Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

Then you missed pretty much the whole ending where Gabriel breaks down. But I would be hesitant to recommend you revisit it.

 

I.T. (2016)

Big-time charter airline owner Pierce Brosnan is about to launch an "Uber-for-private-aircraft". Overextended, he needs an IPO to succeed or he's sunk. His big presentation to investors starts to glitch, and a temp IT guy saves the day. A grateful Brosnan hires him full time and brings him over to fix his very wired house's wi-fi. But Brosnan's 17-year-old daughter is just this creep's type, and when she finally spurns him he launches a full-on internet attack on the Brosnan's family and company. The police don't believe him. Brosnan has to go old-school to fight back.

There could have been a decent thriller about creepy stalker tech-bros or 60's Mustangs vs. the internet-of-things, but this wasn't it. This doesn't understand much about tech nor how people use it, and that's unforgivable in an age when everyone carries a computer with them at all times. The ending has standard action sequences with a cool Equalizer-type guy, if you are able to stick through the middle part. Pierce certainly tries his best.

 

Baby Driver (2017)
Dir. Edgar Wright



Baby is a getaway driver who is working off a debt to Doc, a shadowy operator who organizes high-stake heists and rotates his crew for every operation. The one constant is Baby, a prodigious man behind the wheel who listens to music during his daring escapes as a way to center himself. He is taken somewhat out of his lonely existence when he meets a pretty young waitress called Debora, but even after he has paid of his debt, Doc won't let him go.

This was pretty hyped but I thought it was fairly underwhelming. The gimmick which got a lot of attention, the way all of the car chases are choreographed to the music, is a lot of fun. That does not change the fact that one good idea doesn't make a movie. Beyond the gimmick, this is a very empty movie, with cardboard characters (which can be fine in some films but does not work here). Lily James' character is barely two-dimensional and has absolutely no agency. The various winks at other movies in the genre fall a bit flat ("Heat", the audition scene in "Driver" during the climax in the parking garage). Harry Mulisch once described the process of writing a book, or at least the brainstorming that preceded it as waiting for a good idea, then once you had that good idea, waiting for another, then another one and then another one. Only when you had four or five good ideas did you start structuring a narrative and did you start writing the actual novel. I realize that the process will be different for every creative person, but to use Mulisch's concept, it feels like Edgar Wright had one good idea ("I'll make a movie about a getaway driver and use it as a vehicle for intricate choreographed chase scenes") but then just filled in the voids in his screenplay with all of the genre cliches you can think of.

I can't really fault the cast, though I did think Ansel Elgort was a bit dull in the lead role. Having said that, I'm not sure anyone else could have done much better. Jamie Foxx is great as a pure-bred sociopath with homicidal tendencies, but we have seen him play variations of this character before, some of them of the humorous kind (e.g. Motherfvcker Jones in the "Horrible Bosses" movies). Jon Hamm and Eiza Gonzalez do have some chemistry, in spite of their characters being underwritten.

Guillermo del Toro raved about how this was a huge step ahead for Edgar Wright. It's certainly different from his previous work, but I'm not sure if it towers above his oeuvre. He has made better movies from a purely writing perspective, that didn't have the budget to look quite as good as "Baby Driver". I guess it depends on what you find most important.

 

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: the soundtrack of "Baby Driver" is great. But then, it would have been a huge letdown if it wasn't.

 

You can definitely make such a movie with cardboard characters and it be good, like in "The Driver", where all of the characters are completely reduced to their roles (The Driver, the Player, the Detective, the Connection) and we don't even know their names. But Edgar Wright wants to have it both ways. He is obviously interested in these people beyond their roles, but then at the same time, the exploration of their respective personalities, in so far they have one, has the depth of a shallow puddle.

I think he didn't really know what he wanted in that regard.
I think Hamm and Gonzalez make it work, he certainly didn't give them a lot to work with.
Jon Bernthal also sort of worked, but he was only in like three scenes and he has played this kind of super-intense character so many times that you sort of fill in the blanks in your head. In that regard, that was a successful casting choice.

 

I agree with you guys that this movie was highly overrated... but are you sure that happened?

 

It didn't.

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They roughed him up and stole his wheelchair.

 

A Study in Horror (1965)
Dir. James Hill



A knife-wielding murderer is terrorizing the streets of Whitechapel as he butchers prostitutes. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are drawn into the case when Holmes receives a package at 221B Baker Street containing a box of surgical equipment, with a single item missing: a surgical knife. They trace the box back to a pawn shop in Whitechapel and thus get their first clue in uncovering Jack the Ripper's identity.

An atmospheric, nicely shot (considering the budget) Holmes story with John Neville as the detective and Donald Houston as Doctor Watson. Also features Dame Judi Dench in one of her earlier film roles. The resolution was a bit of a letdown, but then, it would have been hard to provide a satisfactory climax. I quite liked Robert Morley as Mycroft Holmes. Barbara Windsor also has a small part as one of the Ripper's victims.

 

I like to call this "the best Sherlock Holmes movie you've never heard of." Most people aren't aware of its existence. It was one of the early offerings from the Sony Pictures Choice Collection years ago and the DVD is beautiful.



Another little-known Holmes picture that should be checked out at some point is Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, a 1962 German-language black & white production with Christopher Lee as Holmes and Thorley Walters as Watson. The screenplay was by Curt Siodmak (writer of The Wolf Man and many other classic Universal horror films, in addition to Val Lewton's I Walked With A Zombie and the novel Donovan's Brain). It was directed by Terence Fisher, the man responsible for the look of the early, great Hammer horror films. (He ended up directing five of the six Peter Cushing/Frankenstein series).

Fisher made this Holmes movie after practically being exiled by Hammer because of The Phantom of the Opera starring Herbert Lom, the most expensive Hammer production up to that time. He took the fall for the picture being a big flop at the box office.

 

Thunder Road (1958)
Dir. Arthur Ripley



Lucas Doolin, a Korean War vet, has returned to his native Harlan County, Kentucky to once again run his father's moonshine liquor. War has changed him into a more reckless version of the man he was before, admired by his peers and perceived more wearily by some of the older moonshiners in the community. A Memphis-based gangster by the name of Kogan descends upon Harlan County with the intention to take over all of the stills, whether the current owners like it or not. Luke and his father are two of the majority of hold-outs who want to keep their independence, but this becomes increasingly difficult as Kogan starts using deadly violence against the moonshine runners. This sets Luke and Kogan up for an inevitable confrontation. Stuck in between them is a treasury agent who is hoping to arrest both men before more lives are lost.

This was a very pleasant surprise. Apparently a passion project of Mitchum himself (he wrote the original story that the screenplay was based on), his strong performance anchors the film. His real-life son plays his character's younger brother (the resemblance is uncanny). A tense and nicely paced drama with some hallmarks of a classic tragedy. Bruce Springsteen borrowed the name of his famous song from a poster of this movie he once saw.

 

Hell or High Water (2016)

Brothers Chris Pine and Ben Foster have figured out a way to pay off the nearly-due reverse mortgage on Pine's ranch - rob banks. Namely Texas Midlands banks, the institution that holds the mortgage. Ex-con Foster has the experience and the gumption, Pine has the brains. They have a plan that makes them very hard to trace. But a plan means a pattern, and Texas Ranger Jeff Bridges thinks he sees it.

There's a lot of Western in this movie besides all the cowboy hats and horses and cattle and being set in Texas and all. Lots of movies have men using a gun as a tool of violence, but in a western the gun a totem that elevates the status of the man holding it. Hell or High Water has that feeling, but doesn't (mostly) portray it in a positive light. And like the more modern, revisionist Westerns it is concerned with the end of an era. But instead of railroad barons and telegraphs turning the wild west civilized, Hell or High Water is set in a rural land turning empty, with boarded up main strips and kids headed off to cities and the panorama of robotic refineries taking the place of mesas. It's a deeply felt movie with fantastic acting and brilliant musical choices.

I'd only fault the ending because Pine's character has an easy out that 99.99% of Texans wouldn't have. But maybe that's why he's the only one doing the robbing. Because if this was just about regular Joes taking back what was took, then you'd be wondering why everyone wasn't doing it. Actually, I'm still wondering that.

 

I would also add the throwaway comment that the scene with the old waitress serving Jeff Bridges' character and his partner is one of the funniest scenes ever in a drama film.

 

I think you guys are taking Baby Driver too seriously. It's a fantasy wrapped up in a modern setting. It's funky and fun and delivers what it set out to.

Hell or High Water, from what I can remember, was good. Foster put in an admirable performance while Pine was ok. The only question I was left with was whether Foster had a death wish or was just completely insane.

 

I'm not sure what made it shit. My only gripe was some hokey dialogue.

 

Such as?

 

I didn't know anything going into the movie. Did not see any trailers. I walked away hating the dialogue but confused how the film went from silly fun to the third act of just way out sillyness. Did not seem to fit.

 

Spider-man: Homecoming (2017)
Dir. Jon Watts



After the events of "Captain America: Civil War", Spider-man returns to NYC where he is allowed by Tony Stark to keep the high-tech suit he made for the young webslinger, on the condition that he will take it easy and not try to bite off more than he can chew. After a while, he gets tired of chasing low-rent street thugs and he aims his sights higher, at a local crime boss who has turned his business of selling alien weapons to local gangsters into a very lucrative enterprise. Only this is the kind of thing that Tony Stark would rather Peter not get involved in.

Very charming reboot. I was skeptical, but Tom Holland really won me over in the role. Deservedly, he is deemed the best live-action actor to date to portray Spider-man. I also thought the screenplay nailed the appropriate tone for a Spider-man film. I liked the humor (Peter's little home video of his first adventure with the Avengers, the problems of being a webslinger when you are stuck in the suburbs, Captain America's educational videos, the suits' A.I., ...). I thought they meant well with some of the cameos, but if you are like me and you really like Donald Glover and Martin Starr as actors/performers, then you are glad to see them in this but also a bit disappointed they hadn't more to do. This also applies to Marisa Tomei, who is great as the new Aunt May, but severely underused.

Michael Keaton is the best Marvel villain to date, though the Marvel cinematic universe has so far been pretty devoid of memorable bad guys, so he didn't have to be that great to outshine the competition. More of the same, please.

 

Phenomena (1985)
Dir. Dario Argento




A young woman, the daughter to a famous actor, is sent to a private international boarding school in the Swiss alps whilst her father is shooting a movie on location in the Philippines. She arrives in an area terrorized by a serial killer, who targets teenage girls whose bodies are found badly decomposed months after they have disappeared. She meets a disabled entomologist who lives nearby her school, bonding with him over their shared love for insects. She eventually confides in the man that her love for insects is more than just an affinity, but a near telepathic bond. The man suggests she uses this gift to try and track down the serial killer.

Though not a Dario Argento grand cru like "Suspiria" or "Tenebrae", this was worth seeing, in spite of its less than stellar reputation among some Argento fans. It shares traits of both the aforementioned films (the eerie, surreal atmosphere, the secluded location populated almost exclusively by young women, a serial killer plot). Though the most note-worthy qualities for me are the two main performances: a very young Jennifer Connelly, displaying the raw talent that would lead to her true breakthrough with "Labyrinth" a year later (the slightly detached style gives her character an ethereal quality) and Donald Pleasence as the wheelchair bound entomologist. There are a few visually impressive sequences in there, especially the night-time scene on the lake during the climax. As well as a not-too-subtle wink to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".

 

Really enjoyed Blade Runner 2049. The length is a bit excessive but that's my only complaint really.