Most Korean movies I have seen go off the deep end in the second half. As long as the weirdness is entertaining enough I don't mind.
And how did you feel about it? Do you think the main characters fully came to grips with the realization that the afterlife is a never-ending horror?
As we don't have a "Last YouTube watched" thread, I'll stick this here. LOCAL58 (6 videos, 2015-2018) Brief videos of late night title cards and informational shows of a small-time UHF station based somewhere near the Twilight Zone. Don't watch just before sleeping. But please, please watch this. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuoMasRkMhlj1VNVAOJdw5w/videos
Daughter of the Wolf (2019) Dir. David Hackl Clair's son is kidnapped and when she agrees to pay the ransom, she is double-crossed by the men who are meant to arrange the exchange. Her military training helps her to survive and even get the upper hand. She then has to trek into the mountains with the sole surviving outfit member as her guide, as he is to bring her to where the rest of his group are keeping her son. All the while, both Clair and the kidnappers are followed by a pack of hungry wolves. This was a bit silly and felt like a mixture of two Liam Neeson action vehicles ("Taken" and "The Grey") only with a female lead. The cast does the best they can but the production values reveal this was shot on a true shoe-string and the writing left a lot to be desired. The action set pieces don't really make up for it either, which is a shame considering that Carano has the ability to really shine in those given the opportunity. This mostly reminded me of the fact that it's been a decent while now since "Haywire" and that Carano hasn't really been given such an opportunity again, apart from some supporting roles (e.g. in the first "Deadpool" movie).
Wait till you see what I do to people that don't type out the title of the movie and only identify it by picture.
4Got10 [aka Forgotten, aka The Good, the Bad, and the Dead] (2015) Brian wakes up in the middle of the desert with a big headache. He's been shot, he's lost his memory, and he's surrounded by dead bodies. He finds a van full of drugs, so he has some idea what happened. He also finds a van with three million dollars, and quite happily picks that one to drive away in. He starts looking up the lowlifes on his phone to try to piece together his identity, but the cops are after him, the crooked cops are after him, the drug cartel is after him, and lowlifes.. well, they are lowlifes. One of those movies full of detestable characters all trying to screw each other over and because you are not interested in any of them winning or losing the movie as a whole is a bore. Throw in some horribly directed action scenes and I was about curse Dolph Lundgren for wasting another 84 minutes of my life. But then the movie threw an absolutely wicked twist. I mean, this story idea was the real deal, one that would have made a good movie brilliant, but in this case just lifts the movie to "watchable". I feel sad it was wasted on this. Lundgren is miscast as a very straight-laced character. He should always be the mushroom-laced character.
Lucky (2017) Harry Dean Stanton is Lucky, a 90 year old man living in the tiny California desert town of Piru. And that's pretty much it. A little slice of life that is deeply American as well as deeply unique to the locale. But it's deeply universal too - what do you do with a life that is spent? Are you saved by routine or by trying something new? Do you break the rules or mend fences? There's no answer, but if you like Harry Dean Stanton (and of course you like Harry Dean Stanton) you will like watching him figure it out. A few notable figures from Hollywood show up in the movie, although Deep Space Nine fans will be most excited at seeing James Darren.
Deadpool 2 (2018) A blind woman had to take care of her roommate after a workplace accident left his legs crippled. Fortunately she could not see that he was Winnie-the-Poohing it. The jokes came fast and furious in this thing, and I was laughing so hard I never had a chance to think deeply about the movie, which is great because all of you know how much I hate doing that. I really liked the new characters, especially Domino. I just wish they had more of that bartender guy from the first movie. He's my favorite. The very very end of the credits had a short choral ode to the main bad guy. I love choral music. But I don't think the Mormon Tabernacle Choir did this one.
The Night Sitter (2018) Dir. John Rocco & Abiel Bruhn Kevin is to spend the night with a babysitter as his single dad, a paranormal investigator, has a date. Amber shows up to baby-sit on the youngster, even though she is actually not a real babysitter with any experience. Her ulterior motive is to let her accomplices into the house so they can ransack it for valuables once the dad is out of the house. Unfortunately another kid staying over finds the key to Kevin's dad's office and unwittingly the two boys release three witches from their prison within a cursed book. Subsequently the boys and the thieves have to work together to survive the night. This was a horror-comedy that is mostly forgettable. The recent "The Babysitter" was a horror-comedy that did a lot more with basically the same premise. The tonal shifts in this are jarring, especially in terms of any plotline related to the dad. The lead is decent and kept this just about watchable.
Memoirs of a Murderer (22年目の告白－私が殺人犯です] (2017) The statute of limitations for murder is 15 years in Japan, and 22 years after a disturbing series of strangulations a man comes forward to confess in the most public way possible - a soon-to-be best selling book detailing the crime and a mall-based public relations tour. The officer on this case since its beginning, Detective Makimura, is stoically observing events. A Yakuza boss who lost his wife is planing more direct action. A Japanese remake of Confession of Murder that keeps the main plot points of the original but is otherwise very different - utterly serious and more psychological. Despite being a minute shorter it feels a lot longer than the original because it lacks the former's many chase and action sequences and replaces them with 30 minutes of post-debate drama and extensive dialogue about the killer's motivation. It's a well-made and effective thriller, but conventional. The shifting tone in the original gave it a sort of magic that this movie doesn't have. Confession of Murder sticks with you, Memoirs of a Murderer is the one you forget soon after watching. Before anyone asks, I checked and yes the statute of limitations for capital crime in Japan was 15 years in 1995. It's since become indefinite.
There was a Indian remake of Confession of Murder as well, but I don't think I will be watching it, mostly because googling "Angels" likely won't produce anything useful.
Cluny Brown (1946) Dir. Ernst Lubitsch Cluny Brown is an orphaned young woman who lives with her plumber uncle in London. When she fills in for the man on a Sunday, she happens to meet Professor Adam Belinski, a Czech refugee who has fled the continent due to Hitler's rise. With Cluny's uncle objecting to her increasingly frivolous manner, he sends his niece to the country to assume a position as a chambermaid at a grand manor house. The slightly scatterbrained Cluny turns out to be a rather awkward fit for the task of a maid and she makes several faux pas in just her first days on the job. She owes her continued employment to Belinski, who has since become a house guest at the manor and who carries a torch for Cluny. Cluny's aspirations for love eventually find another target in the form of a boring but dependable chemist, a match which Belinski finds less than pleasant to witness unfold from afar. Note-worthy for being the great Ernst Lubitsch final film, this rom-com/satire was mostly kept watchable thanks to the two leads. Jennifer Jones is delightfully charming as Cluny Brown whilst Charles Boyer is his usual dependable self. On the subject of Boyer, this film once again reminded me of the fact that his voice is seared into my mind from the amount of times I saw the Time after Time video as a kid, which has Boyer's voice (along with Marlene Dietrich's) in a excerpt from the movie "The Garden of Allah" at the start. I think Boyer actually quotes a line from that movie near the end of "Cluny Brown".
have you ever wondered why Clete Boyer pronounced his name Boy-yer instead of Boy-yea? Please don't say, who's Clete Boyer...??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clete_Boyer
For one, his Cooperstown, NY, restaurant, as "Clete Boy-yea's Hamburger Hall of Fame," would've had an even shorter run than "Clete Boyer's Hamburger Hall of Fame" did. Of course, there's a different restaurant in that location just about every year when we go to Cooperstown, so maybe it wouldn't have mattered.
You Were Never Really Here [aka A Beautiful Day] (2017) Joe, now in his middle 40's, has lived a hard life, from a childhood dominated by an abusive father through an adulthood that left him with physical scars and traumatic memories. Both unable to take normal work and unwilling to leave his elderly mother alone for long, he has become an occasional hitman and problem solver, as long as the problem mostly requires hitting. But solving a problem for a state senator leads to a world of pain landing on Joe and everyone he knows. Maybe a lifetime of dealing with pain is the one tool he needs. A hammer might help too. A totally unsparing movie, not just in the brutality but mostly in showing how psychologically damaged Joe is. But there are moments of supreme beauty and surprise and little charming touches, and there isn't a single second of this that isn't purposefully and meaningfully directed. Both the score and the diegetic music choices are amazing. I really don't want to say much about this movie because it is mostly about the slow discovery of this man. I do want to say it is achingly, movingly good, and it will reward your attention.
Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler My theory is that everything that happens after he goes into the lake is a dying's man final fantasy/dream.
Do not even try to read this if you haven't seen the movie. Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler I think it wasn't because the thing Joe wanted most of all (beyond rescuing the girl) was revenge the murder of his mother, and he wasn't able to get it and it destroyed him.
Pet Sematary (2019) Dir. Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer The Creed family, Dr. Louis, his wife Rachel, his daughter Ellie and his son Gage move from Boston to rural main because Louis needs a change of pace from his busy career as an E.R. doctor. The idea is to take it more slowly and spend more time with his family. On her first day living in her new home, Ellie wanders off in the woods behind their house and ends up on a pet cemetery. She is immediately fascinated by the place, whilst her elderly neighbor Judd, who finds her there, is uneasy about the notion of a young girl wandering around there, or anyone for that matter. Things really escalate when the family cat has a mishap and Judd has an unusual suggestion. Another adaptation of the Stephen King novel that was serviceable enough but primarily made me want to revisit the 1989 original, which I liked a lot. I believe Mary Lambert held the record for the highest grossing horror film made by a woman for that movie and she still might to this day (I'm not sure about that one). Speaking about the 2019 version, the girl who plays Ellie is really good and by far the best thing about this adaptation.
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (2018) Gannon was alone in his trailer when he hears automatic gunfire and explosions in the distance. He meets up with his militia in the lumber warehouse they use as a base and the snippets of news each of them brings paints a grim picture - a police funeral was attacked by a lone gunman who had bombed or shot almost everyone in attendance. The fact that military-level weaponry was used would draw police attention to the militia, so they check to confirm that they had nothing to do with it. But their armory is missing a rifle and body armor and grenades. They go into lockdown, and Gannon is told to find which one of them did it. The problem is, ex-cop Gannon was trained to get confessions, not the truth. One of those one-room puzzles that I love so much, and this is pretty close to the best I've seen. Tense and smart and it's almost scary how well it understands these people. The one song in the whole movie is The Charmaine's "When Ever I Get Lonely", and loneliness is the key to everything. As one of the characters in the film says "it amplifies", taking traits that exist and pushing them, without the moderation of others, into unhealthy, damaging, even disastrous directions. We see from interrogations or conversations how different styles of loneliness led all of them to the organization. Sometimes the tools society uses to protect itself end up causing bigger problems.
Shazam! (2019) Dir. David F. Sandberg Billy Batson is an unhappy teenager who has been bounced around the foster system and who periodically runs away from his foster families in search of his real mother, whom he hasn't seen since he was a toddler. One day he is placed with a very sweet and loving couple who seem to live a harmonious family life with their other foster children. Billy's intentions are still to run away as quickly as possible to continue his search for his mother, until two new circumstances change his mind: he befriends his roommate and foster brother Freddy and he gets summoned to an other-world realm where a wizard grants him superpowers. Whenever Billy speaks the word "Shazam!" out loud, he turns into an adult version of himself who possesses superpowers in the form of superspeed, superstrength, near invincibility to conventional weapons, force lightning, ... Only it is soon revealed that a man who has been coveting this same power for four decades is on his track, with the clear intention to steal what was given to Billy. I don't think I'm the only one who has been pretty lukewarm about the D.C. adaptations of the recent past. Really the only one out of them that I truly liked was "Wonder Woman". I also had a lot of time for the super-quirky and weird "Aquaman". In the same vein, "Shazam!" stands out for being very silly in its premise but embracing said silliness. The creators are thus in on the joke, without hitting us over the head with this fact in every line and at every turn. But enough to keep this very charming (I also loved the "Big" reference in the middle of a fight scene, no less). Zachary Levy is a great casting choice for the adult version of Billy. The fact that this was one of the few D.C. movies that did really good at the box office for them gives me hope that they might prioritize adaptations that similarly stand out from the pack.
Having had the delicious opportunity to listen to the radio play, as a very young kid, any campy rendition of the Billy Batson/Captain Marvel mystique would fall flat.
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (2018) Dir. Henry Dunham Seven militia members hurry to their HQ, a disused lumber warehouse, in the aftermath of hearing reports on the police radio of an attack on a police funeral which has left many cops dead. They fear that one of them will be blamed for the attack, especially after they discover that some gear is missing from their armory, including the same type of weapon that was used as well as the body armor the assailant was wearing. The leader of the group tasks a former cop among their number with finding out who did it and then offering up this individual to the authorities in the hope of saving the rest of the militia. A series of intense interrogations follow, yet the former cop has has a dark past of his own and the clock is ever ticking. Essentially a thriller/parlor room mystery if said mystery was set in hell. Very well acted by what are essentially all very good character actors. So much so that this ensemble can hardly have been an accident in that regard. This brought to mind several other movies in varied genres, among them "Reservoir Dogs" and "Rashomon".