Psych 3: This Is Gus (2021) Gus is about to marry the love of his life, Selene. Unfortunately, most of the previous loves of his life ended up being criminals and Shawn has a sneaking suspicion she might be one too. But digging up Selene's past will end up threatening the lives of Gus and Shawn and, worst of all, endanger the most carefully planned wedding in San Francisco's history. Definitely the most "Psych" of all the Psych movies, with wicked quick dialogue and side-splitting laughs through the whole thing. It's full of guest stars from and call-backs to Psych history so I don't think you would get nearly as much going into this blind. It would also help to be familiar with the 1980's culture that is so often Gus and Shawn's filter on the world and doubly so in this movie. There's also a few growing up / moving on moments for a few of the characters, and this would make a fine cap to the series if this is the last Psych we get. The movie ends with the worst Wham! video ever, and it is hilarious.
Free Guy (2021) Dir. Shawn Levy Guy is a resident of Free City, a local bank employee at a branch that gets a ridiculous amount of robberies. In his spare time he hangs out with his best friend Buddy, who is a security guard at the same bank. He is mostly content in his life, apart from a vague but strong desire to find a romantic partner. One day he becomes intrigued by a woman he meets through a chance encounter. Buddy warns him that since she is a sunglasses wearer (a special class of people within Free City), she will never talk to him. But after he does approach her, his relationship to the woman reveals to him that he isn't actually a real person, but rather an NPC in an open world, sandbox style shooter called Free City. The people with sunglasses that cause mayhem all over the city are the human players. But the continued existence of Free City is threatened when the game studio's CEO plans to shut down the Free City game servers once Free City 2, its expensive sequel, is launched. Thus Guy has to exceed his programming and abilities as an NPC to save his world. I don't actually think that taking the Epic NPC Man web series concept and turning it into a Hollywood blockbuster is a bad starting point to make a fun & funny action-comedy. But Free Guy mostly fails in mining the obvious opportunities for gags. An average Epic NPC Man episode is funnier than this entire movie. Ryan Reynolds is fine in the lead role and Jodie Comer confirms her talent - the scenes she is in are easily the best in the film - as well as proves she can be a star on the big screen just as easily as she is on the small screen. Feels mostly like a missed opportunity overall.
Abduction (2019) Scott Adkins was able to escape an alternate dimension alien castle just as Chinese gangster Andy On's wife was abducted into it. How are ancient Chinese artifacts and chi related to the alien's plans? You will never find out. But their goal(?) of either going home or gaining new three-dimensional bodies to continue staying here is about to be achieved. They only made one mistake. Being part of this appalling failure of a movie. You know what story I'd like to see? The one where one of the worst writers in movies got paid for this script, and the production company decided to fund its creation. I'm sure it involves drugs, or prostitutes, or blackmail - probably drug prostitute blackmail. I don't know how a sane person would think there is a single good idea in this loathsome pile. It is only original in how badly it mashes together dimly remembered concepts from other films. This is seriously Uwe Boll territory. I only hope the two leads got paid well. Everyone else can go to alternate dimension alien castle hell. The only reason I didn't turn it off is that I was surrounded by Ikea furniture parts and couldn't reach the remote. It's a lot more time consuming to send screws into thin pressboard shells sandwiching Polish newspapers than you think.
The Last Vermeer - this film will not win any Oscars, but Pearce was good. And I'm also embarrassed I didn't know this was based on a true story.
Tenet (2020) Why? WHY? WHHHYYYY! What a mess. Quick let’s explain the plot again in multiple sections of exposition that the studio obviously stuck in there. Let's have the exposition even be tiring to the characters so they deliver it in ironic tones? Let's make it a key plot point that the characters not tell each other stuff because reasons. As a time travel anorak, when i went back and deconstructed the time travel, there is a cool idea here but they just way overcomplicated the screenplay compared to the much more sucessful nested timelines of Inception and Momento. What type of timetravel movie is this? (Move your mouse to reveal the content) What type of timetravel movie is this? (open) What type of timetravel movie is this? (close) This is a bit like Primer - you can 'timetravel' using a 'turnstyle' which inverts the arrow of time for you. You then go back into time at the same rate you normally travel forwards. This is similar to primer except in primer you have to be in the timetravel box to travel back to when the machine was first turned on. The difference is in the Tenet theory of time, you always travel backwards until you enter another turnstyle to re-invert. Then you can travel forwards until you eventually catch up to where you went into the turnstyle, ending the paradox But there seems to be a problem with the film here. In primer, you turn on the time travel box. You can now always use the box to time travel but you can't go back further than when the box was first turned on In Tenet, if you invert, you will timetravel backwards forever unless you re-enter a turnstyle - so who built the turnstyles in the past? Did people from the future travel backwards over many years and then build them? That part makes no sense - someone must have actually timetravelled? Also why include the stuff like not being able to breath the air and fire turning to ice? I feel like studios should hire Shane Carruth as a consultant to make sure there is at least some internal consistency to time travel movies
The Employer (2013) A Bain-style corporate consultant and take-over firm is hiring, and they have a unique final interview. The five finalists wake up to find themselves in a locked room. Through a provided phone they get their assignment. The last one alive will get the job. 2009 saw a number of one-room murder box movies, like The Killing Room, The Steam Experiment, and strong favorite of mine Exam. But The Employer didn't use the experience of its predecessors to either build on or make something new. It doesn't have the empathy or tension of Killing Room, it doesn't have the steam of Steam Experiment, and it doesn't have non-stop cleverness and twists of Exam. Employer has zero clever. Zero. It doesn't have twists or shocks or a message or anything that draws attention besides Malcolm McDowell being Malcolm McDowell. It only exists to show off the skills of the gore makeup artist and that's something I could have gone without very easily.
I, the Jury (1953) Dir. Harry Essex Mike Hammer is called in the aftermath of the death of Jack Williams, an old war buddy of Mike's who lost his arm in a war-time incident in which Jack saved Mike's life. Jack was seemingly murdered in his apartment, having suffered a single gunshot wound from a .45 caliber pistol. Feeling indebted to his deceased friend, Mike inserts himself into the police investigation, to the lukewarm reception of police captain Pat Chambers. Mike starts his investigation by tracking down and interviewing the people who attended a party at Jack's place the night of his murder. They are an eclectic bunch that include Jack's girlfriend Myrna, a recovering drug addict, Dr. Charlotte Manning, a well-off and well-known psychiatrist, the Bellamy twins, a pair wealthy young heiresses and Hal Kines, a college student accompanied by his benefactor, retired boxing promotor turned art collector George Kalecki. Even though all of them deny knowing anything about Jack Williams' murder, Hammer remains convinced that at least one of the guests at the murdered man's party has information that can solve the crime... This is the first of three Mike Hammer adaptations that United Artists made in the 1950s. The second of which, Kiss Me Deadly, is the most famous for rightly being considered one of the best ever film noir. This unfortunately doesn't quite reach the same heights, but it's still mostly enjoyable. Biff Elliot plays Mickey Spillane's hero quite a bit differently from Ralph Meeker, whose depiction in Kiss Me Deadly is of an occasional maniac with sadistic tendencies. Whilst no choir boy here, Elliot's Hammer does seem to have a moral compass that works a tiny bit better than the Meeker version. Peggy Castle is a good femme fatale and Margaret Sheridan a decent Velda (though she's no Maxine Cooper).
Sorry to Bother You (2018) Cassius Green (ha!) lives in his uncle's garage in slightly surreal (and later not so slightly surreal) alternate Oakland, California. Very very late on the rent, he takes the only job that will have him - telemarketer. At first it is a job that gives nothing but disappointment, but Cassius discovers the secret to success - his "white voice". It's an ability that will take him far. Like, you won't believe where we are far. A broad satire of capitalism that is very funny and very class conscious. It has one of the top 10 funniest scenes I've ever seen in a movie and all it took was a person and a numberpad. Sometimes it's a little too on the nose, and it eventually goes to a place where the metaphor is so metaphor it takes you right out of the movie. But I can't really fault it too much because I love earnest exuberance so much and even though I've mentioned that beginning filmmakers screw up when drifting from The Formula here a filmmaker that thinks he knows better takes a beat off of the normal flow and it's just the best most trenchant moment of the movie. The music is great, as you would expect from a movie made by Boots Riley.
Marlowe (2022) Dir. Neil Jordan Los Angeles, 1939. Philip Marlowe is approached by wealthy oil heiress Clare Cavendish. She wants Marlowe to track down her lover Nico Peterson, who has disappeared completely a few weeks earlier. After running around not finding much of anything at first, he eventually finds out that Peterson died in a hit and run accident outside of a private club. Clare reveals she knew about the accident all along but does not believe that Peterson is actually dead, because she herself has seen him alive since then. As the investigation progresses, Marlowe finds out that he is not the only one looking for Nico and that most of the other folks tracking down the man are of the unsavory sort... Marlowe adaptation based on a 2014 John Banville novel. This should be in my wheelhouse but in spite of the good cast and decent production values this was very much lacking for me. Neeson is woefully miscast as Marlowe and the plot itself is a rehash of every noir cliche in the book, without anything new or surprising. Daniela Melchior livened up the scenes she is in, but she is underutilized. Only worth seeing if you are a Liam Neeson superfan or if you really love seeing Jessica Lange chew scenery.
I remember when they came out, and thought the title was too trying to be cute (has both a Sherlock Homes and Shakespeare connotation to me). The cast, though, did catch my attention. That was my impression from the trailer, which is why, despite the cast, never put it on my list.
The cast is impressive but of the supporting players I would say that apart from Lange (who is quite obviously having a lot of fun), only Melchior really leaves an impression. Diane Kruger has the meatiest of all of the supporting roles but she is kind of just going through the motions.
Causeway (2022) Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) returns from Afghanistan with TBI/PSD. She returns home to New Orleans with the goal of being able to re-enlist. She meets James (Brian Tyree Henry) who, obviously, has his own issues. I bumped into it somehow, and with the plot, Jennifer Lawrence, and the TIFF and A24 attachments, thought it had potential. At the same time, as much as I do like some of Lawrence's movies, she is also hit or miss. A good script and she can really do stuff with it, but a bad script she is just bland. In this movie, while there were moments, she was bland. Henry was, by contrast, excellent. But for a movie that dealt with PTSD (mostly), it was actually too short, or not concise enough, or something. Plus, it's all dialogue, so it was a bit slow.
Dave Made a Maze (2017) Annie comes home after a weekend away to find her rudderless boyfriend has spent it all taping together a haphazard series of boxes filling up the apartment living room. It contains a marked entrance, and when she calls in Dave calls out. It seems he's been inside this maze he built the whole time, totally lost. She, some of Dave's friends, and some of Dave's not friends go in to rescue him. But it's bigger on the inside than the outside. Like, way bigger. Unfortunately, the thing that differentiates a labyrinth and a series of connected hallways is booby traps. And one other thing. I don't know what I'd do with or expect from the admittedly clever concept of "people trapped in a symbolic Tardis cardboard maze", but if there was a border circumscribing the limits of my imagination this is way outside of it. But that's not so much because it's inventive but more uses ideas that I would have instantly rejected. And it's hard to get into because all the characters except Annie are one dimensional. I guess it's trying to say something about Millennial ennui, but much like the maze the theme remains an unfinished project. It features Warren from Buffy, the guy from Chuck you know the guy, and the voice of Dr. Venture as well as the robot from Fallout New Vegas that sounds exactly like Dr. Venture.
Larceny (1948) Dir. George Sherman After a real estate scam of theirs goes off the rails at a crucial time in Miami, Silky Randall instead moves his swindler outfit's attention to Mission City, a small but quite wealthy town just outside of Pasadena that he perceives to be ripe for the plucking. They zero in on Deborah Clark, a young war widow whose father is very rich and powerful within the community. The idea is for their main confidence man, Rick Maxon, to first seduce her and then to convince her to invest in their latest scam: a supposed home for boys that will double as a war memorial for Deb's deceased husband. Rick finds it easy to insert himself in Deb's life and quickly gains her trust and then her affection. Her kind nature and trusting, almost naive personality start to chip away at his cynical exterior, yet the pre-existing complications in his business relationship with Silky mean that he cannot just pull out of the entire endeavor... Crime noir that is fairly entertaining, though lacks any real surprises in the plot. Dan Duryea plays his usual slimy criminal role. John Payne (of 'Miracle on 34th Street' fame whose manner and appearance here is vaguely reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart) is the swindler with the unlikely moral compass. Features a young Shelley Winters as the scheming gangster moll and Dorothy Hart (most famous from her leading role in The Naked City) in a small role as an unscrupulous secretary.
Hot Fuzz (2007) Nick Angel is an ace police officer in London, but his straight-laced, by-the-book nature perturbs his coworkers and his bosses ship him off to the idyllic town of Sandford with a promotion and a cottage. Someday. But in the now his style fits Sandford even worse than London. Everyone, including the partner that idolizes him, want him to take it easy. No one seems to take petty crime seriously. And there are some suspicious accidents that no one wants looked into. A rather loving parody of action movies. It starts with a little reluctance of equating police work with movie stunts, but I assure you it's just a bit of she-doth-protest-too-much before springing every action movie tactic and cliché on you. If you've seen it in two or more movies, you'll see it here. And it's all fun and pretty funny. What really elevates the movie is the morality of the townfolks. Hot Fuzz may be just making over-the-top fun of some British small town self-absorption, but there's some real, dangerous thinking here that is an all-too-frequent part of human history, I think it's actually important to call it out. It is rather gory for my tastes, I say using British understatement. One cliché of action movies they missed is a softening of death scenes. I think they thought the blood and especially the lingering were funny, but I spent about 10 minutes with my hand in front of my face.
Cocaine Bear (2023) Dir. Elizabeth Banks In 1985 a drug dealer is throwing a shipment of cocaine out of his airplane before he bails out himself. Unfortunately for him, he does not make it out alive, his body crashing down in Knoxville Tennessee. Most of the drug shipment ends up in Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest, in nearby Georgia. There a black bear consumes large quantities of the drugs and goes on a rampage, meeting unsuspecting hikers, kids skipping school, park rangers and finally also drug dealers during its drug-induced berserking... It has cocaine, lots of cocaine. It has a bear. It has a bear doing cocaine. It thus does everything it says on the tin. There was a chance that this might have turned into "Snakes on a Plane", a title that goes to eleven that ultimately produces an underwhelming film. It's not that Cocaine Bear always fulfills the full promise of its title, but it does occasionally. Never more so than during the ambulance scene - which featured heavily in the trailer. It's also heartening to see actors like Keri Russell, the late Ray Liotta, Margo Martindale, Alden Ehrenreich, O'Shea Jackson Jr., .. as well as one super-fun cameo I will not ruin all lend their considerable talents to something as delightfully silly. Two powdery bear paws up!
Boston Strangler (2023) Dir. Matt Ruskin In the early 1960s, a series of brutal murders is shaking Boston to its core, most of the killings carried out by strangulation and victimizing women who lived alone. We follow the story of the so-called Boston Strangler through the eyes of Loretta McLaughlin (primarily) and Jean Cole, two newspaper reporters who are among the first to discover a connection between the random killings. As the months pass and the murderer's gruesome tally rises, McLaughlin and Cole are confronted with an apparently inept police force and superiors at their newspaper who are very reluctant to report upon the Boston PDs many failings in their investigation... The obvious parallels are with Zodiac, which also documents a well-known serial killer case, in roughly the same era. And it shares a protagonist who increasingly becomes obsessed with the case. There are also some similarities in the visual style between this film and David Fincher's 21st century classic. Which isn't to say that Boston Strangler is ever as good as Zodiac. But it's a serviceable crime drama that features a great cast. Besides Knightley and Coon in the lead roles, we also have Chris Cooper, David Dastmalchian, Peter Gerety, Bill Camp, ... among many others.
Emily the Criminal (2022) Emily has a art background, student loans, and a felony - She can't get a job. Then she gets a hook up, quick cash, and she wants more. Because she wants more. Emily is a criminal, but she becomes a criminal as well. This is about as good as Netflix is going to get. Aubrey Plaza is quite good in this, though her performance is missing what the script didn't give her. There are a couple of holes, and it really needed another 15 minutes to give the people more depth. Perhaps that is being a bit harsh as this is certainly not a Cocaine Bear movie. Still, the ending is not something that will surprise you, but how it gets there is worth watching. If you've ever seen the movie Revenge (Kevin Costner, Madeline Stowe), this will look like an urban version of it, though less violent and no drug lords.
The Long Wait (1954) Dir. Victor Savile After a cold open in which a man hitches a ride only to find himself in a fiery car crash, it is revealed that the man in question has amnesia as a result of the accident. Weeks and months pass without any clue as to who he might have been in his prior life. Until he gets a clue: an acquaintance seems to have proof that his former life took place in the town of Lyncastle. Desperate to find out more about his past life, he travels down there... only to discover he is in fact Johnny McBride, the primary suspect in the unsolved murder of the local D.A., as well as a person of interest in the theft of 250000 at the bank he used to work as a teller. The return to Lyncastle does not immediately jog his memory. So his only way of knowing his involvement in either crime is to find Vera West, a former employee at the bank he himself worked at, as well as his girlfriend at the time of his disappearance. The only problem: Vera disappeared completely shortly after Johnny left Lycastle. An old friend of Johnny's believes Vera has actually returned to town, but she has changed her appearance and identity through plastic surgery. Johnny's search for the new Vera eventually makes him zero in on four women who are all somehow involved with the local crime boss Servo: Servo's personal secretary Carol, Servo's girlfriend Troy, Peggy, the floor manager at a casino owned by Servo and Venus, a woman who manages a beauty shop that is one of Servo's legal business enterprises. Enjoyable noir based on a Mickey Spillane novel of the same name. In the tradition of 1950s noir, the protagonist is not all that likable himself. Quinn's mug somehow fits with a man who proves hard to like, even in his righteous attempts to clear his name. The great Gene Evans is lots of fun as bad guy Servo. Loved how the climax at the empty warehouse was shot. Of the four primary women around which much of the plot revolved, Peggie Castle leaves the strongest impression and it's her scenes with Quinn that have the most on-screen chemistry.
Liked this movie. Some things missing but I can't say and I think that's due to editing. I can tell these days when something doesn't add up randomly. I hope I don't get cancelled for saying this, but I also enjoyed seeing a female lead struggling to make it out. No offence to women but as I'm sure it's been mentioned, the era of powerful women in movies drains the joy in seeing you see someone thrive or achieve something. This movie is grounded in that what Emily goes through is realistic and she gets hurt. Not Some easy-duz-it stuff because of her gender. She is a novice at crime as the title suggests. She won't nor can't have it that easy. Good watch worthwhile. I'm a sucker for Audrey Plaza in projects she's in but this one was acting chops.
I hope I didn't come across as not liking it. I did. I heard an interview with the creator of Swarm saying she created the character specifically because there were so many Black women who succeed/overcome obstacles in movies that she wanted to create a different kind of character. I think your comment agrees with that.
Escape Plan (2013) Former lawyer and structural engineer Sylvester Stallone has a very special set of skills that allow him to do a very unique job - escape from prisons to see if they are designed and run up to snuff. He gets an offer from a CIA agent to test a new privately run dark site. But it turns out the guys running the prison are horrible people who will imprison anyone for any reason if the price is right. They are beyond any law, and they certainly don't want to be tested. Looks like Stallone has only once chance - fellow prisoner and new friend Arnold Schwarzenegger. The escape stuff was interesting. The climactic scene was very 80's, which is understandable considering the stars, but it means mixing a little "Oh, that's radical!" with a lot of "I'm noticing how cheesy this is". Stallone was surprisingly good being a brain. However, there wasn't much magic between the two stars. It turns out the main theme of the movie is using people. Just about everyone is out to extract some bit of use from someone else without care for the human. The setup is perfect to make some grand political statement, or at least show some compassion, but there is none of that. It's a callous, uncaring film. Just as bad, one of the examples really breaks the internal logic of the movie.
Pearl (2022) Dir. Ti West Around sixty years prior to the events of Ti West’s X, we meet the young Pearl on her farm. She shares the homestead with her domineering German immigrant mother and her infirm father, her husband Howard deployed abroad as the Great War is still ongoing in Europe. With the third wave of the Spanish flu still raging as well, she is rarely allowed to leave the safety of the farm. Pearl is thus a young woman increasingly frustrated at the smallness of her life and intrigued by the nascent movie industry and the idea of becoming a star herself. A chance encounter with the town’s film projectionist and the prospect of auditioning for a travelling dance troupe give her some brief hope. Until Pearl’s own darker tendencies put her on a path of no return… Very interesting prequel to X. Whereas X was a pretty straightforward homage to Texas Chainsaw, with a good double performance by Mia Goth, this is harder to pin down. The good lead performance by Goth is still this film’s greatest boon. If it has horror antecedents, I would say they are less from American horror and more to be found in Giallo. But this also has a lot in common – at least visually – with things like Pressburger and Powell’s The Red Shoes and Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz. The framing, camera movement, some of the on-screen credits… are all meant to give a nod to the Golden Age of Hollywood. It’s Mia Goth’s performance, brave and completely devoid of any vanity, that makes a lot of the scenes work where they otherwise might not have. She reminds me in some scenes of Isabelle Adjani in Possession. There is some good work in the supporting roles too, especially David Corenswet as the projectionist and Tandi Wright as Pearl’s mother. But Pearl is definitely about the Mia Goth and Ti West creative partnership. One which will continue in another sequel called MaXXXine. Curious to see if they can keep the party going.
Tetris - 2023 Apple TV A fun movie, very quick but because of it's paper story. By "paper story" I mean did