This movie is half the length (and probably a twentieth of the budget) of that thing I watched yesterday, and huge chunks of that are just people walking through the woods, but it’s about a thousand times more interesting. The three main characters- particularly Sam (Lily Collias)- feel like real humans. Great acting all around, but there is one scene in particular that’s the linchpin of the film, and they nail it.
I never watched the original 1979 release of Caligula, but I’d seen parts of it, and I was familiar with it’s history: Bob Guccione (the guy who did Penthouse magazine) hired a bunch of well-known actors and crew to make a version of the story that told a good story without holding back on the sexual aspects, then decided to fire the director and throw in some extra hardcore sex and violence, leading to a movie that most people who worked on it didn’t want to have associated with them.
This is a recut that cuts out the bonus porn and violence, and uses formerly lost footage to make a more cohesive story that includes more acting and less schtupping. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make a good movie. And even without the bonus porn, there’s so much background sex that it loses all meaning. The whole thing is long (about three hours!) and boring. I kept thinking “it must be almost over,” then looking at my watch and seeing only ten minutes had passed.
I realized something about two thirds of the way in: Caligula is the story of a deranged leader of a country that’s gaudy, loud, pointlessly expensive, ponderous, and around for too long. It’s the Donald Trump of art house movies.
It’s an Alien movie. It goes like this:
This is a total fan-service movie, and that mostly works, but there is a specific extended callback that was such a terrible idea that it pulled me right out of the film for a bit. And I thought the Final Boss Monster looked goofy.
Oh, and here’s what I kept thinking when I saw the title:
What a crazy retro block of sort-of-fifties, sort-of-eighties cheese. A new wave noir musical with a lead playing stoicism as blandness. Costumes that Diane Lane can’t keep from looking goofy, and yet Willem Dafoe somehow manages to make black plastic hip waders with no shirt work.
…and Robert Townsend as a backup singer!
…and Ed Begley Jr. as a bum!
…and of course: HAMMER FIGHT!
Look, I only got about three hours of sleep last night; it should be pretty easy for a movie to outwit me.
Not one thing in this movie surprised me. Every plot point is predictable, every joke is telegraphed, every decision a character makes is the one they have to make to get the story to the next point, even if there’s no motivation for it.
…but at least there’s a completely pointless “I got pee in my mouth” joke.
One of the challenges my middle school digital media kids have is making coherent movies. I give them some guidelines to help, including:
Because they’re working on foundational skills, I don’t emphasize another truth that’s important in all creative activities: once you understand the rules, break them. This movie does all the things I tell my students to avoid, and that’s why it works.
Here are the graphics I made for all the films in the order I watched them:
It was funny to watch this collection of old commercials and movies trailers and see what things from my childhood people decided to collect. I wouldn’t normally group together Eraserhead, Meatballs 4, and anti-crack PSAs starring Clint Eastwood, but someone did. Very odd to see the trailer for The Doom Generation and think “Oh yeah, Heidi Fleiss exists.” Also odd to see trailers before a collection of trailers.
While I was watching this I was thinking “Wow, whoever did the casting for this movie did a great job getting people who look like they could have been in prison. Then I looked it up afterward, and most of the cast is former prisoners who were in the acting program at Sing Sing. They do a great job- very natural and believable in the off-stage scenes, and a little stiffer and amateurish for the on-stage parts.
I also learned a cool thing about the salaries for the cast and crew: everyone got paid at the same hourly rate, and everyone in the cast has equity in the movie. No surprise that a setup like that was able to get a waiver to work during the strike.
Not a movie, but Alamo showed the first three episodes. It looks a lot like the 80s animated series, which isn’t surprising since it’s a Bruce Timm show, but it’s a gritter Gotham and a less-experienced Batman. It’s fun, but I left wishing it was more it’s own thing and less of a refinement of the old series.
I’m not into rap, I don’t speak Irish Gaelic, and I think musicians trying to be actors (especially as them selves in serious roles) rarely works- but this movie is great. The band turns in great performances, the music is energetic, the visuals are clever without being distracting, and the story works.
Also: this movie very much earns its R rating. Swearing, violence, nudity, and holy cow so many drugs.
The best movie with a focus on southwest LGBTQIA+ rodeo I have ever seen. Very sweet, and very comfortable and open with gender and sexuality. And it has Teen Witch as an alcoholic mother, so you know it’s good. A big plus: no one gets beat up for being who they are.