Movies

You drag yourself into Nosferatu expecting to be chloroformed by reverence, sipping the historical significance like bitter medicine—and then, in a mild shock, you’re there, clinging to the edge of your armchair, rationing your interest, waiting for the monster to hurry up and pounce. Yes, I wanted to hate this film, as a preemptive strike against a curriculum of “milestones” that, more often than not, turn out to be sacred cows—bloated, unkillable, and astonishingly inert. But there’s a persistent magic here, of the slow, mossy, ghost-infested variety: Nosferatu defeated my silent-movie prejudice not by winning the argument, but by gnawing at my resistance until I had to surrender.

There are dreadful movies, there are glorious ones, and then there are those—like this laugh-riot of a mockbuster—that leap into the yawning abyss between, flailing their cardboard limbs, and come up gasping, ridiculous, and (miraculously!) alive. Planet Dune isn't just bad. It's an epic car crash, a filmic yard sale, a Walmart-brand space opera that dares—gallingly—to sidle up to the grandeur of Villeneuve’s Dune and ask, “Can I copy your homework?”

Is there anything more liberating than watching a movie that understands—it really knows—that coherence is just another rule waiting to be elbowed aside for the sake of a good time? Shane Black’s “The Nice Guys” is not so much a film as a lark in polyester trousers, a two-hour tumble through the sun...

I went into Elevation knowing it would be bad—there’s something liberating in having your low expectations met so precisely, like watching a car accelerate off a cliff with immaculate predictability. George Nolfi’s latest exercise in post-apocalyptic hand-wringing arrives already embalmed, wheeling Anthony Mackie and Morena Baccarin out like two alluring mannequins about to be discarded. It is a feat to make actors this lively feel this bored; by the end, you could almost hear the cameraman nodding off.

I walked into "Red One" armed with precisely nothing but a minor hunch and perhaps a little hardened prejudice against movies that wear jingling bells on their sleeves. Christmas films—those syrupy retail rituals—usually march in like a mall Santa two cups deep, so forgive me for expecting a rerun of reindeer games. But director Jake Kasdan, of all people, produces something so deliciously unexpected, so giddy in its mash-up of action spectacle and Yuletide lunacy, that half an hour in I found myself grinning in the dark, my inner cynic in full retreat.

Let’s be honest: some film critics will spend pages decrying the “worst film ever made” as if to purge themselves of the memory. But to really atone for our moviegoing sins? We must watch Night of Horror (1981)—the cinematic equivalent of receiving a broccoli-flavored ice cream cone at your own birthday party. And as punishments go, this is less “walk of shame” than “forced march of mirth.” Yes, dear reader, I lost a bet, and this scraggly, haunted little opus was my penance. Was it agony? A little. Did I enjoy myself anyway? More than I care to admit.

There is a kind of filmic purgatory, a cinema of stalled ambition and aesthetic vacancy, where the only thing more oppressive than the endless hours of tedium is the lingering sense of money misspent. Armor is not just another addition to the b-movie landfill, it’s the sound of late-career legacy clanging hollowly on the asphalt of a bridge, the celluloid equivalent of watching Sylvester Stallone doze in real time, bracketed by echoes of his own mythos and, faintly, the dying whinny of a studio accountant’s last desperate crackle.

Is there anything more perverse—and perversely funny—than watching Hugh Grant, that perennial celluloid charmer, take a swan dive into villainy? In “Heretic,” he does not merely play against type; he dances into the abyss with silk gloves on, turning neighborly warmth into menace so delicious it’s almost camp, except nothing about his performance feels accidental. You watch Grant, and it’s like seeing Cary Grant slip a knife between the ribs—a delight so vertiginous you can’t help but smile before the shiver hits.

If you’ve ever been so bored in the opening minutes of a film that you nearly jettisoned it into the in-flight void, you’re in the ideal state for TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY—a valentine slipped to those of us who remember when ‘spy movie’ didn’t mean Tom Cruise careening down Burj Khalifa on a dental floss. I confess: I nearly passed it by. I have the attention span of a dog in a squirrel sanctuary, and when I first met Tomas Alfredson’s version of Le Carré’s labyrinth, I almost bolted. But once I resolved to commit—strapped three hours’ worth of expectation and peanuts—I found myself confronted with a piece of sustained, high-stakes espionage art that refuses—politely, dourly—to pander to anybody’s need for instant payoff.

Let’s lay the cards on the table: when a film’s opening proposition is “Jason Statham fights a giant prehistoric shark—again,” you’d best suspend seriousness at the door. The first movie, that improbable waterlogged delight, understood this bargain: it wore its teeth with a wink, tipping its hat to every Jaws-obsessed twelve-year-old (and the ones lurking in every adult). So, of course, Hollywood—in its infinite wisdom—gives us the sequel, the bigger, dumber, and, oh yes, shoddier Meg 2: The Trench. It’s customary. It’s almost a civic obligation. Haven’t we earned our right to a shit sequel?