reviews

Teorema (1968)

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I’m going to tell you something you already know: the Gen-Z teens are really, really into Saltburn.  From the wealth class making TikTok tours of their mansions in honor of Barry Keoghan’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” nude ballet to the working-class slobs beneath them making cum-themed cocktails in honor of Jacob Elordi’s bathwater, it’s the one film from the past year that’s captured that entire generation’s horned-up imagination (despite Bottoms‘s efforts to best it).  Of course, that kind of youthful enthusiasm is always going to be met with equal gatekeeping cynicism from more seasoned film nerds.  A lot of the online rhetoric about Saltburn outside its ecstatic celebration on “MovieTok” expresses frustration that the teens & twentysomethings enjoying it haven’t yet seen real transgressive cinema, which makes them easily impressed by Emerald Fennell’s social media-friendly Eat the Rich thriller.  The most common chorus among older cynics is that Saltburn is just the toothless Gen-Z version of Talented Mr. Ripley, a comparison I even made when I first reviewed the film in December (calling it Mr. Ripley‘s “airport paperback mockbuster” equivalent).  I was mildly amused by Saltburn on first watch, but I’ve only become more endeared to it in the month since as Gen-Z’s horned-up adoration for it grows.  Maybe it is most of these kids’ first mildly horny, safely transgressive movie, but so what? We all have to start somewhere.  Back in 1999, I found my own erotic thriller training wheels in the equally timid Cruel Intentions, a film I still love to this day against my better judgement (after decades of having seen much better, hornier cinema of transgression). 

Despite my naive affection for Cruel Intentions, it took me 20 years to make time for its more sophisticated equivalent in Dangerous Liaisons, a film I did not watch until 2019.  Meanwhile, I liked Saltburn okay, and it only took me a few weeks to catch up with its own artsy, smartsy precursor.  Let’s call it personal progress, something that only comes with time.  I’m not speaking of The Talented Mr. Ripley in this instance, nor am I referring to Saltburn‘s second most cited influence, Brideshead Revisited.  Such pedestrian literature can no longer penetrate my jaded skull, which has been toughened by decades of chasing the high of my initial repeat viewings of Cruel Intentions and subsequent Placebo soundtrack singalongs in the Year of Our Dark Lord 1999.  No, my cinema addled brain turned instead to the great Italo provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose final film Salò tested the limits of my thirst for transgression just a few years after I first saw Cruel Intentions (and was also frequently cited by trolls on recent threads pushing Gen-Z Saltburn enjoyers to watch something genuinely dangerous & fucked up).  Devoted Pasolini scholars and Criterion Channel subscribers would likely be appalled to see his film Teorema contextualized as a Saltburn prototype, but I’m compelled to do so anyway, since the hyperbolic, nerdy gatekeeping around Fennell’s totally cromulent sophomore feature needs to be combated with fire.  Teorema is a much smarter, harsher, politically sharper social-climber thriller than Saltburn by practically every metric, so it might initially seem like an insult to present it in this comparative context, but since all it would really take is one TikTok video recommending it to Saltburn fans (Salties? Burnies? Tublickers?) for the film to find a younger, curious audience, I’m willing to risk the faux pas.

Terrence Stamp stars as a nameless young man who mysteriously appears at a bourgeois family home in 1960s Milan.  His arrival is announced via telegram, and he is introduced to the family’s social circle at a house party reception, but his origin and presence are treated as a supernatural phenomenon.  Without overt coercion or force, The Visitor methodically seduces each member of the household into an intimate sexual relationship.  Equally mesmerized by his saintly aura and by the bulge of his pants, everyone from the father figure to the live-in maid makes a sexual advance at the mysterious stranger, which he tenderly obliges with Christlike compassion for their individual plights & desires.  In Saltburn, that infiltration of the bourgeois household is a strictly conniving one, where the outsider weaponizes his sexual charisma as a way to distract from his scheming theft of the family’s inherited property.  In Teorema, it’s more like a visit from a ghost or angel, throwing the family’s “moral sense” and “personal confusion” into chaos without any aims for personal gain.  Then, a second telegram announces The Visitor’s departure, and he abruptly leaves the family to adjust to their new life post-orgasmic bliss – changed, unmoored, confounded.  Like the abrupt departure of Jacob Elordi’s character in Saltburn‘s third act, The Visitor’s absence leaves the family spiritually & emotionally hollowed.  They’ve been transformed by the experience and are unsure how to adjust to the new paradigm of their lives.  Only, in this case their transformations touch on divine transcendence rather than merely experiencing the emotionally stunted British equivalent of grief.

In interviews promoting the film, Pasolini described Teorema as both “a parable” and “an enigma.”  Anyone frustrated with Saltburn’s kiddie gloves approach to class politics would be much better served by this film’s engagement with the topic, especially by the time the father figure’s mourning after his angelic sex with The Visitor convinces him to relinquish his factory to a worker’s union as an attempt to dismantle the bourgeoisie.  Meanwhile, his son processes his own grief on canvas, suddenly transforming into a Picasso-esque painter; it’s a life pivot that feels both sympathetic to his sudden burst of inspiration and mocking of trust-fund artists who can afford to live phony peasant’s lives on their bourgeois family’s dime.  On the opposite end of the wealth scale, the family maid is transformed by her own sexual epiphany into a religious idol who can enact tactile miracles of God that even The Visitor seems incapable of.  Of course, most Tublicker youngsters slurping up Saltburn rewatches on their parents’ Amazon Prime accounts aren’t really in it for the class politics, which might be the one instance where Fennell has Pasolini beat.  Saltburn is much more sexually explicit than Teorema, which does include flashes of nudity (good news for anyone wanting a glimpse of Terrence Stamp’s scrotum) but largely keeps the runtime of its sex scenes to a minimum.  In the family’s most arousing transformation, the mother figure picks up the cruising habits of a gay man, soliciting young trade & roadside gigolos around rural Italy in an attempt to relive her carnal bliss with The Visitor.  It’s a satisfyingly salacious impulse in the narrative, but it’s just one angle on the story among many; by contrast, her daughter responds to the family’s loss by choosing to go catatonic, opting out of life entirely.

I do not mean to present this side-by-side comparison as a cheap echo of the “hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby” meme.  It’s clear enough that the bourgeois-estate-interrupted-by-chaotic-outsider premise shared by these two otherwise extremely different films is executed with much more spiritual & political heft in Pasolini’s film than in Fennell’s, to the point where I feel embarrassed even saying it.  If nothing else, Teorema includes images & events it refuses to explain to the audience (including the frequent interruption of the narrative by the shadows of passing clouds on a volcanic mountaintop where the story eventually concludes), whereas Saltburn begins and ends with plot-summarizing montages that overexplain what’s already a very simple, straightforward story.  The comparison is only useful, then, in pointing out how absurd it is that the two films should be held to the same standards.  Pedantic film nerds pointing out that Fennell’s film is neither as politically bold as Teorema nor as harshly transgressive as Salò aren’t helping any Gen-Z teens get enticed by the great works of Pasolini; they’re just making the kids defensive.  Do you know what might actually get them into Pasolini, though?  The popularity of Saltburn, even if it takes them 20 years to warm up to the idea of watching its higher brow equivalents.  Enough Film Twitter freaks and Letterboxd addicts have already pointed Tublickers in the direction of The Talented Mr. Ripley, a much more easily digestible precursor to their new pet favorite.  I can only hope this review will help bump up Teorema‘s SEO presence in that conversation, and they’ll eventually work their way up to this one too.  Either way, I’m just happy that they’re excited about any dirty movie; it’s a start, and it’s worth encouraging.

-Brandon Ledet

The Not-So-New 52: Wonder Woman (2009)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

It’s a testament to just how starved we were for Wonder Woman content in the aughts that this animated movie, which came out in 2009, was so well received. It’s not bad per se—in fact, in many places, it’s quite good—but this movie’s version of Steve Trevor is gross in a way that was probably apparent even at the time, but which has become even more apparent in contrast to the way that the character was portrayed by least problematic Christopher in Hollywood, Chris Pine, in the live-action 2017 film that was released just a scant eight years later. 

The 2009 Wonder Woman film starts in the distant past: Amazon Queen Hippolyta (Virginia Madsen) is locked in battle with god of war Ares (Alfred Molina), her former lover. As her warriors die on the battlefield, locked in combat with an army of mythical monsters led by her and Ares’s son Thrax, she turns the tides by beheading her own offspring. Preparing to do the same to Ares, she is stopped by Zeus and Hera (Marg Helgenberger), who tell her that they cannot permit her to kill a god, but they will bind his powers and allow her to hold him as her prisoner in perpetuity, granting her and her people a new home on the paradise-like island of Themyscira, safe from the dangers of “man’s world.” After she and her people build their new home, Hippolyta is granted another boon as she crafts a child for herself from the island’s clay, which the Olympians bring to life: a daughter, Diana (Keri Russell). Decades later, Ares remains under lock and key under the guardianship of Persephone (Vicki Lewis), a warrior who lost an eye when she jumped into the line of fire and took a blow that was meant for bookworm Alexa (Tara Strong) in the war against Ares in the prologue; this lack of interest in battle on the part of Alexa makes her the target of mockery for supposed cowardice by her older sister Artemis (Rosario Dawson), Hippolyta’s right hand general. When modern USAF pilot Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion) lands on Themyscira after an aerial dogfight, a contest is held to determine which of the Amazons should travel beyond their peaceful oasis to return him to his nation. Diana wins this competition, but her excitement is short lived, as Ares’s escape while the island’s inhabitants were distracted by the contest means that she will not need to seek him out and return him to his cell. 

There’s a tonal issue at play here that drags this one down a bit. It’s got a PG-13 rating, and at the time of release, there was some outcry about the level of violence in this one. I think that’s reflective of a systemic issue, as this film is no more violent than Superman: Doomsday, which didn’t receive the same kind of criticism, and I think it’s owed solely to the fact that the combatants here are women. There is a decapitation (in shadow), but in the earlier film, Doomsday murdered an actual child (although the “camera” cut away), but because Amazonians (read: women) are doing the violence, this one received more criticism. It makes sense that this would get the MPAA rating that it did because of this, but the dialogue remains very PG. There’s a recurring bit that starts because Trevor says “crap” in front of the Amazons, then has to explain that it means excrement; each time after this that he uses the word, the Amazons take this as further evidence of the crassness and baseness of mankind, until Diana finally uses it herself at the end as a demonstration of her becoming more acclimatized to man’s world. That’s all well and good (if a bit pat and trite), but its failure to push the boundaries of the film’s rating demonstrates that the franchise is still trying to bridge a gap between appealing to (and being acceptable for) children while aiming to attract an older audience through a novel, more mature approach to storytelling. 

Once upon a time, I owned this movie on DVD, having obtained it for a mere $5 from the CVS on Leon C. Simon, when I was a student at UNO. I have a very clear memory of watching the special features, which included several talking heads from the film’s voice cast, and Rosario Dawson using the word “warriess” several times, which I always found endearing. Dawson is giving a great performance here in general, with a couple of quite badass lines—my favorite of which is when someone teases her about her giant sword, and she replies that it “is but [her] dagger.” Very little in the film stuck out in my mind, however, other than the speedrun through the stations of the Diana of Themyscira canon: born of clay, paradise island, crashed air pilot, championship to determine the ambassador to man’s world, crusader for truth and justice. Once Diana comes to the modern world, there’s a distinct lack of charm in her fish out of water story that acts as a demonstration of why this narrative works better as a period piece; the Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman movie sets its events during WWI while the Lynda Carter TV classic was set in WWII (at least initially), as the earliest comics had been. This allows for there to be some natural chemistry between this isolated demigod princess and a man who can be a little regressive but still likable in that he was more aware than average for this time. Here, Steve Trevor is a total hound dog, in a way that would have been obnoxious even for a contemporary guy at the time of the film’s release. 

All of the stuff with Wonder Woman herself is great (minus a comment that she makes about Etta Candy that is supposed to shame her for being a stereotype), but I’d really rather not have heard Steve Trevor tell Queen Hippolyta that “[her] daughter’s got a nice rack,” even if it’s supposed to be a moment played for comedy (he’s bound with the Lasso of Truth). Later still, he tries to get Diana drunk with the implication that he expects to have the opportunity to take advantage of her! It’s vile, frankly. The rest of the film, as wonderful as so much of it is—the fight between the Amazons and the reanimated dead is a particular standout, especially as it exists both as set piece and as vehicle for closure on the Alexa/Artemis relationship—doesn’t make up for the fact that its male lead is an attempted sexual assailant by any other name. Edit all of that out and you have a 4-star animated flick, but it is in this film, and that leaves us where we are.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Destroy All Neighbors (2024)

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I have developed parasocial relationships with several of the key collaborators behind the retro splatstick comedy Destroy All Neighbors, which has me rooting for its success.  I met one of the film’s writers, Charles Pieper, at a local horror festival a few years ago, and we established one of the most sacred bonds two people can share: social media mutuals.  The film’s score was also co-produced by Brett Morris, who produces and co-hosts several podcasts I’ve regularly listened to for over a decade now, which is arguably an even stronger (one-sided) bond.  Several of the central performers—including Jonah Ray, Alex Winter, Jon Daly, and Tom Lennon—have all maintained the kind of long-simmering, low-flame cultural longevity on the backburners of the pro media stovetop that also encourages that same kind of parasocial affection, the feeling of rooting for someone to continue to Make It just because knowing of their existence feels like being privy to a deep cut.  It seems appropriate, then, that the film is about the kind of long-term, stubborn hustle artists must maintain to complete any creative project in a town like Los Angeles, and how that LA Hustle mindset can also get in those poor souls’ own way.  There’s a tricky balance between the lonely self-determination of seeing a project through even though no one else fully believes in it and the simultaneous need to foster collaboration & community to achieve success.  The people who made Destroy All Neighbors appear to understand the difficulty of that balance down to their charred bones because they’re all struggling with it in real time; all the audience can do is cheer them on from the sidelines.

Jonah Ray stars as the avatar for that LA Hustle mindset: a prog rock musician who has been tinkering with the inconsequential details of his unfinished magnum opus album for years, with no sign that he’ll ever walk away from the project.  Like all frustrated creatives, he blames his creative block on the minor annoyances of anyone within earshot, from the untalented nepo-baby hacks who cash in on their industry connections for easy success to the mentally ill homeless man outside his jobsite who’s just angling for a free croissant.  Things escalate when he finally lashes out at one of these annoying distractions from his “work”, a cartoonishly grotesque neighbor with an addiction to wall-shaking EDM (played by Alex Winter under a mountain of prosthetic makeup and a Swedish Chef-style goofball accent).  What starts as a neighborly spat quickly snowballs into a full-blown killing spree, and the frustrated musician’s Nice Guy persona is challenged by his weakness for violent white-nerd outbursts.  His grip with reality becomes exponentially shaky as his body count rises, and the film slips into a Dead Alive style approach to comic chaos and goopy puppetry, regularly delivering the kinds of practical effects gore gags that earn “special makeup effects” credits in an opening scroll.  Does the troubled prog nerd finish his unlistenably complicated rock album before he’s brought to justice for his crimes? It doesn’t really matter.  What’s more important is that he learns how to get along with the people around him instead of lashing out while he’s trying to tinker with his art project in peace.  It’s just a shame that by the time he figures that out, most of the people around him are reanimated corpses and cops with their guns drawn.

In horror comedy terms, Destroy All Neighbors falls somewhere between the belligerent screaming of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the nostalgic throwback to old-school splatstick of a Psycho Goreman.  If it does anything particularly new within the genre, it’s in its use of cursed guitar lesson YouTube clips instead of cursed camcorder found footage.  Jon Daly regularly appears on the prog nerd’s phone as the host of evil YouTube tutorials, filling his brain with poisonous ideas about how if people “get” or “enjoy” your music, you’re automatically a failure and a sellout.  He’s just one of many abrasive characters who live in the musician’s head rent-free, though, and to blame the murderous rampage on that one rotten influence would be to misinterpret the film’s overall push for communal art collaboration.  Otherwise, Destroy All Neighbors is just impressively gross in a warmly familiar way.  It’s playful in its willingness to distract itself from the main narrative just to have some fun with the tools & personnel on hand, exemplifying exactly what the nerd-rage prog boy needs to learn if he’s ever going to finish his magnum opus.  What’s amazing is that we’re still rooting for him to pull it off even after the liner notes for his unfinished album now include an “In Memoriam” section.  Regardless of whether you’ve ever tried to Make It in LA, anyone who’s ever worked on a noncommercial art project for a nonexistent audience should be able to relate (give or take a couple murder charges, depending on your personal circumstances).

-Brandon Ledet

The Not-So-New 52: Batman — Gotham Knight (2008)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

Batman: Gotham Knight was the third direct-to-DVD release that DC submitted for the approval of general society. Releasing in 2008, it was intended to be consistent with the then-ongoing Christopher Nolan Batman films, specifically taking place between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I was really looking forward to this one at the time, and I remember being less than excited about the final product at the time. Serving as a series of six interconnected vignettes, the film was imagined as DC’s answer to The Animatrix, and although I didn’t much care for it when I first saw it (in fact, I distinctly remember buying the DVD, watching it once, and then trading it in for credit at Wherehouse Music almost immediately), my estimation of it has gone up in the intervening years. Maybe I’ve just grown more accustomed to non-Western art styles or more accepting of changing styles within a single narrative, but this one is pretty fun. 

In the first segment, “Have I Got a Story for You,” penned by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson, several teenage friends gather to tell one another about having seen the urban legend figure of Batman battling it out on the streets with a supervillain: one describes him as a cyborg, another as some kind of vampire, and a third as a monstrous human/bat hybrid with giant wings. If that sounds familiar, you may have read the 1975 story on which it was based, or (more likely) you’re thinking of the 1998 episode “Legends of the Dark Knight” from The New Batman Adventures. This one isn’t a new story, but it does take advantage of the different art styles available from Studio 4°C, the art house that directed this one. Some of the art here could be considered ugly, but it works both as an intro to this particular omnibus-style film and in its own right. 

The second segment, “Crossfire,” is written by prolific comic book writer and author Greg Rucka and animated by Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell). It introduces one of the throughlines of the overarching narrative, the background element of a looming gang war between the forces of Sal Maroni and a mobster known only as “The Russian.” This one serves as a character study of two Gotham City detectives for the Major Crimes Unit. They work directly for Jim Gordon and have conflicting feelings about their leader’s association with Batman – Crispus Allen, who is planning on resigning as he feels that he and his partner are stuck running errands for a vigilante (including the return of the captured felon from the first segment to his cell in Arkham Asylum), and Anna Ramirez, who believes that Batman has changed Gotham for the better. The two end up in a crossfire between the Russians and Maroni’s forces and are rescued by Batman, who tells them that Gordon is a good judge of character, and that he recognizes them and trusts them based on Gordon’s belief in them. 

The third (and in my opinion best) segment is “Field Test,” animated by Bee Train (.hack//Sign) and written by Jeff Goldberg, who was perhaps the closest to Nolan’s work of anyone involved with the production (other than David S. Goyer, who we’ll come back to), as he was associate producer on The Prestige and The Dark Knight before becoming co-producer on Inception and The Dark Knight Rises and executive producing Interstellar. This is the segment with the most pathos, as a mechanical malfunction in a WayneTech satellite is shown to have the side effect of creating an electromagnetic field, which resident tech genius Lucius Fox is able to reverse engineer into a device in the Batsuit that can deflect bullets. Bruce first uses it to frustrate a businessman whom he suspects of having had a local aid worker killed and uses a PDA that he steals from the man to force Maroni and the Russian into a confrontation that he can mediate to force a truce (to keep them from expanding their war into the civilian population while he collects enough evidence to put them away). However, when one of the henchmen is gravely injured by a bullet deflected by the new device, Batman becomes distressed by the violence that is so like the kind that took his parents from him. He gets the man to a hospital and forgoes the use of the deflector belt for the time being. 

Although this one is my favorite, it is worth pointing out since I haven’t so far that no one from the Nolan films is reprising their roles here, but having Kevin Conroy, who is the definitive Batman as far as I’m concerned, more than makes up for it. The only drawback to that is that his voice doesn’t always match with the animation style that the film has. It’s most noticeable here, where Bruce is drawn in a very pretty, bishōnen style, but which I mean that he’s always looking at the camera like this: 

Or this: 

And there’s something about it that just doesn’t set the right mood, even if this is the strongest link in this chain. 

Segment four, “In Darkness Dwells,” was written by David S. Goyer (who contributed to all three Nolan films) and animated by Madhouse (Beyblade, Vampire Hunter D). This segment follows Batman as he pursues the kidnapper of a local church cardinal into the sewers and learns that his opponent, the so-called Killer Croc, is acting under the influence of fear toxin that is continuing to be created by the on-the-loose Scarecrow. It’s the most action-focused of the segments and is more interested in creating interesting visuals than pushing the narrative forward, and it works for what it is, with several fairly tense sequences that really had me on the edge of my seat, credit where credit is due. The segment that follows, “Working Through Pain,” sees the return of Studio 4°C as the animator, with Brian Azzarello taking on writing duties. This one picks up immediately where the previous chapter left off, with Batman being shot by a hallucinating man. He cauterizes the wound and spends the larger part of the segment trying to find his way out of the sewers while flashing back to learning pain management techniques from a woman named Cassandra, who took him in when he was rejected by a monastic order which promised to teach him to work through physical pain. This one is probably second best, as its shift in focus to Cassandra and her own story; the same monks previously took her in when she was posing as a boy in order to learn their ways, only to eventually expose and shame her when they are unable to break her spirit as she excels in their order. In the sixth and final segment, Madhouse returns to provide animation for the story “Deadshot,” penned by longtime animation writer Alan Burnett. It’s straightforward enough: the shady businessman from earlier in the film hires the titular assassin to kill Batman after he lures the Dark Knight into the light by staging an assassination attempt on Jim Gordon. It’s a fine end, if not necessarily a climactic one. 

There’s less to talk about here than in the previous two films. The segments range from acceptable to quite good, but they never reach the point of being truly amazing. At a brief 76 minutes, it’s worth checking out, even if you don’t care all that much about Nolan’s films. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Night Swim (2024)

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I cannot tell the difference between enjoying a gimmicky horror movie and enjoying getting tipsy to a gimmicky horror movie with my friends.  Is the January schlock horror flick about the killer swimming pool genuinely enjoyable, or did I just enjoy hanging out in an empty multiplex on its opening night, opening a couple smuggled cans of sparkling wine to share with pals?  Unclear.  What I do know is that every calendar year deserves at least one wide-release horror about a killer object, and this year we’re being spoiled with at least two: the one about the killer pool (Night Swim) and an upcoming one about a killer teddy bear (Imaginary).  Last year, we were even more spoiled with an especially fun one about a killer doll powered by A.I. (M3GAN).  Other recent triumphs include one about a killer dress (In Fabric), a killer jacket (Deerskin), a killer weave (Bad Hair), and the killer pool’s distant cousin the killer water slide (Aquaslash).  I’m already looking forward to next year’s Panerasploitation pic about killer lemonade, which could learn a thing or two about how Night Swim stretches a simple premise about killer liquid to fill up a feature runtime. If nothing else, it would make for a fun time-killer on the first Friday of 2025.

If there’s any clear argument against Night Swim’s value as a novelty horror about a haunted object, it’s that it gets distracted from its killer [INSERT NOUN HERE] premise with a second, unrelated noun: baseball.  Wyatt Russell continues his campaign to replace Kevin Costner as the go-to Baseball Movie guy by starring as a Major League player whose career is derailed by a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.  Conveniently enough, his doctors prescribe that he starts water therapy to help lessen the severity of his MS symptoms, an easy win for a man who just bought a house with a haunted swimming pool.  In the ideal version of this movie, the pool would be a deadly threat simply because it is a pool, and all action & dialogue would take place either poolside or underwater.  In the version we got, the pool is deadly because Wyatt Russell wants to play baseball again, making a bargain with the evil pool to regain the lost functions of his body so he can return to the majors.  The pool grants his wish but requires a sacrifice, so Russell has to choose which of his two children he loves less (much like Fritz Von Erich in The Iron Claw).  The choice is hilariously easy for Baseball Dad, who has one athletic child and one indoor kid. Still, at some point in the bargaining process he becomes a zombielike soldier who carries out the pool’s evil will even when he’s not swimming – possibly because roughly 60% of his body is made of water, an additional vulnerability on top of his all-consuming obsession with professional baseball.

Distractions on the baseball diamond aside, Night Swim provides plenty of evil swimming pool content for anyone tickled by its premise.  It touches on as many pool-related activities as it can in 100 minutes, ranging from the genuinely spooky (reaching into a filter or drain without being able to see what you’re touching, sometimes being greeted with sharp objects or mysterious wet hair) to the deeply silly (horrifying games of Marco Polo, chicken fight, and diving for coins).  It cheats on its killer-object premise as often as it can, not only by making Baseball Dad a walking pool zombie but also by filling the pool with the CGI ghosts of past sacrifices.  It also shamelessly borrows iconic scares from much better films, referencing both the toy-in-the-drain sequence from IT and the Sunken Place reality break from Get Out.  That latter allusion at least feels true to the liminal realms of underwater swimming, though, and Night Swim is at its most convincingly cinematic when the evil pool becomes a boundaryless void disconnected from the baseball-obsessed suburbia above the water’s surface.  In one of its most inspired scenes, Kerry Condon (following up her Oscar nominated performance in Banshees of Inisherin with the formidable role of Baseball Dad’s browbeating wife) goes for an ill-advised nigh swim and the camera assumes her POV, revealing demonic jump scares as her head rotates from underwater to sideways surface breaths.  It’s a clever gag that can only work in a movie about a killer pool, which is all we’re really looking for in this kind of novelty.

The most potentially divisive aspect of Night Swim is its decision to mostly play its swimming-pool premise with deadpan seriousness.  There are a couple moments when it winks at the audience (most notably in a scene where Wyatt Russell explains his miraculous recovery from MS with the inane line “We have a pool”, delivered directly to camera), but for the most part its goofy tone is underplayed.  There’s plenty of humor to be found in the fact that every single thought in these non-characters’ heads could be neatly categorized as either “BASEBALL” or “POOL”, but the film thankfully never dives into the self-mocking parody of a Cocaine Bear.  The pool is deadly serious business to them, and the inherent silliness of the premise is allowed to speak for itself in contrast to their poolside misery.  A lot of audiences will be frustrated by that refusal to indulge in full-tilt horror comedy, but not every first-weekend January schlock release can be a clever crowd-pleaser like M3GAN.  It wasn’t Night Swim‘s job to constantly jab the audience in the ribs and ask, “Isn’t this killer pool movie hilarious???”  That task is best left to a small group of tipsy friends with a couple hours to kill on a Friday night.

-Brandon Ledet

The Not-So-New 52: Justice League — The New Frontier (2008)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

Many years ago, I used to own the two trade paperback volumes that comprised Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier comic. The miniseries is an exercise in reimagining the transition between what is considered the comic book Golden Age (about 1938 to 1956, notable for the introductions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) and that same medium’s Silver Age (1956 to 1970, notable for the introduction of the modern versions of the Flash and Green Lantern as well as the formation of the Justice League in place of the Justice Society). Set over the course of fifteen years, the series begins with the disruption of the superheroic Justice Society in the face of McCarthyism and sees Superman and Wonder Woman go to work for the government while Batman retreats into the shadows. Later, the emergence of new heroes like Flash and Green Lantern, and the accidental transportation of Martian Manhunter from his home planet to earth, arise just in time for the combined forces of two generations of heroes to take on an extinction level threat in the form of a living island populated by sauropods. 

Those two volumes were, unfortunately, some of the many books that I sold before my interstate move eight years ago as I was paring down my belongings. I haven’t read it since, but I recall it fondly, and I remember being very pleased with the animated adaptation’s ability to tell the same story concisely without the omission of too many important details. I even used to own this one on DVD before it, too, was resold in one of my many moves. Although it mostly holds up as a movie, I must have grown a lot since the last time I saw it, as some of its flaws stand out rather clearly these days. 

In the closing days—in fact, the final day—of the Korean War, USAF pilot Hal Jordan is shot down by Korean pilots moments after learning that an armistice has been declared; he is able to parachute into relative safety, but finds himself facing an enemy soldier who is unaware that the war is over, and is forced to kill the man in self defense. His resulting PTSD from this incident causes him to be the subject of mockery from others after discharge, as they consider him cowardly and perhaps too sympathetic to communism. Elsewhere, Martian J’onn J’onzz is teleported to Gotham City by an astronomer running an experiment, who then dies of a heart attack upon seeing the extraterrestrial’s form. A shapeshifter, J’onzz adopts the persona of a trustworthy detective, all while remaining fearful of violence from humans should they see his true form. These three new heroes as well as the DC “trinity” are brought together, alongside a bevy of comic deep cut characters and some who have become more well-known in the interim because of their presence in the CW “Arrowverse” shows, to face off against the living island and the malevolent consciousness called “the Centre” which animates it. 

This is a gorgeously animated movie. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this is a very strong entry into this canon, since the source material was so well loved that it won all three of comics’ major awards, the Eisner, the Harvey, and the Shuster. Darwyn Cooke’s distinctive art style for the comic translates well to fluid motion, and the imagery is evocative of an older era that works well for the narrative. I really appreciate a lot of the artistic choices made here, with the choice to draw Wonder Woman as half a head taller than Superman being a particular source of jot for me. Although the film updates the title to include the phrase “Justice League,” the majority of the story focuses on Hal “Green Lantern” Jordan, and it may simply be that I am a Buffy fan (now and forever), but the choice to cast David Boreanaz, most well known to many as the vampire cursed with a soul, is particularly inspired. Hal feels guilt and shame, but not for the things that his fellow combatants think he should, and is tortured by the blood on his hands, and that’s not only within Boreanaz’s wheelhouse, it’s his forte. Equally genius was the casting of Lucy Lawless to voice Wonder Woman, even if it’s a shame that there’s so little of her in the film; still, she shines in every scene that she is in, and there’s a particular standout sequence in which she liberates a camp of “comfort women,” teaches them to fight, and leaves their former enslavers at the mercy of the freed women. Superman is aghast at this as they are both working as agents of the U.S. at the time, but it’s a well-crafted reminder that this immortal woman has an ethics and morality that is defined by a sense of justice that predates his “American way.” 

Despite Diana’s rejection of it, there is a distinctly jingoistic flair to some of the proceedings, and there’s a strange sense of sincerity to it that was lost on me in previous viewings. It is important to bear in mind that post-9/11 American Exceptionalism was an ever-present shadow on the entire landscape of media produced in the west, and in 2008 we were still a few years out from the point where non-satire mainstream films would be able to be openly anti-authoritarian and question the state again (the dam-breaker being the success of The Hunger Games, or at least that’s where I normally pin the turning point). As a comic, New Frontier was able to be a little more subversive, with the narrative focus on McCarthyism serving as a parallel to the contemporary (2004) witch-hunting and scapegoating of members of government who opposed the Bush Administration’s warmongering in the Middle East. The film also cut (other than a mention in the news) a storyline about a Black vigilante who fought the KKK before being murdered at the hands of a white lynch mob, as another indictment of the idea that the past was a place where things were “simpler” and “better.” Most of what remains is shown through the eyes of our objectively good viewpoint characters: the xenophobia that Martian Manhunter knows exists and cloaks himself against in order to “pass,” the muttering of bar patrons that they suspect Flash of being a commit because of his red costume, and the aforementioned belittlement that Hal Jordan receives from those who mistake his pacifism for cowardice and his PTSD for weakness. All of that disappears in the back half of this movie, however, as the film goes full Uncle Sam at the end, with all of the assembled forces against The Centre being identified explicitly as Americans, and, upon their victory, an excerpt from the JFK speech is played over a montage of the new and senior heroes fighting alongside one another as they move forward with a new (American) destiny. It’s not that the film’s sudden, new, shallow patriotism is bad in and of itself (it arguably could be, but I don’t have that in me today), it’s that it comes out of nowhere. I think that the intent is to show a rejection of McCarthy-era fearmongering giving way to a new dawn, but it’s a little too quick of a turn in a film that runs less than eighty minutes. It’s still one of the best of this series, but something I couldn’t ignore on this rewatch. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Amateur (1994)

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“How can you be a nymphomaniac and never had sex?”
“I’m choosy.”

The Criterion Channel has been doing a great job of resurrecting a forgotten generation of once-respected Gen-X indie filmmakers whose work has been weirdly difficult to see in recent years – names like Atom Egoyan, Gregg Araki, and Hal Hartley.  During the glory days of independent film festivals and college radio chic, these low-budget, mid-notoriety auteurs enjoyed a surprising level of cultural mystique that has faded as the distribution of their work has effectively trickled into non-existence.  Maybe that break wasn’t all so bad for their memory & reputation, though.  Revisiting Hal Hartley’s filmography as a Criterion Channel micro-collection in the streaming age feels like taking a time machine back to the Classic Indie Filmmaking days of the 1990s.  In particular, there’s something charmingly quaint about how his low-effort crime picture Amateur functions as a relic of that era.  Every one of his characters loiter around public spaces smoking cigarettes, flipping through porno mags, and making deadpan quips over background tracks by PJ Harvey & Liz Phair.  It’s cute in its own grimy little way, a dusty souvenir of 90s slacker kitsch.

The “amateur” of the title could refer to any one of the main players in Hartley’s off-Broadway, on-camera stage drama.  Isabelle Huppert plays an ex-nun who’s learning a new trade as a writer of porno-mag erotica.  Elina Löwensohn plays a video store porno actress who’s trying to break away from the industry by making big moves as a self-employed gangster.  Martin Donovan is caught between them as a total amnesiac with a violent past – an amateur at basically everything due to his newfound medical condition.  The unlikely trio eventually find themselves “on the run from bloodthirsty corporate assholes” as they cross paths with the gangsters at the top of the porno industry food chain, a mistake that has them evading handcuffs & bullets.  This premise sounds like it might make for an exciting, sordid action thriller—and maybe it still could—but that kind of entertainment is not on Amateur‘s agenda.  Mostly, Hartley uses the plot as an excuse to have his characters lounge around in hip NYC fashions (styled as a relapsed Catholic pervert, a soft goth, and a business prick, respectfully) while listening to college radio classics by the likes of The Jesus Lizard, Pavement, and My Blood Valentine.

There might be some genuine thematic heft in Amateur that I’m not taking seriously here, something about how New York City is a dangerous playground where desperate transplants reinvent themselves.  That might have resonated with me more if it were NYC community theatre instead of a Hal Hartley film preserved in time.  I mostly found myself distracted by just how Totally ’90s the movie was in its search for contemporary cool cred.  Its gigantic cellphones, breakfast diner ashtrays, and business cards for phone sex lines were all just as specific to its status as an Indie 90s relic as its single-scene cameo from a loud-mouthed Parker Posey.  This is a movie with multiple recurring arguments about why “floppy discs” are neither floppy, nor circular.  Everyone is either absurdly angry or wistfully despondent in a perfectly Gen-X 90s kind of way, and there’s a lot of easy humor pulled from the clash between those two default attitudes.  It’s an easy era to feel nostalgia for as a movie nerd, if not only because people like Hartley, Egoyan, and Araki used to get relatively robust distribution & critical attention, as opposed to the current cinematic landscape where you’re either making over-advertised corporate IP slop or disposable streaming service filler.  We used to be a country, a proper country with a proper indie cinema scene, and the proof is currently streaming on Criterion.

-Brandon Ledet

Crazy Horse (2011)

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I would’ve watched my first Frederick Wiseman movie a lot sooner if someone told me he made a fly-on-the-wall nudie cutie.  By all accounts, Wiseman’s documentaries are the height of observational, humanist filmmaking, but I can never quite motivate myself to actually watch one.  A three-and-a-half-hour documentary about the current state of the New York Public Library system?  A four-hour doc about the daily operations of a Michelin Star restaurant?  A four-and-a-half-hour doc about the inner-workings of Boston’s municipal government?  I often hear that these are some of the very best documentaries ever made, but they always sound more like doing homework or serving jury duty than watching a movie.  There’s no valor in being incurious, though, so I did eventually find a Wiseman picture that met me halfway (by cutting his late-period runtimes in half) and spoke to one of my personal cinematic interests (sex).  The 2011 doc Crazy Horse finds Wiseman hanging out in the titular Parisian strip club, documenting the backstage & onstage mechanics of its decades-running cabaret act.  It’s a series of cutesy, old-fashioned stripteases occasionally interrupted by nitpicking arguments between dancers, choreographers, and producers about how the staging of the show should evolve.  It delivers all of the usual step-by-step procedural storytelling of the fly-on-the-wall documentary approach Wiseman helped pioneer, except mildly spiced up with a little early Russ Meyer nudie picture kitsch.  I can’t speak for everyone, but I would personally much rather hang around behind the stage of a Parisian burlesque than behind a desk at Boston City Hall, which made Crazy Horse the ideal entry point into Wiseman’s catalog.

I obviously can’t compare the stylistic approach of Crazy Horse to Wiseman’s more iconic works, but I will say it’s a lot less … dry than I expected.  Sure, he locks the camera onto a single, fixed horizontal plane for long, lingering shots, but in this case it’s to capture the fluid movements of a nude body under psychedelic gel lights.  There are also wordless montages of those gel lights switching on or off or switching colors, like the marquees lighting up at dusk sequence of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  Wiseman might be a notoriously patient, restrained filmmaker, but even he can’t resist framing the stage performances of Crazy Horse with a touch of the razzle-dazzle pizazz with which Bob Fosse framed Cabaret; no one could.  Self-promoted as “the best chic nude show in town,” the Crazy Horse stage show provides plenty of psychedelic-kitsch eye candy to fill a feature-length documentary.  Wiseman being who he is, though, he also drags his cameras to the mundane meeting rooms, merch stands, and projection booths that make the magic happen – documenting long, circular debates about the future of the show.  You get the sense watching the performances that not much has changed about the Crazy Horse cabaret act since it was first staged in the 1950s (besides maybe some technological stagecraft, some musical novelties, and the occasional celebrity appearance from someone like Dita Von Teese, who appears on background posters through the film), and yet the choreographer endlessly argues with other staff about the evolving creative vision of the show.  It’s an empire built on cheap thrills, cheap champagne, and even cheaper pop music, but it’s treated like the staging of a high-art opera.  The great joy of Wiseman’s film is in how he’s willing to underline the irony of those passionate discussions, while also fully indulging in the visual beauty of what those artists are fighting for.

A lot of the backstage bickering about the creative direction of Le Crazy Horse Saloon is a classic art vs. commerce debate.  On one side, there’s the poetic visionary who draws inspiration for his choreography from his dreams; on the other, there are off-screen investors insisting on the most consistent, lucrative show possible to keep the money flowing.  The commerce side of that debate can be outright grotesque, particularly in a sequence where hopeful dancers are auditioned for the aesthetics of their bodies instead of their talents as performers.  The art speaks for itself, though, and as corny as some of the sub-Busby Berkeley stripteases can feel conceptually, there’s a genuine elegance to their artistry that goes far beyond mere sexual titillation.  I wonder how often Wiseman’s had to sit through similar debates about the commercial viability of his own work throughout the decades.  He’s a well-venerated auteur at this point, but even the most adventurous moviegoing audiences can be intimidated by the seemingly mundane stories he chooses to tell.  I hear that his new film Menus-Plaisirs is one of the best documentaries of the year, but I’ve spent far too much of my life working in commercial kitchens to want to return there for another four sweaty hours.  Even the two-hour stretch of Crazy Horse wore on me a little once I got the full scope of the movie’s subject, and this one features glittery titties & swinging tassels instead of lengthy meetings with a local city council.  I enjoyed my time with Wiseman and the girls, but I’ll also confess that it still felt like clocking in for a shift at work.  I felt like I was a Crazy Horse busboy for a night, a gig that only a teenage Parisians could fully love.

-Brandon Ledet