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The empanadas shepherd hath lost his way

[cinemacentral666]

Elemental (2023)

Movie #1,271 • KIDZONE

Oh look it's a Pixar movie with a one-word title featuring some not-so-veiled woke-ass socio-political commentary with stunning, some might say groundbreaking animation... I'm kidding about one of those things mostly. I really did dig the look of this and the world they created. Much more style than their recent output. The story is a bit meh, but it's fine. It is somewhat insane to me that this cost $200 million dollars to make, though. Anyway, guessed it bombed pretty hard but my kids enjoyed it. I like going to the movie theater.

SCORE: ��️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¼

[cinemacentral666]

The Little Mermaid (2023)

Movie #1,252 • KIDZONE

I’ll be honest, I couldn’t stop looking at the underwater CGI hair. There might have been something going on there re hypnosis/testing for some new type of societal control mechanism? But yeah, this has some fun moments/effects-drenched set-pieces/performances and the updated versions of the classic songs still go (the new Eric song was an absolute dud though, and the Awkwafina/Miranda-penned was so stupid and bad that I liked it), however it ultimately feels soulless like all the rest of these live-action remakes. At least there’s only like a 100 more of them that I still have to take my kids to.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[cinemacentral666]

The Goonies (1985)

Movie #1,241 • FRIDAY WILDCARD

We went to see this at an outside park screening. The inflatable screen on which the DVD was being projected was blowing in the wind. It kind of felt like I was on drugs watching it. Also, my friends' kid was being super annoying so it was difficult to fully pay attention and enjoy. I'd like to watch it again under better circumstances.

I don't know if I'd classify it as a classic. I have minor nostalgia for this but it was never a real childhood fave of mine (though I can understand why it would be for some).

I gotta give a special shout-out to Jeff Cohen who played Chunk. Damn, I forgot how much he steals the movie. Just completely LoL funny, almost every line. I'll grade this as an 8/10 but it feels more like an incomplete. I eventually want to do a Richard Donner Director Focus so will probably save it for that.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[cinemacentral666]

Peter Pan & Wendy (2023)

Movie #1,231 • KIDZONE

Unceremoniously dumped on Disney+, I can’t fathom why this hasn’t gotten more love. Look, I watch a lot of kids' garbage and this is worlds better than most of it. Maybe my admiration/appreciation for David Lowery clouded some of the obvious criticisms but I was glued to this for nearly all of the very generous 90-minute runtime (what should be the max runtime for childrens movies!). I don’t go deep into the Pan-Verse and the various iterations/differences in the millions of adaptations at this point (although it’s a fascinating, strange and subtly deep tale). Do whatever the hell you want with the Peter Pan story is my take. And I’m glad that Lowery did just that.

[Ed. Note: On the ole blog, I used to grade these movies on a very different sliding scale based (almost) exclusively on how much my own kids enjoyed them. But I won’t be doing that here! Everything is fair game for my scorn now hahaha!!]

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¾

[cinemacentral666]

The French Dispatch (2021)

Movie #1,230 • Part of my WES ANDERSON Director Focus series

The third installment of this starring Geoffrey Wright was an incoherent mess but maybe I was just really tired watching it. In fact, the quality seems to depreciate as the film rolls along, with the opening short — "The Concrete Masterpiece" starring Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton and Léa Seydoux among others — being the best and most fun by a wide margin.

This was the only Anderson movie I haven't seen when it came out since The Royal Tenenbaums. Up next in my reverse chronological rewatch is Isle of Dogs, which really rubbed me the wrong way on my first and only viewing. Will be interesting to see if my opinion changes this go-round. But suffice to say, that's why I waited so long to watch this one. I think I was pleasantly surprised, all things considered, as I'm generally not a fan of anthologies.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¼

[cinemacentral666]

Asteroid City (2023)

Movie #1,219 • Part of my WES ANDERSON Director Focus

Today I am starting a new weekly series that will run every Thursday for the remainder of 2023. I'll be revisiting the entire Wes Anderson filmography in reverse chronological order. I had previously eschewed doing one of these in a nonlinear fashion but I'm making an exception here for a few reasons. For starters, I'm already deeply familiar with his catalog and I actually rewatched "The Big Three" (Rushmore, Tenenbaums & Darjeeling) just last year, though not for review purposes. I've actually yet to see The French Dispatch after being thoroughly turned off by Isle of Dogs. So I'll start at the present and work my way backwards, all the way to 1994's Bottle Rocket short film.

Although this post is coming out in November, I'm actually typing this in late June, having just seen Asteroid City in the theater on the weekend of its opening wide release. And, in a nutshell, I pretty much loved every facet of this. I'll do an "official ranking" at the end of this, but my initial gut reaction says this has the best chance of cracking into the aforementioned "Big Three" — it's a fantastic film, and it very well might be his most interesting and original to date.

For someone with such a unique, expertly honed and instantly recognizable style, his movies are ripe for fatigue. Like many others, I've often wondered why he never strays from not just his visual motifs but his equally identifiable approach to dialogue. He's truly beyond parody at this point, which is why the underlying themes of Asteroid City felt so fresh to me even if what we're seeing on screen is not.

But to the latter: this also might be Wes Anderson on steroids in that department and there was something thrilling about that as well. Here he blends every stock element in his wheelhouse — from stop-motion and miniatures to his trademark symmetrical framing, intricate set design and fast pans to everything and anything else — and blows it up and out to the nth degree. This movie looks so good that it would still be enjoyable even if it had nothing at all to say.

The fact that is has A LOT to say, both about the artistic process (and more to the point Wes Anderson's process) and about basic human emotions like grief and love, is what makes this film truly special. He's hit home with showcasing true humanity before (see, yet again, "The Big Three") but never has he ventured into this meta territory before. He dares to ask the question, what's the point of all of this really?

Without getting too into spoilers, the entire cast breaks away from the narrative in the final moments and begins chanting, "You can't wake up if you don't fall asleep." This isn't quite the riddle that it appears on the surface. Rather, it felt more like a simple plea.

You have to submit to what you're seeing completely if you truly want to glean anything meaningful out of the experience. Nobody involved in this production half-assed it (clearly!) and neither can the audience. It's a two-way street or none of this works. An older couple walked out of the theater deep into the second act during my viewing. This Wes Anderson IS too much Wes Anderson. And that might have been a bad thing if it wasn't so clearly the point.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½

[cinemacentral666]

Beau is Afraid (2023)

Movie #1,172 • SPOOKY MONTH 2023

Listen to my "podcast" review that I recorded on my phone driving home from Philadelphia immediately after seeing this in the theater on Thursday, June the 8th...

I think this movie is an excellent exercise in being able to accept a piece of art as both an indulgent, sloppy mess and uncompromising masterpiece; these things feel part and parcel in this case. All of the elements, and especially the most insane scenes/choices, feel crucial to the greater point: the unknowable and weird bigness inherent in the mystery of the child-mother relationship.

On the one hand, the themes are bludgeoning you to the death, but there also seems to be a layered puzzle lurking in the background. It feels almost too obvious to say this is begging you to pick through the background, to find clues hidden in the various threads/settings, either to figure out 'what's really going on' or to expand on the motifs and messaging; a single glance at Reddit will show you comment threads within comments threads that seem to go on forever. This level of attention to detail, regardless of how much is window dressing and/or dead ends, is remarkably admirable and clearly part of Ari Aster's intentions (imo! I can totally see how this would be off-putting/pretentious as well). I would go as far to say that I wish ALL movies were made with this much care and love and psychotic precision (even if the latter is, in part, something of a mirage).

But you know what? Despite it screaming at you to examine it, to discuss it endlessly, I found it to be genuinely entertaining and funny throughout. Some lines of dialogues and abrupt moments/cuts almost come off like non-sequiturs or Tim and Eric level absurdism. So in this sense, there seems like a real danger/futility in over-analyzing it. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a bait and switch — I love digging into a film with repeat viewings — but it also seems like one could (and maybe should) try submitting to the craziness and just enjoying the ride.

(Ed. Note: Because I've added the quarter-star system to this new scoring system, I think it's fitting/funny to give this a 9.75 but I think it's spiritually a 10. Jeffy Too Tens strikes again!)

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¾

[cinemacentral666]

Europa (1991)

Movie #1,167 • Ranking Lars von Trier #1

Europa is a stunning work of art, both from a technical perspective as well as an emotional and thematic one. The final picture in his Europa trilogy, this film easily (and immediately) ranks among his very best works. Exploring a post-war Germany through the lens of an idealistic American, Leopold Kessler (played by Jean-Marc Barr), who just wants to "show some kindness" to the people in the wake of Nazism. His naivety borders on the absurd and he's used as a pawn by almost every other party to achieve some goal, all of which run in stark contrast to his own childlike intentions. Anchored by an unusual and unsettling second person narration (with the legend Max von Sydow as The Narrator), the use of hypnotic voice is different and effective. It can be seen as an inner monologue but not quite of this man's volition, like a driving voice against freewill.

The most jarring and experimental visual technique deployed is Lars von Trier's juxtaposition of black and white with bursts of color, typically at the same time and occasionally with the aide of back projections, which characters sometimes interact with as if they're occupying the same space. The result is a surreal and magnificent delight, inventive and blissful yet never grating. It's masterful and unlike anything I've ever seen before. I found myself deeply pondering the meaning or intentions behind these choices. Perhaps color is meant to represent truth or fear or both. But in all honesty, the point — whatever it may be — seems far less important than the simple and tactile wonder it invokes.

On some level this might be seen as sympathetic towards Nazism, but that strikes me as reductive. This is far more complicated than any single "good vs. bad" reading. Years later of course, LVT would land in hot water for his 2011 Cannes presser "I'm a Nazi" comments, so seeing this in retrospect it would seem like there might be even more to it, but I'll always keep striving against any easy narrative because it plainly feels like that's what the art is beckoning we do.

This is is a film about the individual's plight in the face of giant, impenetrable forces, who will stop at nothing from seeing the individual as nothing more than a pawn regardless of what side of the fence they operate from. How even a man with the purest of heart never has any agency and will always turn towards destruction in the end. How on each descending rung of the ladder we find an exponentially increasing need for normalcy, as those on the top — whose lives more or less remain unchanged — engage in psychotic behavior on whims sprung from greed and a fear of "the other," however real or imagined.

We follow Leopold's saga as an apprentice sleeping car conductor on the Zentropa company's Frankfurt to Munich line. The concept of the unending train loop is in easy metaphor on so many levels: from the circuitous nature of the human urge to move forward and away, to the fascist rallying cry, itself the kind of dangerous lie that leads to societal collapse in and around the infrastructure. The film is littered with a cavalcade of tremendous performances — many of LVT's usual suspects, like Udo Kier and Ernst-Hugo Järegård, among others — all of which seem to embody a trope or symbolic personality type (we have the femme fatale, the shameful patriarch, etc.). Lars makes a cameo himself, comically and perfectly cast as simply "Jew" — a provocateur till the bitter end.

When Leo is pushed past the brink of all sensibility, he commits an atrocious act: the heinous murder of dozens of innocents, detonating a bomb on the train as it goes over a bridge, himself among the many victims. The Narrator's booming voice commands that in ten seconds he will drown. But it takes a lot longer than that to die from drowning. So the recitation is slow and painful. None of this misery happens or happened in an instance. The pawns are almost always the ones who push the misery in gears. But what Europa reveals is how little control they ever really had.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

And so that concludes my series on RANKING LARS VON TRIER. He is the final tally (thanks for reading)...

15 Epidemic 14 Medea 13 Manderlay 12 The Idiots 11 Antichrist 10 The House That Jack Built 09 The Boss of It All 08 Dogville 07 Melancholia 06 Dancer in the Dark 05 The Kingdom/The Kingdom: Exodus 04 The Element of Crime 03 Nymphomaniac 02 Breaking the Waves 01 Europa

[cinemacentral666]

Breaking the Waves (1996)

Movie #1,158 • Ranking Lars von Trier #2

[Ed. Note: This was the first film I watched for this Ranking series. Sorry that the tone of this review is so different than the others.]

And so I begin a crisscross through the career of Lars Von Trier. Hey that rhymes! Neat. And fun. You know what's not so fun, it seems? Watching a dang Lars Von Trier film! I am beginning with Trier's Golden Heart Trilogy (1996-2000) of which this is the first installment. I am starting here for no real reason, but maybe the real reason is because I remember when Bjork wore that swan dress to the Oscars. (I don't want to explain that sentence further. I'm sorry.)

Before dipping my toes into the Trieriverse, the only thing I knew about his work is that it was BLEAK. And, guess what? We are 1 for 1 on that count, man. Hoo boy… NOT a feel-good movie here, folks. There are around 15 features and some TV, documentaries and shorts I will be ingesting over the next five to fifty-five weeks (give or take). Whether my precious heart can take it… that's another question.

I like to mix up how I ingest a filmmaker's catalog. Sometimes I'll go chronolog, sometimes rev-chronolog, sometimes alphabetty and then sometimes I'll just throw out a dang wildcard and jump around like I'm in the Irish hip-hop group House of Pain. That Trier (or is it Von Trier–I mean, I assume Von isn't his middle name?) often works in loose trilogical way, I thought it would be nice to start somewhere in the middle and the hop frontwards and backwards, making sure I took in each trilogy in chronological order, of course. It's a joy: being able to experience an auteur's work in full, for the first time (unscathed as it were… something about it feels more pure).

But that's enough preamble, let's talk about 1996's Breaking the Waves starring the great Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård. This film is a classic, me thinks. Like many great works of the cinema, it plays a trick. This movie's trick is that it makes you think it's about sex, but it's really about faith and religion. It's about what an absolute farce the latter is. (And I believe this is a common theme for him. Wwe pick things up in life by happenstance, without really trying — I do, at least.)

This film is long, but it's broken down by Chapters which make it easily digestible in multiple viewings (umm, ever heard of PRESTIGE TV??) . All the Chapters begin with a classic rock song, by David Bowie and others, played over these extremely cool looking. kind of moving portraits (done by Per Kirkeby). I did a supercut of these title cards…

My favorite part(s) of this movie are when Emily Watson does the voice of God. It's a reoccurring bit and it's so so good…

I found an interesting secondary theme to be the role of women in modern society. Yes, the pretense of the setting (a cloistered village in bumfuck Scotland with doomed religious politics) is a cheat, andLVT being, well, a man, perhaps complicates or undermines the point, but I think he did a really amazing job, both facts considered. This is a highly feminist film, and not in a 'beat you over the head' trying too hard kind of way.

That said, there are no happy endings here. The evil men do in their mind is not equal to the evil they can do with their bodies. The final act is spectacularly rough and hard to watch at times (spoiler alert: Udo Kier's character is simply billed as "Sadistic Sailor"). But it's never a morality lesson. If anything, it's a lesson against the entire concept of morality. And it's a notion he would completely break wide open with his next project, The Idiots.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ll be counting down all of Lars Von Trier’s movies right here at @cinemacentral666 every Thursday through September 2023

[cinemacentral666]

Nymphomaniac (2013)

Movie #1,150 • Ranking Lars von Trier #3

By way of its shear gargantuan size (almost 5 ½ hours), and its position as the final entry of his most polarizing era (the Depression trilogy), Nymphomaniac seems to be screaming for — if not only striving to achieve — magnum opus status in the Lars von Trier filmography. The inclusion of hardcore porn is all many (probably too many) are gonna remember about this, but not me. I'll remember all the asinine and overly complicated metaphors intertwined throughout and Christian Slater's atrocious attempt at an English accent. Just kidding. I'll remember the sex stuff.

It’s ugly and sick and I’m sure ‘problematic’ and so on, and yet it ranks among von Trier’s very best because all of those things are part of the human experience, and he hasn’t just made a film about them here: he’s made a film that literally and physically invokes them in the viewer. The difference between a piece of art like this and some scrap of torture porn (or regular porn sometimes) is that, in spite of the vileness of these characters and the full-view, unfiltered look into their actions, it’s rendered beautifully and thoughtfully (the latter almost to a fault, with the plentiful and sometimes lengthy off-kilter digressions into metaphor, though I appreciated those too).

It feels like the spiritual successor, in a way, to 1996’s Breaking the Waves. Where, for better or worse, that film remained tied down to a traditional narrative structure, the setup here (especially with its conversational framing device and use of found footage) is allowed to burst free. Where Emily Watson's Bess became a nymphomaniac out of duty and real human love, Charlotte Gainsbourg's Joe became one out of compulsion and a personified inner rage. It's fitting that Stellan Skarsgård played the central counterpart in each movie, too: the injured, impotent husband in Wave s and the asexual intellectual foil here, Seligman. They would make a lovely double feature if you have half a day to kill.

Also, on that point, its length is a crucial if not necessary asset in terms of its success. Where the grotesque elements of Antichrist felt like cheap genre riffs unloaded in its final act, the audience is inundated from the get-go here with a variety of “hard to watch” scenes and sequences of all stripes and duration. And they come steadily for FIVE hours. It’s an endurance test, perhaps, but a rewarding one — particularly in the middle stretch of Vol. II.

It’s also the rare movie where you don’t need to relate to, sympathize with, or even totally understand the motives of the protagonist. The film is set with up a question: is Joe good or bad? This query is batted back and forth ad nauseam in Vol. I but it slowly dissipates over the course of the second part. In the end, it's more about humanity at large and Joe is just an avatar for our evil urges.

And Seligman's heel turn in the end is the ultimate von Trierian joke. Of course he was just listening to get into her pants. What is a woman like Joe without the thousands (millions, billions) of men? There are, naturally, touchy concepts about gender swirling all around here and, in the beginning, it felt like this was subtly leaning into the misogynist territory of Antichrist (I don't necessarily see that film as stridently anti-women but that sentiment is definitely out there). The wonderful thing about Nymphomaniac is that, by its conclusion, we do register some sympathy for Joe, if not even viewing her as miraculously heroic. And because of its structure, constantly presenting both sides of every moment and idea, and playing devil's advocate, via the Monday Morning Quarterbacking session with Joe and Seligman, we're allowed an even further detachment from moral judgment. It's like LVT is hedging his bets while also staying ahead of the curve. It's pretty brilliant. I don't think this is von Trier's best movie but in a career full of audacious maneuvers and good taste/faith boundary pushing, it's by far his most daring and provocative. And that's saying something.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ll be counting down all of Lars Von Trier’s movies right here at @cinemacentral666 every Thursday through September 2023

[cinemacentral666]

The Element of Crime (1984)

Movie #1,142 • Ranking Lars von Trier #4

Let it be known that during this LVT filmography viewing I made the executive decision to only ever watch full director filmographies in chronological order. That had always been my preferred method, but I thought it would be best if, from time to time, I mixed up the order for [insert reasoning here]. This is the sixth or seventh Trier flick I've consumed (depending on how you want to count his two early shorter films and both the first two seasons of his Danish TV show) and it's essentially ground zero for the man's career. It's as weird and as bold of a debut feature that I've ever seen.

I feel like it's worth mentioning that I am now starting at the beginning and only going forward, because everything about this felt like a shock having digested some of his other work, most notably: his prime "Golden Heart Trilogy" of films (1996-2000) and his most recent work, 2018's The House That Jack Built. It felt like a different director and I say that in the most positive way. Some similarities arose, naturally. The sepia tones were visually similar to The Kingdom's (though more on this later). The conversational voice-over between main character Fisher and his Cairo hypnotist felt like a direct through-line to how the character of Virgil functions in Jack. And the general "frustrated search for something largely intangible that will ultimately disappoint if not fully horrify" evoked pretty much everything I've seen by the man in some way.

But structurally and compositionally, this felt like a whole new world. In fact, in many ways, it is a complete invention of Trier's. This "Europe" consists of fictional cities and towns where it's always night and everything is drenched in liquid. Despite a few grounding allusions, there is no specific state or country, just this cold, wet dystopia broadcast under yellowy sodium lights. The sets used and built for this are fantastic, each a kind of micro-labyrinth, a small mystery onto themselves cutting against the larger noir framework of the movie's plot: a man is on the hunt for a serial killer of small girls before he strikes again. Detective Fisher (Michael Elphick) navigates this spaces in a literal daze, as the entirety of the action is presented as the memory of a man, now an expatriate in Egypt, spilling his guts to a guy with a monkey on his shoulder. This is the first of two primates to get screen-time. The second, notably of the lower order, Fisher finds in a gutter, scared to death and confused, perhaps a stand in for the audience….

I believe that guy is a loris. To start your film with monkey and end it with a loris speaks to some theme of reverse evolution. The fascist nightmares we see are a product of no less. In fact, this – coupled with the elements of his earlier student work and up through his unfortunate "I'm a Nazi" comments – provide much of the framework for understanding Trier's motives on a larger scale. I do believe it goes beyond simple provocation and is worth explorin. I think he's trying to make sense of a world still drying out from the tsunami that was WWII. But I'll put a pin in it that for now before I get to watch the rest of his films.

The Element of Crime is not a movie made for easily digestible 'understanding' or textbook mystery reveals. Even when you get the gist/uncover the trick, he throws a mysterious postscript that shrouds things further. I'm still trying to make sense of these manic bald men…

LVT created a world here. His stellar framing, innovative shots, and glorious use of light all cut against the frantic, obtuse and occasionally obscene script in such a delightful way. Sure, maybe it's all an amalgamation of influence (certainly Andrei Tarkovsky and Lynch's Eraserhead among others) but it's still wholly more than the sum of its parts.

I took a weird route to get to this beginning. In a way, I'm glad I did, but I'm even more excited to keep going forward.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ll be counting down all of Lars Von Trier’s movies right here at @cinemacentral666 every Thursday through September 2023

[cinemacentral666]

It's Cool I'm Good (2010)

Movie #1,136 • MONDAY WILDCARD

I was all set to do a Monday TRUE RANDOM but then I realized that the film which the machine selected (1967's Countdown) was actually directed by Robert Altman and I definitely plan on doing a full Altman Director Focus at some point so I decided to pivot and watch a 35-minute experimental art movie instead.

(watch the full movie above via the artist's vimeo)

I discovered this one just the other day via Megan Boyle's LIVEBLOG 2.0 and I loved it. The IMDB description is very funny but also accurate ("A bandaged woman with mysterious injuries wanders aimlessly around, telling jokes and other patter to the camera held by her volunteer nurses") and I also love that Mel Blanc is listed as one of the stars there because towards the end a Bugs Bunny cartoon is shown playing on a TV.

The editing is really good here, both video and sound. Almost unexpectedly so given the context/fidelity of the medium. I liked the mix of added and diegetic sound, a lovely blend of pop music and more abrasive stuff that collides together in bursts alongside the scattered, nonlinear 'narrative'. To that point: they clearly didn't have the rights to any of it, making it impossible to release in any commercial/official capacity (it strangely isn't even listed on Letterboxd, though a number of her other films are). It makes me wish more movies were made in this rogue style, where you can film yourself playing the flute alongside the album version of "Stairway to Heaven" without giving two shits.

The content of her mostly one-sided convos range from animal biology/habitats to civil engineering to this deranged bologna butt fable/joke...

It's an incredibly funny movie which is a rare treat in something that's also so firmly grounded in the world of experimental film.

The commentary also felt simple enough: existing in this fucked up world is hard, but we can (or should) always try to find levity in that struggle.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[cinemacentral666]

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Movie #1,135 • FRIDAY WILDCARD

I will be taking a break from double posting on Mondays and Fridays in September to give myself a slight breather as I'll be on the road for much of the end of August and won't be able to take in my usual glut of cinema. This one is the lone exception as I watched it recently with my daughter after we finished the original Roald Dahl book.

For starters, it absolutely still holds up and really its only flaw is that Gene Wilder isn't in the movie until halfway through. This both heightens his appearance/role but it also makes the opening 45 minutes a tad boring by comparison.

I hadn't realized until this rewatch that Roald Dahl also penned the screenplay and briefly worked as a screenwriter as in the 60s, even penning two James Bond adaptations (for You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). Interestingly enough he wound up disowning the final film version of Willy Wonka both because of deviations made in the production and ultimately placing too much of the emphasis on Wonka instead of Charlie (and that's obvious in the title change). But, that being said, it truly is Wilder in the titular role that makes this movie work. Visually, it is definitely fun if not dated but none of it works without his performance at the center. It's as hilarious as it is completely bizarre. Wilder presents an affect that is uncanny, almost creepy at times, but constantly engrossing. It's the rare execution that is both perfect and impossible to explain.

And not to disagree with the master Dahl, but I found most of the deviations of the original story to be mostly positive changes, especially the ending, which is a bit more complicated the book but actually strengthens the character of Charlie as well as the moral implications. The book just kind of ends with him getting the factory and I think the final twist in the film is the better conclusion.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[cinemacentral666]

Number Seventeen (1932)

Movie #1,134 • TGI-HITCHCOCK!

EVERY OTHER FRIDAY I’M REVIEWING THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

This one is nearly unwatchable despite some cool visual work with light/shadows and fun miniatures. We’re dropped into an incomprehensible story and it’s unclear what, or whether any of this is supposed to be funny. Apparently, Hitchcock himself called the film a "disaster." I couldn’t even get through the full 64 (!) minute run-time. Sorry.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️

[cinemacentral666]

The Kingdom (1994, 1997) & The Kingdom: Exodus (2022)

"Movie" #1,133 • Ranking Lars Von Trier #5

There are so many inexplicable twists and turns and forced cliffhangers in the last fifteen minutes of what remains the series finale, the eighth and final episode of The Kingdom, that you might forget how smooth and cohesive the otherwise bonkers story came together in totality. Clocking in at nearly ten hours, Lars von Trier's "Twin Peaks in a hospital," shot and released on Danish TV in the mid 90s in two 4-episode seasons (1994 & 1997), is a hard-to-find gem that deserves far more attention if not recognition for being just about the weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen released on a mainstream platform (if we can call Danish TV a "mainstream platform").

I was perhaps most impressed by LVT's ability to juggle upwards of a dozen different storylines which seamlessly crossed and merged when they needed to. I feel some unease with how it ended given this segment of an interview I recently watched on YouTube with a slightly demented-seeming if not sickly Trier. Is he really going on about how not having an ending is a problem? Did he ever even watch this? Does he have any recollection making it? But for the love of god, this man can't help but being an insane and inscrutable maniac for one minute; so, he can get away with it. Few can.

Saying one thing when you mean another is a trick, which is not unlike the whole of LVT's filmography. On one hand, this is among his most accessible works: a procedural genre drama. And on the other, it's a thing where Udo Kier plays the double role of Demon from Hell and a baby born with a normal adult-sized head whose body grows exponentially gigantic by the day until he's like seventeen-feet long screaming for his mother to kill him, which–SPOILERS!–she does.

I will hold off from saying more at this juncture as, apparently, there might be a third and final season on the way, à la another famously long-dormant television franchise from a luminary auteur. But this being Lars von Trier, who the hell knows.

THREE YEARS LATER…

"With this being Lars von Trier, who the hell knows" was an appropriate way to end my initial review of The Kingdom for the S.O.B. went ahead and did it: he finished his small screen masterpiece and gave it an ending for the ages. Having just completed the long-awaited Season 3 here in 2023, with future von Trier projects somewhat up in the air after his recent Parkinson's diagnosis (he says he will continue making movies for as long as he can, and I hope he does, but who knows), I can say that if that is indeed his final project, it's certainly a worthy one to go out on.

To get this out of the way (as anyone writing about The Kingdom: Exodus is legally required to mention within the first two paragraphs): the comparisons to Twin Peaks: The Return are as unavoidable as they are perfectly and eerily apt. LVT was getting compared to Lynch well before he decided to complete his own visionary TV show 25 years later as well. But, while the initial inspiration for The Kingdom had to have been spurred by the groundbreaking Twin Peaks, his conclusion and how he went about it is vastly different. Both are phenomenal, in my opinion, but where Lynch departed from the original framework and story to the nth degree, von Trier's return is firmly grounded in the tone and aesthetic of the original run. Outside of a very meta beginning and ending, Exodus feels like a natural continuation of the story, in the same location with the same sepia-drenched sheen. There's no excursions to the purple ocean world or Buckhorn, South Dakota here.

Not to say he doesn't get weird or try different things within this original landscape, because he does so IN SPADES. It's a thrilling, hilarious and endlessly wild ride in five one-hour installments. The biggest hurdle (and main reason the final season was shelved for so long) were the deaths of several notable actors in prominent roles. He handles this with nuance and boundless creativity. It never feels like an homage because it's so rich, fresh and new. Ernst-Hugo Järegård's Dane-hating Helmer is replaced by his son (as Helmer Jr., comically nicknamed "Halfmer" by the Swede-roasting staff); Jens Okking as Bulder is simply exchanged for a look-alike (Nicolas Bro); and Sigrid Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes), the truth-seeking heart of the show is swapped out for a new lead, a similarly aged Karen (Bodil Jørgensen), who begins the action in the non-sepia "real world" watching the original two-season run of The Kingdom on DVD; and Udo Kier… well, please just watch it to see what they do with Udo Kier.

The meta narrative is fascinating, as everyone in Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet is well aware of the madman Lars von Trier and his awful, fucked up TV series. LVT's own credit-roll commentary also returns (although he speaks behind a red curtain now out of vanity; only his jittering shoes are visible), as does a new Greek chorus of male and female dishwashers: gone are the actors with Down syndrome, replaced by a robot (who's constantly breaking dishes) and a man with a different, and a more severe genetic disorder. As is often the case, many of these choices range from squeamish to deliriously comedic, often simultaneously, but when — MAJOR SPOILER — von Trier himself arrives in a helicopter in the role of none other than Satan, how can you not smile?

If I had known going in that some of the threads in Exodus were going to touch on culture wars stuff, I would have said, "Oh no." But everything is handled with such ease — from #MeToo to Nazism! — and, more importantly, humor. This shouldn't work on paper, but it does.

I watched this on the heels of the Nymphomaniac Director's Cut and came away with a similar take: that LVT is really great at longer form storytelling. Some of his very best work is also the longest, and I don't think that's an accident. He's always tried to distill BIG IDEAS into thoughtful if not nihilistic and absurdist scenarios (Willem Dafoe plays one of the devil's minions who's also an owl), but even when the action makes you want to scream or walk into traffic, there's a cleverness at play which brings it full circle. The shift from the neurological to the cardiological departments (via Birgitte Raaberg's character) is such a lovely and simple notion. The head vs. the heart. You can make a big complicated thing with boundless metaphors, but what does it matter if you don't feel anything? The idea that this is all just a mad artist's foolish creation seems to be the ultimate point and that is a fitting send-off for von Trier in a way, I think. It's cheap on the one hand (it's supposed to be), but also a perfect example/explanation of art as entertainment and/or vice versa. Exodus — yes, like The Return — is as standalone fascinating as it is successful; honoring, but more importantly elevating the original series in the most magical ways.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[cinemacentral666]

Mom and Dad (2017)

Movie #1,132 • THE YEAR OF CAGE, CH. 48

While this isn't a great film necessarily, it's a prime example of why I started this Nicolas Cage filmography review project 17 years ago. I was hoping to find some fascinating and/or original under-seen hidden gems and this certainly qualifies. Reuniting with Cage is Brian Taylor, one half of the duo that made Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (a far superior sequel compared to the original) as well as the Jason Statham Crank movies. This is his first and only solo feature as writer-director (though he's been tabbed to helm another Hellboy reboot) and I really hope he gets to make more films because, despite its flaws, this is definitely worth a watch. (If anything it's proof that all movies need to be 80 minutes long on the nose!)

I won't get into the specifics of the plot because going in 100% cold absolutely added to the enjoyment of this satirical, bloody horror (I didn't even know it was a horror movie). Suffice it to say, by the time the great Lance Henriksen shows up, hellbent on killing his son (Nicolas Cage), there are only ten minutes left. It was at this point I realized that, as a satire, there was no way anything was going to be resolved successfully (what's the point? it's hard being a kid? it's hard being a parent? both parents and kids are stuck in an unending loop of resentment and pain that will forever trump the joys that supposedly come with those roles? SURE). But the film's breakneck pace works in its favor, as does its obstitant refusal to address the logistical WHY any of this happening in the hellscape it presents. It also features Cage at his unhinged best and it's a lowkey/darkhorse entry for Top Cage Rage performances in a career full of them. And let's be honest: this is why we're here...

And most of the action is great: stylish and effective. Look at these two elderly people getting killed...

As muddled as the message might be, this is a well-made movie and it's good enough where that grave sin can be forgiven.

FUN FACTS: Bokeem Woodbine shows up in uncredited, blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo. And the idiot loser Dr. Oz makes an appearance as himself, acting like the idiot loser that he is (he honestly seems too dumb to realize that the movie is making fun of him? LOL).

THE VERDICT: 8 CAGES OUT OF 10

CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.

..in 2020 I decided to watch every single Nicolas Cage movie in alphabetical order. This project will take me multiple years to complete. New chapters post every other Thursday…