Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

The Scars of Dracula (1970)
Dir. Roy Ward Baker



After the local townsfolk try to exact revenge on Count Dracula because he has made another victim within their community, they find out that the vampire has turned the tables on them and made them pay a terrible price for their impudence. From then on, the castle that doubles as his lair is avoided like the plague and outsiders are turned away from the town. By chance, a young bon-vivant arrives in the small community and is himself turned away at the local tavern. Through rotten luck, he ends up at Dracula's castle. After his disappearance, his brother and his brother's girlfriend both arrive in the town, hoping to find him, only to find the townsfolk less than helpful, apart form one friendly face in the form of the kindly town priest.

Another Hammer horror film that stars Christopher Lee as Count Dracula. This is certainly one of the Hammer films in which Lee is most present, as in many of the other Dracula films in which he starred, he was used more sparingly. This is a good thing, because he is by far the best thing about the movie. The rest of the cast pales in comparison. The de facto hero of the story (played by the young Dennis Waterman whom is most famous from his role on "The Sweeney") is especially lightweight compared to Christopher Lee. Michael Gwynn does give a solid but unshowy performance as the compassionate town priest. The castle set was nicely done for a film of this budget.

 

I watched Dirty Dancing for the first time. It is less creepy than I imagined it would be. My oldest was home and had it on, and since she was home for just a day or so, I stuck around.

 

I teach a college level writing class for kids at a nearby high school. About half the class are the drama/musical kids. They were trying to get permission to do the stage version of Dirty Dancing for the spring musical. To their surprise, the teachers and then the parent committee approved the choice.

Alas, it was wayyyyyyyyy too expensive to get the rights. They wound up doing a pretty impressive Into The Woods

 

Not knowing then that Jennifer Grey was quite close in age to Patrick Swayze (only 7 or 8 years) and kind of creeped out at the nickname "Baby" for her character, I opted out seeing it originally. Then a couple of years later, I attended the funeral service of a high school friend who died of bone cancer at age 21, and he had requested that "I've Had the Time of My Life" be played as the recessional music. Great song, now a very specific memory that didn't jibe with the movie.

My daughter, though, recently graduated college (December 2017), and we saw a video of her singing that song at the graduation party her department had (Theater, so they do such things), and then getting all of her friends up on stage to sing and dance around with her. Epic and wonderful, and a nice second/co-first memory to associate with the song, and hence the movie.

 

Land of the Pharaohs (1955)
Dir. Howard Hawks



Pharaoh Khufu and his army return from another successful campaign, yielding personal glory as well as great riches. In a conversation with his High Priest, the Pharaoh admits that the fruits of this latest campaign has given him a treasure unlike the world has ever seen. It leaves just two desires for him in his life: to father a son and to build a monument for himself that will both stand for an eternity but also successfully protect him and his treasures from grave robbers. To that end, he brought back a prisoner from the war, a brilliant architect whose clever contraptions almost lost him a battle. The architect is offered the freedom of his enslaved people in exchange for building an impenetrable tomb. To the Pharaoh's surprise, the architect soon devises of a seemingly fullproof plan and is set to work in actually constructing the pyramid which will contain the Pharaoh's sarcophagus. The Egyptian ruler also takes on a second wife in the form of a beautiful young Cypriot Princess who arrives at his court, but she proves to be an unlikely threat to his grand project.

Howard Hawks' sandal epic. An enjoyable film, standing somewhat apart from other films in the same genre of the same era. This is primarily a movie about death and you could describe the film as one long funeral procession in terms of its tone. As other such films, the widescape Cinemascope frames and the sheer number of extras used in some scenes are still impressive to this day. As a side-note, some of the outfits that the young Joan Collins wears in this film must have been quite risqué by the standards of American cinema of that era, which proves that the Hays code must have been fraying considerably at the edges in 1955, for this to have slipped past the censorship. The final scene within the tomb is classic.

 

Which one is the babe checking her iPhone?

Oh, and "Written by WILLIAM FAULKNER"????

 

Probably why the content feels so different from other sandal epics of that era.

And to answer your other question: Joan Collins.

 

Tag (2018)
Dir. Jeff Tomsic



For all of their adult life, five grown men have kept a game of tag going in which they use trickery and traps to surprise each other whilst out and about in their daily routine. For all of the month of May, everything is fair game. This year, one of them is getting married and has the intention of retiring from the game after the ceremony. Since the guy in question is the only one of their group to never be tagged even once in the many years that the game has been going on, the four other friends are desperate to get him at least once before he walks away from the game. But aren't they taking things just a little bit too seriously?

An ensemble comedy with a strong cast but ultimately a very forgettable film in the "grown men acting like children" subgenre. The best thing about the film might be Isla Fisher as Ed Helm's character's super-intense wife. It's hard to believe this is actually based on a real-life story.

 

The Domestics (2018)
Dir. Mike P. Nelson



Nina and Mark are a couple stuck in the post-Apocalypse. Against Mark's better judgment, he agrees to leave the relative safety of the community they are a part off to travel across the dangerous roads, roaming with gangs who kill, rape, torture and maim indiscriminately. Their destination: Nina's parents home, from whom they haven't heard anything for weeks in spite of being in regular radio contact prior to that. Adding to the tension are their attempts to repair their relationship, as they were in the middle of a divorce when the world went to shit.

Pretty standard post-Apocalyptic thriller, with scenes we've seen before, often times better. Kept watchable thanks to the likability of the two leads, Kate Bosworth and Tyler Hoechlin.

 

Upgrade (2018)
Dir. Leigh Whannell



In the near future, robotics and A.I. have become a normal part of everyday life. One hold-out against this reality is Grey, a man who prefers to get his own hands dirty whilst working on classic American muscle cars instead of relying too much on modern technology. On the way back from delivering a car to a reclusive tech billionaire, accompanied by his wife, the pair are attacked on their way back home, leaving him paralyzed and his wife dead. Struggling with suicidal feelings after rehab, he is approached by the former customer whose car he delivered on the night of the attack. The man wants to give him a chance at walking again by implanting an experimental chip his company has developed, called STEM. The chip successfully allows him the use of his limbs once again, but it also displays sentience and the ability to communicate with its host. The A.I. offers to help the man track down his wife's killers, to which he agrees even after the search turns deadly.

This was actually quite enjoyable. Parts of it reminded me a lot of Robocop and it's clear it was in fact an real influence on this film. The best bits of the film are when Logan Marshall-Green's character is still getting used to the abilities that STEM gives him when he allows the A.I. to control his body and it's unfortunate that the movie moves past his horrified reactions to the extreme violence STEM dishes out rather quickly. The ending was a bit predictable but at least not too fanservicey.

 

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

The Blade Runners of 2049 are the latest generation of bio-engineered replicants, created to be totally controllable. They don't seem bothered when ordered to kill peaceful farmers who haven't done anything wrong in 3 decades, if ever. Not that they show much emotion at other times either. Maybe it's because they are constantly tested and if they are even slightly off-kilter they are murdered to death. Or maybe it's because this future is unrelentingly grim. But then our Runner discovers something carved into the tree at the farmer's house that actually stirs him. Maybe something interesting is going on after all.

This movie is achingly beautiful and achingly slow (but, then, I liked L'attesa, and slower movie you will not find). But while it looks like an art film, the interactions between people (and I mean the talking, not the fighting) felt like something out of an action film. It didn't really feel like the movie it was supposed to be until about 2 hours in. And it never got a grasp on how philosophical it should have been. For example, they had a great ending to the story of the Amazon Echo lady, but we never got into either her or his head enough to make it impactful. If that sex scene was supposed to do that, it really failed. And I hate this kind of placid pontificating polymath CEO, as I keep repeating because Hollywood keeps doing it.

I agree with Belgian guy that the creators of this film didn't totally get the original. Like I know the original movie's LA was built of darkness and steel and concrete and fire, but it had a lively cosmopolitan Hong Kong sort of vibe to it. This movie is much more post-apocalypse.

But they had giant neon Atari signs, so all is forgiven.

 

211 (2018)
Dir. York Alec Shackleton



A veteran cop nearing retirement and his younger partner - also his son-in-law and future father to his to-be-born first grandchild - take a ride-along with them for the day in the form of a high school student who had the choice between taking the ride-along or being expelled from school after he punches a boy who has bullied him for a while at school. During their routine day, in which they take care not to take on any calls that might endanger their young charge, they notice a SUV illegally parked outside of a bank and when they approach it, the driver fires on them with an assault rifle. Inside of the bank, a bank robbery and hostage situation is going on and this turns into a stand-off between the bank robbers and the police. The arrival of an Interpol agent (played by Adrian Mutu's ex-wife!) reveals who they are dealing with as she informs the local police of the fact that the four man team within the bank are former special forces turned mercenaries who are essentially robbing their former employer by robbing the bank in question.

As a fan of the "Crappy Nic Cage" movie genre, this was a decent entry within the canon. His hair style only scores about a 6.5 on the Nic Cage Follicle scale but the rest of the movie is good dumb entertainment.

 

Time Trap (2017)
Dir. Mark Dennis & Ben Foster



After their mentor and college professor goes missing during a search for a couple who themselves went missing forty years ago, two teaching assistants stage a search and rescue mission in the system of caves that had been the man's destination. Also tagging along is one of their love interests as well as two young high schoolers, for some reason. Almost immediately after descending into the cavern system, things start to get weird and they find no trace of their mentor, but plenty of bizarre phenomenons.

There has been something of a time travel fad in recent years, both in TV and movies and unfortunately not that many of those efforts have been good. This is far from terrible, though it loses its way badly in the third act culminating in the over the top climax. The best parts of the movie are those in which our heroes are still clueless as to the nature of their predicament. The cast is alright but not truly memorable other than the kid who plays Furby, who is described in-movie as the Chunk (from "Goonies") of their group.

 

Our House (2018)
Dir. Anthony Scott Burns



Ethan is an engineering student who is so enraptured by his work at the university that his parents are disappointed he hardly has any time for them and his brother and sister even over holidays and school breaks. His explanation is that most of his free time goes to a project he and his girlfriend - who is a fellow engineering student - have been working on: a working device that can transport electricity wirelessly over a radius that is wide enough to make it workable for the size of a single home. But so far their efforts have not even been able to light up a single lightbulb.

His life changes when his parents die in a freak car accident and he has to drop out of school to take care of his younger siblings, a junior high aged brother and a primary school aged sister. He still dabbles in a bit of work on his machine at night and when he thinks he has managed a real breakthrough, his invention instead manifests other, far scarier phenomenon.

This was enjoyable. I like horror films that are actually about family ("Ouija 2: Origins of Evil", "Haunter", "The Conjuring") and this is definitely one of them. It's a very nicely shot film for its budget and I think Thomas Mann is an interesting young actor. He doesn't have the most showy style, it's a bit understated, but he is good at playing characters who are overwhelmed by life's circumstances. He was very good in a similar role in "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl".

 

Hereditary (2018)
Dir. Ari Aster



After her mother dies, a woman with whom she had a troubled relationship for all of her life, partially because she blames her for the tragedies that befell her father and her brother, Annie still feels an unexpected sorrow that leads to her attending a grief counseling group. On the home front, the death of her mother seems to have impacted her youngest child, her daughter Charlie, the most. A young girl who always acted slightly strange but who had perhaps the closest bond of the entire family with her late grandmother, her behavior takes on a slightly more weird turn, until another tragedy besets the family, one which sends Annie further into a tailspin and heightens the tension even more within their nerve-wrecking household.

This is a brilliant little slowburner of a psychological horror film. I will be very surprised if I see a better performance than Toni Collette's in this film this year. It's a performance that requires a total lack of vanity and the courage to flirt with a naturalistic style that might turn into overacting in lesser hands.This is the best kind of horror, one which is built out of the careful winding up of an increasingly unbearable tension with little things: the creepiness of the miniatures Annie works on, the inherent threat that the house (the scary little tree house included) itself exudes, Charlie's strange behavior, Annie's weird relationship with both her mother and her children which is revealed in tiny fractions, ... There was one jump scare in the entire movie (that I can remember) and it's deep into the third act, in the middle of the climax. Perhaps it's no coincidence that this is also the least impressive section of the film, in my humble opinion. I also like that I spent the entire first act thinking I had figured out what kind of horror film I was watching, but then a plot twist hinges the entire thing in a completely new direction.

It's interesting that I mentioned loving horror films that are really about the family dynamic yesterday, because this is something of a gold standard for that genre. The supporting cast is very good too and includes Gabriel Byrne (stoically suffering) and Ann Dowd (terrifying in her own special way).

 

Ocean's Eight (2018)
Dir. Gary Ross



After being paroled out of prison, Debbie Ocean (Danny Ocean's sister) uses her newfound freedom to immediately plan a high-stakes heist together with her long-time associate and friend Lou. They gather a seven woman team to steal a 150 million dollar Cartier necklace from the Met Gala, where Daphne Kluger, a famous Hollywood actress will be wearing it. In the same con, Debbie hopes to get revenge on the man who made her end up in prison, her untrustworthy ex boyfriend.

This was fun. It's not a timeless masterpiece by any means, but it's a good heist film. It also holds up well compared to the male counterpart franchise and is better than all of Soderbergh's Ocean's sequels (though admittedly none of those were very great). Whilst I'm still not a huge fan of the trend of just genderswapping existing franchises (not because I don't want to see great all-female ensembles like this but because I think they deserve their own original stories) this is a much better effort than the female "Ghostbusters", which had a great cast but a poor screenplay. But I still like the idea more of creating original content for such casts, like Jessica Chastain is doing with her upcoming all-female spy thriller "355".

Whilst the entire cast does a good job, it's really Anne Hathaway who steals the show as Daphne Kluger. It's weird to call this a comeback performance when she was never really gone. But she seems to be in a good place creatively and personally and it shines through in this performance. It's probably a testament to how fun this film is that even James Corden could not annoy me in his small supporting role.

 

Isle of Dogs (2018)
Dir. Wes Anderson



A corrupt, dog-hating mayor banishes all dogs from the city of Megasaki to a nearby trash collection island which is redubbed 'Isle of Dogs'. The mayor's own ward steals a plane to go find his own dog on this island. After crashing his plane, he is rescued by five dogs and they decide to help him find his dog Spots, even though their de facto leader Chief is a stray dog who has little patience for masters and even less desire to help them.

I believe this got mixed reviews and I can see why. The stop motion style is beautiful and the voice cast is terrific, but I found much of the writing uninspired. All of the stuff on the dog island is great, but I found much of the broader story pretty uninspired. The movie works best when Wes Anderson shamelessly tugs the heartstrings in regard to the love between a boy and his dog (or dogs).

 

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Middle aged housewife Kate Miller is dissatisfied with her life, particularly with her self-involved husband. We see her have a fantasy of being raped in the shower during her grunting, passionless sex with him. Oh, yes, we see it. Later finding herself alone in the art museum, she plays cat and mouse with a mysterious stranger, at turns wanting to be seduced, seducing, and thinking better of it. She ends up not thinking better of it. The next morning she dramatically... never mind, she's killed. Her son, her psychiatrist, and the prostitute that saw the murder aftermath are on the case - the police are too busy trying to perfect their Brooklyn accents and terrible wardrobes.

I don't think Brian De Palma likes his audience very much. He makes this overwrought thing that you are clearly not supposed to take seriously, but never stops manipulating your emotions to extreme levels. He puts everything in soft focus and muted colors to lull you before the slicing and the blood - so much slicing. Most of all his creation makes you feel terrible for having seen it. We watchers are all so dirty dirty dirty, the submissives who demand the titillation be delivered to us while putting the blame for events on the active party. Why did you make this depraved thing, De Palma? It's all your fault. You put all this stuff on the film. I did nothing. Except, you know, take it home from the library and put it in my DVD player and watch all of it very carefully. It's not me. I'm not that kind of person. Not usually.

The lurid, expansive music certainly plays a big part in setting the mood of the film. I am currently playing the most genteel and light music I own (mostly the soundtracks to Orisinal games) to get it out of head.

 

Rampage (2018)
Dir. Brad Peyton



After a research lab in a space station in Earth's orbit goes into critical failure, one of the scientists manages to escape with canisters containing the compound they have been working on. Her escape pod is destroyed upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere scattering the canisters in various locations in North America. One of them lands in a San Diego wildlife sanctuary, where the compound comes into contact with a gorilla. The animal almost immediately displays an exponential increase in body mass and a proportional increase in violent behavior. His caretaker, a primatologist, is stumped by the change, until he is approached by a government agent who informs him that the gorilla is one of three animals which has been changed in this way and the other two - a giant wolf and a behemoth of an alligator - are rampaging towards the city of Chicago.

This is the best movie I have ever seen in which the Rock battles giant animals with the assistance of a friendly Kong-like ape. In all seriousness, this is enjoyable if you can switch your brain to the "dumb fun" setting. More remarkable perhaps is that the Rock's bankability is now such that he can even turn a movie like this into a 426 million dollar worldwide box office success story. Naomie Harris is a decent female lead, Jeffrey Dean Morgan hams it up a bit too much as the assholish government agent who turns out to be better than he first appears to be and Malin Akerman is slightly miscast as the main villain of the piece. I did like Joe Manganiello small supporting role as a mercenary leader. Enough that I'm curious to see what he'll do with the role of Slade Wilson.

 

I was always terrible at that arcade game because I didn't want to eat the innocent people.

Destroying high rises I was ok with.

 

I think they consciously reference that gameplay in one scene.

 

Summer of 84 (2018)
Dir. François Simard, Anouk Whissel and Yoann-Karl Whissel



Davey is a 15-year old living in a slice of suburbia who spends his Summer hanging out with his three best friends, the four of them generally getting up to mischief when he is not letting the attractive girl next door feed his romantic and masturbatory fantasies. The news that a serial killer is active in their area - one whose preferred victims appear to be adolescent boys - gives him a jolt of excitement. When he zeroes in on the single cop who lives across the street from his home as his prime suspect because he thought he saw the man with a boy who was later reported missing, his friends initially write it off as Davey's usual overactive imagination taking over, as his love for crime fiction and horror stories had made him come up with kooky theories in the past. But when they start to follow the cop and document daily and weekly routines, they notice little things that suggest that Davey's theory might not just be the delusions of a bored teenager.

The immediate comparisons that will be made in terms of this film will be "Stranger Things". The parallels are too numerous to list but include a 1980s setting (see the 'Reagan Bush 84' placards in front lawns), four teenagers who uncover a dark secret, disbelieving parents and some obvious nods to the work of Stephen King and to a lesser degree Steven Spielberg. Where this diverges from "Stranger Things" and reminded me more of "Super Dark Times" is that the kids heroic fantasies of catching a killer eventually meet up with a reality that is much darker than they might have imagined and thus they experience things that would never happen to the kids on the Netflix show.

That does not mean that this movie lacks in the usual tropes. It is really only in the third act and especially the last 15 minutes that the filmmakers discard these, leading up to some shocking scenes. Which is why I also suspect that this won't be everyone's cup of tea. I mostly liked it, though the movie does take some short-cuts in the final twenty minutes to rather clumsily arrive where they might have ended up more elegantly, certainly considering the runtime. It's well-acted, especially by the young lead Graham Verchere and by Rich Sommer, who exudes creepiness underneath a thin veneer of respectability.

 

Pelíšky (1999)

The official English title is "Cosy Dens."

I recently re-watched this for the first time in many years - probably a bit motivated after seeing news about the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion that ended the "Prague Spring" (during which this film is set). I would say this film is often regarded as one of the very favorite modern Czech films despite not being well known internationally (compared to say Kolya which is fairly well liked but seemed to be held in higher regard abroad).

I actually found myself much less connected to it than the first time I saw it. It's still very much a well constructed film that is at times hilarious or depressing, and has some great scenes.

I guess the difference for me personally is that the focus on the 1968 era seems quite of it's time (Prague Spring nostalgia is very big in my parents' generation and the first time I saw this was with my mother) and it doesn't really resonate with me on my own as someone born well after that (and living very far detached from it).

I would still recommend this film if you are looking for something different (and can find it), although I don't really know how it would play to an audience with no direct Czech connection (except that my NYC-born wife watched it with me and found it okay though a bit boring especially the first half... then again she also doesn't particularly like soccer ).

 

The Last Witness (2018)
Dir. Piotr Szkopiak



A reporter for a provincial newspaper in 1947 Bristol England thinks he has uncovered a story that might have national and international interest when he comes upon a Polish man who lives at a nearby Polish refugee camp who seems to be handled with special care by the English troops responsible for the expats. With several other Polish ex-servicemen having committed suicide in the space of a few months, the reporter believes that the man might hold the key to what is causing the string of self-inflicted deaths. Instead, he finds out that the man is in fact a Russian national posing as a Polishman to protect his real secret: the fact that he is the last remaining living witness of the Russian Katyn massacre. When the reporter tries to bring the story to light, he finds out that it isn't just Stalin who would prefer that the truth never sees the light of day.

This movie ended up falling short of the weight required to do justice to its subject matter. It's far from terrible but it lacks gravitas. The biggest issue is the lead, Alex Pettyfer, who isn't horrendous but his performance lacks oomph and it drags the entire movie down with it. This required someone older and more experienced to carry the film. There are also issues with the fact that this is based on a play and it's pretty clear that they merely copied the theatrical set-up in some scenes, but that leads to them not appearing very cinematic.