Scenes from an Empty Church (2021)

 'Scenes from an Empty Church' is a very overt entry in the small canon of Covid filmmaking. Set in a large Manhatten Catholic Church during the height of the lockdown, the film focuses on the resident priests and the few parishioners and others they start to slowly let come into the sanctuary, generally for only brief periods and by appointment.

The film is directed and written (adapting a story by another) by Onur Turkel. Turkel had done some writting on the Bob Byington film 'Infinity Baby' so the works of Byington are the closest reference point I have for this film and its tone. Turkel is arguably marginally more dry then Byington, but he's only about half as surereal. Kevin Corrigan is in this as well and he's worked with Byington before.

Corrigan and Thomas Jay Ryan are the two priests, there used to be a third, an older man, but he died from Covid near the start of the pandemic. That priests death has particularly effected father Thomas, who latter confesses to Father Kevin, in what was a difficult thing for him to voice, that the two loved each other. They kept their vows but were essentially a celebite gay couple. Father Kevin surprises Thomas by telling him that he knew this already. For one thing they loved the theater far more then your average Catholic priests. Father Kevin has a confession of his own that is also dryly funny.

This movie hardly feels like a movie, more like an episodic play. It glides along at a fairly consistent level of wry amusment, at least once the two father's start opening the church. There are a couple of events near the end of the film which felt particularly Byington like to me, one very surreal, and they were among the least effective parts of the movie to me because by this point I had adapted to appreciate Turkel's subtler voice. A mixed bag of a film, but one that does not require a lot of attention, so could be good for film grazing. **1/2

Out of Sight (1998)

 Normally my takes on films tend to line up with the critical consensus, espically if that consensus is positive. 'Out of Sight' is a rare and significant exception, 94% on Rotten Tomatos but this movie did nothing for me. It's technically well made, there are no really bad performances, but it left me cold. I found it flat, uninteresting, it contains neither anything new nor anything done particularly well. 

One of the few negative reviews I could find described it as "warmed over Quentin Tarantino", and I think that captures it. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, Micheal Keaton reprises the role he played in the Tarantino Lenord adaption 'Jackie Brown' the previous year. There is even a Sam Jackson cameo at the end. I will say that the Clooney / Jennifer Lopez chemistry is decent, but I was both confused by and uninvested in their relationship. I liked the ending 15 - 20 or so minutes more then anything else in the film, but it wasn't enough to redeem it. **

Ask Me Anything (2014)

I very thoroughly misread what kind of movie 'Ask Me Anything' was gonna be. I saw a cover picture of Britt Robertson in a men's shirt and lose tie and thought 'sex comedy', this is going to be lite. Well it's not that light, in fact it gets pretty dark and heavy.

The film it reminds me of the most is 'Perks of Being a Wallflower', only without the fun and appealing friends. Like that movie this one is based on a YA novel and adapted and directed by the author, so we are getting what they intended. While the 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' book was presented as a series of letters, the device here is a young  woman lightly fictionalzing her life on a blog, alieses and such.

Just out of high school and taking a year off before colloge Katie is a naive young woman, played ably by Ms. Robertson. While the film starts out relatively light in tone it proceeds to darken, almost every male character in the thing misuses her, her boyfriend has a quick temper, two older men, one of which is her employer, cheat on fiance and wife respectively with her. Her fathers not a great father, and while her mom's boyfriend seems like a decent guy she resents him. A platonic male friend is generally good to her, but a desprisive who can get verbally mean when he feels neglected.

Katie was abused by a neighbor as a child and spent some time in a mental hospital. She is a wreck, but slow to recognize herself as such. The most decent man to her in the picture could be described as a reformed sex offender. 

Things don't go well for Katie, the ending a real downer with a twist that probably works better in the book, though I thought was creatively handled here. I watched the film a second time about a week after viewing so as to better process what this movie really is. It's uneven, surprisingly subtle, gimmicky, tonely odd. An experminat that dosen't fully work, but an effort to be applauded. **1/2

Halloween 4 (1988)

 We watched and recorded on this for the podcast, it's become a tradition of ours to work through the Halloween franchise one movie a year. I didn't have a lot to say about 'Halloween 4' on the podcast and I don't have a lot to say about it now. 'The Return of Mike Meyers' is just that, the anthology formate experimented with in '3' is dead, they bring back Mikey, only now he's after his niece because Jamie Lee Curtis isn't in this one and the Laurie character is supposedly dead. Now I don't know much about the later films in this franchise but I know she comes back.

'Halloween 4' is predictable, very by the numbers, not very creative. The one somewhat interesting idea to the piece is introduced really in the last 2 minutes of the movie, though apperently explored more in '5'. It felt cheap, cheaper then '3' which had like half the budget and didn't make much less then this movie at the box office. I much prefer '3' which was trying to do something different, while '4' was trying, and trying hard, to avoid doing something different. This movie was actually filmed around where I live, though I thought it was pretty bad. *

Maniac (1934), Maniac (1980)

'Maniac' (1934)

Producer/director Dwain Esper was known as "The King of the Celluoid Gypsies" and had his hand in many of the best known explotation films of the 1930's, directing 'Sex Madness', 'The 7th Commandment', 'Narcotic', 'Marihuana' and 'How to Undress in Front of Your Husband'. Though he did not direct 'Reefer Madness' he for a time handled its distribution. Explotation films of this time side stepped production code approval and managed to justify there exhibation as being "eductional", tacking on explanatory title cards or brief lectures either on film or in person to "contextualize" the subject matter, which is code for provide an excuse for on screen depravaity.

'Maniac' perports to be an examination of mental illness but is really just a lose adaption of Edges Allen Poe's 'The Black Cat' penned by Esper's wife and frequent collaborator Hildagrde Stadie. It concerns a classicly mad scientist working on a way to bring people back from the dead, in the process he dies and has his identity assumed by an equally unstable assistant who happens to be a former vaudeville impersonator. The movie is extremely cheap, bad and non-sensical. Not enjoyably so I'm afraid, but at least it's only around 50 minutes. 

At one point in the film the two mads go to the mourge to steal a corpse, but the lady they fixate on is obviously still moving, the mad scientist states they can still save her life so they abduct her. But they went there for a corpse, if the doc is convinced he can bring the dead back why try to keep her from dying? Also why was she in the morgue to begin with if she were still alive? Someone is being extremely sloppy. *

'Maniac' (1980)

'Maniac' was made to take advtange of the 'slasher' movie craze which really hit its stride after the release of the original 'Halloween' in 1978, and would largely play its self out over the ensuing decade, only to approprately return from the dead in smaller bursts right up to the present.

Mostly unremarkable 'Maniac' managed to come out when demand for said product was high enough to earn it $10 million at the box office off a rougly $350,000 budget. 'Maniac' was directed by William Lustig, the nephew of former middleweight boxing champion Jack LaMotta, whose well regarded bio-pic 'Raging Bull' would come out that same year. Lustig had worked in film in various capacities before, including directing hard core pornography under the alias of "Billy Brag". Lustig brings a suitably seamy aesthetic to this film.

Frank Zito is an asspiring artist and big creepy slob with mommy and sex issues who starts killing women and the occasional associated male in the urban decay of New Yorks less then high class neighborhoods. He is surprisingly underplayed by Joe Spinell, a legit actor who had appered in two Godfather and two Rocky movies, in the latter as the low level crime figure who employs Stallon for muscle.

Spinal has a very effective early scene, played long for awkwardness, in which he hires a prostitue, takes her to seedy hotel, and she starts to take pitty on him when he can't get it up and then he strangles her. The rest of the film is less interesting and gets kind of repetitive. He eventually encounters a girl he is unable to take down in the form of former Bond girl and Hammer Horror veteran Carolin Munro. The ending, which goes for what can be read as either symbolic, supernatural or some hybrid, I did not care for. Notable for camo appernces by Gaylen Ross and Tom Savini who had appered together in 'Dawn of the Dead' a few years before, playing a couple whose first date ends very poorly. *1/2

Queen Kelly (1929)

 Previously I was most familiar with 'Queen Kelly' from a bit of trivia, it was a clip from this film that we see the butler Max show to Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis in the classic 1950 film 'Sunset Boulevard'. The use of that clip was some meta commentary purportedly suggested by Erich von Stroheim who played Max in the film, more then twenty years before he had directed the actress playing Norma, Gloria Swanson in 'Queen Kelly'.

A late silent film from that brief period in the late 20's when major studios were releassing both silent and talking films. The movie was produced by Joseph P. Kennedy who at the time was having an affair with Ms. Swanson, setting a pattern for the affairs with Hollywood actresses had by his presidental son. Written and directed by von Stroheim 'Queen Kelly' is the story of a convent girl (Swanson, 29 playing a teenager) who is loved by a prince betrothed to marry a wicked queen. Fairytale type story had a then contemporary setting, first in a fictional central European country and then in colonial Africa where Kelly is exiled. Or at least that was the intended story.

The epic film was to run around 5 hours, von Stroheim, a free spending perfectionist, had completed only around a 3rd of the picture when he was fired 3 months into shooting. There followed a long production hiatus.

Originally intended for release in late 1929 or early 1930, Swanson managed to get a highly truncuated cut, minus all the Africa stuff, into theaters in 1932. Not American theaters however which by this point were playing only sound films. The movie ran in parts of Europe and Latin America. Swanson retained her rights to the thing and it would be showen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and on television in the 50's and 60's. After Swanson's death a more complete version of the film, including some of the African scenes would be put together and releassed in 1985, that is the version I watched.

It's kind of hard to judge it as a complete film because it really isn't one. There is a real sumptousness to the production, the story a heightened and often melodramtic one. I mostly liked what was there, the tonel shift once the action moves to Africa is  intriguing, orignally most of the film was to take place there, in this cut around 20 of 90-odd minutes is all that does. **1/2

Pearl (2022)

Review contains spoilers for it's self and 'X'.

'Pearl' is a prequel to the horror film 'X' which came out earler this year. It is the origin store for the titular Pearl, the psychotic and horny old lady killer both introduced and dispatched in the earler film. We travel back from the 1979 of 'X' to 1918, the farm from the first movie is in much better shape, and so is Pearl, at least physically. This story recounts the psychotic break which tunred Pearl, never well adjusted to begin with, into a real, but not totally unsympathetic monster.

'X' was a loving pastche of 70's and 80's horror tropes, well executed but something that doubtless could have been done by any number of directors. 'Pearl' on the other hand is a very idocentric piece of film making, a distinct vision, horror auteurism. The script is a collaboration between director Ti West and star Mia Goth, both quite willing to go to unusual places.

The film has been likened, and I think correctly, to 'The Wizard of Oz'. In contrast to the muted grime of 'X', 'Pearl' is shot in bright exaggerated colors, there's a scarecrow and musical numbers. Like Dorothy wanting to leave an oppreive life on her Kansas farm, Pearl longs to be liberated from her Texas one. She is sure she can be a star, and if others won't liberate her, like the local film protectionist and her own mother, she'll create her own tornado. But like Dorothy she'll just end up back home again.

The West/Goth collaboration is an intriguing one, and to my surprise the end of this movie teases another film in the franchises, this one to focus on Maxine, the final girl from the first movie who was also played by Goth, now part of the California porn scene of the mid 1980's. Pornography is a through line of these films, the first about a film crew who picks the wrong place to do some shooting, while in 'Pearl' our lead character is shown a silent sex flick by the local film protectionist, who thinks he might be able to entice her to making one of their own.

'Pearl' has a lot of little intriguing touches, that her parents are dour German immigrants trying to keep a low profile while their adoptive nation is at war with their homeland. Most people wearing masks when Pearl goes into town, on account of the then current pandemic, though this element is dropped from the later Church scene. But it is Ms. Goth performance which is the center of the piece, if there was a horror acting Oscar she'd get one. For all the violent buisness she is called upon to perform she must still anchor it to an innerlife. Ungrateful and put upon, a simple girl torn by complicated feelings, deep loves and deep hates. The long monologue she performs near the end of the film is an unbroken, Bergmanesque piece of reflection. Only here it is followed by an ax murder. ***