Movies I Watched in July, Part 1

Not the old (terrible) one, the new (mediocre) one. It’s a bit better than the 1990 TV mini-series, which has obviously coasted on the fumes of nostalgia for a few decades now. (Like I said a couple of sentences ago, it’s terrible.) But I still don’t think this new movie is actually good in any objective sense of the word. The story is OK, I supposed, but the theme of ancient evil reaching out to target a group of kids should have a lot more power than it (har har) manages to generate here. Sure, there are some effective moments of dread, but all the actual horror elements seem to revolve around clichéd (and decidedly un-scary) jump scares and, let’s be honest, creepy clowns aren’t creepy anymore – if they ever were. I know audiences loved this one, and critics seemed to fall for it, too, but it just didn’t work for me. Sorry. 


I don’t know if "The Road Movie" actually counts as a movie, despite the prominent use of the word  in the title, but what "The Road Movie" lacks in plot, acting, dialogue, cinematography, and all the other elements of motion pictures, it makes up for in sheer batshit-crazy entertainment. Consisting  completely of footage from Russian dashcams, it’s 67 minutes of drunken fights, crashes (also often drunken), chases, animal encounters, foolhardy stunts,  and, in one genuinely unforgettable and almost transcendent moment, a terrifying drive through a forest fire. It’s not deep, and it’s not clever, but "The Road Movie" is rarely boring, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything quite like it.


I picked this one up during the last Criterion sale at Barnes & Noble because it was the lone remaining Kubrick film I was still missing -- and really, any video collection (or at least mine) needs to have the full run of Kubrick, right? I hadn't seen "Paths of Glory" in a few years, and I'm happy to say it's even better than I remembered. It's early Kubrick, sure, before he was really stretching the medium, but this is really a masterful work, moving from hellish trenches to cold-blooded courtrooms, generating both unbearable tension and righteous anger, all centered around a performance by Kirk Douglas as his Kirk Douglas-iest. As a bonus, the cast also includes Ralph Meeker, Joseph Turkel (who would later show up in "The Shining"), Adolph Menjou and George Macready (as the real villains of the piece), and Timothy Carey (who apparently got himself fired and had to be replaced by a double in one scene). If the greatness of "Paths of Glory" isn't evident by the time the main story winds up, it becomes indisputable during the film's breathtaking coda: Some of the surviving troops visit a tavern where a terrified German girl is brought ontstage to perform for their pleasure. As she sings, their hoots and hollers grow silent and the men are deeply touched by her humanity -- and their own. Then there's one more inevitable punch in the gut before the credits roll. (The singer, as you may have heard, was played by a young actress named Susanne Christian -- who fell in love with her director and soon became known as Christiane Kubrick.)

Up next: A great New Zealand comedy, more Kubrick and yet another obscure oldie.