Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

Keeper of the Flame (1942)
Dir. George Cukor



Reporter Steven O'Malley returns stateside, having reported from war-torn Europe. The reason for cutting his time on the Old Continent short is the death of Robert Forrest, war hero turned national hero and successful business man. Forrest died in a freak accident, after a bridge near his home collapsed just as he drove his car across it, the structural integrity of said bridge having been impacted by a powerful storm. The regular reporters on the beat dream of interviewing Forrest's widow, Mrs. Christine Forrest, only she has no interest in talking to the press. Days later, O'Malley does successfully sneak onto the Forrest estate and meets Christine. After first denying O'Malley any help with his proposed project, a biography devoted to her late husband, to keep the Robert Forrest name alive just when America and the world are in need of heroes, Christine is persuaded to lend a hand after all, at the advice of her late husband's secretary, Mr. Clive Kerndon. The fact that Christine seems reluctant to share some aspects of the life she led with Robert, as well as the fact that Kerndon too seems to evade some of his questions and reading between the lines of what other members of the Forrest inner circle tell him, the vague shape of what is missing materializes to the experienced reporter: an entire swath of the man Robert Forrest, obscured by his public mythos. Only does he really want to find out the truth about a man he himself had greatly admired?

First movie of the year checks two boxes: the rare Tracy-Hepburn collaboration I hadn't yet seen and the rare 1940s George Cukor film (post Philadelphia Story) I had yet to see as well. Interesting anti-fascist piece of film-making, made all the more relevant in a context where real-life present day oligarchs in the U.S. are propping up a white supremacist government. I see it was likened to Citizen Kane at the time of its release and there was apparently even fear within the studio that it could be interpreted of another critique of William Randolph Hearst. Which is strange, because the first person I thought of - American national hero seduced by fascism - was not Hearst but Charles Lindbergh. Supposedly Louis B. Mayer stormed out of the premiere of this film - one he himself had championed - because he loathed its equating of amassing great wealth with having a weakness for fascism, which is kind of hilarious.

 

100 Meters ~ Iwaisawa K.

A new sports anime movie on Netflix focused on 100 meter sprinters. Similar to Look Back in it focusing on two kids who push each other as rivals in pursuit of success in a singular field. Maybe unlike Look Back in that it also dwells on the negative side of the pseudo-psychology that fuels the sprinters' monomaniacal drive to be the best. I'm not sure the film sees that drive as a negative with the characters reciting philosophical monologues about what it means to run 100 meters, but I think the film gets those characters right. It doesn't shy away from the hollowness of their lives absent the narrow goals they've set even if it is celebrating their drive in the same breath. Animation and direction is excellent.

 

The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

Aristocratic dandy Filo Vance is a man of high-brow tastes, but is known to the public as a sleuth who solves tricky cases. And they don't get much trickier than this. At the kennel show, Vance is showing his not-quite prize dog when a fellow competitor, the wealthy Archer Coe, says some rude things to him. He says a lot of rude things to everyone, so it isn't too much a surprise to see him dead the next day. The police and district attorney are positive it was suicide, but a Filo Vance who is so sure of himself he takes the lead in the investigation is positive it wasn't. The how is soon enough determined. The who has everyone stumped.

A classic locked-room who-dun-it, and once again it seems I have stumbled across a detective series I had no idea existed (there were 15 Filo Vance movies in the 1930's or thereabouts). The puzzle is twisty and turny enough to entertain, however there was very little to stretch William Powell's ability, and reading the Wikipedia article it seems he shared this opinion. In tossing the negative qualities and the homosexual undertones of the book character, without adding the action of a Falcon or the quirks of a Holmes we are left with a bland leading figure. The cartoonish Eugene Pallette as Detective Heath steals the movie, both in dialogue and presence.

 

You might want to try the 1969 Robert Redford movie Downhill Racer which covers the same themes although it does it almost wordlessly. I think it's pretty brilliant myself.

 

Transporter 3 (2009)

Transporter doesn't want to transport something but the rich and powerful person that wants to transport something won't take no for an answer so Transporter transports the thing which turns out to be a woman and am I watching Transporter 1? That seems like what I typed for Transporter 1.

Mostly decent if you just want to see things moving around and Jason Statham fighting improbable but stylish and gymnastic fights, which is what I wanted at the time. This was let down by two things - far too many cuts in the action scenes, and a female character I completely loathed. Spoiled, self-centered, uncaring. Much was said about Natalya Rudakova's acting, but she was perfectly fine - it was the character that repeatedly frustrated me and it was repulsive seeing Transporter guy fall for her.

This continues the theme of using various forms of transportation, and I particularly enjoyed the hyper BMX bike chase.

 

One of the things I come back to when thinking of this movie (which I love overall) is how unnecessarily they demonized the doctor, setting him up as an antagonist when there's no damn way you allow someone who might manifest the measles while on a moon mission to go on said mission. And since the whole movie was one long series of antagonistic elements, reframing the doctor (though not the reaction of the impacted astronaut, Ken Mattingly) wouldn't lessen the tension significantly if at all.

 

Collateral (2004)

Someday soon Jamie Foxx is going to start his limousine business. Right now he's just doing his temporary gig as a taxi driver, which has been temporary for 12 years. This night he picks up a serious Tom Cruise carrying a not-so-brief case who has him drive to a certain address in West Hollywood and to wait. Soon after Cruise deposits a corpse on the cab from the fourth floor. Foxx has picked up a hitman who has four more stops, and it doesn't seem likely Foxx is going to be around to tell the tale after the night is done.

This was such a sharp, good looking, well put together movie, and I really enjoyed Jamie Foxx's performance, which was full ranged but not overstated. I connected with the taxi driver character because I saw some of myself in him, but I guess everyone doing a menial job does. I also enjoyed the hit-man's philosophizing, not that I agreed with it, but I thought it really fit the character. Here was someone that was clearly intelligent and self-aware, with some moral sense, who also couldn't deny the world his skill in killing, so he came up with this sort of "seize the day nihilism" to square the circle of his existence.

Kind of a surprise to see Jason Statham in a five second role at the start.

 

Probably the only movie where Cruise is a villain. And boy does he do a great job. I enjoyed also the philosophy of impromptu from the assassin. Great movie.

 

Since I've been seeing William Powell mysteries, I figure I better see the king of them all.



The Thin Man (1934)

The slender fellow Clyde Wynant sure has bad luck with women. Divorcing his gold-digging first wife to be with his secretary, he finds out that secretary is stealing money from his store's safe. He let it slide until he discovered she stole the wedding gift for his daughter - a princely $50,000 in bonds. Wynant gives gold digger Mk.2 a week to give back the money - the time he is taking for a top secret business trip. A few days later the secretary is found dead, and it's starting to look like the trip was a ploy. Fortunately Wynant's daughter knows Nick Charles, famed ex-detective. However, he is currently on permanent vacation with his whip-smart and very wealthy wife and has no desire to do work again. Nora Charles has different ideas. She very much wants to see her husband do that fascinating "detecting" thing.

William Powell as Nick Charles was a joy to watch, a playboy (or just boy) who treats life as a game until things get consequential and then he's all (or maybe mostly) business. His quick patter and piercing wit is magnified by a Myrna Loy who could give as good as she gets, and all the best parts of the movie are their good-natured back-and-forths. The main failing is one common to the other William Powell mysteries - there are too many characters to keep track of and they look too much alike. In The Thin Man, the ex-wife and the mistress look nearly identical, confusing me (or maybe it was supposed to inform me!).

 

I love the Thin Man series. Even the lesser entries are still worth seeing for the Powell-Loy dynamic.

 

My Letterboxd list. Shigeru Chiba was a minor voice actor in both Ghost in the Shell and this year's Demon Slayer and SpyxFamily movies, so a long career. Watched Demon Slayer dubbed in the theater, though, so probably shouldn't count.

 

Bit of an unexpected choice in my current brief sojourn into serial mysteries of the 1930s and 40s, but Tubi was insistent.



Shadows Over Chinatown (1946)

The gristly Torso Murderer (so called because torsos are all that are left of the victims) has been stoking fear throughout the United States, and famed detective Charlie Chan is taking a bus to San Francisco to see the evidence of the latest killing. He also gets caught up in the dilemma of a bus passenger, who is searching for her missing granddaughter. Little does he know the two cases are connected. However, someone else does, and they take a shot at Chan at the bus station to stop his investigation. Chan is not wounded enough to stop the case, but has to leave the leg work to his Number 2 son Jimmy and their chauffeur Birmingham.

As I feared and expected the movie is full of stereotypes (and infamously a white man playing a Charlie Chan) and all the pseudo-ethnic mannerisms and fake Confucius quotes makes events feel concocted and unnatural. As actor Sydney Toler was suffering from cancer, more than a usual part of the movie was handed over to the Jimmy and Birmingham characters. Jimmy (actually Chinese-American) and Birmingham (a character added late to the series because evidently Charlie Chan had a big African-American following as this was the only film series of the era not to feature a white lead character) had chemistry and some good comic moments. Not a fan of the slapstick they had Birmingham do, but when he talked it got better (one scene started embarrassingly with him so scared he ran into a wall repeatedly, and when Jimmy said "there's no door there" Birmingham answered with perfect comic timing and tone "there soon will be"). Shame that someone with such impeccable comedy skills as Mantan Moreland had to do roles like that. I have nothing bad to say about the mystery, except that it's basically a TV episode's worth of events and they had to pad this thing to even get it to an hour.

The only "San Francisco" in the movie is about 5 seconds of stock footage. Despite the title they don't even pretend to go into Chinatown.

 

Back to it.



Turkey Shoot [aka Elimination Game] (2014)

In an alternate near future, Navy SEAL Rick Tyler is tasked to enter Libya under civilian cover and carry out the assassination of its military dictator. He succeeds, which isn't what the generals wanted. So they cover it up, allow the Libyans to replace the leader with a double, and frame Tyler with a war crime, allowing America to declare war on Libya. Unfortunately, this spirals out of control, creating what is called "World War Africa". With a population tired of war, the President decides to give them the cathartic release of seeing Tyler die on the game show Turkey Shoot where he is hunted by armed killers. No one wins Turkey Shoot. Except Tyler has an unlikely ally.

If I made it seem like Turkey Shoot had a story and theme and moral, I'm sorry because that is a misrepresentation of the movie. It is a soulless work that is a slog to get through. It tries to out Running Man Running Man with its outlandish game show style, but the lack of worldbuilding renders it hollow. It's cautionary future is so bizarre and thin it has no emotional or intellectual impact. The fighting is lackluster and poorly directed. There is a scene where Tyler is hiding in a motel and he watches a brief scene from the original 1982 Turkey Shoot, and that was a mistake because we see how much style and imagination the original had. Can't believe Australians let me down like this.

 

Plenty of folks have already shared thoughts after watching "Wake Up Dead Man" in the past month, so I will only share one thing: I did not expect to find moments of such kindness in the film, and

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most especially related to the big reveal. Father Jud making sure that Martha forgives that one additional person - extends that kindness so the grace offered by Last Rites applies to her - it's a remarkable moment. I felt it deeply, perhaps in part because of the contrast with one of my favorite short stories of all time - "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter which (if you're curious) you can read here.

And as someone getting older and less familiar with the newer generation of actors, I am glad to have at least one person whose career I look forward to following: Josh O'Connor.

 

Stop Making Sense ~ J. Demme

I'd seen clips on YT but never the whole movie, and what an experience it is. Hyper-energetic and often joyful, it really is a tremendous concert film. I'm not sure how much to credit the A24 remaster, but this looks incredible. It has the perfect amount of film grain to not be overly-noticeable but to add a perfect texture to the screen.

 

Saw it in the theaters on its first run three times. The second time was my first movie date with my wife, and second date overall (the first was a concert by the L.A. band The Busboys, whose cinematic career is limited to a scene in Eddie Murphy’s 48 Hours).

 

Tetsuo: The Iron Man ~ Tsukamoto S.

Letterboxd has a Japanuary Challenge list to watch 10 Japanese films this month from a variety of categories. The first category was films by Shinya Tsukamoto, and I found this one on Kanopy.

A salaryman and his girlfriend run over a man trying to self-implant metal into his body. They dispose of the body and in a much more disturbing "I Know What You Did Last Summer," the cursed salaryman starts growing metal out of his body and being chased around. Either as a really avant-garde student film or a great industrial album music video, this was a bit much for me. The body horror, sexual fetishism, shaky camera and stop-motion were over-the-top. While I didn't enjoy it, I do appreciate the ambition.

 

Journey to the Shore (Kishibe no Tabi) ~ Kurosawa K.

A woman's dead husband shows up three years later and takes her on a trip. It's a melancholy romantic drama working within a ghost story. It's beautifully shot and well acted, but I'm not sure it fully follows through on the themes its working in. Maybe I was just hoping for a more cathartic ending.

 

Predator: Badlands (2025)
Dir. Dan Trachtenberg



Dek is a young Yautja warrior who wants to prove himself on a hunt, to earn his cloak. His father deems him too weak and a disgrace to his clan. His brother believes he should at least get the chance to prove himself. Dek chooses to go after the one prey that has eluded all Yautja so far, a creature so fierce even his father is supposedly afraid of it: the Kalisk, the apex predator on Genna, a planet itself known as the Death Planet for the amount of dangerous predators that call it home. After Dek lands on Genna and gets acquainted with some of the local fauna, he has a chance encounter with Thia, a damaged Weyland-Yutani synth. They forge an unlikely alliance, where Thia will use her knowledge of the local geography to guide Dek to the Kalisk's lair. Dek will assist Thia in getting in touch with the remainder of the Weyland-Yutani team - all synths due to the dangerous creatures on the planet - and especially Thia's 'sister' Tessa.

Even before the less than great AVP series, there had been something of a dialogue - perceived or conscious - between the Alien films and the Predator films. So them meeting here yet again is no huge surprise and the universes can mesh rather nicely with each other. In terms of the health of both franchises, I have to say I have enjoyed the recent Predator entries a lot more than the Alien ones. This movie, the predator prequel Prey (also by Dan Trachtenberg) and the animated Predator: Killer of Killers (co-directed by Dan Trachtenberg) were all enjoyable in their own way. This one is unique in that the film is actually carried mostly by a Yautja character, with the second lead being Elle Fanning as a damaged synth that is missing its legs. Thus a large section of the film is of the Dek character carrying the Thia character on its back. Amusingly, the working title for this film was apparently Backpack. Now this does not aspire to the stripped down brilliance of the original film, this is trying to achieve something else entirely - including more than one moment of humor - so it feels almost silly to compare them. A very enjoyable 100+ minutes of action film-making.

 

Moving (Ohikkoshi) ~ Sōmai S.

Renko, a precocious sixth-grader, navigates the separation of her parents. This film starts relatively light-hearted and grows ever more melancholy throughout as Renko realizes her parents marriage is likely irreparable. It's beautifully shot and directed. Tomoko Tabata is terrific as the lead as much of the film hangs on her expressiveness.

 

Primal Games (2025)

Ben and Sarah's honeymoon plans involve a rented RV and a deep forest where they will be alone. Those plans are eliminated when they come across a man with a busted van. Many miles from civilization, the kindly Ben offers him a ride. Despite appearing polite, the guy is putting off major serial killer vibes, and Sarah does not trust him at all. Eventually the serial killer reveals himself in most disturbing fashion, leaving Ben with a single question - "Isn't this supposed to be a Most Dangerous Game movie?".

Well, it is, but Primal Games takes the concept to a really really far-out place. The whole serial killer start was upsetting (especially as it was done quite well), but the next half hour gave it context and we had some amazing slow discovery of what is going on and I honestly guessed the wrong sci-fi concept twice before they gave the actual one and for a short time this was a shockingly brilliant movie, with good questions about the nature of humanity and eliciting some pity for the bad guys. Then I guess the writer didn't know what to do with the idea and the second half of the movie was all horribly unbelievable gun-fu and the shoddiest world-building. The ending was so, so obvious. This was done on a crazy-small $250,000 budget and it definitely doesn't look or feel like it. They were limited in terms of shooting locations, and the real missed trick was not using their look to inform the world-building.

I'm not going to spoil anything because I do think this is worth a watch, but be prepared for an uneven Ben and Sarah Experience. I think this can be edited down to a quality Twilight Zone / Black Mirror episode in short order. Turning it into a quality movie will require a major rewrite. I have ideas.

 

Sounds like an awful idea for a honeymoon. Glad they had some unexpected excitement added to it.

 

I had recorded it on HBO and tried to watch it this morning. I will not bother with much of a recap, but it is Spinal Tap 40 years later in a reunion concert. Hilarity completely and totally fails to ensue.

It is mostly unwatchable, save for Valerie Franco, who sort of sparkles as new drummer (and bizarre death in waiting) Didi Crockett.

That's all I wish to say.

The first one has not aged well (save for the few jokes about "going to 11, "you can't really dust for vomit," "It's such a fine line between stupid, and uh Clever," etc.)
...and neither has the concept.

RIP Rob Reiner.