Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

Wagon Master (1950)
Dir. John Ford



Travis and Sandy, two young horse traders who primarily do business with the Navajo arrive with a few dozen newly acquired horses in Crystal City, hoping to do business there. Also in Crystal City is a wagon trail of Mormons led by Elder Wiggs. The Mormons need local guides to take them across the San Juan river country in southeastern Utah territory. Travis and Sandy, who know the country well from their horse trading, first refuse the Elder, having made a good chunk of money from their horse sales and wanting to enjoy their winnings. A combination of Sandy being somewhat sweet on one of the Mormon girls and outcast solidarity on the part of Travis - who discovers that horse traders like him and Sandy are only marginally more welcome in Crystal City than Mormons - leads to the pair to agree to Elder Wiggs' offer in the eleventh hour. As they set off, the Navajo tribe settled in the area turns out to be fairly friendly. The real enemies of the wagon trail are a lack of water. And eventually, a gang of wanted robbers who want to use the wagon trail to smuggle themselves out of Utah and into Arizona.

Apparently one of John Ford's personal favorites among his work. I'm not a huge Ford fan (I'm in the Hawks > Ford camp myself). This took a while to get going in spite of its runtime being short of ninety minutes, but the good news is that the second half is much better than the first half of the film. The story finds its momentum after the Navajo camp sequence. Ford regular Ben Johnson is the lead, though the two performers that leave the strongest impression are Ward Bond as Mormon Elder Wiggs and Charles Kemper as Uncle Shiloh Clegg, leader of the Clegg gang. Russel Simpson lends his stern face to a very serious Mormon with a strong distaste for profanity. Shot on location in Utah and Arizona.

 

The Heroic Trio ~ J. To (1993)

Babies are being kidnapped by an invisible woman. Wonder Woman (no, not that one) shows up to try to thwart the kidnapping and discover what secret plot is going on. The copy on the movie case describes Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, and Anita Mui teaming up as shotgun toting, kung-fu fighting heroines battling evildoers in a dystopian, noirish city. While technically that combination of words is accurate, the film delivers on none of that cool sounding premise. This film has an only occasionally coherent story and a bunch of cheesy special effects. If it leaned into the cheesiness fully, I feel it might have turned out okay, but it never commits either way leaving just a bad film. It does feature the scene the director in Irma Vep rambles about using to hire Maggie Cheung for his film.

 

My offspring has starred in several different Shakespeare plays, and so often dies. This makes me appreciate Hamlet 2, because I hate watching my kid die on stage and wish we could have sequels where she's actually alive again.

 

Good thing she’s not a soprano looking to pursue opera.

 

The Vanishing (2018)
Dir. Kristoffer Nyholm



Thomas, James and Donald are the three man crew of lighthouse keepers who are meant to relieve the current occupants for a six week rotation on the remote Flannan Isles. Thomas is a widower and a veteran of the job, James is a family man whose wife and kids depend on the money he makes during the long weeks away, whilst Donald is a young neophyte at the job and thus the least assured of this assignment. Whilst the early days at the lighthouse are spent with Thomas and James engaging in both light hazing and training for Donald, their routine is shaken when Donald finds an unconscious man adrift on their island. Also washed ashore is a chest. When Donald gets attacked by the man in the retrieval of the chest, he has to defend himself, which leads to the stranger's demise. James and Donald want to figure out what is in the chest that was so important. Thomas insists they merely keep the chest until they are relieved and then report what happened to the authorities. When James and Donald break open the chest outside of Thomas' will, it is revealed that it contains several gold bars. James and Donald see easy money and a way out of their perpetually cash-strapped existence. The older and wiser Thomas knows that other men will come looking for such a fortune and will no doubt bring trouble and violence along with them.

Drama/thriller that uses the isolated setting of a small remote island and its lighthouse to its advantage. Not quite as mad as Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse, it does mine somewhat from the same vein in the ability of the locale to allow men to spiral entirely out of control. A dramatization of the mystery of real-life disappearances. This movie tells a simple story, but it tells it well, helped by the quality of its three leads. Gerard Butler is good, I already liked Conor Swindells work in Sex Education a lot. It is however veteran actor Peter Mullan and the sad gravitas he exudes as Thomas that carries this film.

 

Spider-man: Homecoming ~ J. Watts

Following the events of Civil War, Spider-man is back in Queens waiting to be called up to the Avengers. He runs afoul of some illegal, alien weapons being sold by a crew who'd been screwed out of a contract by Tony Stark. I appreciate skipping the traditional Peter Parker backstory for this one, but the big emotional backbone of this one is Peter's desperate attempts to get Iron Man's attention. Robert Downey Jr. shows up for some half-hearted cameos. He's really the worst character, and it drags down the film. Hopefully the next ones are better with less RDJ and more Zendaya.

 

Supergirl (2026)
Dir. Craig Gillespie



Kara Zor-El, AKA Supergirl is on an interplanetary pub crawl, with just her beloved dog Krypto as companionship. She is primarily visiting worlds with red suns, which allows for alcohol to have a proper effect on her mind and body. On one of those worlds, she encounters Ruthye, a young girl whose parents and brother have been killed by a band of brigands led by a Krem. Krem killed Ruthye's family after he came to their home to steal the bladed weapons Ruthye's father forged. After reluctantly saving Ruthye once, Kara refuses the girls request to help her track down Krem and get revenge. A mission she does get roped into when Krem steals Kara's ship and seriously injures Krypto.

I don't know if superhero fatigue is a real thing with movie-going audiences, but it is increasingly so with me. Primarily in terms of the cinematic output, which now is starting to feel entirely homogenous even across all of the media companies that are churning them out. Right down to the visual style, the irreverent, tongue in cheek tone and the very shallow writing. Doesn't seem to matter much what character it is or what source material they are adapting. Milly Alcock got grief from online neckbeards, but she is definitely not the problem here and I would say she is a rather good Supergirl. Matthias Schoenaerts plays Krem, and it's unfortunate that over a dozen years into appearing in Hollywood productions, nothing he has done has matched the quality of his work in Flemish and French language cinema. Not that this was a likely opportunity for him to truly showcase his talent. I did have time for Jason Momoa's Lobo, even though I'm not sure if the cocksure act is enough to sustain a standalone movie, but he is one bright spot here as a supporting character. The Supergirl-Ruthye dynamic is another instance of the lone wolf and cub trope that has been increasingly embraced by superhero cinema since the success of Mangold's Logan. Like many of the genre tropes, it feels increasingly overused. I am not entirely sure how they ended up with Craig Gillespie to direct things, there was a time when they at least tried to give the superhero properties that features a high profile female character to female directors. I suppose he got the gig on the basis of strong female-driven character work like I, Tonya, but this is a very different kind of film. Ultimately slightly better than reviews might have you believe, the broader problem is that this type of movie is played out. At least from my perspective.

 

Basquiat ~ J. Schnabel (1996)

A biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat's life from just before his career took off to his death. It took a few viewings to get through. The beginning maybe spends too much time on the drug addiction part. Jeffrey Wright is great, but the story just has him wandering through the first half high as a kite being an ass. The second half was more interesting as the fame and celebrity eat away at him. The film has cool impressionistic moments and a great cast. I watched the black and white version which was part of a 2024 restoration.

 

Masters of the Universe (2026)
Dir. Travis Knight



Adam is the Prince of Eternia, his parents King Randor and Queen Marlena. He is trained in combat by the man at arms Duncan, but does not excel in any fighting skills at a boy, much to his father's chagrin. Among his age peers he is both pitied and bullied, and his only real friend is Teela, Duncan's daughter. One day, invaders arrive led by Skeletor, whom overwhelm Eternia's defenses and capture both the king and queen. Skeletor is after the source of Eternia's power, a sword guarded by a Sorceress, the guardian of Castle Greyskull, who uses her power to send both Adam and the sword to a different dimension. Thus it is that young Adam grows up on earth. Fifteen years have passed, and he still has not been able to return to Eternia, due to having lost the sword upon arrival on Earth. When he does retrieve in unlikely circumstances, the now adult Adam is confronted with an equally grown up Teela, who has come to Earth to retrieve him and bring him back home to a much changed Eternia, which has been ruled by Skeletor in his absence.

Whilst I did see some episodes of the original TV show as a kid, I can't say it ever was one of those things that maintained some huge level of appreciation or affection decades later. So I would have never checked this out just on the basis of nostalgia. However, more and more people online were likening this to Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in it being a charming, unlikely gem. Since I did love that movie a lot, I decided to give the He-Man adaptation a try too. And whilst it is not nearly as good as Honor Among Thieves, I can see why some liken the two. Both mine from a similar tender irreverence to the source material to create humorous and charming moments, though I would say the DnD movie succeeds more in those attempts. The two leads, Nicolas Galitzine and Camila Mendes, are fun and actually have some on-screen chemistry. And however much it pains me to admit as someone who generally dislikes him and especially in light of the recent new sexual assault accusations, Jared Leto's Skeletor is indeed hilarious. Was less enamored by Alison Brie's Evil-lyn. An actor I generally like, but she is doing like 50% more of winking at the camera in this than anyone else, which is kind of odd. Probably also around twenty minutes longer than it needs to be.

 

Total side-note, but Travis Knight's next movie is going to be Piranesi, an adaptation of the Susanna Clarke novel!

 

I think LAIKA's stop-motion aesthetic will be a cool fit for the setting.

 

Titus (1999)

With Rome's ambition served against the Goths
by legions led by great Andronicus
Rome's senate thus bestowed him Caesar's crown
which tired ancient Titus does turn down.
When Prince Saturninus picked by default
the hedonistic parties never halt.
The Queen of Gaul, ill chosen as his bride,
plots vengeance for her eldest's homicide.
Reminds of Klingon proverb oft retold -
"Revenge is a dish that is best served cold".

When your dialogue is written in four century-old stone the creativity has to come from how you present it and I just adore everything about how Titus is presented. The casting is fantastic all around, and I always love anachronistic and stylized sets and props. The main moments of modern invention are at the very beginning and very end. We start with a scene of premonition and parody where the entirety of the play is symbolically cast as a frantic and destructive child playing with action-figures. And at the end the role of Roman citizenry and that of the audience are combined and just after we emerge from the insane climax of Titus we are shown this stone-faced crowd and realize our own place within them and our complicity in what just happened. Yeah we just had nearly three hours of perversions, but you watched it all, didn't you.

The one message filmmakers construct from a Shakespeare play is deciding to stage the play in the first place. What are you saying by picking this over any other play, or something else entirely? I think the reason is the nature of the tragic flaw. In the four Great Tragedies, the problem is caused by a choice unique to the character and situation but the flaw in Titus Andronicus is so basic that it becomes a perennially useful lesson - a moment of forgiveness early on can prevent a cascade of hate and suffering later. Or that when you do something horrible kill all witnesses. Probably the former.

 

Moss Rose (1947)
Dir. Gregory Ratoff



London, at the turn of the 20th century. Rose Lynton is a chorus girl at a theater, where she is known as Belle Adair by her admirers. A fellow chorus girl, Daisy Arrow, has been seeing a wealthy gentleman, though she refuses to share his identity with Rose. Though Rose has glimpsed him a few times, both at the theater when he picks up Daisy at the end of performances as well as the boarding house both girls live. One morning, just after crossing the man in question in the corridor at her home, Rose finds Daisy's body in her room, seemingly having died a non-natural death, with a bible with a moss rose stuck in between its pages left near the bed. Suspecting the wealthy man who has quickly left the premises, she identifies him thanks to the hansom cab driver she accosts later that day: Michael Drego, a well-off and wealthy gentleman of leisure whose mother Lady Margaret is a member of the aristocracy. More pertinent information is revealed in the newspaper, as Michael is engaged to be married to Audrey Ashton, a fellow member of the gentry. Knowing that being implicated in a murder case will harm his reputation, Rose uses the knowledge of his identity and likely involvement in Daisy's murder to blackmail him. After a first attempt fails, a brush with a police inspector softens Michael up, and he agrees to pay her 500 pounds. Only, Rose wants something else: she wants to accompany him to Charmley Manor, the ancestral home of Michael's family. To realize her dreams to find out first-hand how the proverbial other half lives. With few other options to buy her silence, he agrees to allow her to accompany him back to Charmley. A decision he has trouble explaining to his fiancee. In an unlikely turn, Lady Margaret, in contrast to Audrey, warms to Rose. But the still unsolved murder of Daisy hangs over everything, especially once the police tracks down some clues back to Charmley itself.

Noirish mystery thriller with some gothic mystery sprinkled on top during the Charmley Manor sequences. Starring Peggy Cummins of Gun Crazy fame as Rose. Irishwoman Cummins at least attempts a Cockney accent, though occasionally leaning a bit too much into it. American Viktor Mature does not even try as Michael, his lack of an English accent of any sort is explained by a childhood spent primarily in Canada. Vincent Price has a supporting role as the inspector in charge of the murder inquiry. Though it is veteran stage actress Ethel Barrymore who steals the movie as Lady Margaret.

 

Singapore (1947)
Dir. John Brahm



Singapore, 1947. Among the passengers on an inbound flight is Matt Gordon. A veteran of the war, he is not a stranger to the place, but rather had lived there prior to the start of the Japanese invasion. In the weeks leading up to the fall of Singapore, he had gone through a whirlwind romance with Linda Grahame, a young American woman he meets and falls in love with. In an extended flashback, we see their romance and its tragic end: on the day they were to be wed, Linda perished in a Japanese bomber run, that destroyed the church where she was waiting for Matt. Matt himself has returned to Singapore not out of pure sentimentality for the woman he has lost. Rather, prior to fleeing Singapore himself, he had hidden 250000 dollars worth of illegal pearls he had wanted to smuggle out of the country in his hotel room. Hoping the pearls are still in their hiding place, he has returned to retrieve them. Immediately attracting the attention of deputy commissioner Hewitt, who knows him from five years prior and already suspected him of being in the illegal pearl business back then. Matt's quest for the pearls gets sidetracked when only days after his arrival, he spots Linda among the guests at a hotel, alive and well. Only when he approaches her, she does not recognize him and when he inquires with one of the hotel employees for her identity, he is informed she is in fact known as Mrs. Ann Van Leyden. It turns out Linda did survive the bombing of the church, but had suffered permanent amnesia as a result of it. During the war time years, much of which she spent in a Japanese internment camp, she met her new husband, Michael Van Leyden. Matt's priority now shifts from retrieving the precious pearls to winning back the love of his life, by attempting to restore her memories of him and their shared romance...

Panned somewhat at the time as something of a Casablanca clone, I found myself enjoying this in spite of its obvious inspirations. The weight of knowledge of a doomed city in the flashback, as Matt and Linda have their romance with the threat of the Japanese invasion ever looming in the background is powerful. The Singapore setting - actually shot entirely in California apart from some archival footage - is its own character. It is true that the screenplay gives Ava Gardner precious little of substance to do in the second half of the film, which is unfortunate. Fred MacMurray is solid enough in the lead role, without ever possessing Bogey's roguish charm.

 

Spider-man: Far From Home ~ J. Watts (2019)

Following the Infinity War/Endgame saga, Peter returns post-blip to high school in time for a class trip to Europe. Meanwhile a new superhero, Mysterion, is fighting elemental monsters and Spider-man is recruited to help. A bit better than the first of this series, but still bogged down by it's relationship to the greater Marvel-verse. Characters like Nick Fury and Maria Hill just feel wholly out of place here and are being crammed in unnecessarily. Tom Holland is fine as Spider-man, but there isn't anything really interesting going on in the story other than the European setting. Tony Stark still the somehow the worst after Endgame.

 

The Unsuspected (1947)
Dir. Michael Curtiz



After a cold open in which we see a shadowy home invader enter the study where a secretary is working late, then murdering her just as she is in the middle of a phone conversation, it is revealed that her murder was treated as a suicide, the killer having staged her body to look like death by hanging. It is a second tragedy in a short time for her employer, Victor Grandison, a radio personality who has garnered some fame and a following through his true crime radio show. Shortly before Grandison lost his secretary Roslyn to 'suicide', his ward Matilda had gone missing and was presumed death as she traveled by boat to Portugal, her vessel subsequently sunk. The house Grandison shares with Matilda and his niece Althea, is visited by a Steven Howard. Grandison does not know Steven, but Steven himself claimed he was married to Matilda, just days before her disappearance at sea. Grandison is dubious about the claims and has an acquaintance of his, a police detective, check the man's background. Most of his claims appear to be true, including the fact that Steven Howard is heir to a huge oil fortune and thus is unlikely to fabricate a fake marriage to Matilda for her inheritance. The strange tale takes a different turn when a telegram from Rio de Janeiro confirms that Matilda is alive and well, having been rescued by a Brazilian ship, and ready to board a plane home. News with implications not just for Howard, but also for Grandinson, Althea and Althea's husband Oliver, who had been engaged to be married to Matilda before Althea stole him away.

A noirish murder mystery thriller that has a lot of moving parts to begin with but all of which are resolved rather tidily by the end. Claude Rains carries much of the film as the central figure of Victor Grandinson, with most of the other major players sort of revolving around him. Casablanca's Michael Curtiz is helming here and there are little moments where he reveals the extent to which he had the juice, especially in a few clever shots that use reflections, and one memorable close-up shot. As it drives many of the decisions made in the third act, one flaw is the Steven-Matilda romance being a bit underserved, certainly in terms of explaining the extent of their mutual affection.

 

A Matter of Life and Death ~ M. Powell & E. Pressburger (1946)

A WWII RAF pilot, Peter, radios to an American base operator, June, as his plane is about to crash. He chats her up with some last words as he's about to jump from the burning plane without a parachute. He awakens on a beach the following morning miraculously alive and finds June biking home from the base. They fall in love. Unfortunately, the afterlife didn't intend for him to live and want him brought in to balance the books. Now, Peter must appeal for his right to live.

A pretty compelling fantasy romance for the most part that gets entirely bogged down in weird political rhetoric during the trial in the afterlife. There's an interesting blend of medical drama and metaphysics that leads up to the finale. Unsurprisingly for Powell and Pressburger, the set design is terrific. The escalating stairway to heaven is particularly cool. The black and white afterlife is hilariously bureaucratic. That said, the closing trial focuses on a weird pissing match between UK and US which might have made sense post-war in 1946 but is just off-putting now. It doesn't ruin the film, but definitely deflates it before the end.

 

Dr. No

Year: 1962

Platform: Criterion

Summary: MI6 agent James Bonds investigates missing agents and a strange island in Jamaica.

Rating: 8/10

I have never been big on Bond. Of the old ones I saw this and Man With The Golden Gun when I was a teenager. I've seen the Daniel Craig ones in theaters but they feel too generic at times. Casino Royale though was great when I saw it.

Connery though, is fantastic in this. You can tell it's finding its feet but it's still a compelling story. But what I love is how much of its time this was. I can picture my grandparents going to see this for instance.

 

I Love Trouble (1948)
Dir. S. Sylvan Simon



Gumshoe Stuart G. Bailey gets hired by Ralph Johnson - a self-proclaimed self-made man and local politician who came up the proverbial 'hard way' - to figure out who might be blackmailing his much younger wife. Said wife, Jane Johnson, has been receiving threatening letters, suggesting the blackmailer will reveal something dark from her past. Ralph does not believe his wife is hiding anything truly nefarious, but since he has only known her for a year and only been married to her for seven months, he needs Bailey to fill in the blanks in her life. Since Mrs. Johnson moved to Los Angeles from Portland just a year prior, Bailey travels to Portland to start his investigation there. He quickly figures out she had worked in a so called carousel, a dime-a-dance joint owned by a Keller. The place itself is long shuttered, but the man is still around. Keller has now moved on to running an illegal off the books gambling den. Bailey shows up there and isn't greeted very welcomingly by Keller's heavy, Reno. Keller himself is more forthcoming, informing the P.I. that Jane had still gone by her maiden name of Jane Breeger back when she worked for him and that she had left Portland ages ago, closer to six years, accompanying a comedian by the name of Buster Buffin to the city of Angels. Thus upon his return to Los Angeles, Bailey now has a five year gap to fill, the years Mrs. Johnson spent in Los Angeles prior to meeting Ralph Johnson. And whilst he gets some more information once he tracks down Buffin, now running a diner out in Venice Beach, he becomes increasingly aware of the fact that no one is telling him the whole truth and there seem to be unseen parties who do not want him to figure out the full story of Mrs. Johnson. One of the untrustworthy parties is an attractive young woman claiming to be Jane's estranged sister.

Very fun little detective noir. Actually an adaptation of later Maverick and Rockford Files writer Roy Huggins novel The Double Take, who himself wrote the adapted screenplay for this movie, which turned out to be his entry into Hollywood. Bailey's assistant/secretary Bix is easily a new favorite of the archetype. Mostly successfully walks the tightrope between keeping a light tone but still maintaining a level of danger for the protagonist to deal with. Also fun to see the clear throughline from Stuart Bailey to Jim Rockford. The movie features a lot of on locations shots in and around Los Angeles.

 

I reminded myself that King Lear exists today, and went looking for a non-Ran version, not realizing there were so many. But I stopped looking when I saw one featured Anthony Hopkins,



King Lear (2018)

"I am a man, more sinned against than sinning"
to salve his ego Lear must keep clinging
ever to lies that diminish his role
in ruining all that he hoped to hold
He sees the truth as he faces checkmate
but it's too late baby yeah it's too late

This version has a brilliant reinterpretation of the relationship between the elder daughters and Lear. The flattery at the beginning is not conniving and false, but a practiced ritual born from being beat down during long years living with this oppressive figure. They only give Lear what he wants to hear because they've been alive long enough to know what happens if you don't. You can see them cower whenever Lear goes at them. The two sisters come into their own slowly as they gain real power and he loses it.

When you cut so much of the play it puts a spotlight on what is kept, and one of those things is the words of the fools, the mad, and the insane. You easily appreciate George Orwell's opinion that Lear is only saying wise things when he's gone loco. The rest of the time he's full of crap.

One thing I really liked about the contemporary setting is the incongruity of these apparently modern Western citizens dealing with all the royal hullabaloo in old fashioned terms. You get these repeated moments of realizing how ridiculous it all is, but it's not like people back then were morons. We take for granted how much of what we consider logical and natural is really just style.

 

Evil Dead Burn (2026)
Dir. Sébastien Vanicek



Alice and her husband Will are celebrating Will's brother Joseph's birthday, together with Joseph and his wife Thya. Over the course of the evening, Will and Alice get into an argument, which is a regular occurrence. The inebriated Will drives away angrily, in spite of Joseph's attempts to stop him. On the drive home, he gets into an accident caused by a deadite. At Will's memorial service, Alice is greeted rather coldly by Will's parents, who never much liked their late son's French wife. Alice herself has a desire to sell the business she ran with her husband - a restaurant - and return to her father in Paris France, much to her mother-in-law Susan's chagrin. When the family gather at the old former home of Will and Joseph's late grandfather for the wake, it turns out that the deadite threat has followed them there from the funeral home, and it wants an item that was once in the possession of Will and Joseph's grandfather.

The third entry in the reboot of the Evil Dead franchise, this one is more or less a continuation of Even Dead Rise, though the threads that directly connect the two movies are rather limited and more or less bookend the new story and characters. This is one of familial discord further fueled by the deadite threat. I think I liked Evil Dead Rise better. Even though Evil Dead Burn has a more classic Evil Dead location with the creepy old house - as opposed to the apartment complex in Evil Dead Rise - I preferred the ensemble in the previous movie and I also think it succeeded more in terms of the two main Evil Dead traits: the dark humor and the inventive gore. There is also no performance quite as memorable as Alyssa Sutherland's Ellie in the previous movie. Her delivery of "I'm free now, free from all you titty-sucking parasites" is still crystal clear in my minds ear. Lead Souhela Yacoub as Alice is decent. The original trio of Raimi, Tapert and Campbell once again have producer credits on this one. The thought of my old pals getting a nice payday for this is... groovy.