Growing Up with I Spit on Your Grave (2019)

★★★
Terry Zarchi's mistitled Growing Up with I Spit on Your Grave (more on that later) expands upon previous examinations of Meir Zarchi's cult classic that appeared on D.V.D. releases and presents an informative behind-the-scenes look at the infamous shocker from 1978. He brings together a wide array of commentators and cast members to discuss how the movie came together, the experience of filming its notorious rape scenes and the Streisand Effect that the negative reviews had on home video sales. Star Camille Keaton has spoken frequently on her involvement and her belief in the project, but the younger Zarchi goes one step further by obtaining interviews with actors Eron Tabor and Gunter Kleemann, who both explain how they got their roles and go over what they thought of the content when they read the script. Crew members and film critics chime in, but Zarchi's use of social media to recruit commentators both for and against the movie is a level of fan outreach that I've never seen before.

Ghost World (2001)

★★★★
Enid (Thora Birch) sits in the front row at her high school graduation. Decked out in her cap and gown, she watches as a classmate in a wheelchair and back brace gives a speech describing high school as the training wheels for the bicycle of real life. A trio of rappers in full '90s apparel (still in style in 2001) runs out on stage to entertain the class and audience. Enid is not amused. Her friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) is equally unimpressed. After the ceremony, the two run out of the auditorium and stomp on their caps. That's what they think of their high school years. What do characters like this do afterwards? This is the story of Enid and Rebecca and that phase of their life when the future is uncertain. Based on the comic book by Daniel Clowes and directed by Terry Zwigoff, Ghost World is a funny and touching story taking place during that uncertain time when someone is old enough to start thinking about the future but too young to commit to anything.

Geostorm (2017)

★½
Geostorm is Dean Devlin taking a stab at directing a disaster movie after years of producing Roland Emmerich's projects. He was very capable at that job, delivering profitable movies without the production headaches of something like Waterworld. If his debut film in the director's chair is any indication, Devlin's strengths truly lie in producing. The possibility exists that he could make a better movie down the road, but I never spotted anything here that demonstrated that he learned anything from his business partner in terms of storytelling and presentation. Maybe he figured that he could just go with what works because it worked before and brought in the money. Whatever his thinking, Geostorm is a tepid sci-fi disaster movie that isn't a complete disaster on its own, but it shows that Devlin has a ways to go if he wants to match the excitement of Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow.

Go (1999)

★★★
Go represents the first movie for which I wrote a full-length review. I saw it in early 1999 at a special screening on my college campus. The crowd was a rambunctious lot, with everyone clearly having a great time. Upon the movie's theatrical release a few weeks later, a pair of reviews appeared in the campus newspaper. They were terrible, and not just because they were negative. They were poorly constructed. In fact, they didn't even describe the movie, but were instead tirades against the Hollywood trend of copying the structure of hit movies and reconstructing them into a new package. Pulp Fiction is the obvious inspiration for Go, so the point is not invalid. There were other examples from the time. The Aaron Eckhart vehicle Thursday was one, as was 2 Days in the Valley. When I read those Go reviews, I thought to myself that I could do better. It wasn't that the writers disliked it. They didn't get into why Go was bad in and of itself, inspiration notwithstanding.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

★★½
I have not seen the 2016 reboot Ghostbusters, with its all-female cast a magnet for intense criticism, some of which is deserved if its infamous trailer is any indication. If I decide to see it, I'll be fair. Until then, we have this third official entry in the Ghostbusters canon, and though it neatly continues the narrative from the original movies, it still falls short of truly standing on its own. Too many callbacks to the first film, some genuinely funny, suggest that director and co-writer Jason Reitman was preoccupied with distancing his project from the reboot. It's not so much one step forward and two steps back—maybe one step forward and half a step back. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is clever, but once it was over, I felt like if another 30+ years went by without another entry, then I could just as well declare this series over.

Germinal (1993)

★★★
The following is a term paper I wrote for a French literature class back in 2000. I think I got a B+ for this.

Realism is the literary style that focuses on precision and rigorous details. The works of Balzac and Flaubert helped pave the way for realism, but another style called naturalism pushed the concept of realism even further. It paid even greater attention to what was real, and while realism sometimes contains a hint of idealism, naturalism contains no hint at all. Instead, there is an absolute faithfulness to reality. Émile Zola worked at making sure every detail was accurate, in order not to evoke any ideal or symbolist elements. He employed the idea of naturalism in his book Germinal.

Game Night (2018)

★★★
Jason Bateman has always been a good comedic actor. I remember watching him on the sitcom The Hogan Family, where his comic timing and delivery were put to good use. He also appeared on Arrested Development, but would his knack for comedy translate to the big screen? Early on he seemed like an actor who would work primarily and prolifically on television. In the mid-2000s he sneaked up on movie audiences and displayed his strengths to a wider viewership. His bit role in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story paved the way, and supporting roles in Juno and Hancock showed that he could make the transition to theaters (notwithstanding his early failed appearance in 1987’s Teen Wolf Too).