Today’s movies include crappy sci-fi from J J Abrams, a couple of so-so action flicks, two musicals, a documentary about a crazy moviemaker who never made a movie, and one of the best independent films of the 1980s.• A Gray State (2017)
• The Chain Reaction (1980)
• Cloverfield (2010)
• Inferno (1999)
• Stranger than Paradise (1984)
• Strangers in Paradise (1984)
• Wake Up and Dream (1946)

The Neverending Film Festival #94

And the Douggie for Best Picture goes to… Stranger than Paradise.Honorable mention: Strangers in Paradise (which is not the same film) and Wake Up and Dream.Not coincidentally, all three are not at all normal films.
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A Gray State (2017)This is a documentary about someone I’d never heard of and wouldn’t have liked. David Crowley was a pre-QAnon conspiracy freak who palled around with the repugnant Alex Jones, and made a crowdfunded trailer for a conspiracy movie to be called Gray State, which isn’t this movie. This is A Gray State.
Crowley never made his movie. Instead he killed his wife, daughter, and himself, so if you’ve yearned to see the true story of a murderous wingnut who wanted to make a movie, this is the movie for you.”It’s hard to imagine how it all went so wrong,” says a TV reporter covering the triple-killing. “David Crowley, a talented, promising young filmmaker…”Wait, was Crowley a filmmaker? He only made a trailer, and that trailer isn’t even three minutes long, so it seems odd that this feature-length documentary shows only brief clips from the trailer, not the whole thing. I googled it and watched the trailer myself:Over a bombastic drum soundtrack, “Hot Head Productions presents,” black helicopters, RFID tags, a child’s arm being branded by government agents, ominous worries about the Federal Reserve, air flights grounded, travel restricted, martial law, National Guard deployed to stop rioting, empty shelves in grocery stores, FEMA agents in riot gear, military commandos in camouflage invading Minneapolis, warfare in the streets, Americans being hooded and shot in the head by US soldiers, more FEMA agents in riot gear, cities in ruins, buildings in flames, and couples screaming as they’re pried apart. The tag line is, “With every weapon of the state turned against us, how long can we resist?”This is Goebbels level shit.”The way I would pitch this thing is, America has finally had enough,” says an indy studio head who was ready to bankroll Crowley. “The population of this country has had enough of the corrupt government, and they make a stand. I think, to this day, there’s still a built-in audience for a film like this.”Yeah, no doubt about that. Half of Americans hate science, facts, democracy, and America, so if Crowley had made Gray State, it would’ve been a big hit with his fellow libertarians, tea partiers, and the QAnon crowd. There would’ve been sequels and spinoffs and maybe a sit-com.Instead of being the new right-wing auteur, he’s dead, along with his wife and kid, so those would-be ticket-buyers are of course pushing theories that Crowley and his family were murdered by the feds, because the government feared the truths his movie would’ve revealed. I am weary of a movie that doesn’t even exist, by a moviemaker who never made a movie.
As for this movie, the filmmakers don’t seem to buy the bluff that Crowley was murdered by shadowy goons, but they do seem intent on softening Crowley’s legacy. A long list of his friends are interviewed, and they all agree that he had his faults, had some issues, but still, he was a great guy. There’s a lingering close-up of his family dog.However warm and cuddly he might have been, I’d say Crowley was despicable. I can’t bring myself to even a smidgen of sadness that he’s dead, and he’s not worth an hour and a half of your time.
Verdict: NO.♦ ♦ ♦  The Chain Reaction (1980)An under-thrilling sci-fi thriller from down under. There’s been a leak of nuclear contaminants at the Western Atomic Longterm Dumping Organization (WALDO), and the corporation in charge wants to keep it quiet, but one fatally exposed scientist sneaks out to warn Australia.After that, there are car chases and other action movie tropes, because despite all the nuclear waste, this is more of a B-level action flick than sci-fi.Some well-staged car chases, though, if that’s your thing, staged by Mad Max director George Miller. Miller did not direct the rest of the movie, though, or it would’ve been better.
Verdict: MAYBE.♦ ♦ ♦Cloverfield (2010)I’ve never been a fan of J J Abrams. What I’ve seen from him is ordinary — competent but uninspired TV, like Alias, Felicity, and Lost. In cinema, he’s responsible for the ongoing dullness of Star Trek and Star Wars movies, so I wasn’t expecting much from Cloverfield, but some younger co-workers at my last job told me it was great, so here goes.It opens with long, tedious sequences purportedly filmed on some guy’s cell phone, which means that the camera jiggles all over, there are staticky jump cuts, etc. We watch boring conversations between a couple on their way to a party, and then boring conversations at the party. There’s nothing even quasi-interesting in these opening scenes. It is revealed, for example, that Rob and Beth had sex, but I already hated both of them so I only hope they used protection.
After 18 minutes and 33 damned seconds of this extreme boredom, the building shakes, the lights flicker but immediately come back on, and at long last, a movie is maybe underway.Then we get genre-cliché TV news bulletins, things start blowing up, and it becomes sadly clear that the entire movie is faux-filmed on a cell phone, like The Blair Witch Project.It’s a style I’d call chaos vérité — lots of “Oh my God” and “Holy shit,” and screaming and “What is happening?” as the camera shakes epileptic and we’re given occasional quick glimpses of invaders from outer space or something.It is the easiest, cheapest way to pass something off as a movie, and it’s a genre from which only one worthwhile movie has emerged, to my knowledge, and that’s The McPherson Tape (1989). It’s certainly not this mess.
The horrendous camerawork and hysterical scripting is supposed to feel real, not like a movie, but I was hoping for a movie. There’s not a single scene in Cloverfield that seems properly focused and framed, not a moment of dialogue that doesn’t feel badly ad-libbed, and this is intentional.
Verdict: BIG NO, not without motion sickness pills.♦ ♦ ♦ Inferno (1999)Somehow I missed this in my roundup of Infernos a while back, sorry.Jean-Claude Van Damme’s motorcycle breaks down in the middle of the desert, but fortunately he has whisky and hallucinates an old buddy who spouts faux Native wisdom.The buddy is Danny Trejo, who’s always fun to watch but who’s Mexican-American, so it’s weird watching him chant and pretend at being Native. There’s also Pat Morita in a diner, reading an unfaded newspaper with the headline, “Congress declares war on Japan,” though this movie is clearly not a WW2 period piece. I could’ve done without the rape jokes, and didn’t need to see Van Damme
fuck two women one after the other, before falling in love with a third
woman. But Inferno is standard JCVD fare, which means someone’s done Van Damme wrong, and he’s a patient man, but at some point, you know, butts must be kicked.Verdict: MAYBE.♦ ♦ ♦ Stranger than Paradise (1984)

Written and directed by
Jim Jarmusch, this is the film that made his name. It’s a movie that
couldn’t have come from Hollywood, as it follows no formula, fits no
genre except its own. One of its biggest dramatic moments is an argument
over “I Put A Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. The only familiar
face is Richard Edson, who parked cars in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off two years later. Stranger than Paradise is
about Willie, who doesn’t even think of himself as part of the family,
but who’s been cajoled into letting his Hungarian cousin Eva stay in his New
York City apartment. Willie thinks Eva is a pain in the arse, but
Willie’s friend Eddie thinks she’s cute.Eventually Eva moves to
Ohio, and even more eventually Willie and Eddie follow, and then the
three of them go to Florida, all very platonically.”Here,
let me tell you a joke, all right? There’s three guys, and they’re
walking down the street. One guy says to the other one, Hey, your shoe’s
untied. He says, I know that. And they walk—”No… There’s two guys
walking down the street, and one of them says to the other one, Your
shoe’s untied. And the other guy says, I know that, and they walk a
couple blocks further, and they see a third friend, and he comes up and
says, Your shoe’s untied. Your shoe’s un—”Aaah, I can’t remember this joke. But it’s good.”And there ye go. Not much happens in Stranger than Paradise, and what happens happens slowly, like life. The film is entirely made of tiny moments, but it adds up to something big. Verdict: BIG YES.♦ ♦ ♦ Strangers in Paradise (1984)

Whoops, I was looking for Stranger than Paradise (above), and landed on this movie by mistake.It’s a musical about a hypnotist from Nazi Germany who gets cryogenically frozen to escape Hitler. After the war, a group of American wackos thaw the hypnotist and bring him to the USA, hoping to use his famous mind-control powers to rid the world of illicit sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. It’s written, directed, and produced by German auteur Ulli Lommel, who plays the hypnotist, and also plays Adolph Hitler. Obviously, everything here is ridiculous, but the singing and dancing is fun, and most of the songs are pleasant quick-tempo rock’n’roll. This certainly isn’t Rocky Horror Picture Show, but it has some of that movie’s vibe.”For me it’s forbidden.””Oh, then we should definitely do it. Most things that are forbidden are such fun.”Verdict: YES.♦ ♦ ♦Wake Up and Dream (1946)

Jeff (John Payne) is a farmer who wears a suit, and he’s in love with Jenny (June Haver), but he always calls her Miss Jenny and she hates that. She grew up on a farm, so she’s decided she’ll never marry a farmer, which means Jeff is out of luck. Miss Jenny deserves better, anyway.
Jeff is at least 35, but he has a kid sister about 5, named Nella, and Nella’s worried because the movie is set during World War II and Jeff has enlisted in the Navy.It’s a musical, with sappy songs all in the 1940s style, where an entire choir sings the lyrics. Don’t give up yet, though.
Pretty soon, Jeff goes missing in action, which greatly improves the movie because he’s a boring doofus. In his absence, Wake Up and Dream becomes a kooky movie about Miss Jenny, young Nella, and some old coot who’s built a boat hundreds of miles from water. Even better, once Jeff disappears, the musical numbers stop, and it becomes a quaint, quirky fairy tale.John Ireland, usually a tough guy in the movies, plays a wandering dentist who flunked out of dental school. The not-quite dentist tries pitching woo at Miss Jenny with lines like, “Maybe you don’t realize it, but a fine set of molars is a rare thing.”For no logical reason, “Off to See the Wizard” from The Wizard of Oz plays as part of the score through the back half of the movie, but it’s not sung on screen.Verdict: YES, I guess, just because it’s so strange.10/21/2022   
There
are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign
or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of
making them — that if you only watch whatever’s on Netflix or playing at
the twentyplex, you’re missing out.— — —