MaXXXine (2024) Dir. Ti West Several years after the events of X, Maxine Minx has made it to Hollywood and has sort of realized her dream of becoming famous by achieving success and notoriety in the porn industry. As she still craves mainstream success, she has secured a rare opportunity to achieve that still elusive goal, being cast in a horror movie sequel, in the lead role, after impressing the director during the audition process. At the same time, Los Angeles is in a frenzy of fear due to the Night Stalker's crime spree and the country as a whole is entranced and terrified by a sudden satanic panic. The arrival in town of a sleazebag private eye from New Orleans reveals that a dangerous part of Maxine's past has returned for a reckoning, just at the moment her career dreams are on the cusp of being realized. Then people in Maxine's social circle start dying... Third and final film in Ti West's X trilogy, all three movies starring Mia Goth. I say final, but there have already been rumblings about West and Goth possibly being interested in a fourth chapter. Whereas X was Ti West's take on 1970s horror and especially Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Pearl was a prequel about X' main villain, set in the late 1910s and shot like a 1950s Hollywood musical, Maxxxine wants to reference the 1980s cinematic period. Some suggested that West wanted to make his own giallo movie with this, but it felt a lot more like many American films of the 1980s. Visually reminiscent of movies like Thief and Manhunter, whereas it borrows visuals as well as some themes from Dressed to Kill, Body Double, Blow Out and Hardcore (which is a 1970s movie but is definitely a direct influence as well). I still liked this, but not as much as either X or Pearl. Its main asset is still Mia Goth's super-committed lead performance. Of the stellar supporting cast, which includes among others Bobby Cannavale, Giancarlo Esposito and Michelle Monaghan, it's really only Kevin Bacon who leaves a strong impression. Though I did also have a weakness for Elizabeth Debicki's director character.
I admit certain parts felt kind of wish-fulfilment-y (particularly about the ex-wife), but I subscribe to Lee Marvin's later-days take that it ended because Walker just felt tired of killing.
A Quiet Place: Day One [2024] I was really really hoping this would be good....b/c I really enjoyed the first two. It was not very good. I wonder why Krasinki didn't direct this.
Finestkind [2023] You know, obviously these movies are dime a dozen, but I enjoyed it. It has enough of a story and decent acting that a one-time watch is totally fine.
The Glass Web (1953) Dir. Jack Arnold Don Newell is a writer on a weekly true crime TV show that dramatizes real-life criminal cases, often times involving murder, for a TV audience. The show is at a crossroads, in which it is uncertain if their main sponsor, a cigarette brand, is going to renew their contract. Don's concerns extend beyond the professional: after having a brief but intense affair with an actress who has occasionally had roles on his show, his ending the relationship has led to the woman in question blackmailing him for money. On the night that he is meant to pay her a final amount of 2500 dollars, he instead finds her body in her apartment, with the signs of a violent struggle all around her. Instead of calling the police, he instead searches the apartment for proof of his involvement with her, including a pair of name tagged pajamas she stole from him. Thinking he has gotten away with his presence in her apartment shortly after her murder, especially when the police reveal that they have taken her ex-husband into custody for having both motive (a life insurance policy) and opportunity (he was seen at her apartment the night of the killing), he is disturbed to discover that he isn't finished with the woman in question after all: in a cynical ploy to save their show from being ditched by their sponsor, the producer hopes to raise ratings considerably for their final episode of the season by devoting the hour to the girl's murder. In spite of Don's protests at the macabre reality of exploiting the death of a person who used to work on the show, he has no choice but to write the screenplay about his former mistress' violent death. A writing consultant on the show whose job it is to vet Don's script's for authenticity, Henry Hayes, seems to be even more of a stickler for details than usual, with Don suspecting that the man might know more about his affair with the dead woman than he reveals... Nice little Jack Arnold crime noir. I became familiar with Arnold's work mostly through his scifi and creature films, like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Tarantula and It Came from Outer Space. Through @riverplate I became aware of the excellent Audie Murphy western he also directed, No Name on the Bullet. This noir is another flavor yet again, yet no less impressive. Definitely a man who had one of the more varied and interesting careers in the 1950s, even if a lot of it was in B-movies. A good John Forsythe in the lead role, and Edward G. Robinson makes a good foil, having made something of a career out of playing this specific type of intelligent yet frustrated individuals. Femme Fatale is the excellent Kathleen Hughes, who had one prior collaboration with Arnold in the aforementioned It Came from Outer Space. Which provided the world with this iconic image, though I wonder how many still remember it was a publicity shot for that movie.
Abigail - 2024 Well structured, well acted, and some genuine surprises that I truly didn't see coming. Giancarlo Stanton was good, as usual, in his very minor role. Melissa Barrera, Kathryn Newton, and Dan Stevens highlight the rag tag band of criminals. Alisha Weir is excellent as the young movie namesake. It plays out just like you would expect, until it doesn't. The gore ramps up in a ridiculously B-movie way in the final 30 minutes and it's used in some really fun ways. This was mostly enjoyable because the trailer "gave away the movie" except that it didn't. It gave away the first act and everything that follows is really entertaining.
Sweepers (1998) Dolph Lundgren is clearing mines in Angola at a site where UNITA rebels recently retreated. He finds lots of normal Chinese anti-tank mines, but he also comes across something he's never seen before. Just them the rebels do a sneak attack on the peacekeepers, and while they are eventually beat back at great cost, among the casualties is Lundgren's son. Five years later, terrorists take a US Senator hostage. They deploy mines around the Senator's house, and a fact finding mission after the event wants to know where they got these high-tech, designed in America mines. There are rumors someone in Angola might know. That someone is a very drunk, very PTSD suffering Dolph Lundgren. Weapon designer Michelle Flynn is sent to listen to his slurred ramblings. This really wasn't very good, but it kept changing kinds of failure so I got invested in seeing what they messed up next. A scene could have bad acting, dialogue, special effects, pacing, choreography, set design, or it could be fine. Or even good. Kept me on the edge of my seat. There is a moment where the bad guy wanted to make himself look like a total badass so he epically announces "Angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly". What The Fudgemuppet was the writer smoking. But like I said, it's not boring. It seems like they had decent money, but the wishes of the director was still beyond that or his ability. This was filmed in South Africa, which was the best part of the movie. You get that unique light and terrain that you just can't fake properly anywhere else.
Eileen (2023) Dir. William Oldroyd Eileen is a young woman working in a secretarial/clerical capacity at a juvenile detention facility - mostly referred to as a boy's prison in the film itself - in early 1960s Massachusetts. Her life consists mostly of the job she does not enjoy, a home life taking care of her father, who is a bitter and alcoholic former chief of police and spending her little spare time indulging in fantasies, often times sexual in nature. Things change when the facility's psychologist retires and the newly hired replacement is not a boring old man but rather a glamorous young woman, Rebecca, having just earned her Ph.D at Harvard and with progressive new ideas about the treatment of young criminals. Eileen is immediately enthralled by Rebecca's beauty and confidence. This early attraction turns into a psycho-sexual obsession when Rebecca shows the lonely Eileen some affection and attention. When it is revealed that Rebecca herself has a dark secret, it threatens to drag down Eileen alongside her... Enjoyable drama that has some slight hints of thriller towards the end. The ideas buttressing the plot are rather wispy and it is easy to imagine a version of this film carried by less talented actors that would just be plain bad. It is thus left to the performers to put meat on this thing and thankfully we are in good hands here. Fantastic leading turn by Thomasin McKenzie, the childlike eyes she makes at Anne Hathaway's character will almost break your heart. Hathaway too is great here, though at this point it's hard to think of a performance where she isn't at least very good. Shea Whigham plays Eileen's father, a man who has made a career out of playing such bitter sad sacks (you can easily imagine the casting director saying they need a Shea Whigham type for the role and then casting the genuine article). And Marin Ireland plays a small but pivotal supporting role upon which the climactic scene hinges entirely. Overall a rather pleasant surprise.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - 2023 As has become the norm, these movies still have the fun action, decent to good acting, and intricate plots that actually make sense, but they're getting WAY TOO LONG. This one is nearly 3 hours and it could have had several scenes either trimmed or removed with nothing lost. The first one is still possibly the best, and it's the shortest by about 15 minutes. Good film, definitely not Part One anymore, and I'll eventually watch the next one as well. Hopefully I don't need a nap between 90 minute blocks for that one.
Altered (2006) Dir. Eduardo Sánchez We are introduced to three men, Duke, Cody and Otis who appear to be hunting something in the woods in the middle of the night. Neither human nor animal, the creature they end up capturing terrifies them all. At Duke's insistence they take it back to another one of their childhood friends Wyatt's place. When they show up at Wyatt's with the creature tied up in the back of their van, it renders Wyatt utterly terrified, convinced that his former friends capturing what appears to be a predatory alien has doomed them all. Wyatt appears to know a lot more about the aliens than his old friends do, though he reveals little of what he knows and insists they leave and take the creature back with them, to return it where they found it. Cody blames his brother's disappearance fifteen years earlier on the aliens and wants answers. At the same time, Wyatt's girlfriend Hope is first confused and then terrified by the mess the trio of unwelcome guests have brought to their doorstep. The most noteworthy thing about this film is also mentioned on the poster above: the director also directed the mega low budget hit The Blair Witch Project. It is however a very different kind of film, not a found footage film, nor does it rely primarily on creating a creepy atmosphere to get its thrills. This is more creature horror, with special effects and make-up that vary greatly in their effectiveness. In general this felt like a movie with some interesting core ideas, but an inability to do justice to most of them. Brad William Henke is probably the most recognizable face among the cast.
The Guilty (2018) Dir. Gustav Möller Asger Holm, a Copenhagen cop suspended to desk duty, is reduced to being a dispatcher. A job he rather loathes but has no choice but to endure until he is reinstated to active street duties. One night, towards the end of his shift, he gets a call from the fearful Iben, a woman who claims to have been kidnapped by her ex-husband. As the kidnapper evades immediate capture by the police, Iben becomes obsessed with Iben's rescue and spends the rest of the evening trying to coordinate her release from his dispatcher's station, even past the end of his shift and with his superior ordering him to call it quits. As the night progresses, both the details of what exactly happened to Iben are revealed, as are the reasons behind Asger's suspension duties, and why exactly he might care deeply about Iben's fate. High concept Danish thriller, with the entire movie taking place on one set, the dispatching offices of one section of the Copenhagen police force and with the suspense entirely created through phone conversations and the information that is slow-dripped to Asger - and thus also the viewer - through the various third parties he contacts through phone calls. I admire the fact that they stuck to the core conceit throughout the runtime and also liked that the screenwriter made the protagonist rather unsympathetic. We see him being arrogant, short-tempered, unfriendly and at times just plain bad at his job. I cared less for the late plot twist, though I understand why they did it. This was remade for the U.S./English-speaking market with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role and with Antoine Fuqua directing. I have not seen the remake so cannot compare the two.
The Juror (1996) Dir. Brian Gibson Annie is a struggling artist and single mom of a young teenager who gets called into court for jury duty on a high profile mafia case. To her surprise, she makes it onto the actual jury as one of the twelve. The case is a high profile one in which a mob boss by the name of Louie Boffano is accused of having ordered a hit on a rival boss, in which the victims young grandson was also murdered. The evidence against Boffano is extensive, including an audio recording of him ordering the hit. Knowing that they will never win the case if they play it fair, a member of the Boffano outfit starts to lean on Annie, threatening her and her son Oliver if she does not make sure Boffano gets acquitted. Attempts on Annie's part to warn the judge have disastrous consequences and thus she has no choice but to play along, even if she fears the mobsters might not even allow her to live should she succeed. The kind of (legal) thriller that was very popular in the 1990s. The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, ... all sort of share some DNA with this film. It is far from a grand cru of the genre, but it's mostly enjoyable, apart from the silliness that occurs in the third act. Nice cast too, apart from the leads Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin, we also get a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt as son Oliver, a pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini as a strangely sympathetic mob heavy and Anne Heche as the protagonists best friend.
The Durrells [2016] - 4 seasons I remember being little and reading Gerald Durrells books. Randomly found this show and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's kind, lighthearted, funny, quirky, and shot in a beautiful Corfu. We watched this as a whole family and everyone loved it.
Final Destination 3 (2006) Dir. James Wong Wendy, her boyfriend Jason, her best friend Carrie and Carrie's boyfriend Kevin are four HS seniors who spend a night at an amusement park. Jason is excited about going on a big rollercoaster called Devil's Flight. Wendy is less enthused, partially because of her general dislike of rollercoasters, partially because of an uneasy, ominous feeling she has had the entire evening. As they are about to board the coaster, Wendy has a premonition in which she sees a catastrophic failure of the ride in which all of the people on board die, including herself. This results in a near panic attack in which she demands to get off the rollercoaster before it departs. Kevin, who was sitting next to her also gets off the ride, as do six other people who all also disembark as a direct of indirect result of Wendy's panicking. When the coaster subsequently does fail and kills everyone on board, both Wendy and Kevin suffer from survivors guilt over their respective boyfriend/girlfriend's death. Then Kevin becomes convinced that Wendy's premonition might mean they are still in danger, due to his knowledge of prior events in which small groups of people appeared to 'cheat' death only to still die in freak accidents later on. Wendy disbelieves Kevin's theory, in spite of her continued feelings of unease... All of that changes when the first of the rollercoaster survivors start dying. Of the two horror franchises popularized in the noughties that milked the concept of people dying in horrifying and creative ways, I never had much love for the Saw series of films, whereas I always held much more of an appreciation for the Final Destination films. I don't often revisit films, especially not horror (there is too much stuff out there I have never once seen), yet this one was always my favorite of the franchise and I wanted to see how well it still held up. I think what made this one work better than the rest for me is not that the horror elements are more creative or otherwise memorable. By far the most impressive establishing accident/set piece in all of these movies remains the massive traffic accident at the start of the second film. What sets the third one apart is that the two protagonists, as portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ryan Merriman, actually have an interesting character arc.
The Player (1992) Dir. Robert Altman Griffin Mill is a studio executive at a major Hollywood movie studio who has been getting threatening messages in the form of postcards. These threats have been ongoing long enough that he takes them seriously, though he does not involve the head of studio security because his position at the company is already precarious. Instead he decides to investigate himself and guesses that the individual threatening him must be a disgruntled writer, likely one of the many screenwriters whose screenplay he has rejected a bit too harshly. He eventually zeroes in on one prime suspect, David Kahane. But personally seeking out Kahane only further complicates things, and not just because Griffin develops an immediate attraction to Kahane's girlfriend June. Adapted from a Michael Tolkin novel of the same name by Tolkin himself, this is essentially a satire about the vapidness of the creative process in Hollywood, told through the guise of a neo-noirish mystery with a black comedy heart. Anchored by a good Tim Robbins in the lead role and featuring a veritable regiment of cameo appearances from well-known actors. In some cases appearing as themselves, in other cases playing a supporting role within the Griffin Mill character's sphere. Of those small supporting roles, I especially liked Richard E. Grant as an idealist screenwriter who quickly sells all of his beliefs on the altar of quick Hollywood success. Amusingly this little Michael Tolkin anecdote from the commentary track about the making of the film rather sums up what it is actually about at its heart. So the agent's shallowness and ignorance was something of a happy accident: Was nodding along at my dad’s excellent analysis of THE BICYCLE THIEF in his commentary for THE PLAYER and fully *shrieked* when he dropped this tidbit. My god. And I thought The Player couldn’t get any more meta!!! WHAT!!! pic.twitter.com/BDWsjjBu6e— 𝕯𝖎𝖑𝖉𝖔 𝕭𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖘 (@EmmaTolkin) May 22, 2024
Horizon, Part 1 (2024). Ponderous Western. Kevin Costner and Sienna Miller star. The story was all over the place. it's 3 hours and one minute. Supposedly, there are 3 more movies. I think I'll pass.
Ophelia. The 2019 retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia's perspective. Decent, not good movie. Always nice to see Daisy Ridley (as a redhead, yum), Naomi Watts is good as Gertrude (and her sister), and Clive Owen is one of favorites (how he was not cast as James Bond instead of Daniel Craig is an eternal cinematic crime; he was born to be Bond. Just watch The Croupier). They take some serious, and unnecessary, liberties with the plot. Hamlet himself is a bit of an afterthought. No spoilers, but the end is, umm, not quite how Hamlet resolves. The mousetrap scene is pretty well done. The poster above pisses me off, as the mix up the pictures and the names. Can't stand it when they do that. Yes, I know why, but still annoying.
Clue (1985) CLUE is like any other movie. All the characters are fictitious - even the "victim" is imagined. It is like a Stage Play. Except it is a movie. The scene opens in Mr. Boddy's palatial mansion. Mr. Boddy is the victim of foul play and is found in one of the rooms. THE OBJECT OF THE MOVIE is to discover the answer to these three questions: 1st. WHO? Which one of the several suspects did it? 2nd. WHERE? This one is easy because it is shown in the beginning of the movie. 3rd. HOW? Yeah, this one too. The answer lies in the ending. The viewer who, by the process of dedication and good plain common sense watches until then wins. This was kind of an anti-matter version of And Then There Were None. While the main figures of Clue are similarly stuck in a mansion of murder, it is ancillary characters being killing instead of the main cast, and instead of pleasure coming from the cavalcade of unusual deaths and outlandish responses, this one was rather lackluster and very 80's-ish in its humor until the ending when a whirlwind of Tim Curryness kidnaps your attention and he just amazes.
The joke of my summary is that it is a slight satire of the first page of the instructions to the original editions of the Clue game. But if I have to explain it it isn't that good of a joke. But that's ok, I do it to amuse myself. When I re-read my review in a month I'm really going to enjoy it.
Well, I got it. But now that it has been explained it seems kind of stale. I no longer feel like I'm in on something special...
Only those of us old enough to have played the 1950's edition or who googled "clue instructions" just after watching the movie know the true joy of reading the review. In any home recording version you get all three endings, with one labeled "How It Could Have Happened", the next "How About This?", and the final one "Here is how it really happened" (the most convoluted of the three). I don't actually know how those correspond to the A, B, and C endings in the theaters - Wikipedia doesn't say. So I still don't know which ending Siskel and Ebert liked best.