'Parasite' is near perfect, capping of a fantastic year for film

Parasite is pretty much a perfect movie. It's terrific, tantalizing trailer promises an unexpected ride and boy do you get one. As great as director Bong Joon-Ho's work has been prior to this, and I'll admit to not having seen quite a few of his movies, this one feels special.

It has some of the same black humor and visual dynamism that all his films has, but somehow this film feels more prescient and more evocative of the period we're living in right now.

Class struggle has always been an intriguing subject, but sometimes it's hard to convey without being too preachy or simple. What Joon-Ho does here, which is genius, is deliver a stunning indictment of the coveting of wealth while providing huge laughs and genuine thrills in the process.

The trailer is right when it tells you that the film appears to be going one way and then goes in another -- I wouldn't dare spoil the surprises of it -- but the set-up is simple enough. An ambitious, but lower class young man stumbles into a job as a tutor for a precocious teenage girl from a wealthy family. He sees this opportunity as a chance to improve the lines of his entire immediate family and he is remarkably successful in that endeavor until he isn't.

I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a movie and then found myself clutching my armrest with anxiety. There's a Coen-esque precision to this movie that you just have to step back and enjoy.

The performances are flawless across the board with the gorgeous Park So-Dam stealing scenes as the lead's sis and Joon-Ho regular Song Kang-ho, who in a just world should earn a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his hilarious and deeply effecting turn as the patriarch of a family of con artists (or parasites depending on your point of view).

Like so many great filmmakers, Joon-Ho makes you realign who you might have sympathy for from scene to scene. Most of the characters here have a humanity that's undeniable, and they are in a way victims of a capitalist system.

We can laugh at seeing rich people get exploited, but also be horrified when the less fortunate lash out at them. And it ends on such a graceful, ironic note that feels like the only way it could have ended.

Joon-Ho has now made a name for himself by making operatic thinking man's adventure films. Some worked like gangbusters for me -- Snowpiercer for instance -- while his Okja was only a mild success for me.

But this film proves he is a Hitchcock-caliber talent with a rhythm and perspective that is so thoroughly unique and which feels compellingly authentic. Despite being a foreign language film, Parasite isn't pretentious and it doesn't keep you at arm's length.

It's a movie that will tickle the funny bone of fans of dark comedy like me and then will stun you with its climax, which certainly shocked the audience I was in, but also felt totally note perfect with what had proceeded it.

I have seen several movies this year that I thought were unqualified masterpieces, films I know I'll be watching again and again over the years. Parasite is one of those movies. It's a courageous film and it's indicative of a year that to me will go down as one of the great movie years in recent memory.

It's unforgettable, and deserves as wide an audience as it can get.

How to keep 'Halloween II' in the horror movie canon

The flaws of 1981's Halloween II are pretty self-evident, especially in comparison to the 1978 John Carpenter original that proceeded it. It's pretty humorless, Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't have enough to do and it stretches that idea of Michael Myers being pretty much immortal to absurd lengths.

Also, in a controversial move, it tacks on a subplot about Curtis' character Laurie Strode being Michael Myers secret sister that feels tacked on and wholly unnecessary.

And yet, there is a lot that is great about it. There are some legit, terrific scares. The film uses its claustrophobic hospital set to great effect. And Donald Pleasence's delightfully over the top characterization of Dr. Loomis still doesn't disappoint.

Basically, it's a totally worthy sequel that has much if not all of what I love about the original.

But 2018's fantastic reboot Halloween negated that movie. Set 40 years later, the film implored audiences to ignore the good, the bad and ugly from the films that followed the original Halloween as if they never existed and instead they as realistically as they could, made a direct sequel which established a new canon.

As much as I enjoyed that movie -- and I did -- I still wanna be able to appreciate Halloween II as part of the series' universe, and I think one view of the film allows me too.

Whether intentional or not, the filmmakers behind Halloween II (Carpenter was a producer on this one) leave plenty of breadcrumbs to interpret that entire movie as a nightmare fever dream of Laurie Strode's. Early on the film we watch her being hurried to the hospital after the harrowing events of the first one, but then she mostly is drifting in and out of sleep throughout the movie, while mayhem happens all around her.

It stands to reason that in the immediate aftermath of the events of the first film -- if treated realistically as the 2018 edition does -- that Laurie Strode would be suffering post traumatic stress disorder as that night continued on.

If the 2018 film is to be believed, Strode is still a wreck 40 years after the fact, understandably so.

So -- I think the 1981 movie works if you view it entirely as a bad dream -- especially the denouement in which, SPOILER ALERT, Michael Myers is exploded and  shot several times point black and still comes back for more.

What can I say, I'm a stickler for continuity!

#RIP: Robert Forster was more than his great 'Jackie Brown' role

Like most people of my generation I first became aware of Robert Forster after seeing his stunning, subtle turn as a burnt out bail bondsman who gets a new lease on life when he teams up with a scheming Pam Grier in the Quentin Tarantino classic Jackie Brown.

Thanks to that Oscar nominated turn, I was able to do eventually do a deep dive into this underrated B-movie leading man's career which despite its ups and downs help on strong for multiple decades.

Sadly, he has passed away at 78, and while his Jackie Brown role will always be fondly remembered, film buffs shouldn't sleep on some of his lesser known work.

For instance, he was the star of one of the great counter culture movies of the late 1960s -- the politically-charged Medium Cool. He's the audience surrogate in the movie -- an ambitious film journalist covering chaos on the periphery of the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

In the movie, Forster is a real heartthrob in the George Clooney mode, and you'd think this acclaimed film would have led to him thriving in the auteur driven '70s where actors like him really thrived, but instead for one reason or another he got bogged down in B-movie trash and high profile misses like The Black Hole.

That's not to say there aren't a few hidden gems in there that are worth a look. The most beloved entry is probably Alligator, a totally bonkers 1980 film about a killer reptile stalking the streets of Chicago. In it, Forster plays a weary beat cop whose is insecure about his hair loss.

Both the film and his performance are firmly tongue in cheek -- the script was written by John Sayles after all -- and you can see traces of the Max Cherry character in Jackie Brown throughout this film.

Another fun watch is a thoroughly '80s action film called Vigilante, in which Forster starred alongside another B-movie legend, Fred Williamson. and iconic movie tough guy, Woody Strode. In it, Forster gives a badass, totally committed performance as a man out for revenge after his family has been savagely attacked.

In later years, he had a fruitful collaboration with director David Lynch, who had originally hoped to cast him in the Sheriff Harry Truman role on Twin Peaks. Instead, he cameoed in Mulholland Drive and stole several scenes as Truman's even-keeled brother on Twin Peaks: The Return.

I can still hear his voice -- kind of flat and matter-a-fact. He always seemed to not even be acting -- he just was that down to earth guy. He seemed to have a great, buoyant spirit and was working all the way to the end (he pops up in the new Breaking Bad movie, too), and cinephiles will cherish much of what he did in his 50-year plus career.

Misunderstood 'Missouri Breaks' has gotten better with age

If the 1976 western The Missouri Breaks is remembered at all its usually because it was a infamous flop for its A-list stars (Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando) who were both coming off the biggest hits of their careers and because of Brando's undeniably eccentric performance as an effeminate assassin with a toothache.

Today, not burdened with the expectations of being a follow-up to The Godfather and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the movie holds up as a peculiar, fascinating revisionist western whose commentary on class fits neatly within the oeuvre of its acclaimed director -- Arthur Penn.

In his best films, like Bonnie and Clyde and Night Moves, Penn proved expert at subverting our expectations and deconstructing the cliches that genre films usually embrace.

With The Missouri Breaks he has a premise that could be deemed generic not downright banal: Nicholson and a team of bandits are making ends meet by stealing horses and when a rich homesteader gets fed up with their antics he dispatches a 'regulator' to take them out one by one.

For some of its running time, the film is an amiable if a bit meandering comedy, with an almost Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid-style temperament. But unlike that film, darkness is always creeping in. John Williams' terrific score underlines this juxtaposition; it's by turns jaunty and joyful and then ominous.

Nicholson goes very Method here, really giving an authentic, realistic performance as a striving man who wants a foothold in mainstream society but can't shake his bad boy bonafides. He engages in a romance with the main villain's daughter that is doomed from the start and he is relatively helpless as his friends succumb in increasingly brutal ways to the whims of Brando's killer.

Brando on the other hand gives a performance that is undeniably surreal but still Nicholson's equal in every way. At the time of the film's release his bizarre choices were viewed as indulgent, and perhaps they are, but they don't detract from the continuity of the film.

His Robert E. Lee Clayton (a character very aptly named) is a bit of a madman, and albeit a sadistic one. He shares some DNA with Javier Bardem's character in No Country for Old Men, except he appears to have his own peculiar sense of humor.

While he and Nicholson don't share the screen much, when they do the tension between their styles is electric and whatever bitterness that may have existed for the two on set actually helps to serve their scenes together.

Still, this film is not interested in marching towards some inevitable shootout on a dusty main street, which is perhaps why audiences back in 1976 were so confounded by it. It's a film interested in moving diagonally instead of forwards or backwards, and I appreciate Penn's willingness to craft a strange western, since its a genre that can often be bogged down by its conventionality.

Take for instance a scene that takes place in a whorehouse. Scenes like this seem to exist in every post-code western movie. But unlike any others I've seen, The Missouri Breaks presents one that is downbeat and unappealing as any establishment probably would have been at the time.

The dialogue is also almost Coen Brothers-esque in its complexity. There are no straightforward declarations here of heroism or villainy. There is a sense that everyone is under the thumb of people who make more than them, even the daughter of a rich man, and in that every man for himself world of the west you have to grab what pleasures you can, while you can.

For Brando's character, apparently, that involves dabbling in cross-dressing and feeding his horse carrots with his mouth. Wild choices to be sure, but how boring would this character had been if Brando had played him as tough talking badass, instead of the unpredictable dandy we get here.

The Missouri Breaks is no masterpiece, but it is a testament to the freedom '70s filmmakers briefly had, to let their freak flags fly.

RIP Diahann Carroll: Looking back at her classic 'Claudine'

The death this week of Diahann Carroll was particularly devastating for African-Americans for a myriad of reasons.

She was a huge trailblazer -- her dramedy Julia was the first network show starring an African-American woman that wasn't demeaning or premised on stereotypes.

Later, she'd play a memorable diva on Dynasty, singlehandedly diversifying one of the more aggressively white television shows in American history.

But for me, her greatest work may be the 1974 comedy-drama Claudine, in which she played the title role and for which she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Nominations for black actors were extremely rare in the 1970s, and they unforgivably took no Oscars home for acting over the course of the entire decade.

Things were so dire that a secret Black Oscars were held among African-American performers to acknowledge each other because the industry stubbornly refused to.

Somehow though in 1974, Carroll broke through. On paper, it was not typical Oscar fare. It's a loud, abrasive romantic comedy drama about a single mother struggling on welfare and her burgeoning relationship with an affectionate garbage man (played with great charm by a young James Earl
Jones).

Carroll, whose image had always been high brow, is surprisingly believable as a blue collar New York mom, and her harried, humane performance keeps the film afloat. It is one of the rare earthbound black films of the blaxploitation era and its a real showcase for her and Jones to show off their range as the episodic film keeps throwing road blocks in front of them.

Some of the film is hopelessly dated and, of course, its plot elements involving unwed mothers, wannabe political revolutionaries and suppression from the state could be construed as 'black people problems' -- certainly in many homes they were.

But there are nice little moments that make this movie special. I love the way Carroll plays a scene where she watches Jones run verbal circles around the white man she works for. Her early resistance to Jones fades at the sight of his strength of character and she runs after his garbage truck to give him her number.

Later, Jones is confronted in a bar by one of her sons when he appears to have abandoned Claudine. They get in scuffle, and it ends with Jones holding the boy close, their grappling becomes an earnest hug.

Meanwhile, a killer Gladys Knight and the Pips soundtrack supplies a different kind of soul throughout.

Much of the movie is chaotic -- the central dilemma is a catch-22 where Claudine will have to give up the social aid she desperately needs to have a relationship with Jones' character, but will lose him if she chooses to stay on welfare. The film never fully resolves its conflicts -- and ends on an oddly surreal note -- but Carroll's poise and power stick with you, which is perhaps why the Oscars couldn't ignore her.

It was a strong slate that year -- Gena Rowlands, Faye Dunaway and Ellen Burstyn giving some of the best performances of their careers (Burstyn prevailed) -- but Carroll was definitely their equal in this small little movie that time has largely forgotten.

'Joker' is disturbing, provocative, divisive and yes, very, very good

I don't think I can recall ever seeing a movie this hotly debated before it even came out. Now that Joker -- director Todd Phillips re-imagining of the classic Batman villain -- has finally arrived it has been deemed both a masterpiece and a disaster, depending on your point of view.

It will surely be one of the most controversial, talked about films of the year -- and I believe its creators wanted it to be.

Probably only time and distance will provide a fair hearing for this movie. Unfortunately fear mongering about its violence (its brutal, but not moreso than John Wick 3) and its message (which has been wildly misinterpreted, in my opinion), has poisoned the well to some degree.

Joaquin Phoenix's mind blowing performance is the one thing receiving near universal praise, and while its bound to be a hit, there are some critics and audiences that will never appreciate this film. It's definitely a dark, foreboding film, one that will make a lot of people deeply uncomfortable, which is understandably a feeling many filmgoers won't want to have.

Me, on the other hand, I like films that take me out of my comfort zone, whose ambiguity leads me to want to discuss them after the credits roll, and with plots that are unpredictable. On all these fronts, Joker is a knockout, in fact, it might just be a masterpiece.

It owes a huge debt to Taxi Driver, and especially The King of Comedy. But the casting of Robert De Niro is ample evidence that Phillips is not trying to be shy about making those connections. This film is a bit more straight-faced that those two, although it does have some of the same bleakly funny humor. At its core, it could be seen as simply an argument for better funding mental health treatment, but it's also so much more.

After all the hype, I was pleasantly surprised to be pleasantly surprised by this movie. It very cleverly weaves in the Batman/Bruce Wayne mythology while finding a way to make the Joker character, which was have already seen in so many iterations, feel fresh and new.

Heath Ledger's Joker was cool, in a kind of dangerous way. But Phoenix's Joker is by turns sad, pathetic, scary and truly disturbed. From the very first scene we understand him to be a person on the brink of collapse, which is why its absurd to think that audiences would see him as some sort of ideal to emulate. Even as he takes on this Joker persona and unleashes his inner madman, you are always aware that this is a sick person made that way by a sick world.

Phoenix gives one of the most astonishing physical performances I've ever seen. His expressive face has never been put to better use and he is in nearly every single scene of this movie bringing a intensity to every moment. I was on the edge of the seat throughout. I found this movie unsettling, not because it was advocating for the mayhem that occurs (I think quite the opposite) but just how visceral it all feels.

Phillips made the point of setting this film in the early 1980s, in a Gotham that is like a match waiting to be lit. A random incident perpetrated by the Joker ends up starting an ersatz political 'movement' which really resembles full blown anarchy. Both the character and the movie take great pains to underline how apolitical they are.

Phoenix's Joker has led a truly terrible life and his self pity is well-earned, its just how he chooses to handle it that's not remotely acceptable. And ironically, for a movie that's being misinterpreted as some sort of pro-incel nonsense, it's a movie that pretty blatantly underlines the fact that the character's shift to violence only begins when they gain access to a gun.

The movie doesn't rush the character's journey, his self- discovery feels fairly realistic for this kind of genre film. It's the most curious kind of blockbuster -- there are exciting sequences, and some downright horrifying ones -- but also quite a bit of pathos and bleak irony. The filmmakers really swung for the fences knowing that this is the kind of movie you can't not react to.

That's why I take it issue with AO Scott and critics who call the film 'boring.' It's not a movie for everybody -- certainly not kids -- but it's good and healthy to have movies that push our buttons. After so many charming but ultimately weightless Marvel movies (Black Panther being a notable exception) its refreshing to see a movie like this completely upend what is and what can be a superhero film.

And then there's the ending. I just wholeheartedly believe that if you walk out of this movie thinking we're supposed to be cheering the Joker on or romanticizing him, you're really missing the point. He is supposed be frightening and he is. He may think that he is an icon, many sociopaths have delusions of grandeur. But we see him for what he is a fascinating figure of madness.

In a just world, Phoenix would be the front-runner for Best Actor, but I fear the controversies around this film will prevent him from winning a long overdue reward. Still, I think this film and his performance will live on and I only hope when temperatures cool down, people recognize it for the game-changer it really is.

Revisiting a favorite of my youth: 'The Witches of Eastwick'

Revisiting an old favorite movie can be a bummer. You can end up questioning your character in the past -- why did I like this thing? You ask yourself (I'm looking at you, Police Academy movies) and then others are a total delight. Some even hold up in new and interesting ways, and that's definitely the case with 1987's supernatural comedy The Witches of Eastwick.

Let's just start with that first -- supernatural comedy -- this used to be a legit goddamn genre (just like cop thrillers and straightforward suspense film). And the '80s were the height of this particular type of high concept film.

Some downright bizarre movies (if you think about them long enough) like Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice could be blockbusters, and The Witches of Eastwick, in my estimation, is one of the best.

First off, I'm biased. Jack Nicholson is my favorite actor of all time and he just feasting in this movie. It let's him do a little bit of everything he does best -- and it employs what I have always thought is his secret weapon as an actor: his total lack of vanity (at least on-screen).

It also boasts the dynamic trio of Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer in peak movie star mode. Sarandon in particular was a revelation this time around. She made the conscious choice that her character, Jane, would be the most unabashedly into Jack (a.k.a. the Devil) and her characterization here is a blast. In fact, I enjoyed her so much in this it dawned on me how much my distaste for her public persona (remember the 'revolution' she predicted?) had clouded my appreciation for her as a performer.

There's also a great, gonzo supporting performance here from the underrated Veronica Cartwright that's a real tour de force of physicality and over the top hysterics.

This is also a showcase for the great George Miller, whose mercurial filmography (Mad Max: Fury Road and Babe: Pig in the City...) is mostly dazzling and far too short. He manages to put his unique visual stamp on this material (especially in a bravura careening car sequence) which was adapted from an allegedly problematic novel by John Updike.

It could never be made today -- not only because it is a dialogue driven movie aimed at adults -- but also because it can't be easily categorized, which is what Hollywood seems most adept at doing nowadays.

Instead, this is thematically a movie in many ways about pleasure -- how you get it, how you owe it to yourself, how we all seek it and get. It has all these simple pleasures -- some extraordinary gross out humor, an earwormy score by John Williams, Nicholson's mellifluous voice -- but it also, whether it was meant to or not -- seems to have it's head screwed on right when it comes to the battle of the sexes, no small feat for a film from over 30 years ago.

For the uninitiated, Nicholson plays the devil -- summoned to a sleepy, WASPy town by three women with witching powers they just haven't tapped into yet. Ironically, Nicholson positions himself as a #NotAllMen smoothie, flattering these women and not so coyly suggestion that their rode to liberation goes straight through his bedroom.

But once he overstays his welcome and the women begin to turn on him, he reveals himself to be as selfish, needy, venal and vengeful as any entitled man. Meanwhile, Cher, Sarandon and Pfeiffer get amble opportunity to riff on the blooming independence of each other their characters and when they turn the tables it's tremendously satisfying. Pfeiffer in particular has a monologue that really hit me hard this time -- about men's need for rationality and order and women's ability to both recognize, accept and adapt to chaos. It's great, perceptive writing. What a concept!

Even if you don't want to go that deep, this is just a super fun movie that is totally on brand this time of year, especially for folks who want to cautiously dip a toe into horror. This isn't a scary film, at times its a bit macabre but in a merry, whimsical way.

I couldn't recommend it more.