Deathstroke: Knights and Dragons: The Movie (2020) Dir. Sung Jin Ahn Slade Wilson is an augmented super-soldier who hides his abilities from his wife and child, pretending to be a businessman when he is in fact a renowned mercenary known as Deathstroke. This bites him in the ass when his abilities bring him onto the radar of a man called the Jackal and this ends up endangering his family. Ten years later, Slade Wilson is estranged from his wife and son, only both return in his life when the remnants of the group that the Jackal belonged to once again threaten the life and safety of his child. This is a movie connected to a CW animated series of the same name that I never saw. So I can't say how it compares to the TV show or if it is closely related to it plot-wise. On its own, it's a decent though not especially great superhero movie. The voice work is good, especially Michael Chiklis as Slade Wilson.
The Rental (2020) Dir. Dave Franco Charlie and Josh, two brothers with very different professional backgrounds, take their respective wife Michelle and girlfriend Mina on a weekend away to a beach-side home on a rather secluded stretch of the Oregon coast. Mina is also the CEO of the company Charlie owns and founded, which means they are much closer than in-laws otherwise might be. Their arrival at the beach-side home is somewhat ruined by the revelation that the landlord is a bit of a bigot. Whilst the rest of the group gets over the awkward encounter rather quickly, Mina cannot shake the feeling of unease the man gave her, and it is slowly revealed that she is not wrong about there being something off about their beautiful getaway location. This is a pretty straightforward genre exercise of the kind of horror/thriller flicks that Joss Whedon lampooned and meta-critiqued with his "Cabin in the Woods". This is considerably less high-concept than that, but it's still enjoyable due to the quality of the cast. Dan Stevens is slowly becoming one of my favorite actors of his generation, between his work in both comedies (he was terrific in Eurovision) and horror/thrillers (brilliant work in Apostle and a quite solid genre turn in The Guest). Alison Brie (director Dave Franco's wife) is terrific as always. Sheila Vand is a revelation. Only Jeremy Allen White doesn't quite match the quality of the other three principals, not that I would deem his work in this film terrible by any means. The cast largely makes up for the fact that neither the climax nor the big bad end up being very original.
My wife and I were visiting some family friends and we took their kids to the movies to see this. Full house, fun crowd. And there's a scene where lines are being fed to one of the characters when one of the others says something overtly sexual and the crowd laughed uproariously - at which time one of the kids whispered in my ear to ask me to describe what the comment meant. One of the most awkward moments of my life.
In the excellent movie "Enemy of the State", Will Smith says to his wife, "I wouldn't mind doing a little 'monitoring', myself." She responds that he will have to do a lot of 'monitoring', and their son, Eric, asks, "Are you guys talking about sex?" I don't know how old Eric was supposed to be, but I thought his line was creepy or at least in poor taste, based on Eric's apparent age.
Would you have been unaware at his age? The innocence of children is maybe the most frequently and substantially overestimated thing in the universe...
At age 8, and I think that's about how old Eric was, I had NO IDEA about sex. But that was, as Adele puts it, A Million Years Ago. Children may not be quite so innocent as we think, but that is the fault of a culture that is increasingly sexualizing younger and younger children. That's a shame. 8 year olds have no need whatsoever to know anything about sexual behavior.
That's a little hard to believe-- in a world full of dogs, cats, farm animals, grade school students of unrefined nature, even flies, you'd never gotten curious enough to figure out even that the word applied to certain situations, let alone how the process actually worked? I mean erroneous ideas were common at that age, but everybody knows that there's something there that people mostly talk about in code and most of my circle had about half of it figured. A few classmates just outside my circle were already trying it on a bit, albeit mostly unsuccessfully Were you a completely uncurious child?
I was an only child til I was a little older than 8. My mother was visibly pregnant for about 4 months till my 8th birthday, and my brother was born 2 months after. I was told only that I was going to have a baby brother or sister. I don't recall wondering how she got pregnant. I think I learned about "the birds and the bees" maybe a year or two later, 5th grade. Just to be clear, I am certain that our society is not better off from 8 year olds knowing about sex. It's not necessary that they know. If a child begins to ask questions, then a parent needs to have answers that are age-appropriate, but apart from issues of privacy and modesty, sexual differences between the genders are not matters that young children have a critical need to understand in depth. If a 4 year old asked, "How did the baby get in Mommy's tummy?", I think a family that has spiritual underpinnings can tell that child, "God put it there." If the family isn't spiritually oriented in a theocentric way, a child can be told, "Babies happen because Mommy and Daddy love each other."
But there are a number of impossibilities there: 1. Children are not 100% controllable. Probably not 10%. They are going to wonder about things, see things, ask people who don't take your attitude, and imagine things and sometimes get them right. A kid's intellect may be immature, but that doesn't make it nonexistent. 2. Children are going to see animals having sex-- farm children more than city children, but there are still cats, dogs, squirrels-- You may think it isn't "necessary," but it really isn't preventable. They see it, they wonder about it. Older kids tell them stuff. Nothing about the concept of "necessary" suggests "preventable." all you are likely to achieve is to teach your kids that there are things they should never share with you because they will embarass you and you can't face it. 3. Children's own bodies will experience hormonal reactions as early as two or three. They're gonna wonder about it, and they're apt to figure out or imagine stuff about it. People are actually fairly good guessers. You're gonna notice that certain parts of you swell up sometimes, and what's going on some of those times. 4. And if it is too puzzling, there's always the encyclopedia. Some kids don't especially take to reading, but others do and some really do. If you draw one of those, are you going to try to keep it from everything but children's books? I had exhausted those before I was 6; happily my mom had the foresight to arrange that the adult section of the public library (within safe walking distance) knew that I had permission to access anything that interested me. Which was mostly dinosaurs, archaeology, and history. But all I had to do was identify myself on arrival, and no one would worry a bit if I went to fiction or medicine or whatever. on a given day... Anytime I found a word I couldn't figure contextually I went to the OED or the encyclopedia and looked it up. By the time I had finished with the six wives of Henry the 8th I had looked up enough words to be pretty sure how pregnancy worked and how the world had gotten to be so screwed up in how it treated wives and children. I mean, the bottom line here is really the first rule of living: "There is a maximum of one person in the universe whose actions [or knowledge] you control." And it isn't your child and certainly isn't anyone else's...
The Tax Collector (2020) Dir. David Ayer David works for Wizard, an imprisoned crime lord. His job is to "tax" the gangs working on his territory, who are all made to pay a percentage of their earnings in exchange for their life and continued ability to conduct their business. He is assisted in his work by the sadistic and intense Creeper. The status quo is challenged by the arrival of a new player in town. A man whom they initially do not take seriously, until it is seemingly too late. A rather underwhelming crime thriller that is riddled with clichés and rather slow-paced for a movie that clocks in at just over ninety minutes. I'm also not really convinced by Shia LaBeouf, whose character Creeper is meant to be terrifying, something he doesn't really achieve in properly conveying. Cheyenne Rae Hernandez exudes about 10x as much threat as his counterpart in the rival gang.
An Inspector Calls (2015) Dir. Aisling Walsh England 1912, in the mansion of the wealthy Birling family, the clan has gathered to celebrate the engagement of the daughter of the family, Sheila, to the son of an equally wealthy industrialist, Gerald Croft. Their soiree is interrupted by the arrival of a police inspector, who is there to investigate the tragic suicide of a young woman. Whilst each family member initially denies knowing the girl, it is slowly revealed that each of their lives intersected with the unfortunate and that each of them contributed to her tragic end. Adaptation of the famous play, with a good David Thewlis in the titular role. Nothing spectacular, but generally well-acted. Took me forever to remember where I had seen Sophie Rundle before (Jamestown!).
You also saw Sophie Rundle in The Bletchley Circle, BG. She also had a good turn in an episode of Call the Midwife.
One of the small silver linings of this pandemic year, is that I am staffing a residential home. One of our residents has been sent home to self-isolate from work twice in the past 6 weeks, and to make it special, I've been showing him some of the classics. It's been great fun introducing him to Die Hard, The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters and Silverado. Today was When Harry Met Sally and man, did William love Meg Ryan's orgasm scene and the four-way phone call after Harry and Sally had sex. We stopped mid-movie and rewatched each scene three times, I think. This has been fun.
Talking about this just yesterday and today I found that Bletchley Circle is on Amazon Prime. Just re-watched the first episode. If there is anyone reading this thread who has not heard me pontificate on The Bletchley Circle, all I can say is that the first season (3 episodes) is the best mystery show ever on TV. It is both cozy and procedural, and I would defy anyone watching it for the first time to stop after the second episode.
How is explaining where babies come from sexualising children? Since living in Germany I have come around to the idea that Anglo culture is quite prudish and sexualises a lot of stuff that is not sexual - e.g the whole taboo around nudity etc
Babies are the result of sexual acts. 6 year olds do not need to know the mechanics of that process. I'm not sure when a child needs to know more than a gentle brush-off response, but I doubt that it's age 6. There is a line between prudishness and modesty. I think it's better to exercise modesty than to parade ones nude body around, but that might be simply a family standard. If your family allows nudity to be normal, I have no problem with that at all, but I would object to your taking off your clothes in my living room.
You keep framing this in terms of needs and necessity; but the real issue here is "how do you propose to prevent children from finding things out?" A "gentle brush off" doesn't stop anyone, adult or child, from wondering-- it just sends them somewhere else to find out. Life really only offers you this much control; you can be the one who answers the child-- or someone else will and who knows who that might be or what their answer might be shaped like?
it's more contextual in germany For instance, on lockdown i converted my parents conservatory into my exercise studio. After big bike rides I'd strip off my sweaty gear, weigh myself and put on fresh clothes. My mother was horrified because "the neighbours might see me" - but so what? so you don't get nude in the living room - but also, you go nude in the sauna and the world keeps spinning.
I completely agree - also its just scientific info and the kids don't sexualise or think its anything special at that age. That all comes later. So its actually a great opportunity for them to understand basic stuff, before it becomes a big deal Having lived in both cultures, i actually find the prudish anglo-saxon culture bizarre in hindsight.
Grantchester season 1 & 2 (2014-2016) Grantchester, 1953. We meet the town's vicar, a WW II veteran turned clergyman called Sydney Chambers. When he volunteers to perform the funeral ceremony to a man who seemingly committed suicide, he earns the condemnation of some of his flock and meets the police detective who investigated the circumstances of the man's death, Cambridge Detective Inspector Geordie Keating. When Sydney becomes convinced that the suicide was in fact a murder, he becomes Keating's unlikely partner and the two men solve the crime, forging a partnership that becomes a regular occurrence afterwards. British detective series are a long-time comfort food. My current favorite is Endeavour. With no new episodes of the young Morse's adventures in sight, I gave this a try. It shares some of the qualities that drew me to Endeavour: a period setting (early to mid 1950s here, late 1960s/early 1970s for Endeavour) and the chemistry of the two leads. It's fun and James Norton is a charismatic lead, with veteran Robson Green as a reliable foil. If I have one major complaint it's that the will-they-won't-they dynamic between Sydney and Amanda gets really, really stale by the end of the second season. Thankfully it's not a big enough factor to otherwise ruin the show. I do like some of the other supporting performances, especially Al Weaver as the slightly bumbling curate with the heart of gold and Tessa-Peake Jones as the old battle-axe Mrs. Maguire. Still have the Christmas special and one full season to go from this DVD. Might report back if I feel I have anything to add to this write-up.
The Vanished (2020) Dir. Peter Facinelli Wendy, Paul and their daughter Taylor arrive in their RV to celebrate Thanksgiving weekend camping by the lake. Within a few hours of their arrival Taylor disappears completely from within their RV and the local Sheriff starts a search for the girl in the nearby woods. Both the parents and the Sheriff have no lack of suspects for the girl's disappearance, between the shady man running the camp, the young, suspicious-looking caretaker in his employ and the young couple in the RV parked next to theirs, whom Wendy suspects from the start. Or can the situation not be explained as a simple abduction and is something far stranger going on? This is a very weird film, which seems intent on being many things at once (family drama, thriller, mystery and even a very weird dark comedy at times), though none of them convincingly. Jane, Heche and Patric are three good leads who give this their best, but the mediocre writing goes well into the preposterous by the third act and there is only so much a decent cast can salvage.
the sauna is an environment where nudity is expected. it's also optional, but generally the rule, rather than the exception.
Van Dammethon 49 Kill 'em All (2017) An emergency room nurse is being interrogated by the police. She is being debriefed after a horrible incident were a wounded Serbian mobster, injured bodyguards and bystanders, and a concussed Jean-Claude Van Damme were all brought in to the hospital after an assassination attempt at a nightclub. Then some well dressed guys with guns showed up and started shooting. If the nurse is going to survive someone's got to kill 'em all. Wait, this is all a flashback. We know she survives. Well, there goes that suspense. Along with Alien Uprising this is the weakest post-JCVD movie by quite a bit. First they made Van Damme concussed, which mostly gave us a guy with a headache instead of the reason we watched this movie in the first place. Then they put in twist after twist, and that isn't always bad but it really felt like they were reaching here. Twists only work if we think we understand what is going on. If everything is confused or facts are contested, they don't. And third, the fights were cut to pieces. I don't like lots of cuts in fights, but there is a way to do it right. You need to keep the eye point constant and you need to keep the flows going in the same directions. It ended up looking like they were trying to cover up actors who had no skill, and that wasn't the case. This is a first draft of a promising script sent to a just graduated filmmaker.
The Pale Door (2020) Dir. Aaron B. Koontz Duncan and Jacob are two brothers whose bond was forged in childhood trauma. The older brother Duncan has grown up to become an outlaw of some renown, who leads his own gang. Duncan has kept Jake out of his life of crime, until one day, he reluctantly takes his little brother along on a train job for which they were a man short due to one of their gang having recently found an early demise. The train job is supposed to yield a great deal of money, evidenced by the large contingent of Pinkertons guarding the transport. Instead, they find a locked chest containing a chained young woman. The girl promises them a great reward if she is returned to her town, only upon their arrival there, things are not quite what they seem and instead of a reward, the gang finds a great struggle for survival. I love westerns. I love horror films. So I obviously love the relatively rare western-horror subgenre, the peanut butter and jelly combo of what might be my two favorite movie genres. It has produced some very decent to great results in the past. To name just a few: The Burrowers (love it), Bone Tomahawk (great), Ravenous (solid), The Wind (flawed but interesting). The extreme isolation and man vs. nature realities of frontier living should make it a rich setting for horror films in general. Unfortunately, this one is a huge letdown. Some very thin horror clichés combined with low-budget production values and mostly forgettable performances doesn't add up to much. It also took me like twenty minutes to recognize one of the brothers as Rick from the Magnum reboot. Which is weird, because it's not like he doesn't look like Rick in this, it's just that my mind couldn't quite grasp his presence in a western.