Black Christmas (1974)
Starting off Christmas season with this groovy slasher from the 1970s (directed by Bob Clark, who also directed Christmas classic A Christmas Story), I was really surprised at how vulgar and violent this movie was (happily surprised). Set in a sorority at Christmas break, the ladies of Pi Kappa Sigma have been receiving sexually aggressive phone calls from a man they dub "the moaner". But when members of the house go missing, the women have to wonder if the moaner is not just an obscene caller, but a violent killer as well.
I love 1970s clothing and decor, as well as the overall vibes of the 1970s. So I really enjoyed Black Christmas even though I'm not generally into the slasher subgenre. If you're into horror, especially slashers and/or Christmas horror, this is one to check out.
Grade: B
***
Peeping Tom
Directed by Michael Powell, Peeping Tom was very controversial when it was released in 1960. The film follows a man, Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Bohm), who has a passion for photography...and MURDER. He enjoys killing women in particular and films them as he stabs them to death (with a blade attached to his camera's tripod--very clever).
While Peeping Tom has obvious themes of fetishism and voyeurism, what *really* turns Mark's crank is fear. We find out that he was the victim of his psychologist father's experiments on fear in children: Mark's father would purposely scare him and then film Mark's reactions. This, of course, led Mark to being the fear-and-film obsessed killer he is as an adult.
Peeping Tom has gorgeous cinematography, which makes sense give that Michael Powell also directed the visually stunning Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes (although Peeping Tom had a different cinematographer than those other two films). Clearly, Powell valued beauty in film, even a film with ugly content. I'm really glad I finally watched this classic psychological horror film.
Grade: B+
***
Subservience
This movie, released directly to Netflix, stars Megan Fox as an android purchased by Nick (Michele Morrone) to help with childcare, cooking, and cleaning while his wife, Maggie (Madeline Zima), awaits a heart transplant in the hospital. Of course, this sexy maidbot, named Alice by Nick's daughter, becomes sentient...and evil.
Subservience is a perfectly entertaining mindless popcorn flick about the dangers of technology that can think for itself. I have a feeling we're going to see a lot of movies like this is the coming years. There's honestly a lot more action than I expected in this film (I guess I assumed it would be more...mind games? Cat and mouse?) and action mostly bores me, so I was definitely playing on my phone during the last 20 minutes. Take that as me not recommending this movie, although it certainly could have been worse.
Grade: C
***
Jennifer's Body
After watching Subservience, I was inspired to rewatch the movie that put Megan Fox on the map. Jennifer's Body, directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Diablo Cody, was released to middling reviews at the time but has now gained cult status as a "good for her" type horror film. When I saw it in 2009 I remember being disappointed that it wasn't as good as Juno (another Diablo Cody-penned film) and I thought most of the "cute" turns of phrase that Cody likes to include in her scripts were forced and not very clever.
Upon a rewatch, I now see Jennifer's Body as....drum roll please...a good but not great movie! *confetti*
I have more of an appreciation for it now, and I think Adam Brody's turn as the Satanic lead singer of an extremely mediocre indie band is hilarious, but overall I'd still rate it as just ok. At the time of its release, I feel like the movie caught both sexist flack for starring an attractive, yet not particularly talented (sorry) actress in the lead, but also feminist flack for...the same reason? There was definitely discourse around the movie. Watching it now, I don't really see the movie as particularly feminist OR anti-feminist. It has two female leads and they pass the Bechdel test, but Jennifer's Body doesn't really feel all that subversive to me.
I'm glad I rewatched it and I'm glad it attained cult status, but, to me, it's just ok.
Grade: B
***
Home Alone
I was SO into Home Alone as a kid and then I didn't watch it for a long, long time. Now, I am introducing it into my cycle of Christmas movies (there are like five movies that I regularly rewatch at Christmas, but not every Christmas so I don't burn out on them. It was Home Alone's turn this year).
As an adult, I have a lot of appreciation for Chris Columbus's surprisingly dark and unhinged tale of a young boy, Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), left behind at Christmas while his family jets off to Paris. While staying squarely in a PG rating, Home Alone is pretty fucked up. Kevin is really treated as a pest by his entire family. He lives in a world that is uncaring and hostile to children. No wonder he wishes his family would disappear!
And then you have Harry and Marv, played brilliantly by Joe Pesci (who struggled mightily not to drop f-bombs while filming) and Daniel Stern. When the "Wet Bandits" realize that Kevin is home alone, they figure burglarizing the McCallister homestead will be an easy job. After all, what can a little kid do? But Kevin is...precocious. I will say that Macaulay Culkin is not the most natural child actor I've seen. He says his lines with a forced and overly loud tone. But I'm not going to criticize a kid who was abused by his piece of shit father. In some ways, Home Alone is a bit of a guilty pleasure knowing that Culkin, a huge child star of the 90s, was being treated like crap by his family and Hollywood at the time.
If we put that nastiness aside, Home Alone is a deeply fun, funny, and enjoyable movie that holds up really well 35 years later. There's a reason we can still say "keep the change, ya filthy animal" and most people get the reference.
Grade: A
***
Edward Scissorhands
It had been years since I watched Tim Burton's classic story of the uncommonly gentle man with scissors for hands. The movie unnerved the hell out of me as a kid, so I don't think I watched the entire thing until...college? In any case, it had been a while and I decided to revisit it.
Edward Scissorhands is an almost excruciatingly bittersweet film. The content itself is bittersweet: a very gentle man created by a mad genius and left alone in a castle is brought into society by a well-meaning woman, Peg Boggs (Diane Wiest, just wonderful here), only to become the object of fascination by a bunch of shallow, ignorant suburb-dwellers and then a hunted scapegoat when things go wrong. The movie is also bittersweet on a meta-level in that it represents a time when Time Burton made interesting, creative, heartfelt films instead of ugly Hollywood dreck and Johnny Depp was an exciting up-and-comer and not an abusive weirdo.
We didn't know how good we had it.
Edward Scissorhands is notable for that weird mix of colorful, suburban conformity and BDSM-goth vibes. Although Ed Wood is my favorite Tim Burton film, Edward Scissorhands feels the most Burton-y. It also has an absolutely beautiful score by the great Danny Elfman. The music really jerks those tears out of you.
Really glad I rewatched this one.
Grade: A-
***
Daddy's Head
Daddy's Head is an incredibly unnerving horror film on Shudder. James (Charles Aitken) is killed in a car accident. He was a widower and recently remarried to Laura (Julia Brown). He leaves behind his young son Isaac (Rupert Turnbull), now an orphan. Laura waffles on adopting Isaac and becoming his legal guardian. She also has a drinking problem that gets worse in the aftermath of the accident.
And then the...thing...shows up. A creature that moves quickly in the dark and can mimic human speech. This entity starts to convince Isaac that it is his father. In a different body, sure, but very much alive. Isaac's insistence that his father has returned and Laura's constant drunkeness and resentment towards her stepson reach a boiling point.
So, yeah, it's another grief horror movie. They are so hot these days, but I'm starting to think they might be overstaying their welcome. You can't top Midsommar and you shouldn't even try. But even though Daddy's Head is a middling movie, it's got some seriously creepy creature design. It'll definitely spook you!
Grade: B
***
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
In preparing to see Robert Eggers take on Nosferatu, I revisited Werner Herzog's 1979 version starring Klaus Kinski, Isabella Adjani, and Bruno Ganz. Hands down, the best thing about this movie is the music. The score was composed by Popol Vuh, a West German musical collective. They do amazing, mesmerizing work here.
The cinematography is also stunning. Between the music and cinematography, Nosferatu the Vampyre has an almost hypnotic quality to it. It's very slow and the plot is thin and familiar. But it doesn't feel boring. It's almost...relaxing. Klaus Kinski is extremely creepy as Count Dracula (not Count Orlock in this film, as the character is called in the 1922 version)...he's serving rat face, which is appropriate given the role rats play in the film.
Nosferatu the Vampyre is a very nostalgic film for me because it brings me back to my college years when I was watching a lot of Herzog and exploring artsy movies. I would only recommend it to people already inclined to watch it anyway--fans of Herzog and artsy vampire movies. It might be a bit too slow for others.
Grade: A-
***
Carry-On
Another mid-level Netflix movie, Carry-On is good, but ridiculous, fun. Starring Taron Egerton as Ethan Kopek, a TSA agent working at LAX on Christmas Eve and feeling a little...mixed. He just found out he's about to become a father with his girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson), who also works at LAX, but he's also just kind of drifting through life and his ennui is becoming more apparent and obvious to both him and Nora.
Inspired by a conversation with Nora, Ethan asks his boss, Sarkowski (Dean Norris), for more responsibility and it allowed to work the xray machines. When he discovers an earpiece in one of the bins and immediately gets a text telling him to put it in his ear RIGHT NOW, Ethan is swept into a situation he was never meant to be part of. The man talking to him using the earpiece goes only by "the Traveler" (Jason Bateman) and he explains to Ethan that a man will soon be in his line with a suitcase and Ethan must let the suitcase go through. Ethan asks what's in the suitcase, but the Traveler refuses to tell him...which is how Ethan knows that it's bad. Really bad.
Carry-On has excellent pacing. Although there are many familiar beats to the movie, it's never slow and never boring. It is, of course, completely unrealistic. So many things would foil the bad guys' plot, but let's just ignore those and enjoy the ride.
Despite the fact that Carry-On is technically a Christmas movie, it will never be in the Canon and is likely doomed to obscurity since it's just another mediocre and forgettable straight-to-Netflix film. But, like a one-night stand, its a fun way to pass the time.
Grade: B
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