Frank's Movie Log

Maléfique opens with a man named Carrère saying goodbye to his wife and young son. He is a white-collar criminal and today marks his first day in prison. We meet his cellmates: Lassalle, an older librarian of few words, Marcus, a brash young man whose large breast implants clash with his brawny physique, and Pâquerette, a man-child with a penchant for eating things.

After establishing these characters and their interpersonal dynamics, the plot kicks into gear. The men discover a moldy diary that doubles as a spell book. Eager to escape, the men try some incantations but discover magic carries a high cost. Continue reading...

Ingmar Bergman’s first feature. Inga Landgré plays Nelly, an 18-year-old girl raised by a piano-teacher in a small village. Nelly yearns for something more and sees an escape when her estranged mother arrives to claim her. But happiness eludes Nelly in the big city, where a complex triangle forms between her, her mother, and her mother’s gigolo boyfriend. Continue reading...

“It will blow you through the back wall of the theater!” Does anyone remember that tagline from the film’s trailers and print ads? It makes no sense, yet it’s my go-to description for folks new to Die Hard. Continue reading...

Christmas Evil isn’t the sleazy Santa slasher you’d expect. Continue reading...

Mario Bava’s directorial debut. A hybrid mystery and mad-scientist picture. In contemporary Paris, young women turn up drained of blood. The press screams vampire. Dario Michaelis plays a reporter determined to uncover the truth. The case leads to his estranged cousin, her gothic castle, and the secrets they hold. Continue reading...

Follows Border Patrol and Hoppy Serves a Writ in the Hopalong Cassidy series. Hoppy and his deputies buy a ranch and settle down, only to run up against a crooked cattle baron played by Victor Jory.

Weakest of the three Cassidy films I’ve watched so far. Lots of filler shots, lingering takes, and Andy Clyde’s tepid slapstick. That said, Robert Mitchum shines in his meatiest (albeit shortest) part in the series thus far, playing yet another outlaw grunt.

In 2016, I gave Jack Frost a one-star review, calling it “bad, even by movie-about-a-killer-snowman standards.” I was wrong. Continue reading...

Howard Hawks’s recipe for a good movie comprised “three great scenes and no bad ones.” Hammer’s first entry in its Dracula franchise gives us exactly that. Continue reading...

Dermot Mulroney brings his uptight, upper-crust girlfriend (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) to his tight-knit, liberal family’s Christmas get-together, where he plans to ask for his grandmother’s wedding ring. The film mixes family drama and romantic comedy but commits to neither. The stellar cast’s innate charisma shines, but the film feels ashamed of its rom-com ambitions. It raises some interesting points around inclusion, tolerance, and dialogue, only to fall back on reductive tropes. It’s a rom-com dressed up in a family drama; as if it yearns to prove it’s about more than meet-cutes, but meet-cutes are all it offers.

It’s grown on me. I wrote a snarky review in 2011 that bemoaned the final girl’s “fit of acting” as she goes up the stairs instead of out the door, but time has been kind to Black Christmas. Continue reading...