Foreign Shudders & Old Americana: BFTW 7/11/25

After nearly a year without Shudder, the spooky streaming service is back in my life. Actually, I signed up for AMC+, which includes the Shudder catalog among its many wares (wares that bafflingly include only a few episodes of IFC's Documentary Now!). There aren’t as many new-to-me titles as I hoped, and exploring the depths of the menu remains frustratingly difficult. Still, I was glad to finally see The Rule Of Jenny Pen. Geoffrey Rush plays a proud judge sent to a nursing home to recover from a stroke. The care facility's dull, anomic atmosphere wouldn’t inspire much hope in anyone, even if John Lithgow wasn’t hiding among the clientele, pretending to be infirm for the staff before creeping around at night, making the other patients lick his hand puppet to avoid bullying and torture.

I’m always down to see Lithgow squint with demented hatred, but I’ve seen too many Brian DePalma movies to forget this mode is in his wheelhouse. Unlike 3rd Rock From The Sun fans, I wasn't traumatized by his Dexter season. So it was Geoffrey Rush who surprised me, conveying the terror and determination of someone losing control of his facilities when he needs them most. James Ashcroft’s direction helps plenty, highlighting the nightmare of decrepitude and dementia without dehumanizing its victims. 

Cinematically, Lithgow’s cruel Dave Crealy provides the engine for dramatic set pieces and moments of extreme dread. But what elevates Jenny Pen above age-sploitation is how Rush’s indignant judge and George Henare’s shamed rugby star are compelled to distinguish between what must be accepted when your time is running down, and what doesn’t. Impending mortality is easy to make gripping, and so is a psychotic dance routine from John Lithgow in a bathrobe. But to make room for both in your movie? That’s impressive. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

I was shocked I'd never heard of Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter before spotting it on Shudder last week, despite the film coming out almost twenty years ago. Plus, it's got Kevin Corrigan, James LeGros, Ron Perlman, Connie Britton, Zach Gilford and a deadly arctic landscape perfect to appreciate such character actors in. Initially, it seemed like my hopes for a low-budget post-climate change The Thing would be achieved. For the first half or so, we get these champs slipping in and out of snowsuits, debating whether their drilling is ecologically sound, and wondering if it’s guilt, claustrophobia or something spookier that’s making everybody extremely stir crazy. Unfortunately, the problem turns out to be cheap, metaphor-killing, ‘00s-era CGI. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

In 1971’s Born To Win, George Segal plays J, an amiable junkie stuck in a madcap hell he can’t get out of, even when he bothers to try. The first American film by Czech New Wave writer/director Ivan Passer, Win has a casually cavalier tone that stands out even among the many comedies and dramas set in the squalor of ’70s New York City. While it’s not crucial to enjoying the movie, learning Passer had just escaped Communist rule alongside collaborator Milos Forman helps explain the film’s sympathy for J despite his dubious morality: a desperate need for escape requires both abandoning people you love, and making yourself vulnerable to others. 

While Segal and Karen Black both made plenty of antiheroic, counter-cultural classics in this period, Win is the only one they’re in together, achieving an unhinged romantic chemistry based on mutual need and unreliability. The film was supposedly edited to be more comic than intended during production, and in a sense it plays as the most comic moments of a miserable story. Familiar faces include Hector Elizondo as a contemptuous dealer (his future Gary Marshall roles only make his geniality more disturbing) and Robert DeNiro as a second banana cop. DeNiro was reportedly almost fired for clearly being above ensemble work, but whatever attention-pulling jive he tried was edited out. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

Right before I watched Sinners, I failed to get through Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu. The visuals were dramatic enough that I thought I’d manage, and I may try again. But I had to stop when I realized that, for the first time in my life, I felt like rewatching Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If I'm going to watch this story for the umpteenth time, I’d rather watch men cheat death and cross oceans for Winona Ryder than a consumptive nepo baby. I’d also rather watch Gary Oldman priss it up than see Bill Skarsgard so badly misused, belching in the shadows behind a giant ‘stache like an undead Eugene Hutz. But my take on all things Eggers is that he should be having a lot more fun if he’s going to be so damn derivative.

Like most of Earth, I didn’t see much cause to celebrate the 4th Of July as far as America the institution goes. But, faithful humanist I try to be, I started the day watching The Last Waltz, about a group of Canadians (and an Arkansan drummer whose distinctive style came from his blocked view of bands at segregated concerts) so in love with American music that Bob Dylan asked them to help him popularize folk-rock. After more than a decade of adventures with and without Bob, they decided to wrap things up with a big concert featuring Bob, The Staples Singers, Dr. John, Neil Diamond, Muddy Waters, a few more Canadian immigrants and some visiting Europeans who eventually turned out to have problematic politics, but did genuinely love American music. A third-generation Italian immigrant filmed it, letting the band (now known as The Band) explain what it was like to move to America and why they bothered. If you look at this country from the bottom up, you can find stuff to be proud of. POPCORN CLASSIC.

Popcorn talk is explained here. If you want to suggest Shudder shit I might not have seen, or ask about anything else, try anthonyisright at gmail dot com.