I had to rank a bunch of A24 movies recently and came to the conclusion that even if I hated absolutely every movie they released, I’d still be glad they exist at all. It’s sort of like my thing with Full Moon Features, although there’s a handful of titles there I love. I’m not a big fan of Full Moon, but it’s awesome that they continue to release movies their fans want to see, and that they’re doing what they want outside of the system.

We’re not revolutionaries about cinema or anything at Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo, but as I age and as studios devalue film as much as they possibly can—and some want to go back to the way things were, but sorry, the train’s left the station and companies like Warner Bros and Disney have fucked us all—I put more and more of a premium on studios and individuals who are still finding ways to tell their stories. The days of doing one for the studio and one for yourself, which Martin Scorsese has talked about before, are seemingly long gone. If anything, we’re going backwards with filmmakers who release something exciting and relatively original, and then find themselves with nothing on the table but big budget IP offers. It’s a great system if we don’t really care about master artists handing down their works to the next generation. Who cares? The property is all that fucking matters now.

There’s still room for all of it, as I’ve tried to emphasize for well over a decade at this point, but the people with money don’t think so. Nor do the acolytes of superhero movies and tentpole features, who treat any desire for variety or exhaustion with temper tantrums that give toddlers pause. All of this makes those who are still releasing movies interested solely in their story and their audience all the more valuable to me on paper alone.

A24 releases a wider range of movies than they get credit for. That’s probably the misconception about them that bugs me the most. It’s not that they’re only doing weird arthouse shit. It’s that the list of companies still trying to prove people want to see lots of different kinds of movies is practically non-existent these days. Easier to be extraordinary when most of your competition is getting more creatively conservative than ever.

Blood Vessel (2019): D+

We’re trying something new this month at the movie rodeo. The reviews will start with the movie that has the lowest score, and then we’ll work our way out of (sometimes) Hell and up on into (probably) Heaven. Why? Why the hell not.

And if all of that sounds really stupid, we’ll save it until I finally get around to starting a cult.

Blood Vessel is the sort of movie where I would rather stall for time than actually discuss its finer points. There aren’t very many, which surprises me as the premise, involving Nazi occult dealings and a boat full of World War II cliches winding up on a Nazi ship known as a minesweeper, should be an easy win with me. I’m still surprised that I found myself repeatedly struggling to maintain interest in a grimy, bleak, and thoroughly ugly movie. A dark, mean-spirited film would be fine, but contrived surprises and a plodding plot make it hard to appreciate the times in which Blood Vessel delivers effective shock and interest. It also doesn’t help that none of these characters are particularly interesting and are being chased by a relentless force of evil that isn’t very fun to look at.

Blood Vessel just doesn’t give me anything to focus on and enjoy. Despite good performances from this cast, especially Alyssa Sutherland (Evil Dead Rise) as a British nurse, the material just doesn’t support that with anything that grabs your attention. This undercuts the movie’s few moments of tension, built by some good editing and lighting. This is another one of those movies where there’s a lot more to appreciate than actually like.

F/X (1986): C-

A franchise (there was a 1991 sequel and some mid-90s syndicated Canadian TV silliness) largely lost to time. I wish I had the late ’80s cable TV memories of watching this that some people seem to have. You might have fond memories of this surprisingly successful action movie about a movie special effects expert (Bryan Brown) who helps the Department of Justice with a dangerous mob trial. I remember it being on a lot as a kid, but I don’t remember ever actually enjoying it. There was nothing for me to come back to when I watched it for the first time in about 30 years a few months back. The more-or-less fresh experience of watching it now left me thinking that I hadn’t completely wasted my time. Maybe about 60% was wasted.

Maybe it’s just that my brain keeps wishing it was Roy Scheider instead of Bryan Brown. A good actor, Brown’s character here isn’t as charming or impressive as the script seems to think he is. Most of this movie, when you aren’t entertained by Brian Dennehy acting like a cheerful lunatic asshole, feels like the film is trying incredibly hard to convince me that this is all very exciting. It should be, and the movie does maintain a tight story of what happens when the initial job is completely fucked, culminating in a very entertaining second half, but that’s more about good editing and having a good concept to execute at long last. When this movie actually has to deal with its characters, or advance the story in interesting ways, the results are a lot more mixed.

Reform School Girls (1986): B-

Reform School Girls sustains its spoof of women’s prison movie tropes a lot longer than you might think. I’ve been meaning to watch this for years, knowing it by a mixed reputation because some people are just not going to enjoy spoofs no matter how hard they or the movie tries. They’re a little hit or miss with me, but Tom DeSimone used his experience directing actual women in prison films to give Reform School Girls the balance it needs to be a spoof that continues to be funny because the characters and the story independent of what it’s lampooning are as much fun as the jokes.

It also helps Reform School Girls remain so consistently entertaining when you have a cast that includes Wendy O. Williams, Pat Ast, and Sybil Danning. Everyone gets the tone of the satire, playing their characters and assortment of expected moments and scenes with this genre (shower scenes, abusive warden scenes etc) with just the right energy between sincere and understanding the joke. You don’t even have to really know anything about these movies to enjoy the odd tone and over-the-top performances, although it would obviously help a little. Linda Carol as the mixed-up-mostly-good girl Jenny is also part of the charm, as her mostly straight performance plays well off the movie shifting between an actual story and a generally funny caricature of exploitation film.

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985): B+

Do we miss Daniel Day-Lewis yet? It’s been six years since his final performance in Phantom Thread. Movies like My Beautiful Laundrette, an early win for his intensity, charisma, and unsettling dedication to character deep dives, leave me half-hoping he gets bored and comes back for something.

It’s okay if he doesn’t, since we have movies like this story of two very different young men (Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke) reconnecting a relationship and trying to get a struggling launderette off the ground. My Beautiful Laundrette makes something intimate and even profound out of the ordinary, with a story that has drama but never at a pitch that feels crass or overbearing. Our main characters are distinct and interesting, and their evolving relationship plays to the best of not only these fully realized people on the screen, but the actors playing them, as well.

The rest of the cast of My Beautiful Laundrette is like that, leading a multitude of smaller stories that connect with our main narrative quite well when the movie’s brisk pace and 97-minute running time come to a head. Everything hits a satisfying conclusion, with director Stephen Frears (still turning out good movies in his 80s) overseeing a balance. I’m not surprised this was originally going to be a TV movie but got a theatrical run after running raves at a film festival. It makes important the minute on a larger and more memorable scale than you’re expecting.

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986): A+

The entire 1980s run Francis Ford Coppola had, when studied as a whole, reads like a fever dream. There’s certainly something for just about everyone, with the time-traveling fantasy comedy drama Peggy Sue Got Married perhaps being the most accessible of anything from this period. It’s still a bizarre depiction of a story that uses some unexplained form of magic or divine intervention to send Peggy Sue Bodell (Kathleen Turner with another really good 80s performance) back to her senior year of high school. It’s a simple premise that doesn’t worry about attaching logic to what’s happening to Peggy. Instead, the movie runs on the momentum of building interesting characters that are played to perfection by this cast. Peggy Sue Got Married also often brilliantly uses Peggy as a character to create some surprising reactions on her part to everything that unfolds.

Peggy Sue Got Married does make full use of the wish fulfilment fantasy side of this movie, with Peggy getting to spend time with her parents, turn down her future husband—Nicolas Cage, making the sort of unique choices with the character Charlie that we continue to watch him make to this day—and sleep with the cool loner artist. Some of that we expect, but again, Kathleen Turner’s performance creates uniqueness to Peggy, and she doesn’t always take this movie in the direction we’re expecting.

Really, that’s the best way to describe Peggy Sue Got Married. It was a pleasant, impressively deep at times, and overall strange surprise in 1986, and none of that has aged poorly.

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.