Well, as it turns out my imaginary 17 year old son is gay, and he thought the scene was hilarious and said it was so “bougie 90s trashy” and “are you sure she’s not really a drag queen?” Then he RuPaulogized when I told him about chromosome thing! So you’re right! It would have been different! I’ll watch it with my actually gay other daughter sometime and let you know how that goes, too.
don't bother. i can't know what the truth is in what you said, but i suspect it's not 100%. from now on, i'll leave you alone.
FWIW, I watched the movie with my wife who is a big fan of Jamie Lee Curtis and who is not particularly shy about sexuality in film but loathes depictions (and realities) of people being exploited into sex. We found the scene quite creepy.
This is a rare example of an American remake that is far superior to the original (the French action comedy "La Totale!"). It's also the template for the kind of movies they should remake in Hollywood: ideas that were good but lacked the budget in their countries of origin to do them justice.
The Vast of Night (2019) Dir. Andrew Patterson The late 1950s, in Cayuga New Mexico. The townfolks gather in the local gym to see their high school basketball team meet a local rival in the first game of the season. Missing the game due to their jobs are a pair of friends: switch board operator Fay and the fast-talking Everett, a DJ at the local radio station who dreams of much bigger things far outside of Cayuga. Early on in Everett's broadcast, Fay hears a strange sound over the radio. Then later on, she hears the same sound come in through her switch board. On a whim, she calls into Everett's radio show and after he plays the sound to his listeners, some idea of what is happening is pieced together after people with knowledge of the event start calling in. It is left to Fay and Everett to piece this information together and figure out what is truly going on that night. My expectations for this were very high and I can't say they were entirely met. Which doesn't mean this is a bad movie. It's still very enjoyable. It's also a movie that manages to have modern sensibilities whilst also paying homage to true B-movie sci-fi flicks of that era, like "It Came from Outer Space". One should also respect the impressive achievement in terms of the technical quality of this film, between the low budget (though supposedly Amazon spent some dough on sprucing up the VFX after they came on board having secured distribution following the first screening at the Slamdance film festival) and the fact that this was the directors first feature-length effort. I especially liked the oner (which obviously had more than one hidden cut in there) that was partially used for one of the earliest teaser trailers for this film. The full five minute scene is fantastic, especially the section of it that takes place in the gym. Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz have good chemistry and a strong screen presence, which is required, because they have to carry much of this film on their own.
Bring Me Home (2019) Dir. Seung-woo Kim Jung-yeon and her husband have been desperately looking for their missing child. After six years, Jung-yeon's hope has dwindled away whilst her husband is still using every moment of free time to search for his son. When her husband dies after a tragic accident, Jung-yeon struggles with suicidal thoughts, until she gets an unexpected tip: her son has supposedly been sighted at a remote fishing village. When she heads over there, she is met by people who aren't not very helpful to her search and perceive her as a snooping outsider. Among the locals is a corrupt police Sergeant who has his own reasons to want to get rid of the big city interloper. The writing in this is a bit erratic but the movie as a whole is saved by Yeong-ae Lee's moving lead performance as the bereaved mother. Something of a mystery/drama that turns into an action thriller in the third act.
Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010) Captain Alex has moved his army unit into Kampala to take on the Tiger Mafia, the most ruthless criminal organization in Uganda. Learning about an important exchange of briefcases (or actually briefcase, as they could only afford one), the army attacks. However, it does not go smoothly and Alex loses many solders. He does manage to grab the brother of the head of the Tiger Mafia. Seeking revenge, the head of Tiger Mafia sends infiltrators to capture Alex. However, they find out he is already dead. Who killed Captain Alex? Oh, wait, I already typed that. This was made with a budget of $80, but it looks like it cost at least 3 times that much. But what this lacks in pacing, acting, and convincing.. well, anything, it compensates through earnest affection. Director (and writer and editor and special effects creator and...) Nabwana IGG just loves action movies and all the cast just love being in this action movie. Many of them can't even stop smiling when they are acting. The defining feature of modern popular Ugandan film is the "Video Joker", a person that supplies running commentary on the films. They are a cross between a narrator, a MST3K riffer, and a rap hype man and they totally bring the film to life. They brighten slow moments, energize fast moments, and frequently matched my own emotional outbursts at the goings on. This is definitely an invention Hollywood should steal.
I'm through without finishing. Chelsea Linetti left the show -- classic case of addition through subtraction -- and they responded by forgoing the Halloween Heist episodes, which was the best scheduling conceit since the Friends' Thanksgiving episodes.
Braugher in that huge dove suit is the pay-off to a couple of seasons worth of Braughter playing that role super-seriously. I laughed so hard at that reveal. Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler Braugher in that huge pigeon costume is the pay-off to a couple of seasons worth of Braugher playing that role super-seriously. I laughed so hard at that reveal.
Guns Akimbo (2019) Decidedly non-badass Miles spends his days working as a programmer of crappy mobile games and his nights trolling the worst message boards on the internet. In the movie universe that means the comments section on Skizm, the homepage of streamed fights-to-the-death between the crazies and low-lifes. Miles' drunken insults turn towards the people that run Skizm, and that gets Miles some unwanted attention. Now he is forced - in the most extreme way possible - to be part of the contest. His opponent is the craziest and low-lifiest of them all - 43 time winner Nix. The gun-fu action thriller has been around for decades, and while they have never been entirely serious they all have this sober core of some moral drive that forces the hero to pick up their guns and not put them down. So in this send-up of the genre we skip that stuff and simply have a highly-reluctant hero who literally cannot put his guns down even though he wants to. Some of the funniest stuff in this very funny movie are Radcliffe's attempts to do everyday things with those weapons, which also seems to be a comment on how useful those things really are. I thought this was constantly enjoyable and modern, with the 80's and 90's music tying into the genre's history (which culminates in a fist-raisingly transcendental moment with a Stan Bush power ballad). However, in the end this had the same problem as The Cabin in the Woods - it remains a member of the set of movies it is dissecting, and is unwilling to transgress those boundaries. There is an absolutely smashing performance by Rhys Darby (most famous as the manager in Flight of the Conchords) as a bum who gives Miles some sound advice and questionable food. Unfortunately Samara Weaving frequently sounded like she was reading her lines from a cue card for the first time.
Becky (2020) Dir. Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion Around a year after her mother has died of cancer, Becky and her father drive out to their lake house along with their dogs, Dora and Doug. Becky is greatly angered upon their arrival to discover that her father has also invited his new girlfriend and her young son along for the weekend. Her mood gets even worse when her dad reveals that him and his girlfriend plan to get married. Angered at what she perceives as a betrayal of her mother, Becky runs away. At the same time, four dangerous criminals have just escaped a prisoner transport nearby and they descend upon the lake house to find an item that their leader Dominic stashed their almost a decade earlier. With no neighbors nearby to help them, the family's only hope is now Becky. Following her excellent work in "Ouija II: Origin of Evil", I believed Lulu Wilson to be one of the best child actors working today. Unfortunately now nearly four years later, that Mike Flanagan directed horror flick still remains Wilson's best movie. There is nothing wrong with her performance here, but the material just leaves a lot to be desired. The basis of this seems to be the old notion that Home Alone is actually the story of a nascent violent sociopath in the form of Kevin McCallister. This same idea was already used - I believe better too - in small indie horror flick "The Aggression Scale". As unbelievable the premise is in both films (kid fights off hardened criminals alone), I think it still worked better in "The Aggression Scale" than in "Becky". Also of note is Kevin James playing a non-comedic role as the racist neo-Nazi ring leader of the gang that descends upon the innocent family-to-be. It's of course not new for a comedic actor to try his luck in more dramatic, dark roles (Robin Williams had such a spell with "One Hour Photo" and the "Insomnia" remake and I loved Albert Brooks as the main villain in "Drive") but James really fails to convince here in a role that is supposed to be scary and sinister. No amount of swastika tattoos can change that.
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)- I watched this to get up to date on the Bill and Ted movies. Decent use of time.
Rim of the World (2019) Dir. McG Alex is sent to Summer camp by his mother, very much against his wishes. As a self-confessed tech nerd, he is very much not an outdoorsy person. His mom hopes that the experience will help him to get out of his shell and perhaps make some friends. Within a couple of days of his arrival at the camp, he and a handful of other kids get separated from the main group. When they get back to the rally point, no one else is around and it becomes apparent that something very odd is going on, which is revealed to be a large-scale alien invasion. By chance, the kids come across an crash-landed astronaut who begs them to take a special key to the JPL, supposedly literally the key to humanity's last hope against the aliens. Thus a long and dangerous trek commences for the newly acquainted foursome of youngsters, one in which they have to fight off aliens (alien bloodhounds included), looting criminals and their initial preconceived notions about each other. This is not very shy about what it is trying to achieve, it is essentially Goonies mixed with Independence day. McG uses the opportunity to reference many other movies, among them Jurassic Park, Aliens and Return of the Jedi. This was a charming experience, the very definition of harmless fun. If this movie is to have a Stranger Things style break-out child star, it will most likely be Miya Cech. The Mustang scene especially is when she more or less steals this movie from the rest of the cast.
Da 5 Bloods (2020) Dir. Spike Lee Paul, Otis, Melvin and Eddie are four Vietnam vets who are returning to the country for the first time since their service. On the surface, they are supposedly there to retrieve the body of their fallen comrade and former squad commander, ‘Storming’ Norman. Together with Norman, the four of them were known as Da Five Bloods and the surviving four men worship Norman like a demi-God. In reality their trip to Vietnam has another goal: near the end of their deployment, right before Norman died in combat, they found a downed CIA plane containing a large shipment of gold. Their initial plan was to bury the gold in the jungle and return sometime later to retrieve it. Due to unforeseen circumstances, that waiting time has turned into decades. Each man has his own issues with being back in the jungle, none more so than Paul, who has serious bouts of PTSD and who seems to blame himself for Norm’s death. I really liked Spike Lee’s previous movie, BlacKKKlansman. I thought this was a step down from that. It’s a more self-indulgent Spike Lee film, both in its runtime (2.5 hours) and the way it goes off into wild tangents. BlacKKKlansman was a more focused effort on his part. Which doesn’t mean that I didn’t find stuff to enjoy in this film. Certainly this cast has great chemistry, especially the four surviving Bloods. Chadwick Boseman is also fantastic as Norman and I almost wish we had more flashbacks to him than we ended up getting. I was less into the fact that Lee had the old actors play their younger selves in these flashbacks. Having four younger actors play these roles would have been less distracting. It gets a bit messy and needlessly bloody in the third act.
City that Never Sleeps (1953) Dir. John H. Auer Officer John Kelly feels trapped in both an unhappy marriage and an unsatisfying job. He is a member of the Chicago PD who went into the life because his father is a cop who insisted his son follow into his footsteps. He is finally convinced by his night club dancer mistress Angel Face to quit both his job and his marriage and flee to California with her. To that end, he needs some money and thus he accepts legally questionable work from a shady lawyer who wants to take a pickpocket whose services he has used down a few pegs. This sets in motion a series of events that brings said pickpocket onto his path, with unforeseen consequences. Decent little noir that gets especially interesting in the third act. I also liked how they found the time to reveal the humanity in even the smallest supporting characters (e.g. Gregg). Another good turn as the villain for perennial baddie William Talman (though he might be most famous for his role on Perry Mason).
Hinterland is a police procedural set in a small town on the Atlantic coast of Wales. DCI Tom Matthias (Richard Harrington) has left London and is living in a mobile home near Aberystwyth. In the course of a two season, ten episode series, Mattias and his partner, DI Rhys, played by Mali Harries, are tasked with solving a series of murders. The series is well-acted, IMO, and is in a "noir" vein. It's on Netflix. Matthias is a rather troubled character because of a tragedy in his past. This element presents itself periodically.
The Good Place Finally caught the fourth season of The Good Place. There are precious few shows that know when to quit and go out on top, but this show is firmly in that exclusive pantheon. The show is smart and funny, every character satisfyingly develops over the course of the show, and the show pretty much nails the series finale. All in all, a very satisfying watch.
The Sleeping City (1950) Dir. George Sherman At NYC's Bellevue hospital, a young intern named Foster goes outside to have a smoke. An unseen man shoots Foster in the head, killing him. The police open an inquiry and find out that Foster was generally well-liked and had no know enemies. His roommate reveals that he did become increasingly unnerved and stressed in the last four months of his life but he never revealed the cause of this anxiety. When the investigation ends up failing to create any good leads, the head of the precinct decides to bring in three members of his so-called confidential squad to infiltrate the hospital. Two of them will pose as security guards, but the third man will do the heavy lifting and actually infiltrate the hospital wards as an intern: Fred Rowan, a detective with actual medical experience through having completed several years of medical school as well as having served in the medical corp during the war. Rowan himself doesn't seem to get very far in his investigation, other than noticing that another young doctor, his own roommate, seems to be under a lot of stress, more than can be explained by the pressures of being an intern. Eventually the focus of his investigation settles upon an old elevator operator whom he suspects knows more about what is going on at Bellevue. At the same time, he undercover work is complicated by his attraction to one of the nurses on the ward he is working. A decent little mystery/noir shot on location at the actual Bellevue hospital in a very realistic style, occasionally near-documentary. Conte is very good here, as is Coleen Gray.
Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar (2019) Dir. Sam Yates Following the divorce from her first husband, Agatha Christie contemplates a change in her literary output, wanting to find more romance both in her personal life and in her work. Her publisher's reaction is lukewarm and her personal attempts at exploring real romance also find little luck, until she accepts the invitation of an archeologist to visit his dig in Iraq. Arriving there, she meets and becomes increasingly intrigued and attracted to the young archeologist Max. Max pulls her into the murder investigation of his friend and mentor Patrick. When more fatalities occur, more people turn to Agatha to solve the crimes. A fictionalized account of Agatha Christie's real-life trip to Iraq in 1928, during which she met her second husband Max Mallowan. With a Poirot-esque murder mystery attached. Charming, harmless entertainment and Lyndsey Marshal makes a very good Agatha Christie. Somewhat reminiscent of "Agatha Christie and the Truth of Murder", which also features Christie solving a murder in the middle of a real-life event (in that instance her disappearance in 1926).
As a child of the 1980's (and every decade since) I have a deep cultural connection to the phrase "Electric Boogaloo" which we comically attached to every kind of sequel even before the movie first using it hit the theaters. Now I hear that some dastardly figures have appropriated it for their nefarious purposes, and I'm here to take back its good name. Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984 - yes, the same year as Breakin') The local youth all dance at the Miracle, a dilapidated community center. Mr. Douglas, the evil Southern California real estate developer (the staple bad guy of 80's movies and TV) wants to tear it down to build a shopping center, a place of commerce and entertainment that will certainly never fade away. The kids need some way to raise $200,000 to fix up the building, and I was shocked when it turned out to be a dance fundraiser. Oh, man, I wish there was some other way of taking back "Electric Boogaloo" than watching this movie. Any episode of The A-Team would have had a deeper evil developer plot. And again they do a poor job of providing philosophical justification for a lifestyle built on street dance, especially during the cringy dinner when Ozone and Turbo went to Kelly's rich parents home to ask for a donation. The subplot with the inappropriately-heterosexual Electro Rock crew was built up and then went nowhere. I do think the dancing was a step up from the first. Just as the best part of the first movie was Turbo's solo dance with a broom, this movie's best part is Turbo's take on another Royal Wedding classic - the rotating room. This version would have made Fred Astaire jealous. Its lighting and room movement was far ahead of any other example of the type - it was like seeing the true magic. Ozone has his own single dance and it was great too, if a little short. It was obviously an inspiration for the video for Dirty Vegas' "Days Go By", one of my favorites.
In what way was the Electro Rock crew inappropriately-heterosexual? I'm unlikely to see the movie, so I rely on your perceptions.
The Killing (1956) Dir. Stanley Kubrick Johnny Clay is newly released from a five year stint in jail. He goes right back into a life of crime by planning a daring heist on a race track. He assembles an eclectic crew of men around him, most of which are not career criminals but opportunists who see in this scheme their final opportunity to get rich, each of them needing the money for their own reasons, beit a greedy trophy wife, a sick spouse who needs better medical care or just the funds to pay off a loan shark. The heist is planned in intricately detail and its execution initially appears to match its concept, only can crime truly pay? One thing about watching a film with Coleen Gray in it is that you go "Hey, I haven't seen 'The Killing' in a while!". Which is now rectified. Still holds up as well as ever. I think on this viewing, I especially admired Marie Windsor's supporting role as the unfaithful, scheming wife of the putz of the outfit. Whereas "Rififi" influenced almost every European heist film that came after it (and many American ones too), The Killing is sort of the blueprint for the genre in the states. Almost every heist movie since then either borrows directly from it or borrows from other films which were influenced by "The Killing". Also famously a great influence on the young Quentin Tarantino. Kubrick is already very much a master of his craft here. Also always admired the sparseness of the edit. Clocks in at around 84 minutes but not a single minute is wasted.