Reviews by JxSxPx

Jesus Christ Disney… look, you guys played fast and loose with historical facts bad enough in the first one, but this is especially egregious. Watching these two films back-to-back is a textbook example of colonialism rewriting the historical narrative from the point-of-view of the “winners.” Guys, Pocahontas’ story isn’t some magical love story about a plucky native girl and a stiff upper-lipped British dude.

The darnedest thing is, overall, I enjoyed this film better than its predecessor. That really isn’t saying much as I believe the original film to be one of the worst features from the studio. Why is this, you ask? Well, the original film was the studio tasting Oscar nomination glory from Beauty and the Beast and deciding they were going to make a Very Serious Work that would finally nab them the golden statue for a major category. The original film is turgid, self-important, riddled with every cliché in the book, and sidesteps historical tragedy for Americana folklore, or a nearly fairy tale-lite approach to the material. In short, it’s a tedious “prestige” film that’s nowhere near as deep, good, or important as it thinks it is.

This sequel though? It’s a hallucinogenic trip through Disney approved history in which racial strife can be soothed with a musical number, Pocahontas somehow inspired Shakespeare to write “to be or not to be,” and Jean Stapleton voices a housekeeper with incredibly poor eyesight that functions as a reoccurring gag. Hell, by the time she ends up adopting a bear and Pocahontas’ bodyguard while her boss, John Rolfe, runs off with Pocahontas for “happily ever after,” I was just resigned to the funhouse mirror version of events.

None of this makes Journey to the New World any good, and nothing probably could. No, not even the better than average animation that puts other direct-to-video sequels to shame. (I’m looking at you Return of Jafar!) The best thing this one has going for it is an unintentionally farcical tone in contrast to the Very Important Movie and Message of the first. But dear god, please stay away from historical figures from now on Disney, especially ones of color who died tragically due to racist attitudes and policies.

Have you ever thought that what the film adaptation of a Noel Coward play needed was Jazz Age covers of “Car Wash” and “Sex Bomb”? Me neither, but Easy Virtue has them, and a few random musical numbers as well. Sure, the sight of Ben Barnes crooning some Cole Porter is enough to make me quiver and swoon, but it’s not enough to save Easy Virtue from the tedium that sets in. Damn shame as Coward’s at his best when the fizziness and artifice of his language (and sharp edged bon mots) are allowed the appropriate room to breathe. But we do get to watch Jessica Biel get outclassed by the acting prowess of Kristin Scott Thomas during their numerous verbal spats, and play vague flirtation and coy sexual attraction with Colin Firth as her traumatized father-in-law. What this needed was less modernity, the casting of Biel does not help sell the period, and more of a “let’s misbehave” vibe, as Porter once wrote.  

Who exactly was the target audience for this movie? There’s too much adult humor for the kids, it’s too juvenile for the adults, and it’s flagrant in its disregard for Dr. Seuss’ words and themes to please fans of his work. I suppose fans of Jim Carrey’s free associative overacting will find plenty to enjoy here, but that’s not enough to justify the experience.

No, How the Grinch Stole Christmas exists in some cinematic no man’s land where the only thing I can point to as strengths without an asterisk is the technical achievements, mainly the production, costume, and makeup design. Nary a straight line to be found, the sets look like Dr. Seuss’ curvaceous drawings come to wacky, kooky, kitsch-filled three-dimensional life. I love looking at the scenes of Whoville where we can stop and appreciate the vibrancy of the colors, the strangeness of the layouts, and the over-the-top bric-a-brac littering the frame.

The same thing goes for the makeup design of the Grinch, which finds a common ground between the Chuck Jones cartoon, Seuss’ original design, and enough room for Rick Baker’s ample creativity. The result is a complete transformation of every major cast member, yet they’re still recognizable enough underneath the layers. The Grinch’s smile lines seem to mimic Carrey’s, and Bill Irwin, Molly Shannon, and Taylor Momsen already elf-like features are exaggerated here to transform them into living cartoons.

Yet these are merely cosmetic strengths and they cannot paper over the glaring weaknesses of the rest of the film. Ron Howard’s a journeyman director, not a cinematic visionary, and his point-and-shoot style doesn’t serve, explore, or expand the whimsical world of Dr. Seuss in any meaningful way. There’s two musical sequences just because, although the presence of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” makes more sense than the treacle that is “Christmas, Why Can’t I Find You,” and a Tragic Backstory™ for the Grinch. Why? Because they needed to pad out the story and decided that transforming the Grinch from grumpy scrooge to tragic loner was a smart idea. Long story short, it’s not.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas has its fans, and I’m assuming the veneer of nostalgia is clouding their judgment. At least it’s better than the live action Cat in the Hat from a few years later. If that’s not damning with faint praise, then I don’t know what else to tell you.

From the opening scene straight through to the completely bonkers finale, Deceived has got to be one of the most absurd and ridiculous entries in the domestic thriller genre. You know the type, happily married woman slowly but surely discovers that her husband was really a stranger the entire time, complete with assumed names and secondary families. This entry orbits around an antique necklace, so at least there’s something unique to look at, I guess. Goldie Hawn does well against type, John Heard is appropriately charming then menacing, but the whole thing is just an elaborate series of tropes, poorly deployed jump scares, and predictable character developments and story beats. Of course there’s a child that exists to get imperiled in the last act, a family cat to act as a false scare, and an empty warehouse for the heroine to get chased through. The ending is so abrupt you’re left half-wondering if what you’d just watched was a stone-faced farce. 

Meet Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), a trans sex worker fresh off a 28-day prison stint as she embarks on an odyssey across Los Angeles. Her mission? To confront her cheating pimp/boyfriend (James Ransome) and the “real fish” (translation: cisgender female, played by Mickey O’Hagan) he slept with while she was locked away. Joining her mission is Alexandra (Mya Taylor), Sin-Dee’s best friend and fellow trans sex worker, and Razmik (Karren Karaguilan), a cab driver with a predilection for trans sex workers.

Tangerine is a lot in a short running time, much of it the sight of Sin-Dee hoisting Dinah, the “fish,” across town in order to confront Chester, said boyfriend. She can’t carry around her dead carcass, so the foul-mouthed, barely dressed living presence will have to do. Sin-Dee’s single-minded trek across the city’s demimonde is an aggressively spinning top that threats to fly off destructive chaos at several points.

Eventually these various threads come together in a donut shop, but it’s the journey that’s far more entertaining than the destination. The more Tangerine tries to tie Razmik into the other stories, the more it forces a defeating sense of gravitas into a film that’s primary mood and mode of expression is anarchy, spontaneity, and sisterhood’s healing power in the face of overwhelming adversity. The less time we spend with the professional actors in the film the better as Tangerine’s sense of verisimilitude and empathy expressed primarily through the points-of-view of Sin-Dee and Alexandra remains the greatest strength.

The professional actors feel like people playing dress up and spouting off pre-scripted dramatics, while Taylor and Rodriguez feel authentically real in front of the camera. It’s a strange bit of alchemy, but their very lack of actorly polish is their greatest virtue and asset. They emerge as real people from the place beyond the margins of society. They not only get the chance to shine in Tangerine, but they drive the narrative and show the validity of their expression, personhood, and the warmth of their friendship when all else has fallen away.

Darlene Love and Christmas go together like peanut butter and chocolate. I welcome any opportunity to hear her church-trained pipes taking on the trappings of the season, and It’s Christmas, Of Course finds her in stellar form. From her choice of material through her vocal performances, from the cover art to the range of styles, Love has assembled a fine, fine holiday album here.

There’s less gospel or religious themed material then you’d think. If any performer could make me care about hearing another version of “The First Noel,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” or “What Child Is This,” it would be Love. There’s only two of the twelve songs that center around religious imagery or feature lyrics that mention Jesus directly, “Christmas Must Be Tonight” and “Night of Peace.” “Night of Peace” is the stronger of the two as it features Love’s voice quacking with restraint, emotional devotion and tenderness.

The rest of the material is assembled of covers of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (“Christmas All Over Again”), James Brown (“Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto”), the Pretenders (“2000 Miles”), and John Lennon (“Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”), just to name a check a few of my favorites. Her version of “2000 Miles” drips with the emotional longing and melancholy of the song, while her “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto” is equal parts empathetic and emphatic. Yet it’s her version of “Christmas All Over Again” that announces itself as best of the pack straight out the gate. It’s refreshing to hear Love sing straight rock and roll, and her big voice adopts itself to Tom Petty’s rollicking song quite fetchingly.

Sure, the production here is more staid and generic than any of her well-known Spector classics, or her team-up with the E Street Band for “All Alone on Christmas,” but it’s still a uniformly solid album of seasonal material. Props to Love for releasing a new Christmas album without a “Silent Night” to be found, and for going with a colorful cover that forsakes the traditional red, green and white color palette. It won’t rival “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” but it also only adds to her artistic legacy and domination of the season.

DOWNLOAD: “Christmas All Over Again”      

The original selling point for House of Wax was the 3D technology and stereophonic sound, not to mention the completely unnatural color scheme (not a complaint), but the film’s legacy remains in Vincent Price’s tortured, hammy performance. Come for can-can dancers sticking their legs and rumps directly into the camera, stay for Price’s burn victim makeup and stalking the night for corpses. It’s that kind of delightfully trashy movie.

The plot of this thing feels ripped straight from Tales of the Crypt: gentle artist creates lifelike wax figures while his rich investor wants him to drop the stately, gentile artistry for lurid compositions. An argument ensues, the artist and his creations get caught in a fire, then we flash forward to find the rich investor killed by a badly scarred man, the artist reopening his wax museum, and the new exhibits in the wax museum with striking similarities to several missing persons and stolen corpses.

And if House of Wax had narrowed its focus down to just that and not added in thinly written lovers, comedic relief bumbling cops, and barely there sidekicks, it would have been much better. Why exactly does one of Price’s henchmen turn on him? I guess it’s because the cops wave some booze in front of his recovering alcoholic face and he sings like a canary. It’s one of many plot points that feels rushed or just thrown in and prove more distractions or time marking from Price’s central performance than anything else.

House of Wax is Price’s show through and through, and it’s the film that launched him from reliable supporting player to horror icon and leading man. While the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean were turning mumbling into the new cinematic dialog, Price wraps his nasal purr around every rolling syllable and elongated vowel with élan. He masticates his purple dialog and delivers it as if he’s still acting opposite the likes of Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde in a major studio production. Price’s elegance and artistry is better than the material surrounding him, but he also manages to elevate it to something almost worthy of his presence.   

Freaks was Tod Browning’s passion project. His earliest work on the project can be traced back to 1927, and it’s something of a miracle it got made at all. It’s an even bigger miracle that MGM didn’t bury this thing after the horrific first reactions and heavy editing involved.

It’s tantalizing to think about the film that Freaks might have been, but what emerges as you watch it is a sense that is unclassifiable film is still a masterpiece. It’s nearly impossible to wrap your brain around the prestige and glamour of MGM having produced this humane, sympathetic, and yes, scary film. Was wunderkind producer Irving Thalberg merely trying to recreate the box office and magic of Dracula and Frankenstein? Probably, but boy did he get something wholly different.

Browning has compassion and empathy for those dubbed “freaks,” and he works to humanize them throughout. This point-of-view, spoken aloud by Wallace Ford and Leila Hyams, reflects Browning’s own history as it spent a great deal of time traveling the country in a circus during the late 1800s. If you’ve ever wondered why so many of Browning’s best known films involve circuses and their performers, why they’re so routinely conscious of their struggles and desires, then this bit of biographical trivia will fill in that blank.

Freaks is of a piece with his other works like The Unknown, another tortured love story in a circus with horror undertones. These films spend a great deal of time examining the minutia of a performer’s daily life, and we begin to identify with them as people before the curious and troubling story beats kick in. The brief running time of Freaks means that this sympathy is essential for the complicated emotions of the ending to work.

The story finds Hans, one of the little people in the sideshow, falling in love with the trapeze artist Cleopatra. Cleopatra is carrying on an affair with Hercules the strongman, but indulges Hans’ affections because of his immense wealth. Once she realizes that she can get a few things out of him with coy flirtations and touching, she decides to up the ante by marrying and then poisoning him. Once the rest of the sideshow learns of her horrifying actions they devise a plan to protect their own and save Hans.

It is in the final moments of this twisted courtship that Freaks pulls away from “slice of life” scenes and into more atmospheric, terrifying territory. Everyone knows the two biggest set pieces of this section of the movie, the wedding scene and the rainy night revenge. The wedding scene is a scene that transforms the film from something akin to cinema verite towards the shadowy, hallucinatory aesthetic of the Universal Monsters. The sideshow performers announce their intention to accept Cleopatra as one of them and pass around the “loving cup,” but soon Cleopatra and Hercules erupt in scornful mocking of the entire scene.

That scornful eruption underscores much of what makes Freaks such an essential masterpiece: for all of their physical disabilities or deformities, these circus freaks contain the same wants and dreams as the rest of the us, and it’s the characters whose compromised morality and inability to see their humanity that emerge as the true monsters/freaks of the film. Cleopatra and Hercules may be attractive and capable of passing through society unnoticed or commented upon, but their hearts are twisted things incapable of connection or empathy with anyone not exactly like them.

The destructive harm these two threaten to the circus means that something must come around to right the wrongs. I mean, that’s just basic horror movie morality play at work. Whatever is coming about to disrupt the stasis, be it a werewolf or stalking serial killer, it must eventually be expunged. This leads us the rainy night revenge scene.

This is probably Freaks’ must outright concession to a being a horror movie. The intolerance of Cleopatra and Hercules must be snuffed out, and the thunderstorm, mud, and hinted at violence of this make it truly unnerving. This is the most exploitative moment, probably the only one in the film, that finds many of the less mobile sideshow performers slowly crawling towards a frantic Cleopatra and Hercules. What exactly happens to Hercules is a mystery, but Cleopatra’s fate ties into the carnival barker introduction in a neat little bow.

First reactions to this film found its viewing audience siding more with Cleopatra than Phroso or Venus, a circus clown and seal trainer that meet the freaks as equals and react with disgust at their mistreatment. MGM removed about thirty minutes from the running time, leaving Freaks at a little over an hour, and couldn’t figure out an ending. They eventually settled on a happy coda that finds Hans reunited with Phroso, Venus, and Frieda, Hans’ original fiancée and a fellow little person in the circus sideshow. It’s a strange beat to end on and something of tonal whiplash after the violence of the prior scene, yet it doesn’t harm in the film in any material way. What emerges in the end is a sense that Freaks is a compassionate film buried beneath a label of “horror” and a complicated history that serves as an anchor around its neck.  

You don’t go to MGM for horror, especially during the 1930s and 40s when Universal was cornering the market and RKO’s Val Lewton unit was making artistic works on shoestring budgets. MGM was the home of glamorous movie stars, of heightened romances, epics, and musicals. Yet here is 1941’s spin on Robert Louis Stevenson’s little Gothic novella about the duality of man, and what an odd creation it is.

MGM essentially took the script of the Pre-Code Paramount classic, gutted the stuff that wouldn’t get past the censors, and put big names squares into round holes. The entire thing takes the Gothic fervor and hothouse sensuality of the 1931 version, complete with similar shot setups, and plays it in the refined, glossy, sexless manner of many an MGM costume spectacle. The first thirty minutes and a couple of hallucination sequences feel like a cheat by the time Spencer Tracy’s Jekyll/Hyde finally meet their demise.

It all comes down to casting choices, muted story beats, and uninspired direction. Tracy is a baffling choice for the main role(s). His cinematic legacy is that of sturdy, good-natured all-American fathers, father figures, or individualists, so seeing him dive into a villain is an interesting prospect. It doesn’t come off through a combination of poor makeup (he resembles Dwight Frye during his manic scenes in Dracula), lazy acting (Hyde breathes roughly and bulges his eyes), and a lack of moments for him to play. By Tracy’s own admission he was miscast, and he worried that this film would torpedo his career. I mean, this is the film he chose to do in lieu of The Philadelphia Story.

While Ingrid Bergman does much better in general terms of acting, she’s sacked with a near unplayable role. Her character is clearly a sex worker but presented as a barmaid, and often swings back and forth between stubborn fighter and limp victim. This change happens within the same sentence in a few moments, and it could have been interesting material to dive into as Bergman’s character is clearly being beaten down and abused by Jekyll’s latent misogyny.

She’s the naughty whore to Lana Turner, of all people, as virginal bride-to-be. Turner’s legacy as a clotheshorse and less as an actress is underscored by her presence here as she evaporates from the memory as soon as she leaves a scene. If only the script had made room to explore how Jekyll’s love for Turner was entirely dependent on her virginity and social acceptability/societal status. It would have helped underscore the sexual violence of the Hyde persona as something always bubbling under the surface instead of coming out of the void as it does.

It’s not all gloom in this film as the first thirty minutes hint at a much better, psychologically complex film lying in wait. Look at the strange dream sequences during which Jekyll first turns into Hyde: Jekyll cracks the whip on horses pulling his carriage that transform into Bergman and Turner. Just as good is another sequence where Turner is trapped in a wine bottle with Bergman’s head as the cork that explodes once it is pulled out. These scenes are strange, sexually complicated, and way better than the rest of the overly long film orbiting around the two of them.  

Darlene Love got her start in her local church choir as a young girl before getting drafted into the Blossoms. The rest is musical history, best exemplified by “He’s a Rebel,” “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry,” yet Love always expressed an interest in recording a gospel album. A musical return to her roots and an expression of solidarity with the music that best informed and forged her vocal style.

Well, in 1998 she got her wish with Unconditional Love. It’s a fine album with dated late-90s production styles and a highly theatrical vocal performance by Love throughout. Of course, gospel singing practically demands and makes allowances for vocal indulgences, and Love’s church soaked alto nearly demolishes the walls of Jericho with their emotive fancy and power.

The problem is that much of Unconditional Love begins to sound the same with one song bleeding into another with little differentiation. I’m not sure if it’s the uniformly dated R&B sounds or the arrangements of the gospel mainstays, but Unconditional Love lands with a softer touch then you’d imagine. I wonder if the presence of a few secular songs reimagined as gospel numbers, Love’s version of “Lean on Me” or Marvin Gaye’s “Wholy Holy,” for instance, would have provided more personality. It’s fine, a bit generic, but Love’s in damn fine voice here and gives some truly memorable and powerful performances. The New York Times didn’t describe her voice as a thunderbolt for nothing.

DOWNLOAD: “It Is Well”