Like a lot of you, achieving and maintaining concentration has been a real motherfucker these past few weeks. Blame COVID-19, sure, but it’s also hard to keep your thoughts in order when your country is being governed by a hideous mass murderer posing as a mediocre real estate gangster. That’s the part that scares me personally. A pandemic is scary, yeah, but there’s a process that can be applied to it, at best, minimizing its damage. We literally can’t do that, and every single one of us knows why.

So, yeah, that has been relentlessly on my mind. To the point where it took me five whole minutes to finish writing this sentence, as well as the last one.

In the spirit of that, I’m going on with my routine. To keep that going, and to get to the actual reviews in this month’s columns, I’m going to lean on the tactic of brief, unrelated thoughts about film. This is the stuff currently rattling around in my head. It’s stuff I would probably tweet, if I used Twitter a little more often.

Then I’ll review some movies. I may not be essential, but the arts sure as hell are.

• What was the last movie you saw in theaters? Mine was Bad Boys for Life. It was good to see Martin Lawrence actually awake for something for a change.

• I don’t really miss movie theaters at the moment. I’ve been falling out of love with going to the movies for a while now.

• People watching pandemic movies right now kind of weird me out. What, the news isn’t good enough for you?

• I take back everything I ever said about Burt Lancaster being boring.

• Bela Lugosi was a better actor than he ever got credit for.

• If you don’t put Nicolas Cage somewhere in your Tiger King movie, you’re doing it wrong. No, he’s not Joe, but he needs to be somewhere in that inevitable release. Carole’s second husband? Fuck with people by putting him in the least-exciting part.

• A documentary about the disgraced, tragic Chris Benoit is fine by me. I hope it is never made into a biopic.

• As long as celebrities can stay in simple rooms and not sing shitty John Lennon tunes, I don’t care what they do on social media.

• To that end, I really hope you’re following Sam Neil on Twitter.

• I guess this is as good a time as any to finally watch The Fast and the Furious franchise. I haven’t seen a single one. Not by design. It’s just on that endless to-do list.

On with the rodeo. The clowns will stay at least six feet away from you at all times, so don’t worry.

Faraway, So Close! (1993): B-

Guys, I’m so cool, I didn’t even know this movie existed until very, very recently. Obscure sequels are some of my favorite finds. Faraway, So Close!, a follow-up to Wim Wenders’ 1987 classic Wings of Desire, is one of the most surprising. Wenders doesn’t strike you as a sequel kind of guy. Wings of Desire, despite an American remake in the ’90s with Nicolas Cage, never struck me as a movie where we might pick up with its characters once again.

But the Berlin Wall fell. From that historic event, Wenders found an interest in revisiting former angels Damiel (Bruno Ganz, who is extremely entertaining throughout) and the newly-human Cassiel (Otto Sander). Other characters from Wings of Desire show up. This includes Peter Falk, once again playing himself, and proving that his presence was always welcome. You can even pretend Faraway, So Close! Is a mini-Columbo episode. Well, I did.

Faraway, So Close! doesn’t have the somber march of longing the first film did. The plot and various characters dip into circumstances that at times are a good deal more absurd than most of Wim Wenders’ work. The silliness of this movie still finds moments as deeply and impressively human as Wings of Desire, which makes the movie as a whole one of the strangest from one our best living filmmakers. I liked almost all of it, but I have a feeling some people are going to be disappointed in slapstick, a heavy dose of the spiritual, and appearances from Lou Reed and Mikhail Gorbachev.

VFW (2019): B+

A group of war veterans square off against a drug dealer and dozens of his most loyal junkies. Under the right circumstances, and with the right cast, the premise is flawless exploitation entertainment. Thankfully, both of these requirements come through in gory, spectacular, and relentlessly enjoyable fashion in VFW. A clever, quick-paced screenplay by Max Brallier and Matthew McArdle is supported by the ever-evolving, fascinating Joe Begos.

Everything you could want from a movie like VFW is here—from the sharp soundtrack, to the excellent editing, and effects makeup. Still, the most pleasing aspect of the movie by far is in watching legendary actors like Stephen Lang, Fred Williamson, William Sadler, George Wendt, Martin Kove, and David Patrick Kelly put to good use in a deeply satisfying action horror movie. This is a career highlight for every single one of them.

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936): B-

Finally watching this nearly 20 years after the Adam Sandler remake (which is something I’ve always liked) was a weird experience. What surprises me the most is just how much the 2002 Sandler vehicle kept from the classic 1936 film. Right down to the outfits Winona Ryder’s character wears throughout the film. The originals on Jean Arthur are beat-for-beat similar. The character is, too.

However, no one could play that tough-but-tender ball of intensity and sarcasm like Jean Arthur. Likewise, no one quite encapsulates the impossibility of someone as good-hearted and straightforward as Longfellow Deeds as Gary Cooper did in 1936. Director Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) had a very specific, arguably unique type of American optimism. It gets a little hard to take with the story of a small-town poet who discovers he is the sole heir of a massive fortune. The movie is still engaging at this point, although a lot of that appeal is in seeing Cooper and Arthur get us to like these strange archetypes in the first place.

Spirits of the Dead (1968): C-

A 1968 anthology film of three Edgar Allan Poe stories, each directed by some of Europe’s most famous directors of the time? It sounds fine. This is especially true, since we’re talking about Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. However, the end result is the same kind of problem a lot of anthology films have.

The best anthology movies hit you with one good story after another. Most of them unfortunately leave you with 1-2 good segments, followed by one that can be lousy enough to be an insult to the ambition of actively trying to derail momentum. Here, that happens to be Roger Vadim’s “Metzengerstein,” which is as tedious as the characters are dislikable. Fellini’s “Toby Dammit” is just a shade better, feeling more like a disjointed trailer for his favorite themes than something that might be considered a story. Terence Stamp saves it from also being boring.

The only segment that particularly shines is “William Wilson.” Not only does it offer memorable performances from Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot, it also depicts a vicious portrayal of a truly irredeemable man. The desperate last steps of the dammed was a Poe specialty. Of the three filmmakers who work with that idea here, only Louis Malle seemed to really get it.

The Train (1964): A+

I hope the fact that John Frankenheimer was one of the best action directors who has ever lived is not something lost to time. Most things are, but the breathless pace and battered heroes of his best films are as exciting as they have ever been. The Train, which was also briefly directed by Arthur Penn (who was fired early on by star Burt Lancaster), is not Frankenheimer’s most well-known movie at this point.

The Train is unquestionably one of the best examples of just how far ahead of the curb he was, particularly at setting grim-faced heroes against rapid-fire tornados of chaos and fate. In the case of this film, the heroes are cynical men and women from the French Resistance at the end of the Second World War. The villain is primarily a Nazi making anxious moves to get a bunch of stolen art out of Germany before the Allies roll into town. The world around them eventually becomes such a force as the movie’s true antagonist that the actions and efforts of these men, as (mostly) good or evil as they might be, become inadequate.

As the movie reaches a memorable finale, the trade-off for this much well-executed tension is the knowledge that no one really saves the day for their respective sides. Some get to walk away, but the movie makes it clear that this is, at best, a consolation prize. Made all the worse by someone like Lancaster’s weary protagonist unsure of what it was honestly all about.

Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.