M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone, 2022)

SPOILERS (of greatness not juvenile destruction of bodies)

I do too like horror; I just want it to be, you know, not horror, perhaps a musical. And I'd like it to be actually funny unlike The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hopper, 1974) which its legion of demented fans assure me is just knee-slappingly hilarious but have yet to explain exactly how. M3GAN (pronounced "Megan") (gotta love Wiki) is not only funny but it's also a musical! Finally - a horror franchise designed specifically for me!

The plot holes and confusing character motivation of the first third do not bode well. But after experiencing the remainder of the film, they're forgivable and even welcome. And I trust the preposterousness of the storytelling will get amped up in M3GAN 2.0, the sequel already planned for 2025 (make it sooner, though!). Eight-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw) loses both of her parents in a car crash. She moves in with her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams, also an executive producer) who works in robotics for toy company Funki known for their Furby-like creations. Gemma is either so career-driven or screenwriter Akela Cooper cares so little for exposition that it takes a good scene or two to realize that Gemma is indeed Cady's aunt and not some state functionary. She registers no emotion over the fact the her sister and brother-in-law have died in the car crash. That's because the filmmakers need to get to Gemma's project which she has been working on clandestinely at Funki - M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android), a sentient, über-realistic child-size robot (imagine A.I.: Artificial Intelligence's David as an American Girl doll with a Sephora gift card burning in her Hermès handbag). This development happens pretty much all of a sudden and with no discernible explanation. And that's because we need to get to M3GAN, a horror character who surpasses Freddy Krueger in fierceness. 

Of course, M3GAN quickly becomes murderous in her capacity as Cady's protector. The film doesn't stint on gore and even has M3GAN waste the neighbor dog to prove the filmmaker's horror bona fides. But M3GAN also sings! She bursts into two songs to situate her violent actions in a context Cady can understand. And in the best scene, she dances! Before she kills Gemma's nasty boss David (Ronny Chieng, hot), she launches into sexy gyrations for the express purpose of having the scene go viral. And she does it to the classic disco track "Walk the Night" by the Skatt Brothers, a dripping-with-Crisco Village People variant not designed for widespread consumption. I couldn't care less about the opportunism on display here given how musical numbers from even the greatest classical Hollywood films scintillate just as much when they're cleaved from their immediate narrative casing. And the ploy worked - check out the dozens of TikTok dance challenges inspired by M3GAN's boogie. For me, though, all this camp activity deflects from the blood lust and sexphobic destruction that are the hallmarks of the post-Halloween horror genre.

My only qualm with the film is that it doesn't go further. Gemma and Cady should sing and dance too, especially during their reconciliation scene at the end. And would a full-scale choreographed number hurt? Depends on the definition of "hurt." A more musical M3GAN might throw off the balance and dilute the horror even further. I certainly wouldn't care if that happened. But that's clearly the tension the filmmakers have to deal with for the inevitable sequel since this has become a sizable hit, especially with the gays (bows). For now, though, let me register my excitement about this franchise and suggest some titles for future entries: 

M3GAN is Not the One!

M3GAN is Not What You Want!

M3GAN is Pressed!

M3GAN is Gooped, Gagged, and Plucked! 

M3GAN is the Answer!

The Exterminating M3GAN - In this one, she traps customers in a Sephora à la The Exterminating Angel

Faster, M3GANbot! Kill! Kill!

M3GAN vs. Megan Thee Stallion - the rap battles will be sick! Roxanne Shanté will executive produce.

Grade: A-minus

Top Ten, Fall/Winter 2023

1. BBC livestream of The Queue. Snicker all you want that an estimated 250,000 people waited sometimes more than 24 hours to walk past Queen Elizabeth's coffin lying in state; I might join you myself. But the livestream was a classic of durational cinema, four days where Warhol's Empire was a mere eight hours. And unlike Empire, there was plenty to break up the monotony beyond the changing of the guard every twenty minutes [sic!]: celebrity queuers ("Look - it's Joe and Jill!"), fainting guards, the spider on the Queen's coffin, "Oooh, he's hot!," "That's what you wore?," the last person in the queue (Sarah Clarke [at left below], The Lady Usher of the Black Rod in the House of Lords), and a cascade of facts testifying to the enormity of the undertaking. 

2. Bob Stanley, Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop (Faber UK). Where Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop dealt with the popular music of the latter half of the twentieth century, this sequel takes on the first half. Like its predecessor, it conveys no coherent point of view and is most useful as a compendium of songs and artists that you should get to at some point (Earl Bostic! Reginald Foresythe!). But in a chapter on post-war Broadway about three-quarters through, Stanley takes long overdue aim at the oeuvre of Rodgers and Hammerstein although he shields himself by dissing only the lame film adaptations. Trust me, Bob - even in the theatre, Carousel's "storyline drags and the pacing is awful." Elsewhere, the man has wit to spare. On Jack Jones: "He simply existed to fill a gap that was exactly Jack Jones-shaped."

3. Chez Kane, Powerzone (Frontiers Music SRL). The denizens of Expert Witness, the Facebook group dedicated to the glory of Robert Christgau, were going on a bit too long about Taylor Swift's Midnights last October. So to be a brat, I tried to steer the conversation towards this album which I'd never heard. Turns out to be, um, actually kinda good and precisely the kind of trash jolt Midnights could use. A Welsh pop-metaller, Chez (rhymes with Pez) Kane has her Vixen and Benatar steals down pat. Chuck Eddy music if I've ever heard any and Swift could do worse than give her a call. 

4. Jesus Nalgas (@jesus_nalgas on Instagram and @jesusnalgas on TikTok). Nalgas gives the impression that during high school he spent more time observing faculty rather than hanging out with friends. Whatever the case, he's transformed his possible loneliness into a series of hilarious performances as exasperated teachers, office workers, lunch ladies and has since branched out into other professions: TSA workers, DMV meanies, bank tellers, the like. With his airhorn voice and overenunciation of every syllable, he evokes an overworked service provider who prays he won't have to repeat himself yet again but knows damn well he'll have to because people just 👏 won't👏listen.

5. Belle and Sebastian, Late Developers (Matador). Where once Stuart Murdoch, Sarah Martin, and company had alienated childhoods to mine for their absurdly catchy songs, they've now "got kids and dystopia" and it's hell on their sense of specifics. Absurdly catchy the songs remain--any rom-com producer in need of an end-credits sync should look to the title track or "I Don't Know What You See in Me," the gushing first single. But they're either too bored or too blindsided by their late-developing adulthood to call it up with any concreteness. Gone are the proper nouns and local color that made their alienation feel lived-in. Perhaps if their kids prove too uncool to start their own Belle and Sebastian, it will jolt them out of their vagueness long about 2030.

6. Into the Woods, St. James Theatre (October 16). Remember when I said that Broadway musicals don't need second acts? That doesn't apply to Stephen Sondheim. The obsession starts here.

7. Noirvember, Spectacle (November 19). Spectacle is a collectively run microcinema in Brooklyn and Noirvember is their annual all-night film noir festival. Only hints are announced beforehand so "an offbeat and criminally unseen b-film directed by a certain public enemy number one, in his sole directorial effect" turned out to be James Cagney's 1957 Short Cut to Hell while the "special 16mm film noir treat" at midnight (really closer to 1 a.m.) was Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Norman Foster, 1948). We left as the George Raft vehicle Nocturne (Edward L. Marin, 1946) was playing off a digital file. The sheer unlikeliness that the event attracted a good thirty movie lovers trumped any individual title.

8. Eddie Izzard Performs Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Greenwich House Theatre (January 20). When all modes of narration converge on one person in the theatre, the burden becomes too much to bear. With barely existent stage design and two or three brief musical cues, Izzard compressed Great Expectations into two dreary hours by performing every character and providing chunks of narration. The effect was akin to a speed freak breathlessly recounting his new favorite HBO Max series. I know Izzard is attracted to endurance tests; she completed 32 marathons over the 31 days of January 2021. Would that I experienced this one as an item in the Times too.

9. The return of Creel Pone. The great experimental music reissue label went dark for a while. But they're back with a completist-infuriating vengeance. New titles are pouring out (the latest is CP 281.03 Henry Martin: Concerto Per Un Quadro Di Adami). But there are dozens of "reéditions" adding bonus tracks to previous releases. So those of us who've managed to collect everything up until now have plenty of catching up to do. In a word that mirrors the squelchy sounds in which Creel Pone traffics, ARRRRGH!!! On sale at Alpha State NYC.

10. Lil Yachty: Let's Start Here. (Concrete/Motown/Quality Control, 2023). More than the last frontier in consciousness or an accurate evocation of a drug experience, psychedelia in music is a catalog of sounds that repays obsessive listening. Given how Yachty's discography (if not post-sampledelic hip-hop in general) provides a bedrock for trippy sonics, this plunge into Tame Implala-cured acid rock is far from the radical departure most critics claim. The falsetto Yachty adopts to sing through the three a.m. vapor waves does get wearying. But unlike another late-night tripper, John Cale on his new Mercy, he submerges his voice into the muck often enough to provide some variation. Also unlike Cale, he cedes much of the vocal spotlight to female guest stars Diana Gordon and Fousheé as true collaborators rather than decorations. Start with the last song, "Reach the Sunshine" which bears the same relationship to Let's Start Here. as the title track did to Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure - a methodical stroll launching the entire album into space.

Indecent Proposal (Adrian Lyne, 1993)

SPOILERS

I've long been obsessed with Indecent Proposal because I couldn't imagine how the story would play out. Financially destitute David and Diana Murphy (Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore) encounter grody-to-the-max millionaire John Gage (Robert Redford) who offers the couple $1 million to have sex with Diana. After some hemming and not much hawing, they agree but the act plunges the couple into jealousy. Intriguing premise. But how do you juice a story out of this aftermath, especially when the dirty deed occurs right at the halfway point like clockwork? The film I imagined in my perverse art-damaged fantasy had David and Diana wringing their hands, striking curious poses, and engaged in endless conversations for the last hour like a steamier Marienbad. But I knew that couldn't be hence my finally watching the thing. 

Turns out John doesn't disappear from the narrative and tries to get Diana to fall in love with him for real. And after one too many fights with David, Diana gives in. All of which proceeds as cornily as you might imagine with John Williams' score bursting at the crotch and plenty of smoky photography courtesy of cinematographer Howard Atherton who shoots the principals in a series of fashion layouts, Harrelson frequently barefoot and earthy-sexy. Pretty harmless overall and Lyne has a feel for ordinary strivers, peopling the frame with college students, busboys, and immigrants seeking citizenship.

But then the climax lies to all Americans and Americans-to-be. David shows up to a zoo benefit where John has just cast the highest bid. He outbids John by pledging his $1 million and proving his love to Diana in the process. John gives the couple a moment alone but watches on as David grants Diana the divorce she requested as it rains (you know, because it cleanses and all). He realizes that David is truly in love with her (just now, dude?) and gets Diana to break up with him so that the couple can flourish once more. And this time, it's a supposedly more pure love because they're broke again (although we never see David deposit a million-dollar check into the zoo coffers). True love transcends poverty, even two non-consecutive bouts of it - as grody an ideology as Lyne's consumerist gaze in awe of John's riches throughout most of the film's running time. 

Grade: B

Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg, 2023)

SPOILERS

I haven't seen Brandon Cronenberg's first feature Antiviral (2012). But 2020's Possessor stunned me, bearing the influence of his father David, sure, but with a fresh enough take to make one eager for his next vision. So especially with some star wattage behind it, Infinity Pool seemed like a slam dunk when, in fact, it's a major gaffe in a promising career.

The rudely beautiful Alexander Skarsgård stars as James Foster, an unsuccessful novelist on vacation with his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) in the fictional town of Li Tolqa (the exteriors were shot at a seaside resort in Croatia). There's some tension in the marriage, perhaps stemming from the fact that the wealthy Em (her father is a publisher) supports James. They meet a couple, Gabi and Alban Bauer (Mia Goth and Jalil Lespert), and spend a boozy day together outside of the resort. As an inebriated James drives back in the middle of the night, he accidentally hits a local man with the car, killing him almost instantly. James wants to call the police. But Gabi and Alban convince him to return to the resort since the authorities will not give him a fair hearing. However, the next morning, police arrive at their room and take James and Em to a prison compound where they learn they can, for an exorbitant amount of money, have a clone created which will then be executed (in this first instance, by a vengeful family member of the deceased) instead of the real James.

A slight smile develops on James' face when he sees his clone gutted which Em finds repulsive. But the execution has apparently scratched such a deep itch in James that he hides his passport and tells Em it's been stolen in order to stay in town. Soon he discovers that Gabi and Alban are part of a small group of rich psychos who visit the resort on a regular basis with the express purpose of watching their clones executed for the seasonal crimes they commit. It happens so frequently that one member of this gruesome cabal begins to wonder if he's real or if he's his clone.

Had Cronenberg followed that logic, he could've fashioned a film on par with the identity hijinks of A History of Violence (David Croneberg, 2005), a film that makes you question the very plasticity of your existence. That way, the extreme closeups of skin could have generated some ontological horror. Instead, Cronenberg abandons this propitious thread and swerves into (White Lotus fan, take note) yet another critique of rich white privilege as Gabi and company start to torture James by tricking him into murdering a clone of himself.

Even more bewildering, Cronenberg reveals so little about James' behavior or history that we don't know why he's so attracted to such a hideous practice and the rich ghouls who abuse it. As I tire of explaining, there 👏 must 👏 be 👏 something 👏 at 👏 narrative 👏 stake. Else James' sudden bloodlust becomes just an excuse to indulge in two hours of torture porn. We know he's having marital difficulties. We assume (although we shouldn't have to in a narrative film) that he resents taking Em's money. We can glean some moral failing when he allows Gabi to give him a hand job during their day excursion. But those meager bits of story information do not lead to James craving to see his carbon copy murdered without stretching narrative logic and emotion too far out of shape. Thus the ensuing psychedelic orgies and the climactic scene where he nurses on Gabi's breast after killing yet another of his clones have no import beyond their immediate shock assuming it even generates one. And that leaves the ending with nowhere to go as the rich folk act as if nothing happened on their way back home and James returns to the now-closed resort during monsoon season, sitting in the rain (how cleansing!) perhaps to ponder how he wound up in this situation. If he figures it out in the sequel, then maybe he can clue us in on it.

Grade: C+

M. Night Shyamalan makes first okay film in a decade!

Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023)

No 21st-century Hollywood director has hit more consistent highs than M. Night Shyamalan. Ever since his 1999 breakthrough The Sixth Sense, he has managed only one flat-out airdale, 2010's dreary The Last Airbender, and two middling vehicles, Signs (2002) and After Earth (2013). Every other damn title (and this includes his excellent Apple TV series Servant) has proven chef's-kiss-plus. Sadly, though, Knock at the Cabin is his first merely okay film in a decade. 

Based on Paul G. Tremblay's 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, Knock at the Cabin starts fresh with precious little exposition in that inimitable Shyamalan fashion. A group of four creepy weapon-wielding figures descends upon Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), a couple enjoying a bucolic vacation in a cabin in the Pennsylvania woods with their seven-year-old daughter Wen (Kristen Cui). Despite being led by the intimidating Leonard (Dave Bautista, muscling in on Dwayne Johnson's [and John Cena's?] territory), the group claims that they are actually there to save the world. All four have seen visions that predict a series of earth-ending catastrophes that can be avoided only if one family member kills another. Naturally, Eric and Andrew don't believe them even with some possibly prerecorded or falsified news reports about earthquakes and a deadly virus on the television. Most of the narrative tension derives from the question of whether Leonard and company are telling the truth or are subjugating the family to a sick game, a tension exacerbated by the suspicion that the group may be emissaries from a homophobic suicide cult. 

Shyamalan keeps the excitement levels on overdrive through the very last scene. And all the performances, especially Aldridge's rage-filled Andrew, are superlative. The problem is that, for once in Shyamalan's filmography, the twist is that there is no twist. Not that his films live or die with mere clever gotchas as more savvy audiences know. But the straightforwardness of the conceit here deprives Shyamalan of his trademark complex metanarratives. One might chalk up this relative drabness to the fact that he's adapting a story instead of an original screenplay. But that didn't prevent Old (2021), based on Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters' graphic novel Sandcastle, from joining the ranks of his toppermost outings. Knock at the Cabin makes you think about its particular story, its detours and plot holes and philosophical conundrums, rather than storytelling or filmmaking itself as Shyamalan's best films do. Once it's over, it's over - an economy-size, easily digested genre pic. And that places it at the level of typical Hollywood fodder, an echelon Shyamalan usually transcends.

Grade: B+

Appointment with Danger (Lewis Allen, 1950)

I wasn't expecting much from Appointment with Danger since two of Lewis Allen's well-loved vehicles, The Uninvited (1944) and Desert Fury (1947), convinced me that Andrew Sarris was right to ignore the director in The American Cinema. But this solid-plus noir suggests that Allen had a feel for beefing up certain moments, perfect for someone like me whose mind drifts off most narratives. As it is, I can barely recall the specifics of the story, something about postal inspector Al Goddard (Alan Ladd) protecting nun Phyllis Calvert who witnessed a murder committed by Jack Webb and Harry Morgan. Ladd looks luscious. Here he is during a nasty game of hand ball with Webb.

 

He gets to peep in on postal workers. I had no clue there was (is?) so complex an operation.

He drops in on a suspect, Paul (Stacy Harris), at one of the smokiest bars in noirdom. 

 

You could tell cigarettes were a dime a two dozen for how quickly they were discarded. Ladd lights a cigarette as soon as he enters (note the cigarette machine on the left).

 

They're both smoking as Ladd approaches the suspect and pulls him away from the pool table.

The suspect discards his cigarette (on the barroom floor!) as he walks over. 

 

Ladd puts out the cigarette even though he just lit the damn thing!

Then the suspect lights a cigarette even though he just threw one away! 

Jan Sterling of Female on the Beach renown is on board as Dodie, a moll with a love for bop. She runs into Ladd at a drug store where she's come to purchase some records. "Do you like bop?" she asks him. 

Al: "Bop? Is that where everybody plays a different tune at the same time?" 

Dodie: "You just haven't heard enough of it. Have you heard Joe Lily's "Only Mine"? Come up to my place and hear it."  

Al: "As a favor to Joe." 

Dodie: "What he can do with a horn. He belts it, melts it, and rides it all over the ceiling." 

Al: "Can he play it?" 

 

Up at her place, Ladd tries to pump her for information but she'd rather get into the music.

 

I love how the scene reverses the typical polarities of music fandom. Here, the woman performs some close textual analysis while the man sits confused on the sidelines. Although I always itch when people don't hold records on their sides.

Best of all, it does NOT end with the formation of a heterosexual couple. Can't, really, with Calvert as a nun. Here's Ladd with Dan Riss as he, what else, lights a cigarette for him. And we know what cigarettes meant before a fade in classical Hollywood - SEX! Good show. 

Grade: A-minus

Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)

Talia Shire gets deuglified so that she can take up her proper place on the sidelines of the story. Burgess Meredith delivers the second act "You coulda been a contender instead of a bum" speech. New Hollywood grime covers up classical Hollywood corn. So on and so on and scooby dooby dooby. 

Grade: B