Authors: Alex Jackson Archives - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

A Ghost Story (2017) – Blu-ray + Digital HD

October 29, 20172017, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Esoterica, Romance

***½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara
written and directed by David Lowery

by Alex Jackson All forms of an afterlife are kitsch. You can’t even conceptualize Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, or spiritualism without turning it into a greeting card or a joke. Kitsch is built into the concept. There was a point in my life where I felt that while it was kitsch, kitsch was all we had. The only other option was to confront the vast nothingness and indifference of the universe and acknowledge how little time and space we take up in the grand scheme. Maybe our belief in a life after death is the equivalent of Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff and not falling because he doesn’t look down.

Detroit (2017)

August 10, 20172017, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Anthony Mackie
written by Mark Boal
directed by Kathryn Bigelow

by Alex Jackson Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit is painfully afraid of controversy. It’s as though Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal were given the assignment to make a film about the 1967 Algiers Motel incident and cringed their way through it, trying their best to alienate neither black nor white audiences. Hilariously, the end result has now become one of the most controversial films of the year. An essay by Jeanne Theoharis, Say Burgin, and Mary Phillips (a trio of academics in political science, history, and African American studies, respectively) recently published on the HUFFINGTON POST denounced it as “the most irresponsible and dangerous movie of the year.” Angelica Jade Bastien of ROGEREBERT.COM states that she left the theatre in tears, not because of the violence so much as the “emptiness” behind the violence. And, of course, Armond White had to get his licks in, concluding, “Watching black people being brutalized seems to satisfy some warped liberal need to feel sorry.” Looks like I was wrong! Black film critics, at least, seem to fucking hate this movie.

The Slumber Party Massacre Collection – DVD|The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) – Blu-ray Disc

April 15, 20141980s, 1990s, 2014, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Satire, Scream/Shout! Factory

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (1982)
**½/****
DVD – Image C+ Sound C- Extras C+
BD – Image A- Sound B Extras C+
starring Michelle Michaels, Robin Stille, Michael Villella, Debra Deliso
screenplay by Rita Mae Brown
directed by Amy Jones

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II (1987)
**½/**** Image C+ Sound C Extras A-
starring Crystal Bernard, Patrick Lowe, Kimberly McArthur, Atanas Ilitch
written and directed by Deborah Brock

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III (1990)
*/**** Image C Sound C Extras A-
starring Keely Christian, Britain Frye, M.K. Harris, David Greenlee
screenplay by Catherine Cyran
directed by Sally Mattison

by Alex Jackson 1982’s The Slumber Party Massacre isn’t a film so much as a work of film criticism. It was produced and directed by Amy Holden Jones, perhaps better known today as the screenwriter of Mystic Pizza and Indecent Proposal, and written by established Lesbian Feminist poet and author Rita Mae Brown, who is perhaps best known for the 1973 book Rubyfruit Jungle, typically considered one the earliest coming-of-age lesbian novels.

Friday the 13th: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan [Ultimate Edition DVD Collection] + Friday the 13th [Uncut]|Friday the 13th Part 2|Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D – Blu-ray Discs

September 22, 20121980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Revenge

FRIDAY THE 13^TH (1980)
**½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B-
BD – Image A Sound B Extras B+
starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram
screenplay by Victor Miller
directed by Sean S. Cunningham

by Alex Jackson

“Do you think you can get through the summer?”

“I don’t think I can get through the week.”

One look at the teenagers in Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13^th and we can see they’re displaced, without religion or identity. Shallow, dim, they don’t have any past and they don’t have any future. Their existence is entirely ephemeral and half-developed. Their lives consist solely of pot, sex, and menial work. We know that they’re really talking about life in the above-quoted exchange–life as a biological process that will come to an abrupt stop for most of them by the end of the week, if not by the end of the summer. They think they’re just talking about work and boredom.

Full Metal Jacket (1987) – Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

August 28, 2012****/****, 1980s, 2012, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, FFC Must-Own, UK, War

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Ermey
screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford, based on Hasford's novel The Short Timers
directed by Stanley Kubrick

click any image to enlarge

by Alex Jackson One of the most noticed Stanley Kubrick trademarks is a scene in a bathroom. I haven't read too much about why there is always a scene in a bathroom, but rarer still are comments related to what goes on in the bathroom. Different activities have different meanings. Urination (A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut) is a sexually arrogant act. It's the one bathroom activity in Kubrick's films that is done with the door open. Bathing (Spartacus, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange again, The Shining) is a hedonistic, bourgeois indulgence and an escape to a safe place. Kubrick is not beyond exploiting the bath's mythological, symbolic connotations as the unexplored subconscious (the subversion of Aphrodite iconology in The Shining) or the womb (Star Child Alex in A Clockwork Orange); bathing is largely a private activity, you see. It is sometimes interrupted, but when that happens the invasion of privacy has significance. (James Mason's interrupted bath in Lolita, for example, had purely narrative- and character-based implications. He regarded it as just another humiliation to add to the pile.) Defecation is even more private, so private that a Kubrick character has never interrupted it. To defecate (Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey) is human, you see. Everybody has to take a shit, but to shit is shameful. The perfect human being would not shit, would indeed be beyond shitting. The HAL computer doesn't shit, does it? Does the Star Child shit? I sincerely doubt it!

Rain Man (1988) – Blu-ray Disc

October 5, 2011****/****, 1980s, 2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Disability, Drama, Tom Cruise

****/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino, Jerry Molen
screenplay by Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow
directed by Barry Levinson

by Alex Jackson From its opening shot of a Cadillac craned across the smoggy Los Angeles skyline as The Belle Stars‘ iconic cover of “Iko Iko” plays on the soundtrack, Barry Levinson’s Rain Man announces itself as one of the very best films of the 1980s. The ultimate high-concept movie, it has a fashionably icy Adrian Lynne/Michael Mann/Ridley Scott aesthetic that’s semi-parodied by way of an absurdist, non-sequitur twist. Pauline Kael called Rain Man “a piece of wet kitsch” while paradoxically impugning its “lifelessness.” In terms of content, it certainly sounds like sugary glurge, but as rendered in the emotionally-detached lexicon of ’80s advertising, all the irony, all the junkiness, has been bled out. The film equates Yuppie materialism with autism, and in a subtle, underhanded way, this humanizes the alien while undermining the film’s own pretension. Once we see this hip disengagement in terms of pathology, we’re no longer attracted and/or repulsed by it.

The Final Destination in 3-D (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

August 9, 20112000s, 2011, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror

The Final Destination
**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C-
starring Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Mykelti Williamson
screenplay by Eric Bess
directed by David R. Ellis

by Alex Jackson It's the summer of 2009. I arrive at the movie theatre, a multiplex twenty miles from home (making it the closest one), to discover that while Rob Zombie's Halloween II has already started, I'm just in time to catch The Final Destination in 3-D. Thinking that I didn't really care which one I saw, that's good enough for me, and so I buy a ticket for the fourth (and, we were led to believe, last) entry in the Final Destination franchise.

Lolita (1962) – Blu-ray Disc

July 20, 2011****/****, 1960s, 2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, Romance

****/**** Image A- Sound A
starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Sue Lyon
screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov, based on his novel
directed by Stanley Kubrick

by Alex Jackson Who is Lolita? There seems to be no independent, cognizant life to the character. She exists purely to be desired or despised. Certainly, she is seen as neither a tragic figure nor a victim–Lolita is always in control. She always has a tight grasp on what her needs are and understands how she’s going to meet them. But simply being clever and conniving doesn’t make you a real person. Humanity could be defined as our ability to experience pain and Lolita lives a practically pain-free existence. Double entendre intended, if you prick Lolita, she isn’t going to bleed. In her eyes, sex doesn’t have many drawbacks. Men lust after her and this gives her power over them.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

June 27, 20112000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Thriller

½*/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sean Patrick Flannery, Norman Reedus, Clifton Collins Jr., Billy Connolly
written and directed by Troy Duffy

by Alex Jackson The first thing I did when I got a FACEBOOK account was look up Travis, my best friend from gradeschool, whom I hadn't seen or heard from in the last twenty years. Looking at his profile, I saw that he listed "extensive" under music and "way too many to list here" for books, but under movies he had just one title: The Boondock Saints. The bands and books he loves are too numerous to mention, but there is a film that, in his mind, towers above all others. There is only one film that bears mentioning. And that film is Troy Duffy's The Boondock Saints. Is it petty of me to not put in that "friend" request? This seems to be all the update I need. Twenty years is a long time. The only things we really had in common were that we both went to the same school and both liked Nintendo and The Monster Squad. That's hardly enough to inoculate a friendship against The Boondock Saints.

Barry Lyndon (1975) – Blu-ray Disc

May 30, 2011****/****, 2000s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Romance, War

****/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger
screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray
directed by Stanley Kubrick

by Alex Jackson If The Shining has dated the most of Kubrick's films, Barry Lyndon, which immediately preceded it, has dated the least. In 1976, Barry Lyndon was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award alongside Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, and Nashville. I have some reservations about a couple of those, but there's no arguing that these are a few of the most revered American movies of the last four decades. And yet, they're all inextricably linked to the year 1975. Certainly, they still work on their own terms, but today there's an unspoken contract that we will acknowledge and accept them as something produced thirty-five years ago. We don't have to make any such concessions with Barry Lyndon; there isn't anything vintage about it.

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) + Kramer Vs. Kramer (1979) – Blu-ray Discs

March 30, 2011****/****, 1930s, 1970s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Drama

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY
****/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Herbert Mundin
screenplay by Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, Carey Wilson, based on the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
directed by Frank Lloyd

KRAMER VS. KRAMER
****/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A
starring Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Jane Alexander, Justin Henry
screenplay by Robert Benton, based on the novel by Avery Corman
directed by Robert Benton

by Alex Jackson Frank Lloyd's 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty and Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer don't have much in common other than that they both won the Oscar for Best Picture and that they are both totally fucking awesome. I know it sounds weird for me to apply fanboyish hyperbole to such conventionally middlebrow fare, but I love these films in much the same way I love Star Wars or the Indiana Jones movies. One is a lavish, two-million-dollar literary adaptation starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton; the other is a minimalist Issue Movie about divorce (apparently aiming to do for the dissolution of marriage what Gentleman's Agreement did for anti-Semitism) starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. Evidently, they represent what the Academy believed was quality cinema at the time.

Sundance ’11: If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

February 6, 20112011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance, Thriller, UK

**/****directed by Marshall Curry by Alex Jackson I have officially reached the point in my life where when I see a cop beating up on a hippie, I identify with the cop. There's a shot in Marshall Curry's If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front in which the police spray two ELF members directly in the eyes with mace during a peaceful sit-in. Some audience members behind me interjected, I think by pure reflex, "That's not fair!" But I found myself feeling considerably less enraged. Yes, these protesters were being entirely non-violent, but what alternatives have…

Sundance ’11: Salvation Boulevard

February 6, 20112011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance, Thriller

*½/****starring Pierce Brosnan, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Greg Kinnearscreenplay by Doug Max Stone & George Ratliff, based on the novel by Larry Beinhartdirected by George Ratliff by Alex Jackson What a waste. The cast assembled for George Ratliff's Salvation Boulevard is one for the ages. You have Pierce Bronson as super-evangelist Reverend Dan Day, Jennifer Connelly as infatuated housewife Gwen Vandeveer, Ciarán Hinds as Gwen's hard-ass Naval vet father Billy, and Ed Harris as pompous, bearded intellectual Dr. Paul Blaycock. These are traditionally serious dramatic actors in roles that lend themselves to caricature, yet they invest these characters with history…

Sundance ’11: Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

February 6, 20112011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance

*½/****directed by Jon Foy by Alex Jackson I'll admit that I can't readily imagine anybody ever making a better film on the subject of the Toynbee Tile phenomenon than Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. The problem isn't that it's done poorly--it's that anybody thought it should have been done at all. Filmmakers Justin Duerr, Jon Foy, Colin Smith, and Steve Weinik worked on this project for five years, but I don't really understand why. Were they actually hoping to solve the mystery? And if they solved it, well, what then? Insofar as the Toynbee Tiles hold any…

Sundance ’11: Benavides Born

February 6, 20112011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Sports, Sundance

All She Can**/****starring Corina Calderon, Jeremy Ray Valdez, Joseph Julian Soria, Julia Verascreenplay by Daniel Meisel & Amy Wendeldirected by Amy Wendel by Alex Jackson Amy Wendel's Benavides Born is throwing me for a loop, and I'm getting a little frustrated about it. I understand that this film isn't trying to be Step Up 4 or the female weightlifter version of Rudy--but it's not really giving us a viable alternative to that kind of programming, either. On a very basic level, I don't know what this movie's about. The small town of Benavides, Texas has only three industries: fast food,…

Sundance ’11: Crime After Crime

February 2, 20112011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance

***/****documentary; directed by Yoav Potash by Alex Jackson From 1983 to 2009, Deborah Peagler was incarcerated at the Central California Women's Facility for the murder of her boyfriend, Oliver Wilson. Wilson battered Peagler, forced her into prostitution, and molested her daughter from a previous relationship, but because he took out an insurance policy before his death naming Peagler as a beneficiary, and because the actual murder was carried out by two Crips she went to for protection, the district attorney at the time presented this as a hired killing. All evidence of abuse at the hands of Wilson was suppressed.…

Sundance ’11: The Woods

January 30, 20112011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Film Festivals, Sundance

*/****starring Justin Phillips, Toby David, Nicola Persky, Brian Woodswritten and directed by Matthew Lessner by Alex Jackson A bunch of twentysomething idealists go out into the woods to get away from civilization, lugging plasma-screen displays and a refrigerator full of Capri Suns along with them. That's basically the one joke of Matthew Lessner's The Woods. It's a pretty good joke. The image of these pseudo-hippies playing "Wii Sports" in the middle of a forest is evocative in a way that cannot be readily communicated with words. Wyatt Garfield's cinematography effectively parodies the look of a Land's End or L.L. Bean…

Sundance ’11: Incendies

January 30, 2011****/****, 2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Canada, Directors: Denis Villeneuve, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Sundance

****/****starring Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Rémy Girardscreenplay by Denis Villeneuve, in collaboration with Valérie Beaugrand-Champagnedirected by Denis Villeneuve by Alex Jackson There are two incredible images in Denis Villeneuve's Incendies. The first of these is during a preamble to the main story. A small Arabic boy is having his head shaved. We push in on his face as he stares contemptuously at us. Everything childlike has been gutted out of him and he's been filled back up with rage. I can't recall the last time I saw the aftermath of child abuse concentrated so concisely and with so…

Sundance ’11: Uncle Kent

January 30, 20112011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance

**/****starring Kent Osborne, Jennifer Prediger, Josephine Decker, Joe Swanberg, Kevscreenplay by Joe Swanberg & Kent Osbornedirected by Joe Swanberg by Alex Jackson Despite having recently celebrated his fortieth birthday, children's-show cartoonist Kent Osborne is no closer to leaving young adulthood behind. Never married and not a father, he finds himself too embarrassed to date anyone. Every single woman his age feels her biological clock ticking and asks, on the first date, whether he's ready to have children. With no greater purpose outside of his work, Osborne wastes his days smoking pot, frequenting Chatroulette, and trolling craigslist. You would think that…

Sundance ’11: I Saw the Devil

January 26, 20112011, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Revenge, South Korea, Sundance, Thriller

Ang-ma-reul bo-at-da***½/****starring Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik, Jeon Gook-hwan, Jeon Ho-jinscreenplay by Park Hoon-jungdirected by Kim Ji-woon by Alex Jackson The rape scenes in Kim Ji-woon's I Saw the Devil are the most blatantly eroticized and sadistic I've seen since Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, but they're countered by the hilariously gory revenge scenes against the rapist (Choi Min-sik) by his victim's boyfriend (Lee Byung-hun). The film isn't trying to rationalize the rape with the revenge or the revenge with the rape. Rather, it regards women and the men who rape them as equally undeserving of our sympathy. One is tortured for…