Act of Violence (1948) Dir. Fred Zinnemann Frank Enley is a war veteran who has gone into business as a contractor after the war and has made a good living for himself, as well as built a family after resettling in California. Whilst he is away on a fishing trip with his neighbor, his wife Edith gets a visit from Joe Parkson, who knows Frank from their war time and is desperate to see Frank. Edith gives Frank directions to the lake where Frank and the neighbor are fishing, but once Frank becomes aware of Joe's presence there, he flees back home before the two men can interact. His fearful behavior in the presence of his wife eventually forces him to fess up that Joe is indeed a fellow veteran he served with, only any visit from Joe will not be a kind social call, since he knows Joe blames him for certain tragic events that occurred when they were both imprisoned at a POW camp... Enjoyed this a lot, certainly one of the better noirs I watched in a long while. A returning veteran type noir, which focuses less on trauma - though it's still there obviously - and more on betrayal and guilt. Robert Ryan plays righteous anger very well and Van Heflin is equally good as the tortured man with the dark secret. Features a young Janet Leigh as Edith and Phyllis Thaxter as Joe's girlfriend Ann. We get several on-location sequences in Los Angeles, including an appearance of L.A. noir staple Angels Flight.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) Dir. Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah Some years after the events of the third film, Mike is getting married to the physical therapist who helped him rehab from his injuries sustained in their previous adventure. At Mike's nuptials, Marcus suffers cardiac arrest, but survives and wakes up a changed man, having had a vision of their late Captain Howard during his unconsciousness. Said Captain Howard's legacy is tarnished when a trail of drug money is traced back to his accounts. Mike and Marcus know that their Captain was not a dirty cop, so they set out to clear his name, only get dragged into the scandal themselves in the process. Fourth chapter in the Bad Boys franchises, the second one helmed by Adil & Bilall. I think from both critics and viewers alike, the sense emerges that many people preferred the third one to this one. I suspect that the nostalgia factor was a big part of that, with 17 years between Bad Boys II and Bad Boys for life. So that sentiment had clearly been used up for the third installment. I actually prefer this film, because Adil & Bilall do their own thing more as opposed to the Bay homage that much of the third film felt like. Most of the cast of the third one returns, including Jacob Scipio who plays Mike's son. The Reggie callback was indeed fun (and funny). Very glad for Adil & Bilall did this well at the box office, especially after they suffered the painful experience of having their Batgirl shelved for a tax write-down by Zaslav.
The Unseen (1945) Dir. Lewis Allen Young Governess Elizabeth Howard arrives at her new place of employment, working for widower David Fielding, who let go his previous Governess and needs a replacement to take care of his son Barnaby and daughter Ellen. David is at first dubious of Elizabeth, having expected someone a bit older and experienced to take on the job, especially since his son Barnaby is a handful. As Elizabeth gets used to Ellen's quirks and Barnaby's open hostility towards her, she also becomes aware that everyone in the neighborhood seems strangely obsessed with the boarded up vacant home next door: not just the children, but also several of the neighbors. Then she becomes aware of several strange goings on in the house during the nighttime, some of which seem to involve her new charge Barnaby. A noir that leans every so slightly into gothic horror, the screenplay (co-authored by Raymond Chandler) is based on an original novel but very clearly borrowed several ideas from The Turn of the Screw. The first hour or so is decent enough but once the contours of the central mystery are revealed it becomes much less interesting and the climax is kind of ridiculous. Stars a very young Gail Russell, in one of he earlier roles, long before her later bouts with alcoholism cut short first her career and then also tragically her life (love her latter day performance in one of my favorite westerns SEVEN MEN FROM NOW).
Seolgyeja (2024) Dir. Yo-sup Lee Yeong-il is the illusive leader of a four man team which specializes in concealing contract killings as accidents. Constructing Rube Goldberg structured mishaps that are invariably interpreted as freak accidents, they have some success in essentially committing murder for clients with deep pockets and a desire for discretion and deniability. The team eventually begins to suspect they have rivals, with Yeong-il himself even believing that this hypothetical other team of 'cleaners' might even be responsible for the death of one of their own team, who died in an apparent accident some time earlier, which Yeong-il is now re-evaluating as a potential murder concealed as an accident. It is a realization that they can not dwell on for long, since they have a new client in Young-seong Joo, a young woman whose target is her father, a man embroiled in a damaging corruption scandal. The media attention that the man's criminal case is garnering complicates the creation of a convincing accident, but at the same time tensions within the team itself muddle matters even further. South-Korean crime thriller with some interesting ideas, but I would say executed imperfectly. Gang Dong-won is good as the team leader. Apparently more or less a pretty faithful remake of a 2009 Hong kong thriller by the name of Accident, though I did not see the original version so cannot compare the two.
I love Streets of Fire. It's my all time favorite bad movie. It begins and ends with Jim Steinman songs, we're treated to Willem Defoe's craggy face and leather bib pants, and the movie features a raft full of interesting actor cameos. Great movie. Except that I didn't like it the first time I saw it. It was summer during my college years and my best friend had wanted to see another movie. I prevailed. I mean, the Streets of Fire trailer had these great jump cuts and it was billed as a "rock and roll fable." Except this movie ain't much of a fable; it's as you say, spejic, it's a western. And I hate westerns. The next night we went to see the movie Andrew wanted to see: Ghostbusters. A better movie. Which only served to make me rate Streets less highly. I happened upon the album second hand, played the shite out of Nowhere Fast and Tonight is What it Means to be Young and came to the movie through the back door. I watch it every couple of years.
Three Wise Men and a Baby - 2022 If you lose a bet like I did, and have to watch a Hallmark Christmas movie for Christmas in July, pick this one. It feels more like writers from the old TGIF sitcoms wrote a movie about adults instead of the usual fare. I'd rate this as merely somewhat bad instead of horrendous to its very core, which is the Hallmark equivalent of peak Scorsese. One random note: There's a character named Fiona played by an actress named Ali Liebert and a character named Susie played by an actress named Fiona Vroom. If Fiona can't play the role of Fiona, it would seem to make sense that you change the character name to avoid confusion on set.
Dune, parts I and II Meh. I was probably destined to not love these movies. Dune is one of my very favorite books. LotR is one of my very favorite books and the fact that those movies are fabulous shouldn't really detract from the experience of watching the Dune movies. Except it does. Dune is an extremely political book, and politics are hard for the movie medium. There's enough action in Dune, since we are talking intraplanetary warfare, but compared to the epic scenes in LotR, they pale almost to the point of boredom. The battle between Feyd Rautha and Paul Muad' dib, climactic in this movie, cannot hold a candle to Aragorn's battle with the lead Uruk hai. It also doesn't help that the lead visual interest -- the sand worms -- are just that. Worms. Worms just cannot be as strikingly visual as Peter Jackson's balrog or the Nazgul lord riding that gigantic dragon. The first movie is pretty much a paint-by-numbers version of the book. I think every scene pretty much happens in the same chronological order as they do in the book. The second movie starts wildly taking from Dune and it's sequel, Dune Messiah. The aforementioned duel between Feyd Rautha and Paul takes place in the second book. And the arrival of Paul's sister in the second book is heavily played here. Dune Part II is less a movie than it is a jumping off point for what I expect is a raft of hoped for sequels. It's telling for me that the ornithopters, the wasp like helicopters used on the planet Arrakis, and which are perfect in the movie, is what I will remember the most. Oh, and Stellan Skarsgård's voice. It's incredible.
The Killing (1956) This is the racetrack's biggest race all year, and there's going to be millions in the counting room after the seventh race starts before the payouts begin. Veteran criminal Jonny has the plan to take it all. He has the insiders, the to-the-second timing, the dupes, and the escape route. He's got it all figured out. The one thing he didn't plan on is one greedy woman. One of Kubric's first movies, and definitely a visual treat that keeps you glued to the screen. A weird thing in The Killing was how heavily narrated it was, at times feeling like those 1950's non-fiction films about how steel mills work (which I have been watching a lot of recently). This plays with temporality a lot, which isn't rare in heist films although modern ones do it to show the twist of how the crime was done and this uses it to better demonstrate how all the complicated bits fit together. One thing that drew my attention was probably just an aside to the writers. There are three women in the movie, and they all have very limited agency. At the time it was very difficult for a woman to do anything independently, so they had to hitch their carts to a guy they thought could get them what they needed. The thing is, when a cart is hitched to a horse, the horse is hitched to the cart. The motivations of most of the people in the heist was trying to be the man their woman expected. Maybe The Killing was meant to be a caution against getting involved with a gold digger, but 3/4ths of a century later we can interpret it as 1950's misogyny conceiving these men's downfall before Jonny even thought about the racetrack. The coolest thing any of the men do is Jonny's final line to his girl telling her no.
Bodkin (2024) You know, not a bad show. It's sort of a mix b/w a British/Irish murder mystery and Only Murders in The Building. Beautiful setting and a decent story. Nothing earth shattering, but for a 7-episode show is very watchable.
Trigger Warning (2024) Dir. Mouly Surya Parker is a special forces operator who gets called back home to New Mexico after her father has died in an apparent accident, when the mine on his property collapsed on top of him. Parker is dubious from the start about the official explanation - she spots evidence of an explosion in the mine and she knows her father knew the mine inside and out and thus also knew its weak points - and conducts her own investigation. She soon zeroes in on Elvis, a local small time crook and his dad Ezekiel, a smarmy individual with political ambitions and suddenly very deep pockets. Complicating things further is the fact that Elvis' brother Jesse was Parker's high school sweetheart and is now the Sheriff of her hometown. Pretty straight forward revenge action thriller. Jessica Alba is a decent action lead, Anthony Michael Hall is chewing scenery as the main villain, the rest of it is pretty paint by the numbers. I had to knock it down another tiny notch, since the scene that establishes Parker as a bad-ass soldier also delves deep into the slightly (or not so slightly) Islamophobic tropes many of these post 9/11 thrillers have indulged in. You would think we are past that point now, but apparently not.
Exhuma (2024) Dir. Jang Jae-hyun Shaman Hwarim and her associate Bong Gil are hired by a wealthy Korean-American family to solve an apparent spirit-haunting that has even afflicted their employer's infant child. Hwarim traces the family's spiritual affliction back to the paternal grandfather, whose uneasy rest causes him to reach out from the afterlife. The usual fix for this type of haunting is to exhume the body and find it a new resting place. To that end, Hwarim reaches out to Sang Deok, a Feng shui expert, a so-called Geomancer, one who specializes in judging the energy of places of burial. In that capacity, he works together Ko Young Geun, a Mortician who assists in the relocating of the bodies. When the four man team visits the burial site of the grandfather who is supposedly haunting the family, Sang Deok is disturbed by its negative energy, to the point that he is confused why anyone would ever choose to locate a grave there. When he inquires as to how that decision was made, it turns out that it happened after consulting a Buddhist monk that Sang Deok never heard of. Disturbed by the nature of both the grave and its location, his instincts are to back out of the deal, especially since he believes that if the ritual to move the body goes wrong, it will not only doom the affected family, but also everyone involved in the ritual itself. Only the promise of a very big payday and the fact that his associates threaten to go ahead without him convince him to join the undertaking after all, though it soon turns out his instincts had been rather on the mark. Some good stuff here. South-Korean cinema is terrific at this specific type of horror-thriller. Especially the first 75 minutes of this are truly terrific. After the big bad is fully revealed, it's still enjoyable, though slightly less scary. Reminded me a tiny bit of Goksung in its best moments, though it does not match that film's pure quality, one which I don't just deem one of the best horror films of the 21st century but one of the best films full stop. Four central characters are all very well cast, Choi Min-sik a terrific lead for this and Kim Go-eun nearly matching him as the very charismatic shaman Hwarim. Nicely shot, especially in some of the surreal looking nighttime sequences.
Fallout (2024) I assume this was only the first season of many. I never heard of this video game, so didn't know what the premise was. I dig it. It's entertaining enough to keep watching. And I love me some Walton Goggins.
Godzilla: Minus One - 2023 It's fascinating to me that Godzilla is such an iconic character that we can simultaneously have the US based Monsterverse, with all the blockbuster craziness that it entails, and the Reiwa era Japanese films that are taking such an amazingly serious turn. This one tells an amazing story around the concept of Godzilla, mostly right in the aftermath of the end of WWII, and uses the monster when it's needed to further the plot. Well acted and the cinematography and effects were exceptional. It was justifiably the winner of Best Visual Effects at the Oscars and hopefully has opened that door for more films that are made outside of the US. Quite the little twist in the hospital at the end that would often feel like a cop out but was absolutely earned by this film. Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, and Sakura Ando were especially good in their roles.
I totally loved it. It was enjoyable. I tend to do the late night work and need a movie on. This hit the spot.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire [2024] Just saw this came out on Netflix and decided to watch with our younger one (she's 9). Well, she left about a 1/3 way and said it's boring. We finished watching, but only b/c I wanted to see more of the OG Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, their roles is not enough to save this forgettable movie.
The Beanie Bubble - 2023 A well acted semi-true story with a great soundtrack. The script was solid, the whole thing was fun, but the constant jumping around the timeline was a poor choice that took it down a few notches. Still, a solid Apple TV+ original about one of the more ridiculous trends we've ever seen.
Mysterious Intruder (1946) Dir. William Castle Don Gale is a private investigator who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty with some shady dealings of his own. His office is visited by an elderly man called Stillwell, who wants Gale to find a young girl who used to live in his neighborhood. Gale is initially very uninterested in taking the case, mostly because Stillwell lacks the funds to bankroll what will probably be a long and extensive search, considering he has very little clues to go on to find the girl in question. When it is revealed that the girl might soon come into wealth, his interest changes, with his enthusiasm for the case mostly being fueled by a desire to get a slice of whatever cake the girl is due for himself. Another one of the Whistler series of noirs, a story about a morally ambiguous protagonist who wavers between doing the right thing and cynical self-interest. Like most of the other Whistler movies, it stars Richard Dix. Most noteworthy among the supporting cast are Regis Toomey and a good turn by Helen Mowery as an untrustworthy associate of Gale's.
Dans la Maison (2012) Dir. François Ozon Germain Germain is a French teacher at a lycée who once had aspirations of becoming a writer but called it quits and instead devoted his life to teaching. He is married to Jeanne, who manages an ailing art gallery. Expressing frustration at the quality of essays written by his new class at the beginning of the new school year, he is however somewhat impressed by one student's effort. A kid by the name of Claude Garcia shows some promise, hints of real but unpolished talent. After Germain encourages Claude to write more, Claude starts delivering extracurricular writing assignments to Germain. Germain becomes fascinated by the work, though he is also somewhat confused and shocked by the nature of the stories. They tell a tale of Claude ingratiating himself to a family by tutoring the son in math. The tutor gig a mere pretext to get into the family's middle-class home and learn more about what he perceives as the idealized family unit: son Rapha, his dad Rapha sr. and his mom Esther. In his stories, Claude appears to grow infatuated with Esther's sad beauty. For Germain, it becomes hard to tell what is reality in Claude's writing and what is just a figment of the teenager's rich imagination whilst his wife Jeanne, with whom he shares the boy's writings, is disturbed by the deeply voyeuristic nature of the work. This was decent, perhaps with a slightly unsatisfying ending, which is ironic considering much of the plot revolves around finishing a story in the right way. Essentially a movie about the creative process and especially about the relationship between author/creative and the audience. We thus see re-writes realized on the screen, with the same scenes repeated with small differences or with shifting focus. And the mystery of what is real and what is fantasy is upheld for the longest possible time. Fabrice Lucini is put on this earth to play a frustrated teacher/academic (perhaps the reason why he has done it so often). This performance reminded me a tiny bit of Paul Giamatti in the more recent The Holdovers. Especially the notion of an ornery older teacher being charmed out of their intellectual and emotional hibernation by an intelligent/talented student. Kristin Scott Thomas keeps the subplot of the art gallery watchable (essentially a commentary on commercialization of the arts as she has to sell items with increasingly less artistic merit in the hope to save her business). Emmanuelle Seigner is very good as Esther. Whilst Denis Ménochet leans perhaps a bit too much into the comic relief aspect of his character. By the standards of occasional über-provocateur Ozon, it's also all rather tame, but still enjoyable.
The Day of the Jackal (1973) Outraged at de Gaulle's acquiescence to Algerian independence, some of the officers of the French army create a syndicate known as the Organisation armée secrète (OAS). They perform various terrorist activities, most notably a machinegunning of the president's motorcade where some 150 bullets fired and 20 piercing de Gaulle's Citroën failed to hit anyone inside. Much of the leadership was rounded up and executed. The remainders are hiding in Austria, where they realize none of their number can ever go back to France without being instantly spotted and arrested. They need an outsider. They find one in British assassin Charles Calthrop - someone with an impeccable history of killing. He will have his work cut out for him - France is a police state where they get informed of all hotel registrations, and the protection around de Gaulle is second to none. And when the French get word that someone is out to kill de Gaulle, they get their best detective on the case. Let the games begin. Everything up to and including the execution of the leaders of the OAS really happened, which probably added a lot of gravity to the movie for viewers at the time. What added gravity to me was the climax which was largely filmed during an actual French military parade. You get this incredible, impossible to fake feeling of these tiny figures caught in a sea of indifference to their mission. This is a tight, tense thriller that is well over 2 hours long but flies by despite being (or maybe because it is) a pre-computer era police procedural where each side has very little information about the other.
Land of Bad [2024] This must have just been release on Netflix. I'm a fan of such movies (like the Covenant), so I enjoyed it. Crowe probably slept-walked through the movie, but it didn't bother me at all. Nice flick to watch if you have nothing to do.
Point Blank (1967) His best friend Mal begs Walker to take part in a robbery. They hide out on the then abandoned Alcatraz Island at night waiting for a money exchange by some organized crime outfit. They kill the goons and start counting their score, but Mal sees his cut alone is not enough for his needs so he shoots Walker and leaves him for dead. Walker survived, and implausibly swims to the mainland with a gut wound. After recuperating, Walker is set to take revenge on Mal and the syndicate he works for, but the movie plays a mean trick on spejic and sets all of that in Los Angeles. Despite that disappointment, this is a first-class movie with fantastically stylized editing and cinematography and makes excellent use of both external Los Angeles architecture and building interiors. There's this scene early on where a montage of Walker headed to his ex-wife's house is shown with the driving, echoing footsteps from his walk through the LA airport the only sound and wow that sets the mood for the rest of the movie better than even the early murders and double-crossing did. This is a cold, cold movie and Lee Marvin is perfectly cast because cats don't get any colder. This movie is so 1967, not in the sense of this is how 1967 was, but more like how 1967 likes to think of itself. The settings were a little fantastical to match the slightly dreamy quality of the movie. And I will say Point Blank ends well. And by that I mean it ends in San Francisco.
I always liked the theory that Walker did die at the start of the film and the rest of it is just the revenge fantasy of a dying man.