The Phantom of the Opera

Terence Fisher – 1962

Hammer Films’ resident auteur Terence Fisher made a string of sumptuously lurid horror films in the late 50s and early 60s, and deserves a huge chunk of the credit for the revitalized studio’s success. He essentially crystalized the Hammer brand that fans still recognize and love today with films like Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, and The Curse of the Werewolf. Hammer and Fisher continued their cycle of classic remakes with The Phantom of the Opera, and as with their others, they wisely made it their own instead of a by-numbers re-staging of past versions. Surrounded by rich and ornate production design, Herbot Lom plays the scarred musical genius wreaking havoc on an opera house to avenge himself against the corrupt owner (Michael Gough) who stole his compositions and ruined his life. Behind a pale, one-eyed mask, Lom uses voice and gesture to create a feeling of gravitas. The mask itself might be the greatest detail in the film. It looks like hand-pressed clay, completely primitive and without aesthetic intention. Aside from having the rough shape of a human face, and nostril holes, it includes no opening for a mouth. Though the Phantom can speak, the absence of a mouth in his mask represents the cruel theft of his ability to express his talent. While not a forgotten film, Hammer’s The Phantom of the Opera is easy to miss compared to their more famous works starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Of the many screen adaptations of the classic story, this one is my favorite.

The Room Next Door

Pedro Almodóvar – 2024

Making a kind of companion to his Pain and Glory, Pedro Almodóvar returns to the themes of aging and illness with The Room Next Door. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore play successful women who were once close friends and get reacquainted due to one of them being terminally ill and the other agreeing to accompany her on a vacation that is to culminate in her suicide. While Pain and Glory felt more genuine, possibly simply due to it being a more autobiographical story about a film director dealing with chronic pain, The Room Next Door in comparison is theatrical and calculated, as if the director is just indulging an impulse to make his own Persona. The former film was an original work written by Almodóvar, while the new one is an adaptation of a novel, a fact that tends to make it even less personal. The gorgeous color cinematography and striking production design are as satisfying as ever, and there are times when it seems like this is just enough to make the film worthwhile. Swinton and Moore, two of the greatest actresses in the world, are brittle and reserved, admirably avoiding easy tear-jerking moments. The film never milks the situation for obvious emotion, instead sticking close to the slow exploration of two very different and very difficult personalities. Almodóvar is one of my favorite living directors, and a new film from him is always an important occasion, so it troubled me that I was so distracted while watching The Room Next Door. I kept asking myself how I would feel about the film if I didn’t know that it was Almodóvar. The fact that it’s in English makes its dialogue feel pretty theatrical and obvious in contrast to the earthy and passionate quality of his Spanish-language films. Whether that effect is the result of my lack of fluency in Spanish or possibly to Almodóvar's lack of ease with English, I don’t know. Long story short, fair or not, I just hope that Almodóvar makes many more films and that they’re all in Spanish.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Jeremiah S. Chechik – 1989 

A perfect example of when an otherwise great comedy is ruined by one egomaniacal star who is willfully out of synch with everyone else and doesn’t care about anything except his paycheck. Yes, I’m referring to Mr. Chevy Chase, who couldn’t be bothered with remembering how to play Clark Griswald, so just played himself and made a lot of wacky faces. Because of this, the character doesn’t work at all. Clark is supposed to be a lovable, not-too-bright bumbler, but Chase interrupts his “performance” constantly to make sarcastic wisecracks in his normal “Chevy” persona, presumably to remind the audience that he’s so above this material. Chase’s entitled attitude and inability to cooperate blinded him to the fact that he was surrounded by quite an amazing cast of character actors in the roles of his extended family, including John Randolph, Diane Ladd, Doris Roberts, E.G. Marshall, William Hickey and Mae Questel. Even the kids are played by good actors; Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki. Even the yuppie neighbors are good; Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Nicholas Guest. It’s sad because this has become such a holiday favorite over the years, but I can’t help thinking how much better it might have been with someone else in the lead role. It didn’t have to be a Vacation movie; it could have been essentially the same except with John Candy, Rick Moranis or Steven Martin in the role and it would have been so much better.  

Miami Rhapsody

David Frankel – 1995 

 

Sarah Jessica Parker does a stand-up comedy routine for 90 minutes in this Woody Allen knock-off written and directed by David Frankel. A lot of people try to make Woody Allen films, but not all of them manage to get Mia Farrow to act in them, so that’s an impressive achievement for which I give the film due credit. That doesn’t make it good, though. Most of the time, Frankel doesn’t give you a single moment to forget that he really, really loves Woody Allen movies, which doesn’t give his film a chance to stand on its own. While Allen’s familiar situations and dialogue patterns are a stylistic choice that his fans enjoy, here they are made frantic to the point of bordering on parody. Characters relentlessly spew sit-com-like jokes and one-liners throughout every scene, until it’s time for the sad stuff, when everything slows down for a succession of heart-tugging cliches. It’s not all absurd, though. There are quite a few shot compositions that are eye-catching. And the focus on a central female character is a noteworthy deviation from Woody Allen’s template. The basic problem is that the protagonist is not very interesting or likeable. She rants and raves neurotically but with a superior streak that’s never endearing or captivating. Luckily, she’s surrounded by a bunch of much more intriguing and fleshed-out supporting characters, played by Farrow, Paul Mazursky, Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Kevin Pollack, Jeremy Piven and Donal Logue. All in all, it’s not bad as a light romantic comedy-drama, but it never satisfies the viewer’s desire for it to be a little better.

Santa Claus: The Movie

Jeannot Szwarc – 1985

It’s hard to buy into the whimsy of the Santa story and the Christmas spirit when this film is shamelessly plugging McDonald’s and Coke and other junk food every few minutes. When the violins kicked in during Santa’s weepy soliloquy about how folks these days have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas, I’d had about enough. The most surreal highlight for me was when Burges Meredith appeared in a bit part, putting a strange bit of gravitas into an otherwise soulless movie.

Return from Witch Mountain

John Hough – 1978

John Hough achieves the miraculous in this film; namely, making Bette Davis boring. Maybe she wasn’t in top form at the time, but this was before her strokes and she sure loved acting and would certainly have welcomed the chance to chew the scenery and act circles around her costars. Here, she seems confused and ill-at-ease, as if waiting for the director to tell her anything helpful. (For comparison, see a sharp and dynamic Davis in her two other 1978 projects, Death on the Nile and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home.) Hough was no auteur, but he made a few good films, and would even make another (far better) film with Davis after this, 1980’s The Watcher in the Woods. It’s apparent that he did these Disney films for the paycheck and functioned as a very groggy crossing guard more than any kind of self-respecting director. It defies credulity that the man could have been pleased, let alone satisfied, with the film’s sloppy overflow of cornball comedy cliches and horrendously awful special effects, inexcusable in a major studio film in the post-Star Wars era. Christopher Lee and Anthony James, as Davis’ henchmen, are the only adults who seem to be taking anything seriously and making an effort. As the two kids, returning from the superior original film Escape from Witch Mountain, Kim Richards and Mike Eisenmann give the film whatever heart and endearing quality it has. The whole thing would have been much better off focusing on them and giving them normal teenage things to do, like trying to integrate into high school or acclimating to life with a foster family; anything other than being targeted by sinister weirdos wanting to exploit their psychic powers, again. Return from Witch Mountain is easily one of the worst films the Disney company put out in the 1970s, and this was the decade that left us The Million Dollar Duck and Superdad.

The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee

Jon Spira – 2024

I was excited for this as Christopher Lee is one of my all-time favorite actors and he’s only been the subject of pretty flimsy, amateurish documentaries up to now. I have mixed feelings about this film by Jon Spira, who made the excellent Elstree 1976. Both the content and the presentation are fairly straightforward, even routine, and I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t already know just as a fan. Possibly to compensate for the absence of either compelling storytelling or a unique angle to develop, Spira opted to use animation – always a red flag for me. A marionette of Lee appears on screen, narrating his own story, and a voice-actor impersonates Lee not terribly well. I’ve heard much better impressions of Lee. The actor gets the accent right, but captures none of Lee’s grand cadence. It’s hard to believe this was the best they could do. These complaints aside, Lee’s story is so impressive on its own that it’s hard to screw up a faithful retelling of it, which the film does well enough. The strongest material consists of a few moments of Lee himself seen in newsreel footage or interviews, especially towards the end of his life when he was enjoying not only a Knighthood and a side career as a metal opera singer, but a major resurgence in his 80s thanks to appearing in The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and the films of Tim Burton. Oddly, only a few luminaries appear to appreciate Lee on camera; (Joe Dante, Peter Jackson, and John Landis are the only directors interviewed, and Dante and Landis don’t even discuss the films in which they directed Lee). Where are Burton, George Lucas or Martin Scorsese, all of whom directed Lee within the last decade of his life? I would really have preferred some more in-depth discussion or analysis of the connecting themes in Lee’s many roles, such as apostacy and sorcery, or even his swordsmanship. Bottom line: it’s a standard biographical documentary, which is fine, and it’s well worth seeing.