Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am in recovery mode, having just spent four and a half hours leading my players through their first major dungeon crawl. Well, actually a castle crawl in this case, but regardless, it took me like fifteen hours to build that whole thing, and my party crushed it in one session. A winding stretch of countryside and full castle infiltration, five separate encounters each with their own unique mechanical dynamics, half a dozen fleshed-out NPC characters… my players are content-hungry beasts, and I don’t know how I’m possibly going to stay ahead of them. Plotting out adventures for those monsters basically consumed all my usual film screening time, but I’ve fortunately still sitting on about fifteen pages of film review buffer, so don’t you worry about any disruptions in the Week in Review pipeline. I’m sure attempting to juggle all this will catch up with me soon enough, but for now let’s not think of such things, and instead wander our way through some fresh cinematic selections. Onward!

First up this week was a romantic comedy, the ‘88 feature Working Girl. Melanie Griffith stars as Tess, an ambitious secretary who’s eager to climb the corporate ladder, but keeps being dismissed as nothing more than a pretty face. After taking a job under Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver) in Mergers and Acquisitions, Tess proposes a clever merger deal, only to have it stolen by her new boss. But when Katharine is laid up due to a skiing accident, Tess takes matters into her own hands, presenting herself as a genuine mergers associate and teaming up with fellow associate Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) in order to claim her destiny.

Working Girl is a persistently charming and absurdly well-cast tale of faking it until you make it, with much of the fun coming from marveling at how confidently Tess doubles down again and again on her deception. Beyond that, it’s basically impossible for a film starring both Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford to be bad, and each of them prove that with relish, demonstrating they’re just as strong as comedic actors as they are at comedy. This is no surprise for Ford, who generally tends to thread at least a bit of physical comedy and straight man obliviousness into his roles, but Weaver is also phenomenal as Tess’ villainous boss.

The film also serves as a fine snapshot of the ‘80s “Greed is Good” era, with its broad shoulder pads, cutthroat business dealings, and misguided faith in the justice of the corporate ladder. I’m certainly not nostalgic for that cultural climate, but it was still fun to follow Tess on a ride-along of that period, and to see how people who were inculcated into such a world tended to view it. Working Girl moves efficiently, makes great use of its stacked cast, and generally takes itself just the right amount of seriously. A very easy watch.

We then watched The Cursed, a recent horror film about a village that comes under assault from a mysterious supernatural menace. The Cursed fires out of the gate with some brutal sequences of violence and human savagery, moving swiftly from a World War I medical tent back to its central village, where the local baron is quick to sanction the slaughter of a nearby Roma clan. In response to their claims of owning his land, he sees their caravan salted and burned, its leader de-limbed and strung up like a scarecrow, its eldest woman buried alive. These actions unsurprisingly invite some supernatural repercussions, as the whole village begins seeing dreams of that lonely scarecrow, and the silver teeth buried beneath.

Pretty serious opening salvo, right? The Cursed is gruesome and riveting all through that setup, with the long shot of the Roma camp under attack serving as one of the more impressive feats of cinematography I’ve recently encountered. And tension remains high as the local children gather to discuss their dreams, and begin meddling with forces beyond their understanding. Unfortunately, once those silver teeth are unearthed, the film ironically becomes somewhat toothless, transitioning into a creature feature that’s far less frightening, brutal, or generally compelling than what came before. Still, the strength of the film’s first act and inconsistently impressive death sequences make for an altogether reasonable horror feature, with the whole production benefiting from strong cinematography and color design. It’s frustratingly easy to imagine a better Cursed that continued to build off the imagery and well-earned grudges of its first act, but the film we got is still a solid watch.

That was followed by another horror feature, Ti West’s latest X. X is a proudly loyal ‘70s slasher throwback, strongly evoking not just the narrative beats but also the sun-bleached aesthetics and film grain of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film follows a group of twenty-somethings who’re on their way to make a porno, having rented out a farmhouse for the setting of “The Farmer’s Daughters.” When they arrive, their McConaughey-channeling producer reveals he didn’t actually tell the elderly couple they’re renting from about the purpose of their visit. And thus they set to work quietly filming their salacious masterpiece, until some gnarled old hands choose to violently intervene.

I’ve had mixed feelings about West’s other films; The Sacrament was a riveting and nasty piece of work, but The Innkeepers was simply dull and lacking in any inventive scares. I was thus somewhat treating this film as the tiebreaker for my West opinion, and am happy to report that X is genuinely terrific. The film is revenant without feeling derivative; in spite of its clear inspirations, X still feels fresh and forward-thinking, with welcome innovations ranging from West’s effective use of De Palma-style split screens to the novel makeup of its party of victims.

Slashers often follow such a reliable formula that you can point out the party archetypes within minutes of starting one, clearly identifying the Jock, Scholar, Slut, Fool, and Final Girl based on each of their first statements. But with X’s party’s stated intention of filming a porno, the conservative paradigm of “sex means death” is made instantly ridiculous, a point underlined by the cast’s conscious separation of romance and sexual pleasure. In fact, it is the film-within-a-film’s lead actors who are the most sympathetic members of this party, with Not-McConaughey’s girlfriend and lead actress (Mia Goth) serving as our true “final girl.”

In place of the usual thoughtless condemnation of sexual frivolity, X substitutes something far more piercing and poignant: the desperate fear of growing old, losing both the shimmering vitality of youth and the adoration that adorns it. Alongside its illustration of the making of The Farmer’s Daughters, X simultaneously captures the hungering gaze of the elderly Pearl (also Goth, in some seriously impressive makeup work), who still yearns to be worshiped as the dancer of her youth. Pearl’s longing is captured with sympathy and grace, making it almost a shame when the film finally gets on with its murderous central business. A great victory for West, and a worthy tribute to one of horror’s true masterpieces.

We finished off the week with one of Francis Ford Coppola’s most esteemed films, The Conversation. Gene Hackman stars as Harry Caul, a master of surveillance who uses his skills to record hidden conversations for private clients. Harry claims total indifference to the actual content of these conversations – all he wants is a clean recording, and he takes pride in the excellence of his eventual tapes. But when one of his tapes implies a murder in the making, Harry must reconsider the ethics of his work, and at last stop hiding behind his tape recorder.

Coppola has stated himself that The Conversation was in large part inspired by Blowup, which applies a similar premise to a fashion photographer. Both films are outstanding in their own right, but the interplay between them is perhaps even more fascinating, particularly when it comes to their lead characters. Blowup’s protagonist feels distant from the world because he’s seen it all – he is indifferent to his subjects and their petty squabbles, and jumps at the chance to get involved in something real. In contrast, The Conversation’s Harry has clearly retreated from the world out of fear, and finds a measure of safety in his position at the recording desk. He is fascinated by people, but refuses to allow himself any true intimacy – instead, he retains the safety of surveillance and authorship, translating honest conversations into his craft, and thereby diluting their power to frighten him.

The Conversation is a resounding success of a character study, and Coppola’s direction has never been more assured. The film offers an alienating procession of alternately sterile and oversized environments; venues like Harry’s sprawling industrial office serve to emphasize the vacuity of his life, all the empty spaces where a human touch has been forcibly avoided. Having dedicated his life to surveillance, Harry cannot escape the feeling that he is always being recorded – his excellence in his craft has actually preempted any possibility of intimacy, for he knows better than anyone just how cheaply private thoughts can be purchased. And so he lurks in the shadows, a timid man who’s only nourished his timidity, until the demons he’s accumulated force him into action. Unlike the somewhat more distant and philosophical Blowup, Harry’s attempts to grasp the livewire of action and consequence ring with the impact of personal tragedy, a scathing rejection of his hope for redemption.

Along with serving as a brilliant character study and thematic compliment to Blowup, The Conversation is also simply a propulsive and engaging thriller, offering all the tense beats you’d expect from a murder mystery. Really, there’s no vector on which this film doesn’t pass with flying colors – it’s simply a masterpiece, one of the great films of American history. And that final shot! God, I won’t spoil it, but you should really see this one. Highest recommendation.