169 - 22 Jump Street

    The same two guys return to pose as college students to find the source of another synthetic drug.
    It’s remarkable that a movie that makes a specific point about how they aren’t going to do anything different from the first time does a better job than the first outing.  It’s actually better!  The gags are funny, the plot is roughly the same, but the writing is better.  The pacing is better.  One of the biggest weaknesses with the first movie was that there was a lull around 3/4 of the way through.  The pacing slowed down and it was harder to get back into the laughing spirit after that.  There’s still a small lull here, but it’s much shorter, and they still pack it with jokes.
    Most notably, they did a better job with Channing Tatum.  He’s funnier in this, because they played to his skills and his appearance.  The humor shifts a little as well.  The most memorable and funny elements of the first movie were when the jokes stretched into the surreal.  This movie plays those elements up more as well.
    It’s more self-aware than the first one was, as well.  During the first movie, a lot of the self-aware elements were packed in early on.  In this one, they pack those in early, but they bring them back before the third act as well, in a reminder to keep their budget low.
    There are still a few weaknesses.  Some of the gags aren’t as enjoyable, but that’s probably because they were aiming for a high school audience.

168 - Frank

    A struggling musician runs into a band that has just lost a keyboard player.  He is folded into the band, which is fronted by a strangely charismatic, skilled musician named Frank, who always wears an oversized head.
    Wow, I didn’t have any sense of what this would be like, but I found it… bizarre, but very enjoyable.  I haven’t been able to fully digest the story or make sense of the ideas in it, but I did find the whole thing remarkably touching.
    The music is very strange, but it has something to offer.  There are a lot of strange sounds involved, and textures, but it doesn’t feel like typical music.  That’s where there’s a conflict in the story - the lead, Jon, admires this adventurous music, but finds himself drawn to something of a more traditional approach to pop music.  I find myself in the same situation most of the time.
    The story drags a little during the second half, but it set a very high bar, and the story shifts to a very different one.  I don’t know if I can say that the second half is bad, because the script sets up everything it has to during the first half.
    Very good, but in a strange way.  A little uncomfortable.

     I noticed a reference that I haven't found any other reference to online.  There's a character that has been treated because he was into fucking mannequins.  At one point, Frank mentions that one of his mannequins is named "Caroline Cuntley."  This is a direct reference to The Real Frank Zappa Book, in which Zappa is talking about a friend of his who lived with a guy named Wild Bill... who would do the exact same thing.  His little girl mannequin had the same name.  It's nice to see this reference.  It's obscure, but knowing that the author read the same book is pretty meaningful.

167 - Hider in the House

    A disturbed man builds a false wall in the attic of a new house.  He becomes obsessed with the family  that moves in, and manipulates events to bring himself into their lives.
    I grew up in a small town with an independent video store.  While I grew up fascinated with the box art for horror movies, I didn’t watch many until high school.  This was one of the movies that I never rented, but it was a real in-joke among my friends.  One of the guys had the last name Heider.  Now that I’ve actually seen this movie, it’s probably good that we never rented it.
    As I was watching it, I kept feeling like every step of the story was a cliche.  But I can’t remember where I’ve seen it before.  I’ve seen Bad Ronald, Crawlspace, and a variety of other movies that have a similar premise.  But I can’t point to any of them that use the same elements.
    The one thing that this movie has going for it is Gary Busey.  I don’t like the guy, I generally don’t care for his acting, but he is legitimately creepy in this movie.  I don’t know how intentional it is.
    The script has a variety of problems.  There’s some awkward writing when the couple needs to get into an argument.  There’s a sequence where Busey is supposed to overheard the hotel and room number where he plans on cheating on his wife… but for some reason, the husband is telling this kind of detail to one of his friends (possibly a co-worker?).  Because of how awkward that piece of information is, we actually don’t hear it said, but it’s clear that Busey gathers that information from their conversation.  When I try to imagine that scene unfolding in reality, it’s kind of impossible.
    After laying a trap that involves luring the wife to a lunch with her husband, leaving a note for her, somehow getting the hotel lobby to give her a key to a hotel room, the wife catches her husband in bed with another woman.  Both she and her husband never question the chain of events that brought her there.
    Busey kills off the family dog.  After the dog disappears, no one seems to be broken up about it.  There’s barely any mention of it, even after the buried dog is found in the backyard.  Hell, they never address what he does with the body of the woman he kills.
    Even the basic setup that Busey uses during the movie lacks a certain common sense.  He builds a false wall in the attic (which is a fantastic, huge attic).  He builds it at one end.  He installs a door to it, and a vent, for some reason.  But he builds it so that it blocks a substantial window.  Wouldn’t people notice that?  From the outside, there’s a window.  From the inside - there’s just a wall!
    There are a few minor upsides.  I love seeing Michael McKean play his usual slimy businessman character.  I love that this came out in 1987, and there are great touches of 80s fashion throughout.  There are a few great mullet haircuts.

    Watching this movie did give me an idea.  In these movies, we typically see that the voyeur becomes more and more unhinged as they become more obsessed with their focus.  I would like to see a movie that uses an unhinged voyeur that develops a comprehensive plan that turns them into an important part of the life of their target.  And that the longer they work at it, they become more and more normal.  By the end, they are fully engrained, and they eliminate all clues about their voyeuristic start.

166 - Absentia

    Seven years earlier, a man goes missing.  His wife is now able to declare him dead in absentia.  Creepy stuff happens.
    That summary avoids anything that could be considered a spoiler.
    This movie is a mixed bag.  There are a lot of cliche sequences, especially closer to the start of the story.  There are loads of “the spooky ghost shows up unexpected and threatens someone” moments.  I’m very tired of seeing those.  They can be done well, but it seems to get harder to do that.  But there are a few things that I liked about this.  First, the story plays with a few perspectives.  We see the supernatural version of the story, but we occasionally get a few scenes of people speculating about alternate sequences.  This is done early on, when the wife talks about ideas she had for what happened to her husband.  These flights of fancy have an interesting effect of making the whole story seem less like a definitive picture is being painted.
    This idea continues at the end, when the police are speculating about what a reasonable accounting for their story would be.  It’s one thing if we see characters talk about these ideas.  It’s another to show them to the audience.  When the audience sees them, they become a credible idea.
    The second thing that the movie does well is that it explores an idea of mythology that I don’t see represented in horror movies often.  The story is loosely tied together with the Billy Goat’s Gruff.  The antagonist is only glimpsed, and what it does is never clearly stated.  There is an implied mythology, but not an explicit one.
    Until I wrote that sentence, I hadn’t considered it, but this could easily have been condensed into an episode of The X-Files.

165 - Back to the Future

    After his mad-scientist friend builds a time machine, Marty winds up in 1955, and inadvertently causes his parents to not meet.  He needs to get them to meet, fall in love, and then return back to 1985.
    It’s been a long time.  This is the first time I’ve watched through the movie on Blu-ray, and I’m really very happy with the transfer.  There are a few details that I hadn’t noticed before.
    This time through, I’ve realized that it’s a very charming movie… but it has some serious weaknesses.
    It’s a remarkably tight script.  Everything in it is either a setup or a payoff.  There are callbacks to nearly every single detail.  This does make it a very satisfying movie to watch.  But there’s a conspicuous lack of character development.  Especially with Marty, who gets a very small, and very understated arc for himself.  (Mostly, he sees his own weaknesses in his father, and realizes it.  This aspect is not played up.)
    Because everything is setup and payoff, the movie feels like one giant in-joke.  The cast is mostly winking at the audience through the whole thing.  This is where Michael J. Fox pays off - he knows how to deliver those lines in a way that doesn’t feel wrong.  It’s a little more grating when Lorraine delivers these lines.  It might be because she seems to be kind of vacuous.
    I found myself wonder how I would feel about the movie if I hadn’t seen it as a kid.  I know that my dad didn’t like this movie, and couldn’t stand it.

164 - Coherence

    A collection of friends gather for a dinner party on the night of a comet passing Earth.  The power goes out, and things get strange.
    A very strange movie.  It holds attention well, but it seems strangely vague in the way that it ends.  As I read about how the movie was made, both the strengths and weaknesses make sense.
    The biggest strength the movie has going for it is the banter, the very casual crosstalk that happens throughout most of the dinner scenes.  This is really remarkable.  There are a lot of tiny jokes, but they don’t feel scripted.  These scenes sound and feel completely natural.
    The biggest weakness is also born of the same problem.  The cast doesn’t know the plot.  The plot is being made up as it goes along.  If there was some stronger planning done in putting the story aspect together, this could have been a real kick-ass sci-fi movie, like Primer or something like that.  Instead, it gets interesting, then it gets strange, then it kind of falls apart near the end.
    There’s one big problem, and that’s the weakness of character motivations.  The characters - as a group - make bad decisions.  There’s an irrational belief that their doppelgangers are going to attack.  Since they seem to have a grasp on the situation, and they know that the others are exactly the same as themselves, there’s no reason to feel like they pose a threat.
    This was actually something that was great about Triangle - they made it so every step of the movie developed her motivation.  Here, it’s mostly nonsensical fear.
    (Wait, the movie may have said something about the comet inducing paranoia.  But I can’t remember)
    It’s an interesting movie, worth a watch, but hardly worth a repeat watch.

163 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers

    A doctor finds that his his small town is gradually being replaced by alien duplicates.
    I’m not sure why I never saw this.  The story never seemed that appealing to me, probably because it’s been done several times with a wide variety of variants.  But Netflix was carrying it, and it seemed like enough of a horror classic that I should probably watch it.
    It’s better than I expected.  There are variations on the story that I’ve seen on TV, but this is impressive.  The story moves along more quickly than I expected.  There’s less padding.  Kevin McCarthy plays the lead, someone who I mostly know from his roles in UHF and Innerspace.  It’s strange to see him as a leading man, but he does well.
    It’s hard to point to any sequences that are especially notable, except that there’s this very gradual ramping up.  Things are normal, and they get progressively weirder.  During the last act, we get a scene where a bunch of citizens wander to a town square.  Three trucks pull up with pods, and they get instructions for who is supposed to take some pods to distribute to relatives in nearby towns.  Most of this sequence is show with wide shots, which is fantastic.  Keeping distance from the subjects reduces their humanity, and without the sound of them moving, it seems much more alien.
    As the town starts chasing our hero and his girl, there seems to be less and less hope.  This makes the ending especially awkward, since they tack on an ending that is hopeful, at least.  It’s actually a little disappointing, since it doesn’t address how they would handle the invasion.
    It was also nice to see Richard Deacon playing a doctor.  I know him mostly for playing Mel on The Dick Van Dyke Show, and he’s very charming.