Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Boy oh boy have I got a pile of film thoughts for you today, ranging across nearly a full century of cinematic history. We’ve essentially run through both the first- and second-tier films of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, meaning our current selections tend to group into two categories: film classics I seek out myself, or random crap that my housemates put on before I can convince them to watch a classic. This on the whole results in a fairly balanced film diet, as I have much less trouble agreeing to watch garbage than intentionally putting it on myself. Plus, it seems you sickos actually enjoy watching me tear stuff apart, so I suppose this works out best for everyone. Without further ado, let’s charge through some fresh films!
First up this week was The Guns of Navarone, a ‘61 war epic starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn as agents of a secret WWII operation. With two thousand allied soldiers marooned on Kheros, our heroes must sneak to the fictitious Aegean island of Navarone, and destroy the mounted guns currently preventing any sea rescue.
I’ve heard it said that it’s impossible to make a war movie that doesn’t in some way accidentally validate war, by glorifying the heroism of honorable soldiers. At this point, films like The Bridge over the River Kwai and Da 5 Bloods have thoroughly put the lie to that notion; it is quite possible to valorize war heroes without valorizing war itself, so long as you emphasize the inherent meaningless and inevitable consequences of war’s violence. The Guns of Navarone is emphatically not that kind of film, however; it is a rip-roaring war adventure, and far more entertaining for it.
The Guns of Navarone is absolutely stuffed with exciting setpieces, with its heroes braving raging storms, towering cliffs, and all manner of nazi interference in their quest to blow up those guns. The action is delightful, but even more compelling are the film’s many interpersonal debates, with Peck and Niven’s views each serving as distinct, sympathetic responses to the horrors of war. They’re also just charming, witty characters; screenwriter Carl Foreman previously wrote the script for The Bridge over the River Kwai, and it’s clear the man has a talent for engaging cross-continental banter between American and British soldiers. Peck is haunted and stoic, Niven is bleakly funny, and their adventures match the urgency and heroism of war drama with a generous density of crowd-pleasing setpieces. The Guns of Navarone earns an easy general recommendation.
After that we watched The End, a film about a British vampire who ends up banished to Kuwait, where he helps a gang of local thieves perform bank heists. Netflix’s promotional video promised all of that and a bunch of musical numbers, so you can imagine my house’s collective disappointment when it turned out The End only has one musical number, and also doesn’t have a plot.
Constructed as a series of disparate chase sequences with no character building or connective tissue, The End’s first three quarters are only noteworthy for the gross, gleeful misogyny that passes for the film’s sense of humor. After that, the film devolves into a series of “but this was the real story!” reveals that possess no substance or meaning, because the material preceding them lacked any solidity in the first place. Ultimately, The End is an incoherent, mean-spirited waste of everyone’s time.
Fortunately, we rallied after that, checking out Brian De Palma’s original Carrie. Carrie holds the distinct honor of being the quintessential menstruation-centered horror movie, with the whole film serving as an extended metaphor for the natural bodily horrors of adolescence. Of course, this is De Palma, so the film doesn’t hide in metaphor to avoid ugly truth. Instead, it opens on one of its most painful and demented sequences, as Carrie first menstruates in her high school’s locker showers, and is jeered at by the other girls when she frantically cries for help.
At school, Carrie is mocked by the other girls for her shabby clothes, awkward personality, and lack of worldly experience. At home, she is terrorized by her deeply religious mother, who sees the very onset of menstruation as a symptom of Carrie’s unforgivable sin. Between the two, Carrie’s developing psychic powers are allowed to flourish in darkness, serving as a quietly burning fuse all film long. Carrie’s climactic sequence is so famous and so frequently parodied that any modern audience will know it’s coming, but watching the original film, every scene is so drenched in the mundane horrors of high school that the prom night comes as a cathartic relief.
Carrie is as cruel as high schoolers can be, and frank enough in its depiction of developing sexuality to evoke the universal horror of puberty’s Cronenbergian transformations. Sissy Spacek manages the difficult task of simultaneously wilting from and demanding attention as Carrie, while De Palma turns in some of his best work as director, with the whole movie exemplifying the nervous energy of his thrillers’ best moments. His fondness for screen partitioning is used as well here as it is in Phantom of the Paradise, but even more so than overt technical tricks, it’s the interplay of his emotionally charged framing and Spacek’s trembling performance that carries the film. An essential horror classic, effective in every aspect.
Next up, we watched a decidedly non-canonical horror film, the recent Aftermath. Aftermath feels like a film that’s embarrassed to be a horror movie; for a long while it’s unclear if there’s even a monster at all, and the first half spends significantly more time focused on its leads’ fraying marriage than the fact that they moved into a murderhouse. Obviously I’m all for stories that prioritize character writing, but Aftermath lacks the psychological complexity that might reward such a focus. Instead, it mostly feels slow-moving, with the theoretically scary parts largely sticking to doors that open for no reason, or shadows that don’t seem quite right.
With the film tracking heavily in that “is this creature real or imagined” nonsense that has doomed far better productions, Aftermath provides no reason to be scared, no motivation for emotional investment, and no payoff to reward your time. Don’t order the spiciest menu item if you’re going to request it super-extra-mild, and don’t produce a horror film if you’re afraid of making something genuinely scary.
Our journey through recent horror continued with Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight 2. This film, its predecessor, and its successor were apparently all planned as a trilogy, with this one picking up just minutes after the conclusion of the last. With the horrible beasties now insecurely contained in a police station, it would have been easy for this sequel to follow in the mode of its predecessor, and add perhaps a dash of Assault on Precinct 13 flavor to its traditional slasher formula. Instead, this film does something far bolder: it outright shifts subgenres altogether, turning one of the last film’s surviving characters into the new monster, and thereby trying its hand at horror-comedy.
This sequel is undoubtedly messier than its predecessor, with its abrupt tonal shifts and unfocused plotting making for a somewhat bumpy ride. But still, I have to applaud the creators for gambling on such a dramatic shift, and essentially using their planned three-film structure to make an undeniable “middle act” of a film, one that largely foregoes a climax in order to set up its successor. Additionally, the sequences of former protagonists attempting to figure out how to be movie monsters are genuinely funny, stretching the genre-savvy ludicrousness of the first film’s premise in self-parodying yet still committed directions. Having successfully navigated traditional slasher and horror-comedy, I’m looking forward to the conclusion’s presumed stab at full action-horror spectacle!
Our next stop was another classic, the 1938 adaptation of The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn as Hollywood’s most enduring articulation of the daring rogue. You may not have seen this movie, but you’ve likely seen a version or two directly inspired by it; Disney’s take is essentially a note-for-note remake of this film, and Mel Brooks’ version is clearly aping its style and costuming. Watching the original after all these interpretations was no less vivid of an experience; Robin Hood is an alternately thrilling and charming series of adventures, the scale and set design are absurdly generous, and Errol Flynn will have you swooning by his second appearance at the latest.
The first thing that stood out to me about the original Robin Hood is the intense vibrancy of its costuming, with every character decked out in rich full-color robes designating their allegiances. Robin Hood’s costumes are not attempting to be either naturalistic or historically accurate; as a remake of the preceding black-and-white era Robin Hood, they seem intended more to herald the glory of color’s migration to the cinema sphere. The film’s boldness of costume design would never fit in our modern grey and sepia-tinged dramas, where it seems desaturation is used to signal narrative seriousness, so it was delightful to see a film so in love with the width of the rainbow.
The cinematography is much more reserved, keeping largely to mid-distance shots, and generally placing the audience as a member of Robin’s merry band. When combined with the film’s golden age scale, where events like a major ambush or the archery competition might well feature hundreds of actors on screen, Robin Hood feels like an impossibly generous stage production. And this is to say nothing of the film’s endlessly witty script, where friendships are forged over well-aimed snipes, and challenges are laid via brutally withering turns of phrase. Combine all this with Flynn’s unimpeachable confidence and charisma, and you end up with one of the most breezy, charming, and infinitely watchable adventures I’ve seen.
We followed that with a decidedly less venerable period adventure, the Clive Owen-starring King Arthur film. This film came out in that post-Gladiator era where ‘00s producers were attempting to revive the historical epic, a time featuring other large-scale misfires like Troy. This one in particular billed itself as a more “historically accurate” version of King Arthur, which in practice mostly means there’s less overt wizardry, and a bit more focus on the real-world geopolitical tension of Rome retreating from England, with the Saxons swiftly descending on the native Celts in their absence.
This King Arthur film isn’t likely to teach you all that much about history, as Arthur himself is mostly a mythological figure, so I’m not sure I agree with the decision to drain the story of its magical elements. That said, it’s not a total misfire, either. Clive Owen is one of the better actors of his generation, and brings a great sense of fatigue and moral weight to his interpretation of Arthur. He is surrounded by capable supporting actors who feel relatively at home with their lofty lines, including an early Hollywood appearance by Mads Mikkelsen, and Stellan Skarsgard playing an appropriately gravely Saxon invader. Unfortunately, the film’s action sequences are too lacking in choreography, cinematography, or narrative focus to evoke much sense of drama, and its characters too simplistic to see this as anything more than a dutifully self-serious action movie. Ultimately, the most noteworthy thing about this film was seeing Keira Knightley in Lady Videogame Armor.
