’s eventually the star of the film, getting lovely music videos of her singing because she was the one who made it—a background singer who went solo and won a Grammy—only walk back the twenty feet again afterward. It’s a good section of the film, but Neville doesn’t have any way to weave it back into the rest, so the very distinctly delineated third act often swings in out of nowhere. But it still works out, thanks to the subject matter and the interviewees.

There’s probably enough story for twenty hours, but another ten or fifteen minutes would’ve been nice, too. Besides Fischer and Hill’s music videos, Neville’s always in a hurry.

20 Feet from Stardom is a fine documentary and a fantastic time. It just ought to be better; even with budgetary constraints, Neville misses (and avoids) too much.

Also, get Bruce Springsteen to narrate everything.

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003, Wolfgang Becker)

Somewhere near the end of the second act, Good Bye Lenin! starts having some narration problems. At first they seem like a little bit too lazy writing or, given Lenin has five screenwriters, a too many hands situation. There’s just a disconnect between protagonist and narrator Daniel Brühl’s experience and what the film’s doing. Then, as Lenin enters its muddled third act, it’s clear the disconnect is either by design—which seems unlikely unless the point is to make Brühl into a narcissist—or director Becker missed the boat.

Lenin doesn’t just ignore the most interesting points it raises—with some optics because they’re all for the ladies and despite the movie being about Brühl being an exceptional mama’s boy—it doesn’t even do right by Brühl. Ostensibly, the film’s about listless East German young adult Brühl’s complicated history with reunification; his mom, played by Katrin Sass, who the film manages to diss, showcase-wise, which is incredible given she’s in it all the time–she was a Party member who spent her life spreading the good word and then she was in a heart attack-induced coma when the Wall fell.

When she wakes up, the doctors tell Brühl she can’t handle any excitement, which he takes to mean he’s got to lie about the Wall falling to keep her alive. So it’s a bunch of hijinks. Eventually it gets real, with Brühl and sister Maria Simon learning maybe mama Sass told them some lies too. And then it flushes all the real for more hijinks, including Brühl’s romance with nurse Chulpan Khamatova. Khamatova has a “subplot” about having problems with Brühl’s elaborate scheme to lie to Sass, but it’s really just a scene and the end of even the pretense of agency. Sass doesn’t get a name in the credits—she does in the film, but she’s just mama in the credits—and despite the female characters outweighing the male, the film doesn’t even try to beat Bechdel. Even when it’s not about Brühl, Becker’s there to make sure it’s not about anyone else in the meantime.

When it seems like Lenin’s about Brühl’s experience with the Wall falling, it’s good. When it seems like it’s about Brühl and Simon’s family secrets drama, it’s better. When it’s about Brühl gaslighting Sass? It’s always running out of steam. Especially once everyone starts calling Brühl on the gag going on too long, only then the gag just keeps going on too long. There’s also the subtext about Brühl—and many of the former East Germans—wishing things would go back to the way they used to be. Not everyone wants to drink the literal Coca-Cola.

Lenin does zilch with it.

Sass is great. Simon’s really good. Florian Lukas is adorable as Brühl’s buddy, who helps him make fake newscasts for Sass’s benefit. That subplot’s a double-edged sword once Lukas’s video production techniques become more interesting than the main plot.

Brühl’s fine. He doesn’t have a character arc. He doesn’t learn anything. Taking those considerations into account, he’s fine.

Good supporting turn from Burghart Klaußner, who the movie positions like a deus ex machina, but then ends up just being background.

Good Bye Lenin! ought to be a lot better. It does Sass incredibly wrong, and doesn’t do Simon or Brühl any favors. Maybe they needed a sixth screenwriter.

Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman)

It’s been long enough since I last saw Amadeus I forgot the narrative face-plant of the epilogue. The film objectifying the suffering of nineteenth-century psychiatric hospital “patients” is bad enough, but the way the film ignores it’s spent the second half of the nearly three-hour film away from narrator F. Murray Abraham… Well. It doesn’t go well, dragging Amadeus down in what ought to be its victory lap.

Albeit a victory lap all about Mozart’s death. The film’s way too enthusiastic about Abraham’s performance, which is fantastic, but it’s better in the flashback than the old age makeup bookends. And Amadeus, despite the title and the magnificent, meticulous directing Forman does with Tom Hulce (as Mozart), tries its damndest to convince everyone Abraham’s character, a never-will-be composer who engineers the downfall of Hulce as an affront to God, is the lead. And Abraham is the lead in the first half of the picture; the film opens with Vincent Schiavelli (playing Vincent Schiavelli) finding boss Abraham in the middle of a suicide attempt. They take Abraham to the hospital, where he recuperates, and a young priest (Richard Frank) comes to hear his confession.

Frank thinks Abraham is exaggerating or lying when he tells everyone he meets how he killed Mozart; the rest of the film is just Abraham convincing Frank (and the audience).

The first half tracks Abraham’s initial encounters with Hulce, who comes to Vienna as an unhappy upstart wunderkind who wants to drink, bed, wed, and write great music. Abraham’s boss, the Emperor—Jeffrey Jones (who’s really good; shame he’s an actual monster in real life)—takes on Hulce over the objections of his musical advisers, Charles Kay, and Patrick Hines. Lots of Amadeus is Kay and Hines acting like old fuddy-duddies while Hulce increases the artistic potential of opera; Abraham watches from the sidelines, manipulating all he can, simultaneously hating and envying Hulce.

The second half is all about Hulce’s financial and personal fizzling as he attempts greater and greater compositions. Elizabeth Berridge plays Hulce’s wife, and the film tracks their adorable, if problematic, courtship. Things come to a head for the couple when Roy Dotrice, as Hulce’s father (who trained him to be the great musician), comes to live with them. Dotrice is either miscast or the part is wrong; Hulce is both devoted and terrified of disappointing his father, except Dotrice and Hulce are utterly flat together. There’s no indication Dotrice is impressed with Hulce’s compositions; he is just displeased with Hulce’s extravagant lifestyle in general and Berridge in particular.

Given the whole second half is about Abraham exploiting Hulce’s relationship with Dotrice to slowly drive Hulce mad… it’d help if Dotrice were better. His portrait does more heavy lifting than Dotrice ends up doing acting.

While the first half has Abraham eventually inserting himself into Hulce’s life through Berridge at one point, in the second half, he’s mostly distant. He’s gifted Hulce and Berridge a maid (an excellent Cynthia Nixon), and Nixon reports back to Abraham, which gives the film the narrative excuse for Abraham acting on information he can’t know, but it’s dramatically inert.

Then Abraham finds himself forced to assist Hulce in his creative process, and Amadeus, pardon the expression, truly sings. The film finally gets Abraham and Hulce, who it’s been juxtaposing since jump, together on screen, and it’s magic.

Then the film punts it for the finish.

While Abraham’s great, Hulce is better. Neither exactly gets to verbalize what’s going on with their characters, with Abraham’s narrations all about intentionally wronging God and snuffing out one of His brightest angels, and Hulce unable to verbalize what he’s going through. It comes out in the music.

Besides Dotrice, the acting is universally outstanding. Berridge is sympathetic and adorable. Simon Callow shows up as the working-class musical theater owner who convinces Hulce to try to write for the people instead of the royalty. He’s good.

Technically, the standout is Michael Chandler and Nena Danevic’s editing. Absolutely superb cutting, whether toggling from present to past, staged opera to dramatics, whatever they’re cutting, Chandler and Danevic do a marvelous job. Forman’s direction is good but better in terms of directing the actors than the composition. Forman and cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek do a fine job, and there are some excellent sequences (mostly involving Hulce in his descent); the cutting is always what makes them so special.

Amadeus is often breathtaking, beautiful work, with Hulce, Abraham, and those editors particularly excelling.

The Marvels (2023, Nia DaCosta)

The Marvels is a sequel to Captain Marvel, starring Brie Larson, which came out four years before but takes place thirty years before. It’s also a sequel to the TV shows “WandaVision,” which introduced Teyonah Parris (though her character appeared as a little kid in Captain), and “Ms. Marvel,” which introduced Iman Vellani as a teenage hero who idolizes Larson.

Through celeritous convenience and contrivance, Marvels gets the three together, along with Samuel L. Jackson (who also starred in Captain, CGI de-aged, and is back here in a combination comedic relief and exposition provider role) and Vellani’s family, also coming back from the “Ms. Marvel” show. Marvels spotlights mom Zenobia Shroff and dad Mohan Kapur the most, but does give older brother Saagar Shaikh some great comedic bits. Shaikh’s wife is mysteriously absent like they filmed Marvels before all of “Ms.”

It doesn’t matter, of course, because the point’s getting the trio together. Fangirl but still professional superhero Vellani, government scientific investigator turned reluctant metahuman Harris, and intergalactic world-saver (and world destroyer) Larson, who’s not really aware of how her celebrity works on her home planet. Thanks to villain Zawe Ashton, Vellani, Harris, and Larson find their powers intertwined; if one uses their power, they change locations—across the galaxy—with another. While the film does an excellent montage sequence with the three learning how to use the “Marvels leaping” to their advantage (the movie doesn’t make that joke; I made that joke, blame me), it never explains the rules.

Marvels opens with Ashton and her sidekick Daniel Ings (who supposedly has a name in the movie, but I don’t think so) finding an ancient space artifact—a bangle like the one from “Ms. Marvel,” now streaming exclusively on Disney Plus. It never occurred to Ashton one of the bangles would end up on a desolate planetoid, and the other would just be on planet Earth in Pakistan. One of Marvels’s subtlest recurring plot points is how little people look at things from the other person’s perspective. See, Ashton might not have been in Captain Marvel, but only because they didn’t know they would need to have a character mad at Larson for what she did at the end of that movie.

Thirty years ago in story time. In between, there was half the universe disappearing and coming back, which features into Parris’s backstory but no one else’s. It presumably would have also affected Ashton’s scheme. Ashton’s scheme is unclear for a while. When we find out exactly what she’s got planned, it’s maybe Marvels’s biggest plot contrivance. The film runs a nimble 105 minutes, with profoundly precise cutting by Catrin Hedström and Evan Schiff. Director DaCosta likes doing some nice sci-fi establishing shots, too—lots of space superhero grandeur on display, but she never holds the shot too long. Marvels is clearly on a schedule, and DaCosta doesn’t miss any stops.

Things get a little clunky in the second act, which has Jackson dealing with a grim and gritty tribbles “Star Trek” episode. At the same time, Parris and Vellani discover Larson’s space adventures are a lot weirder (and more “Doctor Who,” frankly) than they were expecting.

But then the third act’s a powerhouse. Even as the film ignores plot thread after plot thread—I’m not sure any of the outstanding ones get resolved, the movie instead just floors it, relying on Vellani, Parris, and Larson to get the finale through. And it works just right, even though the film’s got three cameos from elsewhere in the franchise, with one deep—but modern—cut and then another deep and surprising one. They’re all effective—though only the surprising one doesn’t require franchise literacy. It can stand alone, whereas the first two only make sense if you’re up on the lore.

But there’s not much lore otherwise. It’s like the screenwriters—director DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, and Elissa Karasik—all realized there’s just no way to do a straight sequel to Captain Marvel so they might as well treat it as a legacy crossover sequel. With Vellani’s family playing such a large part (besides them, the only other regular characters are Leila Farzad and Abraham Popoola as Jackson’s flunkies), it feels a little like a legacy sequel, a little like “Ms. Marvel Goes to the Movies,” and then… well, no, just those two things. It does feel like there were cuts, whether filmed material or just cut from the script and while some of them were undoubtedly delightful, Marvels works better as a leaner picture.

Larson, Parris, and Vellani are trying to save the universe, after all; they’re going to be in a rush to get it done.

Vellani’s delightful, Larson and Parris are both good—Larson gets the least to do of the three; she’s the stoic one. Jackson’s always funny, even when he’s stretching the bit; Shroff, Kapur, and Shaikh are great. Ashton’s fine. Could she be better? Sure. Does the movie need her to be better? Nah. She’s a good foil, but not too good of one because it’s not about anyone and their nemesis; it’s about people and their… friends, family, country-people? None of the terms really work, but it’s about people who care about one another working together (which makes Jackson’s secret space military organization even weirder since they’re just a bunch of lovable nerds).

Anyway.

The Marvels is a great time.

Also, if you like cats, you’ll have an even better one.

Unless you want the thread resolved, of course. No time for tidying up here, just warping ahead.

Sorry, wrong franchise.

Rocky (1976, John G. Avildsen)

By the time Rocky gets to the big fight, you forget there’s actually going to be a big fight. While the film does open with a boxing match, until somewhere decidedly in the late second act, Rocky isn’t a sports movie. It’s a character study of a boxer, sure, but he’s not in a sports movie. He doesn’t have another fight lined up anyway.

The film starts just before Thanksgiving and ends on New Year’s Day. Holidays aren’t important to Rocky (screenwriter, leading man, and fight choreographer Sylvester Stallone), who’s seemingly been alone for a decade. He’s thirty now, breaking legs for a two-bit loan shark (an oddly touching Joe Spinell), getting occasional fights, winning over half of them, and putting up with his gym owner (Burgess Meredith, mostly saving MAD Magazine time on the caricature) treating him like crap because he’s too old to be a contender.

After the first scene, Rocky’s done with boxing for the first act. There’s talk about it—folks being surprised Stallone won the fight—but the rest of the time is establishing the ground situation. Stallone’s got a crush on pet shop girl Talia Shire, who’s not necessarily not interested in the attention, and he’s best buddies with her drunken “lovable” asshole brother (Burt Young). Young wants a job as a leg-breaker, but Stallone doesn’t think he’s reliable enough. Into the second act, there’s a big implication Young’s trying to pawn Shire off on Stallone in exchange for a job hookup.

Young’s an asshole. They realize in the third act they can make him funny about it and give him some goofy reaction shots during the big fight, but it’s too late. It’s fine. He’s supposed to be an asshole, but he and Stallone’s arc is one of the film’s most rushed.

Just as Stallone and Shire kick off their tender but macho romance, he gets the chance of the lifetime. The world heavyweight champion of the world Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) is looking for an unknown contender for a New Year’s Day fight. Weathers is celebrating the United States Bicentennial, wants to do something showy. Giving the underdog a shot. Now, we’ll find out later Weathers has not just never lost a fight, he’s never even been knocked down. Rocky has plenty of opportunities to exposition dump about Weathers’s record (the film does use TV news footage as a device, but Shire knows squat about boxing, and Stallone could tell her). Stallone’s a fan of Weathers, but it seems uninformed. In one of Rocky’s sincerest flexes, Stallone pushes back at his regular bartender Don Sherman’s regular racism about Black man Weathers. It’s also one of the most realistic—Stallone doesn’t say why he’s upset Sherman’s a racist and just bounces.

There’s a decent argument for Stallone not knowing how to verbalize it. He’s something of an uninformed philosopher king, lots of observations—he even writes jokes to tell Shire—and Rocky’s most shining moments are when Stallone ventures out into the world. He leaves the gym, the fight club, the bar, his “economically distressed” neighborhood, and participates in the world. Rocky will have several problems by the end, up to and including the last moments, but once it rings the bell in Stallone’s self-esteem character development arc, the movie’s basically won. It’s done the Stallone arc, it’s done the Stallone and Shire arc, it’s given Shire just the scantest amount of character moments on her own (it’s truly staggering how much the film puts on her; she’s charged with bringing it legitimacy). Like the rest of the film, the big fight’s got its problems (Stallone’s got a strategy, a foreshadowed strategy, but they make it coincidental), and its moments (despite uneven sound editing, Stallone and Weathers do have a real scene together amid the blows).

Technically, the film’s a sparsely mixed bag. Whenever director Avildsen actually has a good shot (he’s awful shooting in cramped spaces, which is about half of the movie), cinematographer James Crabe or one of his camera operators messes it up. There are some decent shots throughout the film, but they’re either outside, involve static camera placement, or in giant indoor spaces. Otherwise, it’s buyer beware. Richard Halsey and Scott Conrad’s editing is similarly hot and cold. It’s good for the sports movie, it’s atrocious on the dramatics. Young in particular will change head position and facial expression between his shots. Is it Young, is it Avildsen? Probably. But it’s also artless cutting.

Then the sports stuff is good.

Bill Conti’s score is one of the main stars, along with Stallone, Shire, and, to a lesser extent, Weathers. Weathers gives an unforgettable performance, but… he’s not, you know, particularly good. Stallone and Shire are good. Especially Shire. The supporting cast ranges. Meredith’s cartoonish and semi-pointless (it’s like no one told Stallone after he figured out the plot, he could improve it) until the movie remembers to tell us Meredith could’ve been a surrogate family to Stallone but didn’t because he’s an asshole too. One of the film’s other endearing subplots is Stallone’s good nature—his “friends” all want something from him, which he acknowledges and, once in the position to help, does so.

Except Shire, of course, which just makes them all the cuter. Though Stallone’s pushy advances age poorly (maybe if Avildsen directed them better), but Shire’s into it, so it’s fine… see what you made me say, movie? Do you see?

Anyway.

The film’s greatest unsung performance is Tony Burton. He’s Weathers’s trainer, who realizes Stallone might be good enough to get lucky, and Weathers better take the big fight more seriously. Weathers, spoiler, does not. Hence drama.

Thayer David plays Weathers’s Mr. Big manager. He and Meredith unfortunately don’t get a chance to do a caricature-off.

A shame we’ll never get to see it—the movie reminds everyone at least four times there won’t be a rematch.

Theater Camp (2023, Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman)

Theater Camp is a mockumentary, but doesn’t really need to be one. The occasional title cards set some of the stage (no pun), but the documentarians don’t just not exist in the film—their subjects don’t even acknowledge they’re being filmed. And it’s about a bunch of theater kids and theater adults—and social media influencers—so you’d think someone would notice the camera crew. Co-directors Gordon and Lieberman (who “co-wrote” with cast members Noah Galvin and Ben Platt—Camp’s improvised) get some mileage out of the format in the first act, then don’t know what to do with it until the epilogue.

Mockumentaries can always do something in the epilogue if they want, thanks to the format.

But in the first act, the format lets the film introduce Amy Sedaris as an impassioned, perpetually broke theater summer camp owner who ends up in a coma during her spring fundraising tour. The film establishes her sidekick, played by Caroline Aaron, who will always be around in the movie but never have much to do except drop the occasional great one-liner. If there’s a scene about Aaron taking over the camp (or not), it didn’t make the final cut. Instead, Sedaris’s non-artistic son, played by Jimmy Tatro, takes over the camp. He’s a social media influencer planning to document his unexpected boss status.

He never documents his unexpected boss status. It’s like Camp forgot the bit until the third act. His influencer stuff comes back when evil rival camp owner—venture capitalist Patti Harrison—starts sniffing around the camp and flatters Tatro by watching his videos. Tatro was never into the arts, and, you know, content creators aren’t actually creative, so he doesn’t understand all the weird theater kids. Or the camp counselors. He only really bonds with Galvin, who plays the “third generation” stage manager; Galvin secretly has performing talent but has never exercised it.

Tatro’s plot is initially about running the camp into the ground because he’s a dope, only to have to try to save it once he makes one mistake too many. Along the way, he hires a new counselor (Ayo Edebiri), who the film pretends will matter and doesn’t. Thanks to the (intentionally) narratively choppy second act, Camp never has to do character arcs, which would be strange anyway since it focuses on the adults, but it should be about the kids. Question mark.

What’s so impressive about the film—thanks to editor Jon Philpot—is how well the thing flows. Even when the title cards are handling the audience, Camp’s got a great pace.

Besides Tatro’s camp owner in trouble plot, the main story is about Gordon and Pratt’s original musical. The camp does multiple musicals every summer (it’s so low budget we don’t see the others because they couldn’t afford the songs), and Gordon and Pratt’s is always the centerpiece. They grew up as besties going to camp together, only to become bestie camp counselors. Gordon’s been in love with Pratt forever, except he’s gay, which doesn’t matter since most characters are sans-sexual. The movie avoids going there at all, which is fine, but also, why bring it up in Gordon’s character’s ground situation? Especially given some of the later reveals, which the movie could’ve baked in early instead of dropping late for actual dramatic effect and not twists.

Anyway.

The adult cast is all okay or better. Since the movie makes fun of Gordon and Pratt so much, it’s hard to really “care” about them, especially when their actual emotional scenes are played for comedy. With them as the punchlines. It’s not unintentional, either. These sequences are usually beautifully cut by editor Philpot. It also limits their performances.

Gordon’s better than Pratt, though. Pratt seems to be protesting the idea he should have any meaningful scenes whatsoever, even when other characters try to drag them out of him. Ha ha, he’s a narcissist. So’s Tatro, and he’s a delight; easily the best adult performance.

Great, small turns from Nathan Lee Graham and Owen Thiele.

Galvin’s good, Aaron’s good, Edebiri’s good. The latter two just don’t get anything to do, and Galvin’s got to wait for the movie to gin up a way to get him involved. Sure, it does a great job with it, but it’s way late.

But what makes Theater Camp more than a competent, middling outing is the kids. In no particular order, Bailee Bonick, Donovan Colan, Luke Islam, Alexander Bello, Vivienne Sachs, Alan Kim, and Kyndra Sanchez hold it together. Jack Sobolewski, too, but—like Galvin—we’ve got to wait for him. The kids all have phenomenal timing, especially opposite the adults. It creates this lovely contrast in acting styles. The kids are eccentric but real; their counselors are eccentric but for a movie. None of the kids really get a showcase part. Sort of Sanchez, sort of Colan, but not really. They’re the Theater Camp players, but they’re essential.

Cinematographer Nate Hurtsellers does a nice job lighting (though the fake Super 8 is pointless unless it’s supposed to be a filter gimmick; though no one’s got a phone in Camp, not really). Gordon and Lieberman’s direction is good, which is sometimes disconcerting because the direction works, but the documentary conceit does not.

To be sure, Theater Camp could be better. But it’s still very impressive.

Buddy (1997, Caroline Thompson)

Buddy is in desperate need of some contextualizing. The film takes place—roughly—between 1928 and 1933. Given that timeline, it’s a little weird the Great Depression doesn’t start, but Buddy’s also really strange about when it decides to be grown-up and when it doesn’t. The film tells the story of eccentric socialite Gertrude Lintz, who raised chimpanzees as her children. Until a zoo needed to get rid of a baby gorilla, and she raised him as a human child, too. It turns out chimps and gorillas are different, which Lintz—played by Rene Russo—completely ignores, even as her husband (Robbie Coltrane) tells her to think about it, even as her assistant (Alan Cumming) tells her to think about it.

If Buddy could talk, he’d probably tell her to think about it too.

But Russo doesn’t listen. Or when she does listen, it’s not a scene. Buddy skips almost all of the character moments for Russo, which is really strange since she narrates the movie (presumably with lines from the real Lintz’s memoir, which… could use some punching up).

Buddy’s very short—eighty-four minutes (I didn’t time the credits either)—and most of the movie involves Russo trying to get Buddy (a combination of animatronics, puppetry, and man in suit) to learn how to act more civilized while the chimps she’s ignored since four minutes into the movie have hijinks. Buddy’s bullish on training apes to perform tricks, which is a bit of a flex. Though regular science at the time—in the form of a Paul Reubens cameo—thinks apes are violent man-eaters or something. As for zoos… they don’t talk about why zoos are bad. Except lack of money. Wonder where they could get some.

The chimp hijinks are incredible, but they’re also in questionable taste. Buddy casts many of its characters as caricatures—watching Irma P. Hall fight through being the Black housekeeper to eccentric rich white folks is incredible. Not to mention once she shows she’s going to put in the effort opposite the animatronic.

The first few scenes of the film are a little concerning. Everything is for sight gags, or it’s the lackluster narration. And then Russo and the baby gorilla doll aren’t dramatically compelling. But once Buddy starts to grow, Russo shows off how well she can act opposite the practical effects. And the practical effects are great. In the awkwardly paced third act, the script reveals that the whole thing has been about the animatronic ape’s experience of the film, which he can’t communicate because—despite having an elaborate supporting cast—Buddy only exists as Russo’s accessory.

Now, she comes to that realization, too, which means there should be some fantastic character development.

Except, like all the other character development, Buddy skips it. Buddy even skips the whole point because it doesn’t want to get into the history.

Though everyone else is ready for the history. Colleen Atwood’s costumes, Daniel A. Lomino and David Nichols’s delightful art deco production design, whoever put together the elaborate World’s Fair sets they’re on for under five minutes. A lot of effort went into Buddy. Either lots ended up on the cutting room floor, or the producers (and director and screenwriter Thompson) sorely misunderstood what they were doing.

There are also some weird scenes someone fought to keep in, like Russo telling priest Philip Baker Hall (in a fantastic cameo) to get over the whole creationism bit and get with the real. All the cameos are one-sceners—Rubens, Hall, John Aylward, a delightful Mimi Kennedy, young Dane Cook doesn’t count—which doesn’t help Buddy feel less… herky-jerky.

But the main leads are all good—Russo, Coltrane (who gets very little direction but still does a bunch of work), Cumming (he’s the standout), and Hall (Irma P.).

Lovely Steve Mason photography and a good—if repetitive—Elmer Bernstein round things out. Buddy’s a bit bumpy but more than okay; it should’ve been much better.

This post is part of the Friends Fur Life Blogathon hosted by Quiggy of The Midnite Drive-In and Rachel of Hamlette’s Soliloquy.

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959, Monte Hellman)

Besides the unfortunate special effects execution (the conceptions are fine), the only thing wrong with Beast from Haunted Cave is the title. And, I suppose, some first-act budgetary shenanigans—the movie’s about Frank Wolff’s crew knocking off a gold reserve in a mining town and heading across the mountains on skis to escape, and they have this big exposition dump about the heist. Only when it comes time for an effects sequence, the movie entirely skips it. Someone should’ve ponied up for emergency vehicle stock footage.

They don’t skimp (by Beast’s standards) on the Beast for the finale, which helps the movie stick to its landing.

Here’s the setup: Wolff has hired ski instructor Michael Forest to take he and his crew (who Forest ostensibly thinks are just Chicago businessmen) on a two day, cross-country ski trip. It just happens to be timed after Wolff and the crew knock over the reserve. They’re in the sticks–Beast shot on location in South Dakota, which sometimes means better locations, sometimes not—and the reserve’s not guarded on Sundays. Or they can distract the guards? It might be in the exposition dumps, but the subtext of those scenes is always Wolff’s main squeeze, Sheila Noonan, making eyes at Forest.

Noonan and Forest have a contrast flirtation. He’s a hunk, she’s a babe, but he’s wholesome (they’re heading to his cabin, where he gets away from it all to read the encyclopedia and learn about the world he doesn’t want to experience), and she’s fallen. Much of Beast is their getting-to-know-you scenes. Forest’s not good, but he’s not godawful, and he’s sympathetic. Noonan’s good, though. For most of Beast, they don’t know they’re in a horror movie; they think they’re in one of those back-to-nature noirs, and they toggle beautifully.

It helps the third act is maybe eight action-packed minutes.

The best performance is Wolff, who’s an awesome asshole. Forest isn’t so worried about his party having guns until he witnesses Wolff’s management style—Richard Sinatra (cousins) is going off the rails because he watched the Beast eat his hot date, and no one believes him. The Beast is chasing Sinatra; if you see the beast, it’s coming for you. Because it’s a terror. It taunts its prey with visions of digested victims and so on. It looks terrible because it’s 1959 and low budget, but the concept–some faceless spider monster draining your precious bodily fluids–is terrifying.

And director Hellman gets how to oscillate between the terror and the crime suspense. Beast is always done straight, just cheap. Wolff’s got some questionable makeup decisions, but the acting’s so good beneath them, it doesn’t matter. Finishing the quality triangle is Charles B. Griffith’s script. Griffith, Hellman, Wolff. They make Beast something special.

Wally Campo plays the other goon, who’s goofier than Sinatra, even when Sinatra’s freaking out. But both Campo and Sinatra get to show some humanity, while Wolff’s just an exercise in cruelty. Him, you watch for the tension, while they’re a combination of comic relief and dread. Then, Noonan and Forest have their star-crossed flirtation.

And there’s a spider monster out to eat them all.

Hellman’s direction is often quite good, with solid black and white photography from Andrew M. Costikyan, nice enough cutting from Anthony Carras, and a score full of personality by Alexander Laszlo. Laszlo flexes in odd directions at times, with varying degrees of success, but it’s always hep.

Beast from Haunted Cave is more than all right.

Except that title. Like, call it The Hold-Up or something generic heist. It’s a heist movie with a monster, not a monster movie with a heist. Otherwise, though, real cool.

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980, Jimmy T. Murakami)

Battle Beyond the Stars answers that age-old question… what if you mixed the star-fighting of Star Wars, the visual grandeur of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and some of the production design of Alien, but also had all the sexy babes in the galaxy hot for John-boy Walton’s bod. Also, it’s a remake of Seven Samurai.

I should also mention the budget—approximately twenty percent of the original Star Wars (two million, which mostly went to the respectable special effects). Stars has shockingly good space effects. They just don’t have enough of them and sometimes reuse the same footage. They can’t do multiple ships in a frame, which limits the visuals after a certain point, but it’s a fine effort. James Francis Cameron did the special effects for the film.

Unfortunately, even though the space stuff looks good, the sets and “exteriors” are rather wanting. There are some okay matte shots of the alien worlds, but the actual sets are… I wanted to say iffy, but they’re much closer to bad. There are good exterior shots, but they’re models without any people. Sorry, I really want to talk about how Stars somehow didn’t know what trench warfare meant, but we’ll have to wait a bit.

The movie opens with intergalactic (literally, screenwriter John Sayles likes to talk about all the galaxies) bad guy John Saxon showing up at the peaceful world of Akir (home of the Akiras, which is more amusing now than when Stars originally came out) and threatening to nuke them from orbit if they don’t promise to be his subjects. The Akira are a peaceful people ruled by the Varda, a guide to a pacifist lifestyle, but Sayles didn’t write more than a rule and a half. Or they cut the rest. Some of Stars definitely got cut; you have to wonder about other parts.

Saxon’s seen Seven Samurai so he knows he’s got to threaten the yokels and then give them a deadline so they have time to mount a resistance, and there can be a movie. So, he leaves to go mess with some other planet.

Young farm boy with a hankering for adventure, Richard Thomas, decides he’ll go round up some mercenaries to defend the planet—he hasn’t seen Seven Samurai but the town elders explain it to him—and he takes Obi-Wan Ke… he takes Jeff Corey’s space ship, which has an AI on board named Nell (voiced by Lynn Carlin). The spaceship looks like a part of the human anatomy. Well, two parts, but parts in a pair. In fact, from different angles, it looks like two different pairs of parts of human anatomy.

Anyway.

Thomas’s first stop is Corey’s old friend Sam Jaffe, who isn’t going to a lost cause but also wants to breed Thomas with his daughter, Darlanne Fluegel. Fluegel seems like she’s going to be quite bad in Stars and she might be quite bad, but once Sybil Danning shows up, Fluegel improves, thanks to the comparison. It might not be Fluegel’s (or even Danning’s) fault. While director Murakami is good at the space stuff and some of the dramatic stuff, he’s utterly inert with the romance. And since Stars becomes a low-key race between Fluegel and Danning to bed Thomas, the romance will be important. Ish. I mean, it’d have been nice for Fluegel not to oscillate between love interest and exposition blatherer, and it’d really have been nice if Danning weren’t a scantily clad star warrior, but I’m not sure it’d have made too much difference.

But it would’ve made some kind of one.

Fluegel and Thomas team up to save his planet; he goes one way to get more help, she goes another. He’ll bring in George Peppard (as future Earth hillbilly space trucker Space Cowboy, one half of Stars’s Han Solo), Robert Vaughn (the other half of Han Solo, this one a soulless space assassin), and these nice Borg, led by Earl Boen, in a lot of makeup.

Plus Danning, who demands he let her fight alongside, but Thomas doesn’t like pushy women, so he tells her to bug off. She’ll tag along because that bod’s too hot.

Meanwhile, Fluegel gets kidnapped by space lizard Morgan Woodward, who, it turns out, hates Saxon–so, lucky timing.

Thomas is an affable, likable enough lead, but the best performances are Vaughn and Peppard. Peppard takes a while to warm up, but Vaughn’s on from his first scene. Carlin’s a lot of fun–unfortunately, Saxon’s awful. The supporting cast’s okay; there are no standouts either way.

The sublime editing from Allan Holzman and R.J. Kizer is the standout of the entire film (besides James Horner’s proto-Star Trek score). They cut the effects sequences just right and the non-effect sequences just right. Holzman and Kizer’s cutting is responsible for many effects sequences’ success. They cut just as the limitations are about to show.

Daniel Lacambre’s photography is good, too. Stars is visibly cheap but never bad-looking. Well, never too bad-looking.

It’s a peculiar, always diverting, usually engaging oddity.

Even if someone thought fighting in the trenches meant digging wide corridors where they could have battles on the same set but pretend they’re somewhere else.

Finally, look fast for Julia Duffy and faster for Kathy Griffin.