THE FRENCH DISPATCH (2021) **

I’ve been a Wes Anderson fan ever since I first saw his debut feature, Bottle Rocket on cable back in the ‘90s.  Although that film remains my personal favorite, I’ve loved each and every movie he’s made since.  Until now.  I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.  

That’s not to say The French Dispatch is necessarily bad.  In fact, there is a lot to like about it (especially in the first half).  However, once the movie goes off the rails, it never recovers.  

Anderson has a wonderfully idiosyncratic style.  The best thing I can say for The French Dispatch is that no one else would’ve ever thought to make a movie like this.  Every bit of every frame just screams, “Wes Anderson” (in neatly typewritten font).  Since he is one of the most unique directors working today, it seems less than chivalrous to call the film “self-indulgent”.  I mean, why become a filmmaker if the films you make don’t allow you to indulge yourself creatively?  

I guess what I am getting at is that this is, for good or ill, the most Wes Anderson movie Wes Anderson ever made.  That sounds like a good idea, and I’m sure there were many other people that were a lot more taken with it than me, but this is the first time his precious style, just-so dialogue phrasings, and delicate set design made me want to pull my hair out.  I think if someone reigned him in a bit and tightened up the film, stripping it of its more Andersony-for-Andersony’s-sake passages, it might’ve worked.  

The French Dispatch is essentially an anthology movie.  Like most anthologies, the quality of the stories varies.  That said, this might be the most uneven anthology ever made.  

Essentially, the film is a filmed version of three stories (plus a prologue and an epilogue) appearing in the final issue of the titular magazine.  The prologue, featuring Owen Wilson is a lot of fun and sets things up on the right note.  (I especially liked the part with the roving gangs of choirboys “half-drunk on the blood of Christ”.)  The first story, in which a prisoner (Benicio del Toro) becomes an art sensation when he paints a nude portrait of his guard (Lea Seydoux), is charming enough, if a bit slight.

The last two stories, on the other hand, are a chore.  The second tale, in particular, is deadly dull and devoid of laughs, heart, or charm.  It’s in this section where a reporter (Frances McDormand) falls for a teenage rebel (Timothee Chalamet) and helps him to rewrite his manifesto.  It doesn’t help that Chalamet’s acting style is an ill fit for Anderson’s dainty form of world-building, or that McDormand (who is usually brilliant), just sort of sits there stone-faced without much of a character to play.  

The final story, which involves Jeffrey Wright relating his coverage of a kidnapping plot, is only slightly better.  However, Anderson’s constant digressions, arbitrary switching of styles (from color to black and white to animation), and odd framework choices (Wright tells the story verbatim while appearing on a talk show) strangle the life out of the tale before it can ever really begin.  It’s also unfortunate that the cast (save for Bill Murray as the editor, Tilda Swinton as an art critic, and Wilson) are mostly wasted.  

Wes Anderson apparently modeled The French Dispatch on The New Yorker.  If the film was indeed a magazine, I would cancel my subscription.  

AKA:  The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SPACE VAMPIRE (2020) NO STARS

A sexy Space Vampire (Ali Chappell) comes to Earth and slowly (emphasis on SLOWLY) walks around in a skintight black latex catsuit, taking in her new surroundings.  Sometimes she walks around outside in the snow.  Other times she ambles inside a mansion.  When she does finally chow down on a victim, she must wash all the blood off her by taking a shower.  (Nothing is shown, dammit.)  Eventually, she goes home.

Space Vampire was released in 2020.  I don’t know if it was made during the early days of COVID and director Chris Alexander only had himself, one actress, and a camera at his disposal and decided, “Pandemic be damned!  We’re making a movie!”  If that was indeed the case, I applaud him for trying to produce a movie in one of the most trying times in human history.  Sadly, this is one of the most trying movies ever produced in human history.

The music in the opening is really annoying.  It sounds like a dot matrix printer running off an end-of-the-year report while sitting on top of an overloaded washing machine with the drum missing.   During the scenes of the Space Vampire wandering around, the music becomes a series of long, droning sounds that would be the perfect soundtrack to cure insomnia.  

Space Vampire is pointlessly slow and needlessly arty for something called Space Vampire.  (Alexander did a much better job with the whole grindhouse meets arthouse thing the next year with Scream of the Blind Dead.)  Then, there are the shots that are so overly solarized that you can’t tell what the hell you’re looking at.  It almost looks like Alexander filmed his computer’s screensaver and tried to pass it off as scenes for a movie.  

The shots of Chappell sitting on a couch while pink and red light flashes on her go on forever too.  It’s here where you can kind of see what Alexander was going for:  A zero-budget version of Neon Demon.  It’s a good idea, but it totally doesn’t work.

It's hard to screw up a movie called Space Vampire, but somehow Alexander did it.  I guess the problem was it’s closer to Under the Skin than Lifeforce.  Mathilda May would not approve.

FRANCO FEBRUARY: SINFONIA EROTICA (1980) *** ½

Lady Martine (Lina Romay) comes home to her mansion after an extended stay in the nuthouse.  Upon her return, she is shocked to learn her husband, the Marquis, has now shacked up with a young man who caters to all his whims.  One day, the duo finds an unconscious nun on the road, and they bring her home and have their way with her.  When the Marquis spurns his wife’s advances, she runs to seek solace in the arms of the nun.  Once the Marquis learns from his wife’s doctor that any kind of excitement will further disturb her and sex will probably kill her, he and his two lovers set out to drive her out of her mind.  

With Jess Franco at the helm working from a story by Marquis de Sade, you know you’re in for a good time.  Sinfonia Erotica contains all the ribaldry, debauchery, and just plain sleaze you’d expect from a de Sade adaptation directed by Franco.  Sure, it’s another one of those “Let’s Drive Someone Crazy and Steal Their Money” movies, but it’s got to be the kinkiest one I have ever seen in the subgenre.  It even contains some surprising gay and bisexual scenes, which are only fitting, I suppose.  I mean Franco had directed hundreds of lesbian scenes by this point in his career.  Fair is fair.  What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, after all.

Romay is excellent as the mentally unstable lady of the house.  (Who unfortunately is saddled with a bad blonde wig.)  The scene where she prays to Jesus (Christ, not Franco) that her husband will finally fuck her is especially powerful.  Hemingway is also captivating as the young nun who is slowly transformed into a manipulative nympho.

What makes Sinfonia Erotica an upper-tier Franco offering is that it even manages to keep your attention during the smut-free sections.  Franco employs effective use of long shadows, odd camera angles, and echo-y sound effects to enhance the feeling of Romay’s fragile state of mind.  He also gets a lot of mileage from the Franz Liszt score, which evocatively sets the mood. Sure, the ending is predictable, and the pacing drags here and there, but the sex scenes (especially the ones featuring Romay) are steamy.

We have a few Jess signatures at play here.  There are all the slow camera pans and zooms to nothing in particular that you’ve come to expect.  This was also yet another movie based on a story by Marquis de Sade (see also Justine and Eugenie) and there’s a bit of nunsploitation in there too.  As far as Franco’s stock player company, there’s of course, his muse, Lina Romay as well as Susan (Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun) Hemingway, who yet again plays a sexy nun.  

AKA:  Erotic Symphony.  

TUBI CONTINUED… BIKINI GIRLS VS. DINOSAURS (2014) **

After dispatching a squadron of enemy spacecraft, the sexy Bikini Girls, Tansy (Toria Pardoe), Cala (Hannah Robson), and Solara (Kul Sarai) are given the drab assignment of escorting their Wicked Stepmother, Voluptina (Caroline Vella) to a boring space party.  Voluptina naturally hates their guts and devises a way to dispose of the girls inside a conveniently placed black hole.  The Bikini Girls crash their ship on Earth in the Jurassic era and must find some plutonium to fuel their ship and get home.  On their quest, they have to contend with a bunch of dinosaurs who want to eat them for lunch.   

Bikini Girls vs. Dinosaurs contains a bunch of terrible CGI effects, but you probably expected that from a movie called Bikini Girls vs. Dinosaurs.  As far as terrible CGI effects in something like this goes, they aren’t too bad.  I mean, they’re totally not good.  However, unlike most low budget sci-fi cheesecake flicks, there is a cheesiness to the space battles (they look like a bargain bin version of the dogfights from Star Wars) and dinosaurs that is sort of endearing.

I think the special effects team really tried their best when it came to the CGI.  The practical effects are another story.  One alien is nothing more than a stuffed animal puppet, and another utilizes Annoying Orange technology.  The costume on the robot is pretty good though.  

Really, it all comes down to the bikini scenes, and they are okay, I guess.  The three actresses keep their bikinis on at all times, which is a bit of a bummer.  However, they do look great (especially Robson) during their go-go dancing and cheerleading scenes, so it’s hard to complain too much.  Ultimately, while the flick gets by on cheesy effects and bikini scenes, there aren’t any genuine laughs to be had.  (The filmstrip explaining America in the 20th century is amusing, but it doesn’t score any laugh-out-loud moments.)  Fortunately, it only runs fifty-three minutes, but even then, it still feels about ten minutes too long.

KILL OR BE KILLED (1976) *** ½

You know how it is.  You’re out of work, but then you get a sweet job being part of some bad guy’s Kung Fu army out in the middle of the desert.  Only you were so desperate for dough that you didn’t bother to check the guy’s background before signing up.  Now, as it turns out he’s a Nazi.  Bummer.  

So, if you’re like our hero Steve (James Ryan), you do what any Kung Fu mercenary would do in that situation.  You escape into the desert with your girlfriend (whom you met while she was also in your Nazi employer’s Kung Fu army) in tow.  Naturally, once your employer kidnaps her and tries to force you to fight for his elite Kung Fu team, there’s only one thing to do:  Join the other guy’s fighting force and kick some ass.  

Kill or Be Killed starts off with a great From Russia With Love-style opening credits sequence where the titles are projected onto the bodies of sweaty Kung Fu fighters.  That perfectly sets the tone for the next ninety minutes or so.  There’s a ton of action and not many lulls in between the fight scenes, car chases, and Kung Fu battles.  We also get a lot of weird moments along the way (like when Ryan disassembles a Volkswagen Beetle with his bare hands and turns it into a land sailboat) to remind you that this ain’t no ordinary martial arts movie.  

Whenever things do threaten to slow down, there’s a completely gratuitous fight scene complete with breaking furniture, smashed knickknacks, and smashing doors to hold your attention.  All of this isn’t exactly great, but the movie has an odd energy and plenty of personality, which at the very least sets it apart from other similar Kung Fu flicks of the era.  Plus, it has one of the most memorable final karate battles I’ve seen in some time.  

In short, Kill or Be Killed is a fun way to kill ninety minutes.  

AKA:  Karate Killer.  AKA:  Karate Olympiad.

AQUA TEEN FOREVER: PLANTASM (2022) ** ½

This long-awaited (at least by me) sequel to Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters is likely to confound (and annoy) anyone unfamiliar with the animated TV show.  I’ll be completely honest, even die-hard fans may have a hard time warming to it as it’s definitely not in the same league as the first movie (or the show).  However, when it hits the sweet spot (which admittedly, isn’t as often as I would’ve hoped), the results are hilarious.  

This sequel picks up with everyone’s favorite team of fast-food superheroes going their separate ways.  Meatwad is living in an animal shelter, Master Shake is homeless, and Frylock has gotten a job at an Amazon-like corporation.  When Frylock inadvertently helps the company’s evil billionaire CEO create an army of plant monsters, it's up to the Aqua Teens to reunite and save the day.

As with Colon Movie Film For Theaters, Plantasm gets off to such a great start that the rest of the movie is perpetually in catch-up mode.  The fever pitch opening has several big laughs and manages to contain references to everything from Star Wars to The Thing to Space Jam.  Too bad there are some serious lulls in the laughs after that.  It would’ve been an even tougher sit if the Mooninites didn’t keep showing up to interrupt the feature.  Their frequent (and funny) appearances help prevent the film from being a real disappointment.  

This review is coming from a fan of the show.  While it wasn’t exactly worth the wait, it did have its moments.  Your average episode of the show is only about fifteen minutes long.  That’s about the perfect length for the concept, to be honest.  A seventy-five-minute feature is kind of stretching it.  The brilliance of the show is that it’s about a team of superheroes who never really fight crime and spend most of the episodes in their rented home being shitty roommates to one another.  The concept kind of loses something when they actually have to, you know, save the world and stuff.  

It also doesn’t help that they spend so much of the movie apart.  Once they finally get the band back together, there’s a spark of what made the original show so beloved.  It’s just a shame that spark isn’t prevalent throughout the rest of the film.

FRANCO FEBRUARY: THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME (1980) ** ½

For The Sadist of Notre Dame, Uncle Jess took scenes from his flick Exorcism (and its porno version, Sexorcismes) and added new footage of himself as an ex-priest-turned-serial killer and voila!  We have a new movie!  Jess wanders around Notre Dame murdering hookers and/or women he deems whorish.  (“This iron blade will purify your body and soul!”)  He also writes about his killings in hopes his stories will be published in a sleazy magazine owned by Pierre (Pierre Taylou).  He eventually learns from a hooker than a Count likes to hold orgies and black mass rituals in a nearby castle, and Jess is pleased to learn that Pierre’s sexy secretary (Lina Romay) is a frequent attendee.  

Jess spends a lot of the movie wandering around the streets where extras around him stare directly into the camera.  (These scenes are reminiscent of a Ray Dennis Steckler movie.)  Other times, he peeps on people fucking, but it’s just scenes of him reacting to scenes from Exorcism and edited to make it look like he’s in the same room or looking through a nearby window.  (Again, like a Ray Dennis Steckler movie.)  

Franco overacts gamely and the close-ups of his bulging eyeballs are moderately effective.  I especially liked the scenes where he begs a priest to absolve him of his sins.  Romay looks as fetching as always, but unfortunately, she isn’t given a whole lot to do in the new footage.

The additional scenes of Franco murdering women aren’t particularly graphic, but they get the job done.  The old footage is mostly nude and sex scenes from Exorcism.  I’d usually be upset by a director padding out a movie with old footage from his other films, but since this footage features Lina Romay in a sexy S & M get-up, I have no qualms whatsoever about Franco cutting corners here.  

I’ve seen both The Sadist of Notre Dame and Exorcism.  If I had to pick, I would give Sadist the slight edge.  If you’ve seen it, there’s no real reason to see Exorcism, unless you want to see a little more S & M and sex scenes.  (And frankly, I wouldn’t blame you.)

Now let’s move onto the Franco February round-up:  Among the Franco signatures on display are the repurposing of old footage, taking a derogatory view of the Catholic Church, and slow camera pans and zooms to nothing of particular importance.  Of his stock company players, the principal faces are Franco, Romay, and Olivier Mathot (who plays a police inspector).  

AKA:  The Demoniac.