The Bride! (2/5 Stars)

By Wikipedia’s count, there have been 494 movies, 248 short films, 105 TV series, and 420 TV series that have featured Frankenstein’s monster. Of those, there have been 5-10 adaptations of actual novel by Mary Shelley into feature length films, depending on how fast and loose with the source material you allow a movie to be and count it as an adaptation of the source material. Frankenstein is notable for the sheer amount of adaptations and references of the book and its monster relative to the fact that there isn’t a single good movie in all of them to actually recommend. This streak of adaptive failures is, to my knowledge, the longest running and most numerous string of clunkers in movie history. It dates all the way back to the silent era and adds several new examples of rubbish seemingly every year.

The most famous movies, those from Universal Studios in the 1930s, starring Boris Karloff are terrible. The monster in those movies can’t even talk, depriving the audience of any exploration of the book’s philosophical themes. The best thing about this version of the monster is the makeup and hairstyling. Fast-forward to Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation just last year in 2025 and you will find a sexy monster, played by Jacob Elordi, that is oddly immortal, once again confounding the themes of the novel and entirely missing the point. Now we have The Bride! which seeks to layer-on a confusing and anachronistic #MeToo contrivance to, yet again, an underdeveloped if not completely written off exploration of the book’s themes. The best movie to feature Frankenstein’s monster is still Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, which also doesn’t explore the book’s themes, but didn’t have to because it was a parody of all the previous movies that also didn’t utilize those themes. All it had to be was funny, and it was. (The Bride! randomly utilizes the song "Puttin' on the Ritz" at one point, which means writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has seen Young Frankenstein and wants us to know that she knows about it).

What is “Frankenstein” about? There has been a good adaptation of it, Director Danny Boyle and Writer Nick Dear’s play for the London’s National Theater starring Johnny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch. (During COVID, the National Theater made certain performances available for streaming for a limited time. This was one of them and I was very happy to see it on a TV screen). In that play, the whole prologue up to the creation of the monster is omitted. It starts in the point of view of the monster, as he is being “born” into a world of pain and darkness. The monster's first interaction with a human being is his creator screaming in horror and abandoning him to fend for himself. The monster, through trials and tribulations, manages to survive, even to learn language and to read books, one of them Paradise Lost by John Milton. But hostility stalks his lonely days as the people blanch from his hideous form and repeatedly try to hurt and kill him. Finally, he meets up with his creator and has an articulate discussion with him about why he was created, and who owes what, if anything, to whom. This conversation is not unlike one that we, the human species, may have with our God, that elusive deity that put us here amongst unforgiving nature for no objective rhyme or reason. From the play:

Creature: Here is my request. I wish to be part of society. But no human being will associate with me. But one of my own kind - one just as deformed and horrible - she would understand - she would -

Victor: What, I-

Creature: I want a female. Built like me.

Victor: A female?

Creature: You alone have the power to-

Victor: Create another brute - another monster? No, I will not, I -

Creature: It is my right!

Victor: You have no rights. You are a slave. You want me to make you a female so the pair of you can be wicked together? No, I will not. Torture me as much as you like, I’ll never consent!

Creature: I will not torture you. I will reason with you. Isn’t that what we do? Have a dialogue?

Victor: There is no dialogue with killers!

Creature: Yet you’d kill me if you could! Why, you have just tried! So why is your killing justified, and mine is not?

Victor: I won’t argue with you! My god, I’m halfway up a mountain, debating with a - a -

Creature: A living creature!

Victor: A nothing, a filthy mass of nothing! I am your master, you should show respect -

Creature: A master has duties — you left me to die! I am not a slave. I am free. If you deny my request I will make you my enemy, I will work at your destruction. I will dedicate myself, I won’t rest until I desolate your heart!

What a delicious and interesting subject matter this is. And, to my knowledge, no adaptation of Frankenstein in the movie format has ever used it. The Bride! is no exception. The book does not really have a take on Frankenstein’s bride. The creature is alive for about 30 seconds. In the original Universal Studios Bride of Frankenstein movie, the bride is in only one scene before also dying. Again, the best thing about the Bride of Frankenstein is her makeup and hairstyling.

Here, the Bride, played by Jessica Buckley, is not really in the same position as the monster, played by Christian Bale. It is the 1920s, (the monster is immortal which still makes no sense) and has apparently been wandering the earth for about one hundred years. His bodily condition is just as hideous. He won’t die but he also won’t heal. He asks a new scientist, Dr. Euphronius, played by Annette Bening (who is a woman, credit please) to create for him a bride. They find a recently deceased young woman, in fact she is a victim of a homicide, hook her up to some fancy equipment and shock her to life.

Unlike the relationship between Frankenstein and his monster, see above, the monster adores the Bride! and would do anything for her. But there is a problem that simply cannot be overlooked. The monster didn’t seek her permission before bringing her back to life. There was no consent. #MeToo

Here is another big difference. Whereas, the general populace reeled in horror at the sight of Frankentsein’s monster and tried to kill him, the populace here is overcome with lust for the Bride and repeatedly tries to rape her. Now, I’m not a rape expert, but it is my general understanding that most rapes are committed between people who know each other in isolated places, and when it is occurs between strangers, it also happens in isolated places. It is of course, a serious crime, even in the 1920s, and men generally don’t commit serious crimes when there are witnesses around.

In this movie, upon being created, the Bride seeks the joy of life by dancing in a speakeasy. She catches the eye of some neer-do-well-men, and as she is being escorted by the monster (She calls him Frank for some reason) out of this public venue onto a public street, these two men assault both her and Frank with the aim of (I’m pretty sure) raping her. And this isn’t the only time this occurs in this movie. Near the end, Frank and the Bride are pulled over by a traffic cop on the side of the road. Frank lies down and hides his face as if he is sleeping to try to hide the fact that he is a wanted monster. The cop decides that this would be a good time to direct the Bride to exit the vehicle and attempt to rape her.

The rapes don’t occur becuase Frank, the uber-strong monster, kills the rapists. That might be the most realistic part of these scenarios. It is a bad idea to rape a man’s woman in front of him, doubly so if he is a big strong monster. You think society would understand, but no, Frank and the Bride become wanted criminals and escape onto the local highways like Bonnie and Clyde.

A lot of this movie is needlessly contrived. For obvious reasons, Frank and the Bride’s murderous actions are justified even if the scenarios which prompt those actions are severely implausible. At other times, other equally implausible scenarios prompt behavior which is not justified at all. In one scene, The Bride draws a gun and waves it around wildly at a high society gathering (I forget exactly why). The cops show up, draw all of their guns…but don’t shoot The Bride, even though she is waving around a loaded gun in a crowded room of people. After a tense standoff, the Bride shoots a cop. Then the cops start shooting but none of them can aim straight enough to hit Bride as she makes her escape. The movie then argues that the Bride was acting in self-defense in such a scenario. That is stupid.

When implausible scenarios are met with justified actions that the world doesn’t understand, and unjustified actions that the movie insists are reasonable, then you have a movie that doesn’t work on a basic level. And these basic problems are not helped by the writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal's ability to shoe-horn the phrase “Me Too, Me Too!” in one of the Bride’s wild speeches near the end. I don’t give out points for that.As is tradition in Frankenstein adaptations, the best thing about this movie is the makeup and hairstyling.

Hey, imagine if Andy Serkis adapted Nick Dear’s play for the movie screen and played both Frankenstein in person and also the monster utilizing motion capture. Someone should make that movie.

Night Moves (3/5 Stars)

I would have a hard time explaining why I go to Kelly Reichartdt movies. There is a reason you can only see them in New York City (a few select others) and then maybe only in one theater. They are tiny movies. The pace is slow. The plot bare-boned. The direction is simplistic. This may remind you of other low budget auteurs. Perhaps the dudes in the French Wave, or Ingrid Bergman, or an early David Lynch film. But I hate those other guys. Why did I pay a ticket to see Kelly Reichardt?

I think it might be because Kelly Reichardt lacks pretension. There is very little that is abstract about her movies. Her movies are small not because they are metaphors about larger things. They are small because the subjects are small and Kelly is interested in small things and that’s it. Her best movie, Wendy and Lucy, is about a woman and a dog that takes place over a couple of days as her car breaks down and she tries to get it fixed. The remarkable thing about it is the combination of how specific it is about its subject combined with how little it seems the movie wants you to feel a specific emotion toward the subject. Kelly Reichardt seems to be a competent enough director to make bigger movies that have more to say but her scope stays restrained and her purpose ambiguous to the point where her art achieves a sort of rarefied quality to it. These are serious dramas, sometimes about life and death issues, but they are handled in the complete opposite of a heavy-handed manner.  I always feel especially comfortable watching a Kelly Reichardt film.

“Night Moves,” concerns the simple plans of three environmental terrorists in Oregon, played by Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard. Jesse and Dakota live on separate organic farms. Peter is a contact Jesse has that used to be a marine and lives in the woods. He can make a bomb that will blow up a little dam. It won’t really matter because there are 10 other dams on the river but it seems to them that something must be done and blowing up this little dam may just get people talking about I don’t know taking down the others. The movie concerns itself the most with Jesse Eisenberg who probably at the beginning thinks he is in charge of this operation. But little by little his idea of being in charge becomes more and more marginalized to the point he seems to be acting randomly by the end. And maybe the point is that this would be world changer was just acting randomly the entire time, lashing out more in chaotic frustration as opposed to purposeful planning. I don’t know. Kelly refuses to lecture me. I won’t give away what exactly happens other than to say that true to form Kelly has the bomb explode offscreen midway through and throws a rather unexpected wrench into the ending.

Jesse Eisenberg’s performance is at once granularly specific and mostly opaque. It’s not that he doesn’t have feelings and thoughts. He just has nobody to speak about them with. More ambiguous is the characters of Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard. Their most dramatic moments are kept offscreen for the benefit of profoundly confusing Jesse’s idea of what was his life’s narrative. At one point he stands in the woods staring at his trembling hands. Boy, wouldn’t you like to know what he is thinking.

What was it all about? Is this really how these terrible things happen? 

Jarhead 11/09/05

"All wars are different. All wars are the same. Mine lasted four days, four hours and one minute." says Swofford, the jarhead. Desert Storm itself was such a joke that most of the army wasn't needed. All the U.N. needed were planes, which shot the hell out of Saddam's troops before the troops could get there. In fact, you don't see any real combat in this movie. Just bomb drops in the distance. The closest Swofford comes to getting hurt is friendly fire. That was the gulf war. That's all it was. Just a lot of hanging out in the desert, four days of nervousness, then everyone went home. 
This movie captures it perfectly, and the reason that this is just a good war film and not a great one, has more to do with the not-so-great war, then the film. I have to mention Roger Deaken's, the director of photography for this film. At times he creates the illusion that the soldier's are occupying works of art, not Iraq. Of great beauty are the oil fires, caused by Saddam. They blaze with glory in the Arabian sun, and I was awed by the magnificence of the hell imposed by them. A perfect backdrop of the movie and the war itself. I think what we all remember from Desert Storm more than anything else were those great plumes of Fire out in the middle of the nothingness of the Arabian desert. That's how this war was different.