The Doom Generation (1995)

★★
The Doom Generation is the kind of movie that works best (if it can be argued that it works at all) when watched in the middle of the night. That was when I first saw it. I got off the late shift one night in 1997 and turned on H.B.O., and there it was. I watched it again recently late at night prior to writing these words. The lack of ambient noise heightens the movie's nuances. Most of the scenes take place in the eerie dark landscape of Los Angeles. The city's most recognizable spots are nowhere to be seen. The characters are the worst that Generation X has to offer. They slither out when everyone else has retired for the evening. They barely go out during the day. When they do, director Gregg Araki is eager for the sun to go down again. His trio of losers occupies a society seemingly on the edge of disaster, like the pseudo-civilization seen in Mad Max before Max's journey into the wasteland. Araki, a baby boomer, apparently had little confidence that Gen X could succeed. As the middle entry of his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, The Doom Generation is the worst-case scenario for a demographic raised on sugar and empty calories and with a reputation for being called slacker and disaffected. His kids are violent, overly sexualized, contemptible and unintelligent.

Devotion (2022)

★★★
The U.S. military has long had non-white members in its ranks, though they were not initially seen as equals. It took people like Ensign Jesse Brown to break the color barrier and prove that they belong. His story is one of triumph and tragedy. He demonstrated his ability to fly a plane just like anyone else, but he endured heckling from fellow service members who should have treated him much better. Devotion is his story. It takes place during the lead up to the Korean War and follows a group of pilots through training, qualifications and finally the mission at the North Korean/Chinese border to take out vital enemy supply lines. Despite the hardship, Ensign Brown demonstrated his patriotism and commitment to the mission.

Drive (2011)

★★★★
Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive is a gorgeous and thoughtful film. When I say that, I'm not talking about animation or computer generated effects, of which this movie has none. It is gorgeous because of its camera angles, its slow pace, its soundtrack, its sparse dialogue. The characters think about their actions. Tension builds slowly and lingers. This is truly poetry in motion. It's an action movie to the extent that the action is intense, sudden and heart-pounding, though these scenes are few in number and spaced far enough apart that an angry viewer sued the production company for false advertisement due to a misleading trailer that teased more. The hero is a loner who has few lines, like Mad Max, though this guy has no name. The plot is simple, and we get just enough information to know what's happening. There is mob money involved, but the movie isn't that interested in who gets it. The need for this money and the need to get rid of it serve only to disrupt the life of a getaway driver and his newfound chance for a normal life.

The Descent (2006)

★★★½
Neil Marshall's The Descent understands the inherent fear-inducing components of cave exploration—the tight spaces, the darkness, the twisting tunnels—and combines them with the creature feature to come away with this intense and raw tale of terror. This movie establishes just enough of a backstory to get its characters into an inescapable situation, and from there it turns the monsters loose and becomes a harrowing spectacle of intense frights and melancholy outcomes. Marshall, fresh off the success of Dog Soldiers, establishes himself as a director who can take the barest of plots and apply layer upon layer of suspense. His project is an exercise in minimalism. The setting offers few opportunities for the characters to improvise any kind of plan, yet Marshall works within the confines of this scenario to heighten the tension.

Despicable Me (2010)

★★★
Universal's Despicable Me has all the flair (though little of the depth) of a Pixar animated movie, with the kind of good humor reminiscent of that iconic company. It has a likable lead, funny creatures, cute kids and a greedy villain. The twist is that there is no hero with the usual traits of nobility. The likable lead is a thief, but he has a soft side that is exposed with time. The movie's selling point then is not how the hero can overcome obstacles on the way to victory. This is really more about the humorous situations in which the thief finds himself on his way to hatching his master plan.

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991)

★★★
The writers of Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead didn't like the name change (original title: The Real World), but that name change was the best thing that could have happened. The movie was already going to receive a few curious looks due to Christina Applegate's involvement, thanks to her role on Fox's Married…With Children, but its longevity was not going to rest on her role alone. The movie did okay business, but the title made it one to remember. It was marketable. It was that movie starring Christina Applegate, who had the opportunity to play a character unlike her signature role of Kelly Bundy. Kelly was an airheaded and promiscuous blonde. Applegate's new character, Sue Ellen Crandell, was a typical 17-year-old who had to mature fast to take care of her family. Applegate's chance to shine combined with the movie's title cemented its longevity. H.B.O.'s involvement helped too, since the cable company produced it and gave it a second life on television after a warm but not outstanding theatrical run.

Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2018)

zero stars
I can only speculate what motived the people behind Day of the Dead: Bloodline into making this ridiculous movie, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the success of the television series The Walking Dead. The T.V. show takes the zombie apocalypse concept and stretches it out over a long period of time with recurring characters, offering viewers a unique and often tense narrative about the end of civilization. George Romero popularized this concept in 1968. His imitators are legion. Whether they are from Italy or Bulgaria, the pretenders never run out of steam. In the case of Day of the Dead (1985), there have been two remakes, neither of which captured the Romero magic while lumbering over the material in a braindead manner. This movie has no business existing. There’s nothing about it to justify its commitment to film (or digital, whatever the case may be). It’s badly acted and plotted.

Days of Being Wild (1991)

★★★

Wong Kar-Wai loves his characters, so much so that he would rather watch them grow and develop rather than insert them into actions scenes or other fantastical situations. He writes his characters with a complex set of emotions and sees where that leads them. He doesn’t betray them. He charts their course, and the destination may or may not be desirable. We can see this in Chungking Express, or his American production My Blueberry Nights. They can be deeply flawed, passionate, lonely, funny, optimistic and/or cruel. In Days of Being Wild, one of Wong’s breakout films, his characters possess the less desirable of these traits. Even with characters who are disagreeable or contemptible, there is something about them that yearns for goodness, a recognition of these flaws and an attempt to purge them, or at least tame them. Success is not guaranteed in a Wong Kar-Wai film.

The Dark Crystal (1982)

★★★

The Dark Crystal is such a triumph of special effects and puppetry that it’s easy to ignore some of the weaknesses in its plot. Jim Henson dazzles with his creations and his imagination, but the bigger task of leading a large crew to bring his characters to life must have been exhausting. He exceeds all expectations. There is such a wide variety of creatures present here that he surpasses every other production in which has been involved. The worlds of the Muppets and Fraggles don’t compare to The Dark Crystal in terms of puppet execution.

Death Wish (2018)

★★

I don’t care if someone wants to remake a movie, just as long as the writers and directors can give me a reason why the movie was made other than to extract money from my wallet. It’s a waste of time when a remake uses the title and notoriety of an earlier movie while adding nothing new to the story. Case in point: Death Wish, a remake of the Charles Bronson original from 1974. That director Eli Roth is involved in this update isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that, given his devotion to horror and b-movies, he doesn’t generate much interest in the story. Whether it’s Hostel or The Green Inferno, we can look at an Eli Roth movie and know that it’s his. Not so with Death Wish, which has a predictable plot and contains laughable plot developments.