April was a weird month for me in terms of watching movies and TV. I "DNFed" (did not finish) three movies and rewatched a couple favorites. All told, I only watched three "new" (new to me) movies all the way through, one of which was Beau is Afraid, which I did a separate review for. So, overall, a wildly uneven and disappointing month for movies.
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The Scary of Sixty-First
The only good thing about this 2021 horror film about two women who inadvertently rent a New York City apartment that was previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein is its run time: a blessedly short 80 minutes.
Directed by Dasha Nekrasova, The Scary of Sixty-First is a film with a good idea (a cursed apartment) that unfortunately uses a real life person whose crimes go beyond disgusting or tragic and into the realm of "if there is a Hell, it's too nice a place for this motherfucker" as the crux on which the movie lies. The problem with this is that the movie becomes exploitative. The movie turns Jeffrey Epstein's crimes into horror entertainment, and thus makes a joke of his victims.
This is not a documentary about Epstein and it's not a drama about him. It's a movie where two young women rent a suspiciously cheap apartment in NYC, only to discover that it was owned by Epstein. One of the women, Noelle, becomes obsessed with Epstein conspiracy theories (fair enough) while the other, Addie, basically becomes possessed and spends the majority of the movie begging her boyfriend to "fuck me like I'm 13" and humping pictures of Prince Andrew while sobbing hysterically. Boy, I wish I was joking. The "reason" behind this behavior is that the CIA is controlling Addie's weak mind...or the apartment is possessing her...or something about the occult...? It's never really explained.
I've watched Salo. I've watched Martyrs. I've watched movies where nuns use a crucifix to masturbate (Ken Russell's The Devils--highly recommended!). I am not easily offended by radical and blasphemous ideas in film. But this movie offended me. Like I said above, whether intentional or not, the movie makes a joke out of the many children who were raped by Jeffrey Epstein and his friends. I'm sure the director would say that she wasn't intending that to be the message, but that is how it feels when we see Addie furiously masturbating to a picture of Prince Andrew and whining in a high-pitched, childlike voice.
Fuck this movie. I recommend staying far away from it.
Grade: F
***
Experimenter
Written and directed by Michael Almereyda, Experimenter is a biographical drama about the life and work of Stanley Milgram (played by one of my faves, Peter Sarsgaard).
In case you skipped Psych 101 in college--Milgram is the guy who would have an authority figure tell a participant in the experiment to deliver electric shocks to another participant when they made mistakes, even when the participant being shocked begged the other participant to stop. Often, the person delivering the shocks would ask the authority figure (just a guy in a lab coat) if they could stop the experiment and the authority figure would always say no. In 65% of the experiments, the person delivering the shocks would keep going until the other participant (often in another room) would stop responding as if they were hurt, passed out, or even dead.
Now it turns out that the participant in the other room receiving "shocks" was actually in on the whole thing and was not being shocked at all and only faking their distress. The experiment was all about if people would listen to an authority figure even if that person was telling them to hurt someone else. 65% of time, regardless of gender or race, the person in the experiment would do just that.
The movie delves into Milgram's personal life (he was Jewish and was motivated to create this experiment based on the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann who claimed that those who committed atrocities during the Holocaust were just following orders) and his other experiments (the lost letter experiment, which is much cheerier than the shock experiment). Experimenter is a very solid biopic with a great cast...but I feel like it's less about being a good movie, and more about serving as a tribute to a man who conducted one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. If the movie inspires people to learn more about Milgram and about human psychology, then it has done its job.
Grade: B
***
Succession (season 1)
Succession is a good show about contemptible people. Very well-written, often hilarious, and with wall-to-wall fantastic acting, Succession is still difficult to watch because all the characters are rotten to their core, none more than the patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) who, frankly, can fuck right off to hell in my opinion. But his progeny, Connor the milquetoast coward (Alan Ruck), Kendall, the entitled bro (Jeremy Strong), Siobhan, the faithless bitch (Sarah Snook), and Roman, the disgusting psychopath (Kieran Culkin) are all equally fucked up.
Now, of course, as you watch you see glimmers of humanity in all of these people, but at the end of the day this isn't a show about well-rounded and flawed characters doing their best in this crazy world. It's about the super wealthy taking out their massive psychological problems on other people and doing so in comfort and style. I'm probably going to keep watching for the clever writing and to see if maybe at the end of the series they all die (in great pain) in a fire. One can only hope!
Grade: B+
Tom Wambsgans, still a piece of shit but the only character I don't want to murder at all times.
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DNFed:
House of Darkness
When I saw that this mediocre vampire movie was written and directed by Neil LaBute, I wasn't surprised. It has his signature cringe gender politics (LaBute strikes me as a misogynist who hides his true feelings in plain sight by writing pathetic, asshole men into his plays and movies). I didn't have the patience for it, so I turned it off.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe
The premise is intriguing (two men do an autopsy of a young woman with very mysterious symptoms--for example, her lungs are burnt to a crisp while her skin is unburned) but, 1) Emile Hirsch is in it and he's a violent asshole (he assaulted a woman and strangled her in 2015) and 2) I just wasn't feeling it. So I looked up what happens at the end and just stopped watching.
Dashcam
I was warned about this one. The main character, Annie Hardy, is an indie singer playing herself and, unfortunately, she is profoundly annoying. Hardy is a Trump-supporting, anti-vaxxer who is also just very loud and the human equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. This is a found-footage horror movie, but the real horror is the MAGA asshole treating everyone around her like shit. There was no way I was watching the entire movie, especially when I found out (SPOILER!!!!!!) that Hardy doesn't die in the end.
***
Rewatched:
Fargo - A+
The Departed - A
Game Night - B+
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