After the Thin Man (1936) Dir. W.S. Van Dyke After their adventures in New York City, Nick and Nora Charles return home just in time to celebrate New Years Eve at home in San Francisco. They are invited to spend the night with relatives of Nora, a haughty bunch who do not approve of Nick because they feel that Nora married well below her station by choosing a husband whose former profession was something as ordinary and vulgar as a private investigator. Over the course of the evening, it is revealed that Nora's battleaxe of an aunt has an ulterior motive for having invited the couple over: she wants Nick to try and find Robert, the no-good deadbeat of a husband to Nora's cousin Selma. The man has disappeared for several days. Nick takes up the case and thus him and his wife get stuck in the middle of another criminal affair involving murder, blackmail and betrayal. I thought this held up pretty well. Though perhaps not quite as fresh a dynamic as in the first movie, the leads undeniable chemistry persists here and they still sparkle together in the domestic scenes. The presence of a young Jimmy Stewart elevates this sequel to almost the same level as the original film for me.
Blazing Saddles (1974) Taggart, the administrator of an expanding railroad company... wait, this is making fun of Atlas Shrugged, isn't it? Anyway, Taggart has to reroute the railroad and the town of Rock Ridge is in the way. So Taggart and the mastermind Lamarr launch numerous plans to depopulate Rock Ridge, including goading the incompetent Governor into appointing a nih named Bart as sheriff. Over time Bart's quick wit overcomes the town's... let's say reticence towards having a black protector. Eventually the common people of the town and the skilled laborers of the railroad come together to.. wait, this is making fun of Atlas Shrugged again, isn't it? Not exactly a precision instrument, and not every part of the scattershot approach to humor has aged well (or even landed back then). But you can't deny its importance as an exploration into the American psyche and skewering of the American mythos, and it's as funny as all get out.
I always loved this moment in "Blazing Saddles", you can see that Gene Wilder genuinely made Cleavon Little crack up with his delivery of that line.
I had to pay something like a $75 fine for keeping a Betamax rental of "Blazing Saddles" out from the rental place back in the day. On my $3.35 hour minimum wage job, that was a time-consuming mistake.
Swallows and Amazons (2016) Dir. Philippa Lowthorpe In the Summer of 1935, whilst their Navy captain father is off on his ship in the South China Sea, the Walker kids and their Scottish mother head up North to the lake country to spend a vacation on 'their' lake. The kids take the Swallow, a boat that belongs to their landlord, out on adventures and investigate a little island in the middle of the water. There they enter into a conflict with another group kids local to the area: the Amazons, also named after their boat. But they also interact with an ornery man who lives on a house boat - which quickly earns him the nickname of Captain Flint - and who seems to be hiding something. This is an adaptation of a children's novel of the same name. Unfortunately, it all falls a bit flat for me. It's a failure mostly of the writing (not sure if the problem is the source material or the adaptation). The dialogue rarely sparkles, much of it makes no sense even in terms of its internal consistency and the young cast does little to elevate it beyond its level (among the child actors really only Hannah Jayne Thorpe left a good impression on me). The one saving grace is the presence of Kelly Macdonald as the mother, but she cannot rescue the movie on her own. I can certainly see a charming little coming of age story being churned from the same core elements, but this is not it.
l'Été meurtrier (1983) Dir. Jean Becker In 1975, the arrival of a new family in a small town in the Provence causes a stir. Specifically, all of the men in the community are enthralled by Eliane, the 19-year old daughter of the odd couple comprised of a French crippled father and a German immigrant mother. She soon becomes the alluring object upon which all of them project their own desires. This quickly earns her a (possibly unearned) reputation of being 'easy'. One of her admirers is a local mechanic and volunteer firefighter, nicknamed Pin-Pon, who tries to woe her and in spite of her erratic behavior and rudeness, manages to win her over. Or does he? Interesting film, held together entirely by Isabelle Adjani's powerful performance (I'm coming more and more around to the idea that she is now underrated as an actress). This is a movie that hinges on two twists, the first of which is the most powerful and revolves around nothing more complex than the revelation that what appeared to be a purely objectified character has true agency and purpose. There are other good performances in there, especially Suzanne Flon as a near-deaf old aunt with a heart of gold and Michel Galabru (post his many Funès collaborations) as Eliane's tragic figure of a father.
Maigret in Montmartre (2017) Dir. Thaddeus O'Sullivan Two separate murders, seemingly not connected to each other, take Maigret to Montmartre. The first assassination is that of a showgirl, the second of an elderly, morphine-addicted Countess. The reason that Maigret suspects the murders are connected after all is because the showgirl came to visit him with a cryptic message about a Countess being in danger of murder on the eve of both assassinations. The investigation takes him down a series of ever more confusing developments, with various threads of inquiry that lead nowhere. The fourth of the Maigret adaptations with Rowan Atkinson in the titular role. I very much liked this one for its cast and the production values, but it's the poorest so far in terms of the central mystery. In the end, the climax feels contrived and rushed.
Sweet Virginia (2017) Dir. Jamie M. Dagg In the aftermath of a brutal killing that left three men at a diner dead, a former bull rider turned motel manager befriends one of his guests, a loner who seems slightly off kilter, just below a thin veneer of respectability. Fate puts both men on a collision course that will shatter whatever respect they might have for each other. This wasn't bad. It borrows ideas from movies as "Blood Simple", "A Simple Plan" and "Fargo", but the friendship at the center of it reminded me most of a similar relationship between Audie Murphy's and Charles Drake's characters in Jack Arnold's "No Name on the Bullet". In fact, you could interpret this as a 21st century, postmodern take on the same story. A very decent cast, that includes Jon Bernthal, Imogen Poots and Rosemary DeWitt. But as if often the case in such movies, it's the antagonist who truly shines, in this case, Christopher Abbott.
Bright (2017) Dir. David Ayer In an alternate universe Los Angeles, fantasy races (Humans, Elves, Orcs) are living in an uneasy co-habitation, the racial tensions dating back to an event that occurred 2000 years earlier and which has left Elves as the upper-class race and Orcs as the barely tolerated lower classes, with the Humans left dangling somewhere in between (obviously meant as stand-ins for the 1%, the white working class and POC respectively). We follow Ward, a human cop who has the first ever Orc police officer on the LAPD as his partner. He does not like this arrangement, especially not after he gets shot in the line of duty and he suspects his partner of having let the shooter - a fellow Orc - escape due to Clan loyalties. After he is reinstated to active duty having recovered from his shooting, the pair of them are sent to what is supposed to be the safe house of some cult, only to be shot at upon arrival. When they check out the house itself, they find carnage of the magical kind, as well as a Bright (a magic wielder) and a magical wand. The latter item is described as being like 'a nuclear weapon that can grant wishes', so their efforts soon focus on keeping both the Bright and the wand out of the hands of greedy corrupt cops, gang members intent on its power, angry Orcs, Federal agents specialized in magical affairs and another Elvish Bright who wants to use the wand to give a rebirth to the evil that all races united to defeat two millennia earlier. This was critically panned to an extent that was embarrassing for all involved, including Netflix, director David Ayer, star Will Smith and screenwriter Max Landis. The bad reviews were not helped by the more recent news that Max Landis (John Landis' son) is seemingly the latest Hollywood type washed away by the Weinstein backlash. I went in with low expectations and this isn't a great film. It's a bad film, with plot holes you could fit a double-decker bus through and occasionally dialogue that is so bad it becomes cringe-worthy. But the good news is, it's the good kind of bad. Which means that in spite of (or perhaps because of) it's many flaws, this is actually a fairly entertaining watch.
The Snowman (2017) Dir. Tomas Alfredson Harry, an alcoholic police detective in Oslo partners with Katrine, a newly transferred female colleague who previously worked in Bergen, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a woman who seemingly disappeared overnight from her home, with her daughter sleeping in the next room. Harry thinks the disappearance is linked to the woman's supposed infidelity and suspect her husband might know more about it. Katrine believes the disappearance is linked to a series of similar disappearances and murders which happened all over the country. All of the victims were female and had children, all of the crime scenes contained an ominous-looking snowman in the immediate vicinity that was supposedly made by the killer. As they dig into both the background of the victims and the past, they come upon a shady gynecologist and a wealthy industrial as potential suspects. Continuing my theme of poorly reviewed 2017 releases with this feature. Boy howdie, was it bad. I'm vaguely aware of the disastrous production history, but even so, it's amazing that this was apparently the best edit of the film they managed to put out. It's especially unfortunate because Tomas Alfredson's "Let the Right One in" is perhaps the best horror movie of the 21st century and this is a very good cast by any metric: Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson as the two leads and an array of good talent in supporting roles which includes Charlotte Gainsbourg, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones and Chloë Sevigny. You could devote an entire sub-theme about the badness of this film that revolves around one other supporting actor's performance: Val Kilmer. He basically only uses one facial expression in the entire film and I'm pretty sure part of his dialogue was overdubbed by someone other than him. Either that, or something really weird happened in post-production. Apart from the "Mr. Police" meme this movie birthed on social media, this film has no redeeming qualities. So it isn't even the good kind of bad. A waste of a good cast and a huge, huge letdown if you went into this film based on Tomas Alfredson's previous work (which also includes the excellent Le Carré adaptation "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy").
Ender's Game (2013) Fifty years after an insect-like race comes to Earth to try to plant a colony, the united Earth forces create a space fleet to take the battle to their space. For some bizarre reason, they decide that someone around 12 years old is the best choice to be fleet commander. To that end, they pick the best children on Earth and put them in a space station to play Quidditch until one team gets really good at it. That team is obviously the one to command a space invasion fleet. I have a lot of problems with this. Boot camp is designed to wear down the recruit and make them controllable and dependent on the team. How is that supposed to be the model of leadership school? These kids are supposed to be learning astrophysics and they don't get enough sleep at night. I also don't get this worship of Mazer Rackham (Ugh! These names!), the hero of the first invasion - in fact, much of this world felt unbuilt to me. Long ago I read many books by famous generals looking for the essence of knowing what to do. After a long time, I figured out there is no such thing in a broad sense - they were commanding and decisive in battle because they had learning and experience in that very narrow field. Not only do those skills not carry over to other aspects of life, they don't even carry over to different styles of war. It would be better if the key to victory in this movie wasn't some ball-game play, but something from the school lessons, something relevant to a battle that a lot of people spent a lot of time thinking about. I mean, Ender didn't build the fleet or determine it's makeup. Even with all that, I still really liked the ending after the battle. Asa Butterfield as Ender was great in that scene. I just wish the director would continue all the way to the credits in that vein. The redemptive arc in the very end was shallow and unearned, as it is a set-up for a sequel that will never (and could never) be filmed.
The Last Jedi picks up right where The Force Awakens ended, which I found confusing because the triumph at the end was even more ephemeral than I expected. The Last Jedi frequently felt overstuffed, but I had a lot of fun nonetheless.
Tin Star (2017) A British cop turned police chief in a Canadian mountain town is investigating the suspected murder of a local Doctor, whom he knew from his AA meetings. After he is beset by a personal tragedy that he suspects has something to do with the machinations of the local oil company's chief of security, he descends back into binge-drinking, which harbors the return of his former, violent alter ego 'Jack'. Jack goes on a local rampage to get even and does not much care about the law or due process. I gave this Amazon original show a try because some reviewers likened it to "Justified" and "Banshee", two shows that I loved. I can see the thematic similarities, but unfortunately this is not nearly as good as those two shows. Which does not mean I hated it altogether. I liked some of the performances, chief among them Genevieve O'Reilly as the protagonist's tough as nails Irish wife and Christina Hendricks as the opportunistic PR person on the oil company's payroll. I also thought the flashback episode to Whitey's childhood was well done, a perfect little hour of TV. This is getting a second season, which is surprising, considering how definitive some of the decisions in the last two episodes are. If this does return, it will have to be a very different show.
Pottersville (2017) Dir. Seth Henrikson Pottersville is a sleepy little town up North that has seen better days. Maynard, the owner of the town's general store, returns to his place of business after finding out an unpleasant secret about his wife that puts his entire marriage into question. After he gets drunk, he puts on a camouflage suit and a gorilla mask and runs around town at night. The next morning, he discovers that his drunken hi-jinks have been mistaken for a Bigfoot sighting and that a famous monster hunter is bringing his TV show to town, which brings a host of tourists and business to the local economy along with it. So Maynard feels compelled to keep the charade going, but how much longer can he keep it up after a local tracker and hunter is hired by the TV show to capture the Bigfoot? This is a Christmas comedy with a paper-thin script and a bafflingly good cast, considering the material. The likable ensemble manages to elevate this movie to a slightly higher level, but even they cannot save the trite screenplay. Only watch this if you truly need to see Michael Shannon in a Bigfoot costume and Christina Hendricks in a bunny furry outfit.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, I expected to love this. I liked it. What was good? Pretty much everyone in the cast. There wasn't a moment I wasn't fascinated by the people in the film. Frances McDormand got a lot of praise for this and in my opinion deserves every bit of it. Her rage (get back to that in a minute, see below) seems absolutely real, but she still manages to carry you along with her. Harrelson and Rockwell were with her every step along the way. I was fascinated by all of them, as well as the others in the cast. What bugged me? Well, if McDonagh deserves some credit for all of those great performances (and he does: when the performances are all that good, the director had at least something to do with it), I have to call him on a couple of elements in the story and the screenplay. 1. Plot developments: First, the story is based on the horrifically (but thankfully not depicted) brutal rape and murder of McDormand's daughter, 7 months before the start of the film (this is revealed at the beginning, so I'm not spoiling anything). That and the fact that any investigation of the crime has been unsuccessful is really all the reason there needs to be for McDormand's rage. However, [spoiler, highlight to reveal] McDonagh sticks in a flashback that makes McDormand's rage a mask for her own guilt and self-recrimination. It's completely unnecessary and manipulative. And it comes very close to undercutting McDormand's character. There's a purity to the anger McDormand gives us that doesn't deserve McDonagh little bit of gotcha. Second, it's really hard to believe that Rockwell's character can be redeemed in any way, shape or form. The fact that he's not in jail for publicly throwing an innocent man out the window is hard enough to swallow. [/Spoiler] 2. McDonagh doesn't really know how Americans talk, much less American southerners. For the most part, the dialogue is generic enough that this doesn't matter, and there's some real snap and humor (however dark) that I really liked. That said, there are a couple of moments that don't ring true. The worst one is a scene where several characters drop the word c*** with nobody getting their teeth rattled as a consequence. Common enough in the UK, I'm told, but where I grew up that word was never deployed casually and never got a laugh.
I had a very similar opinion of this movie. I love the way you articulated your two criticisms; those things also bothered me. I actually live in southern Missouri so criticism #2 was especially on point for me.
I had no ideas what the reviews were going into my viewing of this dreck, but all I can say is that I am glad the collective "elite" thinks this is junk, because, well, it is. What I did know going in was that this was going to be a buddy cop movie, and I hate buddy cop movies but the notion that orcs and elves exist, and their existence is pretty much just taken for granted, was like catnip to me. Alas, there could have been an interesting movie in here, what with a new lower race, and a new higher race, but no, the orcs are just occupying the social level of El Salvadoran immigrants and the Super Elves are like Agent Smith. It's just too much mashup to be interesting.
Nice review. Sounds like this problem could have been solved by hiring a Southerner as a script doctor.
Kill 'em all (2017) Dir. Peter Malota At a hospital's E.R. where the staff is working with a skeleton crew, they have to deal with the arrival of several ambulances, carrying injured individuals who all appear to have been in a (gun) fight. Moments later, a couple of SUVs turn up too, out of which heavily armed individuals pour into the E.R., attacking everyone in sight, in search for a person named 'Phillip'. One E.R. nurse is caught in the middle and she is the one to tell the story of what happened next to her two FBI interviewers who are trying to determine what happened. But is she telling the truth or is she an unreliable narrator? A Van Damme action vehicle that was a bit hit and miss for me. The action sequences mostly work, but some of the editing in this film is weird (especially in the opening sequence). It does feature a Van Damme on Van Damme scene (not of the body double type) in which JCVD takes on his real-life son Kris Van Damme, who plays one of the bad guy's henchmen. Autumn Reeser is the best leading lady in a while in the JCVD-verse. There is a decent movie to be made out of the same material, one which is less serious, less dependent on twists that make no sense and an editor/director with less aspirations of being the Tarkovsky of the straight-to-video action genre.