Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

Moxie (2021)
Dir. Amy Poehler



Vivian is a high school student just starting her junior year. She and her best friend Claudia try to navigate their school life by remaining as anonymous as possible. They are especially worried about getting onto the radar of a small group of students, revolving around some members of the football team, who have made it a sport to put down their peers with insults and harassment. When a new student named Lucy stands up to this behavior and especially its main proponent, HS quarterback Mitchell, it inspires Vivian to write and distribute a zine in her high school, something of a call to arms to all female students to no longer put up with the sexist and misogynist garbage they have to endure every day. To her surprise, the zine inspires a movement of the same name and she unwittingly becomes the secret leader of a group which threatens the status quo at her high school.

This was okay but ultimately a bit underwhelming. This is based on a novel but there are also obvious cinematic inspirations. Pump up the Jam for the theme of an outsider/loner who manages to inspire his high school peers. Mean Girls for the theme of toxic high school environments. Decent lead performance by Hadley Robinson but I thought some of her supporting cast members were more memorable and I can't help but think this movie might have been better told from the perspective of Alycia Pascual-Pena or Lauren Tsai characters.

 

The Devil Below (2021)
Dir. Bradley Parker



Arianne is hired to take a small team up to a ghost town in a remote area in the Appalachian mountains. Years earlier, this mining town was the site of a disaster that resulted in a coal mine fire which resulted in many deaths and the decimation of the community. The group is met by hostility from the people who still live in the area. When they do find the location of the former town and mining operation, they unwittingly release an evil which has been barely contained ever since the original mining disaster happened.

Pretty straight-forward horror flick with obvious inspirations, among them The Descent and As Above, So Below. Only both of those films are considerably better. This never gets above the level of an average genre exercise. The lead was decent enough that I'd be interested in seeing her in a better film.

 

Watched the 5-part miniseries Chernobyl (2019). Absolutely captivating stuff. The acting was brilliant, and it was so well written, shot, and directed. Just an absolute masterpiece.

I read an interview with the man who wrote it, and he said something that I hadn't thought about, but after reading the interview, it made sense, and it made me appreciate the series more. It was about the power of narrative, and how the story wasn't so much about the mistakes and choices made, and the heroic efforts of so many, but instead the power of narrative and the lies that you tell to keep the narrative going. The amazing thing in the story is how many of the decisions made felt like they could've just as easily been made by any government - especially the US - in order to maintain that narrative. The story could've been about the blundering of the Soviets, but it showed that they made calculated decisions - rightly or wrongly - for the sake of what they collectively believed was right or true. A great example of this is the people who would eventually go on trial for what happened that night. They didn't know that their actions could make the core explode. Their bosses didn't know that their actions could make the core explode. There was no one with any belief that the core would explode. But it did, and another narrative builds from there.

The five episodes just flew by, and it was very riveting. I don't have HBO, but my library had it on bluray, and I'm so glad I borrowed it. I cannot recommend this enough if you haven't seen it.

 

Retroactive (1997)
Dir. Louis Morneau



Karen is a newly retired former criminal psychologist who is fleeing to her native Texas to help process a botched hostage situation she was involved in in Chicago. She hitches a ride after her car breaks down. The driver she hitches a ride with is Frank, a criminal who is in the middle of conducting an illegal deal involving stolen microchips. Also in the car is Rayanne, his wife, whom he verbally abuses non-stop, much to Karen's shock. The hitched ride escalates into a situation where Frank is responsible for multiple deaths and Karen flees for her life. She arrives at a research facility in the desert where Brian, a lone scientist, has been conducting top secret time travel experiments. As luck would have it, he just managed his first successful trial that morning and through further dumb luck, Karen is also sent back in time. Just twenty minutes back into the past, but it's just enough time to try and undo the damage Frank did on her first go around...

This was not bad? I went in with no real expectations, but it's a decently entertaining sci-fi thriller built around the time loop conceit. James Belushi is a decent villain, albeit occasionally a bit over the top. The ultimate resolution felt a bit underwhelming after the wild ride that was the rest of the movie. Features Frank Whaley and M. Emmet Walsh in supporting roles.

 

Fallen Angel (1945)
Dir. Otto Preminger



Eric Stanton, an opportunistic con man, is kicked off a bus well short of his intended destination of San Francisco. At a rundown little diner in the town he has been stranded in, he meets Stella, a beautiful young waitress who seems to share his lack of contentment in life. Eric feels an immediate and strong attraction to her. After going on a date, Stella reveals she is not looking for romance but rather a dependable and wealthy enough man to marry who will give her the kind of life she's been dreaming of. Near penniless, Eric devises another get rich quick scheme to get himself the money to realize Stella's dreams: he will seduce and marry June Mills, the younger of a pair of old maid sisters in town, who are known to have been left a sizable trust fund by their late father. His intention is to divorce June shortly after the wedding, with the intention of getting his hands on half her money that way. Only things don't go quite according to plan...

Noirish drama with some mystery sprinkled on top. Interesting from the POV that the protagonist, played by Dana Andrews, is presented largely as unsympathetic. Indeed both of the primary characters are individuals who are shown to use the people in their lives only for their own benefits. I can't say the resolution felt entirely satisfactory (nor was it the kind of twist the writers might have intended it to be).

 

Been meaning to give that a try myself.

I think the gag was sort of already done - in a more limited way - in the short-lived sitcom Making History (time-traveling protagonist using modern songs to seduce his 18th century girlfriend).

 

Sentinelle (2021)
Dir. Julien Leclercq



Klara is a French soldier of Russian descent who returns from a long deployment to her native Nice. Her latest tour has left her traumatized and struggling with the physical and mental effects of what she experienced abroad. Her new job consists of joining foot patrols in and around the tourist hot spots as part of France's anti-terrorism tactics. She struggles with the contrast between her new assignment and what she was used to stationed abroad as well as with reconnecting to civilian life a bit through her mother and younger sister Tania. When her younger sister disappears after a night out, Klara is first determined to find her and when she has found her, to get her revenge on the men who harmed her, even if it might end her military career in the process.

This was a middling action thriller that initially suggested it might be something more interesting. The early tensions between the traumatized Klara's expectations and the realities of her new assignment protecting potential terrorist targets had me hoping they'd mine a bit deeper into that theme. But after like half an hour, this turns into a French Taken clone. Decent Olga Kurylenko performance, though I still believe she is better in action comedy like the recent Johnny English sequel than in straight up action.

 

COSMIC SIN (2021) - Bruce Willis stars in this awful sci-fi movie about human's first contact with alien life. Star's is kind of generous cause all he does is stand around looking unhappy and embarrassed in the outfit they have him wear. Nice thing is that the movie is less than 90 minutes long.

 

I See You (2019)
Dir. Adam Randall



Shortly after a small town gets shocked by the disappearance and supposed kidnapping of two young boys, the detective in charge of the investigation has to deal with a difficult home situation after he discovers his wife's infidelity as well as increasingly strange occurrences in and around their house. As the domestic strangeness persists, there is a suggestion that it might be connected to the kidnapping cases he is in charge of.

I thought this was going to be a family drama masquerading as a horror film (à la Hereditary) but somewhere around the halfway point it turns into something else entirely. And unfortunately, something far less interesting. Not terrible but not nearly as clever as it wants to be. Decent performance by Owen Teague (whom I know primarily from the recent The Stand adaptation).

 

As 20th century TV series go, I can't think of a better concluding episode. I can think of several shows that match it in terms of quality in this century, but most of them are on cable or streaming services. Definitely a highpoint of network TV, IMO.

 

Roadgames (1981)
Dir. Richard Franklin



Pat Quid is an American working as a long-haul truck driver in Australia, with his pet dingo Boswell as his only companion. As he is settling in for the night and considers getting a room at a nearby motel, he notices a man driving a van entering the same motel with a young woman he had seen hitch-hiking earlier that day. The next morning, he sees the owner of the van observing the street from his motel room window, but he does not notice the hitch-hiker. Pat forgets about this encounter as he starts the long trek to Perth, hauling a trailer full of pork. He is reminded of the incident when he sees the very same van on a desolate stretch of road, with the owner in the middle of digging a hole. Putting two and two together, Pat wonders if the van driver might not have killed his hitch and is now in the process of burying the evidence. He fails to confirm his theory as the van successfully drives off, but shortly thereafter he picks up a young woman who does believe his story and suggests they try to capture the killer themselves.

Weird but enjoyable thriller. The weirdness are in the tonal shifts, where it goes from light and comical to dark and very serious, occasionally several times over the course of a single scene. Some of the nighttime photography is very beautiful and creative. Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis make for an unlikely but surprisingly effective on-screen pairing.

 

The Grandmaster ~ Wong Kar-wai

While I impatiently wait for my World of Wong Kar-wai box set to arrive (Why offer a pre-order if you're going to mail it so that I receive it a week after I could have picked it up in store, Criterion?), I found one of his films not in the box set on Netflix. This movie isn't good. It's certainly nice to look at, but the smashing together of Wong's dreamy, elliptical style with a kung-fu film just never coalesces and just feels awkwardly edited throughout. The captioning for some reason didn't translate when Chinese characters were displayed on screen, which was only a few moments, but still frustrating.

 

Ha, haven't posted here for at least a decade (edit six years).

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)

Four hours of big laughs.



I really thought this was pretty great. But it was a commitment.

 

The fly in the opening sequence cracked me up.

Other than that, I just want to say spigetti and Westerns are best enjoyed separately.

Claudia circa Rocco and His Brothers:

 

Chungking Express ~ Wong Kar-Wai

You can see how this influenced a ton of imitators in the '90s along with Pulp Fiction, and also understand from those failures how hard it is to make a movie this cool. As you would expect from Criterion, the World of Wong Kar-Wai box set is a meticulous and lovely physical artifact. Excited to watch the rest of the films.

 

Quantum Leap (1989-1993)



Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top secret project, known as "Quantum Leap". Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Doctor Beckett prematurely stepped into the Project Accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained through brainwave transmissions with Al, the Project Observer, who appeared in the form of a hologram that only Doctor Beckett can see and hear. Trapped in the past, Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home.

Oh boy!

I haven't been posting much in this topic the last couple of weeks because the time usually spent watching flicks is now being devoted to working my way through this box set. Rewatching Quantum Leap has been something I have long wanted to do, since it was one of my favorite shows in adolescence. I have seen the occasional episode in reruns since, but never the entire run. I'm not nearly done yet (I am now up to episode one of season three).

It has been an interesting experience so far. My first observations upon this rewatch was that they were still perfecting the formula in season one. Whilst there definitely were already some episodes in there that felt like real Leap, I feel like they truly hit their stride in season two and by the time we get to some classic episodes (e.g. Pool Hall Blues AKA the pool game episode), it's been perfected. Obviously some of the visual effects feel dated in 2021 but that never was the primary appeal of the show anyway. I mostly still enjoy the writing though through modern eyes, some of it lands differently. Most of the ones that deal with race have a strong white savior feel about them. In contrast to that, the two central performances that make this thing work are still as good now as they were back then. Scott Bakula makes Sam Beckett's compassionate humanism instantly likable and relatable. And in the hands of a lesser actor than Dean Stockwell, the Al character would have been entirely one-note and even silly (not that he cannot be silly in the hands of Stockwell too but then in a good way).

Still over sixty episodes left. I'm going back in!

 

Borrowed Joker (2019) from the library. Never before have I watched a movie where the character was so, so good, and yet have the whole movie be a boring, awful mess. For a two hour movie, I must have checked the clock 6 times. Also, it was almost a blatant ripoff of every Scorsese movie. Surprised it wasn't called "Boring Goodfellas With A Clown".

Also, I walked into the library, and saw this:

They really should find another way to describe this section.

 

Oh, and watched probably my favorite movie on pay cable: Trading Places (1983). Oh, how I love this movie! The story has been told a thousand times, but Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd were brilliant in it, and the whole supporting cast was great.

"That's because I'm a karate man! Karate man bruise on the inside! They don't show their weakness! But you don't know that because you a big Barry White-looking motherf*cker! So get my face..."