I’ve watched 3 movies over the last 2 days.
Saw “I’m Not Your Negro” yesterday. Maybe you don’t need to rush out and see if you’re familiar with James Baldwin but I found it extremely moving just watching him speak. He had this amazing face and voice and he made these great stuttery gestures as if he were conducting an invisible orchestra as he spoke. Maybe coulda devoted a little less to old timey Hollywood shit and any time at all to kissing boys, I dunno.
Tonight I saw a double feature! The first film was “The Love Witch”. All I knew about this movie going in was it all “In Technicolor”, which is the sort of thing that usually turns me off – like, I think “Black Dynamite” had some good gags but it also left me wishing I’d watched a Rudy Ray Moore movie instead. But a friend said “you should go see that”, and I’m highly impressionable, so I went to see it.
Outside the theater I saw this sign saying it was 120 minutes. You can probably watch both James Whale Frankenstein movies in 120 minutes. That is way too long for a horror throwback. I hoped it was a mistake. Then the credits rolled, and I saw the editor was also the writer, director, producer, and set designer which is very impressive but also confirmation that this was probably gonna be way longer than it should be.
And it was. It was so long. It peaked half an hour in, after the Love Witch meets a guy named Wayne. He gave an exquisite performance, outshining everyone in this picture. I want to say it was Shatner-esque but he veered between extremes more smoothly, he was totally willing to look vulnerable and pathetic, and he didn’t go totally over the top with every line. I just looked him up and it looks like he’s a soap opera actor, which explains a lot. But once he’s out of the picture the movie just nosedives. The other victims are fucking bores. There’s this one scene at a renaissance fair that included a musical number and it felt like it had to be 15 minutes and half of that was shots of jesters and shit. I went to the bathroom and it was still going when I came back.
I was ready to scream by the end of “The Neon Demon”, cuz it was so close to being a great, beautiful exploitation movie but NWR is too much of a baby to just embrace trash. Cut that runtime in half and you’d have a movie I’d love. Can’t say that about “The Love Witch” though. Trim the fat and I just woulda been more accepting of the movie losing steam as it progressed. Maybe they shoulda saved all the piss and tampons for the climax.
I was in such a crummy mood I considered skipping the second movie, but “Sunk Cost Fallacy” is my middle name. So I stayed for “The House of the Devil”, and thankfully it was good. I guess it is pretty old? I had never heard of it, though I recognized Ti West’s name from…somewhere. I enjoyed the build more than the climax but I think I hate horror movies now yet I enjoyed this well enough.