MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2024: Week 28 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Dandelion

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Drama

Director: Nicole Riegel

Starring: KiKi Lane, Thomas Doherty, Melanie Nicholls-King, Brady Stablein, Jack Stablein, Grace Kaiser

The titular Dandelion is the name of a musician who has never quite launched her career, despite her best efforts. Soon she meets a guitarist who helps inspire her best work, and as their relationship grows romantic, it starts to take a rocky downturn. The film is a relation of struggling artist's internal conflicts, told as a romance that begins passionate and grows strained. There is a lot of effort in making the relationship at the core feel raw and real, right down to the complications that rupture it. That little taste of reality is what Dandelion does best, though on the rare occasion that it tries to reach for something bolder, it starts to weigh itself down with melodramatics. It's stronger as a character piece that's relating it's messages through implication rather than saying them out loud. The movie has no resonating power to it, despite some heavy, at times miscalculated, efforts. However, it's one that's easily digestible and enjoyed.

Longlegs

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Thriller, Horror

Director: Osgood Perkins

Starring: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby

Silence of the Lambs meets The Shining meets Hereditary, with Nicolas Cage popping in playing what comes across as a homeless pedophile take on Willy Wonka. I don't know what you're picturing after reading that sentence, but it's probably not as off-putting as Longlegs is. The movie is a startlingly uncomfortable watch. In fact, it even ends with the end credits running upside down, to assure that the audience is nice and discombobulated as they exit the theater. The movie is one of those suspense thrillers that is off-kilter and obtuse, which can backfire if they run too hard in an extreme direction (see: Skinamarink), but Longlegs does it in a fascinating way.

The story relates an FBI agent who is on the hunt for a serial killer known only as "Longlegs," as the connections and oddities start to add up to something personal. This movie draws suspense from the discomfort the larger world gives a traumatized introverted mindset. The main character spends most of her scenes with other people looking like she wishes she was alone, and when she's alone, it always feels like she's never alone. Continuing from there, it's only dead set on keeping it disquiet vibe, which is helped by one of Nicolas Cage's most unhinged performances in a long line of unhinged performances. Cage is very interesting here, because he's almost too much for the movie to contain. There are points where he's exactly what the movie needs and others where he's just aimlessly insane and the movie isn't quite sure what to do with him. Director Osgood Perkins keeps the cinematography almost broken when he's onscreen, which is when Cage is at his best, because the movie is working with him to create something transcendent. When the movie has no choice to shoot him flat, the cracks in the performance begin to show and it almost kills the movie. But the fact that the performance is this dangerous keeps the movie intriguing, maintaining that it's one of the year's highlights.

Robot Dreams

⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscars Nominated: Best Animated Feature Film

Genre: Drama

Director: Pablo Berger

Starring: A dog and a robot

Well, I'll be damned. This movie actually does exist. I was starting to think the Academy made it up, because I couldn't find a goddamn thing when by the time the awards went out. This movie that totally isn't a fever dream is about a lonely dog who orders a robot companion. After some fun days together, the robot rusts on the beach and is unable to move. Since he's too heavy to carry, the dog is forced to abandon his friend on the beach until he can fix him. Unfortunately, the beach seasonally closes immediately after, and the robot is forced to stay there until the following summer. The titular "robot dreams" are a series of sequences where the robot fantasizes about what it will be like to return to his friend.

I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't like this movie more. I love a good animated movie. I love a good pantomime movie. This should be my favorite movie of all time. Instead, I just found myself getting tired of it at points, which is shameful, because the technical merits of the movie are very good, but it just wasn't emotionally paying off for me the way the hype promised it would. I feel like I understood the movie's point early on and the movie was just doing a little dance for me for another hour after that. Robot Dreams is more subtle and artistic than a movie like fellow Oscar contender Elemental, but Elemental doesn't exhaust its flame as swiftly as a movie like Robot Dreams, which runs out of batteries and tries to switch them around to make it run again (I am punning up a storm here). It just compounds until what seems to be a calculated bittersweet conclusion that is supposed to be a tearjerker of accepting our lives as they change and move forward but it only really works if you hold the firm belief that you can only have one friend in your life at a time, which is a really fucking weird personal outlook if you think about it. It probably works better if you look at the movie as a romantic partner metaphor, but that opens a whole can of worms about this movie being about a dog and his mail-order bride and I'd rather not get into that.

Positive aspects include its expressive simplicity. It's very silent film influenced, expressing itself through visual cue rather than voice. One can probably picture how the film might have played out starring Harold Lloyd if he had thought of it. And the animation is pleasant and vibrant. There's a point where the film becomes lush animation for the sake of lush animation. It's certainly lovely to look at, and animation fans will find it heavenly. The movie's themes of companionship and longing are strong, even if they don't evolve as much as the film seems to think they do. Despite my lackluster reception to the film, it's certainly a film I'd recommend people to check out. The right viewer will probably adore it far more than I did.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Bikeriders ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Despicable Me 4 ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Fall Guy ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Fly Me to the Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Garfield Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter I ⭐️1/2

Inside Out 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Lion King ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

MaXXXine ⭐️⭐️1/2

A Quiet Place: Day One ⭐️⭐️