Arachnophobia (Frank Marshall, 1990)

7.5/10
I only half-remembered this from my childhood so I decided to watch it when it was on TV the other day. It's actually still pretty good. The "spider invasion", implausible as it may seem, is well done. Keeping the spiders out of most of the movie (except for the single ones here or there that do the killing) is classic monster movie staging, saving the huge swarms of little ones and the queen for the very end, and it works very well. Jeff Daniels' war in the cellar with the big mother spider is more than a little silly but I guess a big confrontation was needed. I was surprised at how effective the movie still is - anyone who is even remotely not fond of spiders will probably feel their skin crawl a few times. I wasn't sure how I felt about John Goodman's kind of jokey exterminator character - overall I liked him but could have done without some of the cornier scenes he was in. Not a horror classic or anything but a well-made and creepy enough movie.

The Sixties Quartet (Jonas Mekas, 1990-1999)

7/10
More from the Mekas retrospective, this was a compilation of 4 half-hour-ish short films from Mekas shot in the 1960's and released in the 90's. The first was "Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections". The first half or so was dubbed over with live audio of a static-filled, droning VU performance of "I'll Be Your Mirror" that I enjoyed quite a bit. Much of the footage was Warhol at home, on vacation, and occasionally at work.
The second film was "Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas" and was probably the one I was least interested in, not knowing much of George Maciunas. There was some cool footage from early Fluxus happenings though and seeing the likes of George Brecht, Nam June Paik, Yoshi Wada and even John and Yoko was fun.
The latter were the stars of the next one, "Happy Birthday to John, with John Lennon and Yoko Ono" and the title is very self-descriptive, featuring footage shot of a birthday party thrown for Lennon. It was cool to see some rare, casual footage of monstrously famous people, and wondering at the discourse taking place between John and Miles Davis in the garden at John's birthday party was a treat.
"This Side of Paradise with Jackie, Caroline and John Kennedy Jr." (aka "Scenes from an Unfinished Biography") was the last film, featuring footage shot from a vacation Jackie Onassis took shortly after John Kennedy's death as something of memoriam for Jackie and John's children. The idyllic vacation footage from a beautiful place featuring more hugely famous people being themselves was exhilarating, even if much of the footage here was repeated from the Warhol film. Glad I got to see these, they were a treat.

Troll 2 (Claudio Fragasso, 1990)

10/10
How could it be anything less? Most "so bad it's good" movies unimpress me but this one was hilarious. You can't go more than 3 minutes without seeing or hearing something that makes you think "how could anybody actually think that was good?". Very highly recommended.

Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990)

6/10
Not one of the better Lynch movies, not one of the worst, it just kind of plods along with only momentary piques of interest. Listening to Nicholas Cage doing a forced Elvis impression for 2.5 hours can grate on anyone though. As always with Lynch there are some disturbing/unforgettable visuals but the movie as a whole doesn't work nearly as well as his later ones.