A Good Reason to Push the Button

Films: Class of Nuke ‘Em High
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Okay, deep breath. Class of Nuke ‘Em High, based on the title alone, is not going to be a serious movie. When you discover that this is a Troma movie made in part by Lloyd Kaufman, that’s going to clearly be the case. This is going to be a horror-comedy, with the emphasis on comedy. We’re going to get mostly gross out stuff, bad acting, and stupid jokes. At their very best, Troma films are funny like a cat sliding off a newly-waxed table is funny. Class of Nuke ‘Em High is not Troma at its best.

I am more than happen to buy into a lot of ridiculousness when it comes to horror comedy films. That doesn’t mean that I’m willing to accept anything for the sake of comedy. A film like Class of Nuke ‘Em High has all of the problems of a film like Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. What I mean is that it presents a world where the people, the situation, the setting, and everything else is so much of an extreme caricature that it doesn’t touch on reality. It’s not even parody. The people are ridiculous and stupid, miss the obvious, and only by the grace of a higher power haven’t stuck a fork in an outlet at this point.

Rasho-Mano a Mano

Films: The Last Duel
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

When The Last Duel came out, there was some initial thought about Oscar time, but the film seemed to tank at the box office. Ridley Scott famously blamed the failure of the film at the box office on Millennials not having the attention span for a movie of this length or it not appearing on their cell phones. That seems like sour grapes, apologizing for a movie that is, to be honest, too damn long.

I’m not going to apologize for that opinion. The Last Duel is very much in the style of Rashomon in the sense that we get three different takes on the same story, three perspectives on a tragedy, concluding with the duel in the title. That may seem like that means there’s a lot of ground to cover, but Kurosawa did four version of the same story in Rashomon and did it in an hour less of running time. The Last Duel is bloated, and while there’s plenty here that’s good, there’s a lot that can and should be cut.

What I've Caught Up With, March 2022

While there are only six movies here, I watched a lot more than just these six off the giant list. Four more--Free Guy, Last Night in Soho, The French Dispatch, and Candyman were all movies I gave a full review to. I also watched Wonder Woman 1984, which wasn't on the list and was disappointing enough that it didn't even warrant a short review here. There were a couple of others as well. I recommned the Time Warp series of three films about cult movies. There's not a serious discussion here, but it's fun to listen to people talk about crazy movies they were in.

Sellers' Market

Films: Dream Home (Wai dor lei ah yat ho)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I’m not sure what I expected with Dream Home (or Wai dor lei ah yat ho if you prefer), but it wasn’t what I got. The elevator pitch of this one seems like it should be a comedy, or at least that it could be a comedy. A woman, desperate to purchase a flat in over-priced Hong Kong, saves up for years for her dream apartment. When the deal falls through because of the owners’ greed, she goes on a killing rampage to, for lack of a better way to say it, lower the market value of the real estate.

Tell me that’s not a great pitch for a comedy/horror movie. It has enough reality to be relatable (the movie is from just after the sub-prime mortgage crash) but a great deal of potential for some funny deaths, the sort of wacky hijinks that are common in a standard horror comedy. That is absolutely not what we get in Dream Home. This is a surprisingly dark and brutal movie with substantial, shocking gore moments that come out of nowhere. I think we’re supposed to sympathize with the main character as well, something I found impossible to do.

The New Yorker

Films: The French Dispatch
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television

I like Wes Anderson. I realize that on a movie blog, admitting to being a Wes Anderson fan isn’t really coming out of any kind of intellectual closet. A lot of movie people—probably most movie people—have at least some respect for Anderson, whose movies always have a sort of handmade, bespoke quality to them. I have genuinely liked most of Anderson’s films that I have seen even if I have to be in a mood for them. Discovering The French Dispatch at my local library proved to be too irresistible a temptation, so I brought it home and popped it into the spinner.

And with that, I don’t really know where to begin. The French Dispatch isn’t so much a traditional movie as it is an anthology. We learn right away that the editor of a fictional magazine called The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun has died. This editor, Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray) has run the magazine for years, starting when his father, the owner of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun sent him to France for some life experience. Arthur started the magazine, which is very clearly an homage to The New Yorker. We also learn that upon his death, the magazine was to be cancelled, people refunded their subscription money, and the presses melted down and destroyed, pending one final issue. The movie, then is that final issue—four stories and an obituary.

That's a Killer Dress

Films: Last Night in Soho
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I don’t love all of the movies of Edgar Wright (I absolutely hated Scott Pilgrim), but I do tend to like them. I heard a lot of good about Last Night in Soho. It’s also worth saying that Wright doesn’t direct nearly enough; this was his first non-documentary, feature-length film in four years (thank you for the correction). So what did four years away from the director’s chair give us? I was curious to find out.

It's not immediately obvious what decade we’re going to be in at the start. We’re introduced to Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), who is enamored of the 1960s in all things—the music and fashion especially. It’s fashion that is her passion, though, and we soon see that she has been accepted to study at the London College of Fashion. She bids farewell to her grandmother (Rita Tushingham) and heads to the big city.

Shark Attack

Films: West Side Story (2021)
Format: Streaming video from Disney Plus on rockin’ flatscreen.

When dealing with any list of films, I’ve always made a concerted effort to knock out the longest films on the list as early as I could. So, when Spielberg’s version of West Side Story showed up on Disney Plus, I knew I’d be watching it sooner rather than later; it was the second longest film on the current Oscar list I have. It’s also the fact that I knew this would be a tough watch for me. Ten years ago, I would have told you that that was because I didn’t like musicals. These days, there are plenty that I like. No, the issue is that I don’t love West Side Story as a piece of work because I genuinely dislike the source material.

There’s no getting around that fact. I really dislike Romeo and Juliet as a play and even as a concept. There are those who look at Romeo and Juliet as the height of romance. I look at it as a story where two kids (Romeo is canonically 16; Juliet is all of 13) decide that they can’t live without each other and over the course of a couple of days, a bunch of people die for their rash stupidity. West Side Story is that with a couple of really good songs.