Random Thoughts

The Man With Two Brains. Carl Reiner. 1983.

Oh my Emacs! This is so stupid. In the best way possible.

I must have seen this before at some point, because so many scenes were familiar, like the Hufhurr thing, but it’s been a while. And I guess a lot of the jokes haven’t aged well (like the orderlies shaving the genital hair of the patient before brain surgery, and on and on). It’s a profoundly creepy film, but…

There are just so many good one-liners and bits. I laughed and I laughed.

But in addition to the general misogynistic creepiness, it just has some pacing problems. It portions out the hilarious parts carefully, and the more plot-related bits aren’t that well done.

This blog post is part of the Century series.

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. Nicholas Meyer. 1982.

I was going to watch Der Stand der Dinge by Wim Wenders, but my DVD turned out to just have German subtitles. *sigh* It seems to be a current theme with European films.

So I have a choice between another Woody Allen film and this.

I haven’t seen this one since the 80s and remember absolutely nothing about it except Khan himself, and only because those clips show up here and there.

It’s very 70s, but I guess the 80s didn’t really start until a couple years later.

This isn’t a good film, but I certainly enjoyed watching it. I like the slightly too-long scenes and Kirk and Khan over-emoting at the audience. It looks pretty good on this Blu-ray version, too. And it’s nice to watch Spock, Uhura, Sulu and the gang again.

So I give it all thumbs up, but it’s… not a good film.

This blog post is part of the Century series.

Reds. Warren Beatty. 1981.

Most films I have on my shelf of unseen films I can pretty much figure out why I’ve bought. This one, I have no idea. Did somebody recommend it to me?

This is such a 70s film, and not in a bad way. If I had to make a guess at who the director is, I would have said “Robert Altman”, but instead it’s one of Warren Beatty’s very few directorial efforts.

“There was just as much fucking going on then as now. Only now, it has a more perverted quality.”

There’s so much interesting stuff in here (like about the Industrial Workers of the World (I’ve got all their hoodies)) and being a commie in the teens and so on. But every time they focus on the personal relationships it degenerates to Standard Drama Hysterics.

Just deathly.

An unfortunately, after a very promising start, that’s what large parts of this film is about. It’s like Beatty had an idea to make a film about communist agitator slash journalist John Reed, but then thought that he had to make the bulk of the film about his not very interesting love life to make it palatable to a general audience.

Still, I love the good bits in this film.

The odd choice of not saying who the old people who knew Reed and Louise Bryant are (they’re like a choir that comments on the proceedings, sort of) is an odd choice. But it works. Some of them are good people and some of them are assholes, but it takes a while to know who’s who.

It was nominated for all the Oscars and won a few.

This blog post is part of the Century series.

Stardust Memories. Woody Allen. 1980.

My plan was to watch Céleste by Percy Adlon for 1980. I’ve been looking for a collection of his films forever, because the few films of his I’ve seen I think range from great to wonderful (Zuckerbaby, Rosalie Goes Shopping, Salmonberries, Bagdad Cafe), and I wanted to watch the rest of his films.

So I got this box set from amazon.de, because it said it had English subtitles.

And, indeed, the box set says “Untertitel: Deutsch, Deutsch für Hörgeschädigte, English” (and I know enough German to know that that means “subtitles: German, German for hard of hearing, English”.

BUT IT”S A LIE!

Only like a couple of the films have English subtitles!

BAD GERMANS!

(I love that the “Sprachen” says “Deutsch, Englisch, Bayerisch” because Bavarian is definitely not German, I guess.)

So instead of Percy Adlon, it’s another Woody Allen film.

I remember loving Stardust Memories from when I saw it when I was like 14. And it’s the one where somebody tells Allen “I love your earlier funnier movies”. And I totally understand why I loved this film, because it’s Allen’s “I’m rich and famous now and that’s weird” film, and looks like it’s giving us a peek behind the curtain.

And it looks pretty good now, too, but I now realise that it’s just Allen doing his take on Fellini. And as the Bergman semi-failure of Interiors, his Fellini isn’t a as good as the real Fellini is.

And among the weird things here is a woman accusing Allen of flirting with her 13 year old cousin. *sigh*

Still, I have to agree with my 14 year old self: This is hugely enjoyable to watch.

This blog post is part of the Century series.