in the order in which I saw them.<\/p>\n
Dead of Night<\/strong><\/em>: A 1945 British horror anthology. Mostly what you\u2019d expect from that description: people gather at a country house and tell tales, there\u2019s a sad one and a funny one and a kinda spooky children\u2019s one. AND THEN THERE\u2019S THE VENTRILOQUIST\u2019S DUMMY. You know, I\u2019ve always assumed people\u2019s fear of dummies was semi-performative. But this anthology ends with an absolutely spine-chilling tale of a dummy who controls his ventriloquist\u2019s life (this is how they do) and I was legitimately, thoroughly creeped out. This film is available on Kanopy, so you may be able to watch it using your library card, and it would make a stellar close-out for February, the month of The Shortening<\/a>.<\/p>\n Set It Off<\/strong><\/em>: Bank heist flick in which the thieves are a group of black women with truly harrowing personal histories. Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah are both terrific. The Queen plays a butch stoner slice of heaven by the name of Cleopatra Sims, and she eats up the screen every moment she\u2019s on it, whether she\u2019s playing comedy or tragedy. It\u2019s hard to watch because this kind of film only ends one way and that\u2019s down, and these are not women you want to see lose when they\u2019ve already lost so much. The heterosexual subplot seemed thoroughly unnecessary but I guess people do enjoy their softcore; at least our streetwise heroine\u2019s heartthrob is a Yale man. Also would\u2019ve cut the whole cop subplot, who even cares about Dr. Cox from \u201cScrubs\u201d in this movie? \u2026Also<\/em> I get the joke with Cleo\u2019s girlfriend being around all the time but never having any lines, but it\u2019s still obnoxious to make your gay couple the half-silent one, and they need the girlfriend for poignancy at the end so why not let her be a complete person before that?<\/p>\n All that said, this movie offers a startling, unstable blend of comedy, action, comfort-flick girlfriends film, rote romance with an extremely \u201990s naked music montage\u2026 and wrenching tragedy. A woman loses her brother to police violence, and like ten minutes later we\u2019ve got Cleo thinking the \u201ccow\u201d at the bank (a movable vault) will possibly be a mooing type cow. (\u201cStop smoking weed,\u201d her friend sighs.) I loved<\/em> so much of this movie, though I admit at least 70% of that was because Latifah was so, so good.<\/p>\n The Bells of St Mary\u2019s<\/strong><\/em>: You may have noticed that I rarely do negative reviews. \u201cHere\u2019s a movie you\u2019ve never heard of; don\u2019t bother.\u201d Who needs to read that? But this film turns up on a lot of nostalgic lists of midcentury Catholic Americana, so it\u2019s worth saying, I think, that it\u2019s no Trouble with Angels<\/em><\/a>. The \u201csave our school!\u201d plotline feels shopworn, the acting is average but not great, and there\u2019s a subplot where a nun convinces a boy that violence is the answer and we don\u2019t really<\/em> need to turn the other cheek. The film is from 1945 and I get that the playground is a microcosm, but it\u2019s all played out with so much wishful thinking and violence-makes-you-a-man rhetoric that even the charm of Ingrid Bergman doing boxing footwork in a habit can\u2019t save it from feeling dishonest. Unless you like Bing Crosby much more than I do this is just an unnecessary movie. Go and treat yourself to The Song of Bernadette<\/em><\/a> instead.<\/p>\n Chocolate Babies<\/strong><\/em>: Black lgbt AIDS activists\/hapless terrorists hold rooftop parties and kidnap closeted city councilmen in this missive from that great drowned continent, the 1990s. This is a rambling, angry indie film and it made my heart ache. I have no idea how this movie would play to people who came out post-2000. How would they take the brazen camera-glaring declarations: \u201cI don\u2019t have Magic Johnson disease. I don\u2019t have Ryan White disease. I have AIDS<\/em>,\u201d like, at what historical remove does agony become camp? For me this was a very funny movie and almost unwatchably sad. It was also occasionally boring, it was self-righteous, it was glamorous, it captured the high dumb hilarity of drunkenness, it was as close to a slice of life as a movie about The Gang That Couldn\u2019t Shoot Straights could be. A million stars. And thanks to Suns Cinema<\/a> for screening this.<\/p>\n The Amityville Horro<\/strong><\/em>r: A sad \u201970s Catholics-vs.-demons movie which feels more like The Shining<\/em> than The Exorcist<\/em>. Is it\u2013to borrow from Kindertrauma<\/a>\u2013the bee\u2019s knees\u2026 or the fly\u2019s thighs?<\/p>\n A little of both, for me. The imagery is quite strong, especially the hell-glow in the iconic eye-windows of the house. (The giant purple devil pig was\u2026 surprisingly more scary than laughable! But not zero<\/em> percent laughable.) Stephen King wrote about Amityville<\/em> as economic horror<\/a>, and the scene with the lost catering money hits that note even harder than the evil-toilet-goo scene.<\/p>\n And James Brolin as the father George, on whom the demon fastens, does a fantastic job of coming apart. He\u2019s newly married to Kathy (Margot Kidder!), who has three children from a previous marriage. He converted to Catholicism for his bride, which suggests either death or annulment as the ending to her first marriage, though we never find out which; his descent from supportive stepfather to violent menace is even more poignant if mother and children are recovering from an annulment and only slowly beginning to trust again. The nightmare of the gentle, loving man who transforms into a monster after marriage\u2013like Beauty and the Beast<\/em> in reverse\u2013is inherently so raw and frightening. This movie didn\u2019t reach the emotional depths of The Shining<\/em>, either book or movie. The book shows us all of Jack Torrance\u2019s choices, his inner life, so we\u2019re right there inside him as he resists or succumbs to the hotel\u2019s evil and his own. And the movie isn\u2019t about Jack\u2019s journey but Wendy\u2019s, where again we really get inside her mind and choices. Amityville<\/em>\u2018s storytelling focuses about equally on both spouses, but never gets quite deep enough inside them. The extended climax, in which George resists the house and then you think he\u2019s given in but surprise! he hasn\u2019t, falls especially flat. I think that\u2019s because the viewer is led to expect that the character is in a much grimmer place than it turns out he really reached, so the stakes were always lower than we thought. Plus the actual ending is so abrupt as to be hilarious. The family abandoned their belongings and now lives elsewhere! The end. WHAT IS THE DEMON DOING THOUGH.<\/p>\n Because the film itself doesn\u2019t shill for The Warrens (TM)<\/a> and The Extended Warrens Universe, and because it isn\u2019t about the real family murdered in Amityville although it obviously expects us to know about them, I am somewhat more willing to accept that it might be morally ok to film this story. Still not totally convinced though.<\/p>\n The Catholic element is similar to the Conjuring<\/em> take, but less blatantly anti-Catholic. (I\u2019m lowkey convinced<\/a> that the Conjuring series is a literal anti-Catholic plot.) The priests refuse to help, though one (Rod Steiger, playing this role with great conviction) does seem to want to. He has a line which here in 2020 is painfully resonant, when he shouts at his religious superiors, \u201c[H]as that become the fashion now? To cover up?\u201d But there is no Conjuring<\/em>-like alternative authority, because this is a \u201970s film so it\u2019s about disintegration and mistrust. If the alternative is fake exorcists<\/em> maybe that isn\u2019t such a bad thing!<\/p>\n