This Week in Cinema, I Learned…Mar 31-Apr 6 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.
Well folks, it finally happened. I knew at some point my scheduling for This Week in Cinema would get wonky and potentially askew. That time has come. During Horror Week I moved around several films as I was watching them and as films got out of order I ended up watching more movies than anticipated. So, consider this week a treat, or a preview of what October might feel like- it'll be Horror movies all month long when the time comes. This is what happens when you watch movies late at night after work for months straight. In any case, what I learned this week was not to prejudge movies based on marketing or word of mouth as several of these films scored far higher than expected. Pearl and the Happy Death Day films in particular were just damn good. I hope you enjoy my descent into spooky territory, for next week is science fiction, my favorite genre of film.
March 31st
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)
3.5/5
If you want to see a deeper dive of what I think about this Monster movie sequel, check out my full review for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. However, I will say that while it was an overall enjoyable experience, the film isn’t as tight or as clear-cut as Godzilla Versus Kong was. If you enjoy the old school Showa era Godzilla films then you’ll likely have a fun time with this one.
April 1st
The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)
2.5/5
Peter Weir's first feature film was a proto-Mad Max partially due to the focus on cars as weapons but also because Weir was a crucial part of the Australian New Wave of films in the 70s and 80s. While Weir would go on to make culturally significant touchstones like The Truman Show or Swashbuckling adventures at sea with Master and Commander: Far Side of The World, this first attempt falls flat in execution even though there's admirable effort on screen. In fact The Truman Show does share story elements with The Cars That Ate Paris in that a whole lot of people go to great lengths to keep a narrative, or system, of control in place without too many people asking too many questions. This small town in Australia (Yes, I too mistakenly thought this would be set in France) survives by causing car crashes when unlucky travellers happen to come upon the town. The townsfolk strip the cars of any value and I do mean any value.
They take the bodies of the dead and give them to the local surgeon for medical experiments. Increasingly the town's older citizens come into conflict with the youth in the town who clash with each other over the rowdy antics of the crazed, manic, driving of the teenagers. The audience surrogate is Arthur Waldo (Terry Camilleri) who becomes trapped in Paris after he and his brother crash their car when entering the town, ultimately losing his brother to the carnage. He's essentially adopted by the mayor (John Meillon) and is given ornate-sounding roles around town that actually don't mean much since he's paralyzed with fear over the thought of driving. My displeasure with the film is mostly in the execution of the story. The storytelling itself is rather disjointed and rough around the edges but paired with fast-paced editing seemingly designed to disorient the audience, it just wasn't for me. The final act does have some fun as chaos engulfs the town with vehicular rioting, but it's not enough for me to give it a recommendation.
April 2nd
Army of Darkness (1993)
4/5
As somebody who lives in Michigan- I love Sam Raimi. Maybe it's just the fact that he makes it seem possible, like hey, one of us made it out and did awesome things with that opportunity. Though, truly, what makes me absolutely love his films is his insane energy and style that comes across. That energy, that Tex Avery Cartoon flavor, is most on display with his Evil Dead movies. I don't quite know how I managed to get this far in life without watching Army of Darkness because I absolutely loved this film. This is now my second favorite Evil Dead movie, that first one is pure indie horror magic and it's difficult to outdo that one. The film quickly goes through Ash's backstory in the first two films before sending our lovable idiot back in time to the Middle Ages where the deadites torment the valleys and forests of King Arthur's kingdom. Ash is immediately enslaved by the locals and quickly sentenced to death. However, after slaying a deadite in public he instantly becomes a local hero.
After consulting with the wise men of King Arthur's court Ash learns that to go back to his own time he must retrieve the Necronomicon, which relies on him remembering three words of power allowing him to remove the book safely. Obviously it doesn't go well for him and he ends up fighting off the deadite army with the knights. It's all tongue-in-cheek humor and swagger from Bruce Campbell as Ash, who appears to be having a good time with the role- however, I know Sam Raimi gave notes to his production team to “make it as complicated and difficult as possible for Bruce”. What really upped the score for me was the reliance on inventive special effects that were innovative for the time and references to the greats like Ray Harryhausen. There are some truly creepy visuals between the Evil Ash that grows out of his body or the many small Ash copies that emerge from a shattered mirror. There are oodles of style and charm in this slapstick sword and shield horror-comedy, and I highly recommend giving it a watch.
April 3rd
The Blob (1958)
3/5
I never knew that Steve McQueen was involved in this one so it was a nice surprise to see him as the lead of this very silly 1950’s B movie monster flick. Most of the story is a structural setup that focuses on teenagers trying to convince the local cops and adults that something awful truly is taking place. This was most likely due to the difficulties of the special effects required to make the Blob believably capable of killing people- even as silly-looking as it is. I’m sure it played well on drive-in screens back in the day, it’s got just enough useless rubbish in the middle of the script for teenagers of the time to make out before the next round of death by the Blob! The movie theater scene was a standout though, fun stuff.
April 4th
Pearl (2022)
4/5
Having not seen X from Ti West, or any Ti West films, to be honest, I went straight into this film based on recommendations from friends. Pearl is a strange one, meaning both the character and the film itself. It's almost as if Ti West put The Wizard of Oz and Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a blender, and outpoured a technicolor fantasy about a young woman going insane and becoming an Axe murderer. Or at least, allowing herself to be unrepentant in her true form. The film opens with the color grading set to something out of a 1950s family film with bright poppy colors on a recognizable American farm in Texas. Pearl dreams of being a movie star, a dancer on the silver screen like so many of the silent pictures of that time, which by the way Pearl takes place in 1918 with World War One happening off in the background. Make no mistake folks, this is a monster movie with the whole film slowly ratcheting up the tension and setting up the ultimate downfall of Pearl and the family farm. West delights in brutal kills, but they all happen directly as it relates to Pearl and Mia Goth’s performance as the young woman with murder in her eyes.
There's some fun interplay with the association between Actors and Serial Killers, both have an insatiable need to be seen and a good chunk of Pearl's dialogue can be interpreted both ways. The true enemies of the day however are repression, trauma, and fear. Pearl’s father is wheelchair bound and her mother is an incredibly strict authoritative figure in her life. Once Pearl’s dreams are shattered by rejection she goes off the deep end and I assumed more bodies would be thrown into the nearby lake for her best friend the Alligator. It's a pretty solid horror movie and it's got me looking forward to the next film from West and Goth coming this July titled MaXXXine.
April 5th
Happy Death Day (2017)
4/5
The Happy Death Day films were the biggest surprise of the week for me, I was constantly switching the scores until the time of writing. Going into these films I knew nothing other than the basic premise of a sorority girl continually being murdered on her birthday until she solves the mystery of who killed her. Which, yes, that is what the first one is about broadly, but I was incredibly surprised that Tree (Jessica Rothe) actually had a good character arc and transformed from a cardboard cutout caricature to a fully realized person by the end of the film. In fact, the script was far better than anticipated. It’s clearly a film written by people who understand the appeal of slasher films, but also Groundhog Day and Back to The Future (more on that later) as well. The first film leans more heavily into the Horror aspect of Horror-Comedy than the sequel, it has some legitimately good tension and solid execution of the mystery at hand, and the film sets up a huge list of suspects to the point where there might be roughly ten to fifteen people who may have had a reason to murder Tree. She wasn’t exactly the best person before her life-altering retrospective and re-examination of her past choices. This was an incredibly competent and highly entertaining film, much better than expected.
April 6th
Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
4/5
Speaking of Back to The Future, this film is heavily influenced by the middle film of that time-traveling trilogy. The Happy Death Day films wear their influences on their sleeve though and aren’t ashamed of it- both Back to The Future 2 and Groundhog Day get name-dropped in both films. This time around we discover the root of the cause of Tree’s death loop, it wasn’t actually about Tree discovering who was murdering her. It turns out Carter (Israel Broussard), the boy Tree eventually fell in love with from the first film, has a roommate, Ryan (Phi Vu), who's working on a science project that disrupts the flow of time itself. Thus this sequel leans more into the Horror-Sci-fi camp, but comedy is still very much at the heart of this film too. Parallel dimensions get introduced and the time loop is reset for Tree in this alternate dimension which sends her down a path of equation memorization and determined self-harm over consistently being murdered.
Being in another dimension where things are similar but not the same allows the filmmakers to twist the knife emotionally, like with Carter being in a relationship with the Sorority leader of Tree’s house and sorta side villain of these films, Danielle (Rachel Matthews). Again, the script is better than expected with the sequel striking the same story structure points in clever ways without repeating anything unnecessary to the characters’ growth. Happy Death Day 2U is more of an ensemble than the first one and it gets to expand on the world and relationships built in the first film. I must impress upon the fact that I really did not think these films would be getting the scores that I ultimately gave them, but each film surpassed expectations in new and inventive ways. They earned the scores they got, and I definitely recommend giving them a watch.
Bonus
Videodrome (1983)
3/5
I've only seen a few of David Cronenberg's films, namely Scanners and The Fly, I need to check out more of his work so I figured the Horror week of April was a good place to dive deeper into the work of the Body Horror Master. James Woods stars as Max Renn, president of CIVIC-TV on Channel 83. They specialize in overtly provocative and sensationalist programming, essentially broadcasting as much sex and violence as they can get away with, without being shut down. CIVIC-TV as an idea was ahead of its time in realizing that people can and will watch anything and everything. As we are now deep into the internet age, some of this will likely appear familiar to certain periods of internet exploration back in the wild west days of surfing the web. I was struck by the fact that this was essentially just an analog version of internet forums and image boards like the now-infamous 4Chan.
Eventually, Max stumbles across a frequency broadcasting Videodrome, which his studio picked up on through pirate TV snooping and he immediately greenlit the program for public consumption. As it turns out, Videodrome isn't what it appeared to be, instead of a TV show performing sex and torture on a soundstage, Videodrome is a series of tapes that work and react almost like A.I. in a hallucinatory fashion. Overall the ideas presented and practical effects on display (by the legendary Rick Baker no less) make this one an interesting watch, but as was probably intended, some of the body horror stuff with tapes and guns being stuffed into James Woods' mid-riff vagina was somewhat disturbing but also kinda goofy? Anyway, I might have to check out Cronenberg's new film slated to hit Cinemas later this September titled The Shrouds- apparently it has to do with death and being able to watch your dead loved ones decompose? Yeah, that sounds like classic Cronenberg.
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.