Suspiria

 Director/Producer Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is an interesting and intriguing horror/thriller about a dance company of witches with powerful performances by Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton and Chloё Grace Moretz.

Who the “bad” witches are and who the “good” witches are, if any, and what it’s all about, you tell me. Just don't piss any of them off.

It’s an enigma shrouded in a cinematic myth...whatever that might mean.

Nevertheless, I give Suspiria a 3.5 out of 5 for its actors.  You can keep the story…or flush it somewhere.

Halloween

Forty years after her first encounter with Michael Myers, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has spent her life preparing for a re-match with the monster, gets her chance for a showdown.

Writer/Director David Gordon Green, with his Co-Writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, has created a mostly fun and fitting finale to the Halloween franchise. 

There is a lot of humor along with the chills.  Sometimes, you even find yourself  cheering for Mikey. (Or is that just me?)

However, echoing the Geico pre-screening ad/alert to turn off cell phones, which features a group of Millennials making the wrong decisions in a horror movie, Halloween’s climactic scene has Laurie’s daughter (Judy Greer) and grand-daughter (Andi Matichak) trapped in a cellar where there is a cabinet full of rifles and shotguns, but…well, you’ll have to groan through it yourself.

If it weren’t for that, Halloween would have been really good.  As it is, I can still give it an above average 3.8 out of 5.

First Man

I’ve never thought of NASA’s putting an American on the Moon as a dour event, but that’s how it comes across in Director Damien Chazelle’s maudlin First Man.

What I had thought might be one of the best films of the year has turned out to be my biggest 2018 cinematic disappointment.  

 

Except for an excellent cast, headed by Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy, everything else seems so wrong, even though Chazelle used the same Cinematographer (Linus Sandgren) and Editor (Tom Cross) that he used in the fabulous La La Land. 

The biggest problem is the Cinematography.  The film has the soft focus color palette of a ‘50s movie even though most of the action is in the ‘60s.  The shots in the space capsules give no perspective of what’s happening around the action.  And, what action?  It’s just face shots of the astronauts without showing what they’re seeing.  Sometimes, the screen is just black.   

Perhaps, seeing the film in 4DX might create some excitement, but the atmosphere created by the treatment of Neil Armstrong’s personality will probably kill that, as well.

I could go on about other things like Justin Hurwitz’ abysmal music, but why?

At best, I can only give First Man a 3.2 out of 5.