Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

Northern Exposure: The Complete Series. Well, all six seasons held up much, much better than I expected. In fact, it probably could've had another season with Paul Provenza and Terri Polo, but losing the star halfway through the last season, plus moving it to a different night, probably sealed its fate. Even in season six, most episodes maintained a decent level of inventiveness, and sometimes even inspiration.

It was too bad that they couldn't get the rights to all the music, though. Especially in the final season, there were scenes where it was clear that the music on the soundtrack didn't match with the action. However, they did secure Iris Dement's "Our Town" for the last scene of the last episode, and that was a great send-off to the series.

 

Torn (2013)

Two mothers are joined by grief when a bomb in a shopping mall kills both of their sons, and then at odds when blame for the bomb falls on one and then the other.

I think this would be more resonant to those who have children. I really couldn't get into it, although the writing and the acting can't be faulted. I did like the ending and the coda.

 

The Limehouse Golem (2016)
Dir. Juan Carlos Medina



In Victorian London, a murderer is terrorizing the Limehouse district, the criminal's skill in eluding the police only exceeded by the savagery of the crime scenes left behind. He is soon nicknamed the Limehouse Golem, and when Scotland Yard's investigation is going seemingly nowhere, they purposely appoint a disgraced Inspector as the new lead investigator, on the assumption that the man will fail and they will have a ready-made scapegoat whose reputation cannot be further tarnished because it already is in ruins.

The Inspector in question is intrigued by another crime: a young woman accused of having poisoned her estranged husband. Instinctively, the Inspector feels that even though the crimes seem unconnected, solving the murder of the young woman's husband will also lead him to the Golem.

One half horror thriller, one half detective story. Though it is not earth-shatteringly good or original, it is decent entertainment. The performances are all excellent, especially Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke in the lead roles as well as Douglas Booth in an important supporting role. The production values are quite good. I fear that the twist ending is one that many people will have seen coming, but by that point I had been entertained enough that I could forgive them for it.

 

xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)

The most dangerous computer in the world has just been stolen from right under the CIA's noses by a small team of gun-fu parkourists. Instantly knowing they are outclassed, the CIA turn to the only man who can beat them at their own game - the long retired and definitely looking his age Xander Cage. Xander builds a team composed of true insanity, and goes after the computer.

There's a lot for a BigSoccerite to like in this movie. They start with signing Neymar (yes, that Neymar) to the XXX program. And the opening stunt sequence where Xander skis a jungle(!) has a payoff I guarantee everyone here will love. But there's a big talking section of the film between that and the ending action scenes and it is bankrupt. The dialogue is laughably awful. The plot is unthinking. The stereotyping, especially the women, but especially the everyone, is groan-inducing. However, when you write a movie without knowing how the world works, you come up with some pretty surreal shit. I ended up really enjoying this. I'm a horrible person.

 

I have thought some more about "The Limehouse Golem" and I came to the conclusion that I didn't properly appreciate the structure of its screenplay. If you watch it, try to notice how and when each character is introduced and how and when each character disappears from the story. The symmetry is incredibly elegant (right down to the supporting characters).

 

Annabelle: Creation (2017)
Dir. David F. Sandberg



A dozen years after they lost their young daughter in a traffic accident, a husband and a wife open their large farm house home to half a dozen orphaned girls and their care-taker and teacher, a nun. The girls get the run of the house, with only two rules: they cannot go into the bedroom of the infirm lady of the house and they absolutely cannot go into a closed off, upstairs bedroom. One night, one of the girls breaks the second rule after she finds the door to this bedroom unexpectedly unlocked. After she has entered the space, strange things start to occur in and around the house.

This didn't get much love from critics. I thought it was a decent addition to the "The Conjuring" horror universe. It is a prequel to "Annabelle". The first two acts work well enough, it does lose its way a bit in the third act, which is a bit of a common trait with these films. But the first 60-70 minutes are good horror, with some jump scares (which I generally find a rather cheap horror ploy) but mostly focused on creating a creepy atmosphere with stock horror elements like a creepy house, a locked off room and how both are perceived through the eyes of increasingly frightened children.

 

The Babysitter (2017)
Dir. McG



Cole, an insecure and easily scared junior higher, is one of the few kids his age who still insists upon a babysitter. The reason he doesn't mind being perceived as childish is the love and infatuation he feels for his sexy babysitter Bee. When his parents go away for the weekend, Bee is to look after him for the duration but after their first night together, Cole wakes up to find that Bee has let other people inside of his house and their intentions are not to have an innocent little party but instead to dabble in the occult, by performing a Satanic ritual for which they need Cole's blood. Thus the cowardly Cole will have to find his courage quickly if he is to survive the night.

A horror comedy that borrows ideas from "Scream", "The Craft" and "Home Alone". This Netflix original is far from bad, I like the cast a lot (down to the smaller roles of Cole's parents who are portrayed by Leslie Bibb and Ken Marino) and McG is an effective director for this type of over the top fare.

 

Amityville: The Awakening (2017)
Dir. Franck Khalfoun



Forty years after the murders at the Amityville house, new residents move in. Belle joins her mother, her younger sister Juliet and her comatose brother James in their new residence. Her brother has been in a vegetative state for two years and suddenly, nearly miraculously starts to show signs of recovery shortly after their move. Belle is skeptical from the very beginning and upon the suggestion of a new school friend who is also a fanatic of the house and its legends, she begins to consider the possibility that the consciousness displayed by her formerly vegetative brother belongs not to him but to some evil presence that is taking possession of his mind and body.

I can't really fault the cast here, which is decent, between Bella Thorne, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kurtwood Smith. This movie was on the shelves for a long time and you can sort of see why. The writing isn't great and whereas Blumhouse Productions is usually a master at getting maximum bang out of every buck and making even low-budget productions look great, this film looks cheap and has no real visual artistry to speak of.

 

The Dark Tower (2017)
Dir. Nicolaj Arcel



Jake Chambers has been having recurring dreams/nightmares about a terrifying Man in Black and a Gunslinger, as well as a Dark Tower. His mother and step father are increasingly worried about how much he believes these visions to be real. Eventually he gets onto the radar of the Man in Black himself and he flees to the Gunslinger's world in the hope of enlisting his help.

This was poorly reviewed and loathed by the fans of the book series. Which I can understand, though it was always naive to believe that this film would do justice to Stephen King's epic novels. To try and confine this mythology to a 94 minute movie rather reminded me of the pitch meeting GRRM once had in which producers wanted to turn his "Song of Ice & Fire" into a two hour movie, which would have been an equally impossible task.

Judged on its own merits, it's a middling fantasy/action adventure movie with a good cast and a bit of a muddled narrative (likely due to the impossibility to properly adapt the material to a single 94 minute feature film). As a personal side-note, Katheryn Winnick's small part was another reminder that she was robbed of her rightful "Captain Marvel" role. I don't see how you could deem Brie Larson the superior candidate for the role, other than ageism. Which is probably what occurred.

 

La Confession (2016)
Dir. Nicolas Boukhrief



Barny is a young woman living in a small village in Nazi-occupied Northern France. She is trying to provide for her young daughter whilst her husband is a POW somewhere in Germany, from whom she has not heard anything in around two years. What little food she can get, she also shares with a small family of young Flemish Jews who are hiding in her home: a husband, a wife and their young son Dimitri. When the town priest dies and he is replaced by a charming young new clergyman, the women in the small village, somewhat starved of (French) men due to the war, are attracted to and intrigued by the new arrival. Barny is one of the few exceptions, since she is a self-proclaimed atheist with communist sympathies who views clergymen as pawns of the bourgeoisie and religion in general as the proverbial opium of the people. Eventually her curiosity does lead to her paying the man a visit and this first visit leads to a series of visits in which they have fierce philosophical discussions. Over the course of these talks, they first develop a mutual respect and then a platonic love. This love soon threatens to boil over into something more purely passionate, in spite of the fact that both of them have their own reasons to avoid such a scenario.

This is a war drama, but the war acts merely as a backdrop for the main story, which focuses primarily on the game of push and pull between the town priest and the young woman who first tries to take him down a peg but then increasingly starts admiring him (and his faith) more. Enjoyable primarily because of the two leads. Romain Duris is good as the priest, though there are a few scenes where he plays it a bit too glib. François Ozon's new muse Marine Vacth is the real star here, her character's inner pain increasingly forming the beating heart of the story. Recommended if you enjoy slow-burning, chatty French films.

 

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)
Dir. S. Craig Zahler



After he gets fired from his job at an auto shop, Bradley decides to instead become a drug runner for a friend of his, partially to save his marriage with his estranged wife, whom he has grown slightly apart from after she miscarried. This new criminal venture goes well for a year and a half, until a job he had misgivings about before he even accepted to do it goes completely pear shaped. He gets seven years in prison in the aftermath, but the Mexican business associate who lost men and money in the same deal wants revenge. Thus Bradley is forced to carry out a difficult assignment for the man whilst incarcerated, or his wife and unborn child will be killed.

I really loved S. Craig Zahler's previous movie ("Bone Tomahawk", a horror-western that might be the best 21st century western not named "The Proposition") and he is displaying some of the same stylistic traits here. Like in "Bone Tomahawk", he takes a stock genre film (here it is the gritty prison drama) and turns the intensity dial to 11. Like in "Bone Tomahawk", he uses an exaggeration of the genre conventions to explore certain traits of masculinity. As well as sprinkling it all with some gore. In terms of the latter, he doesn't go quite as far here as he did in "Bone Tomahawk". The graphic sequences are limited to some compound fractures and collapsed skulls.

I wasn't a big fan of "serious" Vince Vaughn in "True Detective" season 2, but he works better here. Mostly because the role is primarily about his physicality, his towering height and strength and the way he inhabits that body and feels about the consequences of that strength (in that light you should consider what he does after he finds out about his wife's adultery early on in the movie as well as his interaction about boxing with that one prison guard).

In general, I would say this is one rung below "Bone Tomahawk" in terms of the overall quality of the film, but this hasn't changed my opinion that S. Craig Zahler has emerged as one of the most interesting film makers working in America nowadays.

 

I'm a sucker for long, slow movies, so the length didn't bother me, but I do recognize how it may have been a little indulgent at times.

But I thought the film was fantastic. I actually enjoyed it better than the original Blade Runner. And I'm definitely glad I re-watched the original shortly before seeing the sequel.

 

Leatherface (2017)
Dir. Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury



Years before the events of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", the young Jed Sawyer is sent to youth reformatory after he becomes an unwitting (or not) accessory to a murder committed by his older brother. Ten years later, during a patients' riot caused by his visiting mother, Jed manages to escape, along with three other patients and a nurse they take hostage. Their initial plan, to head for Mexico and escape capture, is derailed when a vengeful and corrupt Texas Ranger is on their tail.

Rather unnecessary and poor prequel to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" that attempts to explore how Leatherface became Leatherface. The premise itself is the problem, since Stephen King famously stated that you shouldn't try to explain the Big Bad too much. I struggle to find any positives to list. I guess I thought the two leads (Sam Strike and Vanessa Grasse) were decent, not that the material they had to work with was great. Lili Taylor really deserves better movies, someone give a decent job, please.

 

You should check out the Scandinavian original on which this is based, if you haven't yet seen it.

 

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Dir. Matt Reeves



Caesar and his tribe of Apes have been attempting to build a life for themselves in the woods, but their settlements are attacked by a fanatical Colonel who leads one of the few remaining human combat units. Even with human numbers ever dwindling, the cost for the Apes becomes too great. An attempt by Caesar to offer an olive branch to his opposite number with the humans backfires, to a great personal cost. Caesar and a handful of his most trusted allies thus head towards the human combatants, in the hope of settling matters once and for all.

I liked this a lot. All three of Rupert Wyatt's and Matt Reeves' Planet of the Apes movies were good, which is perhaps an underrated achievement, considering how easily you could mess up these movies and how many reboots of classic movies have been utter failures in that respect. I think I still prefer the first one for its relative introspection and cast (John Lithgow especially was terrific in that one). But I think War is a good second best, if I were to rank this new PotA trilogy. I was especially delighted with "The Great Escape" with Apes sequence. I also liked the subplot of the little girl whom Maurice becomes a surrogate father/parent to, though I thought the reveal as to her identity felt a bit contrived and fan-servicey.

Still, I think these three films make for a worthy reboot of this franchise as well as a quality exercise in blockbuster cinema in their own right.

 

I was a fan of Stranger Things but I understand your criticism. However, I can't think whom you're referring to here.

 

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

Barb?

 

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

She's not dead. She's in the season 2 trailers.

 

The Zookeeper's Wife (2017)
Dir. Niki Caro



Shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland, Antonina and Jan Zabinski's Warsaw zoo is overtaken by the Germans. A German zoologist, a former acquaintance of them, takes over the best of the animals for his own Berlin zoo, under the guise of saving them, killing those he does not covet. The Zabinski's manage to keep their zoo open by turning it into a pig farm. Right under the German's eyes, they also start hiding Jews, people whom Jan successfully smuggles out of the Warsaw ghetto. As the war progresses, the risks of their life-saving venture grow ever more great.

Enjoyable film. The story itself is familiar but it's worth seeing just for the three excellent lead performances by Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh and Daniel Brühl. Chastain especially throws herself in this role. Heldenbergh has made his career out of playing the likable everyman (I first saw him in such a role in "Ons Geluk" nearly 22 years ago).

 

The Molly Maguires (1970)

A few years after the Great Panic of 1873, the Irish miners in the Pennsylvania coal mines suffered horrific working conditions and were barely paid a subsistence wage. They could do little about it, as only a fifth of Americans had full wage jobs at the time, and union actions were brutally oppressed. A secret terrorist organization known as the Molly Maguires attacked the property of the worst mine owners, and occasionally the supervisors and mine owners themselves. Pinkerton detective James McParlan is sent to infiltrate the organization.

A lose retelling of actual, but secretive and not well understood events. A box office failure, despite starring two of the biggest names of the time. A little overlong at 2 hours, but the things I certainly wouldn't cut are the two wordless scenes of the workings of a late 19th century coal mine, first in the mine itself, scored by Henry Mancini and then fitful coughing in turn, and later in the coal breaker, a structure that still stands today as part of a coal museum. A worthy watch because of the acting and what it tells us of a mostly forgotten history.