Late Stage Films

 It's easy to say with 20/20 hindsight that the original "Scream" film predicted the state of horror in the 2020s. Our two extremes now are the intellectual exercises popularized by A24 and the aggressively ironic horror-comedies produced mostly by Blumhouse. "Scream" saw these sides as complements to each other. Why can't you use knowledge of the horror genre seeped in irony to make some sort of intellectual point about the horror genre? The most recent reboot did not totally nail that balance for me. The script felt a bit too invested in meta-commentary to the point where none of the characters felt interesting or meaningful. "Scream 5" feigns having something to say about horror reboots (or legacy-quels, or whatever word you want to use here), but the main thing it satirizes is the reddit nerds who lost their minds when Rian Johnson subverted expectations with his Star Wars flick. It wasn't for me. Worst of all, none of the set pieces after ...

"The Last Temptation of Christ" feels like a true historical epic despite apparently being made in a rushed and cheap manner. Peter Gabriel's music is a fantastic blend of Middle Eastern and prog rock instrumentals, and the photography is gorgeous. It also has a lot of thoughtful big ideas. Portraying Jesus as having some negative thoughts and feelings is I guess edgy and challenging, but it's not the most interesting thing in the world to me. A lot of the traits he gets here (fear of the future, regret for not helping more people, a weird emotional detachment from the people he does help) are pretty common to the protagonists of writer Paul Schrader. It's good stuff, but purely as a character study I suppose that "First Reformed" is a "better" script. The themes, though. The themes on display here really get at the core of what Christianity is, and they had me thinking about the film for days after I saw it. Here are some of those thoughts. 1)...

 Was Billy Wilder ever un -cool? No, I doubt it. But one of the surprises of the newest edition of the Sight & Sound poll is how well-represented Wilder is. He placed 3 films in the top 100 - "Sunset Blvd." (#78), "The Apartment" (#54), and "Some Like It Hot" (#38). On the surface all of this love seems excessive. Without dissing Wilder per se, citing him 3 times is a bit silly when there's a whole slew of other legends of the art form with 1 or 0 mentions (to name a specific contemporary I personally prefer, Douglas Sirk landed only 1 film in the top 100).   "The Apartment" is a film which I fully appreciate and understand the appeal of. "Some Like It Hot" is... not. And that's a bit strange, I feel, because in a lot of ways those are extremely similar movies. What Wilder does in both cases is craft a dark comedy about the relationship between sex and power - a novel, bordering on unheard of idea at the time (at least in th...

 Did you watch the Dick Tracy TCM special in which Warren Beatty interviews slash fights with "Dick Tracy", as portrayed by Warren Beatty, about whether Warren Beatty's 1990 "Dick Tracy" film is a good adaptation of the character Dick Tracy? I sure did. It was something. Not something good, or especially interesting, but it was compelling and original. The snide insult here is that I've just described most Beatty projects from the last 30 years. What fascinates me about the TCM special is that it's a perfect microcosm of Beatty's whole vibe . He is at once the most conceited man in Hollywood and more willing to make fun of himself than the average movie star. Making a slapdash TV show where Warren Beatty talks to another Warren Beatty about Warren Beatty is a move that requires a monstrous ego. This is the man who pridefully took credit for Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" being about him, after all. But if you go just a tiny bit belo...