Manhattan (1979) ****

The great thing about Woody Allen is that he didn't peak early in his career. In my opinion, he has done some of his best work in his golden years, particularly 2011's "Midnight in Paris." Nonetheless, some of his early works are classics, and “Manhattan” is one of them.

Basically, this is a movie about a bunch of hot messes. 42-year-old Isaac (Woody Allen) is a divorced TV writer dating a 17-year-old girl (Mariel Hemingway). Meanwhile, his married best friend, Yale (Michael Murphy) is having an affair with a pedantic intellectual named Mary (Diane Keaton). When Isaac and Mary fall in love, it turns everyone's world upside down.

It would be easy to dismiss these characters as a bunch of useless, pseudo-intellectual urbanites, who do no useful labor and produce nothing except a miasma of neuroticism and narcissism. Not to mention perversion! I mean, what the hell is a grown-ass man doing dating a 17-year-old, and where are her parents in all of this? The genius of “Manhattan,” however, is its self-deprecation. There's nothing you can say about these nitwits that Allen doesn't poke fun at himself.

This is just a witty, smart movie that should be on every cineaste's list. Allen and Keaton, in particular, are excellent. I was a bit surprised, however, to learn that Mariel Hemingway scored an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She is beautiful, but I found her flat acting to be one of the weak points of the film. The other weak point is the completely sexless nature of this movie about sex. Whatever you think about a grown man sleeping with a 17-year-old girl, it should at least be hot! Likewise, the intellectual connection between Isaac and Mary should have a corresponding physical chemistry. All of these characters seem like they've been neutered. Beyond that, the film is witty and neurotic, like Allen, himself, and a great example of his early work.

4 stars out of 5

Phantasm (1979) *

This is an old horror film, considered a classic, that I had never gotten around to watching. It wasn't director Don Coscarelli's first project, but it's the one that launched his career, and he is still most famous for his “Phantasm” franchise. Coscarelli made this, the first in the series, for only around $300,000. That would be quite a bargain if the movie were even marginally good.

The story concerns a couple of brothers, Jody and Mike, who discover odd goings-on at the local funeral home. The exceptionally-tall undertaker (known in the Phantasm movies as The Tall Man) is taking dead bodies and shrinking them into 3-foot-tall slaves. He keeps some of them around to serve him, and others he ships off through a dimensional portal for unspecified purposes. To help with his dirty work, he has a silver pool ball that flies around and can drill into people's heads.

It all sounds like it could be good. Throw in some titties and some fake blood, and you've got a movie! Unfortunately, the thing is a complete mess. I haven't seen such an aggressively nonsensical movie since “Manos: The Hands of Fate.” I have no problem with the cheap special effects or the weirdness, but a movie should, at a minimum, follow some sort of narrative with at least internal logic. “Phantasm” just jumps from scene to scene, sometimes abandoning entire storylines. The worst part is the “It was all a dream --- or was it?!” ending.

I've read a few articles on the making of “Phantasm,” and it sounds like Coscarelli had no idea where he was going with it. The script was constantly re-written during filming, and he filmed several different endings. The original cut ran for around 3 hours, which Coscarelli was forced to cut to the released movie's 90 minutes. I'm thinking he cut the movie in half and then submitted the wrong half.

1 star out of 5

Office Space (1999) *****

It's time for me to write about one of my favorite movies. I've loved it since way before I started keeping this movie journal, re-watching it every year or so. Lately, I've seen a lot of good films that I rated in the 4-star range, and I've been asking myself why I don't give some of these movies 5 stars. Re-watching “Office Space” reminded me that 5 stars is reserved for a truly superior class of movie, the kind that gives me nothing but sheer joy from beginning to end.

Ron Livingston plays Peter, a bored, depressed office drone. He starts every day in bumper-to-bumper traffic, then toils away at tedious computer tasks in a cubicle. Waiting at the end of the day is a thin-walled, featureless apartment and a shrew of a girlfriend. Watching his youth slip away under these conditions is so depressing that Peter agrees to try an occupational hypnotherapist. When the therapist keels over mid-procedure, Peter is left in a prolonged hypnotized state that changes his entire attitude. He achieves his lifelong dream of “doing nothing” and stops going to work. He also drops his cheating girlfriend and asks out the cute waitress he has been obsessed with. “New Peter” seems on the road to financial ruin, but he is happy for the first time in his life.

Peter's bosses are understandably ready to fire him, but the workforce consultants brought in by his company to help with layoffs are actually impressed by his newfound confidence and candor, describing him as “a straight-shooter with upper-level management written all over him.” While Peter gets offered a promotion, his buddies Samir and Michael Bolton (no relation to the singer) get laid off. To avenge this injustice, the three cook up a computer program to slowly steal money from the company.

Few artworks have captured the misery of “1^st World Problems” better than “Office Space.” Peter has an apartment, a car, and a job in an air-conditioned office, which makes him a wealthy man by the standards of the majority of humans on this earth. So why isn't he happy? He experiences the misery of having things that don't feed his soul, but are just good enough to keep him from seeking something better. Hypnosis frees him to think about what actually makes him happy, and working in a cubicle ain't it!

“Office Space” is Mike Judge's first live-action film, and like his later movies ("Idiocracy" and "Extract"), it did poorly at the box office. The studio had no idea how to market a quirky, workplace comedy with a gangsta-rap soundtrack. Even the movie poster sucked, a picture of a guy covered in post-it notes that, from a distance, looked like Big Bird from “Sesame Street”. Fortunately, the movie found its legs on video, becoming a cult classic of epic proportions.

There is so much to love about this film; every scene is a delight. There's Michael Bolton, the co-worker with a chip on his shoulder about having the same name as the “no-talent ass-clown” singer. (Michael Bolton the singer, by the way, has come to embrace the movie, even doing a funnyordie skit where he acts out some of Michael Bolton's scenes.) There's the often-quoted passive-aggressive boss, Lumbergh: “That'd be great, m-kay?” Then, of course, there's the most gangsta scene in a movie, ever, where they take the fax machine out in a field and destroy it.

“Office Space” is a character study in how different people approach work. Peter's friend, Samir, an immigrant, is just happy to have a job. When Peter asks, “What if we're still doing this when we're 50?,” Samir's response is, “It would be nice to have that kind of job security.” Tom Smykowski, of course, is in his 50's, having reached a point in his job where he doesn't do much, and he's just hoping he can make it to retirement before someone figures that out. Michael Bolton complains bitterly about his job, but really, he's content to stick it out; complaining is more fun than figuring out something else to do with his life. Then there's Lawrence (Diedrich Bader), Peter's construction-worker next-door-neighbor, and one of the best movie characters ever. Lawrence has a lower-status job than Peter, but he's generally a happy guy, and Peter eventually comes to realize that that isn't such a bad deal. The point of the movie isn't that everyone should quit their day job and start working construction, but that job status and money aren't the most important things in life.

If anyone reading this hasn't seen the movie, then I implore you, make space in your life for “Office Space.” It will make you laugh until your face hurts, and it might just change your life!

5 stars out of 5

Metropolitan (1990) ****

I've figured out that Whit Stillman's recurring theme is the fin de seicle, or “end of the era.” The term most commonly refers to the end of the nineteenth century, but I think it's an artful way to describe the unraveling of any situation. In Stillman's "Barcelona," a pair of cousins enjoy a thriving social life in the titular city, going out with a coterie of beautiful, Spanish girls. In "The Last Days of Disco," a group of friends enjoys the disco nightlife of New York City. Whether with a whimper or with a bang, these situations come to an end, forcing the characters to move on to something new.

In “Metropolitan,” Stillman's first film, college student Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) stumbles into a nice situation. With his prep-school background, Tom knows a few moneyed, New York people, but he himself has limited means after his parents' divorce. In a rented tux, he attends a debutante ball on a whim, and winds up getting invited to a swank after-party. This small group of wealthy college students welcome Tom into their group, and they spend night after night talking and drinking, drinking and talking.

What do they talk about? They talk about the kind of things young people always talk about. They talk about books and philosophy. (“You don't have to have read a book to have an opinion on it.”) They talk about the travails of being who they are, the Urban Haute Bourgoisie. (“I can't believe you're actually going to play bridge, such a cliché of bourgeois life.” “That's exactly why I play. I don't enjoy it one bit.”) They talk about other people. (“Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and a thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.”)

Does all this chit-chat get tiresome? Honestly, it does not. Stillman's script is so witty and the cast so invested in playing it straight, that it's just one hilarious line after another. It's also a good story. I've made it sound like nothing happens, but in the midst of all this talking, Tom grapples with the challenges of being the poor one in the group, while his new friends consider the question of how to be a success when they were born into money. Another friend (Chris Eigeman) faces the possibility of being disinherited. Also, there's a love triangle. Not to forget that fin de seicle motif; the group starts to disintegrate. All of this takes place over the Christmas holiday, a reminder of how intense brief spans of time can be when you're young.

Every serious film fan needs to see at least one movie by Whit Stillman, and this is as good a place to start as any. Like Tarantino or Scorcese, Stillman makes a distinctive style of film, and if it's your cup of tea, you will love these movies. In their own way, these talky movies are action movies. Talk, after all, is the action that fills most of our lives.

4 stars out of 5

It: Chapter Two (2019) ***

(Warning: Contains spoilers for the first installment of "It" from 2017)

Adapting Stephen King's work to the screen has always been a tricky affair. King is a great storyteller and a great creator of horror because he knows that the scariest thing in this world is the human mind. His stories may have a supernatural element, but the biggest monsters in his stories are always the human ones. So much of his horror takes place in his characters' twisted, confused, flawed, utterly human heads that it's hard to translate that onto a movie or TV screen. You get the occasional classic, like “Carrie” or “The Shining,” but a lot of King movies just suck.

This is the second effort at King's excellent novel “It.” I finally saw part of the 1990 TV mini-series, and it is un-watchable! Tim Curry is fairly memorable as Pennywise the clown, but the rest of the cast, including Harry Anderson and John Ritter, don't carry their weight. The soft-focus cinematography is very dated, and the special effects look like something from a 1970s Dr.Who episode.

Fortunately, director Andy Muschietti has done a much better job at this iteration. I especially liked his first installment, “It,” which came out in 2017 and focuses on a group of kids in Derry, Maine who call themselves The Losers. All damaged or bullied in some way, The Losers do battle against an ancient evil living under their town, an evil which rises every 27 years to feed on children. “It” feeds on fear and can take on any form, but it mostly appears as a clown called Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). The Losers defeat It in 1989, driving It into hibernation. They then grow apart, grow into adults, and most of them leave Derry.

“It: Chapter Two” picks up in 2016. Only Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) still lives in Derry, and oddly, only he has any memory of Pennywise and the Losers' fight against It. The other Losers have managed to forget all that stuff. When kids start disappearing again, Mike recognizes what is going on and notifies his old friends. None of them know exactly what the phone call is about, but they know that they have to return to Derry, and they know it's for something bad.

The first chapter of this story was tightly wound, perfectly cast and paced. Unfortunately, Chapter Two is a bit uneven. They recruited some top-notch talent for the grown-up Losers, including Jessica Chastain as Beverly, James McAvoy as Bill, and, best of all, Bill Hader as jokester Richie. Bill Skarsgard once again is chilling as the murderous clown. The plot, however, goes in fits and starts. I think the problem may be that the novel was too much story for a single movie, but not enough for two, especially movies of this length. Where the first movie maintained laser focus on the kids, Chapter Two bounces back and forth between 1989 and 2016, and its 2 hour 49 minute run-time feels padded. Despite the leisurely storytelling pace, some of the main plot points feel forced, a sign of lazy writing.

With two really long movies to work with, you wouldn't think Andy Muschietti would have had to leave out anything from the novel, but one of my favorite concepts from the book is missing in the movies. In the book, It doesn't just feed on the town, It also feeds the town. Due to Its magic, Derry is way more prosperous than the usual small town, and the adults are complicit on some level with the arrangement. As long as their own children aren't involved, adults in Derry tend to avoid seeing what is happening in the town. It was an interesting commentary on people's ability to ignore injustice and atrocity when it benefits them, and I don't know why this motif didn't make it into the movie.

Despite my quibbles, “It: Chapter Two” is still decent entertainment. 2017's “It” is excellent, and having watched that, you may as well settle in for Chapter Two. I suggest limited expectations, and given the length of the movie, a comfortable couch.

3 stars out of 5

Spenser Confidential (2020) **

Back when people still watched network TV, there were three kinds of movies: The first kind were the ones shown in cinemas, the Real Movies. They might later get shown on TV, but to be a Real Movie, it had to start out on the big screen. Then there were Straight-to-Video Movies, which were usually exploitative and almost always trash. Somewhere in the middle were Made-for-TV Movies. I think some of them were pretty decent, but I can't honestly remember any of them. I guess that's one of the defining features of TV movies; they are forgettable. 

I suppose the Straight-to-Video market has transitioned to BlueRay, but most people don't really buy their movies anymore. TV movies must still exist, but I cut the cord a long time ago, so it's been ages since I saw one or even an ad for one. What we do have in abundance now are Straight-to-Streaming Movies, and the jury is still out on them. Theoretically, the economics of streaming services should allow lesser-known, lower-budget, artsy films a chance to shine. The Straight-to-Video market had the same potential, though, and we know how that worked out. The difference is that back when we had video stores, you didn't walk into the store and within 3 seconds have someone in your face, pushing some trashy, Straight-to-Video movie on you. Netflix, on the other hand, automatically starts playing the trailer for whatever you scroll to, and they are really pushing their straight-to-streaming “Netflix Originals” these days. “Spenser Confidential” is one of these.

If you are familiar with the Robert B. Parker novels about the private detective, Spenser, and his shady ally, Hawk, or maybe have seen the TV series based on the books, “Spenser: For Hire,” then forget all that. Other than character names, “Spenser Confidential” has nothing in common with what came before. Mark Wahlberg plays Spenser, a disgraced Boston cop jailed for assaulting his police Captain. We meet Spenser as he is finishing up a 5-year prison sentence. Free at last, Spenser reunites with his father figure, Henry (Alan Arkin), avoids his ex-girlfriend Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger), and meets Henry's new protege, an aspiring MMA fighter named Hawk (Winston Duke.) Spenser's plan is to learn to drive a truck, then have a quiet life out West. When his former captain, a corrupt cop, gets murdered, Spenser is drawn back into the world of crime and police corruption.

If you ignore the dissimilarity to previous Spenser stories, it should be possible to enjoy this as a straight thriller, but its charms are limited. The thing absolutely reeks of lazy writing and bad acting. The actors aren't given much to work with, and they do a bad job with what they have.

A friend of a friend writes e-books, meaning books that will never see print. He just loads them up on Amazon, and people pay a buck or two to read them on their tablets. He has said that the key to that kind of work is not producing good writing, but producing lots of it. People will apparently read anything if you simply ensure that they never run out of content. Netflix seems to be operating on the same principle. I can't honestly think of a reason for a movie like “Spenser Confidential” to exist, but I guess some people will watch anything.

2 stars out of 5

A Boy and His Dog (1975) ***

So, you see this title, and you figure it must be a sweet, family-friendly movie about the love between a boy and his dog. No clue that this is actually a twisted, gonzo tale of sex and survivalism in a post-apocalyptic world, featuring a telepathic dog.

Don Johnson plays the boy, Vic, who roams the post-nuclear wasteland of what used to be Kansas with his dog, Blood, who talks to him telepathically. The boy takes care of finding food, shelter, and the like. Blood's job is to sniff out girls, as Vic is more interested in getting laid than getting fed. They avoid murderous gangs and radioactive mutants until they meet a girl who entices Vic to an underground city, threatening the boy/dog partnership.

Based on the short stories of Harlan Ellison, “A Boy and His Dog” was not a box office success, but it has become a cult classic. I can see why. It's like “Mad Max” with a sense of humor, and the theme of a young man who only cares about getting laid is really realistic. The young Don Johnson is perfect as Vic, and Susanne Benton is cute enough to lure a teenage boy underground. Even the canine actor who plays Blood is good.

Make no mistake, this is a a cult classic, not a slickly produced mainstream film with a traditional, romantic story. It's weird, but good weird!

3 stars out of 5

Urban Cowboy (1980) ****1/2

Sissy: “You a real cowboy?”

Bud: “Well, that depends on what you think a real cowboy is.”

This exchange defines the movie “Urban Cowboy,” a movie that itself redefined the concept of what a cowboy is, not to mention ushering in a surge in soft-country music sales.

The movie got its start as a September 1978 article in Esquire magazine, which happens to be the same publication that, two years earlier, published “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” the article that led to a little film called “Saturday Night Fever.” “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy: America's Search for True Grit” was born when Esquire editor Clay Felker visited Houston from New York to give a talk at Rice University. Afterwards, a Texas journalist took Felker out on the town, and when Felker saw Gilley's bar, bigger than a football field, with its mechanical bull and giant dance floor, he knew this was something people needed to read about.

Felker summoned writer Aaron Latham, who had roots in Texas. Latham spent his nights at Gilley's, meeting regulars and looking for a hook to hang his story on. He found it in Dew and Betty, a couple of teenagers who met at Gilley's, got married quick, and eventually split up, because, really, what does an eighteen-year-old know about making a marriage work? During one of the periods when their on-again-off-again relationship was on the rocks, Betty started riding the mechanical bull, just because Dew told her she couldn't. A story like that is lightning in a bottle, and Latham wound up with a hit article that got optioned into a hit movie.

John Travolta wasn't the obvious choice to play a cowboy. After “Saturday Night Fever,” he was the disco guy. Debra Winger, on the other hand, was mostly a nobody. They turned out to be perfect as Bud and Sissy, a couple of beautiful, young rednecks, each dumber than the other. The supporting cast has some gems, including Barry Corbin and Brooke Alderson as Bud's aunt and uncle. Madolyn Smith Osborn is excellent as Pam, the rich girl who tries to steal Bud away. Her cheekbones are even better than John Travolta's. Scott Glenn, of course, is pitch-perfect as the dangerous, ex-con cowboy.

And then there's Gilley's, the biggest supporting character of the film. Much of the filming was done in the actual bar, using real Gilley-rats as extras. The point of the story is that all these country people are drawn to the city for oil jobs, and they want something to remind them of their country roots. That's why they wear cowboy boots and drive pickups around suburban Dallas. Gilley's gave them that sense of community with like-minded people.

The country music resurgence spawned by “Urban Cowboy” eventually fell out of favor, criticized as “not real country,” as other, more traditional acts took over the country music scene. It's the same cycle that always goes through styles of music. It's true that a lot of that late 70's/early 80's, highly-produced country music is indistinguishable from the soft-rock of the time, but it doesn't mean the music was all bad. You cannot deny that “Urban Cowboy” has a great soundtrack. It's a mix of classic rock (“Lyin Eyes” by The Eagles, and Mickie Gilley doing a cover of “Stand By Me”), classic country (“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by The Charlie Daniels Band), country-blues (“Don't It Make You Wanna Dance” by Bonnie Raitt), and soft country (“Could I Have This Dance” by Anne Murray). In the end, this question of which songs are “real country” is similar to the question of “What makes a real cowboy?” It depends on what your definition is.

4.5 stars out of 5

PS - It turns out I reviewed this back in 2015. I ranked it higher with this viewing, and I'll stand by that. The movie has really held up over time!

Contagion (2011) ****

Steven Soderbergh's pandemic movie from 2011 may be way too on-the-nose for our current situation, but everyone seems to be streaming it, so I decided to join the herd.

When a mysterious, new respiratory virus spreads across the globe, an ensemble cast works to decode the virus, contain its spread with social distancing and quarantines, and develop a vaccine. Meanwhile, civil disorder takes hold, as the economy crashes, people get hungry, and looters loot.

Soderbergh does a pretty good job here mixing the macro and the micro. As scientists across the globe collaborate to develop a vaccine, we also get invested in individual stories, like Matt Damon's widowed dad, trying to keep himself and his daughter safe in a quarantine zone. Excellent performances also come from Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jennifer Ehle, and Marion Cotillard, to name a few. Laurence Fishburne plays the same Laurence Fishburne character he plays in every movie. (The guy has a deep voice and an interesting face, but his acting range is more like an acting hot-plate.)

The best thing about “Contagion” is how much it gets the science right. The movie dives deep into epidemiology, public health, and virology. Kate Winslet's character explains the concept of R0 (the average number of people that a person with a given disease will spread it to.) Ehle's character explains the difference between vaccine types and the difficulty of growing viruses in cell cultures. In the future, according to Star Trek, a single general practitioner like Dr. McCoy will be able to whip up a vaccine over a dramatic few days. Here in the Dark Ages, we still have to do it over months, with lots of failed attempts and dead monkeys. “Contagion” shows all that, putting it up there with real-science movies like "The Martian" and "Moon." The film not only promotes science, it also confronts anti-science. Jude Law plays a blogger who enriches himself by promoting a homeopathic cure and criticizing vaccines. There's a great scene where a TV news show interviewing a leading scientist cuts away to give equal time to Law's character, who isn't a scientist or even a serious journalist.

All of which is to say that watching “Contagion” is just like watching real life right now, but with better-looking people. You might think that all that scientific explanation, and the lack of car chases or a romance, make this a dry, difficult film to watch. You couldn't be more wrong. Steven Soderbergh has created here a truly gripping story that will have you on the edge of your seat. If you have exhausted all your escapist entertainment options and are ready to truly embrace this pandemic, then check it out. But wash your hands first!

4 stars out of 5

Rosemary's Baby (1968) ****

I must be the last person in the Free World to see this movie. Somehow, even after catching up on other classic horror films, like “The Omen” and “The Exorcist,” I had managed to skip this one. I'm glad I finally corrected that.

Mia Farrow plays Rosemary, who moves into a New York apartment with her struggling-actor husband, Guy. Like all old buildings, the place has its quirks, including being able to clearly hear the elderly couple next door through the bedroom wall. The sounds are mostly just bickering over silly things, but occasionally Rosemary and Guy seem to hear what sounds like chanting and music through the wall. More intriguing are the stories their old friend, Hutch, tells them about the building's history, including tales of murder, cannibalism, and witchcraft.

Meanwhile, Guy really hits it off with the elderly neighbors. Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman seem harmless enough, but Minnie is very nosy, constantly swinging over to visit. It's unclear why Guy likes them so much, but he is also distracted around that time by his acting career, which really starts taking off. Rosemary's loneliness is briefly mitigated by becoming pregnant, but she has growing feelings of unease about her neighbors, their friends, and even Guy, eventually coming to believe that they are all witches, who are grooming her to steal her baby. As she becomes increasingly unhinged, we have to figure out whether the threat is real, or she is just losing her mind.

Adapted by Roman Polanski from Ira Levin's novel, “Rosemary's Baby” is a classic of psychological horror. The film is terrifying without ever showing us a single be-heading or stabbing. It's all about what is going on in the characters' minds. What struck me most about the film is the banality of the horrors: an inattentive husband, a dismissive doctor, nosy neighbors, and feelings during pregnancy of isolation and losing control. These will be familiar to many women. For Rosemary, having a baby is a dream that turns into a nightmare, but let's face it, it's no picnic for any woman.

4 stars out of 5