Some much new content these past few weeks I can only spare a paragraph or so for each.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Hands down, my favorite Tim Burton film is the original 1988 Beetlejuice. It distills the auteur’s best tendencies into one easily consumable package. A tightly paced fantastical comedy about the dead’s perception of the living – what more can you ask for?! On the other hand, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, its 36-year-old sequel, isn’t nearly as inspired or essential but has just enough “good bits” to recommend.

More than anyone, Michael Keaton seems to be responsible for the success of this sequel, as the movie is on rough ground when the actor isn’t on screen. Keaton is fabulous, while the two other returning cast members – Winona Ryder doing her best Amy Allan impression from The Dead Files and the brilliant Catherine O’Hara – are solid. The new cast members are all good, but there are too many supporting characters stuffed into an overly ambitious but confusing narrative that most get lost in the shuffle or prove to be inconsequential to the film’s plot. The best of the new cast members, besides an always solid Jenna Ortega, is Willem Dafoe as a vain former cop movie actor now a real detective in the afterlife looking for Beetlejuice. He’s hilarious and really on a roll right now.

As I said before, there are a lot of good bits, like a demented baby version of Beetlejuice and a nearly perfect ending, but so much of the movie seems utterly shapeless. There’s a MacArthur Park possession karaoke number that really pales in comparison to the Harry Belafonte possession karaoke number from the first film. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice didn’t ever need to exist, but it’s a relatively inoffensive and mildly amusing way to kill two hours. Grade: B- (In Theaters)

Speak No Evil

A profoundly uncomfortable thriller that uses awkward social situations instead of graphic violence to unnerve viewers. Everyone swears by the 2022 Original Danish film, but I didn’t much like it when it was released. I thought the performances in this 2024 remake were far superior and could draw me into the narrative much better. Maybe that’s just because I’m a dumb American who drinks his own piss, but I couldn’t give less of a shit about the Danish version or its vile ending that managed to leave me both appalled and numb. The 2022 version was so obviously parabolic that it felt like a lesson or a training video I had to watch before the government allowed me to be a parent. This version is a lot better, with a leading performance by James McAvoy, who is absolutely brilliant. The rest of the cast is pretty solid, too, including probably the best child performance I’ve seen all year. For two whole acts, 2024’s Speak No Evil manages to thrill and entice us, but it really comes apart at the seams in the third act where, like a lot of smart and understated horror/thriller films, it feels like it has to fall into traditional genre tropes. While I found the Americanized ending much more palatable than the Danish one, it still spoiled the broth and undermined the whole movie. Grade: B- (In Theaters)

The Deliverance

“I can smell your nappy pussy…” groans a demonic Glenn Close, bald as Daddy Warbucks and sporting sharp goblin teeth. She’s an odd choice to play the matriarch of a black family in Lee Daniels’ The Deliverance, a strange mixture of an A24 horror film and a Lee Daniels movie. It’s like Lee Daniels saw Hereditary and said, “Hold my beer.” Except he only succeeded in making the concept weirder, certainly not better. Talented actress Andra Day (who played Billie Holiday in that recent Billie Holiday movie no one saw) plays an alcoholic mother who is poorly raising/abusing three children. Her mother, played by Glenn Close, helps out, but she’s also a bad person. You feel bad for the kids, who are all more responsible than the mother. However, the mom has an excuse. It’s not her being irresponsible, she’s possessed by a demon. That’s right, an ancient evil stalks the residence, and when not causing animals to die and rot under the floorboards, they’re causing her to be a bad mom. Oscar winner Mo’Nique doesn’t care though, she’s a social worker and she’s gonna snatch them kids up. Omar Epps and the consistently brilliant Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor are also in the movie. The movie lasts far too long at nearly two hours, and we don’t get any hilariously over-the-top moments until the third act. This is a horrible film, one of the worst of the year, a piece of art so miscalculated you have to scratch your head in wonder till you remember it was made by Lee Daniels. He outshitted Shadowboxer with this one. Grade: D (Netflix)

Rebel Ridge

Jeremy Saulnier was one of the greatest and most uncompromising indie filmmakers of the 2010s, but after his biggest mainstream success, Green Room, he lost his edge. His Alaska-set procedural thriller, Hold the Dark, had its moments, but it was less cohesive than instant oatmeal with the milk mixed in before you microwave it. Have you ever microwaved oatmeal? Well, if you were going to and suddenly decided not to, that’s what it was like. After that, he worked on the third season of True Detective, which was held together more because of its immensely talented star, Mahershala Ali, than anything Saulnier did. Now, Jeremy Saulnier is back with Rebel Ridge, a fairly enjoyable ACAB thriller that starts strong but ends weakly.

Sure to be known as Pacifist Rambo, the movie follows Terry, a black martial arts specialist for the military (Aaron Pierre – Mid-Sized Sedan from M. Night Shyamalan’s Old) who gets harassed by a duo of idiot cops for riding his bike while black. They find $30,000 in his backpack and rattle off some bullshit reason why they can legally take it. I dunno, that’s probably technically legal sounds fucked up enough. Anyway, it’s revealed he was on his way to bail his brother out of jail, but the dipshit local cops of this small town are running a little scam stealing money from citizens to fund themselves because the government won’t. Along the way, Terry meets a courthouse clerk named Summer (The Way Way Back‘s AnnaSophia Robb, grown-up), who tries to help him.

The biggest drawback of this movie, and I get why critics love it, is that it can sustain tension without really deploying physical violence. The problem is the film isn’t deep enough to be one of those, and we really crave that violence. We want Terry ripping the throat out of every dumb local cop who violates his civil rights, and we just don’t get it. The movie almost makes him into a saint, never deploying violence even in the most frustrating and fucked up situations. Saulnier‘s other protagonists have all been much more flawed individuals and are, therefore, more enjoyable. Despite a solid performance by Pierre, Terry doesn’t really have an arc, and that sucks. The worst part of this movie they could have easily cut was the subplot about the court clerk, Summer. She’s the least interesting character the movie has to offer by far, and for some reason, we spend a good twenty minutes developing her story. On the other side of the coin, Don Johnson is perfectly cast as the somewhat two-dimensional local sheriff. He can play an asshole like no one’s business.

While Saulnier‘s previous efforts, like Blue Ruin and Green Room, had a pulse-pounding energy, Rebel Ridge descends into a very straightforward and pretty vanilla thriller. It’s well made for the most part, but it’s overlong and stuck in a weird place between a Rambo movie and a Jeremy Saulnier picture. Grade: B- (Netflix)

A Quiet Place: Day One

Despite the uniformly solid performances and general lack of chit-chat, I wasn’t a big fan of the first two Quiet Place films. As appealing as Emily Blunt in a film devoid of endless chatter sounds, I mostly found it to be a pretty basic survival story of a family of two-dimensional characters. Maybe I’m just not a fan of the guy from The Office; what’s his name? He’s in the Jack Ryan reboot on Amazon. What’s his name? Oh yeah, John Krasinski. Yeah, not a big John Krasinski fan. I had zero expectations for a prequel film so much that I missed A Quiet Place: Day One in theaters. Big mistake on my part. A Quiet Place: Day One is a breath of fresh air in a year where horror cinema has been incredibly disappointing. A compelling, unpredictable, and never cheesy survival story following a fascinating central character played exceptionally well by Lupita Nyong’o. She plays a woman dying of cancer who experiences the ear monster’s first attack when in New York City on a field trip with her fellow peers at the cancer center. Is that what it is? Anyway, she has an adorable cat with her, and her main goal is to get a slice of pizza at her favorite NYC pizza place. I can’t think of a better motivation for a character. While this third sequel doesn’t stand with the best horror flicks or thrillers of recent years, it’s very well-made and consistently entertaining without ever making cheap moves. It’s seriously worth checking out. Grade: B (Paramount+)

Batman: Caped Crusader

I was never a huge superhero fan growing up. My twelfth birthday consisted of my parents showering me with Criterion DVDs. My favorite superhero back then was Akira Kurosawa or Mike Leigh. However, if I had to pick one of the ACTUAL superheroes, it would easily be Batman. Not only because of the strength of the villains he fought but also because he seemed to be the most human and inherently flawed out of any of them. As a young kid, I absolutely loved Batman: The Animated Series because of the strong storytelling. It worked both as a children’s show and as a program for adults and offered us some of the most compelling insights into characters that have been explored (sometimes over-explored) over the years. This new series, Batman: The Caped Crusader from BTAS creator Bruce Timm, is a bit of a disappointment for reasons stretching beyond a lesbian Penguin. I actually like the idea of a lesbian Penguin, but Minnie Driver’s voice does not match the rendering of that version of the character. Give me Patti LuPone, Glenn Close, Melissa McCarthy, an actual lesbian maybe, not boring-ass Minnie Driver. She put me to sleep in the pilot. After that, the series explores some other popular villains to mixed results, the only genuinely compelling one being Diedrich Bader’s Two-Face, who might be the most compelling I’ve ever seen the character. The newly created villains most people will never have heard of are the more interesting ones, including a dude with a spiral on his face and a racist old-timey ghost. The racist old-timey ghost episode may be the best. There are many good elements here like a good interpretation of Harley Quinn, really good illustration, a refreshingly fat Alfred, and a consistently excellent Hamish Linklater voicing Batman. However, a lot of episodes really dragged for me. It never comes close to reaching the storytelling heights of that original animated series, and ultimately, that’s what I demand of my Batmaning. Grade: C+ (Amazon Prime)

Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos

Fascinating two-episode, three-hour documentary series about the man behind The Sopranos – legendary television writer and New Jersey native David Chase. The first half mainly covers his childhood, growing up in Jersey, and how his mother inspired the character of Livia Soprano. We then go into the production of The Sopranos and are treated to never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage, including James Gandolfini being agitated on set. Unlike most making-of documentaries, this one dives deep into examining why people identified so strongly with a television mafioso who murdered people and shit. If you’re a Sopranos fan, you should have already seen this. If you’ve never seen the show, watch all 86 episodes on Max and then watch this. Grade: A- (Max)

Aggro Dr1ft

Late at night one night/early in the morning, my friend Tom and I waited anxiously for our friend Nate to figure out a way to play Aggr0 Dr1ft, the new bowel movement by cinematic provocateur Harmony Korine, on his television. You can’t rent this movie on Vudu or Amazon or see it in a theater. You have to download it from the director’s website – edglrd.com – and then maybe watch it on your laptop. After about forty minutes, Nate found a way, and we were off watching this bizarre mind fuck of a movie presented completely in infrared. Aggr0 Dr1ft‘s story, if you could really call it one, is about an aging drug dealer or guns dealer or something, and his life is dangerous. His wife is super horny and has a very large posterior. Travis Scott plays another guy with a gun or something on a boat. There’s no deeper message here – this movie is just a collection of images in infrared. I went in expecting to hate it, but it’s actually mildly entertaining for the first forty-five minutes or so, but then you have another half hour that drags pretty hard. There’s some cool imagery, but your brain starts to hurt after a while of staring at infrared light for too long. All Harmony Korine films are at the bare minimum “interesting”, and Aggr0 Dr1ft is an interesting miss.Grade: C (edglrd.com)