Frozen In January: Death Hunt (1981)

death hunt

Whenever I watch a movie I inevitably go to Letterboxd to see what other people think of it. Letterboxd is like social media for movie nerds. You can log movies, see how many movies by an actor you’ve previously watched, check out stats (it is what I use to write all my movie journal posts), write reviews, and much more. You can also follow other users and when you do it will automatically show you their reviews.

I follow a lot of movie critics and various other users whose reviews I like to read, or who tend to have similar tastes as me. It is always interesting to see what others think of a movie I’ve just watched. It is especially interesting when their opinions differ from mine. It is fascinating to me to see when people hate a movie I loved for love a movie I hated.

I thought Death Hunt was dumb. It is the kind of movie they made a lot of in the early 1980s – silly action films with a couple of big stars, a little sexy, some comedy, and a lot of gunplay and explosions. I’m not necessarily opposed to that sort of thing as you can see from my reviews of various Burt Reynolds movies, but I have to be in the right mood.

I guess I wasn’t in the right mood yesterday when I watched Death Hunt because looking at Letterboxd most of the reviews I saw seemed to think it was a pretty fun movie. You can read between the lines that no one thinks it’s an actual good movie, but entertaining isn’t always good.

Anyway, the film is set in the Yukon Territory way up North in Canada in the 1930s. Albert Johnson (Charles Bronson), on his way home from a long stint in America, comes across an organized dogfight. The losing dog is badly injured and its owner, Hazel (Ed Lauter) is ready to do it in. Albert stops forcibly stops him then pays him $200 and takes the dog home.

With Albert gone Hazel finds his courage and reports the incident as a dog theft to Edgar Millen (Lee Marvin) of the local Canadian Mounties. Edgar is of the old and grizzled but fair and kind variety (in the Lee Marvin type).

Edgar knows Hazel and figures his story is bupkis, and tells him to go away. Hazel doesn’t like that and takes a group of his buddies up to Albert’s cabin to give him what for. Albert, being played by Charles Bronson, takes their what for and gives it back, leaving one guy dead on the ground.

Now that a man’s dead Edgar has to investigate, but instead of going to Albert alone and having a chat he takes an entire posse with him, including Hazel and his friend – all armed to the teeth with shotguns and rifles. His cabin surrounded Edgar walks up to Albert’s place to ask him to come alone peacefully. When he refuses Edgar lets the men shoot the cabin to bits. When that doesn’t work he throws dynamite at it, blowing the thing sky high.

It was probably at this point that I gave up on the film. Blowing a man’s house (and presumably him) to pieces isn’t good police work. Especially when you know that the killing you want to arrest him was probably self-defense. But the film wants them to have a chase and so that’s what it gives them.

Amazingly Albert survives the explosion and hits the road (or rather the icy mountain paths) with Edgar hot on his tail. The rest of the film becomes one long chase.

Made just a couple of years after Death Wish, Death Hunt is clearly trying to cash in on that film’s success. But Death Wish had a specific point of view. In those films, Charles Bronson is a good guy driven to revenge by evil criminals (don’t get me wrong that film’s morality is wonky as hell, but it does have a point of view). Here Albert is a rather dubious character and as noted Marvin isn’t exactly clean cut so there isn’t an obvious person to root for. Except the film clearly wants us rooting for someone, it just doesn’t seem sure as to who. This brings it all to a finale that just kind of whimpers where it ought to bang.

I’m putting way too much thought into all of this, more than the creators of the film seem to have done. It is all meant as a good time at the movies with a little comedy and some big action and good stars and nothing more. This is too many words already, but I should mention Carl Weathers plays Lee Marvin’s good time buddy. Oh, and Angie Dickinson plays Marvin’s love interest, who has so little to do I almost forgot about her.

I suspect if I had poured myself a couple of drinks and invited some friends over I would have had fun with it. But sitting alone on my couch while my wife is upstairs with Covid and my daughter is hiding out in her room I found it all kind of vapid and annoying.

Frozen in January: Whiteout (2009)

whiteout movie

Sometimes you watch a movie knowing ahead of time it is going to be bad. You do so thinking maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe it will at least be entertaining. And maybe, just maybe, it will defy expectations and actually be pretty good.

Mostly, you turn out wrong.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I knew going into it Whiteout wouldn’t be good. It actually has a kernel of an interesting idea – a lone US Marshall in Antarctica must solve a murder. But that’s also the kind of snappy idea that Hollywood all too often screws up.

I should have known not to watch it when I realized it stars Kate Beckinsale. I don’t actively hate Kate Beckinsale. I don’t think she’s necessarily a bad actress. She just has a habit of starring in a lot of bad movies. I don’t know if she just has bad taste, or she’s rarely offered anything any good or what. Maybe she has a terrible agent. But looking through her filmography I see very few movies that I either thought were good or that look anything like interesting.

But, like I said, this film has a setup that could be really cool so I took the plunge.

The biggest problem with the film is that it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a mystery, a thriller, or a horror film. It even throws in a bit of World War II conspiracy for good measure.

Beckinsale plays Carrie Stetko, the sole US Marshall in Antarctica. Most of the base is preparing to fly out. Winter is coming and at the bottom of the world, winter is long and hard. Minimal staff is required.

Stetko usually stays but this time she’s leaving. As is her friend, the base’s only doctor, John Fury (Tom Skerritt). As an example of just how poorly this film thinks things through that is the base’s only law enforcement agent and doctor leaving for several months. There is no indication that anyone is being sent to replace them. While most of the personnel do leave for the winter, not all of them do. What happens when a crime is committed or someone needs healthcare?

But of course, the film doesn’t think about this because it knows those two characters aren’t going to be leaving the base. A crime will be committed and someone will need medical attention and they will stay.

A body is found lying face down in a remote part – a “no man’s land” of the continent. His face is smashed to bits so it is impossible to tell who he is. Stetko and Fury investigate. Stetko realizes he must have taken a great fall. She knows this because, as we see in a flashback she once shot a man causing him to take a tumble out of a high-rise building.

The film loves its flashbacks. They pretty much all surround that one event in Stetko’s life, but the film doles it out like it is some great mystery that will reveal some insight into this current case. But really it is a pretty simple thing that lets us know what she’s doing in remote Antarctica in the first place.

The murder leads them to a remote station which then leads them to a WWII airplane buried in the snow. This should be an interesting mystery, a weird surprise for the audience. Except the film began with us watching the plane crash and showed us why. The only mystery left is what was in the box on the plane that everyone winds up fighting over. It might be old nuclear stuff which would be bad. Really bad. I guess.

Then Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht), a United Nations security agent shows up. He’s there awfully fast for a guy who wasn’t in Antarctica before the movie began. Making us think perhaps he’s the killer. He’s not, but the movie likes throwing red herrings out like that. Anyone who has seen an episode of Law and Order will be able to figure out who the Big Bad really is before he’s revealed.

Oh, also, there is a huge storm rolling in causing the entire base to be evacuated in a few hours. Because this film doesn’t have enough going on, it needs to add that into the mix.

It is based on a graphic novel so maybe some of the script problems come from the source material. All of the plot twists and turns might work better in a comic. I’ve just started reading the book and it does seem to be more of a mystery than anything, and it definitely doesn’t begin with the plane crash so I’m prepared to say most of the film’s problems do come from the script. But only time will tell on that front.

Beckinsale isn’t bad. I don’t think she’s a particularly bad actress. But she doesn’t elevate the material either. And the material is bad. It is too much of everything and not enough of something specific.

The Apu Trilogy is the Blu-ray Pick of the Week

the apu trilog

The week after Christmas is usually a time when those who make Blu-rays take a week off. Oh, they’ll release a handful of items, mostly junk that no one wants, but the general theory seems to be that everyone has spent their money on Christmas presents and the week (or two, or three…) after is a time to recover. This week certainly bears that out as I only count eleven total releases being put on the shelves. Surprisingly out of those eleven releases, five of them actually look pretty interesting. I had to really think about what I wanted my pick to be.

Satyajit Ray was a titan of Indian cinema. He was a master of world cinema. He is one of the most acclaimed directors of all time. His films have won every award imaginable. They are also one of the biggest holes in my cinematic knowledge. I have seen exactly one of his films, The Hero, which I enjoyed, but wasn’t blown away by. He remains someone whose films I continually tell myself I need to watch and that I continually put off dealing with.

The Criterion Collection is releasing this week a boxed set of three films (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and Apur Sansa) collectively known as The Apu Trilogy. They tell the adventure of a young boy named Apu as he comes of age. They were each critically acclaimed and together are, perhaps, Ray’s most beloved films.

They come with new transfers and loads of extras and I’m excited to give them a watch and happy to make them my Pick of the Week.
Also out this week that looks interesting:

The Holdovers: Paul Giamatti stars in this acclaimed drama from director Alexander Payne as a private school teacher in charge of looking after a rebellious student who can’t go home for the holidays.

The Marsh King’s Daughter: Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn star in this thriller about a woman seeking revenge on the man who kidnapped her mother.

The Facts of the Murder: Radiance Films presents this blending of film noir with Italian Neo-Realism directed by and starring Pietro Germi as a detective trying to solve two separate crimes (robbery and murder) that happened on consecutive days in the same apartment complex. You can read my review at Cinema Sentries.

Please, Not Now!: Brigitte Bardot stars in this comedy from director Roger Vadim about a woman fighting to get her cheating boyfriend back by either winning his affections again or assassinating him.

Frozen In January: Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

jeremiah johnson poster

Jeremiah Johnson was a real mountain man who, as legend has it, killed, scalped, and ate the livers of some 300 Crow Indians. From what I’ve read he seems like a pretty rough-and-tumble guy. Director Sydney Pollack teamed up with Robert Redford and turned him into some kind of folk hero in their film based upon the legend.

Redford plays Johnson as a man who initially heads to the mountains to get away from society and truly become something, some kind of man. He isn’t naive or untrained like Chris McCandless from Into the Wild. He has some skills hunting and surviving in the wild. Just getting to the Rockies in the late 1800s was an adventure in itself.

But life in the mountains is different than life in the plains. Johnson find himself in trouble. He struggles making fire in the cold, wind, and snow. He can’t catch a fish in the mountain streams. He has better luck with wild game, but not much.

Cold and nearly starved, he stumbles across an old grisly bear hunter named Bear Claw (Will Greer). The old man teaches him how to survive in the mountains. He becomes good at it. He thrives. He learns the ways of the various Indian tribes in the area, but doesn’t befriend them. He’s a man who likes to be alone.

In time he comes across a cabin that has been attacked by Indians. A child was killed, and the husband is missing. A young boy has survived and his mother who has gone crazy from the ordeal. Johnson begins caring for the boy. Later Johnson makes a mistake in a trade with a Flathead tribe and finds himself with a wife.

This man of solitude now finds himself with a family. It is hard on him at first, especially since he does not speak his Crow wife’s language and the boy is mute, but he learns to love them and they make a life together.

Then tragedy hits and Johnson becomes the liver-eating man of legend.

Pollack and cinematographer Duke Callaghan film it like poetry. Pollack calls it his silent picture and there are long scenes in which not a word is spoken. Shot in and around the Rocky Mountains in Utah it is often stunningly beautiful. Redford does some of his best work. All of this is periodically puncturated by songs from Tim McIntire and John Rubinstein. They are sung in the Appalachian folk tradition and are a little too on the nose declaring the themes of the film. Also they are just bad.

It is interesting that they turned this story of a rugged mountain man, known for his ruthless slaying of countless natives into the story of a good man who just wants to be left alone, at peace in nature. He rarely takes action himself, the mountains or outsiders force him into it. Even in the end when he becomes the Crow Slayer, it is always them who attack him. It does feel like they are turning into a folk hero. I doubt that is where the truth really lies. But we’ll never really know the truth anyway, as the true story was turned into legend long ago and the facts have long since been lost.

Not that it matters. True or not the film is quite good, longing and beautiful. A tale of a time long past, but of mountains that still amaze with their grandeur.

Frozen in January

I truly do love coming up with movie themes for each month. They help focus my watching in the most interesting ways. Over the last couple of years, I’ve learned that I’m rarely going to really push the bounds of the types of cinema I’m apt to watch. I’m never going to watch a Danish documentary on wooden shoes or whatever, but these themes do help me focus my attention.

They do push me to watch movies I’ve been meaning to watch but keep putting off for some reason. And they help me stumble across movies I might not otherwise discover.

So for January, I thought I’d seek out winter movies. I’m looking for movies where the protagonists are trapped in a blizzard, or lost in some godforsaken wilderness, surrounded by ice and snow. My two touchpoints are John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) in which a group of men find themselves in Antarctica being attacked by a shape-shifting alien, and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015) whereupon a group of travelers are stranded in a snowbound cabin in the woods.

I’m looking for isolation and the cold, cold, winter with characters surrounded by ice and snow.

What could be better to watch during the frozen, lonely days of January?

The First Movie of 2024: Miller’s Crossing (1990)

millers crossing

I always make a big deal out of the first film I watch in a given year. I guess I feel like it sets the theme for the year or some such thing. Or maybe I just like stats and the first anything of the year seems randomly important.

As I noted in previous posts we were supposed to be in Kentucky today, the first day of 2024. But Covid kept us home. That and a million other things kept me from really thinking about what movie I’d watch today. In fact, I spent most of the day not watching movies at all, but binge-watching the excellent Amazon series Fleabag.

But as night came I knew I needed to watch a movie and my mind completely randomly thought of Miller’s Crossing, the 1990 gangster film from the Coen Brothers.

I love the Coen Brothers. I have ever since I first watched Fargo in 2006. That movie blew me away. It was so quirky, and funny, and violent. I had previously watched Raising Arizona, but at the time it didn’t make much sense to me. I now consider it one of the funniest movies of all time.

After Fargo I started seeking out Coen Brothers movies. I think I first watched Barton Fink (didn’t get it at first but now consider it a classic). Then I watched Miller’s Crossing and absolutely loved it.

That movie single-handedly turned me on to the writings of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and made me a fan of film noir. I owe it a lot.

I hadn’t seen it in years so this viewing was somewhat fresh. It is still absolutely perfect.

It is loosely based on Hammett’s novels Red Harvest and The Glass Key, but with plenty of Coen Brothers spin. Gabriel Byrne plays Tom Reagan the right-hand man to mob boss Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney) who gets into a war with up-and-coming gangster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito). There are lots of twists and turns making the plot a bit confusing on first viewing, but it is full of wonderful dialogue and that Coen Brothers humor. It looks great, the acting is great, and the music by Carter Burwell is beautiful. It remains one of my all-time favorite films.

I think that makes a good start to 2024.

The Movie Journal: 2023

decision to leave

I watched 53 movies in December. Thirty of them were made before I was born. I had seen fifteen of them at least once before. The theme for December was movies made in 2023 as I wanted to make a best-of list before the year was over. I watched 14 movies from that year, most of which were watched in the first couple of weeks. After that, I got bored and started watching old movies again.

Since it is now 2024 and we’ve seen the end of 2023 this will serve not only as a journal of December but for the entire year.

I watched 529 movies in 2023 which blows last year’s record of 452 movies out of the water. I really thought that after Covid settled down and I was getting out of the house more my movie watching would slow down, but in fact, it continues to increase.

I’ve really gotten my movie-watching down to a science. It has become an obsession. Every spare moment I slip upstairs and put on a movie. Maybe I should get a life. Until then, here are some more stats.

I averaged watching 44 movies per month, 10 per week. My most watched genres were Thrillers, Dramas, Horror, Crime and Mysteries. I mostly watched movies in English, but I did watch some movies in other languages, including 39 films from Italy, 36 from France, 20 from Hong Kong and 16 from Japan.

445 of the 529 movies I watched were new to me.

favorite actors

In the most watched actors category, Cary Grant snuck in this month to tie Ku Feng in first place with eleven films watched. The wife and I decided to make it a Merry Cary (Grant) Christmas this year and watched a bunch of his films over the last couple of weeks.

There wasn’t a lot of change in the directors category. I will admit I watched a Hitchcock film last night (The Lady Vanishes) because I knew it would push him into the lead for the year.

I continued my tradition of watching horror movies at the start of the weekend and writing about them in my Friday Night Horror Movie column. When I didn’t forget, I wrote a weekly column about the upcoming Blu-ray releases entitled My Pick of the Week. I once again wrote reviews for Noirvember, Foreign Film February, and 31 Days of Horror. But I also created new themes this year including Great British Cinema in September, The Awesome 80s in April, and Westerns in March. I really enjoyed doing those theme months so you can look forward to more themes in 2024.

Overall it was a very good year for me and the cinema. I watched a lot of great movies. Some of my favorite first-watches were The Story of Temple Drake (1933), Past Lives (2023), Oppenheimer (2023), Brighton Rock (1948), Man on the Run (1949), Night and the City (1950), Cottage to Let (1941), The Warriors (1979), Red River (1948), Hotel Du Nord (1938), Nostalgia (1983), Decision to Leave (2022), and many more.

You can see all the films I watched by looking at my film diary on Letterboxd.

I know movies aren’t the thing anyone comes to this site for. But I enjoy writing about them and I hope a few of you enjoy reading about them.

As always I will continue posting music too.

The Midnight Cafe’s Best Movies of 2023

oppenheimer still

I’ve been watching movies in theaters for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is of watching The Return of the Jedi in my small-town cinema. Growing up my parents often took me to the movies, and I was always happy to go (even when I was completely embarrassed by being with them as I became a teenager).

We were early adapters to VHS. I got a DVD player before nearly anyone I knew. I love streaming movies. I watch more movies now because of streaming than I ever have before.

But there was always something magical about going to the movies. The big screen, the big buckets of popcorn. Drinking so much soda you thought you were going to burst before the credits rolled. Sitting in a dark theater with some story shimmering in light in front of you was immersive and special.

In college, and for years after, I went to the movies every weekend. I saw every movie that looked even remotely interesting, and when I had seen those I watched movies that weren’t interesting to me. Even then I couldn’t see every movie. I’ve almost always lived in small towns or smallish cities. They don’t get all the arthouse and foreign language films that wind up on critics’ lists at the end of the year.

But I always liked watching the Oscars. I always enjoyed the spectacle – all those rich famous people gathering to congratulate themselves. I always enjoyed hearing about great movies that I’d never heard of before, or that I hadn’t had the chance to see.

I don’t get to the movies nearly as often as I used to – almost never in fact. Over the last several years I’ve become a classic movie nerd. In my monthly movie-watching wrap-ups I always mention how many movies I watched that were made before I was born. Usually, it is the majority of them.

I still watch the Oscars, I still enjoy the spectacle, but rarely have I seen more than one of the nominees. I just don’t watch new movies when they come out.

Well, this year was different (sort of). I watched a couple of movies in the theater (Barbie, and Killers of the Flower Moon) and a few more when they came out on digital services, and then I intentionally set out to watch as many movies from 2023 as I could in December (to tell the truth I started out strongly and after a couple of weeks I returned to my classic movie schedule).

As such I’ve seen 31 movies from 2023. That’s not really a lot, and certainly not enough to create a definitive Best Of list, but darn if I’m not making one anyway. Or let’s just say this is a list of movies that came out this year that I thought were really good.

the killer movie poster

10. The Killer

Michael Fassbender stars in this David Fincher directed thriller as a hired assassin who isn’t quite as skilled as he thinks he is. When a job gets botched things spiral out of control. Fincher employs his usual meticulously detailed style to what is essentially a trashy genre picture and we’re all the better for it.

09. Anatomy of a Fall

A man falls from his second-story window and dies. Wounds indicate he may have hit on the head and pushed first. Suspicions fall on his wife, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller). The only witness is their legally blind son (Milo Machado-Graner). Part mystery, part courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall doesn’t give us any definitive answers but lets the questions hang.

The cast is absolutely brilliant from top to bottom and Justine Triet’s direction while not flashy, is wonderful.

08. Asteroid City

Possibly the most Wes Anderson-y movie Wes Anderson has ever made. It is also, perhaps, his most difficult-to-understand film. It is actually a film within a film within a play. Or something like that. Honestly, it has been months since I’ve seen it and the details have all left my memory banks, but it does have a nesting doll structure with a lot of layers.

The production design is amazing, as per usual with Anderson, and it is crammed full of excellent actors doing excellent work (again as per usual). I really need to watch it again, but on first viewing I found it to be quite excellent.

07. You Hurt My Feelings

Julia Louise-Dreyfuss stars as a writer who accidentally overhears her husband (Tobias Menzies) discussing her latest book. He doesn’t like it and as the title indicates this hurts her feelings. Nicole Holofcener wrote and directed this lovely little dramedy that gets all the details of a relationship exactly perfect. The stakes are low but still meaningful. The comedy isn’t uproariously but it is clever and real.

across the spiderverse

06. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was such a breath of fresh superhero air when it came out in 2018. It was so original, so creative…so colorful. It felt like it was reinventing a genre that had grown stale.

Five years later that genre has started to grow moldy. Across the Spider-Verse doesn’t feel quite as new as Into the Spider-Verse, it is basically doing what it did, only more so. But it still feels so vibrant and refreshing as compared to all the other superhero movies and television shows that I hope they continue to make these for many more years.

05. Barbie

My wife has become a doll collector. She sews clothes for them and creates little stories. She’s quite good at it too. You can view them on her Instagram account. She buys all sorts of dolls, but Barbies are her favorite. She now has quite a collection of them.

We were destined to see the Barbie movie even if it wasn’t any good, but it turned out to be brilliant. It is very funny, there are lots of wonderful gags about how Barbie dolls would navigate the real world, but it is also quite clever and astute. It isn’t too deep, some folks have called it a Feminism 101 movie and that seems correct, and it sometimes got a bit too preachy for my tastes, but for a film based on a kid’s toy it’s pretty darn good.

04. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part I

Seven films in and this series hasn’t let up. The plot in this one is more spy-centric than the series has been in ages, but the plot isn’t the thing we watch these films for. That would be the stunts and while they aren’t quite as mind-blowing as they have been in previous installments, they are pretty spectacular.

Special mention goes to Hayley Atwell who is marvelous.

killers of the flower moon poster

03. Killers of the Flower Moon

I had been looking forward to this film from the moment Martin Scorsese was attached to it in 2017. I immediately read the book and was astonished this was a story I’d never heard of before, considering it happened not very far from where I lived.

It is the story of the Osage Indian Nation and how after being kicked around across the United States they were eventually forced onto a barren, desolate chunk of Oklahoma that was wanted by no one.

Then they discovered oil on the land. Amazingly, the Osage were able to keep the land and make huge amounts of money from the oil. For a time they were the richest people on Earth. Naturally, white people almost immediately began finding ways to cheat them out of it, even going so far as to murder a bunch of them.

Scorsese’s film is rich and long, beautiful and dark, and gives the audience a whole lot to think about. I very much want to watch it again, and again as I wasn’t able to take it all in the first time.

02. Past Lives

Past Lives is a film about choices and regret, about love and life and destiny. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo star as childhood sweethearts whose lives changed when her parents moved her from South Korea to Canada. Years later they reconnect via the Internet. But when things start to get serious she cuts the relationship short, wanting to forge her own life with her own career rather than running back to her homeland for him.

More years later she’s got her career, a husband, and a life. When he comes to the US to visit her all those questions of what might have been surface. Celine Yong, in her directorial debut, has created a film so filled with heart and beauty that I cannot wait to see what she does next. Both Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are magnificent.

oppenheimer

01. Oppenheimer

Going to the movies was a magical experience for me growing up. For a very long time, I adored that experience. But if I’m behind honest I don’t really miss it. When I do go to the movies now I’m usually disappointed. It is so expensive I feel like I have to dig into my savings in order for me and my family to go. The screens seem smaller than they used to, and the projectionists are lousy at their jobs. (if that even is a vocation anymore instead of just some teenager who punches a button on a computer screen). Nearly every time I’ve seen a movie in the theater over the last ten years there has been some problem, either the image is poorly framed, or the sound is off.

People are constantly talking or looking at their phones. Most theaters now have reclining seats that are more comfortable than the old fold-out variety but as they age they get worse. The last theater seat I saw in learned to the left uncomfortably, and they all screech and squeal as if in agony when you try to recline them.

I’m perfectly happy these days watching movies at home.

I really wish I’d seen Oppenheimer in the theaters. It is so big, so bold, so designed to be seen on the biggest screen possible I feel I missed something while watching it at home.

And still, it is my favorite movie of the year. Christoper Nolan’s biopic of the man who invented the atomic bomb is a stunning technical achievement, but it is also a fascinating dive into a complicated story. Nolan uses all his visual tricks to make the story huge, bombastic, and exciting. But it is the human story that is the most interesting.

Cillian Murphy is brilliant as Oppenheimer. I’m not sure that the film, or Nolan, or Murphy himself even like the guy. The film takes pains to show that he often isn’t the smartest guy in the room, but he was a very good organizer. He was able to get all the smartest guys and get them working toward the same goal.

There is a whole lot going on in the film, only a small part of which is whether or not they should have actually obtained that goal. That’s a bigger question than I have time for here, and the film deals with much more than I’m prepared to write about now. But I truly loved the movie and I’m happy to make it my number one film of the year.

And there you have it. My first foray into doing a Top 10 list of movies in a given year. Turns out it is rather difficult to write a couple of paragraphs on your favorite movies, but I hope I at least piqued your interest in a few films.

What were your favorite movies of 2023?

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Devil’s Honey (1986)

the devils honey

One of the things I miss about the old video rental stores is the ability to walk in and find something you’ve never heard of, that was completely obscure and weird. You’d take it home not knowing what to expect. Sometimes it was crap, but every now and then you’d find a real gem.

Sure, you can do that with streaming, but it just isn’t the same.

Growing up, we had this wonderful video store. It had previously been a Burger King, and when it closed down a place called Mega Movies moved in. They removed the kitchen providing a huge space for videos. I used to wander around that place for hours. I loved digging into the bowels of that place looking for something really weird.

As a virile teenage boy something really weird sometimes meant something with a scantily clad lady on the cover. I have this very distinct memory of a single scene from one of these movies. A beautiful woman was wearing nothing but a pair of pantyhose. A man stood nearby watching. She is repairing a run in her tights with some red nail polish which turns the man on, and soon enough she’s rubbing the polish in places nail polish should never go.

I couldn’t ever remember anything else about the movie. I’ve often wondered what that movie was, but I wasn’t about to go Googling “woman masturbates with nail polish” so it remained a mystery.

Until tonight. I have a list of unwatched horror movies and digging through it tonight for something to watch I landed on this movie, The Devil’s Honey by Lucio Fulci.

I’ve written about Fulcio before, he’s a guy who made a lot of movies – most of them low-budget, a lot of them full of blood and gore. They aren’t always great, but they are usually interesting.

I went into this movie expecting some good old-fashioned violence. I was not expecting a half-naked woman with nail polish. Certainly not the half-naked woman with nail polish locked inside my memory banks for going on three decades.

That particular scene happens within fifteen minutes of the opening credits. Before that, there is a scene in which a man gets a woman off by placing the end of a saxophone on her crotch and playing her a song.

This isn’t the Lucio Fulci the Godfather of Gore, this is Fulci’s erotic thriller. Except, that it isn’t particularly erotic or thrilling, but it is amazingly weird and I’m always down for that.

The saxophonist is Johnny (Stefano Madia) and the girl is Jessica (Blanca Marsillach). They are tempestuous lovers. He’s obsessed with sex (as one might suspect from the display with the sax). She wants something more than that, usually protests at his fondling, but usually gives in.

There’s also a surgeon, Dr. Wendell Simpson (Brett Halsey), who is uninterested in sex with his wife but likes to go out with prostitutes (one of whom is the girl with the nail polish).

One day Johnny takes a tumble and bangs his head on a rock. At first, he seems fine, but later he collapses and is rushed to the hospital where Dr. Simpson tries to save him. Tries, but fails.

Awash in grief Jessica begins calling the Dr. on the regular, asking him why he let Johnny die. Eventually, she kidnaps the man and does a little sadomasochistic torture on him while periodically flashing back to more idyllic times with Johnny.

Though I’ve seen 16 of his films and written about him at least five times, I’ve never thought Fulci was that particularly great a director. He can create some interesting imagery, and he’s a wizard with low-budget gore effects, but his stories are usually a mess and his camerawork is nothing special. A film like this where the gore is minuscule and the violence, no matter how psycho-sexual, is mostly sidelined or at least restrained (for a Fulci film) finds itself with not much of interest to say.

There is enormous amounts of gratuitous nudity, loads of misogyny, and the whole thing is ridiculously dopey. Yet I kind of dug it. It is so wild and weird in a way that only Lucio Fulci can be that I had to sit back and marvel at it.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

the masque of the read death

As I mentioned in my very first Friday Night Horror post I started watching horror movies on Friday night because my wife and daughter made a habit of watching silly Youtube videos upstairs in our bedroom. I’d go downstairs and put on a movie, and because it was late at night and because my wife wasn’t around to complain, I’d often put on a horror movie. Then it became a habit. Then I started writing about them each week.

My daughter is getting older. We still watch Doctor Who on most Friday nights, but it is often downstairs while eating our dinner. Then she wanders off to do her own thing and my wife winds up watching Youtube by herself while I find a horror movie to watch.

Lately, the daughter has often been invited over to a friend’s house for sleepovers on a Friday night leaving me and the wife home alone. This is not a problem as we enjoy spending time alone together.

But me being me I still want to get my Friday Night Horror movie in. I feel obligated to watch a movie and write about it no matter what (with few exceptions, including one that will likely happen in a couple of weeks). She doesn’t like horror movies so we compromise.

Vincent Price is a very nice compromise. (Also, as I write this I realize I’ve written some similar thoughts this past summer when my daughter was spending a Friday night at a friend’s).

I think I first came to know Vincent Price as that voice in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” although I think at that point he was just one of those celebrities that everybody knew about, even dumb little kids who had never seen one of his movies. I think he showed up pretty regularly on game shows or as a special guest in various dramas and mysteries. I also enjoyed him in Edward Scissorhands.

It has only been in the last decade or so that I’ve really dug into his body of work and come to love him. He was a wonderful dramatic actor for many years, but of course, he eventually became beloved as an icon of horror movies. He is always a delight.

He certainly is in tonight’s film, The Masque of the Red Death, the penultimate film in director Roger Corman’s cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations.

Price plays Prospero an evil prince living in medieval Italy. When a bout of a plague known as the Red Death is discovered Prospero invites various rich and noble folk into his castle for safety while allowing the common folk (or those who have offended him in some way) to suffer a long and horrible death (when he’s not outright killing them himself for pleasure).

He does allow three peasants inside his castle walls. Two men (played by David Weston and Nigel Green) dared to call him out on his evil deeds, and are now prisoners to be tortured. Francesca (Jane Asher) the daughter and fiancee of the men, begs for their lives and is invited to the castle to be Prospero’s plaything.

Turns out Prospero is a Satanist and his evil deeds are in service to the Dark Lord. Francesca is a devout Christian and he figures if he can turn her away from her faith it will prove his own dedication to Satan.

Things get a little bit crazy before Prospero gets his comeuppance and realizes that no matter what you believe it is death that comes for us all in the end.

Like a lot of Hammer Horror films The Masque of the Red Death mostly bores me with its plotting. There is a lot of plotting and talking and while it isn’t bad, it isn’t all that exciting either. Price (and everybody else, really) mostly plays it straight. He’s still a delightful screen presence, but there’s just a lot of exposition to get through, and I find myself drifting away while watching.

But what I absolutely adore about the film are the sets, the costumes, and the overall production design. It looks absolutely amazing. While watching my wife and I decided if we were rich we’d buy us an old gothic mansion and I’d wear nothing but satin dressing gowns and she’d don only long, flowing dresses. It doesn’t hurt that it was shot by Nicola Roeg who would go on to make some wonderful films himself.

So not a great movie, but one I still loved looking at.