New Movie Reviews

Stranger on the Third Floor Review

September 29, 2016 by JD Hansel

This surely must be one of the most fascinating and strange films I have ever seen.

Stranger on the Third Floor is generally considered to be the first movie in the film noir genre, and yet it is very different from the standard conceptions that come to mind when most people think of noir (based on films like Out of the Past, Double Indemnity, or the Bogart films). The lead in this story is no stone-faced, stoic Bogart type – he’s an emotional basket-case – and the relative normalcy of the characters makes the film feel very different from how I’d come to think of noir based on what I saw in Out of the Past. It starts off like a simple enough old-timey Classical Hollywood story about two young lovebirds, but the second act takes a turn when it becomes an experiment in expressionism, before finally returning to reality for a third act that breaks Hollywood in the strangest way.

The second act features an elaborate and creative nightmare sequence, composed almost entirely of elements that were shown (or at least discussed) earlier in the film, now warped into something entirely unreal. This sequence is expressionism gone wild, blatantly stealing from German, French, and Russian artistic styles, but clearly forming a new style of its own at the same time that would be very influential in future film noirs (not to mention Tim Burton films – even if indirectly – and other dark dramas). Simply put, it all looks gorgeous, and its exaggerated theatrical style makes the whole nightmare scene explode with all the wild emotion that burns in the protagonist’s shredded heart. I’m not sure I can think of any other film that manages to be so vibrant without having color, so over-the-top without getting silly, or so animated without being . . . well, literally animated. Then comes the ending.

The final act is incredibly bizarre seeing as how the protagonist vanishes from the movie, leaving his girlfriend to take over the role of being a hero (of sorts). This is not so much a feminist move as a clumsy one, because this was not done to make any sort of statement about gender equality, from what I saw/heard in my repeated viewings and careful reading, but I’m not sure what exactly it really is supposed to be. This move seems to serve little purpose and just make the narrative awkward. Even more awkward is the conversation the leading lady has with the insane antagonist, which had so little logic to it that there were multiple moments of laughter in the screening room when I saw it. Then, at the end, the antagonist is randomly hit by a car and presumed dead, only for the police to look at him and start talking to him as his body lies in the street, revealing he is alive. This is finished off with one of the most forced “tag endings” in movie history, making for an overly cheery, cheesy conclusion that just doesn’t feel human.

On the whole, however, the film is very strong. The expressionist visuals are used not just for show, but to saturate the conflict, making the emotions of the protagonist that much stronger and the drama of the story that much more powerful. Its commentary on how flawed the American justice system may very well be is truly chilling. The performances by some of the actors, particularly the great Peter Lorre, served the film very well, making for a very special mood to the work overall. I recommend this film not only because it was inspirational for filmmakers historically, but because it is inspirational to me. It’s weaknesses may be absurd, but its strengths win me over, and I cannot help but have a massive crush on this gorgeous, gorgeous film.

Contact Review

September 28, 2016 by JD Hansel

Please, please read this review.

I don’t think the star rating is an accurate picture of what I think of this movie. It is an absolutely brilliant drama, clearly showing off the storytelling skills of Carl Sagan, Robert Zemeckis, and Alan Silvestri at their finest. At the same time, I don’t think this review is adequate either. I sort of have a hatred for this film. It’s one of those movies that I want to either give a very high rating or a very low rating, but I can’t decide which. What makes the movie so difficult for me to process is this: Carl Sagan – one of the greatest champions of scientific, skeptical thinking – gave the world a story that makes a case for faith, and seems to make the case against skepticism itself.

This feels like an abominable treachery from one of the last men I would ever expect to be a turncoat in the movement for scientific reasoning. While the very, very end of the movie seems to suggest that skepticism isn’t a bad thing, the conclusion of the movie essentially does. The viewer is put in the position of assuming that the protagonist’s experience, for which she has no evidence, is entirely real, and not at all of her own imagination. The skeptics, however, decide that her experience must be considered invalid. We see the believers with their signs outside the courthouse claiming that she really did “contact” alien life, but these people (whom we are led to believe are correct) have no good evidence for their stance. They are right by happenstance – because their unwarranted belief just so happened to be true – and that is not a healthy way to think. The messages that this film promotes and the way in which it promotes them may be detrimental to the intellectual safety of anyone who takes this film seriously, which is a prospect that I frankly find horrifying and enraging.

The worst part of all this is that the film is perfect up until the ending. It is one of the most thoughtful, provocative, intellectual, creative, realistic, imaginative, clever, emotional, smart, gripping, fun, and serious films I have ever seen. It looks at the idea of alien contact in a way that makes it seem very, very real – both intellectually and emotionally. I was completely sucked in, on the edge of my seat with my jaw on the floor for most of the film, and I was overwhelmingly impressed with perfect marriage of the screenplay Sagan and his wife had fashioned and the cinematic craftsmanship of Zemeckis. When one considers that this is a drama, which I see as a genre that is generally intellectually inferior to comedy, it is amazing that its first two acts won me over to the extent that they did. All it needed to do to be one of my top 25 favorite films of all time was show that the beauty of scientific discovery is directly linked to the beauty of skepticism, but instead its ending turned the film into the same drivel that most sappy dramedies end with: “no matter what anyone says, all that matters is that you believe in yourself.” No, that’s not an actual quote from the film, but frankly it would have been fitting for the closing credits to feature this exact address from one of the Care Bears.

I will need to consider the film further and read more about Sagan’s view of skepticism, but from what I’ve read in interviews and articles thus far, he lacks a basic understanding of what skepticism is, what atheism is, and how to think with rationality about matters of faith in general. I must concede, however, that the film is deserving of much praise for being incredibly well-made, and I would have to rate it fairly well. At least it can be seen as inspirational to young women and girls who may leave this film with an eagerness to go into the scientific field, and whom I sincerely hope will learn for themselves just how beautiful true skepticism really is.

Mad Max Review

September 16, 2016 by JD Hansel

What . . . the what? I’m very confused about what on earth this movie is supposed to be. The entire selling point of Mad Max – and the story synopsis on the back of the DVD case – is Max’s revenge plot. But this plot is just the third act. The entirety of acts one and two is spent setting up a conflict, rather than following one. I’m not saying that every film must follow the standard Hollywood narrative format, but the best deviations from this format are the ones that deviate to saturate the conflict, not distract from it. In comparison to my expectations, most of Mad Max just feels dull and pointless.

This film raises the usual questions that I struggle to answer when writing on a film I don’t like:

Is it a good film even though it’s not my cup of tea?
Can it be held accountable for not living up to its marketing if the film’s marketing is the problematic part?
And is it really a bad thing when a film does not make it clear how it should be approached/read?

To answer the first question, I do think it is possible for me to recognize films that have many positive elements, even if I don’t particularly like them. I have spent far too much time writing about Pan’s Labyrinth because I know that it is a very impressive film, yet somehow I hate it immensely. I’m not sure that this movie is the same kind of situation. Mad Max does not strike me as remarkably well-crafted, even for what it’s trying to be, regardless of whether or not I happen to like what it’s trying to be. Perhaps the problem is that I cannot tell what it is that I was supposed to be getting out of it, but now that I know what the movie is about and what it spends its time focused on, I still don’t think I’d appreciate it more on my second viewing. Its story is simply lacking.

For the second question, I don’t think I have a good answer. If a movie’s marketing is really bad, but the film itself ends up being spectacular, I don’t think I could fault it much for the marketing. After all, the marketing is not necessarily apart of the film itself, and is generally not really controlled (or even influenced much) by what the director and producer say. On the other hand, if a film gives me less than what the marketing had me expecting, that’s a negative thing. It shows that there’s potential there for a good movie, but the filmmakers didn’t make something as good as what the film could have been. On the other other hand, what’s especially difficult here is discerning when a film is just “different” from its marketing, but not particularly better or worse. With Mad Max, it’s clear to me that all of the time spent “world building” in the first hour could have been spent on an exciting plot that properly mixed in the world building, sort of like The Princess Bride, and that would’ve been far more entertaining (without deviating from what was advertised or what the movie promised).

The last question is perhaps the most controversial, and what could easily make me seem like an idiot to a heck of a lot of people. I’m going to answer this question with a yes, but I’m not sure that it’s a yes in every case. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my review of Pulp Fiction, which I have come to disagree with over time. It seems to me that I only liked the film because I had heard Tarantino explain in an interview how to approach and/or process it. I have come to recognize that, without an explanation of how to approach it, I couldn’t have understood it. Not only that, but I couldn’t have understood how to understand it. That, I think, is the key – I don’t need a filmmaker to hold my hand and explain everything to me, but I need to know what language I’m seeing before I can read it, or what game I’m playing before I can win it; the difficulty of the game is irrelevant.

I don’t really know if this review will make sense to anyone else. I’m not even sure that it makes sense to me. My goal has simply been to explore why I feel the way I do about this movie, and hopefully to understand myself (and cinema) better for having done so. Mad Max is certainly a special film that has some value to it, but the vast majority of the film did not grab me, and I was left wanting much, much more. Perhaps my problem is not so much the film as it is the glimpses it shows of what it could have been.

Masters of the Universe Review

August 25, 2016 by JD Hansel

Yes, I know this movie is crap, but hear me out.

There are times in life when we need a certain kind of movie to deliver a certain kind of experience. Very often for me, the experience I’m seeking is a movie that consistently bounces back and forth between being excellent . . . and being so bad it’s good. The area in the middle is obviously dangerous territory – that’s where all the bad movies live. But once in a blue moon, there’s a film that has many very strong elements, but its weak elements are so laughable that they don’t harm the movie at all; instead, they add to the film’s charm by being silly and dated. I seem to have the easiest time finding this experience with cheesy ’80s movies, and I picked up Masters of the Universe from the library because it looked like a fairly standard example of an ’80s movie. As luck would have it, this movie is the most ’80s movie I have ever seen – in all the best and worst ways – which makes it the perfect example of a movie that prances gracefully across the valley of mediocrity, leaping right from excellence to nanar and back again.

Let me be more specific about what makes it so bad (which I think paradoxically makes it delightful). First of all, this is immensely cliché, to the point that they even stole elements of their story from Spaceballs (as was pointed out in the Nostalgia Critic review) and made all of the villain’s soldiers look just like Darth Vader. The actors don’t give great performances for the most part, and everything feels scripted and rehearsed. At times it feels almost as though they were trying to make the movie as underwhelming as possible, by moving the plot from a fantasy world to friggin’ New Jersey suburbs. The logic of the film also makes no sense, as there are several occasions when the people of New Jersey should have noticed the crazy magic going on around them – and don’t even get me started on how ridiculously illogical that ending is. (I mean, the ignorance of the obvious “grandfather paradox” problems makes the ending almost unbearable in a way.)

On the other hand, this movie looks gorgeous. It’s one of the best looking I’ve seen because of its perfectly ’80s use of light, color, makeup, and old-fashioned special effects. The movie fully embraces how ridiculous it is, and offers plenty of over-the-top performances, which only get better when James Tolkan (Mr. Strickland from Back to the Future) arrives on scene, making the movie even more ’80s. The villain is so perfectly extravagant, and gives a wonderfully satisfying post-credits scene. The story is also very focused on music, particularly from synthesizers, so at this point I think I might be overdosing on ’80s nostalgia. And did I mention how awesome the color looks?

However, at the end of the day, I can understand why someone wouldn’t like this movie. I can especially understand why a fan of the original TV series would hate this movie. On the other hand, for those who want to inject deadly amounts of retro, nostalgic ’80s fantasy into their eyeballs, this movie delivers. Enjoy responsibly; don’t drive while high on ’80s.

Bowfinger Review

July 31, 2016 by JD Hansel

Frank is the best Frank that’s ever happened to me.

There are a few master craftsmen in the world of film direction that are rarely recognized as such, making for cranky rants from snobby movie buffs like me. Generally, if a filmmaker is good at getting good reviews, and has done some memorable work, people associate his or her name with his/her film-making. Frank Oz, on the other hand, has had quite the career as a director, and yet this is largely overshadowed by his time spent as a Muppet performer back in the day. Seeing as how I am one of the geeky “Hensonites” who just adores the various skills that Frank has, it is important to me that people appreciate both his work as a puppeteer and as a director. So, I’m adding his to my Missionary List – the list of movies I promise to spread the word about at any opportunity like a missionary shares the gospel – where it will join the ranks of other underrated triumphs like Phantom of the Paradise, The Twelve Chairs, Play It Again, Sam, and even the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup.

This is one of those movies that is done in such a careful way, with such remarkable precision, that the knowledgeable spectator will be constantly aware that he/she is watching a master at work. It’s special when a film carries an aura of craftsmanship that is always present, but never too disruptive of the feelings that the spectator is supposed to be experiencing. The jokes, overall, do work well, even though I think that the same screenplay – perhaps eve with the same cast – could have made for a mediocre movie. Heck, it would even be easy to hate the main character for being so sleazy. Frank seems to be the element that makes everything about the film work the way it’s meant to, from the pacing to the mood.

While it’s not necessarily the funniest film I’ve ever watched, it has a number of very strong comedic moments, and is pleasant and fun throughout. The performances from Steve Martin and Eddy Murphy are some of their best, and the story is written very cleverly with a smart resolution and satisfying ending. It also has the benefit of being both a good movie on first-viewing and a good “Hindsight Movie” – a film that becomes more enjoyable when thinking about it in retrospect, or when watching it again. I suspect this may not be uncommon for Oz films, since I really liked Little Shop of Horrors the first time I saw it, but over the years I have grown to obsess over it, and it has become a big part of who I am. I can’t say for sure that I’ll ever love Bowfinger on a level that’s very close to how much I love Little Shop, but I can say that this is a movie I’ll happily sit down and watch again with whoever would be willing to join me.

If anyone is ever in need of a fun comedy film for movie night, this is one of my top recommendations.

Colonia/The Colony Review

July 30, 2016 by JD Hansel

Note how my title for this article accounts for two alternate titles for the film. When I watched this movie through the library not too long ago, it had yet to be released in theaters in the United Kingdom. It was being promoted as The Colony in the UK, but on IMDb, its title was listed only as Colonia, without any reference to the title being promoted across the pond – not even in the page’s “Also Known As” section. At first I wasn’t entirely positive that they were the same movie since IMDb didn’t say they were, which is obviously undesirable for the film’s marketers and distributors. After the film’s UK release, at the time I’m writing this, the page has been updated to show The Colony as the official title at the very top of the page, and Colonia as the “original title” in smaller letters underneath The Colony. Now the “AKA” page is confused, with Colonia listed as the international title, even though that’s not the official title at the top of the main IMDb page. I mention all this nonsense to highlight the fact that this film matters so little to people that nobody has bothered to agree on what the official title is, because nobody cares about it in the slightest – hence why it only made about 60 bucks at the UK box office during opening weekend.

That is just a darn shame.

Rotten Tomatoes shows a score of 23% for this film, but critics ought to know by now how to approach a film of this kind in such a way that they can appreciate its stronger elements. The first obvious thing that everyone should be able to figure out from the trailer (and the poster) is that it’s pseudo-Oscar-bait. It’s got a lot of the elements of an Oscar winner – focus on an unrecognized oppressed people, historical drama, etc. – but is ultimately not thoughtful, artistic, or impressive enough for such an award. It’s a popcorn flick in disguise as something more meaningful. The second thing to recognize right off the bat is that most of it will not be creative or artistic in stylistic approach, instead aiming for a realism that will, in theory, emphasize the sense that these are real, historical events on screen. Third, and perhaps most important of all, is the fact that this is in no way striving for historical accuracy, and hardly even strives to honor those involved in the real events upon which it is based – again, it’s a popcorn flick that’s hiding behind a toupee and a monocle.

Once this is understood, now the film can be enjoyed for what it is. While I have very little patience for the kind of realistic style the film employs, I will say that I think the story is really good. For this reason, I propose that this movie is highly underrated – which is honestly the only reason why I felt the need to review it. The story has a number of elements throughout that are painfully predictable, but that’s partially because it’s hitting all of the notes it needs to in order to have the dramatic irony it seeks. Furthermore, the most important part of the story from an emotional standpoint – that being the fate of our two main characters – is not at all predictable.

I was on the edge of my seat, intensely concerned for what would happen to the protagonists, not only until the climax, but until the credits rolled. Yeah. That had to happen before I was sure of whether or not they’d make it, and that’s because it’s easy to make the case that either ending is adequately set up. While I’m not sure that it’s a positive sign that the ending was arbitrary from the standpoint of the story’s structure and what it necessitated, the effect was ultimately a good one – I got a thrill, and few movies can give me the kind of thrill that this one did. Consequently, I say the movie gives all it promises, and perhaps even a little more, so I say it passes.