This Week in Cinema, I Learned…Sept 1-7 2024
Written by Cameron Geiser
Welcome to This Week in Cinema, a yearlong film criticism project wherein I will be watching a new film that I haven't seen every single day.
This Week in Cinema I dove into a new month and therefore, a new theme. September's theme is twofold in that we'll be embracing the surreal, and the fantastic! With a theme like Surreal/Fantasy there's a lot of ways I could go in selecting each week's films, but when considering the year as a whole I mostly just wanted a reason to have films like Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain sitting alongside John Boorman's Excalibur. And while that happened this week, I also actually used my allotted one rewatch per month to revisit Tim Burton's original Beetlejuice so I could be refreshed going into the long awaited sequel that materialized this week with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The rest of the week's films span the range from a 1980s High Fantasy epic with Highlander to a strange little 2024 indie starring Kyle Gallner (If you know, you know) and even… The Demon Slayer anime movie from 2020, which was a fascinating leap as I had zero reference points going into that one. What a week, what a month ahead! Come back next week to see how far down the rabbit hole I'll go in search of the abstract, the weird, but especially… the strange.
September 1st
Highlander (1986)
3.5/5
How did I not see this one until now? I'm actually astonished by that fact because Highlander is exactly the type of film that Seventeen year old me would have been obsessed with. Light on story and scripting, high on style, snappy editing, and kinetic cinematography, this one was a delightful surprise. I only knew two or three things going into this one beforehand. Namely that the phrase “There can only be one!” is shouted a lot, but also that Sean Connery had a role in it and that Thomas Jane starred as the lead. Well, shows you how much I knew, because that's not Thomas Jane, it's just his 1980s lookalike Christopher Lambert. So, what's the story about? Well, it's a bit cryptic on first viewing but the general idea is that Lambert's Connor MacLeod is one of several immortals that engage in a mythic tradition called “The Gathering” in which these immortals are doomed to roam the earth until they all kill each other off. Eventually the final two meet for an epic battle in New York City with Connor's ultimate foe, Kurgan- played with a charming menace by Clancy Brown. Oh, did I mention that the whole soundtrack is essentially just Queen? Sword Fights with immortals set amidst crashing lightning in 1980s New York City played against a soundtrack with Freddie Mercury belting out insane vocals? I have no idea how I missed this one, but it's a damn good time. Give it a shot!
September 2nd
Beetlejuice (1988)
4/5
Since the new Beetlejuice movie was actually being released this week and I knew that I'd be catching it on opening night, I figured that a rewatch would be a good idea since the last time I actually watched the original film was in the 1990s. The first thing I had entirely forgotten was the fact that this is Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin's movie first and foremost. Their performances as the Maitlands was the core and emotional anchor of the film. I also forgot how quickly they died in an unfortunate car accident, but their quirky awe shucks behavior, as if they themselves walked out of a Norman Rockwell painting, was perfectly set against the rude crude dude antics of Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice character. After the Maitlands die they watch their dream house get sold and bought by the insufferable new family, The Deetzes. Since they cannot leave their home, nor do they want to give up their dream house, they decide to try and terrorize the Deetzes out of it, but lament that they aren't that good at this. Beetlejuice himself looms large in the background until he gets let loose on the stage. He's only in the film for roughly fifteen minutes and Michael Keaton uses every second of that time accordingly. More than anything else I loved the world Tim Burton made here, how it operates, the beautifully insane look of the production design, but especially when it comes to the afterlife. The script is tighter than I expected and the whole thing is just an incredibly entertaining ride. Check it out if you somehow missed this one.
September 3rd
Strange Darling (2024)
3.5/5
When I hear things like, “a new non-linear indie thriller full of unique acting choices” I'm already invested, what screen am I heading to? Such was the case with my completely unplanned trip to catch the new Kyle Gallner flick, Strange Darling. Now, to be perfectly honest, the only reason I know about Kyle Gallner is because my favorite YouTube Channel, Red Letter Media, did a triple feature episode of Gallner's films on their show Half in The Bag last year (Great episode by the way, check it out). So, having a brief concept of what this film could be like, I tried to go in without expectations. I'll tell you, I walked out of the theater with a big smile on my face. I don't even really want to divulge any details on the plot as I truly believe the less you know going into this one, the better. Trust me on this one, it was like watching Quentin Tarantino's kid brother make a movie after watching Pulp Fiction. Support indie filmmakers, like Director J.T. Mollner, and check it out!
September 4th
The Holy Mountain (1973)
4.5/5
I did not greatly anticipate watching this film if I'm being honest. You see, I had watched Jodorowsky's El Topo years prior and I did noy enjoy my time with it. Like a living fever dream, or a Sergio Leone Western on Acid, it was baffling to say the least. So I trepidatiously approached The Holy Mountain and having returned to the land of the living, I have good news, this film is a wholly unique and miraculously psychedelic film. It is extremely abstract and packed to the gills with absurdist imagery. Its anti-militarism, anti-exploitation, anti-conformity, anti-consumerism and it's got purposefully sacrilegious imagery with revolting, disgusting and intentionally upsetting ideas at the forefront. That may not sound like it matches the score I gave it, but I kinda loved this punky rebellious film. The story, as best as I can surmise from one watch, is that a being called The Alchemist (played by Jodorowsky himself), assembles a team of people named accordingly with the planets they represent.
Their plan? Once assembled (this takes some time with a bit of a strange backstory to each major player) he tells them something along the lines of “I now know where the Gods reside. Let's go steal their secret knowledge and kill them!” Excuse me? What now? So they do just that. They travel to The Holy Mountain and transcend through the last vestiges of arduous challenges and ascend to the round table of power. Once there I must admit I did not think we would get a resolution that made any sense, but it does! These are the only characters in film history that I have known to fully and thoroughly recognize that they live in a fictional world and they end the film by leaving this realm and entering the real world. Pretty neat idea in my book.
September 5th
Excalibur (1981)
3.5/5
Roughly a year ago Patrick H. Willems, a prolific film video essayist on YouTube, did a whole feature length video about Zack Snyder called “The Zack Snyder Video: Our Himbo Auteur”. In that video detailing why Zack Snyder is the way he is, no offense I like the guy but not all of his movies are, uh… good. After a while Patrick gets to Zack Snyder's favorite movie, the one that informed his take on Batman and The Justice League more than anything else, John Boorman's Excalibur. This movie is… wild. Have you ever thought, “You know, King Arthur and all that is so boring. Where's all the Sex? The Violence?” Then this movie is for you. There's a lot of strange visual choices with surrealist imagery from time to time, but what had myself and a friend bursting with unexpected laughter was the insane line delivery of basically every single character throughout the film. It's just so unnatural and odd, great choices in my book. I found the sound design to be rather… chunky? The acting has zero subtlety, the edit is bizarre in cut choice and pacing, and there are gigantic time jumps at several intervening points. Strange movie, definitely worth a watch!
September 6th
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
4/5
Well, what a delightful surprise. Tim Burton was easily the queasiest aspect of the new film going in for me. In this century I believe he has made, like two decent-to-good movies before this. Those movies being Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie. Anyhow, let me get this out of the way right off the bat. Is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice a good sequel? Yes. Yes it is. The new film feels very much in that same world as the 1988 original. It's also definitely more unwieldy than the first film resulting in a script that is nowhere near as tight or precise as the original, but it does take bigger creative swings and tries more interesting things on the whole. Is it better than the first film? No, I wouldn't say that.
However I would say it's about at the same level as the first in overall quality. This time around Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), her mother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) and her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) return to the family home in Winter River after a tragic accident brings, or rather, forces them together. Are there too many subplots rummaging about in this one? Possibly? But honestly I wouldn't cut a second of the Monica Bellucci or Willem Dafoe scenes- but I could do with less of Justin Theroux's character Rory. I know he was supposed to be a modern approximation of Otho (Glenn Shadix) from the first film, but they tried to humanize this character too much. If you wanted a character to be despised with audiences demanding their comeuppance, don't humanize them- keep them cartoonishly evil like Otho actually was. Oh and obviously, Michael Keaton absolutely killed it as Beetlejuice once again- he didn't miss a step. Check it out!
September 7th
Demon Slayer: The Movie Mugen Train (2020)
4/5
In 2020 I was impressed that an anime movie was the number one film of the year worldwide, resulting in the first time in…..ever (?) that the number one film globally wasn't an American one. For that reason alone I put it down on my list. When considering what film to watch, a friend suggested Demon Slayer, to which I asked “Well, does that actually fit the theme of surreal/fantasy?” I'm happy to report back that, yes, it does indeed count for this month's theme. Mostly because the villain of the piece puts all of the main characters to sleep and puts them in a dream state where he then invades their dreams and tries to kill them. This all takes place on a train by the way, which keeps the action chaotic and claustrophobic at appropriate times. Not knowing anything about the show going in may have left a few details a bit murky for me, but it wasn't too difficult to figure out what was happening. The animation and musical score were outstanding with thoroughly intense fight scenes spread out evenly throughout the runtime. All in all it was impressive. After the year is over and I have more time for TV shows again, I'll likely check this one out.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.