Don't Worry Darling (2022)

Saw Don't Worry Darling, a film that's got twists and turns so it's a little hard to talk about but the premise is basically this: we follow Alice who is the Barbie-doll, 1960s wife of a suit-and-tie-wearing 1960s businessman.  She lives in a plastic-fantastic housing development where they laze around all day drinking martinis and gossiping.  But it's very clear even from the outset that this is not actually the 1960s.  The characters playfully flip each other off and act in anachronistically casual ways, the wives all go ballet practice where the camera prowls and creeps along, watching the graceful women in their identical leotards, clearly signaling that we are in Stepford Wife territory.

I enjoyed this film okay.  It had a good sense of creeping wrong-ness.  I do wish it had been a little more subtle though.  There's a scene early on where the main character is vacuuming the carpet while that Spooky Scary Skeletons cartoon plays on the TV.  That's good: it's subtle.  The picture-perfect 60s atmosphere is troubled by this Halloween cartoon, subtly mocking the ballet lesson.  It's small, but it's still early in the film.  We're building.  Soon after that however there's a scene where the main character is making eggs and realizes to her confusion that the eggs she bought are all just hollow shells with nothing inside.  This is less good in my opinion.  It's still early in the film.  We shouldn't be breaking reality just yet, should we?  Ah well.

Despite not being the slowest of boils, we spend a lot of time with the protagonist, being unsure what's going on, trying to figure it out.  When the explanation comes, it's still a little confusing, but more or less satisfying and there's some interesting inclusion of some internet sub-culture stuff, but the heart of the film is watching this pretty lady be horrified and confused in a sumptuous, midcentury-modern setting.

It's not the best film, but it entertained me okay.  It reminded me of Vivarium (and of course of The Stepford Wives.)  It's very stylish and clever in parts.  It's a little clumsy in parts too, but we can't have everything.

On the Town (1949)

Saw On the Town, a goofy little musical number about three sailors (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and someone called Jules Munshin) who get one precious day to experience New York city.  They meet girls, they get chased by cops, they sing that New York New York song.  It's a whole thing.

Generally this movie was a miss for me.  It's very precious and very sweet.  There's some risqué humor, but nothing that wouldn't fly in a high school production.  No one's motivations make a ton of sense beyond them just being in love I guess, but the point of the movie of course is to be a big frivolous musical.  I'm not a big fan of musicals I gotta say, and this one left me a little cold.

Here's what I liked: the dance sequences were lovely.  There's a An American In Paris-style bravura number that recaps the entire film to that point which is beautiful, really some of Gene Kelly's best work.  I always start a Gene Kelly movie being indifferent to his smirks and grins but I always fall in love with him again by the end.  Apparently a tyrannical perfectionist to work with, but he dances a pretty dance.

So anyway, not a winner for me.  It's a little too old and tame.  It has aged a bit, and there are sequences where they dress up as primitive tribespeople which I don't think is offensive to any particular group but felt very cringey to me.  There's some cleverness and a ton of athleticism, but not enough hysterics or visuals for me to really enjoy.  Oh well, here's to the next one!

Flatliners (1990)

Saw the 1990s version of Flatliners.  It was very interesting.  It follows five medical students who hatch a plan to induce death for a brief period before resuscitating themselves to bring back knowledge of the hereafter.  It's a strange combination of gaudy and fascinating.  It's framed as a sort of horror/drama film.  The medical school where they do their experiments is some kind of converted mansion/cathedral/weeping angel statue warehouse.  It's got kind of a Hellraiser or Suspiria style of gothic, sumptuous horror.

There's many scenes that are outright ridiculous.  There's a moment where one of the characters is sitting in a car in an alleyway and slowly the lighting shifts, lighting up fearsome oni masks spray-painted on the walls.  Look out!  There is a skull just over his shoulder!  But there are also many scenes that are surprisingly effective at being creepy.  As the graffiti is lit up, a dog slithers forward, apparently crawling despite broken legs.  It's very worrying.  Similarly, as excitement about the near-death experiments mounts in the group, they begin ghoulishly bidding against each other, bargaining minutes spent in brain-death before being resuscitated, gambling with the decay of their own brains.  It's a great portrait of ambition run to crass recklessness; so ghoulish, so gross!

The film is interesting.  It's grappling with death and life and these very important, profound things.  I was kind of glad that it went the horror route, but the snob in me was disappointed.  Anyone can make death be scary.  The animal in us will always want to live, but we know we will have to die.  Help me to grapple with that, Hollywood!

I was honestly in the mood for a movie like this though: dumb enough to be sensational, smart enough to be tasteful.  There's other things to enjoy: one of the characters is symbolically linked to salvation.  The film cleverly makes him an atheist.  The film is set around Halloween which affords many opportunities for morbid visuals.

This was not a great film, but it was a good film and I enjoyed it a lot.  It both rose to and overcame its premise.

Odd Man Out (1947)

Saw Odd Man Out, an Irish noir film about an IRA member who goes missing/on the lam after a botched robbery.  The film is interesting.  It's got a good sense of the sinister outside of society, where people close their doors and don't want to get involved.  It put me in mind of war films or Holocaust films where the smallest things mean life or death.  In such a domestic setting, women seem to feature more prominently, whether they be betraying the protagonist by calling the police or helping them by patching them up.

The film proceeds like an action-y Hitchcock film until we get about halfway through, when a homeless man and a raving drunk artist show up and the film veers hard into camp.  It's a very strange departure which ties in thematically, but we move from realism into broad, Dickensian fantasy.  Then again, the main antagonist to the film is a handsome cop who carries a walking stick and uses it to tip up people's chins so he can look into their eyes.  Shades of Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds.

Although it also has a hefty helping of weary Irish melancholy, the film is very fun in a lot of ways.  Like war films, there are many near escapes which are always fun to watch.  Once the message of the film is theatrically declaimed, a lot falls into focus, but the ride up to that point is twisty and interesting and strange.