It was filled with scenes that I would call the Disneyfication of these women's struggle for equality and opportunities, but it's still a movie well worth seeing.
Although apparently John Glenn really did want (can't remember her name) to do the math when the computer started to give contradictory solutions. My wife says the book is pretty good, FWIW.
Yeah, I know that part of it is true, that Glenn trusted her more than the computers. But I meant more like the scene where Costner took down the bathroom sign with a crowbar (IIRC).
Get Out (2017) Dir. Jordan Peele A young black man agrees to go visit his white girlfriend's parents, even though he has serious misgivings about the prospect, especially since his girlfriend failed to inform her parents that he is black. Once they arrive at her family's estate in a secluded, affluent white slice of suburbia, he initially finds himself confronted with a couple of seemingly well-meaning parents who still cannot help occasionally shoving their foot up their mouths. Things take a slightly sinister turn when he starts to notice how weird the handful of white people within the community behave and the way he is appraised and accosted at a family party. I really liked this. It was critically praised and deservedly so. Jordan Peele uses his story to showcase the many micro-aggressions black people are confronted with, even from white folks who would deem themselves non-bigoted and progressive. This film would only work half as well without the cast. Primarily Daniel Kaluuya (a true revelation here and an actor whom I only knew from "Me, Earl and the Dying Girl" as far as I can remember), but also the likes of Allison Williams, Katherine Keener and Bradley Whitford. Allison Williams especially is a very specific piece of casting that is both a commentary on her character as well as the character that Williams portrays on "Girls" (who in turn is a reflection of her own privileged white urban upbringing). I'm pretty sure that Allison Williams was aware of what Jordan Peele was doing there, though I'm not convinced she was 100% in on the joke. More like 80%. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. One of the reasons why "JCVD" works so well (from my perspective at least) is that Jean-Claude Van Damme is only 95% in on the joke. That is what makes his breaking of the fourth wall in that movie so moving (had he been 100% in on the joke, there was a decent chance of that scene becoming gimmicky instead). Of course, for someone like JCVD who lives on planet JCVD, that doesn't have to matter much, but Allison Williams, a white urban progressive who is likely eager to be perceived as 'woke', being a textbook case of central casting to that extent might be somewhat confrontational. Jordan Peele got a lot of attention for his success story here (and rightly so) but I also have to tip my hat again to Blumhouse Productions for their penchant of turning micro-budgets (4.5 million dollars for this film) into huge box office success stories (206 million USD and counting worldwide).
I liked it, but that ending was....well let's just say that I felt like I had to really suspend reality.
Ride the High Country (1962) Dir. Sam Peckinpah An older former lawman rides into a town where he hopes to get a job transporting gold from a nearby mining community into the town's bank. The bank does hire him and in the process the man hires two men to assist him: a former associate of his he ran into at the town's midway carnival, as well as his young friend and protégé. Unbeknownst to the man, both his old friend and the man's young partner have ambitions to keep the gold for themselves. On their way over to the mining community, they come upon a ranch belonging to devoutly religious man and his daughter. The daughter becomes their responsibility after she runs away with the hope of joining them on their trip to the mining camp, where she is to marry a man who has twice proposed to her already. The mining camp itself turns out to be a lawless place of loose morals and the young woman's intended a ruffian who has four brothers who are just as bad or worse than he is. I decided to revisit this Peckinpah classic. Joel McCrea is great in the lead role, it's fun to see Randolph Scott (in his final film) play slightly against type and it's always great to see Peckinpah favorite Warren Oates. This film (especially the scenes at the mining camp) was an obvious influence on "McCabe & Mrs. Miller", which in turn greatly influenced David Milch's "Deadwood". Warmly recommended if you have not yet seen it.
Walk All Over Me (2007) Dir. Robert Cuffley Alberta, a young woman who finds herself in a dangerous and abusive situation, flees to Vancouver where her friend and former babysitter Celene lives. Celene reluctantly allows her younger friend to stay at her place for the time being. During her stay, Alberta discovers that Celene is not an aspiring actress as she always claimed to be but a dominatrix for hire. Short on cash herself, Alberta goes behind Celene's back one day to hire herself out to one of Celene's prospective clients. Only the night doesn't go quite as planned and she ends up in the middle of a criminal feud for 500000 dollars of stolen money and gets her friend Celeste drawn into her mess in the process. This wasn't bad. In terms of its tone, it reminded me most of something like "Go", with a similar erratic plot and an atmosphere that is on the very edge of edgy, sardonic and quirky. Tricia Helfer is terrific and convincingly fierce in her role.
The King and Four Queens (1956) Dir. Raoul Walsh After narrowly escaping a posse which is pursuing him across the prairie, a career criminal and con man arrives at a small town in which he learns of a new opportunity whilst fraternizing with the local saloon keeper: nearby there is a ghost town inhabited by five women. The women in question are all widows to a local gang of brothers who perished in a fire, as well as the former gang members' mother. Just before their death, the brothers had stolen 100000 dollars worth of gold. Seeing an opportunity, the con man decides to pay them a visit and tries to ingratiate himself with the young widows, in the hope of finding the location of the hidden gold. The women's mother-in-law sees through his ploy and repeatedly tries to run him out of their town. Enjoyable western which is mostly limited to a single location and a fixed set of characters. Clark Gable does well as the slimy protagonist, though you can ask the question if he wasn't slightly too old for this role by this point in his career (the smallest of the four age differences with his romantic interests in this film is 21 years). But it is Jo Van Fleet who steals the show as the ornery mother-in-law, who somehow was 14 years younger than Clark Gable when she shot this film.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome a made for TV prequel to the series Battlestar Galactica, which my wife and I are going to re-watch soon. Decent movie, pretty solid CGI work for a small-screen movie, but if you didn't already know the series, you'd have no idea what the frak was happening.
Symptoms (1974) Dir. José Ramón Larraz A young woman invites one of her friends to stay at her family estate in the country. The young woman in question, Helen, seems greatly troubled by her stay at the mansion, but refuses the suggestion of leaving it. The friend, Anne, becomes increasingly convinced that they aren't alone in the large house, a notion that Helen rubbishes. Helen in turn seems afraid or at the very least intimidated by Brady, the slightly creepy older groundskeeper. As their stay progresses, Helen's mental state seems to deteriorate further. José Ramón Larraz' classic psychological horror film. With an excellent Angela Pleasance in the lead role, as well as Peter Vaughan (whom modern audiences might primarily know as Maester Aemon from "Game of Thrones) in an important supporting role. This film obviously took some inspiration from Clayton's "The Innocents" but then also went on to inspire and influence films as varied as Amenábar's "The Others" and Ozon's "Swimming Pool".
Yeah, I enjoyed the ride, but final act was a bit by the numbers and disappointing…the first ¾ for the movie was so well-crafted and paced, while the final act felt rushed and uninspired…
Triangle (2009) Dir. Christopher Smith A single mother to an autistic son gets a rare day off when a wealthy man she knows through her waitressing job invites her for a weekend day of sailing on his yacht. Along with four other friends of the man, they depart the harbor, but their idyllic little trip is cut short when a violent storm surprises them and their boat capsizes. The survivors manage to stay afloat on the capsized yacht until they believe to be saved when a cruise ship comes into sight. Only when they board said cruise ship, it turns out to be an old vessel which is seemingly deserted. Then a series of strange occurrences pile up and the woman is plagued by a strong feeling of déjà vu. This was a very pleasant surprise. After the first act, I thought this was going to turn into a basic slasher on a cursed ship, or something along the lines of "Ghost Ship", but I was totally wrong. The real star of the second and third act is the screenplay, its clever structure and how it appears to be nearly completely internally consistent (to the point where by the end of the film even the early apparent inconsistencies are explained). To give one example of that: plot spoiler inside (Move your mouse to reveal the content) plot spoiler inside (open) plot spoiler inside (close) How the fact that she departs her home with a large duffel bag but boards the yacht with not a thing on her initially seems like a continuity error but eventually turns out to be an important plot detail. Melissa George makes for an effective lead. Whatever happened to her career? There was a time there in the early noughties where she had a solid movie career.
Sand Castle - Netflix - 2017 Just finished it. It was pretty good. Fortunately I get that movies are above all, entertainment and don't get wrapped up in a military movie having the accuracy of a documentary (more in the last paragraph) The story follows Pvt. Matt Ocre, a NG soldier that enlisted for the college money. He questions what he's doing in Kuwait at the time, and attempts to get out of crossing the berm north. They end up in the green zone and a mission to support the reconstruction of a water/irrigation system up in Diyala Province. The premise of the story is the futility of his experience there, and, at least for me, provoked thought on my time there. I never felt like I wasted my time, but I never worried about the "why" while I was there. Some things that stood out to me because I related to them. Them taking the doors off of the HMMWs. We did that, because it made for expedient ingress/egress of the vehicle, some of us even mounted motorcycle pegs on the outside of the door frame to rest our feet on. Going dark at night brought back memories. The closing, about thinking of going home the whole time, and then the fear/uncertainty of going home once that time came. OK, the details of the movie undermine it, but only slightly. From the get-go, there were no MRAPS in theater during the invasion. PIRs are Priority Intelligence Requirements, which support the commander's decision making process, and are specifically tied to decision points of the operation. The context of how it was used in the movie made is seem like they were just filling space with jargon that, to the average Joe, makes them sound smart. Night vision; We had AN-PVS-7Ds and not PVS-14s (monoculars) in OIF1. Those were just a couple that really stood out to at me. I won’t bore you with the individual movement techniques, patrol drills, or MEDEVAC. I'm sure the 'bro-vets' out there will provide a much more detailed breakdown of the imperfections of this movie and how they feel that this was a personal affront to their service. Overall I was ok with the movie, but it's not one of those 'must see again' ones.
The Secret of the Kells (2011) Young Brendan lives in the Abbey of Kells, where his uncle is obsessed with building a wall capable of keeping it safe from the rampaging Vikings. But Brendan thinks there is more to life than that, and when the illuminated Book of Iona is brought in by Brother Aidan he becomes enchanted. Asked to get ingredients for ink from the forest, Brendan, with Aidan's cat Pangur Ban in tow, meets a spirit named Aisling, who shows him the wonders of the forest. This is an absolutely enchanting, magical movie. The visual style is like the very best of Merrie Melodies abstraction mixed with Powder Puff Girls shapes and a little Disney fluidity, and it takes a bit of time before you really get invested but once you do you really don't want to look away for an instant. Fantastic music. Maybe a little slow and scary for little children. Strongest recommendation.
Bodom (2016) Dir. Taneli Mustonen Two high school boys try to convince two girls from their school to join them for a trip to Lake Bodom, at the exact spot where the real-life 1960 unsolved attack happened which left three teenage campers dead and a fourth seriously injured. After they are refused by every pair of girls they ask, they manage to convince two of them to come along by lying to them and leaving out the part about doing the murder tourism, instead telling them that they are going to a cabin near the lake for a weekend of partying. Upon their arrival at the site, they confess that their real goal was to investigate the cold case crime by recreating some of the circumstances surrounding it, in the hope of it leading to new clues or even a possible suspect. Thus they needed a group that was equivalent to the original victims: two boys and two girls. The girls reluctantly agree to stay in spite of being lied to, helped by a promise of weed and the fact that this was a rare getaway for one of the two girls as her strict father barely lets her out of the house. After having settled down, it is soon clear that the two guys are there with very different motives: Atte, the nerdier, awkward one of the two is there to genuinely investigate the cold case. Elias, his more popular, more laidback friend is there primarily in the hope of having sex with one of the girls and used the supposed investigation as a pretext to accompany his friend on the trip. Shortly after retreating to their tent, strange things start to happen. A Finnish slasher film that is actually a quite interesting genre exercise in that it initially subverts many of the usual tropes with a twist that is revealed in the second act, upon which the audience is kept in the dark about the true nature of the story for as long as possible. It's not earth-shatteringly original, but nevertheless quite entertaining and occasional clever. It's also a very beautifully shot feature, especially the night shots, more so when you consider the modest budget.
Eagle vs Shark (2007) Laid off fast food checker Lily has a crush on Jarrod, who works in the mall's video game store. Jarrod invites the hot fast food checker to his dress-as-an-animal party, but Lily showed up instead. They bond sharing their family history, and 32 seconds of cosplay sex later she figures she is his girlfriend. But Jarrod is way too cool and complicated for that. The only way she can stay in his life is to join Jarrod's grand mission to face his childhood bully in nunchuk mortal combat. Sometimes cute and insightful, but often embarrassing and slow in a not good way. One wing of Flight of the Conchords Jemaine Clement often plays this kind of loser with undeserved confidence, but seen from the point of view of his partner it isn't as endearing. I kind of wish this didn't have a happy ending. Unless this was meant to be loser tourism for the well-adjusted, the loser viewer knows things don't just fall together like that.
From a House on Willow Street (2016) Dir. Alastair Orr Four criminals work together to meticulously prepare a kidnapping. Their target is the teenage daughter of a man who has access to a large amount of diamonds through his job. On the night of the kidnapping itself, they successfully take the young woman from her parents' house, but from the very first minute, things seem slightly off. The young woman carries minor wounds on her body even before they had captured her. The teenager doesn't seem at all intimidated by or afraid of her captors. Repeated attempts to contact her parents for the ransom demand fail. Finally, out of options, a pair of kidnappers return to the house to thoroughly investigate it, finding out that they have probably bitten off more than they can chew in the process. Not a bad premise, though hardly an original one either. Unfortunately this film fails in the execution. Once the audience's early suspicions are confirmed, the writers obviously had no real good idea of where to take the story, which makes the third act and much of the second act an exercise in painting by numbers. The best thing about this film is probably Carlyn Burchell's performance as the monster.
Logan (2017) Dir. James Mangold The year is 2029. Wolverine has become a burned-out limo driver who tries to drink away his suicidal thoughts and uses what he makes in his job to support the now very old and infirm Charles Xavier, whose dementia keeps him ever on the brink of seizures which are potentially fatal for those around him. Logan has an unlikely partner in caring for Charles in Caliban. The trio are awakened from their not-so-happy coexistence by the arrival of a Mexican woman and a little girl she has in her care and for whom she seeks passage to North Dakota and subsequently to safety across the border. Hot on the pair's trail are a shady group of paramilitaries who work for a company which uses mutant DNA to create super soldiers. I finally got around to seeing this. A very enjoyable film, certainly one of the best superhero movies I've seen in recent years. Not sure where it will end up in my ranking once I properly try to place it, though I will already say that I am fairly certain it's the best R-rated superhero movie I have seen. Thematically, a lot was made about its ties to "Shane", but I thought its supposed link to that classic western is tenuous at best. The inclusion of the film itself within the narrative is a bit on the nose and the way Shane's words to Joey are used more or less display a weird interpretation of the moral reality of "Shane". If anything, Mangold's "Wolverine" shared more story beats and direct references with "Shane" than "Logan" does. This movie reminded me far more of westerns such as "The Cowboys", "Garden of Evil" and "Comanche Station", to name just tree. As well as "Children of Men", to include one non-western. Some random observations: - Dafne Keen is terrific as Laura - I liked some of the little details, like the little garden Charles keeps inside of his wrecked water tower - I love how they actually sort of used Wolverine's prophesied fate from "The Wolverine" in this movie - I wasn't expecting to see a reference to "Quigley Down Under" in this film, but there it was - I'm on the fence as to how well X-24 worked in this film
Shut In (2016) Dir. Farron Blackburn After her husband is in a fatal accident that also leaves her step son with serious brain damage, a child psychiatrist lives an hermits life in her rather isolated New England home. She becomes obsessed with the disappearance of a young patient of hers, a deaf boy she had taken a liking too prior to his vanishing. One evening, the child seems to appear to her in a dream, though there are signs the next morning that she might have really seen the missing kid, even though no one believes her, least of which her own therapist. The situation escalates as a heavy snowstorm shuts her inside of her isolated home. Considering that this is a very decent cast, with Naomi Watts in the lead role and Oliver Platt, Jacob Tremblay and Peter Outerbridge in supporting roles, this was a pretty big letdown. The writing is rather messy and poor and it never gets close to the obvious goal of a clever psychological horror thriller. A poor return on what is a nice collection of talent in the cast.
The Oxford Murders (2008) Dir. Álex de la Iglesia An American grad student at Oxford tries to get closer to his reclusive life-long idol in the hope of having the man mentor him. In spite of the fact that he has even chosen his lodgings with that in mind (renting a room from the widow and daughter of what was his prospective mentor's best friend and colleague). Eventually the pair of them are brought together when the student's landlady is killed and the professor and student work together to try and figure out the mathematical logic and pattern to the clues that the killer leaves behind in the form of cryptograms. A murder mystery set in academia that doesn't quite live up to its promise. The central mystery isn't even as compelling as the fun silliness in something like "The January Man". A few things keep this movie watchable: primarily an excellent performance by John Hurt (it cannot be overstated how much a great actor who can turn bad dialogue into something that somehow still works improves upon a middling screenplay) and the always lovely Leonor Watling.
No Escape (2015) Newly hired engineer in the multinational Cardiff company, Jack Dwyer has just relocated his family to a hybrid South East Asian nation where he is to begin working on the water system. But a rebel mob is furious at the deal, and is slaughtering anyone related to the deal, anyone helping them, anyone in the vicinity of them, and anyone that said the word "water" in the last month. Maybe their new friend, connoisseur of third-world nightlife Pierce Brosnan, knows more than he lets on. A fine action thriller, but my weak constitution couldn't take much more. I had to pause it a few times until my heart rate went down a bit. But to keep the thrills coming, they had to elevate the risk of the mob, and I went from "how will the family escape?" in the beginning to "how will the world respond to this regional catastrophe?" by the middle.
Gotcha! - 1985 Anthony Edwards and Linda Fiorentino and directed by Jeff Kanew What a great 80s flick! I haven't watched it since I was a kid. "Jonathan plays a game called Gotcha in which he hunts and is hunted by other students with paint guns. After a big win, he goes off for a vacation in France where he meets the sexy Sasha who says she is only interested in him because he is a virgin. She takes him with her to East Germany where they are separated and he has to escape back to the west on his own, all the while being trailed by East German spies. He arrives home only to find the game is still going on, and a canister of film is in his backpack. Then Sasha re-appears."
Stratton (2017) Dir. Simon West After an operation in the Middle-East fails completely, British Special Boat Service commando John Stratton and his American counterpart are left stranded. After they are extracted, at a great cost, it is revealed that an unknown group stole a biochemical weapon from the facility they were targeting. Stratton and his team then track down the rogue Russian operative they discover is likely behind the theft. Their goal is to find the man and retrieve the biochemical weapon before he can use it against innocent civilians in an urban area. This is a pretty straight-forward action thriller. It's far from terrible, but not great either. I like Dominic Cooper a lot (I loved him in "Agent Carter") but the role of an elite soldier is a bit of an odd fit for him. Likewise, Connie Nielsen as the head of MI6 is a rather unusual casting choice. It's all a bit too paint by the numbers plot-wise as well, with the one big twist so telegraphed that I'm fairly certain it will have been spoiled for the large majority of the audience long before the big reveal.