The Durrells in Corfu, Season One. this was advertised on a flyer of a PBS DVD of the musical Carousel, and I'm like.... there's a series about Lawrence Durrell? Not quite: based on a book by Gerald Durrell, younger brother of the novelist Lawrence Durrell, this is pretty damn funny so far. The family moves from Bournemouth to the Greek Island of Corfu. Basically, it's an ensemble "fish out of water" show, but it's quite well made so far. But it is a British show, and those things can shark jump on a moment's notice.
Foreign Correspondent (1940) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock With Europe on the cusp of war, the editor in chief of the NY Globe sends a new foreign correspondent to Europe. Upon his arrival in London, he meets an important Dutch diplomat, a Mr. Van Meer, who is a key figure in the continent's small but fastidious peace faction. When Van Meer subsequently is shot just before attending a conference in Holland, the reporter makes it his job to find out who is responsible, and in the process finds out that not all is as it seems. He recruits the help of another diplomat's daughter in the process. A rather good Hitchcock film that I had yet to see. There are flourishes of quality in there that rival the very best of Hitch's work. The very best sequence in the film is the one in Holland, starting with the panning shot that starts the sequence, then subsequently the car chase to eventually end up at the windmill (a gloriously shot scene). The plane crash scene was also impressive and somewhat ahead of its time from a technical perspective. Less showy but no less wonderful is the crane shot of the staircase at the villains' lair. With a good section of the film taking place in Holland, it was weird as a Flemish viewer to hear the smorgasbord of performers that they got to portray the Dutch characters: some real Dutch-speakers, some Germans who were obviously told to try and sound Dutch and then some English speakers who were merely manipulating some phonemes and were hard to understand even for me. I found that performance-wise, the supporting cast were really more impressive than the two leads, especially Herbert Marshall as Fisher and Albert Bassermann as Van Meer. This was the second film of Hitchcock's American career and as such, there are still stylistic hints that straddle both sides of his oeuvre (there are still many winks to his origins in German expressionism).
The Aggression Scale (2012) Dir. Steven C. Miller A newly formed family of divorcees moves into a new home, against the oldest child's wishes. She hates the fact that they had to leave almost overnight from their old home and she is still coming to terms with the fact that she now has a stepfather and little stepbrother. The stepbrother in question is newly released from a child psychiatric ward and she finds interaction with him difficult. On the second day at their new home, four heavily armed men force their way into the house, demanding the money the parents stole from a mob boss, thus explaining their need to leave in a rush. The four goons find an unlikely and tough opponent in the teenage son. There are several pieces online in which a popular and humorous analysis of "Home Alone" is laid bare: the theory that the movie is in fact the origin story of a violent sociopath/psychopath. "The Aggression Scale" is more or less the movie you get when that theory is played straight. Thus we get a teenager using creative ways to inflict extreme violence on four heavily armed home invaders. I can't claim that the end result is a particularly good film, though I have to admit that some scenes were strangely - almost guiltily - entertaining.
The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018) Dir. Johannes Roberts A little nuclear family is taking a road trip to drive their troubled daughter to her new boarding school. The plan is to stay overnight with the wife's uncle, who lives in and runs a mobile home park with his wife. When they arrive at the park itself late at night, it is seemingly empty. After they settle into the mobile home they have been assigned for the night, strangers start harassing them, initially in a seemingly innocent manner, but as the night progresses this escalates into ever more extreme violence. A very worthy sequel to the original film, which is deemed a 21st century horror classic by some (I personally liked it but thought it to be somewhat overrated). I quite liked the cast, especially Christina Hendricks as the mother and Bailee Madison as the daughter. What could and perhaps should have been an easy and cheap effect, the use of a handful of classic power ballads in the soundtrack whilst some of the carnage is going on onscreen was surprisingly effective. It's also an occasionally very nicely shot little film, by the standards of low-budget horror films (the pool scene is a stand-out in that respect, but also the panning shot of the park benches in the mist). If I have one quibble it's the somewhat jarring use of the "big bad who cannot seem to die" trope. It's a horror staple, but I don't think it really fits into a movie which core concept is the idea that a bunch of "regular" people are doling out this extreme violence just to amuse themselves. Being a violent psychopath doesn't give you superpowers, so it's a bit idiotic for them to keep on coming back Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees style.
Death Wish (2018) Dir. Eli Roth Dr. Paul Kersey is a successful trauma surgeon who lives a happy and privileged life with his wife and daughter. One night, after being called by to the hospital to fill in for an ill colleague in spite of the fact that he had the evening off to celebrate his birthday, both his wife and daughter are wheeled into the E.R. with gunshot wounds, sustained in a robbery gone wrong at home. His wife does not survive her wounds whilst his daughter slips into a deep coma. When the police don't manage to find the culprits even after several weeks of investigation, his frustration boils over to the point that he decides to take justice in his own hands. His spree of vigilante justice makes him a controversial figure in his home city of Chicago, with one half of the people seeing him as a hero and the other half as a violent madman whose acts add to and do not detract from the city's violent reputation. I didn't really go into this remake with high expectations. In the end, it's a disappointing film for a variety of reasons. I think it was Kevin Smith who revealed that he found out on the set of "Cop Out" that Bruce Willis is only in the industry now to make money and any passion he might have once had for his craft is long gone. This is another performance where he is sort of half-assing through things. This is especially apparent in any scene where he is required to emote. He can do the gun violence stuff in his sleep by now. Another problem with the film is that Eli Roth is about the worst person in the world to direct a nuanced take on vigilantism. Whereas with the original film (not with the sequels) you could at the very least still debate whether it glorified vigilantism or not, there is no such ambiguity here. It's clear that the idea is for the audience to see Dr. Paul Kersey as a hero and nothing more. The supporting cast is not bad. Elisabeth Shue is really too good an actress for the limited role that she got here (but I guess you have to take what you can get when you get her age as a woman in Hollywood), Vincent D'Onofrio is very enjoyable as Paul Kersey's brother and Al Pacino's stepdaughter Camila Morrone is actually not half-bad as Paul Kersey's daughter. But I'm not entirely sure what the point of this film is, other than presenting a quasi-fascist world-view as acceptable.
Feral (2017) Dir. Mark Young Six friends, most of them medical school students who are near graduation, go for a hiking trip in the woods. On their first night out camping, one of their group is attacked by a seemingly feral creature. After falling ill, the victim becomes something not quite human, leaving the remainder of the group fighting for their survival. This is basically a "Cabin Fever" clone, which considering that Eli Roth's movie wasn't the most original horror film in the world to begin with means that this has a low originality factor. Thus everything hinges on the execution, which is unfortunately fairly forgettable. Only Scout Taylor-Compton as the lead is memorable, but even there I'm kind of hoping she gets to display her talent in a better film. Only for those among you who are huge fans of the zombie-infection horror subgenre.
I should elaborate, I mean the sub-genre of zombie movies in which an infectious disease is the cause of the reanimation. There are zombies whose origins is different than that, e.g. magic or a scientific experiment gone wrong or coming into contact with a chemical or an alien parasite, ...
Moonrise (1948) Dir. Frank Borzage Danny is a young man who lives in the same small town he grew up in. As a shadow hanging over his life is the crime his father committed, a murder for which the man was hanged. Because of this, he was bullied and tormented as a child and still shunned and judged poorly as an adult man by some of the townfolks. He has developed an attraction to a pretty young school teacher, but has a rival in one of his former childhood bullies for her affection. This rivalry leads to a fight between the two men outside the venue of a dance. During this fight, Danny kills his rival and former tormentor, then hides the body in the nearby swamp. In the days following the murder, in spite of his weird behavior, he manages to woe the object of his affection, but then the crime he has committed weighs on him as an more heavier veil, making any prospect of a lasting happiness increasingly more unlikely. I really liked this noirish crime drama. It's a character piece that reminded me a lot of "Where the Sidewalk Ends". The black and white photography is very beautiful, especially in the swamp scenes. But it's really the performances that make this movie. The two leads, Dane Clark and Gail Russell, are both excellent but it's really the supporting cast that elevates this movie to another level. Allyn Joslyn is great as the compassionate humanist of a Sheriff, Lloyd Bridges in one of his earlier screen credits has a small but pivotal role as Danny's romantic rival and former bully, Rex Ingram has a part that must have been way ahead of its time for African-American actors working in Hollywood during the 1940s, Harry Morgan has a nice little part as a challenged young man who is the object of Danny's compassion and Ethel Barrymore shows up for one pivotal scene near the end.
The Gymnast (2006) Married massage therapist Jane still retains her fitness and strength 25 years after her Olympic-level gymnastics days. She is introduced to aerial dance, finds it a good match to her abilities, and quickly falls in love with it. She also starts falling in love with her dance partner, Serena. Recently I've been thinking a lot about how nice it would be to have a romantic partner. If there was someone in my life that was kind and intimate with me and accepted me for who I am, then I'm sure that person would be willing to pluck that stupid hair is that is growing in my ear. It keeps tickling me constantly. I can't concentrate. I can't sleep. I keep attacking it with tweezers, and my only accomplishment is learning the hard way I really shouldn't use the very pointy German pair I have. And don't think you can rig up some kind of system with flashlights and multiple mirrors to look in there yourself because I've tried and it just doesn't work.
In the movie, Jane was dealing with turning too old to do traditional gymnastics or have a child. So it's about the problems of aging, which is just something I connected with.
Tomb Raider (2018) Dir. Roar Uthaug Seven years after her father's disappearance during an expedition off the coast of Japan, Lara Croft has largely turned her back on the family legacy. A combination of chance and circumstances lead to her re-evaluating her earlier dismissal of her father's inheritance. In the process, she comes upon some of his research, which sends her hot on his trail, traveling to an uncharted island off the coast of Japan in the hope of finding and rescuing him. This underperformed at the box office, especially in the U.S., whilst its international numbers were respectable but not stellar by any means. I was surprised by the degree to which this borrows ideas, plot lines and even entire action sequences (the crashed airplane hanging over the waterfall!) from the most recent reboot of the games franchise. But as a movie, it is average at best. The screenplay lacks originality and merely goes through the motions of an action adventure. Whilst some of the supporting cast is quite good, I felt like actors as good as Kristin Scott Thomas, Dominic West and Walton Goggins didn't really respect the material and were mailing it in to a certain extent. The movie's best asset is Alicia Vikander, who is a good fit for the Lara Croft role and who obviously bulked up to an impressive degree for this film. But to make this franchise work beyond the biggest fanboys of the games franchises, they would need a far better and more original screenplay. But since this underperformed, it's not likely to get a sequel anyway, so that problem won't really present itself. I do think Alicia Vikander is an unlikely but convincing action star (almost to the point of how Emily Blunt surprised a lot of people in "Edge of Tomorrow") and I wouldn't mind seeing her in something similar to this.
Return of the Seven (1966) Dir. Burt Kennedy Years after the events of "The Magnificent Seven", the town the original heroes defended is once again overrun by bandits. Chico's attempt to defend his new home by himself fails and like the rest of the men in his community, he is captured and enslaved by the armed assailants. Chico's wife Petra manages to track down Chris and Vin and once again employs their help to save her husband as well as the other men in her village. In the process they learn that two other villages have been hit in the same way: a violent assault resulting in the capture of all the male residents. After recruiting another rag-tag bunch of gunslingers and dare devils for their mission, Chris and Vin set off to rescue their old friend Chico. The first of the sequels to "The Magnificent Seven" and one I had yet to see. There are two issues that causes this to be significantly worse than the original film. Mainly it's the cast. Whilst the original film gathered a group of incredibly charismatic performers, it's really only Yul Brynner who can truly tap back into that well. There is nothing wrong with Robert Fuller as an actor, but he is no Steve McQueen. Really the only new cast member who truly shines and who could have done so just as well in the original is Warren Oates as the wise-cracking, womanizing member of the new Seven. The second issue is that this movie was edited in a very weird way. Especially in the third act it is done in a manner that at the very least suggests that a part of this film was lost or perhaps never even shot. I think I honestly prefer the Yul Brenner-less third sequel "The Magnificent Seven Ride" to this.
The Breaking Point (1950) Henry Morgan was a successful PT-boat captain in WWII, but after years of trying his San Diego boat charter business is floundering. After a sport fisherman rented his boat for a multi-day excursion to Mexico and then skipped out on the bill, Morgan was desperate, and turned to unscrupulous lawyer Duncan, who wants him to ship undocumented Chinese from Mexico to America. The Chinese organized crime boss setting it up tried to double deal Morgan, and Morgan sends him to Davey Jones' locker. But Duncan figured out what took place, and blackmails Morgan to do another job - be part of casino robber's getaway scheme. Based on a Hemingway novel, it's a pretty good - not great - noir. The proto-Brando John Garfield is good in his role, and things lit up when lady-of-mixed-repute Patricia Neal was on screen, but the family stuff was boring. The one great moment in the film happened at the very end when everyone was concentrating on Morgan - in the midst of the hubbub but totally ignored is a black child worried about his father who will never come home. It was a sly twist for a 50's movie.
I thought all three leads were fantastic in their respective roles, but Cranston had the more showy of the three parts. Carell has that knack shared by some other comedic actors of portraying barely concealed pain and emotional trauma very well. Robin Williams had that quality too. See his guest turn on "Homicide: Life on the Street" in which he plays a bereaved husband of the victim of a violent mugging gone wrong.
Funny you bring it up. My wife and I just started watching my old DVDs of the first season-- that show REALLY holds up extremely well. It feels like "prestige tv" from today rather than a show from 25 years ago.
I cajoled my daughter into watching an episode of H:LOTS when she was home a few weeks ago. "Crosetti" was my choice, mostly because of the raw emotion of the whole episode.
Became part of the Criterion Collection last summer... https://www.criterion.com/films/28695-the-breaking-point Based on Ernest Hemingway's To Have And Have Not. Besides the 1944 Bogart-Bacall version, it was yet again filmed as The Gun Runners (1958). Directed by Don Siegel and part MGM's Limited Edition Collection...
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) The 1983 Star Wars arcade game, opening the way for Memphis Belle. The Hunt for Red October, but Poe The Caine Mutiny. Any James Bond movie results in Babe: Pig in the City, but the subsequent Star Wars A New Hope failed, and Finn and Rose the Skyrim opening cinematic. At that moment, Holdo Space Battleship Yamato II, but it can't prevent Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back. But a Star Wars A New Hope allows the remaining rebels to Victory. We close on a hopeful ET. This film was largely panned by Star Wars fans, which made me slightly predisposed to like it. And there were bits that were good. I liked almost all of what happened on Luke's Island and I liked the codebreaker guy. And I like the idea of a lower level officer mutinying against a leader after they have misinterpreted the leader's intentions, but this film's implementation was overwrought and obvious. In a similar vein, every bit of exposition was repeated and simplified and repeated ad nauseam. All the space battle stuff was unimaginative (although the suicide run was visually stunning). This ended up being a true Star Wars movie and like all the main Star Wars movies it was designed for children. There was a seed of something that could have elevated this - the idea of not being a slave of history and making our own path. That's, like, so California. This could have been the theme of this movie - to finally bury Luke, Leia, and Han and make a new legend with Rey, Finn, Holdo, and Poe. Or better yet not Poe. But they wussed out. They bin the new capable leader uselessly, the concept ended up being the evil philosophy of the bad guy, and the old guard saves the day, forever undying in our memory. Why can't we break free? We have to keep reliving the same movie because we saw the original when we were 7 and it blew our 7 year old minds and that's all we want again and again.