Viewing Diary

Lord, y'all, I am sorry I've been slipping on this. Anyway...

1) 42nd Street: One of the few canonical musicals I'd never seen, and it's both better and less good than you'd expect. The tone is snappy and appealing, kind of His Girl Friday-ish, and the musical numbers are catchy and well-choreographed, but the movie's too short and there's not much plot. I'm sure it suffered from being watched over several sittings, but it's not as great an example of Busby Berkeley as some of his later work. It's also weird in that all the songs are incorporated into the "let's put on a show" plot, but the kaleidoscopically filmed dance numbers are inherently cinematic--that is, there's no way you'd appreciate them if you were actually seeing the show.

2) Night of the Creeps: This actually deserves to be remade. The ideas aren't bad at all (zombie frat kids), and there are some clever aspects and good tributes to old B-movies, but the execution is pretty terrible. No room for second takes, for example. I'd think that someone could revamp the script a little and turn it into something pretty good. Also, did Peter Jackson get his lawnmower idea from this movie?

3) Friday the 13th (1980): That's right. I'd never seen the original, just some of the many many sequels. But now it seems like they're all streaming on Netflix, so I'll work my way through them. For a classic of the genre, though, it kind of sucks... You'd think it would be miles above the later ones, but the presence of actual Jason makes them better. The climactic fight, which (spoiler alert) features an old lady and a weak teenage girl wrestling pathetically is one of the least suspenseful things ever. Occasionally a little scary but only in the sense that being out in a cabin in the woods is a little scary, at least to my own urban self.

4) Mother: Oh, Bong Joon-ho, you are kind of my hero at the moment, cinematically. This movie is fairly astonishing, just as The Host was, and although it could not be more different in most ways, they both tap into a kind of primal vein of emotion that ends up surprising you in the watching. This is rather a lot like Almodovar, in its mix of tragedy, some strange comedy, and a deep connection to the importance of familial relationships. Would I have appreciated this as much before I had my own child? I'm not sure, but it's possible. Anyway, it's excellent.

5) Date Night: Lazy and dumb but not unamusing, entirely due to Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, who manage to get off some good lines.