Well folks, it’s July. One of the true deadzones of our calendar year. Unless you’re some kind of freak that’s actively trying to celebrate the 4th or one of the fake-ass federal holidays that surrounds it (What the hell are we Laboring / Memorializing for, they’re literally just Mondays), there’s a big ol gulf of time during the summer where not a whole lot is happening. And to make matters worse, it’s also prohibitively hot outside due to uh… completely mysterious reasons. Global who? Climate what? I dunno man, everything seems fine and normal. : )

So to escape the heat and find something to do with my time that isn’t endlessly scrolling through YouTube Shorts, I’m back to talkin about Da Movies. This time I’m taking an approach that’s more involved than aimlessly yelling about whatever happens to be playing at the theater each month. Instead, I’m actively seeking out the Good Stuff. Movies that have been on the nebulous list of “films I should probably check out” that rattles around in my brain. 

To be clear, this isn’t just an exercise in reducing the length of my Letterboxd watchlist. The films that find themselves on there are a different breed. For example, one of the most recent additions is Nouvelle Vague, a Richard Linklater joint about French Cinema in the late 50’s. Or you’ve got stuff like the 2023 version of Toxic Avenger, or Eminem’s classic 8 Mile. While I’m sure that these are all masterpieces in their own ways, I’m looking for something a little more specific. The types of things you’re almost embarrassed to publicly announce that you haven’t already seen. Like, I don’t need to go out of my way to write down a reminder to watch Jurassic Park for example, it’s just a thing that should’ve already happened naturally at some point in my life. 

Growing up, the only movies that were consistently put on in my house were either animated or starred Adam Sandler (but never both, I refused to watch Eight Crazy Nights for some bizarre reason). This led to a young adulthood where there weren’t a ton of movies being watched in general, and finally to an almost-30-year-old man with a startlingly large amount of gaps in his cinematic viewing history. So we’re trying to rectify that!

Now, there are a few obvious challenges that come with watching things in a format like this. First, one movie per post is scary since that means I actually have to talk about it for more than a paragraph or two. And second, because everyone else on the planet has already seen most of these films, the vast majority of the major plot beats and iconic scenes will have already been spoiled for me. 

So as an introduction, I’m going to talk briefly about what I know going into each movie. Some quips about the big moments that I know are coming, maybe a line or two about why they’re important enough in my mind to end up here, and also an explanation on why I haven’t sought them out until now. That sorta thing. So to start off Da Year Of Da Movie 2: Electric Boogaloo – Whaddaya Mean You Haven’t Seen (DYODM2:EB-WMYHS for short), it’s time to talk about: 

The Thing

(It took a lot of self control to not type Da Ting instead, please clap)

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been hearing about how this movie shaped the landscape of modern horror, specifically through the brilliant use of practical effects. I’ve also spent my entire life getting Kurt Russell confused with both Bruce Willis AND Jason Statham, which is kinda insane when you put all three faces next to each other. I heard Russell was going to be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and was waiting for a bald dude to show up for an embarrassingly long time. 

As far as the movie’s legacy goes, last year I saw Sinners three separate times and on every single watch I thought to myself “Man, this Thing homage seems really out of place” during the garlic scene. There’s something bizarre about watching a movie reference another film in a way that is so obvious that it stands out as over the top to someone that hasn’t even seen the source material. 

So going into this, my expectations are pretty dang high. All I really know is that there’s an alien-monster uh… Thing on the loose in an arctic base, and that it’s capable of imitating people in order to hide in plain sight. It’s a cool concept, and I’m stoked to check it out tomorrow night! Or for you, the reader, I’ll have checked it out right after you scroll past this image of the poster.

Er, well, it’s from the poster. Have you noticed how Google Images just doesn’t work anymore? You can type “The Thing Poster Official” and get one image of the poster with for sale text at the bottom, and then like a million fan posters or ones for entirely separate movies. And then that first image is slightly skewed so you can’t even crop out the extra text cleanly without cutting into the poster itself. It’s cool what happened to the internet. For sure. Yippee!

Okay, so I have officially seen The Thing. Now for the hard part where I have to talk about it. It turns out that it’s very difficult to discuss a film that is universally beloved like this. You either need to have a personal attachment to it (See my Sarah Marshall discussion from last year for an example), or have a few gripes that make you want to tear it down a little (Here’s me doing that with The Shining). My thoughts on The Thing fall into neither of those categories, so forgive me if this is a little scattered. 

First, I want to mention a few things that surprised me. I would never in my life have guessed that this would open with a UFO. I knew that we were dealing with aliens, but didn’t think it would be directly spelled out from the start. And that actually ends up applying to a lot of the movie. It’s very refreshing to see a story that freely hands so much information to the audience. For example, the dog is obviously important from the second it makes it into the base. There aren’t any attempts at redirecting suspicion onto someone else or anything like that. Additionally, the rules of how The Thing works are directly spelled out to the audience in a weird inversion of the classic “Show, Don’t Tell” rule. The scientist fella more or less reads them off like he’s a dungeon master prepping a party for an encounter. This opens up way more room for the movie to play with suspense, ensuring that things are constantly moving along.

That tight pacing also feeds into another shock for me: This isn’t really that scary. There’s a ton of tension, but it’s never broken with a cheap jumpscare. Everything that’s actually unsettling is set up in advance and shot in a way where you’re slowly pulled into the horrific spectacles, rather than suddenly slamming against them. And those bigger moments absolutely live up to the hype. 

The visual effects are genuinely gorgeous in the vile, disgusting way they’re meant to be. Everything looks appropriately slimy and fleshy, but the designs themselves are also perfect. An otherwise completely alien abomination will have just the right amount of recognizable humanity to prevent it from becoming cartoonishly over-the-top. Watching a dude explode into an impossible mess of spidery appendages and guts never got old, and the refusal to reuse designs kept me looking forward to the next version we’d get to see. It’s real good stuff. 

I also absolutely love the ending. Leaving the exact fate of the last two survivors open ended is the perfect way to cap off everything that’s happened so far. There’s a ton for your brain to chew on as the credits roll, and that sensation always feels great. It’s the kind of movie that sticks with you, keeping you up later that night as you mull over the exact details of what you just watched.

So given how positive this has been, I obviously love this movie right? Kinda, but it’s complicated. There are two weird, nagging issues that are not even really the film’s fault, but still bug me just enough to be mentioned. 

The first is that it’s functionally impossible to watch this movie without knowing at least a little bit about it. The impact of seeing the dog transformation scene would hit about 1000x harder if I didn’t already know that this is a movie with incredible practical effects. The same can be said of a lot of the plot. Seeing this kind of story play out in games of Among Us on a daily basis in 2020 cheapened the “it could be any one of us” concept for me. But again, that’s totally not the movie’s fault. 

The second is harder to describe, so I’m just going to be blunt: This just didn’t quite hit right for me. All of the pieces are great and there’s absolutely nothing I would point to as “wrong” or “bad”. It’s just that the sum of those individual parts is not quite on my exact wavelength, even though it’s an undeniably excellent piece of art. If I were a good critic, this is where I would articulate the exact reasons for that disconnect. However, I can’t quite pull them out of my brain.

I think part of it is the lack of any real characters besides Kurt Russell. The rest of the crew gets a single personality trait each, without any effort to develop them. On one hand, I completely understand wanting to center Mac as the main character since Russell is strong enough as an actor to carry the entire film. But on the other, getting to the final 5 or so survivors and still not really knowing anything beyond a surface level fact about the non-Macs felt a little weird. 

There’s also some small parts that haven’t aged super gracefully. Early on there are a few scenes that end with the snow whiting out the screen for a transition. Those are super cool and add a ton to the atmosphere, which makes later scenes that end on a freeze frame and a fade to black feel out of place. Also, even though most of the movie takes place in a single arctic base, the layout never quite makes sense. Characters talk about how easy it would be to get lost traveling between structures in the snow, but in practice it feels like each building is only a few feet away. 

These are very, very minor nitpicks that don’t matter at all in the grand scheme. I honestly feel like an annoying little Cinema Sins watching pedant for even pointing them out. But there’s definitely something to this movie that prevents it from being an all-timer for me, and those are the only tangible things I can point to. 

That said, I do want to end on a pair of positive notes: First, I can now confirm that I now know who Kurt Russell is. I have a theory that all leading man types exist in a spectrum between charismatic every-man and hyper competent badass. Tom Holland is on one end, The Rock is on the other. Russell is pretty much right in the middle, balancing out both sides perfectly.

Second, every outdoor nighttime shot is absurdly striking. Snow has never looked so goddamn BLUE. It’s like a dadgum Eiffel 65 music video out there, I tell you hwat.

Finally, that scene with the Garlic in Sinners is still really dumb, the back half of that movie is such a weird little mess. 

Does that count as an outro? Should I make more of these? If so, what should I watch? If you’re reading this, you probably know me personally so just like, text your recommendations to me? I guess? I dunno. Goodbye!