The Writer's Poke

Sometimes you re-watch a movie and think, "That one holds up." It's a weird idea: That something can be "good" at the time but maybe less good later. Can a movie really depreciate over time, like a car? Is it normal for movie depreciation to happen, and what causes it to happen? In the case of Spider-Man 2, for example, it's the second movie in the first Spider-Man franchise. A 2026-viewer will naturally compare the movies from the first franchise against the movies from the second and third Spider-Man franchises. Any viewer will also compare a sequel or the continuation of the story against the movie that came before it.  When I was re-watching Spider-Man 2, I found myself more interested in assessing it against Spider-Man (2002), a movie that I had some questions about -- one being: Why are Harry (James Franco) and Peter (Tobey Maguire) friends? Unfortunately, Spider-Man 2 simply assumes they are. It does nothing to strengthen the case. Peter is still work...

Maybe the oddest relationship to think about in this movie is the friendship between Peter (Tobey Maguire) and Harry Osburn (James Franco). What exactly makes them friends?  I guess I'm wondering this because they come from two different social classes, and they haven't exactly known each other for that long. Peter isn't the most popular kid in school, and yet here he is hanging around a rich kid who probably would have his pick of friends -- both because of his background, but also because of his looks.  Peter and Harry end up being roommates, which is convenient for the movie's plot, but how much does an apartment in New York run, and is Peter actually paying half the rent?  In terms of "friend values," why does Harry think it's okay to date Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst)? He must know it's not okay, as he keeps dating Mary Jane a secret from Peter. Only when he knows Peter knows does he offer the cop out: "Well, you weren't making a move." ...

I recently watched A Chorus Line (1985), and maybe I put off watching All That Jazz because I thought it might be the same sort of story. Not at all. Yes, Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is a Broadway director, and there is a little bit about that and his work with dancers and putting on a show. But there's a lot more about him and his race toward death. Much of the movie is the "delusions" he experiences. I'm not sure "delusions" is the right word. Maybe what we get is Joe experiencing his life flashing before him, plus the "bonus content" that his brain creates while he's lying in his hospital bed. Not sure how to explain it. Suffice it to say, Joe smokes too much, womanizes too much, works too much. His daily routine is to shower, take his meds, put eye drops in his eyes, and yell "It's Showtime!" into the bathroom mirror. Except for the womanizing, he doesn't come off as a bad guy, really. He has a daughter and seems to be a goo...

Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm currently watching Natalie Wood films, and so I re-watched this one not for James Dean, but for Natalie.  The timeline bothers me. This is a lot to happen in a 24-hour period. If Jim's family just moved to this new location, how does the house already look like they've lived there forever? If this is Jim's (James Dean) first day at school, has he already given Plato (Sal Mineo) his address? For that matter, how exactly did the bad boys know that Jim and Plato and Judy (Natalie Wood) were at the old, abandoned mansion? Anyway, I'd like the timeline to expand a little. Let's see the relationship between Jim and Plato grow. Let's give Judy a chance to move from the "bad kids" to Jim's side. And so on.  Let's unpack the stuff that's implied. I know it's a 1950s movie, but I need some help understanding what's really going on with Judy and her father. I read that it's an "Elektra complex,...

Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) have a special friendship. Maybe it's because they're both writers. Maybe special friendships simply happen for no real reason. They just connect and they're inseparable. Eventually, a couple of things will separate them: A woman and a war.  At first, the woman doesn't separate them. Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) simply joins them. The film might be called Catherine, to be honest, because she is a force, and in some ways, she is the focus of the movie. The movie could also just as easily be called Jules and Catherine and Jim. It's interesting that they leave her name out of the title.  World War I pits Jules and Jim on separate sides. Jules actually happens to like serving on the Russian front, because there he knows he won't accidently kill Jim.  Jules and Catherine marry and have a daughter. Catherine, however, is not the marrying type. She lives her life as an experiment. Maybe she was curious to see what being a wife an...

Just to pick on something first: That ending. I'm not sure the movie has one, really.  At the beginning of the movie, we see the alien spaceship crash into Earth. We're then given the idea that it may have been buried in the ice for 100,000 years. Whatever the Thing is, it was able to wait for its moment.  When the alien makes it over to the American station, how did it know that the American station was there? That's one question. It took out the Norwegian station, but was it not happy being in its current form? Did it want to look human? If so, why? We'll never get to know, because this movie, just like the early Alien and Predator movies, never gives us any look into what the Thing is thinking. All we know is that it's advanced. It knows how to travel in space, and it knows how to mimic any lifeform it comes into contact with.  And it can stay frozen.  Humans cannot. Macready (Kurt Russell) has a plan, and that plan is to blow up the American station. How does th...

This is a pretty entertaining movie, but I'm not sure if it wants to be taken seriously, or if it's a satire on the "free love" culture of the 1960s. I viewed it more as a satire, but with a good message. Bob (Robert Culp) is a documentary film director. He and his wife, Carol (Natalie Wood), spend a weekend at a place in the woods called the Institute. As the camera swoops in from above, we see naked people lodging, yoga posing, and bathing outside on the deck. They're all naked. What kind of "new age" place is this? Bob and Carol spend their time inside, however, with a small group taking a 24-hour crash course designed to get them connected to their feelings. One of the group exercises is simple to stare and other members and "get to know each other" by looking. The idea being, we often don't take the time to stop and look at one another. We're too busy looking and thinking about ourselves. I mention this exercise because something s...

Into the Spider-Verse (2018) introduced us to four Spiders from other Earths, but Across the Spider-Verse opens it up and introduces us to, or at least shows us, dozens more. Spider-Gwen, who we met in the first movie, is the main Spider focused on from a different Earth. It seems like she and Miles, our Earth's Spider-Man, are more than friends, or they would like to be. There's only one problem, and it's not that they're from two different Earths. It's that a relationship between Spider-Man and Gwen never works out in the long run.  Even though there are all those different Spiders out there, we find out that the "canon" stories each of them follows generally have events that cannot be changed. Spider-Man and Gwen not working out is one of the canon events. Another is: Spider-Man cannot save the people closest to him -- be it, Aunt May, Uncle Ben, their father, etc.  Does freewill not exist anywhere in the multiverse? Miles cannot accept that. He wants t...

So, at the same time the Tom Holland Spider-Man franchise is going on, there's also this animated multi-verse franchise. The Holland Spider-Man works in the context of what's going on in all the other Marvel movies, and this one is its own separate deal. Of course, right now, the Marvel movies are in "Phase 9" or something like that, and they're all currently into the multiverse theme... but this movie came out in 2018 and I guess offered a sneak-peak at what the multiverse would look like.  This movie's Spider-Man is named Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). One of the ideas forwarded is that anyone can be Spider-Man. That said, the movie still features Peter Parker, but he dies. Then, the multiverse opens, and we get to meet a few other Spiders from other places -- including Spider-Woman (aka Spider-Gwen), Spider-Man Noir, and even Spider-Ham. To say that the movie is non-stop and fast-paced would be an understatement. I still remember watching this one in the th...

On the surface, Match Point seems like it's going to replay the Crimes and Misdemeanors script. Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a semi-pro tennis player who has decided he can't make it on touring circuit. As a result, he becomes a tennis instructor for the well-to-do at a London club. When we first see him, I think we're supposed to get the idea that he's playing the game -- not tennis, but social climbing. With a little luck, he can get in with a wealthy family. That's what ends up happening. He marries the sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), of one of his tennis club students, Tom (Matthew Goode). Does he love Chloe? Or does he simply accept that marrying into the family is what he needs to do to move up in the world? Chloe seems like a nice enough woman. She's by no means ugly, but I'm sure we're supposed to see her as plain, especially when she's compared to Nola (Scarlett Johanson). Nola is really the woman that Chris lusts after, but her problem ...

A lot can happen in one summer in Barcelona.  If you're two young American women, perhaps visiting Europe takes you out of your day-to-day routines. This may give you a chance to see yourself and your life from a new perspective.  Vicky (Rebecca Hall) wasn't the type to get swept up in romance and fantasy. She had her normal life planned out. She was getting married to an average, successful man. He will provide for her economically, as her 2-carat engagement ring testifies.  Christina (Scarlett Johansson) was the type that didn't know what she wanted. She only knew what she didn't want. She was much more open to experimentation and didn't feel the need to conform to society's box. If a strange Spanish man invites her to go away for the weekend, she will be open to the offer.  When they meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a "bohemian" painter, Christina is immediately attracted. He seems dangerous, maybe a little intoxicating. Romantic. Vicky sees him a...

  The story is lean. The run time is only 84 minutes, and the plot is just about the same -- the 84 minutes before the noon train arrives. A lot of clocks everywhere, too, to remind you just how close to noon things are getting...  At the beginning of the story, Kane (Gary Cooper) and Amy (Grace Kelly) get married. It's a Sunday morning, but they just have a small civil ceremony. Their plan is to go to a new town and run a store. That means Kane has resigned being Marshal, but for some reason his replacement won't arrive until Monday.  Then they find out that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) is going to be on the noon train, and three of his buddies are already in town waiting for him. The four of them are surely going to kill Kane, because Kane had arrested Miller and Miller had been sentenced to death, only to be pardoned by bureaucrats.  Kane looks for men to help him face Miller and his friends, but no one in town will step up. He seeks help at the saloon, the church...

The first time I watched Doctor Zhivago was about 30 years ago. A friend picked the movie, and I watched it over at his house with his parents. For whatever reason, they kept the volume very low, and I never bothered asking them to turn the volume up. As a result, I missed out on a lot of the dialogue, didn't follow what was going on in the plot, and got totally confused on who the characters were. Regardless, even though I was maybe 21 or 22 years old, I don't think I was the right age for this film to fully appreciate it, even if I could have heard what was going on.  Now that I'm in my 50s, and I have a little bit of life experience behind me, it's much easier for me to tap into what these characters were going through -- not that I've ever been through a World War and a Communist Revolution, but I'm maybe better at comprehending the idea of what people will do to survive, and how some people will cling to the idea that life is about more than just surviving....

As a "who done it," I'm not sure it comes as much of a surprise who done it, or even why. That said, I thought the movie told an unusual story in an unusual way.  The beginning is the end, really. The film opens with a man getting shot. Soon enough we will learn that the man is Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott). He's the person Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) buys the property from for what will become her first restaurant.  That's all getting ahead of the story, though. Mildred ends up at the police station because when he's shot, she's married to Monte. She sits in the station telling the detective her life story. That is the movie.  Mildred's whole deal is that she will do anything for her children. Unfortunately, her oldest daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth), turns out to be an amoral spoiled brat. Are we to blame Mildred for how she turned out? Veda's dad, Bert (Bruce Bennett) more or less implies that Mildred is to blame. His view is that Mildred doesn...

This movie has one or two more twists than you probably think it will have, and they all pretty much works.  When I'm watching a "mystery thriller," I don't want to feel cheated, and withholding information or tricking the viewer in some fashion makes me feel cheated. I don't feel cheated watching Wild Things. The only "cheat" I can maybe point out is when the music "leads" you to think in a specific direction. If you watched the movie super close, you might be able to see a character act in a certain way when no one is looking that wouldn't make much sense if you thought about it, but I don't have any specific scenes in mind to point out. Overall, the coherence and integrity of the plot is good. The first hour is played straight, and then everything turns. As you watch the first hour, see if you can figure out the turn, and remember, it's going to be "turns," not just "turn." I do wonder why Denise Richards isn...

This movie had people crying in the theater at one point. I heard multiple people trying to control their sobs.  * When I was looking to buy tickets last weekend, I knew I wanted to see this film in IMAX, but the closest IMAX theaters were already almost fully booked. So, I thought, surely there will be less demand midweek. But it turns out that even the Tuesday 10 p.m. screening, the one I went to, was packed. Who are all these people? I wondered. And why are they so interested in The Odyssey? I still remember being a Graduate Student at the University of Mississippi 25 years ago. One of my jobs then was to assist a Professor with his World Literature class. This is when I first really studied The Odyssey, and while I loved it, I don't remember the undergrads in the class being overly thrilled about it. The story was there on the page, but it doesn't as easily "come to life" as Nolan's vision of it does.  And so, my thoughts about the audience I was watching the ...

Thirteen years before he played Odysseus, Matt Damon was somehow playing Liberace's loveboy, Scott Thorson. As I watched the movie, I was into the story, but I felt like the movie was only scratching the surface, just telling us part of the story. But since the script is based on Thorson's memoirs, that makes sense.  Who was Liberace? Well, I'm still not sure I know, really, but Michael Douglass's performance is amazing. He has the look and mannerisms. Everything about Liberace's relationship with Thorson, and apparently all the boys who came before him, is so incredibly wrong. The age difference, the power difference. Liberace doesn't come off as a "groomer," but he definitely took a vulnerable young man and "trapped" him in, what? A relationship of some sort -- Liberace himself didn't seem to know what he wanted -- to be a dad, a friend, a lover. Somehow, he thought it was okay to be all of the above, but he also must have known what he...

This one came out in December 1986, and I remember watching it in the theaters. I would have been about 13, and I had no idea that it was a musical. Needless to say, I hated it, and although I'm okay with watching musicals now, I haven't watched it since.  What's it like watching it now, 40 years later? Well, I love it. Specifically, I enjoy Steve Martin as Orin, the evil dentist. Martin is a weird Elvis/Jerk hybrid on giggle juice. And the best scene is when he's working with Bill Murray, who plays a bizarre dental patient (Arthur) who gets off on the pain. Orin doesn't know exactly how to handle Arthur, as the dentist lives to dish out the pain, but not to patients who like it.  As far as I know, this is the only film to feature Murray and Martin on screen together. I read that Murray did film scenes for The Jerk, but those scenes were cut.  It might seem weird, but I have sensitive ears when watching Little Shop of Horrors. That is, for whatever reason, the uses ...

When I was writing my review about Platoon (1986) this week, I noted that a lot of American war films do not present both sides of the battle; so, with that freshly in mind, I was interested that this film does include at least a bit of the German perspective. And to be quite honest, the Germans are portrayed quite decently, or at least as no better and no worse than the Allies.  At one point, the Germans try to surrender to Lt. Col. Frost (Anthony Hopkins), but he tells them to go to hell. In response, the Germans act shocked. They were trying to play by the rules of war, and the Allies refused to follow those rules. It was only then that the German Field Commander said, Fine, destroy the city.  Until that point, you get the idea at least that Germany occupied The Netherlands, but they didn't turn it into a parking lot or rubble.  At another moment in the film, a German commander gave Allied prisoners chocolate. I mean, it's small things like that humanize the Germans, b...

Give Quentin Tarantino $30,000 and a 16mm camera and see what he can do.  The budget was ultimately more than $30,000, but this has a very low-budget movie feel, not that that's a bad thing. In fact, it's almost exclusively shot in a warehouse.  As I was re-watching it, I thought about how this movie might work even better as a play. It's dramatic, sure, and it works as a film, but the focus to a single location would work very well on stage.  For the most part, the power of the film relies on the actors and the intensity in which they deliver their lines. We might not have known it in 1992, but this film includes many of what will become "Tarantino Guys" -- Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Harvey Keitel. The only "Guy" really missing is Samuel L. Jackson, who I understand auditioned for the part of Holdaway -- not a very big role, but a role that probably would have popped more with Jackson.  The movie is odd in that there is absolutely no female presence....