Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

I considered going to see a screening of AKIRA last night - presumably the "restored" version you mention. I'd be sad to see "the shortcuts in the animation become more visible". I'm surprised that's a Thing but frankly HD has done no favors to many beloved spectacles from my childhood. I made the mistake of watching part of ALIENS in HD at some point. Cameron simply didn't mean for us to see all the detail in all the deep shadows... 

But every time I've ever revisited AKIRA I'm still impressed. The attention to detail and the character animation is impeccable. Maybe I'll stick to my old VHS in perpetuity.

[Dr. Whom]

Well, it is not disastrous and the general quality of animation remains excellent. But I get your remark about Aliens in HD. Some things were never meant to be seen in detail, and now they are. I understand the reasoning behind 'now in super HD 40K resolution', but it doesn't always serve the movie.

[indianasmith]

CAPTURE (2026) - This one was a hidden gem on Tubi.
A young woman receives a phone call that she has inherited a house that once belonged to her mother and father, whom she never knew.  When she arrives, she finds the house has a dark reputation with the locals - she also finds a 30 year old video camera and a box of home movies from the 1990's, which reveal a dark secret surrounding the deaths of her parents and a dozen or so other people that were murdered at the site.
   You would think a haunted VHS video camera sounds like a dumb premise, but this movie makes it terrifying!
4.5/5

[M.10rda]

THE WAITERS' BALL (1916):
This pre-Buster Keaton short from Roscoe Arbuckle finally clinches for me that Buster didn't "make" Roscoe funny, as Letterboxers often like to claim - though he did contribute a lot of value. Roscoe knew what he was doing behind and in-front of the camera on his own, and in fact WAITERS' BALL is tighter, slicker, and funnier than some of the Roscoe/Buster flicks that followed. Roscoe is an inept and mostly unflappable chef in a restaurant that by all rights should have no customers, yet still does. In lieu of Buster, perennial third wheel Al St. John plays Roscoe's foil, an equally inept and manic waiter. Al really shines in the spotlight (and in a bunch of close-ups) for a change, pulling some ridiculous faces and showing off snappy comic timing.

The first three-quarters of WAITERS' BALL is essentially plotless - "just" one rapid-fire restaurant gag after another, but executed flawlessly. There are visual gags (Roscoe loves a good background sign), there are verbal gags in the intertitles, there is prop humor, there is slapstick, there are bodies flying through the air, there is (as usual) irresponsible use of a firearm, and it goes on for fifteen minutes and it could go on for thirty! My Mom watched a Roscoe short w/ me last week and asked "Did they just make it up while the cameras were rolling?" This theory seems plausible for some Roscoe flicks but WAITERS' BALL feels like it had an elaborate screenplay that mapped out everything to the smallest gesture. Roscoe's camerawork and editing is especially crisp here. This also allows him to do a lot more personally/as a performer w/ smaller, subtler and more specific gestures and expressions.

The eponymous social function is briefly set up in the first fifteen minutes and then only commands about three minutes of screentime. It's the least important and least funny part of the movie.  Roscoe does end up in drag, however. He looks better as a dame than you might think! Actually he's got kind of a Commander Stephanie Sterling vibe goin' on.    3.5/5

[Jim H]

Resident Evil - Very solid adaptation of the games.  Funny, great lead performance, terrific pacing, constantly moving.  Loses me a little bit in the last act, where I think the humor of it undercuts something like what is happening TOO much, but still a really good film worth seeing on the big screen.  Guess Cregger don't miss, eh?

One thing I want to mention: the setup and some of the subtext to this is rather similar to Exit 8, which is the second best rated video game movie now.  Kind of interesting that.  It would be a mild spoiler to say what this is, just interesting to think about if you've seen both.

[M.10rda]

DREAMS OF THE RAREBIT FIEND: THE PET (1921):
This might be the original kaiju movie! Director Winsor McKay was the author of the "Little Nemo In Slumberland" comic strip and also the strip that shares its title w/ this short - apparently the title character loves eating "rarebit" (rabbit?) but it always gives him nocturnal indigestion and wacky dreams. In this 11-minute episode, he dreams that his wife adopts what at first looks like a tiny stray kitty cat, then starts to grow into something more doglike, then gradually more like a mini- (then full-size) rhino, and finally into a giant monster, which proceeds to do what all giant monsters tend to do - rampage and destroy the city. Obviously the air force must respond!

McKay made this cartoon 7 years after the primitive GERTIE THE DINOSAUR - and the evolution of both animation technology and McKay's own craft is remarkable. There's clear similarity to Miyazaki and Otomo, w/ stylized yet detailed backgrounds and then smartly strategic, convincing character movement against those backgrounds. THE PET would still look sturdy if it premiered today in an indie animation screening. McKay apparently made at least one other RAREBIT FIEND short, though it seems to have been lost.       Too bad!    4/5

[Dr. Whom]

Could it be this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rarebit

[M.10rda]

That must be it! That looks like it would give me fun dreams, too...!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Chopping Mall" (aka "Killbots," 1986)

A group of young mall employees plan an after hours party when the stores shut down for the night. Unfortunately the festivities are interrupted by the mall's trio of high tech security robots, who've turned homicidal after lightning strikes their central computer.
A fun, action packed B-movie classic with the most "80s" premise ever!

[M.10rda]

MY STARS (1926):
This is an 11-minute trifle enlivened by the pseudonymous direction of our old friend "William Goodrich" and his characteristic wild action (at times, anyway). Johnny Arthur is an uninspiring-looking boyfriend (so uninspiring that I failed to recall he was the male ingenue in the fun Lon Chaney horror THE MONSTER!) whose girlfriend would rather stay home and stare at glossy 8x10s of male movie stars than go out w/ him. (Actually she comes off as a big jerk and an airhead.) In a desperate attempt to get her attention, Johnny masquerades as a series of 20s heartthrobs and attempts to woo her, only to find each time that she's moved on to a new unattainable crush. When Arthur becomes Douglas Fairbanks, he leaps over walls and literally flies through the air. This part is a lot of fun to watch and clearly required aerial wires, further  affirming the spiritual connection between Roscoe movies and Chinese action flicks of the latter 20th century. (Of course Buster never needs wires to leap seven feet in the air and Roscoe is able to make guys fly onscreen just by throwin' 'em.)

The film appears to get bored w/ its own story and ends in a tangent where Arthur and his girlfriend steal and fly an aeroplane (and naturally crash it). Studios kept giving Roscoe a lot of dough to spend on these shorts!    3/5

I'd read that Roscoe had a cameo and had to go back and FF through this a second time to spot him. Indeed he appears as a mailman in a few shots but is tough to recognize because he's lost a ton of weight and looks trim and healthy. (I wish I knew his diet strategy!) MY STARS is thought to have come out in 1926 and by his cameo in 1927's RED MILL he's heavier again but shaves his head of beautiful hair to disguise himself. It's tough to keep the weight off!

[M.10rda]

THE MOVIES (1925):
If you keep watching silent comedies compulsively, you realize there weren't a couple of other guys trying to be Keaton and Chaplin and Lloyd, there was an endless parade of mostly interchangeable guys, and now I learn there was at least one guy, Lloyd Hamilton, trying to fill the large void left when Roscoe Arbuckle stopped playing leads onscreen. No one can ever be Roscoe, alas, but he's behind the camera doing his best w/ doughy & mischievous proto-Roscoe Hamilton, who plays two roles here. The main role is a big jerk and kind of a sociopath, who spends the first 10 minutes (which feel like 25) wandering around picking unnecessary fights w/ strangers. The second role is movie star "Lloyd Hamilton", who appears in the second 10 minutes (which feel like 15), which I guess provides the audience w/ assurance that Hamilton himself is a nice guy and it's just the main character in THE MOVIES who is Chaotic Evil. Predictably, Hamilton's lead proceeds to wreak even more havoc for the Real Hamilton.

THE MOVIES is one of the weakest Arbuckle auteurial efforts I've seen, though to be fair most of them have been Good to Amazing. But THE MOVIES is interesting as it represents (alongside CHARACTER STUDIES and MY STARS) a side-trip for Roscoe through Meta movies about Movies. The second half of THE MOVIES takes us inside the studio system - onset, backstage, in the commissary, et al - which is priceless as a historical Primary Source. It's also tempting to read the second half of THE MOVIES as Roscoe trying to have some fun at the expense of his own cursed reputation. Both he and Evil Lloyd Hamilton are husky gentlemen who get in trouble for bein', well... too thirsty! Of course IRL Roscoe was an evidently nice (if scrumpy) guy who privately retained the loyalty of his colleagues after being unjustly accused of sex crimes. Publicly, though, he must've felt more like Evil Lloyd, getting chased off the set en masse by both the police and the entire production company.    3/5

[lester1/2jr]

Hauntedween (1991) - There are low budget, irreverent, and amazing movies like, off the top of my head, "Little Corey Gorey", but this one, while irreverent and low budget, is not brilliant, but is still mostly fun.

Cut rate Animal House characters similarly need to save the frat, so they put together a haunted house. Translation: it's a sex comedy AND a straight to video horror movie. Alas, it's regional and a little too amateurish and timid to be super successful at either of those things, but they do try. The head frat guy is likeable and his blonde girlfriend is really pretty hot. The extras all very much look like people off the street/ friends of friends of the cast. The dialogue and line deliveries in general could have been much stronger. There's an awful lot of just walking around the frat house saying  stuff.

Similarly to the aforementioned Little Corey Gorey, this was released in the early 90's but has it's heart much more in the 80's. (Actually, I think LCG was filmed in the 80's and released later). The last third works up a decent head of steam and is clearly where they put the most attention/ budget. There's even a Hauntedween title song and an authentic regional (Kentucky? ) college rock band that sounds like George Thorogood meets REM or something playing at a party.

4.25/ 5 some would likely rate it higher for it's historical/ bad movie significance. I would watch it again. It almost becomes a real horror movie in the that last act.

[M.10rda]

GOOD NIGHT, NURSE! (1918):
"Can you imagine America's human tank in the role of a nurse?" Roscoe Arbuckle Movies fall into rough sub-genres, where he spends a year or so making a bunch of movies about the movies, or about poor rural folk, or about restaurants, or whatevs. Some of those sub-genres overlap and this one intersects w/ restaurant comedy WAITERS' BALL as both belong to the sub-genre where Roscoe and/or Buster got into Drag for a while. Roscoe is "in the role of a nurse" for less than 5 minutes of this (epic, sprawling) 23-minute short, and actually it would've been a better and funnier film overall if the entire film was about him playing a large and flirtatious cis-female nurse.  But whatevs. My bigger/biggest issue w/ the film is that Roscoe uses Al St. John in two roles here, and the first one is in brownface as an organ grinder.  I don't know why this was necessary, as actually the entire first act of the film (where alkie Roscoe wreaks drunken havoc on his wife and she commits him to an asylum) is mostly unfunny and unnecessary. (The actual capuchin monkey that accompanies Al the non-white organ grinder is pretty funny, though.)

But then Roscoe is trapped in a mental institution run by mad doctor Buster and chief henchmen Al (again). Roscoe doesn't mind being institutionalized when he checks out foxy madwoman Alice Lake, giving a very accurate prediction of the madwomen Helena Bonham would start playing 70 years later. But then Alice wants to escape so Roscoe tries to help her, and wackiness ensues. Among other tactics to avoid re-apprehension, Roscoe steals a nurse's uniform from the same plus-sized actress he stole the party dress from in WAITERS' BALL, and hence we have the eye-popping raison d'etre for this film's title.

I suppose mileage will vary depending on your taste for Drag and Camp, but for at least a couple of minutes, GOOD NIGHT, NURSE! is laugh-out-loud hilarious. The funniest part to me makes almost no sense - a good minute and change where Doctor Keaton lays eyes on Nurse Arbuckle across a hallway, and vice versa, and they make lascivious eyes at each other at great length, both performing ad infinitum a gesture that must've had more cultural cachet in the Roaring Teens: each sticks a finger in their own mouth, sucks on it, and then presses it against a wall or door or doorframe while continuing their googly-eyes shtick. Okay, Roscoe wants to be a convincing large female nurse, I get it - and Buster (I guess) just decides this large female nurse is the hottest woman he's ever seen - yet there is a "Blue Rose" element to this scene that remains mystifying. Yet both actors are so committed to this nonsense, and it goes on for such duration, that it seriously made me lose my marbles (in a good way).

But eventually Nurse Roscoe is found out, and the chase is on again, and Buster performs several impossible leaps into and through the air, and Roscoe (a human tank, but a fleet one) enters a marathon and is chased on foot by the entire staff of the asylum. Roscoe the Director doesn't cut Roscoe the Actor any slack - he hoofs it convincingly for long distances in wide shot, ahead of a bunch of skinnier guys who are also acting like they're running fast. Roscoe and Buster were their own special FX department.   3.5/5   

[M.10rda]

OH DOCTOR! (1917):
A year earlier and unlike GOOD NIGHT, NURSE!, this one really has no connection to healthcare except for Roscoe playing a Doctor (who we only ever see outside of his practice) - but, both OH DOCTOR! and GOOD NIGHT, NURSE! suggest a traditional/farcical French influence of Moliere upon Arbuckle's comedy. Moliere's funniest plays are his Sganarelle plays, which all involve characters pretending to be doctors in pursuit of sex and money. Doctor Arbuckle here is a classic Sganarelle, shirking his work to chase ponies and ladies at the track even though he's got a long-suffering wife and a child (Buster in short pants!) at home. Moliere wrote Satyr(e) plays and Doctor Roscoe is a real monster here - but also ala Moliere, the audience's sympathy shifts to Roscoe when even more reprehensible characters try to scam him and his family out of everything they've got.

Some Arbuckle movies are outrageously funny and some are just pleasant, but all of them so far have been distinct - the guy gravitated towards similar themes but he never made the same movie twice. OH DOCTOR! is a 23-minute epic w/ tons of plot and complex French farcical choreography. The characters, though broad, are more motivated than in many of his films, and you kind of care about them (or loathe them) beyond just laughing at them. There are fewer memorable laughs than other Roscoe flicks from the period but his direction is very tight and I actually wanted to see the conflict resolved in favor of the Doctor's family. The two female characters (the sexy Con Woman and Missus Doctor) have more to do onscreen than the women in most Arbuckle movies and are even alone onscreen or together onscreen w/o men a bit. Buster is secondary as the neglected/abused son, thus Al gets a beefy role as the Bad Guy. For the first time it occurs to me that Al is a way more plausible Leading Man than Roscoe or Buster - he looks like Jude Law w/ some crazy Jim Carrey energy. He also gets to perform several impressive stunts that normally Buster would handle unilaterally.

As often was the case in Roscoe's movies (and personal life), cops are no help at all and/or only make matters worse. Roscoe skips cross-dressing this time and instead runs around in a cop uniform for a while at the climax. In the end, Evil is punished in several ways and, in a universe devoid of moral authority, Doctor Roscoe is almost rewarded for his nefarious habits... almost.    3.5/5    Not super-funny yet still extremely interesting.

[M.10rda]

LOVEMANIA (1924):
Al St. John was Roscoe Arbuckle's nephew, which seems like pure nepotism if you watch half a dozen Arbuckle films where Al appears (often in beards and wigs) but doesn't do much, but then eventually if you watch a bunch where Roscoe gives Al a lot to do, you realize Al was a capable physical comedian on his own, as well as being a lot better looking than either Roscoe or Buster. To the best of my knowledge, LOVEMANIA was Al's biggest bid for leading man stardom (or at least the one that's survived and/or been remembered). He's top-billed and also credited as writer/director, though the publicly-banished Roscoe helped him in both departments and his touch is clearly felt.

Al gets home from his secret wedding to receive a classic BREWSTER'S MILLIONS-style letter from his rich uncle, a weird dude who "hate(s) women" (that's a direct quote) and will happily give Al a check for one million dollars if Al promises to never get married. Since Al likes his new wife and her family, they contrive the kind of scheme that only (barely) makes functional sense in a dumb comedy - they transform her family's (already large) estate into a mental institution and invite the uncle over to the house to get a load of his nervously broken down nephew, who is so tragically in love he has gone hopelessly mad. That's about the last part of the story that made any sense at all to me.

What follows, though, is about fifteen minutes of unrelenting Arbuckle/St. John-style mayhem - very enthusiastically and amusingly executed. Al learned well at Buster's side and is eager to demonstrate as many Keatonesque leaps, lunges, pratfalls, and other unwise stunts as possible. None of the action is remotely motivated by plot or logic, which in this kind of action showcase....... is just fine! There are two moments that stand tall in the Arbuckle filmography. One is a running head-first leap out a second-floor window that terminates in Al landing directly on his head, then immediately stands up and runs away. Amidst raucous laughter, I had to wind this back and watch it three times to recognize clearly that a dummy was used in conjunction w/ a pretty decent jump cut in the wide shot. GREAT GAG. The second standout moment is easier to figure out in real time - Al intermittently drives a car (poorly) but repeatedly climbs into the backseat to hector his uncle. But it's still executed beautifully.

The rich uncle, who looks and acts like Buffalo's foremost theatre critic  , nevertheless declares that he's actually a heterosexual at the denouement. If LOVEMANIA came out in the 80s, reviewers would universally harangue it as being terminally brainless, like they did w/ stuff like WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S and POLICE AVADEMY 4. Children (of all ages, myself included) would still laugh.    3.5/5    Maybe reviewers and audiences in 1924 didn't take to LOVEMANIA, though. Al never became a leading man, though he did eventually parlay his gifts into playing sidekick "Fuzzy Saint John" in many dozens of westerns through the early 60s. I hope that was a comfy and pleasant life for him.