My 1/2-Ass Movie Blog

 IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. Spencer Tracy, Ethel Merman, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Sid Caesar. Dir. Stanley Kramer, MGM, 1963 I do not generally write about films I stop watching halfway. What's the point? I either have nothing positive to say about it or was in the wrong mood. In both cases I'm ignorant of its full length to perhaps do it justice. In the case of Stanley Kramer's 1963 comedy smash, however, I feel compelled to make an exception.  My problem with the movie is not my mood, nor disappointment because it's not the movie I once heard. In fact, my biggest problem is that I haven't heard it described in glowing terms, or any, since I was about 9. See, IAMMMMW used to air anually on one or another of the networks, often in December. My parents didn't care for it and never watched it, but my friends watched anytime it aired and talked about it in rapturous terms. Until about 9-10 years old, when it seemed to drop out of conversation, or conv...

  LONE STAR Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pina, Joe Morton, Kris Kristofferson. Dir. John Sayles, Warner Bros., 1996 One of the great pleasures of being a movie fan is muttering under my breath, not 10 minutes in, "Oh this movie's GREAT." Another great pleasure is finding it's still great the next time I see it. On those occasions when I discover it's BETTER than I remembered, and I already called it "one of the best of the '90s," that's when I've got something special on my hands. Writer-director John Sayles's LONESTAR was an absolute revelation to me when I first saw it over the summer. Today confirms the earlier response. Indeed, like chili left to steep overnight, LONESTAR was richer in character, meatier in story, and spicier in how relevant & true that story remains today in a world of border crises, critical race theory, and whitewashing entire curricula. Which isn't to say that LONESTAR is a particularly political film, but t...

  HALLOWEEN Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, PJ Soles, Nancy Loomis. Dir. John Carpenter, Compass Point International, 1978 I decided to watch both HALLOWEEN & PHANTASM the same day, as they had some basic similarities, being microbudgeted indie horror films which saw almost absurd box office returns vs their budgets. Carpenter's film reportedly cost $325k, Coscarelli's $300k. HALLOWEEN earned $70M, PHANTASM $22M. PHANTASM, though shot about the same time as HALLOWEEN, found more mainstream distribution BECAUSE of HALLOWEEN's runaway box office, released in the blood tide of slasher & slasheresque films cashing in on Carpenter's formula. PHANTASM contains slasher-y elements, but it's a bonkers subdivision of scifi horror, one pretty much entirely of Coscarelli's making. HALLOWEEN might not quite invent the slasher film, but it refines and codifies what will be slasher's de rigeur storypoints moving forward. It is its own thing, but it exists wit...

  DARK STAR Dan O'Bannon, Brian Norelle, Cal Kuniholm, Dre Pahich. Dir. John Carpenter, Bryanston Distributing, 1975 My first real film-nerd buddy was named Tom. We went to the same prep school, where our interest in Monty Python, horror movies, & shooting our own productions with Tom's dad's movie camera (not a little Super8 job, either, it had sound) did not earn us invites to the cool kids' parties. Tom had two legs up on me when it came to movies:1.The financial support of his parents. 2.Cable, including Movie Channel. He had access to infinitely more films, uncut films, uncensored films, foreign films - he had a freakin' movie library living inside his TV and his parents didn't care if he stayed up all weekend watching it. Tom had seen many more movies than I, but it wasn't competition. It was friendship - that wondrous sensation of mutual delight when you meet someone who GETS IT. Tom loved to share the films Movie Channel & openminded paren...

  STARMAN Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckyl. Dir. John Carpenter, Columbia, 1984 Sometimes I think I don't collect films so much as directors. Since I don't know the specific wording of the "auteurist theory," I don't suppose you can call me a proponent thereof, but I pay attention to directors and I go looking for work by those I admire. Which is why this blog's address is John-Ford-Is-God. That's why I've written up so much of Clint Eastwood's work. And Michael Mann. And over the next few days, John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg. I gave myself standing directives when I started collecting a few years ago. One was "buy any western made before 1980." Another, "Buy anything directed by or starring Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola." These days, I'd add Carpenter, Spielberg, and Jonathan Demme. John Carpenter has been on my radar ever since HALLOWEEN became a sensatio...