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Little Monsters 1989

★★★★

16 Jan 2025

TrashVHS’s review published on Letterboxd:

This review may contain spoilers.

There is just something so comforting about a live action family film where the kids swear. Fucking absurd to me that swearing is even a thing the MPAA (or any other adult human being) is concerned about. Aside from slurs (some of which are not even considered swears) which carry extra connotations they are all just meaningless sentence modifiers or synonyms for other non swears kids are generally allowed to say as if euphemisms are somehow different. Human beings terrified of their own words they created now that's some goofy bullshit. When I was a kid it was during that late 80s early 90s window when it was normal to swear in kids films. Let kids swear IRL who gives a shit they most likely are behind your back.

Most of the time on letterboxd I try to review films I have never seen before because my watchlist already has more films on it than I will probably get to in my lifetime, but my true default nature is to find a film I love and watch it on a regular basis, some films every day or at times in my life multiple times in one day. With that in mind I am attempting to work some essential rewatch films into this years reviews particularly because I want to do an updated ranking of every film I have reviewed and there are so many of my favorite films I have not reviewed on here (a handful have audio reviews I did before joining letterboxd if you know where to look). Along with my all time favorites are films I fondly remember from childhood I want to revisit which brings us to Little Monsters.

If I remember correctly this was one of a handful of films throughout my elementary school years that my Grandma recorded for me on VHS. Probably because as people who lived so far in the middle of nowhere (I was an adult and they were long dead before their neighborhood even showed up on google maps) they were by far the earliest people I knew who got satellite television. I only remember watching Little Monsters a few times though so we must have reused the VHS to tape something else. That's how good we had it then, look up 1980s and 1990s film release dates, sometimes we would get multiple new masterpieces in the same weekend week after week month after month so we could cast shit like this aside without a second thought because more was always on the way. Now I am lucky to love maybe 5 films a year and that's being generous.

In a world full of lost media I wish I still had every tape I ever recorded because I am sure there was something interesting on most of them. I really only became a fan of Howie Mandel in recent years having never looked into his work before and when I realized he played Maurice in this childhood favorite I knew Little Monsters was due for a rewatch.

For the most part this shit still fucking rules. Some aspects have not aged to well or feel different as an adult such as Howie Mandel and Fred Savage creeping into childrens rooms/beds while they are asleep or occasionally some of the shit Maurice says to Fred Savage's character as well as 'pantsed’ him. Remember when that bullshit was acceptable? The film also has some pacing issues in the third act but otherwise this is still what I enjoy out of cinema. Some very fun visual character design with Maurice in addition to being blue and having horns they also have spikey teeth which they use as a can opener, head boil expansion body horror whenever they encounter light, and an all time favorite pops their eyes out of their head. There is also a great scene where Maurice’s hand turns into a dog and chews up a child's homework. Many of Maurice's jokes don't land but it does not matter hes supposed to be a little annoying and I will take dimestore Beetlejuice/Freddy vibes anyday I find it endearing.

Speaking of endearing there are some real Halloweentown monster vibes here where there is occasionally a really cool looking public domain friendly monster but a lot of it is just people in weird face paint but who cares because its a whole monster community. There are two great villains in the final act one who is like a hairy nightmare version of Maurice who decapitates a child and the other is a kind of a prep school lookin monster (maybe in a human skin suit?) Who gets their face blown off. In the films big battle the human kids also have to dodge saw blades in the floor and miniature tanks that shoot live rounds, there is even a bazooka shot at them at one point. Luckily Maurice shows up with a flame thrower and torches the blue guy!

I love those moments but this film is at its strongest when its just Maurice and Fred Savage's character goofing off and pranking children who were most likely beaten by their 20th century parents. I know my dad wouldn't have believed me and woulda beat me for sure. Piss in the applejuice is an all timer though and one of the core memories I retained from this gradeschool feverdream film. In the monster world they have an arcade and they play a game called Monster Ball where they swipe items from kids houses and break them during a game of baseball then place them back in their homes.

There is a scene where a sack lunch gets chucked out a schoolbus window. Reminded me of a story my best friend in HS told me about his old school when the kids on his bus filled up a glass bottle with all sorts of disgusting things then chucked it out the window into a parked convertible when the bus drove by. Also Daniel Stern is here! We do not get a whole lot of him anymore I really do not know his filmography that well but I have always liked him. There is all sorts of great cheap but effective blue and red lighting in the monster world or during the night in the bedrooms. The Talking Heads closing credits needle drop is fun but imagine what a much needed dopamine boost that could have been in the middle of the film when they are running around monster world having fun or when they are preparing to fight the villains. Love that when the song is over it switches to audio of Maurice munching on doritos over the credits.

Little Monsters is exactly in my sweet spot for tone and visual style but the few issues I mentioned hold it back from being a masterpiece. Still I like it plenty. Will watch again (and again).

Four stars out of five.

#movie review #film review #subjective curiosities #trash vhs #letterboxd #Little Monsters #Howie Mandel #1989 #1980s

A Few Thoughts on Stirner: This is a response to the recent 2 parter Max Stirner episode of The Partially Examined Life Podcast: https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2025/01/06/ep358-1-stirner/ It's a great podcast check it out.

Don't know if y'all read these since I am not behind the paywall but I wanted to throw a few thoughts in. Even though I disagree with most of the hosts readings overall I did find the discussion interesting as always and there were plenty of individual interpretations I did agree with. I had a similar reading when I encountered Stirner's writings for the first time but have changed my mind since. I have read both English translations of The Unique and Its Property a few times as well as Stirner's Critics and other writings from and about Stirner including pretty much the only real attempt at a record of his life where basically everything we know about the historical person is sourced since it was created by interviewing the few living people who knew him: “Max Stirner His Life and His Work” written by John Henry Mackay.

Stirner's Critics is his only follow up to this work which he wrote in third person responding to three critiques (Szeliga, Feuerbach, Hess) of The Unique and It's Property. I highly recommend reading this and the forward to Wolfi Landstreicher’s 21st century translation of The Unique and It’s Property. I do not agree with everything Wolfi reads into Stirner (Though Wolfi certainly makes it his own and is an interpretation I like and make use of personally something that seems very in spirit with what Stirner writes about), but he briefly provides so much needed context lacking in the Byington translation. He takes more care in what words he uses in his translation along with providing explanations of those choices.

Part of the right-wing recuperation of Stirner is because the translation you guys read (and only English translation until the 21st century) was commissioned by market anarchists. He inspired the first queer print journal in history I am aware of, The Bonnot Gang in France, and many more socialist minded projects (Unions and what not) as well as trying (and failing) to operate a co-operative milk shop.

Still the icky feeling his book gives off by his seemingly weaselly unsatisfying decision to not over clarify or spend nearly as much time on a positive project or some sort of to do list to respond to is a fair critique but the point is to apply his ideas of autonomy, insurrection, and free association to your own unique perspective and that is where you find the positive project in your own subjective life experience. This is intentional. For one thing I believe Stirner is merely stating how he lives his life (still he did publish an illegal book about it publicly implying some kind of desire for engaging others). As well as letting his drinking buddies at Hippel’s Wine Bar (The Young Hegelians minus Marx who never met him in person) know he thinks they are fixing the old limitations of Hegel and each critique after by simply making new limitations or giving the old ones new names. Neither here nor there but by most accounts Stirner was a mild mannered friendly joy to have drinks with.

The unique itself is like Debord's Spectacle (giving it a specific one sentence thesis definition is not desirable) or even more so the Dao. Stirner had Hegel as a professor who taught Eastern Philosophy so I do no think it is just a coincidence that he wrote in this way. He of course in turn influenced the Daoist anarchist Jun Tsuji continuing the circle. You cannot limit it simply by language or subject object. It is a self devoid of any fixed attributes put upon it. It is so specific it cannot be generalized. Your property is everything that exists in your reality. Thoughts, relationships, people, ideologies, and how you use them. My friend is my property when they make me smile when I think about them. The shovel I borrow is my property when I am using it and when it is no longer useful to me I discard it. Even though it is back in my friends ownership it is still my property because I know I can borrow it or steal it or buy it from them again. Properties is a synonym for attributes (details of an object, action, or thought) as much as it means any kind of literal possession of something.

There very much is a positive project expressed here though that anyone can take up and in the same way it includes all activities it also closes out none. He is basically saying test all things to legitimacy dont take anything at its word or as some over arching thing as a bare minimum across the board, a starting place. Gender isnt real and neither is God. You can believe in either one you want as long as you know there is no such thing as an external justification or proof for them outside of the self. Same thing as any state or individual powerful enough to give you something only has that power by also being powerful enough to take it away from you and it will be determined by the states well being not yours. This does not mean you can not be a christian it means you must know that there is no external truth that it is or not real and that if it is not working for you you may (if you have the ability to) scrap it at least mentally you may have to pretend but mentally you can believe whatever you want no one can take that from you and if the situation changes materially you can respond rather than holding back due to mentally constructed limitions.

I interpret the whole no overarching external morality thing to mean freedom from having to be violent just as much as it does freedom to be violent. There is no external morality every social belief or institution we take for granted can be traced back to agreement or subjugation to violence. He just means that there is no third party arbitrator who will come down and tell you what to do and if you do what others tell you you are doing what they want you to do and to be aware of that as a starting point in thinking about it. Stirner’s perspective is an attempt at authenticity (an escape from alienation) by my reading but to and for yourself only, you can be as inauthentic as you want to other people in the form deception if you so desire and as Stirner points out there may be no total escape possible from alienation or authoritarian subjugation but it leaves yourself open as an agent in your own reality to respond, create, and destroy when where and how you can even if just mentally in the present moment.

Might doesnt necessarily make right it makes what is. The problem in most peoples readings is they miss that might is not just physical strength. Might can be anything it can be loving kindness, it can be charisma, it can be blackmail, it can be murder, it can be guilt, it can be trading favors, it can be using other peoples own ideological hangups against them, it can be anything. Rather than Might I think of it as what is beneficial to you both short term and long term. It may be beneficial to rob a store in the short term because you can but will it be beneficial to have the store owner try to kill you? To be banned from the store permanently? To go to prison or be on the run from the state? I think it completely allows for a conscious you may not want to rob the store because you like the store owner or you have your own business and you would not want that behavior to spread and have your own business robbed as a result.

As far as a positive project goes Stirner is quite clear with his union of egoists with what a positive project might look like. It is when two or more individuals find a common activity or relationship. Finding mutual empowerment rather than begrudged compromise or violent subjugation. This looks just as much like making love, playing sports, having a night out with friends, etc as it does anything resembling violence. For more context on what Stirner meant by the Union of Egoists here is a quote from his follow up Stirner's Critics:

"If Hess attentively observed real life, to which he holds so much, he will see hundreds of such egoistic unions, some passing quickly, others lasting. Perhaps at this very moment, some children have come together just outside his window in a friendly game. If he looks at them, he will see a playful egoistic union. Perhaps Hess has a friend or a beloved; then he knows how one heart finds another, as their two hearts unite egoistically to delight (enjoy) each other, and how no one “comes up short” in this. Perhaps he meets a few good friends on the street and they ask him to accompany them to a tavern for wine; does he go along as a favor to them, or does he “unite” with them because it promises pleasure? Should they thank him heartily for the “sacrifice,” or do they know that all together they form an “egoistic union” for a little while?"

In general The Unique and It’s Property is perhaps not satisfying from an academic knowledge of the history of philosophy in an so we can argue over principles/claims sort of way but it for sure had a huge positive impact on my own understanding of the world and my place in it as a casual philosophy/political manifesto reader when I was younger and I think it would have been very enlightening to folks in 1800s Prussia. Stirner makes a nice Ying to Peter Kropotkin’s Anarcho-Communist Yang as a foundation for Anarchism and I take equal inspiration from both in my own understanding of the idea 100+ years later.

Most of the supplementary material I mentioned is too esoteric for the podcast I am sure y’all are not chomping at the bit to get into the weeds of Stirner but I do think Stirner’s Critics would make for a great follow up episode the entire PDF is only 31 pages. Also neither here nor there but I am not really a leave a comment type of person so if you read this thanks for keeping the lectures of Rick Roderick alive! I stumbled onto those, the lectures of Robert Solomon, and The Partially Examined Life podcast about a decade ago and for a poor person who has never taken a single philosophy class and did not graduate from an unrelated college degree program it has been incredibly informative and enjoyable to listen to while I break my back at the wage labor factory.

Max Stirner - Stirner's Critics: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-stirner-s-critics

John Henry Mackay - Max Stirner His Life and His Work https://files.libcom.org/files/Mackay%20-%20Max%20Stirner%20-%20His%20Life%20and%20His%20Work.pdf

Wolfi Landstreicher’s English Translation of The Unique and It’s Property: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-unique-and-its-property

#Max Stirner #Philosophy #Anarchism #Egoist

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Sonic the Hedgehog 3 2024

★★★½

12 Jan 2025

TrashVHS’s review published on Letterboxd:

This review may contain spoilers.

More of the same in a mostly good way. Each entry in this film series is fairly mid but in the world of video game movie adaptations that puts them near the top if we grade on a curve which will always be a little surprising considering where this adaptation started with the original ugly sonic trailer (I still think releasing the original with whatever footage they had completed with that design would be an all time hilarious move).

Finally they are catching on 3 films deep that Jim Carrey is the only live action human we want to see not a bunch of cops and double down giving us a double performance. Like most aspects of these films Carrey's humor is pretty hit and miss but even mid Jim Carey is better than most and we get him in such limited supplies these days that I will take what I can get. Since there are two Dr. Robotnicks we get to see Jim Carrey have a laser light dance off, scorpion vs praying mantis power armor fight, and spank himself in what is supposed to be a Sonic The Hedgehog film.

I like these films more than I don't but I definitely found myself checking out half way through this nearly 2 hour runtime. I was pretty hyped at the beginning though with the introduction of Shadow (I appreciate that this pg film does give us 1 scene where he is armed) and a Chao Gardens reference (the ONLY way I would even consider having my consciousness uploaded digitally is to the Sonic Adventure Chao Gardens). Insane to me that they are waiting four films deep to introduce Amy (Rogue too) but it is what it is I guess. Also I know its greedy but where the hell are Big The Cat and E-102 Gamma? This may sound like a lot of characters for one film but they wasted their character roster in the first two films on live action humans no one asked for.

I appreciate anytime you hear music from the videogames like the stage clear music and Live & Learn. I do not understand why most video game films shy away from an entire library of content they can mine most of all when it comes to soundtracks. I swear Hollywood would make a Legend of Zelda adaptation without a single ocarina.

Mostly nonsense but occasionally my exact kind of nonsense. There are subtitles for a live action dog, spanish soap opera, Akira slide, and a human using a hologram to replace their head with a dogs head.

Not nearly as fun as playing Sonic Adventure for 2 hours but what movie is?

Three and a half stars out of five.

#sonic the hedgehog #film review #movie review #letterboxd #2024 #sega

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Gremlins 1984

★★★★★

04 Jan 2025

TrashVHS’s review published on Letterboxd:

This review may contain spoilers.

As a kid I was not that aware of most specific directors and in the same way I thought Tim Burton directed The Nightmare Before Christmas I thought Steven Spielberg directed Gremlins. While it is obvious as an adult had I known it was actually Joe Dante who also directed my beloved Small Soldiers (1998) it would have blown my 7 year old mind. Sensibility wise I am more of a Gremlins 2 kinda person but this original film is such a stone cold classic. I have no idea what cultural significance this film has if any for post-milennial generations but this was pretty much the largest entry point into children’s horror, horror comedy, and Christmas horror when I was growing up. I watched Gremlins often as a kid and I can not believe how long it has been since I revisited this masterpiece.

Similarly to the way Dante directed Piranha in the wake of Jaws, Gremlins managed to inspire an entire subgenre of films that managed to pump out a ton of mischievous miniature monster movies over the next decade and kept alive to this day by Charles Band and dabbled in recently by Steven Kostanski with his love letter to little monster films Frankie Freako.

Unfortunately this film also promoted other imitators of the mystical Asian shopkeeper trope in genre films. My intuition tells me it is likely this trope (including other non-Western cultural stereotypes beyond Asians where a strange foreigner bestows an item or information onto a Westerner) predates the medium of film itself. I actually love both the character of the Grandfather shopkeeper (particularly since he comes back to bookend the film and chastise Norman Rockwell idealized white capitalism) and the performance of that character by Keye Luke but it is fucked up that this stands out as a larger Asian role for Hollywood at the time and would be imitated after along with many other stereotyped fill in the blank roles where you suddenly hear gongs in the background of the scene (which I would guess also predates Gremlins). But hey at least Dick Miller's (We celebrate every Dick Miller appearance in this house and Joe Dante is responsible for a lot of them) xenophobic character gets his (though maybe not enough since he returns for the sequel) along with the police, military, the bank, and other authoritarians who make life in this John Hughs/Chris Columbus/Amblin/Its a Wonderful Life town possible. Even wannabe animal murderer Ruby Deagle gets cartoonishly flung out a second story window via stairlift in a very satisfying scene.

The film has such a fun escalation as we go from a lighthearted Christmas picture, to a cute amblin creature, then straight to not just 1 creature transforming as most films would do but straight to Gremlin'S' plural where we have an entire invasion of the body snatcher takeover. We get to have our cake and eat it too. Not only with having the cute and the scary side simultaneously (Would have worked with the original idea of turning Gizmo into Stripe but I think Spielberg had a great call with keeping Gizmo the whole film through) but also the way the film embraces restraint by slowly revealing the hatched gremlins while embracing excess because once they are revealed it is nonstop chaos and the number of Gremlins just keeps growing and growing. I tend more toward the excess side of preferences in film but it is fun to have both in one movie and no doubt part of the secret sauce that made this film so popular across the board. Like Beetlejuice this is one of those rare weirdo pop culture things that for whatever reason the normies embraced and I can talk to just about anyone over a certain age about knowing they have probably seen it or are at least familiar with it.

Joe Dante is someone who beyond being a filmmaker is a lover of film and is unapologetic about the films and tropes they have a warm affection for and often holds no punches toward the films they do not and that aspect of his personality shines through in the way this film balances the sentimental and zany with the more cynical and uncompromising elements both of which are held together by anarchistic joy and humor. Dante never seems to care if something is conventional, corny, cool, popular, or motivated solely by profit only concerned with if it brings him joy and his films are better for it. Truly one of the great American filmmakers and I do not hear that expressed often enough.

Another great thing about Dante’s films, including Gremlins, is casting. Not gonna go through everyone in the film (Not a bad performance in the film) but a few interesting highlights. Phoebe Cates (and the honorable Judge Reinhold!) back from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, gives a super sweet performance. The way she delivers the dead Santa dad is simultaneously so sad and so fucking funny. Glad the horror genre comes through once again and gives Cates’ character Kate a chance to be a badass fighting gremlins. Same goes for Frances Lee McCain as Lynn Peltzer (Billy’s Mom) a housewife who I think gets more on screen kills in this film than any other individual character. You do not have to check your calendar you know it is the 1980s because Corey Feldman is here (and in every other film). I did not even recognize Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul) in this as a shithead cop. There are some wild cameos in this as well; there is Steven Spielberg zooming by, composer Jerry Goldsmith (Love the Gremlins theme also idk who recorded it but I loved hearing slowed down sinister Silent Night), Chuck Jones (fucking seriously THE Chuck Jones?!) as well as a bunch of other voice actors with heavy hitter character credits who lend their voices to the film, Michael Winslow the sound effects king, Frank Welker who did the voice of every great animal and a million other things, and if that is not enough Robbie The Robot from Forbidden Planet is making collect calls. Also until recent years I had no idea Howie Mandel was the voice of Gizmo. Don’t sleep on Howie Mandel by the way he is not just the bald OCD germaphobe (The triggering incident is absolutely terrifying btw) guy on deal or no deal his stand up specials are great and he played Maurice in Little Monsters.

But anyone who frequents my reviews know why I would be drawn to a film like this and what I actually care about and that is watching funny little monsters run around and commit crimes and hang out. At some point this film becomes a live action cartoon and I mean that in the best way possible. I would have been fine if the film was just 106 minutes of the Gremlins terrorizing the town in mass but as the film stands we get one hell of a satisfying third act crescendo with plenty of Gizmo cuteness to carry us through the first half of the film. Not to mention all the goofy inventions from Billy’s Dad.

There is an abundance of entertaining practical creature visuals (Nearly all of which still look perfect) including:

Gizmo singing, getting hung up on a dart board, saving the day in a Pink Convertible toy, and just being all around adorable. It is wild how blatantly Furby ripped off Gremlins which is why I am a fan of both.

Mogwai puking, playing trumpet, playing Donkey Kong handheld, stringing poor Barney (played by Mushroom the dog) up with Christmas lights in the freezing cold, and a grotesque scene that felt like I was watching Tim & Eric where the Mogwai feast on leftover chicken presented in beautiful misophonia triggering surround sound audio cringe.

The real fun begins after the gremlins hatch from their pods. These gremlins play a record, pull the fire alarm, camouflage themselves with then jump out of the Christmas tree, eat glass, steal a tractor and drive it through a house, attack a mail drop off from inside the blue box, sabotage stop lights to cause car wrecks, go Christmas caroling, attack Santa, flip over a cop car, attempt to kill the DJ live on air. Then it is over to the old dive bar to smoke, drink, play poker, more arcade game playing, a trenchcoat flasher, wielding pistols, playing jazz, hand puppets, bonk on the head with a mallet, Flash Dance parody, sticking finger in the a broken lightbulb socket, ski mask, then it is back into the streets to riot some more. At some point in a deleted scene they kill Billy’s boss at the bank. Then we move it on over to the movie theater (same one from Back To The Future) for a showing of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves. Most new films released in our current era feel to me like they are doing the bare minimum but this theater feels like they went above and beyond (even if some of the puppets dont move lol) because they fill this theater to capacity with gremlins. They are eating popcorn in their theater seats and bouncing around the projection booth having the time of their lives watching the movie within the movie until there is a malfunction and they see Billy & Kates shadows behind the screen and shred it to pieces. But they get out and their DIY gas bomb goes off killing all the gremlins inside.

Then they realize Stripes (It really is amazing how perfectly this film both parodies capitalism and is built for it tell me that is not an action figure name/design) the leader who previously jumped in a pool at the YMCA spawning all of these possessed offspring escaped the theater fireball because they were across the street looting the department store for candy. If the theater was not enough we get one more dose of mayhem as Stripes skateboards, puts himself on TV, hides behind an ET plushie, and squares off with Billy using a crossbow, handgun, and even a chainsaw! Stripes is exposed to sunlight and their flesh rots off, then they turn into a skeleton, then their skeleton melts into a sludge and disappears.

I know they say Stripes is the leader potentially implying that if you kill them all the others die but on the radio the DJ says the military is gonna turn the hoses on them so if that kill the leader thing is not true and there were any gremlins away from the theater to spray then the war against this invasive species only just begun.

Green blood (a staple of PG13 films which Gremlins is a grandfather of) does not work for every film but it works great in this film. Most of the Gremlins die in the theater explosion or off screen but there are a few fun Gremlin kills including; a couple of stabbings, Gremlin in a microwave, food processor (where we get to see the green blood), flung into a fireplace via sword, and head trauma via car hood.

Have I mentioned this film fucking rules? I love that when the water spills on Gizmo the first time the camera angle goes from normal immediately to a dutch angle. I love the complete lack of an attempt to address the logic behind all the gremlins having themed outfits and tiny weapons. Love how each act is basically set by another film playing on a TV screen; It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1956), and To Please a Lady (1960). Love that a character does shifty eyes and in another scene there is the cartoon head trauma dizzy sound effect. Love all the playful references to Spielberg including the gremlins saying ‘milk duds’ in what has to be a reeses pieces ET joke right? Featuring a Gremlin model car and the joke with the Time Machine at the inventors convention is just next level insanity. Cool matte painting near the end of the film.

Next time I wont wait so long before a rewatch.

Five stars out of five.

#gremlins #1984 #film review #movie review #letterboxd #cinema #1980s