Cardboard Science: A million years of evolution with one bomb

DAY THE WORLD ENDED

1955

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Lou Russof

Spoilers: moderate

Fierce creatures

DANGEROUS ANIMALS

2025

Directed by Sean Byrne

Written by Nick Lepard

Spoilers: moderate

Plutonian shores

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

2022

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

THE SHROUDS

2025

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

Spoilers: moderate

Humphrey Bogart in Argument!... or Disagreement!... or Quarrel!... or Dispute!... or...

CONFLICT

1945

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Written by Robert Siodmak, Alfred Neumann, Arthur T. Horman, and Dwight Taylor

Spoilers: moderate (or a touch more than moderate, but, anyway, not high)

I know you've seen enough of the Falls for one trip, but don't cross us off your list

NIAGARA

1953

Directed by Henry Hathaway

Written by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen

Spoilers: moderate (maybe a teensy bit high, but one generally knows how these things go, right?)

Reviews from gulag: Down with the Oscars (this isn't about the Oscars)

But I will indulge myself a moment, because today I watched Robert Zemeckis's Here—the boldest Goddamn movie of the year, in its way, just a real achievement, and one that deserves a full review—but perhaps just as importantly, I also watched I Saw the TV Glow, the third feature (second anyone's heard of) from Jane Schoenbrun, the follow-up to their torturously boring and bad We're All Going To the World's Fair; and, in tandem, they very briefly restored my faith in the state of cinema, one being a fearless late-style swing from a tottering master that does some truly new shit, the other being the kind of redemption I genuinely want to see from a filmmaker who might've burned me terribly in the past, but is willing to evolve towards good, exciting work.  And this feeling was shattered, because 2024 now bears the ineradicable stain of producing Anora as America's putative Best Picture of the year, and now it's all just a bunch of morbid considerations about that whole "state of cinema" thing: the possibility that Zemeckis might never make another movie (because hardly anybody's seen Here and I do not think its reputation will grow going forward); the possibility that Shoenbrun's literal physical well-being could be jeopardized, let alone that of their career; and the certainty that Sean Baker is going to go on to keep making the worst motherfucking movies in the world for decades and decades to come.

Anyway, we'll get to I Saw the TV Glow, but I also watched Marielle Heller's Nightbitch, and now they're together, because they're both obtuse horror movies or something.  I'd say it's because they're both about nighttime, but I believe Nightbitch takes place mostly, like at a 3:1 ratio, during the day.  Oh, whatever, it's fundamentally arbitrary.

NIGHTBITCH

It's not clear whether it was Nightbitch source novelist Rachel Yoder, or its writer-director Marielle Heller, or its coterie of producers, but clearly it was decided that what women needed was their own 1994's Wolf, though I certainly can't tell you what all these women thought women must've done to deserve that.  And, somehow, the results are even less impressive: both Wolf and Nightbitch are using a story of canid transformation as a means of actually pursuing a fantasy about middle-aged rebellion and rejuvenation, and, as we weigh each film against the other, Nightbitch ought to have an advantage, because it's at least not embarrassed of being a fantasy movie like Wolf was; yet it's counter-intuitively interested in being a fantasy movie even less; and while Wolf is surely not good at "being a werewolf movie," and does not deliver on the genre pleasures which a movie about Jack Nicholson playing a werewolf has blatantly promised, at least it did have Jack Nicholson fucking a woman half his age and pissing on his corporate rival's shoes, whereas Nightbitch isn't concerned with the genre pleasures of either the werewolf movie or those of the middle-aged rebellion story.  For the long, repetitive middle half the most Amy Adams's (oh boy) unnamed mother (credited thusly, though I could've sworn she received a name) ever gets out of being a human dog, or a rebellious middle-aged woman, is... well, I guess let's just say that Heller must actually hate cats, but at least the storytelling in the corresponding sequence of Can You Ever Forgive Me? suggested she understood the concept of not hating cats.  Her movie's "nighttime" photography isn't as risibly bad as Mike Nichols's.  Let's give Heller that much.

The brood

CUCKOO

2024

Written and directed by Tilman Singer

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: You're a real down-in-the-earth girl

SADIE MCKEE

1934

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by John Meehan, Bess Meredyth, E.A. Woolf, Carey Wilson, and Vicki Baum (based on "Pretty Sadie McKee" by Viña Delmar)

Spoilers: moderate

It hadn’t come to him, the knowledge, on the wings of experience; it had brushed him, jostled him, upset him, with the disrespect of chance, the insolence of accident

THE BEAST

2024

Directed by Bertrand Bonello

Written by Benjamin Charbit, Guillaume Bréaud, and Bertrand Bonello (based on the novella "The Beast In the Jungle" by Henry James)

Spoilers: moderate

Census Bloodbath: Sleep out with your peep out

SLEEPAWAY CAMP

It's Halloween again, and you know what that means.  Like every year, we resurrect Brennan Klein over at Popcorn Culture for our October Switcheroo!  Sometimes I win, sometimes he loses, but either way, it means Brennan trapped in our own Cardboard Science format and reviewing 50s sci-fi classics or not-so-classics, while I wear his face for a while with some 80s slashers, Census Bloodbath-style.

1983

Written and directed by Robert Hiltzick

Spoilers: extraordinarily severe; or, everybody already knows anyway; or, I'm not sure, but you've been warned

Nightmare Week meets Friday Week: The only thing to fear is fear himself; or Dude, that goalie was pissed about something

FREDDY VS. JASON

2003

Directed by Ronny Yu

Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift

Spoilers: severe

Friday Week: In a Voorhees was he born, through a Voorhees may he be reborn, and only by the hands of a Voorhees will he die

JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY

1993

Directed by Adam Marcus and Sean Cunningham

Written by Dean Lorey, Jay Huguely, and Adam Marcus

Spoilers: high

Nightmare Week: Every town has an Elm Street

FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE

1991

Directed by Rachel Talalay

Written by Michael De Luca and Rachel Talalay

Spoilers: see above (high)

Nightmare Week: Hi Alice, wanna make babies?

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD

1989

Directed by Stephen Hopkins

Written by Leslie Boehm, John Skipp, and Craig Spector

Spoilers: moderate

Friday Week: Trapped by dark waters, there is no escape—nor do we want it

 

FRIDAY THE 13th PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN

1989

Written and directed by Rob Hedden

Spoiler alert: moderate

Note: though based on a fresh watch, this is a re-edited-more-than-I'd-have-liked version of an earlier review written in connection with my annual Halloween-time crossover with Brennan Klein (rarely these days of Popcorn Culture, more commonly of Alternate Ending).  My hopes were to barely change it.  My hopes were dashed, given that significant stretches would have been redundant with things we've already covered in previous entries (particularly my grand unified theories of Friday the 13th criticism), while a lot was simply performative whining that only makes sense in the context of Brennan having control over the programming.  The original will, of course, remain, and it has a lot of neat slasher flick errata insofar as the crossover concept demands I ape the format of Brennan's impiously encyclopedic Census Bloodbath series of 80s slasher film reviews, which I obviously recommend.

Nightmare Week: How's this for a wet dream?

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER

1988

Directed by Renny Harlin

Written by William Kotzwinkle, Brian Helgeland, Ken Wheat, and Jim Wheat

Spoilers: high

Friday Week: A killer buried but not dead

FRIDAY THE 13th PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD

1988

Directed by John Carl Buechler

Written by Manuel Fidello and Daryl Haney

Spoilers: moderate

Nightmare Week: Welcome to prime time, bitch

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS

1987

Directed by Chuck Russell

Written by Wes Craven, Bruce Wagner, Frank Darabont, and Chuck Russell

Spoilers: moderate

Nightmare Week: He's inside me, and he wants to take me again

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE

1985

Directed by Jack Sholder

Written by David Chaskin

Spoilers: high

The fairest of them all

THE SUBSTANCE

2024

Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat

Spoilers: moderate, also I get personal and weird