Full Fathom Five For Fighting

Super 8 (2011): written and directed by J.J. Abrams; starring Jeff Courtney (Joe Lamb), Ryan Lee (Cary), Zach Mills (Preston), Riley Griffiths (Charlie), Kyle Chandler (Deputy Lamb), Ron Eldard (Louis Dainard), and Elle Fanning (Alice Dainard): Lightweight Spielberg homage from J.J. Abrams comes with the approval and cooperation of Spielberg himself. It's a lot like ET gene-spliced with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goonies, and the South Park 'dream' episode in which the kids are trapped on a bus by a monster. Elle Fanning is distractingly wan and emaciated throughout. The kids are underwritten and overdetermined and not all that appealing. Not a terrible film, but so much of a pastiche it hardly seems to exist. Lightly recommended.

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017): written and directed by Martin McDonagh; starring Frances McDormand (Mildred), Sam Rockwell (Dixon), and Woody Harrelson (Willoughby): Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell get lots of pithy dialogue and violent moments to earn their Best Acting Oscars (Lead Female and Supporting Actor, respectively) in this pungent NuTarantino offering from writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, 7 Psychopaths). It's not as good as you might expect from the awards, but it's certainly an actor's showcase of a certain sort. Recommended.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947): adapted by Philip Rapp, Everett Freeman, and Ken Englund from the story by James Thurber; directed by Norman Z. McLeod; starring Danny Kaye (Walter Mitty), Virginia Mayo (Osalind van Hoorn), Boris Karloff (Dr. Hugo Hollingshead), Fay Bainter (Walter's Mother), Ann Rutherford (Walter's Fiancee), and Thurston Hall (Bruce Pierce): A special edition that removes Danny Kaye's bafflingly popular patter songs from this movie would be super. James Thurber's short-short story gets pulled and twisted like taffy to accommodate a romantic plot involving Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo. The movie's a lot of fun except for those patter songs. Boris Karloff is a delight as a menacing 'doctor.' Recommended.

Living in Oblivion (1995): written and directed by Tom DiCillo; starring Steve Buscemi (Nick Reve), Catherine Keener (Nicole Springer), Dermot Mulroney (Wolf), Danielle von Zerneck (Wanda), James Le Gros (Chad Palomino), Rica Martens (Cora), Peter Dinklage (Tito), and Kevin Corrigan (Assistant Camera): Witty look at Indy film-making remains fresh and exciting more than 20 years after its release. Everyone is good. The character of 'Chad Palamino' is not based on Brad Pitt, apparently, despite decades of rumors, but another young actor of 1995 whom writer-director Tom DiCillo refuses to name. Johnny Depp, maybe? A young Peter Dinklage has a show-stopper of a rant about the preponderance of dwarves in movie dream sequences. Highly recommended.

Emma (1996): adapted from the Jane Austen novel and directed by Douglas McGrath; starring Gwyneth Paltrow (Emma), Greta Scacchi (Mrs. Weston), Alan Cumming (Mr. Elton), Sophie Thompson (Miss Bates), Phyllida Law (Mrs. Bates), Jeremy Northam (Mr. Knightley), Toni Collette (Harriet Smith), and Ewan McGregor (Frank Churchill):  In and around the fictional English village of Highbury and the surrounding estates, romance is blooming in the second decade of the 19th century. Or at least it's brewing inside 21-year-old busybody matchmaker Emma's head. Gwyneth Paltrow is very sparkly and glowy as Emma, while the supporting cast is solid and witty throughout. Well, maybe except for Ewan McGregor, hot off Trainspotting. McGregor admitted later that the part was outside his range and not helped by a terrible wig. Oh, well. Recommended.

Snark Fest

Ghost World: written and illustrated by Daniel Clowes (1996): Clowes' episodic graphic novel became a much-praised movie that took some liberties with the source material in order to give it more of a defineable narrative. You won't find a big role for the character played by Steve Buscemi in the movie (indeed, that character is an expanded composite of two characters from the graphic novel, and, (spoiler alert!), neither of them sleeps with the Thora Birch character). However, Clowes co-wrote the screenplay, so the choices were at least partially his to make.

Ghost World focuses on perpetually snarky teen-aged girls Becky and Enid in the summer after their last year of high school. They roam the city trying to find horrifically non-cool things to experience in an unironic way, whether that's retro diners or simply the people walking by them on the street. Things will change for them, in part because Becky seems to be becoming weary of Enid's overwhelming ability to seemingly hate everything and everyone around her.

Moving through the episodes are a gallery of supporting players, grotesque cameos, and pointed discussions about what's cool and what is not. Enid's imaginative world orients itself around perpetual, detached irony, and around amused pity at virtually everyone and everything she experiences. Enid is performing, of course, but it's not a performance she seems capable of turning on and off.

Clowes' art is clean and evocative throughout, balancing the grotesques that wander through with the more normative people and places of the narrative. He's a fine cartoonist. The dialogue is eclectic, eccentric, and beautifully modulated. And for all the irony flying thick and fast, Ghost World leaves one with a poignant feeling of loss at the end. For some of the characters? For the world? Recommended.

Pale Horrors

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie; written by Michael McDowell and George A. Romero, partially based on stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and Stephen King; directed by John Harrison; starring Deborah Harry (Betty), Christian Slater (Andy), David Johansen (Halston), William Hickey (Drogan), James Remar (Preston), Rae Dawn Chong (Carola), Robert Sedgwick (Lee), Steve Buscemi (Bellingham), Julianne Moore (Susan), and Robert Klein (Wyatt) (1990): The 1983 Stephen King/George Romero movie Creepshow, an anthology of five horror shorts, was once supposed to become a TV series. That fell through, and the Romero-produced Tales from the Darkside series of the 1980's ultimately resulted. A second, lesser Creepshow movie came out in 1987. And then came this film, which horror effects guru Tom Savini called "the real Creepshow 3." Got all that?

Here we get three shorts and a frame story starring Deborah Harry as a suburban housewife with a shocking secret. She's actually a retired pop star! Well, no. Then we get three shorts: "Lot 249", loosely adapted from an Arthur Conan Doyle short story; "The Cat from Hell", based on a Stephen King story; and "Lover's Vow", an original penned by horror novelist Michael McDowell.

The last one is the best, with the first two (and the frame tale) partially submerged by too much campiness and jokeiness. As with Creepshow and Creepshow 2, most of the makers seem to have confused the jokeiness and punniness of the frame narration of the1950's EC horror comics from which these movies draw their inspiration with the content of the actual stories, stories which were generally played straight up and gruesome. It's the frame that's supposed to be jokey, not the tale itself. Thus horror gets repeatedly undercut by that deadly, deadly jolite. Oh, well.

The cast, especially of "Lot 249", is very good -- Julianne Moore and Steve Buscemi would soon be on their way to better things. "Lover's Vow" highlights the fact that Rae Dawn Chong and Jaye Davidson (of The Crying Game) bear a fairly startling resemblance depending on the camera angle. Short, vaguely enjoyable, and occasionally interesting. Lightly recommended.