By D. K. HOLM
FOR THE COURIER
The major release this week at The Worx (700 ½ 1st Avenue North, 406-228-4474) is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, an entry that proves that dead franchises won't shut up, as this series becomes as loud and blurred as the Transformers movies.
Also on hand is the incredibly stupid A Ghost Story whose content is as bland as its title. This is a film in which the ghosts actually are sheets with holes cut out, and it's the kind of highbrow horror film in which the camera is content to simply sit and stare, as a widow (a gaunt Mara sister) sits and eats a pie, or methodically drags a couch out to the side of the street for pickup. Fascinating! The only good thing about this dull enterprise is that being draped, the viewer doesn't have to actually see the dread sexual harasser Casey Affleck (he has settled several cases), though one can still hear that squeaky, rasping, mumbling "voice."
For the British Heritage freaks there is Churchill, in what seems like the latest of about 17 new Churchill-WWII-Dunkirk films. This one has Brian Cox and Miranda Richardson as Mr. and Mrs. C., and is a hagiographic knee-pad movie, with soaring music – or at least notes … movies don't feature actual melodies anymore – in which Churchill feels veddy veddy bad about all the lads he sent to die, and simple children revive his spirit with V-fingers, while those he berates continue to “love” him. In general the film pretends that the American military leadership were stupid until Churchill came along to sort them all out and save Operation Overlord, when in un-re-written history Churchill was blithe about sending men to die en masse, re: Gallipoli. The movie is bogged down by re-stating the same damn argument every five minutes, between Churchill and Eisenhower, then the King, his wife, Montgomery, Smuts, and on and on, always about his not wanting to send men to their doom. On the other hand, TV’s John Slattery is excellent as a combative Ike.
Finally, there is Cult of Chucky, the seventh Child’s Play film, and with an eighth poised for an appearance. I imagine that most viewers lost track of the series after the second or third, or at least the one with Jennifer Tilly. She’s back though as the lethal doll’s moll, and the killing ground is an antiseptic mental hospital where a young woman blamed for earlier killings is doing time. Naturally, Chucky shows up thanks to an insensitive shrink, and soon the monster bifurcates a few times to other collectibles dolls and human beings, creating the “cult.” Some of the “kills” are funny, in that paradox of gore films, and Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky has some dandy Bondian quips. Entertainingly grim as Cult is, one does wonder why we as a culture need films in which helpless women are preyed upon by unpunished evil. Clearly a great many men in this society want women but can't get them and so take it out on the gender with fantasies of mass slaughter. Happy times!
As usual, no word on what the Valley Cinemas (600 2nd Avenue South 406-228-9239) is showing, though the website http://polsontheatres.com/glasgow-mt/ will know at some point. The theater may hold over The Lego Ninjago Movie, and / or Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the busy, noisy sequel, or it might add anything from among a list that includes Tom Cruise in American Made, a funny, manic real life comedy, or the drama The Glass Castle. Coins will be flipped.
Next week I’ll celebrate the release of the Montana-set Certain Women on Criterion DVD.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.