How to Make a Nightmare (2014)

A kinda creepy chemist cooks up nightmares in his lab, in this 10-minute short that tries to be gross and unpleasant, and succeeds. Visually, it seems inspired by the films of Guillermo del Toro, and like del Toro, it’s not bad, just not for me.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Three women share a spectacular high-rise apartment they can’t afford, because they think the swanky settings will attract wealthy suitors. Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, and Marilyn Monroe are the women, in this watchable but dated comedy.

It opens with a six-minute symphony playing what I thought might be an overture of the movie’s songs, but it’s not a musical. ?? When the movie’s finished, the symphony comes back for an encore.

Filmed in CinemaScope, which is usually used for impressive scenery, though most of the backdrops here are painted cityscapes.

Harmless fluff with a few good laughs, produced and written by Nunnally Johnson, based on two different plays merged together. I’ll bet both playwrights hated the movie, but at least they got a paycheck.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

From the title, I thought this was going to be sci-fi or schlock. It’s not. It’s a jaw-dropping documentary about the early AIDS era, when the US government ignored the disease. Why? Because it mainly killed gay people, and Republicans were in charge, and literally shrugged.

A lot of people were furious about the deaths of their friends, family, lovers, and their own impending deaths, so they came together to form the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). They started demanding more funding for more research, and the overthrow of the FDA’s years-long testing protocols, because people didn’t have years to wait.

What a clusterfuck time it was! Afraid of the stigma or of catching it from a corpse, funeral parlors refused services and burials for people who’d died of AIDS. The Catholic Church announced that condoms are immoral, and ineffective — a double whammy of lies, as if the Catholic Church knows anything about morality or science. US Prez and 11th-level demon Ronald Reagan waited four years before even saying the word AIDS, and then, in clip after clip here, other Republicans can’t mention AIDS without adding that it’s brought about by behavior, so why don’t you gay people stop doing what you do?

Instead, what gay people and their allies did was, they fought back and acted up. We’re shown activists smuggling foreign, unapproved-in-America drugs, and shouting “Stop killing us!” as bureaucrats dither about rules and protocols. Hundreds hold a kiss-in at a hospital where AIDS patients had been turned away and beaten by security guards. Jesse Helms gets a 35-foot canvas condom unrolled onto one of his houses, and he is not amused.

The demand for less sluggish science pits ACT UP against the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Anthony Fauci, who is clearly the bad guy here. No, no, we have to do this the slow way…

But then, to his credit, Fauci finds his soul and yields, adding ACT UP activists to research committees, inviting them to meetings, and opening those meetings to the public.

In 2024, there’s still no cure, but after a triple-drug treatment was rapid-tested (thanks to ACT UP) and released in 1996, AIDS is no longer a death sentence.

All through the film, ACT UP’s agitators are frightened, of course, but courageous and outspoken and obnoxious when it’s needed. This is what resistance looks like. This is heroism.

It’s AIDS, so you assume everyone on-screen is dead now, dead for decades, and not from old age. Surprisingly, though, several people the film has you rooting for made it through. The title, How to Survive a Plague, tells the truth.

It comes down to what Larry Kramer says at the end: “Every single (anti-AIDS) drug that’s out there is because of ACT UP…. The government didn’t get us the drugs, no-one else got us the drugs. We, ACT UP, got those drugs out there.”

Built from archival footage shot as it happened, this is two hours of emotions, visceral and exhilarating, fulfilling and unforgettable. If it isn’t the best documentary I’ve seen, it’s certainly a nominee.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Enn (short for Henry) is a 1970s punk rocker who wears the required leather, publishes a zine, and does the crazy spastic dance as he listens to some pretty good punk music. Actually, that was my first clue that something was up here — punk isn’t my bailiwick, and there’s a lot of the music in this movie, but I liked all of it. Ain’t that a kick in the head.

Enn and his punk buddies meet a bunch of space aliens, who speak bizarrely and wear color-coordinated latex and do modern dance like PBS. One of the aliens is Zan, and she’s rebelling against their strict rules, which makes her sort of a space punk, so there’s romance in the atmosphere.

The story’s built more for comedy than serious sci-fi, but it is a comedy. Not serious sci-fi. Right? Well, there are laughs at the start, from weirdness more than jokes, but the laughs subside and the story takes a swing at profound. It’s a swing and a miss, but the movie’s better than its terrible title, a bit predictable but never boring.

Alex Sharp and Elle Fanning star. Nicole Kidman plays the queen of punk, and the top alien is an old, old woman who looks exactly like George C Scott. Directed and co-written by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), based on a short story by Neil Gaiman
(American Gods).

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Howard the Duck (1986)

I bought a ticket to see this when it first came out, but fell asleep after a few minutes, and left when an usher nudged me to stop snoring. Many years later, someone told my wife that Howard the Duck‘s legendary awfulness is exaggerated and it’s actually fun, so we rented the DVD, but it froze in the opening credits. So tonight was my third try, and I was determined to finally see Howard the Duck.

Wow. It certainly earns its legendarily awful reputation.

There’s a talking duck who says things like “No more Mister Nice Duck,” and looks for a job, and gets into scrapes, and probably saves the world. Can’t say for sure, ‘cuz I only lasted half an hour, and should’ve bailed sooner.

This is featherweight entertainment, designed for stoners and special-ed kids.

Verdict: BIG NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

… and out of alphabetical order …

Scott Glenn plays William Walker, a stick-up-his-ass righteous American who says he’s adamantly opposed to slavery, values democracy “more than my own life,” and claims it’s the “God-given right of every American to dominate the western hemisphere.”

Backed by 19th-century bastard billionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt and a band of merry mercenaries, Walker sets himself up as ‘President of Nicaragua’, and announces that democracy and equality will be the Nicaraguan way. With absolute power, though, he betrays all his early-movie principles, embraces slavery, and declares war on money-man Vanderbilt.

Walker is a factual figure from history, but couldn’t have been as naïve and kooky as he is in the movie. Who cares, though? Making Walker the man so strange makes Walker the movie strange, too, sometimes grand, sometimes hilarious.

Director Alex Cox breaks all the rules, with chaotic scenes played for comedy, and death scenes played for laughs. Nobody gets shot without blood spurting out like a geyser, and in the middle of a military battle, Walker finds a piano and starts playing a hymn.

The film is agitprop, riffing on Oliver North and Ronald Reagan more than Walker and Vanderbilt, and with gonzo elements to keep your footing as insecure as Walker’s sanity. Like, it’s 1853, but there’s a Mercedes, and here’s a US military helicopter, and Walker is on the cover of Time magazine. Watching this is like, I dunno, like you’ve ordered a pizza and instead the waiter brought lentil soup with pepperoni and gumballs — but dang, it’s delicious!

Ed Harris stars, with Peter Boyle, Rene Auberjonois, Richard Masur, and a few minutes of Marlee Matlin. Screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer (Two-Lane Blacktop). Music by Joe Strummer.

After this, Cox was never allowed to make another Hollywood movie, and you can understand why — this simply ain’t for the masses. Are you the masses? Me, I frickin’ loved it.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

12/29/2024

Coming attractions:

Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (2004)
Howard Zinn’s Emma (2016)
Howl (2010)
The Howling (1981)
… plus schlock, shorts, and
movies out of alphabetical order…

Neverending Film Festival

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