You know how they crank out several documentaries per year about interesting celebrities and their stories? This is one of those. If you’ve watched one or two of them, you know the basic beats. But I will say that this is better-executed and more emotionally evocative than the average one.
I knew nothing of the strong friendship between Christopher Reeve and Robin Williams, and while that isn’t altogether central to this movie, it’s one of the things that hit the hardest and that I’ll remember the most from it.
3.5/5
Saturday Night (2024)
I was pretty skeptical of the idea of this one, but I also only knew the very broad concept: that this was a movie about the beginning of SNL. Part of me feared that this meant that it would take place over a longer period of time, watching the show build its way into the success that allowed it to catch on long-term, and if it had been that, it would have inevitably felt like a close cousin to this unfortunate recent trend of movies where we sit and watch the little corporation triumph through its trials and tribulations. This movie did itself a significant favor by keeping to a very narrow scope of time, specifically operating within the 90+ minutes that provided the immediate run-up to the premiere episode.
While I am admittedly unknowledgeable of the specific facts that took place during the period portrayed in this movie, it seems pretty obvious on its face that the movie played fast and loose with the events of the evening. And as far as the comedy in this movie goes? It’s funny some of the time. There are some laughs. That faint praise feels a bit damning considering exactly what the subject matter is, but it’s a mixed bag rather than an outright failure. Still, those are what I regard as the weaknesses of the movie.
The strengths outweigh the weaknesses. This was paced really well, keeping a good momentum going the whole way and successfully reaching its peak during the climactic ending. The direction was strong; I really liked how this was shot. It helped sustain the momentum I just referred to, especially with the effective use of tracking shots following our POV character of the moment (most often Lorne) through the building. The movie was scored well. The actors and actresses all did a nice job of portraying those early SNL personalities that I’m familiar with.
I was very ready to be underwhelmed, but it exceeded my expectations. I seem to like it better than others do, so I’ll note that as a caveat, but: I pretty firmly recommend this if you take any interest in SNL at all.
For some reason passing understanding, my dad (who maybe hates Trump more than I do) really wants to see the apprentice so we are going to see it in a couple hours.
As far as election hit pieces goes I liked uh parts of The Comey Rule but mostly the scene of the first meeting with Gleeson playing trump which was fantastic. So maybe this one is worth watching.
Speaking of I skipped through most of Stopping the Steal and yeah not much there but the parts with the AZ house speaker was worth it (or all of the leopards face eating parts) but uh you can safely skip the 10 minutes they spend on sharpie bleed throughs (etc etc).
Beetlejuice 2 out on streaming - its rare to say “other than a dogshit script it was mostly fine” but that fits here, just terrible script, 2 pointless villains for some fucking reason, and the Day-o replacement song/number was just awful, must have been 100 songs that would have worked better than that Donna Summer song.
As an aside there is zero chance they didn’t pay Jeffrey “I like to take naked pictures of 14 year old boys but still get cast in Deadwood” Jones for his likeness/image, even stylized, so way to show some backbone there by shitting on him in the movie, brave.
edit: wasn’t donna summer, I think the subs got it wrong and not the shazam thing on the top of androids, dunno.
If Michael Keaton wanted to make some useless sequel years later, he could’ve made Mr. Grandmom, in which he’s forced to begin babysitting his grandchildren when Terry Garr starts wandering around the house confused, stopping only occasionally to shout “Elevate me!”
If you want an indie horror movie, Hellbender (2021) is outstanding. It’s like, what if The Partridge Family were witches with generational trauma who play retro 90’s alt-rock. It looks fantastic for an indie movie, it sounds great. Plus the actors are a real-life family rock band.
So I rewatched Halloween last night, which really didn’t do any favors to my recent viewing of Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween just exists in a whole other league from any other slasher I’ve seen, let alone what I regard as a below-average one. I had it logged at 4.5 stars, and came away wondering if I should upgrade to the full five stars. What a picture. Anyway, that motivated me to jump in and watch the sequel this morning.
Halloween II (1981)
I went into this reasonably expecting a drop-off from the original, both because you have to expect that with sequels and because this is not a Carpenter-directed film even though he apparently had some involvement in its development.
I did not expect it to be this bad. Holy hell this is a stupid movie. In the early going, it was fine, I liked how it attempted to take the baton from the original movie and simply carry it forward as part of the continuing day/night. Then the police car crash/engulfment in flames happened, and I was gobsmacked. Did I just witness the dumbest moment in all of cinema history? Please tell me that was a dream sequence for some reason. No…not a dream sequence. We’re to take that as having really happened in this universe. After that scene, I would periodically check in with myself mentally: “Have you gotten over how stupid that scene was yet? No? Okay I’ll check back in a little bit.” Rinse and repeat over and over again.
Eventually, in the same way that you’ll stop caring about too much about your headache if you bring out a shotgun and shoot yourself squarely in the leg, they decided to unveil the oh-so-clever reveal that Laurie Strode is secretly Mike Myers’s sister. There are not enough facepalms in the world. The franchise to this point had done a great job of getting the audience to accept that Myers was simply a semi-human embodiment of evil who was indiscriminately bringing death to whoever came into his path. Laurie had visited the Myers house early in the first movie when Michael was inside and saw her, putting her specifically even more on his radar. And then when he tried to kill her, she harmed him multiple times. That was enough! He has motive! Of course this dude isn’t going to take kindly to someone rudely interrupting his killing spree like that. But no, they had to try to add a stupid bit of lore to further rationalize his behavior. Talk about a solution without a problem.
Other stuff: why is this seemingly a fully operating hospital that has all of about four people working in it? Why is every room dark? Why does nobody ever flip a light on when entering the room? Laurie nearly dies because she’s locked out of the front door of the hospital? IT’S NOT A CLINIC! It’s a fully operating hospital. I realize that a bunch of people inside are dead, but who exactly closed it? You know this thing has achieved a new stupidity level when Michael walks through the breakaway glass door with so little resistance that I start giggling out loud at just how incredibly dumb this whole thing is. What is going on? What is any of this?
I give this movie non-negligible points for never really boring me. It at least wasn’t a struggle to get through from that standpoint. But I’m genuinely flummoxed at how this movie isn’t more of a laughingstock. It tries its best to disgrace the original. I’m just going to mentally decanonize this and declare that it doesn’t count as an extension of the original film because Carpenter didn’t direct it.
Carpenter isn’t super clear on how much it came from him, but he at least makes no attempt to defend it. From Wiki:
The plot twist of Laurie being Michael’s sister was initially never planned by Carpenter or Hill, but was conceived, according to Carpenter, “purely as a function of having decided to become involved in the sequel to the movie where I didn’t think there was really much of a story left.” He would later refer to this plotline as “silly” and “foolish,” though it would go on to shape the narrative arc of the series in the subsequent films.
