READERS' CHOICE #39: US (2019)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

8

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, but only once, in the theatre when it was released

BEST SEQUENCE

The home invasion and the first meeting between the Wilson family and their Tethered counterparts

BEST LINE

"There's a family in our driveway"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

93%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"With Jordan Peele's second inventive, ambitious horror film, we have seen how to beat the sophomore jinx, and it is Us."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A family's serene beach vacation turns to chaos when their doppelgängers appear and begin to terrorize them."

DIRECTOR

Jordan Peele

MAIN CAST

Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker

THOUGHTS

• It's a delicate balance making a horror comedy which is equally effective in both genres. If you emphasize the humour over the horror, especially in the scary moments, you risk undercutting the thrills; if you skimp on the jokes, then what jokes there are will be incongruous at best and absolute mood killers at worst
• Perhaps it's partly due to this high degree of difficulty that there are, by my assessment anyway, no true horror comedies on the official AFI list. There are quite a few on the readers' list, though, including Jordan Peele's first movie, Get Out. This is probably as good a time as any to mention that the readers' list was finalized before the release of Peele's third movie, Nope, but I was also pretty underwhelmed by Nope. I might give it a rewatch eventually, but I wouldn't consider it to be at the same level as Us or Get Out
• I don't want to talk about Get Out too much more, since I'll be talking about it on its own much much later, but when I saw Us in the theatre I remember liking it just a little bit more than Get Out, although I'm not sure if that opinion holds true upon rewatch. I do think, however, that Us hits that absolute sweet spot between horror and comedy with a foot firmly planted in both camps. When they happen, the jokes land, and they're inserted with a sense of tone and timing that don't take away from the scary stuff. My favourite joke in the movie, by the way, is probably "Ophelia, call the police"
• Home invasions are almost always a potent setup for a scary movie, and Us has the added impact of the home invasion being perpetrated by the sinister doppelgängers of the protagonists. One of my favourite scary movie tropes is when a character sees someone watching them through a window, and the lighting and shadows of the "family in our driveway" scene add to the eeriness. If we want to get philosophical about it, perhaps this concept is scary because it demonstrates how permeable one's home and shelter can be, even if (at first) it's just being permeated by eyesight
• I'd bet that the whole cast had a lot of fun playing both of their characters, but Lupita Nyong'o is next level, with her strong performance as Adelaide and her terrifyingly unnerving performance as Red. The way she physically embodies Red is tremendously creepy, and the voice is just perfect
• Also, the scenes set in the house of mirrors are very effective
• While the "home invasion by doppelgängers" premise is already pretty strong by itself, I admire how ambitious the ending gets with its backstory and internal logic, even if much of it doesn't entirely hold up to scrutiny. We've already seen lots of home invasion thrillers. We haven't seen many movies about subterranean clones rising up to kill their above-ground counterparts in order to form a human chain across America. But hey, maybe this is already a whole subgenre and I've just been watching the wrong movies 
• And finally, speaking of which, this may be a better known fact that I'm aware of, or the movie might have made this point more clearly than I realize, but just in case, I think it's worth mentioning that the Hands Across America campaign was a real event that happened on May 25th, 1986. So, for the movie's purposes, it's pretty important to note that the movie begins with young Adelaide seeing a commercial for Hands Across America right before heading to the beach with her parents

Up Next: The oldest movie on the Readers' Choice list, by a fair margin at that, and one of the few that I haven't seen before. The Warriors, from 1979 

READERS' CHOICE #40: ANNIHILATION (2018)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

8.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, once, probably a year or so after it was released

BEST SEQUENCE

The scariest part is the scene with the bear, the most haunting part is the final scene in the lighthouse

BEST LINE

"It's not like us... it's unlike us. I don't know what it wants, or if it wants, but it'll grow until it encompasses everything. Our bodies and our minds will be fragmented into their smallest parts until not one part remains... Annihilation."

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

88%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Annihilation backs up its sci-fi visual wonders and visceral genre thrills with an impressively ambitious -- and surprisingly strange -- exploration of challenging themes that should leave audiences pondering long after the end credits roll."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply."

DIRECTOR

Alex Garland

MAIN CAST

Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac

THOUGHTS

• From start to finish this movie isn't as thrilling as some of the others I've reviewed, which is fine, that's not really what it's going for. There are certainly some heart-pounding moments, even beyond the ones I mentioned above, but 8.5 might honestly be a bit high if we were judging this movie just based on thrills alone. It's an undeniably excellent movie, though, and the parts that thrill do so in a manner that will worm their way under your skin
• Annihilation has some of the most beautifully bizarre and hauntingly eerie sights I've ever seen in a movie. Worth watching for the visuals alone, and they stay with you long after the credits roll
• Such an effective setting. Even though there are aspects of this movie that make it appear to take place on an alien planet, it's not set on an alien planet - it's set in a Florida swamp, and despite the tweaks and twists to this environment, it's still recognizable to our human eyes. Not that there's anything wrong with alien planets, but I connect more when it's a familiar place
• The cast is great all around, with Jennifer Jason Leigh giving my favourite performance as the steely, blunt and emotionally detached Dr. Ventress
• I found the very last shot of the movie to be less impactful than I think was intended, and I can't really put my finger on why (also I'm going to be purposefully vague just in case people are avoiding spoilers). Perhaps it was because the movie had so much else going on that this final beat seemed unnecessary, or perhaps it was because I've seen similar concepts done better in other movies. Worth acknowledging, though, it's possible that this last scene was deemed important in order to connect with some of the "challenging themes" mentioned in the Rotten Tomatoes consensus above
• Very effective use of the song "Helplessly Hoping" by Crosby, Stills & Nash - a song that I think is just beautiful, and I can't think of any other movies that use it
• The AFI 100 Thrills list doesn't include any movies released after 1999, so considering Alex Garland didn't get into filmmaking until after the turn of the millennium, it makes sense that he isn't included in any of the AFI movies. He made a fair impact on the Readers' Choice list, though. He wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later, and before writing and directing Annihilation he wrote and directed Ex Machina. 28 Days Later and Ex Machina will both be appearing later on in the Readers' Choice list. He also began his career by writing the novel The Beach, which was adapted into a movie by Danny Boyle, who would also collaborate with Garland on 28 Days Later. I only just saw The Beach for the first time recently, and man, I did not connect with that movie one bit. Any Beach defenders out there?

Up next: Us, from 2019, the second movie directed by Jordan Peele (and Get Out will also be appearing much, much later)

#61: CAPE FEAR (1962)

TW: Sexual Violence

THRILL SCALE 1-10

9.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never

BEST SEQUENCE

The confrontation between Cady and Sam's wife on the houseboat, followed by the confrontation between Cady and Sam himself (so, basically, the last 15 minutes of the movie)

BEST LINE

"You shocking degenerate. I've seen the worst - the dregs - but you... you are the lowest. Makes me sick to breathe the same air." - Sam, to Cady

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

96%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"An exemplary thriller powered by Robert Mitchum's chilling performance and Bernard Herrmann's sinister score, Cape Fear seethes with perfectly modulated tension."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A lawyer's family is stalked by a man he once helped put in jail."

DIRECTOR

J. Lee Thompson

MAIN CAST

Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Lori Martin

THOUGHTS

• This might be a hard one for people to read about because the antagonist's primary threat is not just violence, but specifically sexual violence. As usual, I'm not going to be too graphic, and please don't mistake me treating this movie as a form of entertainment for any sort of levity towards the real subject matter
• For a movie made in 1962, it's interesting how clear they were able to make the villain's intentions, despite never once using the word "rape". Max Cady, played by Robert Mitchum, is evil and single-minded, with a leering, half-lidded gaze. His goal is not just to destroy Gregory Peck's Sam Bowden, but to do so through the people closest to him. It's a memorable performance by Mitchum, and I love his southern drawl, especially on words like "counsellah". Also, is it just me, or is Max Cady a great fictional character name
• I do believe this is the first appearance of Robert Mitchum in these movies, but not the last. He'll be appearing again in The Night of the Hunter, ranked quite high at #34, in a not dissimilar role (at least from what I recall; I only saw it once years ago)
• On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that this is the last we'll see of Gregory Peck. He was in The Guns of Navarone and The Omen as well, and I liked his performances in all of them, including Cape Fear, but I think it's fair to mention that he played essentially the same character in each movie - the stoic and brave leading man. This is not to say that this is a flaw with these movies, or even a flaw with Peck's acting. He plays this character well, and this character was what these movies required. But I'd be interested to see a Peck performance with a little more range. I feel like even Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the role for which he won the Best Actor Oscar, would fit in pretty snugly with all these other performances in more thrilling movies. And speaking of which, I only just realized this, it turns out To Kill a Mockingbird and Cape Fear came out in the same year
• If one wants to approach Cape Fear from this angle, I saw it as a bit of a critique of due process and the presumption of innocence, or at least a manipulation of the audience's fears about the situations in which the law may not be enough to protect them. Sam knows what Cady has planned for him and his family, but he has no legal way to prevent it, so he needs to wait for Cady to strike before he's able to retaliate. This depiction of vigilantism isn't the sort of thing I cheer for or endorse, but it is a very effective hook for the movie, enhanced by the fact that Sam is a lawyer and well aware of the legal quandary he's in
• The climax is as thrilling as it is harrowing, ending with a pretty visceral fight between Sam and Cady. I also noticed, especially earlier in the movie, there was something reminiscent of a Slasher villain in the depiction of Cady, especially in the way he shows up when he's least expected

MINI REVIEW: CAPE FEAR (1991)

Our first time talking about director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, who will be popping up a few more times (although fewer than I would have thought; I think a movie like Goodfellas, for example, definitely belongs on this list. Maybe I'll add it at some point). This is a good movie, different enough from the original to be worth watching, but I don't think it's better than the original, and maybe not even as good. The 30 years in between films allowed for the remake to be much more blunt and graphic with its violence and subject matter, but there's still something to be said about the more restrained approach. It's interesting to see De Niro as a full-on villain, not just an anti-hero, and there's something uncanny about hearing his southern accent, considering his normal voice is so recognizable. The original was largely a cat-and-mouse game between Sam and Cady, while the remake fleshes out more of the supporting characters, giving them more connections and backstory, and more agency for Sam's wife and daughter, played by Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis, respectively. And as Sam I liked Nick Nolte's on-edge performance. While watching I realized I haven't seen Nolte in anything else, but I quite liked him in this. Finally, Robert De Niro and Juliette Lewis were both nominated for Oscars. They're good performances, but it's interesting to see a pretty pulpy thriller like this get some Oscar love. And again, perhaps this owes something to the 30-year time difference - the original movie didn't get any nominations in any category.

MINI REVIEW: THE SIMPSONS: "CAPE FEARE" (1993)

Perfect. No notes.

Up Next: And with that, we've made our way through another 20-movie block of the AFI list, so it gives me great pleasure to announce that we'll be jumping back into the readers' poll! Here are the next ten movies, in order:

Annihilation

Us

The Warriors

The Babadook

Paranormal Activity

Donnie Darko

It

Pet Sematary

Gone Girl

Robocop

And so, up next, Annihilation from 2018!

#62-B: GLADIATOR (2000)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, but not since the early 2000s

BEST SEQUENCE

It's too hard to pick one over the others, so I won't. Every scene of gladiatorial combat is exciting and unique in a way that makes each sequence individually memorable instead of just blending together with the rest of the action

BEST LINE

"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

80%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"While not everyone will be entertained by Gladiator's glum revenge story, Russell Crowe thunderously wins the crowd with a star-making turn that provides Ridley Scott's opulent resurrection of Rome its bruised heart"

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A former Roman General sets out to exact vengeance against the corrupt emperor who murdered his family and sent him into slavery."

DIRECTOR

Ridley Scott

MAIN CAST

Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Richard Harris

THOUGHTS

• Would we call this an action movie? I think I'd call it an action movie. It has more on its mind than just the action, and Wikipedia considers it an epic historical drama film, other genres which are also applicable, but so much of the focus is on the action and fight scenes that that's how I'm going to categorize it
• Which I bring up because it's interesting how much Oscar love this movie got at the Academy Awards ceremony in 2001. Nominated for 12 (the most nominations that year) and winning 5 (the most wins that year), it won Best Picture and Russell Crowe won Best Actor as Maximus, but this is not the style of movie or the style of performance which usually get recognized by the Academy. Out of all of my reviews so far I've only talked about three other Best Picture winners - Rebecca, Platoon and Braveheart (but there will be more). Gladiator hews closest to Braveheart, just as Braveheart resembled Spartacus before it, and they do share the sweeping grandeur of a historical epic, but especially in the early 2000s Gladiator stood out as a bit of an anomaly
• And, as the saying goes that the acting Oscars often go to the people who are doing the most acting if not the best acting, it was also a fairly restrained performance from Crowe to win, at least emotionally. Physically he was selling all the action 100%, and maybe not even having to act too hard to do so if his list of injuries are any indication (according to IMDB, Crowe lost all feeling in his right forefinger for two years after a sword fight, aggravated an Achilles tendon injury, broke a foot bone, cracked a hip bone, and popped a few bicep tendons out of their sockets)
• Gladiator came smack dab in the middle of a three-year nomination streak for Russell Crowe. He was nominated for The Insider the year before and A Beautiful Mind the year after, noteworthy considering A Beautiful Mind also won Best Picture, and man, when's the last time anyone ever thought of that movie?
• I would consider there to be three big rip-roaring action set pieces in this movie, and as I mentioned above, I like that they each have a unique quality to them. In fact, I could describe each of them with one word and if you've seen the movie you'll probably know exactly what I'm talking about: chains, chariots, and tigers (but I wish they had been cheetahs just for the sake of alliteration)
• The action is filmed quite effectively in the blazing sun, although there are a few instances of slow motion which I found a little distracting
• Gladiator and Spartacus both feature a Roman senator character named Gracchus. Due to the difference between the years each movie is set I know he can't be the same guy, but I also can't really be bothered to figure out if one movie is more accurate than the other when it comes to this Gracchus fellow, or even if there were just two important Gracchuses (Gracchi?) back in ancient Rome
• Finally, an anatomy lesson. There's a moment in the tiger fight scene when Maximus's opponent, Tigris of Gaul, gets stabbed right through the top of his foot and then we immediately see blood coming out of the mouth hole in his face mask. Now, my takeaway from this was always that these things must be directly related due to, I don't know, blood pressure or something. I went for years believing that being stabbed in the foot would cause you to spit blood, despite this making very little sense according to my (admittedly limited) understanding of anatomy. But, on rewatch, here's the little detail that my brain decided to completely omit: right before the foot stabbing, Tigris of Gaul gets beaned in the face mask pretty damn hard with a shield. This might be one of the most unlikely shared experiences I could ever imagine, but just in case there's anyone else out there who thinks a foot stab leads to mouth blood, I'm glad I could set the record straight (as could probably anyone else with the most basic understanding of the human circulatory system)

Up next: A new one for me, and I'm excited to see it! Cape Fear from 1962. I also haven't seen Scorsese's remake from '91, so I might even watch both and see how they compare

#62: SPARTACUS (1960)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never

BEST SEQUENCE

The final battle, immediately followed by the famous "I'm Spartacus!" scene

BEST LINE

"I'm Spartacus!"

"I'm Spartacus!"

"I'm Spartacus!"

- when dozens, if not hundreds, of men bravely proclaim themselves to be Spartacus in a show of solidarity with the real Spartacus, who doesn't get a chance to utter a word

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Featuring terrific performances and epic action, Kubrick's restored swords-and-sandals epic is a true classic."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"The slave Spartacus survives brutal training as a gladiator and leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Republic, as the ambitious Crassus seeks to gain power by crushing the uprising."

DIRECTOR

Stanley Kubrick

MAIN CAST

Kirk Douglas, Kirk Douglas's Chin Dimple, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis

THOUGHTS

• I'll be frank, I wasn't really looking forward to this one. A grandiose historical epic clocking in at 3 hours and 17 minutes didn't quite sound like my idea of a thrilling time, but I shouldn't have been so quick to assume. I was thoroughly entertained all the way through, even if some parts, like all the Roman senatorial politicking, dragged a little in comparison to the action and battle scenes
• Really reminded me of Braveheart, another movie which was a little overlong, but which definitely held my attention
• Kirk Douglas, as Spartacus, was charismatic and very easy to cheer for. And while this might not count as intelligent movie criticism, I just have to say - man, that chin dimple! It's like a second belly button on his face! I honestly wonder if he had issues keeping it clean!
• As mentioned above, the Roman politics were the less interesting chunks of the movie for me, so partly for this reason I didn't necessarily find Laurence Olivier to be the most memorable villain, even while I appreciated his cold and steely demeanour
• On the other hand, my favourite performance by far was from Peter Ustinov playing Batiatus, Spartacus's former owner and the runner of a gladiatorial school. Anytime he was on screen I couldn't stop watching him and I absolutely loved his unctuous voice, a voice which has in fact been mentioned in this blog, however briefly and however long ago. Ustinov also played Prince John in Disney's animated Robin Hood, another performance I loved
• Ustinov was the only person to get an Oscar nomination for acting in this movie, a nomination he deservedly ended up winning, but Spartacus also got Oscars for Art Direction, Cinematography and Costume Design (and nominations for Film Editing and Music Score)
• This was a very early Kubrick movie, only his fifth feature film, and the only one of his movies on which he didn't have complete creative control. Perhaps for this reason, Kubrick essentially disowned it and didn't consider it part of his canon. And, having seen a good number of Kubrick's filmography, I have to agree that it doesn't quite have the same Kubrickian ineffable quality that his others do. But not to worry, this won't be the last we see of old Stanley, as he still has three more movies on the list  
• I already went on a mini rant about the use of accented English in movies when the characters definitely aren't speaking English, back when I was discussing Alan Cumming's Russian accent in Goldeneye. And we have a similar thing here. Considering Spartacus is set in the first century BC, of course the characters weren't speaking English and I wouldn't expect (or want) the filmmakers and actors to present the story entirely in Latin. But what really distracted me was the broad variety of accents we got. It seemed perhaps like the intention was to have the elitist Romans speak in stuffy British accents, whereas Spartacus's army of slaves spoke with more brash American accents, but even this didn't have total consistency between the characters. And it must be said, when I first heard Tony Curtis speak with his thick Bronx accent, I laughed out loud
• But, if I'm going to declare that I laughed at some of the filmmaking choices, I'll also admit that the ending made me tear up a little bit. I have layers
• Oh yeah, and the swords look kind of dumb
• Finally, there were some pretty fascinating behind-the-scenes stories from the making of the movie, but perhaps the most interesting little tidbit is the fact that it was written by Dalton Trumbo, a man who was imprisoned and blacklisted after refusing to testify during the House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation of Communist influences in the film industry in 1947. And while Trumbo continued to write screenplays under pseudonyms or other authors' names, Spartacus marked the end of the blacklist when Kirk Douglas insisted that Trumbo be credited for his work. Knowing this about the screenwriter also lends a fantastic poignancy to some of the events we see onscreen, especially the "I'm Spartacus!" scene in which all of Spartacus's companions refuse to give him up, even in the face of enormous consequences

Up next: Well, it might sound silly to people who were more familiar with Spartacus, but I actually didn't realize he was a gladiator or that so much of the movie would be set in a gladiatorial school. So, you can probably guess where I'm going with this - despite not being on the AFI list I've been planning on adding it in at some point, so I think this is a very appropriate time to supplement the list with Gladiator, a movie I saw once long ago

#63-B: HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, but only once a long time ago, compared to the many times I've seen Baby Jane

BEST SEQUENCE

Just like in Baby Jane, the ending is pretty satisfying

BEST LINE

"Chop chop, sweet Charlotte,

Chop chop till he's dead. 

Chop chop, sweet Charlotte, 

Chop off his hand and head"

- sung over the opening credits

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

82%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

None available

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"An aging, reclusive Southern belle plagued by a horrifying family secret descends into madness after the arrival of a lost relative."

DIRECTOR

Robert Aldrich

MAIN CAST

Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead

THOUGHTS

• After the success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, they decided to see if they could do it again. The initial plan was to reunite director Robert Aldrich and his stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, not to mention a few of the supporting cast (including Victor Buono, who was nominated for an Oscar for Baby Jane). Sweet Charlotte also had the same screenwriter, Lukas Heller, and it was even based on an unpublished short story by Henry Farrell, the same author whose novel was the source material for Baby Jane. Spiritual sequels don't come much more connected than that, which (for me, at least) makes it a real shame that we didn't get to see the version with Joan Crawford going head-to-head with Bette Davis once more
• Crawford officially signed on originally, but shortly into the movie's production she got sick and was replaced with Olivia de Havilland. Now, it's honestly a little hard to parse what actually happened here. Was Crawford feigning illness to stick it to Aldrich and Davis? Was she just trying to get out of the movie after a rocky start to filming? Or, as she and her doctors claimed, was she legitimately sick, only to then get fired from the role? Who's to say. Regardless, the interesting hypothetical about what we would have gotten with Davis and Crawford would have been the reversal of roles when comparing Sweet Charlotte with Baby Jane
• Both movies feature the Bette Davis character steadily growing more and more insane, but while in Baby Jane she's the aggressor whose abuse of her sister gets more intense as her mental state diminishes, in Sweet Charlotte she's the victim being pushed over the brink by factors outside of her control. Don't be mistaken, Davis's portrayal of Charlotte still provides plenty of opportunities for her to get ornery, and her acting is as hammy as ever, but to have seen Davis as the tormentee and Crawford as the tormentor would have been a really nice inversion for Baby Jane fans
• It is worth acknowledging that I find Davis's performance as Jane to be more fun to watch than her performance as Charlotte. I don't fault the filmmakers for wanting to change things up and not just make the same movie, but Davis had a little bit more room for those really wild swings when she played the villain instead of the protagonist
• Pretty good supporting cast, including two people we've talked about before, Olivia de Havilland (The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Joseph Cotten (a few movies so far, but most prominently in The Third Man). There's also an almost unrecognizably young Bruce Dern. Agnes Moorehead was the only person from this movie to get an acting Oscar nomination, but good God, she's chewing even more scenery than Bette Davis!
• The violence is actually pretty graphic for the time, including shots of chopped off hands and decapitated heads
• Just like in Baby Jane, there's some creepily effective use of music. The best line up above is taken from a song sung by kids over the opening credits, which is actually a schoolyard parody of the song "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," which connects to the plot of the movie, and is, of course, where they got the title. It was also the recipient of an Oscar nomination for Best Song
• Finally, in between watching Baby Jane and Sweet Charlotte, I did get the chance to watch an older Bette Davis movie, All About Eve. A classic movie that I probably should have seen already, it's a pretty good companion to these two, and a good opportunity to see a younger, more restrained Bette Davis (while still not totally devoid of her particular brand of hamminess)

Up next: Another classic that I probably should have seen by now, and the earliest Kubrick movie of his five on the list, Spartacus from 1960 

#63: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

9.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, many times, the first time was probably in high school

BEST SEQUENCE

The final scene at the beach

BEST LINE

"Then, you mean...all this time we could have been friends?"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

92%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? combines powerhouse acting, rich atmosphere, and absorbing melodrama in service of a taut thriller with thought-provoking subtext."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A former child star torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion."

DIRECTOR

Robert Aldrich

MAIN CAST

Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono

THOUGHTS

• If ever I'm accused of allowing my own personal affection for a movie to inflate the thrill score I give it, it might be for this one. For me, I think Bette Davis's performance as Baby Jane is iconic and it's lodged deep in my brain as one of my favourites of all time. Furthermore, I think of this as one of the quintessential slow-burn movies. It takes some time to get cooking, and it drags a little at points, but the payoff at the end of the movie is so good that I don't mind one bit. It's all part of the journey. If you can't quite click into the movie's pace, or if you think it's more tame than it should be, I'm not going to disagree with you too vehemently. But if you're picking up what this movie's putting down, there aren't many quite like it out there
• As a tale of two aging former movie starlets, it made perfect sense to cast two actual aging former movie starlets in Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. As a story fuelled by jealousy, spite and hatred, it was brilliant to cast two women who actually legitimately hated each other, at least by all accounts that I've read. It's at this point that I'll mention that I haven't seen Feud, the Ryan Murphy TV show which had a season all about the making of Baby Jane, but from what I've read there were some pretty wild behind-the-scenes stories between Davis and Crawford
• Joan Crawford is very good in this as Blanche, and she's wholly convincing as a woman at the mercy of her unhinged sister. By virtue of the story, though, Bette Davis is the one who just gets to swing for the fences and I love it. The venom and malice in her performance, the insane look in her wide eyes, the brusque and harsh way she talks, the way her character basically devolves as the movie progresses, the pathetic way she clings to her former childhood glory, I find it all so effective. And the makeup, which Davis had a lot of control over, does a lot of great work too, as do the costumes. In fact, Baby Jane won the Oscar for Best Costume Design - Black-and-White (back when some categories were divided into Colour and Black-and-White). Seems like makeup wasn't its own category back then, so it might have just been considered along with the costuming
• Other Oscar nominations for Baby Jane that year: Bette Davis for Best Actress, Victor Buono for Best Supporting Actor, Ernest Haller for Black-and-White Cinematography and Joseph D. Kelly for Sound. Costume Design was the only win
• The lighting is also very effective and makes their house look incredibly sinister
• Admittedly, I haven't seen many (possible not any) of Bette Davis or Joan Crawford's earlier films. And while I still think the movie is perfectly effective, I can only imagine that it's even more so for people who are familiar with their previous film careers
• I didn't really love Victor Buono's performance, and his scenes tended to drag, although they did help bring out Jane's crazed obsession with staging a comeback. The scenes when Jane imitated Blanche's voice were also a little corny, although at the same time they hit the uncanny sweet spot of still giving me a little chill to hear a totally different voice combined with Jane's manic glare
• Strong echoes between this movie and Misery, another one of my favourites
• Finally, for some fans of this movie, it's most valued as a camp classic or a dark satire. And while I can see aspects of these views in Bette Davis's scenery chewing or the movie's depiction of aging actresses in Hollywood, I've always taken What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? pretty much at face value as a chilling tale of sibling rivalry and descent into madness. It's still one of my favourites, many viewings later, and if you haven't seen it this is one that I strongly recommend

Up next: Supplementing the list with the spiritual sequel to Baby Jane, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte from 1964