for reels: February 2022

A monthly look back at my Letterboxd diary.

Mar 04, 2022

Welcome to for reels, a monthly look back at my movie diary on Letterboxd // Today, I’m looking back at February 2022 //

Hey folks, haven’t done anything on here since last month’s for reels. Wish I could say it was for any reason other than I’m a lazy mfer but here we are. Eh, I have been working on a longer form essay which, after a long shelf life as an endless screed of notes on my phone, is finally starting to materialize so I guess that’s somethin’. Also, kind of hard to focus on anything with a new war going on, not that it’s affected me personally other than catching some of the general anxiety caused by people over here posting way too much about it on social media with a shocking but sadly unsurprising lack of awareness. I dunno man, best I can say right now is war is a terrible racket and we all have at most our lives and at least our humanity to lose whenever the imperial machine rears its big fat jaundiced head, which is practically every second of every day on spaceship earth. Here’s hopin’ for as much peace as we can possibly get in the coming months.

Anyway, over here on the hazy shores of Long Beach where the ships keep on pilin’ up at the port and the sunsets are as Michael-Mannesque as ever, I had a killer month of hedonistic movie watching so let’s get to it shall we? Here are some fake awards for 10 notable joints from my February movie diary…

Best New Movie (Theaters): Jackass Forever

One cool thing about Jackass is that it sort of defies attempts at elevating it, though I can’t help thinking about it and talking about it with more reverence and appreciation than ever. 20 years ago, Jeff Tremaine, Johnny Knoxville and crew propagated a new American art form, blasting out of the same primordial urges that fueled everything from Buster Keaton to Looney Tunes to the MC5, and fathering like, whole swaths of internet culture in the process.

And yet what they do is still entirely their own. Despite the agony of multiple release delays, the fourth Jackass movie (and first in a decade) ended up coming right when we needed it. It’s a bona fide cultural balm — like its predecessors, at once a dalliance with death and celebration of life punctuated by nut shots and animal cum. The stunts are as creative as ever (in many cases even more so) and the whole deal with bringing in new cast members pays off in dividends, imbuing Jackass Forever with a subliminal baton-handing narrative and a playful, cross-generational vibe that in its own way hearkens back to like ‘80s summer camp comedies and Caddyshack and shit, ya know? I’m still high off this one and could go on and on about it, but the main point is it’s a welcome relief that something as life-affirming as Jackass is not yet frozen in amber.

Jackass Forever is still in theaters! Highly recommend catching a showing if you ain’t already.

Best New Movie (Streaming): Kimi

Steven Soderbergh has been on a fuckin’ stellar streaming run, having released two standout Netflix joints (The Laundromat, High Flying Bird) in 2019, followed by two excellent movies for HBOMax in 2020 (Let Them All Talk) and 2021 (No Sudden Move), respectively. This time around he does a Blow Out remix of sorts with a touch of Klute, bookended by Rear Window — amounting to a taut, more-than-competent 90 minute cyber-anxiety thriller for the pandemic era. I’m far from the first to reference these and a few other classic thrillers when talking about this movie and I surely won’t be the last but I think in this case it’s ‘cause Soderbergh does such a damn good job at evoking and updating the genre with clarity and purpose, know what I mean? Also, Zoe Kravitz is fantastic, probably my favorite thing she’s ever done. All the supporting players are great as well (loved Rita Wilson in particular). Just dynamite shit all around.

You can stream Kimi on HBOMax.

Best New-to-me Movie: Head (1968)

I have vague memories of watching this on Nick at Nite or some shit when I was a kid and knew of its reputation as a late-60s counterculture acid comedy that actually works, but I was woefully unprepared for just how hard this Beatles-movie parody/pop-art extravaganza goes. The end product of Jack Nicholson and director Rob Rafelson spending a weekend in Ojai smoking weed with The Monkees and talking into a tape recorder; Head is a plotless, meandering but never boring kitchen-sink satire that’s as indulgent as it is articulate — oscillating between fourth-wall breaking Hollywood-backlot sight gags and, like, mini-DMT trips with groovy blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em celebrity cameos (Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Terri Garr, and Frank Zappa to name a few). Deceptively slick editing, topical humor, and a heavy dose of evergreen antiwar sentiment make Head a groovy soup of vibrant time-capsule cinema worth swimming around in.

You can watch Head on YouTube.

Priceless Document (for “the vomelette” alone): Jackass: Too Hot for TV (2002)

Revisited a ton of Jackass in prep for Forever, found out this little bootleg gem floatin’ around, not really a movie but a special intended to promote the first movie that MTV never aired. Well worth visiting if you’re a Jackass completist, opens with Knoxville getting hit by a car (on purpose, of course), includes Knoxville shooting himself in the chest with a revolver, and “the vomelette” where Dave England eats all the ingredients of an omelette, throws it up into a pan, cooks it, and feeds it to Steve-O. You go into something like that thinking it should never see the light of day but, in typical Jackass form, the delivery is so goddamn funny and committed you realize you’re witnessing twisted, animal genius in full bloom.

You can watch Jackass: Too Hot for MTV here.

Master Lampooning of a Master: High Anxiety (1977)

Mel Brooks’ spoof of all things Hitchcock has a sorta mid-tier Brooks reputation, but upon rewatch I thought it slapped pretty hard, man. Like, right off the bat I can’t imagine liking either Brooks or Hitchcock and not having a great time with this. “Too much bondage, too much bondage. Not enough discipline!”

You can stream High Anxiety on HBOMax.

Trashterpiece of the Month: Beer (1985)

Went in to this one thinking it’d be one of those frat-boy booby comedies of the ‘80s that are almost quaint in how horribly they’ve aged, but also have a particular analog look and feel that I crave more and more in the age of like most new movies being ugly as shit. Turned out to be a pretty funny and charmingly dour social satire on Reagan-era consumerism and advertising. The gist of it is three normal dudes accidentally foil a stickup at a bar, and this struggling German beer company Norbecker hires these guys to make an ad campaign out of it. Not particularly laugh-out-loud funny but definitely amusing in its apt satirical nastiness.

You can stream Beer on Paramount+.

De Palma Deepcut: Wise Guys (1986)

Back on my De Palma bullshit, checkin’ out my fave director’s universally panned gangster comedy about two low-level mafia men (Danny Devito, Joe Piscopo) who lose a hefty stack of their boss’s cash and are set up to kill each other along the way. One thing about De Palma that really slaps is his willingness to take his particular bag of tricks and try something new with it, even at the risk of total failure. Wise Guys doesn’t really work, but it ain’t a total failure either. Much of it feels like a live-action/comic book hybrid gangster piece, which is dope. Devito carries a lot of it by sheer force of presence and skill, and there are even a few sequences that pop off with visual wit (like the one above). Hardly essential viewing but a back-of-the-drawer curiosity worth dusting off if you have the extra time and gumption.

You can rent Wise Guys on Amazon Prime Video or YouTube.

Frat Pack Deepcut: Semi-Pro (2008)

Hadn’t seen this one since it came out, saw it was on Hulu and was curious how it’d hold up. The ‘70s filtered through the ‘00s filtered through the tail end of the frat pack era is a vibe, man. Slap Shot a la Anchorman, you dig? The whole poker scene (linked above) is fantastic. Great mix ‘o guys. Also my late grandpa was the head coach of the Utah Stars in the early ‘70s, so it was fun to watch this era of the now-defunct American Basketball Association (ABA) as the basis for a Will Ferrell joint.

You can stream Semi-Pro on Hulu.

Like… not bad!: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

I love Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 as much as the next horror fan, but for whatever reason I’ve never felt compelled to explore the rest of the franchise in earnest. Watched the new one on Netflix and was really mixed on it, decided some of the others would finally be worth visiting. Having already seen the ‘03 Texas Chainsaw Remake, I figured I’d take its prequel for a spin. I think it’s supposed to be bad but I thoroughly enjoyed most of it. All the Vietnam stuff that’s actually about Iraq/Afghanistan is pretty good. R. Lee Ermey (who you might know as the drill seargant in Full Metal Jacket) ends up being more the main attraction than Leatherface is, which I dug for the change of pace. Some sections drag a bit and the finale falls a little flat, but like its predecessor, this is a totally serviceable and mostly enjoyable mid-’00s torture-porn rendering of a classic slasher franchise.

You can stream Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning on Netflix.

They Really Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To: West Side Story (1961)

Revisited this one for the first time in eons, wanted to have it fresh in my head before I streamed the new one this weekend. Never been a huge fan and I think for anyone alive today the unbelievable levels of brown face will prove a wildly unfortunate distraction, but I also literally can’t think of a movie with more beautiful set design, cinematography, choreography, and even visual effects. Seriously that Spielberg one better be fuckin’ lit ‘cause I dunno how you can possibly beat what the OG throws down.

You can stream West Side Story on HBOMax.