Blacula (1972, William Crain)

Blacula gets by on novelty and hero Thalmus Rasulala’s effortless charm. Rasulala is a medical examiner with the LAPD; the movie’s got a hilariously silly name for the job and department; it just means he gets to go around and flash an ID card and get things done. He’s also the only Black cop in the movie; all the rest of them, including the numerous extras, are white.

While there’s a “romance” in Blacula, Rasulala’s investigation is the main plot. Even though Vonetta McGee, as Rasulala’s girlfriend’s sister, brings Rasulala into the story, she’s going to get less and less as the film goes on. Conversely, the sister—played by Denise Nicholas—will get to go along with Rasulala on most of his vampire hunting. Including when Nicholas has a panic attack upon her first vampiric encounter, something cop Gordon Pinsent will also suffer. Only Rasulala is cool enough not to have a panic attack. Oh, and McGee. She’s fine with vampires.

William Marshall plays the title character; in the eighteenth century, African prince Marshall goes to Europe to ask Count Dracula (a bad but effective Charles Macaulay) to pledge to ending the slave trade. Macaulay responds by turning Marshall into a vampire and locking him in a coffin (where’d Macaulay get African soil? Don’t ask; barely any vampire rules here). Then Macaulay locks Marshall’s wife, also played by McGee, in a room with the coffin so she can starve to death, listening to him starve in undeath. Really, really shitty thing to do. And even though the film’s got direction problems from the start, it also gets Marshall and McGee some fast, deep sympathy.

Only when Marshall wakes up in L.A. he’s an entirely different character. I mean, he’s still in love with McGee, but he doesn’t seem phased by the two-hundred-year time difference or the reincarnated wife or being a blood-sucking vampire, killing people left and right. Plus, one of Blacula’s few vampire rules has them changing immediately, so Marshall’s putting together an undead army.

So he’s not sympathetic. Maybe if he and McGee had some great chemistry, but she’s flat in all her scenes. When she’s vaguely brainwashed, it’s okay; when she’s trying to endear her character, not so much.

McGee is a trooper, though. Director Crain shoots the film in lengthy medium shots, where the actors have to move around the frame a couple times, keep up with the camera, and do foreground and background work. Blacula’s stagy, which seems to be the curse of the vampire movie.

Crain’s also not able to do horror. He can do a little supernatural action, but only a little. Editor Allan Jacobs has some almost okay sequences, but Crain’s footage is working against him. John M. Stephens’s photography is fine, and Gene Page’s music is pretty good a third of the time, which adds up since almost every scene has background music. The best technical is easily Sandy Dvore’s playful but ominous opening titles sequence.

Marshall’s an imposing villain without being a compelling one; it works out since Blacula’s a police procedural with monsters.

There are a handful of notable bit parts. Ji-Tu Cumbuka is a lot of fun as a random friend, Emily Yancy’s good as one of the eventual vampire brides, and Elisha Cook Jr. phones in a tepid but memorable cameo.

Blacula’s got the insurmountable problem of budget and director Crain, but it’s entirely watchable with an outstanding leading man performance from Rasulala.

Five Nights in Maine (2015, Maris Curran)

So, it turns out sometimes you do actually need a story. No matter the locations, no matter the photography, the music, the actors, the editing, even the directing, sometimes you can’t get away with eighty minutes without some kind of narrative.

Five Nights in Maine is the story of newly widowed David Oyelowo. He becomes severely melancholic after his wife, Hani Furstenberg, dies in a car accident. Unfortunately, writer and director Curran putting Furstenberg in at the beginning ends up being utterly pointless, especially given the later flashbacks and reveals. The first sign the script’s not there.

Her estranged and dying mother, Dianne Wiest, calls and leaves an ominous voice mail telling Oyelowo to come to visit her in Maine; no need to call ahead. He lives in Atlanta. It’s a twenty-one-hour drive, and there’s no driving montage footage at night, so presumably, he stops somewhere at least once; we don’t see it because, despite being an ostensible character study of Oyelowo, Curran’s got no idea what’s going on with the guy.

The film sets up a bunch of pieces—Oyelowo’s been pressuring Furstenberg to get pregnant, Wiest didn’t like Oyelowo because he’s Black, her lily-white neighbors are at the least weird to him, something happened on Furstenberg’s last visit to Wiest, Oyelowo’s driving around with Furstenberg’s ashes. Now, if Curran set up that chess board and then inspected it, Five Nights wouldn’t have an epical arc, but it would have a purpose. Instead, Curran just sets things up and moves past them. Only two of the aforementioned items matter, and only during the end-of-second-act blow-out. It’s a shockingly thin film.

Curran’s able to imply a lot more depth thanks to Oyelowo. However, he works his ass for nothing. The camera spends most of the film inspecting him, and he’s always doing something relevant, but it adds up to nothing. Not even for his performance—when Oyelowo’s at the big payoff, Curran goes to long shot. It’s a not surprising miss. Because Curran wastes Wiest, there’s nothing she can do to disappoint.

Oyelowo spends, presumably, Five Nights staying with Wiest. The first four nights, she’s barely around. They probably have dinner together, but the only first and last times are important. We don’t even find out home healthcare worker Rosie Perez doesn’t spend the night until the third night. Maybe fourth night. The film doesn’t count them; it’s not worth the effort for the audience either.

Wiest goes from rude to mean to rude to meaner. She has a couple moments of levity, which the film doesn’t know what to do with; like, they seem accidentally okay, with Wiest getting to do some character development. There’s minimal character or character development in the film. Curran can’t be bothered.

Curran does appreciate her actors, however. She holds her shots forever, letting Oyelowo and Wiest act, react, emote, pout, all sorts of things. Sweat—Oyelowo has a very dangerous jog. Smoke. He starts smoking a lot the last night to gin up conflict. As the film winds down, Curran does what she can to jumpstart the act change, and it’s all desperate and all weird. The last night is entirely different from the other nights, but it’s supposedly all routine.

Though Wiest does have cancer, and she’s not getting better, and she’s maybe having mental health things going on. She doesn’t have a doctor in the movie, and Perez’s medical duties are opaque. Perez is there to talk to Oyelowo and make Wiest dinner.

However, since she doesn’t have a genuine part, Perez’s performance can’t come up short. She’s fine. It’s an extended cameo. Fine. Bill Raymond’s good in a scene, and Teyonah Parris’s good in a couple scenes. It’s unclear if Furstenberg’s any good—Curran’s unreliable when presenting her.

Good photography from Sofian El Fani, great editing from Ron Dulin. The Maine locations are lovely. The music appears not to be original; it’s solid. Manipulative but well-selected; Chris Robertson supervised. Unfortunately, the original song at the end, which uses lines of dialogue from the film as lyrics, is not good.

Five Nights in Paris seemed like an easy proposition, and Curran’s a fine technical director, but she did not have the story. At all. It’s a waste of everyone’s time: Oyelowo’s, Wiest’s, the audience’s, Curran’s.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948, Charles Barton)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein makes a surprising number of Universal monster movie gaffes. Most obvious is director Barton’s fault—Dracula (a very fun Bela Lugosi) casts a reflection. After shooting the “vampire seduces lady” scene half in reflection, careful not to show Lugosi, the finish just has a visible Dracula in the mirror. So it goes from being a clever constraint to a bewildering fail.

There’s also some questionable vampire logic—Lugosi’s victims crave blood but aren’t vampires—and then it’s a full moon at least five nights in a row, maybe six, so Lon Chaney Jr. has something to do in the movie.

For the first and third acts, gaffes don’t really matter. Only in the plodding second; Meet Frankenstein is only eighty minutes and change. There shouldn’t be any plodding, but it indeed plods, mainly because Bud Abbott is convinced there aren’t monsters, and Lou Costello’s either making it up or too dumb to successfully process reality, and it’s a drag. Every gag ends the same way—Costello seeing monsters, Abbott just missing them. In the first act, when Costello’s got a lengthy bit with Lugosi coming out of a coffin next to him, it’s amusing.

Approximately fourteen times later? Less amusing.

It’s especially unfortunate since Abbott’s pretty good when he’s not playing dunce. He and Chaney have to team up to save the day, and it’s a missed opportunity for more. Especially for Chaney, who starts the movie with a bunch of potential but then they just keep doing the same thing for him over and over again.

At least Lugosi gets some variety. He gets to terrorize Costello, pretend to be a mad scientist, seduce the ladies, and lead Glenn Strange’s Frankenstein Monster around. Lugosi’s got the best part by far.

Strange has the worst. While Chaney’s Wolf Man makeup is pretty good, Strange’s makeup seems cheap and flimsy. When he moves too much, it looks like his hair’s going to fall off. But there are decent enough sight gags for Strange in the third act; it just takes until then for him to figure into the plot.

Abbott and Costello are baggage handlers in sunny Florida, where local haunted house owner Frank Ferguson has just bought the original corpses of Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster from Europe. Ferguson’s an obnoxious blowhard, and the film’s best early joke has Costello treating him appropriately. Costello’s better in the workaday scenes than when he’s doing the horror dating comedy—see, new-to-the-area, glamourpuss Lenore Aubert has taken a liking to Costello (frustrating Abbott), but then Jane Randolph starts cozying up to him as well. The second act is basically Costello juggling unlikely girlfriends; Aubert’s a mad scientist after his brain and Randolph’s an insurance investigator trying to figure out if the boys stole the infamous corpses.

Then throw in Charles Bradstreet as Aubert’s assistant, who doesn’t know anything about his boss’s nefarious plans, but Randolph needs to be able to smile at a cute guy occasionally instead of Costello.

The finale’s a madcap haunted castle romp with Abbott and Costello trying to escape but being foiled by monsters at every turn. Of course, Lugosi has the best material, including throwing potted plants at his adversaries. The movie does need to do something with all the monsters, which it resolves pretty well for half of them. The other half gets shrugged off, with the last one hurried so there can be the final, funny gag.

All things considered, it’s far from a failure. It’d be nice if Abbott and Costello were strong together instead of apart, and Randolph seems like she’s going to have a good comic part then gets an immediate downgrade. It’s probably worst for Chaney, who always seems like he’ll get something, but then the full moon interrupts. Lugosi’s a delight.

The special effects—outside Strange’s makeup—are decent. They use a cartoon bat for Dracula, but the transformation scenes aren’t bad, and there’s at least one really good composite shot. Unfortunately, the exteriors are all soundstages, and while Charles Van Enger’s photography does okay, they’re visibly sets. Any related problems seem to be more director Barton’s.

Good music from Frank Skinner.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein doesn’t set itself a very high bar, but it does clear it. Lugosi alone makes it worth it.

El Topo (1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky)

El Topo means “The Mole.” There’s some opening text explaining it, but it’s not until the film's second half where the title really makes sense. There are some earlier nods—the nameless protagonist (played by director Jodorowsky) starts the film telling his son to bury his childhood. Then later, Jodorowsky will magically find just what he needs by digging in the desert.

At the beginning of the film, Jodorowsky rides around the desert with his naked son; Jodorowsky’s a gunslinger, dressed in all black, teaching his son the trade. They come across a mission where everyone—people and animals—have been disemboweled. It’s actually the least intense El Topo ever gets because everything’s already dead. The subsequent intense scenes, while less gruesome, always have live, suffering victims. El Topo’s big on showing the suffering.

Well, after an almost comic introduction to three bandits—including Alfonso Arau; I spent the next fifty million years and hour and fifty minutes of runtime wondering why Jodorowsky didn’t cast the clearly more charismatic Arau in the lead.

I didn’t know Jodorowsky was the lead until the end credits.

Anyway.

After Jodorowsky and his son dispense with the bandits, they head to another mission where the murderers are encamped, tormenting the neighboring people, raping the priests, and so on. It takes Jodorowsky’s character forever to save anyone. Jodorowsky, the director, has a lot of fun methodically showcasing the violence and terror and the utter buffoonery of those committing it.

Until the second half, when the film time jumps and showcases cruelty and evil—and so long as you skip the rapey stuff–El Topo’s best as an object lesson in how surrealism and farce, with the right sound effects, are indistinguishable.

Jodorowsky’s character will soon abandon his son at the mission once he meets a woman, Mara Lorenzio.

Lorenzio and Jodorowsky will fall in love—according to the dialogue—which he will express by raping her, and she will express by demanding he go kill the four best gunfighters in the desert. Raping her gives her magic powers too, which is never important but does mean it's not all bad, right? Also, Jodorowsky’s character is a Jesus analog, so, you know, there you go.

The film will follow the pair on this quest, quickly adding Paula Romo to the group. Romo’s also a gunfighter, and while Jodorowsky determines how to kill these rivals who’ve all basically given up gunfights, Romo’s out to seduce Lorenzio. Because even though Jodorowsky, the director, likes to male gaze the sapphic, the film goes heavy on the general misogyny too. It’s lower-key on the homophobia, but women are enthusiastically evil. When they’re the worst of the worst, the film dubs them with gruff male voices. Romo’s one of the awful ones.

The quest to defeat the other gunfights eventually drives Jodorowsky’s character to a mental disconnect—he’s basically murdered quirky pacifists—and Romo sees her chance to best him, both in pistols and ladies.

Dramatic resolution and time jump, and now Jodorowsky’s character lives in a hollowed-out mountain, comatose for at least ten years. When he wakes—in a comic scene, but it’s unclear it’s humorous because it’s also the revised ground situation establishing—he discovers he’s living with exiled people with congenital disabilities. The nearby town is big into incest, and whenever a baby comes out with problems, they dump it in the mountain.

Jacqueline Luis plays Jodorowsky’s caretaker—when he was in the coma—who becomes his friend, partner, and lover. As a director, Jodorowsky doesn’t ask much of his actors; if they’re in the movie for a while, it’s be hideous then die; if they’re barely in the movie, it’s usually just suffer and die. Even when someone’s in the film for a sustained period—like new town priest Robert John—they’re still barely in the movie. Medium or long shots, absurdist reaction shots. Not a lot of heavy acting lifting. Especially since everyone’s dubbed anyway.

But Luis is great. As El Topo drags and drags and drags through the second half, Luis is always great. And Jodorowsky, director Jodorowsky, seems to know it and showcases her performance as much as possible.

They’re going to dig a tunnel into the mountain—there was once a tunnel, but the townsfolk closed it—but they need to go into town and do clown shows for money. They have some success; Jodorowsky’s not an untalented physical comedian, and Luis is a little person; the townsfolk eat up their performances. The town’s led by the good Christian ladies of the decency league, who make their slaves fight and then execute them for more laughs. It opens with a branding scene. It's a whole new level of unpleasantness for El Topo and it's a relentless one.

And for a half-hour so, the movie is just the townsfolk being shitty or murderous. Then, the new priest, John, shows up, and the story gets moving again to its inevitable, despondent conclusion.

El Topo’s an unpleasant experience but not really a difficult one. When the Jesus metaphors come through, they come through with a, “Oh, JFC, he’s Jesus!” Every single time. It’s tedious. Jodorowsky’s self-indulgent with the violence, which plays like a commentary on Westerns in the first half, but not the second. There’s a funny spoof of a Spaghetti Western stand-off at the beginning, before El Topo’s too far in, and the spoofing stops for more violence, more absurdity, more cruelty.

If it added up, who knows? It doesn’t add up, though. Pretty photography from Rafael Corkidi. Some of Jodorowsky’s direction is good. It’s never bad—surrealism, like farce, defines its own bar. But there’s nothing to it; you can get pretty landscapes, misogyny, queerphobia, and Jesus analogies in better, shorter movies.

This post is part of the Foreign Western Blogathon hosted by Debbie of Moon in Gemini.

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996, Robert Rodriguez)

From Dusk Till Dawn doesn’t have any great performances; it has a bunch of decent ones, a couple good ones, thankless ones, middling ones, bad ones, maybe problematic ones, but no great ones. And it could use a great performance because the script’s full of scenery-chewing dialogue courtesy second-billed Quentin Tarantino.

Tarantino writes a movie he’d want to see, but also one where it’s clear he’s the center of attention. So when it comes time for Salma Hayek’s dance number in the grandiosely sleazy biker bar and strip club where most of the movie takes place, Tarantino’s the one who gets the table dance. He’s the one who gets to suck on some girl’s foot. And he wants everyone watching to know he’s that guy.

His character is a rapist and murderer who has just broken his brother out of jail. George Clooney plays the brother. Genes are funny. Clooney’s the cool, collected professional thief who talks in soulful monologue, listens to people, and only kills civilians when absolutely necessary. He also gets shitfaced when he’s upset and makes terrible decisions, which tracks since he keeps Tarantino alive even though Tarantino’s a monster.

None of that backstory is important to From Dusk Till Dawn. There’s a lot of talking about it because there’s a lot of talking in the movie's first hour, but none of it matters. Once the batshit hits the fan—oh, the sleazy biker strip bar is actually a vampire den—Clooney becomes just another member of the ensemble. He spent the first act and a half of the movie keeping the plot and Tarantino on point, though in the latter case, just cleaning up after the raping and murdering.

Clooney’s one of the decent performances. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the personality for the dialogue without better direction on his performance, and director Rodriguez’s got zero interest in directing performances. He also gets bored with all the talking; not a good combination.

Clooney and Tarantino need to get into Mexico; all the cops in Texas are looking for them. The film mostly shows it via a TV newscast where the liberal local Texas news media tracks a tally on how many Rangers the brothers kill. John Saxon and Kelly Preston cameo on the TV news; Saxon’s okay, Preston’s terrible. It’s a tedious bit, and she makes it worse.

There’s also a liquor store hold-up where the brothers watch Michael Parks and John Hawkes have a lengthy Tarantino scene. Parks is real good, and Hawkes is pretty good, but the scene’s a draggy way to start. Once it becomes clear Clooney’s actually Tarantino’s sidekick, Dawn loses a bunch of immediate potential; it’s all about Tarantino’s whims.

To get into Mexico, Clooney decides they need to kidnap Harvey Keitel and his teenage kids and ride across the border in their RV. Keitel’s a former minister; his wife died a horrific death, and he’s lost his faith. Juliette Lewis and Ernest Liu play the kids. Liu’s adopted. Clooney and Tarantino make fun of him for being Asian. They also talk a lot of shit about Mexican people. On the one hand, you can kind of see them doing Clooney against type, only it’s not exactly (he just talks trash, he doesn’t act it). On the other, it’s just Tarantino in-virtue signaling because he’s an asshole.

Anyway.

Lewis is good. Liu’s fine. Keitel’s good. Keitel’s got a silly part in an eventually gory movie, and when the time comes for him to step up, it’s mostly just to pass the baton over to Lewis, which is kind of cool. The movie takes little note of it (based on the script structure, it is, actually, because she’s a girl), but she’s the protagonist, and it carries. Rodriguez’s got a little more interest in Keitel and the family.

When the action gets to the vampire bar, there are more supporting cast members to play it out. Hayek’s got an incredibly thankless part, but Fred Williamson and Tom Savini do all right. Especially Savini. Danny Trejo’s oddly bad as the bartender, and then Cheech Marin tries really hard in three different parts. Sadly the bit is it’s Cheech cameoing in three different parts. The amusement factor runs out when the first one drags on, and the film never re-ups.

Rodriguez is more enthusiastic about the gory, slimy, bloody vampire action, so it’s disappointing when it turns out Tarantino’s got no story for it. After moving all the pieces into position, the script craps out.

Good production design from Cecilia Montiel, even if Rodriguez and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro rush over it. When he’s not cutting together one of Tarantino’s ego trips, Rodriguez's editing is good.

Dawn’s okay—Keitel can carry the thing after it’s clear Clooney can’t, with Lewis able to keep it afloat when she needs to take over, too—but it’s utterly desperate to cool; and it’s barely, rarely chilly.

Shazam! (2019, David F. Sandberg)

At its very best, for a few minutes Shazam! seems like a Wes Anderson-esque superhero movie gone wrong. Like they lost the music they wanted at the last minute but had still cut the sequence together. Specifically, it’s Zachary Levi’s superhero training YouTubes, set to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now. The song has no meaning to Levi or the sequence. It’s just familiar in the right way. It’s desperate but competent, which describes most of the movie.

The sequence is long enough to grok how they could’ve done the picture as an Anderson riff, specifically Rushmore, but then it’s more like they saw the MTV Music Awards Rushmore bits and didn’t realize there was a context. It’s a weird fail because it’s not exactly disappointing. Until the superhero finale, it’s the most effort director Sandberg puts into anything in the movie, and it shows. There’s thoughtfulness, just not successful thoughtfulness.

Anyway.

Shazam! is an inoffensively lackluster superhero origin story. The first act gets its personality from a John Glover cameo (hey, it’s better than his last DC movie) and then the unsuccessful but not bad Djimon Hounsou cameo. The film’s problem is little the actors actually interact with one another except to move the plot forward; deliver your lines, and get out. Sandberg doesn’t spend any time on the actors responding or reacting. It hurts the cameos just because there’s no weight when the actors return later on. No one’s got any chemistry; they’re just doing schtick.

So it’s never a surprise when Sandberg doesn’t make it happen. When he does, however, it stands out. Like a Big reference in a toy store, but it comes after there’s no acknowledgment of the rest of the scene, which is superhero Levi basically throwing random children in front of supervillain Mark Strong. The most impressive thing about Shazam! is how many subplots they can avoid. There are at least three, probably more, with one presumably left over for the sequel. The others, however, just get dropped once they get to the third act.

And Shazam! does have a good third act. Not the story, but the superhero action. It’s got an excellent superhero action finish, with plenty of cute Superman II nods. It’s shocking how well Sandberg can direct the sequences after the previous, bland hundred minutes. There are also some good, not specific to Levi’s superhero observations about the genre, like supervillains talking from far away and everyone recording on smartphones. Shazam!’s sadly more thoughtful in its background than its foreground, which is trite. Much like Sandberg’s direction, Henry Gayden’s script is perfunctory. There’s no such thing as character development in the script, with the film instead relying on the actors. Unfortunately, Sandberg’s got no time for the actors’ performances, so it’s just a bunch of rote deliveries of rote lines.

So it’s impressive when actors stand out, like Faithe Herman and Grace Fulton. Okay, a quick explanation of the plot. Levi is the adult superhero version of teenager Asher Angel, who has just moved into a new foster home. Herman, Fulton, Jack Dylan Grazer, Ian Chen, and Jovan Armand play his foster siblings. Herman’s the adorable one, Chen’s the gamer, Armand’s the silent one, Grazer’s the superhero fanboy, and Angel’s pal. Grazer ought to have much better material, as he’s Levi’s sidekick in addition to Angel’s. But no. The only one to get a subplot is Fulton, who’s the oldest and going to college soon. Of course, the going-to-college thing is her subplot, but it’s something. There’s zip for the rest of the kids. Angel’s subplot is searching for his mom, Caroline Palmer, who lost him in the prologue.

Angel and Levi don’t resemble much physically—white guys with brown hair, I guess—which would be fine if there was any effort in syncing their performances. There’s not. Levi’s playing a totally different teenager turned superhero adult. All they needed to do was establish a link between the performances, and it’d be fine. Instead, it’s where you can just give up on Shazam!. If the movie’s not going to take its central conceit seriously, why bother with any of it.

Also, they talk about family so much they should’ve gotten a Vin Diesel cameo. Or at least had them watching Fast and the Furious. The villains are the Seven Deadly Sins, which makes very little sense because—even though the foster family says grace—it’s an ambiguous higher power grace. But if they’d had a bit about the kids watching Se7en….

Shazam! just needed a competent rewrite.

Levi’s amusing without being particularly likable. He’s a little desperate for approval, which should work better for the movie. Maybe if they’d have gotten the one cameo they really needed at the end. None of it ties to Angel or his performance; Angel’s never better than mediocre, but he never got the chance to be anything but mediocre.

Strong’s terrible, but in a killjoy, unambitious sort of way. The film aims to keep him as unremarkable (literally) as possible. He’s dressed like a nineties Eurotrash villain, and the special effects on his supervillain sequences are good. It actually just plays into the Superman II riffs.

The film’s technically proficient, just without any distinction. Thanks to the third act, I suppose Maxime Alexandre’s photography is the best technical.

Shazam!’s tedious without being boring. It could be worse and seems to be the peak of the production’s capabilities. But it’s desperate, neglectful, and indecisive. So I suppose with all those caveats, it’s better than expected. And then, obviously, that third act’s great.

Eternals (2021, Chloé Zhao)

The nice thing about Eternals is the film’s most damaging element is obvious. Richard Madden is terrible. He’s not the lead—when Eternals has a lead, it’s Gemma Chan—but he’s top gun, so he gets a lot of screen time. And he’s terrible. What’s even funnier about Madden being terrible is the film leans into him being a “Game of Thrones” star. He’s got a love triangle with fellow “Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington, who’s ostensibly in the movie but really just for a handful of cameos.

Harington is Chan’s adorable British boyfriend. Madden is her Scottish-accented alien super-being ex-husband. It’s a big flex when Harington and Madden face-off, and it’s clear not just Harington’s much better as a movie star than Madden, but Madden sucks the life out of scenes. He might be playing a Superman riff, but it’s an energy vampire Superman. He makes scenes worse. On the one hand, director Zhao can’t do anything with the performance, which has all the screen charisma of molded bread; on the other, she never compensates for it either.

Eternals rises and falls with Madden.

There are other big problems with the movie. It’s really boring for the first hour and a half. Eternals is solidly into the second act when it finally starts engaging. The film’s got a lot of expository information to dump, and every dump is a bad one. However, it manages to plod even more when it’s doing flashbacks.

The film opens with a “Star Wars but serious” title crawl explaining the Eternals are alien super-beings who live on Earth to protect the people from the “Deviants.” There are giant space entities out there who make galaxies and blah blah blah. Doesn’t matter. The movie figures out how to integrate these beyond enormous entities once in the entire film, and it’s a gimmick shot done well. So, the giant entities don’t matter. The human-shaped super-beings matter.

They show up on Earth in 5000 BCE. Madden immediately thinks Chan is cute; Chan immediately thinks Earth is charming. Salma Hayek is their leader, but she doesn’t really matter because she doesn’t have good fight scene powers. She’s a healer. Angelina Jolie’s the warrior one. Jolie gives the most amusing performance because she seems to get it more than anyone else. She’s stifling a smirk but still sincere when it counts.

Like when she’s hanging out with best bro Ma Dong-seok. He’s another warrior, the one with the big heart. Ma’s good. He doesn’t have good comic timing—in English, he’s always had it in Korean–but neither does Zhao, so it doesn’t matter.

The other Eternals are Kumail Nanjiani (laser fingers), Lia McHugh (illusion), Brian Tyree Henry (wills technology into existence), Lauren Ridloff (the speedster), and Barry Keoghan (the telepath). We meet them in the past, and then the film reintroduces them in the present when they’ve adjusted to regular human life. Albeit immortal regular human life.

Nanjiani gets the biggest story; he’s a Bollywood star with an amusing videographer sidekick, Harish Patel. McHugh is forever an awkward tween girl with an impossible crush. Yawn. Henry is a family man trying to put immortal meddling behind him. He’s gay, an MCU first, and it’s okay, but he’s most charming with the family, and they rush through having the family around. Ridloff and Keoghan just kind of come into the narrative as needed, even though they’ve got more charm than anyone else. It’s particularly impressive because Keoghan’s character is a twerp.

Bill Skarsgård plays the villain, an evolving man-beast. “Plays” meaning does the voice performance presumably some of the CGI modeling. The character eventually looks something like the monster from The Keep, which doesn’t seem intentional. Why recall one disaster in another.

There are some nearly neat 2001 references but then not really.

It’s unclear if fixing Eternals’s obvious problems would do any significant good. Besides Madden’s entire casting, there’s Chan’s lack of a protagonist arc, the momentum-killing flashbacks, Ramin Djawadi’s weak sauce epic movie score (just give up and hire Hans Zimmer for a Hans Zimmer score), and the awkward superhero references. Not just to the Marvel movies before it, but also to DC superheroes. Because world-building?

It also doesn’t help one of the credits snippets promise a far more amusing sequel, which has a cameo with great promise.

Zhao’s direction is fine. It’s often good. It’s never not fine. Ben Davis’s photography’s solid. There are a handful of composite shots where the foreground doesn’t match the CGI background, but it could be worse. Dylan Tichenor and Craig Wood’s editing’s good. Sammy Sheldon’s costumes. They’re all right.

Eternals could be worse. Madden could be in it a second longer. And it might never be good, but it also could’ve been better. Score alone. Get someone who could do Madden’s acting for him with the music. Whatever. And it could also be a second shorter overall. Any shorter would help.

Eternals is never really disappointing or even frustrating, just inconceivably tedious.

But, if they deliver on the mid-credits promise, the next one should be a blast.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021, Andy Serkis)

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is under ninety minutes without the end credits, which is fine. While the third act is a perfectly decent bit of action “gore,” once it’s clear Naomie Harris and Woody Harrelson aren’t going to stop embarrassing themselves, the sooner the movie can end, the better.

Harrelson is the titular Carnage, and Harris is his girlfriend. They grew up together in a home for murderous children—though, twist, it seems most of the people these kids would’ve murdered deserved it, or at least the kids were acting in self-defense—and they took Harris away because she’s got superpowers. She has a Canary cry, a sonic cry, or a “Shriek” (her comic book villain name). When she’s being transported, she tries to escape, so the cop shoots her in the head. Everyone thinks she’s dead, but she’s really carted off to the facility where evil psychiatrist Sian Webber experiments on metahumans. I didn’t think metahumans were a thing in Venom 1, but whatever. They’re just all locked up at Webber’s hospital.

Webber doesn’t get a character name and doesn’t do anything but taunt Harris throughout the film, so it’s hard to have much sympathy. Especially since they’re like torturing the people.

Anyway.

We get all that backstory in the prologue, which has Jack Bandeira playing young Woody Harrelson. In the nineties. When Woody Harrelson was in his thirties. Harris is closer to actual age, but… Carnage asks for some extra suspension of disbelief in the silly movie about the head-eating space aliens who banter with their human hosts. Apparently, they really wanted Harrelson, who I hope got a nice check because his performance is atrocious. The part’s not good either, but there are times where there’s not zero potential. Harrelson and Harris’s parts could’ve been breakthrough roles with better writing, casting, directing, and so on.

The film will occasionally stumble into a Bonnie & Clyde-type tone and then run away from it like director Serkis doesn’t want to try anything at all; no one’s more ashamed of taking Carnage seriously than Serkis. With a better script and a less “realistic” visual tone, it might work as camp. But it’d need better performances. Harris, Harrelson, and cop Stephen Graham would have to go.

Graham’s the cop hounding Tom Hardy. Now, Hardy’s the star, but the story’s entirely about Harrelson and Harris, with Graham having been the one to shoot Harris back when she was a kid in his charge. Graham seems to be suffering from guilt over it, but maybe not. It’s impossible to tell with his acting and the script.

The film sets up Hardy—the human—as a complete doofus who can’t function without the Venom symbiote to take care of him. Hardy voices Venom, too, so large swathes of the film are actually just Hardy talking to himself. It’s fine. He’s slightly better as the symbiote than the human because it’s unbelievable Hardy the human could ever function as an adult with even the scantest responsibilities.

Michelle Williams is back as Hardy’s ex-girlfriend, who both Hardy the human and Venom pine for. But she’s marrying doctor Reid Scott, also back from the first one. Williams and Scott are like Hardy’s square friends. Thanks to Williams being phenomenal and holding the movie up whenever she’s around, it works out really well.

And Hardy’s pretty fun. Much of the dialogue’s bad, and Hardy and Graham are terrible together, but Hardy manages to be energetic while dejected, which is impressive. He always seems too good for the movie. It brings a charm, especially with Williams around.

The direction’s fine, albeit unambitious, rushed, and disinterested. Carnage’s script—credit to Kelly Marcel, from a story by she and Hardy—seems like three episodes of a poorly written cartoon strung together, so, really, anything’s a success.

It’s often silly, sometimes inept, sometimes bad, but usually kind of fun, which isn’t bad given all the constraints. If they could just get a better writer, Venom might be good?

Or at least better more of the time. Because despite some genuinely terrible performances from its actors, Hardy, Hardy, Williams, and even Scott make Carnage an almost all right outing.

The Amazing Mr. X (1948, Bernard Vorhaus)

Around the halfway mark, The Amazing Mr. X gets a whole lot more interesting without ever being able to get much better. The film starts as a supernatural thriller, with widow Lynn Bari convinced her dead husband is calling to her, pissed off she’s getting close to accepting suitor Richard Carlson’s marriage proposal. Bari’s little sister, Cathy O’Donnell, is pressing her into accepting, while Bari secretly finds Carlson super-annoying. We know she finds him annoying because when she meets mentalist Turhan Bey on the beach, he can read her subconscious and reveal those grievances to her.

It’s a particular sequence with terrible composite shots—not just poorly matched as far as lighting. However, cinematographer John Alton’s achievement is basically never having a well-lighted scene or a well-composed angle on the composite shot. The angles on the backgrounds are wildly off, which might lend to an otherworldly, impressionist vibe, but director Vorhaus never goes for one. And then Bari’s terrible. Lots will change through Mr. X; the film’s got three major big twists, a couple big reveals, but the constant will always be Bari’s terrible performance. It’s not entirely her fault—Muriel Roy Bolton and Ian McLellan Hunter’s script is a combination of mysticism, deception, and light comedy; Vorhaus is particularly inept at the light comedy—but she’s still terrible. She’s never sympathetic, and pretty much everyone else, regardless of performance, manages to be sympathetic at one point or another.

If Bari were good, Mr. X. might be able to overcome its other failings like O’Donnell, Carlson, and Harry Mendoza. O’Donnell’s never good, but she’s enthusiastic; surprisingly, she was twenty-five in the film, she seems younger, not quite teenage but definitely not twenty-five. She’s particularly bad at the supernatural sequences. Actually, Bari’s better at them. O’Donnell plays them like there’s eventually going to be a punchline, which never arrives because it’s not actually light comedy no matter how much the script tries. Bari at least takes them seriously. But there’s some charm to O’Donnell’s failed approach, which gives Mr. X personality.

Especially after O’Donnell falls for Bey. She and Carlson have hired private investigator Mendoza (a real-life magician they presumably cast for his card tricks and not his screen presence; another mistake for the pile). His big idea to snoop on Bey is to get O’Donnell to go undercover for a reading. Except Bey’s able to see right through her subterfuge and instead seduces her.

That plot development—O’Donnell killing the investigation momentum—ought to stall out the picture but instead, Mr. X. does a deep dive into Bey. So the narrative focus goes from Bari to O’Donnell to Bey. It dollies back and widens the narrative in the third act, but it always keeps Bey in the proverbial shot. Partially because he’s the only one who knows everything going on once the third plot twist arrives, partially because he’s the only main actor giving a compelling performance. At the start, it seems like Bey’s going to be a stunt cast, an extended “exotic” cameo, with the focus being on Bari and Carlson… until the plot starts twisting and turning and Mr. X ceases to be predictable.

Even when there’s clarification and revelation, the film’s got another big twist waiting. It’s a neat plot. Shame the script’s bad; with a good script, Mr. X could probably get away with Vorhaus’s mostly inept direction, though it’d still need a better lead performance than Bari. Not even a great one, just a not always bad one.

Mr. X (which is a terrible title, especially since Bey’s name is “Alexis” and they never once lean on the “X”) is neat without ever being cute; a good idea victim of a too low budget, with a surprisingly excellent performance from Bey. He does a whole lot without any help from the director, the script, or his costars. Though O’Donnell’s mooning is believable enough, given the object of her affection.

A Life at Stake (1955, Paul Guilfoyle)

A Life at Stake is a peculiar noir. It’s low budget, it’s got an actor-turned-director in Guilfoyle, it’s got Angela Lansbury as the femme fatale, it’s got a great, lushly romantic score from Les Baxter, and it’s got a jam-packed script from Russ Bender. The film only runs eighty minutes, and there are a couple longer suspense sequences, but Stake is usually full of distinct dialogue. Bender’s always giving someone something weird to say, and then it curiously derails the scene as the film tries to resolve the newly introduced tangent. It’s got a lot of personality.

The script, anyway. The film itself does not. Leading man Keith Andes apparently got the job for his impressive chest—which gets a showcase in the first scene—rather than his acting prowess. Lansbury’s okay as the femme fatale, but once her viciously cruel and rather icky husband Douglass Dumbrille gets into the action, she’s barely around anymore. See, Lansbury’s a wealthy lady who wants to go into business with down-on-his-luck builder Andes. She’s bored and wants to go back to real estate, with Andes building the houses for her to sell. Or is it all a scheme to take out a life insurance policy on Andes then kill him to collect?

The life insurance policy melodrama takes over from the illicit behavior stuff, though it never gets particularly illicit; while Andes is determined not to take no for an answer, Lansbury’s able to keep him under control because he wants her for her money too.

Meanwhile, Lansbury’s earnest kid sister, Claudia Barrett, becomes fascinated with Andes, and he’s not going to cast her attentions aside just because she’s a naive twenty-one. The naivety makes her just great for exposition dumps it turns out, but with a bunch of added dialogue because Bender’s an enthusiast writer. Lansbury probably gives Stake’s best performance—there’s not much competition—but Barrett certainly provides the most likable one. Well, except Kathleen Mulqueen as Andes’s assistant, who has to put up with her boss not just being a post-war builder bro, but an obsessive one. He’s worried he’s too worried about Lansbury and Dumbrille plotting to kill him… because he’s got too much evidence they’re trying to kill him not to be concerned. Mulqueen’s got to weather his ranting. It’d probably be great ranting if it weren’t for Andes’s performance and Guilfoyle’s direction.

Plus, Barrett’s performance falls apart in the third act when she gets downgraded from love interest to sidekick. It’s not her fault as Bender’s writing doesn’t really keep together for the finale either.

Most of the film is wanting interiors, but there are a couple nice exterior street scenes shot on location. The first is just a shot, finally opening the film up—almost the entire first act takes place at Andes’s boarding house (run by Jane Darwell in an extended but not unwelcome cameo)—and the second is a suspense sequence. Guilfoyle’s no better at directing off a soundstage than on, but Ted Allan’s photography is a lot more interesting out of doors.

Frank Sullivan’s editing is bad, but it usually seems to be a lack of coverage from Guilfoyle.

Stake’s engaging throughout thanks to the script’s strangeness—and Baxter’s music leads to some good sequences—with the wanting finale short enough not to matter much.