INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS — SHOCKTOBER!

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ColeSmithey.comBy far the best version in the franchise, Philip Kaufman’s venerable revamping of Don Siegel’s 1956 black-and-white sci-fi horror classic delved deeper into nitty-gritty details of a pod-induced mass transformation of humans into emotionless doppelgangers.

In so doing, Kaufman gave his movie the visual lift it needed to instill palpable dread and fear in an audience that didn’t know what hit them.   

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The filmmakers use a recurring image system of spider-web similes, which act as a unifying filter of discord. San Francisco has been turned upside-down over night. Everything is different. Garbage collectors are busy on every street collecting the grey fuzzy waste from swapped-out bodies.

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Donald Sutherland plays San Francisco health inspector Matthew Bennell with a cozy sense of paternal confidence that makes him seem immune to anything that could possibly usurp his empathetic soul. Civilization’s sudden loss of compassion to a population of cold conspiratorial aliens, incapable of something as simple as laughter, proves a terrifying idea when played out to its logical extreme.

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Casting Donald Sutherland in the lead role proved to be a coup for Kaufman. Strains of Sutherland’s iconic performance in Nicholas Roeg’s deeply disturbing psychological thriller “Don’t Look Now” (1973) carried over into "Body Snatchers."

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Thematically, the film’s allegory regarding viral-groupthink has plenty of wiggle-room for interpretation because it is so profoundly vague yet universal. It’s easy to imagine authority figures such as police and politicians inhabited by aliens, because they so frequently express an utter disregard for the value of human life in favor of corporate profits for the one-percent.

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A significant genre-imposed rule of the movie is that its characters can’t fall sleep lest they succumb to possession. Doing so enables one of the recently arrived pods-from-space to produce an exact physical replica that will come to life after sucking the subject’s body dry of its meat, bones, and brains.

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Matthew Bennell’s health department co-worker Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) notices a change in her husband. She alerts Matthew to her concerns just as it seems society has begun to flip. A man in a business suit inexplicably sprints through traffic.

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Kaufman sets his audience’s teeth on edge with an inventive soundscape, involving things like heartbeats. Sounds move between the film’s Dolby Stereo format, making the audience feel as if the action is taking place around them.

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Kaufman’s remake gets cameo endorsements from Don Siegel, and from Kevin McCarthy, the lead actor from the original "Body Snatchers" movie. Siegel plays a pod-changed cab driver taking Matthew and Elizabeth for a little ride. Kevin McCarthy’s character is the same as in Segel’s movie except that he seems even more desperate now.

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Philip Kaufman's “Body Snatchers” is famous for a couple of offbeat scenes that you hardly believe when you’re seeing them.

Not Rated. 80 mins. 5 Stars ColeSmithey.comCozy Cole

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January 20, 2025

NOSFERATU

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Robert Eggers Digs His Own Grave

By Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.comIf you've seen Robert Eggers's excellent film "The Lighthouse," then you should have high expectations for how Eggers could approach the well-worn story of Irish novelist Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel "Dracula."

Sadly, you will be disappointed.

"The Lighthouse" is everything that "Nosferatu" is not — suspenseful, and dark in a terrifyingly human way.

There's not much humanity in this plot-crammed and poorly written "Nosferatu."

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Eggers's inspiration arrives via Henrik Galeen's 1925 German expressionist script for F.W. Murnau's groundbreaking if politically problematic silent movie, considering its obvious racist underpinnings.

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Overworked and under-edited, Robert Eggers's "Nosferatu" is not without its charms. Lily Rose Depp is a revelation in her exotic role as Ellen Hunter, a young, horny, nubile woman who offers herself up to the universe to be devoured by whatever form (alien, human, evil or otherwise) that comes through her open window.

Careful what you wish for.

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A sleepy first act finally gives way to a late reveal of the monster. To be clear, Nosferatu is a hook-nosed freak of nature non-human creature, well except for his exposed penis.

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Yes, "Peenee on set" was announced during the filming of the scene where Bill Skarsgård's Nosferatu shows up very nude, and sporting the most ridiculous mustache you've ever seen. 

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This Nosferatu gives mustache rides. Now that's scary. Beauty and the beast indeed. Unlike Bela Lugosi's Dracula, this vampire is no charmer. Zero sex appeal on display.

"Nosferatu" is visually stunning but the screenwriting is not up to snuff by a lot.

Eggers is so obsessed with ticking off a checklist of details culled from every vampire movie ever made that he ties himself up. He employs tropes rather than imbuing the story with novel meaning. The movie goes so far as to throw in a gratuitous Exorcist scene that stumbles.

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Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu The Vampyre" (1997) is a far superior to Eggers's film in every way. Herzog's movie is simply told in a hyper stylized yet sparse setting where fear and suspense breed.

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Hell, Paul Morressey's 1974 cult classic "Blood For Dracula" is a damn sight better than Eggers's movie.

Robert Eggers has squandered a great opportunity to use Bram Stoker's novel as a leaping off narrative form from which to improvise his own cinematic narrative design of suspenseful intent. 

Where is your sense of Jazz improvisation Mr. Eggers?

Come on man; you're better than this.

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If it were me I'd have cast Bill Skarsgård as Ellen Hunter's put-upon husband Thomas, and given the role of Nosferatu to his brother Alexander Skarsgård, who I might add would have been much more charming and dignified — think Astro-Hungarian Empire royalty.

I'd have played up suspense in the three hellhounds sequence where Thomas gets chased off a ledge into the abyss below. This sequence should be the centerpiece of the film.

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I'd have let Thomas die from his fall, and have him communicate with Ellen telepathically (post-death) in her dreams as Ellen does with her domineering sex master Nosferatu. Nevermind that this vampire has all the appeal of a zombie meth addict with lesions all over his body that rebuke his gigantic well-groomed mustache.

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"Nosferatu" is infuriating because of its cut-and-paste approach, and due to its lack of originality.

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A miscast Willem Dafoe does the movie no favors as Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, a Van Helsing archetype. This is the worst performance I've ever seen from Willem Dafoe.

Viggo Mortensen would have been much better casting.

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I suppose this film's tag line, "Succumb to the Darkness" is an apt sentiment in the age of global warming and yet another Trump era.

This vampire movie is perfectly watchable; you may feel inclined to nap during it. Don't worry, you won't miss much.

Rated R. 140 mins.

2 Stars

Cozy Cole

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January 12, 2025

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL

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ColeSmithey.comDirector/co-writer Nick Park and his brilliant team of animators deliver the most delightful children's comedy you could ever imagine.

Aardman Animations has been a household name for decades. Their painstaking approach to stop-motion claymation kids' movies sits head-and-shoulders above, well, every other animation studio.

Ingenious.

Neither Studio Ghibli nor Disney has anything on Aardman Animations.

The love is on the screen.

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Everything you see is an actual miniature model being filmed frame by frame.

Painstaking work.

Respect.

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With a distinctly British sense of humor, this outing for inventor Wallace and his assistant dog Gro mit finds Wallace creating a gardening assistant gnome robot.

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Gromit has good reason to be suspicious of the all-too-efficient robot that looks like a crazed elf.

Wallace gains a lot of public enemies when he rents out his elfin creation to do landscaping for his neighbors.

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The action shifts into high gear when the robot gnome creates a troupe of clones under the command of a diamond thief penguin.

Gnome clones! Oh no!

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Every frame of "Wallace & Gromit; Vengeance Most Fowl" is a thing of artistic perfection.

Normal filmmakers never have to the lengths that Nick Park and crew do in making a story that works at every millisecond of screentime.

The chase scenes are amazing, and every little joke and nudge hits your funny-bone just right.

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At its heart is the friendship between Wallace and Gromit, our two classic comic characters from way back.

Here is a super fun kids' movie that has just as much entertainment punch for its adult audiences.

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It could be a great Thanksgiving or Christmas movie tradition.

What joy springs from this delightful movie.

Screen Shot 2025-01-12 at 10.14.22 PM

I'd watch it again right now!

Love it to pieces.

Rated PG. 82 glorious minutes!

5 Stars

Cozy Cole

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January 11, 2025

THE BRUTALIST

Jo JoWelcome!

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A PRISON OF ONE'S OWN DEVISING

Brady Corbet Paints Himself Into a Corner

By Cole Smithey

 

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Director/co-writer Brady Corbet has made an overwrought, unlit, postwar [fictional] epic with an unreliable protagonist that is as frustrating as any movie you will ever see.

An utter lack of pacing variety, dangling sub-plot threads, and a tacked-on ending make this four-hour audience investment hardly worth the effort.

Fictional Hungarian Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) celebrates his liberation from a Nazi concentration camp by escaping to America, the land of a colder more hidden version of Nazi ideology.

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László's Philadelphia-based furniture store-owning cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) proves to be an ersatz Nazi collaborator who, since moving to the States, has married a shiksa and switched to Catholicism. In no time at all cousin László wears out his welcome with considerable help from Attila's racist wife. Welcome to America sucker.

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A gratuitous subplot involving a black coal worker (Isaach de Bankolé) and his son, gives way to László being hired by Guy Pearce's little Hitler Harrison Lee Van Buren, a narcissistic millionaire intent on subjugating László as his own personal Jewish architect slave. Van Buren has a real hard-on for his self-imposed prisoner László.

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Under Van Buren's thumb (cough), László designs a gargantuan monolithic "institute" (church) that looks every bit the prison of claustrophobic holocaust nightmares.

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László Tóth is no Frank Lloyd Wright.

Is László taking a piss at his blue-eyed capitalist warder by designing the ugliest fucking prison-like structure you've ever seen? Perhaps.

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The claustrophobic building's focal point involves an upside-down crucifix that sunlight shines through.

Weird.

The sexually impotent, heroin-addicted László fulfills his updated concentration camp existence when he forwards his payment for Van Buren's project toward its completion to his own specifications.

Victim-hood is its own reward.

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László's wheelchair-bound wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) enters the movie a half-hour too late, and even then does little to relieve the fictional narrative's doom and gloom trajectory.

"The Brutalist" doesn't know what it wants to say. Is it anti-Zionist? anti-Capitalist? anti-socialist? anti-Bauhaus? No idea.

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I do know that "The Brutalist" is an exploitation movie in love with its own misery.

No amount of editing or color-correcting can save this film from itself.

Save the back-slapping for Sean Baker's "Anora."

Rated R. 215 mins.

Zero StarsZERO STARS

Cozy Cole

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